001here uh kathy molinaro here sorry catherine hodgson here uh rich giannelli here al russo here amy spelino here everyone is here okay thank you uh before we um before i turn this over i was just like to take time and thank the superintendent his administration the board mostly mr washer and our who is our assistant superintendent for putting this workshop together uh for us tonight our goal is to keep everyone informed about the decisions on reopening of our schools and have a discussion with all involved parties to that help makes this decision concerning reopen school this is just a discussion um no type of action is going to be taken tonight but i think we need to understand uh what the practice is and as far as making a decision to close or reopen schools
002so i just want to thank all the board members thank dr sale mr watson and um cara from uh prunty from city hall and kathy o'donnell who has been with us from the start and everybody else about the phone who all whoever else that dr sam and mr watson have on this uh video tonight so without further delay uh i will turn this over to dr sarah or mr wasser uh kevin let me just i'll start for a minute thank you kevin and group for putting this together i've been in absence here with us so i appreciate it it's great timing uh great timing uh you all know what happened on the 26th we were all set to go back uh we had been looking at the data um we had a good window to
003to be able to return our numbers were you know they were not low but they weren't zenith of our experiences and so with that we thought it was a very low risk to bring everyone back and we organized ourselves to do that um and you know what happened friday uh that friday we received some late calls regarding the um in our number of uh cases and uh we sat down with an entire group went through uh everything and decided for safety reasons we would just maintain the status quo and pause our opening and we've been monitoring ever since um now you know reading the paper is no news you know what's going on in connecticut going to phase two the town's in phase two um if you read the papers uh yeah bridgeport new haven
004many of those places are now moving towards red um tonight i think it'd be uh worthwhile we start with a presentation from um uh cara brunty uh we have a disaggregated by category because one of the things you know as you looked at the information at your last board meeting when you look at the numbers or other circumstances regarding mitigation strategies distancing that you can return with different um applications of reopening and that's one of the things that the state has been providing they calculate now on a two-week average and cara i'm sure we'll talk with that so all those things will come within the factors i think cara actually has it up in her presentation so uh with that i will uh let kara begin or kevin if you want to say anything um
005then we'll begin with cara so so dr sal i just want to say quickly um as always we want to thank cara prunty for joining us this evening and continuing to partner with us in this work dr fong and dr beg we also want to thank you for joining us we appreciate your partnership and and and and advice along the way throughout this process um and we and we're looking forward to your feedback this evening i'm just gonna try and share my screen here so just bear with me a second if everybody would turn their unmute it would be helpful one second okay so i'm just gonna go through some of the numbers some of the data that we have for positive cases in danbury and i'll go through where we pulled the information and
006all i want to do is share the data that i get with you guys so um i'm just going to start so what we're seeing here this is a daily summary of cases since the beginning when we started getting cases back in february and march this is our this is by date by event date which is essentially the specimen collection date so it's the date that someone is tested that's why you can see at the um the side here where it says november 1st where you see a little bit of a downturn that doesn't mean that we're actually decreasing in numbers that just means that that that data has not come in yet because that goes by the day that they were tested so people who are tested on november 1st we haven't received a
007lot of those results yet so as you can kind of see from here where we were at back in the spring when we were at our our peak then we went through we decreased over the summer we had very low numbers and then as we saw um our our spike in august when the advisory went out we kind of stabled off and then as you can see right um starting october you know eighth we're kind of at a steady increase in numbers there so this is just uh the weekly summary of that so you can see again our since the week of october 5th and october 11th we've just been steadily increasing in our case numbers and then this is the total um number of cases by age group again since january um when we
008started getting you know some feb well february when we first started our our cases but we pulled the data in case there's any that we missed or any that were updated um so our you know biggest impacted group that we've been seeing um is the age range between 30 and 49 these two age groups have had the highest number of cases this is a monthly summary of cases so as you can see our total number uh of cases for october um has now exceeded what we were seeing in both march and may um so we're kind of you know we're seeing a trend of increased numbers you know august we had our our spike we saw the same thing happened in september we kind of stayed the same and then in october we started seeing
009increases now i just wanted to go over this because this is um an age breakdown and i apologize i keep reaching over because i'm looking at this on my other computer screen so i can see it bigger um so this is an age breakdown four week positive cases by age group so we wanted to do this because we wanted to see we like to compare where we're seeing increases in by age range um so you can kind of see uh again still typically our biggest age group that we are seeing the largest number of cases is the age range between 30 and 49 but as you can see towards the end of october 18th through the 25th and then through the second um you know we're just seeing a large number of cases and we
010did see an increase in cases with some of our younger age groups as illustrated by the november second day you can see we had 24 cases in the 0 to 9 age group now this is our positivity rate by age so we're kind of seeing this goes through you know the number our positivity rate is calculated by the number of tests that were conducted um by the number of positive cases that were received so we did that we broke down the number of children that were tested between the ages of zero to four five to nine ten to fourteen fifteen to nineteen and twenty to twenty four so um and this is uh the the change that we saw in october so our positivity rate for zero to four um decreased a little bit for
011our youngest group and we saw increases in the age range of 5 to 9 15 to 17 and 20 to 24 and a slight decrease in positivity rate for 10 to 14. this is just this number broken down for the past three months so it's those same things that we saw graphically but we went through with the numbers of the positivity rates for each age group their number of positives number of tests for the past three months so that's what you're seeing here i won't go through all the numbers because we just saw it graphically but i just wanted to break it out so you can see and then this is a positivity rate by age group again this is pretty much that same chart except this is the three months so the light blue
012is august darker blue is september and the greenish color is october so um our positivity rate what has been increasing hold on let me pull it up here um uh in certain age groups and you know gone down a little bit so we saw a drastic decrease in our positivity rate in zero to four um while we saw uh a climbing positivity rate between five to nine um our 10 to 14 has kind of stayed the same with a increase in positivity rate between 15 and 19. this is a heat map of our cases in danbury right now this is from the beginning so this is kind of where we are seeing cases for a little while during our august spike we saw a primary primarily we were only seeing cases um in the downtown
013area since then uh the radius has or i'm sorry the diameter has increased for uh the number of cases it's more spread out so as before where we are seeing most of our cases in downtown neighborhoods it's kind of growing and increasing in size and where we're seeing cases geographically so for right now are where we are currently uh our 14 day rolling average is 39.2 per 100 000 um and that is uh that's going by the state numbers they they put this number out today so that um goes what we talked about before with the event date so that has a test end date of october 31st um so that is the last date and then this is that number there and then our positivity rate over the past 14 days is 8.6 which
