001i pledge allegiance [Laughter] okay we're going to move on down the agenda because we have uh first of all i'd just like to say thank you to everyone that has thought that it's a good idea to keep informing our parents we know that people need vacation time and other things and i just feel like as a elected official it's our duty to stay on top of things as a board things are changing um i've been on this board all these many years and this is the first time that we've ever did july and august meeting unless it was absolutely necessary oh we froze it's a good photo it's a good photo though goddess okay kate oh there she's back last week you cut out there a little bit you you're pros yeah why didn't i
002stop uh you were just saying that you were happy that uh you know parents are are given the opportunity to inform and that we don't normally meet in july and august right and i just think it's very important that uh we keep everybody informed and and let them know uh the current updates because things are changing uh day by day and minute by minute so we just want to be on board to let you know that we're not just elected officials just having a nameplate we're here to support you and to hope that when school reopens that it'll be safe uh before we move on to the agenda i have been pondering about this ever since our last meeting and how to sort of say this because i just heard some other bad news uh
003that's something that's racial that happened and it should not happen uh at our last meeting we we was interrupted we had a video that popped up but not so much that video and everyone didn't hear this there were the racial slurs that came out of uh the person's mouth and the words were we should send all the [ __ ] back to africa and i was very hurt and i was trying to deal with how do you address that i look at this as a a member of this community that is it that is inclusive to everyone i know that this and boy administration has a lot to do and with your help and board members and our administration uh we don't want to get our focus on something else we want to stay focused on what
004we were elected to do and that's to move forward and make sure that all our children and our teachers and everyone that uh within this this game not game but in this arena when school open is safe so i just want to uh uh say thank you and whoever these people are i hope that the police can identify them and prosecute them to the fullest because there's no reason to use that type of language to anyone and i just want to uh say that i'm going to if it's if it's my my thing to move this boy boy forward with your help that we can uh work on the things that we need to do right here in denver so without that without anything else because uh tears come down my eyes when i i
005hear people use the language that was used at our last meeting and we came to that meeting to inform our parents of what was happening in the school system and it was cut short so i just want to say we're here to move on and let's take care of our educational uh things that we need to do here in denver so uh kate would you um call the roll please of course uh joseph britton is absent this evening rachel toleski here kate canetta here gladys cooper yeah lauren daley here joe da silva yeah catherine hodgston i believe is absent this evening yes rich janelli kathy molinero here al russo here amy spelina yeah thank you kate thank you okay can you go down to the next item and just read our open statement please sure
006due to the unique nature of the covet 19 crisis and the limitations of technology members of the public who are danbury residents are invited to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore boe at danbury.k12.ct.us okay thank you again kate uh sandy um you want to run through the questions that we have for tonight or i have quite a few here so i'll try and get through these as quickly as possible okay okay repeated questions um or the same thing just uh we'll put them together cindy okay is that it uh theresa chaber asked if we could clarify the need for the permanent early dismissal is this regardless of hybrid distance learning and in the event they ever go back to school in person i heard computers will
007be distributed for high school students is this still the plan when should we expect updates from special coordinators with regards to email slash requests regarding ppt's accommodations for plans chosen are there any updates on how many students will attend the high school for hybrid same for teachers next comment is from stacy smith brown can you tell us how snow days will work is there a way i can select the group my children will attend i really need to have them in the thursday friday hybrid group because of work um i need to monitor them for distance learning and i can't afford child care or a tutor alison benin casa i am not supportive of delaying the opening of school children have been absent of an educational environment since march and are lacking academic and social
008interaction they are isolated delaying till september 8th doesn't help the students frankly we should be starting september 1st taking one additional week to prepare only hurts the kids delaying a week due to a storm four weeks prior is not a viable excuse or reason i would like to see full-time options for families that desire to have them our children are suffering academically and socially elementary students should be afforded this option they are not like high school and middle school students that can independently use computers to complete assignments now more than ever this young age needs the amazing teachers that danbury has to offer i recommend altering plans based on age allowing for full-time options if hybrid is the only in-person option parents need to know core excuse me cohorts and groups asap it's not fair
009to delay and further impact plans and accommodations family needs to make many work full time and need to work we need to know well in advance to adequately plan for our children uh riley 723 can you please address which types of face coverings and masks are acceptable for when school opens i see a lot of local people with max masks that have a vent which defeats the purpose it should be made clear that those are not allowed are bandanas going to be allowed what about neck gators i think it needs to be clear what is and isn't allowed in time for people to be prepared amy and ron hutchins we appreciate all you're doing to ensure a safe and productive year of learning in a pandemic our son will be in the second grade at
010south street he requested to attend school in hybrid this year having the option was wonderful for our family during our introduction to the district in first grade we were told we could not see the classrooms it was a minor frustration not to be able to see the classroom in advance of our son's first day or have access to any class list to contact other parents to say hello we understand privacy and safety concerns yet this year with student private emails established and a heightened awareness of who we all come into contact with is it possible to provide families the ability to opt in and sign necessary waivers to access two things pictures of at a minimum the student's classroom and cafeteria to feel comfortable that our children are in a safe environment and class list
011of students and parents with phone numbers this can help provide transparency and accessibility that our family and likely others could benefit from and bring together the community in times where we need to stay at a distance terry sachs in accordance with the need for transparency i would like the results of the first survey in particular for k-5 students the percentages for full-time and percentages for hybrid and percentages that opted for total online learning or homeschooling for the most recent questionnaire he would also like those what percentage of students will be school-bused and what percentage will be walking or transported by their families for the proposed new calendar during the first nine weeks there are four weeks with no school on either a monday or tuesday during those weeks will the a group have in-school classes
012on wednesdays so that all students receive a minimum of two days in school each week children adhd or other learning disabilities are required by section 504 to receive special accommodations those students should be allowed to attend school four days per week to fulfill this requirement and meet the terms of their plan if not what accommodations will be made for them as required by law since online learning programs are difficult if not impossible for them to keep up with what percentages of k-5 students participated in the march through june online learning what is the rationale for sending k-5 students home 60 minutes early when they are only in school two days per week to begin with shouldn't we be maximizing their in-school opportunities while they are there do you really expect those students to be able
013to work on computers when they return from home to return home from school finally what preparations are being made for the transition from the hybrid to full-time classes and what would be the criteria for that transition to occur peter s for parents who work what accommodations will the district be providing for the three days a week the student is not physically in school will there be full day elp judy and draco why do you keep pushing the start bake start date back weekly what are the benefits in pushing back the start date for student staff and parents why have you not considered starting this year off with all distance learning so that you have more time to safely prepare the schools for the return of staff and students if it is true that the health
014and safety of staff and students comes first then why are you still pushing for in-person schooling with immune systems being compromised this fall with stomach bugs fever cases common cold seasonal allergies or allergies in general and flu cases this will cause more cases of covid19 as well there have already been instances in daycare with the current stomach bug for instance a child has been sent home with a stomachache and a fever they were also told they had to quarantine for 14 days even though covet 19 was eliminated as caused by the doctor how will this be handled in schools are the school-aged children going to be required to quarantine with their families for 14 days as well what about allergies that have fever symptoms or runny nose or nose there are many runny eyes or
015nose there are many illnesses within the community that mimic the symptoms of cloven 19. how will you be able to tell the difference how will you keep everyone safe there are many unknowns of how this is affecting children and how they are spreading this the health and safety of the school community is the most important if you can't open safely then you are not ready to open mini santosh now that the parents are part of the teaching team and have our students with us three days of the week is it possible to train parents to have the skill set will the teachers be doing live lessons live sessions class specific through the entire seven hours a day when they are distance learning please have a conversation about equity in education dana garland what will happen
016if a teacher is out for any reason and there is not a substitute will classroom teachers be provided with extra masks for children how many extra masks will teachers be provided what's the procedure when and if the teacher doesn't have a mask for a student who for any number of reasons can no longer use the mask they came to school with erica girardi i am a mother of two students at dhs who play football the boys have been happier and more motivated since they started practicing with their friends and teammates in june they were just given their false schedule and now you were telling them that this may not happen until the spring this should be the parents decision whether they want their child to play sports just like they have the option to send
