Danbury Board of Education Meeting 5-12-21

001here catherine hodgkin here rich genelli here el russo here amy spallano here i'm two missing okay thank you um now we're going to turn the recognition part over to uh dr seth yes thank you very much we'll start with um with jill is jill here yes i am today well first of all jill i just want to put you on a pedestal and say thank you for all that you've done you've led the uh music department in ways that i i just can't imagine it's been wonderful you've brought in a lot of resources we've got so many youngsters now on instruments and it's really been a guiding light for us so you're coming through financial tough times boards and usually look at curtailing those but our board has been very supportive but it would have

002been difficult without your leadership and getting the grant and the instruments for the kids to play it's very um very expensive so um we got an award maybe you could talk to the board about the award again and let them know what you're doing please thank you absolutely thank you so much dr sal and i um would like to echo your your words that it's it's been the support of the administration the board of education the school district fellow teachers and all contents our parents and our community because we still show that we believe in educating the whole child and we believe in the arts and we believe in all content areas and that's just a very important message that we are sending out and we just can't thank you enough for all of your

003support that you continue to give us um it has been it has been a crazy year right i guess that's the easiest word for it and um last march the uh the lights went off and the sound went off in our music rooms literally um it was we've never heard quiet music rooms before and that's that had been what we had been hearing for a long time so like every other educator we've you know we've worked really hard to to gain as much as we can in resources um to do as much blended learning and in the process as a department we've learned amazing ways to work together that we haven't had the opportunity before and really amazing ways to move students forward after we come out of this and i do believe that we're

004going to come out of this in a great spot um we we began the the save the music grant about i want to say four or five years ago it began with three of our elementary schools we were given a core band grant for each of the schools there is obviously a lot of requirements that we follow in order to keep that grant following our first year we received three more grants moving forward to there we also have seen grants and additional instruments on top of it go to shelter rock school um with the pandemic there's been a lot of freezing you know i think in the grant and non-profit world but we were able to achieve a hybrid piano that we brought put to one of our middle schools it's a top of the

005line piano that records and just all wonderful things that support students in addition to save the music foundation we've been so blessed to work with an organization called little kids rock they're a national organization whose pedagogy um reflects modern band music and teaching kids what they what they know and what they're interested in so when we think about student-centered learning and we think about tapping into our kids interests that that's where that's where it begins um using music as a second language we've been able through that grant to obtain guitars and drums and electric basses and ukuleles and keyboards and i even feel like a rock star doing it and i didn't feel like one before so it's been it's been a really great experience and expanding it to all of our k-12 schools um

006that program has been wonderful as well um very surprisingly we did receive another grant this year um as you know with with all the mitigation strategies we've been doing to keep our students and our staff healthy and safe and to get back into schools which is which is what we all want uh we were able to we we uh it was a ten thousand dollar grant actually um from save the music foundation that was funded by sony and it was ppe equipment for our wind instruments the national federation of high schools released their third round of aerosol studies which shows all of the safe mitigation and ways that we can be performing in school that guidance has gone out to the district a huge thank you to kathy and to courtney who provided the masks

007and the funding we needed additional surgical masks and can 95 masks to go along with that and the district came through and i just really wanted to acknowledge the tremendous help they've given us through this um although we've lost a lot of authentic music making as we knew it we've gained a lot and what what warms my heart is when i see i saw in the beginning of the year teachers actually outside of their schools waiting for students to come with instruments to change uh strings to tune instruments to give kids the paperwork that they needed um we had a teacher in the beginning of the year that did a tremendous donor's choose and was able to send music kids home with every one of us t students and two elementary schools um so i

008think the more the more we've gotten for this the more we've learned and i just again i couldn't feel proud and honored to work with the group of teachers that i do work with we we recently um put together a teacher appreciation video for them and one of the questions i ask them every year is why did you become a music teacher and the common answer is because music is my passion i love teaching and i had such a positive experience as a student that i want to share that with with the rest of the kids in the world and it's just so important that that we as educators you know that we care as much as we do and just wanted to reiterate that and how impressed i am by by our music staff

009so a huge thank you it's it's been it's been a tough year there's been a lot of school districts making very tough decisions and to the best of our ability we've kept our programs in intact and again i want to thank all of you for that too although dr sal i did promise you brevity um as a parting gift for your retirement so i will i will stop talking because i do believe that students and what students produce for itself so i have a short montage of um video of clips that we attained permission for to share with all of you and i can i can go ahead and do that sure go i'm sorry i thought i could quickly hold that thought so this all resulted in us getting the um being recognized the

010best community for music education by the uh foundation which is a tremendous honor thinking of of the challenge that we have so pretty impressive thank you i um actually cannot believe that we achieved this three years in a row um it's it's not a very easy task to get there's over 600 school districts in the country that received it and we were one of 23 in connecticut neighbors our neighbors in bethel also did receive it again this year and just a huge congratulations to our colleagues across the state but also we're able to achieve this all right go ahead and play it i think it is i think we're in okay [Music] oh [Music] team [Music] version that i [Applause] [Music] and this wear [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh there

011was a time when i was alone nowhere to go and no place to come home my only friend was the man in the moon and even sometimes he will go away too and one night as i close my eyes i saw a shadow flying high he came [Music] hello my name is timothy and i've been in the orchestra at danbury high school for two years now i feel like music has really had a big impact on my school experience and a lot of this comes from just how orchestra is a different class in nature than a lot of the other classes that i take at denver high school [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] is [Music] every mood has a song to match with it it really helps and it can make me happier

012and i find a lot of songs that i can relate to and i know that i'm not like alone i know that it's not only me so that makes me happy like it does like it doesn't have to be sadness it can also be like joy for something a specific thing that also has a song written about it so we i i know i have someone who shares that same joy with me and that makes me happy [Music] peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] thank you thank you thank you jill thank you thank you for your leadership all the parents who homeschooled their children and worked from home and allowed them to play an instrument while this was all going on so but thank you all very much congratulations to

013our cablingers this evening thank you got to say are you going to do the cave um if you're ready for that sure yeah um the connecticut association boards of education as you know is 169 districts and each district board of ed recognized students in their school system for their leadership and contribution to um to the wellness of the schools and the climate of schools and tonight we have families and youngsters that we'd like to present the award to i think we'll start with dr thomas at broadview yes and amanda i think i saw you online i just want to make sure just say yes yeah okay great because i hate just talking to myself amanda we first of all it's such an honor always to present stellar students to the board we are just so

014proud of our all of our students but when we have kids that have maintained excellent grade averages since sixth grade all the way up to eighth grade it's really a great honor as a principal to be able to present them so thank you so much for giving us this opportunity um my first student at bravo is amanda amanda is a bright passionate and responsible young lady she has maintained a stellar academic record throughout her whole three years at broadview in addition to having an academic nothing but academic success she is also compassionate supports of others and she also is very she can persevere of any obstacle that you put in front of her he's just amazing like that she participates in all kinds of community services especially in the broadview community what i like about

