Danbury City Wide PTO December 6, 2021--The video will be uploaded after the meeting.

001so we've challenged back the district can we now revert back to our table process that we used to serve through kids with glory is next friday this friday with student groups there we've met with uh each family liaisons at collectively through the groups and then we met with the parents group as well we heard a lot of criticism compliments comments a lot of things that parents didn't know a lot of things they didn't know as well we heard a lot of curses and compliments so we're not going to be able to get it off the screen unfortunately um so we're going to kind of modify the style of it um in the attendance list is there a list of emails that we can also send on a backup does a presentation do as well so

002that everyone can see it if [Music] a little while ago it's been awesome to see everybody on facebook but okay want to talk a little bit about what we do as a team along with all of the many service staff that your kids save every day so we provide meals obviously i suppose but we also kind of take off the weight of making sure that safety protocols are followed along with like regulations and guidelines and all of that we like to engage with the community obviously here and we've done a couple committees and whatnot so that's kind of how we as a company want to come to danbury we also there's a big part of it is making sure we're in line with like health care professionals so i'm constantly talking to all the nurses

003and making sure come to do you know any special requests because i completely understand everyone is so specific and there's pig eaters and there's you know special requests that need to be uh um we also have regulations which i'll get in a little bit more because that's the part really that we wanted to share with you all because that's not something that's typically known i mean even as a dietitian before i started this job i didn't i knew the baseline obviously but not really the nitty-gritty of it so i wanted to share a little bit with you guys all community wants and needs that's why we're here to talk to you all and see you know as much as we can think about what they want we never really know until we hear from all

004of you and as well as like time management the classic any same as any management of food service has to get taken into account so this is how essentially the regulations are broken down so it starts up at the usda as every government you know regulation starts says the department of agriculture and then it comes down to the connecticut state department of education so they also oversee all the regulations in schools make sure the plates are filled with all the nutrients that your kids could need and they're not getting too much so that's the flow of coming all the way down to danbury of course so you might be familiar with the my plate diagram i don't know it's been out for a while now since michelle obama and so this is our new not

005new this is our tool i guess to look at portioning and things like that so although this is the basic part of it you have you know your five components to a meal there's nutrients that we both me and me specifically focuses on as well it has to make sure they're in ranges so you know the state is happy with us so some of the nutrients that we do are like sodium so that's listed first because it is probably the toughest to get around because if you cook at home you know that salt is just what really gets a dish to be good and it also kind of stops us from sometimes using packaged things which can be good and bad because you know we need the longer shelf life and things like that so

006sodium is a huge nutrient that we kind of have to focus on and make sure it's in a range sugar is also on that carbohydrates all that good stuff protein we do calories down to it's really very um fine-tuned so even like the types of vegetables you have to make sure that there's colors of each one so you have dark green you have red orange yeah it's very specific and they call it a rainbow plate for a reason so it gets very time consuming but you want to make sure that the kids are getting all that they need okay so we this has been kind of a big topic within our office is increasing communication so we want to kind of have an open floor for dialogue and the times obviously have the past two

007years have been crazy as we all know and so it's been ever more prevalent to have you know open communication open dialogue so there's been a lot of um struggles with supply chain barriers and issues and things like that to the point of you know we might have to do last-minute changes to the menu and i know that sometimes the kids might come home and say oh i this what i got surface that was on the menu and we do really you know apologize and try very hard to get what's on the menu to be out because you know that's what we had planned for but sometimes it comes down to the morning of we'll get a call after it should have been delivered and they'll say oh we didn't drop it off it's like

008oh my goodness like what do you mean you didn't drop it off so you know it's been a little tricky to navigate that but what we've found is making sure that we're communicating that with you all and communicating that with the nurses and the staff everything like that is pretty much the best way to go about it if any of you have any you know input on that as well we would love to hear it um but yeah so our main way of doing that is actually through a texting service so if you go to the danbury website or the danbury school lunch website it looks kind of like this and then on the right yeah the right there's gonna be like a little texting service thing and so if you click that and it'll

009sign up it'll ask you to text a certain number and then that's kind of how we really um let you know if any menu changes maybe if there's any seasonal updates or like sneak peeks to menus that's how we communicate best all right and then lastly we just wanted to see like we want to tell you how you guys can help as well and we want to say that recipes we can be creative so these regulations don't necessarily have to be super restrictive there's ways where you know we can sub in different things or maybe exclude a little bit of salt and things like that but we want to see the recipes that you guys are cooking at home or that are your kids favorites because we can find ways of fine-tuning that and making

010it work for our staff for our equipment supply all that so recipes and ideas or even just like a vegetable idea i'm constantly think trying to think of ways to get kids to eat vegetables and so always hearing things like that are awesome um relaying any feedback from the kids because as much as we'd like to be in there 24 7 hearing what the kids are doing and how they like the food we're unfortunately not always able to hit every school so we really rely on you guys to hear how they're doing and what they think um and then encouraging there's some new meals on there and for example when we met with charlotte yes they we spoke about having added plantains to the menu and that actually was on the december menu and the

011kids loved them we got uh chickens drumsticks plantains and rice and beans on the secondary schools yes i'm like trying to remember all the menus and separate them all but yeah so we had that and it was probably one of our most popular days so we do try and find ways to integrate things onto the menu but encouraging students you know to try new things because kids are so picky and it can be really really challenging as a parent as a teacher i know like it makes their day when they come in and they see something that they can they're excited to eat so encouraging them oh try something new oh this is on the menu it's really helpful to us and hopefully helpful to the kids to get all the nutrients that they need

012and then lastly we will have some committees we talked a little bit about um you know establishing new ones coming up or ones that already exist so taking those opportunities to kind of become engaged in the community with us is also super helpful so yeah and then there's our emails and contact info so we'll definitely send it out i can also give it at the end if anybody needs it any cards or anything so there any questions oh i mean go ahead yeah i just think so it sounds like when coven came around that's when maybe the quality if you will shifted quite a bit and it's you're saying if i understand quickly it's because of the packed items first being able to just you know the line serving right so you're asking to return

013to that other model and so where are we at with that so we met with kevin wallston superintendent just about a week ago at this point okay and we presented in the fact that high school the students are overwhelmingly happy where we used to serve 1200 or so meals in a short hour and a half period we're serving to have 1700 students so they're overwhelmingly happy with the pre-package from our point of view yes i speak no un-packaging yes and that that change has dramatically increased the flow of students coming in to receive meals um the numbers on all of our stations have increased well over 12 to 15 to 20 in some locations depending on what the meal is and it's it's made a big change we actually met with a group of um

014what we kind of call similar to like the student board of directors kind of thing and it's it spans all four grades so we met with several freshmen sophomores juniors and seniors um and the feedback almost right out of the gate was that they they were already happier with where things were versus where they were prior when everything was in a bag and that was unanimous amongst everyone in the group and even you know said that though this is what our friends are saying so it was it was a pretty a pretty unanimous statement from them so where are we at with the remaining schools so as i underspark is currently operating the same fashion okay we are going to be meeting with the principal tennis court yep we hope west side will follow suit

015and we've gotten some pushback from the elementary schools from the principals because it's certainly not our position to stand in the way the principal wants something done differently in each individual school we kind of bow to there i think elementary schools are also still eating in the classroom that is correct which is probably hard we can serve they can still take it i'm not even so concerned about where where the kids eat i'm really concerned about what they get and if they if they take more i'm happier because i know they're they'll eat at them so we've spoken to a good number of principals yeah at rogers park they're just at regular tables like this it's true the timing is also their choice like yeah at west side they do like 15 minutes and that's

016it whereas rogers you can sit and eat until you're done and then choose to go outside or not it's always a little bit different timing was a very big a very very big issue going into this year a lot of principals reworked many of their schedules several variations of it to accommodate for it because there are safe guidelines that do require a certain period of time for students to be able to eat from start to finish so trying to fit those mandates in as well as making sure that teachers have you know lunch period needs to be 20 minutes right and then you have 50. because she has allergies and she doesn't venture out yeah um but they have less than 15 minutes between the hallway gym and everything else so in other words from

