001all please stand i pledge allegiance with liberty and justice here michelle's aloha here kate hannah here gladys cooper absent lauren daley here joe silva here catherine ashton here albert russo here william here how would you please read the public participation script the board welcomes public participation and asks that communications be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about the board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system danbury public schools is temporarily pausing in personal public participation in board meetings as we collectively work through social distancing techniques to prevent the spread of code in 19 in our school community the nanbury board of
002education invites members of the public who are residents of the town to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore eoe dameron.k12.ct.us thank you so much this message is from john smith good evening my name is john smith and i'm a danbury resident my question statement for the board meeting on wednesday night january 26 22 is as follows good evening board members and superintendent wilson at the last board meeting i asked the board to respond to my question regarding the allowance of students and schools get staff into school buildings during the week and yet not allow those same people in the public in general into board meetings this is the second board meeting now this year for the public has not been allowed in person i have not
003heard a response if you state that you are collectively working through social justice and test techniques to prevent the spread of cognitive in our school community then why are you allowing students and staff to go into overcrowded school buildings where there's complete lack of social distancing and substandard approach to mitigation as this virus i also have not heard a response regarding visitation by your board members into our school's cafeterias where my understanding is that in these locations in our schools there's near complete absence of social distance in the mitigation i say all of this as my friend who works in the neighborhood public schools has reported to me that she has not adequately provided with n95 masks as a source of mitigation she should be getting a new one every day as they are now
004meant to be used after a 24 hour period with clear guidance out now from cbc regarding the power of that 95 masters against the virus it tells me that there isn't a collective push not only at the andrew but by other super contenders in the state to where not only every staff member but every student with m95 masks i asked the board and the superintendent to not remain silent at the conclusion of my statement i wish a verbal response in this board meeting tonight to my concerns the youtube livestream the local news press and i will be waiting but not commenting on my statement verbally tonight then the optics of your silence will entail a hypocritical combination before well nothing we can do let's protect ourselves and not worry about students teachers and administrators in
005our buildings my statement is not included thank you please respond and nothing else moving on to the consent calendar as recommended moved by lauren seconded by mr russo any discussion from board members yes rachel chaleski hi michelle colello hi kate canetta lauren daley aye jessica facilla all right katherine hodgson aye albert russo r louisa britton aye it's unanimous moving on to staff representatives students hello welcome [Music] 1977 after racial alliance at [Music] continues today after 45 years of operation ace is proud that they have graduated over a thousand students and continues to function as a very important part of our school system where we are so appreciative all of my mr president and for students over the years and we wanted to recognize and remember him this evening thank you ace will also be hosting
006a barbecue on saturday may 19th to celebrate reporting make working celebrate and appreciate you hello a select publicly recognized in january graduates lily coman jensena olivio cenino serena song christine eugene kim seguenza axel valenzuela larissa medeiros and jalen javista we will be celebrating your graduates this upcoming friday during our whole school virtual world regards a certain qa guidance teacher should speak about each graduate to recognize their accomplishments and why we appreciate each and every one following that our graduates will have the opportunity to speak to our current students and staff january graduates also wrote graduation speeches to share our june graduation congratulations january graduates um new students and interviews the asp is excited to welcome new students from dhs to start semester two year with us saturday students started with us this week with additional
007students visiting and interviewing the upcoming week [Music] thank you very much does anyone have any questions for our student representatives or comments thank you thank you very much and for that statement as well moving on to action items mr russo would you make the motion please yes action item a december 2021 finance financial report motion that the board of education accepted december 2021 financial report according to the exhibit 22-12 motion's been made is there a second second segmented by catherine any discussion looking at the summary of the report a cfo and eddie did a great job the numbers are in line however not with some of the encumbrances that exceed the budget will exceed the budget here and something before we have left over it's is it my understanding am i correct to say there's
008going to be a lot of adjustments in these line items in the later portion of the year where we take over this from some to make up the deficiencies of some of the other lines so yes we're in the process of moving line items by atlanta depending on what the um so we're tracking it on a weekly monthly basis um so if there's a shortage you online make sure to see how the other line is and we'll trigger of funds very simple very similar to the grades as well thank you is is that relative is that normal or abnormal where you have a sometimes you go over on one and a surplus of the other is that is that ordinary or is that something unusual it happens um i think you know due to the
009when we transfer to tyler um you know the numbers came in you know they might have been protected a little higher or in the wrong line so that's what we've been doing for the last few months is identifying those items um making sure you know it was a million dollars in one item over budgeted it and you move it into the item that may be under budget so that's where that is thank you for watching thank you any other questions or comments um just a quick question about um you've got to know here that the health care plan is going to be rising this coming year um we're talking this this year 2022 or we talking next leader just want to clarify that first that's it that's for next year as we're building our budget
010you know more about that next month okay great and then i just wanted to um ask if there are any expenditures you anticipate this year going beyond what we've allotted already well um the expenditures i'm aware of are really as we've tried to fill our vacancies with teachers and things being out so our expenditures for substitutes and overages are higher than planned because of the pandemic but we also have some positions we were not able to fill um so it's that money that will be used for the extra substitute costs thank you [Music] good evening everyone first i'd like to thank the sda students as always for their contributions and updates about ace but two also want to echo the sentiments of regarding our late principal joke mr joe heaven it is my understanding at
011ace they are looking to have a more formal recognition um there's a pep in the spring and so at that time i'm hoping over the next couple of months to speak with the principal former principals and hopefully some family members and see if we can't have a more homework recognition for the many contributions the principal has made to the denver community which i understand is a long list of contributions that he has made so i'm looking forward to that time and i just wanted to update the board us in our regards to the families so next superintendent goals and update there are two areas i'd like to focus on this evening one of them is college and career readiness dr cass casimiro will update the board on our pog initiatives and kind of updates on
012the work that's been going on during the 21-22 school year and then second my chief hr hr hr officer will be updating on hiring report for the 2021-22 school year i think dr casimir is going gonna go first quick [Music] that's okay [Music] is um so tonight we're just going to update you just briefly on the status of the portion of the graduate i know um you know for many of the board members uh who have been on board the last couple years you know that was quite a bit of work that only the board members engaged in but also the community at large in terms of building that vision together and identifying the skills and attributes that we're saying are going to be important as a danbury high school graduate and so at some