017their child to school or distance learned from home if we can let all these kids and teachers back into classrooms and hallways together in very close proximity then i believe being outside on a football field with 21 other players is not going to affect anything if we do not allow this to happen then you can be absolutely sure that it will affect their emotional and social well-being just recently the football coach asked his players to put into words what football means to them this was my son's response all football players can agree with the statement that football is way more than just the game as much as we all want to play many of us need to play football keeps us on the right track and headed towards a bright future it forces us to
018stay out of trouble and maintain good grades i used football to relieve any stress or emotions from my day-to-day life and it has turned me into the man i am today i honestly can't imagine a fall without football we need football my son has many friends that he talks about that he talks about that would not even go to school or care about their grades if it wasn't for football these are the kids that we need to be thinking about when we want to take sports away from them it is so much more than just playing on the field wendy paulin my son will be attending king street intermediate school will there actually be six foot distancing in the classroom if not then the kids should not should be solely distance learning will the students
019be having lunch in the classrooms i do not feel that the cafeteria will be safe with too many kids cheryl radachowski chris murphy's proposed legislation to remove sros in our school would put our students teacher and staff in danger his agenda is to defund the police rather than to keep our students safe as a parent of two students at dhs i would have serious concerns if this is allowed to happen if you can bear with me i'm going to check the email real quick to make sure we don't have more which we do not that is the end of public participation thank you sandy for reading that so elaborate thank you so very much uh dr sam is he home yes um could you uh sort of go through the procedure as how are you
020going to go about answering uh those comments that were read well i think tonight during the conversation i will answer some of them and then um i guess we'll take a look at a q a and try to get them out some of them we don't know answers yet quite frankly we'll look i think the calendar we're going to talk about uh the good news about athletics we just got to last just just a little bit ago they are going through with false sports that's i think what the parent was alluding to as of right now so the question is going to be spectators but as far as the kids at least they're going to be able to participate that's for sure tonight we have kathy that's going to speak to some of the things
021that we talked about uh tonight that the parents asked about face coverage safety and courtney also will talk about spacing um so well i think we'll answer a lot of those and then we'll probably try some q a i plan to send out a letter as soon as i know uh what's going on with some of the things uh to parents um so i can kind of hit highlight some of the things that were talked about this this um this evening thank you dr sam i just want to change the agenda just a little bit because i know kathy is here and i know she's going to bring uh some information uh to us about you know uh the protection of our young people at school um i would like to bring the information item
022up nia madam chair i have to leave by now if we could get the vote on the calendar i this way i can go and the discussion can occur i i logged in in order to vote on that but i'm already running late for the obligation and coaching okay okay um okay let's uh just go to the action item okay you want to do a read the action item certainly uh i'll make a motion at the board of education approve the revised calendar for 2020-2021 in accordance with exhibit 20-77 made by kate seconded by joe are there any discussion at this time concerning calendar madam chairman may i make a comment yes okay i um i have care online and uh kevin um with the um with the storm that has presented uh some real
023obstacles um we've kept the forms open on our website um when we're sending home a um your robocall we have the ability to robocall just families that have not turned their materials in we're about i want to say three or four about four thousand we had many that are duplicates so um that has been a yeoman task to try to try to get through we ended it early simply to get to a bottom line um so principals would be able to make phone calls um so the time that we need uh as you're going to see with a presentation with carawanza the number of people that are asking for dl the changes that are going on i think it's a safety issue for planning structure-wise that we opened the eighth but in addition to that
024i have some grave concerns about particularly our primary kids being there all day with a mask on the hours that are spent we'll talk a minute about if the board would permit us to do it why we need the extra time in the afternoon based on the model that we want to utilize for planning they will meet the um the the minimum amount of hours per day at the end of the year and also the amount of days carrick could you speak to a little bit to the board to give more background on what we're doing to extra time uh sure just in terms of the calendar uh very briefly and i know that the board already has the calendar that's presented but for the sake of the public and those um watching the proposed
025calendars which is the start of school to september 8th originally staff were due back on the 20th they will now be due back on the 26th we will have new teacher orientation on the 24th and 25th and so mostly everything else in the calendar stays relatively the same the end of school date gets pushed out um so that the tentative school closing becomes the 18th of the school year and so that's just a short summary in terms of the other components i'll try to be brief with that as well because i know joe has to leave um you know the hybrid in the hybrid model um requires extensive planning planning and uh very intricate balancing of what's happening uh with the students in school versus at home distance learning and blended learning is still relatively
026new to our staff and we're still working on the craft of that teachers need some additional time and they also need to be able to reach out to students who are at home for particular reasons who may or may not be connecting in school um and so at the elementary level we did we did only short and by 60 minutes as opposed to secondary uh there are some additional reasons you know it's a very long day there's reduced movement um across the day the students who have masks on um and it also gives educators time to reset the classrooms a bit there are certain things that we have to do to modify our plans and programs um each day for example one quick example is that students will not be perusing the library and book
027stacks teachers will have to do some book shopping for students um and that requires a lot of time selecting based on their interests and their reading levels and curating that those types of texts for students so that there's not a lot of students touching the books um and that we have set up a process for that so i think this real quick the parents said we don't expect a day to be extended with dl um the purpose of the time too is to reach out to the other half of students and what is on any of the calendars that you see currently in terms of the timing that distance learning is that that time does is made up but it's not necessarily in real time students will be traveling home on the bus and but
028there's some expectation that they will have some equivalent independent practice at home that's um completed flexibly at the high school level i think um it was pretty well documented that serving lunch was extremely problematic and gathering that many students in such um tight spaces and so again um at the secondary level it was imperative that we have a grab-and-go lunch so they are on a 90-minute release that was as long as we can go that we felt was um enough time to give kids to uh get into school get their academics and um you know grab their lunch for for the ride home so you know there's a variety of reasons and a lot of thoughtful planning that went into that um all with the students in mind but also with the educators and our
029staff who need to plan a very con in a very complex way this year to meet the needs of students i have a question so the dismissal times under this calendar are an hour and 90 minutes these are not the same dismissal times in the presentation kevin had given us a few weeks ago the slide that kevin gave was a grab-and-go for elementary students we've decided to not go forward that plan this is just an hour earlier correct correct correct yes it was just too long of a day as we started to work through the details too long for elementary students and we did want to keep them in a little bit longer we didn't want to short change you know we pushed it to the to the greatest extent possible makes sense thank you
030any other question mccarran um i don't have a question but i just want to point out that the start time the new start time mirrors um other districts regionally and many are pushing them back as well thank you any other question from board members i've seen that was made by kate seconded by joe uh kate would you do the roll call for the motion please uh rachel chaleski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper hi lauren daly is that nigh sorry okay thank you joe da silva hi uh rich chinelli hi kathy molinaro aye al russo aye amy spolina aye is unanimous all in favor okay thank you self-care thank you all so very much thank you thank you madam chair have a good night thank you thank you joe good night joe thank you okay
031we're gonna move uh the next item uh the information item up so we can um talk about that now and then we can bring um our final uh discussion up next uh yes um yes one kathy uh o'dowd is she here yes i'm here okay kathy um you you heard the questions in the beginning and cara prunty um i gotta say there's been a great team cara and uh kathy and it just been a comfort level to me to know that someone's watching out for the best interest of our kids so i want to publicly thank both of them who have been just diligent in checking the data and making sure our procedures are solid so you heard the questions of parents all legitimate concerns can you as you talk this evening the things that
032we're doing in those areas i know we received some things from the state that did some clarification so we'll start with kathy and carrie you can kind of uh talk targo in and out okay okay thank you dr sao uh good evening everyone um so in in addressing some of the questions um that that sandy brought forward this evening um in terms of the face masks we are expecting new guidance from the state next week on that um so the one thing that i will say about it this evening is that the masks with the um the valve they will not be permitted they have not been found to be effective and can actually spread so tonight i can tell you that um those definitely won't be allowed and then the state will be issuing
033us guidance next week in terms of um the the gators and the bandanas because up to this point they were considered to be acceptable um but now they're beginning to to look at some new data and question that so um that information um will go out as soon as as soon as we have it um and in terms of how are we going to determine whether a child has allergies whether they have coveted i understand that this is very concerning and very stressful for parents um again we've had some very specific guidance from the state um and if i'm going to try to share my screen i don't know if i'll be able to do that let's see okay just give me one and i i will i'll i'll just give me one minute please
034okay [ __ ] [Music] okay you should be all set now okay let me try to share that okay so can you see my screen no not yet no okay all right double click kathy kathy why don't you just send it to cara cara pompano she'll put it up for you if you want do you hear me yeah i did um actually hold on bye sorry well it's raining like crazy sorry for the delay no no words well we're waiting um i'm sorry sandy is she here i'm here dr south can you um just to help out on these answers put them right on uh type them in under the questions so then we can publish them like we just did about the masks they'll just keep a running thing for us and then we can get
