001call the meeting to order uh could we stand for the pledge of allegiance those that are able to stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay kate would you do the roll call please certainly joe britton president rachel toleski kate canetta here gladys cooper here lauren daly here joe da silva president katherine hodgson here rich janelli here kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spellino here okay we're gonna go right down the agenda uh we had item number four we talked about that early kate would you do the motion presented by mr money to the group i will make a motion that in accordance with connecticut general statutes section 10-157 the board of education hereby elects mr kevin walston to serve as
002superintendent of schools effective immediately for a term ending june 30th 2024 and further moves that the board of education hereby authorizes its chairperson to sign the related employment contract on behalf of the board of education second promotion made by kate seconded by joe the silver any discussion before we do the vote yes yes right oh thank you um i just want to um express that i'm going to support the outcome of the superintendent search committee um because it is the right thing to do for the district and i believe mr wallston will continue to do a fine job as he has done however i would be remiss if i did not express my dissatisfaction with how certain things were handled throughout the process several members requested training at the very beginning of the process which
003did not happen i believe we as a board are due for our own professional development on roles and responsibilities and i think we should look to incorporate how to strengthen the process to ensure proper protocols are followed in the future again i support mr walston's appointment i've enjoyed working with him these past few years i'll very much look forward to working with him in his new role thank you thank you rachel any other comments madam sure yes joe um first i'd like to congratulate kevin i think he's the right choice for our district i'm encouraged by this i too like rachel enjoyed very much working with kevin so far and i think this is a good move for our district um i'm glad we've gotten through this process um i don't necessarily have the same
004problems with the process rachel did that said we can always do everything better there's nothing nothing's ever perfect we can always do it better um i think i think at the end of the day we came out with the right result so congratulations kevin good luck and you're going to need it thank you and uh thank you madam chair okay mrs cooper catherine has your hand up okay cap good evening in order to do the responsible and ethically and appropriate job for the district it is with great disappointment that i cannot support the outcome of the superintendent search committee i must convey my concern over the injustice on how the protocol was handled throughout the process due to the lack of leadership and the outside services that were provided however i do wish mr walston
005the best of luck thank you katherine i also would like to say something i would like to congratulate kevin and um look forward to working with you and to can you continue to working with you um but as also as rachel and catherine have stated i do have concerns um about how this process was um how we went through this process and i look forward to some professional development for the board thank you thank you lauren okay if there's no other discussion uh there's a motion on the floor it was moved by a cape second about joe the silver kate would you do the roll call gladly uh joe britton yes rachel chaleski i kate canetta i gladys cooper yes lauren daley hi joe da silva i catherine hodgson nay rich genelli aye cathy molinero
006aye al russo because i wish mr walson's success kevin i vote yes and amy spolino hi okay could you give me the total cake that is a ten to one tally okay thank you congratulations to mr washington uh as we move through the process and i've heard several comments about the protocol was not and we need some professional development i grant you that but i also believe that as we start the process before we even decided that we was going to do one item i always had some type of advice from either our attorney or someone that knew a little bit more than we do okay do we need professional development yes we do okay and um you know the process it might not have been the way we wanted it was not done the
007way it was done uh 15 years ago when we had dr sapp but it was a different group so we all can learn from that but i thank you all for your support and moving this issue forward because we have a lot of educational things that we need to take care here in this district and i want to work with everyone and i hope everyone want to work with each other so we can make this the best district that is so again thank you congratulations to mr watson we move on down to the presentation of the 20 21 20 21 20 22 school reopening plan mr walsh thank you miss cooper um and to the board of bed also want to thank you for your confidence um i think this amazing community who's been uh
008very supportive over these last couple of months as part of this search process um and then of course um the cabinet uh the staff the team the principals i just want to continue to thank them for the great job today they do um and the the calls for support throughout this process has been very appreciative and i'm looking forward to the challenge i know the district has been stabilized by dr sal's presence for over a decade and i you know recognize i'm stepping into big shoes i have a cabinet working with the cabinet these last three years i'm looking forward to my work with them moving forward but i'm also looking forward to filling out the remaining members of the team to continue to serve this district well so i am ready to move on
009with the presentation ms cooper but i just want to reiterate um my appreciation uh for the confidence from the board and recommended me for this position i work so cara um i believe we have been authorized to move forward with the meeting can you present the powerpoint and i will begin speaking to the board about our process thank you so so one let let me just share we've had an opportunity all throughout the summer quite frankly this road to reopening started in the spring of 2021 with the cabinet and i with input and feedback from our school community feedback from our principals feedback from our parents during listening forums information and input from our board as part of the essa funding process and how we were going to use these funds to help reopen our
010schools in the fall as we got close to the end of the year the state made it clear that one of our main priorities was to reopen schools for 100 percent learning in the fall of 2021 so that has been our pr priority and our focus going into this upcoming school year as you you might recall we ended this week last year talking about how we were going to leverage uh federal monies partic specifically essa 2 and s3 how are we going to leverage those funds to hire additional staff particularly at our elementary schools in high school to to make sure that we can socially distance to the greatest extent possible in addition we've hired an extensive amount of social emotional support throughout the district to provide that support for for students as they return
011to our buildings on october 30th we feel like we are well positioned to receive our kids given all that we've learned about the mitigation strategies um that we have in place we had a great deal of practice in the in the spring of last year and i think with that practice our schools and our principals are well positioned to open up their doors on next monday on august 30th so the presentation we're going to share with you this evening is really a fine tuning of what we initially shared with the community in in june we received feedback we've our cabinet has been meeting on reopening meetings uh quite frankly since may and june and july and august um they go on vacations we're still meeting and reopening meetings and it's we've just been reopening like