013point would be great to do a little bit of an orientation to some of the newer board members that's really the deeper timeline of where we came from but tonight is just a brief update on that work um and i'm happy to provide anybody orientation to work more deeply inside meeting or perhaps the curriculum committee as we move forward in the months ahead and take the time to do that okay but okay thank you so just a reminder uh not too long ago we revamped our vision and mission uh to be in line with some of the great goals that we've established for our students here on that being that danville public schools aspires to enhance all learners to their highest potential and our mission being that we have a partnership with families and the
014community and provide transformational learning experiences designed to provide thoughtful and care graduates and that's really what the portion of writing is about and the word transformational is really going to describe not just the portion of the graduate and some of the other work that you have at the academy as well that you'll be learning about so the portion of the graduate defines the skills knowledge and the dispositions valued by the schools in our community that are critical for college and career life many times throughout our interviews with our business community or various times we've learned that some of the things beyond academics that our community partners would love to see from our graduates are those collaborator skills those good communicator skills uh someone can get along with others and is a great team player and
015that's really the kind of soft skills that we're talking about here so in addition to that we provide not just the life skills and 21st century skills but also social emotional learning skills developing those relationships self-regulation building uh learning how to work well with others understanding their own emotions and regulating those and so the buckets if you will or the large characteristics the broad characteristics that blended up is advocates collaborators communicators innovators and learners and while there's five simple words up there i can tell you it took a very long time to get to those words okay okay so why why focus on those so beyond academics we all have common core skills we have ngss 21st century technology skills those are kind of standard and in school systems we typically focus on those and
016focus pretty hard on us but again those soft skills are things that we really want to make sure in our unfortunate graduate that we're getting students to really reflect on and to understand how they can improve those areas and they're not easy areas to measure there's a lot of self-reflection so how do we do that self-reflection goal setting with students a lot of conversation about that continuous meaningful feedback so how are we giving students feedback along the lines of these very important attributes that we're saying are going to help them in the future and again typically so focused on academics you don't often build these opportunities in and intentionally provide feedback for students this is really important and then opportunities to take leadership initiatives take ownership of projects and just use to give students feedback
017along those lines as well that's a good start this week a lot of boxing no i'm fine that's just sense um and then be explicit on expectations in order to be explicit on the expectations you have to have something explicit and after the framework comes in with language that helps to guide those conversations it provides a roadmap for students over the course of their time with us and so i think um half of you may have participated in some orientations with the future design school there's a terrific organization that we partner with to help us with this work they've done this in many places very innovative but also really helps to tease the best out of the groups that they're working with to get to the place where we say we want to be so
018they've been working with us to help us develop this framework they've been um thank you so the goal is the partnership is to create that measurement measurement framework which which we've been meeting on quite extensively over the last i would say four months on a regular basis with a small core team as we start to develop and find the framework right now we're mostly focused on grade six through eight we're in the process of drafting lengths for twelve and i'll show you a little bit about what that looks like and then we'll work on k5 next year so the first part is really tracking that framework out and then we're going to have to develop outcome measurements by grade level which is very detailed work um and then develop rubrics to support the work and
019then develop and identify sort of model work that are serves as good examples of what these things look like so teachers and students know what the expectations are then of course another part of this is communicating the work that we're doing and then train staff so that they understand how to use the framework uh and then we uh you know provide training i think it's like providing feedback how to get students to reflect um and different ways that we can improve the curriculum in order to build more opportunities in to give kids practice with skills that we say are hard and so the continuum framework and again i'll show you a little snippet of where we are so you understand what that looks like um it's really important to demonstrate a vertical alignment and the
020development of each of the attributes and so how does what does a collaborator look like in uh at the elementary level versus the middle school versus the high school so obviously the sophistication of what that looks like should progress it should be vertically aligned that's probably the hardest part of the work is that our little enemy piece is very language and nuance intensive and our team spent already hours and hours going back and forth with language on that and then also making sure that what we're putting into the framework yeah and these indicators are aspirational and that they're attainable again there's a lot of things that are difficult to measure when you're doing soft skills and these types of work so how is it that we can inspire students to reach and then how to
021help them attain these goals what types of processes do you put in place so that students can actually see themselves growing and getting feedback in this area then of course making sure again critical steps is empowering as learners to make sure that they are seeing themselves growing along one institute yes and so we landed on four categories to demonstrate the progression along certain pieces of the framework so when we say we define an attribute and we have indicators we're saying that we're identifying what we want students to know understand and do and so similar to a proficiency scale if you think of proficiency as achieving the four categories to demonstrate the continuum of proficiency we've bucketed those terms calling them exploring so obviously at the very beginning right progressing getting better you're getting closer achieving
022you're there for where you should be at your grade level and then consciously pursuing that's really sort of an advanced level of performing uh at that for that indicator so an example of this is uh for collaborator we'll start with the two outcomes that the committee selected so i'll give you a chance to take a look at so if you remember each of the five attributes we identified specific outcomes for each some had two some had three and so for collaborator we said students will work effectively with diverse team members respected for opinions and balance seeking to understand what's trying to be understood and then you said students will soon share responsibility when working interdependently to accomplish goals and persevere through disagreement to build common understanding so when you take those two outcomes and that's
023as far as we got with the committee work and you overlay them in the next slide oh that's a little tiny so in your packet you want to reference that if you look at the achieving column you can see so the outcome is listed at the top so it's one of the outcomes that we just read and if you look at this as i won't quite call it a rubric because it's not quite a rubric but it is a continuum and if you look at the achieving as sort of the target area you can see that the indicators we take the outcome and we identify three indicators for that outcome and those are the areas those are the target areas that we'd like to see think of them as sort of sub-categories of the outcome
