Danbury Public Schools Board of Education Workshop: School Reopening

001and as we always do we stand and do the pledge to the flag those that can ledge allegiance to the flag indivisible thank you thank you uh before we all sit down and get too comfortable oh and if you do not want to participate in this it's up to you to me it's an honor and it's a sad occasion that I think that as this community grows and we see the diversity in our community and the sense this is a part of our history I think that we should take a moment and just have a moment of sorry for Congressman John Lewis and as we remember congressman Lewis and all that he stood for let's not forget Ct Vivian and his contributions so if you would like to I would appreciate it if we would

002just take a few moments of silence to remember these two warriors thank you all so very much Annette could you do roll call so I know who's here boy limits so we can have it on record okay I've got jokes of Britain please Rachel s key here key caneta present Gladys Cooper here Lauren Daly here Joe de Silva is absent the signals Catherine Ashton also absent this evening Richards Nellie Cathy Molinaro here al Russo Amos polina yeah so nine present two absent Thank You Kate just some housecleaning some of you that was on earlier if you have any questions you ask you to do your question through the chat box and as Carrie has stated early dr. Meade will be checking in with a checkbox and to go over the questions or put them before

003the superintendent we ask you to have your phone and microphone muted only the Board of Ed lemons are to have your phone's your microphones unmuted so at this time we know we have superintendent here I'm going to turn this part of the workshop over to our super thank you guys very much for this night and to come together and have dialogue regarding the plan I have my team here two cabinets here I did mention that representing our county and Senate Kushner and Brennan I think will be joining us I don't know others I see city council members on I know the mayor is on as well so we have a few things I'd like to begin with so would you please bring up the presentation what I'm going to ask the board what we're trying

004to do is not read we've talked about the plan number of times than we've sent it out but there are some things the narrative around the plan that I think is relevant for you to know and be thinking about I'm going to ask you patience because this plan has changed even today we get information from the State Department we get best practices that are changed and we make adjustments so just that we will try to dispel rumors as they come through but there are things that may be said on Monday and Monday evening they've changed very true so two things I want to express to you that I've come around to understanding it next year the assurances I have that regarding teaching and learning is that we're going to we're going to have distance learning

005as a given whichever system that we're on and if we bring students and in my view that'll be a luxury given the uncertainty of everything that's happening I'm not a monologist I read what all of them are saying and while I'm coming down on the best practices and things that we were able to operationalize in our plan the the the recommendations from the state are put forward as guidelines and they have a qualified it says for example in the social distancing if you can achieve it well we're working on that but you will see tonight there are so many more things to to what we're doing then the this saying regarding safety and it's important for parents the board and the City you know with our due diligence is being done I said a month

006ago I'm gonna focus on safety and because of that I will go on right now telling you that I've I've ridden the state with support from the mayor and from this board and I thank you just twice actually most recently you want to bring up the second letter for me Kevin that my preference is that we start in the hybrid model I think the state has required us as a district has required you as a board to follow the code as you're sworn to do and I am sworn to do and we will do that we have three phases to our plan my preference I will make no bones about it is the hybrid model and I feel it's a model that would present itself in a way that I can create a better and

007safer atmosphere for all our students the the phase one as in my letter here to the governor is one that we put forward and it's going to require much adjustments that we will talk about this evening if you look at the my five points about safeguarding health and safety of students and staff allowing students opportunity return to school full-time starting in the fall that is what were asked to do and with that I I say to you we are returning in the fall it is the everyday thing that I'm having some real angst about so I want to put that as a backdrop and I do want you to know that I've been working diligent about the mayor he has been working with the city medical advisor I've been working with our medical advisor and

008we will update you with some information regarding that as we file as we send their plan to the state we are going to attach an addendum that I think would be helpful in supporting our case for starting in Phase two you want to roll that through a little bit for me the Bri entry plan is extremely expensive and Courtney's going to go through it you're going to see half as much of money that we could have spent we've had to prioritize focusing on the things that I've talked about in terms of distance learning safety cleanliness things that when we listen to the various groups Kevin's going to bring up as they gave us input they have a very high priorities for us we've attempted to achieve that in in a in a manner that was

009reasonable and a man that we could afford to do but in actuality the need and the ones that far exceed or we think we need to do totally if we would achieve everything that the guidelines request us to do we're fulfilling them but as best as possible with that standard so you want to move through the letter and go to the next phase may about and I'm going to I'm going to ask you at this point if you'd like to comment regarding set the stage a little bit about what we've been doing sure absolutely thank you dr. Tsao so we really engaged our health department in our medical advisor and dr. Fong to be able to talk a little bit more about what is available under the governor's executive order and what steps that we

010can take to make sure that our children are safe and secure and particularly obviously and some of our buildings that are there are just a lot of kids there and so we've had several meetings about this today's meeting we sort of came up with a strategy that along with our reopening plan we would add in a letter from our doctors that are very direct saying look we don't you know I'm sorting it but basically says look we just don't think it's safe to send our kids back to school under a full opening you know plan that the hybrid plan would be the best approach I don't see a bureaucrat up there that's going to want to overrule a doctor a medical doctor for the simple fact that god forbid we have an outbreak or a

011community spread going on in one of the schools we're gonna hold people accountable I'm gonna hold people accountable people accountable that ignore our requests that's very rational reasonable and safe that's been put forward so we think that that is a very powerful message to be able to send to those individuals that are making this decision and we certainly understand and applaud their enthusiasm to get our kids back to school as fast as possible I think all of us agree that there's such incredible value and being in a classroom as a former teacher I can tell you that the classroom experience is really why we have schools but we also you know we have a responsibility to protect the health safety and welfare of our children and our residents and opening at a full opening plan

012will I believe jeopardize the health safety and welfare of our students and all of our residents not just the kids but also the parents the staff members everybody so we think that this will give us a significant amount of leverage and being able to convince the state that you know Danbury is unique in many ways not unique in other ways but unique and incidentally the amount of students we have and that we really need consideration of this approach there are certainly some schools out there you know I think of chibok high school that has it's about half full right it's built for 800 there's about 400 kids in there they can go to a full opening because they have enough space to offer 6 feet between every child we just don't have that at Danbury

013high school and we don't have that our middle schools don't have some adventures in our elementary schools so we believe that this would make the most sense for everybody it's a burden to some extent to parents we understand that we have a custodial care duty here as much as we have education but at the end of the day it's my responsibility I took an oath to protect the health safety and welfare for all people in the city you all did as well and I just am very passionate that this approach is the best way now January we can reevaluate it if it seems like you we've kept on this downward trajectory then that's what we'll do I will tell you that our numbers have been bumping along at about one or two new infections per

014day we get a death every three or four days tragically horribly so it's not completely wiped out it is out there and it's just a matter of putting people on the right proximity to other people to begin a new spread of infection so I think that dr. sail the board the medical team has done the right thing here we're doing everything we can to talk to everybody we can up there we encourage our legislators to to help us with that by reaching out to the commissioner and to the governor staff and saying that we think this is the right right approach but tough times but I think we'll get through it so phase one phase two my conversation with everyone that I'm speaking to and has to do with with our size and we have

015to make accommodations to make it work things that we have to create during a school day to allow the youngsters to attend if we are to start in in phase one but that be as it is I wanted Kevin to go through and let the community know and 163 participants and may have about another hundred and plus on the TV that what all went through here this doesn't mean that everybody agreed to all of this all this is his input that we've received so go ahead Kevin but I say the other letter no just go ahead and go to the first phase go to the participants the participants here yes do you want to talk about them so we can do that right well this is just a thinking thinking the committees at the top

016are the committee's many of them many of them officials of the city and then a lot of the folks are also district staff member so we just want to express our appreciation to this group and then the group down below or additional staff members and district staff members who we had X for additional help X for their expertise and feedback on and what we just want to take this opportunity to to express our appreciation for them as well you want to roll through it and start the presentation okay State cells so the state the state has the state has identified priorities for every district that is going to submit a plan I'm starting with every school district is required to have a hundred and eighty days and 900 hours of instruction in our case most

