Special Board of Education Meeting - August 10, 2021

001good evening i would like to call this special meeting of the board of education to order the next regular board of education meeting is on tuesday august 24th at 7 30 p.m in the board meeting room thank you all for joining us this evening we have a few folks in person and we have our friends out in zoom land also i've been reminded by our health professionals as we start to bring people in person please follow the guidelines on masking and unmasking based on vaccination status so that's just a reminder from our great health professionals thank you um real quick good evening and again thank you all for joining this special meeting in august i know many of you are trying to have some down time and family vacation in august so i truly appreciate

002you participating with us this evening in this board meeting i also want to thank all those parents and community members that have sent emails and letters to the board providing their thoughts around school opening plans we have survived and i will say in some ways thrived as a community working together we finished the school year with an awesome graduation ceremony and many other stepping up and celebratory ceremonies in person we continue to be a district that is recognized for our commitment to in-person learning and working together to have the right protocols in place for a safe learning environment for our students teachers and staff you learned a lot over the last year and we did it all without a playbook we finished the year in person we are going to keep that focus on a

003safe learning environment for our students teachers and staff we are going back to school in person with a regular school schedule monday august 30th that has been and will continue to be our primary goal in-person learning in a safe environment the in-person safe learning environment will include a mask based on the governor's executive order and mass mandate which is in place through september 30th unless something changes at the state level the district will follow those orders dr adley will update us on the most current information from the state based on calls with the department of education and health which continue on a weekly basis this evening's meeting is not to discuss changes or make changes to districts masking policy we will continue to work with our local health professionals and follow the governor's mandate to

004provide safe in-person learning for our students teacher and staff at our last two meetings the board discussed organizing a letter to state leaders advocating for a state policy or guidelines which outlined mitigation strategy that our local health professionals and district administration can use to continue to educate our children safely if and when any of these mandates change state guidelines worked well for our district for in-person hybrid and remote learning decisions last year the letter that has been circulated is a draft and the board will work at the board table this evening on the message in that letter and determine next steps as i've stated the feedback from parents and our community around this is important and appreciated so our goal is in-person learning in a safe environment working with our local health professionals in district

005administration following state executive orders and mandates and looking for safety guidelines and protocols from the state that will guide us this upcoming school year as things change thank you again for participating and for all the feedback we do this as a community keeping our kids in school safe and healthy thank you so the agenda has public comment and then public discussion on the reopening of school so if you want to speak during public comment that's fine public discussion is also gives us the ability to respond or engage in the discussion also so um you don't have to repeat yourself through public comment in public discussion if you wanted to wait for the public discussion to say what you're going to say that's fine also i just wanted to hopefully clarify that for everyone so thank

006you so michelle we'll move on to public comment good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option you will notice a blue hand icon appear in the upper corner of your screen where your face name and or number appears when it is your turn to speak 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 miss mccalla atonito you are unmuted and recognized hi make a lot at tonito 32 hillside avenue good evening dr adley and members of the board of education i have a fifth grader and a third grader at henley

007and i'm speaking on behalf of a group of parents who are concerned that the safety of our elementary students is being sacrificed in an attempt to reopen schools as normally as possible the cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all students staff and teachers in schools regardless of vaccination status masks are necessary to not only protect our elementary students who are not yet vaccine eligible but to mitigate transmission of the delta variant which we continue to learn more about every day safety should be prioritized over convenience the position taken in your draft letter to the state seeking local control disregards cdc guidance and unduly emphasizes the vaccination rate of the vaccine eligible while ignoring our unvaccinated elementary students decisions regarding the health and safety of our children during a pandemic should be informed by medical guidance

008from epidemiologists not personal politicized opinions contrary to what your letter indicates requiring masks would be in the best educational and health interests of our students because it will help keep our schools open and safe the vaccination rate of our elementary students is 0 and the safety protocols in our elementary schools should reflect that dr adley i'm reminded of one of your emails from last september where you quoted maya angelou and saying do the best you can until you know better then when you know better do better we know better last year the district's mitigation strategies including eating lunch in classrooms and indoor masking were effective they kept our children safe and our schools open we should not abandon those strategies now while our youngest students remain unvaccinated and unprotected thank you mrs antonito miss belinda

009fang you are unmuted and recognized hi this is belinda fang 22 beach drive thank you for having this important discussion regarding masks for the reopening plan i am in agreement that we should have our children in school as much as possible and as safe as possible so that they can receive the best instruction and learning experience i'd like to voice my concern regarding the mask wearing issue that is up for debate children under the age of 12 do not have the option of receiving a vaccine at this time essentially nothing has changed for them since this time last year they're just as likely to contract kevin 19 and the highly contagious delta variant and spread it to others i strongly urge you to plea make your decisions based on factual data and the recommendations of

010the cdc and the connecticut department of health currently the cdc advises that schools serving children under the age of 12 implement layered prevention strategies and use them consistently to protect students teachers staff visitors and other members of their households in support in person learning the connecticut department of health advises that all connecticut residents over the age of two years whether they're vaccinated or unvaccinated return to wearing masks when in indoor public spaces as outlined last week in dr adley's email it seems as though many of these layered prevention strategies that were effective last year have been taken away and now even the last mitigation strategy of mask wearing is being considered optional i understand that our town rate of infection is low however darien is not insular we would be remiss to think that we

011are any less likely to experience the rise of infection than any other areas of the country especially now with all that we are learning about the highly contagious delta variant our residents will be or have already returned to traveling all over the tri-state area for work and families during these summer months have traveled both internationally and domestically we would be negligent to go against what the store the state advises about mask wearing i implore you to please heed with caution as many of you have stated time and time again your role is not in public health your responsibility is to follow the advice of experts and currently they are all recommending that masks be worn indoors for children under the age of 12. please please do not deviate from the sound advice and counsel of

012the cdc and the connecticut department of health thank you for your time and consideration thank you mrs bang clayton irwin you are recognized and unmuted mr irwin can you hear us i think your speaker is not i'm still muted i can hear my kids laughing at me in the other room yes thank you mr owen we can hear you now thank you clay irwin 210 leroy uh in different circumstances you're all welcome to stop by sometime if you're in the neighborhood um i appreciate the the comments that everybody's made so far and and quickly to uh dr adley board of directors and everybody else in the community i i do uh appreciate our our common mission of the protection and preparation of our children this is something my wife and i talk a lot about

013and sometimes we fear that the protection of them today is not preparing them properly for tomorrow my message is very simple no question we should continue to follow cdc guidelines but in the event that you all that we are given the option of making a decision of whether to wear a mask or not i asked the board of directors i asked you dr adley that you would allow the parents to make the decision of whether or not this is in the best interest of each child for their individual circumstances thank you mr irwin appreciate that [Music] miss andrea j you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us andrea yes can you hear me yes if you could just speak up a little bit we have the air conditioning going on thank you okay um

014i first want to address some of the comments that were just made um about the delta variant there isn't even a test to determine whether or not that even exists i'd like to i'd like those parents that have spoken about that to uh give that some put some research um into that because there is no test to determine whether or not that that exists but anyway um the school board i've already sent this info to all of you but i'm just sharing this here so that other parents that are listening and can benefit from this information um there's a doctor in germany her name is margarita griez brison she's an md and a phd she's a world renowned neurologist and she has warned that face masks cause oxygen deprivation and permanent neurological damage especially in

