001uh thank you all so much for joining us tonight um i this has been the meeting that has been the most like anticipated to actually see the end specs for this amazing project and i'm super excited so i will just i'll hand the baton right off to you kara so okay well thanks everybody um you know this has been a very interesting project uh that i i think um we can all say that has kind of come at a very interesting time in danbury it's like a perfect storm of things happening right now are you okay but certainly um all good things uh to come and so i think um you know when we talk about the project it's really not just a building per se um actually let me pull up a visual and
002then we'll we'll go from there um dr cell can everybody still uh can you all see my screen did i lose you okay great no good okay um i wasn't sure what happened i kind of lost some audio for a second okay so i think it's um safe to say that this isn't really a typical building project uh where we're building a school just for enrollment um while that seems to be the driving force in danbury and i think we'll continue to be topic of conversation it certainly presented an opportunity to move forward some ideas and some vision that has been um talk at the table for quite a while now um before we get started though i do want to give a shout out now that melissa naydu is on uh and dan donovan
003i don't know if he's on here but um nights weekends before work after work um that's when this project really has been getting done um during the day we have met on a pretty regularly on wednesdays to talk with the high school team uh and a few of the other curriculum administrators to talk about how all of this affects um everything in the future you know graduation requirements um uh programming the way just the way that we operate and the the structures and systems that support teaching and learning and so we really feel strongly that this is a game changer it's not just a building it's a concept it's a way of doing school moving forward and we think it's going to present our kids with a lot of opportunity and and really just better
004informed students that go off to whatever it is that they're meant to do and so you have the document in front of you that talks a little bit about sort of the um the long-range plan the rationale obviously the enrollment again is part of this this is a part uh high school part middle school um concept and we can kind of talk about the breakdown and we talked a little bit about in the document the project rationale and again beyond enrollment that is really about career connected learning for students um so that they have an understanding and an exploration about what's out there in the world so that they're better informed it's not just about uh the common core math and literacy standards it's about where uh where are the things that i like uh
005where are my um where are my talents where are fields that i might be interested in how can i explore those uh in a way that's meaningful and in a way that's authentic and then provide opportunities so when i graduate high school there's some jobs at the other end of the line here and that you you know what you're working for and you're preparing for um in the ed specs we did put in some of the program goals i'll actually start with those i don't want to read everything to you um because it is in the document and i was thinking about doing a slideshow but it would really be exactly what's in this document so it would have been quite a long slideshow so i just i think talking about the program goes a
006little bit uh in terms of the academy piece for the high school side um i think will be important along with kind of going over the larger um the larger vision for not just this location but the broader scope for the high school side so the program goals for the academy of scientific innovation and medicine and academy of enterprise and economics those are the two names that we decided to house these pathways in the academy at this location it's really about providing students this choice and rigorous academic preparation aligned to the state standards um and and really in line with college and career education that bridges uh secondary and post-secondary opportunities and that's really key because that is what this is about um in route to that students have the opportunity to explore career related
007interests understand career trajectories i always use the cna as a very concrete example of what that what that could look like so for example students graduate at danbury high school now with a cna degree a cna certificate and a high school degree that prepares them for competitive colleges for direct entry nursing programs it prepares them to have experiences in advance to know if they even want to be in the medical field it prepares them to go off to the world of work immediately right after high school it prepares them to have a employment um during college to help them pay the bills um and just provides a host of opportunities so they're allowed to uh kids come out they're really like a triple threat they have opportunities and they can pivot in many directions and
008they're well prepared um and they should have a pretty solid foundation for post-secondary course post-secondary work um when we talk about some of the uh the academy pieces we're really talking about programs of studies for kids that are different this particular site will talk about health science and then the business career fields and the methodology that will engross students in is really about project-based learning and providing experiential opportunities all of these will be connected to our dps portion of the graduate at this particular location there's opportunities for all kinds of industry related credentials which are in the document and opportunities for leadership opportunities personal growth and and opportunities to network with with companies in our in our local area so i'm going to zoom out and give you the big picture of the entire system
009that's not just about this location and then i'll zoom back in and i will hop to my document here and if this is not large enough just let me know if i'm making you disney you could close your eyes for about 15 seconds okay okay so what we are proposing again outside of the location of the summit is that we transform our high school into the academies at denbury high school um and so all students have this opportunity it's not just about the students who get to go over to the matrix site um into this new shiny building the goal is to transform teaching and learning at the high school level for all students and that we provide choices um along the way for kids to explore to also to select to concentrate on before
010they leave denbury high school after a lot of conversation um some lengthy professional development very engaging professional development uh working with jay steele and connie mack they are the founding architects of the academies of nashville that we've talked about many times um in using department of labor statistics understanding national uh career clusters regional career clusters and then connecticut's career clusters these are the academies and the associated pathways that we have determined um that will best suit our students and will provide them with the most opportunity in the future these are not exactly a static so these should be reviewed yearly with program goals and they're monitored for viability every year moving forward so every couple of years we should do a deep dive into department of labor statistics opportunities and what's coming around the bend
011preparing kids for the future so we have six academies the academy of information technology and cyber security academy of professional public service the academy of scientific innovation and medicine academy of global enterprise and economics academy of art engineering design i get excited just saying these titles every time an academy of communications and design and the two academies that we're going to develop out first will be the ones housed at the uh at the summit location and those are the ones that are in bold here um academies uh each pathway typically will hold between 120 and 130 students um they could that could be more or less depending on the pathway but also some of the interest and demand um i'll talk a little bit about the academy of scientific innovation in medicine and uh starting
012with the biomedical pathway you have a chance opportunity hopefully to read some of the descriptions to understand what that's about this is a very hot and in demand field sports and human performance pathway some of the certifications that kids can get our physical therapy assistance which is very much in demand but also learn about the body wellness and and human performance um therapeutic health service pathways so this one here would house the cna the ems um and the uh uh ekg and phlebotomy so we have a few pathways housed in this one this will probably one of the largest pathways um in in in this particular academy medical technology and engineering this one we just recently added in to kind of balance some things out especially after having a very engaging conversation with medtronics with
