001first uh we're gonna switch directions a little bit tonight uh the last time that we met we talked about putting together um you know some talking points around each of these hot button topics and um we were able to get some feedback from the citywide pto folks and i um had a few folks that actually emailed me independently to have conversations about this and they wanted to talk a little bit about the delivery of um the messages it's a little difficult when you're talking about these areas which we know are our drivers for the budget that's not necessarily what motivates people to get engaged in the topic and that's kind of the focus of our energy right now as a committee so um we had uh amy and i had a conversation with some of
002the citywide folks we sat down and spoke with courtney and with kevin um and we we talked about how we could take the presentation in a little bit of a different direction to make it more accessible to people to get them interested in it um kevin i don't know if you want to um you know talk a little bit about that or courtney if you'd like to talk about how you feel that the citywide presentation went on monday night sure i don't want to put you on the spot you don't have to but i'll let kevin go first um i'm happy to talk about it kevin do you want to go first sure um so so so one kate i i what i particularly appreciated was um one your opening and your kind of introduction
003to the presentation if you will um i think it allowed for i mean they're you said some things certainly as employees of the district um that's how we felt but we can't necessarily say um and so i i felt that role was that was appreciated um and in fact i think um when looking at our potential um ongoing community engagement sessions i feel like we provided a nice template uh for those remaining sessions whatever that might whenever that might be um and then of course um courtney's presentation itself um you know i felt like the graphics were somewhat attention grabbing and i thought courtney's uh powerpoint presentation as always uh was engaging and you know provided opportunities for people to kind of understand the budget but in small bites and you know opportunities to just
004digest the information and kind of short concrete bites versus that dense you know presentations the way typically a budget could look like um so i mean those are some of like the highlights for me um just in terms of how the community um you know appreciated it or embraced it you know i'm really not sure and i don't want to speak for them so i i think it's probably best at least for me to get feedback from you on what you heard or what you learned from our community and you know how we can improve to get better for the next engagement sessions that might be coming up thanks for that feedback kevin uh courtney did you have anything to add yeah i would just echo that i'd like to understand the feedback so we
005can improve and i just wanted to say i really liked the one pager um in the way that it was simple it was a nice simple like way to show the information and i like the categories so i i kept the way kevin put it forward i think made more sense from my perspective from what i kind of heard from the community to outline it in those category levels and kate's feedback to keep it really simple i really liked that and i think we can build from that um and i really really liked meg and dan's um feedback that he gave to rich with specifics around the impact that i think you know we can just incorporate um into the way we talk about the the impact of not having the budget that we need
006and what we do need for the to build the future so those those were the points i took away um i was excited that they were engaged um and i think we can build on that so those are the and i'd be interested in hearing what you all think as well yeah and kate if i can add one more thing um because i have to applaud joe for bringing up the idea of a one-pager in the first place um and joe i didn't like you one pager that you shared but i love the idea of the one pager um and and i and no but seriously i i felt like the community it it just allowed us like i feel like we didn't overwhelm them the way you know courtney's 72-page budget typically might overwhelm
007a community um you know and meanwhile we still address on the highlights as we had talked about in the other meeting um you know interesting thing is we hadn't planned for the citywide pto but we had one on the calendar and i think it worked out well it gave us something um to provide some feedback on and pivot and if we need to make any adjustments but i i felt it was a good start for us yeah a good starting point for the for the future like to engage people in the budgeting process i think you know in a way that maybe we would i haven't seen in my little tenure here but like i think i'm excited about that that's great um and hopefully we can repeat that measure again about the individual school
008level ptos um you know i don't know if we'll be able to hit all of them but it would be great if we could hit some of them and that's a that's a group that's already had some exposure to the information so having an additional opportunity to to get that messaging to them would be great um did you have any feedback that you wanted to share from uh tim yeah i spoke to tim you know the president of citywide the day after and um he also thought that you did a fantastic job courtney and kevin drilling it down doing it in small bites but i said to him and you know he doesn't pull any punches i just said so tim i know tim we go way back um and i said tim so what
009do you think the parents thought and he said i still think it was too much for the parents you know it was very condensed and that was great but he said they still just want to know about the schedule the co you know you know when are they when's the what's the cohorts going to be they were interested in that stuff and he told me that they had um i guess sent out an email to parents i don't know how long ago but you know maybe two or three weeks ago or something about getting in touch with your legislator or getting in touch with the mayor and he said we had one person send an email so it's just a little he said you know he doesn't say how you motivate people you know they