015the developing brains of children she explains that the nerve connections in the hippocampus die after just three minutes of oxygen deprivation never to be restored again even if you start breathing full oxygen minutes later um so this is brain damage people you're okay with that i i would think not my husband and i both agreed that enough is enough and we are refusing to mask our children ever again so i urge anyone who agrees with me to keep your children home this school year and feel free to contact me if you want to join forces with homeschooling thank you thank you mr rachie would you please repeat your or say your address say your address again please uh five old parish road thank you thank you thank you jeff montero you are unmuted and recognized

016mr montero can you hear us uh i can can you hear me now yes i can thank you okay great i live at uh on whaling road uh and i want to thank everyone for taking the time and showing an interest in all of our children i think it's obviously a very important subject i also want to say that i think the time for mask mandates for students is passed and strongly believe that it should be left to each family to decide whether masking the kids their kids in school is the right decision for their family i believe masking children offers little benefit when you consider how low the risk that it presents to their health and the risk of then transmitting covid is low when you consider that there is vaccine readily available to

017those who want it or at risk but more importantly i think for many of our children it can cause harm it undoubtedly inhibits their ability to learn and communicate and in many instances over the past year has been shown to cause anxiety and other more serious issues the decision to wear a mask should be left up to the families not a mandate from the board of education thank you thank you mr montero mr montero could i get your number on whaling road please 19. thank you mr montero greg grambling you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us mr grambling yep i can hear you can you hear me okay yeah we can hear you just if you could please speak up a little bit with the air conditioning thank you yeah sure thanks so

018thanks to the board of ed and everyone for taking the time i know this is a continuing difficult topic for everyone i just want to make a few comments um you know for the parents who are insisting on mandatory masking for other people's kids i would ask if you would be as adamant about your position if dr adley decided to go in the opposite direction what if he decided that masks are not allowed would you be okay with dr adley deciding that your kids can't wear masks if not why do you think the reverse is okay how can you know and pre-judge what an individual parent circumstances are for not wanting their child to wear a mask my seven-year-old son hunter developed multiple tics during school last year as a result of having to wear

019a mask all day every day one blinking tick and one as a result of difficulty breathing this summer he hasn't worn a mask at all and the ticks are gone is it okay for dr adley to make a decision for hunter or is that my responsibility as a parent this summer my daughter natalie was in yale hospital for a week and diagnosed with bilateral bell's palsy which is now seeing a speech pathologist to learn how to move her mouth again should she be required to wear a mask my older daughter samantha would like to share her experiences wearing a mask this past year hi my name is samantha grambling i am nine years old and go to oxford i really don't like having toilet bath mask all day they make it really hard to breathe

020and really hard to understand my teacher whenever i would sneeze i would have to sit with that gross wet mask all day it smelled so bad in my mask that i threw up twice into it last year during his class luckily samantha didn't asphyxiate asphyxiate or inhale her own vomit unfortunately she was so nervous about riding the bus and being made fun of by other classmates that we had to drive her to school going forward if i were the board of ed or dr adley i wouldn't be comfortable taking on the responsibility for all of our kids governor lamont and the state have passed this decision to local jurisdictions i would encourage you to pass the decision on to parents where it rightfully belongs the one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate when it comes to our

021children inconsiderate for parents who know their kids and their health needs best thank you mr grambling and please thank your daughter for taking some time also mr grambling could you just repeat your address again if you're there yeah at 11 blueberry land thank you username claire you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us claire i can hold on let me just turn my camera on uh sure and just just you could just speak up with the air conditioning in the background thank you so much i will i will try to claire raver 12 sherry lane in darien i just want to thank the darian public schools um for their continued efforts to keep our children safe in school with coved last year was difficult but nonetheless my two children who both attend oxridge had

022a terrific year in school regardless of mask wearing i listened to dr fauci on rachel maddow's show last night and i listened to him explain about the delta variant which is ram wrap rampant in the covid infection area um he said that at a bit bearing in mind he is the senior advice health advisor to the president of the united states and he has many years of training in virology he said that 34 million people are in fact have been infected with kovid up to may of this year within after may within six days a further one million people were infected with covid and to get to the next one million people it took just eight days i will say that my two children my two boys at ox ridge wearing masks throughout the year

023had no significant side effects from the mask wearing my son wesley has eosinophilic esophagitis and multiple allergies as a part of that chronic disease and suffered no side effects from wearing masks i also observed that they did not experience any psychological effects from wearing masks in school either socially or otherwise the schools have kept our kids safe we have had minimal very minimal infection rates at the elementary school level and i would advocate that we continue to do what we had been doing last year given that there are rising infection rates across the country it is only a matter of time until our area in connecticut whilst at low infection rate right now will experience the same infection rate rises and i would caution the schools to refer and go back to the principles that

024we had adopted last year until we know it is absolutely safe for our kids to be unmasked in an inside area i really appreciate the school system i really appreciate dr adley's efforts and everyone behind the scenes thank you very much thank you claire claire could you spell your last name for us for the record please yeah my accent doesn't make it easy a v e r raver thank you so much have a good evening thank you mr peter mcginnis you are unmuted and recognized mr mcginnis can you hear us it looks like you're still on mute okay thank you very much yes i can hear you out great your your address and if you could speak up with the air conditioning it's appreciated thank you of course it's uh 22 robin hood lane peter

025mcginnis uh first uh thank you uh to all the school administrators as well as to the volunteers on the board of education you have a difficult task ahead of you and uh continue to do so um i just want to get to the point of home rule uh home rule meaning the rule that applies in the household as determined by parents as i think about these various issues uh we have masks we have vaccines and we have hybrid slash remote learning all three of those things work in a kaleidoscope here of decisions some of which are certainly the discretion of the board of education and the administration but moreover some of it has a discretion in terms of parental control i would suggest that the board of education take whatever steps to optimize parental home

026rule decision making on all three parameters such that really the parents are going to decide depending upon the situations and in consultation with their own doctors as to whether vaccines are appropriate or not secondly whether masks should or should not be worn but moreover on hybrid or remote learning i also suggest that the flexibility be allowed uh so that parent parents can make those decisions to allow their child to engage in remote learning on a more liberalized basis than is currently being contemplated thank you mr mcginnis miss bonnie malone you are unmuted and recognized hi there um sorry i'm just trying to make sure hi there um my name is bonnie malone fleming and i live at 11 sunset road i have three little kids and my young my oldest will be starting kindergarten at

027royal school in the fall um and i listen i have three kids screaming upstairs so i'll make this super short and sweet i want to reiterate the thanks to the board of bed for taking the time to listen to all of us parents i know this is a serious topic and um there's nothing more important than the generation of kids that we're educating right now um [Music] and i appreciate everyone's kind of perspective i believe in the freedom of our parents right to choose and um again i just think that parents should have the option to send their kids to school in the fall with masks or with without i would choose to send my kids without um again my three little kids my oldest is only five and uh she'll be in kindergarten but

