Board of Education Meeting - November 9, 2021

001dave good evening everyone um in accordance with the board of education policy as a senior member of the board i would like to call this organizational meeting of the board of education to order for the purpose of electing officers pursuant to our policy i will ask for nominations for each of the positions chairperson vice chairperson and secretary once all of the nominations have been made and seconded we will then vote position by position we'll start we have a motion may i have a nomination for chairperson mrs parent i would like to nominate you david dineen thank you mr parent do i have a second second uh are there any other nominations all right seeing there are no other nominations for chair we have nominations for vice chair mr maroney i would like to nominate joe

002mccammon mrs mckevin is there a second mr ceni will second that are there any other nominations for vice chair thank you may have nominations for secretary mr ceni uh i would like to know is there a second second is best um are there any nominations for secretary now that all nominations and seconds are in order we will vote on each position all those in favor of electing david dineen for the position of chair please indicate by rising your hand that is unanimous with mr brown anyone opposed no anyone abstained david diane is elected chair of the board of education thank you very much i appreciate that um all those in favor of electing joe mccammon for the position of vice chair please indicate that by raising your hand hi that is best scenie moroney worm

003janine mccammon and parent any opposed and mr brown any opposed mrs zachman opposed any abstentions no jill mccammon is elected vice chair for the board of education congratulations [Applause] all those in favor of electing sarah parent for the position of secretary please indicate that by raising your hand that is unanimous including mr brown thank you uh sarah parent is elected as the secretary of the board of education congratulations to everyone um may have a motion to adjourn this meeting mr ceni second by mrs ochman thank you i would like to call this regular meeting of the board of education to order the next regular board of education meeting is on tuesday november 23rd at 7 30 pm in the board meeting room um if you want to switch chairs sure um i want to move

004over here jill and sarah moves around tara play a little little musical chair tara tara sarah [Music] all right [Music] so we'll move on to the chairperson's report i will open it up for a minute if uh mrs parent would like to say anything congratulations uh welcome the secretary thank you okay good thank you mrs welcome to the vice chair thank you anything okay good all right good thank you and i i want to thank you for the last year the board the new members uh over the last year thank you very much it's an honor and a privilege to serve up here with this team of folks and work with the administration work with the parents in supporting our students and working with the teachers in the administration thank you very much um so

005good evening thank you again for all of those joining in person and on zoom this evening we welcome our new board members julie best and tara worm to our board table the election is behind us we now move forward as a community that works together listens together and most importantly respects each other well there has been public conversations social media texts and emails over the last few days around board process and board action there was no action needed on behalf of the board we move forward after the election we are a team of nine volunteers who come together at the board table to do the work on behalf of our students are our main priority we will do that work with our administration our teachers our parents and our community partners we have work to

006do as a community and we all must be involved we will hear more from dr adley on the work around diversity equity and inclusion and our strategic plans these plans are almost two years of board work done at this table with stakeholders from across the district in the community living documents that will guide us forward and it will will evolve and change as we work together as i said at the last meeting we have done so much good work and set the stage during a pandemic that we continue to invest and move our district forward as a high performing district and one that continues to be ranked as one of the best in the state and the country we should be proud of what our students accomplish in the classroom on the stage in music

007on the field and in the community we call home our teachers administration this board and our parents all have a stake in the success of our schools as we go forward i have a quick story uh because i've been part of this board for a long time we started a conversation about unified sports several years ago and you can have the longest hardest most difficult day on earth and when my daughter started in unified sports i think there were four students and a big shout out to paul brager last week i attended the first round robin soccer team for unified sports up in westport shirley klein attended and our children in that program along with buddies from the high school had a round robin soccer tournament they went up on a coach bus they had

008their buddies seniors and juniors and they played three different games of soccer up at westport against other teams so it was a vision to behold it was mission accomplished it was a lot of hard work by a lot of people and that's i think what this community and this board is all about and again you can have the worst day on earth and you sit there and watch those kids my daughter playing goalie a little cringe-worthy but okay when the ball heads towards her but you know they had fun and it was a group effort and a team effort so really proud of how that whole program has come together the board looks forward to the year ahead and working collaboratively collaboratively with all of you thank you we move forward as a community we

009will move on to public comment we will start with our friends in the audience michelle do you want to tee up public comments absolutely if you would like to speak during public comment and you are in person please wait as a chair directs you to the podium if you are on zoom please click the participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option the facilitator will identify you and announce that you are unmuted for public comments once recognized and unmuted please state your name and address you will have up to three minutes to comment thank you please proceed hello my name is sydney meyer i live at 82 narraton avenue my pronouns are she her and i'm a senior at darien high school i would like to begin with

010a story from a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous this person is from morocco in northern africa and is very proud of that fact this story broke my heart and i hope it inspires the change we need on the first day of their world history classes middle east unit the teacher asked the class to write on the board what comes to mind when they think of the middle east several students wrote words such as ak-47 muslims terrorism war and poverty my friend spoke up and pointed out that those words are negative insensitive and largely untrue one student replied with of course you'd be defending the terrorists you're one of them my friend is neither middle eastern nor muslim the teacher said nothing in my own world history class that same year there were

011several boys in the class who would consistently derail the class with sexist homophobic transphobic and racist remarks the teacher said nothing when i attempted to speak up i was not only called names and ridiculed but i was harassed by those same boys for weeks afterwards to the point where i was afraid to go to class i knew in those moments that i was not safe in that classroom because the teacher had stayed silent these are just two examples but there are so many more i sincerely hope that these stories frustrate you and scare you as much as they frustrate and scare me i am bisexual i am a proud member of the lgbtq plus community i deserve to see myself represented in my curriculum my peers in the black student union deserve to see themselves

012represented in their curriculum my best friend deserves to see her latina heritage represented in the curriculum every single person regardless of background deserves that we spent 12 years of our lives learning about western civilization white people and colonization this semester i am lucky enough to be a member of the new african american and black studies course at dhs taught by the wonderful catherine fulton not once until this year did i learn that african people explored and conquered europe long before alexander the great not once before this year did i learn about the technological and societal advancements credited to europeans that came from ancient africa topics and classes like these need to be a mandatory part of the darian curriculum the battle against ignorance and hatred begins with education i firmly believe that if these types

013of classes were mandatory my friend would not be called a terrorist where they are supposed to be learning i would not be harassed out of a classroom for speaking up against hate it is the responsib it is not the responsibility of the minority students to educate change starts now and it must start with us it begins with the teachers who educate us it begins with combating hate with knowledge our teachers deserve to be given the tools and the curriculum to do that we as students deserve to feel safe valued and seen in our learning environment change starts here and it must start now thank you for your time thank you very much for coming can you just repeat your name sorry the fans really loud thank you very much for speaking hello again esteemed board

014members i'm libby panacho use she her pronouns i live at 23 pitch avenue and i'm a senior at darien high school a few weeks ago i spoke to you about the patterns of hate and discrimination that i have observed in our schools and in our town as a whole i came before you today to tell you that you can prevent these patterns from worsening in the future by including diversity equity and inclusion in the strategic plan and also by making a strong effort to diversify the perspectives offered in our curriculum it is my understanding that there are some people in this town who believe that our schools are currently considering teaching critical race theory to our students though in my experience the majority of people do not actually know what the crt is i urge

015everyone in this room and at home to do research into what it is and understand that it does not entail the removal of white history nor is it an attack on white people critical race theory is defined by the american bar association as the practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society and also explores intersections between race gender sexuality and more it acknowledges and explores the idea that racism is still alive in our society in an effort to help us understand how our history has brought us to where we are today and how we can improve our schools do not currently teach critical race theory in our core curriculum though if they did it would hardly be the negative that it has been made out to be what our school has done

016is begun to offer an african-american and black studies course and a latinx studies course as was required by connecticut law in 2020. this is but the bare minimum as it is only offered as an elective meaning that all students who do not actively pursue a diversified education will never learn about poc history i've been an ap and honors student for as long as i have been in high school and despite having taken ap united states history ap american literature and ap american language i had only read one book by a black author in school and had never received a lesson on race relations or poc history that was not from the perspective of a white person it was only by electing to take an additional women in fiction course that i received a lesson on

017intersectionality and the role of race in our society these lessons should not have to be electives there is a large community of students in our halls that identify as female gender queer lgbtqia plus or a racial minority and yet somehow our school has managed to avoid representing them in our curriculum our core classes do not teach race relations and freeze past minority history our only classes focusing on diversity and inclusion are optional we have no class environment where we learn about lgbtqia plus history and experiences if you truly plan to execute the 2021-2026 strategic plan which wants to quote revise and or create curricula that are designed to responsibly represent diverse perspectives end quote than fix these issues it is a common boast that darien high school is one of the best high schools in

018the state but i ask you what are we the best at what are we not teaching our students where do we lack we lack in these diverse points of education teach minority history in our core history classes read books by female queer and poc authors teach about queer experience and gender identity in our sexual education classes teach about sexual assault in those same classes steps can be taken to ensure that every student in our high school feels that they are represented in the material that they are required to learn every day so many of these students they don't feel represented or seen in class you have an opportunity in front of you to change this what are you going to do to show them that you see them thank you for your time thank you

019very much for coming and speaking amy zurbay nine more warehouse drive as we all know there has been a lot of bullying in darien especially recently we see it in our schools with kids bullying kids and we have seen it during the past election cycle with adults bullying adults and spreading rumors about families now i am seeing signs of adults retaliating against the children of outspoken parents like myself i will continue to speak up in public comment whenever i see parents retaliating against my kids and anything school related and i encourage other parents to do the same thank you for coming and speaking anyone else from the audience thank you michelle we'll go over to uh zoom krista karns you are unmuted and recognized krista can you hear us it looks like you're on mute

020kristin go ahead hi um my name is krista karns i live at 40 fitch avenue um i am i have two sons in the darian school system in middlesex middle school both of them have ieps that's been a journey that i you know credit the district for making better better all the time because i feel like uh there have been voices representing them i'm also a graduate of durian high school class of 92 and a product of the darian system um my parents live moved to this town had an opportunity so that i could get an education they were not college educated i'm the first person to go to college and in my large extended family and quite frankly we really didn't have enough money to live in this town um and being different in

021this town has always been hard and from all of the talk in the last months and hearing the stories of these amazing students sorry um hold on a second i'm so sorry um these amazing students you know being different is what is harder than ever and that's just not right so i think with the strategic plan that i'm like speaking in support of we need to just include more voices we need to be attentive somebody's much smarter than me told me once that we live up to what we write down and i think you all have the the strategic plan has been thoughtfully put together it is open enough for many different voices to be considered it is open to research it's open to the latest thinking and gosh if we were still teaching what

022they taught back in 1990s like things changed history changed and mr demean i believe it was you who said that ariana's a district in motion and i really hope that this new board continues to move forward in that motion because the only other option is moving backwards and that is not going to take care and protect our children so thanks and sorry for the dog christ thank you very much susie you are unmuted and recognized good evening um thanks for uh allowing me this time to speak i realize now that i don't have too much to say between what mr janine said and what the kids just said i would just like to echo both those sentiments that we need to put our personal agendas and politics aside and move on for the sake of

023our kids for the sake of of those two brave young people who just spoke and spoke about others who are just as brave who are living their reality every day in high school i have been doing some research uh to help myself become informed and i came across this article um you know how we we've in in the wake of a lot of mass shootings we've become rather complacent and um and we've sort of it's become status quo and as a parent i remember being so comforted by the whole mr rogers saying of looking for the helpers but then we're not looking at the reality of what's happening and i read something in an article today from npr.org and i just like to read from it um this is a ghost town of a sentence