035it to parents they deserve to see the answers to these okay cara i just sent that to you okay your screen is being shared right now i believe okay all right let me check this hold on okay is this going to work or should we just move on if not i can i'll just go through the document why don't you just go through it if we can get it up we'll get it okay um so in in terms of how we will be handling ill children at school um the state has given us very specific guidance um in three different scenarios um if we have an individual and this will apply to staff or a student or student if the individual has coveted 19 symptoms but has not had close contact to a person diagnosed
036with covin 19 we will have one protocol um and i am okay kathy it's up now okay so we just have to make this a little the type is kind of large yeah i know hold on there we go right amy can we enlarge that can you enlarge that kara kathy if you hit that plus button there and you're oh is that charis i'm trying it's not coming up here there we go there you go there we go that's better okay i'll move it along as you speak yeah okay you can go to the second page second page okay very good email sorry hold on oh my word what happened here you got my email up there oh my word okay hold on a second let me try it again um so we will have
037very specific guidance um for a child coming in and when we talk about covet symptoms they are many we are aware that they mimic other illnesses the main symptoms of kovid that the state has asked us to focus on would be fever above 100.4 shortness of breath any difficulty breathing chills and a loss of taste of sense of the sense of taste or smell so um we are going to be asking parents to uh you know screen their children at home in the morning for any symptoms of illness and if they are ill they should stay at home however if they do come to school and they present with the symptoms they will be evaluated by the school nurse and any illness will be sent home if they're having these coveted symptoms we will ask
038that they contact their healthcare provider and get a covid test based on the results we will determine whether they have to quarantine or isolate based on whether the results are negative or positive and then the other scenario that we have would be if the individual has covert 19 symptoms and they've had close contact with a person who's been diagnosed with covid um again there's always going to be referrals to the health care provider and for testing um but there would be more likelihood being that they've had close contact with a person with covet and then if we have an individual who does not have covid symptoms but they've had close contact with someone um again that that quarantine or isolation would determine on whether the results are negative or positive so if we do get
039a student or a staff member with a positive cova diagnosis um the procedure is the school nurse will be notified um but we'll be notifying the principal who and i will be notified um dr sal and kevin who is our co-liaison is notified along with our medical advisor dr fong i then consult with cara prunty at the health department and based on the addendum 5 criteria the amount of community spread that is present at that given time um we would collaborate and make a recommendation as to whether we have to close a classroom two classrooms or an entire building um and then all of the communication would come out through central office to parents and to staff in regard to that excuse many questions yes i have a question how is that how is this
040communicated to our parents this whole page this whole this whole the uh addendum we can post that on the website post it on the website and i think kathy when i send that letter i will also put a hyperlink for parents yeah so they could go right to it that's what i was just thinking too i think that would be helpful in addition to just putting it on our website those two things might be helpful okay i think so too i'm just trying to think how else we can do this but i guess that's really the only way yeah okay um i guess i'm just um kathy i just want to make sure i understand here um because i understand you guys are going to have to make those decisions as we go is there
041i'm trying to imagine a scenario where you're going to have a class where there's a kid who is you know suspected maybe they came in contact with somebody or they're exhibiting symptoms where you wouldn't close not only the entire classroom but potentially the entire school because i'm assuming that some of the kids are going to be riding the bus and if this kid is riding the bus or coming in contact with kids who are riding the bus correct so part of our collaboration with the health department um if there is a positive coveted case then contact tracing is initiated and it's initiated by the health department who will do contact tracing with the positive student and their family and then on our end in this school i would be looking at um the direct contact
042and the close contact that the child had so close contact is defined as um 15 minutes or more of contact with the person with in less than six feet of distance that's considered close contact so for example if we had an elementary class if there's a cohort and someone was positive for covid um and there was you know a class down the hall that those children never had contact we would not have to close the whole school we would have to just either close that classroom we would also have to look at if the child rode the bus versus if they um were driven to school by a parent so that would all be determined based on our end of the contact tracing whether we had to close a classroom or an entire building just
043so just go ahead sorry dr sal just one quick follow-up um in terms of that how that process works um do you guys have like a time like a deadline like a um a timeline for like how long you would expect that that contact tracing and that piece of it i mean obviously depends on the circumstance to some degree but if it's a situation of maybe having to make a decision about closing a classroom or closing two classrooms there's some urgency to that we could make that decision that day okay kathy i think what kate was going is where i was just going i thought as our conversation our plan talked about if we have some question about the time our first step could be three to two to three days while we make that
044determination is that still that's still about that would be that would be if we had a presumptive case so for example um if we get a call that from a parent and my child in this particular grade and classroom tested positive that automatically would initiate um you know a 14-day closure of at least that classroom and then we would have to look at who else the child had contact with if it was a bus but if we have a suspected we could possibly just close for two to five days until we had confirmed testing results so i mean we had those two options yes we had those two options and then the other uh the other thing too is that a child may be sent home and um one of the questions that a parent
045did raise was you know what if it's allergies or what if it's the stomach bug so if we have a doctor that will provide a note with an alternative diagnosis for example if we send a child home with a fever perhaps it's an ear infection perhaps it's strep so if they can provide that alternate diagnosis from us um that child does not have to stay home and we would not have to quarantine i just have one question um kathy will this addendum be in also in spanish and portuguese on the website um it comes from the state only in english but i i can ask to have that translated yeah it would be valuable to do that yeah it would be it would be valuable we can take care of that sure thank you thank
046you you mentioned you gave the temperature at what point rich it's hard to hear you sorry i can't hear the question you you mentioned 104 was a cold temperature but at what temperature should a parent uh not send their child home um if when and if taken no our our district six day guidelines say a temperature of a hundred or more is reason for exclusion from school and that's for any illness and that's always been our our practice then the other thing i i agree with kathy molinaro if this information and also with amy is important to parents so i think that's good the other issue is are parents aware of the procedure by which they'll be notified and and we make sure somehow i know we have a lot of work and you've got
047a lot of work of the contact emergency contact information so that you can make preparations to get in you know get in touch with whomever has to pick up this child [Music] uh so our district's six day guidelines which um will be going out to all of the parents and they are translated into spanish and portuguese as well it informs parents that they need to please keep their contact information up to date and that if they are working that they would need to provide an alternate person who would be able to come and pick up their child within 30 minutes if they were to become ill at school if if that is not possible then we have a place to at least hold the child and keep them safe as well as other people until
048he's picked up or he's picked up so if a child at school is identified to have coveted symptoms um they're gonna going to be put in an isolation room with adult supervision and that's where they will wait until the parent is um able to come pick them up but we will be emphasizing to parents the importance uh especially during this pandemic of being able to come and pick their child up within 30 minutes thank you thank you very much thank you yeah can i just ask one more quick question i'm sorry to interrupt you again um i know that the the danbury public health um they send like an alert out you know with with like sort of like a a reminder for things that people should do to monitor um and i wonder if
049we have us if there's any way we have a similar setup that could be used sort of just to prompt parents as a reminder to screen their kids yes i actually will be developing a screening form that will go home to parents um and we will also have that on the website of the things that they should be checking uh for their child every morning before they either put them on the bus or drive them to school okay but uh i guess i'm thinking more is like a daily thing you mean a robocall every i day know if a robocall is the way to go but but you know um a text alert or something i don't know i think what you're referring to is um our we use it for our employee monitoring like
050a symptom that we do a text message out every day is that what you're referring to yes that we do use that for our city employees i don't know how that would work for an entire school district but um we could look i could look into that with kathy yeah karen and i can discuss that because right now i don't know how that would work um but we could certainly do that we'll talk about that kara thank you all right thanks for considering sure so so let me ask the question that kathy has and carrots i'm glad you're there um should we take this and send it out is are there any organizations like ark or things that that we could send this out to so we could make it kind of ubiquitous as well
051as we're thinking about this these protocols yeah we could definitely go to mute so let's work together with some organizations we can put this out too um go ahead i don't have any more questions of kathy gladys uh dr sal i just have a question if you want to uh make this available make sure that we don't miss anybody because some someone is going to say i didn't know and i didn't get the information i'm thinking about the contact uh that we did um a community uh contact that uh mr watson did and i can't think of her name i see her face did was uh contacting all the different organizations somehow to get this information to them to get out to get to the people that they come in contact with yeah we could
