Danbury Board of Education Meeting 1-27-21

001into order can we stand for the pledge of allegiance those that can i pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and the republic which is stands one nation individual with liberty and justice for all uh kate can you uh do the roll call certainly uh joe britton job were you on i saw him before yep i see him i can't hear him though it's okay um rachel chaleski here kate canetta here gladys cooper here lauren daly here joe da silva president catherine hodgson here rich gianelli uh kathy molinaro here al russo here amy spolino here everyone's here tonight thank you kate uh kate can you go down and do the participation and after kate does the uh reading of public participation if uh sandy have any comments we'll

002go right into the comments then okay the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system due to the unique nature of the covid19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us thank you kate and miss cooper and yep miss cooper at this time there are no public participation comments okay thank you we'll move on down the uh agenda um i

003need a motion to accept new consent count i will make a motion that the board of education approved the item on the consent calendar exhibit 21-09 as recommended second we do the roll call for the consent calendar police certainly joe britton hi here you go joe all right okay rachel chaleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper aye lauren daly i thank you joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich gennelly aye cathy molinaro aye al russo aye amy spellino hi motion to prove unanimously okay um thank you so much an emotion has been carried [Music] next on the agenda is the uh educational staff representative reports we have anyone here from the naa aaron oh aaron you're here yeah no she's not here i don't see her on here i don't okay is that the

004leader here i don't know christy you know dr zlatan's here no who's not here i am here okay uh thank you for the opportunity to share tonight um there aren't really enough minutes in the board of ed meeting to fully express the amount of work that has been done and continues to be done to not only support the hybrid model but also the large percentage of students that remain on full distance learning there isn't a staff member in denver public schools that hasn't gone above and beyond for their students and make no mistake the amount of work that has gone into the safe and successful hybrid opening and continual distance learning cannot easily be measured and all the little things that make a big difference for a parent or student aren't always captured or shared

005publicly in an effort to shed a little light on what has been going on in the background from the administrative side i've collected information from all three levels and compiled the highlights into four categories preparation communication student engagement slash outreach and lessons learned or disruptive innovation so to begin with preparation we've started many moons ago as you are very well aware in creating reopening committees we have these committees with teachers administrators support staff nurses anybody who we could think of that might have another perspective to lend to this opening plan so we've done this in october and we did it again in january we collaborated with central office and our custodial staffs prepared the classrooms for the students return that ranges from anything from ppe hand sanitizers wipes the enormous undertaking of moving the desk

006so that there was appropriate physical spacing at one point i thought i was going to just quit this job and become a professional mover it's great for building some muscle and getting those steps in but it was a lot to move the the the enormous amount of deaths that needed to be moved some buildings were even able to hire additional help because the the enormity of their size we prepared by setting up parents and students in power school this has been a huge undertaking and very well worth the time spent so that everyone has what they need at their fingertips we organize logistically how students would enter how they transitioned how they'd pick up food how they would eat the food safely how they throw the food out how would get them safely to leave

007the building onto the bus safely everything safely safely safely as an administrative team we work with the tech department to develop how students were going to be able to engage in classes when there were more kids online than in person it wasn't pretty at first it's still not perfect but we jumped in and we tested it ourselves we pushed everything to the limit to see where the holes were so that we could plug those holes as best we could we spoke with colleagues from other districts and states to see what was working for them and what to avoid we created innumerable staff duty lists plans to cover arrival and dismissal of students classroom logs sub coverage and most recently starting today how to contact trace which rooms the child was in which related services they

008received which bus they were on who they were sitting near this is a very necessary and tedious um and very time consuming task that we've all jumped into of all of these things of preparing having a feedback loop with staff has been personally to me that of the utmost importance as we've moved through this process we're constantly looking at how we can improve upon what we planned what we when we learn better we do better with respect to communication this has been a huge ingredient in helping parents to process what's going on and plan for what is happening and what has changed we are educating parents about the program choices the schedules for each the mitigation strategies in the building what to expect when you come in the building we've done this through a myriad

009of ways morning announcements virtual town halls parent meetings breakfast with the principal there most of these things are recorded and shared on our youtube channels or on the school websites and through weekly updated emails we also spent time communicating with our students we've trained them on digital citizenship and coven 19 protocols and as an aside as a person in the middle school and i know the elementary staff has agreed the kids have done an amazing job wearing their masks staying socially distanced and just being awesome little humans with respect to student engagement and family outreach uh it i lost track of the number of home visits that have done that we've done at from the from the administrative side our pps staff who usually would do that and administrators as well but we asked them

010to to not and we've been going out to disengage students houses just they're it's innumerable we've been able to show the parents in real time this is what your child should be doing this is what the screen should look like this is how you access this um for us at rogers park we had students come in with their new arrivals they've never seen chrome they didn't know what that little button was we had them in a boot camp outside to teach them how to log in our administrators have been doing lunch bunches with kids and night events with kids to to do things like serious things about discussing the world events so that we could help them process and and understand how they're feeling but also lots of fun stuff kahoot i'm getting really good

011at among us um name that tune even uh as early as yesterday my daughter had a an opportunity to do a story time with her teacher so across all levels t administrators are reaching out and working with along with teachers in connecting with kids in that personal way that we would have done in person another thing that we've done is extracurricular clubs they haven't gone away they're virtual but they meet regularly and this is an opportunity that many of our students have taken advantage of they connect with other students across the grades across the school and they're doing this yes online but they're stepping outside of that realm of all academic to connect with students about things that they like from singing to computer coding to debating to social justice and even a school newspaper

012to name a few we also haven't stopped helping our families because they haven't walked through the door yet or they just started to before they even stepped in we were providing them meals not only the ones that the school and sodexo were providing but we also were collecting non-perishables and at broadview they have a food pantry where people donate non-perishables and then they're delivered to the families at rogers park we have a meal train that's raised over 17 000 and we've provided almost 200 food insecure families with a week's worth of fresh groceries at the holiday the nea is always generous in doing their holiday bear but many schools do their own kind of giving trees where we our social workers and our school psychs and counselors know who the kids that are would not

013rather would not have otherwise had a christmas um teachers and administrators were just shoveling presents their way so we're always working to to make our students feel important to us because they are lastly it's our lessons learned and what we've talked about before is disruptive innovation it's easy to focus on the negative and look at things from a deficit lens but this last section is on the positive that we've learned we've thrown around the phrase disruptive innovation uh when you're thrown into a situation that forces you to change in a manner that may have taken years to come by the biggest positive thing has been this exponential increase in both the teachers and administrators capacity to determine quality online programs and tools as well as utilize them effectively to enhance what happens in the classroom

014while the importance of that personal connection between teacher and student has been laid bare there are many technological tools that we will continue to implement for years to come we would have never gotten to this place if this hadn't happened so that is a silver lining we've also been able to do this because we've had the opportunity to do in time embedded ongoing pd for teachers it takes a lot of planning it takes a lot of preparing and it takes a lot of repeating and we've been able to do that another big win was a virtual parent meetings and conferences it opened doors for parents that couldn't always make it so that even if we had late night they were able to take a five-minute break from their um work maybe it was their lunch

015break and come in and do on their phone a google meet with their child's teacher to learn about what was going on and this was another connection in enhancing that homeschool connection another big win in this in in this disruptive innovation where that students have become advocates for themselves by reaching out to ask for help and clarifying questions they're not always waiting for their parent to do it for them this is age-appropriate of course but this is a key life skill that we talk about a lot and i'm so proud of so many students that are are eye chatting me doctors lead how do i do this or hey they're sending out emails to their counselors to their teachers to their administrators and they're asking for help so that's a key thing that's been that's

016been um positive coming out in closing i want to say on behalf of all the danbury public school administrators a heartfelt thank you to the myriad parents who may not blast it out on social media they may not send sandy an email or read at the board of ed meeting but they've reached out to us administrators individually to say thank you to send an email complimenting what an amazing job their child's teacher has been doing acknowledging the effort put into the planning process and the communication sharing their gratitude for the time spent in google meets helping them to navigate a new terrain your kind words mean the world to us thank you all for letting me share with that i hope i didn't take up too much time you all know that i can talk

017but i try to do it quick and concise thank you dr david thank you for bringing us such enlightened information and we certainly appreciate everything that you do as principal of the rochester park uh middle school and we just thank you for sharing this information with us on your first time for the invite but thank you so very much you're welcome ms cooper i look forward to sharing more okay do you want to snack grandma uh do we have an involved student representative or i'm sorry does uh board members have anything that they would like a question they would like to ask about deleted divorces please no we go down got students um oh i'm sorry are you aaron have you joined us before we move on okay no i guess not i just wanted