015the fact that she is part of the national junior honor society but the best part is this year we challenged our national honor society to do peer um tutoring with the students that were struggling a little bit with their peers and amanda took on the call and was extraordinary did a great job helping out the students so we're just very proud of her she just keeps pushing through wanting to learn new things i just can't think of anyone who deserves to support more than a panda so amanda congratulations hey and um is mom or dad there yeah my dad's here dad keep it going she's going to the high school so i think mr donovan would appreciate it if you keep her going strong congratulations amanda next we have gianni shafallo um what interesting thing

016about gianni is i had him when i was at penbrooke in kindergarten not many principals can say they had students from kindergarten to eighth grade i get to say i did and he was an extraordinary student at pembroke now he's graduating from promoting from broadview he's just a hard-working student he's very diligent he's been maintained a high gpa at broadview for all three years he ensures that he will stay on top of something when gianni say he's gonna do it he'll do it it's just simple as that he keeps his word um also what i like about him too is he's exemplary not just with his academics he stands up for other students he doesn't he's not afraid to speak his mind but he does it respectfully and he's very passionate he stands up for

017every cause um and he doesn't see he doesn't like to see the underdog suffer and he's just that type of kid just shows respect for everyone and he demands respect which is even better so i am just thrilled i didn't see him on but if he was on you would be with me and congratulating him for being an extraordinary student at broadview and once again i always say it but i always mean it you're going to hear about them again so just remember the names thank you thank you mr thomas rogers park dr zelita good evening everyone thank you so much for honoring all these students this really is my favorite time of the year not just because we're winding down but because we do get the opportunity to recognize some of these eighth grade

018students as they round out their middle school experience and so tonight i had the pleasure of introducing you to our two cave winners our first winner is raquel there i know i see her here hi raquel well raquel is such a doll she is the sweetest kid she takes her classwork so seriously and she's always given her best effort she works hard on all of her assignments and i think she might be our only student who is handed in every single one of them this year and that's a feat so we are so proud of her she really has a positive influence also on those who are around her because she is so fun and she's clever and her teachers and her classmates are just delighted to be around her she's a very thoughtful girl

019she often gives thoughtful gifts and sweet treats to her friends and they just love her for she also likes to have fun and she loves to play among us with her classmates when they get some uh downtime so i'm super excited to to welcome her here tonight and to honor her with this cave award so congratulations raquel and our second winner is alexandra perez-lieva and alexandra demonstrates leadership qualities both academically and socially at rogers park she is a very active member of our national junior honor society the social justice club the yearbook club and the student council in class she is one of our active participants and she's often offering assistance to other students whenever possible she's another very kind and understanding student and her teachers say that she is an absolute pleasure to have

020in class so these are two more names to keep in your head and i know mr donovan will be happy to have both of them up at dhs next year and so i congratulate alexander as well i didn't see her on here but if she was here um congratulations thank you very much thank you thank you dr zeta and we have from westside middle school dr lavanca hi thank you dr sal all right yes i want to echo dr thomas and doctor's comments it's always a great honor to recognize our students for the excellent work they do and we're very proud of them so first i would like to introduce chloe djilani chloe i know i saw you and say hello because if you don't say hello then no one in the youtube audience gets

021to see you so uh hello everybody so chloe is an absolutely wonderful student she's a member of our national junior honor society she's participated in a theater program she likes to read and one thing i really love about chloe is she's such an advocate for positive social change and you can see that she uh she had an amazing interview with the production that theaterworks did with us earlier this year that you can see she's a wonderful writer she's recognized by the kinetic writing project for her work and uh just a fantastic student so we're very proud to recommend you chloe for all your great work and second i'd like to introduce eric gelb eric say hello to everybody hello so eric is another wonderful student he always makes you smile he's also a member of

022the national junior honor society he's classically trained pianist he's a risk taker in his learning eric did amazing work this year on his uh his science research projects he presented the state and won numerous awards for his work he did the state came and borrowed our giant structure matter crusher and and did a fantastic project with some plastics and really just great amazing work he's a great debater he acknowledges his peers and their points of view and we're very proud to recognize eric for his work and i agree with uh dr thompson doctors elite again we look forward to seeing you guys again in four years uh just like we're recognizing uh becca who's a senior this year west i graduate gotta give her the props for that who will be recognized by uh mr

023donovan in a little bit so uh congratulations to eric and chloe thank you dr i'm gonna go to ace and then to danbury so we'll go with john weber next mr webber sure there's twos good evening everyone there's two uh a staff members here so just uh people uh understand that ace teachers wear multiple hats and so while they are content area teachers they also serve in the capacity of a guidance teacher so danielle esposito will present the second student because that's her guidance student and excuse me the guidance teachers really build a strong relationship so the first student i'm going to present is brian gallardo valverde he is one of glenda armstrong students so i'm pleased to uh read the narrative that glenda wrote for brian uh brian gallardo galarza valverde has embraced the

024american dream he is a person that we can be proud of today tomorrow well into the future he's inspired us as educators at ace because he was inspired by a math teacher in middle school that saw potential in him that he did not see in himself he took that inspiration as a framework to manage his life to prepare for the future brian has managed his life so far in many different positive aspects that allow him to be worthy to receive this prestigious award when he found himself being overly influenced by negative forces he transferred to ace at ac positively responded to our focus on social and emotional skill development that we provide this resulted in brian being recognized multiple times as the ace student of the week and student of the month winner this caring

025positive young man gained greater motivation for life when his when his friend unexpectedly passed away last summer brian refocused himself to graduate early in january 2021 a semester early at 17 years old with a grade point average of over 3.2 this was after he took a part-time job during covid to help his family out last spring as well as assist his little sister each day with her studies when she was distance learning presently brian still maintains the same job that he had back in last spring as well as being a student at nagatok valley he just recently com concluded his first three classes uh took his math exam today excuse me and actually walked all the way to take his exam to make sure that he got there um brian also recently uh just swore

026in to the national guard so his goal is to serve the country that has allowed him to embrace his his own personal american dream congratulations brian thank you hi everyone i'm daniella esposito i saw layla there layla do you want to say hi hi um i am leila friedes's guidance teacher as john had said and i'm just thrilled to be able to present this award and to talk about layla because not only am i her teacher and she's my student but she is just such a great person and i'm really fortunate to know her and to have her among my guidance students she was recognized by all of the ace teachers we wanted to acknowledge and recognize her hard work and her perseverance over the past years of high school she's grown from a shy

027young girl who was unsure of her abilities and who lacked some confidence into a strong resilient young woman who's found her voice her strengths and her potential from day one at ace layla has shown others her very kind heart her thoughtfulness and her concern for her peers and her teachers and we really need more people in the world like you layla at school i have witnessed that layla is re reliable she's skilled in diplomacy she stands up for people who need an ally or who need a helping hand and in the last year she's been working on the front lines at a grocery store during during coven while juggling school and maintaining her grades laila's growth commitment thoughtfulness and potential predict her very bright future congratulations layla congratulations thank you and uh the last for

