001happy tuesday to everyone i will quickly share the um [Music] agenda if i can get it up i think i can there it is yay okay and so i i was just kind of thinking i know we had i know we gave a quick debriefing at our board meeting um at the last board meeting given some feedback some of the feedback that we had heard from the various constituency groups that we met with regarding sr2 funding and then of course we had our first meeting with the plti regarding the general city operating budget and then i just wanted to find an opportunity to also talk about some groups that were still additional groups we'd still like to engage get some additional feedback from this group to see if this strategically anyone else you feel like
002we need to engage as part of this process um you know there's been a lot of um i didn't realize there was a significant delay on my side i hope you guys are hearing me in real time so um okay and then last but not least um just kind of revisit our budget timelines and see how much opportunity we still have for getting out in the community and educating the community on the budget process our our needs as a district what this means for us short term and long term and continue to plant these seeds out in the community about um you know continue to trying to drum up support for our for for our city budget so always and then of course you talk about next steps and whatever that call to action might
003look like so i but we would just start with our latest meeting first which is citywide pto last night um you know certainly there was a lot of feedback around the reopening and it was our parents first time in a formal setting where they were able to speak directly um you know with our superintendent and then of course the administ team um and so but they're also i heard a lot of support overall uh for the budget so i'm just curious how the communications committee felt about the evening one i i understood certainly the frustration regarding regarding the reopening i think that was normal and folks needed an outlet for that um but i also thought that it was interesting given the seeds we planted over the last couple of months um there appears to
004be some momentum you know regarding support for um and operating by our city budget and so i'm just curious what your thoughts were um after last night's meeting and then i'd like courtney and i to talk about my experiences with these other groups as part of the esser the esser 2 funding presentations yeah kate yeah yeah by all means rich yeah kevin cheer point i just got off a meeting since i'm the the liaison with the pembroke pto and and chrissy who's the pembroke chairperson there gave an incredible review summary of the citywide last night essentially the bulk of her summary was the reasons that it was necessary to support the administration to the board of ed's budget she has a form letter which he circulated and dr apple is going to utilize and circulate
005you know throughout the her staff and of course she's going to send it to the parents is a form letter asking the parents to support the basically quarterback budget you know as simple as as that and she also called out for other people to uh to do the same for friends in different schools if they can get that campaign working so i think your meeting with them resonated you know she didn't really talk about much of the the schools in september opening the focus of her conversation was basically supporting a budget which i was glad to hear um and so i i think you're you know based on that your presentation certainly hit home and if we can get more schools to do the same thing and we can get more principals to stand behind
006us and and you know help generate that paper uh and those letters or emails i'm sorry we're going to counsel people and i also suggested to them that if they had any organizations that felt were interested in listening to our presentation that would you know be supportive of us and would help us spread the word to to let me know and i'll let you know i said we try to engage them in a conversation and you know do a presentation or get them information so you know at least on one school it was very positive feedback you know you know i'm realistic and hopeful that the the feedback was positive on all the schools and if we can build that momentum and we can build momentum with the the teachers and other people in the
007city you know i think enough people would hear that something has to be done you know and i'm not saying and i keep repeating myself don't storm city hall but something has to be done and this is a year that we can't waffle so thank you thanks mr any other thoughts about last night specifically um i i thought it went uh went really well i know that it's um a little bit difficult um sorry it seems like i'm having a delay on my end here i apologize um i know it's been a little bit difficult in that a lot of the questions had to do with school reopening and the pressure that parents feel there so i i certainly um i certainly appreciate that challenge but i do think that you know to hear some
008of the level of interests that's there and asking questions about the budget um to hear questions to hear sort of that there you know there are people in that group who are looking to advocate for the budget actively this year that's something new that we haven't seen in years past so that's a very encouraging sign to me oh kevin we can't hear you if i can also offer um one of the parents um i thought that it's a huge favor last night i believe it was katie williams um who took the liberty to develop a feedback form a template for families to participate in so i believe they had a petition signed to support the budget that was one thing that that the community had going on where i believe she said they had over