018to check that's all okay thank you dr salem so now it's time for our student representative jake [Music] i don't see anybody on yeah i don't see any of them either okay oh i just saw christopher [Music] good evening members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for next ones on tuesday january 26th the 11th graders at ace were offered the opportunity to re-enter the 8th building to take the psat thanks to diana dinardo for arranging and proctoring the test on february 1st ace will run a structured orientation date to deliver expectations for attendance in course schedules behavioral norms and social emotional learning activities time will also be spent going over mitigation strategies and safety procedures students will follow the orientation day schedule

019with their guidance groups to continue the process of building community as we re-enter the building and semester 2 following the hybrid model our orientation day will also be an opportunity for guiding teacher guidance teachers and guidance members to welcome our incoming students from dhs ace would like to publicly acknowledge and congratulate our three january graduates brian galazza rachel jackson and carter strong our three january graduates will be invited to participate in june graduation where we look forward to hear their speeches which will also be viewable on our alternative center for excellence youtube channel lastly ace would like to congratulate our most recent student of the week award winners jalen batista and spencer robbins congratulations to both of you and keep up the great work thank you for allowing me to share what is going on

020with our ace family and stay safe everyone and remain a strong when i didn't quite hear who introduced thank you chris we still don't have a little one from the uh dhs i i don't think jake is here jacob rebecca okay yes no not to say i don't have anything as far as presentation am i correct no we're gonna we got that's correct okay um uh rachel would you do action item a all right i move that the board of education approved the december 2020 operating results and analysis general funds grant project projects in accordance with 21-10 i'll second this is kate okay [Music] uh are there any questions concerning uh the action item saying none uh kate would you do the roll call certainly joe britton aye rachel celeski aye kate caneva aye gladys

021cooper aye lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich giannelli aye cathy molinero aye al russo aye amy spellino hi motion carries unanimously mrs cooper this is the richard jannelli i couldn't get off of being fast enough is there a way that we can just have courtney just give a brief explanation of the uh the information um madam chairman i could you did i we just did the action item you want to discuss it now or i'll just put it up as in in my superintendent report and i could have stupid attendant report please uh do you want to do it right now is my question oh no if you're gonna do it later that's fine okay i'll um i'll just do it within my report i'll call courtney she could start

022it off if that's okay with you everyone everyone yes okay um if courtney would you would you start off important and um kind of discuss what richard just just asked please sure sure thanks mrs cooper thank you everybody um briefly um the last if you'll recall in the last board meeting we showed a deficit that's now showing in balance so briefly i just wanted to let you know that's as a result if you'll recall of some fun some of the items that were in the last budget presentation include items that were grant funded and they've now been shifted over to the appropriate place in the budget so we're showing the budget that's in balance for this year rich has also asked that i for the next board meeting if you'll recall when we when we

023closed last year last fiscal year and opened up this fiscal year after the um we received the funding for this year from the budget the reduction from our original ask if you'll recall um we braided funding together and so that bottom line amount our city amount or board of that amount was about 136 million but the total braided funding was about 145 million so for the next board meeting what rich is asked if i do a full accounting of that 145 so i will be doing that for you it is currently contained in the the grants report but to combine it so that we can show you the full braided funding as we lead into the um budget season he's also asked that we calendar the finance committee for next week on tuesday to kick

024off discussions of the budget cycle so i wanted to make you aware of that as well and you'll be receiving that calendar invitation shortly and then i also wanted to make you aware of um a shortfall that we spoke about earlier with the school nutrition program so um christy talked about all the amazing and fabulous things that they're doing to reach families which included distributing food um through the school staff directly as well as through sodexo and um i wanted to let you know that right now sodexo has come up with strategies to be able to get more food out into the community but because we've been in a remote fully remote model until very recently our food count is down and we're reimbursed by the federal government on the number of meals that we

025distribute and so our gap right now year to date in revenue is about a million dollars um it's not like unlike under other districts that are experiencing this it's just that because danbury's been a hot spot and we've been remote for so long it's a little bit exacerbated um what sodexo did in partnership with um you know sal and myself we we talked to um the lead manager in sodexo and they came up with a strategy to do busing food to families so that we were able to reach a lot more families over the month of december and they've got a strategy going forward to reduce that gap so one of the things that we're doing is getting a week's worth of shelf stable food and on wednesdays when our buses aren't um operating um

026to to drive students we're going to use those buses again to deliver a week's worth of meals to families that sign up and that information will be forced coming to the community shortly in addition we'll be operating an evening pickup for a week's worth of shelf stable food which will be um we'll announce the location shortly we're just working out the logistics but from 4 to 6 pm likely at park avenue school and we'll continue to operate our drive-through pickup for food um at dhs in broadview from 9am to 11am um so our goal and we're going to monitor that how that is reaching the community what the needs are and how we can assess if we can better get food out into the community as it's needed every bi-weekly and visit our revenue number

027so i'll look forward to reporting that regularly out to the board that gap is going to be met with not operating budget funds so not current year funds but um as a result of last year i think i remember if you recall i mentioned that we had a reserve set up from the surplus last year funds that weren't spent during our closure that the city set up for us of about 2.6 million were if that we are not able to close that gap with all these strategies we'd have to take some funds from that reserve our goal is to not have to do that we need that reserve for operating and for you know expenses for um related to one-time expenses for for the board so but we wanted to make you aware um dr

028salas that i talk about that and that we continue to report as the year rolls out kids are back in school so they'll be eating their regular meals so our hope is that we're able to close that gap uh according to we kept everybody employed with the executive order which was the right thing folks have been working and um preparing food and doing all that that you correct yeah and i just wanted to again thank the school lunch staff because i they've just done such a tremendous job they've been you know working non-stop through the summer and all the closures they're in our buildings every day even on this you know the days that are you know we had a early um we had a delay on wednesday and they were there at the schools

029delivering meals so uh and distributing meals so i just wanted to say thank you to the school lunch staff that's been really dedicated courtney can i ask a question about food service um i how is it i know we i know this is obviously a limited window because we only started going back last week but how has it been so far with the distribution of food for the dl kids or the kids that are home on hybrid having it only be at broadview and danbury high school i'm just thinking there's got to be a lot of kids in some of our schools who don't have access to transportation or they themselves walk to ellsworth avenue or walk to park avenue or walk to moore street and we're no longer able able to accommodate that has

030there been any issue with that how are we doing with that that was a concern i had yeah i do have to survey the community and reach out to the principals now that we've been back in for two you know a week with elementary two weeks of elementary and a week with the middle school we see that our numbers are good at those schools but in terms of reaching the families that might not be able to drive there um i've got to reach out to the principals and get some feedback um it's a little challenging that balance between even though less than 40 percent of our kids are in the school it's it's very labor intensive especially in the elementary schools to continue because now there's all the distancing protocols and you know um they've

031still got to distribute the meals at the doors like christy said all the planning that way goes into that like you better you actually need a little bit more staff all of that said um we are looking at potentially expanding to additional locations um that park ave you know is a high you know traffic place um when you have a lot of walkers and we do think that opening up in the evenings there will help if we need to open there in the mornings as well and if you hear feedback please let me know one of the comments i did hear that i will pass on somebody pointed out that the current distribution from 9 to 11 in the morning if a child is on distance learning or a child is home on hybrid for

032their their home side of their cohort for a parent to go pick up the food between 9 11 they have to leave the child home alone or they have to take the child off the computer to go pick up the food because it's being distributed during their academic day which a lot a couple of parents made note of that didn't make a lot of sense so yeah that's good feedback joe maybe we'll look at opening earlier or or in the afternoon maybe when they're theoretically supposedly done yeah or at night yeah that night site we do have but perhaps we could expand evening sites to reach more families thank you that's good just an idea somebody had mentioned that to me that's all thank you thanks jeff thank you and thank you courtney any other

033questions for courtney i have a budget question yes um i know we're gonna talk about the schedule um at the finance committee meeting and i will be there um but i i was kind of and maybe i got the dates wrong i was expecting a presentation today and then are we voting at our next meeting yeah well we will have to vote at the next meeting so we're going to have the first financial committee on tuesday and we'll have as many as we need to have for transparency and to have the board to have a level of comfort with the budget presentation it is a truncated you know and much shorter than we would normally expect but yeah we do need a vote at the next february february 10th board meeting in order to meet

