Danbury Board of Education Meeting 10-14-20

001roll call cake please uh joseph britton is not here he's coming late rachel chaleski yeah kate canetta here gladys cooper here lauren daly here joe da silva um catherine kaushin here uh marissa genelli is absent this evening kathy molinaro is absent this evening al russo here and amy spelina at this portion of our agenda is a very exciting recognition and at this point i'm gonna let doctor say i'll take over the recognition part yeah i do want to make sure we have a conflict cara um has carmen been able to make it tonight did that work out yeah okay great i can't see it let's see here so um well um some years ago morris street was honored with the blue ribbon award um unquestionably it's it's a demanding program um ours is based on

002achievement student achievement and uh in the category for um low-income students achieving exceptionally high rates of achievement when i received the call from the state they were just they were verifying the data looking at it very deeply we're just so impressed with the work that's been going over at south street which begun a few years ago and carmen has taken that leadership over the last few years and it's really crystallized and it's really producing some outstanding results and the state wanted to be sure to recognize that so when we received those schools of distinction as you know last spring six or seven which was phenomenal um the state does a combing uh and evaluating of all of those schools and they called and recommended that they um would send to the national blue ribbon committee

003south street school from connecticut they reviewed the portfolio contacted the state and said they would accept them as a blue ribbon school now you know you you you know this is 47 000 schools and um you know this is an honor that is sought after and to receive it twice in in what four years and uh our elementary schools are doing this is just so impressive so carmen um you're here why don't you talk a little bit i know the mayor's carers too he wanted to congratulate you but um we're just so proud of you and the faculty and students let me hand the mic over to you thank you dr sao thank you board of education thank you everyone administrative council thank you so i just want to show you um bell street is

004here south street can you say hi great job south street so they they you know uh we were trying to think of how we my husband stole nobody we were trying to think of uh how can we make them a part of this because obviously as we all know um this couldn't have been accomplished without the amazing staff from south street and i want to just say a couple of words i have an hour worth of a speech so i hope you guys are ready [Laughter] just kidding um this is a great honor and uh south street staff is amazing they have come a long way as you guys know i i came to connecticut uh 16 years ago from massachusetts from the boston public schools and honestly i never wanted to be a principal

005it's a it's a huge responsibility um and i liked being just the assistant principal but dr sallin trusted me with this position and from the very beginning i i knew that my goal was to make south street number one because i know it can be possible but i cannot do it alone it takes a village it takes a a staff that can trust you at staff that uh builds upon the foundation of the work that has been done there already and so we took on the challenge the staff trusted me as their leader and with the help of the administrative council who's always there to support us the help of our parents who have been able to support us as well bring their kids every day to school and trust us with them every day

006we have been able to accomplish this wonderful task one of the things that people are asking me now is how did how did you accomplish that we again south street was always known as one of the lowest performing school in danbury and across the state and now we're being looked at as a model school and well the three things i said from the very beginning high expectations for everyone um high expectation first of myself and then to the rest everyone there and so we know that all of the students can achieve success and the staff charted that way they are the ones they are the ones that are right in front of the kids and they're the ones that uh took on that responsibility and went out of their way and above and beyond to

007be able to make sure that all of our students for learning we still have a lot of work to do this is just the beginning we're excited this year is definitely a challenge um but we will continue to strive and to provide our students and our community what they need in order for our all of our students to be successful so i thank all of you for your support and dr sal especially and uh here's again south street this is to them as well couldn't have done it without them congratulations man big smiles thanks miles terrific great job uh kara anything dr casmero oh yeah i wasn't sure which cara um yeah no i just wanted congratulations to uh to south street and to carmen um the one thing i can say for sure is

008that my phone rings um quite often uh and it's carmen on the other end asking to try something a little bit different to try to you know do something a little bit out of the box um and her teachers have come to her with some ideas and so there's been this um sort of great flow of ideas and collaboration that has kind of sparked in the last couple of years and the staff is is always coming forward with new ideas to try things to reach kids in different ways um and carmen has been shepherding that in um through her leadership and has been in you know relatively constant communication with with trying to seek out new and innovative ways to to reach students um at south street and so um i also know that she

009goes to the ends of the earth to um reach families um our esl families in particular to make sure that things are just the way that they need to be so they understand what is happening and that they're fully engaged in their school community so i just want to say congratulations to the south street staff and to carmen for her leadership um is well deserved and again this is just the beginning there the sky is um is is limitless for south street and the trajectory with where you're going so continue on and congratulations to all uh there'll be a there is a national ceremony but uh i think it's gonna be done virtual we'll be hearing about it and we'll be getting a special award and i'm i'm sure that uh this spring if we

010have our day in hartford um we'll be um you'll be presented with a special plaque as well so um congratulations and the job well done to the poor to the faculty the carmen to the parents and to the kids great job thank you thank you for the recognition thank you next sandy before we get to the public participation do we have any comments um refreshing as of right now no we did not okay thank you we'll move on to public participation uh kate will you do our reading for the participation part please i certainly will i do see a note on here gladys about mayor belton uh did you want to um uh but do the public what we the the reading for the public participation then we'll go right to sure thing okay due

011to 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 b-o-e at danbury.k12.ct.us the board welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes you may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern you the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students or against any person connected with the danbury public school system thank you kate uh my i'm going to read a brief statement too the concern board for our last board of education meeting regarding spanish translation has been resolved board education meeting will be translated in spanish and uploaded to

012the website the following day thank you all for being so patient and i hope we continue to work together next we will have um mayor bowman come forth all right good evening good evening madam chairwoman good evening may belton good to be here um so uh i want to just to take a few minutes and kind of brief the board on where we stand with the danbury career academy what the latest action in the legislature was what it means and what next steps would be going forward to be able to make this a reality uh first for those that aren't aware there was a special session of the general assembly um about two weeks ago and and during that time period the general assembly adopted the governor has since signed a school construction bill that

013school construction bill does mention danbury specifically and the specifics are that for the first time uh that this state has ever been able to do we would be allowed to repurpose a corporate building or a office building if you will uh for use by uh the danbury public schools as a school assuming that it meets the standards of construction that are required classroom size etc all of the uh operational things that have to go into that as well uh that the reimbursement rate would be 80 percent from the state of connecticut that we would work on a plan that would not only be a beta test for us but then would be able to be translated into legis general legislation that any city or town could use so we're sort of a test bed which

014means that we'll be keeping uh some extra data extra information for people uh so that we can then take this uh information as we go through this process and again use it for a template for future communities to use that we would be allowed to not use a traditional bidding method for construction we would be able to do essentially a turnkey or design build method where we would just like you buy a house or a condominium or anything like that we would go in and buy a completed school as long again as it met all state regulations requirements but that during the process of the construction of said school there would be um uh steps that have to be taken by the developer to meet with the state to review uh the plans and to

015make sure that they in fact do meet um all requirements that that the state of connecticut has so we're very excited that um the state agreed to this this was a very very i can't emphasize what a heavy lift this was um pretty much burned up every iou i have going back about 20 years now i have to give a lot of credit to uh david arkani uh who was right there we were hip to hip doing all this stuff i had to take certain members of general assembly out to play golf i had to wine and dine i had to do everything that had to be done to be able to get to this point where people sort of got what we were trying to do and so i think in the end the

016speaker of the house really stepped in and said it was really coming unwound um the governor wasn't feeling it and um opm had a real big issue with it even though we had briefed them for months we started working on them last year um but uh at the end the speaker stepped in and said no you're going to do this and you're going to do this language that we've drafted which initially they were going to throw out so what does all that mean it means that we're going to be able to go forward with the danbury career academy we've got work to do um as you know i've been meeting with antonio uh over the last week or two to begin scoping out what are what are the next steps look in this and what

017do we need to do to be able to make sure that we hit all the benchmarks that are in the legislation as it relates to filing deadlines and so forth i think first of all i do want to take a step back and in some ways apologize i think the the 2020 task force unfortunately two things came into play there one first one was coven made it extremely difficult to meet uh to have meetings zoom meetings became problematic having a freewheeling discussion became problematic we did have a couple in november but um you know in a couple after that after the holidays and then um essentially we you know we pretty much shut down both the school side and the city side of government um it wasn't necessarily the process that i that i saw

018or envisioned but at the end i think we we got where we needed to be um so we have not had a vote out of 2020 out of this particular program but i don't think that's necessarily going to be an issue and we really haven't had as much interfacing with the board as we typically would should we be in traditional meetings and and doing the way we've always gone about business right so that's not exactly our process all the time but again i think we had to deal with the cards that were dealt with us in terms of getting it done secondly obviously was we were on a time constraint you know we can't wait the traditional five years to go ground up uh if we could identify a 20-acre piece of property that we

019could buy that we could build a building straight up we just don't have the time we know we have kids coming in about three years and even then it's going to be tight to get them in there but having a building that's already pre-built but now requires internal modifications makes our build out from three years to a year and a half and so that year and a half will be mission critical for us to be able to deal with the students that we believe are showing up now we got a little bit of a break this year our numbers aren't as high as they were last year but last year more than made up for what we didn't get this year so it all it all evens out in the end anyways right so um

020our next steps will be uh to continue negotiations with the owners of the building so they can bring back a finite number for the purchase of said building we have a not to exceed number of 94 million dollars we don't think we'll be anywhere near that but that gives us plenty of room for what we need to do to the building uh and to to purchase three pods of that building for our use um this will be a building that will blow the city of danbury long pass uh we're there we you know the future people who are on the border at the city council or mayor can use it if for some reason their numbers get smaller again i don't think they will but if they did can use it for whatever they want

