001to keep their mouth from while we're here and also use the microphones teresa blind daily here hi joe silva here catherine hodgson here albert russo hmm [Music] welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public bank offers objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students snore against any person connected with the danbury public school system favorite public schools is temporary causing in-person public participation in board meetings as we collectively work through social distancing techniques to prevent the spread of profit 19 in our school community the danbury board of education invites members of the public or residents of the town to send brief comments and questions via email in
002advance to public comment underscore eob at favorite.k12.cds dear quarterback the parent pick up policy this is from gene river the parent of policy in our schools is a good one but only if it's fouled and enforced [Music] children in the u.s are abducted each year 90 of them by parents i am writing to let you know that pembroke school where my grandson attends is not following your product goals at all and has not since the beginning of the school year i think of my grandson about once a week i have never once been asked who i am or been asked for my id no one has ever checked to see if i'm on the list from his parents as an allowable person also all i have to do is tell them who i want and
003they call for him mind you my grandson is not the same race as me either so he doesn't look like me at all my daughter has emailed the principal several times and the principal insists the man at the door will check ids and that and then when verified will allow the child to go with the adult then the principle continues in the emails that the man at the door will always check ids check the list and then remember by facial recognition that the adult is allowed to take to child my daughter has shared the emails with me the particle has never once been followed the man of the door does not know me has never asked for nor seen my id and does not know how my grandson is related to me he does not
004recognize me because each time he has asked who i am therefore no one has ever checked if i or anyone else for that matter is allowed to take him my grandson has had at least five different people pick him up and no no one person has been asked for any id or check to see if they're on the allowed list maybe pembroke school has never had an incident but that does not ensure it will never happen this is an easy fix and one that should be enforced i'm asking you to see to it that schools in our district follow the protocol for fan and pickup asking the principal for verification is obviously not enough as nothing in her emails happened the border bank must see to it that these particles are enforced and adhered i
005will be picking him up in the weeks to come and hope to see a safe and positive difference thank you for your time mostly sincerely gene rick this one's from john smith my name is john smith and i'm a denver resident my question to the board tonight is my understanding is that the public is not allowed to attend these meetings in person tonight due to copyright calling 19 concerns and the record-setting spread of the virus in the community my understanding is only those who were invited are allowed to attend tonight i know that the issue regarding this switch to remote learning ultimately lies in the hands of the governor and state department of education but can the board please explain how you can allow students and teachers to go into overcrowded school buildings that lack
006the necessary code of mitigation tools and strategies and yet now allow those same people and the public in general to attend tonight's board meeting there is a clear element of hypocrisy here just as there is hypocrisy at the state level when the state capitol building was closed on thursday of last week due to positive code cases among their building staff superintendent wilson and other superintendents in the state should have the power to switch to remote learning when they so choose i encourage superintendent wallston to push governor lamont and the state the state department of education to allow districts the flexibility to go into remote learning and have those days count we must push harder for this for the sake of the safety and health of students teachers and school staff if there is a doubt
007to be had regarding this coveted safety in our schools i would encourage any board member to go into our schools and see the lack of code mitigation strategies present in our school's cafeterias when the kids kids eat their lunches this is where my friend contacted kobe last one is from elky props happy new year to the board of education this email means in regards to my support of our students and staff within examine public school system and to disclose my concern for funding risks that can negatively impact the danbury public school system the current funding is to provide imperative support services for our students and an increase of funding would ensure educational consistency as well as continue to maintain positive educational outcomes i currently provide support services for our teams and youth all within the
008dps within the dps listening to the concerns they have regarding mental health social and educational issues and their need for more support and educational staff my concern is that we need to work on funding areas in our public school to better support our students which will also provide support for staff if we don't we will see an increase of risk factors including emotional behavioral educational and social problems and challenges i'm also asking the board of honor the responsibility of serving all students in our dps and to seek out solutions that will reflect this responsibility for example a charter school will draw funds away from our dps and drastically and negatively simply impact students and staff part of empowering and providing protective factors for our students and staff is to ensure that funding is maintained and
009increased please do the work you were elected to do and protect january public schools i appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you today and will continue to do so moving forward stay safe respectfully i'll take calendars me thank you that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 22-1-22-5 as recommended by lauren kate any discussion on the confederate calendar seeing none all those in favor of warren if you do a little quote please sure just written hi teresa teresa you're on you okay sorry is that an eye rachel celesti hi michelle colello um kate panetta i'm gladys cooper yes lauren bailey i joseph de silva catherine fashion hi albert russo hi and melisa uh staff representatives erin would you like to take the microphone do a quick switch good evening everyone
010nice to see everyone for those of you who i have not met yet my name is erin bailey i am the president of nea danbury the teachers union and i just actually did the microphone sorry i think he was just too far away let's try again is teachers union and um basically i haven't seen many of you in a while but i wanted to introduce myself to our new board members and welcome you and thank you for your service and thank rachel congratulations on your appointment and we're glad to have you at home thank you and also to say goodbye to joseph sorry to see you go um but thank you also for your service and i know you're going on to do equally as important things so thank you for all that i also
011wanted to take a minute to share with you what went on today in our schools so i don't always dress all in black like johnny cash today we had what our state union was dubbed a blackout today and the blackout served a purpose to hopefully call attention public attention especially to get the attention of our governor to let him know all the things we still need here in danbury to keep our schools safe the intention although some may have seen it another light intention was not to call out administration or our superintendent in fact just the opposite you will know in a news times article that just came out a few hours ago that we as a teachers union are very supportive of our administration are thrilled with how we have been communicating and how