017the time the bell rings so to speak till the bell rings again it should be 20 minutes if there's 75 children online of course the last child is not going to have 20 minutes which goes back into the timing of things making sure that it's a meal that we're able to fully function and be able to serve schools like west side who have a larger volume let's say a traditional smaller elementary like pembroke or things like that and we're able to get the food out to the kids in a timely fashion so time timing as you guys know is a major component and as still and continues to be a hurdle for the whole the whole program and then we have some schools um shout to rock small classrooms they correct uniquely 100 in the

018classroom not anymore not anymore that's right k2 is in the classrooms all breakfast is in classrooms k2 is in classrooms and three five is a launcher oh they are okay when did that start really it's working well if there has to be a lecture okay education looks at it's really not just all about nutrition it's really about socialization it's all about it that's their time to kind of explode if you will so to try to keep them down and tell them what to do and try to keep the heads down flip the light switches from where we sit it all goes into the pot it's not just about the hamburger it's the whole experience absolutely from the classroom yeah right so it is 20 minutes that is a state guideline uh there were many schools

019prior to covet that had way more time than that especially if high school their lunch period was 45 minutes we got that one we call the waves of students that come through um of about 350 400 students we served them in i think was 12 minutes 10 to 12 minutes they ate for 10 minutes and they still had a good long time to sit and socialize so that goes into the pot how our serving style does really affect the equality consumerization eating in the classroom there's just certain things that we couldn't give we heard when the students return we don't give them sloppy items don't give them the canned fruit because it's too wet and it may drip onto the table zero things like this so we were challenged to to kind of solidify and

020really modify what we did into what we can do and it's just carried through for the last uh year and a half now are there you mentioned the supply chains because i know my son personally does not eat the lunches but since everyone is eligible for a free lunch i we heard there was issues with running out of food getting frozen food at the high school frozen salads handed to kids and like these are high school big kids that need a lot of food and they were getting frozen items i can't answer that my office happens to be here i'm here in the cafeteria every day i don't see it happen could it be very very well killed could it be very very well chilled because again it needs to go to a classroom we

021actually have multiple school complaints about that meeting a couple meetings [Music] yeah we've also had reports of like leftover breakfast as part of lunch or as the lunch option um we had a lot of that yeah that's why you're here yeah but what school did you hear the chickpeas are but what school did you have and his lunch was a bag of four cinnamon rolls an apple and a milk and he's a sophomore that's much larger than i am um you know that's not enough for a kid to eat at 10 30 in the morning and has after school like if that was my son's other cross country he runs 10 miles after school but that was his lunch so we did just to reply back so we do do breakfast at the high school

022between seven and seven twenty businesses well i'm gonna dispute it because i don't believe that's necessarily true and i'll explain why so we do breakfast between seven and seven and twenty at high school we find very very few students take advantage of that we sat we found it very positive at rogers park they piloted a program where we offer a second chance breakfast in and around 10 o'clock i think that's what you might be referring to this was at the high school yeah yeah no no roger park did it piloted it i mean thinking back then to the high school where we at about 10 o'clock 10 30 we offer a second chance breakfast girls went up to the halls set up a couple of stations and they were able to take a breakfast at

023about 10 10 30. between classes so i was the kids this was during his lunch period so this was it it might have been yeah well he might have taken it could it have been conceived as a lunch the cafeteria was still open at that point as well well act like right now august 30th so right at the beginning of the school anyone else's children say they ran out of food at lunch way before yes yes the chicken was frozen yes it will have lunch no bread only tortillas for sandwiches frozen chicken that's here in high school so the chicken tenders as everyone remembers it as uh we did run out of an option but there was still uh sandwiches there was still salads available there were still hamburgers available that afternoon we specifically ran

024out of chicken tenders because we had also served a record number of students in that particular lunch we actually had over 875 portions of that product available we used them all by the end of the third lunch and with only a very short period of time between three and four as well as students coming down earlier or teachers releasing students earlier it does cause a bit of a time crunch so they did have chicken nuggets that were cooking but there it wasn't that we were out of food it's just that we happen to be out of that particular option at the time um given the circumstances it was the first week of school we weren't really quite sure where we were going to stand with numbers a lot of times kids are spending their hours

025in the day trying to to navigate the hallways find out where their classes are so it does make a challenge in the beginning because it's hard to forecast because we don't quite know what the incoming class is especially when you have two grades who haven't really stepped foot in this building because they were on distance learning the two years prior so you have freshmen and sophomores who have never been here before it's it's hard to to get a good grasp of those forecasted numbers we i don't believe we've had a incident like that since the beginning of the school year there is again there has never been a situation and i can confidently stand by that there's never been a situation where we have not had food available ever since five years or longer it

026might not be what's menu per se that doesn't happen incredibly awesome yeah this special for that day but that's kind of why we have such a short time if it's not ready that's where maybe they are putting it out i don't know so i haven't heard like i said i'm just it's like the voice of this yeah the beginning of the school year we definitely like i said we definitely ran into an issue with with just sheer volume yeah and i'll be honest i haven't heard nearly as many maybe as much chatter as the beginning of the school year which i i'm sure everybody can understand that the beginning and they were also we were also pretty packed that is correct for those first couple of weeks right so that yeah adds a lot into

027it right and i think sharing your presentation will definitely help and if people know like i didn't know you could sign up for text like that's great yeah so we we urged when we started that texting service it was very prevalent very very happy to do during the days that we were closed to remote learning because we would offer perhaps every tuesday at high school for pickup meals during our closures but maybe somebody called sick as you know people we couldn't get people to work we still can't get people to work anybody wants to volunteer or come and help us or know somebody who wants a job please come come and see us but we may have to change our locations so we'd send it a text universally so we urge principals please put it

028on their website certainly on our website but please put it on their individual websites and i think the majority the overwhelming majority of websites that i checked i did see it yeah and i spot check every once a week so they're still there but again i spoke to a lot of principals just recently can you reinforce it do you send down flyers i'll print them up stuff them into big backpacks a lot of principles are now just doing everything electronically so it's just yet another thing to kind of add to the family's task list but it is very helpful we'll sometimes when there's a change um unfortunately that morning it doesn't help but if you know the night before and you have a two-year-old or a second grader rather and they had their heart set

029on pasta meatballs and we're not able to get it the families could maybe prep them for the next morning hey they're not they're not going to have pasta tomorrow to having grilled cheese as an example so that's a great way for us at least to communicate aside from making the announcements in the school itself i have a couple specific questions if you don't mind for the elementary schools do they still get i thought they had gotten like a hot food option and then also like a backup option if they don't like that but then my son said that they announced that there was no longer a cold option not that it affects it because he won't touch it but he was concerned that there was no bagel or whatever that i guess a lot of

030the third graders tend to prefer so i was just wondering if you could clarify what the options are at elementary school level there are very specific menu options for the day so we do have a special of the day and it's usually a hot item and there's always the yogurt cheese and bagel bagel meal is one option and there should be a deli sandwich as an option as well at the elementary school that is correct so you're saying to the announcement that there's no cold option is incorrect there is a cold option yes okay it should be yes it's listed on the menu i know that's why i'm asking we've actually had parents say that like her son didn't want the lunch for that day then he went to get the bagel but there was

031no bagel and then my son mentioned that his teacher announced that there was no longer a was the bagel announcement just happened to be all joking aside like no last friday no yes one of our freezers went down so there's a very good chance that i didn't watch the problem we have like a parent group parent was asking if that was still an option so my son just happened to mention that his teacher also announced it so i didn't know that this is very strange those options are universally available across the district okay so hot lunch or backup lunch that is great got it um my other question comes from the principal of rodgers park dr julia who is wondering if barge park is going to get the salad bar that they were promised we

032actually spoke about that uh probably four years ago at this point she said that it was a green light ago decision made we can look into it again i know they they make pre-made sounds [Music] health plan like in our presentation it seems like awfully healthy um but are the lunches like are the is the bag preventing like a super healthy lunch all the time it means i know they still have like corn dogs some days and stuff like that which i i'm personally like not healthy at all um so i know pizza is always an option well they always have pizza as an option i mean that's like someone healthy crust or something i feel like the other one should be healthy but i didn't know the bag was sort of like preventing i