010just it's as if they're worried about where their kids bus stop is and they're worried about which i'm not i'm not putting that down i was a parent i would have been the same way i didn't care about the budget when my kids were growing up you know i just cared about that they were safe and that they were you know they knew what they were doing you know well so he just said i don't really know how to motivate people we can't make people be interested so it wasn't i mean you know and we were hopeful i mean we had a great conversation about well we're going to continue trying to present it as often as we can it was a very uh you know uh definitely a more palatable presentation for everybody and
011he like they like the one pager they like the the slides with the four you know sections of of each um category but he just he he said you know it was definitely a great try but i i don't know if it really affected parents a whole lot just being honest that's that's important to do i mean i know like look you guys put a lot of work into this everybody has and and i think you know we definitely recognize that so this is like just part of the process of getting closer to where we need to be in that messaging and that's okay that's that's the whole point of this thing is that we're just going to keep working through this and every time we have an opportunity to do a presentation it's an
012opportunity to be able to adjust how we're doing it because the goal is really just about reaching those people and making sure that we grab their attention um you know i think you know um one of the things that we've talked about before and rich you brought this up with in conversation with me recently was the uh the shock the shock campaign um you know there are certain components of that that courtney it might be helpful if we could get a sense from you um it doesn't have to be tonight you know it's a conversation we could have offline but just to get a sense of you know what are some of the repercussions here if we're looking at having x number of different levels of budget let's say we get two million dollars you
013know which is not a lot of money but it's some you know that's that's a realistic figure that we've gotten from the city in the past in past budget cycles um you know what does that look like in terms of what level of cuts we have to make and how that's going to impact things you know joe turned in some talking points on the niask accreditation and he talks specifically about you know what does it look like if we don't have the proper um you know staff in place because we have to address this excessive size and teacher student loads so we don't have enough staff members in the building you know that's not only bad for your kids education that's bad because you're the diploma that they're going to be walking out the door
014within a few years may not have the same value that it has today and that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that you know if you make it real for them that's what they hear and i know that this is this is the difficulty guys i understand for you you know and kevin i think you put it very succinctly that as as employees of the district you might feel a certain way but there's a certain line of you know that you have to watch and be careful about how you convey things but i also think we need to be really upfront with people and let them know what's at risk yeah yeah i have to say something too i'm sorry courtney but in my comment explaining what tim said it's not that tim
015wasn't thinking that you didn't do a good job first word he said to me was the parents are lackadaisical and i don't know how we don't don't how to motivate them and i think what kate's getting at is exactly if we can make it listen if we don't get if we don't you know continue to um ask the city and go to this is what it might look like for your your junior in high school or your senior school yeah and i think dan's points that he made in the email he sent me was like it's like the bubble gun that told it like we do a great job and we're and it's like on this backs and skins of bubble gum paper clips you know tape and and a lot of really really dedicated
016people but the damn well burst and like i think dan's points are something that we need to bring in and megan's points into how we talk about it because like we're at where we've been at the point and we're at the point i think where we can say okay basically what the city gives us is just our cost of living and less and even if and for every you know like like million dollars that they don't give us we're losing x number of teachers x number of guidance counselors x numbers so maybe there's a way that we can talk to meg and don about dan about adding like a second slide to that slide that shows the impact of what would happen if we didn't do x y and z but i just haven't been
017able to like like contextualize you know mr genelli did you want to talk about why you brought dan and megan into the conversation tonight because i think that's a perfect entrance to have them participate but just to digress for a moment my evaluation of the the citywide meeting was in the conclusion they there were a couple of things that that i thought i observed one there was a an excitement to support support us and the budget by the comments what can we do who do we contact in order to say that we want this budget approved the other thing was there were a lot of questions relative to the reopening of the school i tend to think first and foremost today is the concern of when are we going to get back to what you
018know what i would call a normal day and a reopening is on a parent's mind secondly may be the issue of the budget so you know going forward we may want to open up with some information on on that aspect which sort of preempts their questions and then lead into the budget but the reason i asked dan and megan to be here tonight was to help us continue this process of educating the public in terms of what we're doing and why we have these asks in our budget it resonates more when we hear from the people that are in the trenches as we found out in the past when the the support of the budget at the council meetings when you have teachers and counselors and other people that are in the district stating what
019their frustrations are what the conditions of work are a picture resonates in the individual's mind and they can relate that practical situation to the financial needs that he asks that we have in the budget with that being said since dan and megan are responsible for the largest high school in the state of connecticut they've done a tremendous amount of positive work with what's been given to them um and i qualify myself and say the budgets that we put forth are adequate for education i say adequate because if if we had more money than we're asking for it would be better so when you have ratios of one to four hundred for counselors or one to 65 for the teacher to esl and class sizes of 24 25 that to me is adequate but that is