012things have been going for the past several months and we continue to hope to work collaboratively to problem solve and address the needs of not only our teachers but our entire staff and of course our students so the blackout today was to highlight the fact that we do not have the flexibility for remote instruction which after last week's difficulty keeping schools open i think probably everyone in this room could agree we need some kind of better plan for the coming weeks and coming months if we continue to face a surge in omicron so as we were hoping to call attention to this today all of our uh teachers rally together to kind of stand together in solidarity to show that we're still continuing to hold each other up and support each other even through these
013difficult times as you can imagine being an educator for these past few years now has been extremely traumatic for many of our folks and the past few weeks with so many of our teachers getting sick has put an increasingly huge strain on our teachers that we wanted to just let the public know that we're kind of continuing to endure so i wanted to also thank you for your continued support we were very appreciative of getting the n95 mask mask singular to us last week which i'm still wearing several days later and i spoke with superintendent paulson earlier today and we discussed the need to get those more masks in the hands of teachers because these are single use masks intended to be thrown away at the end of the school day not used continually most
014of us are double masking as you see us as you see that i'm doing tonight as well um the the strain and the emotional turbulence of our day-to-day experience as teachers is not just pseudocoping but it's due to taking on additional work responsibilities and having to fill in for the missing personnel our tutors and paraprofessionals have done an amazing job filling in for teachers when they are out and that's something that we all know shouldn't happen our support specialists our coaches our pbs service people they have all been going above and beyond and i just wanted to make sure and i'm sure everyone in this room understands that but for the public record to let the public know and acknowledge the hard work that our staff is doing to keep things wrong and it's very
015disheartening when we hear things on social media and from others out there in the public that may be saying that you know we're not doing our best to keep the doors open for our schools that is not the case and i think we've all been doing some serious creative problem solving so i just wanted to put that out there publicly and once again thank the board for all of your hard work and hopefully will continue in this next year have better circumstances to work together on thanks very much thank you moving on to our student please representatives [Music] vice yourselves hi my name is gregory parker and i'm the board of memphis president hi i'm nicole and i'm the thank representative for being here so to start off um the voice for change projects are
016coming to an end after the submission date was pushed back a week to january 17th students in both apa government and politics and peer leadership are dashing for four deals to submit in order to have a chance to win twenty thousand dollars um these projects include parking lot jobs remaining seniors are involved in the fafsa challenge organized by the state this friendly competition encourages students to apply for the fafsa and earn prior to winter break danbury high school decided to have a couple of fun events throughout the school building including a hot chocolate panda during lunch an ugly sweater day and a candy cane distribution and all three days were definitely a success students love this fun way of wrapping up their learning before leaving for break the board of governors are putting out applications
017for executive council in order to better hear the voices of the student body this application is open to primarily upperclassmen but we definitely want to see some sophomores and freshmen in order to again hear the voices of each different grade these students will also be helping with school-wide events peer leadership is beginning the process of recruiting new applicants from the class of 2023 these students not only must be leaders but also have exceptional collaboration communication good evening board of ed members cabinet community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence the week before winter break a students and staff participated in the ace cares for everyone's leading card project the project was coordinated by english teacher joe mantle and resulted in 104 cards being created
018and delivered to the prime star center at the danbury hospital for patients this week a students will also be submitting essays about martin luther king jr it is a contest to recognize and celebrate contributions of dr king to our society and ace is currently providing visitations for dhs students interested in joining our community at ace for the second semester dhs students shadow ace students from school day before making the decision to set up an entrance meeting with guidance teachers in order to begin the relationship building process ace would like to recognize donovan matsuk who was awarded the ace of heart the ace of heart award for demonstrating care for others in the month of december ace would also like to recognize jay and batista as a revisiting of the ace of spades award for academics
019hard work and achievement in the month of december lastly ace would like to recognize haley sanchez and paige francino as our december students of the month and the consistent demonstration of our five behavioral expectations the warren banners will be recognized at our next large guidance and will be represented with certificates and dunking donuts thank you for allowing us to share what's going on with our ace family down on the 26th locust and stay safe and remain stronger thank you very much um do any board members have any questions or anything you'd like to say okay thank you uh you're welcome to stay but we understand if you prefer to leave don't feel free moving along to action foreign any promotion that the board of education accept the letter of resignation dated january 3rd 2022 for
020board member member joseph britton and in coordinates with exhibit 22-6 there's a motion on the floor by joseph silva any discussions a little newspaper let me bring this to you and i'll see so so one i just want to say how happy proud we are as a cabinet number one i think collectively as a board to know that one of our more most recent graduates of danbury high school is serving in this very important civic capacity you've been an amazing partner and board member these last couple of years and to know that we all know your journey going to school right now so very excited for you in whatever your professional journeys may take you but also really happy to see you on the other side of the council seat and know and hope that
021you will continue to support canterbury public schools and the children of them i think selfishly i must say with two of my own kids i'm proud you must be he's been an amazing partner for us and to know as former teachers in this district administrators in this district board members who rally and advocate for kids to know this is what we're producing i'm just really happy to see it happening so congratulations [Applause] [Music] um just britain yes theresa rachel toleski hi michelle colello hi kate panetta bye gladys cooper yes lauren daley i joseph silva catherine hodgson hi albert russo louisa i guess motion carries moving along [Music] i make motion that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 superintendent's goals in accordance with 22-07 moved by lauren seconded by tonight joseph brennan give it to
022him is there are there any discussions comments questions is right are you referring to just how do you write it was regarding the diversity rate between the teacher and students and some other kind of benchmarks for the goals that are set here that just needed a little bit more so not a problem so we can prepare that for our next board meeting is part of superintendent update and john spang and dr neat are on tonight as part of the budget presentations um kim thompson will be here for the next meeting on the hr update that's usually visited attendees may i ask a question yes will there be additional the question is will there be additional edits to the goals now the goals are as they're presented gladys [Music] miss cooper unless there's a request made