024who is the subject even the feeling of sadness is floating there unclaimed children hear passive voices unless we give ourselves an active role to play in these unfolding crises kids will absorb our quiet acceptance of the status quo they won't know that we can be the agents of change or that's even possible the world our children inherit is deeply unjust and they know it we need to show them that we have the power to revise it revise it not rewrite it just revise it by teaching history the history of our nation we create a citizenry who are not who is not indifferent to injustice a citizenry that will fight like the like americans have done for centuries and i think the critical the strategic plan creates students who are able to talk and interact in

025a way where they can go through these uncomfortable moments these see these sort of injustice that that occurs daily in their schools let alone in their world and handle it and work through it and become better i don't see any problem with the work that the board and parents and students and teachers have already done on this plan and i look forward to seeing this living document affect my children and and the children of the future to move darian into into the into the being citizens of the world thank you oh and i'm a six lake drive sorry susie thank you for coming and speaking there are no more raised hands at this time okay thank you all those of you that are here with us and thank you on zoom and they'll be public

026comment at the end of the meeting we'll move on to the superintendent's report dr adler good evening everyone welcome everyone um thank you to our students this evening uh tuesday's our professional development was very well received our focus for the professional development uh included mathematics and literacy at the elementary level uh social emotional learning through uh ruler and srbi at the secondary level we also had marlin friend here who continued her sdi workshops with our specialized uh teaching staff as secondary teachers also had an opportunity secondary i mean middle school and high school teachers also had the opportunity to work with uh mr shelton uh we had mentioned mr sheldon in the past and this is this was not this was a time where he was prescheduled to come uh he did come from california

027we know that and he is also going to work with the dei committee this year mr sheldon facilitated a 75-minute session with the middle school separately and the high school faculty separately to discuss the current challenges teachers and students are facing and just to begin a preliminary uh discussion in many ways while he was also assistant in helping us with employment discussion we're also sort of assessing uh his connectivity and relevance and appropriateness for continuing the work together and the cm also happened at the dhs and the middle school for a variety of group of students who were volunteered to participate at this leadership level and again that was uh about a 75-minute uh session both for the high school students and the middle school students i will say that in general he would he

028was well received but i won't uh i won't pass any future meeting now with mr sheldon but we appreciate what he did do we also appreciate the groups of students who participated in that day and again mr shelton was well received uh by the staff i want to recognize thursday that this thursday we will be celebrating veterans day by recognizing and honoring all those who have served and continue to serve in our armed forces uh schools will participate in a variety of ways through uh zoom pre-recorded sessions outside learning activities uh poppy drives and a variety of other activities um thank you to all the parents and the veterans who are for their participation and making this day special for our students for their stories that that bring the reality uh to life to our

029students and uh for sort of sharing their heroism and most importantly their service uh so again we thank thank our students it is an important day to be in school i think our students the best way they can honor in many ways our veterans is by learning about them and celebrating them in that particular venue so we look forward to thursday uh the middle school has been working in close collaboration with the adl as as i have shared with you before and in close consultation with the adl they'll be starting a series of educational experiences uh which will actually start this friday uh we will send a letter right to parents uh mrs rodriguez will send a detailed letter out to parents as to what are the nature of that discussion what are the events

030are going to happen uh what are the children actually going to preview um essentially it will start on friday with background on world war ii and the holocaust and not all our students have had that by six certainly sixth graders and seventh graders have not received that just yet in their education so there will be social studies will address it those issues on friday and monday students uh will preview a video which is i previewed it too and i thought it was very well done um and it was actually selected by the adl um they were looking to bring in uh any survivors from the holocaust which there are a few at this point and particularly they're reluctant to come in given their age and give them uh health and safety and also the option

031was to talk about uh bringing in maybe children of survivors they settled on this option um they the students will preview this particular video and we'll share that with the community and with the board and with the middle middle school parent group uh they will be also talking to a high school student not a high school student from darien high school but a high school student from the region who continues to experience uh prejudice in this particular area around anti-semitism and this person has done this before and this is so we're doing this hand in hand with the adl uh they're excited about it because this nature this comprehensive nature of this hasn't been done before these other parts adding up to it and then on thursday the councilors will be working with the students

032on a slide show and discussion about symbols so it's it's a week-long educational experiences it'll give the kid the kids will have a chance to talk to the high school student too so i'll share that information with the board and mrs rodriguez will share it with uh our parent community so we're we're pleased to see uh and learn about uh that particular event again i did preview the video and i thought it was extremely well done for the particular age level that we're talking about and honestly i don't know that we would be able to dislike that completely um it was nice to have their assistance in it and it really is through the voice of young people and through their dairies uh living through the holocaust it's pretty well it's very very powerful uh

033screen and stay program as you have learned recently was rolled out by the department of public health and the department of education as an option for schools it seemed very straightforward to take that as if it keeps some students in school that that's a benefit that that we can do and uh i want to thank alicia kasuchi our director of nursing and all our nurses for quickly jumping on board and putting in place real quickly for today our first sorry monday to start the program the department of public health only reviewed the program with us fully today and so we had it up and running for kids and there's there are students who already benefited from the program the facilities committee will uh will not meet on thursday november 11th but will meet on thursday

034december 9th there is no december meeting so we'll move that one to december oxford received a unified uh school grant for a thousand dollars to support uh the school's unified sports team in the spring i can't recall who that who awarded the grant richard do you know who awarded that grant i can't work i'll need to find out who actually awards the grant but it was nice for for again that the programs that you're talking about mr dini uh quiz bowl is up and running again and uh saturday november 20th we'll have over 50 students from the middlesex and there'll be teams coming from new jersey new york massachusetts and connecticut all coming together to compete so it's nice to see that come back this week we uh reinstated the recess at the middle school

035i want to thank the administration and the teachers for working through that and making that possible so that started on monday uh robotics is getting ready to uh be rolled out uh we have staff members for elementary and we have staff members uh advisors for uh the middle school we will need to get we're looking at getting the staff members for the high school this particular point next week there will be professional development for those people who are participating because you need to do professional development to actually get the program up and running so we anticipate the program actually starting in december uh we would have a slower start but that's okay because we have the people in place now who we need to actually run the program so it's an exciting opportunity for all

036our students caps caves convention is on friday uh starts at 8 30 at the mystic marriott hotel the title of it is the future civility diversity and student voice if anybody is interested i still think we can get people in i will pass this one sheet around it gives you a wee idea of some of the workshops uh you can get a sense from the title of what it is but i'll just pass these around you can if you're interested just let me know and we'll get you in uh mr tramberg will be heading down there on friday we also have a series of parent tech workshops one is for tomorrow for the middle school the middle school parents parent in the digital age and then friday is the high school if you want to

037know everything to know about digital footprints um you might want you might may want to tune into that one and so that the information is on the district website and uh we thank dr mcghett again for for offering those those are all my nice mr chairman thank you dr adley um we will move on to approval of minutes um it is requested that the board approve the minutes of the special meeting and executive session held on october 26 2021 and the minutes of the regular meeting held on october 26 2021 we have a motion to approve mrs ochman second by mr moroney all those in favor i do not see mr brown but it's unanimous with those of us that are here also yeah anyone abstaining tara and julie we're not here thank you you

038good sir yeah great uh board committee reports all right there is a uh oxridge building committee meeting on thursday at 10 o'clock work is being done on internal finishes and furniture to get ahead of that in terms of you know supply chain challenges but we think we're in good shape there uh in terms of that just because of where we are with uh moving the move-in date over the course of the summer so um everything is going well up there i will reach out to board members if there are former board members um that were part of this and we'll get a tour scheduled on a day that works for everyone it's awesome to see the brick going up and see actual formation of the school coming together so that continues to uh to move

039forward on schedule any other board committee reports at this time good we'll move on to presentations and discussions uh darien public school update uh dr adley lynch is behind her isn't she yes well since since alicia was kind enough to come this evening right uh i'll let her talk to some of these but suffice to say that that we were pleased for the screen and stay program we're excited about the immunization uh workshops which were like sold out in about half an hour basically um and we're working to get more of them we are seeing a wee bit of a tick uptick in uh cases as of even today and uh alicia will fill you in that this chart that i'll share in a moment well actually i'll just share it right now can you

040show that no i didn't see the motherboard anyway yep that's it that has not been updated for today so alicia will give you an update and there's we dynamic that's developing we're going to watch the dynamic and we'll share that with you uh ciac i'll give you a update of some of the changes that they're proposing potentially and with that alicia you were kind enough to come this evening so do you want to fill the board in well um the state of covid is it unfortunately is alive and well in dairy end right now um we've had since sunday sunday we had one case yesterday we had two today we have eight um so i think that and it's all our younger population um i think that it probably has a lot to do with

041halloween gatherings there was no halloween last year so i think you guys made up for it this year in a great way um but i think that that plus some other gatherings and things like that um have contributed to some spread of covet here the brunt of it is being born over at oxford school right now we had six cases that oxford reported today mostly in the fourth grade so we are um we've been doing a lot of contact tracing and today's case has resulted so you got to add eight to that four we're at 12. um and we we're still contact tracing the eighth case that just came in after seven um so what we know so far is you'll add 30 to your current quarantine and we will add a column to this

042over the next couple days by the end of the week it's added about 16 kids into the screen and stay category so just a little bit about the difference between quarantine and screen and stay because i think everybody thinks if you're a contact now you get to screen and say that's not the case if you are if you're a contact that has been in an unmasked situation whether it's outside anything outside of school unmasked any contact outside of school is a quarantine not a screen and stay screen and stay really only applies to kids in school or on a school bus that are within that three feet foot distance and they have to be masked so at lunch for instance when they're not six feet apart and they're unmasked for 30 minutes so lunch is

043an automatic quarantine um for the seven days that we've been doing so we'll continue that um so anyway and we're trying to do as much screen today as we can but the kids that are exposed in an unmasked situation they have to um they have to quarantine still that doesn't change um that criteria so we'll make sure we get all that information up on the website so it's pretty clear you can find it but we send that information out when we do the quarantining and the screen and stay emails that go out um let's see what else i can say vaccination clinics so the vaccine clinic it's not a darien public schools clinic just to be clear it's through the health department i simply helped with the scheduling and sent out the email there were

044576 appointments so it'll probably end up being about 600 so that we have multiples of 10 because that's how the files and the doses are done and so we're working on adding other times and days that we can provide a vaccine for kids from five to eleven it's not a it's you know these clinics will not be able to provide 2 000 doses to the kids at area it just we just don't have the capacity and we don't have enough people you have to have administrators for the vaccine and hands to be able to do it in um providing vaccine for kids five to 11 because you're all parents is a little different than providing a vaccine to a 50 year old adult so it takes a little bit more cajoling parents have questions that

045they want to be able to we want to have the time to answer and um and sometimes kids you know will need to be held in certain ways to be able to administer the vaccine and you know i have four kids and we've run the gamut from sitting still on the table to being brave and saying i can do it and then when they go to give the shot you can't find the kid because they're underneath the table so so there's you know we want to be able to have enough time to be able to do that so i know that there are some people who are upset that they didn't get an appointment right away but there is a lot of availability i don't think it's a vaccine shortage situation so i was on