034the deadline to get it to the city by february 15th so there's a lot of work to do between now and then um and i do i do apologize about the transmitted time that's okay and instead of a committee meeting could then it be a workshop so that board members could ask questions and also i thought um al had asked about having something um sent to board members so we can review it prior to meeting yeah yeah and we uh work on doing uh that courtney yes we can we have um we've met with the cabinet um twice so far and have refined our ask to us a place where it's it's in a good shape that we'll be ready to share shortly we do have a meeting on friday and we'll be working a

035bit over the weekend so i hope and it's my anticipation that we'll have something that we'll be able to share monday afternoon um if we're gonna have the tuesday meeting i know it doesn't give you much time um you can always feel free to reach out and um call me if you have specific questions or things that you'd like us to focus on so that i can make sure and included in the presentation um if you'd like okay great thank you thank you honestly rachel i think your your points well taken considering the time constraints we have to have whatever we have going forward on the uh finance so that we do it as a workshop because i i believe it's important to have the full forward have comments in there as opposed to just

036be restricted in five people and then regurgitated you know at a period of time later so uh the scheduling would be sent out as as a workshop that was a good point though thank you thanks rich i'm sorry i didn't even i didn't hear what mr janella stated does someone repeat what he said i said i would i agree with rachel that instead of a finance committee meeting that'd be a workshop okay we'll have a discussion about that before we turn it into a workshop that's fine [Music] can i move on a more question no uh before we moved out to say i i didn't get the uh date uh that courtney stated that we would have to uh submit the budget to the city of denmark is that uh it's at the second board

037meeting i don't know like uh that the board february 10th for the the board vote and it's due to the city on february 15th gladys it's always due to the city on valentine's day but it it's the first business day following valentine's day which happens to be on a sunday this year so it'll be monday the 15th when it's due okay thank you so very much courtney i think what was said and for the board members it's been truncated but at some point um you know we could have a workshop post um before that as well to go over it uh the budget's very interesting and i'll just uh comment we are trying to understand deeply the uh the the funds that are coming from the feds i'll talk a little bit about that later

038later in terms of how it's going to mitigate our our costs we're also trying to ascertain we had a disparity of number of kindergartens that haven't arrived this year and we're working on figuring out how that may impact our ftes um so that's been a little bit difficult when we're trying to do that so that's coalescing now so we'd have a budget that uh you know better be reflective of what we need operation still unknown within that would be any options we would have to do um the braiding part that um that um courtney has been talking about but we see that as coming from uh biden's um new proposal and coming to this state so but we're we're to the point where now we have a better understanding of particularly the fts so i

039just want to comment on that uh let me i brought kathy is here i'll not care but um the vaccine has been um pretty disturbing in terms of the rollout and i'll just comment that we were prepared and thank him and her department people putting in just about 2 000 folks that were to be entered last monday um under 1a and um late last thursday it was um pulled off the docket and they quote talking about a uh a pause that pause took out um our uh teachers now uh what has happened some districts somehow uh through their health departments were able to circumvent the the uh requirement and were able to vaccinate their teachers um and um it's been um uh quite controversial throughout the state how that happened um i um this morning

040we met with our legislators um we talked with um senator that we'd like to do some um conversation having a conversation with the state department and she's having with the department of health to consider to consider those cities such as danbury that have had high numbers of community spread and have been out that somehow they might be able to prioritize and and permit our districts to at least get into a um a queuing so we can load up and get in and have our folks um and vaccinated and kathy's here tonight kathy and carob have set up rogers park so if you give us the stuff we can get it in the arms real quick um so i'll be doing that and writing the state department but that has been um a dilemma for us

041um if if um we lay it out the way the state's going um you know i don't know our folks may not be um vaccinated until spring and i'll let and i'm it's not just the teachers by the way i'm talking about everyone kathy can you kind of let the board know what's going on i'd appreciate it with that um sure dr sal thank you good evening everyone um so in in terms of the pause um where we're at right now the state is continuing to vaccinate under 1a and they have moved on to individuals who are 75 years of age and older as dr sal mentioned the school personnel have been put on pause and that's really due to vaccine supply from week to week the local health department has not always known how

042much vaccine they're going to get so that has been of course a challenge and just getting the people who are eligible right now vaccinated [Music] what i've been told is that all directions will come from the state the district even the local health department has no control over who will be enrolled next um who will be eligible so when the state does give us that direction we do have someone who will be responsible for uploading the lists entering into the vamp system and then individuals will receive an invitation to set up an account and they will be able to schedule their vaccine according to the department of health i was on a call with them yesterday they don't have a firm timeline what they're telling us is that for school personnel they're looking at possibly

043late february uh to early march as i said you know early march for the when you can get in there so through march we're going to vaccinate and then you have to wait i don't know what is it three four weeks well for the pfizer vaccine you need to wait 21 days and the moderna is 28 days well you know you put you you put that onto it and then you have to wait two weeks after that for you know it to take effect you can see you know we're talking summer school here so we're going to try to really i can't i'm going to say push but um really make the case um to see if we can pardon the expression jumping ahead of the line to get our teachers and staff in there

044so we extend a better chance um to have a safer environment and get our kids back so um kathy thank you for your help and i also want to thank the project park setting that up i don't know if the board member has questions about that but i'll go to the lottery if there's no questions on the vaccine okay um kevin can you update the board on the ais and west side lotteries please sure good evening everyone uh so first i'll start with westside that's the easiest one um dr labonga and jennifer blue assistant principal at westside middle school they have been going to our elementary schools via google meets to promote west side middle school in the lottery process and so frank has done a wonderful job in that effort and uh we anticipate

045a big turnout as we as we've always had for the west side lottery and and what the ais lottery um is has been has completed uh we had six hundred and twenties for the lottery this year um certainly a really good turnout overall um but the board should be aware that we're down about 150 160 applications from previous years um but you know we we feel like we have we still have enough applications to fill the seats um at ais but our numbers are down um the principal at ais continues to do a good job recruiting we had 17 applications from our non-partner schools and 17 applications in total i'm sorry 72 applications in total between our non-partner schools and partner schools dan barry's danbury internally we had 555 applications um and again in total

046we had 627 applications so uh in a couple of weeks we will be um reaching out to families and informing them of their place in the lottery and start calling families soon and inviting them in to accept seats at ais so it's exciting times for us and the train continues to move despite the pandemic and this virtual platform we've all been working any question for mr lost i do uh richard gennady uh kevin the 100 plus figure of the decline is that a grand total between the uh out of district as well as the danbury kids or is it just danbury it is it is mr genelli it's down actually on both sides um the number is actually internally here in danbury are also down and so it's about 150 160 in total but the

047danbury numbers are down but our partners in non-partner schools those applications are down this year as well we typically had at least more applications from brookfield in particular we've only had 11 applications this year so to courtney in terms of developing a budget this would potentially have an impact on our budget too correct yeah all right thank you very much just so kevin kevin just just everybody knows the lottery is not run at the district we we have an organization that runs the lottery that materials come into us now we start following ups and um i just want to uh reemphasize that i didn't i'm sorry gladys i didn't hear you had a question uh mr washington could you forward the information to board members you know as we you know you give out the

048information was trying to write the numbers down and and try to uh do something else at the same time could you for the information for our numbers are now versus last year and and what areas those numbers are up and what are those numbers are down no problem i'll get something out by the end of the week to go to the book okay thank you and kevin just to um also provide to you like i can get when you send it out as part of the board package we provide that the budget uh with some information about the enrollment historically so i can give that to you as well if that's helpful yeah yeah it would be helpful but just so the board we have to maintain that 70 30 proportion if for some reason

049we don't um we do have a year to mitigate i guess um you know that was passed about two or three years ago with our board's help and the delegation so that we don't get cut off you know immediately so we could strategize in terms of how to get the numbers up um so dr dr sal i i just i just want to also clarify to mr jannelli's point um just for everyone to be mindful these are new applications um and of course we get them every year the heaviest number of applications come in kindergarten grade one and grade two um and so you know our seats right now we are approximately at a 7 30 70 to 30 ratio right now at ais and so it's not as if we're starting from scratch you

050know with with enrollment for ais all of these applications are back filling seats for students who will be leaving next year graduating to middle school um and so you know it's i don't i don't want to leave the impression that we're starting from scratching because the numbers are down it automatically means we're going to lose funding um we'll have a better idea it really depends on if these out-of-town families accept the seats we're i think we're going to be in good shape but that but it's always better to have more to choose from and right now we have we don't have as many families to choose from as we've had in years past but if those out of town seats if those families accept the seats you know i think we'll continue to be in