009400 names in support of the city budget of the district budget but then secondly there were also you know opportunities for people to also sign up for a template um if they wanted to write a letter and organically kate you know i was really happy to see that that was happening because of course we can't you know write the letter for everyone um so it was really nice to see that the parents had took it upon themselves to you know put together their own call of action in support of the of the district budget so i was really happy to see that that was happening and and again i you know i i it's too bad that sal can't be here this evening to hear this because i i know it was a tough evening
010for him um but he's also you know quite frankly um provided you know given his advocacy for the budget like we've also laid the groundwork you know for the for the advocacy that has taken place in our community um and you know that the parents are behind this right now and so we continue to plant these seeds and hopefully we can get the support that we need whether that turns into something right now or later i think the important thing is you know we're educators i continue to say this so we can continue to educate the community and hopefully we can get the support amy i know you're taking notes um but did you have any thoughts on this as well last night well i you know i just was at the budget workshop okay
011can you hear me yes you're like i was at the budget workshop i was not able to go to the citywide pto when i looked today i was trying to find a place to watch it and i wasn't able to do that i don't know if it takes an extra day to get on um i looked on youtube i looked on um at our tv so i'm not sure where to find that but um i just just from hearing the comments that have been made already tonight i'm really excited because as richard i've been you know hanging with richard janelli since i got on the board and you know and that the frustration of you know trying to get the community to understand and i just i feel like something's a little it's definitely different
012this year and that's pretty amazing when you think about all the money we're getting which i shouldn't say it like that when you think about how the federal government is is you know in the and state government is supplementing us with the cares and the essers um that's just wonderful and i i think it speaks to uh yeah sal and all of you on the cabinet and then you know all of us just kind of really making this push to get the information out to the community get people interested and involved and it sounds like parents are doing that right just like you said kevin you just said so maybe you know we're we're educated to educate them and maybe we're just laying groundwork and planting seeds right now and maybe this year won't be
013the year but let's let's believe this [Laughter] that not only the city but the state realizes you know how what what a dire situation it is and how we we have to have something change something has to change in a big way yeah so totally agree and and maybe we can paraphrase for you um in case you don't get a chance to watch it the community made it very clear we need to be back in school and we totally agreed um and you know with with the federal monies and city monies that we have that will be our number one two and three priority um and the remaining priorities will follow after we get called all of our kids back to school so well that's good because at seven o'clock this morning i was taking
014a walk with a friend in another neighborhood and i ran into someone who's very vocal uh i said sure why aren't you going to run for the school board and she said no i like to just be the parent who keeps on oh great but she so anyway she was very she was very pleased she was very pleased with you know just what how much how much talk there was last night about getting back the kids back to school there was it definitely was okay can i have please and as well some feedback so um i thought the conversation was great the depth of it both groups both sides understanding um one another's perspective was um was amazing um in in the bigger picture i thought this is giving us opportunities to further um have
015monthly conversations with our families and you know that is something that we did um a couple of years ago we had saturdays with sal at the flc um that were okay it was a small group i think um doing on zoom gives us a larger possibility of families being able to be there what a great turnout last night and it was it was so and not always will we have these hot topics but um so one of the parents called today and she just wanted to really let us know that she appreciated being listened to and thought that there was opportunity more opportunities some of the feedback on um i see on our agenda here is the play group families we had a play group where we had eight families on saturday rsvp and we
016had 18 or 19 families show up on saturday morning and one of the dads had been at one of the um esser workshops and he said and he's got three children in the district he said this is the first time i really felt like my opinion was that um validated um and listened to um and so he's you know psyched to have other opportunities um to be able to talk with us so um you know i think when we think you know a little long-term more long-term um you know this is something we need to build in in having these um uh opportunities to talk maybe not always hot around esther money or budget but you know maybe you know we we go into some curriculum um work and more work around the academy and