021or they can definition an older building somewhere else in our portfolio and use this building so it gives us much needed flexibility as well so we'll continue our negotiations the owners have been super flexible i anticipate having some kind of contract ready to go for the whole project uh probably by um right after the first of the year maybe a little bit maybe early february bring that to the council have the council review that have a vote out of the council we would be required to place a deposit down on the building much like you put a pot deposit down on the house that'll give them their uh go ahead to begin their construction we then have to have all of our paperwork in by october 1st 2021. that's the drop dead date to me

022our reimbursement and um we actually normally it's june but they gave us an additional four months in the special legislation for us to do that so that'll help us um because i don't know if we'll be ready with fully completed drawings by june i think it's more like uh july or august those will be ready and you have to submit all that when you submit for your final authorization um so that's where we stand right now we'll have more information for you as we continue to scope out the project but i i just want to give you a sense of what's going on and where we're going with this and i think at some point a full-blown presentation by the architect who will be engaged uh will be warranted you know obviously in front of

023the board and dr sale and kevin and their team will will work their way through this and work in conjunction with the ed spec and with uh the the building committee on the board as well as 2020. so we're excited i mean it's a good thing right i mean this particular piece of legislation will save us 80 of 94 million so you're looking at about 70 75 million dollars and the delta between 60 and 80 will you'll we would have been around saves us about 20 million bucks when it's all done 20 to 25 million and the style of construction if we were to go a traditional build building for let's say 1200 students you're probably going to spend about 160 170 million um we're getting out the door at about 95 million with the

024reimbursement out of pocket for taxpayers will be about 20 million dollars that's pretty darn good now that doesn't count obviously staffing that's a whole other story but this will allow us to um uh really save a lot of money on debt service and provide us some some wiggle room as we need to staff up the building and hire et cetera there are a lot of questions that'll have to be answered how do we fill the building do we we do like we did with the uh middle school the west side academy where we you know each year we added another grade so we could staff up slowly and higher slowly i think that a lot of that will depend on the numbers that we see coming through um the door in terms of how the

025board up you know opts to do that a lot of that will depend on where we are financially um but i think more importantly it'll be driven by you know how many students we have can we do just a grade six then add another grade six and add another grade six all the way up to grade 12 or do we have to do everything at once or do we do just a middle school once i think those are questions that remain to be answered and that's quite frankly something that the board will have to hash out with sal and the rest of the team so with that i'll throw it open to any questions with obviously uh madam chairwoman if you you so concur and um if i don't have an answer i'll try to

026get one for you i have a i have a question mayor first great job uh on your part in our delegation's part to get this done uh i think this is a great start and a good idea one quick question i know we're working on a design build and the contract of the developers building it is the is the contra is the developer required to do this in a prevailing wage basis um no with the exception that if state money is being used it does require prevailing wage yeah so while the traditional bidding process has been waived um whether it's union or non-union will just depend i think on where the lowest bids come in and what numbers that they come from i think i think a large proportion of the building will be will

027be union labor which you know again we're looking for the best number we can get but we're not doing the bidding that's really up to the developer and okay they'll be contracting with the actual contractors okay thank you mr mayor i have a question uh when we initially discussed this wasn't to build out about 45 million it is but we we added at the end we added another pod in there because we wanted to provide uh flexibility for from 900 students up to about 1300 to 1240 somewhere in that range to do that we had to add in another pod which increased the cost but uh the good news of that is that we we got we went from 60 to 80 of the reimbursement so that made life a lot easier for us once

028again sir let me add my voice to uh the well done button on this crowd well done sir to you and the team thank you so much so mark process wide um we'll have a facilities committee i uh and um you know last year unfortunately we didn't get to go the weekend this whole thing hit but we did we have some conceptual ideas about this the academy um we did visit and um cara and dan from the high school and melissa they do have all gone so we're we have some background information the state also cara you on dr casmaro has uh placed in a position to receive i believe some kind of consultant to work with us is that correct uh correct so we've been selected to work with um in consultation with the

029state of connecticut and nc3t to begin looking at um are evaluating our current assets um and talking about the pathways uh you know how to build these pathways out and do it the right way so these this is a free collaboration with the state of connecticut um that we're very excited about and that's that's really just started um and you know i think um some of our covid meetings have been a little bit difficult to to engage fully but we've just started that plan and we'll be working closely with them to learn how to best utilize our our current assets to build this out so um you know so let's put that aside the the the the break fix stuff uh with mark and would um and the delegation did david uh is this incomprehensible

030um he's not telling you everything uh there was some turns that were moving away from commitments and it was their diligence uh and their persistence on behalf of our kids to do the right thing and and mark uh i just can't say thank you enough for the kids to you and to the delegation and to david uh this is going to be a tremendous asset uh cara and the team are really excited then our kids are going to benefit well well in the future connecticut is going to benefit danbury's going to benefit with this career pathway so um just i'm having them tingling down my back i'm just so excited about this so thank you thank you thank you and uh madam chair when joe gets on we'll we'll set a facilities committee meeting and

031we'll start talking about some ideas and the board too some ideas about construct of the grade levels and some of the things that the mayor talked about as they move along the parallel structure about um how to get this in front of the state so um thanks again mark and thank you thank you team and antonio for his diligence i know you know it was hard for him and uh he was up there fighting for us so tell him i said thank you i will i i the um one of the challenges we're having is that some people on the opm side the school construction side want the operational they want the you know the operational plan for the school and how we're going to you know what the education is going to look like

032within the walls and you know we had to sort of put do a brush back and say well that's not really your concern your concern is are the walls going to hold up are they going to be able to handle so many kids are we meeting the square footage requirements for for all the various programming that the state is requiring um so the sooner we have that piece done i know you've got a long ways to go on that but the sooner like you know late spring whatever whenever you have it done the better because people who ask for it that really shouldn't be asking for it but they want to see it anyways because i think they're more curious than anything else and that was part of the issue um that we had with

033certain people who are really just entrenched bureaucrats that just didn't want to do this because well you know what it's going to look like inside what's don't worry about that you know we're going to handle x amount of kids and so many square feet and we're going to meet all of your requirements so that that's i think that is absolutely under the purview of the board of education is what you you guys get elected and hired to do and that's what you should be doing um we'll we got work to do there's a lot of hair on this in the sense that again some people's feathers got ruffled but uh um i do want to again thank the speaker because um he literally we stood there in a three-way colony he said to the governor

034i gave mark my i gave the mayor my word and i'm not going back in my word this is what we're doing that's it i'm not we're not debating this anymore and then the governor said okay we'll do it so um all good stuff and again everybody pushed from all the different angles to make it happen mark i know is there going to be a is there going to be a referendum i know you had some ideas about that maybe the board might want to hear that yeah i i you know i i definitely think i know that we can we'll we can enter the contractual uh arrangement um with the uh the developer i'm not worried about that with a deposit with authority from the council i don't i i don't think we can

035get away without a referendum because some of the old language from the statutes are still in there so i think we're gonna have to have a referendum at one point but this will be because it's the most cost effective way ever put in front of our voters to be able to handle our students not counting the educational excellence that will go on inside the building which carries and her team is going to be working on um i think this would be the easiest vote we've ever had i just got to find the right vehicle to lop on a referendum but i may just do it even if i don't need it just to say it was done just so that's they can't throw that up to us at the last minute and say well you

036know you need a referendum you didn't get it so there may be we maybe do something in the spring or late spring i'm still kicking this around we were not ready to have something in front of the voters uh in three weeks we just we just didn't know if this was going to fly through the general assembly and i didn't want to ask for too little money which is what i would have ended up doing if i tried to do a referendum then so the answer is most likely thank you thank you madam chairman okay now thank you dr sarah and thank you mayor belton for uh supporting education uh the way you have uh this past year and on behalf of the board we would like to thank you and the delegation would like

037to thank him uh in a special way because um you know we can imagine it was not easy but we know that you support education and we appreciate what you have done for our students here in denver thank you very much mayor mayor do you know a celebrity will give us 10 million dollars if we named it after him good job on that that's not over yet that's not all over yet but uh we'll keep you posted everybody um this is great news uh uh we're we're gonna be working through november and december and um you know you've got your building committee i know they'll get going i'm gonna hop on another zoom call unless you need me um but uh we will definitely keep everybody in loop here thank you thank you okay next

038is our consent calendar cake sorry about that i was on mute i'll make a motion that the board of education approves the items on the consent calendar exhibit 20-106 through exhibit 20-107 is recommended second motion hey exactly any question concerning motion um i'm not sure if the numbers are correct maybe if it's a typo but under the superintendence report of our last regular meeting um the ais magnet school funding update i'm not sure if the the enrollment numbers are correct there i think they seem a little off to me but could somebody maybe look at that uh rachel they were unofficial just count tonight is the official okay but it's yeah but we can correct the minutes okay we'll look at that all right great but but for our submission to the state it's uh

039the october one but we'll check that date and the numbers that we have to correct the minutes okay great yeah thank you i'll put a note another question concerning the minutes uh uh kate could you do the rope call please 40 minutes uh rachel chaleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper yes lauren daly aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye al russo hi amy spelino hi all in there thank you uh next on the agenda uh do we have an employee represented here tonight i don't know no we do i i i'm looking i'm looking up and down i don't see aaron's name uh no madam chairman okay so we'll go down do we have our students on uh with us tonight hello everyone how are you guys we're good how are you doing

040i'm good all right so dhs is working with the do something organization in order to register more people to vote and so far we have registered close to 60 people and we're actually the first in the nation for registrations we're also in the running to win a ten thousand dollar grant for the school and every student who is signed up to register people is also in the running to win a thousand dollar scholarship wow good job thank you guys so tri-m or music honor society is now taking new members for the 2020 to 2021 school year the submissions will be all virtual and we are working towards creating a montage video with all types of instruments and vocalists the board of governors executive council and peer leadership will give tours to the freshmen next week

