001um rachel kevin kim uh where do you want us to start um we have i mean obviously we have the agenda we have the policies after the policies that were sent out attached to the agenda um you know rachel i think you you and i talked about convening the meeting i don't know if you want to start us and then we can kick it to kim or kevin on where we are with policy on this yeah i think we should just review the bullying policy as it stands i mean there's no need for if there's no need for any action that's fine but let's have the conversation and i want to get a pulse from kevin as to just what the school climate is right now so um you know i think kevin if you
002want to take it that makes all the sense in the world right so i mean that's that's a wide open one in terms of school climate as it relates to bullying um but i but i think we've you know we've talked about this quite a bit in board meetings um particularly when we first reopened our schools um and the level of um the level the the social emotional challenges that were brought back into the buildings on the hills of the pandemic um you know it's certainly some of the more serious challenges that we had uh in the fall uh we're not having thank goodness those same concerns um but our teachers and our administrators are still certainly experiencing um you know increased levels of support required for students who are still having trouble self-regulating and
003so i i think we're really just reviewing and figuring out how to support kids on the heels of the pandemic and the fact that they were out of buildings for 18 plus months particularly here in danbury and um and doing everything we can not just academically trying to get kids caught up um and accelerate learnings as we had you know emphasizing some of our goals but um the social emotional piece and behavior and self-regulation is also has been an adjustment for us and so because of that you know we've seen increases in discipline we've seen increases in suspensions we've seen increases in expulsions and so you know those are certainly some of the challenges that we're experiencing i would i would like to think as the school year continues and we get back we continue
004to get back to more normal some sense of normalcy you know academics in our curriculum will be the agenda for the day and there'll be less and less disruption in our schools i would like to think so i feel like the further we get from the beginning of the school year things are getting better but we're certainly still experiencing challenges kevin is there anything in particular with the bullying policy that you think we should address adapt modify add to take away from um look at or look at or talk about yeah i i think the the real tightening that needs to be be done is with our protocols and how we're informing families um you know whether it's initiating excellent investigation and informing families after an investigation has been held so i think some of
005those protocols um in regulations of the policy um is where the opportunity is with the policy itself i think um you know despite when it was written i think all those things still resonate and it's appropriate um the way it's written yeah i i certainly didn't see anything in it that i thought needed to come out i just wasn't sure whether anything you needed to go in do you need us to address or look at regulations to or tuning up those protocols and regulations and obviously if it's not on the agenda for tonight we can't do it tonight but we can certainly hold another meeting and put it on so the answer is yes yes yes and i say yes yes yes because one um we we are working with shipment and goodman to come
006in and provide a presentation to all of our administrators to update those regulations we just feel like they're kind of outdated and that's where our real opportunity is and i think we are looking to have them come in during our admin time in june um and so we're just waiting on confirmation um and then um again sure given that there we have not seen any updates to the policy from shipment and government arcade policies um we're seeing our opportunity truly with the regulations and having them come in make a presentation walk all the administrators through so that there's a admin council understanding of what's supposed to be happened what's supposed to happen when a family or child um shares that there's concerns about bullying how many days we have to respond to a family how
007many days we actually have to conduct the investigation and then what the reporting protocols ought to be and and that's some training that we need to to have just to make sure the system like we've all had the same training and it's been a long time since we had the training from shipment and goodman number one but two we've had quite a bit of um transitions in admin over the years uh so it's it's it's time it's time for us to just make sure we're all on the same page particularly with the increased number of um bullying cases coming up all right i'm sorry disciplinary fractions not necessarily bullying i shouldn't say bullying specifically that's like that that's excellent that's that sounds like a good plan is that some i lost you for a second
008and just so you know joe while you're trying to figure out your sound you continue to try to decide yourself as gone but we know it's you sorry you know i i really should get used to fixing that before these meetings shouldn't i uh now that my net is no longer quote unstable unquote um is that presentation something that we can be looped in on not necessarily during the presentation if it's going to be during the day and it doesn't work but even if there's written materials or whatever or or some kind of smaller version of it even if kim picks it up and gives it to us i think it'd be helpful if we got some of that as well yeah i appreciate the ask joe i think this policy in particular the regulations
009associated with this one are just too important not to share um and frankly um typically in districts they'll have if you want to report bullying you want to report bullying anonymously um there might be on some just some district websites there might be an opportunity to report that and the forms are available on the website um so that's my long way of saying absolutely um because we want we don't want to start doing any of those things until the board is aware of um our feedback from from shipment so absolutely um and you know i if there are more questions um obviously kim will be there and kelly will be there we can provide the feedback uh to the board any members of the committee rachel anybody have any questions or thoughts or concerns about
010what we just heard it sounds like a plan yeah i i i guess i should have put just disap you know all of our discipline policies up here and not just the bullying but um [Music] um how are families again i mean we hear it all the time in while we sit in expulsion hearings but how are families notified of you know our our policies around discipline so if it's it's my understanding in years past what we've done is the policy is sent to families high school is a handbook middle schools there's a handbook and kind of the expectations the scent is part of our opening packet in these last two years some of those things may have not been sent out consistently so that's something we're going to have to make sure is happening
