001today march 2nd at 7 30 p.m in the board meeting room thank you for all those people in person we've got a full house in person we've got some folks in the lobby and um i'm sure i'll see who's online shortly 77 folks online so great so thank you again for joining us this evening in person and on zoom the board appreciates all the participation and thoughts around the 2022-2023 school budget programs we also appreciate working with the rtm f b rtm education and the board of finance these are our colleagues along with the public it is a long process and we will take some lessons learned and feedback from the budget cycle to see what if any changes can be discussed as we go forward with this transparent process and always look to see
002how we can be more efficient on masks yes the governor has signaled he is endorsing a plan developed in consultation with the connecticut department of public health and the connecticut state department of education to eliminate the statewide requirement that is in effect as part of connecticut's covet 19 safety protocols for masks to be worn in all schools effective monday 28 monday february 28th and on this date allow the determination on whether to require masks in these locations to be made at the local level the plan is contingent upon the connecticut general assembly voting to extend through legislation the governor's existing executive order that enables the public health commissioner with the ability of implementing mass requirements in certain settings we believe this is all moving in a very positive direction for local decision making as our
003two letters to the governor outlined dr adley and the board and our local health team will work together to understand how this will work and the possible metrics or guidance that will possibly be used to manage this at the local level dr adley will provide some additional updates during his remarks again we appreciate the community feedback on the current mask mandate and the discussion around it good news at the selectmen meeting this week the building committee members were voted on and the building committee for the royal hinley and homes renovation project can continue to move forward thank you to all those volunteering for this exciting project i thought i would mention if you had not heard this includes removing the portables which have helped us considerably with space and cost during coven open choice thank
004you to the administration and board for the work done around this program and thank you again to the public for your participation in the conversation around this program the program was presented discussed and debated through the board process and a public hearing was also added the program was voted on outside of the budget that it was proposed in and the program will not move forward this year the board bylaw 9340 provides that town residents or taxpayers may make a written request of the board of ed chairperson to add an item on the agenda for a regular meeting the bylaw does not permit a taxpayer or resident to insist that an item be added to the agenda the chairperson and the board have received requests through email to add a discussion and a vote on open
005choice to the agenda this evening i have not received a request from any board member to revisit the issue and it would not make sense to add the matter to the board agenda unless a board member wishes to change his or her mind if a board member would like to place the matter on the agenda for this meeting it would require a two-thirds vote to amend the agenda i would ask now if any board member is requesting a vote that this item be placed on the agenda for this meeting so that the board members can discuss and vote on the matter again thank you with that said thank you again for participating in the conversation around open choice and the board will move forward with the agenda as posted again thank you for all the
006hard work and the conversation around this budget and programs like open choice it is appreciated we are one community with a high performing district that continues to be recognized for excellence as i've said in the past while the last two years have been a challenge the district continued to move forward and we lead keeping the focus on our students and keeping them in school in a safe environment thank you to all our administrators and teachers for all that they do for our students every day while traveling to darien and taking care of their families also during these unprecedented times while we have no meetings scheduled with winter break coming up the board will be flexible if a special meeting needs to be called with respect to the mass mandate and proposed changes if we do
007not meet again the board wishes everyone a safe and healthy winter break so michelle we will move on to public comment good evening for participants in person please wait for the chairperson to acknowledge and call each participant to the microphone for participants via zoom please click the raised hand option the facilitator will i will acknowledge and unmute each participant for all participants please state your name and address for the record log each participant will have up to three minutes to comment michelle we'll start with uh folks uh in the building so anyone in the audience please step up to the podium thank you good evening my name is lori olson and i live at 16 little brook road north i am co-chair of cdsp tonight marks the end of the board of education's budget process
008parents have watched meetings read materials asked questions and have been more engaged in this process than any other year despite this deep engagement we still don't have answers to the following questions why these drastic cuts why were they never discussed before ad cut night why have they still not been examined this budget season we have seen a lack of transparency and a breakdown of trust a lack of transparency can cause dissension not only with the public but with the school staff and administrators establishing and maintaining trust requires effort communication and intention it is imperative for board members to remember that as individuals you are elected to serve and represent the needs of our children and our school district it is not about your individual desires or goals interestingly one area where we have heard from
009all board members is diversity equity inclusion we were surprised that dei work is on the cut list because across the board our community has said dei is important in fact all but one of you has said that you believe in dei you made clear that you voted against the transfer of ken shelton because you did not feel he was appropriate consultant for darian or you did not feel that open choice was appropriate at this time but the line items for dei consultant work in accounts one two zero zero one and two five zero three three in rc 19 are not for ken sheldon or open choice there to make sure the work continues however the district feels most appropriate to cut any dei work after all but one of you have made it very transparent
010that is not the work itself that you object to would further erode trust budget season is a process where board members exercise their mandate to make sure students receive what is necessary to educate them while being fiscally responsible this year the process is breaking down due to lack of transparency people have been disagreeing with each other for a long time this time it feels different we are weaponizing teachers and staff parents and students we need to bring people together instead of deciding things in the dark thank you for your comments this evening who's next from the audience [Music] good evening barry palmer 17 putnam lane danbury i'm the president of the teachers association i want to speak to you tonight regarding the impact on students and staff of the proposed cuts that still remain on
011the table for the board to consider i want to make sure we are all aware that the elimination of eight administration administrative positions could in fact lead to eight teachers losing their jobs due to district contractual obligations to provide those administrators with positions we would all love to hear a discussion as to what the rationale is behind the proposal to defund the school district is is there a good reason to dismantle the number one high school in the state if there is we should hear it and we should have the discussion but if the continued silence is indicative of some other motivation or some hidden agenda that the public doesn't know about we need to consider the message we are sending to our staff while neighboring districts are rewarding teachers with bonuses apparently we have
012decided instead to show teachers the door the path we're on is not sustainable if we continue to endure the erosion of talent that we have witnessed over the last couple of years coupled with our difficulty in recruiting new teachers to come to work here our school district will no longer be a premier district just this school year alone we have had hundreds of students impacted by their teachers leaving in the middle of the year and while it's convenient to blame the national teacher shortage on our staffing challenges the fact of the matter is this many teachers who leave us are leaving to teach somewhere else as a district that prides itself on only hiring the best we need to remind ourselves that the best have options we need to show how much we appreciate our
013teachers by taking actions that will return darien to a desirable district that both retains and attracts the best teachers thank you for your comments this evening who's next from the audience go ahead hi susie flaherty six week drive um i just first of all wanted to say thank you to the board because i'm rather new at this and i've been asking a lot of questions and i have been expressing a lot of concerns and asking you why you're voting how you're voting and i appreciate that most of you have gotten right back to me and i i can't tell you how much that helps build back some of the trust that was discussed earlier mr ceni thank you mr best thank you mrs achman thank you mrs mckim and thank you mrs parent thank you
014mrs worm thank you so much for getting back to me um i've been up here a couple a lot talking about dei and um i'm not going to repeat all the things i've said in the past but i was thinking today that the most important thing to me is that our community is asking for this our community is telling us that we need it fully funded as presented by dr radley in the budget we whether it's the child who's drawing the swastika on the bus seat or the parent who is telling their child not to hang out with the bisexual friend anymore because it'll ruin her reputation whether it is using racial slurs on the playing field or in the hallway or or an adult assuming that brown and black children who come here will
015be ell learners these are all reasons why we are asking and needing dei in our community in our schools so i am encouraging you to please please leave dei as it is budgeted with no cuts so that we can have a quality education that all of us as parents and adults in this community value for ourselves and our students thank you thanks for speaking this evening who's up next inside the room if two or three people want to line up down the hallway there as to who's next in the room that would be fine amy zurby nine more house drive this this past weekend i attended an uplifting event i went to the fcac cheerleading championship even though there were 12 teams competing there was camaraderie among all of the cheerleaders while one team performed
016the other teams cheered them on from the sidelines applauding after each successful tumbling run and stunting routine after all the teams finished competing the cheerleaders danced in large circles mixing with other teams while they waited for the final scores this camaraderie is in sharp contrast to what is happening within our schools by now you know about persistent racism anti-semitism and homophobia these kids needs our need our help almost every one of you have shared concerns over the declining mental health of our students i have heard you comment on how sad it is to see the students wearing masks dei will benefit the mental health of the entire community please do not exclude the people of color jewish people and lgbtq students from receiving mental health help in our schools six of you previously approved a
017transfer transfer of funds to continue our engagement with a dei consultant and i thank you for that i hope that members of this board will stand up to the bullies stand up for our kids and allow the district to continue its work on dei please do not cut funds related to dei consulting services or funds related to any dei professional development i hope in the future that we will follow fairfield public schools lead and hire a director of dei thank you thanks for speaking this evening who's next thank you good evening my name is paul rivera i live at 12 wheels road in newtown connecticut i'm here tonight as a representative of the deering administrators association ordinarily there will be more members of my bargaining unit here tonight but for health and safety reasons we've
018restricted our in-person representation and instead are mostly participating online i confidently speak on behalf of my colleagues in the daa that we have always appreciated the collaborative efforts we have experienced in working with our central services administrative team in addition to the members of the board of education in creating a learning environment for our students that has helped them achieve their individual goals and reach their dreams we are proud of all of our students achievements and of the high quality education that is delivered in our community we have always appreciated the thoughtful process that our central services administration undertakes in creating a budget to help support this high quality education in addition to the thoughtful well-informed decisions that board members have made in improving past budgets my colleagues and i curiously and anxiously listen to
019tonight's proceedings especially the proposed 20 percent reduction impacting the members of my bargaining unit i would like to conclude by thanking our parents for their support in our daily efforts and for entrusting us with your children for our building staff who demonstrate faith in our leadership especially through these past two years that have required incredible efforts by all of our staff members to keep our students in school and for our students who bring us so much joy and challenge us every day to continue to improve in our craft i thank all of you for your time deceiving and for your dedication to our learning community thank you thanks for speaking this evening okay sure go ahead thank you thanks hi i'm krista karns i live at 45th avenue um thank you all for coming this
020has been probably a pretty brutal budget season for all of you and it's been kind of upsetting clearly for a lot of us um i just want to as you consider your role tonight i just want to um i was i was interviewed earlier today and i made the point that you know we vote with our pocketbooks and you know where we spend our money is what we value and as an independent rep as a representative board you have been elected to manage our educational district and make fiscal decisions with our budget we are and while i had quite frankly little hope that our rally the other day was going to trigger all the necessary steps in order to get a revote i do think it was all within our it was within our purview
021to come together and you know raise raise the issue and i appreciate those that turned out i appreciate that it was a cold day i don't there's no harm no file for not coming but there were a lot of people there and as you look at these budget cuts on the table the fact that they zero in so precisely on the dei initiatives that your constituents have raised new like so much concern over both both for the younger ages and the high school kids currently your decisions that you're making tonight are going to show what you value and a lot of you have said that you rep that you value dei and you value you know programs that are going to work just not this time well here's another way for you to do it
022you can brush off certain programs and say that they may not work but overall you're here to choose please do not cut those programs that don't even have any sort of definition because that's not your job either that is our administration's job to decide what we need and this is what he's saying and it may have been hard to approve the funding for ken shelton's additional work and i applaud you for doing that but to cut that off right now would send a huge huge message on what actually matters and there have been programs in this town that have been invested in over the years decades even that have grown to be the programs that this town waves a flag about and and and celebrates and i'm gonna say it sports football all those things