041the tours will be on monday tuesday thursday and friday and will be from 1 to 1 30 1 30 to 2 and 2 to 2 30. it'll be live right um and actually i would think so i was just kind of uh it was very important to mr donovan to see if we could make that arrangement but um okay good well thank you for doing it it's important so the groups will have 10 people each and there will be seven groups each session we also want to say congratulations to caleb schlissel on being a national merit scholarship semi-finalist also congratulations to erin h and on the okay on earning commended status the bog is planning to have a spirit week before thanksgiving break this november we want to try to bring some school spirit back

042we have also had some changes to the dhs schedule starting october 26th classes will run from 7 20 to 12 with additional added instruction time for the cohort that wasn't in the building that day there will also be classes on wednesdays that will switch a or b every week and that's all thank you jake so very much thank you guys jake when are you going to find out if you guys have won the scholarship and all of that did they tell you we should find out in the coming weeks you guys will know okay thank you good job thank you have a good night thank you okay do we have anyone from ace no christopher don't say no yes ma'am nicole hi go ahead hello good stuff for you else go ahead go ahead guys

043hello my name is nicole i don't know if you can see me yes we can hi my name is nicole kushby i am a student at ace and um this year i was nominated to be their representative along with chris johnson your new representative and um what is going on in ace so um good evening board of ed members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing chris and i to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence during the week of september 21st through 25th ace held its humanities department grade level benchmark week the ace humanities department has created a benchmark google classroom that the entire student body participates in based on your highest grade level in english or social studies thank you ace humanities humanities department for all of your

044diligent work on this school-wide learning activity also stay ace staff nominates and votes weekly on the students of the week we would like to publicly publicly represent two students of the week for their hard work and demonstration of their five behavioral expectations at ace 11 students were nominated and two were recognized last week and they are jalen batista and axel valenzuela they will receive dunkin donut gift cards donated by american paving congratulations to both of you thank you on october 27th 12 seniors will participate in the school day s.a.t assessment for seniors at ace on the week of october 25th joanne tolls melissa lasky daniela esposito and approximately 78 students will engage virtually in the dodge poetry festival thank you all for allowing us to share what is going on with our ace family during

045our current distance learning environment and have a nice evening thank you thank you thank you okay next stop to sell the presentation yes at a board retreat uh the timing couldn't be any better right for us uh the request for um a q a and i think you've received that was the request for a presentation over the um our our pro distance learning program a hybrid program which we have tonight cara has uh put it put together we are going to encapsulate this and also put on our website uh because as you know and uh the reopening is going to happen on the 26th and uh there are a lot of questions about the program um i i will say to you there uh what you're going to see tonight is is the thinking over

046time that we have had to develop we have tried to learn from districts around us and we'll continue to learn this will be the phase that we'll implement i think we'll do our due diligence and see if adjustments need to be made but this work has been um i just can't express to you how deep uh and how difficult it has been to do we have i want to say kim is on the line and kevin and kelly just finalized it today to staff for going through doing the staffing because we have as you know there were a number of accommodations that had to happen um the distance learning and the accommodations we had about 72 to 75 staff that had to be um developed and assigned to distance learning while we reconstruct our um

047our class list is like starting from um first day of school but uh i want to just keep quiet now and i would like you to see um the presentation and then we'll leave it up um do uh questions and answer uh kara are you ready to do it uh i am and just to clarify the the presentation tonight was is really you know since the the board retreat we had made the decision to shift to hybrid and so the focus um you know if we had had an extra board meeting or so we'd be able to talk about it like all of the distance learning uh programming that we have in place and then also in addition the hybrid model that we're going to be moving to so this is really more focused on

048the hybrid model um and we'll talk a little bit about how the distance learning cohort fits into this but mainly um to make sure that we have enough information out there to share with our parents who are listening tonight so that they understand how the shift on the 26 will affect them and their and their children at home so i will start my screen share you might if folks have their um they might want to turn the mute okay can everyone see this at home are we good dr sally yes okay great okay so um this is a little bit lengthy um and it's really to go over sort of the details of where we are now but also to unpack a little bit at each level elementary middle school and high school on sort

049of the operational inner workings of the schedule um and also to highlight some of the summary points of both hybrid and students who have selected the full distance learning cohort model and we'll talk a little bit about that i know there was a lot of questions we did answer those through the parent faq so anybody out there who's still um looking for that that is a pretty helpful uh resource with a lot of questions that have already been um asked and answered that was sent out in the last um last robo call by dr sal so this is this should look pretty familiar this is the current district distance learning schedule these are the times that students have been going to school when we shift to the hybrid model beginning october 26th the times will

050change and we'll talk a little bit about some of the rationale for this uh change along with um what we had originally proposed and why we need to make some some adjustments so a preschool session runs from 9 to 11 30 in the morning the afternoon session 12 15 to 2 45 again these were all published um k5 early schools run from 8 to with the bus is departing at 1 35 the k5 late schools run from 8 30 with buses departing at 205 6 8 starts at 7 35 buses departing 12 40 and grades 9 through 12 starts their day at 705 and bus is departing at 12 10. on wednesday you can see that all students are at home learning and there are times set aside for for the start times for that

051day as well that is synchronous instruction with their teacher at home so again depending on the cohort monday tuesday thursday friday the times on the left hand column represent the school day there was a lot of questions around um why we changed the time from the original uh proposed 60-minute and 90-minute early release so if you remember very early on back in august as we were preparing to open in hybrid we had a 60-minute early release schedule for k-5 and then 90 at 6 12. we have done a lot of consultation with aries school districts we have learned a lot from some of the parts that have maybe tripped up some of the districts in terms of timing and planning and so talk a little bit about the differences in the shift in the schedule

052so in k5 we'll have what is essentially boils down to a 75 early minute release and at the high school a little bit longer with 110. what we've learned is that the arrival and dismissal process is very complex particularly with the number of parents that we will have dropping off we need to make sure that we are planning appropriately for that um grab-and-go lunch also takes some time and we are doing that at the secondary level um the biggest uh process we think will take the most amount of time is around the k-8 level but mostly k-5 with young children being dropped off and having the number of cars um coming into the school so all the schools have a plan for that arrival and dismissal um but we are allowing for some additional time

053to reflect the reality that's needed to actually operationalize the um the and execute the our plans at each at each level um we also have learned that everything in distance learning um and so true uh will be for hybrid that everything takes a little bit longer um the planning time that's needed to work with students both in school and to connect with students at home and to plan for the digital complexities that are needed really take additional time for the teacher and we want to make sure that we have some of that time particularly at the end of the day and at k5 where our teachers will be connecting with students at the end of the day who have been working on asynchronous lessons the other thing that we thought was really important having started

054the school year and the way that we did um and you know worrying about disruption is this idea that you know our kids have finally gotten settled into these current schedules we've got them in in their groups we've um took a couple of weeks to make sure that we've identified their needs and that we're working working with them and that their groups are set um for for intervention in particular special services esl services and so we wanted to try to disrupt those current groups as at least as possible and so we took the current schedule and the groupings that students are in and we look to sort of stretch the schedule across and so we created a schedule uh particularly at k5 where this was most imminent to make sure that we maintain the integrity

055of the groups that the students were still working in um with regards to services so um we did our best to to accommodate that um additionally should we find ourselves um and we're seeing this now playing out in communities around us um having to have schools go in and out of um hybrid or full distance learning um because of an exposure um that we want to have one schedule that can serve both purposes and so um the schedules that you'll see presented represent um an amount of time and are organized as such so that whether or not we're in school or we're at home that the length of the day and the organization of the schedule serves both purposes for the least amount of disruption i have several schedules in here i'm going to speak

056first about the elementary schedule and i'm really only going to speak to the early elementary school because both early and elementary schedules are the same they only differ by about 30 minutes or so so i will kind of go through the elementary schedule here just to kind of give you an overview of the day so for students who are in the who are in hybrid and who have selected um i'm sorry who are in the blue on the blue team cohort so that is attending in-person instruction on monday and tuesday students will be in school between 8 a.m and 1 35 p.m they were they will arrive to school they will follow all of our social distancing protocols that the buildings have set up they will grab their their breakfast and they will head off

057to their first class the teachers will engage them as they come in through and supervise students but also begin to engage in social emotional learning activities that are community building activities right from the moment that students arrive in the classroom we anticipate that as we become more efficient with our arrival process and our ability to grab and go efficiently and students get settled um that that will be more time dedicated to this sel morning work and less time transitioning and um and organizing so but that's just a typical fare for the beginning of school anyways but in this particular situation that we're in um we know we're going to need some extra time in the morning to to make sure that our systems are are operating smoothly the instructional day will generally run from about

0588 30 to 1 o'clock students will have their numeracy their literacy reading writing they'll have all of that in addition to that we will still be able to provide our what i need block and our esl services so students will go um and the students have this now in a typical year and we've been able to accommodate that in this current distance learning schedule so students will have some services they will have a lunch break they will have engagement with a special area teacher who will come in to their classroom and they in between all of this a teacher will have scheduled mask breaks for students to be able to take breaks during during the course of their school day dismissal process will begin approximately one o'clock and we know it's going to take a

059little bit of time to get students out safely to to the pickup lines and to uh to drop off and the buses uh will roll out by 1 35 so individual schools will have um their you know set procedures and pickup times and drop off times and um will be communicated by individual schools this is represents a generic schedule for the 13 schools but this is uh been designed to to give parents at home an understanding generally of how the day will work um while the blue team is uh at school um and after they are dismissed the teacher will work at home with the orange team so um this team here these are the students who are not attending in person learning for the day will be sent asynchronous lessons and practice to engage