023by the board i i do not have plans to make any evidence to the goals [Music] yes rachel toleski hi michelle hollow okay kate canetta hi gladys cooper yes lauren daley i joseph de silva catherine hodgson yes albert russo all right louisa brandon bye [Music] correct there are two areas i would like to highlight this is budget season 22 to 23 school year and so this season starts off with certainly just kind of providing an overview for the board in the community of what to expect of course with our new chief finance officer so he's going to walk in the community what to expect over the next several months that that process also involves community and community input so dr mead is also going to speak to with those farmers but that's how that's going
024to take place a little different from last year in previous years the board might recall the community you might recall we had community forums for esser for essa grant and input we courtney and i as part of our community input also had this sort of feedback from the community regarding the operational budget as well um we felt like with that success this success and i had during these meetings we felt like this would be a good strategy to include annually as part of our budget process so john if you can start us off and hopefully you can find yourself with the first page so it's a great presentation uh overview of the process and need to get um that way um thank you very much [Music] thank you very much um so uh the superintendent
025mentioned it's gonna be uh both dan and i and um one of the parts i'm going to talk to you about is the budget calendar was put together and i think when i'm in the middle of that you get to the community forums i'm going to turn it over to dr b and then he'll come back to me and wrap up hopefully that'll work so we uh we have revamped the budget process from last year and um one of the reasons is we have a brand new uh software program um some of you filled with that name and uh that software is state-of-the-art it allows us to do a lot more things and most of that is done online so there'll be less paper and a lot more of the material electronically but the uh
026the key to the the key part of the change uh is on your first page where you can follow along um they're gonna build the budget uh in five component parts five parts and those are all things you're familiar with but we're putting them into a different buckets just to help identify them and manage them and control them a little better and each each of the parts has cost centers in and with those cost centers we'll have more accountability i think than we've had before not that we didn't have any uh but it's um it's more uh drilled down for example each of the schools will be a quad center end time principle some of the programs that we have uh iq for example sites and facilities those are will be cost centers they always
027have been but they'll have a different responsibility this year the first of the five components uh we'll call salaries and wages and that's a part of the budget that will be built here in the central office by my office along with hr and what we'll be doing is taking all of the employees that we had on our last payroll and in our software we'll you know most of those employees are are in bargaining units and unions they have a step function um salary schedule and we'll be able to uh move everybody up a step onto hello okay much better so you hold it down thank you uh so i mentioned the salaries and wages i won't go through that again but we're moving everybody up a step uh to our software so we'll have a
028pretty of a person like person exact um budget estimate uh once we do that that's done central the biggest change uh for us is the second part and i call that we call that base allocations and what what those what that means is the school our school principals will be responsible more responsible now for consumable materials classroom items what really what our staff and our teachers use every day this will be a little bit of a shift away from the way we've done things we've done more of that those decisions centrally and there still will be many made that way but uh gradually some of that will be moved to the schools and each iu school each school will have a budget it's based on their enrollment they're projected involved we've taken the last demographic
029enrollment that we have i think it was april of 2021 and looked at the number of students that are expected in each school in september and um schools get money based on that i'll use south street that's independent um you're expecting 341 students 37 you can hear me i know she muted the zoo and i'm [Music] you don't see where it says budget development process standard public school and then it went away it was like step two step i three don't have the same front page just the blue page oh they can hear us okay they can hear us i'm beauty good okay so we're expecting 341 students at south street in september and for every student the principal will get 65 or a total of 33 000 uh to budget for and those will
030be for things if the say a teacher wants to do something in the classroom maybe enhance the curriculum for example i don't know maybe they want to buy a chair for students to sit in while they read to the rest of the class or you know so all the things you see in the classrooms maybe there's posters on the wall of the uh presidents or maybe the principal wants to have a program to recognize a student of the month and give a certificate or have an assembly something like that things that are decisions that are day-to-day in the schools they'll use this base allocation to help buy that again it's not to change the curriculum but it's allow it's to allow teachers to do more is what's behind it um the the schools haven't had
031budgets but they've been kind of shaped the management of those has been shared and now more of it is going to come right from the classrooms and the principals who are making the day-to-day decisions um this will allow our central office our central administrators to concentrate more on improvements and direction and things like this um each each elementary school will get the same amount per pupil they'll get 65 but a bigger school will end up with more money than us uh the middle schools will get 75 dollars per student because they have more programs they have more lectures there's more things that go on and cost money in middle school and that same goes for the high school they'll get 85 per student 18 years to these kind of things the pro will the programs
032i'll call them for example id or sites and facilities they too will have base allocations or budgets and they'll be planning those as well for some of those central administration programs so that that's the second component the third component i'm going to call that uh improvements and you'll see on the chart there it's labeled initiatives but that third component is for really for new new directions that we might decide to take depending on our budget deliberations but they're really that component is designed to improve instruction over what we have now examples not that we've had any discussions yet but let's say we wanted to bring in a new mathematics curriculum middle school curriculum or something like that that would be budgeted centrally as an initiative and as an improvement the same for example the career
033academy that's coming up we begin to budget for some of the things there uh that would be an improvement that would be budgeted centrally because the base allocations that the principals have just aren't enough money for for things like that same with our strategic plan there are things in there that are different this is where we place the budget in this component or even the superintendent's goals some of those things might require some resources so they go in this third group of i call them improvements the fourth component are i call fixed costs and uh fixed costs are things that you really can't do it's hard to change in the short one it would be hard for us to change for july an example might be the contract with the bus company we just signed