046um vans yesterday and looked it's not very end but you can go to milford there were a ton of appointments on the 20th um and there was appointments yesterday afternoon in bridgeport so there are if the vaccine is available you just have to be willing to leave darien or stanford to go get it stanford hospital their vaccine clinics are full and greenwich too so it's it's just having to go up the line or be patient and wait till there's more availability and so hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to send out some other emails with 30 to 50 appointments in the afternoons um like 3 30 to 5 3 30 to 6 um at the health department monday through thursday starting uh next week so we're trying but it's just it's just having enough people to

047be able to do it um let's see what else that i want to talk about vaccine quarantine i think that's it any questions thank you alicia thanks for coming open up the board questions or comments mr ceni is it simply just uh experts or those qualified to administer you just don't have enough people or is it a resource issue i think it's it's people comfortable giving vaccines to kids so like with the adults they had emts and and um other pharmacists and people who are comfortable giving it to to adults but then when you throw the element of the five to 11 year old emotional state into that i think that it becomes a more of a i'm not sure i'm comfortable doing that um so we we're working on that and you know part

048of it was do we need to do some education and help people train people so we have enough vaccinators and is this just pfizer vaccine just pfizer that's the only one that's approved for kids five to eleven point thank you mr moroney you mentioned um screening stays with about masks and unmasked is there anything to do with vaccination status or any anything to do with vaccinations that's my question so it's it is only for the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated really applied to screen and stay so anybody who's vaccinated it doesn't matter like if we're vaccinated i'm i don't know i'm assuming you are let's pretend you are if you're not whatever um but we're standing we're within six feet of one another we're wearing masks if uh miss parent came down with covid then i

049wouldn't have to quarantine because i'm vaccinated i would just watch for symptoms so anybody who's vaccinated does not get quarantined so we try to get that information from parents for the kids that are vaccinated from staff members that are vaccinated um so for the younger kids once they're fully vaccinated the ones that that are if we get that information and we put that into our nursing documentation system those kids will no longer be vaccinated they'll just be notified that they're a contact and then they should watch for symptoms so anybody who's vaccinated who develops symptoms after contact really should quarantine and get tested mrs mccammon the addition of a screening stay is very exciting um i just would like to know whether or not it's an additional significant workload for your office so it would

050have been but the state health department over the past week changed it from doing a daily monitoring a daily screening for 14 days to having to do a once screen a one-time screening that the parents submit and then you know in our information there to continue monitoring for 14 days but we don't have to collect that information for two weeks so we've we've created a google form online we send out the link the parents the first day they come back fill out that the nurses will follow up to make sure that everybody who's back who's under the screen and stay program has submitted that and then and then it's really up to the parents to continue monitoring for symptoms i want to thank alicia for the staff for really getting this up and running just

051right away and also mentioned that you might see a wee bit of a conundrum of a contradictory statement because when the screen is stay according to the state it's 14 days of quarantine and you might go away we back to 14 days under screen and stay technically we are back to 14 days uh we have had discussions with our medical advisors and our team and uh looks like we we will go to what we're doing for other situations which is test after five days come back after your seventh day out type thing uh so just give us a little bit of time just to roll that out um but that seems that that concession that our medical advisors and team are well into because the other thing just it's hard to make sense of it

052to be honest with you the core light line things up the story up yeah sometimes it's starting to get a little a little confusing a little contradictory but but because you're screening and staying you're not required to get a test at day five to be able to be released at day seven but even with the screening or even with that quarantine seven day quarantine you are supposed to watch her symptoms for two a full two weeks i will say for the ciac what we are hearing uh is that the ciac are contemplating scenarios where athletes in this in inside the school if volleyball or whatever it happens to be would not have to wear masks i honestly am having a hard time lining that up to kids in an academic classroom having to wear a

053mask uh so i'm just going to tell you i have a hard time with that and um i just the whole house of cards sort of collapses for me in that because uh so i'm not particularly in favor of that to be honest with you so it hasn't come out yet it's been discussed with superintendents and uh some of the meetings that alicia has been out too but we'll see what happens but i understand i just can't i just hard time i said to be honest with you i'll leave it at that just for consistency of messaging and just from a health and safety point of view i don't get it but we'll see what happens uh they are we'll see and we'll see how our numbers go i mean today we haven't had eight

054cases like that since last winter so um you know and i think our health director and our medical advisors also have in their environments have saw we uptake the last couple days so it's it's a message to the community to continue to be cautious continue to be cautious you know the gatherings that people are participating in you know i know especially everybody's like oh it's outdoors that's outdoors but if you really are gathering in a close proximity to one another even if you're outdoors you know anybody who's on vaccinated really should wear a mask i mean i you know i know you don't want to i'm tired of wearing them too believe me i didn't like wearing them when i worked in the hospital as a nurse and you know it was like absolutely 100

055necessary for everything that you did so um so i get it a year and a half into this we're tired of wearing the masks but i think i think it will you know when you start to see that uptick in the schools it makes you a little bit more a little bit more nervous about what's happening um so alicia thank you please extend thank you again to your staff the whole team of nurses and our health professionals that we work with and um i think one of the board members already said it you know just whatever resources you need we're here to support that the job that you and your team have done has been incredible and thank you well thank you i appreciate it thank you for mrs bess and perhaps mrs worm these

056are the charts that the board sees every time we have a board meeting here and at one point that was all red last year so we'll come a long way this is the numbers that we just showed you and this is the monthly for the time so you can sort of get a wee sense of how darien itself is doing and this is the weekly i'm sorry i thought of one other thing i did get i've gotten a couple emails from people wanting to know like the survey that we did based on you know do you will you vaccinate your child five to eleven so i'm just going to run some numbers off the top of my head it was about 2200 people responded and what i'm not sure of is if that was each

057household on the responded once or if it was you know a couple people you know both parents from the household or guardians responded but we were about sixty percent said that they would vaccinate their kids five to eleven and the other question that i asked was would they um use the health department or would you be seeking uh your vaccine elsewhere and that was about 40 so and realizing that each person who responds there's some of them have one child some have two some have three some have ten you know i don't know but um you know you get the idea so it it's hard to quantify exactly how many people will get the vaccine but it sixty percent i thought was pretty encouraging and i think that'll help us in the schools thank you

058so much alicia thank you thank you i think we're all set thank you very much any other board questions around the school updates great um thank you again we will move on to curriculum update new course program development process mr chris tranberg oh sorry good evening everyone so i'm going to talk a bit before we have some new course proposals this evening but before we go to the course proposals just a little bit about the process that's in place to do some level setting and uh understand the process before it gets to you because we haven't we haven't done that in at least in recent times so i just put the big question of why do courses and programs evolve and there are some things here and they're not mutually exclusive some of these things

059overlap quite a bit but there's a big a big question of there's a big reason that we want to provide the most comprehensive engaging program for learning across all grade levels all content areas while students are here and we also want to make sure we're providing conditions for them to transfer that learning when they're no longer here so whatever their post-secondary pathway is so a few things to point out the first is student interest so at the high school specifically every few years students are surveyed regarding course offerings and their interests and that's reviewed by the departments and at times departments offer specific departmental surveys either based on that feedback or if they feel like there's new information that they want to know from students to make some of those decisions learning pathways speaks specifically

060to the connectedness between classes especially electives so if you have an elective in a department you want to make sure it doesn't stand out as okay here's this class that's one course in time and there's really nowhere for me to go after i take it that often happens in places like music like if you take an intro to music class which we don't have and that's good because they don't really go anywhere after that so that's something that we think about as we're doing this i just wanted to point out things like the vision of the graduate and strategic plan alignment so the vision of the graduate it's not about creating courses in the vision of the graduate it's making sure that those six indicators are are embedded and how we're designing what those courses

061are and the big driver as i've mentioned several times this year is if standards or frameworks change for any specific content area that pretty much says you have to press pause and do a big a big look at on what you're offering and change it and then another obvious one if there's gaps that we're not offering something that other places are that determines the need for us to to create some courses so this is the process and there's a there's a slide that goes through each level and i won't won't read each phase of the process but you are seeing the new courses tonight which is a different timeline than we've experienced in the past in part because the board has asked when we've done this process here comes a new course and we've already

062had our budget meetings and the question is well what are the implications for the budget if we approve this now are there fte implications are there new materials and so we moved up the timeline quite a bit so we can have those discussions prior to to budget season which is upon us so at the high school the general process after the survey it goes to teachers and then moves the departments work together and it moves to what is called the curriculum council and that's made up of teachers from each department and then it goes to and then it goes to uh there we go then it goes to an administrative group um after that it's a review after it gets approved by that group it comes to the board so it's been very well vetted

063chris why don't you pause for a moment while we're experiencing technical difficulties you can continue it's still recording okay thank you so at the middle school because electives aren't as a regular part of the middle school experience that's often predetermined um this is somewhat of an aspirational process that we have put together um and it's similar to the high school that the course you're going to hear about tonight there's a proposal for mandarin at the middle school that's not really based on student surveys but it is based on a need that we have because there's no there's a mandarin program at the high school and students can take french mandarin or spanish at the high school but in the middle school they can only take french or spanish and for anyone that's studied mandarin at

064all it's not a language that you can necessarily reach the level of proficiency that we might desire by the end of four years so that's more of a need based it's not necessarily a student request based and we're also if you uh if we look back to it was two and a half years ago one of my first presentations with mrs summers was looking at the middle school schedule looking at different elective offerings and i think you'll hear more about that coming up and this is a process that we would like to use in order to do that and at the elementary level so we're kind of going it's a funnel high school has the most flexibility because of the design of a high school program of study middle school is a little bit more

065constructive in elementary even more so because there are just so many standards in content areas at the elementary level so this process is more about program basis so math and focus being a recent there was a study group that was put together um to say okay do we want to continue with investigations three i think it was at the time or look at some other programs and after uh determining the criteria this math team brought together okay it's gonna be investigations 3 or math and focus they did a year-long study and a pilot and then made the recommendation based on that so this process tries to reflect what that would be and again in support of the new timeline when we have our super saturday budget meeting you'll see anything that gets approved through this

066process over the next few meetings um these are the types of items that you'll see appear in rc19 as well as the additional staff needs so that's related to supplies any textbooks and our new curriculum subcommittee will also be part of that process before it comes to the table for budget the time to develop the scope and sequence and the curriculum for the course and that's in curriculum writing hours professional development needs as well and any equipment or technology that we would need to support that classes so that's just a quick overview of what it looks like at each level and take any questions before we start to i should have weird these are just the things that we look at to determine the success and the efficacy of programs as well [Music] thank you

067mr tranberg i think that was a good a really good recap appreciate that um mrs achman so i just have a question because this process is new and um i'm not opposed to it but i want to know what we're doing so if it takes we're going to hear about mandarin tonight we actually which i really appreciate see the ft increase the equipment increase are we approving provisionally and then discussing during the budget are we approving and then we have approved those expenses and as a board we should recognize that so when we go to budget season we're not focused on them what's the administration's hope and then what's the board's discussion on how so in addition to sort of like bringing the whole process forward part of the process is if there's a course

068approved you'll see different finances associated with it the thought process says there if it's approved in a budget it's it's there if it's if it has to come out of the budget you pull the from professional development textbooks you pull that out so we'd really be looking for to approve the course and then if it gets approved in a budget then it goes forward and if it doesn't so the the the fidelity of the course is what we're really looking for the board to approve yes you're getting away sneak peek at i get some of some of the monies involved um but i don't want i don't want that to complicate that uh we can present those monies uh during the budget process but you're getting a sense of the courses that are going to