052those when they did the presentations we can use those groups yeah that would be a good idea we'll get them out i think the more we get this out the point i think everybody's saying the better it is that they're informed so yeah that's good work on that any more questions of kathy before i ask kara i'm sorry i have one more question um go ahead kathy i know that we talked about there's got to be an adult supervising um any kid who's in the isolation room is there is that a designated person is it going to be the nurse in that building or is it somebody else um it will vary building to building um depending on staffing and the location of the room yeah kathy we missed you didn't hear that depending on
053staffing and availability um in in the proximity of that room to the principal's office or the nurse's office right so it will vary from building to building kit okay thank you okay any any discussion about kathy about adults in terms of identification things of that nature you want to share in terms of our staff yeah anything there yes so the staff um and part of their return to school training from me will include a checklist of symptoms that they should check for every day and the procedure for notifying their immediate supervisor if they are ill and that they will need to remain at home um and the process in terms of uh testing and how long they have to stay home for is the same uh as for the students on this addendum five okay
054i think along those lines for everyone so that we're all on the same page you know substitute teachers have always been a challenge to us this is going to be a great challenge to us and we're we're trying to think through how we would do this um we do have our interns that we're hiring as many as we can it may be difficult to recruit subs based on the covic uh we will work on this um you know that was a question of a parent and the class will be covered um and uh you know we have to try to figure it out it'd be nice if we think we're gonna have enough subs but we're trying to plan for well if we don't have a sub what's an alternative that would would be helpful
055to us so we're working working that out as best we can uh cara i mean it could be more questions of kathy some things you want to bring to the board cara prunty uh the one thing that i just want to point out in this document when we go through the three different situations is um regardless of if a person tests negative if they were in close contact with the person diagnosed with cova-19 there's a required amount of time that they will have to be out so if they are asymptomatic it'll be 14 days if they are symptomatic it'll be 10 days so even if they test negative they're still going to be asked to quarantine for that amount of time kara we got some guidelines on the i called the red light green light
056stuff can you talk a little bit about that with the board about the community spread sure so there's um there's in addendum 4 there's metrics that they laid out whether it was for a low moderate and high spread community spread there's different metrics that we look at we're looking at on a weekly basis we're getting that information from the state from dph so we're monitoring that very closely every day making sure that the levels are still within the safety zone and we're reviewing that with kathy and dr sal and everyone within the school so that way we can make those decisions safely we're monitoring what's happening on the national level and we're also tracking it here uh within our own community and our surroundings [Music] anything else you want to bring to the board regarding
057some of the activities um i think kathy did a good job covering it unless anyone has any specific questions does any boy members have any questions you know some of the things i think kara and kathy that i hear even from from from board members and parents is you know um how do you make these decisions and i think you know as as we make it not quickly but we make it with the with the data that we need to make it with and the professionals and then um if there's a question about um you know an incident i think we have been conservative and um try to make it so that our climate is is safe for the kids um but as anything else until you have an event you know when something happens
058that's that's that's when you start putting these procedures and these procedures can change as kathy just mentioned depending on what you discover um i i started out by saying to this board we're lucky that kara and kathy are so proficient and capable and communicating constantly that um you know they will have the day to help us guide us through these things and i feel my own kids were there that i have a comfort level that what we're doing will keep our kids safe based on their help so um more to come i'm sure but i appreciate all that you guys have been doing thank you thank you and we'll make sure this gets out to uh parents kevin um as i think that suggestion from gladys those groups that we visited uh that you visited
059i think with morrissey that time or whatever or with ann we should get them out too so we'll get these things out and kathy you'll work on getting these this translated did i hear that okay great great so uh before we if i i know we don't want to spend all the times what happened to what two meetings ago talking when you had questions but i think it might be worthwhile for you to see this presentation that kara has because one of the parents asked what was the results of the survey how many people just learning i just mentioned that first survey was really just give us an idea uh this most recent one is the most valuable one of course there's actual commitment so carawanza can you kind of give the board a little
060background on what we what where the data that we're looking at sure um good evening everybody uh cara pompano do i have the ability to share my screen now yes yes you should be able to do that okay um it says the host is disabled okay let me try that again hold on please she disabled again it did disable you should be okay um so one of kara is still saying it's popping up oh hold on you should be okay it's still popping up playing host disabled participant screen sharing okay i do have you on um it it it is showing that you should be able to do that you want to try that again kara and if not you'll have to send it to me it's the same one i sent earlier too if
061you wanna all right let me see if i can pull that up before so one of the things that um we've all been working on in the day department is around the program selection survey that's went out to parents um the deadline was this sunday night at 59 we shortly thereafter started working on um cleaning all the data and the results um we did present to admin counsel um regarding all the results so they could see the breakouts that they're building um and then we're working on follow-up phone calls um it's still saying disabled care if you want to just try to working on it right now pdf version perfect thank you so principals are now aware of how we're breaking up the cohorts as well as what it looks like is overall um breakouts
062we did look at our demographics and and took that um strongly into consideration um and what it would look like where we cut it off at um the alphabet we're doing an um great so if you can i'm not sure if you can make that a little bit bigger so they can see it kind of like a slide okay yeah that's great and if you just um scroll down to the second slide for cohort breakout okay you're with me one second oh boy that's okay if you just scroll down that should be like press the down button perfect thank you okay all right perfect so cohorts will be determined by um the student's last name alphabetically cohort blue will be last names a through l and cohort orange will be last names m through z
063originally we started calling them something a and b but unfortunately um the high school uses that for their days so we had to keep it something that was um not going to be confusing to students or parents if you look at the graphic on the right it shows you the total number of students from the district that's elementary right nope this is the overall district so if you look at the total cohort blue yep and so right now we still have quite a few pre-registered students as well as um so not everybody has rolled up into power school these um cohorts were determined based on the overall power school enrollment and verified with pre-registered students so what i did was they took everybody currently enrolled for the 2021 school year then actually added the pre-registered
064students that i knew were coming but are pending approval for some reason mostly it's around kindergartners or our transfer students that are awaiting a couple documentations particularly because of the closure through the pandemic so um you'll see that our total numbers at the bottom if you were to add them together or a little bit low but that's because we're waiting on those pre-registered students i want to assure you that those pre-registered students have been included in the survey result data they are we are constantly reaching out to them they're receiving everything that our registered students do as well so when we're bringing out the cohorts to blue and orange with with um the breakout alphabetically like that you can see the balance our concern was around what does that look like for students receiving services
065within our district and it's a it's a fairly it's a it was the best way to balance on one letter so yes we could have gotten more specific in certain places but it was important to us to keep it district-wide and not just have different cutoffs at different schools particularly to avoid confusions within families of what day students were attending um so their cohorts are going to be identified in our student information system so powerschool will be visible to parents and teachers and administrators so that we can easily identify what day students should be expected um so if we move obviously this was presented i believe thank you into um the uh re-entry plan and so the way we called it group a and now that's that's being called group blue and then group b
066is group orange and so this is what it looks like in the re-entry plan so our our blue group would be attending on monday and tuesday just and then the um orange group would be uh distance learning on those two days everybody's home wednesday and then group orange would be attending live on thursday and friday with blue staying home if you want to go perfect um this is what it looks like with our breakout of the demographics we wanted to ensure that there wasn't a significant change in group a or b now just to to be clear that these numbers um and the percentages are not based on pulling out kids from distance learning as that's still a moving target within the survey results so we we are seeing a change as things come in
067uh but this is based on we want to always have a space for all children who are enrolled in our public school system that if all students were attending in person this is what the breakout would be so with our english learners our special education you can see the book within one percentage point um the uh the only um discrepancy we kind of see is between the hispanic latino um which we have a six percentage point change as well as our um our white students uh with a five percentage point between the cohorts um if we were to swing those it would it would really change the um amount of students attending by the hundreds um so this was this is just how the breakout looks again this is without distance learning can you go
068on the next slide thank you so is that our as i said before our results closed on sunday which was 8 9 as of monday morning at 8 8 on 8 10 these results were pulled we had over 9 300 responses um within those responses there were multiple responses for individual students so we had quite a few duplicates some were um changes and some were parents just submitting the same response or um i'm sure to see and make sure that they submitted i want to make sure they have an answer for their kids within the data so we had to clean through those once we once we identified all individual students our end was 8 387 unique students so at that point we started to break out the data um when students recorded multiple when