034a five-year contract last year next year this year to sure we could change the number of buses but the contract is in place another example might be some of our special district tuitions those are driven by ieps a number of those students are likely to be in their same schools next year so that's kind of health insurance is another one you know we had our program sure we could change it but it would be hard to do by july so those are the fixed costs maybe some of your utilities might be found in there too and then the last the fifth component i'm going to call those special needs those are primarily one-time purchases that the school needs to make from time to time but they don't have enough money take the example i used
035in south street they have thirty thousand dollars if they needed to replace their copy machine or let's say in the art room uh the kiln needed to be replaced or in a school art room it's really not fair to say you have to do those big things out of your pupil that would leave you at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the other schools so there might be a few things there that we just said you know it's a one-time deal and that we're going to put money in so as to not disrupt the equity of the per pupil so those are those are the five component parts john i just wanted to add i just wanted to add one thing about the 500 building components there's one area specifically i'd like to highlight and that's the base
036allocations for school captain and i we've had quite an opportunity to talk about this strategy and we're seeing number one we feel strongly that our our principals our teachers leadership teams and their respective schools um this this provides some autonomy for them to make these kind of decisions that john has talked about perhaps in some cases they did not have before but for us in terms of building a budget it's an opportunity for us to build that accountability with budget decisions as well so you know danbury like most districts um kind of relied on here's a an emergency i need something to purchase someone makes the decision and unfortunately you get a whole lot of emergencies across the district john is trying to build in some buffer in everyone's budget so that their budget has
037these emergencies like a contingency built in again autonomy autonomy on staffing these one-time costs that john has talked about schools also have that flexibility but it's an opportunity for us to kind of also control costs because we're going to have schools kind of develop their own budget with your time you need to make some of these decisions but the accountability will be on them um we're seeing this i'm certainly seeing this as an opportunity to cut down on the requests once the budget season has started in the school year and so if you have an allocation for your school not just staffs but for other decisions that you can make in your building we're looking at this as an opportunity to cut down costs across the system so autonomy is great for our principles in
038our schools the um accountability and then also again opportunity for us to cut down across the processes sure thank you if we could look at the next slide in his budget process accomplishes right so so goal three when you read it it says um to establish an efficient budget process and i think this will do this because we've taken the budget we've put it into component parts easy to identify there's no other place you know where money is is part for something we don't really know about therapy so it's i think it's efficient and then everything is in a component the goal also is to establish a coherent plan and i think by by having components i think that's coherent you just heard how i describe them that can be i think it's pretty clear
039we'll have to you're new so take a while to become familiar with them but it does provide clearance but a goal 3 also says that we'll establish an equitable distribution of resources medical disputes and resources and the per people allocation does that every elementary school gets 65 per pupil every middle school 75 a high school 85 i think that's technical nobody gets more or less unless they have more students so it does happen and then the next um the next slide is we call it the budget timeline if you could switch to that for a second there's uh what what you're looking at is uh where we are right now with the budget calendar but as mr wallston mentioned we're in the budget season so we've done a few things already in late december we
040sent instructions out to the principals and program leaders with their allocation and with some instructions that said um here's what here's your money here's what you're allowed to stand on for example they cannot uh hire staff with that money they cannot do building projects or things like that it's it's for what goes on in our in our classrooms and offices but they got that in late december and they're friday we're going to have workshops with the principals either in person [Music] we're going to we're going to show them how to use the software to enter their requests so they'll enter what they want how much they like and um some description of how they use it and what it's for and again we'll be able to see that quite easily as soon as it's entered
041uh but we've also started projecting the salary and wages of the first component part you don't see that on the on the calendar here you've already started it um it's slow but it's going on and then what we're going to begin to do next week is the component of fixed costs we'll be looking very carefully at health insurance we're going to hear from our consultant what they recommend we budget for health insurance and look at some other things the bus contract things i mentioned but the budgets from the principals and program leaders are due back january 19th but let me uh turn to dr me down for a second and skip the day but your before and after the 19th cycle welcome for new board members should i just shout and so one of my
042goals is around community engagement and to really improve the two-way communication that we have with our families and back in the spring when we were looking at getting feedback from the families around the essers we felt we were very successful a by the number that came to the forums that we had the input that we received afterwards and then how we used all that input to process what we're going to use the ester money for and so building on that strength that we had already we felt that it was really important to capture families thoughts and feedback of what they wanted the budget spent on it is taxpayer dollar and so having their input is really important to this process so we have two dates coming up next tuesday night the 18th at seven o'clock
043and then uh the next week on thursday the 27th also at seven o'clock the invitation went out in an email um robocalls reminding families to look at their email messages last night and we have over 30 families signed up already as of when i checked about three o'clock this afternoon so families are interested in the budget we know we'll get good feedback we will on that night have english and spanish going on so we can capture all of our family's interests in the budget and their thoughts and their feedback so i'll take it back to john and that that's where we are with that thank you right and so there will be two of those uh the 18th and the 27th but if you look back at the calendar that allows us the principals and
044program leaders get their requests back on january 19th but with the forums then we'll have time to consider what the community wants and build that in or change what we already have and if you look at the calendar our goal our target is to have that already by february 4th and submitted to you we hope february 9th complete with as i said the principles the communities employed and things like that so and then then your work will begin or through your committee uh we'll go to the next step so uh that's what's planned it's gonna be a very busy january um i'm pleased to answer any questions in my sure i have a finance committee meeting for 6pm is this the same as this community forum meeting or is that a separate event i'll have
