001okay there it is okay what we just picked gregory can you pull that would you mind dragging that out for us i got a couple in my car no no we have one it's over there we know it's there okay maybe that wasn't such a good idea this wasn't easy to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all kate will you do the roll call uh joseph britton uh not present at the moment but maybe joining us virtually here catherine hodgson is absent at rich ginelli here kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spolino here okay thank you so we have one up okay uh would you read the public participation strip that we use the
002board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments in 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 you're against any person connected with the danbury public school system danbury residents are also invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore d-o-e at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you kate ogre do you have any comments would you read them please you have one from september 10th from dominic reynolds um and it's a question to the board will changes we may be made to bus rooms my child is still arriving late to school every morning thank you from the same parent from dominic
003reynolds this is monday september 13th past the district thought about a keyboarding program app for the elementary students since the pandemic and because students will be expected to continue to use the chromebooks students need to learn how to tell you thank you for your consideration thank you ogre next on the agenda oh do we have anyone in the audience that we want to come before the board seeing none we move on to the consent calendar kathy i make a motion that the board of education approved the item on the consent calendar exhibit 21-101 as recommended second most promotion made by captain second by joe the silver any questions concerning consent calendar cnn cape newton royal corporates rachel celestine aye cape canetta aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly i'm joe dasilva all right catherine i'm sorry
004rich ginelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo aye amy felino aye thank you ted emotions okay uh we move down to our educational staff representative i don't see anyone here unless someone you know okay so move on down the agenda our student representative i would just like to say on behalf of the board thank you uh for being here with us tonight and bringing the information from your particular school to share with the board so however your three young ladies want to start we have dhs and we have a second so however you want to work between yourself to bring your information hi my name is nicole i come from eighth i wanted to say thank you to the bad members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on
005behalf of the alternative center for example a staff participated in a 21 student entrance interview this past june and four more interviews on august 27th both of the new students start this fall the staff is continuing to run interviews and welcoming new students during this month of september last week six more students visited ace and there will be six more students student visitors a special that our ace student hosts who play an important role in the visitation project on august 30th ace ran a structured orientation day to deliver expectations for student attendance and course schedule behavioral norms and social emotional very mechanisms students follow the orientation day schedule with their guidance groups to begin the process of building communities as a part of the orientation process i aced students and staff gathered as a whole
006school under the test on this property to have our first large guidance in person ace held the teammates department grade level benchmark on friday september 10th the ac managed department has created a benchmark cooking classroom that the entire student body participates in based on your highest grade level in english and social studies thank you acma's department for all your diligent work on this school-wide learning activity the benchmark process takes place during a three-hour block and students worked extremely hard this year on their tasks after the benchmarks were completed ace held an afternoon barbecue to welcome students and staff back to the 2021-2022 school year it was a great day filled with both hard work and team building base will be holding its first parents night of the year on monday september 27th at 5 00
007pm under the ace 10. after meeting as a group families will have the opportunity to meet with staff individually ace would like to publicly thank the district for providing an attempt on the locust avenue side of the property we have been using the tech verbal school assemblies terence night school lunch and several teachers have run collaborative classes under the tent thank you for supporting us with this resource thank you all for allowing us to share what is going on with our ace family and have a nice evening and stay a strong hello i'm gregory parker i'm the bog president for denmary high school um the first couple weeks of school have been going really well um the hallways are probably one of the most biggest concerns there's definitely traffic in them but it has gotten
008better um as weeks continue people are starting to remove more routes hallway traffic is clearing because of that as the underclassmen begin to become more comfortable with the different ways to go to class masks were another big thing that we were worried about but all students seem to be wearing them there haven't been any real big issues it does get a little uncomfortable in the heat but as the buildings start to cool down mass definitely become easier to wear as for the cafeteria the lungs haven't been a problem cafeteria food is being served efficiently and the tents personally i think are super cool they're super popular everyone does like to go down to the blue tables and have lunch social distances still applies outside at the blue tables especially the students just are a fan