033mean you see me like with it health knowledge but yeah i don't know if the bag was like through preventing a problem if the hot lunch would be better when it served like on a tray easier you know i mean i can't imagine how hard it is to keep something perfect in a bag yeah i would definitely say it does restrict it in a way the the serving style just because i mean a vegetable if you if you like prepare it right then you're like a go and the kids will eat it but then if it's like cold and it's mushy and things like that after having to put it into all the individuals it's like the appeal of the vegetable definitely is taken away so that was a bummer um otherwise i would say

034it always fits into the guidelines you can always count on that portion it's always whole grains you're always having a certain amount of fiber you're always having a certain amount of all the nutrients are all all there they just might look a little different so a corn dog you know some of his school meals are like that's their meals right they go home they don't have a perfect house that has whatever they want so the school meal is their meal and i was just thinking that should be a decently healthy option right i think we're definitely also trying to move as the serving styles are hopefully changing it will move a little bit more in the direction of adding like i sneak a little bit of vegetables in the chili and stuff like that like

035you know so we are kind of leaning a little bit towards in the serving style including options that are more home cooked because that always helps in any facet of nutrition like if it's home cooked it's more than likely has less sodium processed fats all that stuff you can kind of probably more likely to eat it for sure which is why i think the chicken leg was so well yeah we'd like to menu items that they're gonna like right so that was getting that out and that's my concern if all the schools aren't required to go back to the other way then you're left with on really not quality food so i'm concerned about that if why well that's what's tricky is like some some schools if you're moving a little further along you want

036to give them all those options yeah we have tons of ideas and things like that and we're willing to like work with our staff to get to the point of like creating those but it is really challenging if it's there's eight how many elementary schools sorry i'm from mother's field so i'm like not not down these farts but yeah so 13 schools you've got to get on board it's really challenging i'm even more concerned i'm sorry too too because now to hear that there's even more restrictions depending on which school and where their lunch setup is so now if they're worried about something spilling like i was surprised to hear that so now there's even more limitations and what you guys can offer these kids which is why none of my kids get lunch anymore

037because they were like it's changed we don't understand why and they think it's awful so we bring a whole lunch every day i mean they were pretty i mean they always had their favorites um but even that has changed but i i think that that's part of the problem too is to hear that depending on what school you're in right now yeah if there's a bad item on top of it it's even more limited based on what how they're eating within the school so how do you have any options i mean what are your options what are they doing is what okay no no uh everybody gets a hamburger and whatever fruit is in the bag and whatever looks like i don't think it was displayed in that way she was making some announcement from

038the school like she my son's teacher is very like easy going she's not gonna make some sort of random rule it had to be for that day or maybe my son took it as forever maybe he was born that day i don't know that's why i was asking but i don't think she like went broke you know a different place but either way it does not seem like uniform at all and i wonder if the spilling stuff maybe because they're eating in the classroom and they're like getting really upset to even hear that and i and i did not know that it was not a uniform decision i think this sort of piece meal does it make a lot of sense to me i think also you know every i i can't really speak to

039what a principal's job entails i guess but i i know everyone they want like you know the best for their kids hopefully and so i think there's not been a huge um i think we can involve the schools that have successfully implemented the service like the high school and more street and things like that i think we can kind of get them to communicate a little bit so that then they can see not to be like afraid i guess of like letting the kids eat in certain places and see what they're doing and communicate a little more so we would love to also facilitate that as well to kind of see if they have ideas amongst each other to get something to work you know what i mean i do i i personally think it

040should just come from the top that everybody has to uh figure it out so that we can have quality quality lunches for the kids and more options you know in the salad bar that you're talking about at rogers park right they're actually they're having a broad view i guess they used to have a west side too my daughter said it's no longer i mean i mean that those are things you should have at all the middle schools the high school yeah should be equal it should be equal like i just if it feels very disconnected i don't really understand that this sort of mindset around this right now but um and you know and again i know it's not it doesn't sound like it's you per se so we'll have to try to no we're

041four feet and principal air came to us collectively we met about two months ago maybe even more at this point after school started it's just can we do kind of a hybrid of what your intent is or what your direction was to pre-pack everything and and yet give the kids somewhat of a choice and so to this day i'm not sure how involved you are with the school but the kids have a choice of vegetables the kids have a choice of fruits and they like it and they're eating it yeah the more important our goal is for the kids to eat if they don't need it what do we need to be here for them yeah we want but it's the fact that if the individual schools have to approach you to make a change

042you know is that happening or you don't change until you're asked no no no we we approached we kind of highlighted it at moore street extremely successful principal is very very happy as a matter of fact she wrote a great congratulatory email to us and we took it to we brought this concern a couple weeks ago we met and uh we brought it to administration's attention and they're going to be addressing it with the principals is our serving styles so quality is stemming back to the way we're serving so we'd like to get all of our schools back on uh the way we're serving we were serving pre-clothing for quality and for more options and it sounds like its principles are being reviewed it depends on the school and our ability to spread out or

043not be able to spread out and so we have some cafeterias that are so small literally the kids or don't even have as much space as we have right here and some schools do so for example south street the cafeteria is particularly small the same with ellsworth elementary particularly given the size of those two schools where sadly rock were able to spread everyone out and literally have a single desk the same is true at park avenue they're really spread out have a single desks separate tables but the school is so big and the cafeteria wings are so very basic also they still have as big as the cafeterias they still have tables in the gym and we're taking that taking over half of the gym to try to distance the kids as much as possible

044so it's really going to be school dependent and to help determine whether or not we can do this given what we've learned about the spread i think we're in a much better place than we were before but we also are at greater risk when we have more kids on top of each other without the mask and have challenges with quarantine so that was really the difficulty and just saying go back to normal in our cafeterias because we want to expose ourselves increase our risk in our regard so that's kind of kind of why we've been hesitant to go all the way back we understand they've come to the cost into some of the things that they're talking about had the opportunity to kind of spread out a little bit and have some options for lunch

045which has been great um but but as i share with barry i welcome to the cafeteria that day and i'm hearing some of the same concerns that i've heard in other forums with parents about the quality of the food regardless right so that's why it was important for me to have this discussion and find an opportunity for us to talk about families having input and students have an input and actual menu ultimately that will prove not just quality but also kids just kind of going back to what i heard when i walked in jade was just talking about the different options kids would be happy with what's being served barrio will probably already share the issues and challenges around shortages with food choices and staffing and you know that aside because that's just kind of

046what we're dealing with right now the longer term 20 maybe not right this minute maybe not tomorrow but 22-23 at the latest you know we want to make sure our kids have some and our families have some significance saying what the menu looks like and if they're happy with the menu i'm hoping kids will begin to be a little happier with the food options that are in front of them whatever it might be um [Music] until we met a couple weeks ago i hadn't thought about the fact that again i decided this time when we met that we're limited options when his staff can't reasonably get hot lunches and say hey he's like this lunch is something this lunch it's kind of one lunch for breakfast or whatever and you put it down on the

047table because that's how they actually service you but we can definitely go through a process in which the schools that have the ability to serve because we can spread kids out um we can look at those schools that are able to have some equity issues for those that will not be able to but i think the vast majority of our kids will have the flexibility to do this so we can jump back identify which um i'm totally good with the principles making the decision because i know she's making the decisions the best care our biggest problem was like the chickpeas like every other day and i do think that's gotten better and things like and like this i have a unique perspective because i stuck there too so i'm there at lunch every day with

048them and like when they get salad but there's no dressing like i did fourth grade and 80 hands are up because they like salad but when they're not dressing then they're not getting it but again is that like one of the concerns where you're hearing that some classrooms saying yeah they are okay because it does sound like there's there's that element to it too depending on where you are what kind of your eating setup is i guess i just get confused with like what does spacing have to do with how we're serving food like what we're serving i don't know like trying to look like our rivers are way down the hallway down the wing and you can't give a kindergartener a tray i guess you can go up you have the option of a