028in preschool my two-year-old was wearing a mask this year um and i'll have a three-year-old who i if i he's wearing a mask it like really saddens my heart i know many of his little friends developed social anxiety um my daughter said that it was hard to breathe i had tantrums before school um and the thought of her sitting all day in kindergarten with a mask i just think the detrimental kind of impact developmental impacts of these kids which we don't i appreciate the parent who said you know i my kids had a great year and i was happy but they were fine we don't know and actually there are many leading experts who are saying that masks are more harmful than helpful and the risk of kids developing serious risks because of covid um

029i think that the risks to our children masking them are much stronger and millions of more children will be impacted if we do that so i hope that the board of ed allows parents uh to choose if they have that right uh thank you so much again my name is bonnie fleming and i live at 11 sunset road in durian thank you mrs fleming good evening good evening user cmc you are unmuted and recognized hello can you hear me if you could speak a little louder yes if you could just state your full name and address we appreciate it thank you my name is kiara cortez and i'm at 20 chestnut street i'm here with great i'm here with great concern for my child and for all children who have no voice to speak up

030i'm here representing many parents in the town of darian who feel the same but are afraid they will be ostracized if they speak out i am here to respectfully urge you to end mass mandates in schools and give parents and children a choice the damage of children's mental health cannot go unnoticed for another school year the physical emotional social and psychological effects from wearing masks are detrimental to our kids did you know that a child's brain cannot develop and function in a learning environment at full capacity while wearing a mask masks automatically tell the body that it is not safe therefore triggering the brain to be in a state of fight or flight and work overtime the way that the brain normally masters information is off balance creating distress impulsive behavior fear panic anxiety confusion

031slower reactivity loss of critical thinking lack of comprehension and focus masks also decrease oxygen and blood flow perpetuating a child's fear and driving adrenaline additionally a child's well-being is highly dependent on emotional connection with others and that becomes difficult in a mask many young children are still learning how to signal fear confusion happiness etc one child i spoke to recently said that she was scared for the first month and a half of school because she couldn't differentiate faces and could not remember anyone's name she also said she was looking to see if anyone was quote unquote different but she couldn't tell this i understood to mean that that she was trying to gauge who she could trust it's harder without facial cues we teach our children about stranger danger but with everyone wearing a mask

032how will they know when something isn't right whether they know it consciously or even have the language to understand it children are suffering their speech and reading delayed disengaged in learning withdrawn lack confidence and have social anxiety it is no wonder that suicide depression and anxiety is at an all-time high these children are our future we have to do better for them this year they need to recover from the trauma of the past 17 months and get back to feeling safe and in control again they deserve to connect and engage in a nurturing learning environment show expressions and be able to focus without fear i am concerned about what the long-term effects on an entire generation will look like down the road aren't you i want my child to be to grow up to be

033confident successful and secure and you should want the same finally i don't believe an unregulated cloth mask is the answer to keeping kids safe they offer a false sense of security so unless we are talking about n95s which are sufficient yet art yet aren't made to fit children anyway please end mask mandates my child's outcome is my responsibility and after 18 months of asking lots of questions and looking subjectively at information i believe it's time to it's time i decide what is best for my child and you decide what's best for yours thank you thank you miss cortez miss carol carolina magui you are unmuted and recognized hi thank you um i just want to thank the board as always and the administration for their efforts to do what's right for all our children in

034town um i know tonight has been mentioned several times the fact that masks for kids can or kids wearing masks can develop um several different issues and i'm interested in uh if it's possible um if they have any studies that show that that is the case like for example i know in asian countries they've been wearing masks for many many many years and i haven't heard about kids being not being able to learn because they're wearing masks not being able having mental deficiencies because of it or any of the other things that they were mentioned tonight so if there's any studies that can be shared with all of us about those i will be uh very uh thankful for to receiving them and that's it thank you and i do support whatever the administration decides

035to choose and with our health experts so thank you ms magui thank you very much and do you want my address or you know it yes no because you can give it to us thank you 28 games at lane yeah thank you thank you bye miss elena brylovsky you are unmuted and recognized huh mr can you hear us yes hello thank you uh yes good evening and thank you doctor name and address please oh yes of course i'm sorry uh we're at 76 near waterlane and we have three little children two of them are hindley um yeah we have a third grader and a first grader and a two-year-old who is going to preschool this year um and i would like to start with um thanking you dr adley and board of education for everything

036you do to keep our community safe we're all very grateful i will be very short and i would like to cast my vote um and there is a in just to state that there is a mounting evidence that wearing masks prevents the transmission of the virus in schools and on buses even without physical distancing wearing masks is crucial to keeping schools open for in-person learning children can transmit the virus it is factual so to keep teachers safe to keep our schools open i believe unvaccinated children must wear masks i find it heartbreaking to see our little kids go to school wearing masks most of the time perhaps not recognizing their faces but i think it is crucial to keeping schools open i think it is a very small price to pay for keeping schools open

037and i think it will be detrimental to their mental health and emotional development and on educational level if schools are closed so the way i see it that either we wear masks and keep schools open or schools closed and we just all homeschooling not everyone has the chance to be able to homeschool their children for many different reasons so i don't think it's honestly optional um and so thank you so much for your time and um yeah that's that mralovsky thank you very much thank you miss alicia melbourne for unmuted and recognized hi my name is alicia melberg24 hang on i'll start with my video my name is alicia melbourne 24 christie hill road um unfortunately i didn't prepare for tonight to speak um but after hearing some comments um first of all i want

038to thank everybody at the board of ed and dr ali for keeping our schools open um this spring my husband and i had several conversations and his exact comment was it made him sick to his stomach to think what would have happened if our six-year-old was not in school so we appreciate everybody's efforts with this i would like to address several people's comments on the mental impacts of children um they are affected and not having to study you have parents that are stating that these impacts are real um my child does have some social anxiety issues and they were impacted by this and i believe they were further impacted by this so i would like to know how the board of education and dr adley would like us to communicate this to our children um

039for example this summer when my kids went to go for ice cream on the last day of school they asked me why they weren't mouse and go for ice cream how do i explain this to my children how do i explain to them that the germs don't exist at go for ice cream but they exist at our schools i'm not one way or another i'm saying where i believe the masks should lie but i believe that it should be our choice and our district's choice and whether we mask our children i also ask that the board of education and the school district um address how we are going to identify the mental impacts of this and how we're going to communicate this to our children um lastly i recently listened to a board of education

040meeting where a child spoke out she specifically said take our mouth off we are not a threat we are not sick is this what we are communicating to our children again i think everyone for keeping our schools open i'm one of the most appreciative parents for what everyone has done in this community to keep our children in school thank you thank you mr spellberg user jackie's iphone you were unmuted and recognized jackie can you hear us you're on mute oh sorry hi can you hear me we can hear you just if you'd state your name and address and if you could speak up we have air conditioning on in the background thank you sure my name is bill leonich i live at one siwanoi road i have a kid going into middlesex and two they're