012every day all summer and then we we invited in the greater community on the 16th i believe it was of august at that time we had close to 35 40 members of the greater danbury community which included some people who are on this call cara prunty who's been an amazing partner um throughout this last year and a half i feel like she's on our payroll here in danbury but and then our superhero cathy o'dowd of course was on the team as well all of the members of cabinet and then you know we had teachers we had principals we had school-based support team we had nurses paraprofessionals representation from all of these groups and you'll see some of the names momentarily and then some familiar names also from last year dr fong um and dr begg
013who also led their hand and let their expertise to the process so i just want to speak a little bit more about the process we shared an initial overview or plan of our reopening plan cara who's our teacher of all teachers helped to put together a lesson plan for our engagement session with the bigger reopening committee we had breakout groups did an amazing job of ray coletti who's not here tonight but he's one of our teacher extraordinaires who helped with the breakout groups we had our meetings remotely all of our experts in the field gave us feedback to help fine-tune our document i believe our document started in 20 24 pages i believe it's 32 33 34 pages now we've got raw feedback from our families and basically told us it it wasn't acceptable for
014our families and it was confusing and so we fine-tuned it accordingly we received more info we received more feedback from our teachers we had english teachers who told us we didn't have periods in the right place um but we continued to fine-tune and fine-tune um and then we had um teachers who told us the document wasn't declarative enough and so then we went back again and we fine-tuned it again and i'm saying all that is to say number one the the document that we're sharing with you this evening uh feels strongly this is a representation of how the experts in the field how people who are in front of our in front of our kids every day um feel like we can open our school safely we feel like we have a document that covers
015everything and anything that we miss we feel like the document and the plan is a fluid plan and as we continue to get feedback from our governor federal guidance and state guidance we can continue to make adjustments to this document so that's i'm saying all of that to say this first slide this evening we will not have uh public speaks as part of the process i just want to make the community aware over the last few weeks at community forums district surveys and direct emails i personally i know many of my colleagues have as well i receive many calls and emails regarding masking remote options for remote learning full in-person learning and vaccinations just to name a few and i just want to say and take this opportunity to make everyone aware that we deeply
016value our community's input and want to share with the community that our reopening plan is fluid and we will continue to update the plan as we receive guidance or orders from our governor state department of education or the state or local health department this is a re this is our introduction to our reopening plan and our next reopening at our next regular board meeting there'll be an opportunity for public comment um and and i also want to invite our parents in the community uh to look at the email on this first page and feel free to reach out to us with any comments or suggestions that you might have we're ready kara so i i will just get started and just reiterate our essential belief is that reopening danbury is is an absolute priority for
017us reconnecting kids to academics activities arts and athletics is number one priority we've heard about the challenge of the social emotional uh challenges that our kid kids had last year and after getting feedback um i'm sorry and so we tasked the reopening committee with to look at feedback from the state health department to from the state education department to before making any recommendations um to to the danbury board event and so in here if you click on here here's the interim guidance from the state health department and also from the state department of education that guidance us much much of that language actually lives in our recommended document ready karen and so just earlier previously i had mentioned you'll see here and this document will live on our website as well but i just want
018to thank our community members again for their participation in this process okay and so the document reflects the most recent recommendations from the committee to ensure the health and safety of all of our student staff and visitors use use effective mitigation strategies and by providing high quality instruction for all of our students so tonight we will be asking for approval for the plan and just some context for the community the government actually requires that we have a safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services this plan must be made publicly available and so we will have this as part of our website and then also submitted as part of our essa application which was actually submitted i believe it was two mondays ago the overarching goal is to get all of our kids back
019in school for 100 percent um in-person learning camera all right and so the reopening committee last met on the monday august 16th and made the following recommendations the recommendations when approved by the board of education will be finalized great and so there are a number of areas that we'll be discussing um and vaccination is one of our first ones and so what one of the key mitigation strategies and key takeaways uh from the from the cdc um is to promote vaccination as a leading strategy in the community uh we have continued to promote vaccinations in our letters to our to our parents we in our weekly updates we have a vaccination schedule that's available i believe the last one was available uh was made available this week and as we continue to have that mobile
020vaccine in our community we'll continue to make that available for our parents and students one of the other things that we have done and as part of a promotion as a strategy strategy for communities is to partner with your local health department to provide access to back stations for families district-wide and we've partnered with our school-based health center i mean they've also partnered with the skid city to make sure that these opportunities are available and so it's because of our partnership with carol prunty who's on this call we were able to we leverage that relationship to get the mobile vaccine unit in in our district and in our community this summer and then the last one and this is uh most recent order this executive order is requiring all vaccinations for staff this is recent
021as of just last thursday the district will start reviewing this expectation with bargaining units as soon as possible and for more information this will be made available on the website and certainly i know kim is on this call as well and kathy as well and if there are any questions we can talk about that later as well okay mask use and so the committee the district is requesting that mass can be required for all students staff and essential visitors which i'll talk about a little bit later in every event we will be making reasonable accommodations for individuals with um a disability that prevents mass use um additionally there's a current executive order requiring uh mask in school buildings um then there's also an order uh to support mass squaring from the city as well in
022addition to masking in buildings nascar also required on school on public transportation including our school buses this is sitting in cohorting so the cohorting expectation is going to be challenging this year but i do want to take an opportunity to speak to this first we again just reiterate reiterating prioritizing 100 in-person learning um implementing three-foot social distancing guidelines to the greatest extent possible i can share with the board in the community tonight i would say in the majority of our classrooms we are able to do this and and then of course in some of our grade levels uh we are coming close to it uh but not but not three feet and so in the majority of our elementary classrooms this is something we've been able to accomplish given the additional staff that we brought