028this evening i'm mr donovan from danbury high school thank you as you could uh see i'm in my mobile office uh right now so i didn't even get a chance to get home yet so you know when the cable ward comes out the two that i'm presenting to you tonight were the first two that popped into my mind when they did it they're going to be very familiar names to you because you've had them for the past uh two years i believe jacob rebecca right two years they've been representing danbury high school at the board of education i couldn't be prouder of these two not just in their academics but when we shut down for covid they took a huge leadership role in trying to work with the student body and seeing how we can

029connect with students from virtual um you know virtual spirit weeks to any idea we could and we were talking all the time about things we could do to get better but first i'll start with rebecca who is an extremely hard working student uh currently uh bog student body president soul studies honor society president music honor society vice president the model united nations secretary a lead within the denver high school theater productions a liaison to the danbury board of education as you know in addition to her extracurriculars rebecca works two jobs takes care of her brother nick who's at our school who has disabilities during the day while a single mother works doing all of that she has a 4.4 grade point average during her time at the high school she has been awarded a high

030honor roll seven times and outstanding delegate twice in the yale model united nation program she's excited to continue that the model united nations program further in her college career she's dedicated to her academics she's just an all-around really cool person to have conversations with that you can take to a different level and we enjoy hurting jake a lot uh where'd we find out we're going becca i think it was temple yeah she'll be attending temple university in the fall she had a lot of choices a lot of discussions that ucla was one that we were going back and forth but i don't think mom wanted her going that far away she didn't want to go that far too expensive her hard work paid off and temple gave her a nice package that was affordable so

031she's going to be heading down there and jake has never failed to put hard work in each and every year he assumed a role in student government from his freshman year he was the secretary sophomore year as a secretary um and then he moved on to student body secretary as a junior and now he's the vice president this year of the bog he's a membership chair of the key club i was a participant for two years in that in the key club uh no stranger to all the different clubs involving himself in theater the hatter's herald the yearbook committee green club various national honor society gaining insight from his experiences he earned high honors i believe it was every semester jake was at high honors and he's got a 4.3 gpa he's never relented on

032his schoolwork he's never stopped he's always kept it going his hair is usually a different color once every two three weeks right we get to guess what we're going to do there and he loves serving in his community as well and jake did you make a decision about next year yet i did i'll be attending university of miami in florida uh two words two words for you jake sunblock now i'm not sure if that's two words or one word but you know me and you gotta have a conversation before you go down there my friend i'll definitely be packing that in my bag in closing uh did more than the than anybody when it came to student government in the past two years we couldn't hold elections so they stayed on with the jobs they

033moved up in the jobs and they put all their effort into the student body of dhs which i'm not even sure the students recognize but i just wanted them both to know that the principal of denver high school thanks both of you for spending time with him during covid to spending time thinking about the student body and i'm so excited to see you guys on june 10. uh congratulations everyone was so proud you know what's interesting we just finished uh the portrait of a graduate and mr genelli said something like you know how do i put this into words you know and kevin said well you know what it's let's just call it our north star i think we just witnessed our north stars guys right right in front of us so uh this is

034what we want to emulate these are the characteristics that we want in our graduates and the attitudes and and just all-around wonderful contributors to the goodness of of danbury and danbury high school so i congratulate all of you on behalf of the board congratulations thank you thank you okay uh next we have let me just i'm trying my he keeps going up um i had sent something out it's it's national um nurses week i think rachel celeski has something that i sent out she was going to read i know kathy's there so um rachel you have it we really do yep would you read it for me please sure um in honor of national school nurse day today may 12th please accept this note of appreciation on behalf of our students the danbury board of

035education and the danbury school community you are extraordinary individuals and i want to recognize each of you for your part in the very important task of keeping our school community safe well during this difficult and uncertain year of the pandemic this has enabled our students to continue to learn to their highest potential as national nurses week comes to a close i am hopeful that each and every one of you have been reassured of how valued important appreciated embraced and loved you are as this is dr sells last year with you he would like you to know that through your service you make a difference in the lives of our students and families every day and your passion commitment and dedication are qualities that he will never forget nor has he ever taken for granted on

036behalf of the danbury public schools community thank you thank you and give me just a second here kathy i know you're here are you not yes i'm here uh dr thank you good evening everyone um and thank you um yes but i i just would like to thank you for that beautiful message it's greatly appreciated on behalf of our amazing nursing staff who have gone truly above and beyond during this pandemic we sincerely thank you dr sal thank you for your leadership to all our administrators who are so supportive of our school nurses um i really appreciate your message thank you you guys are terrific and maybe you can make an announcement about the about the vaccine you just uh uh yes um so um as you may have heard the fda has given emergency

037use authorization to pfizer to now administer their vaccine to children ages 12 to 15. so we've once again partnered with the community health center and today i sent out registration links beginning tomorrow uh every day including the weekend through may 18th students ages 12 to 15 will have the opportunity to get the vaccine it's also available through the vaccine assistance line to make appointments as well as vams and late this afternoon i was informed that our school-based health centers possibly by the end of next week we'll be able to obtain up to a thousand doses of the pfizer vaccine so i'll be working with them in the next day or so to be planning clinics for our schools it will be open to students 12 through 18 years of age regardless of whether they are

038registered with our school-based health centers um that is not a requirement and they will also open the vaccines to parents of those students if they have not yet been vaccinated so this is a very exciting opportunity uh certainly a positive step in moving us forward towards herd immunity and we're very happy to be able to offer it once again thank you for your leadership i mean i'm just amazed this was going to happen and um we've already got a plan to implement it so this is what um my note went out today just so many levels of appreciation thank you again madam chair with you with the recognition okay thank you dr sarah we are moving on down to your agenda uh we're going to public participation the board welcomes public participation and asks that

039the comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covet 19 crisis and the limitation of technologists members of the public who are danbury resident are invited to send brief comments and questions by email in advance to dps public comments board of ed at u danbury.k12.ct.usd now at this time i'm gonna ask uh carol are there any comments to read tonight cara um i i think that the mute buttons on carrick can you hear us sorry about that yes okay we have two public comments first one

040is from chrissy marufi good evening all i wanted to start off by saying how grateful i am for all of your hard work and dedication especially given the increased difficulty of navigating us through this pandemic the last year and a half at the last boe meeting as well as the reopening workshop it was mentioned by dr sal that although distance learning will not be an option next year we will be able to utilize that framework next school year for inclement weather related closures as we all know over this past year remote learning and snow day quickly became a topic of heated debate and one that most people have strong opinions on opinions on one way or another there are no doubt many scheduling benefits to having a reliable last day of school date months in

