Danbury Board of Education Meeting 4-28-21

001certainly uh joe britton here's okay um rachel chapuski here kate canetta here gladys cooper yeah i believe lauren is absent for the regular meeting is that correct yes okay thank you uh joe da silva i don't know joe's popped on since we started i don't see him uh catherine hodgson here uh rich giannelli here kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spamino here okay uh we're gonna move down to the recognition part of our agenda yes is dr lavanca here i am okay let's do the uh you have the honors there thank you very much good evening everyone it's so nice to see you today good evening it's nice to see you thank you a west side middle school academy is so proud to congratulate the connecticut school counselor association counselor of the year our

002very own mr curtis dara is waving to us you know curtis does amazing service to the school um our parents our students and our faculty but i think you know in recognizing him for this award it's also a great tribute to the service he does for his association and the counselors across the state making presentations frequently serving in leadership roles at the state level so we're just so very proud to have him as a member of our school for the wonderful job he does for all our students and also for the recognition that he brings to us uh as well so curtis congratulations thank you so much dr leblanc um so you know i wouldn't be myself i would have a couple words i wanted to say to everybody um so danby public school staff

003students and esteemed board of education i'm humbled and excited about this award and to be representing not only our state but danbury candidate at the national level you might notice my purple cow in the back that's milky way and i'll tell you about why he's an important part of my life as i reflect on the past six years in danbury and being at west side middle school academy i can't help but smile at all the learning experiences i was so lucky to be a part of in this district my favorite part of being a middle school counselor is having students for three years from sixth grade to eighth grade everything i do is with a lens with what's best interest in my students the amazing transitional growth in middle school from sixth to eighth grade

004has always been a delight for me to be a part of that adolescent journey and as eager and excited and hopeful learners those three years are full of mistakes passion courage and learning they leave middle school as independent grateful and inspired learners from around the world this past school year alone we helped with many students find their way take on new challenges and as school counselors we've been there for when a kid realized they did something mean something wrong got accepted to college scored a high grade that they worked for and cheered them on at a dance recital the smiles and the hugs and the thank yous the high fives they make it all worth it it's funny as i go into this profession that sometimes i feel like i'm the one that's teaching them

005all about life and at times i get surprised when it's a student that teaches me what life is all about for my favorite dr seuss story the lorax i learned that unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing's gonna get better it's not oh and milky way here around the last week of school a student gave me this cow and said mr dara i simply just want to thank you so much for teaching me how to be a purple cow and they said wow a purple cow and he goes you taught me that's important to stand out than to fit in i'll remember that for the rest of my life i challenge you all to find the purple inner cow within you seek adventure explore every opportunity enter those i can't and i

006won't to i can's and i will stay true to yourself and be who you are this summer make sure you spend some time at the ocean i was told that the ocean forces you to dream and insist that every single one of you become dreamers always remember to have courage and be kind thank you all so much for this recognition thank you on behalf of the board we would like to say we are just so happy to have you uh working for us in our system and with that smile anyone can wait can you can gain anyone over with that beautiful smile thank you thank you congratulations curtis thank you all so much okay um kate what do you do yeah i'm sorry i just want to let you know i just heard from joe

007to silva he's running a few minutes late that he expects to jump on shortly okay okay could you do the script for public participation and after that uh carol will do the three comments the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covit 19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at ct danbury.k12.ct us

008thank you kate okay our first comment tonight is from ann riddle to the board of education thank you to kathleen o'dowd donna whitehead and susan germain for their seamless guidance in navigating quarantines cova testing and vaccinations for me a dps teacher their health included phone calls directions times for testing and a late afternoon phone call to run to rod to rogers park to get a vaccination that became available that day their assistance every question a person might have had had been anticipated in addition i think the board members and the dps administration for presenting public discussions on covid19 with dr fong and others finally i appreciate the tough decisions made by dr pasquerella in conjunction with the board of education to keep the rest of the school year as a hybrid in consideration of the

009health of our students staff and community second comment is from gabriella perez submitted by gabriella perez on behalf of christela cruz hello everyone thank you for this opportunity my name is christela cruz i'm a danbury high school graduate and have a younger brother who currently attends dhs i wanted to share a little bit about his story because i think it's worth hearing the stories of children in our system my little brother is a great kid he is kind and caring but he has a tendency to be very very shy in a school as big as dhs it was very easy for a student like him to get lost amongst the chaos of thousands of other students my brother struggled with this because he needed a more individualized approach to his education and perhaps smaller cast

010classrooms to put him at ease and allow teachers to see him fully less kids would allow him to come out of the shell as well as the opportunity to explore his interests my brother loves to cook and one day hopes to become a chef because of his passion my mom and i tried to enroll him in abattek as they have a culinary program in smaller class sizes but unfortunately he wasn't accepted and we have and we were left with a very few options for his schooling my brother tried to join one of his few one of the few home act classes at dhs but again he wasn't lucky enough to be chosen while his teachers are wonderful and try their best to accommodate him it is clear that dhs is severely overcrowded and quiet shy

011kids like my brother aren't developing full potential as a result danbury needs more schools we need charters and magnets and technical schools so the parents and students can make informed decisions and get the most out of their education please consider the urgency of the situation as our town continues to grow bigger and bigger thank you the last submittal is from eva jimnet jiminez first i would like to say thank you to the board of ed for the opportunity to submit my testimony on behalf of my community i am a proud member of lead latino for educational advocacy and diversity as a resident of danbury who went through the public school system i know firsthand many of the issues faced by our school the main issue is one of overcrowding especially in our middle schools and

012high schools i am writing today to urge the board to put politics aside and advocate for a more permanent solution to our problems of overcrowding in the city i do understand that many decades of neglect and poor funding are to blame for the crisis we are experiencing today in order to have an equitable solution that satisfies our future needs and provides another educational option to our parents the democrats and board of ed must end their vocal opposition to the charter school we are working so hard to open i will be blunt and honest since i am not a politician some board members are losing credibility for their opposition to the charter school and they're unwaving unwavering support of our democratic delegation this divides our community when we could all be working together and using all

013of our resources to ask for more equitable funding from both the city and the state this blind opposition slowly based on politics discredits many board members as they asked city hall for more funding it makes them seem like they only care about our children's future if it fits their political party the majority of our community continues to support the opening of a charter school and our base grows every day we have noticed that our delegation is willing to perish on an ideological hill that will turn the majority of latinos against them what we are witnessing is a blatant disrespect for the needs of an entire minority community just because the delegation has gathered a handful of latino leaders to oppose something they don't even understand it doesn't mean that the majority of d'amberians does not

014support the charter school we ask that the objective leaders of the board of ed to work with us ask our delegation and the union to back off and allow us to build this school you know it is the right thing to do and it will go a long way with helping the crisis we are in then we can join forces and partner to ensure we have equitable funding from both the city and the state if you allow some of the board of ed members to continue to put politics ahead of the needs of our students there will be a long-term and irreversible consequence i feel that our community is being ignored and underestimated i do hope the board of vets is sarah seriously considers a meeting with our delegation and allows us to build this

015much needed school right in downtown thank you and that concludes the public participation uh thank you karen for the three comments uh kate will you do the motion for the consent calendar yes i make a motion that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 21-56 through 21-59 as recommended did i hear a second eleven seconds okay motion has been made by kate seconded by al are they in a question concerning the consent calendar cn9 kate would you do the roll call certainly joe britton joe's mic is not working yes he gave me that i read in the chat give me a thumbs up there yep okay rachel aye kate canetta aye gladys cooper aye uh catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinaro aye okay thank you kate the motion

016is so caring uh kate would you do the emotion yes i'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda promotion has been uh made by kate to amend the agenda could i hear a second second promotion made by kate second by captain kathy what's the amendment i'm sorry what what is the amendment it is related to the solution okay yes the motion was made by kate second and by captain all in uh in favor okay all right all right did you roll call yeah deuteronomy sure joe britton yes uh rachel chaleski abstain uh kate canetta yes gladys cooper yes uh catherine hodgson abstain rich ginelli epstein kathy molinaro uh you're on mute kathy sorry hi thank you um al russo uh amy spalino abstain five abstentions and foreign favor okay so the motion is

017defeated okay am i correct him i'm sorry i thought she said five in favor and four abstentions uh flip those numbers okay it it i i guess i'm just questioning is the reason for the uh i'm curious the reason for the abstentions maybe you can clarify yeah okay and i think it may be some confusion about what the purpose of the amendment is right uh kathy uh marnell will you read the uh motion or just uh go about what we would decide why we need to add this motion to the agenda tonight you're on mute um so this is a motion in order for um the board to be authorized to enter into a contract with a search firm for the search for the superintendent and so in order to enter into that agreement um

018the board needs to um then needs to vote affirmatively to enter into the agreement and that's what the motion's about so kim why wouldn't that be presented with the motion rather than just a blind it could be it could be i think that's more just yes it absolutely could be that's the purpose of it yeah so maybe somebody could call the question again yes to amend the agenda i make a motion to amend the agenda purpose motion made by counting purpose to uh to so that the board of ed can vote to enter into a contract with a search firm i will second one okay motion made by kathy seconded by kate in a discussion deuteronomy uh kate sure joe britton yes rachel celestine aye kay canetta aye gladys cooper aye uh catherine hodgston hi

019rich ginelli yes uh kathy molinaro hi um al russo yes amy spolino hi and i see joe da silva on here now i snuck in when you weren't looking thank you thank you okay thank you emotions spoke so bad so for clarity's sake for me is would that come under the action item yes right okay so you might want to uh kim just for clarity did we take it up as the first item you you can you've moved to amend the agenda so you can put it i would put it right now since you're all on the topic that's that's okay are you ready for the motion yes that the board into into enter into an agreement with ray and associates for the purposes of providing consulting and search services for the selection and hiring

020of the superintendent of schools commencing july 1st 2021 under the terms and conditions as provided in ray and associates standard agreement second promotion made by kathy segna by a joke and a discussion on emotion cnn 9k do the roll call please joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate connetta aye gladys cooper yes joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinero aye already yes amy spolino hi thank you motion so care do we have anyone from the nea to speak in good evening everyone good evening miss cooper how are you today hi erin how are you it's nice to see you all um i want to take a minute before i get started to just congratulate my friend curtis dara i am so so thrilled for him winning this award earning this