051at least a 7 30 70 30 range that we're in now thank you kevin anything else with the lotteries building facilities update i know mr britton i think we're trying to have a meeting on wednesday uh we're trying to hold right get ahold of it down we wanted them to come in and discuss the projects we have osborne um coming around we've been moving out of there and um we're moving into granville and at some point we should maybe even have a well i guess we can't meeting but maybe we could do a video of this of the building really did a nice job there and then um backfilling uh we have a plan to backfill with sacred heart we're on a year by year rental or at least which would work out for um

052dr mead and her group and for the um registration center so then which would save us some money um quite frankly so that'll work out really well for us um we also have um the summit going forward uh cara and her team um doing a tremendous job in defining programmatically what will happen there and then uh working with the um with the board in in terms of head specs to um create that environment to make it work the board's going to have some decisions to make in terms of how we fill that up um you know um it will be expensive you know you're talking maybe um you got it it's going to be six through 12 and how um see i think it's 1200 1200 and how we fill it up so that's going

053to kind of be uh both exciting and challenging but we just want to hear more about that and i was reminded last week too when we went through all of this one of the proposals that the city was looking at was building an early childhood center and you may recall the area that they were looking at was over at um great plains school on the one side as a possibility so i'm asking them to discuss that and that's down the road um so you have a lot we have a lot of things going on for building in facilities um the funding for that has been good so um you know hopefully we can get everybody next wednesday mr britain and um have that meeting and and have antonio and not dan come to the meeting

054um i don't know if you have any other comments but that's sort of where we're at on on all of that has it been set up by the way kara yeah i emailed kara and she said that it looked good for wednesday just waiting to like finalize the agenda and everything great would that be at six o'clock yeah six o'clock yep okay great so that's terrific and we want to do that and i know the town had a meeting last night on that steering committee i was not able to attend um there was a mess up in the uh the invite for us but i guess they went so they can update us with that as well they had some conversations last night about the summit um so to so next next next wednesday uh

055for the facilities committee um in your package you should have received the blueprints now just take some time to go through it um the cap spent about two years or thereabouts um putting this together with some specialists and it talks about um how the funding in the state of connecticut or how education in the state of connecticut can come up and um [Music] in a way that'd be much more um equitable in terms of particularly with our cause of cities they're looking at ecs funding over a 15-year period to increase it by about two and a half percent they had about 30 points they were looking at um ways to um uh recruit teachers they were looking at ways to um work on social emotional assistance for districts also looking at school improvement and grants

056collapsing some grants and focusing more making them easier for particularly the alliance district which we are um the other big thing is looking at the funding of special education you all know that access cost never has filled or are funded fully that the state needs to step up somehow and think about doing this um they are focusing on ell as well because that's the fastest growing population of state um you know we're the the the child the poster for that our students are part of our great mosaic it's having our kids our yellow kids but the funding there needs to follow so they're working on that as well um in inner government they're looking at ways to reduce the number of assessments which we think would be helpful instead of the yearly program that they

057have one of the things for the board you know we're into a minimum budget nbr the the recommendation is go to not mbr but an actual um expenditure spent and to try to come up with a foundation level that's reflective of that um there are 30 points in here along with a backup so i you know i just suggested you go through it and um you know you'll hear more and more this is over a period of time my only dilemma is i don't want this to interfere with our proposal of danbury getting up to our uh allocation eight more years uh to to get the right funding and in fact we've asked for an acceleration of it um i did mention that the caps as well so i did lodge that complaint that if

058this is done that did not impact those of us that already have been cited to come up to a parody for getting our educational funding so um just take your time and go through and answer the questions um just ask me when we can um i'm sure caps um okay we'll have some workshops on it uh as well um if i could just spend a minute today we had the legislative meeting and it was a good meeting lasted over an hour an hour and 10 minutes we presented the draft that the board looked at which basically was similar to last year um we have two members of our delegation on the education committee which is really good for us the senators on there krishna and one another elected official i'm sorry i can't think of

059his name but at least we have two folks that we can talk to and i think they expressed their um their support for our programming uh and for the funding so i'm excited about that we also talked as i mentioned before about the vaccine and trying to do some kind of a prioritizing um for you know danbury or urbans like danbury that have been challenged with the community spread so uh i thought the morning this morning was a successful meeting uh gladys you were there i don't know if you have any comments about it or any other the kelly or kevin or courtney is a good time to do it my uh dr sarah you expressed it quite well i think it was a good meeting i think that the delegations are bored and discuss

060all the concerns that you brought forward to them concerning how to continue working together to make sure that we move our district forward in the in the right direction and uh i thank you for inviting me to that meeting it was very educational and very informative uh and i think that we have a group of people that's going to be working with us alongside of us to move what we need to get done here in danbury forward kelly or kevin anything you good just to reiterate i was very very appreciative of the time and i'm really seriously listening to jamberry's needs and concerns um they asked a lot of insightful questions and i think gained a lot of knowledge to help inform moving uh what they need to do forward hey tom keep us on

061speed dial just give us the buzz and you know we'll do what we can to uh you know inform them uh so thank you very much that is my report do you want to move down to um yes i can um you um i sent you the material this started oh my goodness um i think the governor started last spring talking about expanding open enrollment i know market come to mark and um you know asking questions about our area so apparently as you see there is a bill a proposal for open choice for expanding it hadn't been done in years uh in this western part of the state which would be us and for norwalk to expand that part of the area um and the information is just coming through um you know it does

062speak to ways of filling um the buildings that maybe need enrollment it is a voluntary program it is not a required program uh there's some questions about um uh expenditures and uh costs that um the delegation this morning said they too wanted some clarity on particularly about special education courses what what what does it mean when it's reasonable i wonder about the yellow courses support um but they were mindful of those at this point so if it does become a law then they would have to create the process normally to rest in the area they implement it for us it's going to be the cess which is down in fairfield county that rest is going to um i guess manage it so far the only districts that i know that have that seemed to have

063been interested there was a presentation at ridgefield and i got a call from the superintendent in brookfield um and that's it that's all i've received so far so um stay tuned about that one but you do have all of the materials and then the open choice so everybody knows is more for um you know voluntary desegregation and to have our suburban schools more uh integrated along with helping for enrollment issues as well so that that's what that's about oh kate has a question uh rachel also had her hand up she actually was first thank you though um so the way i understood it is it's more geared more toward elementary level can you confirm that and also i just would like to express um my support for um expanding that as you know a small

064piece of a multi-faceted solution for our enrollment issues um i think it's just um a small piece of the puzzle um i'm not i'll have to check i don't think there's been any commitment but it wouldn't make sense to start with the elementary and through it um i haven't gotten much information on it um as they go through i guess with the um proposal we'll gather that and i'll bring it to the board soon as i can find out some information absolutely okay um i had i had heard um from a board of ed member in sherman and i don't know you know this is going back now uh at least a year if not longer that they had open seats available at sherman as well so i don't know if that's something that you

065could reach out about dr sal or if somebody else should be doing that well my understand what has happened was the rest sent out a i won't use the word survey but an interest to the whole region and then they responded to that and um and um he the gentleman from says will do presentations to those districts that are interested and the only two that i've heard so far kate that that is that doesn't mean there won't be more now but uh he did send out that um and that's all i know the two uh that are interested at this point there'll be time and um to do it if there's an interest uh may i just clarify one more thing dr sal and i and i'm just you said that cess uh which is

066the the lower variable education ces in fairfield they're the regional office apparently that's going to run it as opposed to in advance which is our our risk typically it would be in advance but for some reason maybe they have the infrastructure and the staff already i'm not sure but that's where they're running it out of at this point okay thank you and he could actually he said he'd be willing to come up and do a presentation i think that would be a good idea down the road he's been doing it okay if you guys are interested let me know we can invite them i i guess my question would be as and and i know this hasn't been a lot of information about this is the grade level and whether we send a first grader

067second grader over to ridgefield or any other surrounding district and i often think about how parents react when their kids are on the bus from damn there uh you know uh i think we really have to really have the presentation understanding what is the uh the real purpose of this and how would it benefit our children not just uh looking at uh you know feeling space and and moving uh some of our children out of uh our school into ceramic surrounding areas or surrounding areas coming in i i think there's a lot of unknown about this and uh you know like i said i would not want to put if i had a child going to school if you'd like um just kind of let me know i'll i'll ask the their executive director whomever