041advance and there are also valid social emotional concerns over taking away that unexpected day off as it is something as children enjoy and have fond memories of long into adulthood i wondered if we might be able to find a balance between the two scenarios for instance maybe you can give students the first one or two snow days as traditional days off from learning then after that those that have been used fall back to a remote learning option for all the others going forward doing this could allow us to have the best of both worlds keeping a mostly fixed last day of school as well as little of that spontaneity students and staff enjoy so much and look forward to thank you again for all your hard work and allowing me this opportunity to contribute an

042opinion and the second and final comment is from oswaldo chin i would like to thank all of you for the great work you have been doing despite the pandemic please do not feel discouraged or unfounded and by baseless criticisms from people who do not represent our children nor they represent the latino community these people are representing special interests and it's their personal agenda under the camouflage of advocating for our children and the latino community please keep up the good work and thank you for your time and that concludes the public participation thank you so very much care the consent count uh kathy could you make a motion to uh for the consent calvin police that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 21 through 68 through 21-70 as recommended motion

043made by kathy could i hear a second second stacking that by joe de silva and a question concerning the consent calendar cnn uh cathy can you call for the consent calendar please yes yes rachel hi gladys yes lauren aye joe de sobo hi catherine hi richard hi al hi and amy hi eyes have it okay thank you the motion is so caring uh the educational staff representative uh n e a erin miss cooper can i just interject just quickly excuse me um yeah we have some we have some students on the call um and in our meeting just may not be aware that their excuse to go um so i just wanted to let them just wanted to thank them for joining us this evening and they're certainly welcome to stay but if they don't

044want to stay they'd certainly welcome to leave thank you for sending that message out mr williams sorry aaron excuse me no problem okay thank you everyone good evening it's nice i am so excited we had i have something wonderful to share with you we had an event um this afternoon as you may or may not know every year nea danbury sponsors a retirement teacher appreciation dinner at the end of the year in may and usually we host uh upwards of 350 people at the amber room well obvious for obvious reasons we weren't able to do that kind of an event this year and so we were [Music] how can we celebrate our retirees how can we celebrate our teachers after the hard work that they've put in for this year and do it in a

045fun way that was meaningful so what we came up with was um kind of a drive-by caravan at the amber room very similar to what the danbury museum had done for their ball this year where um our teachers were able to come by and pick up a free dinner for to this evening to feed for their families and they were also able to drive by and celebrate our retirees we had seven retirees that we honored this afternoon and um it was quite an interesting um setup they got to sit at little cocktail tables in front of the amber room with um you know balloons and decorations as all teachers and colleagues got to drive by celebrate with them in their decorated cars and then pick up a meal so it was kind of yet another

046one of our um alternative ways of celebration and accommodating um this unusual terrain that we've all been kind of navigating this year but it was a very special moment and we were thrilled to be able to do that for our teachers this evening also wanted to mention the rally that took place last week the bridge the gap to fully fund our school budget obviously you all know we've been working diligently to try and get the word out to our community members to our council members and to our mayor to try and change the the tide of funding our school budget we all know now that you know we didn't we didn't end up with what we wanted and um i don't want anyone who participated in um you know lobbying the common council and making

047phone calls to our elected officials and reaching out to the mayor i don't want anyone to feel like they fell short because the efforts didn't fall short it's it's the people that are choosing to not fully fund our education our boe recommended budget that are are really failing our schools and our children so i wanted to just congratulate everybody for putting in a hard press effort to get more money for our students this year because you know whether we all agree or disagree on certain issues we can all agree that our schools need more money and our kids deserve more money and that's something that we're all um in the same boat working it towards so the rally was a great success we had over 100 people came we had people from all different um

048parts of our community and different organizations that came to speak out on behalf of funding the budget fully and we will not give up we're going to continue the push and i just want everybody to be reminded that the teachers do lead this charge every year every spring we're always fighting for that budget and fighting for our students um so a couple good things and a jill russell benner my gosh that video you put together whoa tears you're such an amazing person i'm glad to call you my friend and uh jake goodwin and becca dastilio oh my goodness youtube as someone who personally knows you and all the work that you have done over the years to be a stellar student sorry about my phone ringing in the background um we're just really really proud

049of you and jake as a former student of mine my goodness i'm so proud of you so i wanted to put that forward um i also wanted to address a couple of misconceptions from our board meeting from a couple of weeks ago i kind of wanted to just clarify a few things and we won't go get into any of the topic of discussion from the past meeting but i do wanted to put some things out there for the board to hear tonight um some of the comments that were directed towards me i perceived as animus directed at me whether they were meant to be or not um and i replaying that whole that whole evening in my mind and discussing it with my executive board officers and and fellow teachers i i think there was

050a miscommunication and a misunderstanding um please note that the information that i was trying to bring to you that evening i had already shared with dr sal and had already followed the proper chain of command to do our due diligence to rectify things when we bring things to you um you can trust that we've always brought things to our superintendent and brought things to the chain of command and through the proper channels before it comes to you there are times however when our nearly 1 000 teachers feel like you need some additional information and that was what i was attempting to do on their behalf a few weeks ago though i'm proud to call myself a third grade teacher and i adore my students when i come here to speak to you i'm not speaking

051as aaron daley the third grade teacher employee i'm speaking as aaron daley the elected union president that represents 1 000 teachers i'm not here talking as a teacher i'm here talking as a president who has to look out for all the teachers in danbury that's my role just as all of our board of ed members are are elected to do their to do their service for their community my role is i've been elected to make sure i give you information that the teachers want me to give you want me to share with you and that i'm serving to protect the teacher's best interest that's my role i think um it's it's difficult sometimes when i have to bring information that's unpleasant i try to always bring you some good news and some good scenarios and

052good stories that are going on in the teacher world as long as as well as things that are going on with our students but i am charged with bringing you the good the bad and oftentimes the ugly because that's what's going to make our school district better and you having all the information that you need to have that we want to share with you that sometimes you may not get a chance to get um that's my job that's my role and it was my goal a few weeks ago to give you some information and it was my hope that dr sal would bring you additional information in executive session i don't know if that took place and you have to understand from the teacher's point of view this is our only forum to communicate with

053the board this is it this is our one opportunity and they do that through me so everything i bring to you is their voice so i i want to make sure that we continue our good working relationship and that you know you understand that my my role is to bring you information and what we perceive as things that you need to know um and also just to let you know i know it was said as a comment but as a union leader i can't be reprimanded reprimanded for bringing you information and for speaking the voice of the teachers that's that's just not something that can happen maybe aaron daly the employee but certainly not aaron daley the union leader which is how i come to you this evening i really want to just impress that

054the city and the school system will only only work well when there's a free flow of ideas and collaboration and i really hope to make sure that we continue on that road so thank you again and i appreciate you listening as always and i'll see you in a couple weeks i think christie is available oh boy did we go disconnected can anybody hear me yes yes i can hear you doctor sir okay should we okay thank you i didn't know if something happened to the video goddess did you want to go to um dr zelita yes uh i was muted sorry okay dr leader good evening everyone i'm so happy to be able to continue the celebration of the arts this evening i have the great fortune of working with jill and i'm so grateful