060them in learning at home um i can't begin to tell you how much work our coaches are doing right now to design lessons that are pre-recorded and that prompt students to what the areas that they need to learn along with uh you know directions for the practice that they need to engage in so we do have a team that is working very hard to produce these very high quality constructs that the teachers can set the students who are at home up for learning at the end of the day when the teacher is done with the blue team there is an opportunity sometime between 2 and 3 0pm and the individual teachers will schedule this with students to check in to answer questions and to make sure that um things the anything that needs to be

061clarified is done so um there's also time for teachers that's going to be working on planning and having some meetings but there is an opportunity in here to check in live with students to engage them here the same thing plays out in reverse on thursday and friday with the orange team in school blue team at home so you start to get the picture there on wednesdays everyone who in hybrid is at home so between 8 a.m and 12 30 p.m students will engage with their teacher from both cohort who are both cohorts uh live with their teacher home they will have a morning meeting um potentially a whole group lesson here and then followed up by several small group um lessons that will be scheduled individually with the child's classroom teacher we will also still

062be able to provide win and esl and special education services this will be scheduled through the school at the end of the day the end of the day on on wednesdays is 12 30. so again just to reiterate where the in-person learning happens either monday tuesday or thursday friday all students are home engaged um virtually with their teacher live uh from home okay this is the uh the next slide is the general elementary schedule for the late schools this is the same exact um idea just about 30 minutes difference between early and late so just to summarize the hybrid program for k-5 students will attend school in person two days a week based on their cohort assignment both cohorts will attend class remotely on wednesday the focus of wednesdays is mainly small groups scheduled by

063the teachers and the students will be provided the students who are home on the on their non-in-person days will be provided asynchronous lessons and practice so the asynchronous to clarify these are assigned lessons in practice to be completed independently and flexibly and the teacher will check in with students at the end of the day special areas this has been there's been a lot of questions about special areas special areas will occur only on the days of in-person instruction and so if your child special occurs on a monday and a tuesday they will engage with those teachers but not so much if they if that occurs on a thursday and a friday and they are in the blue cohort what we'll try to do in the spring is rotate some of those specials so that students

064are able to engage with all four areas and have exposure to all of them additionally we've had some some of our special area teachers have asked if they can still post to a special area classroom a recorded lesson um so if students still wanted to be able to see what was happening in an art class that they may be able to do so so we are still working on bringing creative ways to engage students um and adding to what it is that we've been able to plan uh so far if a student has a special that falls on a wednesday they will still have their special area but it'll be a live synchronous class with their special area teacher okay so in contrast to that we have the elementary full distance learning program so for

065families who have selected full distance learning these uh students are going to be assigned a distance learning teacher that's been a a lot of the work that has been going on this week is to identify and finalize those those selections and those lists um students who are in the distance learning cohort will follow a relatively similar schedule to what's happening in the schools um and there's the day their start of their day will either be at 8 o'clock or 8 30 because we're going to try to align the schedules to the schools with which they came from i have to commend the cabinet team for working really hard on creating a system where the majority of students would still be affiliated with the current schools that they're in so that there's an alignment of services

066as well which we think is very important for continuity um so just very briefly uh what you see here at the beginning of the day tier two intervention simply means that the distance learning teacher would be the one to deliver any services in for tier two uh instruction that is needed um normally in students who are in the schools would receive intervention services from one of a number of folks but in this model um the distance learning teacher will be delivering that intervention um unless there's um another another plan in place and students who are currently in different types of intervention will be contacted to kind of continue those groups and we'll find ways to to continue to do that so generally the instructional day is the same numeracy literacy reading writing mathematics um 8

06730 to 12 30. they will have a special choice board they will not engage with a special area teacher we simply do not have the staffing capacity to to do both in both programs um they will still continue to have a win in esl and any small group instruction that the teacher feels needs to be provided um 12 30 to 1 o'clock students will have their lunch and then will engage in some additional asynchronous instruction or practice at the in the second half of the day in the afternoon it is possible for some students not all to have arrangements for additional small group instruction or intervention uh based on need and current services that are provided so similar to the way that we've conducted uh this now in the distance learning program that's currently running

068we have some students who are attending additional groups and are being provided certain services on wednesday in the full distance learning actually all five days are virtual with the teacher and synchronous but on wednesdays in particular again the focus of those is more on the small group instruction again looking very similar to the the way that the in-person students are are would have that um and what is currently happening as well okay so in summary for students who've selected at the elementary level the full distance learning program they they will meet with their assigned distance learning teacher virtually five days a week special ed esl and intervention will require students to work with additional staff members during the day so that may happen or before or after the school day ends so we're going to

069be working very creatively to make sure that kids receive those services students will not be assigned special area classes or teachers however they have access to a special area choice board for self-paced enrichment no grades will be issued in the special areas for students in the full distance learning program okay the middle school schedule these obviously looks a little bit different but the same idea applies so the middle school schedule will run from 7 35 to 12 and the students who are in the blue court again blue cohort again monday and tuesday will be in school they will arrive 7 35 grab and go breakfast they will go to team enrichment they will continue on through their classes and they will be dismissed and hop the bus at 12 40. at the same time the

070orange team is at home but logging in virtually to those classes and so they will be logging into these blocks here so that they do not need to log in anywhere during this time period but block one two and three they're required to log in same thing on tuesday when both students are at home in the afternoon they will be they will have some assigned independent work that they have to complete uh flexibly it doesn't have to be between 1 15 and 2 45 but it could be at any point in the night but that is to just to identify that there is work that would be assigned the teacher office hours at the middle school level really represents that time and uh period where a teacher could still make an arrangement for a small

071group to pull a student or two that needs some additional extra support so there is time embedded in here as well on wednesdays again i'm sorry on thursday and friday if you're in the orange team the same thing plays out but in reverse on wednesdays both cohorts um everyone is at home and they will have a touch point with the teacher um in a little bit shorter blocks straight through the day they will have a break in a lunch and at the end of the day they have a little bit more of an extended block and again team enrichment to touch base with kids and to do a little bit deeper on social emotional work that needs to happen um sorry so yeah so wednesdays is everyone is at home so in summary for that

072schedule the hybrid and distance learning students actually let me go back just explain something um the students who are on full distance learning have a selected full distance learning cohort they are in distance learning five days a week they simply log into their classes along with the orange team or the blue team that's at home on different days so they're logging in live and virtually five days a week through their classes so they they they do not have a separate program per se they are simply not ever coming to school in person but they are logging into their classes so i just wanted to make that distinction at the secondary level so in summary the hybrid model cohort students attend in person and they're assigned cohort days students at home log into their google classroom

073and google meets to participate in each class following their course schedule full-time distance learning dl students will just simply participate and do the same as their blue and orange cohorts but they will do that five days a week all students on wednesdays regardless of hybrid or distance learning will attend classes remotely according to their schedule at the high school this sort of represents maybe the biggest change in the schedule um i know there's were a lot of questions about wednesdays um i think um though for as many questions there were about um the perception of not having enough of structured time we're also received as many emails thanking for the the the time to uh to do things flexibly so um regardless of that we did have we have gone in and made some some

074changes we worked very closely with mr donovan and his team to put something together that we think will um will solve some of some of the concerns that initially arose so again monday and tuesday at debris high school the sessions will run from i'm sorry monday tuesday thursday thursday friday the sessions will run from 705 to 12 10 for in-person instruction and they will follow an ab day schedule they will attend four blocks they will be dismissed and grab their lunch and go home at 12 10. the orange team similar to the middle school and as well as the dl students and the hybrid students will log in from home and follow their normal class schedule on an a b rotation in addition to this again the the high school has a an extra block

075in here the middle school is a little bit more time added into their schedule and they have some more embedded small group instruction but we are also asking the students who have been at home on the orange team that they are able to uh that they log in for live interactive mandatory flex session um it's actually interesting mandatory flex we'll have to think of another way maybe to to word that um but our typical flex sessions that we use the enriching students model is called our flex um and so we would like to see the orange students log in to have a um kind of a q a and to d and to check in with their teacher um from the classes from the day it is definitely a little bit more difficult when you're

076at home to ask questions um high school particularly a lot of classes such as ap where the content is very heavy and so this offers students an additional check-in with the teacher to make sure um that they have everything that they need um and to have any questions answered for quick check-in um the blues the team who is at home the blue students who happen to be home can also log into this time and have those same questions answered but we're asking that the orange this the orange team at home that that is a mandatory uh flex and we're going to um reevaluate that um at the end of the semester to see if that is indeed still necessary but we wanted to ensure that we had sort of a fail-safe system in here to

077make sure that kids who are logging students who are logging into their classes have an opportunity to ask some questions at the end of the day if they didn't have an opportunity to do so in class because they're home virtually so the same plays out thursday and friday with the orange team again just the reverse on wednesday similar to the other models all students are at home and are logging in this wednesday becomes um an alternating a b schedule mr donovan and his team has created a calendar to alternate these days um and also take into the account that um there are some mondays and some holidays in the school calendar where that would mean that the blue team would be in school a little bit less than the orange team and and or vice

078versa on some weeks and so he's going to create and flex the schedule a b to account and make an adjustment so that um there's equal amount of instructional time for students in both cohorts who attempt to attend in person just something of note on the wednesday afternoon session students will log in for a mandatory mentor flex session this is a live session so this will be an sel check-in an additional opportunity for students to work with their mentors for a variety of reasons um and and this we think that this will be very helpful across the year particularly in this environment um to make sure that we have that that um that one-to-one check-in with their mentors and the afternoon will be assigned independent work and most of our teachers are in department meetings