021award for his hard work with his students on a personal note i just want to say curtis and i share many students over the years and the students who some of them happen to be my favorite i know we're not supposed to have favorites but we inevitably do will always come back and tell me how he changed their lives in so many like small ways but essential and important ways that they remember forever i have high schoolers coming back and telling me you know things about curtis i have um fifth graders who have just met him for the first time saying they can't wait to go and work with him and and do the fun activities that he talks about so he's a he's a pretty amazing asset to danbury public schools and um many

022of you don't know that he's also a fierce lobbyist for our students and he testifies often at the state level on behalf of our students and he's a fierce student advocate so all of his work um he's one of our unsung heroes so it's nice to see um curtis get some recognition and we're just really proud of him and he's also a wonderful active member of nea danbury and does a lot of work with us too so we're thrilled thrilled for him so spring is in the air everyone and um as a third grade teacher i always kind of want to couch my remarks at these board meetings like a report card like a teacher writes a report card right so i'm going to start off with some really positive things tell you a few

023things that maybe that we need to talk about on a deeper level in the future and then i'll i'll wrap it up with some some more positive and exciting things so with spring in the air um some great things are happening in our schools and in case you haven't had a chance to see them personally i've been told that 381 seniors managed to get together and line up for their senior portrait which was a huge undertaking and administration did a fantastic job making that happen a little bit sense of normalcy coming back to the high school and kids starting to feel like you know there's light at the end of the tunnel the hatters class of 2021 finished their beautiful hand print mural if you haven't had a chance to see that it's amazing and

024the teachers doubted this that all all of the senior class would stand in line to put their hand print on this mural wall and everybody did they waited so it was worth it to them which is a cool thing to see proms graduations underway for planning it's exciting times and certainly normalcy that everybody welcomes in elementary schools this week walking through the halls kids are making mother's day cards and mother's day presents another sense of normalcy they're growing seeds and journaling in their notebooks about seed growth they're playing on the playground together they're doing outdoor play dates my own students are talking about getting together with masks outside for playdates kids are having baseball games together on the fields and talking about who is going to strike out the other one first hearing these conversations

025in school is just doing all of our hearts such such benefit and and making us all feel like we're moving forward some of the challenges that we're undergoing right now um espa testing and um our teachers once again have are working through unprecedented challenges for this state mandated administering of this test and the biggest challenge has been administering it to our students who have chosen to remain dl for this test administration and we've faced countless amounts of challenges and teachers have been so resilient with you know very little training to administer the test remotely they have been connecting with parents training and tutoring parents how to upgrade their system software at home and do all sorts of tech issues to get the kids on for their testing and so just really want to commend teachers

026for their effort in in getting this done our state union lobbied very hard to um have these tests negated for this year and and not have to put our students through it but we're all doing the best we can and kind of smiling and getting it done because you know it's something that we have to do but i hope everybody understands the amount of work that teachers are putting in and our students are are doing to have to sit through these tests during these times um so teachers are once again rising to the challenge and i am pleased to say um we can report really a return from spring break without any major disruptions which is also good news for danbury public schools some of the things that we want to talk about um some

027of our concerns are are looking at the future for next year our state union and our local indian union of course are lobbying fiercely against dual teaching for next year i don't think i would really have too many people in disagreement that dual teaching simultaneous teaching of remote students and students in front of you is not sustainable for a long term and it's not a positive thing for either student or teacher and nobody really benefits greatly from it so hopefully our governor will do the right thing i know there has been some preliminary discussions about um eliminating that and hopefully it will move forward officially in the coming weeks um that being said i do want to point out and something that you know perhaps we can have further conversations in the weeks to come

028i've been getting some feedback from some members that in some of their observations from supervisors that they're actually getting written up for not being proficient with dual teaching which is just unreasonable and unacceptable for something that we learned how to do or didn't really even learn how to do just had to start doing less than three months to go so you know i hope that's something that we can work towards in the coming weeks where that won't be happening and let teachers and students try to get through the last 30 plus days um doing the best they can in the situation that we have in front of us another more serious thing that i want to bring to the board's attention tonight is an issue that um came about in february and is something that

029we've been working through and we're working with not just the nea um executive board on this we're working with the secretaries union now the nurses union the para union and we're even having discussions with the teamsters with this as well it was an incident that involved the switchover to our payroll a new payroll and accounting system back in february and as a result one of the major problems that arose from this was a transfer made to our hsa accounts and then withdrawn so what that what happened for employees is on their statements it looked like a direct contribution and then a direct distribution so why is that important and why does that matter well that obviously could have very serious tax implications and um we've we've been working with the district on a remedy for

030this and i have to say working with kim thompson and dr sal on this has been wonderful um big picture we are very concerned that our finance director did not communicate in a transparent way to employees when this initially happened very disappointed that we had to find out um kind of by by accident about this and um and our finance director was very late to the party to try and come up with a red parody for this so what we're working for right now is making sure that we have um assurances from the district that there won't be any financial implications to our employees over this and we're working with miss thompson to um get some documentation to verify that and she's been great working with us on that so i just kind of want

031to put it out there that we work really hard to make sure that communication is always open between our union and our administration that's something that we've been forging over many many years and so it's very important when there are mistakes and that you know listen we're teachers we we live on trying to you know have have things rectified and people learn from mistakes but when mistakes feel like they're being covered up um that is concerning to us so we wanted to bring that and kind of go on record and bring that to the board's attention that that's kind of where we're at in this resolution process and i do want to say you know um you know we do not hold dr sal responsible for any of this and he has been wonderful in

032trying to help us come to a resolution for this but i wanted to go on record with that that being said the challenges that we face ahead in the months to come with planning for reopening in september um will be great we already know how huge of a task we all have and we already are kind of um talking about how we're going to have no summer yet again as we're trying to get things in place for our students in our schools next year so it's really important that you know labor and management continue to work together and continue to have that trustworthy relationship together and um i just want to put it out there that as you're discussing um selecting dr sal's replacement nea would like to be included in the interview process and

033have a role in that we really need to have a seat at the table to make sure that the best choice is made for all of our our kids and our employees and i think you know having the biggest voice in labor which you know representing almost almost uh you know what are we up to almost a thousand employees now kim right um so i think you know it's really important that you know you allow us to have that seat in that voice at the table dr style has always strived to keep labor and management working together and so i hope that will continue to be adaptable and flexible and communicate with honesty i always promise to wrap my remarks up with some good news um you know that we have been lobbying to make

034sure that our education budget gets fully funded and we had one rally at the last meeting that i spoke about um where dr zelena joined me and in advocating for fully funding the the budget we have another event coming out that we invite everyone to join us at it is um tuesday may 4th so next week at city hall the defenders of public education and danbury are having another rally abridge the gr bridge the gap to fully fund danbury public schools we have a lot of co-sponsors with this event the community for change is joining us jamberry's naacp is joining us connecticut students for a dream are joining us jamberry justice network is joining us western connecticut area labor federation afl-cio is joining us and the amalgamated transit union local 1622 is also joining us

035so the cool thing about this is with each one of these events our community network is growing and it's not just the teachers screaming for more money for our schools it's our entire community so please get the word out and help help us spread the word i know you're all doing the great work and lobbying for the funding on your end but if you can lend a voice to our rally and hopefully mayor cava will take that into consideration as the final decisions are being made for the budget thank you so much for listening and again happy spring and hopefully the positivity will continue to grow in the next few few weeks thanks everybody thank you aaron this is cooper yeah i've got a comment i find it appalling that an employee of the district

036is is publicly reprimanded by another employee we've never had this we have a code of ethics relative to the the comments in the public section and in my 15 years on the board i had never heard of anybody being thrown under the bus like this for a mistake that apparently is what's mentioning is a mistake and then prior to that asking for pleading for some sort of dual teaching stuff and the errors that they they made in order to get there i mean i don't know what's going on but this is unprofessional as far as i'm concerned this is not to be a form for that you go through the ranks within the district to the superintendent and then there is an executive committee if there are other issues but not to iron this stuff

037out in a public session i really don't think this is the form for it may i respond to that please since it's directly directly to me yeah yes we're not gonna oh we're perhaps perhaps background on the information will be given to you at a later date but we felt that with two and a half months of working through this and not getting um any any um edification or apology until probably three days ago we felt like it needed to go on public record that we are very concerned about the transparency that has been going on um with this one department all right um and i just could i just say something please as chairperson uh mr janella and aaron to me this is not the the right place or the time to have this

038discussion okay so i would just like to say that um chair um personal gladys if i might that i i yes and by the integrity of my work and i value the relationships tremendously with all the teachers in the district including you and and you know i can appreciate the concern i do hope that i'm able to show how it was rectified and it was rectified in the in the quickest manner possible and you know i do hope that you know you and i can speak about it in future in greater detail um but i i'm saddened to hear this in this forum i do stand by the integrity of the work i do and the work of my department and thank you gladys for allowing me to state that thank you you're welcome okay

039could we move on to the on the agenda dr leader cooper yes thank you for letting me speak tonight um i will echo erin said about the students they've been so adorable it's really cool to see them kind of in the spring mode it was so beautiful today and they were out and they were smiling and they're getting used to going outside with that mass break and taking it off a little bit it's been really nice to have more students in the buildings and we've really enjoyed it and espa is is is it is um i want to shout out the administrators who have spent countless hours planning and talking to the state and scheduling when kids are going to take it when they're not going to take it who's going to hand out hundreds

040of more computers i was just out front handing out computers to our distance learners who have their own computers that can't really use theirs because they need a special uh website it's been it's been um but we're getting through it as we always do we'll come out positive on the end and in true to form i will be sharing my screen so that tonight i have a presentation that was put together by our k5 esl bilingual um group headed by tammy um cordona and so can you all see the the supporting english learners on your screens yes i can perfect i'm going to play this [Music] now hmm [Music] chinese [Music] so [Music] you [Music] blue how do you do get your job [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm [Music] you [Music] so thank you so much

041for letting me share that with you and have a great night and thank you again for always bringing us good news thank you thank you uh any of our students here hello can you all hear me yes hi so some stuff about sports this past month congratulations to dj donovan and anna rita lynch for being named the cx scholar athletes for 2021 they'll be awarded in early may the dhs hockey team took the division iii championship at at the south west conference which is great spring sports are also in full effect with the baseball softball volleyball lacrosse and tennis teams playing home in a gate home and away games every day so now about some more school related things the chipotle fundraiser organized recently was a success we appreciate the pto so much dhs in