069show up and you know in the budget process so so we're approving the course conceptually and the budget season we'll have the conversation with regards to financial yep and the good thing is if the course gets approved but we can't run it because of the budget at least it's approved and we can bring it back the next year without having to go through approval again and just sure i actually prefer it i just want to know what when we are asked to make approval exactly the expectations around thank you mr either board questions or comments yes mrs mccammon i have two actually uh my first is thank you for this it's really helpful to see it all laid out um one of the things that we talked a lot about a few years ago was

070vertical alignment um so it's i could you just spend a minute i can see how we're doing horizontally and certainly you know between the secondary levels we have the department chairs to cross over but um what are we doing here to make sure that our vertical alignment continues so i'll say the most important piece for us with vertical alignment is the curriculum leadership team which is made up of the directors elementary director of elementary education as well as all the department chairs so when we're looking at the curriculum we're making sure and checking for that in our process along the way my second comment was i loved your um beginning slide where you talked about the different drivers why you would create um uh new courses and i know it's all embedded in all of

071the new courses but i thought if we could consider as we look at this process and how it works that's just a really digestible way to say what are the one to three reasons why we put this course in the pile and it also helps us see alignment maybe between vision of a graduate and and our coursework or you know a change from any other change so you know some sort of framework like that that's really easy to access i would ask if you could look at that i think that's that's a great suggestion and i'm hoping one of the items that the new curriculum committee might take on um is what do we want the proposals to look like in order to indicate exactly that so where's the strategic plan alignment where is the

072vision of the graduate alignment so we can make sure we're clear because we don't want to be offering or suggesting things that aren't supporting them thank you mrs cavin chris could you just go back to the high school or the middle school maybe the slide there i think what would help down the road and i think this is great starting to lay out the process these are great questions here in some way shape or form we've invested in a lot of people over the course of the last year and i think seeing some type of chart in terms of all the people involved you know from where julie's role sits to where the department chairs sit you know i think that would help kind of fill in the picture of how the process works um

073seeing all the players um so i think that that would help if that that makes sense for the board absolutely thank you any other board questions or comments goodness did we lose it i that was that no the next one oh you didn't you don't have one so the next is the new courses yep discussion on proposed new courses for darien high school for the 2022-2023 school year mr tranberg so before we get to the high school um i know mrs rodriguez is here as well as mrs maurizio to talk about the mandarin program and so i think miss mauricio's going to take the lead on some of the highlights of that proposal i'm back you're taking us all around the world and now you're teaching us mandarin also i'm back [Laughter] um is there

074chris is there a a slide for me i can't if there is i can't see it if not if your memo is projected okay perfect so i'll start with the three reasons why we decided to propose it um it's first and foremost it's a logical progression in our program since we already have a well-established and robust program at dhs however there is more contact time needed for our students to establish a level of proficiency that we would like to see after the high school experience is over the board has also requested this of us several times and many parents have requested this of me personally over the past six years that i've served the district and just this year uh five different sets of parents have asked carolyn about this as well and the third

075is that we've had a lot of student interest in talking to students at the end of their experience senior year we have several students that continue on with mandarin for all four years there's a very you know robust high number of students that do um just in speaking to them they've always said oh i wish i could start i wish i could have started sooner um i would have loved to have done this you know for seven years just like my my friends that take french and spanish do and then talking to families um that are fifth grade families when they're requesting their languages they have either had children that have gone through a mandarin program at dhs or know that mandarin is offered at dhs have asked you know do you offer mandarin at

076the middle school when will you can you um so there over over time there has been a lot of of interest from the community and it also just makes sense for the progression of our of our program um in the memo there's a chart there we also talk about how we're going to roll it out one year at a time starting in the sixth grade this ensures a predictable growth of the program continuity of students from year to year and it also ensures that students have as much time as possible um for their chinese culture appreciation to grow as well as their functional uh language proficiency and it follows the model that we have at mms with um six sixth grade students that want to study french they begin in the sixth grade and fifth

077grade students that wish to continue with spanish at the middle school also begin in the sixth grade and we ask that they stay with the program all three years if they are able to so this allows an incoming sixth grader to start and then continue on for uh three years um it will require a teacher for next year we anticipate a full sixth grade course load and it also will feed directly into our program at dhs we currently begin mandarin at dhs at level one and we will continue to offer mandarin one at dhs just like we do with spanish french and latin however we are vertically aligning our proposal to begin mandarin at mms so that it feeds directly into mandarin ii at dhs so that students can develop their proficiency at a level

078that is appropriate to be able to eventually take ap mandarin chinese and that's it great thank you i will open up to board questions or comments mrs achman so no surprise i'm going to say thank you christina i mean we've been our mrs maurizio we've been um asking for this and so to see such a detailed plan is really appreciated and i think it'll be a great course offering um especially given that we have so many students achieving very well at the high school at mandarin to kind of give them a chance to achieve as much as their peers and other languages is much appreciated so i'm in full support of this proposal um and you know identify that there are costs associated but i think it directly impacts student learning so thank you thank

079you mr welcome this is perrin i thank you miss mauricio this is excellent and i'm super excited about the opportunity that our children will have i am curious about your thought process um you say you plan to adopt the discovering chinese program i just would love to know what other programs you looked at what did you like about this particular uh program and are there other districts in our dirk that a offer mandarin in sixth grade and b what programs do they use sure so there are several things that went into um into play when deciding which program to go with we currently use a program at dhs called integrated chinese integrated chinese begins at level one but it is appropriate for high school and college students particularly because of the topics that the series

080of books talk about life in high school going out with your friends applying to college things that for a middle school student wouldn't necessarily apply to them the this program it's used by two schools in our dirk that offer mandarin at the middle school it's broken up into four units one unit per year which is one of the things that we liked the most about it that it's very easy to just move from one year to the next the re i do say this in my memo the reason why we're not um going to be using unit 4 is because it unit 4 looks exactly like the first part of mandarin 2 which is where the students that would go through this full program will eventually end up another reason why we chose this program

081is because of the resources that come along with it so students get a um what they call a work text and one of the hallmark features of learning mandarin is you not only have to learn how to speak and read but you also need to learn how to write and write the characters so this work text comes with writing exercise writing exercises directly built into it and there's also an online component that works on any web browser so whether a student is using a chromebook at home and then switching to another type of device um i'm sorry a chromebook in school and switching to another device at home if they have access to it they'll be able to do those activities online in school and at home and the teacher is able to assign those

082activities directly to the student whether it's any type of traditional assessment like we're going to do page 10 of the workbook or i want you to go home and log into this program because there's a video with questions that i want you to prepare to then bring to school the next day so it fits really well with the technology that our students have available but is also very conducive to learning mandarin the way we would like our students to learn mandarin not only being able to speak and read but also to be able to write which is one of the more challenging aspects of learning the language thank you thank you any other board questions um yes mr moroney do we have uh first thank you this is very exciting but the question i have

083is do we have any space concerns at the middle school to offer a new class to have enough classroom space to house the class no we currently don't have any any of those issues because it'll be the same number of the same number of students so they would just be incorporated into um into the current schedule and we have room to accommodate them mrs mccammon i just wanted to ensure that i can read the memo correctly on the second page it's an incremental fte per year or it's one in one fte period i'm just not sure on the first year to the second second year yeah all right thank you it's the way the memo is presented it's incremental um i would say that based on how fte tends to work if students are taking

084chinese they're not taking something else so i would be surprised if it was one to one each year um and that includes the first year so this is an estimate thinking that that means that 80 students are signing up for chinese and if it's that many then okay what are students not taking so there might be an adjustment based on that um so this is this would be the the most fte possible it's a gross number versus the net basis yes it might show up differently in the budget mrs perry to this point would there be an offset you know it's french and spanish but those ftes reduced because there's 80 80 children not taking those forces can i just make a comment just just and we'll do this throughout the presentations but this is

085an example of the strategic plan coming alive a little bit in a small way in fact nothing in a small way because uh christina has been before us with rich international travel experiences for our children which are real learning experiences no grades attached to them no competition right um but this is an example of how it comes alive in we've got department heads here today uh building principles here today and they're they're this is a living document for them already has been and you're starting to see the increments of if people want an explicit thing here's an example right um it may not be as powerful as people want at this point um but we're building upon it so i just i just want to point that out no thank you that's a good point

086i will say too thank you i think the memo really kind of sets the standard and you know any feedback from the board on a go forward basis but i like the overall um outline of the the memo um the fact that it goes out several years it impacts costs associated with the contract and potential fte costs too so really well done thank you thank you for all of you uh on the phone there and principal rodriguez also you're welcome uh moving along chris thank you mrs dunn principal of durian high school is going to join us next um there is a memo in the packet from her that goes over some of the changes to the program of studies and then we have some department area leaders that will go over the new course

087proposals so this is done welcome welcome thank you thank you very much for having us um i am happy to have keith teller and francis genosko uh christina who is going to stay on greg barron here this evening to talk about some of the new courses that are being proposed um you re you have those packets um already with you um also wanted to highlight um first some of the changes being proposed that are not new curriculum proposals but some ideas about how to approach some of the courses and some renaming so first was the digital journalism course this is the course that ultimately delivers the digital newspaper for durian high school and the proposal here is to restructure the delivery of the curriculum not the curriculum itself um what we have learned applying what

088we have learned through the pandemic and um this is a course that is particularly suitable to looking at a hybrid model much of the work is independent with students all working toward the same goal of producing the newspaper but much of the course is independent work independent writing cooperatively very creative work laying out the newspaper the artwork that goes with that um and so we are going to request that we consider um that 50 of the classroom time is spent um in the classroom and that 50 percent of the time is spent um online through uh asynchronous um instruction and also one-on-one meetings with the teacher um during that time um the the um you know concept of bringing up students time giving them some um capacity to make their own decisions about when their

089work would be done rather than necessarily during let's say period four at the high school may allow for some other coursework to be taken on and also recognizes that there is independence uh built into this course and um we think it will be an interesting um model to apply the hybrid learning to um shall i go on or would you like to stop for questions why don't we pause through each one since they're very good and thank you mrs dunn i i love the whole concept and and how you approach that um so that that sounds great any questions on digital journalism yes mrs ackman so can you talk a little bit about how that work is it's a course for credit right would the teacher on the asynchronous day still be meeting with us

090every student on that asynchronous day would the check-ins be as needed um what does staff time look like on those days where they're not checking in um yeah francis is there i'm sure he'll jump into i can see his hand moving there but uh yeah i think that we are um the design would be that there would be lessons on the alternate days that would be posted by the teacher the teacher would also be free on those opposing days to meet uh one-on-one with students in conference as you would expect even in the typical course as it is designed now students are working within the classroom setting are walking up to the classroom showing the teacher their work and so we don't envision that it would be that much different but on the asynchronous days

091there would have to be some check-ins some work progress shared a teacher would be able to comment on that work students would be able to comment on each other's work and so it it's allowing us to take what we've learned through this experience that we've had and try to take some of that positive learning and apply it to this particular course francis you might want to add something i don't have much more to add to that you've said it very well ellen and during that blended learning period the teacher would be rotating and as ellen said conferencing with individual students or small groups of students on some of the projects that they're working on for the newspaper but at the same time there would be a blended learning uh assignment or a lesson posted for

092the other students to access and that would typically be you know a video of the teacher um going over the teaching point for that particular lesson um talking about the expectations for the work there would be some resources readings and videos posted for the students say on google classroom and then there would be a chance for the the students to have a conversation in a digital space using some of the digital platforms that we've been using such as padlet um for them to have an asynchronous conversation it might sound strange to to see it in those terms but these are some of the things that we've been using as ellen said for the last you know year and a half when we've had some experience with hybrid models and remote asynchronous models this is a