013an engineer there who is connecting me with their outreach coordinators and this is a very big company and they're housed right here in connecticut and they're very excited to begin conversations in those areas and then we have the environmental and renewable energy pathway which seems a little bit like odd man out uh in the group but that's an area that we hope to grow out and and is certainly in demand in terms of renewable energy so um we are excited about that i'm getting another robo call from the denver public schools okay um and uh and and with that we also have the academy of global enterprise and economics so management and leadership pathway investment in finance that's going to be a really exciting one business and entrepreneurship another exciting and global supply chain and
014logistics which is a very fast emerging and developing field certainly not new but with the um amazon and and movement and shipping and sort of the the disruption that we've had um with the pandemic the amount of logistics uh that go into what's happening right now is is incredible and there's a lot of work and demand in that area so these two pathways i'm sorry these two academies are are what we have tagged for uh the summit site um we think there's opportunity there with not just new bonds but with the number of global companies that are located there and we think we also have because we have a fairly well developed business department already and we have some programming in the health service it's nice to have sort of a little bit of a
015foundation to take over to that site to begin with the rest of these pathways will be developing out as we move forward um these kind of demand a little bit less of in terms of equipment and build the exception of the engineering which that's for another day this is really about ed specs for the building um and we can certainly get into more conceptual conversations about this shift and what it means understanding what a ninth grade career in college academy is it's really an exploration course for this for all ninth graders before they make selections into these academies at the end of ninth grade so um i don't want to make this too much about the you know everything about the academies and the educational components behind it um we really should have like a
016workshop on it and get and kind of get down to you know details and ask questions and talk about graduation requirements and all those things that kind of will come come with the shift um this today is really about talking about the site the building um and the project that needs to get submitted to to the state um in uh glenn i'm going to be kind of calling on you for in about a second so i'm giving you giving you your 15 second warning um that will have some questions um but i also i want to talk a little bit about this piece here in terms of the the number of students that this building will service which is 1400 we've tossed around a little bit about uh you know how many students should be
017on each side we were informed that um it'll be 360 students on the on the middle school side which is very small and the balance of that would be on the high school side and so we did go back and make some changes along those lines can i ask you a question about that yes sir i'm deeply concerned about that this doesn't seem to address any of our middle school problems we have more than a 360 student middle school problem now yeah much less than two or three years when this is open much less the increased enrollment how does this address our middle school problem at all and what are we gonna do if we don't address it here we've gone to the state they've done the and and i just ordered another um uh
018another study for from our demographer there are seats empty uh at the west side and the only authorization we have for reimbursement that is for reimbursement let's let's be glad is that we could build something about 370 350 to 380 for middle school they that those are what the numbers support respectfully that makes no sense we were discussing a year ago saying i agree with that but i'm saying we uh that's what you asked where that's where the number comes we were looking at trying to put in five or six hundred there if you recall we were talking about it but uh the state uh now push back and immediately permitted for us to do at this point maybe we maybe we need to more aggressively push back against the state because this is ridiculous
019a year ago we sat in sites and facilities discussing it live at rogers park what we were going to do about a middle school and not wanting to put 300 more students at broadview or we couldn't do it at west side or couldn't do it at rogers park we didn't want 300 more kids that brought you because we already had 300 more kids we had to figure out where to put this is 360 kids two years from now maybe we need to push i don't doubt that the state said that maybe we need to push back against the state because this seems a little silly doesn't it well that's sort of with our position there are a lot of things that are on here joe um for example as we open uh you know the
020building just like we did with ais and those things can change and then we can make adjustments but the application that danbury's submitting and i'll let glenn deal with that a little bit maybe that's all they'll support in terms of reimbursements we could build what we want but the reimbursement is going to just be on you could put in 1100 high school kids and you could put in you know 300 um middle they're fine but if we if we exceed the middle school number they have a problem with the reimbursement so that's why they pushed us to this whole number queer respond any better than i can glenn are you there yes yes the um the the enrollment projections you're right i mean they take the they take the uh eight year highest and uh
021i don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment but um um you know based on what was submitted uh or what was talked about that's that's where you know you're right absolutely right dr sal is that the reimbursement is is what's key here anything above that in the eight-year projections danbury can build it the the state just won't pay for it what do we have to do to explain to the state that the eight-year projections for denver are always wrong that the eight-year projection we had going into 2019-20 not only was it wrong we were told we were getting 300 new kids we got 650 we got 65 percent of the of the 10-year and or eight-year enrollment increase in the first year six months after the demographer completed the study well
022that's why we asked the demographer to do another one and we're putting in there that um you know very possibly with the everything being lifted we may be seeing another surge and putting that in there if they make some adjustments then they then that's through our advantage but would it help would it help us to go to our delegation and attempt to have them speak to the people that do this and say guys this is dumb this doesn't solve our current problem much less our future problem all right i don't i don't know i'm asking the question i mean it's not our fault i don't know may i bring a little sunshine into this conversation sure thing antonio um so um everybody's getting excited because yeah it's my dogs so um let let's just be
023clear i wanna because we're among friends here uh let's just be clear about two things um schools are built and expanded based on uh eight-year projections uh the board of education prepares eight-year projections um the projections that were over uh exceeded were projections that we as a city as a board of education partners presented to the state so um the state doesn't do the projections uh the board of education does um and that's the reason why sal moved away from the old demographer and actually went with a company that a little more expensive but they're probably the best in the industry their eight-year projection peak florida middle school was only about 300 to 300 kids 300 to 330 kids and that's about three to four years out so that's the maximum that they ever envision
024a growth in the next eight to ten years so that is the only thing you can walk to the state with and request an expansion or a building with you can't you can't show that you only have 330 kids in your school and go build a school for seven or eight hundred kids because you're over building according to them they're not going to give you state money to deal with that so let's just be clear about two things the democrats documented was for 330 kids and i believe it's dan's on the line he probably has her right on the tip of his tongue i think it was three or four years out from now so we can't go out and build a facility for 500 children we'll never be reimbursed uh the entire project becomes
025a liability so that's the reason why we have to fit into the if you will the parameters of the demographer's projected enrollment increase which this project does very very well so um when we were talking about expanding some of our existing middle schools we always looked at expanding our existing middle schools to facilitate about 300 children because there is additional capacity uh at the west side uh uh middle school i believe it was about 80 children to go in there so we're even pushing the envelope with but i feel that by the time uh the audit comes by we'll have those children in our school system and we could easily justify building a 360 c addition to our school system to support uh you know the enrollment projections that's the way school building grants works