017space issues and things like that right well we have a platform yes yes yeah i absolutely add too i really just look forward to all these opportunities to be in the community even though it wasn't physically in the community it was so good for me to be able to hear directly from people as someone who was new and newish when kovitz started and we we went remote um so i was i was so appreciative that this group put together with kevin and anne and with your support from the board all the all the outreach to the community that that happened and in spite of the disappointing city outcome with the first initial mayor's proposed budget i still feel really optimistic personally um because of all of the commitment that i was seeing from the community
018and from families to getting a deeper understanding of you know what what's driving the underfunding in the city and what's driving you know the future of what we're looking at wanting for the city to educate our kids so it was exciting for me so kate if it's if it's okay um because i know some some people on this call were not part of the uh the nea meetings and the student meetings and the play group with the families so we'll we'll kind of summarize quickly i know i had referenced these things in our last board meeting um one the plti group um i really feel like we need to continue to find ways to leverage this group because i mean they're they're a powerhouse uh they're they're informed um they want to be involved in
019and much like our city-wide pto group and they are not the same faces um i feel like we need to find ways to get in front of this group more often if there's anything that we can do as a school community to help them i think it's in our best interest uh because i think they're they're going to be supporters of us um and we you know we we didn't have a lot on the call that day but as everyone on this call knows there's an alumni plti alumni um and so katherine tucker i i believe is a great partner um you know we had an opportunity to review that was our first opportunity to review the city um our city asked and the opera regular operating budget um but you know we it's almost
020we really can't present one without also talking about the sr2 funds so we talked about the difference between the two we talked about the priorities associated with esser2 we talked about our original ask not with any great detail because we wanted to make sure we got in front of the board first but in broad strokes we told them that we initially asked the city for 13 million dollars and that number was going to be reduced because now essential had some eligible areas that could be moved over um you know that wasn't those those are that opportunity was not afforded to us when we originally presented um our ass to the city um and then after that again we had made some adjustments um you know we had a very interested group they had an opportunity
021to ask a lot of questions um and it felt really good about the potential there um and i feel like if we can find more opportunities to engage them i think i feel like that group will get bigger and bigger um you know it was you know just one of many nights we could probably speak to them um again there was only about 10 people there that night but i think of more promotion and more opportunity to engage i think quite frankly we would have more folks um part of those sessions so i just we had a really good meeting um you know i don't know what courtney and anne's thoughts are i thought it was a really good start there were a lot of questions which was great you know i think there's a
022lot of like reading the room interest in my opinion um which i really like to see so that was encouraging and in the nea and the feedback from the students um you know we we did hear some recommendations that were a little different from uh some recommendations that we had talked about with our administrators and within the cabinet um and so those things were you know all that kind of feedback is always important i believe i had mentioned in the meeting the students have talked about you know hoping that the district would would find ways to um [Music] upgrade its infrastructure in the schools to make sure remote learning at home is up to par now of course if we don't if we're not required to deliver remote learning in the fall that now you
023know it may not have the same type of urgency but you know it was one of the things mentioned um students also talked about uh finding online and i love the fact that they focused on these things they talked about providing um online um hands-on engagement strategies so some of some of the kids talked about stem in particular and they said listen if we can't be in the classroom and have our um our science labs in person then we want to make sure we have science labs remotely and remotely and virtual because we want to still have those experiences um and then you know the majority of the students talked about it a need and a desire to have um and these are my words not theirs but restorative kind of circle conversations with their
024teachers and their peers because they felt like they needed time to get to know their teachers and their peers um and so it was you know it was really cool to hear the students ask for some type of formal way to engage in a dialogue that talked about um social issues that talked about things that were going on in the community um and it was you know it was it was nice to see them articulate these needs and these wants and desires and i think it fit nicely under our area under social emotional support because that's essentially what they were asking for um and so it was good it was nice to hear that they were asking for things that we were looking to focus on um and i don't know if you're there still
025there but i'll i'll just jump to parent meetings english and spanish um and so in the english meeting you know one of the things that certainly resonated me that resonated with me that may have been different from other meetings um parents had talked about enrichment opportunities for the kids they talked about s.a.t prep that you know they talked about other enrichment opportunities outside of the um opportunities to you know regarding retention and remediation uh they also wanted opportunities for enrichment um and then and then one of the things that resonated with me in the spanish group uh spanish-speaking uh parent group um you know families were asking for extracurricular activities as they also did an english one um but they talked about in the spanish group and english group talked about how it's an opportunity