023on in in the majority of our high school classrooms uh we're able to accomplish the three fit social distancing guidelines uh given the additional staffing but at the middle school just kind of given our constraints at that level we will not be able to maintain three-foot distancing necessarily in every single classroom and so that will continue to be a challenge for us at the middle school um and then um our over in what we've done here we've added a link here for um just more information about sea guidance regarding social distancing guidelines uh but this is something that's in the district we live with uh for the last couple for the last 18 months we feel like we're really good at it now and again to the greatest extent possible we will be at three
024feet but the guidance uh the federal guidance is sharing with districts it's not a requirement it's certainly a recommendation um and then they're continuing to encourage us where it's not possible continue to layer in other mitigation strategies i.e make sure your mask is always on um you know find every opportunity to make sure your kid's hands are clean and make sure you have opportunities to make sure hands are clean etc already cleaning disinfection and hygiene so this speaks to some of those layering the mitigation strategies and so last year the board and the community might recall we had wednesdays off at the beginning of this process when we had our kind of a b hybrid schedule and we had crews coming in to work to clean commonly used surfaces on hand door knobs throughout buildings
025and what we've learned from the state health department federal guidance is that contaminated surfaces are not a significant risk for the transmission of of sar cov2 therefore routine daily cleaning of all school areas is sufficient detergent-based cleaning will be used on all occupied areas of schools and buses on a daily basis and so the need to do that in between bus runs is not as urgent as it was before however we will for our rooms we still maintain isolation rooms in our schools we'll still encourage our custodial staff to clean and disinfect our restrooms and health offices will also continue to be clean and disinfected on a regular basis great thank you and so screen testing is a mitigation strategy that's been highly recommended by the cdc the district has decided to participate in this
026process but it does require parent permission and i'm going to ask kathy o'dowd to jump in to provide an opportunity to just kind of walk you through this but also educate you a little bit about the process okay thank you kevin good evening everyone um so the state department of health had approached the districts in regard to participating in this free program uh in which we would be offered a weekly screening uh for students um focusing really on those who are not able to be vaccinated yet which is that uh k through six grade level we will be partnered with a lab who will come on a weekly basis to our schools to perform what we call pool test pool screening so what that is um it's it's a group sample so um this is
027a voluntary program and it will require parent consent um and the school nurses will be uh once we've partnered with our lab i haven't been assigned a lab partner yet the state anticipates that will happen next week this is a program we look to start probably mid-september and when we have the volunteers to participate in this it will be a weekly sample um uh so it is a name fob it's just anterior nasal swab it's not a deep um nasopharyngeal so the q-tip really just goes inside the opening of the nose and all of those samples are placed in one tube and that's the pool um the lab will turn around that testing time within 24 hours and if any any um member of that pool tests positive what they will do is then an
028individual test a pcr to identify who that positive person is so it's really just a one-time visit there won't be a need to have a second they will have all these samples that they need on that weekly basis and then we will be notified if anyone has tested positive so the goal of this program is really for us to be able to identify cases most likely that would be asymptomatic sooner and then you know that's just another mitigation strategy that we have uh the school nurses will help by um sending home the consent forms and as i said the testing will be conducted by the lab and we have decided to trial this to see first of all how many will participate and the type of results that we get from it so at this
029point the testing will only be for students um it you know the goal is to really reach that group um we may move that on to staff but that's not been decided yet by the state so for right now it's k-6 students on a weekly basis kathy can i ask a question quick about that um it seemed and i know this by experience i have a daughter going to seventh grade who's not yet 12 so she's not actually vaccinated eligible eligible yet is this k to 6 or is this any student who's not vaccinated right now they are focusing on the k-6 program okay is that not recognizing that there's at least some children in grade seven that are eligible for vaccine um we you know we can look at that just an idea yeah
030no and certainly once i'm assigned the lab i'm gonna i have direct communication with them so that's certainly something that i can discuss with them yeah all right i only have it and it's only for me it was only for a very short time so it won't be a way it won't be a big deal for long but i just that thought came to me when i saw them thank you for that and i will certainly thanks thank you sure any other questions yes i have a question please uh hi kathy so i thought in one of the previous screens uh kevin said that there is an executive order that every vaccinations are required for all staff and yet here in your third bullet program screening is for unvaccinated students and staff so the the
031mandate for the vaccine came out after the pool testing information went out so the weekly screenings for those staff under the new vaccine requirement who um will not be vaccinated will not be eligible they they've spelled it out in the guidance that they will have to do that testing on their own okay thank you i will make the update captain yeah the um the actually the the vaccine guidance just came out this afternoon so we're i i've read it we're digesting it and um you know as a team we'll have to look at how that will work and more on that kathy you have the floor for the next two slides just a reminder okay any other questions on the pool testing no okay so we'll move on um these are all links to the
032uh kogit 19 student screening form we are still asking parents as well as staff to screen themselves for illness before coming into school and we have uh links to the english spanish and portuguese versions there we are reminding parents please please do not send your child to school if they were sick even if it's something you think is just the sniffles or a little cold um i can tell you with the delta variant that that is presenting more respiratory with just cold symptoms so uh we are just as we were last year any child who exhibits any signs of illness be it headache stomachache colds they should not come to school and if those symptoms develop in school they will have to be picked up and i'll talk about the um you know the requirements
033addendum 5 will be updated by the state hopefully next week but basically if someone is ill and can't come to school or if they are sent home it's going to require either a negative cova test or an a note from the health care provider with an alternate diagnosis in order for them to return and we have to be very strict with these guidelines you know we we've worked hard to get back full time and we want to keep our doors open so we will be um monitoring that um very closely um in in regard to the contact tracing notification protocol um that will be unchanged from last year you know should there be um an exposure that um we are notified about in school uh all direct contacts uh will be notified by a robocall