042partnership with community health center inc is offering vaccinations to eligible seniors many students have gotten their first dose of vaccine already the class of 2021 met yesterday to take senior class pictures and leave a nice memento in the form of a handprint on the blue wall near the gym entrance due to the hard work of the pto it was an asynchronous learning day and the juniors took their sat we wish them good scores and good rest today many seniors are also committing to college and we couldn't be more happy for them on april 19th to the 23rd students took their connecticut seal of buy literacy test which is a fantastic opportunity the date for prom is may 28th from 7 pm to midnight at the amber room and tickets will be sold next week the

043senior trip will be friday june 4th to six flags new england hopefully students will will be able to get a semblance of their senior year back graduation planning is also underway which is a great feat and that is all i have for you thank you no thank you thank you jake does any boy members have any question for jake no okay thank you again jay do we have anyone from ace yes good evening board of ed members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence eight students participated in the 53rd annual danbury cultural commission poetry contest then congratulations to sabrina carvalho for being awarded third place in the contest the danbury cultural commission will hold the awards ceremony on may 20th the

044ace 2021 graduation ceremony will take place on wednesday june 10th at the broadview auditorium at 3pm a special thanks to eddie thomas the and the hospitality of the broadview team for allowing us to use their auditorium to be able to provide a graduation experience for our students families and staff planning for the ace renaissance fair is underway the this day of student engagement is being led by english teacher daniela esposito and social studies teacher kyle choccola english teacher melissa melissa lasky and social studies teacher robin melillo are beginning a quarter four humanities collaborative project exploring how popular culture has impacted our society with the english 3 and u.s history students a romeo and juliet virtual field trip was coordinated and organized by daniela esposito to take place on monday april 26th the opportunity was offered

045to 52a students thank you daniela the 18th annual ace coffee house is being organized by english teacher joanne tolls and her poetry students and will be held on thursday june 3rd ace will be hosting a spring career day on may 21st with virtual guest speakers to present careers that serve the community this special day is being organized by diana dinardo and dj jimenez lastly ace would like to publicly acknowledge and congratulate our most recent students of the week kaylee cartrill and jacob miner keep up the great work youtube thank you for allowing me to share the great things happening with the ace family this spring stay safe everyone and remaining strong thank you chris okay thank you chris amy would you do action item a sure i make a motion this is high school graduation

046date i make a motion that the board of education set the high school graduation date as june 10 2021 with a rain date on june 11 multiple ceremonies will be held due to cobia 19. motion made by amy but i hear a second oh second second if the board wishes i think dan is here he could yes does he want to speak on a graduation yes dan uh thanks for having me uh i know last time we were here dr martens came on uh sorry i couldn't make it and um talked about what our plan was as far as getting information from our parents and students so we sent out a survey we had 500 responses to that survey 370 which is a little less than half the students in the graduating class uh responded

047to it we talked about three options that we were going to give them one was the whole class out there with live streamed and no guests the second option was the drive up similar to what we did last year with uh looser guidelines now uh that we have and the third was multiple ceremonies on the field and uh 53 percent of the parents and students chose the multiple um one to have on the field so we were planning on going with three but now let's uh change just from the government stuff allow us to do two ceremonies on june one two o'clock one at five o'clock the orange cohort will go at five and each guest it'll also be live screen but each graduate will receive four tickets bringing us to about 600 spectators in

048the stands which is where that's all been dotted um three feet apart and masks will still be one unless something changes i know continued there's been a lot of talk about uh the senior events you know we just had a pretty cool day the other day tuesday when the juniors were taking the uh sats where we had a great number probably close to about 550 juniors came into the building and took the sat uh you know we had to take 60 some odd rooms so we only put 10 to a room we had to do an except this seniors in we had about 300 and 380 ish seniors in three different waves come in somewhat of a graduation picture those ones that you see at the entrance of dhs and then they would go down

049onto the field and we set up the 2 0 two one and that group would take the two the next group would be zero and then grouping down the pto did an outstanding job of uh getting the mural picapi who is a west side uh arts teacher uh we had them come out the hands and they'll put their hands on the wall so it was a pretty great day to see the kids um it was very well organized by my administration team and a special thank you to you know mr portelli the uh who was out there taking it for uh the yearbook the picture will not be in the yearbook because the yearbook is already out and but look for way out to then do what they want with it uh dr obre who

050now was picture thing i'm to get socially distanced and now he's doing his photos to try look well mr who's uh does all the work for you all here who took a awesome drone picture of the two zero two one at different times and then pasted them all together which we'll get out to the seniors the class officers uh the class not the class officers but the class advisors of miss gurney miss messinovic who helped organize this whole thing and our staff that was out there it was a great day and you know it was to bring a little normalcy back going toward our senior events i've been working very closely with cathy o'dowd and discussing what we can and can't do and you know it's the prom coming up on the 28th is at

051the amber room we have a meeting with them to discuss how many students can go uh following their guidelines of what they have to do as a business with uh you know tents outside and things like that we're looking to have a senior fest our six flags trips movie night for them and then the graduations um both graduations that is up to the board uh we here at two o'clock it's not going to be as long as it normally is because we're not going to spend 35 40 minutes saying names it'll be half of that so i imagine graduations are going to be about an hour and 20 minutes long for each one the middle school graduation is june 9th they are doing their three schools up on uh up on our field as well

052so we tagged it together with them on the ninth us on the 10th and then rain dates as it goes through after that so that's how it all came about thank you thank you uh does any board member have any question for mr jonathan madden chair yes mr donovan can you just repeat the times for each cohort it was breaking up on my end i don't know if it was for everybody else i'm sorry uh two o'clock for the blue cohort and five o'clock for the orange cohort right and everybody gets two guests you said four oh four okay great thank you mr donovan once your schedule is set can you make sure that all uh that schedule is set to the board members please yes ma'am thank you any other areas for the board

053the park and just as we've had in the past [Music] um if you don't have any questions about that i want to ask mr donovan something mr donovan did i hear someone getting some award from your family my son won the uh ciac or was the ciac scholar athlete of the year for danbury high school congratulations must be a problem it's been a very tough year and dan has been trying in in so many ways to make it normal as possible and um it's been a human effort i just want to thank them for doing this because it it will make the end of the year a little more special for them as i said in the commercial you're going to give them a shot at a better year and i'm so proud of us

054being able to do that so thank you dan my pro my pleasure there's no questions we can go to the next item argue the roll call oh yeah approved thank you this is off-screen i apologize uh joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate canetta i uh we'll skip gladys um joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi rich gianelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo amy spelino hi okay motion carries um action item b um rachel i'm just wondering if you have any thoughts as the uh the policy chair about whether or not we should be reading these whole entire paragraphs or kim perhaps you could chime in on that yes i i've read them every year how do you feel about reading them this year go for it kate i'll make a motion that uh

055pursuant to cgs section 10-215-f the board of education our governing authority certifies that all food items offered for sale to student in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1st 2021 through june 30 2022. this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups second by catherine i'll do a quick roll call joe britton yes rachel celeski hi kate canetta aye uh joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich

056genelli aye cathy molinaro aye all right the motion so carries thank you um richard do you want to take that second motion under action item b um i'll make a motion regarding food exemptions the board of education or governing authority will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event and three the food items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer games school plays and interscholastic debates

057are events but soccer practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings or not the regular school day is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food sale thank you for taking it by catherine second by catherine thank you i'll do a quick any discussion okay we're going to roll call joe britton yes rachel celestine yes kate canetta aye uh joe da silva all right catherine hodgson hi rich gianelli hi thank you kathy molinaro hi all right the motion carries thank you very much uh joe da silva could you read the third motion under action item b please uh yes just give me one one moment to bring up the agenda i'll

058read it if you want me to uh thank you catherine if you would pinch it for me that'd be awesome i'll make a motion for exemptions for beverages the board of education or governing authority will allow the sale to students of beverages not listed in section 10-221 q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event three the beverages are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence sorry is it an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity the school day is the period from midnight before to

05930 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and most must be the same place as the beverage sales all right thank you for that thank you joe um any discussion all right uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye um joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich janelle hi kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spelino hi thank you very much that motion carries all right we're up to action item c uh joe britton absolutely thank you madam vice chair i would like to make a motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9273 conflict of interest as recommended by the policy committee all right do i hear you seconded by catherine okay catherine you get the second there

060any discussion or comments yeah i got a comment kate questions called a conflict of interest yet when you read through this i mean it wouldn't be my interpretation of any conflicts of interest um is that just an inappropriate word or am i just not understanding the text rachel did you want to speak to that i'm trying to pull it up here sorry rich i'm just also pulling this up on my screen here appreciate your patience simplistically i think a conflict of interest would be you know if you had an employee then as a board member or teacher or something you know if it was possible that that would be a conflict but these just seem to be guidelines i mean it's not saying it's a you know point but it just well it's it's a

061civility code yeah that i could understand rachel and also meeting protocol um it does it does specify in parts of the document you know that you cannot take private action that will compromise the board and the administration you know he had to conduct business in an open transparent manner um i think there were components of that but um rachel you know obviously you is the the chair for that committee um you know maybe we want to bring that back for discussion we don't pick the caption yeah that caption came from cave and we don't pick the caption and it's and it's pretty uniform across all all boards i mean then it's a numerical enumeration so okay the titles are wasted thanks rachel okay uh any other questions or comments seeing none uh joe britton aye

062rachel celeski aye kate canetta aye jojo silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli aye cathy molinero aye al russo aye amy spelino hi motion carries um action item d um joe do you have that up now or or shall i move on to something else i'm sorry i caught you again i'm sorry no i was just on you i have it okay thank you action item d motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 9300 methods of operation is recommended by the policy committee 21-62 and page 41 in our packet can i get a second please second thank you rachel uh any questions seeing none uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich gianelli hi kathy molinaro hi thank you al russo

063hi amy spelino hi motion carries thank you um amy could you read uh for action item b please yes i make a motion at the board of education except for first reading policy 9321 board of education work sessions as recommended by the policy committee 21-63 page 42. thank you amy can i get a second please second thanks joe britton uh any questions or comments i just want to make a comment that um uh policy nine three two one is already um in established but this the board of education workshop sessions it should read is 93212 i know that bylaw 4-3 was included as a reference um and i just want to also make a point that um in that by-law that we're not approving because it's already existing for us um just that there is