011across all of our schools thank you anybody else's questions michelle did i see your hand yeah yes thank you and then after that after they have the actual binder um what is the process if there is an incident what how does that actually escalate in other words what is the chain of command if somebody has some sort of an issue where there's suspension or expulsion or whatever is involved you know what is that process that chain of command so our if there's a suspension um at the school level there is a notification of families um sent from the principal's office um and so it might be the principal of designee so if it's a suspension there is a suspension letter and call typically associated with the suspension if the student is going to be out
012for a significant period of time there are arrangements made to provide work while the student is not in school and then of course if it's an expulsion is in a different there's an additional layer of conversation and scheduling for the actual expulsion hearing but that's kind of typically if there's a discipline involved that requires a suspension um there's an official notification that comes from the school to the family and a discussion also takes place i guess i'm kind of really digging down deep like as soon as the incident occurs and the child is in trouble and is sent to the principal's office sorry um what happens then is the parent called immediately or is somebody else called at that time are they called before the parent when does the parent actually in the chain of
013command uh notified i i think it's situational right and so if you know and i think it also depends on the nature of the incident i mean we have some cases where a student can be removed from class and sent to the principal's office and the teacher can um get them back in the class without without any incident and it doesn't require a school discipline at all um you know the student may not just need to be helped to get back in classroom um if it's a discipline it should require out of school time um you know a number of things can happen but an investigation has to happen it really depends on the incident right and so yes okay i'm sorry i guess i'm speaking more in the lines of possible suspension or in
014the end suspension so if you have a child that there's an issue and it's warrants suspension what is the product what is the protocol in that regard when is the parent brought in who is brought in and like if a phone call to the parents requested is that um acknowledged immediately is that put on hold what is the process or is this the student that we need to define right so the student no it's pretty well defined in our schools so okay the student is not um assigned a suspension without a notification to the family um and so that will happen with a phone call and a follow-up conversation with the family walking the the parents through um you know whatever the infraction was and then formally there's a letter that typically follows to follow
015that conversation but there is a communication that takes place to confirm that the child is not expected back in school for a certain amount of days um and then of course there needs to be a rational why that that decision has been made so the principal assistant principal is having that conversation with the family um you know regarding that incident it's only the principal and the parent that's in that discussion or their principal principle or designate principle or designate principle or assistance only only those three there's no outside um help or social or no there's no other service or it's just not that is part of that right not as part of that conversation but notifying the family um that the child is being suspended now they certainly could be one as part of the
016re-entry or when it's time to talk about retribution um or services might be required um certainly those things will take place oftentimes but just in terms of the process in which the suspension and notification happens um it's principle assistant principle and we we try to distance like um our pps staff from that conversation because we don't want to involve you know the guidance counselor who's supposed to be really objective in this process and we don't want to include them in the disciplinary conversations so that the student so that the student continue to access the counselor as a resource without you know without any bad feelings about what may have happened in school right no i completely agree with what everyone is saying here about actually focusing in on this issue i just feel that like
017do we know what the like increase and the percentage like let's say from the last five years past to where we are now do we have an idea of what that increase is that we've at least observed where obviously we do need to address it i agree with everyone here on that matter i'm just wondering like you know have we taken that into account and to kind of get an idea of where we are right and i don't have the exact numbers in front of me but we've we've definitely had an increase in suspensions this year um and an increase in expulsions this year um i frankly i think and i think it's kind of well chronicled in our budgeting for the 21-22 school year we anticipated increases in um behavior challenges this year which
018is why we asked for additional pps staff and and deans for the high school to kick off the school year um and you know and and i think we needed that plus more quite frankly um yeah i think i think that's excellent absolutely i was just i'm just i guess trying to say that i hope that that area of what all that means obviously we take into account what's occurred and why we're here but that it's kind of really clearly defined for the parent or the child you know the student himself to realize you know where are those boundaries what are we looking at you know what is that process you know where are you in that you know when you're kind of getting um kind of maybe getting into trouble a little bit more
019than you may have in the past kind of thing so i'm just you know i'm just asking for that reason and i agree with everyone i think definitely needs to be addressed thank you kate thanks joe um i just wanted to say like i you know i certainly think it's important for us to to look at these policies um particularly since we're seeing an increase you know in things going on in the schools um but i would just point out that you know as a board uh all we can do is set the policy um and that you know to some degree this is falling to our administration to deal with um and you know they have repeatedly asked for the funding to try to bring forward more mental health supports both at the the
020local level and at the state level i know that there's a bill going through the education committee right now at the state level that is specifically around mental health support for students and you know that's the kind of thing that as a community here in communities across connecticut um we really need to try to support and push forward so that we can get the kind of funding that's going to make it possible for us to put support staff in schools to deal with you know the conflicts that may be happening there um you know i i think there's only so much we can do through policy unfortunately thanks louisa bridget um rachel do you have anything else on this topic bridget if you were talking you weren't muted okay uh rachel you have anything else