049sandwich for lunch or pizza right you have different options and now because we've asked food services to bring the food to the table you know we're not going to walk with mashed potatoes with gravy and loose peas and expected staff to run these conditions to all of the tables for 200 kids lunch waited 30 minutes to get them off clean them up and then get another 200 kids with loose food going in like the plate versus a cold lunch in a bag we package them they're all ready to go 300 kids measuring those kids whatever the size of the school bag like that that's a lot more reasonable in terms of how we have to turn them over so the schools that we have some more flexibility because the cafeterias are bigger you can go

050back to the kind of older style of growing up christy what would you like to eat today like a pizza would you like a sandwich i want a sandwich an apple boom boom and you go back to your table they don't have to go with the bag lunches on every table they can spread it out so i think that's what barry's referring to kind of piloted at mars to see something we can do but i'm telling you now if you go to south street that was worthwhile which is going to be tight it's going to be able to do that and not have the increased risk would it be possible to do some kind of a middle ground so in the morning and then has that luncheon delivered because they all sit at the same

051table right so i'm sorry almost like like a hospital like when anybody's ever talking to them what you're gonna eat and then they bring that meal to you i don't know well in effect we have that today right so they kind of used to do with lunch calendar or whatever sort of a thing so i mean just coming through our area our survey our our serving area is going to just change the minds of a lot of folks i think it's going to look nicer yeah i'm all for that i think they should go through but we make special menus just for those groups we understand there's some challenges with the little ones carrying back to the class in that case maybe they could order like in the morning and have their hot lunch delivered

052to you know or so some of some of the challenges with that that i definitely think we could we could grow into and definitely take a look at are something like transporting so for a school like shelter rock who has classrooms the majority of it um you know taking out and i'll use a low number i'll say 100 kids transporting 100 lunch trays while keeping them above temperature maintaining all the food codes and everything else without spilling and anything else everything if it's assuming that it's self-contained every product on the menu would have to get packaged everything would have to be pre-contained pre-wrapped so you'd still get a bag of things so is it possible of course with enough resources and enough time and time being a very large component in just about everything that

053we do especially how precious it is for the principals and the teachers and everything else is it possible theoretically but is it practical in order to take you know a hospital car around the classrooms and while you're dropping off 20 trays to classroom one and then having to stop unload go to classroom two 20 more trays is your food gonna stay hot what are the resources that are gonna go into that making sure so there's a lot of challenges that do that which is one of the reasons why um and as much as the pre-packaged food does kind of play into it a lot it's a little bit more easier because you know if you have say pizza for example like the galaxy pizzas which kids as people you know kids have seen one so

054they look like little little pies pretty much um you know it's a lot easier to bag 200 pizzas and then off they go to the classrooms along with whatever their vegetable and other components may be trying to give them individual trades and things like that it does open up a big clause into having to transport you know okay we're going to do 200 bagel meals first and then we're going to do 164 sandwiches and then 47 of this and then 28 of this so now you're gonna have to do multiple trips because you could have multiple products and different guidelines we're making on top of it all right wow and it's a challenge because something as simple as a as crazy as it sounds as a plastic container you know we're not just one school

055district i mean the whole country is ordering the same plastic containers like what are we doing what are we doing right that's another whole topic yeah so there are a lot of a lot of hurdles but we got some great ideas from the uh the travis group the group of dedicated uh elementary i think there were all schools a rep for muslims uh yeah yeah so their high school went down to the elementaries we had some actually we got some great input from them this was mid to earlier november and our december menu was reflective so as leah was saying one of the mom said uh and i like to use the the example somebody if one of them said my kids love lentil soup with hot dogs i presume that's a big latin cultural

056dish and trying to meet the needs i said can we can you tell us what it what's in it we had some conversation about it and i said well maybe we couldn't use those particular spices because they're heavily salted we were not permitted to do that but maybe if we broke apart the spice blend and we segregated out the garlic and onion powder and so on and so forth we can come to terms then we ran into the risk of giving soup to kids so we met them halfway and we came back to the table lee and i and we said well maybe we can make a side dish of lentils would that kind of satisfy the lentil soup as opposed to having nothing and still engaging them and we're going to be running that

057i think so we put a lot of their items they love chicken my kids love chicken how come we can't do grocery chicken sure enough we put chicken on the menu chicken drumsticks they were there i don't want to say they sold out but i saw it at the high school it was i think everybody just grabbed it right to record something actually across the top so new ideas we can kind of customize them to meet our needs exactly because we're listening facilities stacking timing as doug said it's it's it's a lot to do to get those meals out for the kids but if you come up with any ideas we're i'm certainly on uh email list we're all on our face on our web page so look us up drop us an email we

058can start the dialogue we are meeting as i said earlier we are meeting um but i hope we'll be regular we're looking forward to the next challenge group our time yep three times um we met with a group of students we're meeting at ais nick the end of this week and we've asked some other principals maybe they're interested in putting some parents and students in the same room or we assume so if you have any ideas if you have any suggestions send it our way and we can just work through whatever challenges we have together at the end of the day if the kids don't eat it's nobody went we're just making it for nothing it's a waste thank you very much yes yeah i saw your website i'm just looking at it today is

059there is there a email there on the website where i could say you know i could send it to uh the superintendent secretary yeah i didn't think i'd ever be this like emotionally invested in like chicken drums [Laughter] next up tonight hello everyone the back side over here i wanted to let everyone know that we have been granted funds to run the parents supporting educational excellence again i'm going to pass this around to everyone we are in the recruitment phase phase of this project this is a curriculum brought to danbury from the center for school change which actually has a different name now i can't remember exactly what it is partners there's a 12-week course we will start on the second to or the last saturday of december and then go for 12 weeks i've

060given you the registration form as well as every single evening starts with a question of what you're going to talk about in class it is facilitated by two folks outside of our school district one that has educational background one that has a family background as well as understanding how districts work how policies are written and it's a nice compliment i'm sure many of you have heard of tlti the parent leadership training institute it complements that in a way of helping families to become change agents effective changing agents in their schools to make change you know around policy working with the board of ed understanding how board events work understanding how laws become regulations and then on to how the regulations and the policies are made no matter how policies are made for the regulations and

061the statutes it also has an opportunity for families to come together and talk to other community experts around education and gathering this is happening in about four or five other districts this coming year starting in january our saturday meeting will be in person at our cottage street facility where i'm located right now we'll do social distancing and the class will start there and then we will be on tuesday nights on zoom uh be about a two and a half hour class at night this is all free of charge to our families and so we're asking um for everyone to go back to their school to recruit two people we'd like to see a full class of 26 books they do attend a board of ed meetings so as we get back if they're in person

062in like march they'll be there superintendent wallston comes and speaks to the group it's just it's a really really good class to really understand what makes a district work and how can families be really good change agents and making changes in their schools so i invite all of you to encourage folks or yourself to become active and register in this program and we'll be off and running in january yeah and can you explain how this is different if at all really focuses on civics and personal development where this is focused on school change and how do we make decisions and how can how can a parent okay or how can a family be active in them in those changes there is not any plti project left at the end but we have seen many people

063move into board of ed positions city council positions really understanding how government and districts work so where pll plti is really focused more on civics and people being a citizen yeah will that have um information like specific to danbury or is this more like general knowledge it does it does so you know you start off with a 10 000 foot level talking about how laws are made what comes down from the federal government like around title one then or exactly what barry talked about starts in the usda i think then it goes to the state department of ag how the state works with the information they've received from the feds and then how we operationalize it in dandruff absolutely thank you so there will be very specific things um to dandruff especially when kevin speaks

064to the group when we have community night or the world cafe which is you know a little different on zoom but you know understanding other fans perspectives in the district that's one of the change and what i've given you on that second page is those questions that will be asked each night and so you can really see you know how that happens national state and then how do you get those perceptions and take care take those opportunities okay great hi i'm grace grace is my new assistant director for the office of families thank you so much for having me i just wanted to mention about the registration forms we had some parents um just having a little bit of trouble sending it to me electronically it's a written form so some couldn't scan it and