079on wednesdays across the district um so that is where they will be so in general and again similar to the middle school students who have selected the full distance learning model will just be logging in from home five days a week the hybrid program cohorts students attend in will attend in person on their assigned cohort days students at home log into their google classrooms and google meets to participate they follow their course schedule students who do not attend class in person must also attend the aligned flex session to check in with their teacher again we will reevaluate that at the end of the semester to ensure that that is indeed still needed full-time distance learning program students will simply log in and follow their courses five days a week and all students on wednesdays regardless

080of hybrid or distance learning will attend the classes remotely according to the published calendar and this the students will be shared on this calendar if they haven't been uh to haven't already received that and i believe that calendar runs through through the end of december and then will be readjusted and things like snow days and and so forth may be maybe accounted for um ace may have a slightly different schedule to accommodate student needs um so those will be published and sent to students from that school specifically um something to know um we are still giving the s.a.t at denver high school so october 27th students in grades 9 10 11 and 12 not taking the s.a.t we'll have asynchronous lessons posted for the day so yes we will be coming back for just one

081day and then we will be in asynchronous learning the next day to accommodate our seniors taking the sat so the timing is not terrific um but it is nevertheless necessary uh students in grade 12 who are registered will report to school at 705 the buses will run normally breakfast and lunch will be provided we'll end the day at 12 and i believe a robocall went out yesterday to confirm the students who have registered and in a very short time room assignments will be emailed to those students so that they are aware of where they need to go on the day of the test we will also provide the psat for juniors uh in january and more information will be coming out we did have lots of questions around attendance and whether or not students attendance

082will be counted or how it could be counted um i just want to distinguish and it's not quite on the slide but there's a difference between period attendance so i was present for my algebra class at 7 a.m but i didn't i didn't attend to i didn't attend any other classes um and that would be the daily attendance so period attendance is by class at the secondary level uh for instance and the day attendance daily attendance is that you've attended at least half of the school day and so in this environment and this was uh this little graphic here uh was extracted from the state of connecticut's publication and guidance on tracking attendance and um in the in remote and in hybrid a student can be considered to be in attendance by a combination of

083these four things here so and that is for the daily attendance so attending virtual classes virtual meetings um consideration for time logged into any electronic systems that we have and any assignment submission or completion so if students were assigned asynchronous work and they have completed that um and it would have taken a student an hour to two hours so on and so forth that the uh that that time is logged in to account for at least half the school day to be marked overall present or overall absent we will be adjusting our attendance codes on the back end it's really nothing that folks really need to worry about at home but we will have we have had to expand our different codes to take in consideration students who are in a remote program who are

084absent or present and students who are in person absent or present um we are still working with uh learning about the state of connecticut and they should be updating us with further guidance on on ways in with which our distance learning days can be counted should we need to use them for uh should we have a snow day so if we have inclement weather and we simply shift over to distance learning um we would obviously like those days to count there have been some state statutes i believe on the books that have made that a little bit complicated that i know that are being worked on now and it's my understanding that the commissioner will be providing guidance on the ways and what we need to do on our end to have the our distance

085learning days considered um for the use for inclement weather when we have to cancel in-person learning and i know that doesn't make a lot of sense but i know that the state of connecticut is working on providing that guidance for us um you would think that that would be a bit of a no-brainer but um it needs to be clarified and and we will certainly follow suit with whatever we need to do to comply the grading for this year we've said this in many other notifications we're back to normal grading procedures for 612. um if a student has any difficulty they should contact the teacher and school administrator there still is an option for a pass fail however um that needs to be um delineated and approved at the school level but we are back

086to normal grading procedures normal honor roll distinctions will be restored for this year at the k5 level um you know we have a standard based report cards so there are components uh academic um pieces that are on the report cards that sort of delineate different levels of progression with different skills and so some of that will be shifted and so um while we'll still continue with the grading there will be some areas that will be not applicable because we haven't reached that part in our pacing yet or things have shifted because we have shifted some um standards and have prioritized other areas so those those changes will we will kind of uh make special notes about what teachers and parents can expect with those uh the teachers um will be making those adjustments um particularly

087in special areas the hybrid program students will receive grades for the classes that they attend the distance learning program students will not receive grades so that would be an area that you student would receive an n a and not applicable as far as technology goes we are expecting um students to bring in a fully charged laptop when they come into school um on daily and to also to protect those devices to the greatest extent possible um and that you know there are a lot of the backpacks these days have a pocket to to keep things safe um but in the but folks can get creative i just had someone one of the principals texted me a picture of a of a bubble uh envelope from the uh like ups store and the student was able

088to transport their laptop in a little bubble case that was i think they've probably purchased at the dollar store so um there are different ways that students can definitely protect their devices but they will be bringing them back and forth for the most part unless they're directed to do so otherwise from their teacher and we just ask that all of our students respect our uh school equipment and that they adhere to safety and security protocols when we are in the hybrid environment and particularly the secondary level where there's an expectation for collaboration at home and in school that requires a very intense amount of digital collaboration uh and respect so that the teacher can can can teach their lessons and so we're just making sure that parents um at home are also holding their their

089children vigilant to having the utmost level of of respect for uh the hybrid and the complexities that kind of ensue as we try to implement this new model parent-teacher conferences uh we were going to reschedule these for k-5 um there's going to be many changes with teachers and shifting in programs and so we feel that it would be best to to hold off a few weeks um closer to the report card and when teachers who are receiving new students have an opportunity to develop um some relationships and to um to best understand their students abilities so we'll be putting out some new dates for that grade six through 12 will remain the same we may have to get a little creative with how we do that set those appointments um and there may be some

090asynchronous activities that are assigned to students in order to be able to accommodate uh parent schedules um to be able to meet uh meet with all parents and all the meetings will be virtual and then uh this really isn't for the general population this was a slide that was added and i know that there were some um board members who were curious about you know what is what does the distance learning look like at home um you know maybe i don't have children in the school system or i don't have school-age children and so there's a a link to some lessons um just a few that were delivered and then some wonderful k-5 student response videos um that you can take a look at to see sort of how our students are are working in

091this environment and i have to say we've been very proud of our teachers um stop hearing now very proud of our teachers uh and what they've been able to accomplish in a short period of time uh we did provide them with some training for the for the distance learning and they have taken off um and so they've been really you know our students have have gotten settled into a lot of the routines for distance learning um and are are doing well so we're really proud of the work that the teachers have done and and the support of the parents at home and and the work that the kids have been doing to uh to do well and to thrive in this environment so um you can help yourself to those links at will and um

092get a sense of what that looks like at home so so kara just briefly because there may be some differences in class sizes based on the number of faculty that we had to reassign so you'll have some variances on classes maybe you know we tried to do some combining uh we were able actually kevin and kelly and then um kim were able to salvage all of the classes all but one that we had to combine schools which was very impressive so there are some variances also cara has some piloting going on so you may have heard some differences at one school versus another that we want to kind of keep an eye on and in fact if it's solid and something that we can um we could scale up to uh to to for us

093to utilize then we will look at things like that so we have some things going on corollary to the regular program the other thing i think board members have said hey what about connectivity gina can you respond to that please sure hi everyone um i did receive uh our vouchers for comcast and um we have started passing those out to families so i'm very excited about that we're going to be sending some reminder robo calls that this is available and posting some more information on our website in addition we um that was part of the everybody learns initiative and we did receive an additional 900 chromebooks as part of that initiative as well so um every part of the commitment has been filled and the connectivity in the schools i know that's been any comments

094uh yeah the um the access points in the elementary schools uh the installation of those has been completed and um so now we're just in the process of visiting every elementary school to test out their bandwidth and make sure that every ap is working uh the other side is kelly drucus talk about your program how it fits in and what the hell is in that yeah so um with special education and related services we've done a very similar model to the secondary um what we have done is we have um taken most of our our caseloads and we'll have the teachers do a combination of in-person instruction and some streaming to students that are at home um in in populations where it made sense that there was enough students to warrant a full distance learning

095class we will be assigning one teacher to do full distance learning um and so we are currently working through um talking with our building administrators and then outreaching to each of the staff members that are involved in that to make sure that they are clear on the students that they will be responsible for um as we transition back into hybrid it was our goal as a department to make sure that we're providing the best instruction but also minimizing disruptions to these students because their learning needs are unique and we felt keeping them consistent as much as possible was very very important and i know that the esl department is operating similarly similarly and is uh kind of following that pattern with that population of students as well kevin anything at the popul to the presentation

096before we move to questions kevin i guess he's good kim yeah so so i i i i'm actually quite frankly i'm i'm excited about the the principal's participation in our meetings this week um kelly and kim and i met with every elementary principal this week in preparation for just trying to get their staff ready um and given the the varying options that were available to our to our parents um the principals have worked really hard to meet those needs meet those demands um and and as a result we've had to move staffing around considerably um and and principals have been working hard for these last couple of weeks just trying to balance classrooms um but but frankly i'm i'm excited and feel like we're going to be positioned well to open up our schools next

097week um kim anything um just i just want to echo kevin's concern or kevin's comments um and and i will say that one of the things that um i have been most deeply embedded in is talking with well over a hundred of our staff members about some pretty important um health conditions serious issues that these folks have been returning to work and i continue to be impressed by the resilience of our staff and by their dedication to their craft i think it has been while challenging it has been a really important and critical part of this process and it really has allowed us to say as a group that we value our our teams and we value our employees and we're able to really work with the vast majority if not all of them to