021on the this one no i just just to add like you know the board is really our purview is policy it's not so much regulation i mean that would be you know uh under kevin's purview and i mean you could certainly give us information so that we're aware of it but our job is like that that policy level oh yeah no no my question was just give us the information just in case we have to like impact policy or something the regs are certainly within kevin's purview for sure right um wait yeah no that's getting way too far to the weeds for um okay i i think that's it on this one um the next one on the agenda was um i believe public speaking at the board meetings um something i realized this evening
022because kate pointed it out for me we have a public speaking policy it's 39 93 25.31 um 93.25 actually talks about it too um can everybody hear me or am i locked up again you're good i'm good okay um believe it or not um our our meeting our conduct of the meeting section of the of our bylaws actually limits public speaking to 30 minutes obviously we can extend it if we want to the irony is that's actually not in the public speaking section of the of the minutes or of the bylaws which which i thought was interesting kate pointed out i'm like you know probably makes sense to have me all in one spot but um rachel did you want to start off on that because you would you and i had talked about it
023at least once before um just about the the maximum time frame no no just the policy in general but in general so what i'd like the committee to consider is a couple things you know we had um people from other towns come speak to our meeting which we don't have it's not addressed in our bylaws so just something to consider is limiting it to danbury residents in immediate family members directly connected to a danbury student or a danbury public school employee regardless of where they live i think they they should be able to come to us but i mean that's just my my thought on that um i know city council limits it to danbury residents only um so we could certainly do that but then you're kind of you're limiting it to you know
024the folks who attend magnet school and employees who live out of town um so that's that's one the other thing um to discuss is uh uh what would say i lost my train of thought with that one while you put the train back on the rails i can actually touch on that ironically our existing bylaws kind of aren't there they're kind of awkwardly and badly worded um it kind of indicates a limitation to people who live in danbury it it actually says the board of education considers it important of the viewpoints of citizens of danbury and school staff now citizens is absolutely positively the wrong term you're not a citizen of a state or a municipality you're a resident um did i lock up again okay good um so we what we probably should do
025and i agree with you wholeheartedly rachel is probably be a little bit more specific for two reasons the way it's written here i mean citizens is again the wrong term it's certainly not explicit enough in in if read the wrong way you're absolutely right it would limit the ability of not just parents of students at the magnet school but let's say the non you know the the divorce family where the where one parent lives in bethlehem one parent lives in denver um so it probably should be a little bit more specific the other problem too is this it could be interpreted here to limit school staff to danbury and obviously we don't want to do that um we should i think the logical the logical revision would be to have the viewpoints of something to
026the effect of you know residents of the city of danbury students or parents students you know who attend danbury schools the parent of a danbury school student um gambling taxpayer um and any staff or employee any member of the staff or employee i don't want to limit it obviously to teachers we have a janitor wants to come and speak we have a lunch lady who wants to come and speak which is almost certainly the wrong term i just used but um you know there could i mean we have how many county employees do we have 1500 employees um and more if you include the bus drivers i think we want to make sure that we click we're clear that any staff or um employee can come and speak um and and the city and this
027is actually would be a little bit broader than the the council's um criteria because the city account the city council limits it to residents and taxpayers because you can actually be a damper taxpayer without being a resident uh terry i like your list but people who work here uh would that also include their family coming to talk or just the people who work it's an intro it's an interesting question i hadn't thought about it i mean just throwing it out there i understand no no it's it's it's an it's an interesting question i i wouldn't think of an employee's immediate family but i suppose there could be a situation that may be rare enough that we can kind of leave it in the chair's discretion and the chair always has the discretion to recognize anybody
028um for sure so you know but it's i mean it's a really interesting question i know that it would come it would come up a lot but it's certainly something that could come up for sure um but i like your list um and like i said it's a little broader than the city who limits it to taxpayers and residents i think we need to be a little broader because we need to include our all of our employees i think we need to include the parents of our magnet school kids and any parent who doesn't happen to live in danbury but as a child goes to danbury schools yeah that's a good point thoughts kate louisa michelle michelle i do so um what about people that fall within the district like for instance so they're speaking
029a lot of talk about open choice open choice would allow other towns to actually um interact with danbury so how is it that would be handled um should that actually be implemented or not whatever the case is because i know with zoning we take in all the other um local towns um opinions surveys into the overall you know um solution i guess both same as we did when we were looking at um several of the of the um charts and slides that we've been seeing throughout the last year of the board of ed so would that be the case now what if that is would that limit that any exchange with any parent or family that interacts with danbury even though they are not a taxpayer would that be also included well if you have
030a student who you know using fairfield for example if you have a new fairfield student who's coming to danbury in open choice obviously they'd be the parent of a danbury school school school student for sure um [Music] a general a general member of the population of new fairfield well no i guess sorry i i i'm trying to make sure i understand the question um are you speaking about somebody specifically with a student here under open choice or just the general person who lives in one of those towns it's not here yet if the conversation isn't on the table but it's clearly in the in the area so for us to implement a policy like this could really hinder part of the 24th district as well as other surrounding neighborhoods that actually may be implement you