026to address the social emotional support that's needed and so kids can answer interact with their peers you know could we have extracurricular activities and k5 um and six eight you know they're already provided at 9 12 but we could we also find opportunities to do that in k568 so that kids can interact with their peers um you know which again i thought it was a cool ask for parents um you know as we try to get back to some sense of normalcy and in courtney i don't know if you guys remember anything specifically from those meetings you want to highlight i will yeah go ahead no no no courtney go go well just because it's new to me so um i really really appreciate it in both groups the english and spanish-speaking um the parent
027groups um the family engagement piece so what was really interesting was they had even like thought through ideas about how it could happen and things that anne's kind of started maybe needs just additional support so little investments that go a huge way is what i heard back and i knew ann had been doing this a lot throughout our remote learning but really engaging the parents to teach them about the technology to support their kids but not just that they were talking about like curricular pieces so they talked about the new math which is now not new anymore but like teaching parents the way that they didn't learn math but through little they have recommendations for like asynchronous videos for grades you know that that wouldn't be a huge investment in time for us because and
028live sessions too you know but they had specific suggestions for like engaging parents to be able to teach their kids at home so even in a not remote world it really exposed those things that we knew and probably karen knew and and knew but um in a way that they articulated saying like let's build on this you know you know when we return to school fall like parents can remain engaged in that way with teaching their kids if we teach them about the technology and or the curriculum in an engaging way so i really liked hearing that yeah absolutely coordinated and the sense of ownership that our families have for our schools and for the curriculum and for their love of the schools came through very very clearly um and when they started to talk
029about um at moore street their theater arts program which has been uh one of their best programs that we've actually run through our family resource center there with the help of the the principal and the support of the teachers um the parents really advocated for new curtains and i know that's that i know you're gonna mention that i'm just i'm gonna mute myself it was just it was so great because it really showed that sense of ownership about their school in saying that we can do these wonderful programs but if we could just get this one thing fixed it would be a hundred percent perfect force and so um yeah that that really hit home there was definitely a sense of pride in those moments and you're absolutely right um and just for the record
030i was in full support of new curtains but i did not promise we would deliver on a new curtains right um gosh it would have been nice too because they were definitely prideful yeah so so i know we had also talked about i'm sorry i just want to summarize those areas i one you know this is a condition of the grant that we have to submit in a couple of weeks um it was it was a condition of the grant to engage community groups and we felt like you know we wanted to make sure we did our due diligence uh but they also think we have found some good will in the community and this will continue to help us with the support that we need for our overall operating budget we did explain as
031when talking about the essa funds what's eligible for you know that we don't want to build in reoccurring costs into the plan and that's how it's differentiated from our um danbury education budget um and and why there's still an ask from the city um at the same time while we will be using these monies to address these initiatives and the remediation that's needed um to help us recover from um recover from um overpandemic um and i think folks understood that um and and i i think there's a general understanding after leaving these groups you know this is this is insurance money you know we're getting our insurance check and we're going to begin to address um the damage that's been done um and and they know that they they can count on us uh to
032to make sure those monies are redeployed in the right way and we you know we provided that those guidelines that the that the government is expecting us to spend them um and how their feedback you know potentially can inform those decisions so i i feel like when we go back and we continue to talk about the city budget um we have folks that we can continue to turn to and hopefully leverage and to support for our city budget but and i know we had talked about a couple of meetings ago some additional groups we would like to engage and um so i added those in number three i just want to get your feedback about c in particular because i know we had i know we've visited them a couple of times and um just
033wanted to see if that was also still reality yes so um i've reached out to both of those groups um a and c uh naacp and the brazilian community uh the emanuel church on main street to bring them together and the dominican club i've had conversations with elvis nuvos and he's bringing it to his board to date that's awesome those will be moving forward i think once we have um some better information following tonight's meeting of city council then we'll be able to for format a plan of um or an action plan of how we want to meet with those groups and what's the message that we're sending okay um so i had talked to kate earlier this afternoon um and i i think for a moment i had talked to kate about you know