055for her tenacity and her collaborative nature that's really made this a success so for tonight's silver lining across the district i want to give a special thank you to rachel wade another influential arts person she's our k-8 art department head who shared with me the slides i'm going to present with you i just threw some imovie music on it so i want to it's a short one i promise so please enjoy i'm bringing to you a look at our k-8 students art experience this year so do please enjoy [Music] so so thank you so much i know um i'm missing a person the board of ed room and i'd always remember rachel would fill the walls with all the amazing artwork that our students did so i know that was a little bit fast but

056i hope that you enjoyed it and i look forward to seeing you all soon thank you now thank you dr leader uh what beautiful artwork i mean it was beautiful thank you uh student reps jake i think i'm gonna do it today okay okay okay is jake's still here okay rebecca okay i don't know okay jake is still here but i think i'm gonna do it um uh first off i just wanted to say thank you for um honoring me today and i think jake feels the same way um i was very kind um i don't i get like weird when people say nice things about me but i i am very thankful so well deserved by the way yeah thank you thank you i really appreciate it um but yeah we do have some

057exciting stuff to talk about um for like end of the year things so um we sold prom tickets last week um that was like the last week of selling them and the seniors are really excited that we were able to do a prom i know they didn't have one last year which was i know a lot of kids bought their dresses but i think i'm reusing mine so probably what's happening for a lot of people um so that's going to be on may 28th at the amber room and i think it's going to be outside and inside i'm not entirely sure i i sometimes miss the memo on what's going on but i'm pretty sure that's what's happening um also uh the vog organized the class officer elections so last year we didn't have class

058officer elections just because of everything that was going on but this year we were able to culminate um about 25 different students participated in the student elections which i was pretty proud of by just getting kids to participate online can be very difficult but we had students campaigning through social media and stuff like that and i had over 300 um ballots filled out just today for the senior class um and it's only the first day and it's closing tomorrow so that was that was nice to see and students went really all out with it some were using green screens um so to like put a little presidential background yeah it was pretty cool um so then the bog elections which are different from the class officer elections because bog is the entire student body those

059are happening next week um applications were due today and then i think there's a board of education meeting june 9th i think that's when we're bringing the new um bog elected officials and everybody can meet them at that time and then jake and i will officially retire from our duties as um board of education liaisons which will be sad because we've been doing it for two years um so then a couple weeks ago i don't know if it was two weeks ago three weeks ago i kind of lose track of time but um we took pictures on the field for senior pictures which is something that usually happens um a little earlier in the year but we're glad that we got to do it it was a dif it was four different groups i believe

060three different groups we went down to the bleachers we took the picture that the seniors usually take and then we like did the 2021 on the field and then um the danbury pto uh painted the wall for us um near the field near the baseball fields and then we did all did our handprints on the side of the building which was really fun it was like a it was a nice senior experience we got to be with other seniors which is nice um so then on may 10th the key club celebrated its 50th anniversary and did an induction so not the not the overall key club but the dhs key club has been there for 50 years which is a pretty good achievement and then also the peer leaders put together a celebration for teacher

061appreciation last week and they had every day of a teacher appreciation week they had a poem written about a different teacher right over the loudspeaker and then they did um so that was all handwritten poetry and then they had like food and they had like something in the break room for all the teachers which was very nice and i think that's all i have uh this week but we'll be back probably obviously before the end of the year so that's it thank you thank you yeah okay so uh do we have anyone from ace good evening uh cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence these students will host our 18th annual coffee house on june 3rd students and staff will have

062the opportunity to share their creativity through reading original poetry musical performances and artwork the ace graduation ceremony will take place on wednesday june 8th at the broadview auditorium at 30 pm the change in date will allow ace students to participate in both the ace graduation ceremony and the dhs graduation ceremony on june 16th ace will be celebrating the birth of our founder joe pepin a virtual slideshow is being created to celebrate the impact that joe has had on the danbury community and the ace facebook page is collecting appreciations that alumni and staff have for joe students in the building are working on creating a bulletin board to celebrate joe's legacy and the history the ace humanities department will be administrate administering our humanities benchmarks the week of may 17th to may 21st on may 21st

063this will be hosting premier day with virtual guest speakers to present careers that serve the community this special day is being organized by diana dinardo and dj jimenez ace staff will be running entrance interviews from may 18th to 20th and then again on may 25th and 26th thank you to the ace staff for beginning the process of building the relationships with our incoming families ace would like to announce our april student of the month award winners excuse me sorry about that thank you to the ace staff for beginning the process of building the relationships with our incoming families ace would like to announce our april student of the month award winners ramir rivera and alexa dar congrats to alexa for also making the honor roll in quarter three ace would also like to publicly acknowledge

064and congratulate our most recent students of the week liliana palma and jen sedano keep up the great work thank you all for allowing me to share the great things happening with the ace family this spring thank you chris uh before i move on does any board members have uh any question for either one of our representatives okay saying not seeing none uh we're gonna move on to action item a rachel okay i move that the board of education approved the 2021 to 2022 school reopening plan for five full days full school days per week for 180 days as presented by the administration motion made by rachel could i hear a second second segment by joe de silva uh madam chair i we've been getting some updates from regarding the essa money and one of this

065regret one of the requirements and i think i gotta double check it maybe by june 23rd but i'm not really sure they've just uh looking at some dates but we have to publish the uh but for the board has to publish your reopening plan that is a requirement for us to submit the grant so i just uh wanted you to know that that's all thank you thank you doc thank you dr sam um kathy could you do the roll call can i just make a quick comment yes i just want to you know reiterate my point from our workshop um and thank you for having that that was you know greatly helpful um just about the distance learning piece and i'm not suggesting that it remain you know as in its current form just just

066that we should recognize the innovation of of what happened when when this first when we first launched dl you know i thought that this would change education forever and uh you know it's funny we talked about extending the school year because i thought you know with this there would be a way to um mitigate the summer slide the the learning loss over the summer um so i just you know to have it fall by the wayside i wonder you know what we've learned from this experience or what we've gained from this experience so that's just my thought of course we need to fully reopen schools and no doubt in my mind i mean that's been the message from the state level all year long and so you know i'm glad i'm glad we're making it

067work okay thank you are there any other yeah are there any other questions on uh action item a see you none cathy could you do the roll call please rachel aye gladys yes lauren daly aye joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi richard janelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi i just have it thank you the motion so care rachel would you do action item b a move that the board of education approved the revised 2021 to 2022 school calendar in accordance with 21-71 move by righteous secretary jack not by yourself um okay yeah i just need to add something because okay go ahead at the beginning of the um board meeting you heard a commentary uh let me what my understanding as of right now from the state department is that um the