093chance for us to put that into uh into play and and provide it for our students that had a you know a pretty good experience with some of it i have to say that just i'm tremendously excited about this uh but around the board table we have been asking what have you learned about covet here's staff member teacher the department chair taking that learning and we know our children can do this right our students can do this they're gonna have to do it when they go to uh on to college this is a wonderful opportunity uh to expand that and learn something from it i'm just thrilled with it to be honest with you well i am um and i applaud francis in the department for taking something and uh learning from it and come

094back and implement it if you took the mask off would you be smiling oh yes [Laughter] good any other questions or comments go ahead mrs mccabe i agree with dr adley yeah no it's neat to hear taking what we've learned since there was no playbook and kind of building it into our playbook as we go forward so thank you um mrs dunn you want to continue on principles of engineering yes principles of engineering again is not a curricular change but rather a platform change i guess is the best way to say it so um for many years the principal of engineering course has um used as its uh i won't i guess i could say vehicle for learning um the fuel cell car and um this is at one point was there was cutting edge

095technology um that probably would not be considered the case uh at this point and with with um you know so the truth is that it's less efficient than battery electric uh cars um that we're seeing very commonly today so um the department has looked for an alternative um that would provide the same kind of learning the same kind of design uh thinking the same kind of engineering applications um and has would like to request refocus that curriculum on uh robotics rather than the fuel cell car accomplish the same goals um and also add in um some interdisciplinary work with coding and computer science that would be an advantage of this particular model over the experiences we have had with the fuel cell bar i think it's a great idea and we would like to ask

096you to consider that chain thank you mrs dunn sport questions or thoughts mr c would this course be uh complementary perhaps to the new robotics program that we're doing at the club level i mean is there any thought about integrating some of the learning so that you know i'll let greg's picked up but for the answer that would be yes mr dan you want to speak to that sure um yeah the the integration of robotics into this program is hopefully going to get students more excited about robotics and some experience in it to help um support the extracurricular so kids who have this will have an additional opportunity to go into the extracurricular robotics program as well so hopefully they'll tie in together nicely thank you very much thank you any other questions or thoughts

097great this is done do you want to move on to ap economics yes thank you um so two name changes um the first is i think very simple in that we started out with ap economics when we added ap macroeconomics things got a little complicated because then we had to economics and ap economics courses so we'd like to go to the more appropriate name ap microeconomics so that it is clear to all that this is a distinct force thank you mrs dunn questions comments from the board great we'll move on to humanities to urban studies yes and and humanities is perhaps one of the longest standing courses at marianne high school uh over 20 years a very very popular course and a um a really beautiful interdisciplinary course in many many ways taught in the

098social studies department and it you know with all of the discussion of even our graduation requirements being recategorized under humanities the department has asked for us to consider um renaming the course to a more accurate name which really is urban studies um because of the content of the course um and the uh again it just is more uh an explicit um communication of what the course really is about um humanities as it stands now is somewhat misleading to what the course is especially when it appears on a transcript thank you mrs dunn board questions thoughts great thank you mrs dunn thank you um i will introduce them the three new courses and mr darren will talk first about sports marketing which is an extension of our business program uh yes we're looking to add a

099sports marketing course which will be a second level course onto marketing essentials so marketing essentials will be the prerequisite and um the sports marketing course will give kids the opportunity to follow a pathway into marketing and be able to build upon some of the skills and the content that they've learned in marketing essentials um we feel that there is um from some of the surveys that we've done within the department and within um across some of the different courses of the department we're finding that students are interested in pursuing um marketing a little bit deeper there's interest in sports as well many of the students in our district are involved in sports so to kind of tie these two together um where kids can learn about on the sports and entertainment industry and um how

100it plays a huge role in um our economy um and this is just ties into um the goals in our department to give students more opportunities to pursue pathways in business and this is just another course that helps us achieve that goal thank you mr darren board questions thoughts good great what's next mrs dunn okay we will move english skyscrapers and subways mr genesco okay thank you and uh i think it will help if i provide a little bit of context that will you know allow you to see our thinking with this course over the past four years in the name of being responsive to the interests of our seniors we have attempted to add or we've proposed several new one-semester thematic literature courses for them and four of those new courses have proved to

101be very uh popular and attractive to our seniors those courses are women in fiction which you heard about earlier tonight actually the literature of suspense sports and literature and the literature of food and travel and we have one other one-semester thematic literature course that is also proven to be very durable it's a very long-standing course we've had for many years and that course is literature and philosophy so those five courses we're currently running and those five courses have proved to be um very you know attractive and popular for our seniors um over the past four years too we have twice successfully run six different one semester courses in an academic year and so one of our goals is to once again have that number of viable courses courses that we're providing our seniors in a

102single academic year so our goal is six um so the five courses that i've mentioned earlier um all have enrollment numbers that suggest they have some staying power tonight we're proposing a new course that we see as an attractive one semester offering that will be a great fit along with those five and that course is as ellen has just introduced it's called skyscrapers and subways the literature of new york city before landing on this particular course option the dhs english department brainstormed a number of potential one-semester thematic literature courses and we were guided by the results of a student survey that we conducted last spring and then our rationale for proposing this particular course is that it allows us to draw upon a vast number of diverse perspectives and stories that are set in new

103york city as its course material and then also allows our students to use their own experiences of new york city to inform their understanding of those stories so by taking the course students will continue to develop their skills in reading and writing and listening while deepening their understanding through a variety of points of view their understanding of that global city that's just a train ride away for darien so i want to stress that the course would be aligned to the other one-semester thematic literature offerings in terms of its workload and its major assignments and its final exam students would be asked to do the same things in the other courses obviously the material would be different and just as a personal observation having had the pleasure of observing these one semester thematic literature courses a

104number of times they tend to promote a great deal of creativity and focus on both the part of the students and the teachers and they tend to be in spirit at least something more akin to the college experiences the college courses that our seniors are going to be taking and for that reason they tend to really like these courses so with that said you have the proposal in front of you you're welcome to ask any questions i will say one quick thing that on page two you may notice that number eight suggests that this is not a humanities requirement that is my mistake it is a humanities requirement so um we'll make that correction thank you mr uh dinosaur appreciate that open it up for board questions and thoughts yes mrs achman so i want

105to as i look at the courses and the number of sections that you're currently running do we you think you have enough space that you'd be pulling kids from one of these other courses but you think you have enough interest to run all six is that how i'm reading it correctly absolutely um the two courses that have we have fewer sections of women in fiction and literature and philosophy i must tell you that we have had a core number of students that that have sought those courses out and i i really don't see this course pulling from those populations that uh we're serving with those two offerings okay so you would maybe theoretically anticipate a change in sections on mystery mayhem movable piece or the leather lettered athlete which are running three or more that

106that's what we expect okay thank you thank you mrs zachman any other board questions or thoughts great thank you mr genesco all right so the last uh course is the ap spanish literature and culture uh which will provide a second year of ap spanish for our students who have accelerated in spanish and christina will speak to that so with the change in the spanish sequence that started last year as well as a growing number of heritage spanish speakers in our community that we have accelerated through the program it's opened up an opportunity for us to offer an additional ap spanish class the typical trajectory for students that study spanish at dhs over four years in our current sequence is spanish three or three honors as freshmen spanish four or four honors as sophomores and ap

107spanish language as juniors which leaves a window for us to introduce ap spanish literature for our seniors and there will still be a spanish five course available for students who wish to take a fourth year of spanish but who do not want to go on to a second year of ap however adding 80 spanish literature creates two options for seniors that wish to continue on in the fourth year and thus a second year of ap study and it is um i'll note that ap spanish literature is the only um literature course offered by the college board's ap program in a world language great thank you very much i'll open it up to board questions good dr adley anything you wanted to add or no i just want to i want to thank the members of

108the department and the principals uh for their advocacy for these courses for students and uh the creativeness and um i think they're excellent yeah i know thank you all very much thanks for staying up with us um and participating great presentations and uh just continues to show how we move forward with these these course offerings and the thought process um around some of these courses too so thank you very much anything you wanted to close out with miss dunn no i just wanted to thank everyone again i i think that dr ali said it very well when you think about the vision of the graduate communication creativity curiosity i think we have captured that in in these courses and i appreciate everyone's good work on them great thank you very much thank you all have

109a good evening thank you thank you thank you we will move on to presentation and discussion on october 1st district enrollment report and projections mr rudel sure um october one enrollment stands at 4 637 students with 218 at the elementary level 1098 at the middle school and 1421 at the high school so we did use the three-year average persistence ratio uh we did want to note that we do see a drop-off historically of eighth graders going into ninth grade uh and then an uptick of 11th grade going into 12th grade which is why we don't just simply roll forward the grades um so for next year we are forecasting 4636 students which is one less than the current year um however elementary will be recommended at 110 sections or one section more than the current

110year which is from endless second grade the middle school is forecasted to go down 23 students uh is really a high eighth grade student class leaving this year and a lower fifth grade student moving up and then the high school up 23 students we did want to highlight a few sections so royal kindergarten tokenic first and home second are all within three tipping a section based on this forecast however on the opposite side hindley second henley third and royal second are just slightly over that class size limit uh so there's really those six sections that we'll want to watch closely during the budget both for tipping a section and possibly being under reception okay thank you mr rudel could i ask and um so we have the federal project in the rhode heights well underway

111and topped out palmers will eventually start to move forward um they haven't really started on corbyn drive in terms of residential tonight there is a presentation at planning and zoning about uh 59 units up near selleck woods in the parklands area so you've been working with at least federal palmers in corbyn drive potential numbers in these projections yep so if even if you recall the previous reports that we did those were factored in uh so we carry those forward okay is there anything you need or and maybe this goes to the facilities team anything you need in terms of updates with those projects with planning and zoning with you know one of those projects is is being run by uh you know local community personnel so any update we can get is useful information okay

112all right thank you any other board questions or thoughts mr ceni so my impression the senior class this year was kind of the bubble class the cafeteria class if you will um have you um sorry [Laughter] i wasn't part of that joke about it um but no um did you build anything into that fall off but then i see the freshman class as large as this class the freshman class this year was larger and so you're carrying that forward into the tenth grade okay um and so you're gonna have to carry that forward for a couple more years right okay and then i didn't look back at the uh current eighth grade class eighth grade pretty much around 395 so that's a high grade okay which is one of the reasons why you see the

113swap of the middle school to the high school got it thank you sir thank you mr senior mrs best i was just curious um from looking at the last enrollment report to this one it looked like we were down about 18 students across the district for the current year yes we were um we did see a large spike in oxfords which actually made up for some of it so we were expecting a larger decline um what really changed for this year was oxford which was a plus four over 40 students but from august until october first we did we did see some drop off okay thank you mrs best any other board questions or comments on enrollment projections yes mrs mccammon and just confirming i'm assuming open choice numbers are not in here because the

114program is undefined but correct it's confirming yeah thank you good clarification thank you good we will move along to further discussion and possible action on regular board of education meetings for the 2022 calendar year dr adelie uh this is this is a process that we have to file at time clerk's office so you see the uh 2022 calendar as described here i will point out one thing just that it pertains to a possible discussion later on under i which is a start time from the board if if the board decides to change the start time we would have to modify this document because it talks about 7 30 so i wouldn't want to have to do all special meetings so we would go back and do that so the meetings are as represented okay any

