001thank you [Music] hey oh i pledge allegiance to the flags of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all orders oh thank you [Applause] we want to thank our colleague for being here to lead us in rachel celestine here kate metta here gladys cooper yeah lauren daley is absent joe da silva here catherine hofstra and richard chinelli miss absent kathy molinero participation the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system danbury
002residents are also invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you it's very difficult to hear you and understand i apologize i'm sorry are there any emails no many emails for tonight now do you have anybody in the public uh that would like to address the board tonight answer yes can he address the board tonight yes yes you understand that yes [Music] but anyway could you come up just a little bit closer you know we all need to have a problem [Music] uh i've been in education for 51 years 32 years in noah high school nice 19 in west council we got that out of the way a few things i've seen since we moved to danbury 40 something years ago they
003never spend enough in education first of all taxes up here are very low compared to everyone wants to replace us in fairfall county but nobody wants to raise taxes i'm saying if you raise taxes on a person that pays eight thousand dollars a year on its property taxes it's often ten dollars a month increase anybody even these kids over here can handle that but i'm saying that's one and what we need this money for is staffing right now in danbury schools overcrowded you know that this high school was much too large should have two smaller ones as an educator you should understand easier to control a smaller school also easier to educate them if you have the proper staff we've lost number of the aids to the teachers and aids the teachers in danbury makes
004about fourteen and fifteen dollars an hour whereas they go to over a tj max someplace like that even walmart they can make up to 18 19 an hour we don't pay them enough we don't have enough of them we need more of them you know all these things all they hear about in this house keep the taxes low what the heck good is that if you can't get a decent education for your students my kids graduated the embryo high school did a great job in their college everything else but it's tough for these teachers again and i see the boss over here he's new i understand that but and even he realizes there's too many people in these schools what's going to be done right now i also have complaining about the chamber of commerce
005they should postpone that debate tonight until another night i believe they have their own political agenda down the chamber of commerce that's why they probably did that there's no you know so again taxes increase i hope the mayoral candidates see that that way i doubt that crocker bagger from brookfield will have one of the raising new taxes i just want to make sure that we get a better education and better help for our educational staff especially the aids to help the teachers these people do a tremendous job you can't find people who do jobs like that for that especially the ones in special ed esl and things like that i just hope anyway that's right right now it's all interesting thank you sir for your comments my hearing's not great thank you very much for
006your comments is there anyone else like to come before the board at this time [Applause] is it out of order for me to ask a question right now uh yes okay okay let me go on again um next on the agenda is uh the consecutive okay would you do the consent film i'll make a motion that the board of education approved the item on the consent calendar exhibit 21-105 as recommended emotionally okay second segment by joe any questions when senator constantine gladys cooper yes joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi [Applause] yeah okay as i looked at the agenda before we came tonight i thought have we let the public know that they can come in person i mean look it looks to me like i don't know where maybe on the website maybe there's
007other places but it looks like public participation is supposed to come most through the emails it doesn't say yet that you're welcome to come does it i mean i don't know do we have that on maybe our website or somewhere else so um amy we we invited folks to the board meeting i believe in our first meeting so that the public was invited however there was a limit of i believe it was 50 people per capacity and in addition to being invited to come in person just to make sure we got the participation for families who did not feel comfortable they were also allowed to submit any comments uh remotely as well so that's why that option is there but if you might recall we actually had an advocate here at our first meeting we
008were actually counting numbers in the event people came in we didn't have a couple of visitors but not many but we just haven't had a lot of this walking traffic yet and maybe with the option to submit questions remotely i don't know if that's cutting back on the traffic but the invitation was there if we can put it out again certainly if you think it will help an invitation was there in the beginning thank you thank you moving on down to the agenda uh student reps good evening board of education members my name is scott gerstin this is andre du leon and we're here this evening to give you an update on what's happening at danbury high school the annual homecoming game is this weekend at 2 p.m for staples all are welcome to join
009us in supporting the hatters and the question for victor on our new turf field that is now open uh today the psats were administered at the chess with the freshman sophomores and juniors and the seniors reported to the field we took our annual picture and placed our handprints on the screen a big congratulations to tim timothy chen as he was a semi-finalist for a national merit scholarship that is awarded to one of 16 000 applicants we also had another six students who received honorable mention status and on an academic note we are now half of the way through the quarter warning things seem to be running a bit more smoothly at dhs students are adjusting to the one-way halls and stairwells and everybody's kind of figuring out where to go and everything um and last