020not a good education so with the positive attributes and the positive success that has been done in the high school you know i think that's a tremendous success story that we could say that we're making accomplishments in inroads then in spite of you know other obstacles we had but also we have to hear the challenges that they're faced with they're faced with in terms of dan and megan in terms of going ahead they you know my feeling is they cannot continue to operate on stuff that we give them or or you know yeah i think we i think we agree on that rich i just you know i think we need to hear from from them yeah firsthand you know what their what their success stories are and what their challenges are sure okay thank
021you um you know but first off thank you for having uh dr martins and myself here tonight you know we it was mentioned earlier that this is a new style of budgeting process and all that stuff and all my years as an administrator and i think i can speak for dr martin too in danbury we've never been this involved in the budgeting process of what we need and had conversations with courtney and kevin uh you know every now and then kevin you know kevin's sending out this random text hey i need to know how many teachers you need right now for this and give me your numbers for that because it shows that they're they're they're asking the right questions and it's a new process that we're all going through so you know we thank
022them uh and for you for having us here tonight to talk about that you know as i'm sitting here taking notes and you know dr martins and i talked about what you know some of the things that we were going to talk about but my note sheet just looks ridiculous right now because you know you've mentioned everything that we've gone through you know from being in administrators who when we took i took over as principal uh you know denver high school was in a good place dr martins and i think work very effectively together and we've made it a better place we've taken it from a you know a review school to a focus school to out of a focus school with our um you know to getting our graduation rates higher not perfect nothing
023we've done is perfect yet but the frustration that was mentioned earlier is something we also feel we feel frustration in that we know we can do more we've had things in place that have been taken away from us because of budgeting reasons we had to assign different things that worked well um and that's where the frustration comes in for us we know we can do better you know we're at that threshold right now of you know the as many uh they're not tricks but strategies that we know and that we've put in at some point it just comes down to boots on the ground and people doing work and when you mentioned counselors with case loads of no matter how hard a counselor works they're not going to be able to service students you know
024i just saw the bill that's being proposed in the assembly for you know making the ratio for counselors and psychologists and all that stuff you know one to 250 which is what we were trying to do and what niask said that we really have to get down to quickly so there's there's things like that that um you know we're working towards you know as i said again i apologize i'm kind of all over the place thinking of my thoughts now because you really got me going um you know i agree with mr ginelli that uh this budget season i don't know if it feels different or the excitement that excitement's the word used for getting parents here it's anxious for us because we're at the end of the road i don't have any more strategies
025i don't have any more um you know things that i can do to do this besides just starting to short the kids in danbury high school uh and i can only speak to denver high school i can't speak to the middle schools or elementary so i won't do that but you know with the two major concerns that both dr martins and i have are coming to head right now and it's the roll-up of the 25 credits that all kids in the sophomore class by the time they graduate have to have when it was 21 before and um the population growth you know just when i took this over five years ago we were at 2 900. we're at 33 and we're you know every class we graduate now has got somewhere between 750 and 850
026in kids the senior class is going to be probably about 8 25 by the time they all graduate but we're bringing in a class of 940 and that keeps going so if you bring in classes at 940 961 you know you're talking about a high school that's going to have 35 3600 kids in it and while the addition was was great and really needed we know we're talking about the summit project and moving for there my greatest fear is something that mayor mark has said before i know he's no longer with us as the mayor but if they follow the same footstep is i'll build you the building but i'm not going to staff it i've heard that enough times that we can't have that anymore you know we can't have that we're going to
027it's going to require a lot of teachers to get to where we're going to have to go requires a lot of pps staff and and these are things that we're here for when i did that back when they were doing the 25 credits in it it's got to be three or four years ago three years four years ago dr martins and i went in front of the board and showed the impact of the population growth that was projected when they gave us the the study that was coming out and that and i needed 28 teachers at that time over the next four years when they're coming out i think i've gotten you know to the best of everyone's ability probably eight teachers maybe nine i could think of over the last you know time i've
028been here uh so there's we're playing catch up to a problem that is going to be here in two years population and and the credits and and i looked and you know dr martin's did went through all the data that we have and she does an excellent job of keeping track of all the data that we have if anybody ever wants to know anything we have it and the improvements we've made and we've noticed where it's tough to tell where we are now because we didn't have an sat last year we didn't have you know the psat only a certain amount of kids took it this year so it's tough to compare last year's but you know it's we've done a lot of great work up there and i'm very proud of the stuff that