068boards are not required to um not introduce i'm sorry to offer uh remote to the to your to the community but in in that same communication they articulated five or six opportunities kind of like what rachel was talking about when you might be able to use it as of right now um the the emergency days in the calendar there's five days in there and we'll talk about that but the board has to stay with the five days because we have no authorization the executive order has expired to say to anyone that you can offer dl at this point now they may they'll probably come up with some recommendations but i just wanted to make that uh known to the uh to the board and maybe uh carrick can speak about the calendar for them um

069i want to just quickly comment on what rachel brought up because i think at the point you were trying to make rachel if i'm correct is along the innovative practice and use of technology in terms of you know creating learning environments that that look different for students and we're having lots of conversations about that and so i kind of want to separate the pandemic distance learning from innovative practice moving forward and so we're having you know informed conversations that guide graduation requirements for students and opening up flexibilities that perhaps perhaps were not there before um in our understanding of what is acceptable quick example um you know as we're looking at um after school programming um a lot of our kids either you know can't do the bus or can't get picked up um and

070buses busing is extremely expensive we've already talked about after school programs where kids can log back in virtually once they get home and meet with the teacher convenience for the teacher convenience for the student we're likely to get more engagement and it's really all about the balance of the virtual use and i think we were at a point where you know the pendulum had swung so severely um and it's really about where can we instill innovative practice in in our teaching learning environments that maximize what we're trying to do using the digital technologies that we've now become familiar with so i just wanted to say that we are very much thinking along those lines that's great cara thank you so much welcome um i don't know kevin or cara do you want to kevin you

071want to comment about the calendar or adjustments i could just quickly briefly there were just a couple of changes on the calendar and it really had to do with um you know now with the moving into the year really more delineating some of the the pre-days for teachers really the structural calendar for the students haven't changed um we did remove um two or three of the early dismissal days uh just to really only make sure that we have in there what it is that we need and to reduce anything that was back to back uh which we thought was a little disruptive and so we just took a second pass over that um we added a new teacher orientation day in there um because we didn't negotiate three not two and so we just moved

072that some of those professional development pieces around at the beginning of the year but it really didn't impact the structural calendar for the student um there was an error in in in june on one of the dates and so that has been since corrected it was more of a typo so i think we're good to the the calendar has been uh you know vetted by both unions and have gone through the uh gone through the circles overview thank you are there any other questions concerning uh no just ken just to mention to the board that um what surrounding districts have done it's relative to the comments the parent made if in fact the um the state comes back and says the board has an option for the remote learning for um those days one of

073the things that districts did and i i think it's a good idea personally but you can talk about it uh you could you could use the first three days for example as emergency days and then because and then you can bump the next two just so that you don't go too late in june the motivation guys anybody that's subbed in our schools to do anything we do not have air conditioning in schools it's very difficult late june so that is an issue for us but i just put that out there so if things change the board can consider some kind of a of a blended uh opportunity but that's that's that's remaining depending on what the state does and they come back to you with i just want to leave you with that thank you

074any other questions on this motion uh captain could you do the roll call for the motion please rachel chaleski aye lettuce cooper aye lorraine i'm sorry lauren daley hi joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye richard gennelly aye al russo hi amy spolina hi nice habit thank you motions of care amy would you do action item c yes i make a motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9326 taping recording of boe meetings as recommended by the policy committee i'm sorry 72 okay any questions on the motion me and i captain can you do the walk rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren daley hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgston hi richard jannelli [Music] catherine hodgeson would you do action item d yes i make a motion that the board

075of education except the second reading and adoption policy 9273 conflicts of interest as recommended by the policy committee 21-73 promotion made by catherine could i hear a second belarusian okay any questions on the motion cnn uh catholic could you do the roll call please rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren bailey hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgdon aye richard janelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi eyes have it motion so careful thank you lauren would you do action item e please lauren okay yeah could you do it joe what i got right here um action which one was it f 300 series yep i got it i make a motion that the board of education except for second reading and adaption adoption policy 92 73 com oh that's the one we just read

076i make a motion that the board of education except for second reading and adoption policy 9 300 methods of operation as recommended by the policy committee sorry that's okay made second by catherine catherine any question concerning the motion saying uh catherine would you do the roll call please rachel celeski aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye richard jannelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi eyes have it thank you emotion so care russo could you do action um number e the 993 series i'm sorry i make a motion at the board of education except for the second reading the adoption policy 93-21 board of education workshop sessions is recommended by the policy committee and exhibit 21-75 second about show any questions concerning the policy cnn captain cause you

077do the roll call rachel chaleski hi gladys cooper hi lauren daley hi joe da silva hi catherine hodgston hi richard genelli hi al russo yes amy spolina hi eyes habit motion so careful thank you so very much uh richard uh mr janella could you do action item g sure emotion left the board of education except for the second reading and adoption policy number nine three one three administrative regulations formation adoption and amendment as recommended by the policy committee motion made by mr ginelli do i hear a second second by rachel or any discussion a question concerning the policy cnn uh catholic can you do the roll call rachel chaleski aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgston aye richard gianelli hi al russo hi amy spolino hi hi ted thank

078you so very much dr sale you're up next okay let me just get to my um give me a second okay [Music] you want to start with the city council municipal budget those of you that attended thank you um you you heard last week what happened at the meeting um we were later's budget as recommended to the subcommittee and then recommended to the community as a whole they had a long discussion about it but our budget is at 1.25 in terms of our operation budget um and we're going to have to start dealing with that what i number two on here talks about the state and federal state grants and let me tie those two together because um as you know the board had asked for that 13.5 million we're down to we asked for

079that six and a half and we reduced it because of money in the essa we're going to have to now uh go into there and uh look at how we're going to um mitigate um the the difference um you all know i don't want to preach to you all um we're going to have to open schools the the opening of schools in there along with staffing and other things that we need uh we talked about the cliff that's just a reality um you do have some help on that with the way we're opening the reopening with some of the staffing moving down but you are going to be faced with that issue in three years with me as the money goes so now maybe something else will happen that will mitigate that that's a possibility

080next year when you come around to the budget season um i checked with um and courtney's on i know we've been checking with hartford we're trying to get clarity on language and let me tell you it's been very very difficult it's not because our our our contingent our legislative group has hasn't tried it's just the way they operate we believe that the money that was coming out of the committee that will go for a general assembly for a vote which would give us uh next year i believe two and a half million dollars uh more money that we should be getting there's also some other options there with pilot money coming to the city that we may be in line for but right now um you know the the governor uh has not pushed back

081uh on that you may recall his his recommendation was a pause that doesn't seem to be happening so that's the good news for us how much we won't know i don't think until the first week in june is when the vote is supposed to be so we're going to be um meeting and looking at the uh estimating and we did meet the state is sending something out they've added some criteria that they have some money in terms of due dates um um and um we're we'll have to follow those and we'll be in good stead to do that they're going to ask us to build on the so2 money with the criteria so we're we're going to be pretty good with that it's just that we're going to have to figure out what's going to