031know um brought into this process so i want to know before we make a decision like that and we know that there's other um discussions being had i don't want to limit this board so that can't be addressed later unless there's a policy committee or something like that we can always go back and modify it we always go back and modify policy again something's always obviously in the discretion of the chair but then again there's 87 000 people roughly 88 000 people who live in the city of danbury frankly if i were one of them and i am one of them i would be very annoyed if the board were acting they acting to do something based on the opinion of somebody who lives in new fairfield who doesn't have a student who goes to
032danbury schools we should be taking into consideration the opinions of people who live in danbury whose students go here whose children go here who work here who pay taxes in danbury not really the opinions of people who live in other towns that don't have a connection to damari or our schools like that now obviously there is an interesting issue with open choice we're not here yet that's not i mean no town is no town has agreed to join us yet maybe that's something we need to address when and if that when when we get to that point another town agrees maybe we look at it but in the absence of it i think that should be something that's incorporated somehow that it is an option or that it somehow can be addressed because we would
033hate to close the barn doors and then already know that there is stuff coming in that we won't be able to address because maybe we've tied our hands um on the matter we always have the power to come back and and modify apologies sometimes it takes a while to find the time and the calendar those issues so we it's just something that i feel that you know um based on the fact that i'm looking at our my district alone that issue is um and it goes across the board it's important to all three and they're all your your current district in your current district in relation to this job is the city of denver and it is it's i'm in i'm in the 138th ward and i'm telling you now that this is a discussion
034that's coming up for danbury public schools from the guidance from cave and our attorney there's several things happening so i just want to make it clear that um i wouldn't want to necessarily vote on current changes to the policy based on a certain lens when we know that there is more surrounding the issue that's all yeah no it's understood i think the purpose of this is to make sure that we're hearing from people with an actual connection to the danbury public schools not a hypothetical connection to the damn race public schools but you know if it went to town in budgets and in every aspect so we should prepare when we are writing our policy to meet the needs of today and the future possibly agreed and our concerns should be the concerns of the
035citizens of damberry not the residents of they are new fairfield or bethel or brookfield no you have two others yeah i'm sorry people with their hands up yeah i i i see kate i see bridgette let me just let me finish my last comment let me just finish my last comment if if the implementation of open choices being had in danbury as one of its models locations and it's something that the danbury board that the danbury board of the public schools should be as we are in line with the five programs for literacy and everything else the building out and overcrowding but you know all those other options this also is one just as rachel has pointed out bullying and i agree with kevin on the social emotional i mean there's a lot of aspects
036to be considered and we're forward thinking this would be one of them thank you kate thank you uh so a couple things about the open choice piece um one uh i the other you know area of residents of the other areas that that we might potentially be sending children to have to opt in so that's a responsibility of those individual municipality boards to make that decision and to get feedback from their communities about that participation two if you decide that you want your child to participate in this program you have to opt in to have your child participate in it so somebody sending a child from our district to another district has to make that decision on their own and then their their child is a part of that other school district at that point
037and now they're interacting with that school board to express concerns that they might be experiencing or problems they might be dealing with um so i think you know we just you know we have a mechanism here and i think you know when you talk about the magnet school for example where you have kids coming from other districts into our district to come to school here i think we need to be careful about how we freeze the policy here so that we make sure that those parents and those those guardians are included so that they can come to us when they have uh an issue with their student or with with something going on with the school system so i hear what you're saying michelle but i just think you know for the for the program
038we're talking about and for our responsibility as a board here in danbury um you know our concern has to be with danbury schools and with danbury students and feedback from uh folks who are part of that community whether they are living in the bounds of danbury or whether they're directly you know they're outside of the bounds of danbury but it has to be a direct connection to our school system because that's our function so um i think i i i michelle i had other people with hands up um bridgette kim i think you were were you looking at something here too i was um i was just gonna say i i think what i would urge you to to stay take a step back and think about what you're hoping to achieve with this policy
039because um you know we haven't had a lot of experience with people from other districts coming in or other cities until we had this conversation about the masks and the last meetings i think when it really came up and i think you know this is not the only forum in which someone can express an opinion about something the board's doing and there's always people who write letters we do surveys so i think that part of what this policy is designed to do is to give you a flavor of what the community is thinking at a given time but to do it in a manner that is organized so as not to overwhelm your meetings and if there are certain topics specific things like open choice there is always the opportunity to make a content specific
040call for opinion um and so you know the chair could post you know we would be interested in hearing feedback about open choice at this meeting and and modify what rules you have for public comment i think the one thing that i would urge is that as you think about whether this is really a mechanism for controlling kind of the course of your meetings and hearing in a measured way some some opinions to think a little bit broadly about how you write the rules so that you are not always changing them or deciding not to enforce them this time but enforce them that time because that's almost worse um and so you want it to be something that you feel like the chair can kind of consistently um provide the guidelines without um putting her