034that there there was a nice moment um you know when the parents had said hey this is what we want you to do is this is what you can do as next steps and um so going to these the nwc meeting dominican club meeting brazilian community meeting um i don't know if that organic moment you know that moment is going to happen organically and i'm meeting with them next week and so i'm just wondering if this group may have have any thoughts you know perhaps there's a point person for each of these groups that we can help them with or maybe connect with someone from citywide pto just if they're not aware they can know what's out in their community out there in the community to you know further support this um certainly all three
035of these groups i'm sure are more than capable of putting together their own their own materials but just wondering about what you guys thought about strategy or how to approach them or or maybe we don't at all because it's not our place i don't know particularly courtney and kara knight's not our place well i think one of the things that we've talked about um and you know i there are all different ways of approaching how to inform people and keep them informed and communicating and i think the communication is a big piece of this kevin and i have talked about that quite a bit um you know it would probably be helpful helpful for us to be able to give people a sense of what's going to happen if this funding does not come through
036um you know here are the different scenarios we're going to face if we get x number of dollars you know or if if this is what you know that the city is willing to give us this cycle here's what that means for you know certain programs that that you know i don't know if that's going to be you know a sports program or if it's going to be a music program if it's going to be you know the number of kids in the classroom or how it might impact our ability to come back you know into the buildings or you know those kind of things just give people a sense of what is on the line because it's it's a different conversation than the one that we've been having which is here's what we'd like
037to do for you here's what we'd like to do for our students and our schools um this is a conversation that says this is what we are you know this is what we're going to be stuck doing you've been hanging with mr janely too long you sounded like he's he's smart he's right about that he's absolutely smart on that i mean you know i think um part of this is just kind of keeping that line of communication open and and just letting them know like you know because because i think the other piece of this is also and we've talked about this a little bit is here's the timeline for the budget i think part of this is not only education on what we want to do for the schools i think it's also education
038about how that budget timeline works um you know so that people sort of know where their opportunities are yeah and i think i'm sorry katie i'm i'm done obviously i agree with you and some of the things we should look to do is i think is on behalf of the board and just you know this is something for mrs cooper to consider maybe have an op-ed written it as much as and then you put it in the news times and maybe put it in the hartford card or whatever if we can solicit the the the papers up there to to write it um is to have something written in terms of what our plight is you know whether we take the the doomsday approach or whether we sell the sizzle in terms of the the
039hottest thing we've got now is the concept of the academy i mean that is hot and if we can engage momentum enthusiast enthusiasm on that particularly not only from the the the parents but from a business community i think that will aid our support and with that being said maybe we should consider making a presentation to the the chamber if we can get in there relative not so much to the budget we can tie that in but on the academy and what that will mean to danbury into the businesses in danbury and to create the excitement there so if we do that if we do some sort of letter writing campaign so it shows that it's on behalf of the board or if we can get let's say on behalf of the board that would
040have a lot more of a meaning than you know richard writing his own letter um we can try those vehicles we we've got to be able to reach out and perhaps now in our presentations and again i often say know your audience start to say what's on the drawing board and then the impact in terms of if it's not there we've got great things in store for you you know utilizing the funding in this in this current budget phenomenal things in store for you in in terms of the concept of an academy but you know both present dangers uh in terms of being able to be supported and funded we need commitments we need help and there's something along those lines so i think our strategy now has to be an emotional appeal and important
041to what you say kate but not totally doomsdays you know like if you don't give me this this is going to happen not as black and white as that but you know to smooth it over and let them you know basically know that things are not going to be as rosy as as we'd like it to be and they're going to miss out on one of the greatest things in the northeast if they don't support you know support us and get this academy going so and then also come up with certain groups i i don't know how we could reach some sort of a student group whether it's good for us to present to them the concepts of what we're trying to do and with the understanding that maybe they would take home the information