065send it even if they should you just email over the information on the form totally okay it doesn't need to be signed obviously the most important information is that first part but if they don't have access to a computer or zoom they can definitely just send it over to me or you can kind of be that bridge or liaison and send that information over to me thank you so much i'm sorry i just missed who is actually teaching the course so the center for school change assigns two different people one is an educator from another district and then there is another professional facilitator that helps facilitate and they spend time with us ahead of time learning more about danbury as well yes they're from the center first for school change that's where the curriculum is

066written from okay is that in [Music] serve as a canada group to school districts across the state um so they're not like arrests like headed or they're kind of independent from all the rest but they still work hand in hand with um superintendents and state fish they work firsthand with the commissioner's office on these types of positions between the state and supervision to help academia like that's right like they're from academia yes yes yes yes but can talk to families on a non academic okay way too okay it's all about equity and developing relationships because when you develop the relationships that's how change happens and in cases like this they're likely to send someone to us who has a family connection kind of background and the fact that the mission of safety missionaries i forget

067what was commissioned at tucker's background prior to this appointment as commissioner oh um charlene tucker she is um her background was like overseeing the whole family school partnership patrice nelson who was a facilitator for our pog project she's the one that oversees that for school change and if you were any part of our designing our pog i know estella you were i'm kate i think you were as well um yeah over there she and rachel you were there too right yeah so she is really really you know the go-getter for this and she makes sure i get to interview um the person that they haven't come for we've had in the past four different facilitators six different facilitators this is our eighth round of this and they've all been phenomenal i've had no issues i've

068known all of them uh you know and i'm hoping that the gentleman who just did plt and bruce that he'll accept this if you've just recently taken plti this last year it would be yeah it would be great to have bruce like to balance it out because we'd like to see some dads part of the program as well i also just wanted to mention the course was only at this time offered in english yeah so if you have any parents that um you know understand speak a decent amount of english they'll be able to get to the course but at this time so what we've done in the past because we've had a fair amount of people that are bilingual we meet a half an hour ahead of time with them to go over those

069really key terms that are going to be introduced during the course so that it doesn't slow down the pace but it gives that fan you know what is an iep what is it what is an individual education plan so we spent half an hour prior to class starting on those different terms and concepts to make it easier for folks uh it will not be the weekend that plti starts on it will either be the 22nd or 29th perfect yes yes good thank you thank you thank you all right school reports shannon okay so for the high school we finally finalized our mask fundraiser we had uh pick up and uh took delivery this past saturday and sunday at the high school and it went very well we do have some that were left over that

070weren't ordered are were ordered but weren't paid for and nobody really responded so we do have a few left over if anybody still wants them we have put on pause the senior blue wall project just because of weather so in the spring they'll finish the final tough jobs joe from west side is going to finish that and the beautification for benches and flowers bushes by the gym doors obviously we'll be waiting on for the spring for the weather as well our focus right now is thinking about senior gifts ideas for the seniors for prior to graduation so we've been going through some ideas and one of the plans that we have is starting in january to ask the seniors to sign up for the program through like a google form and then we'll do like

071a random drawing for those seniors that participate and we'll do 22 because that's the focus for this year 22 gift cards uh for like a bagel man or another venue that we come up with we kind of have been asking some students for venues and everyone seems to keep saying bagel man so um so our next meeting is going to be the end of january or february and we've already put out that we're looking for senior parent volunteers to help this year again because after we do the gift cards the other thing that we thought about doing is 22 days prior to graduation whichever day that ends up being based on snow days we want to try to do like baskets and raffle them off as well as like a bigger item to make it

072a little more exciting for them we're still kind of trying to figure out what to put in them uh and the lawn signs we're trying this year to do a little bit earlier i guess i'm a freshman parent so i don't know but prior to this i guess there was some concern about getting them in a timely fashion so that's something that they really feedback has said that they want that to be earlier in addition the school there's a stanbury school store that's online but the hatter's hot spot is uh started up a new staff member took over and she recently opened it at the beginning of december and we're partnering to try to sell some items as well so that it could be a little more lucrative for her as well and uh just

073our next meeting we're just going to try to do more of like a presentation style um since as i keep hearing everyone mention that it's more than just the freshmen that haven't been at danbury high school and i know me as a parent last year it was very difficult to try to register for classes because it was so brand new it felt like my child was in college and so um one of the things that a lot of us had talked about is maybe just having a simple presentation about how you register for classes at the high school because i know for myself that was a concern for me last year i was panicked and this year i still am like oh no wait how do i do this again so um you know because

074we haven't really talked with other parents in person and we haven't been in the school so um yeah i think so and i mean i would like to like have that kind of factor over to eighth grade parents as well because i know from myself i was very nervous about it so um i know people with seniors kind of look at us and say oh you'll get there but anyway so that is one thing that we're trying to push for and then maybe they'll be you know people that will also want to be involved the thing is they will make sure your student takes every class needed to graduate they will be a senior and all of a sudden right but it's like one of those things when you don't know i sorry and there's

075a know of choices which is right it's a good thing and an overall thing but it's the options are phenomenal too i wasn't saying that yeah they still agree i know and i know i was part of the principal's breakfast and dan donovan had mentioned that we were supposed to have this training in middle school that the kids received the training for that in middle school or were introduced to it and i haven't met one parent that said they they did and even parents that have kids that graduated even still say they don't understand it so that's something i think we need to follow up with but try something yeah i don't know and i don't know when it's supposed to be introduced but i guess we're my understanding is they should be working on

076it progressively through their high school their entire high school career um and i was just told to them about this today have you been in there like you have to put something there you're gonna forget by the time you get to be a senior um and i know like the the pto the danger used to have a presentation about naviance just for parents to just kind of walk them through they do get a username and a password and parents get like a parent password my recommendation is get your child's username and password and go on as them because it's just more options open but it is like my son's a junior and he's like yeah whatever he hasn't been on either wednesday do you receive it from the school counselor it's the students get it

077they probably got it in eighth grade honestly and it's probably something that they just weren't aware of what it was but your counselor your child's counselor can just tell them what their username and password is and then it says it's just how they request recommendation letters but it is like the pto did used to do it i think it was just another parent that wasn't like a professional or a counselor that came in and did it it was a parent that went through how to do an advance okay i will last in high school what we do now i've seen it work best when it's introduced as graduating eighth graders and so they what we do is so let's just as let's just say i'm a guidance counselor and i would sit with you and

078we would kind of walk through your career interests and those interests may or may not inform your electives in your ninth grade here so that will begin to inform your schedule for the next year and then every year you would get your guidance counselor right in google do an exercise if you want to be an accountant and so you know you would have your typical class that you have to graduate but your your electives would be kind of guided by your aspirations when you leave high school until those electives you try to like follow the track and you know you speak to you as a student call your mom and dad and then they say yes this is a great idea this is what my little girl wants to do right and then go on

079and then by the time you get to your junior year that conversation informs college choices and schools that you want to apply to and so naviance as you continue to navigate to show you what schools match your majors arranges so the program itself is comprehensive complex it's a really good one when and especially the part about the communication with the parents because i just find that well i just found my son's password to it he got it on 3 23 2020. like right after the shutdown like they get it their freshman year that [Music] and so i know that and it was probably more than that but i think something with the parents has kind of fallen to the wayside and that really would be helpful i think so that's great all right um well

080we wrapped up our modern pie fundraiser which um was actually record high we did ridiculously well with that this year which made me very nervous that nobody was gonna pick them out because somehow we pulled it off though we actually had a record pickup too they were all gone by four o'clock usually we're there until 6 30 and it's literally in our freezers at home so that worked out really really well this year um we just finished up our spirit where we usually use custom ink not so happy with them this year it was not not their best performance we had some quality issues they should be wrong item replacement i mean it's then they came to pick it up without telling me they were coming to pick it up um it's been it's been