029we've done up there but i have this overarching feeling that it's going to come crashing down soon and i you know i don't want to i don't want that to happen you put a lot of time in there uh you know and dr martin's been in position what 10 years dr martin's now 12. i can count that because it's how old my son's going to be that's right you know that that's my thought process as you know scattered as it was from where we're going so i'm going to turn it over to dr martin's and she's going to tell you because she's been here 12 years in that sitting in that chair over in the office next door and ran the majority of this stuff when it first started she started a lot of these
030thoughts with her and bob rossi when she came in from the state and she needs a tremendous amount of credit to when you hear the numbers she's going to go through and tell you the stuff that we've done all most of that comes from her so go ahead dr martins thanks it's definitely a group effort and um i i would echo everything that dan has said um and i think that we do have a tremendous amount to be proud of um we detract the largest high school in the state of connecticut and we improved achievement rates and we did that despite shifting demographics tripling of free and redund free and reduced lunch uh students and uh that's not typical it's not typical to see achievement move um when demographics are shifting and you have students
031who need more and our kids need more and so i i definitely think that the third leg of the panic stool that we're sitting on is not just the 25 credits it's not just the the growing enrollment i was looking at some projections today the higher projections have us over 4 000 students by 2029 and so we really need to be keeping an eye on that um because of this funding staffing cliff that we're facing the the third stool is the aftermath of this pandemic and we all recognize the toll is taken on the grown-ups and the students and and everybody um and we have one regular education social worker at danbury high school who's currently dedicated to working with students in crisis and she has her hands full there used to be two we
032used to have two psyop coaches to help our teachers work with our students who are acquiring english we used to have a dean of student support we actually had two of them who helped us to dramatically reduce the number of ninth graders who were repeating freshman year which as we know is the biggest indicator for a student to be successful when they graduate from high school and so for me over the last 12 years it's been incredibly frustrating to build systems with really very limited budget um so a lot of the work that we have done has been on the backs of the staff all of us you know to make sure that we are creating resources where they do not exist figuring out how to make google sheets work in a way that we
033can communicate you know real-time information figuring out how to pull out all this data from powerschool it takes a tremendous amount of capacity building it takes a tremendous amount of professional development and coaching and so i don't think that we've done everything that we can in terms of supporting staff with implementing things it's just a function of numbers but we have really demonstrated that a number of these strategies were positively impactful not just those staff positions because there were programs underneath that so the dean of student supports worked with a specific population there was a structure underneath that we had a tutoring center with nine interventionists that helped us in real time to provide students with opportunities to catch up when they needed it um and all of that has been stripped away and so
034when you know we were asked what would you do with this esther money sort of like dust off you know and make better the strategies that we have had in place previously so i think that we have the the the capacity we certainly have the willpower and we absolutely have the passion to get this done but we need help and we need help in a way that dan and i can't make happen we cannot conjure money and so i'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about some of the successes and the challenges because i do believe you're in a position to provide us um with the assistance that we need thank you sorry go ahead rich and to your point kate who says it better than both dan and and and megan in
035terms of the frustrations that you hear the the conditions that they work under and to your point how do you get people engaged i think just by what their needs are in terms of dan saying he needs 28 teachers and he's gotten eight and when you have one counselor two three 3200 kids that has to resonate with something but we're hearing it firsthand yes we hear this through the administration through kevin through dr sal etc you know again the passion and and the the passion and the frustration when you talk to people and who's in the front lines you know doing this work i think has a more of an impact on those listening to it so that you are in the position to convey some of that emotion and information to the outside that's
036the whole purpose of trying to get you know trying to get dan and and megan here to to enlighten us further um you and i had talked about and broke down with it is communications with a student body you know we have i don't think we've ever talked to the student body and here we are on the board you know pounding out chestnut and we're doing everything for the students you know what say i've never heard you know other than board meetings you know that's a good point rich yeah that's a good point i think um you know i think we have to um you know the kevin this is something that you've brought up before that we need to engage more with the youth in our community um and you know we have those
037the student government reps uh that come and sit at the meetings and give us updates uh and um you know i'm sure there are uh or you know clubs at the the high school level that you know having them uh learn a little bit about some of this stuff um might be helpful in being able to convey information back to their parents and for them to come to us and say you know these are the the conditions i'm struggling with the same as we're hearing it from you dan and from you megan thank you so much for for coming tonight and speaking with us by the way um you know for for us to hear firsthand from the kids who are dealing with those challenges that brings that same emotionality that you guys brought tonight