041in this case her in a position to have to make more exceptions than there are other rules those are kind of my general thoughts about this yeah that's that's true these are certainly not things we can always go back and modify but you don't want to do it every 15 minutes for sure kim wells said thank you that's exactly what my intention was thank you so much for making that very clear and and that and that's it it's a really good point that the we can always solicit opinion or comment from whomever we want you know there's a policy a general policy the chair obviously always has the ability to solicit beyond that or by the way or just allow any comment with discretion in the chair at a meeting anyway and just anyway usually
042it won't matter because as kim noted this is not something that happens regularly but it's certainly something we want to have you know be prepared yeah and art and here's the thing arguably the existing bylaws already say somebody who lives in for example brookfield isn't somebody that we're looking for comment from they already say that kind of what we're really talking about here is just being a little bit more clearer and a little bit more specific because it says citizens of danbury anyway which obviously implies people who live here i also think too that it's very important to have this conversation because these things come up as you know on the spur of the moment and so you're often in a situation where you're like right and not so much in where the person's from
043but if somebody starts talking about an employee you know we have pretty clear prescriptions about that or if they start talking about their student and and sometimes you're sort of a step behind in trying to control the dialogue so this is an important conversation i think it becomes very hard to like react without being rude right exactly um bridgette did you have anything i i couldn't so i i think a lot of my points are already covered but it seems the conversation is really just about inclusivity and equity in being making sure that we're hearing all the voices that are appropriate for us to hear and that we're not stifling other people who have to have you know the people who should be part of the conversation that we're making time for them because they
044are the ones who students go here who teach in our schools so you know i i appreciate everything that kim and and had to say i think that sums it up but um i think that clarity is important too and so you know taking a look at those bylaws um i'm not sure when the last time we've we've had a bylaw revision maybe kim you could speak to that that's a whole different world of of conversation for bylaw uh revision and maybe that's something we need to think about not just as one simple piece but as as a piece of a hole and so that takes it in in a whole different direction um but you know to michelle's point having these and and and kim's and kate's having these conversations about inclusivity and and
045equity uh just helped clarify so that when it does come up we're we're ready um and and kim i would just be interested just just out of curiosity at this moment uh when we had when was the last time we did a big law review well funny to say that yeah and we haven't done it since i've been here no we we we reviewed our bylaws just recently well this board policy is 2008. we we reviewed all of the bylaws um as part of the 2019 um in 2019 um every single one because the poor committee um actually it was entertaining for me because you can only imagine how rich the discussions were um but before we created the policy the bylaw manual for the board um each one actually was revisited by the board
046at that time in the subcommittee of the the policy committee at that time so uh teresa you're right some some of those policies actually the the the approval date has not changed because there was no action on them right in cases where those dates have changed it's because the committee actually made adjustments to them so can i can make one more comment so that that's wonderful you know if we've had a bylaw review in 2019 then we are up to date we are you know taking a look at policies by themselves so that's a really healthy thing and and i think that speaks well of the district that uh we've done this kind of work um and i i did the royal we but i wasn't involved in any kind of way so i'm impressed
047that you guys did all of that works that's a lot um so changing small pieces of the bylaw um is complicated and uh maybe uh maybe spending a little bit of time in rewriting the section joe that you were talking about um is is something that we could do as a group uh just so that we do have that kind of clarity and to michelle's point that equity just just wait we the the general policy review that rachel's led for the last nine or three four years we will be starting that up again soon where we get to look at whole chunks of whole policies all in one shot um the last two meetings have been rare most of them will not be nearly this entertaining um we can certainly look at this i can
048certainly draft put together work with kim to put together some clarifying language for the next policy committee meeting if that's the pleasure of the committee that we can look at and maybe do some clarify clarifying here because again arguably this already does what we're talking about clarifying and already limits it to people in gamer now one issue that i didn't even thought about rachel had actually told me about what some staff don't necessarily feel comfortable coming and commenting at a meeting because they don't live in denver now this does say school staff but clarifying and making it making it sure that the people who work for the district know they can come to a board meeting i think also has a lot of merit too because we certainly don't want them not to come so
049because they happen to live in new town i'm wondering if um as part of when we read the expectations for public participation that first line is tweaked and who the board actually does that does invite in to come talk and speak and so whatever language um uh the committee lands on we make sure it's included in that first sentence hey the board welcomes right and then we outline him be very clear who we welcome in of course that's right um bulleted well this is the reason why maybe tonight's not tonight to amend our bylaws on the fly because ironically kevin that's a really good idea i hadn't thought about um what we read at the beginning of our meetings is actually in a bylaw it's in a different one it's in 9325 which is the
050conduct of the meeting by law the irony of course is that's where the 30-minute time limit on public public participation exists not in public participation um now that's okay you read them together and you can you know as kim would as kim will laugh when i say this you can read them harmoniously um but yeah they know we're looking at that that opening sentence that italicized sentence at the beginning of probably the public address bylaw probably makes a lot of sense to this way we make them consistent but we can certainly so which one you're gonna change which one are you looking at to change it it's not a lot of change terry it's if you were to look at 93 25.31 it's on page it says page 35 at the bottom of the page