098find some sort of reasonable way to help them we also have taken that opportunity as another way to continue to reinforce for our um for our teams that we continue to put in supportive services kelly and her crew often will step in to help um but also the um the eap plan that we've put in place um a lot of the training that we've put in place i think has just been really helpful um and and i think it's starting to really become a critical part of people's navigating back through what is kind of an unsettling time for everyone so um i think it's been it's been a very hard month but i think it's been a really valuable one for us um and so i just wanted to say i i continue to be

099impressed by our team of teachers and staff members and and this is a very special place gareth thank you very much uh kelly thank you very much no team for doing it thank you gladys that's the presentation so if there are questions i'm assuming gladys recognized me she's still on mute but i have a couple questions i think this one's for kara um the most common question i've had asked to me by friends and family and people i've seen is why is k-5 asynchronous on the off days especially in light of the fact all of their surrounding towns are synchronous learning on their hybrid days new milford is newtown is i believe bethel is as well in fact in milford even the full distance learning kids are logging and googling into the classroom why are

100our off days for elementary schools asynchronous because that really seems to i don't know it seems to i'm lost on why that's better yeah yeah so so we had extensive conversations about um so so when students log in uh at the high school level or at the middle school level um you know they're they're basically um i'm not going to say it's a little more than observing right you're you're learning you're you're interacting to the greatest extent possible it takes a tremendous amount of work to design lessons to engage students who are both at home and in the classroom and we've been talking and having those conversations and so we're working towards what that looks like um and you can do it um interactive all virtual lessons cones are yeah yes 612 it's a little

101bit easier to do that with students because you can get them up and running and working a little bit more independently there's lots of concerns about the ability for a teacher who is in a classroom elementary classroom to attend to the 10 or 12 students who are in front of him or her as well as try to engage students who are at home at the same time in the same lesson without being tethered to their laptop um and so what happens is either you're if you put a camera in the back of that classroom it turns into like a security camera right where you're observing you're trying to catch what you can catch uh in that lesson and so while you may be able to observe what's happening between eight and one is that engagement

102of of actual instruction with a student um as opposed to you know we've been able to produce some pretty high quality videos with lessons uh that are pre-recorded to engage students with some step-by-step directions for that practice and then to be able to check in with them at the end of the day so they will get a check-in with the teacher at the end of the school day and then when those students come in they will have their teachers undivided attention for the two days that they're in and we think that that will serve our students a little bit better we also have um a lot of our students um you know that the their our their home being watched by a variety of um of folks um parents are a little bit in survival

103mode with where they get child care right now um yes yes and that that describes most most folks um and so having the ability to to actually engage with these lessons a little bit more flexibly so that these videos and the slides can be looked at at times that may be a little bit more convenient when mom and dad gets home from work in in addition uh we felt would be a better direction to go um we're hoping that we can get a little more direct contact a little more direct uh engagement so we would love to see the book ends of the day so in the morning engaged students in the afternoon follow up at the check-in but we need to slide in and get into school um and get our systems up and

104running i know that you know coming i'm sorry go ahead is it possible that we may move the off-state kids to synchronous learning at some point it seems like every other district is doing it i'm just kind of still lost as to why we're not well i think i think you know we've had the conversation what we're trying to what we're trying to do is the kids in front of us we're trying to do we're trying to work with them um as best we can without interfering the instruction during the day and as we looked at those models i think they became more perception as a convenience to to zero in and we questioned ourselves you know we said well why aren't we doing that would it work and we came down thinking you know

105let's focus on the kids in front of us and study that and then see if we need to make i think with carriage just hit some accommodations that we can increase time then by means let's try it but that was you know i think we went back and forth and what we learned was 612 seem to resonate uh better that's why we have that and here we thought this would actually do a better job with the kids in front of us giving them their time i recognize we're all just guests that nobody's ever done this before no and you know it's it's the the folks that i've talked to we've spoke to folks in different districts and we actually have a council group that we meet with and you know they're they're really i hate

106to say this you know no one's super thrilled with any model that they have for a variety of reasons um you know for obvious reasons this is this this is an emergency model that we're operating in this is a model that the state has required us to have as a result of you know our one half measure back to full in person learning and um you know if we had our druthers it would you know and we had you know 10 more features at every grid level we'd be probably look at different models but um you know we're definitely doing the best we can and we're also going to reassess so after a couple of weeks um we're going to see how students are responding are they responding in the way that that we hope

107that they're able to um to get some feedback and at that time too uh once we get our teachers in particularly at k5 um you know trying to find create some creative ways to have a little bit more engagement um again you know it when you teach from if you are to teach from your laptop you're tethered to the laptop if you're trying to engage both groups and when you have 14 little ones in front of you younger kids it's a little bit and you're trying to maintain their social distance and health measures while you have another 10 students asking questions at home it's just you know so so perceptually and from a compliance standpoint it appears that more is happening than really is uh it's my professional opinion but we will reassess that professional

108opinion in a few weeks and see how it goes thank you yeah rachel i'm sorry i was muted thanks i'm just wondering if this presentation could be posted on the district website um there's a couple hyperlinks there maybe not the last um slide but um that would be helpful for families to see it all in one place also are we expecting the elementary kids to um find their schedule of small groups and specials [Laughter] no so um so what's going to happen is there'll be a a transfer per se of of if if the teacher if if a child is getting a new teacher um so towards the end of this week and or possibly monday um we're still working on the finalizing a few a few last-minute details um so if the child's teacher

109is changing they will receive a letter all children will receive a letter you're either have the same teacher go good luck go forth or your chat your child's teacher is changing or here's your distance learning teacher and we're going to include a new google classroom code um on on that letter if the child's uh teacher is changing and then that child's teacher at particularly the k5 level will reach out to um to families and just similar to the way they did when we started the year go over the schedule so the schedule for that classroom will be posted and the and the inner workings of how the school is operationalizing a few things there are nuances um in every building and so the the schedule for those children if they have special services or if

110they've got groups will be made known to those those kids and um you know again we tried to keep groups um so if you're staying with the same teacher and you had esl services you know after lunch you will probably still have esl services after lunch the time may have shifted but we tried to put some things into place that kept similar routines um and you know in place to keep groups uh you know so continuity of instruction and just sort of the fluidity with understanding where to go the other thing just to add in is for students that are receiving multiple services so like in in my department that's frequent that a kid might have you know regular ed instruction they may have specialized instruction for reading or math they may have occupational therapy

111physical therapy speech and language what we've done is in their individual google classroom there's a way to post just to that child and they have a schedule by day of the week that's consistent with the same links every single time so they just go to their individual schedule and click on the link um so we've tried to make it and we've even have our students as young as preschool that are operating and amazingly doing a great job going through those links so i think it's working and we found that visual kind of picture that's personalized to the kids so for those that have more services and support or in any cases where students may be struggling with that feature the kids are are really doing an amazing job at it that's great thank are there

112any other you from board members yes i'd like to ask a question gladys amy yes yes amy first of all i just want to say to all of you who've been working so hard on this you just totally amazed me like you're like magicians the things that you're coming up with and we just really appreciate i'm i'm sure we all feel the same way um it's amazing what you've done i just want a couple a little bit of clarification cara i think you said um in the in the k5 for someone who's a distance learning student and is home you said something about you were you were you were training or working on staff members are there are there different teachers like just like you explained about how you can't really have a class of

11312 or in front of you and then also be dealing with 10 that are home or something so other different teachers that are teaching that distance learning to the k5 yes so we have desert so so one of the i'm glad you brought that up because you know while you know we we won't have cameras in the in the k5 for the hybrid um going we we are able we have made a um you know a a big move and the ability to have that choice where a student can have a distance learning teacher that's dedicated to just distance learning um and and so they will have a different teacher we you know as you know um kim have mentioned we've had you know a lot of staff members that have needed accommodations we were

114able to um creatively match um staff members who needed accommodations to to remain at home with students who have also selected um the option for distance learning and then we could we built on that um to to sort of round out a distance learning program so yes students who selected distance learning will be assigned a dedicated distance learning teacher in k to five k through five yep yes thank you okay are they any other question from board members i just have a quick question it looks like uh joji silva does as well okay um gina i just wanted to follow up with you real quick um i know you mentioned we got some additional chromebooks which is great um and i just want to follow up about the internet connectivity through the elementary schools because

115um i think that last boarding we had a brief conversation about that um and i just want to make sure that we're we're good to go there um yep we so the last time we talked about it uh we were in the process of installing all the aps um and so now they have been all installed and um and like i said we're going around to each school for um to test to test the connectivity and make sure that all the aps are working as we anticipate okay wonderful thank you so much thank you gladys i just had a quick question i don't know whether this is for dr sal or our health director or who just are we comfortable right now with the way the the the state and local coveted numbers are that

116we're moving in the right direction to reopen joe um i have a whole thing on the reopening oh all right never mind nevermind yeah and kara and kathy are here i thought we would talk about that might give us a point i jumped the gun thank you all right um i do want to let the board know that um kim part of this accommodation um particularly at the secondary level where it's content specific the model provides our chemistry physics calculus teacher if uh not in person um to be home in teaching and it's you can't find a calculus teacher you can't find a spanish italian teacher so um what we've been able to do through the work of kim the principals and kevin and and killians and is um they'll teach remotely and we'll have

117an assigned supervisor in the room basically the monitor or in some cases we have to hire a sub i think this whole thing if it all comes to fruition the way we think we we think there's one i'm looking at kim now one fte which i'm just i thought i was gonna talk to the board about more than that right to make this work is that correct yeah i mean what has ended up happening is we've sort of evolved into two different models so um at the secondary level we are doing this sort of distance teaching so we're basically beaming in teachers into the classroom so their class rosters are not changing what's changing is just their physical location so that's at the secondary level and that was because we had unique challenges about class