017recently as recent as is this week we got we got final final word that it has been approved at the state level that schools can also elect to have a hundred and seventy seven days and 888 hundred and eighty five days of instruction if I'm sorry if hours if the board decides to avail itself of the 180 day rule this this is also the state also requires is one of the three big priorities is that we have a plan in place for in school instruction for all students on a full-time basis a plan to provide both in-person or remote learning support options and this is what we're calling a hybrid model and then last but not least a plan for total distance learning in the event there's a significant resurgence of Kovach 19 in our

018community the state recently is this week submitted correspondence that stated that any plan that is submitted to the department this this week that does not include a floor we open an option as one of the three models will not be in compliance with the expectation and so as to help further inform and development of our plan a lot of folks on this call certainly aware that we have elicited feedback of our community Ferrothorn exchange which I'll talk about a little further our district surveys we sent out a first survey right after the state plan was released then we just released another survey yesterday in which we have almost eighteen hundred participants already we've also had several town hall meetings too with our administrators specifically to this issue reopening to with our teachers and staff one

019with students and then to town hall meetings also with our parents and community family and community and then of course we had a Board of Ed meeting specifically for reopening as well families most recently in the last two surveys were asked to select their child's program and choice which we will speak to throughout this presentation and families and staff in the thought exchange in in town hall meetings were asked their highest priority for reopening schools and so our initial survey in July and I'll give you some preliminary data for our survey that was just released yesterday and in that feedback from the survey we learned earlier in July that 73 percent of our respondents would plan and have their children returned to school if we would have to fool in person learning at the time

020again this is when the state's plan was first released 52 percent of our families responded that fit that their child would plan to ride the bus 64 percent when asked if he would choose a hybrid model that was offer 64 percent of our families said that they would select that model and last but not least if offered 51 percent of our family said that they would choose an exclusive distance learning to start the 21 2021 school year a town hall feedback as you might as you might imagine a lot of people again on this call who are watching that they part of the town hall feedback sessions just a summary we did have seven engagement sessions in total and needless to say health and safety was the primary focus of those meetings there were several

021questions about supplying staff and students with PPE you know there were also questions particularly as we got close and closer to our presentations what if in this hybrid ad model would there be opportunities for siblings to come to school together regardless of grade levels so we will have an opportunity to talk about that later on as well staff and families express concerns about our ventilation systems no fans in the classrooms etc and so Courtney's going to talk about that a little bit and how we're going to mitigate to help mitigate those issues there were a number of questions about the process for suspected cove 819 cases and and at the same time who is going to deep clean and/or disinfect our schools and so I think that community is going to be very happy to

022hear that we have plans for all of those areas playing for extracurricular activities in in one of our town hall sessions you know one of the several students in that in that breakout session talked about the importance of you know maintaining extracurricular activities and that it was important for them in a priority for them that we we ensured that they still had a high school experience in middle school and experience and so we will be talking about that throughout the presentation as well I'm implementing safety drills without congregating on it so that is still something we were exploring if we're going to make this happen a plan for higher staff and students and so you're gonna hear a plain about staff as we go through the presentation and then staff how to enforce the wearing

023of masks training of staff and that we'll be talking about when talking about our district calendar reliable internet access for families who will sanitize at rooms in between uses students sharing materials and health concerns for students right in the bus or all prominent issues that were raised in our meetings and for the most part in this presentation this evening you can get responses in how we how we how we plan to attack those the throne exchanged feedback was four hundred three hundred and ninety eight total participants but there were eight thousand and six hundred and fifty items rated and in what you see in this slide are the top rated thoughts that I was able to include anyway for this PowerPoint but again you not probably this group will not be surprised to hear that

024the health and the health of all students who staff was the most consideration teachers particularly were concerned about class sizes being too large to to be able to social distance and so Courtney is certainly going to talk about that and I'll work with a an architect to come up with a plan to make sure we have we can address the social distance guidelines you know specific questions about vulnerable staff and so we will be speaking to that later on in the slide with our HR department with Kim Thompson and we must have resources to protect staff and students otherwise we should not open for in-person learning and I think this evening you heard dr. cell and I may or speak to this issue and I think we've heard the community loud and clear hence you

025know the two letters that have already been submitted to the state and another in another letter that's that's going to back to further support the idea of coming in in a hybrid model something that we're also preparing for and that is supporting our students and staff with social emotional support and again in the thought exchange this was one of our highest-rated items and last but not least additional staff for cleaning and disinfecting classrooms in other areas of the building and you're also going to hear later on in the presentation on how we plan to address those items in those concerns and so there are as part of the requirements from the state for planets to be submitted there were there are certain sections that that are required in every single plan and so we've tried

026to align our plan with the state's expectation and so the categories are as follows facilities and operations transportation and food services health and wellness academic experiences for students staff and Families training for staff to open up the year to help open up the year safely and provide social and training around social emotional support for staff and students tech technology so the ability and the assurance is that we can provide one-to-one devices for all of our children and and and help support families that need need support with connectivity specifically in social-emotional support before and after school care so dr. Mead is gonna speak to those areas also as family-school partnerships and then we will close out the sections required in a plan with chips elvis trainee with extra critical activities there have been a flurry of

027questions on the clarifications needed and chip has been gracious enough to join us this evening to help to help present and so the first person to present this evening is Courtney from director of finance and operations and Courtney thanks Evan um at first I just wanted to say thank you a big thank you to the mayor the legislators the board the medical staff that we work with them with and all the administrators and teachers that got us to the place where we are in the plan and as you'll see you know we still have a ways to go and we have a lot in place that we're going to talk to you about tonight but I want to say first thank you so much to everybody that's contributed to what we have so far Kevin

028I don't know if I have the ability to advance okay thank you so the first thing we just want we wanted to talk to you about was the resources that we've dedicated as doc Patel said it's not enough but we've prioritized with the resources that we do have we've dedicated about 5.2 million dollars of which that's the federal cares that you can see the sources on the bottom we spoke to the board and to the public about a braided funding approach for this this fiscal year this is a subset of that braided funding that is allowing us to safely return students to school within the guidelines and what we've done is we so it's the cares forming before the federal ESS our money that we were tucked with the board about earlier there's a city

029fund so we've partnered with the city to utilize some of our reserve from some of the things that we needed to do and we're utilizing some grant carryover funds from this year from our state alliance and petal and grants so what what are we purchasing that's what this has been a work in progress with a lot of people involved including the director of curriculum the director of Technology director of safety before foot the city and with our nursing supervisor as well as our director especially HR so what we currently are dedicating in resource is about three million dollars to online instruction and distance learning included a big purchase of one to one for Chromebooks software that we need and needed to get in place last year to get students to be able to work remotely

030but to do their distance learning from home and additional investments that Kara dr. characters Bureau is going to talk to you about shortly in addition to student support specialist and an SR bi tech admin in order to integrate the curricular moons given that some kids will be in distance and potentially will be in a hybrid model additionally we're looking at purchasing a lot of sanitizer sanitizing stations disinfectant funding set aside for deep cleaning as well as dr. cells asked that we had a custodian to every building at least and in some places more than one so that we can focus on sanitizing all the touch points and really our big priority is keeping this base clean facilities as safety were purchasing protective shields for desks where for example in the K through two if they

031if we have circular round tables or if we have rectangular tables we need to put on shields on the table so that the kids are separated in addition protective shields for any interactive points with the public as well as signage which I'm going to show you we've engaged with an architect that took three sample schools and walked through from start to finish everything that's a recommendation based on the American architects Institute Institute of Architects applying all of the standards that they come up with for safety with egress and safety within the classrooms PPE we worked with them we did an assessment these coverings are going to be required for every staff member as well as every student they're going to be required to provide their own face coverings but we're planning for a certain amount