026if every school grant project is justified based on projections uh that i've been i'm doing this for 25 years uh and the reason for that is uh the the state will not allow you to overbuild schools and facilities when you don't really need them because it's a ton of their money that's going into doing that so um sal actually has to sign and swear uh that uh upon his kids and and his puppy and his wife that the democrats work is actually authentic it has not been modified by anybody in the board of education that it is uh supported by very good demographer work and that's what he does in the application process that we have to submit which is coming up the in september so i know that's all right antonio i understand the
027process i understand the process except the problem is the process when applied in practice is always wrong we do an addition at park avenue we're bumping up against the capacity every year we do an addition at shelter rock we have portables in the parking lot we do additions at west side we have portables at west side we build a freshman academy and it is almost probably too small the day we open it it's always wrong so the question becomes is is this not the time to go back to the state and explain to them guys our eight year projection we keep beating it we keep exceeding it maybe we need to adjust for that a b and i don't know anything about demography believe me i stayed as far away from math and science as
028humanly possible in schools why i went to law school somebody explained to me how the estimates in this document for the for the career academy are guessing nearing 3 500 students now at the high school and 4 000 students at the high school in 24 2425 that's a 500 student delta and we're only looking at 360 students in the middle school don't they go through the middle school to get to high school or am i off on that maybe maybe i'm not thinking about that the right way no i mean i'd i'd have to spend the entire night to try to explain to you the way these demographers work but yes they do i'll call it buggy on that offline they uh you're gonna have to buy me dinner for that one um they do
029uh anticipate existing movement within your grades and they anticipate a number of factors now i am going to tell you this danbury is very unique and uh in the state has identified us as a unique uh uh community uh that uh some of the trending and some of the specific uh industry accepted methods for doing demographer work doesn't always pan out for us and they recognize that that's the reason why they've given us a little leeway not a big leeway but a little leeway to go a little higher on the high school numbers okay a little higher on the middle school so the numbers we're talking to you about have already been barely i've already beat them up and i've already pushed them to the limit where they're they're not going any farther uh but
030but it is and and and look uh the the beauty of it is um some of our growth is just unexplainable uh and and and they're they're intrigued by it uh because it's and and so are the demographers they they just tend to uh to try to figure out where it's coming from how it's coming and how do you model it these demographers all sit back and say how do we model what's going on in danbury this unique community uh how do we model it you know and they can't so i here's what we have we have a nice flush a fluff factor in the demographer's work i've already pushed the state to give us some courtesy on those numbers we got to just keep our fingers crossed that we're gonna we're not gonna exceed
031these projections because joe one of the worst things for me to do is go through building like i did three three schools put three additions on by the time i get done closing the paperwork with the state we're completely over capacity you have no idea how crazy you go but the only way we can justify the reimbursement is we have to use the demographer's work the firm that sells you is the best in the state yeah okay thank you i just had a suggestion from melissa naydu that maybe we should make a demographer pathway [Laughter] i want nothing to do with that to prepare for the local demand okay um thank you yeah so and joe just to your point like i think we all initially thought too this would you know that we were
032thinking like 600 right so we totally understand that it's you know we are to antonio's point up against a different you know a different dynamic there in terms of how they how they do things versus you know maybe what our perceived need is i guess so um okay i think um what might be best to do is uh glenn i'm going to just kind of move to where the pathway labs are to start there because those are kind of the specialized areas that i think are interesting talk about the the two specialized areas um and then i'll let glenn kind of take over talking about maybe the blocking and the square foot and square footage and all how all that stuff works so i'm just gonna scoot to um what appears to be page 12
033on this document um okay so a lot of the work you know came around when we were talking about which you know which pathways are going to go over here we had to really do some quick uh research uh we had a couple of site visits uh everybody was doing homework trying to understand you know what what is the best equipment and what is the best build for these types of rooms to support uh teaching and learning in a particular pathway so there's a couple of specialized rooms here um so the bio we have a couple of labs so the biomedical pathway has its own lab 24 kids make sure they're sinks um animatage um tables are if you don't know what they are please google that look them up you'll be blown away but
034our kids will be working with these um this very incredible equipment and it is very state of the art and hopefully that gets passed in the in the package um a human and a sports and human performance lab so think about almost like a physical therapy room where kids are students are learning about um the human body and performance and some rehabilitation and um and wellness and all things related to sort of the physical therapy route therapeutic health service pathway again this was your cna ems ekg and phlebotomy's pathway again another mataj table will be included in that hopefully and that this would be a very clinical looking setting very similar to a hospital-looking setting um i have some pictures and some ideas that we uh shared with with our architect friends here who helped
035us out just to give some visuals as we were kind of talking through um some things emt pathway this is exciting um when glenn gets glenn do you want to talk about this because this is a great you're doing a great job going through this okay okay okay so at the on the ground floor on the ground floor there'll literally be an ambulance bay where you can pull an ambulance bus in um there's also some simulation equipment so it is a classroom slash um you know um not sure what the word is but literally drive up drive in and you can train right in that room um in sort of a combination combination area so um i have a you know i have a couple of pictures too i can show you at the end
036but again real life simulation equipment um and things that students do we saw this in in nashville um in some of the you know one of the schools there actually was in one of their their marketing videos it was an ambulance bus in the classroom and all the equipment that the kids were using were as if um you know they were on scene and they were running protocols and it was amazing medical technology and engineering so this sort of brings the engineering side of things to the pathway um and so we'll have a little bit more of a light construction machine shop um equipment in that room some some printing stations for design and so kids could actually students could actually design some of uh you know research problems and find solutions design and then
037and then build and test um in your environmental and renewable energy pathway this is going to be very exciting um i don't know if you notice the greenhouse in here this is sort of uh this is going to be amazing outdoor class space on top of of the summit so a learning and lecture lab there running water temperature control roof garden aquatic tables really dig into the ecology and the environment up here and do some solar work as well there'll be some storage areas up there and then there's um these are just general design criteria for all the labs that you've seen um hopefully a chance to take a look at some of the curriculum um melissa melissa nedu uh and the group just went to town on really researching and and writing um for