024and then we will provide students feedback along those lines and you can see how the level of skill differentiates from exploring all the way through the consciously pursuit and you can see a level of sophistication once you get up to that to that level and i can tell you and really that the next slide is the same it's just about the outcome number two okay if you want to advance that just to give you an idea of the depth of this um once we get this and this is a sixth sixth through eighth grade snapshot and so the amount of language and revision that this has already gone through now this is just one of the um attributes in the portion of the graduate so we have five so there's several examples of these that
025we're working on now this is just one to show you to give you an example of the type of work that it that we're doing and so basically we'll be taking the six eight where we've landed out the draft and we're gonna begin at 9 12. so this these are the two outcomes and the indicators for collaborator here how is the 912 part of the 912 indicators differentiated so we have the outcomes laid out so you did that as a whole committee but in terms of the indicators for 9 through 12 and this area we're working on that language now so that's a really rough draft so we're pretty we feel pretty good about the 6 8 draft that we have right now and again going through those in a curriculum committee our tdac committee
026however might want to see those in more detail would be great certainly welcome to get some feedback on that we had an administrative session scheduled just last week because of the snow and so they were going to get a chance to kind of see the continuum for 6 8 at least the draft anyways and then this is going to go back out to a larger group so um really this is just an orientation to the work type of work that we're doing uh just a small sample it's just too too detailed and there's too many examples to go through for this for this type of evening but certainly more in depth um for another conversation for sure okay so where are so next steps is we're going to continue to draft edit and review the
027indicators for the high school curriculum um sorry continuum and so right now some of the things that we're wrestling with as we initially went into this thinking we were going to do a 9 10 section and then 11 12 and we think that we're starting to get the nuances between 9 and 10 and 11 12 are really kind of stickies or thinking perhaps in 9 12 of service basket and outcomes so end of eighth grade and then 12th grade so we're working on on that piece now um we're gonna have to start to design and develop rumors so once we get that continuum set we're going to take detailed rubrics that will align with some curriculum examples to see how does this align where can we provide feedback and add these into student projects works
028and teacher lesson plans how do we build this and to create those those numbers and samples so a little far away from that but that is kind of the next the next work that that's supposed to cover um and then eventually we'll begin with professional development to give some teachers some opportunities to run some experiments hopefully by the end of the year so to take what we have uh drafted to date and to begin to put those in the hands of teachers a couple of teachers especially what that came together on the larger 612 group that we put together and to say let's let's start working kind of one-on-one and talking through where these could live in the curriculum or where are great opportunities and then where are places where we need to build different
029though um to to mirror these two together lots of work ahead for this we're really still about developing the continuum phase right now and then you know there's i keep saying we've got multiple trains running parallel that all have to come to the port or the train station at the same time um so in the background along with the continuum is that we are working on shifting to a new learning management system which is called schoology i think mr watson has mentioned it in past so if you think of google classroom as kind of our basic management system now for teachers and students schoology is really sort of the high-end version of that with way more bells and whistles and really unites a lot of systems together in one roof to make it easier for
030everybody and it's it's more robust so we're looking forward to that transition and we've started professional development along those lines and we hope to track the rubrics i'm sorry the continuum of the rubrics within the schoology system so that we can begin to report out on how our students are doing over time so that's again a very big project it's a multi-year project we also are building the academy model design in the background so that has its own action plan as well but again the idea is to create this transformational new way of operating here in danbury with teaching attorney so these new standards for the portrait of the graduate combined with new opportunities in the way that we're teaching students career-connected learning and this this really robust opportunity leadership and practice that's really empowering
031for students in a way that we haven't had in the past or pulling in pockets and then we're continuing to develop our business and industry partnerships that go along to support all of this so how are we engaging community businesses to support the academy uh we're in the process of uh hosting the academy director position as you know and that's the person who we expect to pound the pavement to go get those partnerships with all the local local businesses to come and sponsor certifications sponsor internships externships shadowing experiences come in and talk to our students about all these careers and partner with us right now we're really looking for them to partner with us to help us develop curriculums the next year will be a big curriculum year we'll get our work to start to
032develop out some of those foundational background courses and eventually the elective courses that open it but we need their expertise um to tell the students engineers computer scientists so that's pretty much it there's a there's a little bit of a timeline on there it's a little fuzzy to read from here but if you have it in your packet um and some of this is shifting a little bit obviously with cobin's cancellations and the ability to pull staff but we're we're moving along we're not too far off from that and we'll be readjusting this as we go we'll provide another update soon it will and certainly again happy to warranty anyone else is kind of just coming into the conversation of either portion of the graduate or the academies thank you i think the curriculum that
033that would be a good fit for and this is not actually in our package so if we could maybe send and send it out to board members or at least have it in the minutes um thank you um any board member have questions not educational experts here but um you know everybody here at this table is invested in what the curriculum looks like um and and what our learning goals are for students so this you made it really concise and easy to understand thank you my other question is sort of because we opened that door about the academy conversation and i just wanted to ask you really quickly um in terms of developing those partnerships with folks who um you know might be offering internships or shadowing opportunities and you know contributing to certain curriculum
034development how does that dovetail with the construction that we have to do at the actual career academy site and making sure that the classroom spaces we're building are a good fit for the learning that needs to go on there so we did a tremendous amount of groundwork with the folks from drafting the architectural plans um if you had an opportunity to see also the edge example right under document to orient folks too that was submitted to the state but we were very careful and very intentional about what needs to be in these classrooms by pathway so designing labs that are very specific to the types of activities that will be in there in addition to identifying equipment that would be needed to bring students to certification so very early on probably way earlier than you
035know anyone was probably asking for we identified as much as we could think of even though we're still in the process of developing but we did identify as many components as possible not just for not just pathways but also for the purpose of safe reimbursement down the line congratulations so at dead times maybe it's a product that can go into that are needed so um and we actually have a chance to take a look at some of the architectural draft plans um very exciting and i feel very comfortable that we'll have the equipment that we need and the designs of those labs and class spaces particularly for cte areas um at least at this stage in the game so we you know we you know we do feel good about that some of the other