045a look at that that may be an old um recurring meeting possibly it's in here it's in google google calendar i will get that i'll ask her about that for when was that the 18th my question about the community forum um so it's great to invite families to get their feedback but what about the greater communities and yet also their [Music] their you know to make them aware of our budget and have good question thank you richard we um are submitting it to the newspaper that will go out we'll send it out through our facebook page and it'll go out tomorrow in a mass emailing to all of our community partners as well this is remote correct yes [Music] so the next item on the agenda is the board might recall some of our board
046newborn members they may not be aware during the spring of 2021 dr former superintendent had presented as part of the budget a new position called chief operations officer so we defunded school year that position as a result of that position as a result of an organizational study and then recent reorganization turned into chief of strategy and operations there are several departments that will report to this position dr mead just presented family community engagement community partnerships rit department facilities department also central registration which is always busy so those those departments just begin with in addition um it was important for us to have someone with a background in communications because this is also going to be a heavy lift for this department as well so communication will also sit in this department and will be a
047cabinet member as well so we had prior to the christmas break to the holiday break we had interviews held with two different panels both panels are recommended the gentleman i'm going to introduce to you this evening dr sealy had an opportunity we had an opportunity to interview him with the cabinet hopefully he was felt like he would be our good fit and provide the leadership that we need at this time so i would like to take this opportunity to introduce dr steven to the board into the community ask me to say a couple of words before we we him in the corner waiting his turn um uh thank you all this is uh this is really exciting um getting to see all the faces of all the names i've been hearing about reading about and
048i'm thrilled to be here and to get started with everybody next week um my superintendent wilson said my background is in k-12 and also in higher education i actually started my career as a high school english teacher in california i was at a comprehensive high school of about 1800 kids and then i moved into administration where i was in school from did instructional technology facilities making sure the football fields got mowed and painted and all that kind of good stuff too chaperoning games and staying there until alaska left it 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning so after i did that for a little while i went up and i did some state policy work too so i i actually got to see some of the inside of the state house and some some
049of how they say the sausage is made and getting a better understanding of how grants are written and how they come into formulation and sort of what they're thinking when that happens and most recently i was at city university of new york uh where i ran a lot of k-12 partnerships for the college in central brooklyn we did early college partnerships uh wrote a lot of grants did some fundraising with private entities as well and then did some general management stuff as well i was also um institutional effectiveness so we did everything from program management to making sure our accommodation was up to speed when the creditors came through um so uh i was very excited when i when i learned about this role will see you at wallston um my wife and i have
050been actually looking to come to this area for quite a while and that seemed really fortuitous when i learned about the role and it just seems just i'm very excited to be here and to start working with everybody thank you i just want to say thank you and welcome next on the agenda week of january 3rd delays and school code closures so i just look forward to updating you in real time during the week of january 3rd on first week i think in many ways it's that first week back is what i'm not going to suggest president wouldn't be here tonight anyway but the first week was a struggle for us not just in every public school but in our region and also across the state of connecticut and across the country the struggles we
051averaged 300 staff members out the week the first week so i just want to publicly thank uh to begin with my team the people who i see every day and through literally together every day over the break trying to plan and prepare for to reopen schools the following week and secondly i have to thank the staff because my team worked tirelessly but then the teachers and principals had to make it happen and i know the board is aware it's been made public by newspapers we had close to 30 bus drivers out monday tuesday and wednesday just mentioned in the days we were in school or almost in school which is wednesday just to be clear um every intention i had every attention to try to get our kids in school every single day um thursday
052and friday because the staff from projections were such it would not be safe to open our activities so i just want to circle back again and just say starting with the teachers and our principals in our schools thank them for helping us save our abilities i have to also thank the parent because we had a number a number of schools impacted with no business at all in short i had a lot of upset parents as you might imagine the majority of them just brought the kids to school and they understood the position we were in as the school community and they just brought together and so i just want to thank everyone for you know their own spirit of influence everyone kind of played a part in play neurologists want to take them i feel
053like we're in a little bit better place this week certainly not perfect but certainly a little bit better place this week i also want to share we i and i have to thank uh rich albert john spain um dr cassinero thompson ed miranda the team worked tirelessly it is open but then it was another just before we reopened on the third as everyone in this room is where the governor announced state department of education announced that the deliveries will be made to all the school districts with plans for those deliveries to land in the districts on sunday so i think there was an expectation across the state certainly here in danbury that our teachers our staff would be equipped with these masks for these tests on monday morning we did not have them available on
054monday morning but we had to go on we were ready on wednesday and this is because they were delivered on tuesday which is fine it was delivered on tuesday and john and we all communicated with our director facilities he's not here this evening but i just want to thank richard albert and custodial staff they went they picked up all the materials on tuesday they were in buildings on tuesday night and distributed around the school district by wednesday morning and available to be made available the students needed them and staff needed them or met the criteria to receive them of course we ended up not having school and that was unfortunate i know our rose and a lot of our staff were on the road our kids were already delayed i was a little delayed in
055calling the delay for staff and so some of our high school staff were actually on the road um conditions that quite frankly that were unsafe for them and not knowing the conditions would be poorly not only for the local goals but we also going later on the major roads as well thank goodness i understand is everyone got home safely we didn't have a teacher we did have an accident and so i you know i just hope everyone is safe and just going to be mindful of all the people who came out and tried to open up our schools i think it's just a credit to our staff to everyone last but not least phase one of the shipment of tests available to students and staff we received last tuesday and phase one because there is