081a little stressful with them but most items are out a couple of stragglers that hopefully will come in soon um we are currently working on our holiday boutique super excited about that um it's a little kid's christmas shop really glad to be able to bring that and do that this year um we are still looking to schedule math science um which is something actually i kind of wanted to ask um i know i think other schools do use math science um i don't know if you guys are doing it virtually or hoping to get instructors and you were hoping not to do it virtually so i was wondering i said i figured there's a lot of schools if maybe we could possibly get them as like an approved vendor so i mean our principal said

082that he thought if it was the same instructor week after week and they got that person approved and they were vaccinated that he thought that would be something that we could probably do in the springtime which is when we usually do it anyway like same group of kids like group kids signs up same groups but obviously i didn't put the forms through right now yeah i mean they're pretty they're a pretty small shop that's probably the same person sarah i think it's normally like 10 or 15 kids that sign up for us anyway yeah and i'm just wondering if like they seem very willing to work with whatever criteria we need sending vaccinated staff doing math keeping business wondering if we work with them if they would be able to meet those accommodations for like

083any schools and kind of almost have them approved the vendor type level it would be more like a club like elementary school after school club well so this is like we usually bring in during the day during the classroom oh so ours is different we did after school yeah so we bring it in we've brought it in like all the classes get to experience it um like they do offer the virtual option it's a hands-on experiment so doing it virtually it's it's not as exciting yeah virtual influencers it's hard to interact through the screen so you know um that's what we're hoping to bring in history it was nature's classroom but it was a mobile thing it was supposed to be outdoors but then it monsoon the day that it happened so they had to

084bring it indoors and it was in each individual classroom for fourth grade and one day in fifth grade the next day so they did do it it worked out right so yeah i don't know like i said they're willing to they're pretty flexible so i don't know if that's something we could possibly do less paperwork to kind of do it on a broader school i thought um you said that was history or were my times classes maybe like they came mobile it was making it last year ais but outside it was actually amazing it was a full week uh they brought like a version of the program if they normally do like the sleep away but they brought it naked monday last year we were split into two groups so it's like one group had

085half the week in the other hybrid group had the other half of the week but um i was able to come and take pictures they did like seven different activities they did a dissection they did like a little walk in the forest it was really they loved it it was a good backup option if you have and don't want can you have a contact control yeah sure you used to reach out to them for sure um and then we're also looking for a history program if anybody's got any good because history so i'm sure that's something we want to get to maybe we'll stick with that [Laughter] kindergarten but it was a musical program that did songs of all the history like star-strangled banner it was like u.s history but it was really interesting because

086they dissected the songs that kids knew and taught like talked about the history behind the songs and then it was like do you know what that means so i'll see if i can find it yeah definitely it was different for sure um we're also trying to see if we can maybe for like late spring you know maybe may try to put together a talent show again that's something that we used to do i think i'm trying to do it outside and we did have some concerns with lighting and playground equipment and things like that um and also even maybe a stage i don't know anybody has any ideas on how we can sort of do a stage outside like um because the concern was basically if we just set up like on the blacktop no

087one's gonna see a you know second grader brookfield town parkfield town park i mean they have a park there too but um um [Music] doing that kids just love their you know their american idol for the whole few minutes if they're singing um yeah yeah i'm telling jokes or whatever and so that's basically i think everything i've got to report i'll find out about the dues for you and um i think their next ptm meeting is scheduled for january 6. which is pretty quiet right now they look great they're still selling them they're also running a school store with holiday orders delivering soon they're trying to plan an outside social slash dance in the spring for the eighth graders some kids maybe something else for the whole school and their next meeting is the first

088thursday in february they just had a meeting last week and they're doing it um concurrently with the principal monthly meeting which started in uh colvin he started doing monthly meetings just to update parents and then the pto jumped on a tag team so they do it's still virtual but that's it from west side and i was not expecting it but we did um a profit of a thousand nine hundred so that was pretty good for something that's not expected so we're definitely doing it next year um we've had a couple of uh meetings and those are with mrs bradley next week we're going to have a busy week we'll be having a raffle extravaganza and it's going to be outside so we have some parent volunteers and so we have a lot of donations from

089businesses so the baskets will be outside it's going to be a lot of work you know to get them outside and bringing them back in but it you know we'll make it work um so we're looking forward to it and we have only 18 thanks to south street we're having the denmari patrick's hockey day so we're going to be doing a saturday then we're also having a holiday shop for the little guys and all those were donations by staff and businesses so we have quite quite a bit of stuff um and um so right now at the school we do have some clubs after school um we do have the art club and that's by um west hunt intern she's doing an art club once a month and then we have a science club twice

090a month and then we have the theater club that's going on and i don't know what that looks like but the kids know that we don't know if it's going to be you know outside i mean it's going to be may sometime um but we don't know what it looks like at this point but they're okay because they're all excited right and they're looking forward to it so that's what we have going on um we just finished paying off our murals we've needed five murals um inside the building to make them look nice and they look fabulous all right um we bought the month medals for each classroom for the school year and then we got to have our election day base sale this year which we didn't get last year we made like 860

091dollars off of our bank sales which is really cool it was very sweet we had lots of our principal's been out the past month so there's not a lot to be doing um after the first of the year we'll have our yearbook cover contest and our yearbook sales will start and then for valentine's day we do carnation sales uh king street there's not really anything to report they haven't been we haven't had any meetings except for in september um um ais actually i can also do rogers uh rogers park had the debris hat tricks fundraiser which was very exciting they came to the school everybody loved it i don't know what the final tally is i like how much money we made or exactly how many tickets were sold but i know it created a

092lot of excitement roger spark also now has a green house hopefully everybody saw the photos online it's amazing the gardening club is putting it on and it it is just amazing to see how much time and effort the teachers put into all these things they mean black beans and rice which they grew the beans very cool um i think basically that's what's going on there and we're trying to get some like picnic tables and stuff to put in the greenhouse and things like that but those are the major things over there um ais has had quite a few things going on we did an outside book fair that was very well attended we had a very successful food drive we sold online spirit wear which is going to be delivered next week and we are

093also hopefully waiting on approval to do a um drive-through toy close donation um next week where we're also setting up these little it's almost gonna be like a drive-through winter not holiday winter viewing and this little drive through kind of a setup um so we're setting up these little like stations where kids can stay in their car and see like lights and little like signs and all these like doing scenes and sort of drop off your donation and you'll drive through and you'll get a little craft to take home and it should be very cute and for the spring we're looking forward to doing a bunch of different activities i think our major one will be the international fair which will be a set up outside and maybe different families sort of come and represent

094their heritage and they can basically do whatever they want we have we've had in the past very successful all different tables and people kind of come and stop so we're looking forward to doing that um and that's pretty much it so good evening everyone i want to start off by saying that uh and she got back just in time to celebrate her kids who were finalists to say uh this saturday they did an amazing job that's awesome so we will have a press release out on them soon they are incredible um and so obviously i'm sad sadly it did not get the same at rockefeller center but they really are remarkable and the teacher is amazing and given you know it's not as if we have a choir class where kids are pulled from different

095classes to go and get pulled to go to music class this is elementary school things are incredible so kudos to the teacher i got to meet her um again speaking a little bit more from the tree of these fabulous uh so that was really good to see this weekend i needed to start off with that before um and so on if you don't mind i like to just jump into it we had a busy couple of days school days including weekend we have learned that a number of our peers in the region are also struggling with some challenges as well i just got off the phone coming in you may have seen in the news they closed down for two days because they tried to three days thank you as they tried it they settled

096down apparently there was some unrest in the community where there were some incidents in the community so i think that contributed to them closing their building down and one of my cabinet members is doing an internship there so she's a little closer to what's going on that i also call no walk norwalk is also struggling with several incidents in their district connected to some folks there as well their their situation is really intense they had a threat there was a email right there was something in the bag uh you know weapons in the bag including the bomb in the back and so uh police actually bags were left behind at the school police came in the building and went back imaginable at the building until they were able to get all the bags to the