038these sections so i i can't thank them enough this has been um you know and and we i'd literally make phone calls on the weekends at nights and and people were were going to town writing on this i just want to make sure i can't thank the the group enough um dan donovan missy uh they do so um i'm gonna scoot down to the other labs apologize this is this is a little non-linear um so for the academy of enterprise and economics which is more of the business management leadership side those obviously don't need to look like science-y kind of labs but we want to make really simulation rooms right so very corporate looking a little bit you'll see that we have you know large lcd displays monitors and stations device charging stations investment and
039pathway design again computer stations in here as well as an led dynamic stock ticker track stock market tracking simulation um software and you know we're in the process of researching a few of those video conferencing capabilities and just the the room in the environment to to simulate um that experience for kids but then you know also the equipment to actually do real work and to understand that work um business and entrepreneurship again some of these are very similar very business-like rooms the global supply chain and logistics so that's kind of a combination of the business but understanding the mechanics behind it um and the systems that make these things work and then an opportunity to build and unmanned aerial drones and to have sort of the work and design space to do that and so
040again here's the curriculum and the sample courses um there are so i think too there are some because we have to rewrite that there is some inconsistency so if you see something we'll point it out but we have to re reduce some of these areas i just want to point that out that's all cara that's the the formatting stuff yeah but that's okay it's still a draft like we said yeah yeah um media centers capstone coral instrumentation area so um this will house a middle school they will have music programs we'll also have music programs for the high school students as well um it'll have a pretty nice gym um and there's some of the specifications there that are listed out glenn jump in anytime yeah you're almost to where i want to go okay
041and then uh beyond the gym the cafeteria is uh you know that's one area that i think we still have to do a little more work on um it's a little bit a little bit small but um and then this other stuff here gets into the main office administrative areas and all the blocking do you want me to go down to the blocking or the or the today matrix okay yeah so is as uh um karen the team identified the the pathways the types of rooms and so forth um our team uh looked at each of those uh kind of spaces and and based on the [Music] needs of of the pathway labs or other types of classrooms identified the size and capacity of each of those clubs um you know throughout the uh throughout
042the program um those are this obviously the specialty types of spaces the classrooms the the core classrooms are pretty much what you would think that they would be in in you know danbury high school or any of the middle schools um the key challenge here is obviously we were dealing with there are dealing with an existing building and and how does how does uh each of these spaces might they fit into um into the program and into into the building so um you know we we kind of uh went through that and and uh based on the square footages identified what could fit in the in the existing um building space and then what spaces would be built on the ground level as new space and in order to do that we did a a
043blocking diagram and a relationship diagram so that we could understand how things were stacked um on all the floors and uh um you know what that might look like it's very abstract you know to um to to most uh but to to an architect uh it's a great planning tool to to move forward into the next step this of course is a road map that would be given to the design architects um and uh you know this is going to be a great tool for that you know next step in the process um so go ahead then i was going to go ahead yeah no i'm you know i don't know if you want to just is the blocking diagram in here [Music] we we tried to identify all of the all of the different
044spaces in the building along with the mechanical electrical needs of the of the building um some of the furniture needs um as well and and this is again very abstract but you know there's there's two two larger wings and then the center uh swing that is smaller so identifying what uh what kinds of spaces are going into each of those wings and the adjacencies of of the spaces um and so i think you know overall it's a uh a a great document to get started with the design you know design phase so for the board you know in terms of conceptually um it's a remarkable plan but you know it does change the way we do business um your care allude to graduation requirements in the board's graduation requirements we've up to 25 now so
045you know um with the core work that has to be done we do have the option we call alternative uh ways of getting credits that we could look at where some courses can apply um to meet them but what the port board needs to we all need to keep in mind in order for given all of our youngsters an opportunity to experience these academies and their um and their particular interest they may have in the pathways they have um we as our band kids our accelerated kids our kids that are getting support um we have a seven period day we probably have to go on eighth period day at the high school to give the alternative for youngsters to be able to take core and then come experience this so you know not only are
046we building a school but we're building an education platform that is distinctly different that will require different patterns and ways that our kids will matriculate through the curriculum and there is no there is no um leaving youngsters out because this i made a choice as a ninth grade or 10th and now i can't get in there is flexibility uh in this but it is not just the building it's gonna drive um all of the work that we do i know the board members were at the meeting when melissa came that night and kind of talked that through well this is this is what's coming this is what's real and um you've heard us talk about the academies in nashville the people from nashville have been advisers on this for us uh giving us uh the
047do's and don'ts and um industry standards and ways to go about the business and this team here in danbury focused on equity and access for all kids and with that the design does permit that permits a youngster to enter into ninth grade have some exploratory courses and then make some choices as to what they would like to do um along with their core so uh it's not a um you know once i make a decision i'm out kind of a thing so that's really exciting i don't know cara or melissa do you want to speak to any of that is melissa with us yes i'm here rarely am i given chances to speak because i'm so passionate about um we're holding on to our seats very good um yeah i mean as as dr sale
048alluded to you know we're talking about an enhancement to a high school curricular experience an enhancement that allows students to see their not only their place in high school but also where they can go after high school there's there's always discussion about um college and that discussion doesn't go away but what we do start discussing with students is when you go to college you're going to college to pursue a career and that decision is just as important as the college you're going to choose to go to so it is our intention with the curricular experiences we are going to build out in all of these pathways and i hope you do get a chance to read through the suggested courses that we can create um it's intentional so that students can experience what it is
049they see themselves doing in the future and it's through these curricular experiences that they're going to be able to make better decisions for themselves as they enter a post-secondary world whether that includes college or not um whether it includes military or not um the focus of their studies are going to better prepare them to make the decisions that they need to make upon leaving their compulsory school education thank you melissa so just to throw a few you know we were when we were trying to you know looking for rooms and thinking about inspiration you know we started to um come across simulation rooms that were just very exciting um for students that had combinations of clinical areas as well as student desks and meeting areas where a a teacher could see students who are working
050but also at desks with there's with other students collaborating um we talked a lot about um you know making experiences as authentic as possible so when you offer a course right that we tried to go all the way we we looked at equipment that other places have had uh installed in some of their uh similar type pathways where um so instead of pulling in the actual ambulance bus this is a simulation um area to to train students um some of the again just inspiration for for workspaces and design um we didn't talk a lot about the middle school side of things but um we'll be focusing very much on the design thinking process and and and ways to innovate and um you know when we all participated in the board workshop with the future design