064no city clerk um any longer that there's a town clerk so i don't know if we can make that um that simple just word change and that bylaw um that's that kind of precludes the um the workshop sessions portion of this i don't have it it does rachel i have a question i don't have it in front of me what was the city clerk referenced for was that for a notice it was just a notice of meetings yes kim can we do can we substitute town clerk for city clerk in that instance since we don't have a city clerk anymore without having to re-move it yeah i think i would call that a scrivener's error maybe you know i just want to make sure that the town clerks the appropriate governmental official to get the

065notice in the absence of a city clerk i would need to check yes i i believe okay okay then yes then i think rachel's right i think we should make that change um so there's a motion on the floor here with the with a second um in that correction that we're talking about we'll come back on the second read is that right okay so i'll do a roll call for the accepting of the first read here uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli yes thank you kathy molinero hi thanks kathy al russo hi amy spelino hi all right thank you very much motion carries um al can you read action item f performances administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment exhibit 21-66-84 motions the

066board of education except for first reading policy 9313 administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment is recommended by the policy committee and i have a second on that please second uh joe da silva got that one uh any questions or discussion okay seeing none joe britton aye rachel tuleski i kate canetta i joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy smolino hi thank you motion carries uh we are down to action item g um amy could you read that one please sure thank you uh i make a motion that the board of education approved the march 2021 operating results and analysis general funds grant projects in accordance with let's see we have exhibit 21-65 on page 47. thank you very much okay joe da silva's got the

067second there any questions or comments okay seeing none joe britton aye rachel celestin aye canetta i joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russa yes amy spelina hi all right thank you very much motion carries gladys we've just um taken care of all of the action items there so we're at item number 10 on the agenda here okay just go ahead and complete that thank you for caring and even i had a little accident no problem at all so the academy model is under item 10 i don't know if that goes to dr casimiro yes dr casmir we have a presentation i know we've talked about this before but we're starting to come together just for the board's um background um the edge specs we had some drafts

068that we sent over the city and i guess they'll work through what they need to do operationally and then obviously they'll come back to the board and to work with respects but what you're going to see tonight is sort of the um the dream that uh and the reality is starting to come together in terms of on paper and some possibilities so with that kara can you please thank you dr thank you uh board um just to preface this uh presentation just a little bit i just want to let you know i'm having some laptop issues my laptop is not holding the charge i'm on 7 i'm gonna give this my all and make it a nice uh succinct presentation um and i do have a backup plan kelly will help me out and i'll

069call in from my phone to kind of walk through it if i if i happen to uh to die before this is over um so let me let me pull up the presentation so um we've been on quite a journey together uh this year with regards to and even last year with regards to the idea and the concept of an academy model um and i i i can't tell you how thankful i and proud that i am of uh the board high school administration middle school administration uh central office staff that have really come together to to support this new vision i feel like we have a education angels out there i keep calling them that have been having some wonderful conversations uh and and planting seeds all over not just the district but now

070the community and there's a lot of great chatter about this um in terms of providing opportunities for students um and and making sure that we're well positioned for the future and that our students are are going to be ready for uh even 21st century and beyond so i just want to thank everybody for their involvement this is really just a a summary to kind of wrap um there's several more um a couple more several more presentations between the portrait of the graduate work and the graduation requirements and a few others that i'll talk about towards the end of the presentation but as we're kind of nearing the end of the of the year and with the approval and passing of the um of the academy at the uh council level uh we just wanted to

071kind of give a short wrap about where we are with the work and what are the next steps so i want to remind everybody about the vision and mission that was adopted um by the community by the board and by all of our stakeholders i went back and i was i was looking at the words on here and uh they really kind of resonated with the work that's that has happened this year so danbury public schools aspires to advance all learners to their highest potential and the danbury public schools in partnership with families and the community provides transformational learning experiences designed to nurture thoughtful and prepared graduates and i think that there is a large group of us that have really taken this vision and mission to heart when it was revised and really thinking

072through what does that look like in our school system and how do we make good on this promise and i believe that the career academies and this movement at the secondary level will deliver on that so just a reminder of those who may be joining or watching a board member for the first time aboard a presentation for the first time tonight and a career academy concept is a a design it's a it's a concept that to prepare students for both college and careers they are connected together this is really about career connected learning for all their schools within the schools that link students with peers teachers and community partners in a structured environment that fosters academic success the three hallmarks or key elements of a career academy concept are a small learning community so how

073do we take our very large high school and make it personalized i know there are some comments about overcrowding we hear that all the time in the dairy public school system and that is true and there are some ways to mitigate that several years ago with the idea of the ninth grade academy the idea was to to to take that very first transitional year which is very critical and to break it down into a smaller learning community and to really build relationships with students focus on social emotional work um and to make sure that our students and teachers are able to cover some things that are unique to to ninth graders and learners and denver high school has done an amazing job with developing that model out the career academy and and the pathways take

074that to the next level it's kind of uh learning small learning community 2.0 um in addition to the small learning community this is about college proper preparation uh through the form of sequential curriculum and it has a career theme so this is not just about careers we are preparing students for college with an added bonus of helping them to focus in on a career and explore that career and learn what it is that they like for themselves and to be able to make more informed choices in the future um another part of the career academy concept is this advisory board um that's very critical we saw this down in nashville we've learned about another school system out in nebraska one that we hope to visit in the near future that is actually supposed to be

075uh maybe even doing a little bit of a better job in some areas than nashville but this idea that there's an advisory board that's uh consists of community members business partnerships uh strategic partners to help us employers higher education so with wescon and local institutions in the community to help us build these programs together um so that there's a feedback loop and a cycle of of information that continually improves the career academies um the this is uh should is uh has been presented a few times but this is the academy organizational structure so um while the building has been called at the summit has been called the career career academy um this is really about the academies at denbury high school and the summit location will house two of those cat academies and those are

076highlighted in the in the black outlined circles here so all students will go up to danbury high school and attend danbury high school and participate in the 9th grade career in college academy i have a slide that kind of outlines what happens during that that time period but we will have six academies overall again these two that are highlighted are the ones that will be at the summit so we will have the academy of information technology and cyber security and you can see the pathways that are are slated for this academy here some of these are can be amended as we continue to push through and work through these programs and pathways we may amend some of these to make sure that we're bringing the most advantageous um curriculum to our students that provides the

077greatest level of opportunity uh for for the future we have the academy of professional public services you can see those pathways our academy of scientific innovation and medicine which are really concentrating very heavily on right now as well as the academy of global enterprise and economics those will really need to be fleshed out first but we also have to bring these other ones online almost simultaneously but these are the two that we're focusing on um and these are actually going to serve as sort of a test model for development of these of the other academies we have the academy of art engineering design and the academy of communications and design and again there's a large amount of stem focused uh pathways that are here but also um some others perhaps more in the humanities and

078service industries uh and leadership so we're very excited that we are able to offer um we'll be offering uh many different pathways that will uh surely pique the majority of our students interests so we are excited about that so the ninth grade career academy when students come up to danbury high school everyone comes on the main campus um part of the the kind of the hallmark of the career academy is really this focus on this one semester exploratory course um that will focus on team building career and pathway research so what do all of these pathways what what can all of these offer what do what are the careers that are connected with these pathways what are the earnings potential what kind of education do you have to get to retain these um is it

079does that happen at a two-year technical school does it happen at a four-year school can it happen at either um what are the on-roads and off-ramps with the different career trajectories within these pathways as well um there's a focus on organizational and employability skills um how do you function in the in the workplace so there's some workplace learning and then the idea that there's a digital literacy and also financial literacy so as students are learning about different careers um we put them through their paces of understanding what it takes in the real world to to um uh in terms of income in terms of running households in terms of uh what types of futures that that they can have with different options um there is a career exploration fair this uh we saw that this

080was one of a very um important component to uh in nashville this is a very big deal they had hundreds and hundreds of folks coming in industry professionals representing um all different types of career pathways that would come in and there was booths and kids had an opportunity to talk and interview and um ask questions of for some pathways that they may be interested in and then of course an opportunity to uh to visit to visit at the college certain colleges of college level so um making sure that students actually get their feet on campus and they feel what that that is like and they begin to see themselves down these uh down these pathways and these heading and down these roads um so beyond the let's move my toolbar out of the way so

081beyond the academics so um clearly students will still be taking all the college preparatory there's advanced placements all of those opportunities will still exist um but in addition to that the beyond the academics there are other preparations that come along with the the college and with the career i'm sorry the academy model again we talked a little bit about ninth grade um and that focus would be on college careers college fairs and college visits they participate in exploration course and they eventually choose their pathway in the spring and they apply to a pathway under a particular academy that is usually happens by a lottery process so students identify what pathways they're interested in first choice second choice third choice um and then they get placed in the lottery for selection to those i know there's

082a lot of questions around what happens if they don't get in um and and those are all answers uh good questions and answers that will develop sort of the the if then um on roads and off-ramps of how to get into a pathway and and what happens if you want to leave those are all to be developed in the in the near future um grade 10 industry field trips and guest speakers so try to get students out and to see some of these uh um what it looks like in the workplace in the pathways and the academies that they have chosen and to bring folks in to have conversations about what it is that they do and what makes their their job special or what are the hallmarks and features of their job students will

083at this point have at least one foundational course in their area in addition to the normal uh gen ed kind of core requirements and so they'll get a little taste of of the pathway but it's also wrapped around these great discussions and experiences that they have uh in their academy area 11th grade the goal is to do some job shadowing if possible get kids out or we can do some virtual job shadowing as well there's some there are some opportunities students would again kind of dabble in the next level of electives that would be offered in their pathway um so usually there's a there's a about two or three courses um so it could be four in a pathway sequence so um you know there's it's not like students are in uh you know 10

084or 12 elective courses over the course of their four years they will take a progressive sequence of pathway electives um eventually leading to grade 12 where they'll complete a capstone project and potentially an internship the capstone is something now as part of the graduation requirements for all of the students in connecticut and so this would tie in nicely with opportunities for students to work with the advanced pathway electives for so for example an advanced engineering course um could be the course that the students chooses to do their capstone project in um so there's opportunities for all of us to be interdisciplinary and very meaningful and to happen in areas that the students have selected so the students have chosen these areas and that they're highly invested in the in the outcomes this also looks great