014is also increased from what we've been seeing we've been um pretty much throughout this whole time since august we've been around between four and five percent um then we saw a slight increase between six and seven percent and now we're steadily seeing over eight percent so then i just wanted to show and put up a addendum four which is um the what we look at with our metrics in uh it's developed to make decisions about schools and in person learning so um this is uh that first part which is what we uh what what we looked at which is our 14-day average of new cases per 100 000 um so right now we're at 39.2 which would put us in the less in-person learning section and then the secondary indicators which is the positivity rate
015over the past 14 day which is at 8.6 percent um you the things that you want to look at is if it's trending flat to upwards um ours at this point is trending upwards um our speed of change when we look at that with the number of cases um it has been going up pretty quickly last week our 14-day average was 22.8 and now we're at 39.2 so that's a pretty uh dramatic increase over the past uh week so that's all i have in my presentation if anyone has any questions i can make a few comments too okay great let me just meet myself can you hear me there yeah we can hear you dr bank yes thanks so cara um thank you for the numbers and the date and um being uh just so
016um a data driven uh in a very emotional time uh if i can just give you the perspective uh my perspective on base based on data and the danbury hospital and greater danbury medical community's perspective we went from a a rate in our seven hospital network danbury being the biggest where we had for all seven hospitals less than 10 admissions total between all the hospitals uh we have the same steep curve and that we have gone from 10 to 20 to 40 now we're close to 80 admissions that's uh number one uh we similarly at the highest rate since uh well before memorial day the thing that kind of distresses me and gets me really concerned is that when we're in april we were we actually turned the corner and there was sunlight ahead of
017us because it was getting warmer we had more of an opportunity to go outside we had no other states in the country um were having outbreaks so we could we could um get resources whether it's supplies or staff from around the country and also people really afraid and diligent the problem is this we're moving indoors on everything we do their whole country uh is essentially in the red i'm not trying to use hyperbole but i'm saying that because there's no one to draw resources or supplies or staff we're on our own here um unlike back in april and there's uh again this is probably a little bit my own personal opinion but i see a a bit of complacency in the subsets of our society compared to april uh we've had numerous um examples where
018um there's been gatherings of significant size not only on the traditional holidays or weekends but uh social establishments having literally hundreds of people in um and people were just they just basically were broken they just want to go out and and have an event there's weddings there's a lot of so the point is um based on the data there's uh and from the social experiences we're i can see why we're gonna we're gonna unfortunately get worse before we get better and so the reason why we do this is because if we can predict where we're going to be from a um overall positivity rate hospitalization rate and the like then that gives us more direction to make evidence-based decisions on what we need to do relative to our school system and to keep our our
019kids and our families safe again the last thing we want to do is set our teachers and our children our school system back by having another day of uh learning when they're not with their teachers and believe me i i completely understand that but i also understand that for every 100 people that are positive this data shows at least a couple are going to die at least the date early in the year was that it was more the area of like at least three people were going to die it's less than that now because a we have better treatments and b we have um more people being tested with milder symptoms so admittedly the death rate is lower but i just want to highlight the idea that um myself i personally no one wants us
020to open up our schools and and and have our children participate in sports clicker activities uh and in school learning more than me but i think we gotta also look at the data so uh cara i'll turn it back over to you thank you dr beck so i guess i don't know kevin or dr sal if there's anything uh any questions uh doctor fox on did he want to make it please yeah well let me let me ask something i i think it's interesting in the summer months when the when the rate is not you know it's not high i think i think not only people can spend more time outdoor but the important thing is that is that the the children are not at school so that they don't have a crowd in the
021school and they are they're at home more more more likely or with their friends and so on but still their their sort of role as as the agent that passed the virus from themselves to the adults meaning to the parents the grandparents and so on it's always a risk that i think it that we have to pay attention to because because this the young kid is like the trojan horse because what happened is that in fact there are there are reports now that in young children not only they have a milder condition but actually in contrast they have a higher viral load because when they look at the virus on the respiratory tract it's higher so they carry the the virus and if if they don't uh uh get treated and tested we don't know
022we assume that they don't have problem and and that assumption obviously just you know keep them even more at home and with the with the opportunity of having the the parents the grandparents and and uncles and aunts infected so it is something that we we have to bear in mind the potential you know a bigger problem when when kids go to school because we may uh get into the the sort of innocent complacency and and the misunderstanding saying well they're not they're fine and and we have no problem uh so that's something that we have to bear in mind i think carol said it earlier about another point that because the testing and is the date that that that is uh you know when when the when the individuals not all of them are sick
023but some of them uh you know already have symptoms so so when they get tested that we put the date there but in reality the exposure could have been a week before or even two weeks before because this is why the quarantine period is 14 days because they can be exposed quite a while back and not not showing up so sometimes you have to understand not just looking at the time that the when the peak comes because if you look at the recent um uh data from for example in the summer you know when when when young people go to the beach and and a party stay and so on so they did they spike i mean in florida and california and other places with nice beaches so the the the the need to understand
024that is also very important that that uh celebrations as dr beck mentioned is a potential it's something that we we need to to to pay attention to and and therefore coming back in the month of october we have halloween and uh and and also the uh columbus day so you have basically two celebrations and then you you know when it comes november even though as if it is quiet but then people um it's spending more time indoors so crowding in the house because most people don't wear the mask when they are in the house because they assume that they are fine and then comes december actually a lot more as you know a lot more than uh christmas you have the uh kwanzaa your hanukkah you have many other celebrations and that's and and that's
025the time when people get together in fact governor lamont said today is going to limit the number of people having celebrations in the house down to 10. now i don't know how compliant that is that people actually can police that and and and you know to make sure that there's not a crowd there and and again when they are in the house they don't wear a mask especially during celebration the excuse is that you know if they hold a glass of wine they're not going to wear a mask they want to drink you know take a sip from time to time so it is it's a reality so having the distance learning now until the end of the year i think it's the right thing to do so so let me just thank everybody before
026i just want to make this comment so that friday i think what was it 23rd this is this is the predictive um strategic information we saw coming down the pike and that's that's what forced us into making that last minute decision because we erred on the side of safety thinking the numbers were going to do exactly what um what we had information and data said that it might just do so that's why we get the pause that's and that's where the trend is and um i think what uh for tonight you could hear i heard about what goes into your decision making well how this goes into a decision making the disaggregation of the data by age um all of those things are very important to reform the same decisions that we make you could