051folks they took us through a design thinking process they pushed our thinking to start with the problem that we're trying to solve and we started to understand everyone's perspective in that problem so that when we designed a solution um there was empathy built into that solution we we reached a better place there was a connection to to the people we were trying to solve the problem for and that that enhances communication and understanding and deepens thinking really so um the middle school side will really focus in on that design thinking process but we will have uh design labs and maker spaces for kids to explore and to dive deep into their ideation and and ways to think about their learning in ways that they haven't done before so um you know these are just inspirational
052concepts that we've been tossing around just to give you idea of what kinds of things are on our minds when when we envision sort of the next wave of classrooms um and and kids actually you know getting their hands dirty and working and doing the work and learning through very authentic experiences in areas that actually have jobs uh at the end of that road so i'm gonna zoom out a little bit i'll take my screen share off for a bit and see if anybody has any questions only that i think the board always knew that this was not going to be a separate diploma in high school this was part of just as ace has been for years traditionally a danbury secondary school high school with a danbury high school diploma the same is what
053happened here the youngsters will not have a a football program a basketball program there they will when they go back to the main school which means we provide transportation um but you know it's all of that will take place um at the main campus if you would so structurally this is danbury west in a lot of ways um where the youngsters would be there and then return to the high school if they wish for other activities um you won't have the same gyms and you won't have the same feels there'll be that's what i think cara is talking about we've got to look at our graduation requirements and in the requirements it talks about alternative ways to achieve that and they could build that plan to achieve those very um accredited courses they need but
054maybe in a different pathway so all of that happens so just to be clear cara the way this works i think when we when the advice we had from um when we went to the academies is that our kids would have their experience in ninth grade would you talk a little bit about that because i think everybody should hear that sure so all students would come up to danbury high school for their 9th grade course so they're oriented to denbury high school and over the course of that year through next college and career exploration course they are oriented to all of the academies and all of the pathways and so that they would understand um the career trajectory if you will of where certain areas um you know the different stopping points along along a
055continuum of career paths that lead to different things and provide different opportunities you talk about salary there's a little bit of financial literacy embedded in that course as well so they understand these types of jobs produce these types of incomes but here are also the conditions for these jobs and the type of work that you would do and understanding your needs and wants um as a person and what might be a good fit um coaching students along the way to um not just learn about the careers but also have some opportunities to kind of get their get their feet wet a little bit i'm doing some site visits um having a career fair which is a very big part of this so um folks from all over come in and we you know start to
056build those partnerships to get kids to people to come in to talk to our kids um so that by the time um that they reach the end of ninth grade so obviously they're taking all their core courses but this is a specialty designed course for ninth graders um and so and we talk about workplace uh work based learning and and and how to how to um how to navigate that environment um but so so the students would select at the end of that year after learning about multiple areas um and visiting all of those sites all of those academies um what would be best suited for them so they get to make that selection and then they apply based on a lottery the lottery's an open lottery students put their maybe first couple of choices
057down and we would work out a system to do that as equitably as possible um the plan is to support all special education students and students who need esl services in all academies no matter where they are part part of the way to do that is to make sure that we're on an eight period day so that students have opportunity to take both their language services and any special education iep driven needs that they have in addition to these electives that that will enable students to uh reach certification or at least be exposed to several courses in a concentrated area for them to get a real deep dive of an exposure um to areas of interest so um that'll be part of sort of the action planning that we'll have to do is to get
058to um you know a scheduling system that allows for us to do that we do have some professional development lined up for for this summer that the high school team will engage in as well as the curriculum administrators and that is to learn how to schedule these uh best practice around these schedules we'll be working with the folks again from academies in nashville and then later in the summer we'll be doing more program at programmatic development we really had to jump start that internally with and that's reflected in the document that you see here today and thinking through the courses that students would take in the pathways the trajectories of those courses we have a lot of work to do with the on-roads and off-ramps of of coming into these pathways and what do you
059do if a student wants to change their mind and um you know how do we create enough flexibility within our graduation requirements so that um students will uh can make a change um without losing ground in in their graduation so you know we have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us uh we have started to put together a four to five year action plan on how to get us there um there's pedagogical shifts that are involved in this that are that go beyond just naming something an academy or pathway really having teachers understand what project-based learning is about um interdisciplinary uh teaching things that teachers have been um asking for for quite a while now you know when common core came out um and the standards kind of drove us into um silos if
060you will of teaching the english standards and the science standards and the math standards and uh kids learn best when those are intertwined and that they're able to apply those in real life situations so we'll be looking to do some training in that area along with teaming and really bolstering up activities and partnerships that's this is a whole other whole other meeting you know exploring partnerships with our with local communities we've started conversations with some area businesses i had a meeting with neuvons uh i just left elated because the group was so excited to hear that this was coming and you know they wanted me to present to their um their board soon and to get those conversations started because they have a real need for some of the things that we've identified here locally
061um and so it could be a mutually beneficial uh relationship with that i think uh here the states picked up on this work you guys are doing and are coming here right you want to talk about that uh yes so you know the positioning on this has been you know interesting in the sense that um and i have a meeting coming up uh that i've scheduled because i there's a lot of dots that need to get connected in the state in the state there's a lot of different departments at up at the state department that have seeds of all of this that they're kind of working on right these increased graduation flexibilities um governor lamont has put out a a doctrine on on increasing manufacturing high tech high high-skilled manufacturing which of course doesn't look
062like it used to you know it's it's computer everything's computer-based right this is not these are not dirty manufacturing floors and they're looking for laborers they're looking for really high-tech uh people to help to um innovate in and and through these manufacturing centers and we just don't have enough skilled labor so um you know governor lamont has some some skin in the game with trying to increase that workforce and um you know they brought in some some groups to help spark some things and then there's then there's just a few other groups at the state department that are all sort of working on this and i'd love to see a string some things together because i think the state will start to move in this direction we could be if if we do this well