023those programs were not even considered at least from my reading of the budget cuts no chances there and i'm not saying that's the answer but when you talk equity you look across the board but these zeroing in on our you know salary cuts and curriculum you know uh you know teacher jobs and things like that it just doesn't it's it makes me question what you what values are actually being um conveyed with these budgets so thank you very much vote with your heart we're all backing you and um thanks for your time thanks for speaking this evening katie lublin 24 maplewood drive cdsp special education chair prior to the establishment of the 6-12 department chairs parental complaints about 6th grade math and 9th grade reading comprehension and writing skills were frequent and impassioned since their
024implementation those complaints have been reduced drastically department chairs have eased the transition from elementary to middle and middle to high school with great and noticeable impact administration has called these positions critical and warned that their elimination would be a major setback for darienne public schools what then is the benefit of this proposed budget cut how is it beneficial to go backwards to a time and process where teachers carrying a full course load with no release time are tasked to coordinate curriculum without authority to evaluate implementation or calibration removing this authority places the responsibility for teacher evaluations back with building administration how many teacher reviews would have been conducted over the last 18 months when administration was focused on opening schools and keeping kids in classrooms how much more difficult would it be for administrators to
025ensure consistency of curriculum workloads assessments and weighting of grades across course level while also shouldering all of their current responsibilities having department chairs who are subject to experts responsible for curriculum content as well as teacher supervision and evaluation is what fosters growth in teaching in learning and in student outcomes having these roles responsible for 6-12 creates continuity which improves student transition and experience for all learners on a personal note i had the pleasure of attending last week's curriculum night held at the high school for parents of rising freshmen i was in awe of the stellar professionalism displayed by the department chairs without exception they spoke with deep subject matter and course knowledge without exception each one spoke with enthusiasm and pride of dhs's staff and students not one belied the risk their jobs face then
026and still face now they showed up for the students and gave nothing less than their best i hope this board will do the same thank you for speaking this evening good evening carolina magowie 28 cancer i want to thank dr adley the teachers and the rest of the administration for the work they have done so far besides navigating the pandemic in such an excellent way and making sure our children went back in person as soon as possible and in as normal setting as possible by following health and state directives i know we have not been easy an easy town to work with and i appreciate tremendously the patience and grace you have all shown us i come to you today to request that even though open choice was voted out of the budget by the
027five members of the board in the last meeting we do continue to evaluate this program in future budgets and as one of the very reasonable answers to improving the education of our children in the darien public school system we have a responsibility to give our children the best education we can with the funds our town provides and one of the areas that we keep failing is in the dei effort several of our students came and told you horrific stories about what they have gone through in dhs we heard from many board members that it is a time to focus solely on our children and remediate what kovit might have done to them mentally and emotionally hopefully tonight all the funds requested by dr atley to continue this important work will be supported by the majority
028of the board and we do indeed show that the board is putting our children first and ahead of any agendas i would also like to ask that in future budget meetings when you go through your ad cut list the member of the board requesting the item in question give an explanation as to their thought process i understand there is a whole evening separate for that one to have further discussions but giving an explanation as to where they're coming from might be extremely helpful to understand the request i'm afraid that several of those codes proposed two meetings ago by dr brett my bister brown will be removed without any further discussion and that there will be many questions unanswered i hope to hear from him as well as from mr senior mr marroney regarding to their
029proposed cuts and rationale once again thank you for your time thanks for speaking this evening my name is stacy ta i live at clocks lane i'm disappointed the board did not motion to amend the agenda to reconsider the vote on open choice dr king said the time is always right to do what is right mr moroney miss mccammon you appeared to struggle with your vote last week on open choice as an empath my heart ached as you struggled to tell which tells me you know open choice is the right thing to do but you are being pressured to vote against what you know is best to do for our children our community mr moroney there were immediate consequences to last week's vote numerous articles locally throughout the state and even across country were written about
030darian refusing to allow a handful of students into our schools and if that vote stands more consequences will likely follow funding and grants will be affected note that norwalk received significant funding for their high school because legislation provides grants to towns that commit to diversifying and welcoming students from outside the city walls mr moroney you ran on local decisions the decision is in your hands and i'm asking you to be brave tonight and to show us what you stand for miss mccammon i have heard you verbally support inclusion for years you are passionate about diversity equity inclusion throughout the many months of the work we did on the strategic plan you have stood where i stand right now asking this board to make darien more inclusive seven years ago you called me you asked me
031to join you as a parent volunteer to help you make darian more inclusive so i stand here today asking you to remember the critical importance of that goal and to help me make darien more inclusive you were given another chance to do what was right for our children in our community tonight you threw it away you cannot hide tonight even though none of you motioned to amend the agenda there will be a headline tomorrow what do you think the papers will say history is watching us our children are watching our teachers and staff are watching our town is watching present and future potential businesses are watching the state is watching the entire country is watching what we darienne do next please make the right decision not only because everyone is watching you but because it's
032the right thing to do please reconsider and vote for open choice please protect our district's much needed diversity initiatives and do not vote for any proposed dei related cuts and protect our staff positions thanks for speaking this evening good evening i'm courtney kelly i live on abbey road and i'm the chair of the literacy and english education department in the school of education at manhattanville college and i'm also the mother of a sixth grader a proud graduate of holmes elementary who is currently enjoying his first year at middlesex i came here tonight after a long work day when i could be home watching the simpsons and reading with my son because i'm concerned about the efforts of a vocal minority here in darien to limit our children's access to diverse perspectives as a former middle
033school and high school ele ela teacher and a current teacher educator i've had the opportunity to interact meaningfully with people from backgrounds different from my own both in the us and abroad i've worked hard to develop the communication skills and cultural awareness needed to succeed in these settings a process that was complicated by the fact that i was already an adult when i started to use these tools regularly let's do better for our children denying the youth of darian access to a robust dei program not only potentially limits their understanding of the world in which they live and that the diverse people who share it it also underestimates their willingness and capacity to engage with ideas that challenge their own thinking these ideas will not dilute the rigor of our schools but rather add to
034it my time as both a teacher and a mother has taught me that children are stronger and smarter than we might think we should trust ours with a rigorous curriculum that increases their sensitivity to other cultures and raises their awareness of the pressing social issues they will face as citizens in local national and global communities even while it prepares them for success as they move on to college and careers thank you thanks for speaking this evening good evening i'm clara sartori i live at 161 old kings highway south i am a member of the rtm education committee and a former board of ed member my comments tonight are my own i would like to make a few points regarding the open choice program should the board revisit it in the future did you all know
035that when the new darien high school was under construction norwalk allowed darien football and lacrosse teams to use brian mcmahon's field as the home field for darien for nearly two years on alternating weekends darien student athletes coaches parents and spectators took over the brian mcmahon campus and used it as their own a sea of blue and white greeted darien players during each game thanks to the darien parents who transformed brian mcmahon fields to look like they belonged to darien we invaded residential neighborhoods held tailgates and even a few games under friday night lights while i know that a football field is not the same as a classroom would it be too much to ask you that you consider this when rethinking open choice second considering the very legitimate concerns about the uncertainty of kindergarten enrollment
036and the new housing being built please consider initiating open choice for darien with fewer students possibly eight students four four for two schools the first year and then expanded after that finally please assign someone to represent darien on the ces rep council this is the entity that will oversee open choice in this area darien should have a seat and a vote as important decisions are made such as the hiring of high-level administrators analysis of policy revisions and communication of special ed and professional development programs that may be of interest to derry and teachers students and parents monthly reports given during board committee updates will allow the community to become familiar with ces on an ongoing basis and will not fear them when they hear about programs offered by them such as open choice thank you
037very much thanks for speaking clara good evening i'm rp tamachal residing at 369 middlesex um and i want to thank the board for being here for doing the work that you do all year round um but today's the time to think and reflect on why you are here and what why you do what you do here some of you on both sides of the aisles have heard from me and supported me over the years while i have raised my two girls here in durian connecticut when we moved to connecticut it was a question question where do we go to raise our goals at that point it was one kid and we chose darien despite a lot of apprehension from members of my own community and other people of color i have to say it's been
038a mixed blessing there are days where i wonder if you made the right choice and then i see a lot of friendly faces and support around town that make me feel that we did the right thing i'm asking here and requesting each and every board member who is serving here in a volunteer manner to consider and vote to fully fund the deal initiated this needs to be funded for this school year 2022-2023 think once again why are you here think of your children and the education that you hope to offer them if dia is not funded by you you will rob them of one more year of desperately needing the support that they need my kids are learning how not to other others because they have been other in this school system will your kids
039be okay learning that it's okay to other others is this the community that they want to leave from and and represent once they are in the larger world where they see that it's okay to excuse bad behavior by their peers and not support better education please wait vote to save your children reinforcing ti programs help every child to show up every day without fear of being their own true selves this is the promise that public school education gives to every child a safe environment for them to come and study and learn despite whoever they might be i would also like to add our staff our administration everyone has been working ridiculously hard these last two years and to consider even to consider cutting funding for them this year seems to be a very unfair proposition
040and i do hope that you will consider funding the schools in a manner that seems appropriate for darien thank you thanks for speaking this evening sir please step up thank you good evening uh my name is vaiphov muchal 369 middlesex road with the spate of incidents that have occurred and continue to occur in all of our schools i feel there is a persistent attitude that feels pervasive of doing as little as possible to make changes to how we educate our children about other cultures and ways of life i believe it is time to improve our community our children and ourselves i urge each and every member of this volunteer board to vote to fully fund dei for the upcoming school year to prepare our children to be able to navigate the global community and economy
041that they will need to navigate in the future thank you thanks for speaking this evening anyone else outside last call for anyone in the audience before we move over to zoom okay michelle we'll move over to zoom caroline comfort you are unmuted and recognized carolyn can you hear us yes can you hear me yes go ahead thank you okay great good evening my name is caroline comfort i'm the co-president of the darian advocates for the education of the gifted d-a-e-g and i live at 48 narottanav i'm here tonight to voice daeg's support for the administration and for the board's continued commitment to strong academic initiatives and appropriate staffing levels that benefit all students daeg supports the expanded offerings at the middle school in this year's recommended budget including the proposed introduction of mandarin classes and
042the proposed genius hour elective as well as new course offerings at the high school we believe that since they were installed in 2017 the dhs department chairs have played an important role in overseeing continuous curriculum development enhancing learning for all students and ensuring that high quality teaching is consistently delivered at our high school we remain grateful for the action that has been taken by the administration as a result of last year's gifted program evaluation and the work that the idea steering committee is currently undertaking to further improve the gifted program now more than ever we need to continue to support these academic initiatives in the best interest of all of our students thank you very much thanks for speaking this evening abigail hornstein you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us abigail sorry sorry
043my mouse decided to die right then can you hear me now yes go ahead thank you perfect so abigail hornstein 17 edmond street um having compassion and empathy for why someone behaves the way they do based on their experiences never means that we have to tolerate that behavior or hold space for it you can absolutely have compassion and set a boundary and we need to work together as a community to set boundaries let us say loudly and clearly that there are behaviors and words that cannot be and will not be tolerated at school last week this board took the first step in authorizing the dei consultant just as the federal government funds border security so too mustaria provide that analogous support to provide a safe educational environment for all of our children thus i ask
044that you fund dei fully and promptly the amount of money proposed for dei expenditures in our budget is not much on a per resident basis perhaps a couple bucks change the denominator to be only school-aged children enrolled in darien public schools and is still less money than lunch for one person anywhere in our town of course some of us know how to eat for free by doing things like going to what we in our house call the costco buffet of the samples and we know that some of the dei work the district could do might not cost all that much as the consultant and teachers might identify free resources available online or at our wonderful library but not everything in life that is good comes for free most things that are good cost money dei