118schedules at the high school we have graduation requirements lots of movement among kids so that model seemed to work best at the secondary level and at the elementary level because it was we were particularly challenged to find staff to be in the rooms sort of supervising kids while they were learning from a remote teacher we had to adopt a different model so we have aligned those a combination of some folks who need accommodations and others who have volunteered to have a cohort of kids that have opted for distance learning and so those will be taught in most cases from the physical classroom but to students that are electing to work at home so we're kind of balancing both and part of the reason for that is to thread the needle with different schedules different needs

119um and and also just different patterns of learning different structures of the day so it's really been it's a pretty big puzzle and and we sort of laugh if google docs ever goes down we got a big problem because there's a lot of these big spreadsheets and and and all sorts of things um so that's kind of how we've worked together and the creativity of the administrators on your teams is really amazing and that's really the whole reason why it worked so well is because of the you know credit to their commitment to making something work um so that we didn't end up with big staffing gaps which would have been very hard to fill actually before i finish um doctors i do want to just in the in the darkening cloud that is substitutes

120um i do just want to say a word about that um we have turned a lot of our attention to that issue you all know because you've been hearing for years about how compromised we are with making sure we have sufficient substitute coverage in our buildings never will that be more true than this year and so um where we ordinarily have a staff or a pool of about 200 250 subs um we've canvassed the group and we've heard back from about 50. so um this is going to be a big challenge for us to figure out how to cover so we're working on some different creative ideas and are always looking for everyone to spread the word that we're looking for folks who are interested in substitute teaching but um you know we'll have some

121new protocols for covid protections but also um just trying to make sure we've got sufficient coverage in our buildings is going to be a particular challenge for us this year and you may have some undergraduates take advantage of the executive order right from westcon right if you have a student who has decided to take a leave term or something like that also we'd love to hear from them and we're going to try to work with wescon and some of our other partners to see if there's anyone else that we can pull in to do some subbing for us thank you thank you okay uh could i just thank carol for the presentation it was absolutely beautiful thank you um and i totally agree rachel you know uh if we can put this on the website

122so parents can see it it would really be a big help to them and so again thank you on behalf of the board it was a beautiful presentation and i think you can understand it much much better than just having somebody come forth asking a question now you can see it on paper and you can realize okay this is the way it's going to be so thank you again you're welcome thank you so superintendent report no i'm sorry okay uh kate can you make the motion for the action item sure thing um i will make a motion of the board of education ratify the memorandum of agreement with the national education association danbury mea related to covid19 working conditions for the july 1 2020 through june 30 2021 work your only motion made that kick

123that was the second by joja silva there glasses by joe any questions in a discussion about the motion cn9 uh kate could you do the roll call certainly uh joseph britton i think he he is joe did you give that give us an eight iron a okay we'll skip him uh rachel chaleski i gladys cooper i lauren daly lauren are you there you're on mute okay joe da silva aye catherine hutchinson hi um al russo hi joe britton tested texted yes sorry okay lauren are you and i there ah yes i'm sorry no problem thank you i thought i had muted and amy spoolino hi okay did you hear there was uh i think al had something to add yeah al said that uh joe britton uh voted yes yeah he sent me he's put

124it in the chat actually yes oh yeah okay the motion uh has been um moved in second and uh the motion has been carried thank you all so very much thank you and thank you report okay i'll make it short uh kevin the october one enrollment report you ready go okay well kevin's doing it let me go to let me go to b um early childhood senate granville um kelly has been working with bob as you know to open it up and um it has been really challenging and difficult the construction um i was going to thank the mayor as was working with their building department to get i guess a temporary co particularly for our second floor so we can get our classrooms open very much appreciate that but even at that um talking

125them today dora's having come in i mean you know you've all worked with contractors you know what's going on um but we have a date that we think uh will work and that is november kelly i'm gonna say no more number nine we were originally planning on opening preschool the second of november which was a week after the k-12 return we are now going to be pushing it out additional week due to a couple different factors um but granville being a primary factor to that so we will continue in the distance learning model until the students return it to in-person learning on november 9th um and so we will um we just made the decision late this afternoon dr sal and i we uh sent out an email um to notify staff that we were

126planning to make this proposal this evening um and our plan would be to notify families um you know following in the next day or so now i will say uh if bob can get it done earlier i you know we will do that but i i i'm i'm hoping that that 9th is solid so um kelly has been thank you i know you've been there almost every day uh shaking and shaking and bacon but we should take a tour there when it's done i think you're going to be very pleased with it when it's done and dr sally i just want to acknowledge michelle capitelli who's the preschool supervisor has been instrumental in getting everything um you know done and and in place for there it's certainly a heavy lift particularly at this time um

127and she has just been phenomenal to work with as well as uh kathy on the nursing in the isolation room um it's just it's been a good team um you know bob bob is doing everything he can and he's hit numerous stumbling blocks regarding the building um but we are excited and every time i go there it's going to be a great place for our youngest kids so i'm really really excited to open the center i think the end result you'll all be very very pleased with we just need to hang in there unfortunately another week kevin you ready yes so so a quick update for ais and enrollment for the 2021 school year we are down some seats across the board with our partner schools and non-partner school districts as well i think we

128had mentioned to the board last year principal chris roach and his team did an amazing job reaching out to the non-partner districts last year we brought in you know close to 10 additional students for non-partner schools last year and that was really a credit to him and his his team's vision getting out into communities who historically had not um attended ais as you might imagine because of the pandemic those numbers are down this year so last year we were at uh we had 44 students i'm sorry we had 34 students committed from out of town non-partner districts in this year we are down only two actually to 32 but it's really our partner schools where we've we've also experienced some reductions we have we are down in total 18 seats between brookfield new fairfield new

129milford new town and reading courtney will explain a little bit later financially we don't necessarily lose any funding because those commitments um those those districts have um stuck to their financial commitment to us but it also means that we've we had at least until october 1st less space to fit our own students so currently we have 233 danbury seats uh 39 from brookfield 14 from new fairfield 18 from new milford six from newtown four from reading anyway for a total we have 346 students at ais last year october 1st we had 365 which is that maybe the number rachel was concerned about i think we reported something differently at the last meeting so we are down you know close to 25 seats in total um and you know again it's mostly due to the pandemic

130that we were not able to get um the the commitments that we've had in previous years but i anticipate those numbers will go back up when things calm down in our respective communities and the overall numbers were we didn't see the rise at all but you could it was down by about what seven tenths of one percent or uh 100 and the net difference is 145. is that correct kevin i'm sorry and that difference overall enrollment no no it's not it's not that significant so i can't see it we were at 365 this year we're at three no i'm talking about the district level i was looking at the total on the page five it's 25 the net change i think kevin wright 20 out of district and five in this now you guys are

131talking about the magnet school only i'm talking about the district the district down we're down one minus 145 in terms of total but the mat the magnet school will have to correct the minutes from the last meeting but um that was a funding issue but as of right now we did not see the influx we did last year we don't know what's going to happen the things get lifted but uh right now we're staffed at the level as you know and the dealt is at minus 145. so next i have the summit um you heard what the mayor said um and i think um what we'd like to do is ask mr s joe i think carrick talked to you about maybe trying to get a facilities committee meeting there's two things going on there's

132some funding at the state level for some solar projects that the town wants to get involved with us we haven't done a few we've done a number of them then we stopped for a few years but there's some real incentive money there to do it some good possible savings and the other thing is we ought to talk about the summit um in terms of program i i'd like us to start talking about you know the concept of what is what a career academy looks like what the nashville academy looks like so um we can start i think with the facilities committee and then at a board meeting start talking about the concept and come up with a concept the board will have to come around to approve the specs programmatically uh as you know it

133is built now for 1200 we had a real concern about 900 but we're feeling comfortable about the 1200 um which means it literally what it meant up there was getting another pod stat extensively so now um you know i think we begin talking about and i'll have our program folks come and talk about some concepts that we're looking at uh for that career academy so i don't know joe if we set a time but maybe at the end of the meeting you you can do that and we can start having conversations around that thank you oh and i do have one more thing next tuesday i believe next tuesday uh maybe yeah the naacp has asked we're going to go and speak with them um they were doing some comparison in terms of arrests and

134uh with with a few of the districts and we've seen that would be secondary we were a little high and asked us about you know to look at those numbers and talk about them so next tuesday um we'll be talking to them we've met with the chief of police we've been with the high school during during this busy time but we have um we have a conversation that we'll have with the naacp next week kevin when is it what time could you help me out with that believe it's at seven o'clock so seven o'clock so um i'll let you know how that goes but i i did neglect to put that on my report i apologize uh so thank you okay uh madam chair may ask a quick question yes um dr you very kindly

135let us know there's about 3400 kids who are going to be going into the dl model i'm just wondering if we have a breakdown for the different levels of high school uh middle school and elementary if those are like a consistent percentage to yeah um there were uh actually uh kelly cara sent us that let me see if i can find it actually i just want to call it up if you give me a moment i'll be able to get it yeah thank you the the elementary the elementary had a split the 1400 there was about 450 of those kids with yellow kids and then about 160 were sped and the rest were regular red so that made up for that so the other you could see it spread between 6 to 12 but i

136don't know what the middle in high school exactly would be so maybe karen carrick would probably carawanza she's not online but she has been phenomenal getting all the data loaded up so that we were able to disaggregate it in a meaningful um constructive way thank you for that here can i ask a question yes dr sale two parts uh the build-out price for the summit went from 25 million to 94. yet we're only increasing our our student enrollment from 900 to 1200. um i'm sorry is there anything new there any other aspects we're adding to that that building that would just no just space okay just just space with the 900 when we looked at it we were really concerned that we're going to under build and i think when um the state when they