027see where we're at we're at the zenith of numbers um safety is so i promised everybody last spring when this thing happened that our decision is not going to ego it's going to be on the safety of our our youngsters and our teachers uh as you know you're reading emails that you're getting from folks um but what i what i encourage you to do is to listen to our professionals understand the dynamics of of how this can impact our youngsters and understand that as i check around i was asked have you been checking around i have and you know there are kids there are there are school districts that are in sessions they're dismissing classes they're doing contract tracing you know it's pretty episodic but they are going on um you know this allows for
028more continuity even though it's very difficult on our youngsters and as as tonight we'll indicate from our professionals um this is nothing to mess around with this is a danger and i think we're we need to be mindful of that so i'm going to keep quiet now let the board i'm sure they have many questions so thank you may i just add one more point and that is we have to to remember that every year we have the seasonal influencer and i don't know how well the vaccination rate rate is against influencer the the speculation going to be i guess in the last few months we focus in politics there's hardly anything talk about the the influenza vaccine and that is going to be not only for those who have the covet infection if they
029also have the flu infection that their clinical sort of progress or outcome it's going to be compromised in in it you know to a certain degree so it is important to remember that and then the the peak i actually just take a look at the um well it's a connecticut data but it's coming from cdc in the last few years in the last three years the uh the peak of the seasonal fluids in february basically the end of january and the end and the beginning of march that's the peak season and uh the last three years they followed that the the reason i bring up the the three years because as you know the weather continues to change and the seasonal flu certainly have something to do with the weather or the season so that
030is another thing we have to remember that even now because as i understand it there is a increase in the anti-vaccine movement or ideas or philosophy or thinking so i i just want to you know to this group that is important number one yourself should get the flu vaccine and not only that look after your loved ones and then your neighbors and so on because the flu vaccine the annual rate is not that impressive i mean it's not that high people have all sorts of reasons not to get the flu vaccine thank you doctor welcome dr sale i have a question for dr flunk go ahead al just go right through glass go ahead mr russo stop on good thank you uh dr fong i heard from a private source that getting the flu shot
031diminishes one's uh immunity or what makes you more susceptible to getting covet is there any truth to that i don't think so i think and think for people that with the any vaccination especially viral virus vaccination during the the time when they receive the vaccine for a week or two maybe they or during the the active infection they may have the immunolog the immune system suppressed that is a well-documented sort of a a period of time when they have the viral infection especially herpes infections and some of the infections you know is well described so this is another reason get your flu vaccine early don't wait till you know january don't wait till december because they because you're a musician yeah so get it early yeah i'll go back with a quick comment about vaccines
032and how it may affect uh coleman some of the data out of um the far east um may suggest that if you have your mmr vaccine you know what your pediatric vaccination actually may help it may serve some protective effects so the only data that's out there actually may suggest that it helps doesn't hurt um relative to cova so thank you sir gentlemen thank you the board members have any questions it looks like rachel does yes um with our numbers being what they are right now i believe we had 56 new cases today 30 something yesterday and again 50 something on tuesday how effective is contact tracing i think contact tracing is is an excellent idea the only problem for for do for that is is the the the way it is processed because at
033this point now um the the testing takes about at least 24 hours maybe 30 maybe even more so there's a time lost in the in the uh ability to do to do it early because the the earlier you do the best the better it is because not only preventing a wider spread of people being infected and and it also permits those who have been contacted that you know that that they can go gold into quarantine and so on so that is the major impediment i think in terms of the the uh testing times that we have to wait for that long and the other thing is that for the for the test for the uh for the test itself also the number of viral particles and so on i think it it goes up with
034with with the infectious process at the beginning but in the beginning can be very can be quite low so people that get tested early uh sometimes can be negative and in turn positive because the test doesn't lie basically tells you you know you you have the virus so you don't have the virus so it it is it is a a not not a 100 perfect test and then in terms of the tracing also depending how you know how well the the ability to do that i think if people these days carry their cell phone um i i guess with the cell phone if it is turned on they they know where you are but those that don't do that then you know you you and and that is almost like more likely to be a
035senior person because in terms of uh computer literacy it's not you know basically drops of age meaning the the older population i you know my understanding is probably at least 10 20 don't use computer so it's not not you know you don't you're not able to chase them that well you you contact them and get them you know tested and so on and yet those are the people that has one risk factor because of age being vulnerable to the infection yeah and uh dr fulham well you were spot on um one of the challenges that we faced in the medical community when we were doing contract tracing as the numbers got higher it was just the sheer number of people to trace it just got tougher um and so you know when you have lower
036numbers it's actually a little bit easier but you know if you have like so many positive people it's just it's just kind of tougher to do the contact tracing too so um and it's just another thing to consider i just want to add to that so we do have um we do have the ability to scale up and we have state volunteers to handle if we need to do additional contact racing i will say that as community transmission goes up it is more difficult to do contact racing for those reasons and additionally because people aren't sure where they where they got it um that's why we are doing some of these things statewide like rolling back to phase one having things or i'm sorry phase 2.1 sorry not phase one phase 2.1 and issuing um
037a public health advisory saying to reduce the number of trips to outside of your home from the hours of 10 p.m to 5 a.m and those kinds of things and then limiting the number of people you know closing your circle um to the number of people that you are with so that way you can kind of identify where you could have possibly gotten it so i think that that's part of the reason why we put in those preventative measures so that way we can more effectively do contact tracing mad i'm sure i have a question when it's appropriate yes go ahead um this is for either of the doctors and i think dr begg i think you answered this question for me the last time we were all on a call like this but just
038to reinforce the data and the research and the information we've received in the last several months we're still very clear that this is not the flu this is much more dangerous than the flu i mean we're we're still at that point we still recognize that am i correct in that assumption uh there's absolutely no doubt as far as that goes the analogy that it's just a little bit more lethal the flu is just not representative uh the folks that actually end up dying from the flu it's it's much much it's in the area of like a tenth of a at best and those are the people that are truly um have a a lot of what we call comorbid problems they have a million other medical problems i i personally i've been in emergency medicine