041in tokenique and i really appreciate you guys opening this forum up i know it's a difficult thing to do and pretty thankless but at the same time i think it's important to all voice voice our opinions and a lot of people just call it very strong opinions and i think that's fair but i think what it really boils down to is regardless of what news channel you watch or what studies you read are you able to and do you believe you have the right to make your own decision on what's best for your kids or do you believe those decisions should be made by other people if masks work your kid can wear a mask if vaccines work you have the right to get a vaccine and a chance to get a vaccine all teachers

042have had a chance to get a vaccine as well so trying to tell other parents how they should raise their children how they should subject their children to society i think is a gross overreach i think everybody should just take a minute and respect other people's rights to make decisions for themselves and i appreciate you in a difficult situation the board and dr adley and we appreciate all your efforts last year but please consider our right to raise our children the way that we think is best and those people who want to wear masks are free to do so but people who don't want to wear masks should be free to do so as well thank you very much thank you mr lens there are no more raised hands at this time okay thank you

043anyone in the audience want to speak sure if we have the end table here set up with the microphone again just your name and address thank you excuse me yeah you can speak the current public comment or you can speak at the open discussion sure thank you could you just make sure that's on so we could hear you it is it is great you just speak into it thank you so much can you hear me now yes thank you my name is susan fiveson and i live at 27 edgerton street i have three children attending royal elementary school in the fall i support the proposal by the board of education to ask governor lamont for local control of our coveted procedures and mitigation strategies i believe that darien parents working together with the board of

044bed should have the ultimate say in the health and academic interest of our students thank you thank you very much thank you for coming in anyone else in the audience okay thank you oh okay yes i'm sorry michelle we have another raised hand do you want to go back to zoom that's fine thank you user claire you are recognized and unmuted claire can you hear us i can't hear you i just wanted to clarify something i forgot to mention in my comment earlier in that there had been mention of the delta variant i learned and i trust again the senior health advisor to the president of the united states that the delta variant as a as it stands right now is um making breakthrough infections but the vaccines that people have received so far have

045stood the test of uh preventing serious illness in most cases the virus is mutating and it's changing all the time and until there is a point at which the majority of people in the united states are vaccinated the virus will continue to mutate and change there is a possibility that at some point the virus will mutate and the vaccines that we have had will no longer be effective against that mutation we have gone through how how many four different mutations of this virus so far so i think that the experts are that are cautioning people to get vaccinated providing that they are able to get vaccinated is very important that is a very important point we have to make here yes i'm vaccinated i was happy to get vaccinated i think it's really important to

046stop this virus from changing mutating and spreading again in this country until there is a level at which enough people in this country are vaccinated we are facing the fight of our lives i just want to reiterate that that was a point i didn't make in my earlier comments i think this delta variant is extremely extremely dangerous and vaccination as well as mask wearing are the only barriers to this virus that we have right now thank you thank you claire are we good michelle there are no more raised hands at this time okay thank you all we will move on to board communication and discussion and possible action on the letter we did as i mentioned earlier at the board table have a conversation around drafting a letter to the state discussing our ability to

047look at local metrics and have some decision making if and when any of the mandates change from the governor's office around mask wearing um i will let the board know that i did touch base with mr mooney on this letter just ran it by him and he thought it was a good letter directed to the right people um you know there were certain things down the bottom he didn't necessarily feel we had to reiterate in terms of our vaccination rates and different things like that and he felt that as long as we were working within any state guidelines that were set up or metrics that were set up and working in conjunction with our local health officials making those decisions with the district he thought it was a comfortable letter to send out so i

048just want to give you a quick update on that it does not change i know some of the questions came up around liability he did get back to me and say nothing changes from a liability standpoint at this point in time based on what we're doing or even sending this letter out asking for that you know local guidance all right so i'll open it up for board questions or comments around continuing to look at make amendments or changes to this letter and ultimately decide if we want to you know send the letter on up to the governor and the other folks listed here in the department of public health the department of education um and the epidemiologist at the department of public health so i'll open it up mrs achman um can we just set

049the stage of where we are who drafted this particular letter we're looking at yep dr adley drafted the letter based on listening to us at the board table from a conversation standpoint okay so for the benefit of some of the public because this letter was shared widely last night created lots of reactions one way or the other however you feel about it this is the first time the board is going through a letter they have not seen or written so dr adley drafted it but but i think there were a lot of feelings that maybe this was a draft and we were finalizing but we had had input we've had conversations tonight is our working session right is that's why it is a special meeting so we're kind of it's step one and i feel

050like some of the reactions may be feeling strongly whether we're at step five or six and this was done this is the first time the nine of us or the seven of us i know we have some members on zoom however many of us have gotten to sit so we're we're at the initial stage and that i think that's probably a good kicking off point because we haven't even as a group had a chance to react to dr adley's words or letters yet but that's where we are right now so as long as everyone understands in the public where we are i think we can get to where we need to be yeah i'm hoping we can thank you mrs zachman yeah as i stated it is a draft the work is done at the

051board table i think we've heard from a lot of community members certainly folks around the board table have expressed their interest in doing what we do best in um taking care of the self safety and health of our children so that's kind of the origins of the letter so thank you for those points i'll open it up to further board conversation mr ceni uh this is the third meeting that we've discussed the letter say that again this is the third meeting now that we're discussing the prospects of the letter it was circulated amongst board members on wednesday um and part of our board packet that was circulated to the community so i just want to make that clear um i have i i thank dr adley for putting out a first draft i have one

052change that i'd like to to uh to make sure um can i can you hold on just for a second i do have someone jill can you take hold of um that's one word that are proposed so you know the draft will continue to develop thank you let me know in your video and i'll i can send it yeah quick that would be helpful too go ahead thank you just in the first second third fourth paragraph begin returning to school and the one two third the fourth line down autonomy to boards of education i'd like the words boards of education be changed to district that's my only change thank you mr sean so i would support that i changed okay thank you mrs i would agree with that thank you um and then i just

053wanted to make a broader comment sure we've been working off of this document um which is the connecticut department of public health town level coveted response framework that can be still found on the connecticut official state website where they have all the coronavirus if you're not familiar with this and everybody should because we went through it numerous times in determining where the uh what type of learning we should be in remote hybrid full time there's also mass guidance on this actually and so i guess i think why there's so many emotions around this is that there's so much confusion of where we stand i mean this document is a current document and i feel for dr adley every time he comes back and talks about you know the confusion that's out there and in the

054lack of clarity so i think what this letter you know top down all we're doing is asking for some clarity right now we're operating under an executive order which requires mass so to everybody who wanted to debate matthews we're going back to school with mask based on the cover the governor's executive order but i think what the letter does is kind of highlight what dr adley's been coming back week after week after week and telling us about you know the lack of clarity from the state level and so the question is you know after the executive order do we go back to this where the mass guidance says at our current rate of spread we don't need mass for students or do we have some other rule-making uh authority that's going to bind us to

055decisions i think that's all this letter is doing we're not debating massacres right now we don't have that authority but we are calling on our state representatives based on our constituents wishes to give us some sort of framework to to show us some clarity and i think i'll stop one one more comment what worked so brilliantly amongst the different models of education was we had this document so we knew when we were getting close to that 25 uh per 100 000 we knew which way we're headed as a community right now we have no idea good thank you mr sean mrs richie so just following up on that as i read the letter and i agree with mr ceni i think what would be helpful from the state is to have something like that to