036pieces are going to come along the way so for example we had a company a local company that reached out to melissa they do and said hey we have a bunch of computers here very high end that can run the type of software that you need that problems but right something's even higher end to run types of software and for design that you're going to need for from all your pathways they're old for us but they're gonna they're gonna be high-end for you are you interested yes that's talk so i i'm anticipating that we're going to continue to have people uh reach out to missouri's in order to make our views known so i do think you know over time we'll develop the equipment and all the interiors that we need you know at least
037through a lot of our partners in the area who are interested people are not being there they're interested in this so we're excited about that thank you but it's time to shift the academy director person to take out some of those that organization piece we really need that piece uh to perform working full-time in that area thank you so our next update is related to goal 4 and this is from kim thompson a human right hr update and hopefully we have that ready to go as well okay so i guess the segue to all that exciting conversation is who do you have that's going to do the work who do you have among us who is going to be the group of adults who drive all of these wonderful programs and instruction and so what
038i want to talk to you tonight about is what your incoming cohort of teachers look like we had another really big year when i kind of froze our data maybe two weeks ago we were 180 certified staff members that does include a handful of folks that have moved from different positions within our organization so they're kind of on my roster people in new jobs but it's about 180 now we're still doing maybe four or five new certified staff members a week so we continue to expand this group and what i might do is just update some of the numbers for you in another few months time but this is a snapshot for the bulk of the hiring that we've done to date we as you know we probably start in around may june and we
039really ramp things up through the summer so the first thing that i want to talk about tonight is um where are your teachers coming from and this data is you can see 179 108 new staff new teachers this year and 15 of your group come from danbury um and the other surrounding towns you can see there are kind of smaller numbers um that's usually that's about on trend for us might be a little bit low on the danbury side but that's about on trend for where we see teachers coming in to us and where they take up residence remember too that many of our teachers as homeowners have some benefits for working in a primary school district so we tend to also kind of lure people into the city limits for that reason as well
040um first slide on the left the first grade on the left our staff are predominantly still self-identified as female is it about a 75-25 split this year that's about on trend and to the right um the other kind of interesting metric is prior experience in the district um oftentimes we sort of cycle through are we taking too many internal people do they have an inside track are we not looking at external people so this is kind of an interesting kind of number to look at this year we had i think it's like a higher number of external candidates than they typically do in the past which shows that you know we're a district that is attracting new um talent we have i think a lot to offer particularly for newer teachers who are looking for
041something that's exciting and that's challenging particularly in an urban suburban district like this i think that's what accounts for kind of folks coming from outside of our district highly educated now part of this is driven by state requirement that teachers ultimately have master's degrees but we're seeing now as they're coming in the door about 60 percent of your teachers have master's degrees three percent which i thought was a pretty impressive number have doctorates already this sixth year um degree is that um degree that typically for folks who want to come in and be administrators that's kind of another 30 credits beyond having your first master's degree and of course the bachelor's and the ba so this is a slide i know everybody's waiting for um what does our ethnicity look like for our current incoming
042class now again remember this is not the whole district we'll look at that in a minute this is your incoming class and you can see the largest group of non-white teachers is your hispanic and latina group at clocking in almost 20 this year and that is something to watch as we go through the next slides that's a number that continues to grow over trend for us um and it is largely i think going to the types of positions that we've been filling we feel a lot of esl bilingual staffing positions and so you do tend to see native language speakers coming in and um and trying to get those positions so i think that's why you see that number um and about three percent um in the black african-american category one percent in asian and
043then um there's sort of some other pieces of the pie there folks with two or more ethnicities disclosed and those who just want to respond is this full time okay is this full time yes uh yes most of our teachers within very few sessions are programmers um this is kind of a look at since um we've been keeping this data or looking carefully since 2014 i've been making this presentation and you can see um particularly i think the purple line is the one at the top there that's that's really interesting um you continue to see an upward trend in terms of hiring teachers of color and that is being driven again by the blue line of um hispanic latino teachers and again followed by um black african american and asian candidates or teachers of color
044so you see the numbers starting to go up and and we're rapidly approaching kind of 25 again in the pool of newly hired teachers um so that's a trend that we're happy about okay so um this graph is showing total overall teachers now remember that you have teachers anywhere from 980 to a thousand teachers sometimes we're up a little bit higher than that but let's use a thousand as kind of a round number so if you see on that left-hand pie graph that eighty-five percent of your teaching staff are weight and eight percent are hispanic latino part of the problem here is that when you have a pool of a thousand and you're bringing in a pool of 200 change is very slow to the overall aggregate right so we may be um replacing teachers
045that are leaving but also expanding our teaching ranks and so change is going to be very incremental so you really don't see a whole lot if those numbers are rounded as they are for the purposes of pipe you're not seeing needle movers here but you're seeing it over time and so it's a very slight incremental change which is frustrating because as we bring in these classes of you know 180 or 200 teachers we're seeing some really good trend but it's really hard to make a difference in the large aggregate so that's what you're seeing here um i thought it made sense to take a minute to talk about nationwide because i think anybody that looks closely at minority hiring initiatives and how we're doing kind of around the globe or around the country or around
046the state and around our city it's a common theme that is very difficult to attract and retain teachers of color nationwide um these numbers surprise me a little bit um i will say another data is a little bit old um it's from the us department of education and so there's a lag behind us a few years but you can see um at the time in 1718 when these figures were compiled that the general um workforce among teachers was running at about 80 79 percent on hispanic and then you see the other groups this is our connecticut state data and what i think is interesting about this is um at the bottom line here you see a very gentle decline in the overall percentage of teachers who are awake normally hispanic and that is a five-year
047trend and it's slow progress again i think going to the fact that we're i think it's about 52 000 teachers so it takes some time to make a difference um so if you consider that as the national trend and the state trend let's look at how we're doing um so the numbers on the blue chart are the blue the blue bar and the green bar are state of candidate numbers from 2019 to 2020 and your numbers are the red and the purple bars so again i don't think it's hard to conclude from seeing the original pie graphs that within large numbers of hispanic and latino teachers were hiring that were really well ahead of trend when we put us up against the state we're on trend with the other on teacher caller groups but we're