039since 1989 um and i've never seen a healthy person die from the flu the only people i see die from the flu are those who have a million medical problems i have personally seen people younger than me die from covid and the the rate from cover death well it's lower because we're actually testing more people the fact remains that um in our country you know we we we're approaching 300 000 deaths you don't have nearly not even uh exponent you have exponentially more people that are younger and healthier that are uh affected uh either dying or or a serious side effect so that's a very uh insightful question thank you doctor we can't reinforce that enough joe let me let me add something something to it uh there's a very very nice paper com uh
040coming from uh boston children and the the researcher basically instead of just looking at the boston area they contacted the hospital surrounding bosnia or basically the northeast and they collected because they because that is a very nice paper in a sense because they can manage it the number because they only collected about 200 pediatric young pediatric patients with a coveted infection and and of those that about 50 60 percent get admitted to the house get admitted not just seen in the emergency room in the hospital but get admitted to the hospital and then those were analyzed and uh the the answer the the the uh of that study showed that uh 80 that means four out of five those children who were admitted to the hospital not not just boston children as they said it's
041a collection of the area and and four out of five that get admitted to the hospital they they usually are so so sick they need to be in in the intensive care unit and they all have co-morbid condition meaning they have an underlying significant medical problem like diabetes asthma maybe congenital heart disease that has been repaired basically they have a significant underlying problem only one in five or 20 percent have no pre pre comorbid condition so in a sense i think when when i think dr beck i i forgot i mean i didn't remember whether he actually mentioned it the senior population the problem why why the people who died from covert usually our senior age group is basically probably for for the similar reason because as as we age most most of the seniors
042we have increasingly more medical issues basically co-morbid condition and and uh so that that's one reason another reason is that in fact for the for the uh for the infection itself the viral particle is not a complete organism meaning by itself it cannot reproduce so it has to attach to a well a victim or the host and then enter a cell and hijack the the dnas and and the enzymes of of the uh of the whole cell and in doing so they can replicate and they when they replicate they did they kill the cell some of the cells died that's why those that's why the patients are very sick for that reason and if you remember that the the receptor for the virus is interesting that is not as common almost like an age related
043phenomena meaning the younger kids if they they for the younger you are the the study come coming you know on on that question is that the receptor for the virus it's almost like age dependent very nice because every 10 years they have a sort of a group and they look at it every step of the way they increase so that explains why the seniors are also more more more sick because when when the viral particle enters their body they can they can all get into the cells and destroy the cells and also explains why what i said earlier the young kids they are they are basically behaving like a trojan horse because they don't have their or they have very little receptor so they can have a far higher number of viral parts they can
044attach more viral particles there but they can't get into themselves so that's the reason cara for the board i know you talked to your colleagues and kathy you know what are you seeing with school-aged children around us where they're attending now and what kind of feedback you're getting from your colleagues regarding these school districts that have these youngsters in can you kind of give us some background on that i think it'd be nice for them to hear some of that either kathy or cara i'm going to defer to kathy on this first yeah sure um thank you cara yes i can speak to that um so surrounding districts yes they are in um on different models some are in full-time learning uh some are in full-time maybe k to five and hybrid in other models
045um but they are seeing cases every district um or seeing cases on some level and they are closing either classrooms or cohorts for 14 days it happened again just in ridgefield today they have had to close for 14 days someone at the high school has tested positive so i have not talked to a district that has not had cases where they've had to do intermittent closures on all levels elementary through high school has it impacted their ability to bring you know instruction didn't get anything from that instruction uh there have been times where districts have had to close because of teachers being on quarantine and they have not had enough staff to teach in person cara i know any feedback or either dr begs would you see from the area maybe from your perspective as
046well i'm seeing exactly what kathy is seeing you know where we talk all the time so we communicate about all these cases same thing with our non non-public schools with our contact racing the non-public schools in danbury are contact tracing their you know we're seeing cases every week in these schools where we're having to do closures of classrooms or grades or quarantine entire buses but we are seeing that yeah we have three non-publics in danbury right now that are on 14-day quarantines two for a grade level and one for a cohort thank you may i ask a question please yes go ahead okay thank you uh i'm just curious because i know we've talked about you know the indicators we're using to determine whether or not we need to shift models you know either to
047go in or out of a particular model and they're based on these 14 day averages and i'm just thinking about the last um you know plan that we had for reopening and how we kind of got to this point where we had three days in a row where we had you know larger numbers than we expected but it wasn't necessarily you know in that first day or two it wasn't impacting the average enough you know to to give us any kind of warning or heads up that was going to happen i can see how that average would make sense on the other end to say you know we've been clean for a two week period where we haven't had numbers exceeding you know the range that's comfortable but in terms of not running into another
048situation like we did before where we had you know a big jump on one day and started to anticipate that that number was going to go we didn't you know that wasn't going to impact the average so i guess what i'm wondering is how reliable is that indicator you know leading into a potential outbreak i think that's a really good question i'll start if anyone else wants to jump in but i think that that's why we have the primary indicators and then the secondary indicators and there's that one about rate of change and we there was a couple other factors that went into it so we saw a dramatic increase in our number of cases and it happened quickly and and it happened three days in a row so we had we had times where
049we saw one one day where we saw a big jump and then the next day we went right back down again this was three consistent days of seeing a big jump and the rate of that was very quick um so we saw that speed additionally we then were seeing that across the whole state the numbers were increasing where last time it was just danbury so that also factored in a little bit but um anyone else please feel free to jump in yeah cara cara thank you for that clarification um kate and in the secondary indicators that uh cara is referring to and it's it's on this it's on the second half of addendum four um and there are two areas one it's called direction of change and then the other one is called speed of
050change and in our case when we were you know sitting together that friday and you know in one moment we thought we were opening schools on monday and then we're reviewing the latest data um uh with cap our ponzi who's with us right now and and it's exactly that case um we had a significant um uptick in cases over those last couple of days um that suggested that we were going to have um you know this higher rate that that was going to contribute to a higher rate in the 14-day average uh you know which we did end up seeing um and so and so when we're making these decisions you know it's it's initially you know the leading indicator which is the 14-day average but those secondary indicators and in our case you know
051looking at that data that was in front of us in the last three days leading up to that friday um you know ended up playing a role in our decision not to open on monday the 26th it's it's interesting to look at the data the care put out um because uh some of the hospital data um is somewhat similar but it's it's got another 10 day lag so when when we looked at the data earlier this year you know we saw the numbers going up um in the community but we didn't have a lot of hospitalizations and then uh like 10 days you could just superimpose the graphs like 10 days later we started to have the spike in the hospitals and then actually there was one day we we actually went from only one