137looked at the numbers um they verified that the added numbers though they would give us the reimbursement because we do need that space for the number of students that we have because it will have to be middle school part two that meeting next week at 7 pm is that open to the board well every meeting is open to the board but the way the board's policy works is the committee uh will meet and discuss it and then other members are invited to participate but it is just a committee meeting but every board member is invited well which i'm sorry policy committee which committee is no no i'm saying by board policy oh okay the way these subcommittees work gladys am i correct and we're still working that way um yes okay yeah al you could

138you'd be there the committee will discuss it and i'm sure joe will ask your you know you have a question but it's really a committee and then the the other board members that are there um can participate we just don't want to make it a board meeting per se right that's the issue dr sally have the answer to kate questions um so we had 3 486 students total on distance learning 1088 of those were at danbury high school 797 of them were at the three middle schools pretty evenly split um and then there was about 26 students at some of our other programs like reach and endeavor um and the ace program and then the remainder of those were at the elementary level so overall pretty pretty evenly split across the grade levels perfect thank

139you so much okay when we talk to the other urbans that we're running about 70 thereabouts you know so in school and about 30 on dl it seems to be consistent at this point thanks kelly yes uh mr britton sent me a text message he's looking to do the facilities meeting tuesday the 27th at 7 pm if it works for everybody else his mic is not working so he's apologizing um if that works for everybody no i will have a conversation with him uh tomorrow let's see if if it works with everyone and see nothing else going on and then we can confirm it then okay thank you also the um doctor said uh the number that uh keller just gave out uh could we sort of put that um numbers uh and that even

140like sort of the email and send it to all board members so everyone will have and know what they're talking about sure i'll take care of that talk about that sure thank you thank you karen madam chair may i ask a question please yes i just want to go back to what you said dr sal about the naacp meeting next week you said there's a commit like there's a committee that goes glass what committee would that be no there isn't a committee the committee of the naacp their meeting they invited us to their meeting okay if i said i missed is that is that their local chapter meeting that we're talking about no no no it's not a local chapter meeting it's a separate meeting for education yes it's just a it's a meeting uh

141that the naacp leadership from my understanding has is having with dr sale and mr walston and whoever else that doctor said has invited oh yeah the invitation came from julia um okay so you talk that's the education committee of the naacp yes that's who's meeting with you guys okay okay great thank you yeah uh now can we talk about the reopening yes great great great um i think i said uh back then that and and and not the board's always been same concern has been on safety but as you know um my i remarked that if we get our students back this year in front of us um that would be we're gonna be very fortunate to do that and i'm glad we're able to do it and one of the reasons why we're able

142to do it we're learning some things from our surrounding town but the essence of the number of students that are on dl provided us the opportunity to do a hybrid which splits our students in half the the state has always looked at this as a transition so for us the transition of being in remote learning the state calls it we call it dl is that when numbers of hybrid i'm sorry when the numbers uh the infection rate you get to a certain amount that would move us from dl back to hybrid when you're in the hybrid model that is also a transitional period the expectation is when will you go to full in person now if you look at everybody around us you'll notice that just about every school district has started on the hybrid

143and now they're transitioning to the uh in-person learning and the transition typically has been either a k3 for a few days or k5 and then middle stayed on hybrid they come in and the high schools to my knowledge so far been on hybrid with that said we've taken the opportunity to look at our numbers and consultation with the doctors as you know last week when i talked to you that um we would we would start the hybrid model on 26. now joe we've been monitoring the numbers and i have cara here we spoke as recent as the other day and i'll let her speak but my takeaway from this is that our numbers that we're seeing are going to be our numbers the infection the um the rate of uh actual uh positive rate is

144about five percent which has been consistent what is fluctuate has been fluctuated has been the um those the the number of uh incidences where it's gone up to 24 25 down to 17 but the overall the overall numbers seem to tell us that we have an opportunity to bring students in because of the because it is consistent um certainly we'd like to see it going the other way a little bit more and this week the report that i have did do that but um carrie you're there maybe you could explain it a little bit better than i am in terms of how we looked at those numbers those cases sure thanks dr sal um so as dr sal said you know we're continuously monitoring this some days uh we go up a little bit some

145days we go down a little bit i just ran the numbers for our positivity rate for the past week right before i hopped on here and we're actually down a little bit to a 4.2 positivity rate you know this does it changes every day it's rolling i usually do it by week there are you know we're watching very closely how this is what's happening in other schools throughout the whole state and what we have seen is that there's very little transmission in schools so we're watching our numbers closely with with that in mind it's showing that the mitigation strategies put in place have been effective um so even with community spread they're still that's not transitioning into spread in schools our numbers have consistently still been in the moderate range they are looking at addendum

1464 which is the metrics for the different levels they are department of public health is looking at that there could possibly be changes based on that because it was developed in june and they've learned a lot since the reopening of schools so we're also looking at that one of the changes that they are making is they're going to a 14-day rolling average instead of a seven day rolling average because it does give a little bit of a more accurate picture so right now actually our seven day and our 14 day rolling average is right around 17 which is in the moderate level so um so one of the encouraging things that's going on is that we're beginning to get actual data from our connecticut schools and i think i shared it with you cara and

147the team this past week and the transmitting of of the virus among students is something like point two seven percent teaches about point zero seven three percent some less than one percent um and um which which is telling us that that that those expectations that it may um may really cause a lot of infection rates and dismissals is not uh materializing what's happening is what we're reading um the the contact tracing uh relegated to a classroom two or three classrooms students go home for the 14 days rest of the faculty come in and students and they're able to move ahead so um we're collecting that data regularly in fact one of the things that we're doing i've asked the area superintendents to come together with their directors of health and nurses and we're going to

148do some tabletop on on contact tracing for for uh consistency in the region so um you know uh the reopening was based on that um we will reopen we will open on the 26th buses i think someone asked me about the bus i think it was joe and here's what i keep finding about the buses the buses will have windows open uh some districts have two you know they'll put two or three receipts but they're finding less than 30 percent of the kids that are riding at this point but it seems to be growing uh some districts have reported now uh one that's gone back that was about 60 percent i think one of our buses from what i understand at this point if it stands true we have about the largest about 40 students

149on that bus at this point uh so we're comfortable with with that um and you heard the work that we've done with the hybrid it's not perfect but it will bring our students in we will have everybody there we'll have a chance to look at our technology with partial students there with our social distancing and as i asked around and we continue to ask who what you're doing what you're distancing i'm finding out with the mitigation strategies three and a half four feet um lunches are pretty much in classrooms for elementary middle and high school or doing the grab and goes with shortened days that seems to be the formula that that that that's been created at this point so as we get students in uh one eye is going to be on do we

150have to modify the actual program to enhance the learning as we talked about before and then are there things that we can do for the next step and we're looking at the next steps um care um the state has provided some extra funds for and it's very explicit what it can be spent for and that will be for more ppe we're looking at some furniture um we're good we have some tents that you're going to see at the buildings that's for timeout or for mass breaks so we're going to have all of that in line for us uh for the reopening um and my fingers are crossed you know you know phil i want to get our kids back i really feel that um the bridgeports and others are in school our kids are home

151um i like to get them in um i i i want them to be able to feel comfortable and safe and i think this is a good way of starting to do it so um i'm looking forward to the opening i'll just leave it at that and see if there's any questions oh kathy i'm sorry kathy you're online anything to add to the numbers for the for the board um thank you dr sal good evening everyone um i will just uh echo what kara has said um in regard to the transmission in schools i've had some experience with our non-publics who have been open we have had a couple of cases and in those situations there has been no additional spread of covid in the school it has just been within the community um and

152i meet weekly with my nursing supervisor colleagues in fairfield county and so for those districts who are either in person full-time or hybrid they're finding the same the reality is we will have cases covet is still in our community but we have our mitigation strategies in place to prevent that spread in school and we're prepared with our contact tracing to do what we need to do to either you know keep it minimal to either closing just a single classroom or a cohort but the good news is the mitigation strategies are working so i'm very comfortable with our reopening on the 26th and i'd look forward to seeing the kids and having them back thanks again my concern is right now is that we get our custodial staff it has not been an easy it's almost

153like the substitute teachers right uh we're out there recruiting to find our uh our custodians to come in and help so that we have that ongoing um the buses are all set the cafeteria is all set uh the kids will come in it'll be a i call it a grab-and-go breakfast right kathy we we have that going on for the youngsters for nourishment and um you know we're ready to go good thank you are there any questions about the sale from board members kathy thank you again for uh being with us to give us the information that we need and i know it's been a long summer a long journey and we just thank you for always being here to give us the information that we needed to hear thank you again thank you cara

154thank you kathy for doing their help so um next on the agenda uh board chairperson report i don't have anything to report just want to thank everyone for uh coming in and being part of the meeting to uh tonight and just look at your um calendar and make sure we're getting close to the holidays uh make sure that you govern yourself uh those that are working to have commitments and you know make sure that um did the calendar uh give you time to uh reconcile or do whatever you need to do with your job to be at the meeting because we have a few uh date changes uh are there any board committees reporting none okay we're moving on down the agenda um i need a motion to enter into executive session al actually you

155know what al's our second ding i'm sorry yes do you have a question now mute unmute yes should we also make the public world we may be returning to public section before voting we will be returning to public section this is uh down here is on the agenda and we'll be using the same link that was for this uh this first public session just so you're aware so the motion carries so we're going to go into executive session we need to vote sorry yes do you want me to roll call or just a collective ex yeah do the roll call okay joe britton yes he's got yes in the chat there rachel celeski aye canetta i gladys cooper yes lauren daley aye joe da silva all right there we go good night there uh catherine

156hodgson hi um al russo hi amy spolino hi motion curious thank you emotion so careful thank you all okay so we go to the link for the executive session yes