009of the tents and eating outdoors it's nice it's nice to be outside and eating lunch with all your friends so um i do have to say that that's a personal favorite bluetooth but other than that school opening has gone really well that's all we've done so far hi i'm tina mcgill i'm the bog vice president of danbury high school so moving forward these are some of the events that we have going on so senior fest was supposed to be this friday on september 24th but it got postponed due to bring until october 29th um our first home game is this friday against norwalk at seven o'clock and it will be orange and blue paint and then on october 13th we have multiple events going on so the freshmen and sophomores have their psats while the
010seniors have captained down um the senior 2022 photos and the hand prints will be done during that time as well we're planning to have a movie night um either on the field or through a drive-in on either october 14th or october 15th since we can't have a homecoming this year we thought like that might be a better alternative um to having a dance and then i'm me and greg and the rest of the bog members are super excited for in-person spirit week this year um it will be on the wake up october 25th and we chose that week instead of the week of homecoming because we wanted a full five days of spirit week since that week we had columbus then psat so we thought it would be better if we moved it um the
011themes are so pretty up in the air and undecided as we still need to ask the rest of eugene um council members but our themes will probably be red white and blue day in paradise orange and blue day either character or decades day and 20. thank you all so very much and i would just like to say the board members uh i know we can't hear and and ask questions like we are normally doing we're at beaver brook but um when the minutes come out probably tomorrow you can have the you can see the comments that all the students brought to us tonight so on behalf of the board i know it's difficult uh you know to try to understand people when we were in this mess but we all are trying to be safe
012okay again thank you so very much okay we're moving on down the agenda action item nine uh i need a motion to table this action for tonight please uh i'll make a motion to table action item a is that one of the terms the stretch the simplification for the system okay i'll make a move in that table now my pleasure so i just want to make the board and the community aware i believe it was last week we heard from the state construction authority they made us aware that if we wanted to receive the reimbursement for the installation of the solar panels and of course we do they would not uh reimburse us for any solar panel installation on a roof that's any older than four or five years old and so given that information
013and as our partner partnered with the city the request right now is to seize and desist from the project until we can reevaluate kind of reassess and then so further notice we will seize and assist on this project is that a new rule of the four or five years because usually roofs are a 30-year yeah at least 25 yeah so is that something new that they put into the statute for reimbursement i don't believe kathy it's a new development and so what happened like what happens and i don't know all the details on this um we had the company approaching many districts across the state of connecticut and in this case of course they come to the district but they come to the city making the cities and municipalities aware of the cost the potential
014cost savings um and so what we heard from this construction authority is that they had to come back kind of in you know after the fact and tells school districts that these projects they would not be improving unless the groups are less than five years old i was going to say i think i remember that when we did have those installed on the other roofs they were in conjunction with the new roofs at the time can i correct them i think yeah probably like park avenue yeah yeah yeah yeah okay thank you thank you sure thank you mr jadel we were part of and this is really an embarrassment or a major disappointment because at the meeting that that kevin myself and city officials and the mayor attended as well as the the consultants of
015the utility company they never approved they never specified that this was a a glitch in the system the the uh it was applauded there was a tremendous amount of positive press on this the 13 million dollars you know value and half of that was a grant an arrest was guaranteed to us in savings the amount of work that was involved up to this point is really wasted by kevin and his staff and his department rich albert on behalf of uh antonio and and his engineers spending time as well as david saint-hilaire i mean it's a tremendous amount of work that was done to jump foods the through hooves for a short period of time if you remember one of the summaries i said we came i think it was the sixth of the month and
016uh we had to get an approval for kevin to file the grant because it was between the first and the tenth of the month and and then all of a sudden somebody from the state wakes up and notifies us or somebody here of this glitch as to why the consultants never told us this what was beyond these so it's really an embarrassment and and uh a sad thing if it doesn't go through i mean we were certainly it certainly would help us to to do this and the fact that they were giving us a guarantee for the five million dollar payoff uh in the savings based on a performance uh fund performance contract we were doing was also excellent because it cost the city nothing so it's uh i don't know where the the mess
017up happened but at this point here we're just waiting to hear and everybody uh is on on is on hold i mean it's really a shame thank you okay the motion was moved in a second we had our discussion okay please sir uh joe britton joe i need you to you can hear me i've got a yes in the chat rachel celeski aye kate metta aye loves cooper hi lauren daley hi joe dasilva aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo hi amy bolino hi thank you the motions okay we move down to action item d um mr janela you want to read the motion please it's going to be hard my classes are up here just bear with me they unfold that the board of education approved the end of the year physical