115questions or comments on the um regular board of education meeting for the 2022 calendar year yes mrs mccammon and so that includes the two dates being moved because of the board of finance the two dates that are moved to wednesdays yeah that should that should align yes yeah thank you okay good may i have an emotion to accept um the schedule of regular board of education meetings for the 2022 calendar year mrs achman second by mr moroney all those in favor that is unanimous thank you we'll move on to further review and possible action on the proposed 2022-2023 budget calendar dr adley uh so at the board's discussion about the budget calendar there was discussion about making sure that we added in an additional meeting and you'll see that that has been whether the board

116wants to do that or not we can discuss this tonight that meeting has been entered in february 3rd which would be after the public hearing and before the approval of the board our approval of the the fy 23 budget so that's that's an additional date that has been added in um certainly at the the board pleasure of whether you want to continue with that that was in response to uh last year uh just some last minute cuts and just to have discussions about things so again i'm just pointing at it yeah i think the goal is well this is a tight calendar and it moves quickly i think the in my tenure on the board the saturday meeting has been a big help although it's a it's a long day but i think it's been

117well received so just making sure we have the right timelines built in here and then we'll continue to talk to and work with rtm fmb rtm education on coordinating even those meetings and those questions to kind of streamline and work with them as we go through the budget season but make sure everyone feels they have an opportunity to to look at and and understand and present their questions you know around the budget so i'll pause there mr ceni um so i was the one who proposed that extra meeting but after giving further thought over the weekend and i guess you know what we're trying to achieve and maybe it should work from january 25th on so january 25th is that cut night if i understand it correct okay so our first stab at ad cut

118i guess then we go to february 1st it's a special meeting and it's a public hearing and what we ran into last year is we heard certain items amongst the public hearing and there was a reaction amongst board members but it was a little problematic because it was late in the process so i guess the question is instead of adding february 3rd that thursday meeting on february 1st can we add just an agenda item that is uh like discussion of public hearing so that we don't have to gather this whole body together but there can be a reaction if needed by this board and so then we go into february 8th and that's the final basically that's when we actually go and vote on the ad cuts i'm not mistaken correct and so this week

119is the ability for the board to react to public comment republic the public hearing i don't want to get this mixed up public hearing right um and then also the community would have the opportunity to use public comment at that meeting on the first and then even prior to uh the meeting on february 8th if they had a reaction to our reactions you get what i'm saying and so this way we don't have to add another evening out for all of us but at the same time achieve what my goal is right okay this is aquaman so to mr cd's point typically after the public hearing we hold the board of education meeting immediately following to do just that so that we don't have to come out again on february 3rd okay so what we

120typically do is we have a public hearing then immediately following the public hearing we hold the board of education meeting if there's anything else we have to discuss based on either on what we heard or we're like wait now that we've heard this we need more information from the administration we requested at that meeting and then we roll in to the eighth and it saves everyone from gathering again a third so yeah i think i just don't know why that's not there because i think it satisfies both means yeah again i wasn't clear when i asked it yeah no i think that makes sense so if we can somehow put a line in there that makes it clear on the first that there is another opportunity to apply that'd be great and then they can

121wipe out that great mr maroney but i think john then maybe on the 8th we need to have a i don't know do we have a second public hearing if we have to find something different on uh looking at my dates on the first the community may need to come back and opine or or discuss what we have discussed they would have i'm not verbalizing that well at all yeah well no i get ready but i don't but to me it's but to your point though that i don't think it's public comment i think we should have a modified public hearing after public comment that's all we're discussion on that why um why wouldn't it be public comment we could receive the comments as we make our decisions typically right so we could change but

122typically what we do is we do add cut lists so in the 100 million dollar budget the public knows what to comment on because if we're never going to touch say mandarin because we've discussed it we don't get a thousand speeches on mandarin because the public knows we're not going to touch it so we do the ad cut list then the public comes in and they talk about what we're saying is kind of up for discussion then after that public hearing we have a meeting so if we need more information or we want to kind of signal out to the public something we can and then we meet the next time to make our final ad cut and you would have public comments so if someone feels really dramatically again about something we've said they

123have the chance to hear it but at some point we have to make the decision i mean this was really sorry yeah go ahead i mean this was raised last year yeah criticized for making changes late in the process but it was in reaction to the public hearing right totally suitable so i just want to make it i think it's communicating this to the community right that after we have the public hearing there may be a reaction we're going to discuss that in public right and to dennis your point you know i don't know if we need another public hearing there will be another public comment good mrs best i was going to ask if there is anything different we'd want to consider about how we make sure the public is staying informed on what's

124being discussed so that people aren't surprised by things that the public hearing if there's an effort we can consider making um to keep people up to speed on on what what's being talked about i know there are always efforts made but is there anything additional to consider and then my other question was um just to clarify do special meetings necessarily have public comment i feel like i remember sometimes there's not always public comment at a special meeting but i might be mistaken yep so the tradition of the board is to always have public comments sometimes they only have one though so your point we can think about is there anything else we need to do from a communication standpoint around the budget and i think some of that we'll also discuss with rtm fmb and

125rtm education because those are important questions and some of the other partnerships that submit questions too okay yes mrs mccammon in general i i agree with this choice i i do think when we create the budget calendar you know it's helpful the way that it's laid out now um that like for example on the 25th it's pretty clear about what we're going to discuss on the first you know if we do the public hearing and then more than just a regular uh board meeting if we're i think there's a level of clarity so that whether it's board members or it's the public they understand the process as they read through the agenda and can see the arc of the ad cut list um so you want to use the description add cut and where it's

126being addressed or or or that we're calling it budget modifications so you know i think we should put it i mean look i think the public is used to add cut and cut night so i think in parentheses you add add cut so i think everyone understands that and then add to february 1st that we go into a regular board of education meeting after that okay make sense and then dennis will make we will have public comment on february 8th also okay yeah i just want to point out mr chairman that uh what we just voted on on the regular schedule and it's on this schedule is nope um but we don't have february it is as a yes so there's our regular meetings and there's our budget calendar and this is our budget calendar

127yep yeah i'm just point tonight that the um march first was one of our original board meetings and we moved it to on this calendar to march 2nd because the board of finance has put out a preliminary schedule to have us present on march 1st and the theme was for april 5th and 6th there was a conflict of meetings there so it's it's we already just approved it but it's also in here i just want to note that it's a change okay so should we also add just for everyone's information that on the first that we are engaging with the board of finance first february 1st oh well that that is that's on this calendar here that's it it's march 1st march 17th and then our meetings on the second you just said something about

128february 1st the board of finance oh i'm sorry i should've martial okay all right good all right good so with those changes are we are we okay with approving this budget schedule as amended so just to be clear that means we're removing the february third thursday meeting correct and we're making the clarifications on february 1st going to a regular board of ed meeting and then adding the ad cut modification we have a motion to move that forward as amended mrs mccammon second by mr ceni all those in favor that is unanimous okay thank you first reading and discussion on board of education policies proposed revised 9350 quorum and voting procedures proposed new 1310 school security and safety mission so the proposed changes to board policy 9350 is as mr ceni rightly pointed out when we

129made the revisions to policy 9310 it conflicted with this policy which required board members to be present physically in order to vote so that provision is um eliminated we also eliminated the requirement that a majority vote is needed in order to pass any motion that's covered in 9310 by robert's rules shipment of goodwin's model policy um says that an extension on any motion is that the board member who abstains will have been seen to be voting with the motion that carried so that just as a clarification of what an abstention means and um then the shipment of goodwin model policy also adds that board members should not vote on any interest in which anything in which they have a pecuniary or a personal interest okay thank you mission again this is the first reading and

130discussion a lot of work is always behind the scenes and then we will surely thereafter uh look at our subcommittees and assignments around that um to further continue to work on policy so any questions or comments on these first readings yes this is obviously nice to be quick i just when they say personal interest can you help us define it i mean if i'm voting on an english class and my kid might take it i don't see that as a personal interest i see that it's a duty but do they provide any language no i could get some clarification i think they need a more direct personal interest but but i'll see if i can yeah i mean we just accept gifts we you know i it would just help i think all of us

131so that we know sure thank you thank you like a financial benefit directly to you that no one else has benefited from but you know that's all right thank you we move along to continue discussion on high school stadium lights agreement i know dr adley we had this on the last agenda it is coming up for renewal with our neighbors so i open it up for discussion while we have the opportunity to look at this are there any thoughts comments or questions that come to mind that the board would like to work on with respect to this agreement we would then think about what we need to do with our partners in town on planning and zoning they would have to be involved if there's any changes or amendments that would like to discuss with

132this i think our overall goal is to continue to be good neighbors i think any of us that have participated in friday night lights or any other night that there are lights on it's a great community event i think the whole community including the neighbors around the high school have come together to celebrate you know really fun um sports games up there at the stadium and it's just proven to be a real great community event and thanks to mr rudel and company the addition of chartwells it seems to be the hot spot for burgers and fries up at the um concession stand according to some of the numbers so it's really all come together to be an incredible opportunity for the community to come together under the lights so i'll open it up to board

133conversation is there anything you would like to discuss around this agreement and then you know work through with attorneys and planning and zoning and our partners in terms of our neighbors around the property yes mr ceni so i i was uh planning the zoning chair as the lights were improved so um you know one comment this stand still agreement was kind of signed in in the background if you will um amongst the board of education the administration and then the neighbors so i think this time around um i'd love to see a broader community input as we look to potentially uh amend this and of course any amendments as i read it have to go through the planning and zoning commission of course so we we start like with a broad input from the community

134with full knowledge like we don't want you know midnight games going on you know adults on the fields like with reasonable constraints around this to be good neighbors and she said um but i do think we have to you know bring a broader uh spectrum of the community including youth sports and other people that might be have an interest in using it um number two is i think we do need a briefing from legal counsel uh you know on this and what this document truly means um so we understand how to bring it forth to the community and gain their input so those are my great my comments thank you mr sini would the board entertain a um go ahead so my question is it's been on the agenda twice and i don't know what's

135being asked of us is the question do we renew the contract or do we not or is the question do we amend so one i need clarification on what we're being asked sure and then two i would agree with mr ceni that i need to know our role because we're not planning and zoning and so this at the moment is kind of like a private covenant and um i think the board had questions about it at the time too and we got lights up and and lights are up and we're happy but i need to know our role i need to know what we're being asked of twice now on the agenda and then i need to know from council where do we have standing because i don't want to over stretch our standing yep

136no good question thank you mrs zachman so the goal was to refresh the board on the agreement have everyone read the agreement there is history there and i think everyone has gone over the history so it is then you know the question is do we renew it as is or do we amend it i open it up to the board if there are any thoughts thank you mr ceni and thank you mrs zachman so i would say next steps are almost a special meeting where we have council and planning and zoning and we go over that like what are the opportunities to make any amendment or revisions working with our neighbors and that is the board interested in making those amendments or revisions and does it work for the neighbors and for the community so

137does that answer your question and then and then voting on sort of yeah sort of okay we'll get there and then and then and then the board would have to vote on making those amendments in line with what needs to be done from a planning and zoning standpoint and working with our neighbors and then moving the agreement forward there is the option to just renew it as is but my read from the board is they wanted to have more of a discussion around this because it has worked i think it's worked well but we also need to continue to work with our neighbors so i'll stop there yes yes one clarification this is an ongoing stance agreement yes unless we make an amendment good point thank you mr smith that's illegal and that's where right

138so it's almost like an evergreen and that it would roll over unless we decide to make it question i would suggest we have a discussion with our legal counsel yeah and then figure out what our standing is okay and then how we can make an amendment i think that makes sense so we can get that and we will get that and actually basically the way people have described it is gonna roll over unless we mend or request for it to go away which also has to go to pmz but at some point somebody's gonna have to put the table what's wrong with it as is or not uh do you want it away done away with completely do we want to modify it till we open up some more nights or otherwise i mean someone's