042to their parents and spread the word there is that what you know the the district is looking to do for them and listen to their input as kevin has said they shared with you before so these are just different alternatives that we could look at the problem is as always time is short you know we're always doing things in a crisis moment and every year it's during a vacation mode and then with things that we do it's between meetings and board meetings so you know months go by we've got to accelerate our pace and and all i can say is that we can't back down this year we've got to enlist everybody's help to get our money from the state and to get our money from from the district i want to make two points
043one can we reach out to that what's he called the lobbyist that we employ up in hartford see what he's doing for us and how he could recommend that we we uh we go about this and and again put some pressure on that that ecs funding secondly what's the concept of trying to get a pr firm to do some professional writing for us you know and can we use um her name escapes me now the woman who writes for us who does the digest i forget her name robin robin yeah can we can we enlist her to do this letter writing campaign and and do it in the digest and have it sent out you know readily quickly so again we express our our concerns and needs in that it's another vehicle one of which
044we've never done before but again at this time here i'm saying we've got to think outside the box and most important is that the administration and the mayor get together and sit down and review what we had discussed last night in that budget meeting they they have to sit down and the city has to be the mayor and this finance guy david saint-hilaire has to sit down with with sal or kevin or courtney and all three of them as to understand what work we've put in to this logic and the consequences or the forecast i was like the forecasts as we've shown it and maybe they even have a budget because and i think courtney hit the net on the head today and talking to her you've got to be able to work with a
045group who is applying the revenues to you so you know where they stand you know if they're saying that their five-year forecast is making up the number 10 million dollars maximum and we're coming up with a 20 million dollar forecast in the other five years and we never meet and talk about it it seems like we're not on the same page but we've got to start acting as one unit one group in one town and then advocate as collectively as as a group as a city to push these things forward but so we can't do what we've done before what we've done before was our you know we took our tail put it between our legs you know made our changes move stuff to the alliance money and we made magic and everybody thought we
046were the greatest things since pepsi cola but you know we don't have any more room for moving money so and whatever we do we've got to do quickly i agree rich it's just it's so tough right now because there it feels like there is no time to uh you know get the get this information saturated in and also get the action that we need from supporters uh to make that all happen so i um i definitely hear that and i definitely hear your point about uh you know how we build this is like a collaborative effort because i think that is that is definitely the way to to do it my concern and you know i've expressed this before is that i i'm not sure that uh everybody um who are in these elected positions
047are coming at this the the future of the city from the same angle and and that presents a challenge um you know i don't know how how we get everybody to understand that the health of the community depends heavily on the health of our education system um but that is sort of you know the underlying to me that's the underlying message that we have to bring forward and that we have to encourage other people to participate in well that should be our primary goals kevin said we're educators and that should be our goal and objective is is to make that point and educate them to you know i think so richmond i've had a conversation about this a few times but i think to remain factual because these are these are facts you know they're
048neutral facts and then you can look at how you uh opine about them like whether or not the investment should be in student behavioral specialists or you know but but these are all facts you know these are facts and i think one of the things that resonated that rich said is we're moving towards an academy you can't rightfully open an academy in a few years and have these holes in your overall infrastructure like we're shoring up something that is building to the future like with a common set of understanding that we we've become challenged for factual reasons danbury's grown connecticut's dropped city's only given us 1.72 we're challenged in our grand list you know the the state froze the funding like a set of facts to all acknowledge and then commonly say well what does
049that mean for us and how do we do it it is hard this year that the esser came so late and we we decided to do that braving and we're doing it but we're banned we're doing it in a way that shows when it goes away what happens so i don't want to be the only one and kate doesn't want to be the only one and kevin and karen don't want to be the only one knowing that we've put this money into these grants that are going away and people are surprised everyone has to commonly own what that means because we've got to build towards it and i think that for me is the one thing i'll keep driving home because even if the city fails us this year it's a pandemic they're not raising