0182020-21 financial report the general funds in accordance with exhibit 21-103 most promotion made by mr ginelli seconded by kathy uh with the discussion yes just my thoughts my thoughts are that there should be some numbers attached to this general statement and it's a bit anorexic uh it doesn't give us numbers of where we actually stand it's sort of an explanation so i i would too for a motion to tell you listen until you get we are just proving the leaflet that we have the one-page flyer the consent in the in the book okay we're not attacking numbers the numbers i'm sorry i don't know what i'm consenting to yeah but we have our finance directors that's going to give us some information so we're not going to okay mr watson you want to go ahead
019and actually yes sure sure thank you mr russo and i certainly understand the question so i understand that the board is accustomed to getting a budget detail associated with the report i'm going to ask uh frank connolly our interim director of finance to just try to provide an update or kind of summarize the update and then i will provide some rationale on why there's no budget detail for this month but the expectation is is that we would have it in subsequent months but frank i'll ask you to go first i think we'll be able to hear you from there and then i'll just interject at the end to close out okay uh excuse me mr uh uh superintendent all right you have a question if you want to go ahead and no that's okay i
020just i have the same concern as al um just that we're approving a memo is kind of so and it's funny that we tabled the previous motion because that's and before coming to the meeting i i had that thought at the table this motion just because it just seems odd to approve a memo and not have an actual report of figures for the year-end so that that memo maybe could be better served in information rather than an action item okay so it's already on the table so we can defeat this and then table it and then make a motion at the table do you want to take this i i do think it will be in the board's interest to hear the report um and we're happy to still table it but i think we'll
021be in the board's best interest to still hear the report just so you have an update uh from the office at this time okay okay okay yes okay thank you i concur with your remarks um we were working on the end of the year numbers and they were just changing around jumping around so much that we thought it more prudent to delay and to firm up the numbers um and so what i did was put together a report just give the board an idea of the issues that we which is not only numbers issues but the personality institutional financial history uh and then the change in the software and as i came in on your finance director was walking out the door there's so little to work with and we're trying to consolidate your old
022phoenix system in order to come up with end of the year numbers we've got to take the old phoenix system which covered 12 months out of the year and splice it in with the tyler system which only covered six months out of the year but the tireless system did not include encumbrances between the phoenix system so there's a myriad of different things and as i put the numbers together and i said i said wow your end of your balance was really climbing um and so i try to highlight the key elements as to why you're entering your balances were refined as much as they are and you're not unlike other boards of bed in the state at the end of the year with your schools you had less than 90 days in in the classrooms
023and that impact electricity that impacted supplies that impacted special education so you had and health insurance as i noted in my report to you it impacted your health insurance also because a lot of people put off uh having electric surgery and i expect that to change going forward so i try to highlight um the problems of the personality problems of the software and it comes down to coming up with some fairly substantial numbers and i was reluctant to come out in public and say here's your number and it's still a little bit fluid so what i'm saying is that it's a substantial number uh we plan to have an informal discussion with city officials on this uh and we do expect you have a full report next month to the board and uh the motion
024that you have on the table to to approve i concur my suggestion to you is either table it or just accept the report and what that means is you're not approving it there's nothing to approve but accepting it is acknowledging a receipt of your financial status and it'll be the same thing in the next month he could vote to approve of the uh financial report which i'll be working with the new finance director of of uh going over with him we've already started this is his third day on the job now so um we'll have a firmer number but again we're lucky to come out with a number it winds up the newspapers it changes somewhat and i i'm just not comfortable at this point for the reasons i explained so my suggestion to you
025is rather than approve this report accept it which is the form of acknowledgement that something is writing that's what it is and it's your call whatever you decide and the and i i just wanted to add um to frank's presentation this evening uh we are anticipating at least as of right now close to a two percent um excess at the end of the year and so the board might recall last year we went to the city and asked them to put monies in reserves for us for this for the school district we anticipate even higher numbers than last year for that request we gave dave st hilaire a couple of weeks ago on the heads up that we were anticipating these kind of numbers and so we hope that the city will continue to work