068runs the program to come and give the board a presentation okay i can do that just let me know and i will arrange that yeah okay because we all learned something because it has been dormant for years and years because it hasn't been funded right okay um okay i'm sorry can i just ask a question uh madam chair to dr sound so doctor salad you just say it's been dormant so there hasn't been a lot of attention to it or there wasn't it hasn't expanded okay the program hasn't expanded in fact when i was reading the legends the um proposal for the talking of the blueprints for connecticut schools that i sent out there was a um a pause in here that talked about actually um let me just it said before you do any

069more expanding they should uh address the uh in here require more study of schools of choice to address for example the inequities and funding problems of magnet schools um which is all of them they need to tackle how they're funding the school so open choice has been in that lump so they haven't been doing anything this is the first legislation in a number of years to present itself um so that's that's that's brand new it hasn't been approved yet if it does then danbury and norwalk would be the areas that it would impact yes okay thank you from here if the board would like and we'll all learn something okay uh no more questions if you do have any just send me an email and i'll try to answer it because uh you know there

070are open questions on and i know the reopening of schools and the extended learning program um kevin has been working with the principals and courtney i if you don't mind i'll start with the extended learning program uh dr mead is here that is something that we've been very worried about um and she'll explain why and what we're doing and i want to thank you for you know really really trying to do this because we know it's important for families go ahead dr me great thank you dr sal good evening everyone um so the extended learning program operates um for your knowledge in the um all the elementary schools in the morning and the afternoon and in the middle schools just in the afternoon and we had to furlough furlough off people this fall and so

071hr has been working with us to bring those folks back but because of the early hours that school is getting out teachers and paris have to contractually stay in their buildings and so we have been working with recruiting more staff to come in to be able to staff those programs i believe next week we will probably be able to open up two or three schools we will be following the same protocols and everything that the schools are following you know distance the hand washing everything that they're doing protocols contract tracing things like that so my focus this week and next week is to continue to recruit staff we have gone out to our safety advocates who work shorter hours as well as our school lunch people we have it in apple track and out and

072out in indeed looking for staff i'm working with a college to recruit students from there hopefully we'll get some that can actually walk to elsewhere school depending on their schedule um and then we have it out on social media so if you know anyone that's looking to work from seven to eight or eight thirty in the morning and then twelve thirty to 6 or 1 o'clock to 6 you know have them apply to the application or to call me and i can walk them through the process so but it is our full intent to um get the get that program back up and running for our families because we want to keep them in the learning mode in which they have already decided that that of hybrid and not throw the ball the delicate balance

073that we've created as a district between those that are distance learning and those that are in hybrid so that's my update uh thank you and i know there's been a lot of questions in the reopening about health and safety and then kathy's with us tonight um i think you know kathy maybe you could comment the work that you've been doing um and how we're working with the nurses and with the principals and the teachers um with the reopening can you do that for us please um yes sure dr sal um so um you know in terms of the reopening um i'm very confident in the mitigation strategies that we have in place um you know i also need to thank uh courtney and rich albert and their team uh they've done a wonderful job with

074um getting everything in place as far as um you know all the the hand sanitizers the arrows on the floors directions where to go how traffic will flow uh the six foot distancing so um as i said i'm very confident in those measures every school has an isolation room which we are you know prepared to use if that's necessary if we have a concern that a child is exhibiting covet symptoms um the child will be assessed and put in that isolation room um and then we ask the parents be available to come and pick their child up within 30 minutes the nurses have all been trained in the contact tracing and you know we are prepared to do that either during the school day after school hours or on weekends whatever is necessary we have

075plenty of ppe we're well supplied and and it's really been it's been great to see the kids back in the building and we're enjoying it um is there i i know today with contact tracing and all of that work that we're doing with the um health department um and i think that's been the biggest challenge um so the board would know but we were asked about the report so just to re-emphasize where the reporting uh regarding the number of cases we have where that would be and just find everyone and how that's handled with the real can you hear me yes okay so my camera has gone off i apologize um so in terms of notifications just briefly on the contact tracing so when a case is identified we have a direct contact notification we

076identify who has been a close contact of that positive person and we have a procedure in place as far as collaborating with the nurses and principals and how we get that message out to parents and to staff who have been determined to be close contacts in addition to that there will be a general notification letter that goes out to the school staff and community it's just informing them that there's a case it lets them know that the direct contacts have been notified and it is just for their information and then in terms of the public um back in december gina helped me to establish a covid19 dashboard and it is housed on the danbury public schools website it's as soon as you go to the home page it's on the right hand side um and

077that will be updated um i would say within 48 hours um i i do look to do it every 24 but depending on how things are going um it may be 48 hours so it will tell the individual school if we have a case if closed contacts have been identified if so how many and how many people we have in quarantine um and it will just again for we want to be transparent and offer the public the information to see the cases but we do not identify if it is a student or a staff member um you know we want to let you know how many cases we have but we also have to protect the privacy um of the individual who does have coven though that that site is there for the general public

078to view whenever they choose to [Music] does anybody have any questions of kathy i i do madam chair when it's appropriate oh i hate it kathy just a couple questions um i i noticed the the the dashboard doesn't look like it was updated since well the 20 the 24th right um have we had any further quarantines or issues since then yes we have and it's because of the time that has taken me to investigate that and take care of the priority of notifying the direct contact and the general school community um i usually update that in the evenings um okay but that will be by tomorrow that will be all updated that wasn't a complaint it was just leading to my next question how many people do we have on quarantine um currently okay so

079we have had um since we reopened we've had um four quarantines they have been grade level uh i'm sorry classroom not grade level classrooms so in those four currently we have um 70. okay um one other question i i how have we been doing are we seeing kids coming to school sick more importantly are we seeing kids coming to school with if they're not sick that a family member's sick their siblings sick their parents are sick are we sending kids home how is that coming okay so um yes we have seen some not a lot of children coming to school sick but it has happened um and as soon as the teacher identifies that either the child coughing or appears to be ill they go right to the school nurse and then the appropriate action

080is taken and we are calling parents um to come and pick them up um in terms of illness at home um the nurse once they become aware and sometimes that information comes from a teacher a child may reveal something if they've been on you know if they're online um that someone is sick in the house we start investigating that and we are asking that if there is an ill family member that everyone in that family remain at home until kova tests have been conducted any other question of cathy i froze up there at the end thank you very much kevin sure you're welcome yeah picture that joe um the other area that has been a work in um has been um with with kim and her group um she was working with the principals kim

081you want to talk about your segment with the reopening sure um part of what we're really struggling with is trying to make sure that we can provide enough support to kathy for contact tracing and that we can have a handle on when we have employees that are calling in with absences do we need to triage them in the direction of this is an ordinary absence or this could be a covet-related absence so um in the last week or so my team's been working at putting out um they're basically sort of flow charts and they start with help i'm a teacher and i need an absence or help i'm a para and i need an absence and it walks them through a series of steps on how to enter an absence particularly if it is covered

082related um what the what the flowchart does is it links to a google doc or a google form that they are asked to complete name um the best phone number to reach you at and some really generic entries for example my child's been asked to quarantine or i'm awaiting test results once they hit submit it feeds directly into a google doc on kathy o'dowd's desk which filters all the information into columns for her so that she can see it and she can start triaging the contact tracing piece that also feeds into my office where we then go back around to look to make sure that we have appropriate coverage if we have to provide any supplemental staff as you've heard me say there is a fairly reduced number i would say dramatically reduced number of

083resources from which to draw in order to cover classrooms if needed so i've also been working with administrators and their secretaries across the district to ensure that they have a plan that is known to the building administrator and their second person in charge on how classes will be covered in the event that there are high numbers of absences i've asked those building administrators to provide kind of a tag or trigger number on what's the number of absences of teachers or staff in a day that you think you can comfortably handle by moving some of your staff around and that information has gone to melissa bang who's responsible for coordinating our asap coverage and if she she works typically and checks in in the evening and very early in the morning so we've set up kind

084of a call tree when she sees that trigger number hit um she connects with the administrator who then will work with dr sal and kevin to determine whether they can provide coverage or we may need to close a building part of what we're really trying to be prepared for is we're trying to have as much information as we can in the event that we think we may need to close because of staffing issues this as i said two weeks ago this is going to be one of our greatest challenges in communications with families on how to get them sufficient notice so that they can make arrangements for a closing that we may have to invoke because of staffing problems and we continue to kind of talk about the earliest point where we think we can

085provide that what is clear is that we can't provide that closure information early in the morning on a school day students will already be in motion they'll already be on buses so we're really trying to pay attention to who are all of the people in a given building who could be called upon to sub if needed some of this is going to be by experience we've tried to anticipate a number of scenarios so that we can be as ready as we can be and some of it will be by experience i will tell you now that we've had elementary in for a week and a half and this is the week with middle we're starting to see increasing sick numbers and so that's causing not only a knockoff for kathy who has got to do