045and education are goods are needed wanted helpful and yes we'll need money we need to recognize we get what we pay for so again i'm going to conclude by asking that you fund dei fully and promptly thank you for your time thanks for speaking this evening username emily you are unmuted and recognized uh we see you can you hear us yes we can good please proceed your name and your address thank you okay thank you for my time thank you for your time my name is liam lee my name is liam lee and i live at seven berry lane and i'm a fourth grader at tokenique elementary school i'm here to speak on the matters of the dei committee two years ago when i was in second grade i encountered these couple of boys in
046the gang and i had a couple of friends who were asian and half asian we used to hang out because we were really good friends and um these boys like kept on grouping us and asking if they were um we were brothers and they know and i feel like they were kind of doing it to get under our skins and i know and i i'm sure they know it's uncool to do that and it's not fair because it's just like they're showing that they don't like they don't know this stuff and um cutting budgets for dei committee um it's gonna help with this matter also when i'm on the bus and i'm talking to my friends people are like yelling these uh ignorant comments like i'm i'm not racist because i eat rice and that
047stuff and i'm not racist because i eat ramen and that's i mean you can't say that because it's not true people like rice and you're gonna eat rice also and when i was in pre-k one of my earliest memories in pre-k was that like people kept on bullying me and saying um hi i have chinese eyes like that and it's just not cool because you're grouping asians with these eyes and that stuff and it's it's it's like being unfair to us and it's just not cool so the dei committee will like show people open up their worldly vision make them more worldly show them um it's gonna educate people more for this um for their school it'll help them through life so cutting budgets for this dei committee is not gonna help so thank you
048for your time um bye emily thank you for staying up and for speaking [Applause] rich hill you are unmuted and recognized hi everyone can you hear us i i sure can uh my name is richard hill i live at tim wakeman what road i'd like to discuss two points this evening first i want to urge the board to pass the budget with the funds from the dei consultant include it this is the work the board has overwhelmingly will overwhelmingly support it in the past the community dr adley and our students have told us it is needed it is work that is already happening please allow this work to continue second i'd like to address last week's vote on the open choice i recognize it's not on the agenda and i'm not asking it to be
049reconsidered my comments are specifically directed to the board members who had previously expressed support for this program and indicated their openness to the program in the future but voted against it last week setting is not the right time i have a simple question what's the right time what are the parameters for it to be the right time i'd ask the board going forward that a vote of not now should require guideposts to hold the board accountable for when it is passed it's potentially a slippery slope intended to avoid a difficult decision otherwise just vote no stand behind it leadership is not doing what's convenient it's making the hard decision at the inconvenient time your time everyone thanks for speaking this evening teresa vote you are recognized and unmuted hi go ahead teresa hi teresa vote
05022 circle road i'm a member of the rtm education committee i do not speak for the committee but we did have a meeting last night which dr adley and several board members attended at that meeting i stated that i expect board members tonight to be fully transparent and explain the reasoning behind their cuts or their ads we'd never we did not get that in fact with some of the cuts we only got the number line items and if you did not have a budget book in front of you you had no idea what was even being cut so regardless of whether or not or not a certain cut or add the motion moves forward i expect to hear the reasoning behind them particularly the department chairs the athletic director an assistant principal at dhs and
051dr adley's salary but moving forward many of these cuts are not even about budgeting they seem to be about an agenda majority of the cuts impact curriculum and dei and not approving open choice falls into that category we hear time and again that this board cares about social emotional learning and yet your cuts tell me the exact opposite curriculum dei training and open choice all play a role in seo they are not mutually exclusive so the excuse is that we need to return to normal or we need to focus on remediation your cuts actually do the opposite there is a new normal and that new normal is a world that embraces diversity equity and inclusion and improving the mental health of our students impacted by the pandemic that too embraces diversity equity and inclusion our
052goal as parents and the job of our educators is to prepare darien students for the world outside of our borders these cuts prevent us from achieving that goal and in fact put our children at a disadvantage if your cuts stand darian and his children will be left behind thank you thanks for speaking this evening emily bryan you are unmuted and recognized thank you my name is emily bryan and i live at one oxford lane in darien connecticut thank you for having me thank you to the board for all the work you do throughout the year i'm speaking today because i support the administration's plan for diversity equity and inclusion in the schools i'd like to ask you to have faith that your administration is responding to the needs of your students colleges and workplaces across
053the country are committed to programs of diversity equity and inclusion in not voting for this you do the students in this town a disservice if you do not provide the skills of interpersonal relationships that their next steps on their journey will require do not be afraid of change loving your neighbor is not about caring for the person who is just like you it's about caring for the stranger don't imagine that you're preserving some idyllic version of this town if you've lived here for 50 years like me and been through the educational system you'll know it's always been a work in progress together we can be better more just more fair more welcoming maybe you don't like the details of this plan then make some recommendations but don't put down the proposal or the funding recognize
054the skill of your administration and support them recognize the experience of your teachers and support them recognize the requests of your students and respond to them as the taxpayer in this town that is what i would like my board of education to do thank you very much for your time thanks for speaking this evening dwayne morgan you are unmuted and recognized thank you can you hear me yes we can join go ahead my name is dwayne morgan and i live at 35 hamilton lane with two fifth graders at ox ridge and one going to kindergarten there next year i'm speaking in opposition to any budget cuts related to and diversity equity and inclusion in today's multicultural world i struggle to think of anything more important than being able to work together with individuals from different
055backgrounds i've listened to members of the board dr adley parents in town fight for dei week after week i can't believe we have to fight for this look at the college websites of schools we hope our children attend each and every one of them are making dei a priority look at the companies where they where they will hopefully someday work corporate america is making dei a priority yet we are here fighting to keep 69 000 in the budget to help prepare our kids for the world they are growing up in the second our children leave dhs they will immediately find themselves in a situation where they'll be living with studying with learning with working with people who look differently talk differently think differently worship differently than they do they need to be prepared for that
056to happen they need to be able to discuss important topics and work in a team setting with people who don't look think and worship exactly the way they do it is something that is learned we know our kids aren't learning it because on a regular basis here in derry and we find swastikas being graffitied on school property or a white power symbol showing up on a high school or social media post aren't we tired of the ignorance don't we want our children to be better than that we need to start wanting better because the rest of the country colleges and workplaces are demanding our children be better darien has been a town of exclusion for long enough if you don't listen to dr adley the cdsp our teachers then listen to our students i know
057you all remember when the students came before the board this fall and spoke about their mistreatment at dhs those brave students were some of our best and brightest the hatred they described brought tears to many people in attendance and watching at home that was a cry for help from our students who recognize the need for this program don't let our kids down tonight i can't imagine a single person watching tonight walking into their offices tomorrow and announcing they're against diversity they're against equity they're against inclusion the proposed budget cuts do exactly that being cultured is never a bad thing being kind to others who are different is never a bad thing please give these dedicated educators the small amount of money they need to address this major problem that we have so our children are
058prepared when they leave different time mr morgan thank you thanks for speaking tiffany o'connor you are unmuted and recognized tiffany can you hear us we can't hear you looks like you're still on mute okay yeah we can hear you go ahead tiffany thank you thanks um i wasn't actually planning to speak tonight um i thought i had written everything i wanted to share with the board in a letter that i emailed to all of you today um but at the end of my letter i mentioned briefly um that i hoped you all wouldn't support the last minute proposed cuts to dhs including the assistant principal director of technology department shares and other cuts that had not been discussed publicly i didn't bother to elaborate in the email because i actually wasn't sure whether to even
059address those cuts at all in my letter um mainly because well they are so absurd um as was the process um that i can't imagine the board or at least eight of you um even taking them seriously i still can't imagine it but this afternoon i was surprised to hear that some of the other board members may actually be considering the proposed cut of an assistant principal um as the dhspa co-chairs explained in their speech last week three assistant principals are very much needed given the size of the dhs student body and our current staffing aligns with the staffing ratios for this position at other schools in our derg i'd like to give you the complete job descriptions of the assistant principles but i can't do that in under three minutes similarly i don't have
060time to share all of the responsibilities of the director of technology but we'll simply reiterate that this is a crucial position to facilitate and integrate technology for the learning in all of our schools nor can i share the responsibilities or even all the ways the department shares have improved curriculum consistency in under three minutes three minutes is not a lot of time yet in these few minutes i've already talked more about these positions than the board member who proposed to cut all of them he explained why he proposed the cuts and how they would affect the schools for exactly zero minutes looking for the efficiencies in the budget is smart but randomly making cuts with no discussion is not i truly hope the board's consideration of the assistant principal cut or any of the last
061minute thoughtless unexplained cuts is just rumor please take the time to investigate ask questions and discuss these important roles before considering any changes darien high school has a long tradition of academic excellence and the people who fill these positions these critical positions are a big part of that please don't let one reckless board member dismantle the high school on a whim thank you thanks for speaking this evening armelle jacobs you are unmuted and recognized carmel can you hear us yeah can you guys hear me yes we can go ahead thank you want to start just by saying um thank you to see i'm already going thank you to liam lee who's such a brave little kid i mean i just i'm like i'm so in awe that he got on this call and told his
062stories and i hope that the people on the board are hearing his call to action and i think everyone on this call who also thinks he did a good job should raise their hand and say so because that kid as far as i'm concerned is like a tiny little hero in our town and it should be celebrated i also want to direct my comments i like mr hill sorry like mr hill i want to direct my comments to the five who voted down choice in particular the ones who flip-flopped um what i want to say is that you know it hit the news and if you go to the sort of facebook posts where all of these various you know the current posted their article the stanford advocate if you scroll down it you know
063you can read the comments and you know you don't have to take my word for it you can ask mr ceni because i saw him in those comments too talking about it and explaining his choice which i applaud you for thank you for being transparent but i'm sure he saw that what they say about our town is not good it is our reputation is so so bad for being hospitable darien where the d is silent didn't you know what what did you expect it's darian everyone thinks of us as being like dan gullar said inhospitable and i guess my question and not inclusive my question for miss worm and mr moroney and miss mccammon and mr ceni and mr brown is are they right because these proposed cuts the direction where they want to take
064us it's not moving forward you must know that it's taking us backward it is fulfilling this idea that we are a very inhospitable closed place i want you to ask yourselves if they're right about what they say about us when you consider whether you're funding dei more in the future i i just i think what christa said is right on it's about values and i'm not here to shame you i'm here to beg you i'm here to beg you can you please take us forward and not backward because if you're bending to the will of the 1000 that signed a petition or mel you're at time this evening okay you get what i'm saying help us go forward thank you danielle you you are unmuted and recognized hang on danielle can you hear us or
065yep oh hi can you hear me yes go ahead thank you name and address oh hi uh danielle you i live at 14 lighthouse way i have three kids that have gone through the darian public schools one is in college now one is in the high school and i have one at henley i may set the record for having the most years at henley i have never done one of these before and um i just wanted to have my voice out there saying that i agree with everything that's been said by all these wonderful speakers before me i support dr adley's budget as it is without the cuts i especially would like to emphasize the need for dei funding my children are half asian and when i heard little liam speak about some of his
066experience it um reminded me of some of the experiences that that they had when they were younger and i think given the things that have happened in town recently we do have a need for dei um and i hope that you will consider not cutting it at all and then on another note i would just like to thank dr ashley for everything he's done for our town for the last two years he's worked incredibly hard it's been a very difficult time thank you and your staff i can't imagine what you go through having to stand up there every week and get the vitriol of some people and thank you very much for all you do and thank you to the board uh for taking the time because i can see that it's multiple hours every
067week thank you thanks for speaking this evening louise waylip brown you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us yeah can you hear me yes go ahead thank you okay thanks so i'm looking down cause i'm reading from my laptop the effect of voting no on open choice mrs worm i know you're passionate about ninth grade gifted and talented idea program and their projects and competition entries sadly since you voted no on open choice you will be prevented from seeing a bright norwalk darien kindergartener class of 2022 who will be in the ninth grade class of 2031 32 from being able to write an essay on their diversity experience within their own school essays which other ideas students around the country are already submitting for national competitions now that's now our derriene students won't even