026with us in this regard but those numbers are also not firmed up yet and we want to make sure those numbers are firmed up um we we have every um all of our conversations with the city and and dave st hilaire on this we feel pretty confident that we're going to get the cooperation that we need uh but we want to make sure we have the firm numbers for the board and for the city before going to them thank you thank you chairperson thank you manager i do have a motion to table his vice chair of the finance committee uh mr chinelli is chairman of the chairman of the finance committee do you have any guidance on this sir my suggestion would be since the the board based on the conversations is uncomfortable is that
027we table the the motion and basically from what we heard from frank in terms of the volume of work that was necessary over the summer with the transition in computer systems and and the lack of personnel led to the delay in firming up these numbers having nothing to do with the integrity the numbers that's not the issue but i think for the comfort level of the board not seeing any numbers or specifically hearing numbers that we just table it and accept the the discussion as to the the reasons the trials and tribulations of what frank had to do with the temporary staff during the summer months in order to get all this work done and and so my recommendation would be to tailor this and bring it bring it back when everything is is solid
028and and uh and we're out of this mess and can just go on continually as normal in the past we've generally had the year-end done about this first or second board meeting so we're really not that far behind considering you know i i'd like to say chaos that that happened uh this year as you you know during the summer i was keeping you informed as to what was happening in the department uh with the turnover with the volume of work and again with the switching from one accounting system to another which is an enormous job in itself uh so you know it's physically impossible to with a limited staff uh you know that they had to accomplish the the normal year-end work agreed sir this is no reflection on the man's efforts so i concur
029again i'm asking the board i was making a motion to take this so in order to make the motion to taper we would have to because emotion was made so i need those two people that made the motion to take withdraw their motion and then i need someone else to make a motion to the table okay so i need kathy and rich both you will brought your motion to uh for the action item and one made the motion in one second and then i need if you will grow your motion then i will ask someone to make a motion uh to table it but before we table mr watson do you have anything additional that you want to add is there a specific reason that you wanted uh this uh completed tonight no no that
030i then but the important thing for me was to make sure the board had an update okay um and so as long as that information is out and available for the board i'm very comfortable with how we're proceeding okay okay so mr uh er you will make the motion to take it i will okay thank you second bye no second i think okay okay so um okay i'm gonna do the wrong call because there's no other discussion when you take this joe britton he is a yes rachel celeski aye kate canada aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye rich janelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo amy spolino okay okay so the motion is carried okay thank you all okay so we moved to action item c uh amy would you
031do action i didn't see yes that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 teacher evaluation plan as recommended by the t ballot committee in accordance with 21-104 all seven promotion made by anus segment by kate on the end of discussion i just wanted to ask yes i just want to ask what the you know the basic changes that we're approving okay um sure and no no no problem so i'll start out and then i'm gonna ask um kelly to add a little bit extra um one amy i just want to thank you for your participation on the committee um there was some great partnership from the t-val committee and so christy who's from losing christie's elite dr zolita who is our union representative from the administrators and then of course erin daly from nea and
032our teacher group and then all the rest of the teachers and administrators on the group um the big focus for us was certainly to focus on similar to last year in terms of the state goals and that was the focus on student and parent engagement and the social emotional support for our students and given kelly's expertise in school climate and social emotional support kelly's going to just provide a little bit of additional information on the changes for this year but it's not significant other than what we did last year counts now that that's really the big shift and there are other couple of tweaks um regarding uh teachers supervision uh under like teacher observations etc and so kelly will speak to those students so the um just as in last year the um social emotional
033learning piece is an essential focus of the state and the district so we are recommending that teachers focus on that along with parent and student engagement um but both for the benefit of supporting and improving academic achievement for students um so their teachers will still be scored on their action steps meaning the steps and programs that they implement to achieve those goals um the number of observations has been changed slightly the number of observations um for our um what we do is our beginning teachers which are classified as year one year two teachers or any teacher back from the last year we were scored which was the 18-19 school year that was shown in need of support those teachers will be evaluated with two formal and two mini observations so a total of four annually
034we've also added that they have the right or ability to request an additional evaluation an administrator can always go in and do extra evaluations this is the minimum but a teacher can also make the request and you formally wrote that into the plan which is a change um that's kind of been the informal practice going on but we thought it important to reflect for our year three and up teachers and those are also teachers that have shown that they're proficient or above um they are doing um one formal observation i'm sorry too many observations or informal observations um and then we're also required to have our teachers do a mid-year review and an end of the year review with their primary evaluator for our newer or teachers in need of support those both have to