052person on a respirator to six people on a respirator like in 24 hours so um you know my concerns like selfishly on behalf of uh the sickest of our population is that we see the spike go today you know two weeks from now or more that's when we see all the hospitalizations of the worst enough people on the respirators thank you so the doctor bags and and everyone you know the the you heard dr fong this is a conversation we've had regarding when we spoke you know a few weeks ago when we were going to return that we would have to be mindful of one the flu and secondly what the holidays and even at that time predictively you had said to us be cautious uh be mindful and and inject the data because you
053really felt as though we would be in a in a situation where we may have to step back so this is a conversation we had back then which has come to force right now i'm just curious from the board in terms of that i know where cara is and kathy and in terms of uh safety returning um your reaction to dr fong's um recommendation and the rest just so we could hear it this is the purpose of tonight too thank you gladys thank you uh mr december um first i'll reiterate what i said the last meeting the time while the timing was unfortunate to pull back that late on that friday night i think it's pretty indisputable that we made the right decision that going back at that point would have been bordering on reckless
054especially in light of where these numbers have gone um i i think it would be cavalier on our part to disregard the advice of doctors fong and bag we have medical advisors for a reason and none of us are doctors and they are um it doesn't sound to me and either of the good doctors or cara can correct me but it doesn't sound to me like we're anticipating these numbers getting significantly better significantly fast the trajectory in the state clearly doesn't look great the trajectory in the world and nationally nationally isn't great i think the thing we have to do is obviously be safe secondary to that i think we owe it to our families to give them as much notice as much consistency and while it is hard to be on distance learning knowing
055they're going to be on it i think is important and and having some concrete ideas that what we're doing and how we're planning it makes sense and if the doctors are recommending that we avoid going back until after the holidays that makes a certain semblance of sense especially in light of the trajectory of our numbers and the likelihood that people are not going to distance over the next six weeks or eight weeks or ten weeks because clearly far too many people aren't doing it now we have far too many restaurants far too busy many that clearly need to have some enforcement action taken because they're blowing through their restrictions um but i i think there's we would be remiss if we ignored the advice of our medical professionals and advisors that's why we have them
056thank you madam chief thank you joe for the comments thank you and i i feel right now if no one uh has any other questions uh for dr phone carol or kathy or uh the other doctor that's on the line madam chair al russo yes yes ma'am i just like like to echo uh joe da silva with uh the latest input from dr fong and dr begg that yes uh i am also on board and with the idea of uh holding off uh doing any sort of hybrid plan until after the holidays are when the numbers get better uh they have certainly enlightened us with uh with their wisdom and their knowledge and uh it's again it's indisputable the kids should stay out of school thank you no thank you al i was leaving i
057have a question it's katherine um so i'd like to know the protocol if people do get covid and what our protocol is like bringing them back because there it hasn't been proven that people can get it twice is that correct and then you mean if we identify cases yes so what happens is i understand that there's a 14-day quarantine but is it for the person that's positive or is it for everybody that's been in contact or is it is there different levels kathy uh yeah would you honor that yes thank you dr sal i can speak to that so if a positive uh if we have a positive case um what we do is we go back 48 hours and i identify who was in direct contact with that person direct contact meaning for 15
058minutes or more within six feet of distance so once those individuals are identified those direct contacts do need to quarantine for 14 days and they need to have a cova test and within that 14 days even if the kova test is negative they still must remain in quarantine because the incubation period for covid is 2 to 14 days so once that 14 day period has expired their quarantine is up and they would be able to come back when we have a positive individual that quarantine is 10 days and that's either from the if they have no symptoms it would be starting the date that they go for their test um or symptomatic the day they start symptoms and the reason for the 10 versus the 14 um the evidence has shown us that after 10
059days a positive person although they may still test positive they're not considered contagious to shed the virus did you just briefly talk about the contact of the contact so um for example if someone's identified as a direct contact um and they are sent home and they're required to test siblings or other family members can still go about their daily activities they are considered secondary or a contact of a contact and they would not need to quarantine unless the other individual in the house tested positive thank you thank you thank you okay just a just a comment madam chair i don't know if this is you know appropriate at this time but i mean i'm just heartbroken that we're we're considering you know this long of a time frame for not reassessing um the situation the
060numbers you know i'm heartbroken for our kids that have been you know essentially in isolation for nine months i mean that's not healthy either so you know i'm i'm kind of venting my frustration a little bit you know i know this isn't an easy decision um but you know i look at the other towns um brookfield's going back on monday and they're also in the reds my understanding um there's an urgency at the state level to get kids back in school because that is irreplaceable um and and is this would this even fly with the state to go this long with um with you know just saying we're not gonna go back until january february where whenever you know it would this be acceptable um what they've kind of decentralized their decision making and are
061permitting individual towns to make those decisions rachel um their preferences i i believe is is to have students in school um if there's mitigating circumstances then uh it becomes an individual town's decision you take new haven for example um they voted to go on dl and they didn't even have the issues that we had they've just continued that indefinitely we have been on in in other other places have as well so um i think the answer that is we would notify them and um but it is an integral individual town uh district decision to do that um i think your comments regarding the time away and all of that is is very deep and and and something that uh is always in front of us and that's the net uh and that's that's the challenge
062that we have you know how do we bring them back in a way that we feel is safe in in light of what the professionals are telling us um we we've we've been on the side of of of uh safety um not that they're that social emotional is an issue it certainly is as far as a decision it becomes an individual town decision unless of course there is rumors about a lot of things where um the governor is looking at some things about thanksgiving and stuff but to date every decision that's made has been local i'm just not ready to throw in the towel yet i want to keep reassessing and looking and not just definitively say we're not going to go back until you know january that's a long time mr ginelli um i
063think for the administration it's important maybe that they hear from us as a group dick we can't hear you if you don't mind at least i can't i'm sorry if i could fix this thing here is it any better now i can't hear you mr um just hold on is that any better well hopefully you can hear me now i think it's important that the administration hear from the board as a whole as to i don't want to say a vote but maybe just the a's and nays so that they understand that we support them or or we have different feelings not that we're in the position to have any authority in this particular situation um i respect rachel's position however i think uh kelly could speak to the chaos that ridgefield is going through