069parents recorded multiple responses for students we had said that they could edit their response so we always took the last recorded response from the parent initially if you're looking pre-k through 12 um 69 of those responses so that they would send their students in hybrid 31 overall would airplane art are keeping their students home for distance learning you can go to the next slide these answers some of the questions that were brought about in the um original opening statement um k5 the total responses were three thousand eight hundred and twenty two um thirty two percent um uh select the distance learning option keeping the sixty eight percent hybrid and i would say there were multiple responses um a lot for our um just from a anecdotal note uh multiple responses for a lot of our
070k5 that were changes with from the parents um grades six through eight we had our total response of 2050 um and 29 plan on distance learning 71 sending their students in the hybrid and then 9 12 31 plan on distance learning with 69 in the hybrid so we're really hovering around that 30 when we were taking numbers initially with the data um we were looking between depending on the breakouts we're looking between 24 and 29 so we've seen a little bit of an uptick with the um parents choosing the distance learning for the people who are choosing later um who are submitting their responses now so as a result of all of these um district and school outreach strategies that are being implemented our uh dr sales continues sending robocalls to families that haven't completed
071the form gina jasmine has been extremely helpful with identifying the families um that we need to specifically speak a response from also individual phone calls are being made to families by building so principals staff members teachers um we're all reaching out this week to to connect with families and and find out their intentions and to support them and really completing the program selection form since the numbers that we published as of when the survey was closed we are now cleaning 703 additional responses of the 703 uh 246 are planning on distance learning so of those responses 35 um are distance learning so again a lot of the later responses we're seeing are are really around the distance learning piece um and then communication is coming from the superintendent to inform families of the cohort breakout
072so just giving a generic presentation of like it's going to be a through l and m through z blue and orange and what that looks like as well as any students that um would need to attend school for other purposes including their services and and things like that so um though that will all be forthcoming with a general communication and then next week we will be in uh sending individualized letters to families so that's going to identify each individual student what school they're in what the program selected was and then what cohort they will be in if applicable that way we're pulling directly from our student information system how everybody is registered so that parents are clear on okay this is your student's last name this is the cohort that they will be attending in
073and then any follow-up that needs to happen from that in addition we'll be identifying that you voluntarily chose distance learning this is what you can expect as far as the communication moving forward so um again we're continuing to um look at the data clean the data um in all of those pieces there was also a question at the beginning that i can answer around um the buffing and the survey results of students that are um planning to attend um in a hybrid um 67 of them plan on using breast transportation from dave ray public schools so it's not that all students are just electing not to use the box that are not within that 67 some of them are already identified as within walking distance to the school so they might be considered um under
074that or that the parents are electing not to have them use transportation eric can i interfere um um okay i mean the the the the the um the unbelievable work that's going on behind the scenes the parent had asked that question for our special needs has been um a human effort by kelly and her staff so i think kelly would you speak somewhat how you're you're personalizing this and working with uh the kids you're in charge of please sure um thank you dr sal so for the students with special education needs um they will be informed along with the other um district notifications on whether they're in the blue or orange cohort um we do have a group of high needs special education students in which we will be speaking with families and should they
075wish to send them in for both cohorts my team will be reaching out to them over the next couple of days and into the early part of next week and we will make sure that they are invited to come in on monday tuesday and on thursday friday and again those are for our um students with pretty significant disabilities primarily in our self-contained population so those families we've already reached out to many of them and will continue to do so over the next few days regarding the special education services and accommodations and modifications the state department of ed just released some guidance actually this evening i got it about an hour before this meeting so my team and i are meeting tomorrow morning to work through the details of that um but we will make sure
076that students receive their services both when they're in their cohort model um as well as through the distance learning so regardless of what model students are selecting um they will receive their direct services as well as their accommodations and modifications and the accommodations and modifications also apply to the 504 students i know that was a question that was posed so it will look a little bit different than it has in previous years but certainly our priority is to make sure that all the needs are met and students continue to make progress on their individual programs dr cell did you have any other specific questions well i think that's i think that's did you um i think it's good for parents to know that those youngsters will be coming on a different schedule it's good for
077them to know that the personal outreach from you and from your staff so that we're taking care of that i think that's very important cara anything else for the board before they ask questions i don't think so i i think that was the majority of it but i'm happy to answer anything okay yes rachel no it's quicker i'll go after you okay okay i can't hear rich at all overall it looks like out of a total school population we've got about 82 responses uh roughly speaking overall when you can you go back to the statistics on a high school it seems like that in terms of the actual responses of about 3500 children um oh i'm sorry so you got 2 400 out of the 35. all right i i didn't recall getting those figures
078so that's okay all right thank you yeah but i think overall the representation you know statistically of the responses is pretty good i think so too just for the board certification it seems that the districts around us what i've been seeing they're running about 19 20 on dl people are going back and forth but that we're about 10 percent more um than our surrounding district which will impact um for the board certification uh staffing that and um and putting this together at staffing is is incredible so that's why we need to get to a bottom line so that we can start the assignments the secondary is particularly challenging because it's by certification the elementary the certificate is much more general so there are a lot of things going on with that but with 31 30
079percent of our our our kids families asking for dl will reduce the numbers and spacing in the schools that will happen you will have more spaces on the buses um and then we'll be providing this you know um and i could have if you would like cara speak to how that will be organized somewhat in terms of the dl if you would like to do it after this questions this evening so i just want to put that out there follow-up question also on dr sally this is to your hypothetical question currently with all of the media publicity relative to the opening of schools and the statistics on children having the viruses and the pros and cons etc etc you anticipate changes from your surveys to people that were hybrid now changing their mind to uh
080district learning i mean we've seen them i think that it's a it's a challenging time for parents to to discern information coming from the media from the you know all the different sources their their pediatricians um i think everybody's trying to make the best and most informed decision for their families and we've seen the changes both ways i mean the later survey results tend to be more the distance learning but in general we've seen people switch to hybrid as well so you know i think it's really unique to family circumstance and and their perspective around kind of the data they're seeing in the public yeah but but for the most part it was as we got later the distance learning choice thank you very much i think there's some other questions gladys yes raise your
081hand up thank you um originally when we were talking about um the cohorts and how we were they were going to be divided um there was so going to be um some research into um neighborhoods possibly and um i know that there are some families with um different names so siblings have different last names so will that be a consideration yeah so dr sal is going to send some information with the with the parent um communication uh or letter that goes out individualized when when their cohort is um determined and sent to the families we've already informed principles of the procedure around that to be prepared um also uh kelly churches and um our ell program director will be involved in analyzing the the services that need to be delivered for that student as well
082so um there that's already been discussed and shared with the principals there will be an opportunity for for family circumstances to be addressed and and we'll do that at the building level because they tend to know more specifically and uniquely have a relationship with the family and the number of kids in the school and the number of kids in the school sure and look what the classroom sizes look like thank you are there any other questions from board members that you i don't know i i have a question teaching for the teachers are they expected to teach in class and then they're expected to teach distance learning at the same time i i couldn't yeah that was part of it that was part of the time but cara can you talk about our about our
083uh strategy and and how are we preparing the teachers to be able go ahead kazzy to teach many of them many of them have not ever taught that way and i find it impossible but anyway go ahead kara sure thank you dr sal um certainly challenging uh there's no no secret about that this is this is challenging for everyone uh not just the teachers those but those uh folks who are also supporting teachers as well this is new so um in terms of i'll explain a little bit about the structure and the the differences between k5 and 612. so at the six i'll start with the 612 level so the 612 level um students will be assigned to their teachers as they normally would so a teacher would receive a roster of students they will
084soon find out who will be on quote-unquote distance learning and who will be in which cohort uh monday tuesday or thursday friday they will be live streaming lessons and and projecting lessons um and utilizing lessons that are accessible to both the in-class students as well as the at-home students at the same time at the same time but i'm going to clarify something that i think will help will be clarified during the professional development when teachers come back one we will be utilizing something called blended learning um blended learning takes into account uh it's a mixture of in person and at home learning you can produce asynchronous material for students to use at any time you can also produce videos and teach alongside live with um students at the same time who are at home and