048well above in in the hispanic and latino area and i think that's something that we should um certainly credit our teams in those content areas in our esl our core esl teams that do a really good job of recruiting but also training and providing opportunities for learning that is what's continuing to attract people into our district in particular so i think those numbers are very promising now this is the slide that sort of says why are we doing this right so we all have a priority i think toward equity and toward um these these recognition that these are valuable components to our workforce one of the metrics that's often looked at is what is your demographic demographics for your kids what does your school population look like and on the left you can see these
049are last year's numbers so um from progress october that um sixty percent of your student body is coming in self discloses hispanic or legendary sort of that little vote attracts was fighting with the powerful people um but you can see it's about 60 hispanic latino 25 white look at that compared to the property starter on the right which is again your new cohorts so if our goal is to try to provide for our kids mentors and enrollments who look like them right administrators and teachers that we're making slow progress um and it's gonna take us quite a long time and i think it may be an aspirational goal to ever get to the point where the demographics of our teaching rights would mirror exactly our students but this is kind of what we always keep
050in mind is the end goal this is kind of where we're trying to head toward by providing um clients and providers or role models and giving kids an opportunity to see people who look like them in the classroom oh and this i'm sorry this this slidings are existing published again the numbers are more sobering there um i like to show your new class numbers because those really are showing the work that we're doing now um on the right is sort of the we're in this slow slog or trying to get back to um you know a little more equitable representation so you can see that there okay so the question is are we just not hiring minority applicants are we not finding them what seems to be the issue why is there this slow or
051gentle increase and this is a document that takes a look at who's in the applicant rule so you know the magic of computers is everybody applies through applejack and we're able to run some really good statistics about how many people plug in what their what they look like and so you can see here that our candidate pool is still predominantly white and particularly i put in their special education um as a as an indicator that's another area which kelly will tell you it's very difficult to find a large pool of applicants who are teachers of color in that area um and then you can see just for a comparison in the esl area that's really where we start to see some parity um just a moment on on the hiring process just for new folks
052um so the actual hiring of candidates or teacher candidates does not run through hr it's a very central decentralized process so in this ring we start to talk to our administrators at our admin council meetings about the district's highway priorities what are we looking for what are our goals um you know how are we searching and finding applicants and it's the building principles or what i call the second book from the hiring administrators that are doing all the initial screenings and the bringing in candidates for interviews most if not all buildings will bring candidates in for a panel interview with some teachers and they will nine times out of ten have them do a demo lesson so that people can actually see them practicing their craft and see how they're doing um from that there
053is a recommendation that comes out of the building and it comes in the form of a ton will happen report into central office um and we will review in central office those hiring reports with kind of a more global view so we'll look um certainly for things like this certification in place how much experience does someone have we're trying to place them an appropriate place in the salary schedule and often members of cabinet will kind of bounce around some of the candidates that we see is this the right person um does this person have the right attributes are they too high on the scale that kind of thing so that's when it kind of comes into central office and that kind of last review happens it's rare that we may you know pause on anyone
054but it does happen sometimes and it's really a reflection of having a last place where we can look to see if some of our hiring goals are being met and the same goals that we talked about in the spring so that's kind of an overview of how the process works and then this is kind of a pie graph of where we're looking um in the last few years we've really started to spend more time looking at particular identified institutions we've always gone to uconn mountain a school we have wonderful candidates come out of there we've always worked with wescon sacred heart bridgeport and you see that in these numbers we're starting to see more traction and i think there's a reflection of kind of a younger pool of applicants at indeed or at ct reef
055the more digital online places where teachers tend to look for positions and we've also done some distance recruiting so we might go down to some of the historic black colleges and universities and talk with their career offices about kids that might be interested in coming up here to to work we do find that that kind of 100 mile radius rule tends to hold true that you don't see a lot of kids coming from southern schools up to the northeast unless they also existing connection so we talk a lot about those pieces and um this is really this polygraph is really where we see the majority of our applications coming in um being the biggest one that sort of blue column right and that's really exciting for educators just some general observations um you've heard me
056say a couple times tonight so bilingual um physicians tend to draw fluent language speakers who identify minority status um and we're seeing in the secondary area what we've seen over many years now math biology show periodic sites in candidates who are teachers of color but that they tend to be along with kind of more traditional english social studies and physics tend to be predominantly white applicants so we're starting to ask some questions we we um are listening to a lot of wisconsin state department of education they're trying to kind of bolster some programming for how we can bring more students of color through some of these programs and that's we're starting to partner with them but those are some trends that we continue to see and i will say that the state department of education
057has really made a lot of effort in recent years particularly with certification as an obstacle just some kids coming in and being able to teach and so this year more so than in the past we have a couple of teachers who needed to complete their student teaching in order to be eligible to be teachers and we've worked with some teacher prep programs to say they can come and sub for us and that will be in lieu of their student teaching so we're all trying to find ways to kind of fast track some candidates into the pipeline in a way that has traditionally provided obstacles for them um again um we all talk you know i think in education about goal setting and i think these are the two real goals that we've been focused on
058for the last few years to continue to support um a drive for minority hiring and open positions in a ratio that reflects the demographics of our kids and also to support the state department of education and other organizations that are really looking to expand the pool of talented diverse educators so um last slide is just a couple of action steps um the first these are sort of the priorities for us for this year um we've talked some about focusing on communications and that communications function within the district and using some new resources for kind of bolstering the way that you communicate out to the community and so i see that as something that will be very helpful to us um i would love to see a recruiter and mr wilson i've talked about this a
059couple of times would love to see a recruiter who could be dedicated to that for right now what i think we need is a stronger bridge between some of the materials that we've done in my office the brochures and the ad spots and really working to get the communication out into the district through some other forms of social media to see if we can't expand the pool number two is to look each year for two new sources to make an outdoor list it might be a new college program it might be a teacher prep program it might be a state department initiative but to try to build every year two new places to add to our roster so that we can see whether we're able to generate some more diversity of interest number three continue