034and letter just as they were last year that read a lot excuse me red alert uh covered 19 kathy i think we just lost your audio well looks like she has a lot to say there we go i'm sorry we lost you for about 60 seconds okay i apologize dashboard we didn't hear anything about the dashboard if that's what you talked about that's where i was getting to next okay did you hear about the robocalls in the general notification letters okay so i'll start back on the contact tracing process i apologize um so if there is a known case that we're notified about in school all direct contacts will be notified by a robocall and letter um it will be that red alert quarantine message and parents will be asked to check their email for
035the instructions on quarantining and where they can go for testing then a general notification letter will go out i'll provide that to all principals and that will just be notifying the staff and families from that school that a case has been identified and all the direct contacts have been notified and then as of um monday our danbury public schools covet 19 dashboard which is on our home page will be activated again and i will be updating that on a daily basis as well as reporting any positive cases to the state department of health [Music] and then as we move on we'll see the quarantine guidelines on the next slide okay so um when it comes to quarantining um we have some new guidance due to the fact that we now have students and staff who
036have been eligible to be vaccinated so we'll start with person a so any person who tests positive for covid19 regardless of their vaccine status and if they have symptoms they will isolate until the fire online requirements have been met it will be a 10-day quarantine isolation from the first time the symptoms have appeared they need to be 24 hours fever-free without the use of fever-reducing medications such as tylenol or adele before that they can come out of their quarantine and if they do not have any symptoms which we call asymptomatic they will isolate for 10 days from the date of the first positive test they will continue to self-monitor and they will be isolated another 10 days has passed as long as no symptoms have developed then we move on to person b so in
037this scenario any vaccinated student or staff who is exposed to a coveted positive person and they are asymptomatic which means they have no symptoms they will not have to quarantine they do need to have a cover test three to five days after their exposure but teachers will be able to report to work students will be able to come to school as long as they have no symptoms this guidance requires wearing a mask in all public places for 14 days but as we know now for example in danbury masts are required in public places at all times and they will continue to self-monitor their symptoms for 14 days should they become symptomatic during this period of time they would need to repeat the kova test and all test results should be reported to the school nurse
038and then we have person c so any unvaccinated student or staff who is exposed to a copin 19 positive person they quarantine for 10 days following the date of last exposure and this is unchanged from last year they will still have a covet test three to five days after that date of last exposure test results will be reported to the school nurse they will self-monitor for symptoms and um we always invest her parents to contact the primary care provider and staff as well they have questions or concerns okay and uh we have one slight change to the close uh contact information and definitions so direct or close contact um exposure is still defined as 15 minutes or more in a 24-hour period um adult direct close contact distance remains within six feet of the positive
039person now there's a slight kathy sorry yeah only students maths need to be consistently kathy we lost you for about 60 seconds again so sorry don't be catholic goodness okay i i apologize uh should i start you left off with a difference between the adults and the children okay thank you kelly um so the adult con the adult direct contact is still six feet 15 minutes within a 24 hour period so the exception is any student seated three feet away from a positive case will not need to quarantine if the exposure was limited to the classroom only masks are consistently incorrectly worn and the contact person is asymptomatic so this applies again to the classroom only i can see this working at the middle and high school level you know the goal is that we
040do not want to have to quarantine an entire class if we don't have to um at the elementary level although we may have the three foot distancing there are times during the day where the masks are off in the class uh the students will have their breakfast snack and sometimes lunch in the classroom so that erases the masks worn consistently and all day long but at the middle and high school levels where they're changing classes and they are stationary in their seats wearing masks for the period that they're in there we will be able to do that three-foot definition kathy i have a question real quick and this may not be for you um are we at least at the elementary level are we still using the desk shields like we used last year yes
041we are okay yes so the dust shields will be used um if the children are having snack or lunch and their masks are off they they can use the best shoes then yes well query we were using desk shields routinely throughout the day last year correct um they won't be in the question yeah it's uh it's been determined that that's not necessary and for some of the desks it didn't really fit well um and it was really you know interfering with learning so we are only using those now when uh maps are off in the classroom yeah and and joe there's also some thoughts out there that as we encourage um airflow in our classrooms uh that the the shields on a desk are actually prohibiting the airflow that we need in the classrooms and
042so our our stance on this is when kids are eating and have a snack in the mask or off uh we will have the shields up so whether that's snack time in elementary classrooms um or in our cafeterias the shields will be up um but otherwise uh the the most important mitigation strategy will be masked uh throughout the school day so that that's the reason for the switch primarily no evidence necessarily to suggest that they've been effective and then two um you know the idea that it's prohibiting you know the airflow that we need to encourage uh right now during these times okay thank you it just seemed that i wanted to ask because obviously we've reduced our distances we may not be making three feet and the current iteration of covet seems to be
043more contagious for kids so i i that but that logically makes sense if it's affecting the airflow and we're all wearing masks then that's okay yeah the math is the more important strategy for sure so in terms of determining whether it's going to be a three definition or a six um that will be determined by the school nurse um as you know she talks with the teachers in consultation with me so we will determine at that point whether the quarantine will be the three foot or this any questions on that if you copy okay so the next four slides were asking dr casamaro to speak to these slides they're all specifically related to instruction in our classrooms thank you kevin and congratulations to you kevin thank you um so um as far as the quarantine
044goes we wanted to make sure that um students have a way to still stay connected to what is happening in the classroom and so um leading into the last couple of weeks we determined that we did have enough of funding within our sr3 funds um to support some additional instructional supports and coordination at the building level um so first i just want to say that all of our teachers heading into this year will continue the use of google classroom to post the week-long overviews the lesson plans the resources that folks have been accustomed to seeing on a daily basis and over the course of the week and so any student regardless of quarantine even if they're home with the sniffles may access the google classroom on a daily basis to make sure that they're keeping