085in class so when in this model when you say produce videos so are not the producers okay so if we were to record what's happening right now in this in this session that is actually a video if i hit the record button and i'm having a cop you know i'm having i'm teaching a lesson and and you are my students um that is happening real time it is shared at home um i can cast my screen similar to the way that kara wanser just casted her screen and talked through a lesson students who are in the classroom and at home um both experience that lesson very similarly in the same in the same time and space so so the actual physical location then becomes irrelevant um and there's actually opportunities there are ways to have
086collaborative activities uh for students at home and in the classroom to work on together your google doc that they're filling out a graphic organizer um students at home can even collaborate with students who are in school as well so we did um purchase um and we have been doing a lot of learning ourselves about blended learning we have a series of modules that we'll be using with the teachers that are particularly useful for not just blended learning strategies but blended learning with some social distancing considerations as well which is kind of the curveball in in blended learning for everyone so how do you manage some of these um more complex uh scenarios so uh we did just go through that trainings part of it with our curriculum staff um they were highly engaged by it
087we started to develop some materials around it we're also going to have some of our uh super user teachers who are going to take a lead and develop some videos to help model how best to do this and give some great strategies and examples and so teachers will have access to that during the um the training period that we have so we're thankful for having a few extra days before school to get started um i i don't make light of the complexity of doing this and certainly we're going to be working to support teachers moving forward at the k5 level a little bit different um it's a little bit harder to navigate some of these spaces particularly when you have kindergarteners first grader second graders uh that you're dealing with so um oh of course
088my timing is okay someone is at the door um so uh we that is where we will be having separate distance learning teachers and so we will have to determine the need for the staffing for for the number of students who selected distance learning however um students may not be associated with a particular school who select distance learning from the start so if we have you know if i have 35 students 35 second graders who need or 40 second graders who need a distance learning um the teacher will be selected students will be pulled across those schools um and they'll have their own their own classroom teacher okay may not be associated with particular school there may be some groups of students that are clustered together more so from one school than another but in
089general um we're staffing a virtual school k5 um and you know until we see the breakdown and the final numbers come in that makes a lot of sense kara yeah yeah that's the best way to we think that to approach the k5 and it'll be tricky because um you know what what's what what gets you know when you pull a few kids off of each teacher's roster um and we have some folks who will be servicing students um you know there's not that it's not a huge change when you start to you know have classes that near maybe one class as 50 or 60 percent of the students have selected distance learning there may need to be some rebalancing across grade levels um that's to be expected yeah so there's going to it's a great
090um it'll be a bit of a puzzle to a little bit of a balancing interior balance across the district carrick just comment about the expectation that the kids at home on deal will be getting exactly the same programming so currently um so we will be able to provide the core program k5 for students at home and we're hoping to be able to provide at least a special area experience um but they're you know there's not uh neces there's no way you can replicate everything with all of the staffing and the programming and the services during the school day the typical school day in full distance learning given the staffing challenges that we will have to try to make this happen so um it's not like we have an entire separate staff to to handle distance
091learning so we so you know we it's not like we're going to have 30 or 40 teachers that we're going to hire to do this we have to make this work and service as many students as we can in this model um using existing staff so we will do our best to provide as many services as possible and the typical programming curricular experiences um but in terms of until the um if the district were to convert to full distance learning for everybody then staff is then become becomes more accessible but in the initial distance learning phase it'll be difficult to provide everything in the same way that we would in a normal setting certainly going to try is there a limit to the size of the distance learning classes so right now you know we
092are we are talking around uh uh for 20 to 20 or so students 15 20 30 we have to we have to look at the configurations it's a little bit different um you know in distance learning but we also have to take into consideration that one at the way that we balance the virtual side we have to be prepared for if a student changes their mind and goes back into the classrooms that we're also rebalancing there as well so if a student shifts from distance learning in the beginning they may have a completely different teacher if they choose to come back we would send them back to their home schools um to the best of our ability but it's going to be very tricky and there are some things that we just don't know yet
093um until we start to put the pieces of the puzzle together and we start to see where things fit really well and where we're going to experience some challenges and have to problem solve thank you thank you i just wanted to just claire i i'm sorry man we'll ask a question yes amy i just wanted to clarify that um when dr sal when you said that um in grades 9 12 31 chosen learning 10 percent higher than other districts around them i'm sorry so you said that our district with the 9 to 12 is 10 higher with who of 10 higher than most districts around us as far as the distance learning and you said so that will be a challenge for staffing and this is exactly what cara was just explaining and then yeah
094what when i said when we were having our talks with the prince everybody's collecting data as we go so things can change but it sounded like most of the districts around us were running about 18 19 and when we were collecting it um that was that initial we were you know about there a little bit higher when this came back we're up at 30 30 30 what happens at the secondary if you're teaching chemistry and there's six kids that let's say we need a chemistry teacher i can't go get a biology teacher and have them teach chemistry because of certification even within the sciences because the the the courses are specific to certification k-5 or even to k-6 you can you can be generally certificated and to take a classroom i'm not saying you know
095if you haven't taught kindergarten or first grade for a long time it's kind of tough but you are certified to do it secondary we have to match certification for teaching and that is a challenge um just that we can get minor assignments and do things you know we may have to drop of course if we if we can't but that is a bigger challenge to us that's what i meant and the teachers that are i'm sorry i was just going to add with when you were asking about the area districts you know we also still have about almost 3 000 outstanding um outstanding surveys so we or more be more approximately 2 700. when when we consider those if we were to assume all of those are hybrid and that they will send their kids
096that could swing the number so parents may be assuming like if i don't send something i i'm my child will automatically be in person so that that can swing the numbers so if you do see like within the next week that number is starting to change that is why um for those families having it responded okay thanks i have just another question too um so what is the feeling of the the teachers i mean have you already established which teachers are interested in distance learning and you know are these teachers that like are looking forward to doing that or maybe teachers that are deciding they don't want to be in the classroom but they'll stay home and teach from home like who you know how's that going that's pretty complicated i mean i think we're
097working through that with personnel there are folks that now we have people already requested i'm going to throw a number i think it's 50 which is you know much lower than i thought we were going to be but that doesn't mean that and they're asking for various reasons um if if we uh get through a list where uh folks are medically challenged complicated and then they they have rights to assignment of course we'll accommodate those then we have the rest to deal with if we get beyond that and amy and sal are left teaching but we need you to teach something else then there is a process where we do assignments and we would follow those procedures about the you know having folks assigned to teach a class they may or may not want to
098do it but there's a way there's a district procedure to do that so first you'd have people actually you've asked right to do it for various reasons and then beyond that if we need more beyond that then there's a procedure and kim couldn't be here tonight to talk about it but for us to go through to make those selections and those um those assignments that's what we would have to do okay thank you yeah not easy not easy that's for sure no no no that would be difficult for everyone i will go ahead kelly kim did inform me uh that's currently there's 48 certified staff and approximately 25 non-certified staff that she's working through those accommodation requests for yeah okay thank you and and for and and kelly with your your your assignments you want
099you want to speak to that that's much different um so we are working through um right now my team is working very hard to figure out the number of students that are um selecting distance learning um and similar to the way that kara explained for the k-5 staff we will try as best as we can across the special education department to assign staff to be distance learning teachers only it special ed the certification for most special ed teachers are k-12 state of connecticut we do have a few that only have k-3 preschool is a separate certification um and so that is something that will present a little bit of a challenge with that that certification area um and we also need to take into consideration some of the special populations so although the the state
100department of ed certification for most of the staff is from kindergarten through 12th grade there certainly are staff that have more experience working with certain types and populations of disabilities than others and we want to make sure that we utilize the expertise of those individuals to provide services to those children so um you know we are going to try to make the distance learning um as much as we can within certain populations we may need to do a blend um and so we're working through the details of that and it's highly dependent on the numbers but it will mean some shuffling of staff across the special education department as well loans up to update them on grandville quick sure um so i won't say this as happily but granville is our new preschool that part
101makes me very happy the part that i'm saddened by is it may not be open in time um so the builder is working as hard as he can to get things moving um the delay of the calendar certainly will be helpful um you know i think it's intended for other reasons but it certainly gives us a little bit more time as preschool starts one week after the start of the regular school year so their start date will now be september 15th um and so bob who is the builder of the of the site is helping to work with us as diligently as he can seven days a week to try to get us in there as quickly as possible i'm hopeful that we'll be able to be in by the 15th to start um but