063we could be a flagship in the northeast there's no doubt in my mind um you know this is doing a wall-to-wall academy model is a game changer um and i i it's not just a game changer for the kids but it could be a game changer for the community the community has needs um everyone you know what businesses come with their skilled labor and when there's no skilled labor and it becomes too too expensive to outsource they move to where those locations are and so we have an opportunity to to fill both both needs um here and um you know there's a lot of development on the partnership side and and the community side that we can do but there's a lot of people that are already interested and are very excited so so you
064know also as you can hear melissa talk about this who's a you know she's in the sciences you have teachers that have been teaching for years and now this is in their real house and you have a whole new excitement on their part too to select some and i think the board and district is going to just realize the impact not only for our kids but the the the enthusiasm from our staff um it just it just it just sends a thrill down my spine to think that we have an opportunity to do this just growing out of a building so melissa and cara and dan and that team that it did i think it's just going to be wonderful all the way around all the way around so i don't know why don't you
065just keep quiet maybe i'm sure the board has questions i'll open up amy go ahead well i'm as excited as you are it's very exciting but i i have a few well i'll start with just one question and that's you just said kara that ninth graders will all be oriented oriented towards all the pathways and then there's the lottery and 100 did you say how many get in a thousand how many no so there's so so there's about right now each pathway we're anticipating ballpark about 130 kids in each pathway not academy so each of those right gotcha so what happens to those ninth graders uh that you know were uh get exposed to what the pathways were go for the lottery and then they don't get in is it yeah is it a standard
066college prep program like they yeah so so what what we're talking about it's a good question and what we're talking about here are really um uh strategic electives a grouping of electives so we're where electives could be um you know kind of randomized right well first of all let me back up a little bit and say um if you if you didn't know you may have noticed that there's not like a you know an arts and theater academy or or something like that um we we brought that up we we uh dabbled in that quite a bit and had a lot of conversation around that um the bottom line with arts and theater and music is that that's for all kids right all kids should have opportunities to explore that and to have elective choices
067in those areas when it comes to selecting electives in an area we're talking about concentration of two or three courses um and and so there's just really a couple of courses that students would actually take to dig into some of this content um and and the real uh the academy and the pathway piece it's really about um you know the field field trips opportunity bringing people in the in the industry in to talk to the kids to get them excited um having um some connections between the classes in an academy about what with what students are doing so if student who's interested in in the healthcare area will have a lot of similar and crossover courses um in in an academy for which you know we're talking about the academy of scientific innovation and medicine
068there's one two three there's five different pathways in there um and uh and quite a few slots uh to to to work with so even if you didn't get into your uh biomedical pathway there's lots of crossover in the courses between the cna pathway and the uh the ems pathway um that's dead students can take and so you know not every student will get into every pathway their number one choice but if they're in the health academy they should more than likely if that's the area that they're interested in more than likely be able to get into a pathway that that's within the healthcare realm um you know and those are things that amy will continue to work out on the best way to do that there's going to be more demand in some areas
069than others so year over year we're going to have to reevaluate that so you know right now we have kids that want to go i think dan said there's like 200 applicants for the cna program every year that everybody gets in they take 60 students and and because that's all that we can take um and so you know the goal here is to increase those similar opportunities as much as we can and add and add to that and so certainly as you know once we get to a wall to wall academy model and where we have systems and structures in place we can expand and contract some of those um like i said from year to year based on on need and student interest and then also over a period of multiple years of evaluation
070say you know okay so do we still want to offer uh an integrated manufacturing pathway you know yes or no and and why you know what's supporting that decision-making process and that would be based on daver data and and statistics and and uh you know local area demand okay thank you you're welcome i actually had a question maybe and forgive me if you already answered this but just like so a student that applies for the lottery right and doesn't get it for that uh ninth grade year or what whenever they would start the academy is it possible that if a vacancy were to open up in their second year of high school or third year of high school for them to re enter the lottery or is there is it kind of are they baked
071into having to do the full amount of time at the academy to have the experience yeah those are that's a great question and those are i mentioned at the beginning that we're we have a lot of work to do with the on road no if it's too pretty and off ramps right like you know getting in and coming out right and if i want to make a change what's that process look like and how do we do that so it's not so disruptive um but but benefits the student and so those are all like kind of part of the action plan and the training that we'll we'll get into um into the nitty-gritty as we kind of work out the details but we've had some preliminary conversations about those and they're all great questions those
072are all things that have to be logistically laid out and clear for kids for parents for everybody on on how to do that best cool so so joe that's one of the things even at that if you and i decided to change the courses that we took should also apply to graduation so it doesn't impede them from moving ahead graduation rates and um you know and well we talked about those very questions can they make some other selections and and those things need to be answered as as we go through because the whole point of this is to is to have kids focus in that direction and as a sophomore you know jesus when kids go through college they change their major three times so i did 20s yeah we could reduce that look at
073that look at the hands going out so doing this would kind of focus them and yeah make make another turn but um you know those are all things that we can would have to work out but um but as long it doesn't impede my worry is always it doesn't impede their graduation may i also just quickly add to the the districts that have moved to towards models that are are the academy model the data actually shows that once kids actually enter an academy they it's rare that they want to move the percentage of students that want to leave the academy once they're in is very small and this is from research across the nation um part of that is due to um the fact that you're in a small engaged community you you actually create
074community um and once you're there you feel secure and you feel supported and and that's actually what the beauty of the academy model does for very large uh places like danbury high school um and and it creates that um feeling of security so so the data on kids wanting to leave once they're in is very small um and and we have actually thrown around the idea that there may be pathways that we um we have developed based on um local department labor of statistics data that kids might not be interested in right now and so when we looked at some of the pathways that we do have um it's okay in the first few years if you had you know instead of 120 kids per pathway maybe we do end up with 240 kids in
075a pathway um because it happens to be popular and and that does occur as well and so um and that's like to kara's point that um at the end of every year at the end of every two years you're evaluating your data on what kids are requesting what kids are not um and and that's you know the whole beauty of like improvement science when you start looking at the data on why kids are leaving why kids are are wanting this particular pathway why they do not want this pathway and making um decisions again based in um high demand high economic wage economy how do we keep innovating our own systems to make sure that what kids do want as long as it aligns with um the the ideals of the academy um that they're always