097school and the site safe they had a two-hour delay i believe it was this morning to try to provide social emotional the mental health support students and staff but as you might imagine had to be quite troubling i spoke to some teachers uh administrators that i used to work with at milwaukee high school as i'm trying to provide reassurance that they're going to be okay and here we are at noaa so just rewinding back to us on friday this brought our attention that one of our first it was looks like one of our teachers had received the message that was forwarded of course to the principle we began to address and deal with what was in front of us to the point where it was a little concerned because we just are not sure of

098who the person is we still don't know exactly i feel like we have a little bit more information that we had on friday but on friday we didn't have enough information we felt like it was it made sense to send our kids home to no staff home just kind of given the level of brexit we were dealing with one threat in the morning we needed some time to mobilize our buses i actually received an email from one of my parents who was very conservative the organization of the buses and i totally understood where she was coming from um but honestly our buses we i also think the bus is the bus company because folks don't work in between you know they drop off at the end of the day so we were pulling folks from

099child care we were pulling folks from doctors appointments working out in the gym taking a walk in the car i mean they could be doing anything and so we were as buses were coming into the parking lot on friday anyway we continued to keep us kids go to the buses that they were assigned to if it was a true emergency we would have just and don't get me wrong it wasn't urgent we probably would have done something different but we felt like it was controlled and that we got everyone out of the building um as quickly as possible we did not vote with the two o'clock assistant 130 distance of it was the building is dismissed as the buses come in get on the bus so i think we had four or five buses actually

100have to circle back because they left prematurely and if you've been up at the school you just kind of have like 50 something buses i believe it is and just kind of all lined up double bar so someone must have made a signal to give them to go i know i mean i was standing there watching them leave and their kids coming up to me they thought you know i had the power to give them what i did back and so it took a little bit longer than i would have liked i think we do an amazing job getting kids in and out of that building i think typically it takes nine to ten minutes with three thousand kids probably took more like 15 to 18 minutes on friday which felt like an eternity quite

101frankly looking back on it if we know that we may have to make a decision like this again and i'll fast forward to today in a minute um we will call the bus company further at the beginning and let them know as we're thinking about or even considering it we'll have them on deck and make sure they've pulled over people so we've learned from from what happened on friday to make sure they're at the table sooner in the process i think they gave them about 40 minutes of the time the majority of the buses were there in that 40 minutes but like i said we still had five plus buses that got there a little weight and left for the prayers so that's one the the threat was the threat itself was vague we didn't

102feel like it was credible and that we had enough to substantiate anything significant just in terms of we just didn't feel like it was credible however we didn't we also didn't feel like we had enough information to not send kids home and you know during this whole time of course we've collaborated with the police department with the city officials with the mayor as well today was a little different we received a threat late last night followed by another one this morning we have more information than we have on friday the police are pursuing a warrant to go to google and get the permission to find out who the career of the account was but at this time we don't know exactly who that is but given that there continues to be some action on that

103side meaning they continue to send emails out it's actually helpful for us we are making sure we do a better job shielding we have now the ability to shield the recipients of these emails there's an investigation going on but we're able to do a better job shielding our students and staff as these emails come in we don't want to stop the person from sending emails because we'll leave better chances of catching quite frankly so just know we feel pretty good about what we've done to shield our people i can't say much more than that but let me also say i struggled today not releasing the high school again i was in the building this morning for a couple of hours in the building at the end of the day for dismissal we went back and

104forth on what we should do we felt strongly like we needed to make it through the day um and not because just to prove a point it was really about we felt like we were safe given the new information that we had which was different from friday we continue to work with the police department we've asked the chief to maintain the presence that we have so we have five police officers in the building we have two sros who are stationed assigned here three additional officers they were amazing on friday they were in school they were working with our staff because we had some staff members that received these emails firsthand they were shaped up so we did whatever we could to support them kelly who's now our assistant superintendent of special education personnel she deployed

105social workers and her support staff to the building today to the high school but that support is available for staff and students district-wide it's only a request for any any kind of support and mental help support every bar they will be deployed to help us we know this is a really difficult time for us i'm doing everything that i can to make sure we have our bases covered and we have the support that we need to survive it was on the phone with the chief earlier this evening this shortly we will continue to maintain the half the fight that we have if we need more we can have a conversation um the five gives you pretty good presence at the high school so we're gonna go with the we'll maintain the five that we have

106like i said they were incredible on friday and the fact that we had people working his division working on the email exchanges and pursuing the warrant we're also really encouraged by that as well we're not at the place now where we're totally hands off so our i.t because it also has the ability to work and help as well so we're encouraged by the progress and monitoring and assessment that you saw in that email that i sent out that we're able to have a little different eyes on this situation that we had on friday with all of that said if the language and the breadth continue in the way that we feel like we need to do something different we will we'll do everything we can to continue to update folks and to update our parents

107and if for some reason we think it's enough just to keep his home whether it's a high school any other building we will do so and then deal with it on the other side just in terms of you know it's going to be a significant disruption particularly do that k5 or even six eight for that matter but we'd rather be safe but we felt really good today about who we were um we continue to feel like they're not credible threats but a threat is a threat and we understand the actions we have to take on friday all i can say right now is just given the information we have it felt a little bit better about not dismissing this so i understand that maybe questions after that but i just wanted to just share what

108i i can right now yes yes just i'm just curious you know what one side i have just gotten a call and an email as well um so you know the wording says you know these threats are not credible uh which is a good thing i'm just curious when they say i'm sorry this is west side but maybe just in general too when sort of disciplinary action they're saying has been taken i'm just curious what that looks like what's happening around those threats you know okay so the in for the family's parents here who are not aware of west side we had a student who made a concerning statement on friday on the heels of what happened at denver high school on friday so we learned about that on sunday night through a parent so

109this child may be safe on the bus on friday and i'm assuming that child who heard the statement that the parent know informed the principal sunday evening until we begin to see that motion um called a couple of other students they said that yes they also heard the statement almost word for word and so with that there's actually a code of comment if you make a threat it could be up to 10 days plus extra right including police involvement etcetera so when we say the cold content doesn't mean applied it's applicable here it's no different it'll really depend on the level of statement if there's a weapon you brought in like it's like an automatic 10 days depending on the statement or the level of the threat it could be the same so i'll just

110go here okay without bringing any attention okay i was told not to say too much because don't get the understanding but just know there's kind of a mask on what you can do off one kid at king street and a friend texted me saying there's like 20 cruises driving to the higher at the high school this is friday so i just texted my son i said are you okay and he very quickly responded back um he did not know that the school was in lockdown until they announced it in passing between first block and second block is that when it happened or you know where some parts of the building may be on soft lockdown or aware of it before other ones were i'm just kind of wondering what the process is because he was

111aware of being in lockdown for about five minutes so um i'm gonna answer in a couple ways so so one i was at the building when we released on friday i was in library i could barely hear the announcements um so that's one and so i can understand depending on where you are in the building depending on moving the school they may have made it hurt i don't know um i was in the office dan was making the announcement but i don't know what that means in terms of what you're hearing throughout the entire school you're actually sheltering place which is not a total lockdown but there's no movement which essentially means you can't come in until we're we don't the police department encourages not to use a few soft lock down the block but

112it's a very soft one um and it was literally maybe five minutes and not because i was there like from the front office by the time i sat down and got in and said okay where are we like we had just come off of the off the shelter clips yes and so what happened with this school we were assessing the whole time and we had made the decision i had made the decision every building is going to be a sheltering place until we have a better handle on what's going on and the chief of the police several police officers at the school and at that point had being the school safe so that decision was made it was in five or six minutes um in fact we hadn't even made all the calls to the

113principles i did the same thing with my son he's like yeah i'm fine i heard that and he's like yeah i heard the announcement it was like i don't go anywhere and he and today i asked him how it was just like i'm i was happy to stay in school all day like and he said i felt totally safe so he said he didn't feel any different he felt safe and he was happy to be in school all day but i got text messages from a friend as i was driving here saying are you keeping christian home from school and i said what no because i didn't know about until your message this afternoon i didn't know about anything else and um her daughter or another friend her mom picked her up this morning and