038because you you're caring about the whole school it helps to hear from those individuals you know that's what will resonate because they see that kid up there that's talking or saying something and that could be their child too you know so i think that's that's definitely um we're wondering then if you can help us get in touch with the kind of students who might be able to offer some feedback or be willing to speak with us and give us some testimonials absolutely you know we can set up any time you want kids they love to do this and our hatters are are very good at it they're very good at um advocating for themselves and they would love the opportunity to speak to people in power yeah we would love to do that um how
039do we make that happen uh let me let me brainstorm for a day with dr martin's tomorrow and we'll have a plan for you um you know it talks about you know adult availability you know like when can the kids do it and then you tell me you know um you know what who do you want you know you want we want a good cross-section of danbury high school so it'll take us a little while we will need to set up some probably some interpreters and things like that uh to get a true cross-section um of students but we can get it done okay um no no no pressure um i appreciate it though uh we appreciate being able to partner with with you on this okay yep go ahead then i just wanted to
040also bring up that you know the in addition to trying to present to the public you know a a a budget that engages them and has their interest you know we're trying to do this and i think this has been probably the best presentation that we've we've made in the 15 years of 14 years that that i've been uh with the board and we've gotten away from our 80 page you know exp excel spreadsheets um but we've got to make the powers that control the purse strings aware that our foundation is crumbling and if we're embarking and my frustration is and courtney you know i talked with courtney daley on this is is that when we're lacking funds to provide for current you know our current budget cycles we're looking for the city to go
041out and bond a 90 million dollar you know brick and mortar building for a new concept we have you know called the academy and if we can't afford the staff that like you said you know when mark gave us the addition then you know what's the purpose of it yeah no i rich i agree but i think you know this is a conversation we're going to probably have again a couple times before we get towards the uh you know the actual city council presentation part of this but for right now i think you know we really need to focus our efforts at um you know the the school community the the the students the teachers the the parents and the families of our school kids they need to hear that message from us because we
042need them to take action you know and reach out to city hall and then you know when we have the opportunity to go in and have that conversation um with the mayor and with the with the city council you know absolutely we're going to have to revisit that conversation and come up with a game plan to help them do exactly what you're describing which is address some of those cracks in our foundation i wondered if i could just give one little question so i really like the simplicity of the one pager and i would also credit joe and say thank you for those ideas and kevin for putting it together and i really like the categories i don't know that that like i think you would give them the feedback that it conveys a positive
043message do you know what i mean so i'm just wondering how we now think now that we've we're thinking in this way and we've heard from dan and megan and we know the things we know how do we craft that strategy from a marketing perspective to include that side of the because i think yeah i think that there are different stages of this conversation right like we're talking about the latter half of this conversation which is if if we don't get the money which is you know if we don't win them over with like some of the positives that we're trying to do it's like okay let us try to scare you now right that's those are the the natural human drivers um but you know i think that's that's a good question that i
044might have to think about it i don't know if anybody else has any anything because that's just like the the only brass and text piece i'm just wondering is how do we then like incorporate so for example if we're thinking of a presentation or a one picture how we talk to people about it in a way that's marketed um how do we then incorporate the things that dan and megan know so intimately into those buckets and are they the right buckets and how do we portray that that's and maybe that's not for tonight i'm just saying that um out loud because i i obviously haven't been able to do that yet you know yeah i wonder if that's you know to some degree if that's more about incorporating it into the presentation more than it
045is the visual that we distribute because the visual is just you know something that i i'm hoping we can put on social media i know the the cdypto talked about uh dispersing it amongst their their email list um you know that's that's to generate interest in it and you know try to get people you know hopefully going to some kind of presentation with us that presentation is an opportunity to like really convey the emotionality like so that's that's part of what came out of this meeting tonight and and from dan and from megan you know the emotionality of um you know the situation that that they're in and that our students are in that's that opportunity to have that that kind of exchange is through that that that medium i think um but but i'll
046think about that and i i hope everybody else will too about you know how we might incorporate that into the actual presentation uh the materials rather no thank you go ahead amy uh you know i hear i hear the frustration of dan and megan you know and and gosh i wish there was some way to convey that you know you know what would someone say who's not really well schooled on what goes on in in the schools you know but i mean just those few those couple of things that were you know we we needed 24 and we got eight i mean that's a big difference right uh what's that we needed 24 teachers but we we've gotten eight and that they're making these plans and these there's structure they're making a structure supposedly we're