056refer to as we make these decisions i don't know if the letter clearly addresses that so i think i would like to somehow make it very specific that we're looking to make sure that that same procedure is then put in place at some point when september 30th comes and the requirement to amass goes away if we're given districts and the health department the local level are given that ability can we have that same sort of um chart so to speak that we can refer to and it might be the chart that's up there right now or might be a chart that's more specific to masks it might be worthwhile i don't know to mention or reference that chart that you're referring to mr ceni that has very specific guidelines on it so currently the fma

057currently the state department department of public health have not reissued anything like that actually we had to follow that exactly we would never have open school and wouldn't be in school but that being said uh there was some uh discretionary opportunities we had with our health department to make some decisions within that and that's why we didn't follow that completely but for them for now they have not issued any written guidance on that and certainly have not distributed anything of that nature they're telling us more to come on it but about something that is helpful with this consideration so the fact it's still on the website we should just mrs ogden so i agree with mr cena's points um especially that that should say administration and i think what dr adley just said is very

058important last year we were not held to we we were allowed to make decisions locally with our health department and i feel like if we're going to write a letter to the state that's what we're saying we would like to retain that we would like that very clear for our constituents we would like to make it clear that it is not a board of ed decision we can't vote on masks or not um i think everyone at this table is very clear they're like they're students in 100 of the time we'd like to do it safely that's a decision between the medical professionals and administration operationally for the administration it's really like the medical advisors are telling us how to do that but we did sorry i don't have it in front of me but

059that that grid that john has we didn't follow it to the letter of the law we did retain some local autonomy and able to do it and in doing that we kept our schools open so we're just reiterating in this letter we would like to continue what we were able to do last year for the benefit of our children when it comes to masking i hear the emotion i sympathize with the emotion i just don't want people to have the impression that we have the decision-making ability around that particular topic um but i like the idea that that last year locally we were able to make decisions and that we we asked to retain that that authority thank you mrs dude just because i have a document in front of us remember these are guidelines

060and the language even said consider more distance learning above so it gave us a broadcast we didn't have there was no letter of the law so to speak it was it was very subjective and broadly outlined [Music] just to summarize some of this okay um something to be effective i think after uh after masks in that third paragraph we could say we appreciated the question we appreciated the flexibility accorded by the guidelines in and then i need the name of the document john last year and look for similar guidance from the state does that capture deb and could i just say similar guidance and um decision making from the state i don't know if i'm being repetitive but i think that's what we're really asking for we're looking to re retain that kind of local

061decision making make sense if you want to call like the the health uh heat map or something i'll get the correct i don't know what that means i'll get the correct for you i'll give you this thank you and it's up on our website still yeah i have a bunch of grammatical errors like this but just like this right there's a lot of truth i mean i have a lot of stuff does that have something to teach you it may very well i enjoy it can okay and that's something that we'll focus on it's not i retain the right to disagree just for the record okay yeah it's not substance substantially changing anything we're all comfortable it's great okay thank you i'm glad you're good you know what's mr brown i know you're you're joining

062us from your um you're educating yourself this summer out in out in the university of chicago i appreciate you zooming in um i just want to make sure you have any thoughts or comments to add i appreciate that glad to hear from home um i wanted to say thank you to dr adley for drafting the letter i appreciate that the question where we are legally i know this is a question we've gone back and forth a number of times over the past year in terms of where the decision lies i think it's very important that we allow the decision making to happen locally perhaps even as local as in the house of every parent in town and i think that this letter is a start to get us in that direction i think that the

063change mr ceni suggested i would agree with otherwise my only comment is i don't want to let perfect grammar be the enemy of good grammar and it's incumbent on us to get this letter up to the state house as soon as possible so we can get some clarity for our students for our parents and be able to move forward uh issuing guidance as fast as we're able to thank you thank you mr brown yes mrs richie paragraph four i think is redundant i don't know if it's necessary i don't know what other people think about that particular paragraph but i feel like it's been it was mentioned in the above paragraph i i don't think it's unnecessary i think it just adds more verbage so i do have i i agree with that i have

064that highlighted and that was a comment from mr mooney also that's the given the high vaccination paragraph yes yeah we strike that yeah the other question mr mooney did say he felt we had all the right people here in terms of who directed to i don't know if there's any other thoughts or anyone else that people think it should be directed to or if we should copy some of our other local politicians and representatives i don't think it ever hurts to copy people i don't think they have the um i think it's really been sde in the governor so we may want to copy them so they're aware of our position should it come to them i don't think that hurts but i think who are addressing it to at the moment are the actual

065decisions on this yeah why don't we just see all the uh absolutely perfect makes sense thank you any other thoughts comments dennis you guys i'm all in favor of this i think mr brown summarized it quite well that it should be local control and if it goes and to me this is a step to this point maybe it goes to local house control and local home control [Music] but i think it and mrs ackman's point is i think it's just trying to continue what we had last year to be able to run our district the best way we can try to do that as possible yeah i think what the goal always being and many people over the last several weeks in the summer with this conversation and said you guys did an incredible job

066keeping people everyone did an incredible job parents students teachers keeping kids in school that should be the primary focus and staying focused on that for their education and then you know working on what worked best last year in terms of working with the health departments and having those guidelines and having some autonomy i like that word mrs to make those decisions locally to keep people to keep our students in school good dr adley anything to add no i i'm not can i take away if i make the general consensus of those changes that we get at all sap or do you want to see it yeah we'll take that or take us consensus of the board and then um we won't send anything until everyone reviews it and i confirm with everyone that we're we're

067comfortable with the updated draft send out a final draft so that we can just take a quick look thank you so here's well yes go ahead welcome however you can do it the way it is is currently sits you can write a final draft the board could choose to vote or not vote based on the changes but the letter is currently signed by the chairman of the board of ed and the superintendent so you could finalize the draft and send without a vote okay i would suggest as we've lived through this before make sure the rest of the board members are comfortable with that yes but i think we've all discussed edits i don't know if it's ms mccammon doing it or dr adley i trust them both to do it and as long as

068there are those edits circulate and i think you can both send them off good but i would make sure your board members agree with that yes thank you mr zachman mr brown anything that your your face is now in front of me along with the skyline of chicago lucky you um no i think we're in a great spot i encourage uh any cleanup edits that need to be made um but i at this point i think it's a great work thank you all and i'd love to see this get up to hartford as soon as possible thank you mr brown so i will do this may i have a motion to accept the proposed joint board of education superintendent communication as amended and to send it as addressed to the appropriate state officials with copies

069to our local state representatives uh mrs achman second by mr ceni all those in favor aye that is unanimous all right thank you all for that discussion thank you all for taking the time um to look through this and work through it i think it speaks to the board's thoughts the administrations and our community and thank you everyone from a public standpoint for the ongoing feedback um around this good so now dr adley we will move back to public discussion on the reopening of school well this this is a public discussion if anybody has any other comments to make um i'm happy to respond to those or answer any questions that the board has is about our presentation from microhalf uh so okay we'll start with the board and see if anyone has any questions