051yeah i've got like what you were i'll get to that in a sec but if all i'm talking about is when you see viewpoints of in the first sentence just making citizens that longer that longer list of people that's all okay no if you go back to page if you go back to page 31 in that packet yes kim i was going to say you know at the last meeting i think it was last meeting you had someone made a comment asking if you would continue the email comments which goes i think that was the other thing rachel forgot about people feeling uncomfortable and you know you might want to talk about whether you want to amend the policy to do that yeah that that was the other thing that you did off the rails
052neither neither could i and i knew you wanted to talk about i knew there was something else yes that's exactly um to put a pin on this one terry if you look at um on page 31 it's 9325 if you look at where it says public address there's that italicized sentence that comes right after the words public address that's the sentence we read off of our agenda at the beginning of every meeting on public comment i think that's the one kevin was talking about maybe tweaking to make consistent with whatever we do to the public speaking uh policy thank you rachel um email comments emailed comments so it's come up a couple times i'm gonna be honest with you and and be very um clear in how i feel i'm not a huge fan of
053the emails because first for several reasons email could be from anyone anywhere um you know we're talking about limiting in-person public participation to you know but this could be from anyone i mean we could ask for a na your full name and and physical home address in the email um so it just it it just further makes it very complicated in that sense but and then the other thing is the public has access to us via email all the time they can email us any at any time the full board our email addresses are on the district website so and and i also feel that behind a computer gives people um a different sense of i don't know what the right word is courage um you know and and then you run into like well
054how does how do you present how do you limit the time you know do you limit time when you read it out loud in a meeting it just becomes very complicated so that's my thought on that but i i didn't want the decision to be made in a vacuum so i'd love the committee to have the discussion and i'd like to hear your your feedback on that terry and then bridgette just because those are that said the order i saw your hands i i was thinking uh maybe one way would be have a form uh for uh email comments to fill out the name rank serial number and explanation that type of thing uh just have it all so they have to all fields need to be populated just a suggestion it's an interesting way
055to do it bridgette so i i i see what rachel is saying about the complexity of accepting uh commentary from people that we cannot see or interact with um and don't know for sure are in the district but i'd like to just throw out that this is a complicated district where parents work two jobs and some people have accessibility and mobility issues who ends in other issues that might make the attendance at a meeting rather challenging and so email is a an easy way or a a fair way uh for people who have challenges uh in attendance to get their point across and and i'd hate to see it go away because i'd like to make sure that we are as fair and as transparent um and as possible and so having that email option
056in in a way maybe as terry suggested in a very you know in a different kind of format maybe in a formalized manner um makes it fair uh across the district and um i know that we're all trying to to get to that place so that we're hearing the voices and we're making sure that people are part of the discussion and i don't want to take necessarily take email away because i feel like if we did that we might create a stumbling block to people whose voices should be part of the conversation so that's my two cents thank you michelle i saw your hand yeah i saw you goodness oh my goodness sorry i lost you there you go zoom users back um sorry i um i agree because there are certain people that don't
057even speak english and there can type out their email it will translate perhaps they can have another family member convey their messages so i think email as we are preparing it seems our whole curriculum around technology is clearly something that is used every day so i think that would just be a sense of the times maybe we can implement some way of you know taking the weight off of whoever that individual is is getting all that additional work from and you know kind of distribute it somehow figure that out or maybe kevin can but i think it is important to keep that open somehow in parent square or whatever we were initially discussing thank you kate thank you i concur i concur that you know this isn't this is for me is an equity issue
058um but i i do like terry's idea if you did something through like a google forms you know where folks had to fill out you know name rank and serial number but then also you could limit the size of the field where they're providing comments so that to rachel's point you know the person who's reading these aloud you know doesn't have to spend five minutes reading that out loud and it sort of you know puts put some level of um cap on you know the feedback that we're getting um i i think it might be also important to consider that um you know we're not going to read anything that has inappropriate content in it um because i don't think you know that's something i think we should explicitly you know state as part of
059this um thank you kate um my two cents and i kind of i i i agree with a lot of what rachel just said about some of the issues we've had and and for bridget michelle terry these are some of the issues rachel was just identifying some issues we had last year uh number one there was no way to know who some of the people were and there were emails and i think there was one this year as well but there were emails that just smelled like they weren't really from anybody who was local um more importantly there were also instances where we were being done with what were clearly form emails where you get the same email from seven different people you know or three different people would send the same exact email in
060and our secretary's reading or our minutes or our functional secretaries and sitting there reading three emails that say exactly the same thing at a meeting um but i also agree there there's a certain benefit to being able to email especially if you can't physically get there or you don't speak the language i actually honestly i didn't even thought of that um that's that's definitely a concern maybe maybe part of the solution is as terry said you're creating a form the other the other part of the solution may be this these are written comments we don't need to read them in a meeting they can be circulated to us as members in advance of the meeting and they could certainly be appended to and made a part of our minutes so that that they are public