047gonna get the 24 but we're only getting eight so now we have to back down i mean it's like kind of like spinning your wheels a lot right and it kind of sounds like i mean i know that dan and megan represent so many of our administrators and our staff and our teachers who are just you know so professional and you know doctors have always said and you're we're all saying it's always on the backs of the staff but how long you know and then that uh over 000 students by 2029 it's just it's frustrating you know it's just frustrating you want to say that people don't you get it you know don't you understand you know yes we have we we have so many accomplishments you know and we're so proud of our students
048there's so many great things going on what this is this is a big problem i i don't know how do you get that ex that frustration across well if i could jump in i don't even like the frustration part you know i want to make sure that while we're frustrated we want to be we're frustrated because we know we can do better and we know we can deliver a better product uh for saying that and you know we also we're in a tough position and it was mentioned before you know we have to respect our elders and kevin and dr sal uh that was a cheap shot kevin yes it was in what we have to do uh you know and we've never been we've never been asked to to present to the board like
049this before you know so you so you could hear it so you know it's hopefully a new day that goes forward but um you know i wonder if it's not a page that says we can do better and then put those as bullet points we needed 28 and we got eight we needed you know we we we had one social worker we have zero we had a sad coach we had two deans now we have zero like we can do better like that's the kind of thing that maybe i don't know whose place it is to put out there if it's ours that we can do it you know but maybe that's the kind of thing that would would grab people we can do that it's a great thought i think one of the areas
050that we haven't really leveraged a whole lot yet is social media and i think we have a really good opportunity to use that um i i put together a little um clip and it just kind of gives like a like a it's like a very basic like let's talk to like some of the concerns that we've heard through the emails we've gotten from parents i'm just going to share with you real quick but it's this conversation courtney is getting me thinking about that because i think we could do a similar thing you know with that content in the in the uh all right so let me see if i can go ahead and do this there's no sound on it so and so um you know the idea is just like kind of a very
051simple messaging you know to try to give people um something that grabs them on an emotional level and then tell them what we're doing to answer their concerns and then ask them for a direct action um i'm just wondering if folks have any feedback on that or any thoughts about how we could take for example what courtney was just talking about and put that together as a piece i don't talk to partners i'm sorry no no please go yeah in terms of incorporating the the since i'm always thinking financially is what we just heard in terms of as an analogy of the 28 to the 88 and incorporating that into our multi-year forecast so that you not only equate the the needs that we're talking about but you put a price tag on there so
052the community understands what it's going to cost to get to that particular place well it's you know it's a two-fold effect everything we're doing has a cost implication to it and if we build on that and take all of these parameters to get us to a better education it shows us that we have strategic thinking both in the academic curriculum as well as in the financial knowledge of it and we're putting on a table what our needs are to achieve this particular criteria whether it be just moving ahead for a better education compliances i agree with you rich i just want to right now i want to stay focused on the the social media stuff for just a minute um we can certainly come back and and talk about um the i think you know
053the multi-year piece of that i think is important so i do want to come back to that and talk about that um and talk about specific costs that we should be giving in in maybe the larger presentation whether that's um that that four-page document courtney that we were linking to yeah yeah yeah kate i love it i think if one slide that just says we can do better before the call to action with bullet points from dan and meg and from the rest you know that we make them pithy i love it i think i don't know what other people's feedback is but if i saw that and i had my daughter in the school district i would i would definitely get engaged in a new way if i hadn't been engaged thanks courtney kevin
054were you did you have something yes so um and kate i think and and thanks for sharing that uh with everyone i i appreciate it the last time we saw it and um i think it does tug at the hearts of our readers and it helps to promote um action um and and i think the action piece is my question right now i feel like um we might need some legal guidance on some of the things that we're talking about right now okay um you know because i don't want to get us in trouble um i don't you know right and i i know we had the conversation about you know potentially leveraging kid voice um in fact i initiated that a couple of weeks ago um and then offline you know i was a
055little concerned about leveraging kid voice um as a means to get a budget approved i just i just feel like it's a little fine line that we're walking i just want to make sure we get some feedback whether it's from kim um or from some other expertise um and it's one i you know we haven't we've been moving so fast and i think this has been amazing um the fact our community relations peace i can't believe we haven't had this for years um just just trying to think about overall goals for us as far as the budget process and i know we talked about some of these things before uh but like increasing support and credibility in the community as part of the process and so we i mean i think we we gain tremendous
056support just by speaking truths right and and that's what we heard dan and meg do tonight um you know that's part of the message that courtney and i were trying to convey on monday i mean courtney has tried to do in previous presentations um but continue to educate stakeholders and build trust and so you know that's one of the reasons why we're going to get into these various communities where we can you know ask mr jannelli to introduce us to that to that community ms cooper to introduce us to that community ms molina to introduce us to that community um and and the more we build you know we educate state stakeholders and build trust like tonight dan and meg spoke and like i can look at the faces and like you know just feel