064and has gone through because they've elected to to go through a five-day situation where everybody's in school but i i think as a board at least if i were on the administration i'd like to know what the board's feeling is in terms of holding up going back until you know in january and that being said if that is the decision that the administration takes i also think during this particular time that we put our other resources into some of the deficiencies we have in the uh distance learning to see if we can sure those up and then come january try to come up with another solution just not go back to the hybrid situation but maybe there were different solutions to to consider at that particular point again with safety being the number one factor
065and seeing where the numbers are so in essence i just think a vote of confidence if i were on the administration just by the yeas and maids i think that would be comforting at least i feel it is to the administration and if if you want to take a vote such as that uh no uh mr ginelli uh could i speak can everyone hear me yes okay uh this was about this tonight was to have a time for us at board members to express our concerns and we are not here to say that this is what we're going to do or the administration is going to do we want to hear the professionals as to how they have expressed their concerns about the numbers and then we as a board have overall discussion about it
066and i can you know identify with rachel i don't know if anyone is ready to throw in the towels but you know i think the medical people that are here and the numbers from city hall and the numbers that we are seeing telling us a different story and i think that we can all voice our opinion and share it and that would then it would be left up to administration to come up with what they feel and i think the discussion was if i'm not mistaken since we have the thanksgiving holidays coming up how many days the kids are going to be in school since we have after that we have uh i think next week we have a day or which is veterans day then thanksgiving is coming up then two weeks in between
067that is christmas and you know january seems like a long time away but it's not so i think we need to as a boy have the overall discussion and i don't want to get into saying we're going to vote on this just have overall discussion so we can sort of uh vent our views and administration can see how we feel as a board and then whatever the decision is there would be uh a communication between the board and the administration in accepting their recommendation can i thank you board members would like to voice their opinions i will along that line when you're thinking about it when you make an account i think two things please parents i mean what happened that friday was awful but you know i'll make it again on safety i'm sorry
068but to be able to communicate and so they can plan is so important i think somebody mentioned that before so whatever we think through that is right in front of us how can we communicate in a meaningful way so parents complain appropriately the other thing i want to put on the table is that if we decide to go back next date whether it's after christmas after thanksgiving we can't not go back we have to figure out in in that proposition that the executive order has you can return with different mitigating circumstances unless we're ordered to by the by the governor or someone i don't think you know us episodically saying we can't come back because it's got to be something that we feel solid about when we do come back you know it's so important
069yes if something really extending extenuating happens of course but uh we cannot you know one we have to be able to communicate and if we come up with some kind of a timeline we need to know how we can implement it and i've said this before everybody back doesn't have to happen it could be phased it could be more distance there's a number of things but just keep that in mind when you're thinking through this for our parents and kids because i know at the heart of everybody you want to do the right thing so that's helpful to us thank you gladys amy had her hand up before okay amy i really appreciate the professional opinions that we have on the on the call tonight the doctors and kara and kathy and you've been so
070diligent and you know in in all ways and really appreciate it but i just feel like we're missing a part and i'm sure that dr sal you and and the cabinet and the administrators are well aware and just like rachel said i mean i'm really concerned about the isolation and the social emotional and um and i have talked to a couple of teachers of you know younger grades and how um it's kind of seems as though they're getting into a groove now with distance learning and they feel that they're connecting with their students like four days a week and um you know seem to have some concerns about going to hybrid because then they would possibly be changing who's the class mix is and all the different challenges of that but i guess i'm just
071it just doesn't sit right with me that we're gonna we're gonna call it now and say you know i know we're not calling it now but we're gonna wait and not have children back in school i mean we're about kids right i mean safety yeah i get it but i i don't know i just don't it just doesn't sit right with me that we're just gonna throw in the towel and i know we're not throwing in the towel but it just seems like we're so focused on just the numbers and the medical part of it but what about the social emotional part how how how important is that for our children wow it's it's it's it's thank you for that comment it's extremely important and as i said a few minutes ago that is a
072challenge that we have um you know we the continuity of instruction for kids it's four days a week maybe not the best but it's there the hybrid does um put a pause to that because you have over 70 folks that we have to do accommodations we cannot staff it any other way i mean that's just an operational thing um you know that's just a fact you just as dr said before there are faculty and staff that have mitigating circumstances can't come back um so you know we're kind of this is a model to bring it back um we could improve it down the road but we haven't even started it i think amy you know i you know this is why i was so pleased that we were meeting tonight so we could hear this
073you know all i'm saying is that if we sit down and we look at all this i can't see it in my heart of hearts the danger of putting my own grandkids in and my own grandkids have been in they've been quarantined i've been through this i know what it what it does to them um it's very hard for a lot of reasons but we got to look at that and if we decide on the next date well i want everybody to hear that we're gonna have to come back we're gonna have to figure out how to come back because of disappointment and the numbers that you see by these professionals here scare me um the emotional part scares me as well i don't have an easy answer for that but i do know you
074know this too weak stuff it's kind of hard on families that is very hard and the doctors mentioned to me about a month ago look you know we might gabe will go back but you have to be mindful of the holidays just as the colleges have been you know i mean it's the worst time to be doing this uh but uh it's it's a big problem um i mean a very very deep problem right let me try try to answer the the concern expressed by you know from amy and and rachel uh as a retired pediatrician i absolutely agree that social connectedness is extremely important and at my stage i can tell you the you know the pediatricians who stop seeing clinical patients i arrange them that we have lunch every two months for the
075last 10 every two months so basically six times a year and so social connectedness in in the senior group and the student age and the younger one are very important and and you know certainly what we're doing i i i think it's a balance not just between going to school and versus distance learning because a hybrid model has both so uh the point is that there's always a portion that they are not going to see the classmates in in person my suggestion is that maybe the parents you see if you look at the parents their their you know feeling or their ability to cope with both the the types of education maybe that's the area that we have neglected in the sense that for example uh because i'm basically in a house arrest myself and
076i understand how important social connectedness is important so what i what i have done is that i subscribe to i upgrade my uh my zoom uh subscription so actually i have been organizing my retired pediatrician we have been meeting every month i mean just like the meeting tonight we have here so the parents the the parents of children who are kept at home they they have you know if they can manage to do things that to bring back social connectedness whether it's virtual or re or real uh you know we maybe they need some help but certainly i i have no no problem and no question that what we do is not uh the best way but if you look at the downside the potential downside i think if we bring the kids back to