085by the way uh for applications for colleges uh being very competitive i had an amazing um interview with two students uh well actually they're two female engineers no longer uconn students that work at medtronics medtronics is one of the largest if not the largest medical technology uh device producer in the world they are in over 150 different countries well they hire exclusively in connecticut from uconn for their biomedical engineering program so that's one of the pathways that we'll have and one of the things that they told me that was critical when they got not only got into uconn um but in order to kind of be competitive with with their specific program in the biomedical engineering that they liked to see that they had already gone had done projects in the high school that put

086them through the design thinking um process where they went from the from the idea generation stage all the way to production of a prototype and that they had experience with that they've entered competitions and all of these types of things within the academy will prepare students um for that level of competitiveness uh regardless of if they want to choose that or not they will have had some some amazing experiences uh with with capstone and working with um some advanced uh projects within their pathways and uh just to give the board and and folks maybe at home and some of our teachers who i know have already begun to ask a lot of questions and get very excited about this dan and meg at the high school did a great presentation to kind of articulate um

087the vision and where we're going um but here we are in terms of the phases so we're going to be busy for the next couple of years looks like some of my my uh bullets jumped out of place here but that's okay um so this year was really all about down in phase one all really about concept uh development and planning so um what could this look like what should it look like how would we use the building that has been secured by by um by the board and by the city and and how do we make the best use of use of that seeking board approval this year to make sure that the direction of the academy is what is wanted we definitely felt the level of support not just with the board but

088now with the community and now the staff is getting we've got some pretty excited staff members that are asking lots of questions um the ed specs are obviously being developed and are in a final stages um there will be some continued tweaks as we visit some programs uh for example i would i'm gonna be getting up to um uconn and taking a few folks up to see their biomedical engineering lab to see what is it what's if we could build a lab what do we want to look like and what are what are the critical uh the critical components and any materials or equipment that we might need to make sure that our students have uh have good training have good access um we've engendered some some great community support and we're going to be

089doing a lot of something called academic positioning so taking stock of the current courses that we have that can serve this model well and then maybe having to um you know question some others right and so what are the courses that need to fall into these pathways and programs what will best serve our students in their future so we'll be doing a lot of uh you know delving into our current curriculum and um working to kind of bring some things online phase two which is in the 21 22 school year we're going to start with some central office and administrative training some of that has already has already begun we'll begin this summer working on budget development for these academies and programs i do want to point out i know there were some concerns about

090you know what is this going to cost you know we are still building regardless of if we do academy model or we open up a traditional high school we still have to open up a school so it's you know the same amount of staff that you need for a 1400 student school traditional school is the same staff you're going to need to open up a an academy because it's still 1400 students so you still need teachers you still need administrators still need nurses and and so on so um we have to do that anyways the students are here and we are going to not just help the overcrowding issue that we have to address our growing enrollment but we're also going to provide some incredible kick butt programming for our kids so um so there

091is a budget to that and that will be developed as we start to push on the details of of all these plans moving from the concept to the actual design and implementation um we'll start some teacher professional development next year mostly around project-based learning and really involving teachers in the design and development of some of these pathways um the following year in phase three continued lots of teacher training um partnership development really reaching out to the community so um we we we will have 24 different pathways all of those will need to have partners that will not only provide expertise but also potentially some some funding which will be wonderful and then this is really where a lot of systems change and alignment starts to kick in so really pushing on the way that we

092used to do things uh kind of breaking down status quo and re-envisioning the way that we formulate uh all of our systems i guess if you will you know how we schedule things the way that we approach master scheduling and development the way that we approach uh you know how how um students move through and complete the graduation requirements so it's going to involve some really mindset shifts and some changing and we're again working on some of that this summer will be beneficial for the team uh to kind of understand what what lies ahead and what levers we need to push to to forward this um this is also the year that we're really going to be focusing on grade nine because the next year in grade four we have to implement the grade 9

093college and career exploration curriculum so there'll be a lot of work with teachers especially ninth grade teachers on how to deliver this what's important where's the focus um and what's and what is it that uh makes the hallmark for grade nine and then uh again in phase four this will be the first year where the ninth grade will get that curriculum and those students will begin their spring academy selection process and then at the same time once that process is complete we'll begin with a new master uh new master schedule development for the spring of 2024 so it'll be very exciting there's a tremendous amount of work that lies in between uh in particular uh phase three and phase four to get this off the ground and then in phase five that is our opening

094tenth graders will go to their chosen academies and pathways and we'll continue with the professional development for all i don't want to forget the middle school component in all of this we're going to be working on really developing this out rather soon this is a much smaller group 360 kids not any less important but a little bit at a smaller scale in terms of of the academy and so once we sort of get some lift off with the academy model itself which is quite extensive we're going to be focusing next year early on to really make sure that we're designing out this middle school component well so there's tons of action planning happening in the background so the group at denbury high school myself central office we met to do some action planning with the

095uh kneecap folks those are the architects from the nashville group and they really pushed us through the beginning development of an action plan our draft plan to keep us honest and hold us to a timetable this is just a little snapshot of page one of a 14-page document that we've already started um this is one of several action plans that need to be developed as we go we have graduation requirements we have portrait of the graduate we have a lot of curriculum work ahead of us will be um we've often referenced um financial braiding braiding of our finances well there's going to be a lot of braiding coming up uh very soon this summer and all of next year talking about the portion of the graduate work our curricular work our professional development and training

096the academy model and then the backwards design of how this changes our school system and what are the uh student outcomes that we expect at each level to make sure that we're graduating our students with this vision that we have that they're well prepared and that they're ready for they're ready for the world so what are we working on right now so sort of the immediate things that we're doing uh we're in the process of last-minute adjustments to the graduation requirements to meet the new vision the high school team will be along with some of our central office folks will be presenting on that in one of the upcoming board meetings very soon a lot of the graduation flexibilities will kind of be visible in these graduation requirement changes we're going to be identifying the

097courses that go along with these and how to align those to the portrait of the graduate and then begin action planning on all of that um there's a lot of kneecap training that's the national college and career coalition and we have a pretty intensive uh summer schedule with the master schedule development um it's different than how we traditionally do it and it involves a lot of a lot of shifting and a lot of understanding august we're going to be working on the program and pathway development again supported by folks from from knee cac and and people who work directly with nashville and that other school i talked about from grand island in nebraska and then september we'll start with some project-based learning and so how to shift traditional learning to more hands-on more experiential more

098interdisciplinary learning and to make sure that we have key components in our curriculum and start to gradually build those over time between now and when we expect to open so that we are practicing these things and we're learning and we're getting training in advance of of moving in this direction so that we're well prepared and that folks feel confident and that the teachers are heavily involved in the development of this as well which is really important um positioning of alignment courses i spoke a little bit about that developing the electives trying to push through all the industry credentials what it takes to achieve that we have a great head start on that but there's a lot of work involved and again developing our industry partnerships and working with some consultation on course developments or bringing

099in engineers so how how how do we circle back to those two engineers from medtronics to help us inform some of our curriculum and the types of things that students need to to learn to be successful and then development our grade 9 course and then again just final adjustments to the ed specs i did reach out to antonio and jay just to make sure i could make a few minor adjustments nothing to the nothing to the footprint of what was everyone saw but more along the lines of further delineating the design descriptions of those rooms so what do we want those labs to look like and and making sure we have the right equipment in there so um as we visit other sites uh and talk to um professionals and folks who have academies or

100pathways here and there that have developed um i'm asking for things like what are the crit what's the critical equipment um if you can have if there's two pieces of equipment that you need to have in a cna program which we already have or an engineering program what's a non-negotiable and making sure that those get into our ed specs so that uh when it comes time to develop or when we design these rooms that there's a full understanding of what needs to be in there for this to to really be done well um and not just uh you know the bare basics and so uh i'm getting ready to wrap here but um you know part of that ed spec on paper development is really how do you how do you take a vision and

101and capture it on a piece of paper so that someone else can interpret your vision and bring it to life and so um the idea we've spent a lot of time talking about what we want these learning spaces to look like and um while we have a lot of classrooms that look like this and there's always a time and a place and there's always spaces where um this is a pretty traditional looking classroom and setup there's certainly room and balance for some additional spaces that we think will be a little bit more enticing this is obviously a snapshot of our concept at the at the matrix or at the summit i should say and so when we think of learning spaces these are some of the pictures that we showed some of the architects that

102we worked at with friar to say look this is what we wanted to see happen we want to see classrooms that look differently we want to make sure that there's equipment in there that is representative unsimulated of what students would experience they get a real sense of what's happening bringing in this is an example of some specialized equipment which is called i always say it wrong it's a animatage table or nata mataj table uh there's over 3 000 virtual uh dissection and um you know examination uh capabilities with this that are absolutely unbelievable they have two of these up at uconn that they use with the medical students and the nursing students um and these are the types of things we want our students to be utilizing um you know how is it what what

103are they what's the equipment and what kinds of activities do we see when we walk into a room what are kids doing are they are they working in groups are they actually with hands-on are they experimenting are they testing things out are they um formulating hypotheses are they generating ideas what is happening and so um you know we're definitely envisioning very active learning this was another example of some learning spaces that we said you know this is this is what we want our learning spaces to look like we want them to be exciting not just for the two students but also for the teachers as well so just some out of the box non-traditional these were what we used when we started to talk about some of the concepts there's going to be a greenhouse

104at the top of the summit for our environmental students um and what what a better way to to to dig into that and to start working on on real real life real world uh projects and pro and problems so um this would be something that you know we tried to bring that um business our business side to life and what what would that look like what type of equipment and programming would they need so i will leave you uh with with some of those exciting uh learning spaces um things that we will continue to flesh out um we're gonna be bringing all this together in the in the near future very soon and really digging deep on the details you'll be hearing from again the high school team on the portrait of the graduate the

105graduation requirements all of these things are intricately tied together to kind of make this happen um and then i'll stop talking because i am down to five percent which is not bad um but uh again i want to thank the board i want to thank the high school team and central office and the community as well as our city council um and and all of our representatives for their full support on this uh i think this is going to be amazing and i think that the there's a lot of tremendous people involved in making this happen so we will provide more details and updates probably in the fall of course you can continue to email me with any questions that you have madam chair i said it would be but we will come we have