057the emotion in the room and and yes we we want folks to take action but i just want to make sure we have the expertise and feedback what our role is and what we're allowed to do in terms of trying to get folks that promote promote action i just want to make sure we're not okay overstepping that yeah no i hear that um and i'm glad you bring that up because i'm not always clear where those lines are so right right right right and and kate i mean i although we might we may not win everything right now but if we continue to get out and and there's a level of transparency i think the community is going to continue to appreciate it um we're educators right and so we're we're fine we're going out
058and trying to educate the public uh but there's also opportunities for us to tap community expertise i mean throughout this process the more we go out there the more feedback we're gonna get um i've heard from several parents i've we've actually adjusted and pivoted on our presentations based on feedback from different folks um so i i think that the more we continue to do this again we may not win right now um but we will continue to gain momentum and build trust and as we continue to build credibility for this budget process yeah i think we have a lot of ask in these next couple of years um just at 912 alone yeah that's a that's a very good point kevin and we we've talked about that a little bit before where uh this is
059not a this is not a rate this is not a racism marathon so right i mean don't get me i still want to win don't get me wrong we're still looking at the finish line i get that um yeah no i think that's a good point finish the marathon i will uh i'll reach out to kim and and just have a conversation um you know about where what's appropriate um okay if if that last part was not in there um does that seem like something that's useful i think so i think so now of course that may leave people with well what do i do now and we don't have that page but if we don't get ourselves in trouble and we've educated everyone i mean i wonder if we could substitute that last page
060for instead of like a a direct action just putting like a almost like a timeline of what the budget process is people have done that i've seen that in other districts like here you know it's factual and informational here's when here are your opportunities to express your your voice yeah yeah i've seen that before in other district presentations they just don't have a date yet which is very convenient no they will it'll get calendared soon it's been a challenge all around so i get it that that's not you know high on the priority list necessarily yeah um all right anything else uh joe we haven't heard from you here tonight so i've been feverishly taking verbatim minutes oh you are good very good i just want to make sure if you had anything that yet
061an opportunity if you don't that's okay no no i'm good i've been i'm listening everybody's good on my end mrs cooper anything nope okay uh amy i think we're running down then um in terms of you know going forward um and we haven't heard from you i apologize dr mead um do you have uh any information for us about different groups i know you were you were trying to do a little bit of outreach there um and i'm just not sure where you're where you've landed on that yeah i do hi everyone it's good to see you i have um a whole list of potential people to go and meet with groups to meet with and i have drafted a letter already kevin i just shared it with you as well and i aimed a
062little bit more in this letter about home value and new businesses to danbury and how having students that are well prepared um and all these new opportunities coming up um that we would then like to be able to go out and meet with these folks to explain the budget process to them and ask for their assistance in advocating for it when it comes to be public hearing time so i can continue to work on that um if the group so desires um but i think we need to continue to get our our pr marketing materials online um before we go out and do that okay thank you ann um i think we're pretty well set on the one page or at least the last version i saw i don't know if um kevin or courtney
063you guys could pull that up and just show the group real quick i'm not sure if everybody's seen it here all right give me one second and see if i can i'd write this then i figure it out but i make it really small when i share it so thank you so much sure courtney i'm trying to here i'm trying to as well this new platform that i just learned hey i just want to ask you a question or someone said in the beginning that you can watch this or people or can be on this right now on youtube uh yeah i think we're streaming this committee meeting to youtube does that mean someone can watch it afterwards like some someone who couldn't be here yep absolutely on youtube yep on the hatter's tv now
064what was that the same for the city-wide no i don't think city i think citywide has their own account they do that's right you're right they did their own zoom or something yeah how many people around here talked about internet four cool it's probably dr sal cara me you a couple of video members watched it last night i figured it out kevin can you all see my screen oh good yes thank you so i'm not gonna please bear with me because this is a new technology that um kevin's daughter brought to us which is uh visually very appealing but challenging for me to uh display but you know kevin do you want to walk through because you you did this puppy like this is really like you're you're a baby sure sure so the the
065five uh the five areas of focus um i think it was our first meeting kate uh where we got feedback from the board members and we were asking for feedback on you know kind of what five what five things what four or five errors should we highlight uh for the public and for the community and so actually one of them was dhs accreditation that was one that was repeated a number of times and then special ed supports and ell supports were two other ones that were there was considerable overlapping had mentioned a number of times and so we had decided we didn't want to create confusion for the community and get too far off from courtney's original presentation the you know our original presentation to the community and so the social emotional support was certainly