060to build upon gains with our current minority hiring pipelines and those initiatives that are through westcott and nyu nyu is a new program to us last year westcon has been with us for many years and for those of you that are new that's a teacher prep program where we start to identify kids at denver high school who then go to west pond and take teacher prep classes and often we'll come and do some work in our summer school we hire three this year out of the pipeline which is the most we've ever hired and so we're really excited about that this program is kind of modeled under a successful program that runs out of new york state where it's kind of grow your own so you identify kids who are interested in teaching particularly their
061students of color and you kind of nudge them through this process which can be pretty long and grueling but moves them through this process and they give them opportunities to be successful and so we're going to continue to try to build it on those gains by working closely with mezcon and nyu and number four is a new pipeline idea we've bounced this around for the last couple of years we have a large group of paraprofessionals many of them have some education higher education credits so any of them are on the road toward a va or have a beyonce already and so those folks are people who um particularly if they're foreign language native speakers those are folks that we want to try to incentivize to go through an alternative route to certification where they might
062actually become teachers of ours so they start in one capacity and we give them a career career pathways into another capacity so we're looking at whether we can create some incentives partnering with educator union and also with the state to try to identify who those folks may be among us that would be good candidates for teaching ultimately and finally you know retention is always a question and our retention numbers are are pretty good we do tend to lose some of our bilingual and esl teachers to other districts once we've completed training so we go through all of the training and give them a really really good foundation and they get plucked by other districts so we're going to try to really work harder to understand why that happens aside for money if that's only while
063it is um but i think there may be some other reasons so we're going to try to work hard at kind of an exit interview process this year see if we can get some more attention to that and that's what we're doing in hr cam can you also just add a little bit about the westcon partnership for jamboree public schools over the years that have yielded in reading teacher hires um with students that graduated from denmark high school and just speak to that a little bit because i'm beginning to think it's probably rob cody's time for this year yeah i think we should bring rob back i know he he comes periodically to talk about and surely for the program the program is amazing um and i think that you know there's lots of people
064who are starting to say things like let's see if we can start to identify kids at the elementary level middle school the kids that want to grow up to be teachers and so by really partnering with the high school and and giving these kids a very clear pathway into westcon we've got some really great traction and these kids are awesome i mean they're just they're excited to be here many of them came through the embryo public schools all the way through and so they have stories to share about their own experiences here and then we give them a chance to really be in the classroom with their sleeves rolled up and kind of doing their thing so i think it's a wonderful program um we also in that i don't talk about substitutes because it's
065just kind of depressing topic but in the substitute area also we are really working closely with the teacher prep program at west common and we're looking to see if we can start to pull some of those kids into work with us as substitutes that's only going to continue to bolster this kind of connection that we've got with the school which has literally been here in our backyard and who has you know really have been very loyal to us as we have been to them so i think that's the kind of homegrown initiative we're going to really start taking some traction um and we hope that nyu um will continue to grow over time that's one that kevin made the first initiative with them and really tried to kind of mirror it and i think we
066may see some other partners on there as well thank you kevin thank you so much i don't know if there are any questions about that presentation any questions for ken thanks um it did have a couple questions and you sort of spoke to this a little bit and it sounds like you're attracting teacher attention you know and trying to you know figure out sort of how many folks are sticking with the district after your period can you give this like a snapshot maybe of like you know out of a potential class of 180 otters how many of you expect to retain past like a three-year-old yeah so i i think we do a decent job of retaining us it's super hard right now it has been for the last two years because with coped we've
067seen just mass numbers of people decide they don't want to teach anymore or they want to retire earlier so their numbers are really skewed um before that time you know we typically will have i don't know maybe maybe 30 retirements in a year and in terms of kind of mid-level folks who leave i would say maybe 30 a year so a lot of our numbers are replacing they're what we call backfilling but i think that we need to do a better job of more dialogue and for that it's time right but more dialogue with these folks who are leaving about why they're leaving i do talk to people that tend to go to other districts to kind of ask why that is and it can be anything from the length of my commute to um
068you know the amount of pay so it's really it's a hard thing to get our hands around um but you know i would expect every year that just for backfilling that we're looking at 125 150 teachers um if that gives you kind i think we can do a better job of tracking i'm just not quite sure how to track it yeah yeah there's a there's a lot of data they do for already without having to yeah um and then my second question is about you know when you're talking about the placement of teachers and the buildings and things like that it's my sense that from building the building we don't have the same demographics in terms of student population so is that a consideration when placing teachers so um right now and you know we
069have this debate every chunk of time uh about how to replace teachers we have had years where we kind of do the speed dating where a whole bunch of administrators sit in a room and they interview all sorts of people and then everybody arm wrestles for who's gonna go where um and so that didn't work right um and so we really have had this decentralized process and so in some respects we really are following the track record of the administrator right so whoever the building principle is has kind of a sense of the demographics of their building and i think hires accordingly um so it's a little bit tricky to kind of keep a handle on and that's why this centralized review at the end is so important for us um you know we have
070had times i think historically in time i've been here where we may have an administrator that we kind of hey you know i noticed that the last six hires that you've done you know were all white females or you know can you talk through with me about about this issue so i think it really is building specific but because we are decentralized it really is driven by your principles and so that requires us to really have um broad and deep conversations with them about what our priorities are as an institution thank you presentation was great and it looks like we're making great progress i'm gonna add you just said the bad word and i'm gonna say it again substitutes yes how are we doing it as kelly like has kelly services managed to dig up
071and say any new i'm sorry so kelly services they are here they've been here since the first week of january but they have been recruiting since september or october maybe um and in earnest really in november um they faced i think they saw the same headwinds that we were facing so there's only so many people in the pool um they have um gotten to their initial estimate which was to get 100 people up and running right away is that an addition to the is that including the people we already had that includes the people we have so they've converted almost 100 of the people that we had and now they're supplementing um so they're finding really good traction through indeed they're getting a lot of traffic that way and they are also trying to really
072exploit this relationship with westcon as well i would say and i meet with them on thursday mornings to get a recruiting update you're looking at about 25 a week that they can get through their system it does take them a little bit longer because they do extensive training so they have a special ed module they have you know a classroom management module so they do a lot more training than we ever did so it's taking a little bit longer but my hope is that in the next four weeks we'll see that we're going to get close to 175 something like that which is really our sweet spot that we came back from the break um when i2 was down for the account uh we had about 340 people out a day so i do think