139gonna have to fit on the table why do we put this on right yeah so that's kind of where i am we've had it on twice i agree we either need to do something or we're just tacitly renewing it i don't think the board has put a stake in the ground but part of that is i don't know where we are is the administration making a recommendation is the administration saying how this is running is have the neighbors come forward i heard one neighbor last meeting saying please stay with it but has there been any conversations about any modifications we should consider or are we asking the board members to say what we should consider i don't have information so as um myself mr lynch mr manfredonia met with the neighbors in advance of the

140last meeting to give him a courtesy that this is going to be on the gym right and i'm actually it's also part of the the agreement that we do meet with them annually last year we didn't have to because there was no there was no football games that being played from a minister point of view we feel just from the school point of view that it's running well if there was a if there was one opportunity the only additional thing that potentially would open up for us potentially would be like a tuesday night game right um other than that uh there's a feeling that it's running well and it's a meeting that's meeting our needs so we're happy essentially with the agreement understands from a school point of view okay so that's i think helpful

141to kind of guide our conversation we may agree or disagree right but we haven't heard that yet so but we have gotten input from the community and this was first put on the agenda yes to look it over and gain more input from the brain so that if they have a need to use the facilities they would like the opportunity to apply but again i think our next step is to understand what we as a board and what the district can do within the constraints of this private agreement yes now that it has been five years yes upon that we're educated we can go out to the community and say you know we're okay or you know but do you need well i would ask would you like to utilize these facilities uh differently differently

142than any other facilities right so i think dr adley to your point if there's an opportunity to look at a tuesday night game or something that's something you would like to look at and then i think the goal was for the board to come back with any feedback just based on looking at the agreement is there anything that you thought anyone on the board would want to change or have as a discussion but we'll move forward with a special meeting we'll get guidance from council and planning and zoning but i asked the board to go back and continue to if you have questions and don't understand the agreement but look through the agreement understand how it's set up and if there's anything that you see that you feel we could change or move forward and

143work with our neighbors on bring that to the table for example there's a two game per limit tonight under the lights per sport right yeah i've heard you know in certain cases that parents would like to see more than two things under like that restriction lifted you know when you look at how this was constructed it was constructed around events and not times it is very odd from a png perspective also so again it's something to all to discuss with council and bringing in the community feedback in our own culture so what so i'll put a stake in that without looking at the merits of any individual agreement i'm uncomfortable having an ongoing agreement that's a legal agreement rather than an ongoing neighborly discussion because we don't have that in other areas and in the

144few cases we do it hasn't served us well like our prohibition on a pool for the lifetime of the high school in retrospect the community may have been open so regardless of what's in this i'm uncomfortable with the precedent of these types of legal agreements so what i would need to hear from council is is there merit to having these and that does not mean to the neighbors i don't want to be a good neighbor but in general i'm not supportive of these types of agreements thank you mrs just say i think we might be stuck with some sort of an agreement with these neighbors into perfect too sure that's what we need to understand so we'll clarify that all right good good discussion all right so i'll move forward with it can i yes

145what's the form for the feedback from the community i don't know well i think we should we should organize a special meeting and have at it the right people from a legal planning and zoning standpoint make sure our neighbors are invited okay all right and that way the community yeah i'm sorry no go ahead i think the legal discussion has to be an exact section yes okay once we come out of that we'll understand what the constraints are and what that flexibility is and then we can go forward with the administration and give them some input on how they can proceed with this body collecting more good public hearing or something all right good thank you for the discussion good questions all right we will move forward discussion and possible action on start times for

146board of education meetings and public comment so several board members and we've had this discussion i think at the retreat so i put on the table for a discussion of changing the possible start of the board times until seven o'clock i think there's a consensus we'd like the board meetings to run about two hours or so so we continue to work hard on looking at the agenda i think our folks that join us from the school from the administration and guests do a great job with presentations it is up to the board members to look at read and understand the board presentations so we don't have to have full-blown you know line-by-line presentations to us and can spend more time with questions and thoughts and kind of exchange with these things also i think we

147need to think about guests that are coming to present i think about open choice at the last meeting we need to think about putting those folks sooner on the agenda so they're not hanging out listening to all our discussion until 9 30 or 10 o'clock at night so that's one of the thought processes i think we also we had a discussion around moving the start of the board meeting to seven o'clock and then the effect on that in terms of executive session would people let travel work school be able to show up at 6 30 or earlier for an executive session or are people comfortable with having the executive session potentially after the meeting taking into consideration that we'd like to stick to a two-hour meeting we need to respect the administration and their travel

148times and their long day also so um i'll pause there on the start time of the meetings and see what the discussion is at the board table dr adley anything you wanted to add to that i'll just mention about just executive session that there will be some exceptions where exact executive session would have to start before um generally if you want to have it afterwards that's understandable but but there would be some that we make because of the we've had it in the past where for whatever press and reason or other ways we had to have it before the meeting we had to have it before the meeting because we were potentially having a vote at the meeting correct based on an interview or a hiring so good so i'll pause there and open up

149to questions or comments i'm not sure why we're changing it just it's been it's been a discussion i think people would like to start earlier and get out earlier and if we can adhere to the two two hour timeline i think some other boards in town start at seven some start later at eight so just a discussion that's come up in conversation so how i'm sorry go ahead mrs finish how would we adhere to the two-hour timeline because board members might have questions there might be longer public comment i i worry about there's no adhering to a two-hour time limit it's just a guide and i think other boards in town have done it they've tried to guide the meeting by working primarily on the agenda and the presentations to overall a two-hour meeting but

150yes we can't control public comment on the front or the end i think the only other way to do that is also we've done it in the past in august we did it it looks like a heavy agenda there's something specific that we want to talk about talk about that we want public comment we need to use this special meeting opportunity to do that you know on an additional date over and above a regular board meeting so i hope that answers your question okay yeah mr senior i'd support a change of seven i mean uh after a long day work coming here and then sometimes go until 11 30. i mean the last meeting let's let's be honest we had to rush through our regular work items um to get out of here by 11

15130. and i know a lot is driven by public comment so my suggestion would be every meeting starts at seven if we have to have an executive session uh so be it i think that that often occurs in other boards where they have an executive session and the public in those unfortunate instances will have to wait for us to reconvene in public session but for the most part if we start at seven and have executive sessions after then the public doesn't have to wait but i you know these these late meetings are tough on our employees tough on the people who are even joining us from zoom and we'll give it a whirl and if it doesn't work then you know we'll go back to 7 30 but i think a half hour shift earlier

152will benefit us all and get me to bed a little earlier so were you were you saying that if we started meetings at seven but we have to have an executive session we start at seven call an executive session and then the public rates yeah and those in those in those you don't know how many of those meetings we have but it's only a handful each year if it didn't work for a 630 start seven that's just a change in policy it's it's something that we would have to make sure we communicate out and socialize with the public the other thing i think we need to think about is if if there's a consensus to change the meeting to seven o'clock is when when do we want to start doing that because it is a

153change from a long-standing tradition of having our meetings at 7 30 so mrs mccann i think if we made a change to seven o'clock we would be warning our like our regular meetings that way and so i think we would probably make that change with the first meeting in january you probably would adjust the calendar and then move in january it would be the natural okay this is mrs could i just add that you may want to check with council at the idea of warning a meeting and then holding another meeting over it um for executive session that has proved problematic in the past so i don't quite remember okay all the details around it but having the public waiting on a duly warned regular meeting was a problem brought to council at one point

154and so i would just check and see if we could do that okay right any other comments i would just note again that the the 2022 calendar that we voted on earlier had 7 30 so somehow we would have to note that and i would also just i say in a very respectful way the two hours i understand mr chairman you uh but i also respect uh sacramento's comments and a sense of like our master gender and i certainly work with my staff myself do these uh as finite as we can as quickly as we can these presentations but we're ahead and like it nearly seems like every meeting i'm adding another update on something else um to the master agenda so if we get collectively when we're looking at the masters you understand because

155that's where it gets like essentially built and it's just that we comment so that's why the master agenda has meant that our work yeah right it hasn't lately um and there's been a pandemic so understandably but that is why getting that master agenda right really does help keep our meetings shorter why do you think i do think that january has like again only has guided i use it like they did generally guide what the meetings are it's just it just gets attitude quite frankly i just i like i understand what you're saying any other mrs mccammon i'm agnostic on a change in start time because it doesn't impact me personally but um i would actually like to hear from staff if they would value it staff's here go ahead you don't have to agree with

156the superintendent that's for sure no pressure yeah is it on now yeah i can only speak for myself so it wouldn't be fair in terms of colleagues i'm fine with either start time um but it's 7 or 7 30. um whatever the feeling is to take care of all the the work and that we have to do so i'm fine with other time um i do appreciate though that we do get out of here late very often um but it is a longer ride home um and a longer night um but i share the same you know commitment to all the work that we're doing so i'm fine by the way thank you miss mr tom bird don't be shy i would i i find with either i would appreciate the seven o'clock personally i

157have a short commute but i would still appreciate it um and that doesn't guarantee we'll be out any earlier it could mean that we just no longer i just want to put that out there too there's no there's no guarantee there all right you know i we serve at the pleasure of the board so i'll do whatever since the executive session many times involved by issues i just want to make sure that we save enough time for those executive sessions to have meaningful discussions and not be rushing correct to come into a seven o'clock meeting sure good i'm like chris i have a long commute so uh but i could do either or seven or seven thirties play thank you mr rudel yes sorry mr as as one of the commuters for me i think

158john's point i i what frustrates me is having executive session change different times and not being able to it makes it difficult for me to get out of the city and plan right because i only get that warning on thursday or friday so if i have a meeting scheduled for two weeks it makes it difficult so i would personally prefer one start time every time and then figure out executive session whether it's whether we hopefully do it after or if you have to do it before but try to limit that as much as possible for me i would prefer one start time for me that makes it easier so and seven is fine i can do seven but just i just need one time that i can schedule a round it's more difficult for me

159when we have executive sessions sometimes at six so then sometimes sometimes you're saying it's better than executive sessions at the end of the meeting you know every meeting starts at seven that would be ideal for me okay and then or seven thirty i don't care which time but yeah but i think you know i'll check the council on starting a meeting and going into executive session and making the public wait i'm not comfortable with that so i'll look at that um it might be very doable i just know at one point it wasn't yeah no good question so the other conversation and i've gotten not necessarily based on this based on this discussion i think there'll be some takeaways and we'll come back your thoughts mrs worm i'm just not sure yet okay here at

160seven o'clock on tuesdays say that again i don't know if i i'm not sure if i can hear it fair enough good mrs parent i'm fine either way by the way okay good the other conversation that um has been brought up to me is public comment and i think public comment kind of comes and goes with what's going on uh agenda items and other type things so i did get some guidance um from counsel from mr mooney on on public comment and it's interesting how some other districts do it so in terms of the schedule of the meeting and thinking about the time of the meeting we can set up public comment in the beginning of the meeting and have that public comment specific to board agenda items all right and that may limit i

161don't want to say we want to limit public comment to 45 minutes or an hour or 30 minutes it's important to continue to hear and engage with the public so we can have public comment at the beginning of the meeting and have it specific to agenda items and then the public comment at the end of the meeting can be broad public comment for whatever comments the public want to bring to the table the only other guidance that i got from council was how do you do a sign up sheet for public comment and i said we don't do a sign up sheet for public comment and he said that's fine as long as it works and i said we're kind of in a two-phase we've got public we've got zoom we usually start with public