077school and then a week later we tell them that well now we'll have the closer school you have to stay home and if we keep on wavering i think that you will drive the parents crazy and that is also not a good alternative so besides you know using zoom or google meets and you know different programs for the children that they can connect with the classmates their friends and so on in addition i think i think the the fact that they're home when they are not on the computer uh learning from school doesn't mean that they cannot see the friends as long as they have the mask they keep the distance so i think parents what what they need in fact is for us to enlighten them to say hey you can do this and
078this this will have some activities for the kids because otherwise if we take school and house as being too sort of arrested area then i think we we missed the boat thank you thank you can anybody comment about let's say we were to make a let me just play a little scenario we're gonna wait three weeks or four weeks and then make a judgment um what would you have to see dr begs in order to when you're advising us or doctor that this is a time that we can re-enter what would you have to see i think that might be helpful to the board too in terms of feeling comfortable anybody want to comment you know cara punt they had to leave bill yeah so um one of the concerns i have is that if
079you look at the college experience most colleges um are ending their school season as a thanksgiving so the thing that makes even more complicated is that uh between thanksgiving and um and christmas or hanukkah and kwanzaa and the uh holidays that you have now all the college kids home i actually would be more than happy to revisit the numbers with karapunti the department of public health on a weekly basis i have no trouble revisiting um i towards dr fong's comments though uh well we do want to revisit that we don't want to create an unrealistic expectation that they create false hope i i as a parent who had a child um this past spring that had uh distance learning and and um kids that were that did the um sports my heart actually breaks that
080that our kids can't be there i i i can't imagine missing um the school on behalf of your children and missing sports and all the activities but but uh unfortunately the reality is with the numbers getting higher and all the college kids coming home and such a short window between thanksgiving and the december holidays that um i don't mind revisiting but i don't want to create a false sense of hope thank you i also i just want to say just a minute about the staffing piece because i do think it's i think this discussion is primary obviously but one of the kind of tentacles of this to think about is we have an awful lot of staff members who are in that age group where they have young children that are going to school in
081neighboring districts and so as those districts start to close the impact that we're seeing also is on their being torn between having to find childcare for their own family students and coming to work the other factor that i think warren's thinking about in this discussion of how long for us is that right now don't forget we have everybody coming in and we have teachers coming in at least two days a week to teach so they're still kind of living in this double world um and really the motivation for that um those of you that were on the the team that negotiated that piece was for them to grow more comfortable with the hybrid model of having students in front of them and students at home if we're thinking about a long-term closure then kind of
082the rationale for that starts to fade away a little bit for us um and and you know the other factor that plays into that is as conditions worsen which is what i'm kind of hearing tonight that they all we also need to be mindful to assess conditions for our um colleagues that are coming into the workplace now without children um so those are just kind of the the so as i said some other tentacles that are not necessarily part of this conversation but are things that kind of have a will be impacted by the decisions we make thanks ken i'd like to just jump in if i can make a comment please um i i echo the concerns that rachel and amy are expressing and i'm also thinking about those students who you know for
083school that's their their safe place that's where they get the wellness checks that they need they get you know food they get security um you know a safe environment um so i i am troubled um at the thought of doing this but i think what i'm what i what i'm really struggling with here isn't necessarily what the administration is doing because i think they're acting in good faith on the the information we have in front of us about how to keep everybody safe to me i'm looking at this and and wondering you know this is this is a community-wide conversation and we're having it in this bubble of the school community because this is you know the word we're the body that oversees that and the administration oversees you know the operation of the schools
084but this is really a community conversation and what our priorities are and i'm a little concerned that we're being you know we're in this position of having to make a really tough choice uh about how to handle this because within our community you know they're the business there are businesses that are open and operating and people are going into those businesses and they're mingling with each other and um you know people are not taking it upon themselves to to stay home and stay quarantined i think if that was going on and we were having a larger community conversation about this and we were prioritizing opening the schools um you know this could be a very different conversation and i just feel like we're sort of um really kind of in a position where we're relying
085on people who are outside of the school community uh to make decisions and they're not making decisions that benefit us being able to reopen safely so you know i i think that's sort of the crux of what i'm what i think we're dealing with here is like we're we're going to have to make this tough decision because other people are not making the decisions that in their you know personal lives and that that impacts us and i don't think we have any we don't have any control over that so i just wanted to add that to the conversation thank you madam chair i have a question when it's appropriate i don't want to take anybody's time um i don't know whether this is i know cara got off i don't know if kevin or one
086of the doctors who had done the answer my or maybe cathy o'dowd my recollection i'm trying to recall from memory our last meeting at 39 cases per thousand hundred thousand we would have to be closed right now per state guidelines correct am i remembering that properly so so joe that the school metric and addendum 4 is a little different than the one that was initially released when we were first closed for schools so the way addendum 4 works is it's it continues the more cases you have addendum 4 recommends that there are less kids in school and and so you know really the way the addendum is set up it gives it provides some significant latitude for the districts for the board for the superintendent so it wasn't as clear clear-cut as you know anything
087over this you close schools um but but it was kind of like a sliding scale the more the the greater the number the less amount of kids you were to have in school and then of course as as we know at that time we were planning to go back full k-12 i'm remembering am i remembering correctly the a standard at 25 per 100 000 for for schools was kind of the target was in the red absolutely after that once we get number 25 uh that's in the red zone and last time we met uh as best we can remember i think we were in like the four or five range so we're there and now we're up in the uh well into the 30s uh and rising so we're and we're definitely in the red
088zone thank you right and now uh we're all using the state data that was a part of the problem we had two sets of data we've been through that so um but the 25 is that or or less than 20 more than more than 20 puts us in the red zone but but as kevin just said um the state's permitting districts to mitigate it by increasing distancing and making other accommodations are those things that we're thinking about at some point in the future other other models than two on two off yes we've been yes joe we've been bringing so many different ways i mean you know play all different scenarios what if middle school doesn't come in what if high school doesn't uh do we have more space if we have more space can we
089open up can the kids come more often i think these are the things that we're looking at you know how um yes we also have other other devices that we have um that we're going to be able to utilize particularly at one level which uh you we could phase in and you could you could have k3 then we looked at a different model from middle and high school so there's different variations and that's what this um addendum for permits us to do thank you dr sale yes if uh we close and then open on the 26th and we were in the red and we're looking forward to open just i'm just using this as a scenario you mean two weeks ago 26. why would we open with the school still in the red i i