032when kids show up without them or with inadequate coverings we have them on hand to provide we're providing all the teachers with them face fields in addition to the masks so that you know their eyes are covered and during those based covering breaks you know everything have additional protection and a lot of protection for the special ed staff that we'll be working directly with our most vulnerable students such as disposable gowns and additional shields for those children that will allow them Kelly we'll talk a little bit more about that but there's a clear part of the mask so you think and read facial expressions so we're able to have them be able to participate in their learning in the best way possible in addition we set aside funding this year because we when we fed

033the families we were lacking in reimbursement from the federal government and so we needed to set aside some money from this year's budget for food services so that's about five point two million this assumes that we can fit everyone in the classes and that we don't need to buy more teachers or more desks so this only works you know live which and that it's a work in progress is because when we get the results of the survey that we sent up to the parents when they're selecting whether they're going to be full distance learning or in a hybrid model if what or we know if we're going to be in a hybrid model we'll have a sense of the numbers and we'll be able to say whether we can safely and effectively within the guidelines

034hit the kids in the classrooms and not have to spread out even further if we assume we had a hundred percent all in model and nobody's remote this doesn't work because we have about seven hundred classrooms that have more than twenty-four students so why the mere mention that you know we're really strongly advocating with the governor and to allow us to start in a model that makes more sense to be able to distance the kids out more corny you may want to comment I think this appropriate at this time there for example the high school he has about 500 classrooms that have more than 24 now the mitigating recommendations is when you can't achieve the distancing given that everything is cleaned as washing the pans the ventilation windows open things of that nature that the

035mass provides the safe distance but when you look at the high school alone for example with 500 classrooms in a block four sections 125 a period you'd have to probably add 20 25 teachers and then have the space in order to teach them which versus the game in Mossel the middle school I see Christian Europe you know as a few hundred could have been over that now I have the elementary so you know the amount of money that we would have needed whether they exceeded 1012 million dollars I think and that's talking about added buses and men think so what you see here is our best shot to try to create the conditions that we know we could provide within the resources that we have I'm sorry yeah that's really good dr. Solley yeah thank

036you so much for pointing it out it's prioritizing with what we have and the architect that we're working with is making sure that we're spacing the desks out so that the you know there's a template and they've gone through walk through three different types of schools and classrooms I'm going to show you some examples so we're literally putting dots on the floor to locate where the desks will go which is why you know right now today Kevin mentioned the results of the preliminary results of the survey something close to 30% of families might choose distance learning that would help us spread out the kids in the classrooms in the way that we need to do otherwise it could be another five million dollars that we have to go back and ask for okay so okay

037so on the facility side we're following the CDC and CSD as well as the American pediatric Association guidelines and we're coordinating directly with the school nurse supervisor and the director of public public healthcare pronti ensuring that schools meet high cleanliness before we even reopen and we're going to maintain the monitor throughout the year so we're hiring those additional custodians we're buying sanitizer for every single classroom there's going to be a replacement cycle throughout the hallways we're putting on sanitizer containers and also a hanging wall hangings there's signage reminding people to wash their hands for 20 seconds in addition to signage reminding them to sanitize next to the sanitizing station so planning for and maintaining appropriate social distancing within the classrooms hallways at the time of arrival dismissal and in common areas we're also working building

038to building going in and looking at first the plans and then walk doing walkthroughs of all the buildings to put down decals that are going to remind the kids the distance within the hallways so for example where Highway is 10 feet we're going to have one-way directional where the flow will allow we're working with the building principals and individuals dots that are six foot apart to remind the kids to be mindful of their distancing so you know that's one piece we're looking at all of the egress so every single time and I'm a kid makes a movement and they're mostly going to be in the classrooms in that elementary middle but when the buses arrive we're four times the busing so that the kids are spread out within all the buildings when they entered multiple

039doors and they go right to their classrooms and they're going one way directional so and then the ventilation protocols we're working with city and facility professionals and I'll have you advance to the next slide because I'll talk a little bit more specifically about that in just a moment so I mentioned the building by building facility plan going into detail at three of our schools one elementary one middle and one high school and then Kevin myself rich Talbert our director of facilities and Kathy O'Dowd are a supervisor of school nurses and Ellie church this our director our special ed are going through a building by building meeting with each individual principal and making plans that comport with what a recommendations are for classroom setup and for egress as well the the lunch distribution and I'll get

040to when I talk about the food but there's not going to be any kids in the cafeteria we worked through the recommendations at least according to the current plan things could change because you know the state hasn't yet issued waivers for the things that we need to do we anticipate that and are hopeful that they will issue the waivers that we need but there'll be a point of distribution that will distribute the food to the classroom and we'll talk a little bit more about that later we're working on setting up all the isolation rooms because the state requires us to set up an isolation room again it needs to have ventilation we're hopeful in some cases where there's for example specials rooms now that the specialist teachers are pushing into the classroom some of those

041could be utilized as isolation rooms the high school has already identified a room that's very close proximity to the nursing room now the building mechanical systems we've worked with the city to work through how we're going to test and replace filters and I'll talk a little bit more about that and we've set up really strict protocols for sanitizing and cleanliness throughout all the buildings again our biggest priority particularly in response to the community feedback that we got so facility operations this it is agreed to review all the BMS the building mechanical systems to ensure efficient operations this is really important to make sure everything's functioning they do it normally but they're going to do it more stringently this this summer they're replacing all of our merv 8 filters and identifying with rich Jalbert special conditions

042to replace with a higher level particulate filter mark 13 the school starts and we have before school even opens we're going to operate all ventilation systems at full capacity for one week and we're going to remind administrators about ventilation changes and they can't make any adjustments without working through the facility director as well as this the city director okay can we can go to the next one after school opens now you might have read some of the guidance about ventilation is really important this is one of our biggest priorities just to ensure that we have proper air flow and so we're following the guidelines to flush the air inside the building for a minimum of two hours prior to occupancy and then one hour after with the dampers open as fully as possible and we'll

043program and lock the fan schedules to align with the schedule of building occupancy and we're going to keep the ventilation system running during all hours the building is occupied so this keeps maximum flow and then at a minimum where the temperature will allow and we don't have other means of insulation available and windows we're saying should be open to allow for a minimum level of fresh air exchange in the open occupied spaces I did want to mention in this plan our facilities yeah we've sent a memo out to all the partners that we normally do rentals with that for at least the first six months we will not any rentals so that's a loss to the district of revenue and it's for safety means that we're doing that yeah okay okay and we can move

044to next so this is showing the signage I mentioned us working with the architects they've identified all the locations throughout the buildings where we we would be it would be good to put these signs so if they skip cover and require before entry at the entrance of every building you know there's no visitors I think if you read through our plan you'll see that and even parents we're setting up tables outside so kids forget something that's entirely necessary medication or something they'll be a table outside with a drop off place for the parent to drop parents are not going to be coming into the buildings we're going to remind children in the students in the hallways to maintain six-foot social distancing through signage okay we can move to the next one and then like I

045mentioned the hand cleaning we're going to just put up signs to remind people wash hands prevent spread through hand sanitizer you used to as if you're out in the community now another thing I mentioned earlier is the floor signs so where it's allowable where the a we were pre making ourselves and putting on the floor and various parts of the EE so someone asked earlier about a classroom so this is just showing you know the architect was showing us how we would set up with distancing between the desks so you know each each room has a certain capacity for what we can what we can fit through terms of desks to be appropriately distance and we're going to adhere to that okay and this is just King Street here's another example of the classroom setup

046with distancing this doesn't it's not doesn't look exactly right because this is what our custodians did so just briefly tell you the where we are in the process all of our custodial staff have gone into all the buildings and moved all the extraneous things to the walls so whether it's beanbag chairs or rocking chairs or storytime places we're moving all that to the walls and the week first week of August principals are going to invite certain teachers in to come in and take away items from the classrooms we're really just gonna have desks to encourage the maximal maximum you know just the thing with the desks and that's what it's gonna be there's also a six-foot perimeter around the front of the room which you can't see here for the teacher area and it's a