082happen in the alliance money because that was part of ecs so until we understand uh what's happening with that we really don't know how to move that that around but we are going to have to look at the essa money two and three to mitigate the difference between what the town had recommended and what we need to open school i'm going to just stop for a second and ask courtney uh if she has anything to add to that no doctor i think that captures it um we have a budget planning session on friday so i i'll just say we did submit the sr2 grant um to the state um and waiting for acceptance on that and in the process of submitting the sr3 grant they released the time frame um and so we're working through

083like dr cell said we have our carry forward of the seven million plus the six million additional needs and the new reopening plan so as we go through and prioritize we look forward to working with the board about a multi-year plan that looks at the next four years um until the esser money runs out and talking about as we've built that strategy to build towards that um that need for those academy years and for when those as their monies potentially are not with us any longer so we're looking forward to briefing the board on that as we start that process on friday thanks dr cell thank you thank you and again ryan um ryan is monitoring it for us in hartford uh i know courtney sent him an email the other day um and then

084he sent some information to us so as we get this information obviously we'll let you know but right now as we think it's good news that the governor uh will sign at least that recommendation that came out of the subcommittee so that um that'll be helpful to us um thank you that takes care of a and b really for me unless anybody has any questions thank you dr sale you're welcome okay so um thank you gladys i think that's i'm done with my report you want to go to discussion the discussion i didn't got to say yes okay um me uh as we just try to frame this the tyler is the program that we're moving into that's the budgeting system and um you know as the board of ed members have heard and discussed

085the finance department has been working on this since you know february uh to correct uh you know these errors that were made with the hsa and they've been working diligently on this um as we looked at this problem um we've noticed some other tendencies in there and i will say to what we're learning i think it was joe asked well where did the problem stem from it really is the way um these systems are set up with calendars of deductions and data that's entered it seemed that uh for us the error at least in this respect was a data entry error so what we what we are doing with this new financial system it is pretty comprehensive and it's very uh difficult to maintain and our department is not that well you know staffed quite

086frankly so we worked on uh doing a few things that the board should uh know because it's paramount i know that the importance that we follow steps in order to assure that we have an opening what we're told everyone uh as we transition through the next month and a half july 1st is our window to open up so we have to make sure everything is in line with our budget our payroll and those things so when we open up the new budget here everything uh paychecks and deductions are all uh corrected so one of the things that courtney had needed to do and we've been able to uh do that along with the tyler help is that we have a project manager in the next two months that are really going to assist in terms

087of making sure that all of the various components of the transition happens and happens in a timely way we've been able to ascertain because this tyler conversion has is not unique just to danbury many of districts in the in the state have been had to transition because of um the ending of the of an old system that not being maintained we've been able to uh have a person who was very deeply stead in the uh this process of of the tyler and uh is going to work with courtney um into looking at the um the setups to make sure everything is in line she has been through these and been through a lot of the issues so with her advice that will give us a lot of safety net and redundancies to make sure that

088everything uh is is according to the way it has to be in order to go in into thailand and then um we'll make sure that we're working obviously with tyler very closely with hr and the finance committee because right now this is a blended program and they will be uh helping us what i suggest that we do if it's okay with you all because i know you'll have questions does that that the finance committee meet maybe next week and tomorrow morning we're going to present a work plan with these constituents there talking about our needs and maybe uh if it's okay with you madam chair i would invite the chairman of the finance committee to the meeting tomorrow morning and to listen in and be first in what we're doing so that when we meet

089as a when you meet as a subcommittee of the board on finances you have a full understanding of how what we're how we're moving forward how we're reconciling the books how we're doing and publishing our um you know our balances making sure sure all of that uh is known so i thought that might be a good idea uh so that everybody is updated that's okay with you it's okay with me if it's okay with the board members there's no questions if it's okay then maybe then you could call a uh finance committee and you could update everybody on that and uh about the work plan and that that would be a good step forward are you okay with that yes uh is it possible right now uh i know we're getting busy uh the 19th

090which is off wednesday which is fine just i happen to not be available lately okay okay did dr sales say there was a cabinet meeting tomorrow um did you chairman the chairman yes the chairman meeting executive committee yeah you're invited to that also madam chair i'm sorry i'm the vice chair of the finance committee am i also invited to that meeting with your co-chair yeah yes yes sir thank you the leadership would be good so i apologize and by the way it's at eight o'clock out well so cara will send you an invite yeah i've got the invite i'll forward it along that's all right okay thank you thank you for working this out okay courtney can i ask courtney a question could you clarify some of the beginning points that sal made uh what

091was the what was the the initial issue sure so um we were in a system a legacy system called phoenix that went offline with support on july 1 of 2020. so we were running a payroll from that system without support from july 1 to january 1. we signed a contract for a new system that started us with an implementation on october i think second or third that's a really short implementation time frame for a payroll um you know to go live um we did we put in place a lot of controls it's a very very new system so what it does is you you have to work with the human resource group because it's now integrated where we were once siloed there's uh you build out salary schedules and work calendars and benefit deductions in

092separate tables it's a really nice system we look forward to previewing it for the board it's very transparent there's a very beautiful audit trail of everything that happens where we were living in a paper-based system and we really look forward to sharing that with you there's an employee self-service portal that people will be able to view all of their pay information when we go live but we were unfortunate in that we had to do a mid-year go live implementation normally you'd do it on july 1 and it would be a nice process where you could set up your general ledger test your general ledger set up your purchasing and payables and and run your payroll and you get to run parallel test pay rolls we didn't have the luxury of doing that in this case

093so um and my staff worked tremendously hard i'm tremendously hard from uh october all the way through january one they didn't take any time off over the holidays and we ran a lot of controls so i want everyone to be assured we ran the last payroll in the phoenix system that had deductions december 15th we ran a december 30th payroll in the phoenix system and we did a calculation in the new system and looked at side by side every single person's pay every deduction and did variances and we had to push the button to go live um i have happy to say that we paid 100 of our staff and there were a few errors as you would expect when you go live in a new system what did we do wrong we didn't communicate

094that well to the staff we ought to have you know um we were just literally trying to get this off the ground so number one and then number two the issue that arose um with the hsa contribution um essentially um in the system we we need to and needed to establish very strict controls about who has access to what points in the system dr sal has now put that structure in place so that we have an executive steering committee we're meeting tomorrow so that we can turn off rights for people so that very specific people you have the right controls in place i'll just say also my payroll group every payroll does a payroll to payroll comparison to compare every variance that happened so from payroll 23 to payroll 24 we look at every single

095deduction every single line and say okay what changed yes this person reduced their health insurance this person left the district this for example and it's labor intensive but it will be when you're in a new system and you're testing things and so um at one point uh there was an hsa deduction it's called the health savings account deduction that um was is set up in the system as being a one-time twice a year or one time a year depending on your employee relationship that deduction was set up with probably not as robust training as should have been and what that meant is there's a calendar with that and somehow we don't know yet every single date in that in that particular deduction got checked off um we don't know how it happened but there are