106a quite an agenda left but i just want to thank cara for this we have the ed specs that are going to kind of the match to the functions here that'll come back to you um before we leave in july so uh in june so you'll be seeing um those specs that relate to these thank you very much gary if board members have questions if you can just shoot them the cara um she can answer them for you so thank you very much for a great presentation okay thank you super nintendo report yes let me just start i was going to have courtney do but i think it's more general than anything here the the city and state budget i believe next week the city is going to vote on their um on their budget

107i did talk to mr cabo there's a nexus to the the conjunction here about the state budget i understand and i just talked to brian bingham again he's our lobbyist coming out of the education committee they've restored uh some of our ucs funding which is uh terrific and i'm i'm trying to get a fix on the exact amount but i think it was a specialized five million dollars at this point that that was re um reinstituted in there and uh according to joe in my conversation if money comes through there he fully expects to pass it through to the board of ed uh as mark had done to you so i was really um happy to hear that timing may be an issue only because i understand maybe you guys know better and i we

108approve our budget next week i mean the town doesn't i think june i want to say 7th or 8th maybe the governor budget gets approved in hartford so there is some timing issues but anyway um joe did um want me to convey that to you that that money comes through it'll be passed through to the board uh which is good news and so all of the folks that have been lobbying and writing letters it's made a difference uh so i thank you for that i'll just move through here because i want to get to the reopening uh ellsworth project nothing big except that we got approval to go out the bid so as of a few weeks anne and richard and the group down there will be moving moving out but they're getting ready to

109put out bids so we can start that project which is exciting i have kathy here kathy really quick could you update the board on the vaccination project oh sure thank you dr sal good evening everyone um this past weekend the 24th and 25th we again had the opportunity to extend the invitation for vaccinations not only to some of our staff and families but to students as well we started the project with um partnering of course with our health department danbury hospital and the community health center to offer vaccines at the danbury mall a special thanks to amy taylor at the community health center she made this such an easy process for us uh it was as simple as sending out a link to our students we started with seniors and once you know that was

110that was accessed we opened it up to 16 years and up and then we still had spots available where we were able to offer it to families uh staff who had not yet been vaccinated so it was um very successful so their second appointments have automatically been scheduled so by the end of may i don't have exact numbers back from the community health center yet but i know that we had close to 600 spots filled so that's a very positive thing for our district moving forward thank you so much kathleen for your leadership there frank are you with us dr ivanka i am could you um we've been thinking about this about frank two years five years i think actually uh so uh when west side middle school academy was established we followed the lottery

111process that the um the ais school was using yes lotteries taking place in january and ours took place in february i think one of the realizations we found is that it's very challenging to conduct a lottery for a middle school that late in the school year mainly because the process uh you know some districts have entire offices dedicated to choice programs and we we run that outside of the assistant super and through the assistant superintendent's office and so the process of having well over a thousand students every year apply for the lottery and then going through the process of of accepting students and seeing if they want to accept the seeds that they've won through the lottery takes a great deal of time we've only finished the lottery process just a couple weeks ago so

112for our lottery that took place in february we were just wrapping up the process now and getting all the names in and at a middle school level that poses a great deal of challenges for preparing for the next school year there are a lot of things that are different in a middle middle school in terms of scheduling students ensuring that we have the purple staffing and so on so it's been my recommendation that we move that lottery from february to november in order to facilitate um really more opportunities for students ultimately because the lottery process takes place so late that some people get their seat late in the process they choose not to take it and so giving that opportunity to students earlier in the year will first of all administratively make the process be

113much smoother and then secondarily i think for students it gives more people the opportunity to make the choice at an earlier time so uh i made that recommendation to the central office that we moved that lottery process to november to uh to make the process more efficient uh i we can do that we'll just put in our operational plan it just i think frank hit it on those it permits youngsters to uh more access and that's what the board's always wanted we always wanted so i thank frank for his leadership um so we will probably make sure we get on the calendar we will publicize it because it is a change but um you know i i if we fully support that probably should have done it as frank said a few years ago we

114simply did it because we always had ais that we had then we had the stem it just doesn't work for the middle school so um with that i finished my report madam chair when would that change take place are you looking to do that next year next year thank you um yeah i'm sorry i was muted i just want to ask the board members have any questions to talk to dr dr leblanc okay so before we go on then um just so you know yesterday i think yesterday afternoon maybe five o'clock we received a memo from the state which is relative to our next conversation the remote learning that took place this year by giving everybody option will not be an option that will be required to give so that is out of the equation

115officially we've been waiting for the state to make a commitment and they finally did as of yesterday afternoon there are some areas that we can use it with as optional but as far as the board saying we're going to permit an option for parents that is not what the state department is recommending so um it does have relevancy to our planning i just want to i just came in yesterday afternoon let you know that dr sal i have a question kind of semi-related to that yeah um two two actually two questions number one there's no distance learning option for next year we're now we don't have to offer that that's we got that confirmation yesterday yeah that's what it is and our target is five days a week for all kids right for next year

116for next year yeah um yes everything is for next year is the state going to allow us to you went you went you went mute i can't read your lips you can put it in the chat joe xfinity did their best to lock me up um is dl going to be an option in lieu of snow days in the future one of the bullets that they had like five bullets uh something like um the state department realizes the value of the and would like to utilize this in different circumstances and they listed five one of them joe did have a comment about when there's a clement weather um what extended time they would offer it on a limited basis we don't know that but they did indicate that okay thank you so uh we if

117there's i don't know if there's any more questions but we have a pretty heavy agenda the next one to talk about if we could move forward which kind of gets to some of joe's points okay are we ready okay okay so um the um elementary and secondary emergency relief fund so2 and i'm going to come back around but [Music] courtney has coordinated our effort and did filed the application to the state last monday of the 11 plus million dollars um and um i guess we'll be waiting for feedback um because as i've told everybody that's the money yeah they said it's yours dan barry but it doesn't come it comes with an application uh and so um we've taken as we've talked about with you guys uh areas that were in the operation budget when

118we cut it back to see where it made sense and she was been able to braid those funds in there along with alliance money now it doesn't account for the extra money we just talked about um the five million dollars in ecs because we don't know about that we still don't know what it means about alliance but we did submit uh she did courtney did submit the s of funds last week um and uh we'll be getting some feedback uh on that the um at this point um we we expect that they'll approve it but they may ask us for do limes some modifications um the next item 2122. sit back and think about this one through our goal next year and we have been planning for all students returning at each of our building

119for a full day five days a week back to some normalcy um over the break in the past while we've been working with the state legislators we've been working with um the um the units department at the state at the state level because we looked at modules um we uh been working with and we hired the architect to do assessments real-time assessments so that we had good data because my goal was to bring it here tonight so that you could hear it and hopefully we'll be able to alert parents into what we're doing the city has been part of going out and looking at sites with us we have um kevin has a presentation he's been shepherding this project through uh we've been measuring and re-measuring you know um measured twice and cut once we've

120been doing that we found some discrepancies so there's um there's a quite a bit of work here a lot of um support from um from the town a lot of support from our principals who have been um just um a tremendous group giving us feedback uh going through here so kevin i don't want to spend time doing i think you could talk us through and leave it open for the board for questions okay kevin are you there i am i just had to unmute myself thanks dr style so there are um two slides that courtney was going to open with to address on the application uh so that the board and the community can see where the money has been allocated and how that those monies were um submitted we could do that yeah so

121courtney go ahead okay thanks oh it's on um kevin if you're what's up it's up there recording okay carrie you can put the presentation back up there we go there it is go ahead courtney we just thought we'd combine it into one i'll be brief because i know this is a long a long meeting tonight um okay gary could go to the next oh no i don't see the um there we go okay so this is just a reminder about the sr one two and three funds so what i was going to talk about briefly is sr2 so we know that one is the cares act funds that we mostly spent down this year the sr2 is as dr sal mentions about 11.2 million and we just submitted the application and then on the third

122just briefly i'll tell you the sr3 what the american rescue plan funding that was um signed into law in march it was a 1.1 billion came to connecticut of which 995 million is to the leas which of which will be a recipient of and it was provided by the governor to the ga general assembly the plan ah two days ago so we should be hearing back soon and that's that third line for the additional uh 25.17 projected uh million and when kevin goes into the next few slides about the reopening plan and talks about the money it's mingling all of these funds so as we get more refined in the sr3 plan we look forward to talking to the board about you know the breakout that's related to reopening and then the other buckets and

123okay you can go to the next slide care i'll be quick and this is just a summary high high level summary of the esser to grant that we just submitted which is um you know the four categories learning loss mitigation family and community engagement school safety and social emotional supports and then technology supports so you can see how this breaks out we have additional detail we look forward to sharing with the board in the near future once our grant is approved but that's for salary and benefits mainly a lot of that salary benefits and learning loss mitigation is for teachers and then to enable us to expand safely as kevin's going to talk about in the reopening plan as well as some curriculum supplies and social emotional training the family and community engagement is for

124some family liaison support as well as um supporting families through uh family visit stipends um communication and parent support tools and then there's a big amount in the school safety and social emotional that's for our counselors as you remember we shifted about 3.5 million from our original board request into sr2 so that accounts for a portion of that and then also some facility lease costs that um kevin's going to go into related to some needs to expand um our space and technology supports so any well we'll be talking to you in further detail just wanted to give you a really broad overview again it was submitted on monday so we look forward to hearing back from the state about the application thanks kevin thanks courtney okay we're ready for the next like hour thank you

125so so one let let me just start out by saying i i just want to acknowledge all of the work that has been done by the cabinet on this and so um one everyone on this call in the cabinet uh principals around the district extended cabinet just want to say kudos to carawanda who's been really helping us organize the planning around this and i mention the entire cabinet because the the four phases that are on the screen right now uh quite frankly we have gone through this multiple times in the last school year and the one element that has been missing from this is the budgeting and you'll you'll you'll understand what i like what i'm talking about when we talk about the impact from this planning and so let me just start from left

126to right one as part of this plan and to get all of our kids back to in-person learning i know i i know this is let me just first start out by saying this has been a priority for uh doctor style from the beginning you know it's it's been a struggle and you'll understand uh the logistics and the challenges of trying to make this happen district-wide um in subsequent slides so first as a district we reviewed um our space capacity at every school every classroom in the district uh we have done this several times now uh through various you know variant points when we've been trying to re-enter schools so this is nothing new for us and then uh the next step where it says what if analyze we have reevaluated on our space capacity