073that's a long way of saying um i think they're making some strides i think the end of the holiday driving season is a bus for us because now there's people flooding in that are looking for alternative work um remember we also have almost 100 tutor positions that are open and that's really been a struggle to try to build so we're kind of got competing interests we did raise up the daily rate for our building subs and we are i think just shy of having two in every elementary school building now that's gonna really help a lot that's the full-time buildings up and that's a great idea yeah thank you yeah good luck i wish i could tell you 300 people we're in the same boat everywhere there's no magic bullet yeah anybody else thank you
074ken so the next item on the report is open choice program update so i just want to make the board and the community aware open choice originally projected to be launched in danbury region 2223 school year we've been informed by a ces partner that open trace program is going to be delayed at least one year gentleman eric nyquist our partner at ces had shared with us that he's going to need more time to develop these partnerships with local school districts to potentially open up doors for open choice options in surrounding areas so we will continue to work with him and learn of any developments throughout the next school year but at this time we've learned the launch will be delayed at least one school year i just wanted to make the board aware of that
075update we have also provided that update on our website as families continue to have questions a couple of months ago actually our partner asked us to make sure all the requests for open choice went directly to them so they can continue to survey and be able to share directly with the state the level of interest in our region and so i haven't heard a report from him the number of families that are actually interested but they did they did make it clear that it was very important for them to have that data in order to justify the work in our region so i'm hoping to have some more updates soon from ces and eric but for right now the launch has been delayed so i don't know if there are any questions on that before
076thank you all right so the next one reimbursement requests for unplanned expenditures and i'm going to ask john for some help and back up on this but let me just start by saying we partnered with our local lobbyists about a month ago along with in collaboration with the city of danbury across the mayor's office there's great optimism that we might be able to get reimbursed in some of these untapped monies federal monies from the state of connecticut and john can give some of the details 1920 or 2021 unspent i'm sorry monkeys that impacted us directly here in danbury john worked with the finance director and the lobbyists and helped to quite frankly put together i think a really good case for danbury to get reimbursed close to three million dollars well thank you so what
077we're talking about was back in march started back in march of 2020 when we were all set home our school lunch program um was affected there were there just weren't any kids coming into the schools uh for the rest of that year to sell lunch or breakfast to and that was the third of the school year our our school lunch program lost about seven hundred thousand dollars as a result of that sudden closing and that continued uh into the fall of we were still closed and by then there was an executive order from the governor that we should continue to pay our food service workers during the shutdown the gig but there was still no right not enough revenues coming in uh for half the year when we pay our staff it was we were
078short and when the year ended in june the loss that year was a million and a half dollars so for the two years losses of 2.2 million not just here all school lunch programs around had the same problems last october of 2021 we got a call from the city finance director who pointed out that school lunch losses were an eligible expense for sr3 that's a grant program sr3 is what the it's the arp money the american rescue plan money schools and towns got it but for schools it was it's called esser iii and when we got our allocation uh there were certain um there were only certain things you could spend it on or really pandemic related before that happened you might recall when you adopted our budget for this year in june of 2021
079before this before the phone call came we developed a multi fund strategy where we had expenses coming out of the budget expenses coming out of the alliance grant the cares act the sr2 grant the sr-3 brand primarily a number of staff and services to support us during that pandemic and so those staff were hired in the summer we heard about it and began teaching they were have been in place uh for a couple months when uh city finance directors suggested um we look at the sr3 plan again he thought we should amend the plan that had been approved by the state and i said to him well we can't we've you the board had adopted a plan months ago and people were here working we really were in no position to send them home i
080didn't watch it frankly so the discussions continued and we did finally reach consensus as kevin pointed out some of us have heard that there was additional money that the state of connecticut had received under the american rescue plan that they did not dull out to all the municipalities we're not sure why we heard it a couple different ways so we contacted our lobbyists sullivan and shane and told them the situation we were in and they too weren't under the impression that there was more money that had not gone out to the districts so we decided to ask for together under the mayor's signature we put a request in it's actually written by the lobbyists you know what to write into who and that went in seeking reimbursement for these losses that occurred in the last
081two years from school lunch the city finance director also pointed out that the sr-3 would have also reimbursed the city for some chromebooks that we bought when we first shut down they were kids that didn't have computers at home and instruction uh was going on and we bought about 600 000 worth of chromebooks for the students so that is also in that's an eligible expense as well for reimbursement so together with the city there is a request now for two point eight or nine million dollars that was made to the office of policy and management for reimbursement from what we're pretty sure is a fund that the state is holding in us the superintendent pointed out um the lobbyist was optimistic that we could get something on that and that's that's the world they live
082in so they're good so we share their optimism so the next area is correct lottery partnership and couple of weeks ago i received an email from our correct partner who has administered our local lottery here in town for years now they've informed us that they are no longer going to serve as the administrator of our lottery so after trying to understand the rationale they went on to explain i was actually reminded of this story when i first blamed it here in the district that they initially stepped in it was an emergent situation here in the district they kind of came to the rescue and since then it's turned into an ais lottery west side lottery west side lottery that's complicated that's stem lottery and global studies and then of course ais that is continuing it's
083very also complicated and at this time they needed to move on assurance that they would continue to serve as a partner and provide any technical assistance that we needed so i just want to make the board aware we are currently in in pursuit of another administrator i immediately called our local rest which is at advance the mr jeff kitchen we have a meeting on february 8th and to take correct up on their offer to provide technical assistance they will also be part of that meeting to see if we can broker a different new partnership through in advance to get this work done so like the previous update i'm confident this administrator will also be able to lead us through a new partnership here locally so i'll have a new update for the board soon but
084i just wanted to make you aware that we are transitioning to an environment so no need to be nervous i don't think but it's i think it's just news that i just want everyone to be aware another update for the community and i think it requires some kind of background particularly for our new board members in the community i mean this is not on your agenda right now but this is regarding danbury primary school in brookfield we've had to as part of our lease agreement we last year during the spring as part of the cdc guidelines and recommendations we were you might recall during the 1920 school year in 2021 school year danbury public schools wrote a letter to the governor in the commission of education basically stating that our schools were too overpowered to