086the contact tracing but also we're starting to watch how we're going to invoke coverage so that every student is appropriately supervised and covered with a teacher i definitely think i'm destined for a career in logistics we're getting there and as i said at a certain point i think we're all going to be just hopeful that we've got a sufficient communication skill built um and a tree built so that we can communicate with each other but typically these things as you might expect happen in the evening so we've already had some experience with getting going um you know late at night with kelly and kathy and her team to try to mobilize as quickly as we can so that's really where i've spent a lot of my attention right now we also in the last week

087or so have had a quite an uptick in requested accommodations these are not folks that we had heard from since june as we've been providing those accommodations these are mostly new requests and so um those are some difficult conversations because we are really not in a position now with staffing to be able to provide additional support or coverage for teachers who want to work exclusively from home so those conversations are still ongoing in my office and as i said they've escalated fairly considerably in the last week or so so we're trying to get to those folks to make sure that we can provide in-building support as we need to or alternative accommodations or in some cases leaves of absence to try to figure out the best way to to kind of help people through this

088period of time i will tell you that as i've said before the level of adjustment and resilience and commitment from all of your staff from administrators to teachers all the way through um down to you know para educators custodians safety advocates school lunch these people the uniform commitment is we want to be in school we want to be with kids we're doing everything we can and some of them are really um at significant personal cost are really trying to make this work so i continue to be grateful for the time and the ability to meet with these people by zoom and and talk with them often more than once to make sure that we can get them the support that we need um to get them back to school with their kids so we'll get

089there i think we're all a little deflated by the vaccine problem i think we were all very optimistic that that was going to go more quickly so as i said we're a little deflated by that but um we're going to get there one way or the other so that's my report man i'm sure i have a question for kim if i may kim in terms of coverage um somebody asked me i honestly don't even remember who i remember whether somebody messaged me on social media or whether i saw somebody at the grocery store uh there was a disconcerting i found disconcerting rumors so today okay that that in terms of coverage that we may be pulling the dl teacher for elementary schools to cover in schools that's not true is it right um it may

090be true um and let me let me describe it this way each building administrator is trying to put together they've worked with me to know who all of the folks are in their buildings and there's a variety of people that can be used to cover every building has a building sub at least one and that's somebody who is dedicated every day to going to that building many many buildings also have what we call a cohort sub it could be a couple of days a week it could be four days a week again committed to go to the buildings although we've been having trouble with one for every building just in terms of getting people to commit um that's the first two primary pieces there also may be some sub coverage through the aesop pool which

091is kind of sporadic coverage that's also very much in place and we continue to scan the applications for those i will tell you that i think last week there were two um there's not a lot of people coming in the next the next list then goes to folks like again understanding not anybody's first choice could be some para educators could be some esl teachers could be esl paras could be your srbi paras could be coaches we may we've talked with the nea danbury leadership it could be specialist teachers and if we get to the bottom joe honestly and it's the choice between closing the building or not it may be a dl teacher that gets redeployed and those kids go on asynchronous learning as the parent of a dl kid who one of the one

092of the reasons why we chose the l was specifically the problem that i had with hybrid then the other two days there's no teacher that it is asynchronous i would have a deeply i would be deeply disconcerted to find that all of a sudden we're pulling dl teachers out because the fact that they're there four days a week is pr a significant component of why people chose that that i don't i don't think anyone disagrees with that i think i i want to stress it's a really last case scenario for a day i i don't see it as a solution for more than that and i don't want your job channeling your inner harry potter to try to make all this work i get it i know but i do appreciate that because it's it's

093a very common piece of feedback and we have heard it um but i i really do think you know we've had many many communications with particularly at the elementary level with those administrators and they are all very well aware that that is a that's a do or die situation and i'm hopeful we don't get there i i really am okay thank you thank you for the board for the board um you know we've come through and we've said when we come back and this is the reasons why we're coming back we've got the mitigation strands but i thought we accentuated the the challenges and the big challenge has not been in the virus being um spread within it's been the ability for schools this is the practice to maintain and stay open when the adults

094get uh infected if we get to the point where there's a critical number we'll get a call and say stay at home in a bl i mean that that has been the challenge um so you know as as and as dire straits we would have to put folks in there but we do have a continuum and a plan uh but you know it may be where we just have to close and that's just the way it's going to be it's going to be our life until we get everything done particularly this vaccine so again i thank you and your group for doing that i don't know if anybody else has any questions of kim before we move to the next part i don't have a question for kim but just on reopening dr sallin is

095this the appropriate time gladys yes go ahead um so a similar situation as to joe's where you know the parents just made a decision based on what the original plan was and for the middle schools and dr sal you and i went back and forth about this but there was a last minute change to have the kids go to school and be limited to one core classroom and then learn remotely for the their other core classes um i'm not saying i disagree or agree with that um you know my two middle schoolers had two really great days um this week and i also feel confident in the mitigation strategies that were put in place um it's not to say i don't have anxiety with sending them back um but i feel pretty confident um you

096know with the the protocols in place so with that decision i think parents just have to be nimble and flexible right in this time and environment that we're in um i know that there were some that weren't happy but in you know that's kind of a a major factor when you know families make a decision to you know go dl or go hybrid could you talk about um like how that decision was made was it a team decision and i understand you know it's for just initially two weeks but um what will determine if kids are allowed to move from class to class um at some point sure um christy are you still on is dr zeta yes i'm here i think it would be helpful because um just so the board knows um these

097things are not done in the vacuum there's a lot a lot of conversation going on about safety of course you would expect me to have our medical folks involved and kathy is on and she's advising one of the things i'm kind of proud of christy and her group and dan and the others they've reached out to uh and have been involved in communication with the surrounding districts not only in connecticut out of state and the i call it the accordion method we were in opening um and i'll just go on the on the record by saying that initially opening we wanted to stay open and i think the lens that the middle school looked at was how to do that best and they've worked together i'm going to christie speak to that one of the

098things that we have to understand that um that we look at central office is that as decisions are are propagated at a level that for consistency pretty much much they have to be the same so there had to be discussion among between those principles over time and kevin uh has been part of those conversations but in this particular case um i'll let christie explain to the whole board why and are thinking about the movement ahead and opening up to greater flexibility uh and starting in a way that we feel is safer and to avoid quarantining and closing down but kristy can you dr sal i'm i'm okay with going first talk about how it's looking um so so rachel and in for the board in general you know when when talking through these mitigation strategies

099into sales point about our efforts to try to keep everyone safe we felt it was in everyone's best interest to limit the movement as much as possible and so this was really about maintaining our cohorts in our classes um and in our various grade levels um have an opportunity to see how we're doing making sure that we can you know make sure our teachers and our staff are accustomed to implementing the protocols um it was a significant step for us you know we felt like we had a successful week with elementary our principals our teachers did an amazing job first week with at the elementary schools we had every confidence that the middle schools would do the same thing but frankly one to south point you know we wanted to make sure all the middle

100schools were doing something similar in terms of implementing a model that looked looks similar but two we didn't want to compromise our kids the second they got back in the buildings um and so you know kathy earlier had talked about um had talked about the contact tracing protocol and i don't want to see but you know we've already had a case of one of our elementary schools more than one and so when we look at the contact tracing and we have to make a case to quarantine the classroom it's much easier to quarantine the classroom when the cohort is limited movement in middle schools we might have to shut christie's grade level down or potentially a school and we just wanted to get some confidence and just try to get back in our buildings first

101before we had students moving around around the buildings and i and i understand i think we all understand the parents concerns about you know hey my kid has been home for you know almost the entire year and they i you know i i thought i signed up for a regular school experience and i i i think it's okay to say we're not ready for the full experience yet um and i think we're taking baby steps right now just to ensure just to protect everyone that's our staff um you know kim shared our our obstacles to just making sure our staff is safe every day and the challenges with staffing and the supports in terms of subs that we have or don't have um and we were concerned about all of those things and all those

102things went to the decision making um so for right or wrong i think i i think we felt pretty good let's just start with the cohort first um it's it's not ideal you know the last thing we wanted to do was you know i think and i think sal said it best a couple of months ago when we go back to school we wanted to be as you know as close to the school experience as possible and i know the middle school students are probably saying their parents are saying this is not you know regular middle school we understand that um but we do feel like this is a good first step so i i just as chris i know you're on the spot i'm still going to put you in on the hot seat