010but not least senior fest has been rescheduled to october 29th due to weather thank you for having us and have a good rest of your evening hi my name is nicole um i am coming from ace um i wanted to i'll let you know what's going on um in the last two weeks ace has taken in 10 new students and we are very optimistic that they will have success and become part of our family the ace eight also took psats today 9th 10th and 11th graders and the seniors came to dhs today to do cap and gown measurements photos and the parent first also as a team building and connecting connection making space making making experience the higher age staffing students went to the gym just you know went to the danbury ice arena today
011after the psats to skate and have some fun so after the psat after lunch uh we went to the damn race they actually opened an arcade uh and these are given like these cards so we tried out the new arcade and some of us skated and we had a really good time also the last week of october students and staff will participate in spirit week names for each day were voted by on voted by students on a global farm um on october 26th during profession of development staff will participate in a workshop workshop regarding general agency their skills thank you very much for allowing us to share what's going on in our ace family stay safe everyone and remain strong thank you and if you want to thank for our complete meeting you can stay
012but you did still do guilty and i know you have class tomorrow so if you whenever you would like to leave okay thank you thank you thank you [Music] item [Music] a yes please education specifications for solo panel installation intermediate motion that the board of education approved that education specifications for solar panel installation at king street intermediate school in accordance with 21-106 well second multimated by catherine uh second about kate and a discussion on the motion isn't it yeah so so previously we had approved the other five sites i believe it is and so for the state to consider the job they need to consider all of them together the board might recall at our last meeting we actually pulled one of the motions given the concern around the age of the ruse the state
013has not necessarily declined the idea of that they're not saying it's not going to be approved but for the entire project to be considered all of the all the motions need to be moved through the state so this will complete the package um and be submitted to the state for consideration so we would have held up our end of the bargain um and then we could smith the grant and fall so we'll we will hear that we have our fingers crossed we're just been doing a young man's job trying to get this work prepared um when many see if any questions the book i have that i can't answer any other questions for boardrooms santa kate royal callers rachel celestine hi kate canetta i gladys cooper yes jodi silva catherine hodgson hi kathy molinaro she's
014giving me the thumbs up hi amy spolino hi thank you so much certainly in the 2020 21 year end financial report make a motion that the board of education approved the 2020 2021 here and financial report in accordance with 21-107 that's page 10. that'll be your second second directory any questions or discussion concerning your motion okay oh man chair just a brief discussion of bogo accommodating we are our surplus of 2 million 832 and i understand uh because of insurance that i concur that probably leave that in reserved for lots of surgeries about your issues in the future bye for now thank you manager any other questions [Music] and appreciate that summary and also the breakdown of the reserves because we've heard numbers but we have never seen actual figures and what they're allocated for
015so thank you thank you very well done thank you i think it was an excellent job welcome thank you mr speakman okay we'll call rachel celeski kate canetta i gladys cooper yes joe da silva catherine hodgson hi kathy molinaro russo hi amy spelino hi motion self care kate if you do acting advocacy sure i'll make a motion that the board of education approve and authorize a change to the signatory representatives for danbury public schools to john spang chief financial officer and eduardo miranda deputy director of finance second motion made by kate segment dot joke and discussions and questions concerning the signature change okay rachel celesti kate canela gladys cooper yes joe da silva catherine hodgson kathy molinaro hi albert russo hi amy scalia hi martian self-care amy would you do action item team please yes
016sure i make a motion that the board of education approved the authorization of signature change form for the ed-099 agreement child nutrition program in accordance with 21-108 page 18. okay motion made by amy ii okay the second of that captain and any questions discussions cnn um kate through the roll call rachel zalewski aye kate canelo i gladys cooper yes joe da silva catherine hodgson hi kathy molinaro al russo hi amy selena hi thank you all remotely self-care moving on down to the attendance superintendent's report thank you miss cooper and thank you for the bed for this evening so we have three updates as part of the superintendent report one about an update on the moment we have been providing some numbers for the board in september and have some final numbers at least for october
0171 submission does not mean families are not still coming to danbury but i do have some final numbers that will be submitted to the state i also want to provide an update to the board and school community regarding the executive order and how that's going and last but not least just a reminder for our families um and just the work that our teachers are doing in the school uh regarding the quarantine and academic support from students so i will start with the enrollment update of enrollment report so last reported i think i shared with the board in our community relations subcommittee that we were anticipating that we would have over 12 000 students given the number of students that are pending registration and the number of students that we already have registered here in district