085come back and be able to adhere to the social distancing guidelines for that reason when others other school districts were in school whether 50 or uh or going back and forth we were either home uh remotely a hundred percent and then of course last year came back in the fifty percent hybrid and so during the 21-22 school year the opening of this school year we wanted to make sure that was not an obstacle for us um and by to the greatest extent possible which is a new world we love to use now greatest extent possible we wanted to make sure we can social distance throughout broadhouse school district which led to several hires across the district at the high school and elementary level but it also led to a new lease agreement in brookfield to
086help with our social media without social distance and efforts and so given at ellsworth elementary school south street elementary school two of our smaller cafeterias in the in the district and then stanley rough elementary school which is a large one of our larger cafeterias in the district but they were also growing by two additional sections at the school we made a decision at the district to move 11 kindergarten sections from those three those three affirmation schools and moved them to the brookfield site this came at a considerable investment we signed a two-year lease with an option with an opt-out after one year the opt-out was a i believe a two-month penalty and we went into agreement because we had all kindergarten students at the site it required considerable construction to make it work it required
087a new desk at the school site to make it work and our director of facilities his team between his team our director facilities rich jobert and our finance office we were able to open the doors at that school and do so successfully and frankly really on the backs of the teachers and staff to open their doors are we able to do so but now moving forward as we've talked about the financial cliff that's part of our budgeting process last school year the financial cliff that is a reality of the ester grants esther cares institution sf3 we have decided that it's in our best interest particularly on the hills of learning that our hillsborough annex project is scheduled to open on time which would mean instead of 11 11 sections opening netflix to the next year
088we would only be at seven sections and so given all of that information not to mention it sounds like we would need an additional a couple of hundred thousand dollars extra to continue to have that building function next year given the limitations of the limitations of the facility there um directory facilities as well as he believes that the site needs an additional oiler to make sure our classrooms are warm throughout the school year in addition to uh some because we have air conditioning at the site we built additional classrooms but there were challenges with to make sure that air got to all the new classrooms so that duct work also required additional upgrades i believe we went oh we've already gone over budget by several hundred thousand dollars and given those additional investments that will
089be necessary to open up the building we feel like it's in our best interest to come out of the police at this time and so again ellsworth will be returning back home and those four sections will be back in the building in this space they will have new spaces so certainly we've had significant growth in the downtown area particularly at hellsworth so we're very happy to announce it of course the bill is not open yet i'm very happy to announce that they've projected to open on time stanley roth on south street both talk to both principals and you know they've enjoyed an opportunity to kind of take that space they've never had before at least in the short time that i've been here just reminded them that those kindergarten teachers and students will be coming
090back next year so you know we we're mindful that the cdc guidelines are still in place but we've also learned a lot and since we have moved our students out i feel like we can bring our students back to their respective schools and do so safely as long as we continue to follow their mitigation so i just wanted to provide also that update for the board it certainly opens any questions i understand if it might be some given given the last minute questions thank you and that's it but i just wanted to follow up about our longest running thing with the session opening relatively soon has there been a discussion with him about sort of what our priorities are a discussion about ecs funding yes so we're working on a date to try to get
091brian back in asap as soon as possible so we can talk about some specific danbury priorities and i think many of them are not very different from last year asking for the state to expedite this schedule uh the schedule payment schedule if you will i think i think we've made a good case in years prior and i think we make an even better case now given our continued growth and frankly we're very different from most districts in the state of connecticut with the ongoing eol growth so i'm hoping that this will be a good time good times report we were provided a list of the committees in list form instead of a table form so those are there in front of you and put in the minutes for this meeting i know we're in the
092in the beginning stretch of the marathon meeting uh schedule so um if you're not aware the the meetings are listed at the end of the agenda for just so you're aware um cara did add the january 31st finance committee meeting as well as a tentative february 9th special board meeting for our uh interviews um the pto liaison list was distributed to all ptos through this pto distribution so they sent those out with your names and what's what pto you belong to so you should you know with the instruction to invite you all to their meeting or let you know what their meeting schedule is i found that um the past two years it's been very sporadic not on the regular schedule like you know pre-cold day so that is pto um would like to i
093know we're in we're about to you know hit a bunch of meetings but um establish at least establish our policy committee and uh curriculum and maybe sometime you know i think mid to late february awesome just so we can offer policy establish a chair and just get briefed on where we are where we left off and as far as our policy audit goes and then curriculum kind of you know establish what we want in that debate it's important that we're meeting in person and it's been a work in progress uh from our zoom meetings to to the black box and to here where there's technology and we can hear everyone and be heard um i think we're gonna move back to the black box it's just a bigger space i've been assured there will be
094microphones available to us so that you know sound won't be an issue so that moving forward we'll be at black box and we'll be able to open to the public and resume public comment in person um let's see what else uh west side is in great need of volunteers speaking of meeting marathon if you'd like to add some judge judge volunteer opportunities for their academic competitions the science fairs next tuesday february 1st for eighth grade and wednesday february 2nd for seventh grade the fair is virtual so you just have to log on to your computer from about 7 30 to 10 30. it is um it's a nice experience you get to you know see the kids present to you um and you know you just have like a handful of kids i think to
095just to hear from and then kind of give feedback on their projects and so if anyone's available please contact john newcastle at westside or you can always call the school and the main office will kind of do yes it's the first and the second it is the first and the second is that a tuesday and a wednesday next tuesday yes yep um and just so you know i was on the um the monthly cave board chair check-in last week which is helpful it's a nice network of chairs across the state and i was added to there to the cave chair distribution email list and we all kind of share procedures and processes through through that connection that's just nice just wanted to share that update for me are there any board communications comments anything from
096we haven't had no updates go ahead okay um so i met with dsabc and they are going virtual with their mentorships right now they will be in the process of looking for new mentors and they are um kind of getting ready to go into a big fun cruiser season where they're going to be doing the guide to doing into the local restaurants thank you anyone else any updates comments before we adjourn i will entertain a motion to adjourn move by joe is there a second let's please go up saying aye we are adjourned