045up with their with their assignments um and we have some special uh supports in place for students who will be in quarantine and i'll talk about those in a second so students who've been officially identified as quarantine will be contacted within 24 hours by a new person who will designate as a school quarantine liaison and the sql as we're calling them not to be confused with the sql report for those of you who are into databases and computers and spreadsheets um the sql are going to will communicate the attendance and social emotional check-in procedures to students at home and make sure that we're connecting to to those students during the day and so this is a person who will set an attendance check in time um usually right at the conclusion of the day this
046will likely be one of our own certified teachers staff members that'll be designated to do this right at dismissal to make sure that they're checking in with the students who are who are in quarantine and this is all um subject to whether or not the student is asymptomatic and is feeling fine and well enough to do this but we will have someone reaching out to those students and to connect with them on a daily basis for each day that that there are in quarantine for students to be marked present during the quarantine they will have to attend the check-in at the designated time and also complete at least 50 percent of their class work to the best of their ability and make sure that they're reaching out and connecting with their with their teachers um
047again um only the students who are we are required to quarantine have to do this um and and engage in these social emotional check-ins um in addition to this um we have designated um we've just actually posted for positions to have certified staff members at the elementary level middle school and high school level that will be available for support in the course subject areas for students who may need um to to help with some of the assignments that have been posted during the day um and to just kind of keep up with what's happening in the classroom so we're excited to offer both this school quarantine liaison a position one for each school that will help to communicate and coordinate this and reach out to our students but then also to have certified staff available
048to our students who who will be at home should they need to do do so you can go to the next slide please [Music] okay this one is about the performing arts and so um as you know last year we had to make some modifications to the programming um as as we have done um still it is it makes most sense to have as many performing or high moving activities outdoors were practical um we still have lots of tents that have been folks that have utilized some of those to take advantage of additional outdoor space we're feasible in the performing arts world extending distancing by six feet or more is recommended anywhere where there's increased respiration wind instruments singing high exertion dance and you'll see the same recommendations along the pe lines as well droplet
049control measures are implement should be implemented during activities with increased respiration um and bell covers for wind instruments um and what we call instrumental ppe uh which our department chair uh jill russell did an amazing job securing grants and funding to get some additional ppe for for our students so they can continue to play next slide please um and similar to what i just i just mentioned um wind instrument in particular and singing outdoor remains the safest place to practice instruments the ppe has recommended and of course the continued hygiene good hand washing and sanitization when using the instruments before and after um and just maintaining that that good clean hygiene with all of our instruments and art supplies and any items that the students are touching next please thank you i'm excited to say
050that we will be returning to regular distribution of sharing books and materials this was a big issue last year that made it difficult our teachers did an amazing job with regulating that um and providing opportunities for kids um but at the same time it made a little bit more difficult so we're happy to be able to go back to our regular distribution and checking out of books and all clubs and activities are going to resume in person this fall but we're still not allowing any food sharing and that's just good part of the part of the good hygiene practice at this time and kevin i believe you have cafeterias yes i will jump back in thank you cara and so i know there was a question earlier about death shields so in our cafeterias and
051in our classrooms where students have snacks we want to ensure masking is in place after consuming food and beverages whether it's cafeteria or in our classrooms we've asked all of our principles to make sure there are barriers on our cafeteria tables as an additional mitigation strategy to the greatest extent possible and so we have ordered on clear barriers plastic barriers for cafeteria tables throughout the district and then in some schools or classrooms where students will eat in the class those same barriers will be offered and available for classrooms during meal time we will continue with plans to offer outside feeding at the high school for those of you who have maybe have been to the school recently we have tents outside of the cafeteria outside of the building we will be asking mr donovan to
052join us hopefully at our first board meeting to just give an update on how how things are going so far but we are excited that we're able to separate and socially distance our students at the high school um and as long as the weather cooperates we'll continue to have students inside and outside to to spread kids out on death shields as i mentioned earlier will be available nola cafeterias for district wide for student use and we will continue to encourage hand washing and the use of sanitizers throughout throughout the school day particularly after eating visitors and so until further notice parent meetings will continue to take place remotely or virtually we will maintain our regular sign-in procedure to ensure accuracy for contact tracing protocol uh the public is not likely aware but you know we
053do have supervisors and in district office staff moving from building to building we have our teachers who teach fine arts in other subjects special ed staff a lot of our staff members are shared throughout different schools so we continue to ask them to maintain regular signing procedures in the event we have a positive case so that we can contact trace um appropriately um open house and school-wide parent events will remain virtual um in outdoors whether the parents have made provisions for outdoor seating and so further notice non-essential visitors will not be permitted into schools but i do want to speak briefly about essentia visitors this is something that is continuing to change and evolve the essential visitors visitors that provide a service to students in schools such as student nurses interns vendors contract service providers
054will be required to follow the policies and procedures set forth in our reopening plan and for those who are appropriate particularly vendors and contract service providers we are asking them to submit their own safety plan for the group of students they might be working with and then because we want some evidence that they're adhering to the practices and the policies set forth in this plan and so that plan will be submitted to the district where appropriate um all of these cases i'll be reviewing with cathy o'dowd if there is um specific if there are if it's related to sports you know we certainly would involve chip if it's related if it's a public event and we have a lot of community participation we will ask for input from cara punty's office the local health department
055so we we feel like we have a pretty good protocol in place to help protect protect our school community but just to also make sure anyone who comes and works with our students uh they have a plan a safety plan in place as well that's consistent with our own real play plan okay school buses recess yes yes exactly previously yeah do you mind sure um i am um the board liaison for dsabc we're having a meeting tomorrow night and they always ask me what you know what's the latest so does this mean are they considered essential visitors the mentoring program or not yes and dsabc would um similarly carrick can you click on the click here button and so we would be working with um the person in charge of the program and and so