047corridor that's going to be set up in each classroom for the teacher to be able to have a bit of room to move at the but maintain that social distance and they're also going to have plexi and I don't know if it's called flexi but face shields that are made of plastic that will be available to them should they choose to use in addition to their face coverings those are face shields yeah those are the face shields so the busing and transportation you know you know Kerry is going to talk through the scheduled busing and transportation is a big consideration for the schedule I've got to be able to get the kids in and out safely as you saw on our survey earlier of the people that are planning to come for in person we

048can ask to me that as many as fifty percent will still be riding needing to ride the bus it may be lower when we get the final results of our actual survey when people are really having to sign up for what they need but we're requiring face coverings per the guideline and CDC guidelines for all students and drivers on the bus those drivers are also going to be provided with boxes of masks disposable masks so if a student shows up without a mask we are going to provide it so that they can safely ride the bus we're intensifying the cleaning protocols between every run and the windows are going to be open on all the runs so if you have to wear their appropriate clothing you know when it's colder out but the guidance and

049the recommendation is to keep those windows open and we're going to be prepared for the increased car traffic we're training staff and we're looking to partner with the city to get additional staff for traffic flow and to modify some of what we're doing with traffic low flow like for example at the high school and we're going to work through that with each of the building leaders principles about arrival you know where we can set up separate place for the bus to come and a separate place for parents did you drop off we will and where we can encourage entrance by cohort we will some buildings won't allow for that safely but we're working through it on a building by building basis mm-hmm okay I think I'm ready for the next one oh and this is

050just showing a spray down of the bus with a appropriate disinfectant just don't have everyone like turn after every run on all the touch points and at the start of the day and ended a foot up for the seats food service we're monitoring upon the CSD food service nutrition safety guidelines we're still being required to offer five you know choices of different types of meals they're called components and so because it's going to be of a grab-and-go nature we're going to put four different things in the bag and the fifth is the milk and they can choose the milk but that way we're going to have the flexibility to have them have a snack during the day and we'll I'll explain that a little bit more in a moment and we're gonna give additional safety

051protocol training for cafeteria staff they've been working through the whole summer as you know then food distribution so they're very very familiar with masks where I'm keeping the masks on wearing their gloves they're very safe at any rate because they're dealing with food but you know they've stepped up all the protocols and so we're just gonna remind them of that and do a couple of run throughs because the you know one thing I just want to mention we applied for the CEP status for the entire district and if we get approval for that that means that Debra high school yes and Westside we're not going to have to collect rosters or have people sign in digitally you know to get their lunches um it will be able to just do a count and it could

052be like the other schools that are on CEP applicable so we're eliminating all the touch points there's not going to be a point-of-sale snacks for the first six months we're not going to be doing that and we're going to be distributing to the classrooms ideally what the schedule hopes for is a grab-and-go so we'll be able to in the in the case where we have enough workers they'll be doing the bringing to the classroom in the case where we don't we're going to work through the union to find out who the appropriate staff will be to be active volunteer helpers to come get the food and bring it to the classrooms and then ideally like I said it'll be in enough time so they can eat a snack if it's a late dismissal for example

053for the Elementary they might not be getting out to 135 and they won't be eating in the classroom and ideally it will be a grab-and-go but that again is subject to approval by the state we better get a waiver for that yeah and that's and that's the my update for the facility's food and transportation as they coordinate the one things I would have is why do I do that when we looked at the schedules and the number of individuals needed to be spread out for the lunches with the masks off we thought it presented a real danger for the kids and so we've had to cohort them differently and we have to work through that I think we have obviously this is one sided right now we've got to work with the teachers and the

054other groups to make the thing happened but offensively we've had to go to this system in order to distribute the food to make it them yeah you you might here to dr. cells point other schools that are able to eat in the cafeteria their smaller schools we you know after talking with in and talking with the middle school principals we've got you know nine hundred and a waved in the high school those of you that have been there we've got three hundred and thirty and a wave and in most of the middle schools and after talking with Cara Prunty and with Kathy o down it's just not safe to have that many after we're covering in the classrooms in the cafeteria so which is why we're looking at doing a grab-and-go type type meal and

055we'll still the the students will still be getting their full you know balanced nutritional meal it's a quarter of those the next section is Kathy and Kent thank you Kevin good evening everyone I'll be addressing the topic of supplying of our PPE the personal protective equipment so as Courtney had mentioned for the state guidelines space coverings are required for all district staff and students they will be asked to provide their own health services will maintain a backup supply in the event that a child doesn't have one or if the mass becomes soiled during the day something happens to it we will have a backup supply in the event that there is a student who cannot tolerate wearing a mask and that may be some of our special ed students or some students who have medical

056conditions the staff working with those children will be provided with additional PPE such as face shields and yeah that would become necessary okay Oh community local health officials when the staff member or a member of their household is tested positive for Kovac and is possibly if those others in school we will be asking families to we'll be providing a checklist and we will be asking that as well staff to self monitor as home there will be a checklist for certain symptoms and if they are experienced and not feeling well they should stay at home should metaphor would come directly to the school nurse that a family member or someone in the household or a student themselves has tested positive for Kovac there's a process in place that information will go from school nurse to the

057principal and to me I will be notifying dr. Sal and then we will immediately along with our medical adviser be consulting with Cara crunchy at the Health Department on as to how we will proceed okay I have I think we lost you hear me yes okay Kevin can you go back one slide sure thank you okay so I've been working with Courtney our Director of Finance and I can confirm that we do have an ad we will have an adequate supply of protective personal equipment in place for reentry I have done a cost estimate for her for the entire years to what I think we will need I've placed an order that we will that will take us through the first four months of the school year so we will you know ensure that all

058those safety measures are in place okay all right you can go to the next five Kevin thank you so we are required by the state to identify a supervisor isolation room in every building for individuals who have been assessed by the school nurse and determined to have signs or symptoms of Cova 19 the room will serve as a waiting area until the individual can be transported home so I am working with the building principals with rich Calvert our Director of Facilities we've also discussed it with the architect that we've been working with and we will be identifying those buildings and a process will be in place to identify staff members who will supervise intial children can be picked up as part of our sick day guidelines which parents will receive and will also be posted

059on our website it's our expectation that students who are ill will be picked up within 30 minutes I understand that parents need to work and I greatly understand those challenges so they will need to have someone else does it may be that you can come pick up their child in the event that they are ill okay the isolation room will also be utilized by the school nurse in the event that an aerosolized procedure must be performed if we have any special needs students who require suctioning or any type of aerosol treatment we would need to utilize that isolation room as well the superintendent of the schools has a procedure for the closure of schools for a length of time based on a positive cove in 19 case or cases and to the risk level within

060the school community of the term but determined by the local health officials again any suspected case of Kovac we will be sending home we will be collaborating with the Health Department and their recommendations we will determine how we will proceed after that and we will be identifying a response changing within each school and the district with specific responsibilities in terms of reporting to the school nurse to me to the superintendent as well as identifying staff we will need to identify more than one staff person who would be responsible for Dupleix pollution in the event that someone is out Thank You Kathy okay so from the human resources perspective obviously one of our greatest challenges is trying to figure out how we're going to align staffing and part of the reason why the survey is so

061significant to my group is that as parents make elections and as we tried to decide where we're going to assign children how children are going to be moved through the system we need to obviously align our staffing accordingly so that's why the the survey asks the kinds of questions it does so that we can have a better idea in human resources about how we're going to respond in terms of current employees what's happening in my office primarily is how to handle those folks who may need to take time because either they have tested positive themselves or they reside with someone else or have interacted with someone else who has tested positive for Kononenko the 19 so we are in the process of finalizing training of all of our HR specialists on working on the ins