056another phase two and we were informed earlier today that phase two will be arriving will be available for school districts as early as this friday so we are expecting once we get something official we will be able to pick up this additional shipment assuming they will be at the same pickup location than it was before but we have yet to receive those details and then with that that means we will have additional tests available for staffing students likely as soon as next week so again we have some procedures for students and staff kelly and kara actually going to walk us through it and i think that is it for me however just before friday before the storm because we anticipated a storm we anticipated this storm like everyone so we wanted to make sure we
057wanted to do everything we could to keep our staff safe our school community safe we did not have the capacity to distribute the tests to our students so we had to save that for monday but we did have the capacity to set up a test distribution day the day before the storm on thursday and so uh john and uh and our school safety advocates came out to support john if you could just walk the board of the community through what happened on thursday and then dr caspero going to ask you to yes they do so we were close all district staff we were averaging 300 staff members out last week on this week i believe monday it was like 130 140 district staff across the board which is normal normal numbers for us so in
058fact i think monday night tuesday one was the first time we didn't have to wake up at five o'clock and start to do text making sure we could open up the building sunday so right very happy thanks for that question sure thank you so so what we're talking about is the test kit distribution and if you recall we we knew we might be closed uh thursday and friday and this was after the ice storm wednesday and uh as uh superintendent explained we didn't want to be in a position where we were holding test kits when staff members needed them we wanted those test kits used so we could open school and um really the the heroes are kelly and kara on the day of uh wednesday uh they worked tirelessly to put an email uh
059out of all staff uh with an attachment an attachment a link that if you wanted a um a test kit the next day uh there was a few things you had to do um online you know indicate who you were where you were but the reason you were requesting it because we didn't have enough for everybody we wanted people who either had tested positive or been in close contact but there was a criteria you had to set up and what they did was they asked staff to uh fill out their forms by eight o'clock that night and people did we alerted them first that the um the email would be coming look for it people did they fill out the form but then that was really a heavy lifting they had to sort that information
060uh clearly make sure everyone that was requesting it was entitled to one and then get that information back to me so that thursday morning and they were given um appointment blocks i think the first one was from 11 30 to 12 and they loaded up people and that we were at the high school in front of the high school um another appointment 12 to 12 30 or 12 30 to 1. and we set up uh two two lanes if you came into the high school came down the hill on one of the two sides with a advocate directing people you go left you go right the lines were on and as people got down to the hill by the front door there was a safety advocate in the table with the list that they had
061prepared just from the information that night and turned it around so quickly the people who they were checked off their name asked for an id and then about 75 yards up the driveway we had another table set up with four advocates and that's where the kids were we didn't want people clothes or traffic jams and what most people did was they were told open your trunk and they did and then the advocate came around and put the test kid in the trunk along with instructions what to do if they tested positive and the way they went and that went on for three or four hours it was pretty controlled the traffic really didn't back up we might have three or four cars waiting at one time but then it was very spread out it was
062all uh very safe and um i think we handed out 130 someone kicks that day people very pleased to get that so that worked as mentioned the principals have their allocation of kids in their schools with some uh instructions that are comparable describing them thanks john did a very thorough job explaining the process so um yeah that yeah the process for the distribution actually went fairly well and quickly and it was it was organized and your team did an amazing job also in getting those out um that happened on january 6th the criteria that we used with the staff again this was guidance that was issued by the state when the test was distributed to us and that was that you did not have covid in the last 90 days you were symptomatic and that
063you were direct contact and so in the initial first week when we sent the survey out to staff who were requesting we had about 170 778 staff from personal outperform and from that about 146 were eligible and about 31 were eligible with reasons like i just would feel better if i hadn't wanted to kind of at that point at this point in time it would not have anyone for everyone um you know those were kind of classified as ineligible or if it had coded uh within the last 90 days and so after that distributions uh occurred we did receive a lot of emails over the course of the weekend how can i still get a test can anyone now and so at that point the responsibility picked up the building level and so if a
064staff member still using the same criteria and the students as well in their code in the last 90 days was presented with symptoms or was it a confirmed direct contact then they could be requested from an administrator and if it was a student on the student side that would go through the nurse and the nursing both determinations as well and so um just taking a quick leach a good peek on our our master sheet it appears that we've handed out approximately about 100 809 student test kits so far since we started that on monday i'm sure that will grow or as people educate the forums it's kind of a fluid process at this point and then several more staff members as well so the good news is that we would be able to provide test
065kits for everybody who qualified and who needed one um and in the hopes that we will have another shipment that will come in um and be able to get these out a little bit more freely to everybody but um at the current time we're able to provide everybody who needed a test kit um with foreign mass and 95 mass using our federal government relieved money yes or 3 there was some money left to use those will be coming in in the next day or so they were in stock uh westport company had them cooking bought masks from before so more are on the way thank you and last but not least it's the update on quarantine guidelines and for students and staff sure thank you um and just before i go over that i just
066want to add that um the distribution of the kids really helped with this new process in place um cafe o'dowd as many of you are aware worked tirelessly all weekend as people were self-testing our employees at home to identify who could and who couldn't come into work and i do um you know believe that that has something to do with the significant increase in amendments for this week so um the the um cdc over the holiday break uh released updated guidance due to the new variant and with that guidance it was then reviewed by the state uh department of public health as well as the state department of education and so right before reopening and the meetings superintendent alston was talking about um the state had indicated to us that districts could feel free to
067adopt the new guidance by the cdc um and so the guidance is consistent in the first portion i'll go over that if you're symptomatic so any of the cold-like symptoms um that are commonly associated with cobia 19 you are to stay home you were to isolate um anywhere to test before you return to work or until you're not presenting with symptoms and the testing though did change slightly as you guys are aware that getting a pcr test was virtually impossible for many and so you could do a pcr test an anthogen test or a self-test kit um so that self-test kit which we were not previously accepting we're now allowed to accept for either staff or students um in addition um if you are testing positive for cobia 19 another one of the changes in