102if for some reason we're not we will come up with other accommodations and that could include a distance learning plan for a brief period of time um we will be in there by early october at the very latest but he is trying to do everything he can to get us in there more like mid-september so i will continue to update you as we have more info thanks kelly okay um i know there's more questions but one thing we forgot and ann mead i think is on ian uh richard and i think caden they have some questions about parent and notification can you talk a little bit about what you put together yes yes hi good evening everyone um so we have my department has put together a family school agreement that talks about the things
103that the district is doing ahead of time and what we expect families to do such as practicing wearing their mask having their children wear their masks during the day spending time talking to their children about washing their hands well during the day um and then the second part of the agreement is what we want parents to do um doing so for our side it's you know the it's the follow-up um in our buildings it's helping children to limit their movement in the building and follow the patterns in which we and you're frozen can you hear me okay all right well i know gladys can you hear me yes yes uh anne's hands frozen so but i but they see spent a lot of time working through this communication appearance which will be very helpful um
104to to to us about communicating the many of the things that we're doing so i don't know if the board had other questions of of anything else yes rachel um speaking of parents um has there been any um thought into how we can support them as you know um kind of a partnership in homeschooling or distance learning i mean well i think um probably the greatest gift we can give parents is good communication on what we're doing and certainly the start of school um in a normal year is a little bit chaotic right we pretend there's a lot of information that needs to be shared a lot of things that need to go back and forth between school and so in a normal year it's it's quite busy so um you know one of the
105things that we're going to be maintaining throughout this uh this school year whether we're in phase one phase two or phase three is the continued use of google classroom but with some expectations for a little bit more organization in the way that teachers organize those and the methodology for uh communicating through google classroom um so it's a little it was a little bit hectic last year as everyone was connecting at different all at once and using different structures and if you had children at multiple grade levels you saw probably saw that more so um and so we are going to have some more organizational parameters in place expectation for kind of a weekly communication and an overview and i think that that will help but having some consistent teacher expectations for the structure in the
106organization of communication will help to streamline i think across the district and so that will be a consistent expectation so we're not going to wait until we shift into a different phase to start that up again we're just going to get folks organized from the beginning and have a consistent pattern i think that that will be very helpful and certainly all the tools that we create to support and get shared through there and we intend on still posting on the website um any teacher training and help and videos to get started uh with the school year given all the the complexities that we have ahead of us were there some parent videos as well i thought and some of this um yes right now we're really concentrating on making videos for the teachers and making
107sure we're getting them up and running and then um but we do have a lot of the same tools that we've started with in the spring we will still be continuing with um in terms of uh you know things like ixl a3 learning and so we did by the time uh you know we got through the spring we did have a lot of tutorials in multiple languages at that point how to log into powerschool and so all of those things will be reorganized and re-shared with with parents and communicated on a regular basis um i think in the spring we had really good success with dr sal's weekly letters that was um very helpful and so as new information comes out we will probably continue dr sound i'm i hope i'm not speaking for you
108but i i would i'm making a huge assumption that we're going to do that again but that was very helpful as we were updating in real time any any communication changes we would likely use that for large things and then instructional things could go out through the teacher so not a great time for ann to get kicked off um but my my understanding is and has been working in the background trying to put together some type of google academy to try to help families navigate uh naga bay navigate the google the google platform um and so i'm sure when aim gets back on she can talk to us and help us out a little bit more and kind of explain a little bit more detail but if nothing else i know anne was was trying
109to work with some of her staff and they they of course they would collaborate with cara's team but i know that was a goal of hers going into this fall she is trying to grow back on and while she's trying i will say to the board we've been trying to work with local groups to create some daycare and i wanted her to update you a little bit on that that has been somewhat challenging but um and has been reaching out with a few groups in terms of trying to get some affordable daycare i mean that that's that's the key and uh ann are you on no she's not on yet so anyway if she gets back on we'll bring her up um but uh thanks kevin okay while we're waiting um for ian to get
110back home um does any board members have any questions cara thank you for the information uh you guys are working hard and uh we appreciate what you're doing we really appreciate it thank you um so so uh cara said we're gonna know our intent to the board by next wednesday um we're hoping that we sent a robo call out gene was very helpful uh the parents the families that hadn't turned in a forum principals are calling we're trying to get some assistance to the principals um they could speak spanish and portuguese as well the to the outreach but we're hoping if we could get a you know the same thing you know a number by friday night then starting on monday we can do some of the things cara talked about and then we'll just
111mail out to those folks that uh we that have filled it out and those that are um uh that we know have made the choices and i'm hoping to do that by wednesday uh to to them so that they have that information for planning purposes uh you know for child care and what have you um and then if there's some um need as kara pointed out for um folks to to change uh we've left that with a procedure with the building principles so they would be able to to to start that process as well during that time amy that's we're hoping to get people uh requesting um the dl work and maybe then find out how many staff we're going to need and they'll be working simultaneously as we collect this data and aside from
112that uh cara and kathy have been collecting all of the medical data that we have been eyeing and i've said to the board the one constant has changed so you know things can change quickly as you can see but um you know i feel as though we're moving in multiple steps multiple direction and although i heard the parent tonight why not get the kids back sooner i could just tell you this is so complex and to create the structure to permit folks to sign up and have folks make these changes and assign the staff this extra time is is really needed otherwise it could have been pretty chaotic when we opened so thank you for that very helpful yes what is the answer when parents say to you uh or some parents have said to
113me why is that you just don't keep food close without opening it so what is the punishment for a district if you decide that you're not going to open well i think as i point out if the board may close uh if the the um community spread as such where it's threatening that is a that is a given uh right now the executive orders permits the board as you know with your support we fought very hard to do hybrid and by the way it permitted a lot of districts to connecticut to get that so um you know we let dan barry led the way on that so right now we're following the law um and if if we get a call from cara or from uh kathy that there's a community spread um we'll do
114the right thing and move to the deal and i think a while ago i said to everyone the best thing we can plan for and thank god karen and kelly have been working so diligently on this and kara wanda with the numbers distance learning is the one thing we can depend on so to train people in that area is going to be tremendously useful to us so if that happens then we'll go to dial and at that time that's that's what we'll do but right now we're following the law and we've managed to um to do it with a hybrid which is safer for our kids and challenging the parents we understand that but safer for the kids to come back slowly now the question was asked to the board how do you transition back
115to full-time i think that has to be some of our thinking um but as i as i remind the state ours was not for a medical reason for hybrid ours was purely on on on part of our major challenge has been spaced and providing the social distancing with other mitigating strategies to uh to handle the the number of kids so um you know i think our transitions could depend on medically what's happening in that world before the board can make i think a decision unless something changes radically that's what i would say thank you doctor sir dr satellite i thought the board didn't have the decision-making authority to open and close schools and solely with the superintendent and what you're saying now is is that there has to be a board approval to go either
116way or make changes well no no i i i first of all i couldn't go to school to dl the one that would tell us would be um our uh health department and no i wouldn't need board approval but in essence if we go to the next step which is opening full time we there would have to be a conversation obviously but that's how it would work the decision we would be basically told look you know for community spread and i would make the decision to close down yes thank you rich for the clarification on a different subject while waiting uh to kevin kevin i know that you and ann have worked hard through your portrait of the graduate to make inroads into many many of the ethnic communities are we doing the same in
117order to get out this information as we talked about tonight on protocol issues um it's very difficult you know unless you're in as i understood in the past it was more of an invitation or getting to know these particular groups or their their let's call it churches or organizations are we doing that with passing on this information and also the city-wide pto i haven't heard that mentioned during our meetings and they have a vast mailing list so any information that we have to get out could be sent to the president of the city-wide pto and have them disseminated to their members in is an effort to get our information out to the general public but to the point that what are we doing in the hispanic community or minority communities to make sure that they
118get all the information any appropriate language that's important to them without saying just go to the website so so mr genelli in our parent forums uh we had we had a couple of parent forums with the community as we were getting feedback on on the on the reopening plan number one um and then we also had a breakout we also had an additional parent forum in in a couple of different languages also to kind of get feedback and and provide a platform for for our community um given what i heard earlier from miss cooper which was a great you know great recommendation um as part of coming back to school you know perhaps use a similar approach and approach i think that i'm hearing from you now um to engage those individual communities to try