068be able to submit those entries 10 years from now because of your vote no mr ceni as chair of the board of ed budget committee you are fully aware of the 36 000 net revenue builder the open choice would have given our town with busing and special ed provided by the sending district not costs but revenue you're also aware of the 99 build that our town that already exists in our town our school district has had a five-year downward trend in enrollment 156 students five years ago that would take 30 students additional every year for the next five years just to get back to the enrollment that we had five years ago it is absolute bs to talk about increased enrollment we've already been there the darien town budget and finance committee is and i
069quote largely in support of open choice if you are indeed elected re-elected to the board of education mr ceni in november i hope you follow through on your interest to revisit open choice finally please bear with me duke i have a suggestion about how the board discusses proposed budget cuts because i think it would save a lot of time and um and it would be way more informative to to constituents i'd like to make a request for budget season 22 23 that when a board of education member proposes a budget cut that they add a line of justification and explanation alongside the budget sheets they submit since we the constituents aren't given any rationale for each cut for example one board member mr brown proposed at least twenty budget cuts this season one of which
070a ten percent cut superintendent's salary that after two years of guiding five thousand students and hundreds of staff through a pandemic while we currently have an inflation rate of seven percent i find that cut to be reckless and disrespectful thank goodness other board members thought the proposal to be ludicrous and threw it out dr adley has done an outstanding job since he arrived in our district and the board of ed's goal and i quote is to establish and maintain solid respectful working relationships with you're at times deb you are unmuted and recognized deb can you hear us i can hear you i apologize i'm in the car thank you my name is deb denial my name is deb denial i live at 66 middlesex road um i had no intention of speaking tonight but i
071have to say how surprised and actually disappointed i am at at all the finger pointing going on here i think we had numerous board meetings on open choice we heard from the town residents and i think the board voted the way they did based on all the comments that they received i don't think that it was something that was thought of last minute i want to thank the board for all the hard work that they have done and considering all the residents opinions but i don't think that any board member should be forced or made to be persuaded from what their decision was and i don't think that that's right i think as a town we have gone in the wrong direction we are negative and we are unkind to each other and i think
072that that needs to stop because that is what we are showing the children that is what the children are seeing that is all i'd like to comment on thank you thanks for speaking this evening peter peter orphanos you are unmuted and recognized peter can you hear us yes yes thank you thank you um peter or foss i live at 67 raymond street uh i it's been my pleasure to appear before the board to advocate many things uh going as either as a private private person as a member of cdsp formally and also now as a member of the rtm i have heard many reasons presented supporting the open choice and dei initiatives have been presented at great length and i will not go back will not go over them again um uh other i would
073like to uh uh thank mr hill for his comment about when is the right time i said uh would like to affirm that position which is if we're not going to look at it now when are we going to look at it i believe that that's something we need to be asking ourselves um but after reflecting on this issue at length the question i have to ask i ask the board and other people to ask themselves rhetorically um what about open choice and dei do we seem to be afraid of there seems to be a in sort of an undefined fear of well what could happen something bad could happen this may not go the way we like it to go it could be um might be expense down the road because i really haven't
074had any real rational basis for uh not proceeding with these uh these initiatives i think that the vote has uh done is to teach our kids that love thy neighbor as thyself ends at our town line i think that is i'm profoundly disappointed in that that situation i think unfortunately we've diminished the town and our district thank you thanks for speaking this evening paula sardoni you are unmuted and recognized yes thank you i'm sorry couple things i have to tap tap before i i go on so um i would i'm i'm speaking tonight josh um to remind everyone um i'm sorry unfortunately you're hearing a lot of negative comments of a lot of people criticizing the budget as is right now uh but i would like to support the board on the decision they have
075made in the last week and thank you so much for all your work on this all the hours have put into it and all our kids in our schools are very thankful thank you thanks for speaking there are no more raised hands at this time okay thank you michelle thank you for everyone that's in the building and thank you for everyone that's been on zoom for speaking this evening we will move on to the superintendent's report dr adelie good evening everyone those people who are online and uh in person and uh ironically enough just given some of the topics we've spoken about uh our elementary schools will be celebrating uh kindness over the next two weeks various read-alouds writing activities food drive for person-to-person food pantry and other activities feel free to stop by the
076neat coffee shop on monday uh where you will get a cup of coffee and with a sleeve decorated by some of our our students around kindness uh congratulations and thanks to everyone who supported the henley pto uh including our facilities uh our pto members for our story walk it is installed it goes around the side of the building uh so the first book will be by the author amanda garman uh chance things that uh cha that's right change things and uh we'll get this up and running and you'll be able to go around ours and see that storybook uh thanks to the efforts of our uh henley librarian jackie hyde uh for making this a reality congratulations to the kids in middlesex so they had the further the screening of cinderella because of the storm
077and so congratulations on completing the musical and the two shows last saturday elementary schools have celebrated world allowed today last wednesday with guest speakers and virtual uh visiting authors focusing on books with global themes cultures and settings and tokeniq had two enrichment programs featuring korean and chinese dancers as they celebrated the lunar new year our tokenic fourth graders participated today in nape testing that is a national assessment educational progress and tomorrow our middle schoolers will participate um our our friday eighth graders will participate and see the respective tests for their grade level fifth grade parents night is going to be my zoom on february 16th at 6 00 30 pm and assume link will go out to parents fifth grade parents on monday now the last unofficial day for students at this particular point given
078the additional snow days that we've had is friday june 17th i know there's some no one's more disappointed so to speak when when a snow call or a weather thing doesn't work out but in some ways i guess i'm glad in some ways that we don't have to deal with it but i just want to let people know that that process starts depending on every every every storm every situation is is a wee bit different some may start the night before where we contact our local officials i'm watching every every news station i can get every uh every uh projection online that i can get but it really kicks into gear most mostly at four o'clock the next morning uh we're in contact with the darian public works at gentile he does a super job
079for us um we're in contact with the bus company uh to see kind of our even drivers get in and into work as superintendents local superintendents join in and we meet with a meteorologist at that time of the morning too at 4 10. so the decisions made somewhere around about 4 30 mr lynch is in contact by the the roads around here and also the state of our buildings so those are all the inputs that go into it and honestly that they well to say honestly simply put safety the safety of our staff and students are just paramount in that decision and they all don't go according to plan i'm not a meteorologist but we do the best we can under the circumstances and no we have staff who travel a long distance we've had
080staff actually getting road accidents and so on so forth over one of the last storms um but we make the best judgment we can but but we have a lot of people who travel and that impacts things but ultimately the safety of our kids and our staff are really what guides the decision and um some of them haven't worked out just recently as projected but such as life a little bit i don't have anybody any questions but i'll be happy to answer them uh friday the 18th we have a pro mr brown oh hey just a quick follow-up on that ellen in terms of you know teachers who have to travel a long way and working parents we have in town and knowing that sometimes we get it right sometimes we get it wrong why
081wouldn't we lean towards just calling it the night before and you know hopefully we get it right i mean i don't know do we have more accuracy in the morning or i know we've missed a couple recently i don't know if anyone tracks this or does the stats but it would just seem if you have child care coverage for you know our staff and for you know working parents why wouldn't we just air and make it sooner i i don't know if that would make a big difference in the outcome i'm just curious if i had if i had a certain confidence level um that something's going to happen it wouldn't be the first time that i would i'd call it that the night before but i can't i tend to think things change here
082real pretty quickly as you can attest to right uh so i i don't want to rule out the opportunity of having school so uh if i can wait tomorrow and i would probably i would i would make the way to the morning it would have to be as a slam dunk a decision that uh i could make it the night before and if that's the case that's fine if there was if we were going to get slammed and as predicted but it's so unpredictable at times that i want to give it every opportunity to change uh friday the 18th is a professional development day it's also the second make update uh for henley so there will be an early release for the henley students and the teachers in the latter part of the afternoon will
083participate in professional development that's mostly uh within departments and then friday the 21st through the 25th is president's day and um it's the february recess and we wish everyone a safe and enjoyable uh process all right we'll move on to um approval of minutes um we have a motion to approve the following minutes of the special meeting in the regular meeting held on january 25th 2022 in minutes of the special meeting held on february 1st 2022. we have a motion mr moroney second by mrs mccammon all those in favor that is unanimous thank you move on any board committee reports mrs parent the curriculum committee met um thursday january 27th we discussed hated to literacy and music and i just wanted to give a nice quick little thank you to the teachers that led us
084into our let us look into their classrooms and the children that shared some of their work with us through those presentations it was a really nice reminder that there actually is some really nice and excellent teaching and learning happening in this district so um thank you to them to them and we will have our next meeting on february 17th thank you mrs parent any other board committee reports we'll move on to presentations and discussions durian public school update dr adley so the covet the covert metrics here obviously everybody's probably focused on the governor's speech and press conference yesterday and so i do have an update uh from that incorporated into this this update that i'm giving the board at the moment uh so i think it's suffice to say that the metrics within the town
085and within the school have been very very favorable uh the recovered rate within the town is 5.5 and that's down from 17.5 57 from last week this gives you a little bit of a sense of uh where we have been to if you look at like cases reported even from one three right down to uh two three you can see that the dramatic drop that is occurring and that's good that's good to see we're pleased about that obviously he's just some monthly reports check that january one and so here you can see the drop so with oops i'll just go back to this for you so um with our rates that we have uh in the school so there's 99 over 99 of the staff the complete staff right not just teachers just complete staff
086are vaccinated uh the 12 to 17 year olds we have over 99 of the kids are vaccinated uh the five uh in the five to 11 year years of age there's 55 of those students have been vaccinated um against a state number of 34 so even though it's low or perceivably low given as opposed to the 99 is still relatively high for for the state and those students we know have the the lowest risk factor of getting significantly ill in any capacity so uh yesterday's well i'll just i'll go down this order i guess mitigation strategies we changed some mitigation strategies so uh last week and last friday we we shared with the parents that we would be transitioning into normal lunches again and again none of these decisions are made in isolation they're all
087under consultation with our medical team and and those were uh reflected in the cut in the the numbers um and also what's happening or not happen in hospitals and the sickness of kids and so on so forth so they felt comfortable moving back to that normal setting that has happened this week some of the schools have already transitioned many of the elementary schools have already transitioned it is much larger in their lunch rooms right now um but the kids are glad to be back together the middle school uh given that there's there was a lot of transition had to take place because it's up in the gym and those tables need to be brought back down so on so forth so they will be transitioning in tomorrow uh the high school has closed one of
088the gyms down the other gym they're actually going to leave that open because some of our ninth graders actually if they want to go in there they can't go in there and there's there's there's a socialization there that they may feel just as comfortable in there so we've opened those normal processes up that was done in advance of the governor's uh discussion um yesterday so you heard from the government's discussion that on february 28th he's going to give local municipalities the discretion to make that decision uh i will say that the correspondence that the board did had some impact i won't say at what level an impact but but it was they have respond they responded uh to that um and asked off some follow-up questions so um certainly the things that we've asked for
089we've resulted in um so it's important that we address those obviously and uh meeting today we had a meet today with our medical advisors and our team uh emily dr canifeck and david i want to thank them again publicly for all the work that they have done on alicia too um to bring us this far uh so i will just share with you that given our rates of where we are the team feels comfortable that on the 28th we would transition to an optional mass warrant for staff and for students so that is the direction that we would be going i would say that there are a few caveats to that one of them is that students currently still have to wear a mask on a bus because the federal regulations oversees the local regulations
090that's the cdc because from flights on airplanes to public transportation it includes school transportation the department of public health and the state department of education they still have to work out some guidelines so they have indicated if you saw that the conference they're having indicated that they're going to give us some guidance i don't know what that looks like if it's anything like the christmas gardens it will be the night off uh or the the day off um [Music] i can't rely on being on time that's for sure right and we have a uh you know the february break coming up and so on so forth so we do need to sort of see kind of uh what those guidelines are actually going to be because they may give us some other parameters but at
091this point we'll be moving ahead with um removing the mass for those who want to recommending if anyone wants to keep it they keep it we continue to save for our younger kids and anybody else who needs to be vaccinated that that's that continues to be the recommendation um but anyone who feels that they would like to continue to wear the mask we would put that in place there are other things that are open though for discussion and we need some guidance on it and i can't really answer tonight one is what happens to a student or a staff member who is uh quarantined they essentially currently have come back after the five days but they come back with social distance and then they come back with a mass warrant right i i personally can't