114she's not going to school which i i guess everyone heard a little bit differently but i just didn't even know about the continuing practice he said he said something there's more than a regular episode i have a question um i just want to know i assume that safety has always been something that you've been thinking about and trying to improve on but what specifically are we trying to do like maybe for the high school or for the other schools like to improve like i know i was part of cam street and i know they changed like the front and how you enter and things like that but are there still conversations going on about what we can do in the forefront so that we can try to figure this out i don't know metal detectors

115like you know just i've heard all kinds of things that people are talking about having you know more access to police for quicker response or something like that like i just i'm curious so this may or may not be what you're getting out you have to question some of the principles and i'm actually talking this morning it's time to revisit this see something to say something campaign that we have because i think more than ever this is really a time when we need to remind our students how important this is to keep our schools community safe it's language that's been somewhat removed from our community just kind of given that we don't have necessarily have the same momentum that we had in previous years so that proactively that is one thing that we've talked about

116doing i'm meeting with all the administrators tomorrow for a quick 30 minute check-in and that's something i'll be reiterating to all of every school you know different levels of engagement open years but everyone's familiar with the strategies and how to get kind of the full school school school community engaged so that's something that i'll be pushing pushing on all and then the other piece is really creating a sensible awareness through and to see something to say something is really important so i'm just gonna stay there for a second because i feel strongly if our kids see something they say something we're not going to really have any problems at this school because if it's something internal just feel like one there's going to be another student who knows what's going on and at the high

117school particularly we talked about the additional presence of police officers at the school we have additional facility we still have gaps you know we have personnel shortages as well and it's not just batteries in safety accidents unfortunately one of them here at the high school but i think we're trying to get to eight or nine i believe we have six or seven so we're trying to make sure we output all those positions but at the same time we have two additional teams this year and although their job is not necessarily to walk the hallways but certainly in between classes they certainly do and one of the things that i like they also have a caseload of students and so they have connections you know personal connections with a number of average students that potentially can

118help indicate lessons so i think that's also helpful for us the fact that we've hired the additional we will never will always know more but the fact that we've hired additional social workers and guidance counselors this last year i think also helps in times like this just to make sure we can get more kids in front of get more staff in front of kids and then last but not least particularly at the elevation level and what we've done is 612 as well we have intentional time carved out for building community and classrooms and i'm not suggesting in a community building activity someone's gonna say kathy did it right because i kind of suggest that's going to happen but if we've connected with the teacher in a way that does not mean folks you know kids

119in class talk about how they feel about what's going on in school how this is making them feel they could encourage someone to speak out to the teacher when everyone has left the room and so we feel like you're literally just continuing to be intentional without these practices can lead to being proactive and addressing these issues but just in terms of additional like hands-on security-like personnel is not something that we're looking at right now but doesn't mean it's not something it is important for me to make sure that we have the requisite number of attitudes at the building i don't feel like we'll ever have enough quite frankly and if we're budgeted for nine then i was born so i just met with the director today for security to see where we are we had

120a couple of hires we had a couple people leave and so it's just been kind of resulting just but that's i have a question in terms of communication so it seems like given the you know volume and the number of students here that potentially that there's a situation where it's too loud for a student to hear it could be a life-and-death message theoretically that's concerning i think in some ways um you know i know too because even like a lockdown is usually just like a one one shot you didn't hear it you didn't hear it um the message so i was just wondering like is that something that we can we're looking to address yeah and i know you're walking a fine line between you don't want to also cause hysteria but like well everyone

121needs to be quiet you know like similar to how the principles were communicated with you know something students could even opt into if they wanted to that they could get an alert on their phone it's like you know shelter like certain rooms or hallways or bathrooms even in the bathroom necessarily here there might be a speaker in there you know in addition to those practices are you familiar with rachel's challenge okay it's it came out of columbine and it's a really um impactful sort of assembly i guess if you will um i would i would encourage you to reach out to maybe mr dara over at west side he does a shorter version of it for the eighth graders he takes a group every trimester and my daughter happened to be i was actually gonna

122knew before all this was just happening i was gonna reach out to you and tell you all this because i thought it was so profound for her that it should maybe be something that's available to you know um all of the eighth graders if you wanted to just pick a grade you know maybe you know at raptor's park and broadview as well um it was just really profound i mean i i could almost start to cry talking about it she came home in tears i'm like what is the matter she told me about this thing that mr dara had done and he asked all the kids to please not talk about it so that it stays very organic for the for the remaining groups but they basically have this circle of and i won't go

123into the whole thing but it's it starts out pretty basic you know are you in stem are you in global studies step forward if you are and then it gets a little heavier and heavier and before you know it you know they're starting to learn about their peers and some of the challenges that they might be having at home that they don't talk about didn't know about maybe it's a divorced family maybe somebody's dealing with alcoholism in the home and it it stayed with her i mean in a good way and i think for her um and for all the kids there it just sounded like it was very important right now to have that connection for these kids to have that sort of safe space to say like this is what i'm going through

124this is what's happening so i just would say i was really gonna reach out to you and all this stuff was going on i said oh my god um but it was i love that he's doing it and i wish it was more available to more of our students because i think it could be very similar to the say something see something i think it could be very um it's not gonna you know it's not gonna be the answer to everything but i think right now with especially off coping and just all this the mental health and the i know we've got these extra funds you know curtis does it because he does it but he's chosen to teach up a course and stuff and does it i don't know if that's something that we

125can get our other you know counselors to do with the other schools i don't know if it's something that you know you could hire these other people that do the rachel's challenge and really bring it in a big way as to my understanding as like an assembly um so just something to look into i think it goes it sounds like it aligns with what you're trying to to do i had a question um i just was wondering if um i saw and i don't know the credibility or anything but there is i'm sure you're aware i think you actually sent an email about what was going on over at the avid tech um is that part of what is going on here or is that something else um government over there around that piece um

126back to remote learning any other just some general questions about the stages there's some significant relationship in the state of the construction office so we're being with the new folks in charge of the construction office along with some city officials is you know we applied for this very unique application and from my perspective this should not be an no everything is okay but there have been two really important positions in the state construction office to folks that are no longer in that spot in that spot but there was one main creation there's enough paperwork out there to oh trust me they're working in there yes so i can hear it every single day i have two hopefully very easy questions um so when is the ais lottery in january it's open okay and then oh

127actually it's three questions sorry when do you the school calendar when it's like next year's done good question i i'm actually asking my team to put together for 223. um so that would be three and anything on this open choice is that like kind of stall but the article the paper was like no one has signed up yes and so i know that they don't want to be part of us um go to our website because it's supposed to they are they have actually asked that all the inquiry any questions on open choice but they need these questions to go back to the state to say hey there's significant interest in damn barrier and i think they need perhaps a little more ammunition to push on their surrounding districts to open up seats for open

128choice that's that's just my like that was my takeaway we'll share it with you um is there any perks to another region going into this open choice i mean is that who you're waiting for to stay to entice it or so that the state is if you're a recipient district um there are some incentives for you you get additional monies um you know a couple of dollars extra per per student um student you get a couple of extra dollars to educate that child so they try to they try to make it really attractive to districts to participate in and then of course sending the student um we don't lose everything until this incentive actually for us to send because we're going to lose every single penny but as i said before has the apartment so

129i didn't say it was bridge field i believe it was their board there's a 1920 school here actually voted not to participate and i do not know what that means for brookfield i would argue they well they um and so i just wanted to go back to the friday incident phase incident obviously we will continue to update and immediately and make a decision quickly i that's the best that we can do but we'll do everything you can say just want to reiterate the police department was incredible um in addition that works with the emails and investigating that that area of this work they have every confidence that they're going to help us identify who the sender is a little delay over the weekend with everything going on with their funeral they have lost in the

130department feeling pretty good about where we are again we have a lot of information today that we did on friday afterwards so i'm really sorry about friday and today quite frankly but we'll continue to do everything we can sorry i was a little distracted tonight messages yeah think we're gonna happen we'll be in touch about the next stage it's like the third monday of the holidays have a good night i think generally though