096too many people that had access to that we've shut down that that functionality so when we ran the payroll um it ran through with an hsap employer sponsored contribution to uh the employees my staff immediately caught that because we have checks and balances in place so when we send a transmittal we normally look at every register the deduction register the payroll register we were up against the very tight time frame so we submitted that batch to the bank in order that everybody could get paid up on a monday for that wednesday payroll when we when we noticed the error we talked to the treasurer of the bank and did an immediate reversal of that transaction once we did a reversal of that transaction we had full assurance from the bank that we could follow up

097and make sure that every one of those transactions got reversed the transactions when you talk about them there's a ppd and a ccd file so the ppd files are the ones that included the hsa transmitted missions we found out later that when an hsa transmission goes into an account it counts as a contribution and then a distribution so in order to have that adjusted and corrected we had to submit a special file to say it's not a contribution and a distribution you need to adjust the distribution so there will not be a tax implication working through sigma in the bank that took us at least a month and a half to get to the right parties to do that correction but from day one on february before this the reversal happened before the bank settlement

098date cigna assured us in writing that that could be 100 corrected we just needed to get them the right file and we have the whole tax year to do that we did not want to wait for the whole tax year to do that we did that um um you know as soon as we got into it with the right parties at cigna now i do take responsibility for the fact that it took a month and a half to correct um it shouldn't have taken that long to correct um but that's that was the hsa issue it ran it it ran through the system we followed all the proper banking protocols we have controls in place and dr cell has since put additional controls in place where we now also have it involved you know in

099our steering committee which we need from a data perspective we have hr collaboration and we're looking at all those points to make sure that all the right controls are in place with this consultant that's helping us i hope that answers the question yes thank you very much courtney thank you rachel uh so so i don't know did you set a finance meeting for next week i missed it next wednesday at 19th that's okay you're mr genelec i don't have any problems just caught me went through little things i'm literally curious as to what we're going to do with the finance meeting i'm think sorry talking about the work plan also if i have any other budget um okay so it's just a follow-up as to what the meeting will be for tomorrow okay thank you

100thank you okay okay it's uh why would have anyone here so i don't want to go back and forth because clara has enough to do uh is six o'clock good for everyone good for me okay okay okay we'll go with next wednesday six o'clock okay okay thank you okay uh do you have anything else to add dr sarah well no that's enough okay i just don't want to leave you i'm dr sam i think next down on the agenda is the informations from uh policies uh please read them at your uh convenient okay board chairperson report very brief we met with the consultant firm uh last night ray associate who's gonna be leading us and taking us through the process for uh our new superintendent and we will be uh following the process and they're

101going to outline the structure for the board to go through and you know he has a timeline all set for the board and uh you know when we start uh getting into the overall heavy work uh we don't plan to leave anybody out we're going to keep the information coming to the community and when they get ready to set up their focus groups and and the other information that goes along with the input into hiring the new superintendent we will try our best we will do our best to keep everyone informed so that's where we are right now we had our first meeting with them last night i thought it was an excellent meeting and they are going to work us through the process okay seeing no other information or no other discussion or any

102committee's report i have a committee report okay go ahead right here just that the policy committee met last week um in light of our reopening plan the committee reviewed the coveted policies that we have in place um just to check for relevancy um there were a few that will expire at the end of the year but the committee plans to revisit those at the beginning of next year and i just want to thank our two legal minds that joins joined the meeting um thanks mr wallston for facilitating and uh for everyone's input and feedback i i enjoy those you know conversations um and i also just wanted to inquire as to you know now that we are discussing reopening um when might the board begin to meet in person well i think our last conversation

103was once everyone get fully vaccinated and i think that was maybe a couple of months ago and i think it would be most appropriate to you know next month is june july hopefully this july and august we won't be doing meeting except to do what we need for the superintendent search so i would if everyone is comfortable why not look at in september in school this way everybody on the board would have been fully vaccinated and i think that was one of the things that kate brought up and if we do it now if i'm not mistaken we can't do it at beaver brook anyway what am i right doctor says my my understanding is uh the inside the social discipline is still a requirement i think that's why the city council still meets in

104uh that way so we'd have to move you to a bigger spot yes okay probably up to the high school um the black box was tossed around as an idea yeah that would i would say you'd have to probably go there yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm sure you didn't i don't want to butt in but i i'm sure when you meet with the new interviews and stuff you do that live so we would set that up for you there so then yes your focus groups and all that could take place but we would move you into probably the high school i'm comfortable you know what's waiting until september our kids will be would be back in school for a day and you know again july and august hopefully we can have some time off this

105year and you know move forward in september anyone else have any other ideas or you want to go you know i just feel the spirit the better um i thought what kate said was wait until everybody is eligible for the vaccine and i know we're towards the end but i just feel like the sooner the better because it just could keep getting pushed off and pushed off that's all too i tend to create i think that and the fact that yourself are retiring it might be nice that we personally be there to you know to to say goodbye and i personally have social emotional girls i'm not seeing the the rest of my colleagues on the board for a period of time so this is another i can hear you something that could be maybe

106the last meeting the board meeting of this year that we may be able to do that will keep everybody comfortable it might be gesture just to have that i think what i'm saying is in lieu of the fact that dr sal was retiring i thought it might be nice if we could do it this this year it perhaps in the last board meeting of june so that we could say formerly the vitamin person as well as each of us seeing each other since it's been a long time since we've at least seen each other face to face if everyone is comfortable with that yeah it might be a solution i don't know what regulations are that if some of the people can't tend to don't want to attend they could do learning and perhaps we

107could those that won't feel comfortable and couldn't can do it in person it's just just the thought process yeah the thought process along with you know no matter how we go about it about other board members feel about that yes yeah i i just like to echo mr silence that everybody i'd like to echo mister generally sentiments before you go for a live board meeting at the end at the end of the session so we can say goodbye or dr salem in person i'm not totally uncomfortable with zoom i think we communicate rather well but uh i'm hoping maybe next year we could operate in sort of a hybrid mode because trying to get across town at rush hour for five minutes 45 minutes um but yes i i would like to meet at least

108once in june and i echo mr ginelli's tenements on that deck thank you you are welcome yes yes i am i would just like to say i i agree i would like to meet in june also and i would like to be able to see everybody and see dr sal before he goes boy that sunset's gonna be kind of pretty huh [Laughter] well okay so is everybody comfortable with the last board meeting in gym yes but i'm sure okay uh i give madam chair i'll i'll double check with with kathy i'm sure it's fine and it's okay with you we'll move up to the high school is that okay okay okay yeah all right thank you okay okay thank you uh see you now i make a motion i need a motion to adjourn this

109meeting some move madam chair moved by mrs j silver seconded by el rousseau okay thank you good night thank you all right everybody good night