018as of as of today i'm sorry as of october 13 we have 11 876 which is 42 more than we had last year at this time of 11 838 however we still have students pending in the system and right now you'll continue to try to help get those families registered i think i had mentioned at the board meeting last night we still have families that are having trouble doing physicals to get in our buildings and really working with our families to try to get them in the building as soon as we can the we had as part of our sites and facilities meeting we had talk committee meeting we had talked about demographer report that was done last year in 2020 the updated demographer report there was a high medium and low projections for the
01921-22 school year those projections were pretty much right on but those were the low projections the low projections had us a little bit under 12 000 and sort of had us kind of stabilizing for the first year however overall the projections also uh suggest that we would have overall increases in time but year one um coming back from the pandemic they had projected the low projection anyway was a little under 12 which is about where we are and we are expecting again a couple of more students but the 11th one i'm sorry the 10 october 1st numbers are pretty much right on target so i just wanted to also make the board aware of that um the demographer had also suggested that we would likely have higher numbers and kindergarten this year because not sure
020where parents who kept their family and kids home last year during the pandemic where the families would choose to either have their kids come in as first graders or kindergartners from the numbers the numbers will suggest that the majority of our families chose kindergarten and so we have as you can see and well i don't know if you can see this in the report that we share but we have 924 kindergarten this year kindergarteners this year which is um close to 120 more than we had last year we also had a significant increase in fourth grade this year an increase of 49 up to 932 fourth graders this year so we haven't experienced some bumps in certain grades eighth and ninth grade we had 33 additional kids in the eighth grade then the high school
021and sales so it's continued to experience and growth they had 167 additional 9th graders i believe in september i had shared we had projections north of 12 000. we did lose two or three hundred students um at the end of the year and you know looking back on it i'm not sure if i should really be sharing i mean i can share data with the board in september quite frankly it's premature our secretaries are just coming back in late august and so they are clearing the data from the schools and so a lot of our families who have chosen to have left danbury we don't have all that data about our first meeting in september that that date is continuing to be updated and really it's not until the middle of september end of september
022when we have clean data so yes we've had four or five hundred new families coming to the district but we also had 200 plus leave the district that's why we don't have the 12 000 as of right now uh but we are anticipating we will have close to 12 000. um it won't necessarily make the 10-1 submission to the state but we're pretty uh confident that we will be at 12 000 so i just also wanted to provide that update to the board as well so it's my understanding that historically we've also had a abundant enrollment in january what does that mean hard no one usually means in today's world but what does it usually add or is there a number that that normally adds or that we get out of that bump in a
023moment in general yeah joe i don't want to say what that number might be because i'm really not gonna i don't know um what number what what we have experienced typically i do know like you and probably the majority of our board as well that we do experience growth in january because i think some of the countries that our families are migrating from that's a good time of year from them um and and so i think we should continue to anticipate that as well which is quite frankly why i'm confident we will be over the 12 000 number before the year is over um what that will mean for next october first i don't know uh but i'm confident we'll be over twelve thousand before the year was up for sure thank you mr wolfe
024is it possible um you know we all are taking notes is it possible that you board members to receive the information that you were just reading from yes we were taking notes absolutely okay so what was in the board packet uh were our numbers as of last week um 10-1 and the numbers i just shared with you the 11 876 were effective um 10 13. so just just up to date as of when we just ran the last days i just wanted to move forward but yes i can share these shows yes but also um it would be interesting to see and so our next i'm sorry any more questions about people our next item i didn't forget this time our next item is regarding our executive order one i just want to publicly say
025there's a number of people that need to be thanked and first i want to start with the staff because we have the executive order needed to be operationalized here in the district our staff have been amazing and compliant with the order regardless of what their choice was they've been amazing for complying with the order quite frankly we were very nervous dealing with just trying to figure out how we're going to operationalize this and we would be able to open up our schools we will be ready to open on a weekly basis the staff has been absolutely amazing and leading that charge is our human resources department so ken thompson who's of course here with us this evening uh you know she has been really concerned about just making sure our buildings are ready to open
026uh when the order was was to be activated um her and her team have done an amazing job just to ready us ready us for this we've had to meet with all the labor units to just make sure everyone was also on the same page i also want to congratulate them and thank them for their cooperation in this whole process um but there's still work to be done um it's ongoing work to be done uh but kim just wants to i i've explained to just provide an update just about the vaccination process the testing how that's looking how that's going just so everyone just gets an understanding of what we've been working on any potential complications but we've been looking really good so far so i'm happy to have kim share the good news thank