076continuously being met and so it really this is a this is a model that requires continuous improvement and continuous reevaluation of our systems to make sure that we're actually providing the services to our students that they deserve hey joe go ahead um my question falls somewhere halfway i think in between amy's questions and joe's questions i'd like to thank them for making me think of this question um if we're doing a wall-to-wall pathway program and this is just kind of part of danbury high school how do you do the pathway if you don't physically get into you don't win the lottery and you don't get into the summit how are we wall-to-wall pathway for the kid that may want to do it and like amy said is oriented towards it but didn't get in not
077just to the pathway but didn't get into the school no um well we have a slide for this well well let me look hold on by the way i love the program this sounds amazing let me see is this okay here's one um okay so disregard all my crazy names like which version so that's just my behavior um this is like version 9050 so this is you know um okay so so the the goal is you know so students so the very first academies that that we'll have obviously are these two here because we're going to develop we're going to we're going to work our tails off to get these other ones up and running so that sure kids have you know a place to you know everybody has a place to go um and
078hopefully it's within the areas you know at least within the academy it might be you know so so you know if you look at the academy of global enterprise and economics and you're kind of a business-minded kid and you want to you want to do something in that area you're not sure an entrepreneurial and a little bit of the business side any one of these will be it will be an exciting option if you don't get the first one the second one is you know there's a lot of crossover there um so but you know the the trick here too is you know like i said we have to get these up and running the the amount of uh curriculum writing that has to happen you know between now and then um is unbelievable so
079you know and and it's it's relationships with uh companies who can help support some of this stuff it's training for staff it is making sure that we find teachers with the right certifications or finding ways to support them to get those certifications to give them in the right seats for this and so you know the the bumpy part of this will be that that will have um in the beginning you know not every single one fleshed out in where we want it to be and so over the course of a couple of years we'll get there um but you know that there may be high demand for this in the beginning but then as everything else opens up um you know more more seats are available it's kind of like the lottery now where you
080know there's only so many seats and then we you know we have to kind of go back to the to the drug war but we're going to try really hard and again this is part of the budgetary process this is part of that you know um supporting supporting the the budget with a model you know with with being able to fund um you know opening up a new site and and allowing us to continue to develop the curriculum and and resources that we need to kind of to get this off the ground no matter what we do even if you just opened up a plain old high school 1400 kids we have we've got a lot of work to do right so i don't know if i asked a question right what do we do
081if there's a kid who's who does this or knows the orientation to these pathways is that every danbury high school student or only the students that win the lottery yeah explain in ninth grade oh i'm sorry i'm sorry okay so like i said we're going to try really hard to get all of these pathways one way or another there'll be a place for every student to go okay so i don't want you so every student will every so so we may have to double up on the on this pathway here joe to get to get a slot for for all the students but but we'll get there so every student comes up to ninth grade like 950 freshmen or so we'll have their foundational courses their typical courses they'll take their pe we'll try to
082get some of those uh core classes out of the way um they'll have their college and career course and um at the end of that they will select um a couple of these pathways you know that they're interested in and then we will develop a process for the lottery process and students will be notified and then so if you're a 10th grader and you get in here that means that you're taking the bus over to the summit location for your classes at the end of the day if you play sports you're in the theater program after school you you take the bus back to the to denbury high school you come back to high school so is the anticipation that all the freshmen are at the high school and the career academy is 10 11
08312 correct okay i wasn't i thank you that actually i kind of yeah and i kind of glossed over a lot of that piece because i didn't want to i was afraid that you know uh you know this is about the technical specifications of the building and i went when i went to high school it was 10 11 12 so i'm actually used to that so okay yep so same idea then same idea and they make deflections so these are all kind of not quite upper academies but 10 11 12. that makes a lot more sense thank you yes uh could i just ask the question and and i'm excited about the academy uh and excited about all the information that i've heard so far my only question is and i think you just sort
084of maybe cleared up uh on some uh reservation that i have uh when it comes to uh students um being selected by the lottery and uh so you're saying all freshmen if this if it's a thousand they're gonna have an opportunity to get an opportunity to uh attend this academy is am i hearing this right and that 950 student or whatever it might be is uh will not be put into a lottery until the next step okay and the reason i bring this up because you know as i go back over the years and i think about ais and west side magnet school and how the atmosphere uh as far as some parents uh versus other parents because if my child got in into uh the magnet school or uh the uh west side academy
085they were a little bit smarter a little bit brighter than you are so i think that other students that weren't able to get in are and are on a waiting list i think some of those comments should sort of need to bear into mind when you're dealing with parents because i think it's uh it's very important to some to consider those things and i know that um things are going to be based on a lottery system as you can't put a thousand here and a thousand here but it's it's it sort of hurts students and parents when that type of conversation is going on between parents about yeah my child got in so maybe yours on a waiting list and it might not never get in so uh that's that's a very negative uh point
086that i think that we need to consider uh and uh gladys you bring up a very important point um again conversation some of the conversations that we've had around this you know when when students um try to put this i don't know how people look but when students are you know when there's a application to to uh ais application to the middle school west side those those are really very much parent driven right so um and sometimes we some you know parents that have a little more uh um influence influence or or capital if you will to understand the system navigate navigated a little bit more vastly uh tend to have an advantage right and getting those out let's get that application in and um and so so so there's take that and put that
087in the parking lot and that's really kind of a parent-driven process what we want to do here with this ninth grade academy is empower the students to make those decisions for themselves and so at this point it's really less about the parent and it's really more about the student understanding the process understanding what the options are having the chance to explore those options and then making an informed decision um you know based on this the curriculum that all students get and that that's the game changer every student gets the same curriculum and they get coached in the same way to make those decisions at the end of the process of course parents will influence some of their choices but every every student will have that opportunity to to have that same um equity if you
088will and understanding what their options are and how to access those options thank you you're welcome joe i can't see if there's other questions joe does anyone else have any questions i was on mute there um i guess my my question is uh just procedurally uh do you want for these ed specs do you need to take another pass at them or do you want us to act on them tonight and send it to maybe a full board workshop or something like that well let me just this was just a draft for ideas i figured that's it but there is a good question joe there is a process antonio could you kind of explain what what is expected of eventually joe yes the board has to approve it that that is a definite but what's
089the process of your thinking through job antonio that's the application uh yeah no problem um this is the draft and it's a great working document um and i think what we would be looking for tonight is uh to to an endorsement to continue to further develop this and i'll continue uh an evaluation that this um preliminary ads will fit within the building footprint um and that we can make it work uh i think if we were able to get that um well not from this committee tonight uh committee that that would be great um but we we still have a little bit more work to do and i just have to tell you the amount of work that this group has done in a short period of time is really amazing i i put these