103christy but um i just wanted to let everyone know like this was behind the decision like we feel pretty good about the cohorting piece um and that was important to maintain that middle school at least from the beginning to make sure our staff is accustomed to implementing those protocols chrissy you want anything to that uh you can if you want if not um first our middle school administrative team we're a tight-knit group of eight we work together um happily on most things so while we have nuances in our buildings that make us a little bit different we enjoy each other's company on the regular and so when we're faced with these kind of things we like to work together and collaborate so we 100 percent we're collaborating with one another some of us belong to

104a cass group that actually has administrators from across the state meeting and when we were coming back into hybrid i had reached out and just said hey what do you guys tell me what's what's the best thing you've done what should i avoid and it was an overwhelming cohort cohort cohort keep your kids if you could keep them as cohort as possible that's the best part the opening up and shutting down is killing us and we are blessed to have kathy that's doing and all of our nurses doing this crazy contact racing because the principals spend it and i i felt their pain today the first time with with trying to figure out where some um possible exposures were but that just weighed heavy on my mind and as a parent too i have a

105high schooler in an elementary schooler and just thinking like what would i want my child to do um if they if i was going to choose to put them into hybrid and how i want to keep themselves we are still in a global pandemic with a more virulent strain coming out i'm aware of that and are so are the other administrators we are also aware of the strain it's putting on our children and our parents and so we wanted to do something that was going to keep us open as long as possible because it's going to happen it's already happened to our elementary friends no matter how hard they tried it it's gonna happen but we wanted to to say let's see how long we could keep it open to kevin's point you know you

106have one kid now who went or if it's an adult you just went from 17 individual classrooms where you were staying interacting and by the way teachers have said kids have been engaging more than ever whether they're in person or not just from you know kind of the change which is good but now you now took those 17 individual pods that if one person was positive you just shut down that one classroom they just moved to four other classrooms that may have been with other kids and so that is it's kind of that did that as a science teacher used to do that std thing with the m ms and who touched the eminem and then you have spread it and so now like kevin said it could be a grade level depending on the

107class that they went to could be three if it's a like a pe class so we were looking at it less of anything else then let's keep the school open we want these kids in here we believe in that wholeheartedly and we want to do everything we can to mitigate the closing down because all of the districts that have opened up any person that you talk to and you can ask some staff members here whose kids are from other districts the quarantining closing down is more disruptive than anything else that's been our our push and again like sal said we're going to look at this on thursday determine you know how many kids are important how is that how's the quarantine even working has it moved and you know our goal to move through the

108schedule as normal we want the kids the teachers love seeing them come back we love seeing the kids but we want to do it safe and we don't want to shut down every other minute because if you're a parent that's counting on having your kids out at school for two days and now all of a sudden you got to come pick them up that's a disruption that nobody wants to deal with thank you guys so anyway we'll be reviewing it you can all tell we're trying to do do what's best and we felt this was best and yes decisions made from from central office for continuity and safety but it is a team approach and um you know i i think the board we should be proud that we spend so much time doing what's

109right we will transition to um the next phase we're going to look at it next week the good news everyone you know holding out a little bit um the numbers are actually have come down regarding the infection rate and what have you so that's sort of what we anticipated um and so we'll look at all of these things next week so um you know that's how that came to fruition um i do have a little bit more to talk about if if you don't mind i'll move i wanted cara to talk about the instructional piece how you think it's going um okay um k5 anyway now just for the board for the high school we don't have an opportunity to do any of this if they're going to come in and they're going to move

110around we cannot um you know isolate and do the cohort so that's going to be you know the numbers they come back in a week february 1st so uh we're just going to have to watch that closely we had the opportunity at the middle school to do something a little bit different but the high school is going to be you know normal as as possible um you know we have about a 400 kids that are on dl um the rest are coming in on two split days so the numbers are down uh the hallways are marked um they've gone one ways and so you know to do as much as possible to turn um avoiding and social distancing but the high school will be on their normal pattern for structure anyway so cara you have

111something uh sure just um you know just the general reports that um you know things are going as as planned so far um you know the first week or so with the students coming in well now middle school as well but particularly with k5 is really about establishing um more about establishing the routines of safety and procedure and how to operate in their building in their classroom in this environment and sort of the rules of engagement and so that has gone well um it was a little bit more of a lighter instructional week than we would normally plan but it's pretty typical for um if students were coming in in september and they're seeing their classrooms for the first time um so too those things still happen even though it happens to be january so

112um we have all of some of those typical things but then a whole bunch of things that are not so typical um given the new structures that we have so um teachers are very eager to to meet with the kids um it was wonderful to see some of the photos and to see some of the kids coming in to the buildings they were very excited across the board um i think one of the great benefits in this environment is getting that return energy when you see your kids in person um you know after not seeing them for so long so there's there's nothing that can really beat that um so as far as uh the instructional from the more instructional sides of things you know we were able to i'm not sure if we mentioned

113this the last time that we met but we were able to provide a secondary device to all the teachers who requested it and that was made possible through our tech department who worked feverishly to reconstitute and get our laptops that were ready i should say chromebooks coming back from the high school so when the high school received their uh donation their large gift those students have over time started to return those chromebooks and the tech department has repurposed and refurbished those laptops so that we can provide the secondary uh the uh a secondary device to our k5 teachers um so that they can uh be able to uh work with the at-home kids uh and in person a little bit more easily so with two devices to help to monitor and one to uh to

114to project our lessons if they need to do that and so we think that that will be a great help we've also had a lot of monitors flowing into the district um which are also a great help in this environment uh through some uh generous programs where teachers simply had to ask and they were donated which was amazing um so we're really happy about that you know we did have to make some very quick shifts and pivots um teachers from this point forward will be struggling a little bit with how to handle students who are in quarantine so you have students who are at home in a cohort students who are in school and now the you know the dynamic of quarantining across the week and so we're working through some of the challenges logistics

115in terms of pacing um and there'll be nuances in every building based on how that's going but we have full faith that our teachers uh will be i think who use the word flexible or quick and nimble that that's going to be something that will be sort of par for the course for everybody you know probably for the remainder of the year but i'm very proud of the teachers with the transitions the principles the unbelievable amount of planning that has gone into this can mention something about being a specializing in logistics at this point and i think that that's another good term that we'll be using a lot um every single day there are meetings to plan for multiple scenarios and those things those change and evolve daily over the course of the week and

116so no day has been the same um for quite a while so and and in this particular environment with with opening and the quarantining um everyone will continue to have to be quite flexible and to be ready to pivot at a moment's notice and uh you know we have great staff and our teachers are very flexible and have been flexible they've been fantastic and so um as as things come up we'll we will make those adjustments um i know there were some questions at the last board meeting about you know how are our kids doing and you know we um now that we're back in we will begin to administer the star assessment for the winter and then las uh the last testing has also just started and that will kind of run through the

117beginning of march so we should have some winter data by maybe early march depending how long it takes to get through this assessment window i will preface that by saying that the environment that we are testing in is atypical and therefore results are not considered reliable we've had we did do some fall data assessment and we've had our data was wildly all over the place um we you know reports in the younger grades and the data looked better than it's ever had um but the teachers reported that they're all the students also had a little bit of help um at home with some of the questions on the test from you know maybe some supportive parents who are trying to help with directions and things like that so unintentional um unintentional things but as we

118get students into a little bit more routines some of those more universal assessments may become more predictable but it's difficult to have to use a universal assessment in this environment because your control factors are not the same we have students coming and going students who are in quarantine testing a student who is in the home environment is very different than testing in the school environment and so we cannot control for those factors so really the best way to tell how a child is doing is to talk to the teacher we have ongoing embedded informal assessments in our curriculum and so those those more informal conversations about how students are doing with grade level curriculum are really um will give you the most amount of information right now that said we're still going to have go

119ahead and move ahead with those assessments we will work through those over the course of the next month month and a half and we will see what that data says and we also will have to still uh implement our espa assessments and ngss and figure logistically how to accomplish that which will be very challenging in this environment but we will do that too and we will use whatever data we can gather from the kids to make decisions and structurally as we go and we will probably have a report out due at some point in march to kind of use whatever data we have available at that point again with a grain of salt about the testing environment but we can um we'll we'll cross that bridge when we get to it thank you unless uh

120kelly you have anything bring up sure um i just want to update the board on the opening of the new preschool um i have to commend the preschool special education staff they have just been phenomenal thank you to the board and all the district personnel who supported it truly was a team effort in opening that building so we were given clearance by the city to open the building the week prior so the staff quickly moved in and set up their classrooms in basically a day um and receive the kids the following week um i have seen nothing but well i can tell they're smiling by looking at their eyes but they do have their masks on but the kids coming in are just thrilled it really is geared towards young children it feels like a