027you kevin and um i think they're really good news is i won't come running down every 10 minutes saying the numbers are up the numbers are down i don't know what we're gonna do um so it's been a journey the last um really three weeks and um just to kind of recap what this order required of um i'll say sort of the vast majority of our existing staff or for people to establish full vaccination status by producing a vaccine card and or if not fully vaccinated to seek an exemption from proving vaccination status and anyone who is not vaccinated needs to go through a weekly testing protocol so um when i was here a couple of weeks ago talking about that we were just setting up the protocols and it has our um testing staff
028so those people in the mandatory testing pool are testing on sundays mondays or tuesdays submitting their test results by tuesday at the end of the day in order to be cleared to work on wednesday and so we have to juggle a bunch of things not only folks getting out and getting the test but getting the results in within a 72-hour window which is established by the governor's order and its regulations so it has been a challenge for lots of people um and so when i was here initially talking about it we had um over 600 people that we had not heard from yet um and that was a source of considerable concern on my part um what are we going to do if all these 600 people need to test and can't come to work
029i am really happy to say to echo kevin's comments my team has really using the help of the administrators has really gone all the way through that list so we now have a mandatory testing pool of about 170 employees that means if you do the math that our district is 89.5 vaccinated which is great our teachers in particular are 90.2 vaccinated um so i think that kind of reduces everybody's stress level a little bit to kind of hear those numbers and of those 170 or so that we continue to monitor that number is going to continue to come down as people go through the second course of vaccines or as people become more recognized in how to get their test results submitted we've more or less automated everything so our employees are filling out a
030google form and uploading their test results and it's coming it's feeding into a document that's showing us um you know whether we have any positives and where they are located and where those people are um i think for tomorrow we're looking at about 15 or 16 folks that cannot report to work tomorrow because they have not produced their results and those folks are being placed on an administrative leave without pay until such time as they can cure that lack of a result so we're going to continue to reach out and work with those people to make sure that they understand the protocols and can comply i'm hopeful now that starting this week we can open the window a little bit wider so we're going to be able to have some folks who want to test
031on saturdays to do that and submit their results on monday so i'm going to go ahead and send that email out towards the end of this week i think that for those remaining people who were really looking for some of the no cost or no fee test centers saturday's a super convenient day and that didn't fit within our current protocols now that we can monitor those 170 people with relative ease that shouldn't be a problem for us so we're going to go ahead and roll that out a little bit more so that we can continue to help people um to get the tests that they need to be able to submit the results um we looked carefully at some on-site testing um i'm not sure that we will need to do it because of the
032volume of people when we were looking at 600 people that was a real concern for us and john and i have been kind of partnering to talk with some on-site test providers but there's some insurance issues reimbursement issues those kinds of things that made that kind of an obstacle to immediate implementation so we'll continue to look at that but for right now it seems like people are kind of getting into their groove and and they're getting things submitted in a timely way or if not they're reaching out so that we can dialogue with them about how to help them get this process completed so i'm really confident that we won't be fine we don't we won't be losing any funds for failure to comply and we're going to continue to kind of walk through the
033process of papering the rest of this process so um so far are those classroom teachers or the staff members um right now um and i just have to double check right now i believe it's all non-certified stuff okay thank you yeah and excuse me for laughing kate but i asked this that was my first question to kim when she mentioned it over to me as well so far with the people that are testing and we have any positives come the very first week we saw them but they were ones that already were kind of going through the content tracing process so we were already aware of them but no we haven't had any surprises and i would expect just from the people that i've spoken to people know you know they're going to flag when
034something comes in like that so people have been really good about kind of communicating but we haven't seen anything like that thank you mr wilson on the same line of his executive order how close are we to getting rid of masks in school a question i i've asked relatively frequently right mr i yeah i'll have to answer you i think the same way i have responded before um and as for the order whether it's the city or the state we are required as of right now by both um both both places to make sure that massive warning schools so it's really not an option for us um as as your superintendent or for us as a board until those orders are relaxed so that's where it stands right now thank you thank you very much