035be in person for our um 10 you know for our summer season teachers that are shown being proficient or above they can do the mid-year virtually um through an electronic submission and the end of the year is in person um some of the dates year to year always tweak we always have to reset the dates to make sure they abide by the school calendar um but those are the basic highlights um for this school year are there any other questions seeing none the emotion has been moved and seconded okay kate would you do the roll call uh joe burton is off the zoo right now so i'm gonna skip him rachel toleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper yes lauren daley hi joe da silva hi rich danelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo amy
036spellino hi promotion so kerry thank you we can move down to the superintendent report thank you miss cooper so i have a couple of updates for the board in the community one i would like to speak to our challenge around our buses and transportation just want to acknowledge one of our families asked the question earlier in public speaks that's one i've received um several and when i say several i mean 20 30 50 plus emails from families regarding busing and i understand i understand why because we continue to be challenged with our bus routes certainly it has been improved over the last week the first week was we were so concerned quite frankly we thought we were going to have to do something drastic to make sure kids got home in a timely fashion it
037improved the second week and it continues to improve this week we have a tracking monitor for arrival and departures at every school something quite frankly we only typically do for late buses now we're just tracking every bus every day just to get a better handle on where the problem areas are what we have learned number one is that we have two or three buses that are habitually late and so we're trying to find that understand the root cause of that number one number two we continue to be challenged and so i'm on a phone call actually with a parent this morning and the parent acknowledged that the dispatcher is driving the buses and they recognize that because they called called the dispatcher the dispatcher was unavailable and i guess they just recognized the dispatcher from
038over the years being in a school system and so the shortage that we have talked about in this school district around the state in our region is real right here in danbury the commissioner sent out a correspondence to all the superintendents on monday also acknowledging the bus shortage there was a call on monday with all the superintendents making superintendents aware that the state and the governor's office was doing everything that they could to unwind any challenges with the motor vehicle around certifications and any hold up and try just trying to figure out ways to expedite cdo licenses for anyone pursuing bus bus license of our certification so the state has been working with us or trying to work with us to help unwind some of the challenges and any backlogs in the system to help
039expedite as soon as as quickly as possible [Music] the state does not have any answers outside of that right now um in the in the in this the state educa education department doesn't have any answers outside of that right now but they did make us aware that they are trying right at the motor vehicle office to help unwind any challenges that might exist there and so they they shared with us they would have some further support and guidance as soon as they could as a district you know we will be meeting with our contractor provider because i think we need to sit with them and then figure out how if there are other ways we can kind of explore some solutions right here within a district we understand the routes got a little bit better
040this week and although i understand there may be some families out out there that it didn't necessarily impact them to improve routes but my understanding is we received two drivers back to the fleet on the sta this week which allowed us to add a couple of extra buses and so we hope we're going to continue to have some improvements but what we're learning um is that we have a couple of buses again that are habitually laid i just want to also remind the board we have i know dan donovan presented at our first board meeting last week as part of that conversation and dan's presentation and i just want to thank him again for doing that he presented an option where we could potentially get out of the high school up to 15 to 20
041minutes earlier by not providing lunch for the kids which i'm a little hesitant now as gregory just talked about how much fun he was enjoying the tent and eating outside um so i uh but we will we in a community relations committee meeting um and speak to those options and the potential impact and see if it's something we should further explore um i'm mentioning this because it could have some there could be some benefits also to have in the high schools leave early because then that means our afternoon runs would be a lot more efficient i'm not suggesting we do it for that reason but there could be some benefit if we decide not to select that option i think it's going to be incumbent upon us as a district to maybe look at our
042high school times in middle school times and see if we can find more minutes in between those runs not exactly sure what that would look like right now not sure what the impact would be on teaching time but i think in some ways somehow we need to find some additional minutes for about to just provide some more space so that our particular elementary families who are impacted we need to provide supervision for kids at bus stops and at homes and child care make sure that those those buses arrive in a timely fashion whether it's pick up or drop off at the end of the day and it's not just it's not just the timing issues yes um i do not i do not disagree with that at all um and so what we have learned