062and outs of the families first protection act which provides specific protections for people in those categories and so that we can provide support to our employees in addition we're engaging in regular communication with all of our employees and our HR teams to explain how a variety of different protections will work so the familiesfirst Protection Act the Family Medical Leave Act collective bargaining agreements that have their own leave provisions in them Kevin if you can go back one side please my team is being trained on how all of those pieces will fit together for our existing employees in the event that they need to take time as a result of some sort of either a diagnosis or an interaction with someone who has been diagnosed for existing employees we're finding that it's incredibly important that we

063provide additional training to them to give them some peace of mind on the safety protocols how they work and so over the summer from the spring and through the summer and into the fall we're going to continue to push out additional training and support a lot of it is being done through our Employee Assistance Plan through our Cigna they have provided a wide variety of webinars access to personal health and wellness videos and information on how to stay safe in the fall during the pre days immediately prior to the opening of school we've scheduled some additional training including a Q&A session with a health care provider who can help some of our staff work through things like what if my mask breaks how do I respond so we're trying to create kind of a diversity

064of training for folks so that they will have some sense of security when they come in to work and that's been something that has been well received and it is important for us to continue to convey to our employees in addition we have made sure to publicize and encourage use of a telehealth program so for those arm of our employees to participate in Arsenic net insurance plan there is a telehealth option available and Cigna will continue until October to assist in coverage of deductibles for if for any of em please do sleep testing so part of our big push is to make sure that everyone understands what's available for those employees who cannot return to work that's going to be the line share of our work going forward we are aware that we have quite

065a few employees among ours who have serious health conditions that will make it a challenge for them to come back to a full in person learning environment so we've been working with union leadership to make sure that the message is out to all of our employees to please connect with either me individually or with a member of my team who's been designated to handle confidential health matters and we're engaging in a one-on-one discussion with those employees so that we can understand this nature of the serious health condition they present and whether there are reasonable accommodations we can provide to those employees that will allow them to return into work safely and appropriately there will be a wide variety of individualized reasonable accommodations that we can provide right now the numbers are not huge we have

066about 25 employees who have come forward so far I expect that come August those numbers are going to continue to increase and so we'll continue the process of one-on-one dialogue which is what is not only contemplated by the way that we try to do business and the damn brave public schools but it's also required by the law to engage in a dialogue with folks who come forward with a serious health condition so again in addition to kind of the regular hiring and processing and onboarding that we're doing right now it's a significant push for us to make sure that we've provided a sense of security and a conversation with our folks who are concerned about what the ramifications are of returning to work with a serious health condition so that work is ongoing on my

067team that's all I have thank you Kevin may I have two minutes jack dr. dr. Fong yes yes well I just want to share with the group that the hybrid model actually is the best the wize model to start the reopening for the reasons is that in the pain that most of us understand that children are not as susceptible or not as severely impact by the coronavirus the reality is is definitely not the case a paper published from the mayor's College of Medicine in a journal of the American Medical Association they looked at a two and a half week period for March to 14 - April the third during that two and half week period forty-eight children were admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit in the United States and Canada so it's only a

068two and half way period of those 48 children admitted to the intensive care meaning they have severe illness as a result of the Cobra infection 17% of them have no known medical conditions therefore is 83 percent of children admitted to the intensive care unit have underlying medical conditions such as diabetes obesity asthma and so on and complex medical care situation so that if we want to provide the best safe well environment for all the student the hybrid model give you give us the option that they can stay home I think they can stay home if they can afford it they can manage it and we turn to school when when dependent is over or when a vaccine is available or when - basically the condition of the corner virus infection is much much reduced or

069almost you know with the herd immunity maybe can stop it so I think this is the wise approach with the hybrid model at least at the beginning and because we can always modify this you go along but that is a wise thing to do thank you check the dr. Fong is our medical adviser so I appreciate that he was one of the advisors as my mayor Belton was speaking about this prior to that the beginning of the meeting that we're going to Cole let's say a letter of which he'll be signing to attest to what he just said let's continue with the academic experience please so cam and Cal hi I'm Kara and Kelly has a mirror on the director of instruction so I know that folks are very anxious about this part so I

070want to try to do my best to kind of clarify some of the some of the differences in in the models the choices that you've made and then what we were required to put forth to the state of Connecticut so this slide explains that at Danbury public schools like every school in Connecticut was required to put forth a model for in-person learning a potential switch to hybrid learning and then a distance learning plan in that in all phases of the plan phase one two and three we were required to offer distance learning as an option to families regardless of the face so the in in the in-person plan okay this is a traditional relatively traditional schedule with health and safety guidelines and expectations followed and teachers and students are coming to school every day there

071may be some modifications to the schedule which will you'll see when we walk you walk you through some of the sample schedules most of this is to accommodate some of the other factors that we have to deal with such as having students who are in a distance learning program and also being able to accommodate busing transportations and some of the increased expectations that are required to follow by the state of Connecticut in in all phases of the plan we anticipate making sure that our students maintain digital blended connections throughout so when all students come back we want to make sure that everyone is up and running technologically they are hooked up to some of our very high quality platforms that we have recently purchased that we will maintain through next year and possibly the next

072year afterwards so that should there be a need to switch to a hybrid or distance learning model at a moment's notice similar to the way that we did in the in the spring of last year that we have all these pieces in place students are ready to go and that there is more of a seamless switch over and less disruption as we move forward okay so I just want to make sure that that was very clear the hybrid model is a model that again should the should we have to move to would be a a two-day a week model a B model three days a week of distance learning with other opportunities for the synchronous instruction so on the days that students were not in and we would still may maintain contact with students again

073we'll go over what that looks like in more detail and some of the sample schedules that we're putting together now to work through some of this again even in a hybrid the distance learning full distance learning option is still available to parents additionally special education students and bilingual students may have more contact to receive services in this model Kelly true just as our pupil services director can touch upon that a little bit after this slide before my next one to give you a sense of what that might look like and then in a distance learning model students and parents because parents are partners in distance learning engage in the learners learning with materials and supports from the school this could be a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning I'll talk a little bit about the

074fall cohort distance learning group in a second but should the entire school district shift to distance learning there be an increased expectation for more synchronous live instruction and some of the components that based on the feedback from parents teachers and students we know needs to happen in sort of our distance learning 2.0 plan and I'll talk a little bit about the fall cohort in the next slide when we when we get to the choices and what that will look like but I'd wanted to make sure that there is a distinction between sort of the folks entering in the fall cohort and sort of the overall difference between when we have to shift as a whole district to distance learning and at that point students will be with their with their regularly assigned teachers so Kelly

075can you talk a little bit about the special ed piece and then I'll talk about the choices that folks are asked to make since there are a lot of questions around that sure good evening everyone Kelly Tricia's director of special education um I'm gonna focus a little bit on the hybrid model everything that dr. casimiro just went over will apply to students with special education needs if we were to move to a hybrid model students with more significant needs particularly those that are in our self-contained special education programs as well as some of our bilingual students would be it would be a partnership between school and family to determine which of those students would benefit from coming in for additional days under the hybrid model and that would be determined on an individual basis based

076on students individualized needs and so what we would do is look to offer additional day is beyond the two in-person days to those particular students and Families again in conversation communication with parents to make sure that they were in support of that option as some of the students have more challenges with accessing and making progress on their IEP is under the distance learning model particularly those that need more hand over hand instruction and things of that nature so as that if we were to go to a hybrid model if you have a student that is in one of the kind of categories that I just described the district will be reaching out to you and having conversations over possibly some additional options that may be available at that time thank you and just to add

077to that and you could stay on this slide Kevin this is fine the ER ESL students I'm sorry I meant the slide that you are on thank you our ESL students would also receive their services whether they're in person or distance learning that we would make that happen if they were ESL students receiving ESL services okay lots of consternation around the program choices for the fall and so I want to be clear Deborah public schools position is that we too want to start in hybrid learning similar to you know some of the other comments that were made earlier hybrid the hybrid model is the best for Danbury and we are striving to get permission to do that in the absence of having that permission if that's at this very moment and we've got some folks