092see them this is me just talking as a light person i think they're gonna have to if they're gonna come back it's gonna be very difficult to imagine that they're gonna have to wear a mask because just given if if the decision to not wear masks or to optionally wear masks it's just going to be interesting so they're going to have to sort of come out and tell us some guidance around that particular issue don't forget that all of all these strategies uh including the math and them and the strategies we have in school right now are all predicated on us wearing masks right so everything that's being done all the mitigation of the suite which actually i think our medical team would say that's been instrumental in getting us as far as we are
093at this particular point and in many ways uh our rates uh are just if the same way i've said on other topics from open choice if we can't do it nobody i don't know what it can do because our rates are such that we should be able we should be able to make these decisions now but there are some things that i'm i can't just give answers to you and i know parents might want the answers to fundamentally will which will be translation to an optional opportunity for students to wear masks that's the good news i think but there are some there are some um other issues there just an open agenda at this particular point and you may have questions yourself actually um so i'll just keep going just for a second then we'll
094we'll open up the floor that's okay okay sure on the new yeah go ahead sure so two questions do we have enough n95 for staff that would want to use them in the classroom we have thousands of n95s okay [Music] um and then dr adley when you speak about local control and again i know this is brand new news and there were hearings today but dr giudani i think is her name stated that elected school boards will make the call in previous times it was you in consultation with the health professionals but this was very different language than i've heard in the past do you have any color on that or shall we wait sure uh the governor said superintendents will make it okay along with mayors honestly like the policy we have you could
095read the policy both ways in terms of uh the superintendent uh just an administration just uh appraising the board advising the board on it or the board uh making that decision uh it says possible action if the board wants to do that look i don't want to get into a he said she said about this particular issue right um i'm happy enough to go forward with well one of the things you're gonna have to think about i'm happy enough going forward with the recommendation to this point and the board has been very supportive of making administrative decisions along the way right and being reactive to those i think we're just going to have to be careful over the next two weeks or so because those are going to come well they may come or they
096may not come so you're gonna have to make a decision as to uh to react to that in real time or to come together again to make a decision yeah and if i may just follow up um i would just urge us all to watch as the language gets issued to your point mr chairman you know be ready willing and able to call a meeting at any time but let's make sure we watch the language too because it was a very subtle but strong tone shift around the elected officials making this decision this time versus the last time we'll continue to monitor and uh maybe pray for some clarity mrs achman so i would stress what mr sini's saying the language i have seen makes the boe decision in an elected decision versus during the
097pandemic when sde directed that the bue had no role it was a superintendent but this language and this policy has been pretty explicit i read it the same way mr cheney did that it is a boe decision so i just want to support if that's the decision of the health director superintendents want to go that we have the ability to convene and do it so people don't start arguing well the boe doesn't vote i'm not doing it like i just want to be clear so whatever decision we make if we need to convene we do and at the moment the policy that i read is very different than early in the pandemic and now includes elected officials so we'll continue to watch that and we'll convene as necessary to stay on target with the february
09828th day that would be our goal i believe any additional board questions or comments so the cic guidelines they return this return to uh uh practice and so on and so forth is uh we've got the five days uh so that's kind of uh what's going to be in place uh we've opened up the spectators for for ciac cic is also asked the department of public health by february 10th if it would uh allow basically their recommendation of all the sports teams to not wear mask as i don't know where that's going to go but given the fact that the department of public health have sort of supported or will be supported through the legislation the uh february 28th event so they may just extend that i don't know but that that's on the table
099at the moment and uh i respect again our spectators here i've opened up uh for visitor guidelines just at the current time ever visit our guidelines like for instance the fifth grade the parent night at the uh at the middle school we've over like 300 families or so squeezing 300 families in there there's some parents who don't want to do that right and still feel uncomfortable in some capacities um so i don't want to force them to do that so we'll continue to be before this this the sexual data february 28th to continue to manage those situations uh on a one-to-one sort of uh scenario uh we did have i think the last time you're asked to clarify about this particular maintenance the building here we are wearing masks um executive order 13a if you
100may remember that there was clarification or or confusion around the idea of uh either being not vaccinated or not being able to sit six feet apart or there was confusion around even if you could sit even if you were vaccinated and kidnapped apart and you still had the word mask uh under advisement council vital we had said that we would move in this direction and also in support of the actual staff executive order 14a has moved this forward kept it in place until february 15th so after february 15th you essentially could go back to pre-cover days in terms of how we operate i might just say if we would just wait till the same you can consider just waiting to the same time as as february 28th but that's just if you're asking for a
101technical answer back that's that's that's the technical answer back there also came up with a discussion about are our kids really eating in hallways um [Music] uh just in schools per se they are they have been so isolated examples um and essentially they haven't been sitting alone per se if particularly the students who are just coming back and they have they have their different regulations for lunch time that they have to be six feet apart they would never be sort of set by themselves they would have someone maybe at the end of the table a companion that's currently what's happening right now uh so basically they were they've been so isolating probably count them on with one hand uh there's other ways that we uh sort of solve that problem we're gonna have to still
102continue to try to rationalize that we're doing that now if someone comes back after five days try to put them with the partner that's not in place now because we're back into the normal lunch room setting but and that was just another response to that question anyway those are the the big announcements uh scent look and the united methodists will have there are there is uh vaccination clinics and booster clinics coming up for five and 11 year olds so that's an opportunity for people if if they would like or need to particip partake are looking for an area to get a vaccination or a booster shot good thank you dr adley so as soon as we hear more news from one of your calls or meetings we'll um communicate that out to the board and
103see what we need to do in terms of making that decision we may or may not mr chairman we may or may not you know make commentary or just have to call a meeting because yes we may or may not have any more information that's fine duke mr rooney i have two questions dr adley one one is um the mask on buses i realize this is not under our control and purview but what will happen if a student gets on a bus without a mask well we try and work with that student we try and work with the family as best as we possibly can my students look the bus driver cannot become the police police of the of the mass is distracting and so on and so forth but but ultimately ultimately it stood
104if he refuses to work when he's on the bus right the most part what happens is we tell the administration on the other end if he refuses to get on you well we're not gonna move until you get it on you gotta you gotta put it on as simple as that okay but most times if there is an issue it's really because a student for whatever reason just can't keep it on or won't keep it on during the time of the and then when they get to school they simply report that we don't we don't just i just think it's going to be difficult to explain the logic to a young child and even a 50 year old adult of why you need a mask on a bus and you don't need it in school
105and you don't it just makes illogical sense to me but that's a different point my other point is for the guidance and when we get that to me that's very important you know if cases begin to spike i think we need to be clear to our public of what would constitute masks being brought back and mitigation efforts being brought back and to me i think that's paramount for us to have that as we go into this and not write it as we go along because i mean we'd be out of compliance today with our covet metrics with the heat map and we've been on out of compliance the entire time we've been in school so i think we need to be clear as what those metrics are which would constitute going back to masses so
106i think the governor said yesterday if if zombie crone appears or some other variation of this uh but the but i've been tongue-in-cheek our medical team has said that if there was another outbreak another uh strand of this dependent on the severity of it the acuity of it the hospitalization that the pressure on the health system all what might seem extreme things right now perhaps um but the specific metrics i unless ronnie i don't know how specific they are going to give it but our team itself are just describing it as those variables together and uh analyzing those those variables as they show up but i imagine it'll have to be pretty significant do the bus drivers have a supply of masks on the bus to potentially hand out i think they have yes they
107do good thank you all for that discussion and we look forward to moving forward with that um we'll move on to discussion and possible acceptance of contemplative gift from the darian youth lacrosse uh mr christopher manfredonia you with us mr manfredonia yeah go ahead chris we can see hi guys can you hear me yes thank you great thank you mr d so you have here in front of you the board um has seen the past the donation very doing a very generous donation from the dairy youth lacrosse association uh the amount of sixty four hundred dollars total thirty two hundred dollars each to both the boys and girls high school program and that money will go to offset um the cost of filming for both those programs at all three levels freshman jv and varsity
108for the upcoming spring season all right thank you mr manfredonia a little uh tough hearing you there but any questions from the board perspective this is um ackman um hi mr manfredoni where are we on huddle and i only asked just so that we're not asking parents to raise money for taping when we have huddle i'm very appreciative of a gift happy to accept it but just wondering where we are on our huddle filming so we we do have the huddle uh stadium camera installed um it is ready for use and ready for uh taping um we still will probably have a lot of our some of our lacrosse games taped certainly not that are not in the stadium but we do have the capacity to now film games or practices in the stadium with
109the huddle camera all right great thank you good any other questions all right thank you mr man fredonia may have a motion to accept the gift from the darian youth lacrosse in the amount of six thousand four hundred dollars for boys and girls lacrosse to be used to offset filming costs uh this is best second five mrs all those in favor that is unanimous thank you thank you mr manfredonia and um thank the darian youth lacrosse uh for the generosity thank you thank you mr janine we'll move on to discussion and possible approval of proposed middlesex field trips mr chris tranberg and miss carolyn rodriguez good evening we have two field trips for consideration but it is actually only one field trip now the march 11th and 12th trip has filled up um so there
110is no space if if the trip was approved uh but i have miss rodriguez is here to talk about the trip to chicago yes good evening um the trip to chicago is one of the national championships that the quiz bowl prepares for all year um this year it's in may and it is in chicago every student that is attending to compete would have a chaperone attend with them and the field trip lists out how they would leave on a friday and return on a monday so students and staff would have two days that they could possibly miss but they would be competing as different teams within this against the other quiz bowls for a national championship good thank you i also have ken romeo if there's any questions um he is the quiz bowl advisor
111so i have him online too great thank you no it's always an exciting program and they always do so well with the program so it's exciting to support it may i have a motion to approve the proposed middlesex quiz bowl field trips march 11th through 12th to ellicott city maryland um that is the one we're talking about no the chicago one we're talking about the chicago one they have a motion to approve the proposed middlesex quiz bold field trip um on may 6th through the 9th 2022 to chicago illinois chicago illinois mrs ackman second by mr ceni all those in favor that is unanimous thank you wish them luck and uh continue with that great program thank you thank you very much thank you carolyn we'll move on to the update on diversity equity and
112inclusion uh mr tranberg good evening again everyone uh just a brief memo with some updates first february is black history month so there are celebrations and recognitions happening across the schools that doesn't mean that we only study black history during the month of february but it's a time for intentionality and and celebration about those contributions and innovation so there's different events happening at the high school they are preparing for the names can really hurt us program so there is a training coming up in march for program implementation coming in april the middle school has its gay straight alliance the gsa is up and running and they're also working on additional visual uh representations that are happening around the building so in the packet you'll see some some of the bulletin boards our dei team is
113scheduled for february 28th we're looking forward to launching that group the committee members will receive notification on the 28th if they're on the dei team or one of the networks associated uh with the dei team mr shelton will be here to launch that team and provide some do some work with teachers and also work with student leadership on february 28 march 1st and 2nd he was also here for our professional development day on friday the 14th and he worked with all teachers in their respective groups of elementary middle school and high school we also are working with someone there's been a request to work on gender identity and expression the laws that go with that and the language so we're going to look at having someone work with the administrators to make sure they're as
114up-to-date as possible and then decide how to proceed with providing some support for teachers in that area as well thank you mr chamber mr ceni chris did you say the 28th you're going to notify committee members by this thursday oh i'm sorry okay okay okay so this thursday you will notify yes the third this thursday is the 10th so people will know on the 10th and the meeting is the 28th and then my second follow-up is in terms of the plan you know we we've discussed cove and kind of put us behind is there any way you could give us an indication where we are in terms of implementation of plan and where we should be given where the strategic plan kind of had forecast absolutely so as far as professional development goes as you