061comments they don't necessarily need to be read more importantly reading them at the meeting we had emails during the last two years that were truncated that weren't read in full because it would take longer than 30 minutes to read them a couple of them probably would have taken five or six minutes to read so that may be someplace where we land where instead of we we allow the comment to come in by email but instead of reading them at the meeting we distribute them to all of us and make them part of our minutes and this way we all get the emails we get to read them we get to go back and reflect on them rather than just hearing them in a meeting and letting it go out you know go out to the
062ether after we heard it terry um and we could limit so many words in the description of the of the comment uh and we can also uh do the you know i'm not a computer uh you know recapture yep yeah that type of thing uh i think that would help i'm sure uh and have a a spanish form english and spanish form or put in portuguese uh so whatever they feel comfortable and then it gets translated to english for us you know just throwing it out there yeah yeah i mean those those things get it those would all work either whether we're reading them or whether we're getting them in print because sometimes i think i'd almost rather get them physical emails so i can actually like sit there and read them rather than just
063hear them in a meeting while we're you know trying to do other business um is this something where we think we need a policy or maybe we should draft some kind of policy rachel for consideration at the next policy meeting um what do you think um i ask for your opinion both because you're the past policy chair and our chair yeah yeah i think if you if you i don't know if it warrants a policy i mean i would refer to kim on this i mean we could put something in you know our public participation policy but maybe it doesn't warrant a policy true yeah we can always do everything we want by practicing robert's rules kim yeah no i i agree you know and i'm wondering are there regulations i haven't looked at that
064to see if there's anything else supporting that we can kind of tweak a little bit i mean again i think going to i try to always think about what's the purpose of the rule or the policy and if it's that you know it's it's equity and quotable access as bridget's talking with people that can't physically get to a meeting what are we trying to accomplish and so you i think you can tweak a regulation that says if there are alternative means which with which people would like to communicate with the board here's one way or something like that um and and then obviously within your discretion as the chair um you could or could not i suppose read them at a meeting if you chose to um you know i i just i i think
065it's important to honor the inquiry with some kind of a a forum for folks that are looking for an alternative way than coming to the meeting but i think a regulation would do that so that you would be a little bit more nimble so bylaws don't necessarily have regulations well wouldn't this be with the is there not a public i thought there was a public policy i mean i thought that would you you could do it as a regulation to the public speaking policy right exactly thank you we could work with of the public speaking policy right because we've got these kind of scattered across these documents right so you could link it to one of those policies and some of the stuff here can just as a simple matter of parliamentary procedure could be
066some of it could be the discretion the chair or just a vote of the membership in other words if we had everything distributed before the meeting and there were five emails that are distributed somebody could make a motion i move we waive reading of the emails and make them part of the minutes and just vote on it yeah that's the other the other so i mean i just want to make sure i'm following i if we are looking to adopt email public participation or electronic public participation i'm not sure email would be the best way to do this and i'll share some thoughts in a second but if if it's an electronic public participation it it seems to me that should be included in the policy and then we would come up with a form
067that would be acceptable by the board to receive this information um and then i mean that's just my initial thoughts anyway after hearing the dialogue carrie also when we get a comment do does it should we require that we respond or just the acknowledgement that it was received uh i think there should be some sort of feedback um that it doesn't go into the you know the realm of the never never land generally speaking general comments to the board address that we we've used for the last couple years when we were meeting remotely there may have been an acknowledgement that that the email was received but generally we don't much like the comments at the meetings we don't generally respond directly to them um i mean in theory we can but generally we don't emails
068obviously to our email and our email addresses we we all respond however we all respond sometimes i was you know there are there are emails i respond to thank you for your email there's other ones i respond a little bit more detailed some i probably won't answer at all but um generally speaking the general emails we got in the general comment email we didn't necessarily respond certainly in any detail um and that email address that we were using for comments was a on the fly thing to accommodate public comment during our remote meetings kevin raises a very good point this is maybe this isn't so much an email issue as electronic comment which may be a different format than email kim i'm sorry you had your hand up i i just i i'm sitting here
069kind of listening to discussion and i'm i'm wondering and i'm spitballing a little bit here but i'm wondering if there isn't a different vehicle for people who can't get to a meeting to express a concern to the board like we we mentioned a little while ago in this meeting about you can always email but and i'm thinking and this may be a terrible idea but i'm thinking about like a not really like a a bulletin board like an electronic bulletin border some other vehicle that's not part of the do we incorporate it into the minutes do we read it at a meeting where we could meet bridget's goal of making sure that people's voices are heard across all sectors by you but it may not be in the meeting context i don't know if that
070makes any sense i'm kind of making it up as i'm going along here but like parent square if it had its own kind of area that you could go to so like is that what you mean something like that i i think michelle if we're talking about public participation we could certainly put together some type of survey where our families and you know parent participants if they're interested in submitting um submitting comments they can include their name their email address we can match it automatically if they're an employee or a parent in this community um and you know we there may be some folks who don't necessarily fit in there but if they're connected to our system those emails those emails will match one way or the other but we've certainly had enough experience in