078who are working on that our legislators who are working very hard on our size mayor dr. Tsao and cabinet and lots of folks in the absence of that we are still required to offer right now currently five days a week in school learning and so the choices currently are based on on that premise that we have to offer an in-school experience five days or just learning option there is always of course the homeschooling option which you see on the screen but in terms of the bigger choices that families are making most families are making the choice between in school and distance learning now should the state grant us permission to enter in a hybrid model then we will be able to have folks edit their choices and to update their selections and of course if

079there's any changes in that that would change you know that would be awaken weigh heavily in the way that parents would want to make choices we would allow of course for families to make those updates and to make those adjustments but you have to understand something within this our distance learning plan and what we're able to offer is based on the number of staffing that we have available the number of students who select that option it's a little bit of a chicken or the egg situation here because many parents want to know exactly what it looks like in order to make a clear and informed choice we need to know kind of what our pieces are as well so that we can put together the best plan possible I will explain a little bit something

080about the the distance learning and a program called edgenuity at the secondary level and I want to clear up a couple of misconceptions about that and some of that may have been a result of the way things were captured or phrased in the survey to you and it is also part of evolving information that we are learning as we are working with the company to understand more about some of the programmatic features that we have access to and so in the nutshell edgenuity is not a third party that we would send kids to off to to be educated for educated with I'm sorry I'm edgenuity is a curricular platform and there is a resource for teachers to use in class to support teaching and learning in a digital environment the courses can be aligned very

081closely to our DPS curriculum they can be customized and so all teachers at the 612 level in the core areas mainly the core areas would have access the students will be enrolled in those courses and students will get used to using materials and digital content from those from those from that resource there is an option within a Genuity to have more of a self-paced course which we were considering very closely however there are some technical issues that we're working through at the end of the day a DPS teacher will still be working with your child in distance learning whether it is in a fall cohort or if the district should switch over and we're working out the details behind that on so they'll still be contact with the DPS teacher we do have issues around

082certification that we're trying to work through and how what that looks like at the secondary level and so you know but students you know their experience would be would be different then then if the district converted over to the whole district in distance learning where the teachers are largely available to work asynchronously and synchronously with the entire class so more information will be coming out about that but I just want to be clear that students who would participate in the distance learning in the fall core cohort would still likely have contact with with their teachers but would be would be working more independently and have a little bit less contact and students who are in the class obviously in person in school okay I know that's a lot to absorb there's a lot of questions

083around will I be able to change my change my decision once I make it when some more information becomes available and what where what we want parents to understand is that we will be staffing and trying to you know creating bus routes and transportation to make sure that we're adequately servicing kids who select the different options and so changing over very quickly and coming in and out of those options is not easily done certainly a parent we could work with parents to to make make those things possible if needed but they wouldn't be instantaneous they would have to occur at certain breaks where we have time to adjust and and redeploy so I know that that was a big concern with folks so your choices for the fall that you had an opportunity to see

084where the in school again traditional schedules maintaining blended and learning connections some traditional schedules in the census the teachers see students five days a week but some of those schedules will be adjusted so that we and and possible some early releases which you'll see in the next page the homeschooling option which is always an option and we can work with families who select that little bit more closely to explain what it is that they need to do and again the distance learning at the k5 level I didn't speak too much about the k5 they would likely have our own DPS teachers working on creating a virtual classroom this could potentially mean that you're not your child is not necessarily assigned to a school per se but rather a teacher who will be teaching grade two

085or grade three course content for example and so we have to be able to again adjust these based on the number of teachers that we have available and the number of students who select the option and where those occur which schools in which grade levels so it's a very complex matrix of decision-making that needs to occur Kevin you can go thank you so I do have a couple of our principals at each level we have an elementary school principal middle school principal and high school principal to briefly talk to you about some of the k-12 schedules and the proposed schedules that we're considering the first one deals with the phase one and then the second one deals with what a hybrid schedule could look like and we will start with the high school dan are

086you on yes great thank you thanks for having me here tonight try to get through these schedules that is everyone has said I had the opportunity to sit and view this chat and I think it's very important that the teach teachers and parents even some students that are on here that it's very important to understand that very high school Danbury public schools everybody is pushing for the hybrid model so what we're doing now and these schedules that are coming up or because this is what the state asked us to do so we have been sitting with the administration and the exodia NAND facilities at Danbury high school and did a tour with an architect trying to find the maximum space in our rooms you haven't got the total recommendations for them yet but as we've

087come through we're getting a good idea of how many students we could fit in in each classroom as dr. Sal mentioned there are many many classes at Danvers High School that are over 24 students and and how and what we would do with that is what we're working on now so we're going to go through the three phases there will probably will be some or two phases they'll be some adjusting guy Kevin adjusting this is the first phase that we came with and the big thing that you'll notice is while we start on time at 7:05 and 720 that no one will be dropped they're allowed into the building until 7:05 generally we have some students that show up as early as 6:45 in the morning get dropped off doors will stay lock and entry

088will be not allowed until 7:05 because kids will have to report straight to their just their classrooms no more gathering in the cafeteria or open spaces you can't have that the big change is that were out hour and a half early every day at 12:30 now why do we have to do that because there is no way for us to serve our lunches our cafeteria was the first thing that we tackled measured and found that we cannot service our for lunch waves in there so at 12:30 we can do what we're referring to as a grab-and-go lunch from different kiosks around where we have the buses and we're looking to dismiss you know certain waves or areas of the building at a time go down grab your lunch and go and get on the bus

089and eat it when you get home 12:30 you know is late in the day it's you know almost 5:00 it's five hours later or something eating so you know we've encouraged kids to bring snacks and things like that but then when they get home at after one o'clock - 1:55 it's independent practice time this has allows teachers to you know get in contact with students that weren't there it gives teachers the opportunity to work on some deal stuff with their colleagues that we have part of - Devon you want to go next one this one is the in-person modify so we would divide our DHHS up we are still discussing how to do that but we are leaning towards you know dividing it by alphabet taking a through K and L through Z and making

090a group one into group two reasons for that is it allows families to go to school at the same time and we think that's the best model that we can work for doing that with Wednesday's off for everybody with synchronous learning with their teachers this gives a lot of time for office hours and things like that but with this model right here I feel very secure and safe that we can get all of our students into the building and maintain safe distances while I think we'll get a good handle on the classrooms I don't think we're gonna be able to manage a six foot or even the distance in our hallways we've been working with the architect and making you know looking at our stair towers up and down stair towers we did not go

091with one-way hallways because it was too difficult but what we did with the towers going up and down is that it almost makes one-way hallways as you come through it will take some extra time for students to figure this out especially our ninth graders you know we will be looking to do small groups something or other to have tours or put something out just to you know not only our freshmen coming in as their introduction to Danbury high school but even our tenth eleventh and twelfth graders this is going to be a whole new traffic pattern to them we've been working very hard on and I believe we're continuing by the time we're done we'll have it pretty much mapped out within a week or so thank you Dan dr. Zuleta appers schedules the schedule

092is very similar to the high school with the time-shifting and we work together to make sure that there's not a bus run time in between so you're looking now at two schedules one for Rajesh prog Robbie and Westside and then one for our endeavour Academy so students it's a shift in our time to come in usually kids are dropped off at 7:25 and from 725 to 7:40 they're coming in they get their breakfast they're kind of milling around different so they're gonna be dropped off between 735 and 750 there will not be a breakfast it's going to be a grab and go kind of kiosk as they walk up specific stairwells three to six feet apart and they go directly into their first class which is their team in Richmond so there will not be