115know we have a limited amount of scheduled professional development and those days have happened this year uh so any other professional development would be working with uh teams of teachers and individual groups um as far as the dei team we're just it's a later launch than expected so our our deliverables this year were coming uh to an equity statement that would represent the team uh completing the equity audit and then just those opportunities to engage in conversations um and honestly just i would say to demystify what is dei and i think we can still do that work uh especially if we can get that statement done that's that's an important goal this year and we planned on working with student leadership on two separate occasions and we're still going to be able to make that
116happen as well so when do you think we could get back on plan sometime next year you think next school year i should say um back on plan uh i just i think the work is ongoing and so when we talk about dei as an initiative i just think it's more about a lens uh i think when we're saying it's an initiative it sounds like it's this giant change we're really just trying to put language around some of the good practices that we already do and identify where we do need to make some shifts so it's not big it's not ominous it's work that that frankly we've been doing and there are some changes we can make to do it better but as far as on track i would say next year would be if
117we can if we can gain some momentum and continue the work into next year i think we could be in a better place next school year yes thank you thank you mr c not to be no just i'm not being controversial about it but i'm just saying like we're behind we're like months behind where we were and trying to work with our kids and our staff so i just want to know that mrs best thank you um chris could you just tell us a little bit more about the anti-defamation league program the names can really hurt us just a few more sentences sure the i've experienced the program as a principle and so this is based on it hasn't changed drastically but the anti-defamation league comes in trains up a group of students because when
118the program itself happens they provide a space for students to talk about some of the challenges they experience and you need a group of student facilitators who can not only be a support during the program itself but follow through they can be part of the upstanders for lack of a better description so when they're hearing things that need to be addressed they can step up and do that so it's really about environment space and identifying challenges thank you thank you mrs best mrs ackman um mr tramberg some of this work as you notice is stuff we've done right i mean some of what's going on at the high school and it's listed as going on at the high school has gone on to the high school for a number of years so as you meet
119with this leadership forum are you talking to the kids about whether they feel they need more they need less they need different because i think to your good point some of this is the stuff we're done and maybe the board is seeing the memo the first time and the public is seen for the first time but you know american change makers and library displays of the contributions have happened so what's different i guess or what are you looking for the kids to hear what they need different what they want to see different i would say an important part of the work right now is definitely hearing from students and the program shapes itself to what the needs are of the of that population so the program itself is adaptable um the difference the big difference
120i would say and bulletin boards are a great example because bulletin boards is an easy step to take is you can put up a bulletin board and not ever talk about it so the next step that's different is we're trying to provide the space to actually talk about it on top of it one of the shifts that's happening with dei is just providing space for conversations uh and space for conversations to not make everyone agree about anything and to not feed into confirmation bias but to navigate a difficult conversation i learned that way too late my dad and i see the world very differently i love my dad and i go visit my dad and we can talk about really difficult things because we've learned how to have those conversations that's a skill that we
121can help prepare kids to do right now we we need to divergent thought is fine but civility is important and we get good at it when we practice and if we are not practicing having those conversations we certainly don't ever get better at them thank you mrs mccammon i found this memo very helpful thank you very much and i was looking at the beginning of it and it looks like we've been talking about dei about every other month and so this is just a request if i recognize it some work to put it together but because it's an area of focus and it's a relatively new area of work if we could continue to get an update about every other month i think it would be helpful if there's a better clip i'm all for
122it but but that would be my my suggestion yes absolutely recognizing that it's work absolutely that's and that's planned and just connecting to even dr adley's announcements i don't know if you noticed but those were typical announcements and like three of them like oh that's a dei update that's a di update it's not a dei update it's just an update on how school works it's an update how school has always worked and so it's important for us to keep like refocusing our lines it's like yeah this is this is the work that we do in schools thank you thank you mr chairman mr cameron is it there on the updated master agenda so so they've been they're in the master agenda and i would say some of this is also we've been slow and deliberate
123because i have to regain and re-engage the staff and the confidence that we can do this that we're charged to do it that they're going to get supported to do it there's a wee bit of risk involved in it so um i don't want to say we're the startup because we haven't been for a very long time so we've got like seo we've been doing the esl a long time reporters called esl it's the fabric of teaching it's character education it's all those things but but certainly there's a hesitancy right um that can we do this are we being supported to do it from everyone um and that's where we also want to do it thoughtfully so uh this is apparent i have a question that's maybe not for tonight but it falls under the
124dei umbrella i would just the the section 10 226 h has been brought up by a couple board members i just wanna maybe not for tonight because we have a long agenda ahead of us but um if we could better understand as a board what we are doing to satisfy that and what the regulations are around that and i would just love to better understand that we could do that really quickly now it's something that we complete every year for the for their state report in terms of how we are addressing that if you want because you want to just give a couple of updates just real quick i'll do the 30 second version uh so every year we do a performance profile report for the state and we have to answer that specific question
125so typically we and other districts talk in some general categories um one of them is about outside partnership so when you partner with anti-defamation league when you work with a consultant when you work with the nccj you talk about some of that work um the other is what are the opportunities you provide in school not only in your school but access you provide for students to go out so what magnet schools can students attend and then what clubs and activities can students participate in what sports can they participate in music festivals inter scholastic athletics all of those things qualify um under the category and there's also targeted groups like the black student union the gsa so those are a different category of of groups and access that we provide and then the final part is
126what are the goals of the district um so for us since the strategic plan uh was recently adopted and has diversity active inclusion as core values and the specific steps that would be something that would be in the performance profile that year thank you mrs parent i will also add that i i spoke to council since this question came up and i think pretty much what mr tranberg said that it's an annual report that's filed and that we should be continuously looking at programs that can continue to support that and i think we do but there's an annual report that's done and you know he said that's basically the conversation and it's two years behind always so if you look up our report you can always catch what it was two years ago this is
127ackman so on that point me ask asks also in the ass gives us an accreditation right so knee asks question as often what are you doing on diversity equity inclusion given that we have a knee ask review coming up um do you think we'll be able to show significant change over the last report um to meet their needs so the standards changed for me ask so this is the first time that that's a prioritized standard so in some ways it's going to be everyone's favorite line in education a baseline but they'll provide some evidence of what's happening now and then there'll be recommendations from that committee as to what might need to be prioritized but as far as a point of comparison um i i can't think if i compare the new standards to the
128old i don't see a through line of how they would try to show what's happened since last time okay thank you i would also say things like word languages and the travel experiences that we're trying to expand all of those things are like they're not just those are all connected and and trying to support these things one last question so we still have about a standard 16 to 20 kids who go out of district to other schools correct thank you mrs zachman thank you mr tranberg any other questions very good thank you we'll move on to further discussion and approval of the 2022-2023 proposed board of education budget we are currently working with the superintendent's proposed 2022-2023 budget so bear with us this is that um i had tonight where we go through um each
129line that's been presented in terms of an ad or cut so i will make a motion based on what has been brought up through the last couple of board meetings it will then be it can then be seconded and then discussion and then a vote so any questions on the process or any more clarity do we think we need around that or are we good yeah just to be clear you you want a second to discuss any of these other things right you you don't want discussion before a second correct okay thank you right that's the process thank you good all right um we will start with a motion to decrease rc1 darian high school count 110114 0.6 fte physical education teacher sixty six thousand five hundred and fifty five dollars do i have a
130second second mr moroney discussion any discussion on that may have a vote on the motion to decrease rc1 durian high school 1101 114 0.6 ft physical education teacher uh vote to decrease all those in favor mr ceni mr brown mr moroney mrs mccammon mrs worm and mr janine so could i make a request that you do the next two together so that we can we're not oh sorry my bad yes all those opposed to the decrease mrs ackman this is best and mrs parent that motion passes thank you so the next motion is to decrease rc1 durian high school 21-220 for curriculum supervision china exchange stipend we got to do the other two associated with this he did he did 66 000 total yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry it's a good point thank you very
131much so in the motion is the full load okay thank you of the salary and the benefits so it's a good point thank you very much thanks guys sure um so we'll move on motion to decrease rc1 durian high school 21 220 for curriculum supervision china exchange stipend by seven hundred and one dollars do i have a second mr brown discussion mrs achman i'd like to understand the cut okay so i believe i i put this one up um and i guess while i'm talking to me as well talk in general as to what i did so we'll save some time here for everybody this evening um really this is an exercise in priorities and looking at priorities in our budget season we spend an exorbitant amount of time in our budget season not talking
132about our budgets and what we care about in our budgets we have an increase request from the board of finance and from fmb to try and be around a two percent number i think if you look at our capital we're closer to five we have had situations where we've had cuts be requested historically and we've had suggestions that we need to cut 30 odd teachers or gut the music program i thought this would be a good exercise in going through where our priorities are as a board as we've heard many times where we're heavy percent staff versus thirty percent so in order to be able to enact a change you're going to have to focus on that i think this board has done very good work lately looking at the ipad program looking recently at
133the school lunch program taking a look at programs and policies were put in place long ago by other boards or even some recently as they're on here they look and see are they effective we getting what we expect out of them are they delivering the education to our students are they helping our teachers providing with technology do we have better educators do we have systems in place that are really enhancing what our students do and learn and that really should be our focus as a board so i really took this as an exercise to put those priorities forward again and be able to focus on that apparently that's not the discussion we're interested in having and that's fine so i think a number of these i'm not going to proceed on for this evening but
134i do think getting our priorities in line around budgets is an important effort we should have been making in budget season despite the other distractions we've been dealing with and finally to china exchange on its own it's four thousand dollars we can leave it i don't know if it's going to happen or not i think it'd be awesome if it did but we can just leave it there and hopefully it does so i will not be voting further on that thank you thank you mr brown any other conversation mr seaney yeah and just in a broad sense i just want to make for the record i early on in this earlier on this budget process when um fmb talked about a million dollar cut i requested that you know perhaps administration could come back and
135prioritize some of you know what what might have to be cut if we had to reach a million dollar cut um i was told that that was too much work and i accepted that but then i shifted it to some of these new initiatives um again uh that that wasn't met and that's administration's uh you know they can do that but now what the public is watching is the board now make its own priorities in this ad cut list you know taking into account some of what we heard um and it goes well beyond what we heard this evening so i just want to put that in please you made that request at this table that was not a request that i thought at that time was made by the full board nor did i
136ever say it was too much work to you or at this table my chair didn't i'm sorry about that i never said it was too much okay i'll i can produce the email so i i think it's odd on the night we're cutting the budget that we're talking about our process of prioritization and and i am struggling with that mr brown i i hear what you're saying and that is why we have an all-day meeting on jan in january and we go through a month of kind of saying what do we want to do i think what we're missing here or at least has always been the accepted practice is when the superintendent presents us with their budget that is their priorities and so they they have prioritized then we do our work mr ceni's
137correct creating priorities from that and making decisions about what what we accept as a priority but what we don't do is throw and i was really asking about china exchange we can handle the others as they come what we don't do all of a sudden is say i decided in the 11th hour to start a conversation with no rationale and then on the night of sorry you're not doing that some of you have done it old boards have done it but not well but maybe new boards have done it like i'm sorry i am frustrated i respect the fact that every single board member has the right to cut or add what they see fit but i'm struggling with all of a sudden we are sitting here saying well we didn't have priorities we didn't
138discuss priorities then bring them up we have met every week in the week of january bring them up bring them up last week if you want but i just don't i you don't need me to accept it but i don't accept it as good work as a board right now so i'm glad i have a rationale on china it's four thousand it doesn't matter maybe it matters i'm very clear on how i can vote on this so i will just add and i think mr senior and i have had some very good conversations about this but i i think what we have to think about is how we want to change the process on a go forward basis and i think the process has been and i think the superintendent has put to forth a