050taxes maybe we can budge them a little bit on the dollars they're not budging a lot that is what it is this year potentially maybe i'm wrong but and this is the time to build that momentum so we can put put in place the infrastructure for next year's budget cycle that's more transparent more participatory people understand what they're asking for they can advocate because you've caused a groundswell of people to be involved in a way that is is i'm hearing you know from colleagues at city hall they're saying we're getting ladders courtney you know we're getting we're hearing from people so they know that it's important to people and i think that that means something i don't want to just ask to say something kate yeah of course amy um so to uh the point
051that you've all been making do you uh courtney kevin cara do you have plans to do you have you met with uh david st hilaire and mayor cabo i mean is that is that in the future yeah so so amy i actually um i had talked to rich for a moment earlier today courtney and i had also talked i had reached out to sal earlier um to see if we can't get some time with um the mayor and and and the finance director dave st hilaire um i know he had previously talked to the mayor i believe last week or the week before um but to mr janelly's point it would be good to get back in front of them and kind of walk them through um you know in a more informal way exactly
052what we shared last night i'm sorry at the board meeting on monday when we walked the board through um you know that that braiding conversation and what this is going to mean for us for the next few years um and walk them through that exercise um and and make them clearly aware because i don't know if we've done this as explicitly as perhaps we need to um and sit down and walk them through that exercise and make sure we can educate them on what our needs are um and then hopefully have us have an opportunity to do something similarly with the council great just because just as courtney was saying it you've all been kind of saying the same thing you know if you can ex if the emphasis is on this infrastructure that has
053to be uh shored up before we head on to the academy which is going to be such a great thing for dan barry it's like what did we say uh we said it the other night in the northeast and it's going to put us on the map and so on and so forth i mean uh you know we're gonna be like a trailblazer i mean that should catch their attention i mean and right i mean that should hit their hearts like yeah we want this for dan barry you know i know mayor bowden was remember him saying at some meeting a couple years back like we need something we need something like to put us on the map and he was the one who kind of i just remember he was so interested he was
054excited he was right so i mean we need that go ahead is it okay to speak yeah so i i agree amy you know what one of the one of the kind of philosophies going in you know when we set up the nashville trip um was was to in the spirit of collaboration that's why i invite the the chamber of commerce president that's why we invited the mayor that's why you invited board members that's why we invited the administrators and some curriculum folks to build that this is a community effort and that's what nashville did is it it is from the ground up a community supported school system and that has um advantageous relationships with one another so you're producing a workforce for a community uh students come back and they they live and work
055in the very town that they were educated in corporations stay where they are because they have they have they have help they have dedicated help uh and and and students and and workers that come back and um who want to continue to give back to the community it creates a cycle of um supported and sustained community development and and that's you know a huge factor i think for for folks i think it's also highly advantageous talk about you know property owners um you know what if i knew if i had a young child in the school system right now and i knew that this was coming and i was trying to figure out where i want to live i'm probably gonna move into it into a town that has all these advantages for for my
056my child and my student as they graduate high school um and there's a competitive price to pay for that right sometimes when it comes to the housing market and things like that so there's the potential for this is is really um you know the return on investment has the potential to be really really fantastic and um you know we we're at a point i think where you know we've squeezed out the i everybody in our district on the back we know how to make a dollar go further than anybody else because we've had to do that and we've gained a lot of skill in doing that but we spend more time braiding and meeting about the budget and the fallout of the budget and trying to mitigate the problems that we have and which positions
057are we not going to fill this year and there's there's a collateral effect over time on that and here we are in a perfect storm and i think that we you know some of what's happening right now is a direct result of not being able to keep up with the things that we've needed to keep up with and enrollment has increased and our classrooms are you know have are crowded and here we are so um you know we just we're at that we're it's a perfect storm right now we have we're at a tipping point um we have stretched everything we could possibly stretch and you know we want one thing we've learned from the parents this year is how much they care about what's happening they've never gotten closer i think to the classroom
058than this year they've um really kind of connected with with the teachers the teachers have made comments that i've you know i've never um got to know my family so closely this year you know families are asking questions they want videos how do i help them with this topic or that topic amazing things have come out of of a difficult time and you know there's a lot to capitalize on here if we can so um you know i i agree i think the academy is one of the most exciting things to come down and i do believe it'll be a flagship like we've said that before and we just have to invest in it and no matter what we put whether it's an academy just a traditional high school there's an expense to that there's