093any congregating there will not be anybody in the cafeteria they're gonna go right into their classrooms for a very simple breakfast learning piece will occur between 750 and 1250 we're still looking at our rotation that we have in so that all their core classes are seen looking at a 45-minute core class of elective class I'm each day and so the kids will continue to maintain on what we're used to doing in class now at the dismissal that'll be a 1250 and we'll start with where our parent pickups in our walkers and nobody's dismissed again 3 to 6 feet apart walking down specific always it's going to be very different between the three buildings we have different layouts well aside only has one floor and so it's what its gonna be us going in mapping out

094when I walked with the architects at Rogers Park we were able to talked about the two-way traffic but there's got to be someplace is where you can't go both ways and so we decided just a one-way around but we're able to get two lines of kid but also in the classrooms I know we didn't see any middle school classrooms pictures but I did with again with the architect kind of laid out a science room we had a lot of tables across the three buildings we have a lot of single tests typically and so we were able to kind of add our desks where the kids were kind of sitting ours was a 16 at that point but I know that they're working on this reinforced foot bar but students will be facing forward masks 3

095to 6 feet apart it's there's not going to be a lot of interaction and small group work like that so just so that you'll understand that this is going to be different than what we are normally doing with all of our collaborative work because of the safety of the students and for the teachers very working on bringing the lunch so students will be picking up there the building they're not allowed to eat it on the bus but they will be they will have that for when they get home and then like dance I will be expecting our students to continue yes afternoon and our teachers and they're still using the familiar I Excel that they have and andraz kids for some of our it's not students teachers people to monitor that live in the afternoon

096answer questions and endeavors this same kind of setup their times are just a little bit so our modified hybrid because again I would echo what Dan said is I preferred we are you know et the middle schools is over a thousand students my side will be at 750 that school remember was an intermediate school it's not made for giant children and so the more we pack in there the harder it's going to be to social distance them so we also like everybody else has said on this meeting prefer that the hybrid and so ours would look very similar to what Dan had said again at the times are different with the group a in two days everybody home who comes in to date we had discussed some different getting everybody in already thinking about addresses

097no not all families have the same last name and so we did talk about in some of our small groups looking at address that the busing rafi easier that way and endeavor again same just times are a little bit different thank you Thank You Christine dr. hayslett up on behalf of elementary schools able to attend Oh Thank You principal Matt you know so this is principal Michelle I am the principal at shelter Rock myself Tina Tina hislop who is the president excuse me the principal at King Street and Lenise Ehrlich was on with me as well the principal of stat they left rough for kind of put in charge of the elementary schedule which is quite a challenge as you can imagine given the differences in building sizes layouts of buildings and so forth so

098our five day in school schedule looks like as you see in front of you there the 8:05 to 8:25 is for the early schools students arrived that grab and go there and get their breakfast they attend their learning their in-person learning also includes their special area class so they would still you know receive art music PE and media at the conclusion of the day they would grab and go lunch we have addressed our concerns with you know our younger population waiting so long to have their lunch so we are looking into providing them a midday substantial snack to hold them over until they get their lunch and then travel home the teachers would stay in the building and they would offer independent practice and support our distance learners and for our late elementary schools that

099we would run the same type of schedule except they would obviously start half-hour later I think what is really important when we think about the elementary schools is that we are planning on utilizing all of our entrances to try to appropriately keep the children as apart as we can we've also had some discussions about staggering the parent drip drop offs as well as the parent pick up so it doesn't unfair interfere with traffic as we anticipate there will be a lot more families who are electing to drop their children off at school rather than taking the bus and I think if you go to the hybrid model I think what's important to note too about the elementary school is our grab-and-go decision comes from you know I know sadly ruff shelter Rock we have an

100excess of 500 children which makes cafeteria challenges recess challenges extremely difficult the grab-and-go provides us the opportunity to provide our children with a safe environment as well as providing them their breakfast as well as their lunch so we are very much in favor as well as the modified hybrid schedule with the a B day we are also looking into grouping our children by families in terms of siblings so all of a particular family would go on the a day and that would be Monday Tuesday Wednesday teachers support the distance learning they so we'll provide lessons for the students live and then our second half of the building comes in on Thursdays and Fridays so they do receive the full day they're still getting all of their their core subjects and we are so able to

101provide them with the opportunity for breakfast and lunch the specials would be in their classrooms right the specials are in their classroom so we would have art on a car music on a car the PE teacher would push into the classroom we are also working closely with our custodial staff in terms of making sure that the rooms are free and clear of extraneous kind of materials so administrators are coordinating with custodial staff as well as teachers who need to come in and kind of remove some of those items that may be personal items so that also allows us to ensure the safety of the children in the classroom environment Thank You Ana next section before we move on to the calendar and training support just a comment on preschool regarding the schedules we are currently

102still in the process of working out preschool and allowing us to alter some of the ending times for the k-12 level it does present a little bit of a challenge with preschool that we're working through and so we will certainly um be in contact with those families regarding the exact times for those sessions um just to note too on the proposed schedules that we did show you please just note for parents and community members that those times are tentative they are not written in stone yet we are working out some of the details to make sure we have enough time for to get our buses you know safely and securely from one level to the next and cleaned appropriately but that will give you a general idea or sense of what the anticipated schedule for

103the fall does look like le grande roll should be ready right yes that's correct and Granville is our new preschool location and we are expecting to open that up at the end of August thank you thanks Kelly you could just go to the next slide okay um so on this slide you will see that part of our reopening plan has been staff training and that has been a critical component of our plan I'd like to just start by reminding you earlier in the presentation that we are proposing that we go with the state's waiver for 177 school days for children which would give the district 3 additional staff training days and that would mean that our first day of school would be pushed back until September 1st for students so staff would still start on

104their first day which is which was proposed by the district which I believe was August 20th um and then we would get those three additional days to do much of the training that I'm going to outline it would not affect the last day of school as a hundred and seventy-seven student days would be what would be required for the state waiver um part of our training is going to be broken down into a couple of different components or buckets the first is regarding curriculum as dr. chasm era had talked about we are trying to invest in different digital supports to help students to learn both in our hybrid and our distance learning models and one of our efforts in the fall will be to how to train students and staff of how to best use

105those models when we have them in front of us in early in the school year we noticed that that was a challenge as we transition to distance learning and so one of the things we would do with those additional days at the beginning of the year for staff would be to train them in things like engineering and other programs and software that we're using to supplement instruction for kids um the next bucket would be on social-emotional we've broken that down into a couple different components the first is social and emotional for staff you know we are concerned about staff our staff members have been through a lot through this distance learning they work extremely hard some of them have endured personal situations Family Matters and we want to make sure that they take care of

106themselves first and so we will be doing a series of trainings for our administrative team our teacher trained team our power educators and others across the district and how in looking at their own well-being and emotional well-being and so that will be done through our Sigma plan and we'll also be reminding as Kim Thompson had spoken about earlier of all the resources that are available through our insurance carriers Sigma which is the EAP program and other online resources for staff the next bucket will be looking at social emotional supports for kids um we know that this situation that has happened has caused a lot of trauma for kids it was a sudden stop in closure of schools there has been less connectedness with their teachers their school communities their friends their family members and so

107we'll be looking at a series of training on trauma-informed instruction and what that looks at is making all of our staff that are working with children aware of what this time trauma can come in many different forms it could be related to kovat or other situations and we want to make sure that teachers are prepared and how to deal with that I'm so additional staff training in that area will be provided at the beginning of the year we'll also be talking about social emotional learning and how to infuse different activities and lessons to build on the school climate and restorative practices work that the district has done over the last few years I'm going to make sure that's that two tiers put at the forefront connecting with their students and checking in on themselves and

108also talking about ways in which our support staff our social workers our psychologists or school counselors can support those efforts in the school building I'm reminding people as always confidentiality but particularly with with regard to health reporting recording record-keeping of how important it is to maintain confidential information and just bringing that awareness to people's attention on the other side of the slide you'll see some of the training on new policies and procedures we have to put into place personal hygiene and etiquette how to teach students to frequently wash their hands to wear their masks to maintain social distance a lot of the things that we've previously encouraged like working in groups or being really close to a peer a friend we're going to have to teach our younger children and our older kids that that's