056let's just say they have a lot of mentors working with students and we'll we will be asking them you know how are they going to ensure when they work meeting with kids um if they're doing this in person and then you know we may deem that it's more appropriate to meet with kids virtually you know but but if it is in person they would need to include in here what strategies are they gonna ensure that masking is in place what strategies are they going to use to make sure social distances in place after you're done with your meeting how are you going to encourage hand washing um can you keep continue down uh cara thank you and then there are a couple of areas here also about um you know if appropriate uh disinfecting the
057space after you're done but also contact tracing so in the event we do have a positive case make sure there's some kind of record of what students that you've met with and so it would you know we anyone who we're working with is going to be working with our kids they're going to be required to answer these questions so in the event we have a case um cathy o'dowd could put our hands on who the child met with uh was that person vaccinated or not vaccinated um you know all of those answers will be readily available because we have a plan in place uh so as an example amy that's these are the things that we rely on and then underneath there will be place for my office or designate to sign off on a
058request okay great thank you very much you're welcome next slide camera and so school buses recess and so in our school buses and i think i mentioned this earlier masking is required on all public transportation including school buses we will open bus windows to improve ventilation and we will work with the bus company to make sure windows are open we will to the best and to the greatest extent possible we will have control loading and unloading on buses because it's certainly recommended i think given our success with this last year i think this is something we can continue to do where possible particularly at an elementary level you know we would try to have a assigned seating and try to keep keep kids cohorted on buses um also to the greatest extent possible during recess
059and phys ed masks are not needed for outdoor recess or phys ed we're certainly going to continue to encourage distancing and promoting hand hygiene before and after outdoor activities our principals are well aware of what this looks like they had a lot of practice last year and so we'll have hand sanitizers outdoors but mostly we're going to encourage students to wash their hands when they go back and come back into their classrooms from outdoor activities and then certainly it's recommended that we six feet or more is recommended where increased respiration is likely and so if our kids are running around outside their recess you know to the greatest extent possible we want them to be six feet or more apart we understand they're going to be times when they get closer but the important thing
060is that they're outside um and they're not inside for these for these activities next i care and then sports and i've asked our athletic director um to join us for this slide and i also understand that there might be questions at the end for sports because i know we have a lot of families that have kids that are participating in extracurricular activities jeff thank you kevin uh good evening everybody uh we we're we were fortunate we followed the ciac everything the cihc uh mandates they put us and we follow along um two weeks ago ciac came out with a statement that fall sports will will go on as scheduled and that's their approach we're we are taking uh our teams have begun training uh as early as august 12th uh we have another bunch of
061teams starting tomorrow so we'll be up and running close to full capacity uh as soon as uh early next week uh masks uh for the most part about eighty percent of our program in the fall is outside so we're really in good shape with the with that the indoor programs girls volleyball swimming cheerleading masks uh they have to wear masks and uh they're because it's a mandate in school buildings where we don't think that's going to be much of a problem in fact they wore them last year and and we did very well with that as well public transportation we've had a couple of trips uh we're going to work very hard to um and kevin mentioned about loading and unloading number of athletes on a bus we have to wear masks uh our coaches
062have been you know very good about that and we're going to keep pushing toward that we have roughly 500 or so athletes we're actually our numbers and participants are fast approaching where we were two years ago so we're going to be up near full capacity with the kids participating we work diligently weekly with the ciac in fact we meet next week we almost weekly to talk about different policies changes different things coming down from the governor's office etc so we're in tune with everything that's going on and moving toward the start of this fall season we're in pretty good shape as we move toward it any questions thank you chip cara the next slide so our next few slides focus speak to our focus priorities to reopen our schools the majority of them are going
063to speak to our academic priorities and so i've asked kara and kelly to speak to these last remaining slides and then open it up for any questions that you might have sure thank you thank you kevin um so um with us for funding uh we've had been able to secure some opportunities to um purchase a few additional resources that um not only serve us well uh right now in this transition but also in the future and i'll talk about those on the next slides um but from an instructional priority standpoint um this year we will have a deliberate focus on the priority standards grade level standards and focusing really on the instructional depth over breath and what that means is many people hear the term acceleration and what it doesn't mean is going faster with
064the curriculum to try to squeeze it all in it really means to have a deliberate um thoughtful approach to looking at the highest level highest leverage standards that a grade level um that is offered at a grade level and really making sure that students master those standards before next year it also means looking at the previous grade level to see what grade level standards really needed to to be a circle back on and reinforced so that there's a successful uh staircase of of instructional complexity um that helps to move students along to the next grade level so um our teachers will hear a lot about acceleration this year um and really making deliberate choices to make sure that students are engaged through high quality tech selection but to also make sure that we're choosing things
065in the curriculum that will really position our students well and to spend the most amount of time there um and so our department chairs our supervisors and critical administrators are working hard to to repace some units and to also focus a lot of the department time in meetings in professional learning communities to help teachers make those deliberate choices across the year of course we're going to continue to provide student supports where needed we have some additional funding to do so um and so some of that will probably start up in the september early october with some additional after school opportunities uh mostly virtual we have some wonderful technology now that allows more teachers to be able to access more students in before and after school hours so we're excited about that um and we have
066purchased some resources to help students and teachers access critical grade level content but at multiple lexile levels so lexile level is typically the reading level with which a child is able to access content and so besides the increasing student engagement we're going to be focusing on hands-on projects problem-based learning all things to increase that engagement level with with our students and again bolstering enrichment after school tutoring supports um and particularly charge focusing on some of our second language learners um who probably were most affected uh by the pandemic last year um and into this year next slide please and so some of the resources we won't go into detail on all of these but um we purchased a a large amount of resources that are flowing into the schools now do the math which is