119to make sure we get to every corner of the community um as much as possible anyway to kind of reassure them that we have we feel like we have a plan at least to the greatest extent possible that's going to be safe for our kids and then also provide a platform for folks and to answer answer any questions that they may have so we in it for this for this part of the work we have not broken it out in the same in the same way we did with the other work when getting out with the portion of the graduate work and the and the equity work um but it certainly would be appropriate to try to reach you know different different segments of our population and community so i'll make sure i work with
120anne on that when we get back out without community another thought process kevin is possibly to reach out to manuela a former board member who has the the power of the newspaper to be able to have her write articles and give certain opinions that that the administration has so that her readership could be more intuitive to what we're doing as well as another source of reaching you know a body of people it's ian hi if i can address that so the tribunal we've been able to run um or under my column for the last um three months i have been updating um what we're doing in the district um so i will update it again now for the um september issue there was a great article about the reopening schools and emanuela has also used
121some of the information that's come out of the connecticut mirror as well in her monthly publication the tribuna tribunal if i can just go back for a second when i got cut off there we were talking about the family school agreement that will have kathy's work in it as well as the document that she showed you tonight in multiple languages that will be um emailed or mailed most likely emailed out to all families with the expectation that they sign that and that they send it back and so that will be our notification that they have read it and they've understood the responsibilities that we need them to do to try to keep all of our children safe and healthy as they um are sent to school so we're really upping the ante um on the
122family parent partnership piece as well as um our our expectations of the district's expectations of them during uh distance learning and monitoring what the children are doing um there um there are signs that will just get a little date revision from september 1st to just to september 8th that will go out into the community on monday they're sitting in my office already and we'll just get the date changed on them and so that's reminding parents to uh you know wear the mask start school be attentive um to the things that they need to do um i wanted to quickly just uh to address the uh before and after school um project that we're working on so there's two things going on one is we are working with the data department to see what days our
123children are going and once that information goes out to parents who have already registered we will be able to slot those children into before and after school care at their own school using the same cohort model to the best that we can i'm probably using a cafeteria separating children um by their groups that they're in their in their class during the day to to be able to provide before and after school for those students on the off days and that is a big hitching point for parents um you know that have to work who's going to have my children for the three days who's going to support distance learning while i work i'm working with an outside agency and with two potential locations in danbury to be able to run full-day programs what i am
124going to need help on is helping to staff those and so i will work with our hr department on staffing our elp and i'm going to work with the community on what that looks like to staff those full-day programs again social distancing um making sure that we have enough internet access so that students can do their work oh boy did we lose you again i think so oh no i see your name still there and oh i guess we lost them okay well anyway we we are trying to find that daycare working with some outside groups um and i'm glad to hear that we'll have that information that we're going to share with parent parents that's all we have gladys okay doctor sally i have a question about that the daycare component we were just
125talking about and maybe the better question to say for anne and i can ask at another time if we need to but how many people were talking about serving in one of those programs because it seems if we're serving a lot of students in two locations three days a week we may be defeating the purpose of not having them in school three days a week yeah no that's a good question and a balance in school then we put them in yeah kind of goes it flies in the face of logic it undoes what we're doing undoes what we're trying to accomplish by not having them in school fighting right that is that's a hard one i mean you know it's it's it's you know almost like an oxymoron is what i say is that the
126the the essence of what uh beth bai who's been in charge of these daycare centers um have been has done it throughout the whole spring successfully and they have a model that they promote to us and it was based on what ann just said um you know the number of students would be relegated very small um so it would it would not be your whole sale okay kind of a thing but that is a problem and you know otherwise i'd say you know why don't you open school and bring the kids well we can't that's why they're closed kathleen you're right so i think it would be limited and um it would it would be run through this outside organization to help out i think it's a helping hand for some parents because this is
127a challenge with work we know that yeah it would be limited if we can do it at all the other right uh if um you know if n if in if there's no other question to end or without the cell we have one last item on the agenda before we move forward german um i'm not the same you want to uh briefly let's talk about this yeah actually actually a parent had sent that did you she talked about well let me just briefly just say this um uh al it has something for us to um to look at i know that was regarding senator murphy has a bill and it's part of the national effort here about defunding and somehow the sra's sorrows got thrown into it um and i have a letter i think
128i would manage to send to you as the co-chair of cause the large build super the large district superintendents um are opposed to it and um you know i think murphy's idea of in getting counselors and stuff is great but these sros have been outreach and they've been so proactive and prevented so many issues they're they're they've been part of the school fabric they're not there to arrest kids they're there to to assist us and to head off uh um trouble and so many times our kids feel so confident talking with them um they help families and kids from getting into problems so a group of superintendents did meet with um mr senator murphy's staff uh expressed our concern about this none of the right pathways to go uh but i unfortunately i think it's
129still part of the uh his efforts in in the federal government the legislators to defund them i wrote i wrote this morning to get an update and i haven't received it but al was asking for a resolution and that's why it's on the agenda uh tonight um right gladys but what would it entail for the board to have a resolution uh you know to come up with the resolution um to more to get additional information we could further discuss this at our first meeting in september uh you know to get the information from cave as how to put forth a resolution as a board um and you are planning to have another uh meeting with mr murphy or his staff so you know we're not here to do a resolution tonight am i correct we're
130down i go down to discuss it um you know i'll leave it up to the board the the um we i've sent this this letter is going out from all the superintendents um our police chief in town is very much will sign off on a letter i'll send it personally and if you know if i can get more information to bring to you from uh cape to the next board meeting i i will do that and then from then possibly get a resolution and if you can get cave to support it then they could distribute it throughout connecticut uh for boards to decide if they want to support the resolution that would be one way of doing it and i could try to collect that information for you okay are there any questions about the
131sam yeah is there an urgency to this where something is just can't hear you cannot hear you mr sir is there an urgency to pursue this particular subject matter relative to where murphy is in his proposal and and what they're trying to do on a federal level when we've got so much at hand i mean this is nothing as far as i understand that's eminent in the next month or so so do we have to spend much time on it currently um well that's up to you i i um you know i i i did ask friend ravinovitz if they could give me information i can just get what they have and and then get it to the board the board has the opportunity every time as i did write a letter yourselves as as
132as a citizen board member how important these sros go i think that goes a long way as well and i can try to collect that information for you so i will say to you guys they are so important to us and the city has been very helpful in keeping him in there so um you know beginning i think we all i think all of us understand that dr said you know and i i i think it comes down to you know people lost power you know didn't know that this you know uh what's going on and uh we just wanted to bring to the forefront to see what was our position was what could we do as a board and uh making sure that um the legal aspects are taken care before we go out
133and start presenting stuff i think mr russo is trying to get your attention i don't think we can hear him okay he's been waiting he's been waving at the camera i noticed i don't know if we can hear him we can't hear you okay can he put him on the chat i think he's yeah uh al you can put it on the chat or he's going to maybe try to call in i think mr murphy ought to spend his time going after ever sauce and ui and stay out of education i can't even hear what mr general is saying he said yoda spend his time with eversource instead of the sros as a practical matter the chances of this building called the united states senate anytime in the foreseeable future is probably roughly equivalent to
134zero so miss cooper i have mr russo on the phone can he is it okay if he asked a question through my phone yes go ahead mr russo we're ready can't hear it can you hear him kevin absolutely go ahead mr rooster i'm ready just want you to know that i very strongly disagree with senator murphy's bill to defund the sro program because the sro that they mentor they're out there with it with it with the students they their counseling they teach their social workers and sometimes actually surrogate parents and and most of all they put themselves in harm's way for your children i i find the bill offensive and what i'm asking is for some point of resolution dr sale has the right approach bring it to cave disseminated if we are streaming live
135i would like every resident every student every parent every teacher to contact senator murphy and if you are like-minded you disagree with this legislation because after all he represents us one of my fears is if we do not act and this thing slips by and turns into some sort of law that is too late to do anything about it and our children will lose thank you for allowing me to comment and uh i'll try to plug back into my video and thank you thank you uh mr boston thank you everyone i think everyone's the same way he feels so men madam chairman i could take my letter send it to bob reader and um tell them uh you know the approach to see if they'll promote that i can i can do that um yes
136that's not a problem i can handle that yes okay okay okay so uh we can uh we can move forward you're gonna move forward with um your contact and then we have some additional information to bring this back to the group um at our first meeting in september okay okay um before we uh adjourn the meeting uh i would just like to ask some board members that have uh you know we talked about making sure that we keep the uh community and families and want everyone in in forms instead of next wednesday having a meeting could we go down to the 26th and schedule our next meeting to uh you know just maybe a week before school open and you know if any additional information come