068the guidance was that you have to do a five-day quarantine so that was reduced from the previous 10 days i do want to clarify though the 5-day quarantine is it on day six you're no longer presenting with a fever and your symptoms your cold stopping this running nose has significantly uh dissipated then you're able to return to work on day six or a student is able to return to school on day six if your symptoms persist you need to remain out up until the 10th day or through the 10th day or until when you're feeling better it is also expected that between day 6 and 10 if you are back that you are wearing a mask around all others um consistently um which is common without doctors in school anyways but just highlighting um you
069know to a staff member then in the break room or something like that you need to make sure you're messed up the entire time um we are still quarantining um unvaccinated individuals and recommending that they test on day five after their last exposure um and then the last change in the guidance is regarding individual contact racing and this was all given out in a letter to our families in school community on january 3rd and what that is is we are no longer required to do individual contact tracing across the district and so what we were doing previously is if you are in a six foot radius of a positive individual you are given a contact notification as a parent or as a staff member and so now what we are required to do is after
070a positive identification is in place assuming all mitigation strategies are are in place as well so where i'm asked to think as much as possible that we do group notifications to that class so if you're an elementary student and you're in a kindergarten class with a child at test positive we're going to notify the kindergarten classroom um that there was a student within that class or there was an individual within that class because it could be an adult that tested positive we do not any longer do the six foot radius we're just notifying the location at the secondary level that is done by course um on advanced teams it's done by team or by club um so any contact in a school we're doing a general notification to the school community that there was an
071exposure how are we dealing with exposures in the high school college i mean i happen to know a student who received a call right before the holiday the person who sits next to him that guy would have assigned scenic at lunch was positive lo and behold the next day he woke up didn't feel well seven days later got the code results from saying before because it was funny was positive positive we are trying to the best of our ability within all locations in the school to do group notifications such as a lunch table um so if you know we have a signed seating in the lunch um so we do try to notify the individuals in the location i will tell you in those areas it's not a perfect science the classrooms are much more
072easier to do but we try to the best of our ability to keep people notified at the lower levels it's much easier as the classrooms eat together um at the secondary level it can be challenging hopefully at the secondary level you're calling your friends and tell them i would hope but um yeah just a quick question really um so when you talk about the um the change in the foreign tinkering and the need for folks to wear a mask in that five-day period following when they return how are we having like lunch or snacks and things like that so they are still able to eat lunch and snacks um but we are asking that they eat and then return with the mask on so just a heightened awareness to all um that you know you
073need to eat you can take a drink and then put the mask back on um the research is showing and from you know the information that's coming from directly from the state is not as likely to pass the virus on to others but we do want we know that this this variant is spreading much more quickly so just in common good practice for all kids um just a heightened sense of eat and then re-mask um but we do have you know there's not a there's not an individual place we can put everything that's returning from the quarantine um and then the only other exception would be um as you guys are aware we do have some individuals in classrooms many of which follow within my department um that we have some students that we know
074have more difficulty consistently wearing masks so in those locations for example some of our preschool classrooms some of our self-contained classrooms and so forth if we are aware that those individuals are not consistently wearing the mask then we are doing the individual contract tracing in those environments just because those mitigation strategies are not consistently in place and so depending on the scenario you may hear that there's a you know an individual contact tracing and a notification um if we have students that are not math compliant i'm happy to report that is a very minimal number of classes for individual students so we look at it on a case-by-case basis and consult with kathy and the school nursing learners if there's any other questions thank you just in general in terms of subs i mean nowhere
075ever was any district ever going to have enough subs to cover last week's trade recovery so this is a problem nationwide problem nationwide has going to county or bringing county services in does that increase the number of sums we have not yet time today they have been aggressive in their recruitment but it hasn't yielded us you know the results that we need right now um that's just brand new right so um um report i have quite a few things i'm sorry um it's just we haven't met forever and a lot of things happened and transpired since the last time we met just to touch upon committees briefly the draft uh are attached i spoke to most of you individually um but if there's any feedback you know i'm open to that um i'm also open
076to placing members on a waiting list for a specific spot that you know if there is one that opens um i can place you on a waiting spot on a waiting list but after tonight i mean that's pretty much said and ready to roll yes kate um [Music] yes were there many meetings um there are usually one a month but i will say i accepted an additional responsibility while sending into the board members so thank you for um negotiations can have informed me that we will be doing three contracts this upcoming summer so i'm looking for two members per group we have three of them uh the nea january teachers danbury pirate educators and custodians so if you are interested please just shoot me an email and let me know so i will need six
077six board members to cover those three this summer committees that are not on a regular schedule so we have three hopefully policy continues on a regular schedule finance and facilities which i'll talk about in a minute just please be aware that any any committees that are kind of like ad hoc schedule uh just touch base with cara um as soon as possible so that she could possibly set up the live stream it's the scheduling is getting a bit difficult with scheduling community meetings that aren't on a regular regular basis i just want to mention you know the committee meetings i know i mentioned this at the board orientation but attendance at the committee meetings even if you're not a committee member is very beneficial um just so you know when some inaction must be taken
078before the full board from committee you know gives you a little bit more background to what's going on um what i didn't mention at our orientation was just attendance in general at regular meetings is quite critical we should be committing committed to attend all regularly scheduled meetings we of course have members that really wanted to be here tonight so we're trying out this hybrid format um working through it hopefully very temporary um i um it's important to be in person you know it lends to a better better work environment and conversation cohesiveness of the board so bear with me as we work through this and i have to say a huge thanks to kara olga and our i.t our iot folks um you know they did have some advanced notice to try and work this