090folks on a deadline for submittal or final expects and they've been working nights and weekends getting it done so and this expect is probably better at this point than most that i've seen in my past career as a final document so you really uh i want to commend the entire team that pulled this together uh and not only that this is probably one of the most exciting programs i've probably will ever be involved in this is a trendsetter this building will be a trendsetter but that spec will be housed in it uh it will be a first of many so um i i think uh a simple endorsement that you like what you see so far and you um endorse the expect and the uh focus of the ed spec would be great tonight so
091we can continue to move it forward um as we come to a complete and final ed spec it will move very quickly so i think dr sal and kara by presenting these tonight to you and you guys getting a good chance to be educated on them is a very critical move to us eventually coming before the full board with a final version and having you vote on it very quickly joe can i ask you a question yeah go ahead joe as a matter of procedure if this is a draft and not the final draft that we're referring to the board i'm not entirely i mean i'm all in favor there's tongue iran this is not a a question about the the document but if this isn't a final document how do we how do we
092vote to approve it to forward it to the board because what the board would get wouldn't be the document we're voting on they'd get a different document uh just as a matter of procedure that seems somewhat wonky or or am i off doctor cell care and yeah i think tonight's purpose here was there's a lot of work that's going in it but it's a draft and i think what what antonio's saying guys are we going in direction that you're interested in for sure and then now we'll take it back there's we gotta look at this and make some modifications john's got to look at it and then uh we find that i don't expect to be much different unless the board said no it's not the way to go then went back to square one
093but then we can make some adjustments and then come back to the uh board and say here's a here's another here's a recommendation with some final draft for you to consider and then you know like we normally do we look at it the board names input we wait two weeks make any adjustments and then approve it i mean that's how i see it yep okay thanks i got the question too when do you think you have to give the state the final approved specs from the boards by the board so um we're working on sort of when that deadline um should be um remember the ed spec has to be approved and endorsed by the full board of education uh prior to us putting an application in the application is due september first well we
094have a tremendous amount of vetting to do um to make sure the expect can actually be met uh and we're gonna be doing that now that we we have a very good document in front of us to do that so joe i don't think we're looking for anything that's crazy formal we just want to make sure that what we're presenting tonight you guys are interested in uh this very tremendous amount of work document that has been produced uh is something that you guys are interested because now i will start to work to make sure that this fits in the building and working with the team that we have they will ultimately finish up the final document uh for you guys to approve as a full board so um you might not even have to do
095any type of emotion tonight but i would love to just hear from you in a sense of emotion that you guys uh endorse the uh the the the segway into uh you know this uh academy and where we're heading and the work that the team has done so far and maybe you look forward to the final document that's it that that works for me so i have an easy easy way for us to do that so let's just go around the five of us and let's uh give our little our thoughts about it i think this amazing project i think the work that the entire team has put on specifically with these specs is amazing i have been excited about this project for was almost two years when it was first uh the first nashville
096um you know idea was presented to the board and i'm really excited to see what it can do because i think there is a lot of value in stem and i think this is going to give an important choice to our students to kind of consider kind of where the whole world is going so i'm excited and it's got my full support so i that's that's what i got for that um i i too um endorse it and um i'm going to divorce myself from the cost what it's going to cost down the road and just say that it's a wonderful program and the kids will our kids will just benefit from it tremendously so i am all for i i love the project i'm hoping my kids are interested in going there when they
097get that when they get that far i get a few years left to go but no i think it's a great idea and and definitely pursue refine this clean it up do whatever we have to do but no this is definitely the right direction for sure i'm in total agreement with everyone um i love i was supposed to go to nashville and couldn't go at the last moment and i was so excited about it i'm amazed at what uh the team has pulled together and i just love this idea for our kids i think it's so uh it's so forward thinking i love that and i love that we might be a flagship in the northeast um that would be a wonderful feather in danbury's cap and i really i like that i think it's
098a great opportunity for our kids and it's exciting thank you so amy maybe i could we could charge them a tow when they come [Laughter] nashville nashville has made over eight million dollars that's how we pay for it we need to get a royal we need to get a royalty or something nashville has made over eight million dollars in hosting site visits so far well there you go that's that's the next that's the next phase of it for us right our next revenue stream yep yes court courtney can put that in the 2829 budget [Laughter] oh great thank you and by the way al had al went off to another meeting also i was going to say if i i thought i was here in the beginning it was he just there's there was a
099ptli meeting that i think he's attending oh there's p-o-p ptli they're presenting some of the budget stuff yes yes okay well i guess from that joe i assume everybody likes the idea we're gonna continue um you know refining this working with the city um letting them know what we're doing and and then um you know keep you updated regarding uh any any modifications that we need that's great and thanks to all of you for all your help yeah thank you yeah phenomenal really good glenn and uh mike and christina his team you know we i'm not gonna lie i was in a slight bit of a panic because i never wrote expects before so um you know he they stepped in and kind of supported us they gave us an outline to follow this is
100what this is what the state asks for and uh and you know they too were on um calls with me over the weekend so i just want to say thank you it happened to be the nicest day of the year so far so i appreciate your stopping to rake the leaves thank you joe can i just bring up one more thing i go ahead not on the agenda but it's about facilities glenn uh is working with us with this i've also had glenn um work with us regarding next year and the reopening of schools so um you know we'll be bringing information to you all about that um he was in the district today we did some visiting we've done some um we have standing committee looking at the reopening with the principles in terms
101of different scenarios um the state informed me yesterday that um they want to talk to me from davier on monday about our space issues i'm interested to see what they got to say but um on monday regarding that but uh all kidding aside glenn has been um really with us he knows our buildings he's done many additions and um so we're right now planning that if no matter what the state does if all of our youngsters come back what is it going to take to create um uh person in-person learning five days a week no matter what happens with dl or otherwise so glenn uh is working with us and so you'll be seeing more of him i just wanted to let you know that and thank him for all of his advice it's been
102very beneficial thanks thank you dr sal do you need us to give you a motion that we like the direction of the pathways thing do you do you need that for or maybe i don't think it hurts somebody would make that motion i i met mr chairman if i may make a motion joe go ahead i'll make a motion of the sites and facilities committee approves of the direction of the draft uh ed specs that are before us and encourage the administration to pursue them or in and complete complete a final draft for our uh review in this direction motion has been made is there a second yes i'll second it thank you did by amy all those in favor say aye aye aye motion carries yay thank you okay thank you so much all
103right thank you guys thank you everyone um yes motion made by kathy seconded by joe all those in favor you