067a great math program it's intervention for both our student support specialists resources as well as our teachers our training is being focused on right now in the first couple of days before school starts uh illustrative mathematics which is a program um that we're looking to kind of move in k-12 we're rolling that out k2 it's a program that we've had our eye on for quite a while and now we had some of the resources to actually to be able to bring it in it's a highly accessible math program gibbel's reading assessment our ability to assess students in greater detail at the k5 level so that we can make better instructional decisions sips intervention kits these are again reading intervention kits more resources for the teachers uh to target very specifically instruction that's needed um some
068orton gillingham reading training program that is more training for teachers to help diagnose and prescribe issues with reading and to teach reading um open syed training this is to bolster our science programming newsela pro this is actually i should be at the 912 level not k12 um but that's a current events and um multiple tech sets at multiple reading levels so that teachers can more easily differentiate for students um and of course we have been um throughout all of this continuing to focus on our academy program and pathway development training uh we completed some of that over the summer um you may have heard of that in the the summer update that mr wallston provided um that was very successful and as of uh even just today we started effective teaming training with all of
069our grade nine teachers um and they'll also be exposed to the college curriculum um that they'll be implementing uh very soon in just a few short years um we'll be moving through in the next year or two project-based learning training again that's about engagement and that's about student-centered learning we were able to buy a host of musical instruments to bolster our department our growing musical department which is wonderful and also um adding some of those books to the class libraries which we've been wanting to do for several years um and of course we through attrition lost some some texts during the pandemic as we sent some books home and um a few didn't come back so we're happy to be able to bolster some of those classroom libraries next slide please in terms of staffing
070supports again through essenter we're able to add additional 13 srbi paraprofessionals at the k5 level we're very excited about that they'll offer a helping hand to tier one and tier three uh intervention ten interventionists which are more seasonal 100-day employees to assist with intervention needs at the 612 level an additional sciop coach at the middle school level uh and our humanities instructional coach which we lost in the budget a few years back were able to hire back with esther funds i'm also the site coach we also we did have a couple of site coaches back in the budget um so we're really just kind of getting back up to those levels and then our very fast growing swift growing technology department um we were able to get some additional media techs in to support the
071numerous devices that we've purchased over the last year and a half so we're very excited about that and we are also very excited that we many of you know we use google classroom as a management system it's kind of a management system light if you will in terms of its ability its dashboards and back-end supports for teachers and and students and families um so we'll be we have purchased and we're moving towards a new program called schoology we've added tons of laptops and classroom devices and of course very much needed up network upgrades across the district and i believe uh kelly will talk a little bit about some of the social emotional supports that we've embedded thank you kara um so some additional uh social emotional supports and staffing that we were able to um
072provide to the district due to the esser funding was additional teachers across the uh special ed and pupil services staff we added several special education teachers due to growing enrollment on the pupil services staff we needed additional support at the elementary level and we hired one additional psychologist as well as another psychologist for our new danbury primary center at the secondary level we also added a school counselor and as many of you recall that was also recommendation for the from the nes report and so something we're conscious of doing over the course of hopefully the next few school years and we also added another school crisis counselor um we have one crisis counselor at the high school and as the population grows there is just a greater need for student support and assistance and so
073we were fortunate enough to add another social worker to support in that position additionally we were able to bring back our two deans of student support this was a position that was that we had and found much success in prior school years with supporting and intervening with students and their families and so that we'll bring two of those uh staff members to the high school they are two uh teachers um that are stepping into these new leadership roles to support uh students who are at risk of you know failing not doing well successfully disengage with school and to try to work with their teachers parents and the community agencies that are involved with them to support um we are also i spoke with about this a couple i think the last time we met if
074i recall correctly we were also fortunate enough to be one of 15 school districts across the state to get the leap grant and what leap stands for is learner engagement and attendance program and the focus of this is to be able to provide additional staffing resources and supports again for students and family one of our concerns coming back from a year and a half of very untraditional schooling is student absenteeism and disengagement um and so we will bring aboard two social workers where we were just issued this funding a very short time ago so we're in the process of trying to onboard these individuals and they will focus on home visits and really going to students homes meeting with families trying to figure out any of the barriers or obstacles to coming to school and
075providing and intervening with to provide support for students sometimes it's a social emotional mental health issue other times it's a child care issue sometimes it could be a resource issue and so really what we'll do is it'll be an extensive protocol to work with each student on an individual basis and go out into their home we'll also provide additional training and support for all our pupil services staff members throughout this grant as well as our administrators uh so that we can expand this program when the grant monies go away uh to be able to continue this support but we know um that this will be a need in the upcoming school year as it was over the course of the pandemic um kara spoke about this a little bit uh previously in the presentation but
076one of the focuses of our school quarantine liaisons um is to focus on on social emotional needs of our students so in addition to the academic needs they will also do social emotional check-ins and they will also be able to notify some of the additional support members on this team if a student or family needs an additional resource and mead is also working on hiring parent liaisons throughout the district one per building to support district wide with outreach to students and families and i will bring more information on this upcoming but we are in the process of applying for a state social emotional assessment and screener it's called aperture and what this will do is serve as a screener for our district to help um with you know diagnosing and prescribing just like we do