035yeah a month ago i believe we asked this question yeah okay thank you sir okay and so miss cooper the last item for the superintendent's report is about quarantine and academic support when our students are quarantined i know there were some questions and some other meetings that i've been in so i just want to make sure our families are talking about what this process looks like what the support looks like in the event they've called from our schools on the quarantine and what the academic support plan looks like with an important team kelly trooshes is going to help us with the data thank you kevin um so just a quick update when a student is identified in needing to quarantine so they are an exposure to someone in school sometimes we're getting it from a
036sports team um whatever the circumstance it is we're committed to providing them instruction during the time that they're out so what happens is they're not able to come into school um we are not doing live streaming for the most part in classes because it was very disruptive to attend to the students in school as well as the students online there are some classroom teachers that are doing uh check-ins um during these kind of down times morning meeting times with their students um just out of the goodness of their own heart and we certainly recognize and commend them for doing so but we do we are paying students out of our essa fund ms our teachers out of our as their funding for after school time where they're providing check-ins and academic support services to those
037students that are on quarantine um so within about 24 no later than 48 hours after you're notified as a parent or guardian that your child needs to quarantine you're contacted by this designated professional from the school building and you're given your check-in time and the supports that are in place for students we also have staff members checking in on the social emotional well-being of our students so it's twofold both how are you doing how are you handling the time being at home do you have any questions and then can we help you with any of your academic support um we are currently monitoring it so right now you are designated a contact for the most part across the district within your school building um but if for some reason we notice that more students are
038out at one school versus another we will lend support we have not had to do that to date but we certainly are keeping an eye out and have a plan in place for doing that thank you it's good i don't know if there are any questions um [Music] you know i can see how that works for middle and high school where they live on google classroom but is that is that the same for elementary is elementary still utilizing good question yeah so all of our staff are required to utilize google classroom um teachers during the first week of school made sure that all of our students were logged in and able to access the classrooms depending on the grade level i will say our younger teachers younger grade levels k2 are doing more in classroom
039things but making sure students know how to access should they need to and are carefully selecting activities so that they have to go to google classroom um three five is incorporating it a little bit more regularly into the classroom instruction um but teachers are required to post things on the google classroom um so that if and when a student is in quarantine it's there and easily accessible thank you thanks my next is on the agenda for information board members that would like to uh participate in attending the cave convention and i hope we will send someone or someone would like to go so we need to let carol know or we contact or figure out how we're going to do this okay but i think we should uh be at the convention it's only one
040day when it used to be like two or three so yes if i could not share we actually got an email notification from uh cave that the registration for that event has closed let's do it we can get it so that's no problem they they want the stuff look good they want them i'm sure they do they they kept it unfortunately they kept it because of uh the cathy dependencies oh you have uh carol cole tomorrow that would be great thank you okay uh what we thought up on the agenda um and no one brought to my attention the last couple times i'll committed reports you know because i don't want to um omit any of our committees that are doing something and if you want to have you know you want to say something
041or talk about what the committee is doing at the board meeting just stop me because sometimes i get on the road and i forget and we don't have it on the agenda or it might be a different place so right now i asked uh anyone have anything for a minute i'll commit to report rachel some pto or pto liaison reports just so you know what's happening there i went to the first dhs pto meeting um the end of september that was virtual um and that same week i went i attended the ais cto meeting and they are holding their meetings in person but outside um and of course everyone knows the uh the citywide pto had to meet the candidates event last week um and i also attended the west side hospital um they're doing
042meetings virtual but it's a joint meeting with the principal and the pto and this week they're they're hosting a coffee with a cop this friday which brings police officers and the community members they serve together over coffee to discuss issues and learn more about each other that's with their resource officer thank you and we know our finance committee uh had a meeting uh community relations committee having me had a meeting and i'd just like to thank the leadership of those committees and board members always participating in those committees to learn even if it's not the committee that you cheer uh you are there to learn how that committee is different from what your committee is and what the procedure is so i just want to thank you all for uh your participation um i don't
043have anything on my agenda except to remind board members that only 26 we will be doing board self-evaluation which is uh very important for the board and we'll keep it informed about that um lastly unless mr watson have anything else that he wants to add i would like to thank um finance auburn officer john and uh at water uh for work and putting the the beautiful document that they did concerning the finance the uh budget and and i certainly appreciate that so and we would like to welcome them here to danbury don't do anything to make a rush out so if there's nothing else no more questions um take i'll motion to turn on me [Applause] you