079out for us and i appreciate all that they did to make this work i mentioned the cave legislative breakfast that happened yesterday i attended with michelle and mr walton um and board members the conversation was mostly around uh special education cost and the cap on the ss plus grant that's been a topic for years now for the cave kate group and not only hiring you know diverse staff but just challenges around staffing in general we're all feeling it as mentioned previously the city-wide pto met on monday the day before that kevin and kate and i attended i will send the list of the pto liaisons to them so that they know who is their pto liaisons are um i think what i'm going to do is send them your email addresses so they can contact
080you but also try and capture their email addresses so you have a way to connect and hopefully attend some pto meetings and then let us know what's happening at the ptos um nick caruso is scheduled to come back this is very far in advance but we do have him on the calendar for march 30th to come back we tried to have a goals and responsibilities workshop um last year and felt that with new board members coming onto the board it's better to wait for them it's hard to schedule them so march 30th is what we're kind of stuck with um and then i want to say thank you to our new members who have really stepped up to participate and observe expulsion hearings and everyone in general just thank you for you know helping us
081with that um and that's it for me are there any other board updates just so i wasn't is there a question that is excuse me that i asked the question please yes guys uh the question to either the secret tenure or uh are we still looking into faith uh crossing god over the sand and when you're having near school think glass is asking about crossing guard or or some other sign for uh granville we had um yes this request come up before we are looking um and working with the city on our side i'm sorry i didn't hear but the reception is terrible so you know if i had to call someone personally i will uh you know so because i didn't hear what the remark was sorry gladys kelly kelly said that um they
082are working on that and they will follow up at our next meeting okay good enough thank you thank you just a quick question and i guess my last quote my last question will be and i will go um is it possible and i think it goes in in the order uh that has been in the test uh the superintendent secretary was sent to the very students that we as board members are being represented at pto members and send us back a list at the time that those schools are having their pto meetings so i guess my question is will we be receiving that that notice from the superintendent's secretary what i'd like to do is reach out to the citywide pto i think it'll be more efficient to just reach out directly to the ptos
083um it's a lot to try and track down when and where the ptos are meeting they're kind of all over the place and you know i tried to look on each individual pto website um they're not all always updated um so what i'd like to do is have uh just a list of board members and their email addresses and their pto that they're going to represent and put the ptos direct email address so that communication can just be direct is that clear okay uh but uh you know we can have a side commentation about that okay okay all right thank you sounds good okay my question good question i hope um as far as the committees like community relations who do you want to do you want me to organize a meeting i mean that
084that's a great question yeah i think as you are the um prior committee chair yes if you could as the as the chair um initiate the the first meeting and elect the elected chair yeah great oh i did have a note about facilities committee there was we'd like to move forward quickly with that there's a lot of work to be done so we're looking to hold a meeting on january 27th at 6 30. and then from there meet monthly every third thursday of the month so for my facilities committee um i know our facility's chair is leaving us so i will i will be on that first committee meeting i'll open it and ask for a chair to step forward and we'll let you share them and then turn over the meeting to them okay
085and mr britton i'm sorry but go ahead no no worries no worries at all um yeah i had something prepared that i wanted to say and um i figured i'd let us handle business first before um being that this is the last time um i'm gonna be speaking as a board member the next time i speak somebody from over there yelling so um and good things hopefully um but first off uh really thank you uh characteristics to present wallston for really this very kind gesture and those kind words and really everybody three years i've been on the board and you know i i meant it in my letter when i said that you know my three years on the board was the biggest honor of my life you know i often felt that my time
086here was sort of a continuation of my education in danbury public schools because every meeting here i learned something new i there was a new challenge brought forward that really required a unique um you know approach to finding a solution and you know after tonight i can confidently say that i think i've completed my time as a student in danbury public schools um you know having said that i'm going to leave you all with a promise and that promise is although i'm leaving the board i'm not leaving any of you or anyone in this district everything that i've learned being a part of this group i'm taking with me to the city council because it's just a plain fact that this district for almost as long as i've been alive has not gotten its fair
087share of resources from both the state in the city and i know in my new role on the city council i'm going to be in a position to tell these folks you have to wake up and face reality because these problems are not going to go away with a wish um and to the district's credit year after year this district does more with less and it continues to blow past expectations and in my opinion provide the best education in connecticut and that's to entirely to the strength of our teachers our educators support staff the administration and to me that begs the question can you imagine what this district could do if we're given the resources that it requires and you know personally it also really grounds my ears when i hear people bash camera public
088schools because this is a strong district this is a great district we have strong educators we have strong administrators strong support staff and our students really received a strong education i i loved my time in danbury public schools and i think the reason why i'm sitting here today is because of the education that i've gotten and you know i'm proud to say i was part of this group we all got along it was all civil it was portable i loved it and you know i'm even more proud to say that i was a part of this group when we navigated the once in a generation pandemic to the credit of the administration and everything that was done um you know beginning the construction of the second high school the career academy i can't wait to
089see that you know become reality and hiring the first new superintendent in over a decade you know i think those are some pretty cool memories that i'm going to have and you know i want to give a shout out to the folks at shelter rock for being so great to me when i was a student there and when i was their board liaison which i'm now happily passing the rings off to our new board member luisa britton former pto president of shelter rock um and then you know thank you to uh turkish and schulewski former chair cooper all members of the cabinet nea danbury you know and our new rock star superintendent mr walston you know i owe you all a lot and i promise i'm going to have your backs on the city council
090you know i wish all of our new board members and our seasoned ones returning the best of luck and you know just one final thank you to everybody keep fighting the good fight and you know just remember at the end of the day this job is really about one thing and that's to take care of the students and so thank you all so much it really was an honor so thank you thank you with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn by mr da silva's second seconded by kate all those in favor [Music] and so one of the parents