070or comments around general thoughts around reopening which you updated the last time sorry sorry mr chairman i probably just should say that just update the board from this morning's meeting yes with the connecticut state department of education and the public health at that meeting uh the department of public health reiterated actually this is the first time that they've really said that our children are to go back uh to school and our staffs will go back to school vaccinate our unvaccinated with mass at least until september 30th at which point or before which point other other executive orders take place so that is the latest information that we have to go on so that's what we will be doing i've had to meet with our health professionals um who should support that as you might expect

071in this case uh so that's that's the latest information there's no written information that have been provided just yet they are putting hopefully some guidance like that uh mr suny together and other guidance to reiterate what they said today but the bottom line is the decision today to say uh you're required to follow the department of public health uh mandate that is a requirement that is in that executive order until september 30th so uh towards the end of this week that's the communication that i will send out to our families uh to really reiterate that uh expectation and plan thank you dr lee for that update mr c can we uh in the spirit of conversation just address some of the things that came up related to the lunchroom um sure are you expecting a

072normal lunch so we're as i said we were expecting a normal lunch particularly middle school high school their their students there are vaccinated uh the guidance that we have been given is to really consider the impact the cost benefit of some of the instructional programs the delegate moves and so on so forth so for the most part at the high school in middle school we'll be doing a normal lunch we may spread out right um the lunches will be certain there'll be no box launch type thing uh you'll have to go through the line if we decide to utilize the gym next door that's that's up for discussion i will say that like we are in a position nine that we went in six weeks ago again unfortunately and we're probably closer to opening up

073more in line with how we close than a full reopening in terms of no mitigation strategy so on so forth right um so that's kind of like a change that has sort of happened given given uh the cases and given the metrics that are in place at the moment and how they are being interpreted by our public health officials so the one area that we discuss uh length today with our medical advisors is i put back on the table the lunch uh the lunches for the younger children and what we're going to try and do there is to ensure that they're at least three feet apart with their with their mask now obviously they don't have the mask on whenever they're not eaten but uh they're comfortable with that uh within the guidelines that have

074been provided so that is what we're working on to try and ensure we can we can accomplish that them and we will accomplish that good thank you dr adley mrs zachman so this is part of next the next discussion and this discussion but um it's one of the measures of our goals is the development and implementation of a comprehensive safe plan for return to school school's coming when would we expect that kind of plan well the plan currently exists on the website right now that has been communicated to everybody we will be updating it with these changes that i'm praising the board off so they will be updated in real time and communicated both to the board members and the members of the public okay thank you then i think as as close as we

075are an update at the next board meeting before school opens in terms of your normal reopening i would say that would be minimal yes yeah good thank you um mrs mccammon dr ali what's there an update on remote learning uh the remote learning update is at that it will be in place and defined by the board of education the state report of education for the fall of 20 2022 guidelines will be put together in january of 2022 i know it doesn't make sense but they have cool remote learning uh off the table um well let me make sure i'm clear but the pull remote learning off is an option except for in certain cases um which may be uh related to uh ppt's uh 504s or other mitigating circumstances but it's not a general option

076for the public uh it is also not to be counted as school days for snow days so they just they just took that off the table completely uh i think that the general consensus is what you evolve which we all know in person learning is better than remote learning so whether you consider they've gone too far or not but essentially they're not to be counted for the 180 days they are learning is to be considered for if you want to do it for students who have to be quarantined and it's my recommendation that we communicated in the plan that we will do that i i think providing anything else less than that our community has come to expect a high quality of uh in in per or sorry remote learning when that is necessary but

077that's really at for the most part the the board or sorry the district's direction that you have to go out for a quarantine therefore we'll provide you with uh the remote learning so it's not an option for people to do it's coming off the snow days it can't be kind of towards 180 days except if you are being quarantined and we're providing the remote learning option so is there as we go forward over the next couple of weeks i'm thinking of all the work that might have to be done to prepare classes or teachers is there something in place i'm looking at you mrs klein around ppts and 504s that we're getting ahead of that to prepare for knowing like what is that what does that student size look like that we may have to

078be i hope that's not your answer no what do we know do we have any idea and we may not write this second but you may be working on the population that we may need to be doing remote learning is this on youtube yes thank you we don't have families that have reached out some learning but we are in touch with families who do have children with high needs on ongoing dialogue great thank you mr maroney yes is there any update on the quarantine policy vaccinated or unvaccinated so if you are vaccinated you do not need to an asymptomatic you do not need to uh quarantine so that's that's the message here to the more we have people quarantine both staff members and also students are the better uh so that and we do sorry

079thank you again yes uh the better uh because there's more opportunity than to uh contain the continuity of learning and actually in person i should have said that as of today uh we have been looking at whether to do test interviews and and jump on board uh the state is offering the ability to do that in consultation with the health professional today we decided that we would we would do that and we would provide free testing for our elementary students uh who obviously are unvaccinated this is voluntary this is not something that's required it's it's a voluntary participation and there will be a same for any unvaccinated staff to go on a weekly basis uh to be tested that's at the expense of the state department of education they will set it up with us

080in consultation with our health professionals and our our nursing staff and i see alicia here uh nice to see you alicia so we will be communicating that that will be an option uh for uh parents of our youngest students and it's also for staff who may not be vaccinated thank you doctor thank you i'm sorry can i just clarify just so everyone's clear on that the article on that i saw that testing would be available for elementary students so k through eight like how are we defining that how does this state i believe it's k through six alicia is it k through six i think it's kc-6 i'm sorry say that again i believe it's k-6 the testing for the elementary element there's a meeting on thursday that i'm gonna listen in on and find

081out more about it so we can just let parents know very clearly and then it's for all unvaccinated teachers regardless of level or is it only through k through six oh it's all unvaccinated uh teachers uh but uh priority districts would then if it applied to a priority district if you wanted to do the students at at the high school level so we're not a priority district so we can't do offer that but most of our students at least if it's 87 of them are vaccinated that we know about um and do we know our percentage of vaccinated teachers minimally there's bridges minimally about 75 minimumly and just just to clarify when we say teachers we mean staff staff yes there's other folks thank you great thank them um mrs parent um a lot of

082my questions were already asked but is back to the quarantining i'm thinking more of an elementary student if this elementary student is positive we're still quarantining the entire classroom so the cohort you're not you're not required to do any cohort and some of the stuff that we're going to try and do which is also attached a wee bit to the the cafeteria for the most part uh we're trying to encourage people within a week most people most children sit beside the same children at least for that period of time and we may actually encourage that require that to some degree at least for every week a week at a time so that if someone has to be quarantined we're not sending the whole cafeteria or the whole class out the elementary it's okay saying [Music]

083that you won't quarantine a whole elementary classroom but if we're trying to push back into some of the instructional practices which would have kids a wee bit closer to each other uh if we can do the 15 minutes within the 24 hours uh we'll try and do that that's just very hard to manage and very hard to clarify if the teacher is able enough to to say hey you know that definitely didn't we didn't uh cross the 15 minutes and so on great uh we won't do that but if it's if it's i i really don't want to compromise it's a fine balance between instructional practices and health so we're trying to sort of it's not a perfect system there i would not rule out uh whole classes having the quarantine again just depending on