090don't understand that we closed a couple of weeks ago we were in the red and we're looking at maybe two weeks from now and we're still in the red why would we open school i i don't i don't think we would i mean if we if if we did i mean one of the things that doctors are telling us and what you know you have surrounding districts what's happening in those districts they're in the red what are they experiencing you know if the experience they're having in the school district that's in the red is that you know they're constantly every day the last minute you get a new call and you're cohorting the kids have to go home and you're closing two weeks and you have complete chaos i have to you know is that
091better than what we're doing uh maybe not um so you know that's what we'd have to look at that would be the only because what you're hearing the projection of numbers are not going to get better they don't look like they're getting better at this at this point so you know to bring them back to take that risk and that's why i asked the question what would it have what profile would you recommend for us to bring them back well your numbers are going to have to get at least back we were under 26. so it plateaus and then we have other circumstances that's going to keep them safer according to dendon 4 where we have more spacing those are things that we would have to do and then make that evaluation so it's it's
092it's and when you say two weeks it's very difficult for parents to plan for two weeks that's the other part so can i add some information yes please kathy um so um as the board is aware um we report on a daily basis to the department the state department of health we're required to report for each school if there is a positive case for uh students or staff even though we are on distance learning i'm still required to report those numbers um and so just to let you know in in the last three weeks i have reported 40 positive cases so um you know if we were to come back um we would be doing closures at least every week or even more um just given the number of cases that are out there in
093the community so that could mean that at six o'clock in the evening parents would get a phone call that for the next 14 days your children can't come to school it might result in 12 o'clock noon you have to come pick up your children we have to close so given the amount of community spread there would definitely be multiple class or building closures thank you kathy and put some perspective on it dr sal can i just comment on the social emotional comment that was brought up earlier yes please so i just want um i certainly understand the concerns of social emotional in-person versus social emotional during distance learning but i i do just want to remind the board that a strong focus across all staff in the distance learning model has been on the social
094emotional we recognize that as a need for kids we built it into our schedules from preschool all the way up through high school to have a designated carved out time we've provided extensive professional development on sel this year for all staff certified and non-certified and we've also in addition to providing the social emotional or trauma-informed training we've also provided resources and lessons on how to infuse social emotional activities into mathematics reading writing for example so it certainly is something that we've given great consideration to and i am not taking the position that it's the same as being in school um but it is the focus or will be the focus of all our teacher evaluation plans this year um and certainly is a strong focus daily in addition you know the outreach and the connectedness
095for the community on food internet access housing you name it all the basic needs that many of our families are going through our staff have truly went above and beyond and are are really seeking out and sharing resources with families community members um and uh in fact i i constantly get calls even from other surrounding districts and areas on you know do you know something about that could help a family with this so um all of our staff are really committed to supporting our families um even though um a majority of it is done through the computer or via telephone um which is certainly a different format than we're used to but it is at the forefront of everyone's mind because we need to support our kids whether they're right in front of us or
096whether they're you know through the computer screen eric has mirrored any comments regarding the teaching piece you like to make yeah i do um you know i mean obviously we want to get our kids back in person that's always a goal um you know particularly our youngest ones uh with the type of instruction that they need um but there's something really uh to be said for continuity of instruction and routine and consistency and you know i think maybe my biggest fear heading into this season is in coming back a bit was you know what would that look like for students whenever there's a disruption in the schedule for any reason snow days or early dismissals you know we always kind of lose ground with kids um in the restart of those modes and so um
097the one thing i can safely say is that you know i do feel that we have a good structure in place for distance learning right now students are receiving direct instruction from their teachers five days a week um and and you know our teachers are have gotten into a quite a good groove um you know this fall and they have you know similar to the sel they had a great deal of training um we've had more uh meetings uh in professional development this year than we've had probably in five years in the last five years just because we've been able to um build some efficiencies into the way that we're um way that we're meeting with teachers and the way that we're able to do some some plans and so um you know indecision is
098tough i was on the phone with a with a with a parent along these lines and i think um what was one of the hardest things for the parent was building a child up to come back to school only to have to tell them at the last minute that that wasn't happening um and and that you know they the parent themselves expressed um concern that we would be in a roller coaster situation emotionally and that making sure that we provided some sort of consistent messaging for the kids and to keep keep things moving forward so that we can you know when it's the right time to bring them back bring them back and that was just that was just one parent's opinion but um it hit home a little bit with the with the emotional
099roller coaster of coming in and then finding out you can't come back in um so you know um the continuity of instruction is key the routines are key um avoiding a little bit of the roller coaster but you know we are definitely interested in getting our kids back in we need to get them in we just have to do it when it's you know safest to do so um so but i do have faith in our teachers with the distance learning they've done an amazing job i'm there isn't a day that goes by where i don't get sent some incredible lesson or an amazing video of students that are doing things that we never thought were possible in this environment so they are growing in different ways and and while there are some definite uh
100downsides to this we're seeing some things out of kids that we've never seen before um and because we provided a different venue so um you know there's always there are always positives to find in these situations so you know we want to see our kids back uh desperately but um you know when the time is right and this board you know can help make decisions about that thank you if there's no other questions that board members want to ask uh you know some of our board members that we haven't heard from they have any questions if not we would like to sort of wrap this up so what we're going to do is obviously take this feedback think through this and um you know begin to communicate about what we think we we need to
101do you may recall we did a pause and we didn't target a time but this tonight was very helpful um you could see you know all of the information the data that we uh that informs our decision and we'll use it in making that decision i personally appreciate hearing from all of you um always realizing that all of us have the best interest of our kids in mind so i never doubt that it's just how we get there maybe a little bit different at this point so i thank you for the meeting very much if there's no other questions or discussion uh ask the motion to to adjourn our meeting so moved second second bye catherine catherine thank you catherine all in favor can i hear all right hi hi thank you thank you everyone
102everybody thank you doctor thank you good night