043you know at the same time we have more cars i think on the road than we've ever had um you would think that would reduce the number of students on buses and that's not the case because we don't have as many buses in the fleet as we've had in this house so i i totally agree with you and we are we are feeling the impact of the bus shortage here in more ways than i was hoping we would yes jeff two two questions uh chips on the stream you'd come in last meeting and said there was an issue with sports has that been straightened out or not been straightened out um joe uh chip had a couple of other issues like literally the next week after he left the board meeting um chip is very
044resourceful and you know found solutions to them without costing the district too much money um in the last couple weeks i have not heard any challenges so i'm assuming we're okay there uh but i i am aware of some situations that vary next week from the board meeting but you know through resources we were able to resolve it so we didn't impact um impact our activities for kids the second question is is sta are they complying with their contractual obligations i understand they have challenges i understand there's problems with drivers they have a contract they have certain things they have to do are they doing that's part of the conversation we need to talk to them about okay i i understand where you're coming from and i i understand that you know is the problem
045but i think we also i mean they've been in tremendous partners over the years um but we do need to talk because it's having impact from the district on another side because we have to pay staff to supervise kids at the school because our buses are late and so they're the impact is real now after the first week which is understandable but now we're in week three and we still have some sites with late buses still mr janelle kevin i'm having a hard time understanding something it was my thought and understanding that in last year's conversation relative to the financials and a bunch of presentations that we were paying the drivers the full salary to ensure us that opening day they would you know we'd have full staff and therefore to eliminate the need to
046lay off people and then to re-hire people in addition to that i thought my research be correct that we were i think adding on 10 buses you know a need for the for the brookfield location and another a need for the the enrollment increase that we projected so with that being said where is the shortage happening and i can understand you know in order to become a driver they're of motivated logistics so that's something but at least on a status quo i looked at it that the the payments that we made for full salaries at least would assure us the the opportunity to be fully staffed with drivers and and not have this problem normally in years fast we've always had glitches in the first couple or three weeks to get roots squared away so
047that's normal but i don't recall this particular issue and i don't understand why unless i'm missing something so mr j i think part of just kind of unpacking some of the things i just heard you say one the agreement we made with sta last year was to make the drivers whole right so to make sure they didn't take a cut and pay a reduction in pay they could have taken reduction play and go on unemployment we made sure they were kept whole during the pandemic sta also hired additional buses to the fleet but this is assuming once this school year started their all of their bus drivers came back to start the school year which my understanding is that did not happen in addition they added additional buses and we didn't get additional drivers to
048fill those to drive those buses um so that's that's my understand how they began the year um and so they have substitute drivers and that that helped the plug-in but this is then of course also assuming that every driver is at work every day you know they have people calling out just like our staff calls out from time to time um and so a lot of our families they may have the bus 20 and then the next day they may have plus 20 and plus 35 and 38 on the windshield i mean that's because the bus company is collapsing routes um because this is what this is their reality at 5 5 30 in the morning as they're trying to get ready for a school day all right i think it makes sense that another
049question is to keep track of this uh i know some parents were in the in their portal when they go they have what they call an excuse absence or an excuse delay which is not necessarily the the child being laid but it's more attributed to the the bus being laid but yet reflects on somehow the student there is there any way to at the end of a period of time is to calculate this data or to change the software so it delineates that this is the bus issue and then go back and say sda you know what the statistics or at least alert the parents that this is not an issue of your kid being late but it's just a transportation issue right so it's the general practice um and i would like to thank
050all of our principals for doing this i'm sure they are when there's a bus that arrives late there's kind of an announcement bus 22 is coming in and so all the students on bus 22 they're not going to be monthly um if the if there is it should be overturned quickly you know because sometimes a teacher might mark them late for getting that the child is home bus comes to the same example so there may be a couple of instances where it needs to be overturned but generally bus comes in there's an announcement from the office that that bus is coming in late um and that child is excused accordingly we may miss some at the high school but there's enough gap in between the high school that really shouldn't be an issue because those