139budget that are his priorities and you know in speaking even with board council unless we through the course at the board table of the last couple of weeks come back to the superintendent and say we feel the budget is too high we would like a percent cut or would like a dollar amount cut then that's something he can work with i don't think it's good practice to ask for a prioritization because i do think the budget that the superintendent puts forward is his prioritization and then we go do the work through a series of meetings so again i think we have to do a deep dive after this budget season to see what we can do better what we can do differently i think we've heard it from the public we've heard it from board
140members and we'll do that work so we can move forward and i do just want to be clear i was pointing that out we did not get a priority list we are doing good work for the board we're working off of a lot of these we discussed that at lane so i'm not speaking for mr brown no and i'm not speaking to you i understand your process and i agree with that thank you thank you mr brown yeah just briefly i welcome a conversation on process i think several commentators identified some issues that may be your best executive session i think the process and information has been provided from the admin speaks to certain line items that really aren't light items that we've always treated perhaps we had full line items so i think identification
141the process and revision is necessary so i welcome that opportunity thank you mr brown hi this is ackman i'm sorry i get i'm beating a dead horse this process has worked for darien for decades and is outlined and there's a schedule and we approve the budget calendar before we even start i am getting a little frustrated and of that like well we'll we'll do a process review because people just don't like the process or or what feels like to me maybe didn't do the work to the end of the process so if you think that the budget needs to be lower then say it but just don't say it on the last day and then when people ask you questions say well i just don't like the process we need to talk about the process
142these are real people's jobs and lives we're talking about thank you mr achman i i'd just like to say i made that request over a month ago i think you would so thank you all right we'll move on um so a vote to decrease rc1 durian high school 21 220 for curriculum supervision china exchange stipend by 4701 all those in favor of the decrease raise their hands okay so that fails there's no decrease to the rc1 during high school 21 20 21 220 for curriculum supervision china exchange stipend 4701 if i make a motion to decrease rc1 during high school 21 220 for curriculum supervision ssd coordinator stipend by four thousand seven hundred one dollars do i have a second i do not have a second uh mrs achman love to hear a rationale any
143conversation okay go ahead mrs mccammon i didn't put this up i mean i think we asked a bunch of questions about it so i mean if you're i don't know if you're looking specifically for dave but i think our process is that as a part of the questions we just have to put these up so there might be times when when there are these are just up for for questions i recognize there's greater concern but i don't so has there been a quest stop at every everyone so is there an outstanding question i don't have one okay so we'll move on to a vote to decrease rc1 darian high school 21 220 for curriculum supervision ssd coordinator stipend by four thousand seven hundred one dollars all those in favor no one is favored so that
144motion will fail motion to decrease rc1 darian high school 102003 other student activities china exchange by 7 000 do i have a second i do not have a second so that motion fails we will move on thank you next motion to decrease rc1 darian high school 21102 for assistant principal by 235 do i have a second achman do i have discussion um and this i can save us time because this goes for all the administrators this to me is also one of those cuts of not doing your homework if you read the administrator's contracts if we cut these positions we would still have to pay these employees until january of 2023. so we would still need to put money in the budget they wouldn't be working for us because we would eliminate the pit the
145so we'd have we'd be paying people not working for us i just urge people when they make their cuts either talk to people read your contracts which with the exception of mrs worm and mrs best we've ratified i get they have me yet have a chance to read them all but like you're wasting taxpayer dollars to pay people not to work for you thank you mrs zachman yes mrs parent i just like to echo that this is a clear example to me that board members are not doing their work and these are real people's jobs on the line and we created undue stress for no reason thank you mr parent we'll move to a vote to decrease rc1 during high school 21 102 for assistant principal by 222 235 all those in favor there was
146no one in favor so that motion fails thank you we move on to motion to decrease rc1 durian high school 21.21 5 for department chairs by the amount of 704 do i have a second mrs achman love a rationale any discussion okay uh mrs best i'll just add i'd love to understand how how this cut was going to help us prioritize i i just don't follow any further discussion okay we'll move on to vote to decrease rc1 durian high 5 school department chairs by 704 397 all those in favor nobody in favor of that motion fails thank you next motion to decrease rc1 durian high school 21602 for campus monitor by 64 341. um do i have a second mr ceni discussion i i just wanna i didn't put this up but i wanted to
147see if i remember talking about it i remember administration saying it was possible and it could work from a budgetary standpoint but before i vote i just want to get some clarification that the intent is is possible now um if we're talking about the the same thing and taking they eliminate one campus monitoring shift to mms yeah and we give back the rationale that it's a completely different base that we're talking about from outside driving early dismissals for kids it's a whole outside campus it's a whole different rationale that's not something that i'd be supporting okay any further discussion another question yes mrs dr eddie are you saying that if this switch taking one from high school to the middle school would that compromise the safety of the high school well everything if you're taken
148away if you're taking away a level of supervision so at some level there's a level of supervision and safety that's reduced i would not be recommending doing that thank you further discussion we move forward on a vote to decrease rc1 darian high school 21602 for campus monitor by 64 341. all those in favor okay that motion fails thank you we move on motion to increase rc1 durian high school one zero two zero zero seven for parking fees by fourteen thousand seven hundred forty dollars do i have a second mr ceni discussion mrs ochne um so i i kind of get this one and i it's come up before i will say years ago mr harmon and i increased parking fees i would just say our going theory at that time of keeping it in student
149activities was that we weren't going to use things like that we were directly charging to to seniors to offset taxpayer dollars we were going to put those dollars back to seniors the board may change and and decide that that's not the theory they're going with but that was the theory at the time we were charging senior seniors but that money we weren't kind of making money off of we were going to put it right back to the kids so that's how it became kind of their senior events and i just that's just the history the board the board can make a decision how they'd like to go on that secretary or mr rudel what what changes in terms of now are we going we'd be looking at fees for students for some of these activities
150i think this was a senior lunch or breakfast or uh so if 100 of the parking fees are moved to the board budget um you would have to collect revenue in another manner or fund those senior events or just not have those senior events um it is a mixed bag within the durg they're wilton ridgefield weston put 100 of parking fees in the board budget westport puts nothing in the board's budget uses it for things like senior events new canadian is similar to us where it's a bit of a mixed bag so there's no right way or wrong way to do it but if it is moved it just has to be a you know a way to figure out how to fund senior events so you'd be looking for fourteen thousand seven hundred forty
151dollars from somewhere else to fund these events or collect that from the students so some districts charge a fee ranging anywhere from forty dollars to eighty dollars um we do have the district student activity account that you could utilize for a while but obviously the longer you utilize that uh you know eventually you're gonna have to come to some type of solution um but that's basically where you have to go okay thank you this is an account what is the typical year over year balance or like your end balance for the student activity account my what i'm going for is how long would we go at our current rate before we run out of money so we have a little over 80 000 in that district student activity account um so if you were to
152you know take 14 000 out of that you know every year plus a little bit of what we take for scholarships and assuming we sweep in there would be a good amount of years before you would you know run short at least over five any other further discussion uh may have a vote to increase rc1 darien high school 10207 for parking fees by 14 740 dollars all those in favor that is mr ceni um mr moroney mrs mccammon um mr dineen and mrs worm uh all those opposed mrs best um mrs ochman and mrs parent so that motion moves forward i think we'll need further conversation as to how to work with our seniors and all those activities and events that go forward should but i think we have to look at the other student
153activity accounts and funding of those next motion to decrease rc3 middlesex middle school 21 21 5 for department chairs by 149 553 do i have a second no second so that motion fails we'll move forward motion to decrease rc3 middlesex middle school two four zero zero one for genius hour by sixteen thousand one hundred and twenty five dollars do i have a second this is warm so um i'm not going to support it but i do i i am going to make a request um we need a second we need a second second second second good discussion thank you i'm going to request that this is optional and not mandatory for students one of my issues with it was that it's going to increase stress on children we didn't speak to the children to ask
154them if they wanted it i would just ask that it would be optional anything you want to add dr adley here [Music] i appreciate your comments i see it differently the school sees it differently and and it's it's respectful and it's where it's going to stand as a as a requirement for all the kids so then i would ask they would like to see um an update once the program kicks off and and i think it would be important too to get some student thanks i feedback that thank you um uh so that was second we had discussions so vote to decrease rc3 middlesex middle school 24011 for genius hour by sixteen thousand one hundred twenty five dollars all those in favor thank you that motion fails we move on motion to decrease rc5 hinley
155five one zero five three four four point two fte physical education teacher by fourteen thousand seven hundred and seventy two dollars do i have a second okay um [Music] so that motion fails all right um [Music] motion to decrease rc11 athletics 110114 for athletic director by 221 thousand 291 dollars do i have a second mrs ochman discussion mrs ottman well i have some that this isn't the athletic director's position this is the director of physical education who is also the athletic director so this whole line is pulling together all our phys ed teachers making sure our playgrounds are safe making sure everything's on on track so one the cut can't i mean we could get rid of it and pay someone to january 2023 again for fun but it also isn't just an athletic director
156there are teachers involved here there's supervision involved here there's safety involved here actually technically can't get rid of it correct yeah legally we have to have an athletic director in that role you need someone with a certification yes correct thank you any further conversation okay good sorry this is a case of people that doing that work thank you um so now we'll move to a vote to decrease rc11 athletics one one zero one one four for athletic director by 221 291 dollars all those in favor uh there's no one that motion fails thank you motion to decrease rc12 maintenance 71001 for a groundskeeper by 100 3 825. keep in mind that is fully loaded with benefits uh we have a second mr moroney discussion so for me i'm just trying to eliminate as many positions
157that don't touch students and i don't feel that the administration mr lynch have made a compelling case to plan this full-time equipment thank you mr rooney further discussion mrs mccammon i won't be voting for it not so much because the administration hasn't made a compelling case but because i do think the budget's high and i want i want to eliminate things that don't directly impact students we'll move forward to a vote to decrease rc-12 maintenance 71001 for groundskeeper by 103 825 all those in favor that is mr ceni mr brown mr moroney mrs mccammon mr dineen and mrs worm all those opposed mrs ochman mrs best and mrs parent that motion moves forward thank you next motion to increase rc13 music 65005 for music uniforms by 8 307 dollars may have a second mrs best
158discussion matt yes mrs best thank you thank you um as i've said before this this attire is required for students who take these courses to complete their coursework for their grades and their credit in these classes and it has historically been the practice of this board and district to provide students with the materials they need to to participate in their coursework thank you mrs best any further discussion mrs perrin we paid for uniforms for athletics that are extracurricular these are curricular and it's my strong opinion that they should be supportive again just remind me these specific to band this is banned chorus and orchestra at the high school where they are in the middle school there's like a a dress code in the high school they have specific attire that they're required to wear and
159they have to participate in x number of concerts right per year for their grades thank you mr sini um this is another example of policy kind of creeping into our budget session so i think we should have the conversation but i won't be supporting it this year thank you mr c any further discussion all right um a vote to increase rc13 music 65005 for music uniforms by 8 370 300 sorry hundred and 8 dollars all those in favor mrs best mrs ochman and mrs parent all those opposed mr ceni mr brown miss mr maroney mrs mccammon mr denis mrs worm all right that motion fails next motion to increase rc15 technology 13045 for software maintenance open gov by 109 350 dollars may have a second there is no second that motion fails thank you motion
160to decrease rc 15 technology 21201 for director of instructional technology by 221 291 dollars may have a second all right no second that motion does not move forward next motion to decrease rc15 technology 11044 for technology support by 102 970 dollars do i have a second second mr barron discussion so again this to me is not so student-facing and i feel it's a management issue where it's one hour at the high school tools at middlesex and i think along with byod that i think we can live without this but one person's opinion thank you mr rooney any further discussion i guess i i would just ask i don't know anything to add mr rudel or dr adley on with the change in the one-to-one you know is there any any other insight other than what
161we've heard around this position so physicians based at the middle school right so the impact of one to one doesn't affect uh the need for the technician okay clarity the size of the middle school at 1400 students plus over 100 staff it wouldn't be possible to run that school with just one technician and then moving the other uh to the middle school okay thank you we may have a vote to decrease rc 15 technology 11044 for technology support by 102 970 dollars keep in mind that's fully loaded with benefits so all those in favor of a decrease mr brown mr moroney all those opposed mr ceni mrs best mrs ackman mrs mccammon mr dineen and mrs worm so that motion fails thank you we'll move on motion to decrease rc 16 administration one two zero
162zero one for consulting services demographer by ten thousand dollars do i have a second mr brown any discussion mr brown so i sent an email to rich that there was an error in this uh 1612001 all those different line items my intention was only to cut the 10 000 for the open choice liaison which i believe since we're not doing open choice is no longer an effect so i would take all of these 16 rc rows off if possible okay so we'll let them fail okay so um [Music] it was a second don't we have to vote sorry just comment yeah but i i think we should take that b-o-e vote five to four and place it next to the eliminate open choice league we have yeah okay so just just for record keeping on