127um given a new cdc recommended three-foot social distancing guidelines and so with that new information needless to say um that provided you know some additional capacity for us and opportunity for us as a district um as as many of us know um the district has been afforded or we're anticipating being afforded um essa 2 what we're calling asset 2 and s3 funds and we've already planned and quite frankly we've already playing essa 2 and s3 monies and looking to leverage those funds what the priority being to reopen our school safely for all of our students and staff but with with that budgeting of course we've been also assessing a financial and academic impact um as courtney had outlined earlier you know the the state outlined four priorities for the district um to to use these

128funds um when we certainly been assessing all of those realities as part of this planning and forecasting and then last but not least and that brings us here this evening we want to provide an update for the board our staff who was anxiously awaiting i'm sure uh and then of course also the community we know our parents and families and students have been anxiously awaiting uh what the return is going to look like indeed if we are returning i know dr sal has already mentioned this unequivocally we will be back in our buildings in september fully so here are some of the problems and challenges that have been in front of us i don't think this is going to come as a surprise to anyone who's watching this evening and that is space right and

129so with the social distancing guidelines in place it limits our classroom capacity um six to 12 schools and so our secondary schools did not have the space specif particularly to house students in the cafeteria and so i know our families you know their preference would be that their high school students their high school children can be in school all day for a full day and our challenge continues we continue to maintain that we can't have the students in the cafeteria and and feed them safely with the social system and guide social distancing guidelines in place additionally at our k5 schools we do not have enough teaching sections to accommodate the enrollment guidelines and so if we're going to have social distancing guidelines we just don't have enough classrooms to address and as this community knows

130um you know we have talked about a need to expand particularly at ellsworth building at annex and so we'll have you know a little bit relief there and building out more classrooms and so we have experienced the the high enrollment in the district these last couple of years the social distancing um just exacerbates those challenges and so i'll just speak a little bit more to that and so solution is our next step and this is about an investment in facility upgrades uh purchasing furniture um leases um in the district and outside of the of the school community and then of course additional staff um and so and so just to expand upon that a little bit more uh we are looking at purchasing desks and i'm um you know there's a part of me that's

131almost uncomfortable talking about the type of desk that we have to order because i'm thinking about the slide that cara showed which she talked about more traditional desks in classrooms and so we will there's a need for us as a district to purchase desks that are no more than 28 inches wide so that we can get our kids back in school safely now the the benefit is that as a district we will have an upgrade in our school furniture these same desks can be put together to you know promote cooperative learning and grouper and group activities so those are good things for sure but it is a significant investment see that on the next slide um you know what we are estimating um this the furniture investment to be but just to give the board

132and the community uh even greater a greater idea of what this can look like our middle schools and our high school will need desk instead of cafeteria tables um in which all of our all of our socially distanced and we will have student desk in our cafeterias in order to spread our students out into and to be able to realize the capacity numbers um outweigh the star uh and so and so that's one um two at the high school specifically possibly even one of our middle schools uh we're looking at tent leases um i did say tent leases leasing tents um so like the same type of tents that you would see at banquets etc um those type of tents some of them closed some of them open but we're looking at tents leasing tents

133um so that for the overflow from our cafeteria particularly at the high school um with the social discipline guidelines in place we can only get 300 to 350 students in the cafeteria we are exploring on the idea of using em spaces um in the school and then also looking at having courtyard and and also um evaluating the idea of also having tents in the tennis courts uh we need to work with the city to just make sure we can do that safely so we don't damage uh damage the courts themselves um but we've already um get we're looking for some concrete um estimates from the tip company to see if they can put a floor down um that is safe enough not to ask so not to damage the tennis courts additionally we also would

134like to uh we want to continue to maintain the lease that we have at sacred heart for overflow um and also to maintain um some of our classes that we have there now but we're also looking to sign a lease agreement with st joseph school in brookfield connecticut and i'll certainly talk about that a little bit more because i'm sure that got a lot of people's attention activity um and so staffing leasing facility upgrades uh we will need to commit to if we're going to commit to reopen schools which we are um it's going to require additional staff furniture lease agreements etc and so we are recommending that we move kindergarten classes next year incoming kindergarten classes be moved from south street elementary school stadley rough elementary school and ellsworth elementary school and those classrooms

135which would add up to 11 11 sections in total be reassigned to brookfield danbury high school will look to switch to an eight period day and add um and add positions to maximize classroom capacity while addressing graduation requirements and just kind of overall impact if we're going to safely over to safely reopen our schools in the fall the district will place kindergarten certified staff at the brookfield site because it will be a one grade a single grade focus site for the district for these three schools i'll go into a little bit more detail on why these schools have been chosen we will also need to commit to this lease to accommodate at least to accommodate 200 plus students and then the staff that's going that that will be there to help um teach the kids

136and and then we will need um to purchase furniture about the cafeterias and classrooms k-12 and tents for cafeteria overflow and uh carrick can you go to the next slide please so just some rough numbers for the board in the community estimates and so for staffing and supplies we are looking at hiring 15 teachers at the high school level and asking two existing staff members to teach an additional class to address graduation requirements we will need to hire 20 teachers for our elementary schools including special education including two special education i'm sorry that 22 teachers include special education and esl teachers two pps staff for the site as well and whatever other support staff we might need for the brookfield expansion and then of course we'll need to outfit all those classrooms in brookfield and

137any additional classes we'll be adding on in the district which again i'll speak to a little bit further on in supplies and additional classrooms added district-wide um at an estimated cost of 3.4 million dollars gleason furniture um and so least intense for the high school and the middle school to address safety um while maintaining social distance and purchasing desk at the elementary and secondary schools to accommodate social distance and committing to the lease will come to an estimated 1.8 and a half million dollars last but not least transportation um we it looked it appears we will need at least 10 additional buses for the fall in which five will be needed just for the brookfield expansion so students won't have to be on those rides too long and then five additional buses will also be

138needed for overall growth in the district these costs are based on current pricing from from the transportation authority um this this is this comes at a total cost of um five million nine hundred thousand and eighty three dollars um and and so i i just wanna go back to um in summary and i i want to revisit why we've identified south street ellsworth and stadly rough as schools to move those kindergarten sites to brookfield and then why kindergarten um specifically so so one kindergarten specifically one um i think as a as a district um and there's a many different ways we could certainly could have approached this but we were having a hard time with the idea of pulling students from a grade where they were moving up or graduating from one of our elementary

139schools we were having a hard time trying to come up with a with a protocol to pull any other grades uh from a school and why they would be pulled um dr sal had mentioned this previously in previous meetings um i the board i think um is aware that we have sister school arrangements uh for enrollment and registration purposes and so just for clarification a sister school arrangement is for an exam for example um ellsworth and great plain are two sister schools in our district and so if ellsworth is experiencing high enrollment in a certain grade that that student that student in that family once we have exhausted all of the classrooms classroom spaces at ellsworth and if their space at great plain uh we will then transfer those students or that student that family

140to great plain those sister school arranges exist all throughout our elementary schools and so we will continue to use um exercise those arrangements to handle enrollment and enrollment increases throughout the district what some also an additional clarification on the elementary editions uh we don't need to hire new teachers for the brookfield expansion we need to hire 16 additional teachers that will be pop that that will backfill certain spaces throughout the district so for example um this board is aware that we open up granville the granville academy this year for our pre-k program those those classes previously were in great plain and haze town uh the district is looking to backfill those those classrooms with additional sections uh so we have the space um and so we'll be looking to uh bring on four sections in

141those two sections at each school next year kindergarten is one of them grade two is another grade and then um in stephanie's school i'm sorry at hayes town elementary school uh we'll bring in i believe it's grade two and grade four as well and so uh throughout the rest of the elementary schools we have 12 more schools i'm sorry 12 more ftes or teachers that will be looking to hire those those classrooms will be in um in in shelter rock we will be adding an additional section south street will be adding one section we will be adding two sections at stably rough uh we'll be adding a section at park avenue we'll be adding a section um at i've already mentioned haze time we'll be adding a section at uh pembroke uh we'll be adding

142two sections that great playing two sections at hayes town um i may be missing one uh but the the the point being we will be adding sections at multiple sites throughout the district and elementary schools in addition to moving these 11 sections out of our district so that ellsworth which is already overcrowded to make sure that they can number one have space for their support staff because we were um we were maximizing in our attempt to maximize every space in that school uh we found when we were done with the exercise of what the reopening look would look like in the fall we realized at that point we did not have space for our support staff and we also we also did not have enough space to safely have our kids in the cafeteria on

143a daily basis for those of you who have been through ellsworth elementary school it happens to be one of our smaller cafeterias in the district we were also evaluating the idea of having a tent outside of ellsworth and then at that point just felt like it just was no longer appropriate to consider that as an option ellsworth would have been the only elementary school that would have needed a tent outside of its building to have kids uh safely safely social distance so so so first ellsworth was one of our first schools again as everyone on the board is aware we are looking at breaking ground on the annex building very soon and we're hoping that is going to be opened up in the in the fall of next year um so that we we thought

144number one it was also made sense to move this to move our kindergarten sections across town and then they would return and come back into the new building which is actually being outfitted for kindergarten classrooms south street uh we we this year um is the first year we have gone to three sections in every great since i've been here three sections in every grade level at south street um one of the classrooms and and so the principal at south street had four sections and two of her grades um we reduced that this going into this school year one of those classrooms was actually turned into a nurse's office because we needed a nurse's office for our um previously the nurse's office that was in the principal's office and with with covid and and trying to

145make sure we can have a safe space for kids we had to make sure the nurse's office was in a separate space it's actually appropriate space that it's in but it also took up a classroom and so that was you know one of one of the two reasons why we had to reduce the sections of the school there's still once there's still one classroom available at the building and so we will be looking to take advantage of that one um however with that said when going through the exercise of trying to open up south street for next year again we notice um and at that school they're already challenged with space for support staff challenged with space for their cafeteria they too are one of the smallest cafeterias in the district um so this is