051buses get there before that seven twenty drops it was also you know something that may alleviate some of the necessary calls the our office have her parents said my kid wasn't late yet it was marked excuse me so but i apologize for asking the second question i heard from a lot of parents i've seen this a lot on social media the app that tracks the buses shuts off at four o'clock it goes dead at four o'clock is there a way to fix that because we now routinely seem to have buses that are going running for late elementary schools after four is there a reason why it shuts down at four can we tell the bus company to not do that i can um i'll answer you this week so and thank you for asking that
052question because i had a number of parents also asking about the app as well this is what i learned from the bus company and so just going back to the example that i shared earlier five o'clock i'm not trying to make excuses for sta like this is part of my job but i think this also speaks to the shortage and so it's let's just say five o'clock the bus company is going in for maybe the bus company is going in we're all used to um reviewing the app to find out where the buses are and so my my child is on bus 20 and the bus company and so i'm watching the navigation and hoping this bus is going to be on time so i can at least go to work behind the scenes at
0535 30 6 o'clock in the morning whatever time it is the bus company if two or three people are out they are combining routes in early in the morning and so the the app and the navigation that's associated with your child's route is going to be off considerably because if i pick up if i'm bus driver 20 and i pick up half a 15 round half of 38 route and my understanding is that i learn from one of my colleagues that's right and then another bus driver and they pick up the other half of 15 and 38 and so the app has been off consistently it shuts off in the afternoon at 4 o'clock the app goes dead and you can't track the bus after 4 it goes dead after 4 pm you can't track
054where any bus is it just shuts off i was not aware that have not i have not heard yet okay so i i'll look in that fight i've got a point it may just be that they assume that the buses are done by four and that's when it's automatically set like a street light set on a timer but they if they're not gonna have kids home by four and they don't seem to be able to do that and we need to fix the time thank you thank you so miss cooper i do have two more items for the board in the community one we have we received our latest update from the governor executive order 13 g executive order 13g i believe the board is already aware it requires that all of our staff is
055vaccinated for those for the staff members who are not vaccinated they have to be tested on a weekly basis then we had an emergency meeting on friday with superintendents and then another meeting this week with even further clarification by the expectations of districts across the state of connecticut kim has been working with all of the union leaders across the district and i can't thank all of them enough for their cooperation uh throughout this entire process uh kim thompson and her team have done a great job just trying to manage all of this data and so if you guys if the if the board and the community can just kind of envision we need to have result vaccination evidence from every single staff member certified and non-certified and then we need to have either vaccination results
056or a plan to test every staff member and kim is going to share with you shortly we learned that on september 27th the rule takes is in effect immediately we got some good news early this afternoon but i'm going to ask um miss thompson to share some more details on it because this is this impacts all of us extracurricular activities requests to work in schools after school any volunteers that we may accept and you know approve for them to work with our children all of our staff so cam ready thank you um so this has been a journey um and and it's been a journey across the state and so we're fortunate that you know we have some colleagues out there to continue to kind of commiserate with over the requirements um here's what i
057can tell you as of today um and as my team is actually still weighing in and sending the tests so they're still updating um right now we have we think an accurate count of 1767 employees now that does not include for example the 75 to 100 tutor vacancies that we still have um it also does not include topping up our sub pool so we will run about 2 000 employees as we typically have give or take is my expectation but as of today we can see that 1767 folks were collecting paychecks from us in the last pay cycle and have been in process of those about 400 have not responded to my two emails asking to please submit vaccination status a vaccination card or some explanation of where you are in the process so we
058are as we speak um hitting send on an email to those roughly 400 or so employees that says congratulations you're going to join your friends in the testing pool um and the testing pool protocols are coming out tonight um so i expect that um of the 200 vaccinated staff that we have so we're running about 70 right now of those we're going to get some more cards in from people over the next few days so that's big idea number one is i suspect that we are much closer to 80 than 70 vaccinated but we're trying to rustle up those last um handful of cards so that we can get a handle on those folks um the trick for this week or the the sleight of hand for this week is how do we then get
059weekly test results from what is probably going to be several hundred employees and so um you know just one point to note is um and it's a bit of a bird walk but there is a provision for requesting an exemption either religious or health related from showing a fully vaccinated vaccine card that exemption does not exempt you from testing so all those people that we are now in process with their request to be exempt from producing a card still have to go and test so right now i'm dealing with the big group of people who need to test um we don't any longer have the capability of testing in-house so what we do know is everyone needs to test out in the world who need the test and when we know from the executive order