109no longer acceptable in a school environment um we'll talk about physical distancing when students are walking in the halls transitioning to the bus and all of those things will have to be new trainings protocols and procedures Forest to learn we'll talk about screening for symptoms to make all of our staff hyper vigilant about looking at students and their staff members as they're coming into school and it's important to impress upon our families that this will be a partnership with them and making sure that they're screening their children before coming to school we'll also talk about personal protective equipment and how to appropriately wear and dispose of that equipment and reminding us staff on little different policies procedures regarding face masks and how we need to reinforce that throughout the school day for kids thanks thank

110you for technology and connectivity and access hi everyone Jena jasmine director of technology our main focus with technology and access is to support the curriculum across all models for all students and so we have worked really hard to supply Chromebooks to all students during the during the spring and we continue to do that over the summer we'll also have a supply of Chromebooks for any new students entering the district's the district and through a generous state grant we received brand-new Windows machines for all students grades 9 through 12 we'll have an inventory on hand in the event that a device gets damaged or lost or stolen those things are bound to happen so we will have an inventory on hand so we can replace devices the district will provide a model for which all students

111can transport their devices to and from school safely and be able to basically pick up and if we have to have a sudden school closure they will have a device with them I'm really excited because the district is excuse me currently working to secure wireless access internet access to all families and we think we've come up with a solution where students will be able to sign out a device and they will be able to have some internet access to continue their learning and of course we're going to develop protocols for the frequent cleaning of devices Thank You jr. and so back to Kelly our director of pupil services social emotional support thank you um so just to piggyback on what I just said a moment ago and I apologize for revisiting the same topic I'm

112really just impressing upon the social emotional supports again for students um particularly to the planning at each building we will make sure that all staff are establishing that positive safe and supporting learning environment we know that that is something we always strive to do but particularly for students that have been out of school now for five months that's going to be that much more critical we're also going going to address topics I'm and have further dialogue further instruction further reading and exposure to books regarding race equity and bias and bringing about the importance of these topics particularly in our world and surroundings today in each school we will develop a plan of how we plan to check in with individual students and follow up with them on an ongoing basis for any students that may

113just be displaying signs and symptoms that they need some additional adult support we want every kid to have at least one if not more trusted adult in the building in which they can go to and seek support if it has something to do something that's bothering them we have seen a lot of kids that have fear around around issues that are going on in society a lot of students that are dealing with their basic needs you know and struggling to have those met and we want to make sure to address those in our plans and lastly just further impressing upon the training that will do to staff to make sure that they're able to support our kiddos in the best way possible Thanks Thanks thanks Kelly after me his family school partnerships yes I'm here

114good evening everyone thank you Kelly and Kevin I'm in need I'm the director family school partnerships and if you'd like to go to the next slide Kevin that would be great we have been working hard in my department to enhanced the shared responsibilities between schools and family and in doing so we will be looking for parents to help us keep everyone healthy in the schools we will be doing some heightened communication to understand the new policies and protocols that our health department will be putting in place and in doing so we will be enacting a family's remit that we will expect every family to read and to adhere to as we reopen schools this is protection for our students our community our teachers and all of the staff in the school if we all do

115our part we'll be able to keep healthy many people have asked about looking at the schools and visiting the schools that is something that is always near and dear to our heart having an open-door policy though to keep our buildings clean and safe and cut down on any chance of transmission of anything we will be doing videos to show you the changes in the building and schools we'll be doing some zoom meeting or meet for orientation for incoming children to their classroom along with that will also be more training for parents to better understand how to facilitate their children's learning how to navigate the technology we have how just to be more supportive in a distance learning model and understanding that new technology and then the next slide many questions have come up about our

116extended learning program this is our before an after-school program yes we will be open we are now taking registrations you can call the EOP office at two oh three seven nine seven four seven three three or go online at the Danbury Public School website under family and community there's the forms there you can fill out you can send them in with a payment listed on the form or call the number that I just gave you two visit our 49 Osborn Street building to pay and to submit your registration forms we are not giving a total start date yet because we want to see exactly where students will be and how we're best going to be able to meet family's needs so that's gonna be for an after-school program dr. Sal has asked me to look

117into the possibility of running some full-day programs off-site from the schools so therefore I am looking at two different buildings and looking for proposals that we would be able to run a 7:30 to 5:30 program for families especially if we're in a V model it would give parents the opportunity to enroll for a fee their children should be able to have recreational activities learning we would support their distance learning while they are there but it would also provide care for families while they're working and we will continue to from my department to encourage the use of community resources food trucks Connecticut Food Bank August 5th there is an upcoming food truck at Rogers Park it says 8 o'clock in the morning please visit our web page on family and communities for community recently we want

118to make sure families are getting what they need and I will now turn this over to chips thank you exact chip both athletic director chip Sava screening good evening everyone I'm the director of athletics yeah my name is chips Thomas trineas Kevin I want to thank the administration and all the members of this committee as you can see there's been a lot of work put into this about athletics and extracurricular activities we are follow and we are monitoring the guidance from the CIA see for those who don't know the CIA see the CIA sees the governing body of Connecticut high school athletics they are arm of the state education system so we are what's called education based F and we follow as I mentioned we follow those guidelines to the T the CIA C has

119allowed athletic programs across the state to implement a phased an approach for participation activities and athletics started it started on July 6th actually we've had we're averaging about 350 athletes a week in our program the athletes are all screened by coaches and our athletic training staff we've had very good success Kelly mentioned about the gives kids missing things there has been a tremendous upbeat atmosphere at the high school with the kids just coming in for three hours a week our programming is outside we don't use the buildings just yet the athletes train in cohorts of ten and that will remain the same until we are waiting for additional guidance from a state to begin the next phase of programming which would be around August 2nd or 3rd the anticipation from the state of Connecticut is

120that we're going to have a sports program we would love to have the kids back in high school at the hybrid having a taste of the having the kids in the building again our program uses setup to run as we normally would you would see different things of course we are continuing ongoing and established lean procedures in the process to sanitize shared equipment we're working with the state on that one of the things you need to know as parents moving forward school field trips are going to be canceled for at least the first six months until we figure out what how we're going to measure those for safety and all those things we're asking for visual trips to be encouraged by our teachers and for those students who are going to do distance learning they

121still can participate in extracurricular activities I just want to point out that if you choose parents as a home school and you decide that you want to participate in sports that can't happen you have to be in distance learning and role in a school district in order to participate in the CI a C programming thank you very much Kevin that's it for now thank you chip dr. Tsao yes these dots this has been long and I'm going to turn it over I appreciate all the hard work that's gone in and it will be going even further the elementary principals who are shorten year will be coming back we've just sent something out to him so they could spend the detailed time within their own buildings to develop individual schedules so all of that is working

122I'm glad you reiterated that if some choices needed to be headed and we have some advice from the state and parents want to make another choice we will open it up to a lot of those parents to make those adjustments so with that Gladys I'm going to turn it over to you and I thank everybody for their diligence and listening to us it has been a very long summer and I think we've planned it as best we can for our youngsters so thank you thank you on board I just would like to think I'm and everyone that was listening to the presentation we know that you're working hard we can hear and we can see it I want to thank our council members and everyone that's on the phone and most of all board members

123that have listened to the presentation before this one and I just want to thank you and our delegation we want to thank you and hopefully hopefully that we will stay in contact and that you know everybody has said that we support the hybrid model and that's what dr. Sarah has slept forth and I hope that you somehow can put it into our gonna head that this would be the best fit for Gambia and on that I just like to close and thank everyone who are listening tonight thank you so people have questions obviously bring them to us I'm sure that as soon as I have some information I will get it to the board particularly about the health ooh that mark discussed with us this morning when they construct that letter I'll share it with

124you and we'll attach that to our plan on Friday so thank you thank you thank you very much