084the nature we'll try not but i also want to go back to some level of of uh of different learners now that the kids are used to thank you doctor mrs karen can i just uh confirm what you said about the snow days because i know a lot of people were excited about the idea that snow days would remote sundays would count so that's that's off the table so there's just when i thought i'd correct it let's play guys um i'll probably have to like take some action here because it's on a calendar to something right right so uh no they we cannot do that anymore so you'll get all the snow days back to our students your wishes come true and um last year they petitioned to do this and give us guidelines and

085so on so for sure thank you thank you uh this is richie so just back to the quarantining again so doesn't that mean then our classrooms all need to be set up the same way they were last school year to ensure that if someone is quarantined that they can access remote learning and doing that i'm guessing we'll have it set up in that same period of time that we did last year so that if someone is out because um they're quarantining or they're tested positive and they're unvaccinated that we will be able to transition them to remote learning very quickly so that they don't miss out on instructional time so we certainly have advanced in the sense of what we've got ready right in terms of uh class seating this and so on so forth

086but i will say that students are doing labs right we're not not having students do labs this year that's a cost benefit thing it's a judgment that's the level of a judgment there but those types of things i think we think they're important to try to continue but if you have a lab team we'll try and confine that as best as we possibly can um so there will there will be the um uh sort of like class list and class layouts on they'll be readily available we'll be a better position to do that uh the readiness for um for being to order learning will still be give the teacher the 24 hours to get ready for that we still still need to do that because i can lean from one most teachers really try their

087best to get it up as quickly as possible it was difficult last year when you've got people coming for all sorts of reasons it's not really impossible to keep up with it um this i think hopefully we'll be in a better position because it'll be less and i know the teachers will do their best to get it up but reasonably because you can be talking about one person uh one student getting ready or 24 students getting ready with interventions and all sorts of things to do so we'll do do the best to get that up but we'll have to give the teachers at least the 24 period get it up and running mr maroney going back to to local control in quarantine is it is it our control of whether we quarantine in a class

088or just an individual student the question i'm asking is something mr brown brought up multiple times last year how many students who were quarantined eventually became sick which the number was less than five so to me if we're erring on if our goal is to have students in class can we err on the side of not quarantining students and see how that plays out if we have especially if we have masks on that that would hopefully mitigate the transmission of the virus so the department of public health have issued the directive around uh the three food sort of phenomena better term the three food sort of radius so that's we kind of have to work with that but we do have some flexibility uh that will be looking to see if we can exercise whether

089it's it's that circle or it's a whole class or somewhere in between i understand that they understand the question um but there are there are there are recommendations and requirements that we the three feet requirement that we have to work with but i think our health professionals i have to give a lot of credit to alicia david and dr kennefact for really working within the flexibility that they had last year uh and i know that we'll continue to do that where it makes sense from a health and safety point of view to do to do it thank you mr just one last uh part of the discussion a number of times the psychological health of our students came up in some of the public comments and it wouldn't be possible you know we've often had

090our physical health experts come in and speak to us but maybe the head psychologist or child psychologist expert that you're using um to come in and just brief the board in the community about you know some of the challenges that they're seeing um as a result of some of the mitigation factors and the virus in a future meeting i'm going to take out our consideration whether the board would like us like like us to do that um we are uh reaching out uh through a sort of web of care uh to uh particularly we had a lot of most of our kids were in school course of the year uh particularly to students families who have not been in school to make sure that they receive the transition that they need to receive and there

091is any other intervention that they need to receive uh we've done that on a one-to-one basis identifying them personally before school and that process has started okay mrs dochman could for the board's consideration could i broaden that request in that maybe we have psychologists in our schools and we've added psychologists and we've invested in that maybe what maybe my request would be for the board to consider is bringing in our school psychologists and saying what are they seeing in school what is their caseload look like has their case load or their issues changed pre or post covid and some of that might be masking some of that just might be a result of social social isolation or or different stressors at home but maybe it might be good this coming school year to get an

092update from our school psychologist and also as part of our investment in them um and we're adding a school psychologist the year and understanding their need their workload and what they're seeing on a daily basis i think they're good points there's also in the plan adding reading interventionists and different things like that so i think the sense i'm getting from the board is we'd like kind of an update and have those folks attend a meeting we can discuss might not be the next meeting we might want to see school open and you'll get you'll get a lot of shirt back you know when school's open so in due course yeah good all right thank you great this is the cameras um i'll just agree wonderful i look forward to that um is there any update

093on extracurriculars whether it's theater or chorus or sports that anybody needs to know at this stage so the update on extra curriculars is that we are moving forward with offering [Music] i'm trying hard to think of one that we're not offering at this point it's not coming to me so we're trying to offer at least the preponderance of them uh music and the performing arts uh will still have a little bit of an expectation from the department of public health about distancing right um which you can have a different opinion on but that's kind of uh they still see the coral and uh programmers well maybe maybe some of the wind instruments that they project and so on and so forth droplets uh so we'll continue we'll continue doing some of those outside where we

094can actually there were a lot of things we thought that we did last year outside that we learned was actually better outside and perhaps uh just as well received by parents and staff and students so we'll we'll continue continue to work with that we find a way even in the summer there to to pull off wizard of the wizard of oz and uh with you know see-through mass and it was phenomenal so uh the kids and the staff will walk through that but that's that the music one is still relatively in place with some restrictions around it i would ask too that if there's any needs around outdoor space of tenting or tables or chairs i think the students really appreciated all that so i think we would all be supportive of whatever those needs

095are as you go into the fall it's a nice time to be outside for that stuff any other board questions or comments thank you doctor yeah no i'm i want to finish up with the board mr c good yeah yeah no perfect thank you mr c so michelle we'll start with folks that are in the room and um please if you want to step up to the mic thank you just your name and address and if you can speak as loud as possible with our with our air conditioning thank you how's that uh joanna walsh 17 pleasant street um i am co-chair of cvsp this year along with lori olson who i believe is zooming in um and there's been a lot of comment tonight uh and a lot of emotion around masking and unmasking

096[Music] and in our roles as co-chairs of cdsp we have heard from many many many parents in the community regarding all these reopening plans and the comments are unanimous to us that parents overwhelmingly want their children to be in school in person and as a result of that we believe the school should follow whatever guidance public health officials give that will keep our kids in school in person for the year and avoid as much as possible any risk of quarantines and shutdowns durian was very successful last year we kept our kids in the classroom as much as we could more so than most of the country and even some surrounding areas and we did that by following local public health officials we are very excited for this year we're very excited that dr adley and

097his administration are trying to have a school year as close to normal as possible like you just mentioned that means meetings on carpets in small groups pumpkin carnivals that means middle schoolers get to actually walk around in between classes instead of the teachers changing classrooms and all these things and it also means return of after school activities field trips everything that's been missing for the last 18 months so if the experts say that we have to do it in masks let's do it in mass so we can actually do it um we believe everyone in this debate is well intentioned we all want the same things we want our children to be in school and to be healthy we are all incredibly frustrated that this pandemic has extended as long as it has so we