163the description it's i don't is it there i can't no it's still dave brown up there as well so just just when you guys finalize everything yeah thank you so we'll uh vote on a decrease of rc 16 administration one two zero zero one for consulting services demographer by ten thousand dollars um all those in favor that motion fails thank you a motion to decrease rc 16 administration one two zero zero one for consultant services weather service by twenty five hundred dollars do i have a second you sure you wanna keep the same guy i'm sorry yeah we're a lady i thought you had al roker's cell phone that motion uh no second that motion fails thank you motion to decrease rc16 administration one two zero zero one for consultant services superintendent discretionary consultants by
164six thousand dollars do i have a second no that motion fails thank you motion to decrease rc 18 personnel one two zero zero one for budget control by seventy two thousand eight hundred and seven dollars do i have a second mr ceni discussion so that that's mine and rich did a great job of going back and looking back to fiscal year 18. and you know if you take last year out fiscal year 21 just because we used it for spacing and last year was last year um you know i know i've been harping on the fact that we have uh enrollment that's difficult to forecast but i look at back at the history and i think we can move forward with two budget control items for the next fiscal year this is ahmad so my
165concern with that is we do use this for staff we use it for special education paras that might come up we've talked a lot about remediation which i would urge the board to have more definition about what that means but if we think we're seeing upticks in slp if we think we're seeing upticks and services that might be another area where we would pull pairs from also additionally it was referenced in oxford that one year we ended up with large classes part of that is due to spacing but that class actually tipped and we put we're able to put a pair in there to help support that um but not take on a full new fte at the teaching level so i think given the number of sections that break three is wise but i
166leave it to board discussion further discussion this is best and i was just going to reiterate that we have three classes at three elementary schools that are within one student of breaking right now as projected three sounds reasonable to me any other discussion the fact that there's three classes that are already highlighted that are very very close to tipping three makes sense to me well and i go ahead mrs zach i would note that sometimes there were questions about you know enrollment programs why would you do it these are all at the upper levels these are none of these are at the kindergarten level other than royal so i think these are kind of our students we've kind of been known and tracking um and due to class size standard those are that's what's causing
167the breakage in some of these okay and this decrease brings down the budget control to two ftes just so everyone understands this has been canada i'm comfortable using a historical average for this um i think if we really do run into difficulties we have to have a different conversation um and we can anyway sorry okay no thank you any further discussion okay we will vote to decrease rc 18 personnel one two zero zero one for budget control by seventy two thousand 807 dollars uh all those in favor mr ceni mr brown mr maroney mrs mccammon mrs worm all those opposed this is best mrs achman mr janine and mrs parent so that moves forward motion to decrease rc19 curriculum one two zero zero one for consultant services by twenty thousand dollars uh may have a
168second mr c conversation any conversation all right mr maroney so it's my understanding that this is how we when we propose cuts which i will not be supporting is how we how we talk to the public and let them know that we're that we're hearing them and that we've heard from both sides and especially tonight we heard very pro that this is important but in pre in previous meetings we've heard how people don't want to continue with mr shelton and some of these other people that we're working with so it's just to alert the public to get the feedback that we got and tonight was very powerful feedback which has caused me not cause but strengthen my resolve that we need to continue to do this and i will be supporting not supporting the cut
169thank you mr rooney any further discussion mrs zachman i think we're voting on a budget and dollars in it and that's what we're doing tonight and that's what these cuts are thank you mrs any further discussion we'll move forward on a vote to decrease rc 19 curriculum one two zero zero one for consultant services by twenty thousand dollars all those in favor mr sini mrs mccammon and mrs worm all those opposed mrs best mrs ochman mr moroney mr dineen abstaining so that motion passes um motion to decrease rc19 curriculum yeah all right thank you uh motion to decrease rc19 curriculum one two zero zero one for dei consultant services by forty five thousand dollars may have a second there's no second so that motion fails thank you motion to decrease rc19 curriculum two five zero
170zero three for professional development equitable instruction practices by twenty four thousand dollars may have a second mrs ackman discussion mrs achman so i do think some of the concern that we heard from parents this fall was on dei the language can be hard and we want to make sure our teachers are using great teaching practices to let both points of view or multiple points of view on any issue be heard i think just as we've struggled sometimes finding language that it is really important to train teachers so that they can respect all points of view and i'm not putting our teachers down i'm saying this is hard for all of us to do and so if we if we really want to empower our teachers to be able to make kids feel comfortable expressing a
171variety of different points of view i would think that we would want to support pd that would give them instruction on um equitable instruction practices right so that nobody feels as if their point of view is less value valid so this seems to me to be maybe an attempt to tell me if i'm wrong to answer some of those concerns and really train our teachers and coach them how to have really hard conversations um respecting that there are different points of views and different value systems and a whole host of different perspectives that come into your classroom thank you mrs any further discussion we'll move to a vote to decrease rc19 curriculum 25003 for professional development equitable instructional practices by twenty four thousand dollars all those in favor that motion fails we move forward thank
172you last motion to increase rc 26 darion high school one four three zero zero three for elp tuition by three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars um rick just a rick rich most beginningly um again we are increasing our percentage to four percent all right um second second you'll second it discussion okay we'll move forward with a vote to increase rc26 darien high school one four three zero zero three for elp tuition by three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars all those favor mr ceni mrs best mrs ochman mr maroney mrs mccammon mr dineen mrs parent and mrs worm uh any any opposed any abstaining mr brown that motion moves forward thank you so if we have worked through thank you thank you for the the conversation and the questions so we've worked through our
173cut list do you have a an update mr um brutal yep uh so the total reductions were 225 so the budget would be 110 million 607 thousand and 16 or a 3.74 i'm sorry can you just say that again uh 110 million 607 000 16 or 3.74 thank you all for the work um any other questions or comments all right thank you i do i'm sorry i just want to follow up i mean to dennis's point earlier and we heard some criticism about people putting items on the ad cut list if you look back to just last year he was one of us was getting criticized for not putting things on the ad cut list until too late so again the process will discuss it but this was a great way and this is a
174great way to show interest and discussion they're not final decisions until we just go through that exercise so i just want to point that out thank you mr ceni mrs parent i don't know that i would say it's a great way to fire up some administrators and teachers whose jobs were on the line i think that was callous i think there's better ways to have this conversation thank you mrs parent mrs ackman so mr c and i agree more tonight than we disagree and that up until maybe last week and and a while ago maybe pre-co would we used to hold a finance committee meeting in between and we don't have to do it that way we would really signal hey that was a question i've gotten answers back i guess what i was objecting
175to to be specific is mr moroney respectfully that when you say i'm not really serious about it i think by the time we get tonight we're supposed to be serious about it because it's on the chopping block i will couch my comments and to say yes mr i think there's always room to hear more opinions i'm glad we do public comment to do that but i think by the time we get tonight i will see that and we are not final until we vote but i think we should be at least be serious by the time we get to tonight thank you mrs mr brown you know i i would just like to you know point out that we do work in public transparencies is important and we've seen that the entire process has been
176transparent front to back and you know to the point of what's serious what's not i think it's all serious and i think when all this work is done we've gotten through our entire deliberative process and we go to vote as a board i think it's important we all support each other's work and vote affirmatively so i would hate to have something as reckless as voting against a budget voted on by the entire board after doing its work so i'm glad we had the chance to do this in a transparent fashion okay let's be clear that's an objection to what i did last year so i mean if we want to take shots like that i get it you've taken some shots tonight i was very clear that i was concerned that our budget last year
177didn't meet state statute i shared that with the board i shared that with our superintendent and i shared that with mr dineen i said i supported the budget but i had this concern i feel like i was open and transparent about it we can keep bringing it up if we'd like i don't know that it's productive that it doesn't talk about the work that happened this year i stand by my vote last year and and i would be happy to talk to anyone who has questions about why and how i did it it had to do with a reading of statute i felt differently than other members and i supported the way they voted but we can keep reliving last year to justify this here if you'd like we could do it all night thank
178you mrs mrs mccann i'm just going to suggest that we keep moving through the process there's been a lot of shots taken tonight i really do think that we benefited last year from some period of self-reflection when we moved on it we are always growing and learning and we have to be willing to to look at what we did and see if it how it and to understand the impact on on the people we work with and the people around us and so i i would i hope we will go through a period of self-reflection after this budget but i i'd like to just finish tonight thank you mrs mccammon i'll move um uh for a motion to approve the 2022-2023 um budget that we just reviewed with the cuts and the additions that we
179just approved may have a motion to approve the board of ed budget for the 2022-2023 um school year mr ceni um second mrs best all those in favor that is unanimous so we have a budget we've moved from the superintendent's proposed budget to the board of ed budget i think the next meeting uh is our presentation to the board of finance on march 1st i see mr palin in the audience right excuse me we have capital yeah we have to yeah we have to go through capital too so we'll move on to action yep [Music] so we'll move on to any um there were no recommended changes to the capital budget any further discussion no no there's one okay okay good thank you um no it's not on there that's all right um i will
180make a motion to eliminate the hvac replacement um under capital for the central office this office in this particular room for 155 thousand dollars may have a second for that cut second mr maroney discussion any further discussion we'll move to a vote uh to decrease uh the capital for central office for the hvac replacement system by 155 000 all those in favor mr brown and mr moroney all those again opposed mr ceni mrs best mrs ochman mccammon mr dineen and mrs parent i will make a motion to move forward and approve the capital budget as presented uh for two million eight hundred and twenty one thousand four hundred and seventy seven dollars do i have a second mrs mccammon any discussion we'll move to a vote to approve the superintendent's recommended capital budget for fiscal
181year 23 2821 477 all those in favor mr seaney mrs best mr brown mrs ochman mr maroney mrs mccammon mr dineen mrs parent and mrs worm so that moves forward approval of the capital budget thank you so we have a uh 2022-2023 operating and capital budget moving to from the superintendent's provost budget to the board of ed so thank you very much we'll move on to further discussion and action on proposed revisions to board of education policies 1025 automatic external defibrillators 1050 possession of deadly weapons or firearms 1075 green cleaning programs 1125 pool safety plan 1150 sexual offenders 1175 prohibition against smoking 1275 freedom of information and freedom of information request log in 1300 non-discrimination community mrs achman and mrs scion um you all saw these during the last cycle i haven't received any questions
182on them in between if there are tonight i guess mrs cyan and i could approach them but we haven't received anything okay thank you mr zachman any further discussion or questions on those policies i just read through all right i will move to um action to a vote on the proposed revisions to board of education policies 1025 automatic external defibrillators 1050 possession of deadly weapons and firearms 1075 green cleaning programs 1125 pool safety plan 1150 sexual offenders 1175 prohibition against smoking 1275 freedom of information and freedom of information request log 1300 non-discrimination community all in favor of um the pros the proposed revisions to those policies um mrs best um sorry motion to prove second mr ceni all those in favor that is unanimous those policies move forward thank you very much we'll move on
183to further discussion in action on board master agenda for february through august 2022 there were some updates dr adley yeah these just reflect the uh diversity equity inclusion regular update to the board and also the which will be part of the curriculum update the library reimagined sort of like the curricular instructional function of the libraries good thank you any further questions or discussion on the proposed board of education master agenda for february 2022 through august 2022 i may have a motion to approve that mrs mccammon ii mrs zochman all those in favor that is unanimous for the board of education master agenda february 2022 through august 2022 we move on to personal action we will move on to action items personal items appointment resignations and retirements mrs scion um just a quick shout out to
184um the high school administration for the ability to replace a biology teacher in january so thank you to them and those kids will have real biology thank you mrs science we have a motion to approve the par report as presented mr moroney second by mr brown all those in favor that is unanimous thank you very much we'll move back to public comment um michelle we will start with any of our folks in the room i'm not i doubt i guess there's nobody in the hallway so anyone uh in the room that would like to step up to the podium all right thank you um michelle anyone on zoom armel jacobs you are unmuted and recognized carmel can you hear us uh i can hear you let me just start my video hi um i know
185it's a long night just want to say a quick word of thanks for preserving what was in the budget for dei and i it is not lost on me um the way we're moving forward so thank you to the people who are standing up for taking us into the future of the 21st century so thank you thank you that's all thanks for speaking our mouth thank you have a good evening you too thank you guys michelle anyone else there are no more raised hands at this time all right thank you thank you for those folks joining us in person on zoom again thank you for all the conversation and the feedback um may have a motion to adjourn this is best second by mr ceni all those in favor we will see if we need
186another meeting before the 20