121preschool center and it really has just been amazing to watch them and kudos to the preschool staff because they have just done amazing um so i thank them publicly for that we are currently just occupying the top floor of the building so we are able to bring in six of our preschool classrooms um and then when the bottom floor is complete hopefully within the next couple of weeks we will start to migrate over the rest of our preschool program we do we'll have only a three more classes to bring over as we do have a couple classes on distance learning right now additionally just across the special education department and pupil services department staff are continuing to support the re-entry of students to school you know kids have just rolled with it they've come back

122they're excited to be there we have hit a few bumps with children that need some additional assistance with mass tolerance and wearing and the staff have just been remarkable in stepping in and supporting kids working with families and just really making it a comforting place to be the kids are are really thrilled to be back and additionally just working with kathy o'dowd she has done an amazing job i cannot thank her enough um publicly kathy i don't know what we'd do without you you know the contact tracing and really when we have to reach out to staff because i've been working very closely with kathy on that again they're understanding um it's not ideal to get a phone call stating you need to be on quarantine but you know they all are jumping in whether

123it's the administrative team or the teachers saying what can i do how can i help what can i do to help you know contact families and support and so forth so um really i just feel blessed to be um it's been a stressful time but it we just have a remarkable team supporting uh this effort and um proud to be part of it thanks go and one thing you know we we had uh kova challenged us in a lot of ways one a lot of deliveries didn't get to a gran granville so we were we didn't know if we're going to open and i called joe cavo mayor cabo's first week and he got he did get uh work with the city and got the inspectors out and gave us a temporary seal so i

124want to thank him publicly for that effort because we were really worried about opening and we wanted those youngsters um with the smile in their eyes coming back so i thank all of them yes thank you sal yeah well thank you and bump a phenomenal job so i think for the board you know we didn't just jump into the teaching and learning part i think i i've come to appreciate the work that our folks are doing um um christie threw out a term to you um the um disruptive innovation that's exactly it you try to maintain what you're doing while you're doing something distinctly different and that's sometimes very hard to manage and i'm proud of my teachers and i'm proud of my administrators uh for doing what we're doing and we're bringing the kids

125back safely we get the current we get the vaccinations done sooner i don't want to look at that and to get our kids back one of the things i want the board to know with the time frame that we have um you know like maybe yesterday before yesterday we didn't have to do an early dismissal because we get out a little early um if there's ever going to be a late dismiss a late start it doesn't work for us on any on any level because you start two hours late you bring people in for 45 minutes so we'll probably wind up going dl um if we have to do an early dismissal we can do that still but late starts or just won't work for us at all um so with that the reopening we

126start with our we did have the psats by the way everyone i think i heard 400 and somewhat kids came in so that did go very well on tuesday uh so next week we'll open up second semester with our uh prince with our high school at the next meeting we'll talk about how that's going so um i thank everybody um for their efforts um um because we are happy that our kids are back so thank you madam chair that's the entire report oh thank you dr say i'll sarah are there any questions from board members considering any item that got the sales for yeah i do mrs cooper in the interest of reporting is it possible that at the next board meeting we can have an update of the portrait graduate where we stand with

127that and how it relates to the new educational process going on with the matrix and whatever else is related to it if you could squeeze it in it would be of interest thank you um for the board okay i think um i know i just signed up for another meeting for it i'm gonna go over to kevin and kara you think at the next board meeting at the presentation we can we can do um a presentation would that work yes i mean i could also do a quick update now um just to update the board on where we are and you know and we can also do a presentation that also works i think the thing considering the time kevin let's do it if possible the next meeting okay and if you can't then you

128know there's always a meeting after that i know that's fine absolutely okay that's what we'll do and uh that'll be great thank you thank you doctor uh we move on to uh ford's chairperson report uh comments is uh all board members you receive your uh committee's assignments and pto layers on the district committees uh this is a working document if there's any uh disagreement with what's in the uh document that you signed up or did not sign up for we would just have a conversation about it the next thing that i want to sort of bring to your attention is that um as we move forward we know that uh the pto liaison uh is going to be a challenge right now and uh uh carol will be sending you out a list as to

129who the contact person will be uh for your particular school so you know we can have a discussion or a side discussion about that later if anyone wants to have a discussion with me you can uh just text me or call me and i'll be willing to sit down and talk with you about it are there any board reports or committee uh report at this time or comments at this time i do i have a couple things yes i have a comment too oh me yes hey uh class i just want i wasn't sure how we left the conversation about the finance um workshop but i just would like to say that i really think it's important that we can all work together and and have the workshop so we can understand it and then

130you know therefore we support the budget and it's i know it's kind of rushed but it's really important that we have that workshop uh and even if that agreement i've had a discussion with mr chanelles some other things i want to work out with him before we decide uh we have them to tomorrow uh to get it out i have to have this discussion up about some other things before we uh go into having and making other workshops working work making in a workshop my uh concern i'd shared it with mrs janella to make sure that everyone that's on that committee is involved and will be able to participate whether we have a committed meeting or a workshop okay thank you are there any other questions madam chair yes uh just a couple of comments

131um sites and facilities meeting for uh next wednesday uh because my opinion because the board has sort of been circumvented from the the committee uh i would like to see that with consultants with the mayor and and mr you know mr about now and and the superintendent i would like to see that citizen facilities uh subcommittee meeting turned into a workshop so uh more of a board can have a voice as to what's going on rather than just have to sit on the sidelines and number two uh as far as uh choice for students uh from the 50 000 foot level i see that it will win uh long as it's applied equitably because uh the student could eat if they so choose can have a different educational experience in another district and and the

132win both on both ways is a smaller classroom size thank you thank you any other comments i do rachel yes um something that came out of our one of our city-wide pto meetings was a question um regarding summer school and i don't know if this kind of entails what um cara was talking about where our students are at academically but they were wondering um you know will the threshold be expanded for summer school for you know an invitation for summer school and will it be offered at all levels and can students if they you know feel you know if they didn't meet that threshold could they opt to take and pay for courses over the summer so um you know we we've been talking about summer school um there are some unknowns about whether or

133not we'll still be in the same situation in terms of whether or not we need to hybrid socially distance how many students we can have in a room there's a little bit still of the unknown of also probably big unknown about availability of staff staff come on a voluntary basis to teach summer school and so that would have to be um you know part of the factor but um you know we will always offer to uh you know our first our legal requirements uh in terms of students who are substantially deficient we were able last year which i thought was great um because it was virtual we were able to um expand our our offerings quite a bit so i believe we have almost we had over 900 students in just the k5 summer school

134alone that was quite an operation last year but because it was a virtual we were um you know we were able to accomplish a lot and it was uh quite successful so um you know we will have to look at a variety of options that could take different uh scenarios in mind to maximize uh you know and expand as much as we can to to learners again it's gonna it's going to depend on our community conditions what's allowable available resources in terms of human capital um and and along those lines so um you know we're looking at it we're on it um and we you know you can guarantee we'll do our very best with it and we want to see our kids um get everything that they can over the summer as much as

135anybody else does yeah we'll be back with that my dream has always been that our youngsters would come and take elective summer school just to experience particularly at the secondary so that that has been there will continue the challenge the board's going to have quite frankly and you know we put a lot of money into that summer school um depends on what happens with the budget you know let's be frank uh the money coming from um uh the course money where we're going to get some information and we're hoping you think they would say that this should be used to to mitigate any that's the learning loss that would be a you know great revelation for them to do right so that could be added resources so the timing is perfect um we're looking at

136who we're going to invite in but i sort of hinted a little bit before you know this vaccine is going to make a big difference in terms of you know being ready and then you're gonna have to get the staff that's gonna teach it and i will tell you we've been challenged in the past to have enough staff uh come in and work during the summer when when we didn't have the virus so um you know it's it's going to be a challenge but uh it's on uh it's on for us to deal with and we will deal with it and i and i hope that um you know as kerosene might be some kind of a blend and we have enough resources to to get to the youngsters that want to make that commitment

137that would be a wonderful thing so thank you for the question thank you okay all right any other questions i'm seeing that uh thank you all uh for participating tonight and uh once we get everything set up about uh the workshop uh the finance workshop uh we will have kerosene that information out to everyone okay if there's nothing else i entertain i'm watching to adjourn a meeting so moved second day okay can i hear everyone say good night please