162everyone does it very respectful stands up walks through it we go to zoom michelle manages it so unless someone feels we need a sign up sheet other than when we do specific budget type meetings and it makes sense i'm not so concerned about that but i'll throw it out for conversation around the public comment in the beginning of the meeting being specific to board agenda items and the public comment at the end of the meeting being open public comment thoughts mrs parent so i just want to be conscious that we have seen more students speaking a public comment and my concern would be if we limit those students if they're not speaking on an agenda item and we have a meeting that goes to 11 30 i don't want students to not be able to

163public comment because they're asleep um that's why that would that would be my major concern about limiting it to attend items i will ask you know what i'll ask council if it's feasible if there are students that want to present if they can present at the first public comment um i'll ask the question mrs worm that was the same thing and that was my thought that students could at least speak in the beginning okay so i've just sorry i just mentioned that at times it's very difficult sometimes uh on important issues to discern is that talking about that agenda item or is it not i don't want to get into uh discussions about but part of it is part of it isn't um well it used to have to open just consider that and then

164finally we've been talking about communication and opening communication keeping communication going i would hate to take a wee step back to perceive that we're we're limiting those opportunities that's just my just get have it just take out the consideration too mr rooney did you did you have any uh a pining from legal counsel about and i don't want to say limiting because i i am one who is vastly opposed to like calling a question limiting conversation but when you have repetitive comments of the same for 45 an hour and it's the same people not the same people but the same comment of the script and people reading the exact same script maybe a little variation can we say if you have anything new to add please do so or you know so you can just

165say i agree with the previous comments and now as opposed to three minutes it's 15 seconds to me so it's a great it's a great question i i've done that once that i can recall and yes um when we tie a public comment or we can you know i can speak during public comment and say if further public comment is all around the same topic if you just want to state your name and address and say you agree with the person that just spoke or you agree with the person's comments that is fine that is allowable so people just want to make sure their voice and address are recorded but they're just going to agree with the person that's gone ahead of them that is fine this is aqua um so you are correct the

166board can instruct people to group their comments and say i agree with the first three speakers or i'm speaking on behalf of the 10 people sitting in the room right now but i would say this board has a long history of accepting public comment and part of that is because it had a history whether real or perceived of not accepting public comment or having comment that was only on an agenda or after an agenda item and because of that at times there were people who thought that their voice and concern could not be heard and that agendas may or may not have been constructed in that way and so i would really caution it is inconvenient it is long it makes for long days i know what it's like as chair i write down every

167public comment i read it as soon as i get home so sometimes i'm up late but we ask to hear from our public and we're lucky enough to have an engaged public that comes to our meetings so i would really caution us from changing the idea that you can come to your board and you can talk to your board and i think hopefully if we have some better communication or some tighter issues um you know we won't see it as much we also have the option always of postponing an agenda item if it's getting late and we don't we want to move that to the next meeting but i really have strong concerns about limiting public comment so just to reiterate there's no limiting of public comment that's not what i'm proposing or that's not

168the conversation i want to have board members have come to me how we can be more efficient i agree we don't want to limit or stifle or whatever word you want around public comment there are other districts throughout the state and being on the chain of emails that go through they do public comment very differently um they have one public comment um they have public comments specific to agenda they don't have open public comments so it's just a conversation based on feedback that's been given to me over the last year from the board but i agree there's no goal here to limit any type of public comment some of it was how can we continue to be efficient make sure we're focused on the right topics and agendas mr c two things i think we

169can do a better job communicating that uh the public can submit their comments the email and we we do read them often we get the email and they they state it that's again they're right but proficiency to remind them emails work number two i guess the question i would have you know address all these concerns is there a way we can limit that first public comment to one hour and then and again prioritize our students in an hour and just say okay this is the first hour we're done with that we're going to a regular agenda and then at the end it's unlimited as we see fit this way we're not rushing through our business if you will like we've had to in the past to reach in 11 30 kind of not deadline but

170departure time so so good so good question so legally we can limit our public comment to an hour to 45 minutes to an hour and a half whatever we want to do and then we can pause move on to our agenda and open it to public comment again i think that presents challenges and concerns and would have to be socialized with the public and them understanding it it pushes people to the later part of the meeting you bring up another good point and just to confirm yes um emails in terms of public comment can be received from the board um emails will not will not be read at public comment they are just circulated amongst the board so if you send an email into the board for public comment it's just circulated amongst the board

171and the administration it is not reddit public comment and that's guidance that's from council mrs zachary so i'll take back my word limited because i understand the chair's not trying to limit public comment um but what i what i would say is sometimes matters of public interest are not efficient they're messy they're concerned there's lots of points of view and so you know procedurally i also have a concern if we're just talking about doing executive session and warning it for the end of the meeting and now we're saying we're going to let public comment go along at the end of the meeting we might end up here till midnight anyway i don't think we always have long swaths of public comment i i just think it's one of the things you sign up for and

172it and it's our history i am i am i would be very very concerned to try to make public comment more efficient i i don't know the right way to say that i'm you know maybe that's a bumbling way but that's kind of it sometimes public comment just isn't efficient it's the public talking to their elected officials i understood thank you mr zachman any other board yes mrs i just wanted to went to john's point cindy's point about um you know limiting it to a certain enough time i'm a little bit concerned about doing that and that if we're voting on something during the meeting and somebody wants to weigh in on a vote that evening and you know they hit an hour and they can't share their thoughts before we go i'm concerned about

173that so i mean i agree with this aquaman it's kind of what we sign up for and it is what it is my opinion thank you mr mrs form so i know so talking about if they send in emails and we can't read them but as you're saying if there is a vote coming up and they want to weigh in could we then at least say we've received you know these 10 people and say their names and say they are for whatever change or and these you know 10 people are against so at least they feel that they've been heard and people out there know that they are for or against whatever is going on but maybe it's just a close i think it's a i think it's a good question i think it adds

174um i don't know whether it be board work or administrative work i'm not sure i personally want to go down the path of deciphering letters as to whether people are for or against something i think it should be circulated by the board and as the board has the discussion they should take that feedback into consideration i don't think we want to get into saying who's for who's against anything we just want to get all of the public feedback and then discuss it but i will i will run those questions by council yeah there was also a question of um somewhere on the website of posting public comment um in terms of letters into the board sometimes it does get challenging because there is personal information or identifiable information that people don't always realize so that

175presents a challenge too and council is not necessarily on board with posting all those letters that come in other than circulating amongst the board and the administration so this is best i was just going to add that i like a lot of people are saying i think it's important to give the public an opportunity to speak this i think that's that's a very important piece of the work that we're doing here is listening to the public and i think that what's critical in the input from the public is to understand sort of the qualitative part of what they're sharing with us it isn't it isn't a vote it isn't we're not getting a statistically significant sample of individuals feelings on a subject one way or another so it's getting their individual perspectives that help guide

176our work so i think to that end i would say i don't think we want to limit at this time in any way shape or form i also would add i think that we've had fewer forums in the last two years for the public to engage with the schools with the district with the board of education the administration there haven't been as many you know coffees with the principal there haven't been as many opportunities to be in the buildings etc and as a natural reaction to that everything sort of rises to the top right we've been sort of in triage mode handling um education and the schools so i think as that tamps down a little bit and people are getting back used to working things through the system the way they used to that

177it might naturally kind of bring less to our table all the time i will reiterate too as words matter and this community and social media pick up words and take words and run with it we are not trying to limit public comment we are trying to have a discussion how to do public comment the right way so the public continues to be heard i think it's important that students are coming up more and we want the students voices to be heard so again i look at it as is there a better or more efficient way to do it so that verse so that voices are heard so that's that's the conversation sorry i didn't mean to suggest no not at all just a quick question because we do have students and minors commenting and now

178we are broadcasting on youtube and we are then recorded on youtube can you ask council about that is a minor required to also give their address and should we have that recorded and out on youtube because these are kids um and the answer might be yes or maybe we could bleep it on youtube i don't know but so it's a good it's a good question so it is up to us and our policy whether we even want to collect addresses that's up to us whether we want to have the address recorded if we are having if we are from a policy standpoint and a board standpoint asking for the address we can limit the ask for students that are presenting in public but the address has to be of record um in the minutes of

179the meeting but we as maybe not on youtube but we as a board can decide whether we want to have a public comment with an address or without an address that i did ask council or a town just or a town good point yeah and there is no there is nothing that restricts someone that maybe lived in darien moved to stanford moved to her weight and from speaking um so it's not specific to their address um you know the conversation with council was you know not sure how many people actually ask for addresses at other public comments so it's something we can take up as a discussion this is parents just would it be sufficient are you a dairy in resident or not and then yeah i mean that's a conversation we could have if

180it doesn't matter where they're from they're entitled to public comment i'm not sure collecting it i i think for our own interest and for whatever they're presenting to the board it would be nice to know they're from darien so they have a best vested interest in it so mrs mccammon i think the tenor of the conversation so far sounds like we want to um probably honor the way public comment is run now but understanding that it may be fairly inefficient so perhaps we could agree that if we have a particularly long public comment period we take a pause at the beginning of the meeting and see if we don't need to adjust anything um are there people that we need to move forward or items i think that's a good point i think as we

181have a long public comment then we should pause and look at the rest of the agenda and see if we want to adjust the agenda again go to a special meeting or move the agenda so what i'll do is this was a good conversation again i brought it up because of feedback from the retreat and feedback from individual board members i think i have a sense there's some questions to follow up so we'll we'll put it on the next agenda to see if we want to take a vote and do any changes but again the goal is how can we be more efficient how can we continue to hear from the public and now we also have students participating which is great keep in mind we're also going to have students on the board as

182we go into the new year all right good any other questions or comments are on that good thank you all um we'll move to action items uh personnel items appointments resignations and retirements miss scion so we just still continue to see more movement than we usually have in the past as far as resignations and then subsequent hiring so okay good so may i have a motion to move forward the personal action report for november 9th 2021 mrs achman second by mr moroney all those in favor that is unanimous michelle we will move back to public comment we will start with any of our friends here um in the room if not we will move to zoom good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom

183of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option the facilitator will identify you please state your name and address you will have up to three minutes to comment greg grambling you are unmuted and recognized mr grambling can you hear us i can hear you can you hear me okay yes thank you mr grambling hey greg grambling from 11 blueberry lane i just have a quick clarification question for um miss kasuchi i think earlier um when she was making comment with respect to the the survey results for the the the younger kids the five to 11 year old kids i thought that i i may be a mistake in here but i thought that she may have said that it was 60 zero percent of the respondents indicated that they did want to have their

184kids vaccinated um i'm just comparing that versus the the survey results that she emailed to me earlier today and you know the first question says i am interested in vaccinating my any my my school-aged child five to eleven and in red it says no 61.7 percent and then the third question is i plan to sign my my child children up to receive a covet vaccine and 56.1 percent said not applicable i do not plan on vaccinating my child five percent said no 12 said maybe and just 27 said yes i just i wasn't sure if i misheard or maybe there's just a clear difference between what she said versus the results that she sent me so maybe before those become public information just want to make sure that was uh clarified thanks very much thank

185you mr grambling anyone else michelle there are no more raised fans at this time okay thank you all for coming in person thank you all on zoom thank you all for the organizational meeting and the opportunity to continue to serve welcome new members we have a motion to adjourn uh mr ceni second by mrs best all those in favor