059a cost you know we need to we need to staff it so um whether or not anybody invests or into the idea we still have a 1400 student body school facility that will need to be filled with staff and they will need resources and we have to be ready for that well i'm just going to quickly just say one more thing and see it's just like you said where is the perfect storm and um it's not it's not the same old same old city budget meeting you know i mean it's like listen guys this is something different now you know we just came through the coat we came through cobra this is what we learned we had a lot of good things happen from it we need to spend this money to remediate and get
060everybody back up up to where they're supposed to be but we have this opportunity you know what i mean why don't we take it have you have people on the council seen nashville clip you know the academy of the academy clip from nashville i don't know i mean you know just not sitting there and saying oh yeah here comes the school board oh yeah that they want to forget it you know no no this is this is different this is different this is for you guys this is not guys this is for everybody in danbury you know just what you were saying kara i don't know so this yeah this educational what this education has to continue after after budget cycle right after the budget cycle we have to keep this group motivated and moving
061forward and reaching out to different groups um i don't want to cut everybody off but i you know it's 7 25 we've got a city council meeting coming up in five minutes so i'm just wondering if there's anything anything less that anybody wants to mention and i noticed that you put an article in there about uh converting your transplants to uh to become uh more permanent danbury residents uh it's a it's an interesting article so um i definitely think if you haven't seen it you should check it out um but does anybody have anything else before we uh recall the stroke post go ahead courtney let me very quickly say that so the council has published the mayor's proposed budget he's going to present it tonight and then i believe that the time frame for
062the education committee hasn't been confirmed yet with council member levy is next tuesday the 13th i'll get confirmation maybe they'll even announce it tonight shortly because they usually do that that spring break week so everyone where our opportunity to talk to the council and then between now and may is when they adopt the budget so if you know we are so inclined and that's the protect we take that's our opportunity to influence people to possibly have the council push back to the mayor and in the interim as kevin mentioned we're looking to get a meeting with the mayor we're just checking in with sal before that council meeting if it takes place on tuesday okay go ahead can we have a meeting prior to meeting with the council so that we could brainstorm the sort
063of a concept as to how you know how you're going to make the presentation and and things like that yeah so we don't want it no friday but soon i don't want you on your holiday but you know it's yeah i'll be around so yeah anytime you guys see fit let us know we'd love to brainstorm so that we can make this so i said a broadway theatrical production so that we won't have this particular show and and then the other thing i want to mention is do we want to follow up and have somebody maybe contact robin and we can give her information and let her put it into a form or if we can get some people together that are good writers to to write something up pass it by gladys and see
064if we get it published do we want to undertake that and and move on that as in on the behalf of the board is that your thought yeah you know i want to you know would seem to be a board member at neptune and put everything on on the the the owners of the administration but i would say yes on behalf of the board perhaps kate and myself and and uh amy and other board members uh can come up with something and we'll run it by gladys and we're running by you guys and at least we can get things started that we talk about i have no problem reaching out to robin on behalf of the board and probably just need to get a couple of board members in a room with her and get
065some feedback um from you to inform her writing just make make sure it's your words and not ours um but i i i can set that up quickly just call robin tomorrow stop you find you know and get maybe yourself and care who could support the needs for the the the the items on these social emotional so she could put it down and and uh at least we'll get something started that we talked about okay okay and then from that we could snip it and perhaps do the letter writing to the newspapers and see where that goes okay and i'll speak to sal about the lobbyists that we had talked about before i had mrs uh just a quick question uh mr watson have you set a date with the naacp have that contact been
066made um i understand it is contact has been made but i don't think we have a date and you don't have a date from wcp who was the contact made for do you do it to the chairperson or the educational committee education committee and that person is who did you contact julian horn yes okay i did send an email out to her and have not heard back yet okay i'll resend it can i give her a call yes i yeah absolutely okay thank you thank you miss cooper okay no problem all right i'm gonna make a motion to adjourn um gotta hop on this other call as i'm sure all you do so all right thank you second thank you all those in favor aye all right thank you see you soon good night thank
067you so much