071this district with google forms or other surveys and we can set that up on our website and as an extension of the board agenda they can click on that and public participation can be submitted in that form we can have you know they could be three or they could be 30. um and we can all aggregate them we can have a record of them we can have their email address in there their first name last name to some of the points that teresa had raised earlier um and we can limit the comment section right we can limit the number of words that can be included in there to make sure it doesn't last more than three minutes so i i think we could develop a system you know pretty easily um and kind of direct
072families and people who want to participate um through some type of form so not not terribly different from the parent square but at least it would be a structure in which folks could participate that's great i think that's great yeah sounds good i think it would help with uh community relations as well and kate i think um it's kevin you you had an interesting point maybe maybe we need to look at whether something like this should go towards our policy um the good thing is we're not amending that policy tonight we have to look at it for another policy meeting uh maybe this is something we look at to deal with that pause because it's the same policy we'd be amending um so maybe this is something we look at in in connection with that
073as well um we you know work on some language um and it made maybe it's possible that somebody else has a policy that we can look at and crib off of or use as a template but i i like the notion of some kind of electronic comment more than just a blanket email address here all the world please email to this address because right right rachel has a really good point there were emails that really looked i'm curious let's just leave it curious i'm sure i mean we got and we got into our personal emails this way our board emails as well they were curious yeah to say the least i think we all received them oh yeah oh yeah i'm not even talking recently i'm talking the last two years um you know i
074actually ironically the last run of stuff we had as much controversy as there was i didn't see that many that there that i thought were really curious that were like really oddly like you know not real or not out of nowhere most of those i think most of those i think we're like real people who are here um but yeah maybe it's something we we we um play uh do some word smithing on and drafting into the existing policy um maybe it's just the next sentence of the last paragraph or as kim suggests maybe just have it as a vehicle i mean we're redoing our website anyway maybe in that board member portion of the new website there's a here click here to send you know to write to your board of education yeah and
075it's not even part of this yeah yeah you know possibly couple it from decoupler from a meeting so people don't think they're limited to commenting related to a meeting right well that's true yeah sounds good making works yeah and possibly if we develop we could maybe begin exchanging you know but at least start it off that way i think that's great yeah and i think putting it on the website is a great idea rachel that's an accessibility thing you know um yeah if people are looking us up they'll see hey there's a comment section yeah well but i i like that notion actually the the combination of rachel's idea related to kim's decouple it almost decouple it from the meaning so it's not so much comments in a board related to a meeting or related
076or what people would assume is related to an agenda but just make it just make it comment to us period joe cara joe cara has extensive um experience with surveys in a district and she she might also have some some ideas here as well we can lend on her expertise here works for me i do think that there's ways to create a form a google form where you're forced to fill out the first five or six sec sections it does not let you advance unless you complete those pieces there's also a way to create an add-on so you can actually upload identification you can snap a picture of your driver's license or some other type of photo id that might indicate you know with where you're from um and i also believe that there's a
077way to do voice notes as well so even if a person uh felt it difficult to actually type in a paragraph um that you can load in a voice note and upload it the same way that you can upload a driver's license and then just hit the send button but i can certainly play around with it and see um different ways that we can configure it but there's ways to kind of at least flesh out a minimum amount of information that would kind of validate who a person is so in other words terry your idea is possible and karen knows how to do it good job i'm sorry yes michelle yes um the only part that i think and i haven't really thought it through in all of the but when i first heard the
078comment about the driver's license i just think a lot of people would be apprehensive um for whatever reason they might have they are in the school system whatever whatever their background is whatever is going on in their life i might i think that might actually stifle them a little bit um or the community i don't know what everybody else's thoughts are but that was just like the first kind of no i i agree it's a fair point yeah we don't want to create a process that's going to suggest we're going to create more barriers to the process so yeah that's that that's a that's a very fair point it also would impact people that don't have one more people that are going through something that you know or just don't have a driver's license yeah
079or you know whatever you know yeah i guess the the i guess the point is that it i think we can program it the way anyway that's and i think the comment was more i think kara's comment was more i tried try to do something to honor the notion that they're they're connected to the district and i think kevin had a good point before we may be able to email match them now because basically just about every parent has an email address in the system uh terry uh students uh some of them won't have an id and if we're going to be accepting comments from students as well but they all have a student they all have a student email yeah a student id number an employee really in elementary school or i mean uh
080elementary school too elementary school my son my son's on google docs all the time and he's in fourth grade oh yeah what they could do by the way what they learned how to do in a computer in the last two years is absolutely astounding yeah um you know it worked a lot um doesn't mean they don't complain about their ixo homework for kids and takes right gibson yep you got it um anybody have anybody else do we have anything else we need to address this evening it's an excellent question i'm about to go to my kitchen and figure out right now um everybody have a wonderful entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second second made by kate seconded by terry uh all those in favor hi hi eyes have it