146one this is again another reason why south street was identified as a school that was a logic that was logically to be moved to the st joseph brookfield site last but not least sadly rough um it's sadly interestingly enough number one it's one of our bigger elementary schools in the district but what we found throughout you know many walkthroughs in the building is that the classrooms are just much like ellsworth oddly shaped um and a lot of our classrooms could not accommodate the 22 with social distancing or even 20 with social distancing in a number of these grade levels and so we were again we went through the exercise with the principal looking at what it would look like to open up the building in the fall we found ourselves um looking at uh taking

147over this space in the in the in in the library media space which is actually very big um he'll be able to accommodate many of his uh support staff but then we also found like the other schools we would have needed to take his music classroom his art classroom and other in other available spaces um to not only add the two sections that he he still needs um but and then we would have been compromising space for his specials and as dr sal has mentioned a number of times we want to try to get back to as normal school as possible and we after reevaluating um his the position at stanley rough we thought it was best to also move his sections onto brookfield elementary school um it also works out geographically of the three

148schools stanley rough happens to be the closest ones to brookfield the other ones are not so conveniently located to brookfield but it does help release some of the challenges that we have with space at south street and in ellsworth specifically kevin uh one thing too for the board um maybe i didn't say that this is a full day of school um if particularly the secondary with the challenges for the cafeteria and spaces at the high school also just um it would be 13 classes at uh saint joe's is that correct or 12. um yes that's it it would actually be 11 um it could it could accommodate up to 13 but we thought it was best to stay around 11 so we could have dedicated spaces for support staff there um and also our specials

149as well so the board um every school will be effect impacted um with um granville opening even though it opened late it was a january thereabouts for next year where it's going to create space so that we could create the assist to school arrangement in here which the demographer just alerted us to expecting about a thousand kindergartens so not only do we you know have the space issue we have the increase particularly at the kindergarten so all of this hopefully will be able to accommodate um our needs we looked at the modules didn't work out for us even though we were able to get them at a school district that um had some special circumstances and had some least um they would be remotely located and not attached to buildings we thought there was some

150security issues so this is the plan for the board to consider to really be able to bring back youngsters and this is making the assumption that the social distancing is part of our expectations when we return we keep asking if there's going to be some variances on that and i what i'm told quite honestly is that until the cdc makes some decisions you can expect to have these three free guidelines even with the vaccination particularly at the secondary level k5 i think um will be with us only because of the vaccination part but um so that's making all these assumptions i don't understand i don't know how we could plan and say to the board and to the community well we'll just wait until august that's that's a ridiculous statement um you know i i

151test uh positive for stupidity if i did that um so that's why you have what you have in front of you which is a pretty um pretty aggressive plan in a lot of ways we um had some real challenges about who would go to saint joe's or the new site um if it was a k5 building how do you make choices about you got families different grade levels kids have been in we thought kindergarten although um they're going to have to move out of danbury they haven't been in the school system there shouldn't be a connection unless there's siblings out but obviously but we thought that would be the least destructive to our families and kids um i'm saying to folks with the enrollment the way it's going um you may need these buildings for

152more than one year but right now kevin has been working with saint joe's with a one year lease and we have one year left on sacred heart at this point yeah don't die yes so dr south i can just also say um to the board and for the community we did speak to the transportation department as enrolled as uh registrations continue to come in we're trying to get an handle on where our families live and assess what the drive would look like uh for our families um to date um we're anticipating number one it definitely will not be as and i don't this is i don't want to say anything bad about magnet school but we do not anticipate it will be as long a ride for as our magnet school because we have kind

153of a controlled it more of a controlled area to pull from um sta is anticipating as of right now you know based on the the the parameters that we provided them 25 to 30 minute ride for our students that's what they are estimating that right to be but we will have more specifics for them uh we just ran a report for the initial first wave of kindergarten applica registrations that have come in and we've shared those addresses with them and we'll continue to share that with them so we can have um some kind of information for our families in real time so they can understand the impact just also wanted to be clear we'll also be looking to have elp services um in the am npm at the brookfield site for our families understand that

154there might be a need for child care there as well and so the same services that we would be providing in danbury would certainly happen in brookfield as well i think at that point look i mean um we're still working on this obviously um you know the tents the uh bus routes and everything but at least you got the whole gestalt about what we're thinking um at this point so thanks kevin and thanks team for putting it together so any questions and comments madam chair i have a question that's appropriate yes um before you go uh mr silva i just like to make a comment and and i i certainly appreciate all the work that has been going into this uh i'm thinking as a board and it's 9 20 at night and once you

155pour the rest of the information that you need to pour into this we could sit down as a board and have a workshop on this because i'm quite sure there's questions that's going to be longer than one or two a quick second that as a board workshop we can have a much better discussion about this uh you know i i just don't know how anybody else feel but go ahead mr just silver uh i'm happy to wait for a board workshop for most of them i got one quick one then um all of it correct me if i'm wrong this is this planning is what we need to do in order to come back full time five days a week and comply with distancing yeah if the cdc removes the distancing requirement in july or

156in august can we undo this so joe thanks thanks for that question one um i i don't know if dan is still on i i just want to applaud him for accepting this assignment and is assuming this additional task if you will so we have acts we we have axe dan um any commitment in our schedule that we've made in terms of overages or additional classes that teachers might be teaching um to to set up the schedule in a way so at the halfway point in the school year we can mitigate you know any additional investments that we've made and pivot at the middle of the year and come out of that joe more specifically to your question about those other things in terms of the lease the commitments to the staff etc i do

157not anticipate if we were to hear from the cdc in late july or august quite frankly if we hear in late june it might be too late for us because we hope to make our hires we hope to have our lease agreements taken care of um and for year one uh quite frankly there's a i think there's a silver lining in this we can cut into class size significantly across our k5 classrooms this possibly we can do that also at the high school um it's not ideal the last thing that i i'd want to us to spend our money on are tents outside and so if you know if this we don't have to continue leasing tents and our kids can go in the cafeteria i think that is something certainly we can undo uh

158but i i think there are some benefits to having extra teachers in the system cutting into class size and it's an opportunity for us to mitigate some of the learning challenges that we know our kids are going to have um it's and they'll get more one-on-one attention um so for year one we might be locked in yes okay that's fine but not everything okay perfect good question if i may yes um kevin because i don't know any better is there any social emotional impact on a kindergarten aged child being on a bus for an hour a day um well there's always could be that possibility they're so energetic uh i think it goes by pretty fast but now we're hoping it's not going to be an hour out i think what i heard the initial

159model was a half hour is that correct yeah so so mr russo we we are intense we we we did evaluate this with um an initial evaluation with the sta um and they they are projecting a 25 to 30 minute ride um and so you know one of the reasons why we have five buses for these three schools is to make sure our kids are not on the road for you know more 30 40 50 minutes um trying to get to the building um but what we also heard in our feedback is because it's not a true magnet school where they have to drive all over the city to pick up students it's actually not going to be as long as the ais ride is currently um so it's it will not be the longest

160ride for our students in district for sure thank you um gladys i think if the board's gonna have a workshop um you know i think the community is waiting for um for something and um you know i i think i'll make the statement anywhere we're going to come back five days a week the money in the essa uh courtney has been mindful of that and has put it to the side she's ordered the ten buses the staffing king kevin articulated these are things that this district should have had to begin with so um at some point if this workshop could be earlier rather than later so that we could get information out to our parents it really is important i'm glad this is on tv tonight at least we can get the initial um you

161know information out for folks what we're doing okay thank you dr unless there's any board members that have any other questions or you know what are you feeling about a workshop you know if you guys yeah can i be brief i think a workshop is excellent i have a few questions but um just the most pressing is for me is there's another surrounding district who um is going back full time five days a week you know um very soon um and a letter went out to parents i believe saying that the three feet social distancing recommendation not requirement may not be fulfilled in some classroom so i just i don't understand how how they can do that and also it's such a shame that we can't use utilize the distance learning in any way shape

162or form when for some is working so well and um you know even before covid um that was a topic that came up to address the overcrowding um so those are my my really quick two cents but i would appreciate um a workshop and i'm available anytime any other comments it's not uh that would say you want to say something no i'll just work with you to get some i think you know there's some questions but the sooner we get around this right better for all of us right so thank you we'll have a side conversation too early tomorrow uh you know about the workshop and the information and how you want to get it out okay uh i'm gonna and if you're finished uh dr sale i'm gonna move on down to the agenda

163my board chairperson report's gonna be very brief uh just like for all the board members to uh look at the future meeting dates and uh there will be some extra meeting dates uh we're looking forward to working with rain associates okay and their first email to me today if they want to meet with the full board so you know it might not be at your conveyance you know uh we have to sort of work around everybody's schedule and put this in place and we know that they're here to work with us to take us through this process so uh when you get the call or you get the email you know or let me know that this day does not work with you before i contact them okay thank you uh if there's any nothing

164else we are going yes i just did one that has comment i just want to make a comment um i just want to publicly apologize to courtney for what happened this evening um personally we should have you know and i'll speak to aaron about that i think talking about generality is coming to a personnel we can identify was not the right thing to do so i do probably want to apologize to her and we could have stepped in so um i just wanted her to to know that i appreciate that i want to add to that too courtney i'm very sorry that that happened and um publicly i think she should be reprimanded thank you kathy i also appreciate that uh courtney you know how we feel about you we know that you're doing a

165great job okay and one of the things that you know i that we know whether whether you might like it or not you've taken on a humanist job you know and uh at some point i think this board need to look at you know some type of an assistant to you and to help with other things and and you first focus on the budget and the money aspect of this board okay so i'm sorry that it happened this way i just it was out of it was out of the noon and it should not have happened and uh we i apologize to you okay well thank you so much um gladys and and everybody um you know this district means a lot to me and and my the integrity of our information and the people

166that we work with and and the support and relationship with erin as well so you know thank you i appreciate that and we'll just keep going forward from here thank you courtney thank you thank you uh we need we need a motion to enter into executive sessions so move madam chair i'll see you bye bye joe seconded by kate thank you all in favor hanging pointing point of inquiry madam chair are we going to have to vote on anything and if so do we have to come back into public session i don't think so oh no no okay okay so we'll be adjourning directly from executive session yes right okay i just want to make that point so the public knows we're not coming back yeah right and we've got to switch over to the

167executives they're a separate link yes there's yes yes separately that's why i asked the question okay thank you are we adjourning i think we're returning yes we're not we're not adjourning we're not adjourning we're entering going to executive sessions see everybody there