060and the guidance and the update that came at two o'clock this afternoon because it continues to update is that there are free locations where folks can go and test it can be rapid it can be pcr but it needs to be one of those it can't be the home test and people can go to a place of their choosing to get this test we have devised a google form for everyone to use and it looks very much like the one we used last year for covid related absences so what our employees will do is go in and fill out a google form that has name location um phone number where we can reach you email address and a an assertion that they have taken a test on a certain day and it's going to have
061to be within 72 hours and an assertion under penalty of law that they are either positive negative or inconclusive and they will upload that test what's then going to happen is that google form will populate an excel spreadsheet which is going to allow us to monitor those multi-hundred folks and see whether they've got positive negative or indecisive tests right now and and this is a conversation that's ongoing with our union partners right now the plan is for anyone who cannot produce proof of a negative test so that means the test center lost my test i didn't get a result on time or it's inconclusive those folks are going to stay home on an administrative leave with no pay no sick time no pay and that's one of the things that will be the subject of
062continued bargaining with our union partners um you know there will be some cases like if you have a case that or a test that is inconclusive may say you can use your sick time for that if you're positive you're going to be using your sick time to stay home but right now the um the guidelines make pretty clear testing failures are on the employee so failure to get the results on time is going to be on the employee what we're going to do for this week because i think everyone across the state anticipated that in this week one which starts on monday that you could test during the week and submit a result what much to our surprise at 6 pm on friday we learned was you had to have a negative test in hand
063on monday morning so everybody did a lot of scrambling everybody i think honestly kind of said can't do it um don't have staff on the weekend but can't do it and so today's guidance is you must test no later than sunday and we can receive negative test results or test results at any time from this friday the 24th through next friday october 1st for week one so we got a bit of a buy honestly for this week um and then in week two our plan is to set a testing schedule so we would like to receive or we will require that we receive your test no later than a tuesday night which means you need to get a test either sunday or monday or tuesday and a rapid test is fine submit by the close
064of business four o'clock on tuesday so that we can then let you know we've got you'll get a receipt on your google form but if you are negative or if you are sorry positive inconclusive or no test at all you do not come to work on wednesday so we picked wednesday because it gives everybody a weekend day and a weekday to get their tests done and also if we picked a monday um we couldn't process in time and honestly we have trouble with subs on mondays anyway so we still have to get around what are we going to do when we have people testing positive that can't come in and how are we going to cover those people in the classrooms so those are kind of the remaining burning questions for us on how we're
065going to process i suspect that we're going to get more and more people who are submitting vaccination cards this is going to be a hard goal i think for people to go through the testing we're very sensitive to lots of different concerns some people simply can't get vaccinated others have very real reasons why they're not getting vaccinated and so without even approaching those we just are trying to send the message we are extremely sensitive to how difficult this is this is a very emotional issue for a lot of people and i think our union leaders have been excellent about advocating for their members and really working with us on how we're going to get through the nuts and bolts of this um it's going to be bumpy in in the first week um i asked
066mr wilson who approved by bringing in um some temporary help for us to get over this hump and i think once we get it automated in the way that we foresee it's going to really start running pretty easily but right now we've got some challenges so um as i said the email is going up tonight to those of our folks who have not produced a card yet and we'll see how we go with the next couple of days and then next week into the week one of tesla yes mr genelec can the testing sites are they definitely treatment are they dan very specifically yes so there are there are two state approved free testing sites in danbury that came from a list that i received from kathy o'dowd today one is the pal center and
067one is the war memorial and those have afternoon hours um they really cover the landscape of availability there is also on the 2-1-1 site there is a constantly updating list and if you filter by no-cost tests you will also see some pharmacies and that kind of thing that are providing those no-cost test sites my understanding of our insurance and remember we have some of our folks who have cigna insurance we have some of our folks who have teamsters insurance um it is not clear that the insurance companies are going to continue to cover surveillance testing after october middle of october so um that's in my email to folks that i can't make any representations about what's going to be covered or not covered i will say that what is clear is if folks are going
068to try to access the insurance they need to go in network because out of network is very um spotty to me on cost so we would do we would drive them to to always consider in-network but the question of whether cigna is going to continue to cover the cost of those if you have not been exposed and if you are not demonstrating symptoms the person that's outside the danbury area you