066one of the areas of focus and highlighted in our original budget the curriculum supports in green was was another area that was part of our original budget the focus classroom instruction is a term uh that we is an umbrella term that we thought of to to to to focus on uh the interventionists that we're going to need to help mitigate the learning loss um the the additional support that we're going to need in the ell for ell staff and special ed staff and so in focused classroom instruction it also will address um i believe it was the ell special ed and interventionists were the areas that we would that were going to be parked under this focus area access to tech technology we assumed our community would would immediately um appreciate the need for access
067to economic technology um in this you know during this time and then underneath after we identified the five focus areas we just gave some brief information in terms of the ask we went back and forth on whether or not to actually associate a dollar amount the dollar amount when just focusing on these five areas of course didn't add up to the total budget that courtney had originally presented and so we had um really at the last minute decided to not put those numbers in um not it wasn't being it was not in an effort to not be transparent but it was more about if we put those numbers up there we're going to end up in more than a one pager in our original document uh because we would have to explain then where the
068red the remaining monies are are parked let's just carry forward money i just want to be clear like yeah what this is like the new initiatives and it does add up to the new initiatives but to carry forward money and we just didn't think it was important to highlight it here sorry to introduce kevin thank you thank you carl thank you carl and so those five uh focus areas that we had talked about and um pretty much agreed more because this pretty much captures the feedback uh from the committee um and we thought it was best to have to get the feedback from this group and also from folks in the community um to make sure that those positions um that we're asking for are parked under each um each each area focus and as
069they listen to their presentations they can understand why those positions are needed and so you know part of what we heard tonight from dan and meg um you can see um you know the dean parked the guidance counselors parked in there under social emotional support the social worker parked under there under social emotional support um the family liaison which we didn't talk about tonight parked on the social emotional support um and and and here's the high school tonight telling us um they they continue to need more resources to support the growing population at the building uh the fact that you know we've been out of school for you almost a year and a half um and you know i think all of us are bracing for additional needs um and you know and the demands
070on our staff are going to be considerable when we come back into the buildings um and we need to make sure our staff is is our principles a resource so we can meet the needs of the kids that are going to be walking in our buildings in september um and so the access to not to technology is also i think apparent we've asked for four additional media tech uh technicians to help to make sure we have we have the requisite number at every building um given that we're going to be a one-to-one school district our enrollment growth dan and meg talked about as well and so that's why we have those additional high school teachers uh you know park right back in the air again um to help address that growth and quite frankly the
071three is just addressing the minimal growth you know because they they need more they ask for positions last year we ended up not not filling those positions and so you know we continue to um to impact you know the choices and options that that kids have at that at the high school the curriculum support that is needed across the district is also here you know we continue to talk about the enrollment growth and and so with that growth comes needs for english language learning support um and that that's why the the sheltered instruction coach is parked here again and so you know part of what i tried to explain to families on at monday night at citywide pto um you know the more that we can help all learners this means all of our al
072all of our kids benefit um and so if i have 22 24 kids in my classroom and i need and i need um you know targeted support for some of my students and then those resources are available this helps ensure everyone gets what they need in that classroom and so but we everyone doesn't get what they need if we don't make these investments and so this was just a quick overview um you know and then at the bottom we did put in there that we need folk support and um you know we did have that that kind of call to action information in there and you know upon obviously upon reflection just wondering what that should look like moving forward absolutely thank you kevin um so just for the committee members who may not have
073seen that um i don't know if you uh i think it was a very strong uh a very strong graphic i think it really hones in on what we're looking for and makes it easy to you know even as you're going through it kevin make an appeal for the specific things that we need that are going to really change the uh environment especially if at the high school if we could have those supports i hope so all right um any other business that anyone wants to bring up no i just want to say one thing that document is one of the most beautiful documents i've seen in my life that was that was very good it was exactly what i had hoped it was going to look like thank you joe seriously i thought it
074was a great idea and i we really appreciate the recommendation absolutely very well executed all right well thank you guys for for coming tonight um let's try to set a meeting and next meeting um i just want to say thank you for having us thank you for being here we really appreciate you taking time to do it yeah and then meg thank you so much for making yourselves available tonight and that email uh with that feedback is also really very helpful thank you thank you everyone see you at pog meg have a good night thanks dan have a good night turn the heat on you