077for academic skills um where we might need to have some targeted intervention for students so this will flag some students that are struggling in certain areas and then allow our staff members to delve deeper with those kids and provide support um so again once we submit that application and hear back we're hopeful for a mid-year rollout for that program thank you can you ask a quick question please sure um kelly thank you for sharing the information about the the leap grant i'm really excited about that for our district and you mentioned that we're gonna we're gonna be pulling in an additional social worker i'm just wondering also um you've got family support positions um how many of those are we going to have for for the parent liaisons we're trying to hire one per per
078building to start um they will work there'll be actually two social workers through the leap grant uh that's our role there to social workers um and then to also make available for some of our social workers psychologists and school counselors that choose to do so there will be some funding for after-school support so we can use our existing staff beyond the school day to help support with some of our families that's wonderful and then training for all those groups so the parent liaisons uh the existing pupil services staff members and of course this new team um we'll also have a couple um heads or leads that will help to guide um and gather information because a big part of this will be these two additional social workers will work district wide um so how do
079we make referrals how do we track the data and how do we make sure we're following up with students one of the requirements of the grant is a pretty extensive data tracking to make sure that our efforts are truly resulting in improving student attendance and engagement in school excellent thank you so much thank you and cara can you bring us to the next slide and so uh miss cooper this concludes our presentation i just want to um thank cara punty again for joining us this evening there may be some questions or comments we may need cara's expertise um and of course i'm going to thank kelly and kathy and chip and kara for jumping in and helping out with the presentation this evening as well but we're ready for any questions that you might have
080for us kevin when it's appropriate i have i have two questions okay um number one i read an article this morning in the norwalk hour it was referring to norwich schools they apparently have had the same uh parent desires about remote learning and the article basically said the state of connecticut is not authorized remote learning this year so is that accurate not only is it not required we're not authorized to do it on a full-time basis so it's it's an interesting um we've had this conversation internally ourselves i don't know if we really got confirmation from the state you know we we had a desire earlier in the school year i think we were very hopeful uh for aim for days of increment whether we could provide remote learning experience for kids and we were
081told uh that remote learning is not an option to count as a dave you know toward the 180. the article said the exact same thing about norwalk yeah and so somewhat contradictory as you know providing a remote experience for kids when it's not allowed as part of the um but you know nonetheless that's that's kind of where we are right now so i you know just just to acknowledge that question joe because i noted that you know there are a lot of families that are requesting uh the remote as a remote learning as an option certainly understand why you know there are varying reasons why uh families have made this request and i empathize with a lot of families particularly after last year and going through last year and a lot of families chose to
082stay home and keep their children home because they didn't feel like it was safe to to send kids in um but we we are the district that is we're we're following the guidance from state and federal guidelines uh prioritizing 100 return for students we understand that there are going to be instances where there are some anomalies as part of you know some some individual circumstances where we may have to do something different but we'll we'll take those on a case-by-case basis thank you my last question is do we it's wednesday school starts monday do we know what our total enrollment is do we know how much how how many students were up over last year so i i i can take a look um i'll need a second i i can just tell you that
083it's a moving target yes yes and i'm smiling because karen and kelly know i'm in meetings for the enrollment i think i started twitching when you said enrollment joe um i mean danbury continues to be popular uh we're we're about 950 kindergarten students um this year and um a 975 kindergarten students already so one of our wonderings was were we going to get for the families who kept their kindergarteners home last year were they going to resurface as first graders and kindergarteners and what we have learned is kind of been a split so it looks like we're going to be over a thousand easily in kindergarten this year um and it and it also looks like we're going to be close to a thousand in the first grade wow but the last time we look
084we're 9.75 kindergarten we anticipate we're going to surpass that number by at least another 75 to 100 and i'm pulling up our numbers for first grade right now i'm mentioning these two grades because these are kind of our growth growth areas if you will um so safe to say overall enrollment so um it certainly has not declined and just had a meeting with our middle school principals yesterday their enrollment continues to grow and with social distance and in the lack of options that we have at the middle school i think it's just another reminder that we need more space for our middle schools you know we we had that realistic conversation yesterday uh and social distancing guidelines and no guidelines uh we really need space for our three middle schools we need some other options
085and joe i'll i'll look for this document i'll circle back and answer that question for you that's fine thank you very much okay miss cooper um any other questions from you or board members um i have one other question um maybe for carapante kara is it is it um the mask mandate is only through october or is this for the entire school year so currently the school mask mandate under the executive order is only through september 30th the city of danbury mask mandate does not have an end date at this point and that covers all indoor spaces which would include schools got it thank you welcome i entered any other questions from boardman saying none um i want to thank everyone for the presentation and uh it was a lot of information and i know
086it took a lot of working together to put this together and and on behalf of the board i would just like to say thank you if there are no other questions uh or no other concerns anyone have any uh question for mr watson or uh carol or anyone else mr uh sympathetic uh we want to have a quick one yes uh right just a quick question um once this is approved um will this be posted on the website and if so um will there be live links within the document um you know i think the the public just saw our agenda which they can't click on the links embedded yes um i'm sorry rachel yes it will be available on the website and i have not tested it recently but once you open it on
087the website the link should be live but i will confirm to make sure that it is thank you absolutely you're welcome thank you rich are there any other questions cnn uh kate there's no other question kate i will make a motion that the board of education approves the 2021-2022 school reopening plan as presented promotion made by kate seconded by uh al so we've had discussions so kate you want to go right into uh the motion um as far as a roll call got it uh joseph britton yes richard chaleski aye kate caneva aye gladys cooper yes lauren daly aye joe da silva aye sorry catherine hodgson aye rich jannelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo roll dog yay and amy spelino hi all right that's unanimous unanimous thank you all if there's nothing else it's
088about 8 22. i need a moisture to adjourn this meeting and everything thank you exactly bye rachel okay thank you again good night you