098need our school officials to remain steadfast and listen to the public health experts their appropriate risk-based mitigation steps have the best chance to keep our kids in the classrooms for the year thank you thank you mrs walsh and thank you mrs olson for zooming in on vacation next in the audience hi hi my name is chris wajilla from 4stanton road and i am with the group unmask our kids darian throughout the pandemic parents and our children that have been at the mercy of scientists politicians industry and teachers unions with respect to coveted mitigation measures our children's needs have often taken a back seat to the metrics of local case counts and hospitalizations it's time that we have a seat at the decision-making table we applaud the school district's letter to governor lamont requesting local control

099of masking decisions but we are going around and around in circles on this issue cloth face masks are not considered personal protective equipment or ppe according to osha standards in fact the proper protection for a particulate the size of sars code 2 is an n95 or higher respirator if the goal is to prevent the spread of source code 2 are you prepared to require n95 masks for all teachers and children it is often argued that white masks are not worn to protect the wearer but to protect others wearing a face mask is a reasonable thing to do as long as in doing so it does not harm the wearer but that is not the case the potential physiological effects of mask wearing include hypoxemia hypercapnia shortness of breath and inhalation of microbial contaminants on the

100surface of face masks psychological effects can include fear mood swings fatigue and compromised cognitive performance dr abbey and board members we request that you ask the health professionals that counsel you if they have the relevant studies that prove that long-term mask wearing for seven plus hours a day five days per week 180 days per year is safe for our children and can they guarantee that our children will not be harmed by long-term mask wearing the fact is they cannot provide those assurances because those studies and children have not been done and for that reason masking must be at the discretion of parents and without coercion i'd like to end with an important quote from a recent interview with carl hennigan a professor of evidence-based medicine at the center for evidence-based medicine at oxford university in

101response to the question is there any evidence that face masks are keeping our children and our teachers safe he responds quote no there isn't any evidence that masks in school reduce the uncertainty of whether they work or not what i would say to people is in the absence of evidence if you think they should be wearing them go and talk to some children i can tell you they hate them they find it really difficult they don't hear it adhere to the guidelines so for instance they go in their pocket and they pull them out that's a dangerous issue with co-infections i think the government should start to look calmly at the data and say where is the evidence for what we do and if it's lacking then you have to err on the side of

102not intervening the just in case approach is not the way to perform in health care end quote we must use the precautionary yep i'm finishing up we must use the precautionary principle with respect to masking children you cannot in good conscience require an intervention that can potentially harm in order to protect others we are the parents excuse me we the parents should decide whether to mask our children or not thank you very much thank you mr julia anyone else from the audience thank you michelle if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom of 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 there are no raised

103hands at this time okay we'll have a public comment toward the end again also just give it a second to make sure we're good yes no hands no hands okay thank you all in the audience and thank you all again for those participating in zoom um we will move on to our uh discussion in action on proposed 2021-2022 district goals uh dr adley so members of the board uh at the last meeting we've distributed the strategic work and the measures to go along with the goals at that time the board discussed could we split out the teaching and learning and so we have done that to result in seven goals instead of the six i would say that you know the board decision as to how many you want and are the ones that you

104don't want you could and at one level you could do uh goal one uh goal three and goal five and um because i think a good goal two for the most part is is potentially contained in the strategic plan but that being said i will split it and they're there for your consideration and discussion thank you dr adley i will open it up to board comments and questions do you want to go through by each goal or how do you want to yeah if you want dr adley do you want to do that and just give a quick update um do that i i will be very very brief um you haven't had it so i'm sorry go ahead and listen together i think maybe before we jump in we should talk for a second

105about the fact that this document's a little different than a traditional goals and objectives document it's really more focused on the board of education and what the board of education would be doing as it goes through its year vis-a-vis interaction with administration so i think that's an important change we've really moved our traditional uh goals and objectives to the strategic plan um and so i just think that it's important to start there because it's a little bit of a change in in process i i support it um for the record um i like the fact that we've articulated what the board's focusing on this year and i think that we have already voted on the strategic plan so i believe that we have articulated what the administration will be doing i'm happy you know if

106the board wants to discuss how to look at what's inside of the strategic plan or how to look at anything that might fall below that level um but that's my comment thank you mrs mccammon so before we go one by one yeah yeah sorry and i know i spoke with you about this um mr janine i agree with mrs mccammon this is a real change from how we look at district goals um and i think some of it's really good and that we have some goals for the board as well it kind of helps keep us focused but we've really moved away also from kind of what's our work plan and ex an expectation i'm sorry expectation of the district on an annual basis and some of that i would agree is in the strategic

107plan but i worry straying too far from that because the strategic plan only takes us so far so right when when that ends then are we going back to enumerating annual district plan and work work plan and expectations they feel in general girl and i say this respectfully a little light things like continuity of meetings well we've already approved our meeting schedule so we have continuity of meetings check we've accomplished part of the goal i mean i'm missing a little bit of substance and maybe as we get down into the curriculum one we can talk more but i'm missing a little bit of what mrs stein referenced last meaning kind of our rigor and work plan to kind of true up back to as things come up throughout the year to say what were our

108annual expectations um maybe we can pull a little more of it out of the strategic plan but i do think from a mapping standpoint this is this is a significant change um from how we typically do it so sir so certainly um over the last couple of years has changed from definitely changed from what it used to be was relatively i'll call it departmental in nature and where that was delineated which is which is fine as a way of doing it this tries to recognize a bit maybe a bit late or otherwise but it tries to recognize what the district's priorities are and what the board's priorities are to get accomplished also with with also the strategic plan not to overload everybody and be redundant with some stuff and then as you say included some

109self reflection goals uh performance as a board show you are right in the way you're describing it i'm happy to uh reflect accordingly or listen to recommendations as to how the board might want to proceed it certainly might be something that we do also early in the summer or part of that retreat as to how we want to proceed with the goals moving forward that may be a worthwhile discussion to have as opposed to just proceeding go ahead mr senior i mean i'm happy to embrace change here given so much time was put into the strategic plan so i appreciate what we're trying to do to separate the strategic plan and the board's goals and objectives and you know basically marry them at some point as we we check in but i guess to the

110question that comes up when we reach the goals of the strategic plan we would then go and update the strategic plan i'm assuming right um well i would consider the strategic plan a living document because it as it's written yes the big goals um some of the strategies might change given circumstances or different decisions that are made so that that would be a living document i don't expect honestly i don't expect every year to have the necessarily the strategic plan on this right okay so i would thank mr sean i would add just a follow-up is it a goal i think i like the the cadence of reviewing the goals and objectives and seeing the progress i did like seeing from a departmental standpoint i think of some things mr rudel has brought up over

111the years that he is looking for or may need so i don't want to lose that ability to make sure we're capturing you know something like that i think in something like this is the goal to add a column you've got the measures but they've entered a column that updates kind of where we are on some of this stuff on a regular basis so unless the board wanted a different feedback um our different uh uh response sort of timing wise i would do what we've done last year which is uh come back with the the regular fall winter and spring updates i'll go to mrs richie mrs richard maybe you could just um clarify for me because i don't it's not clear to me how this ties into our master agenda and because usually our

112goals and objectives set our master agenda and lays that out very clearly so maybe you could just briefly touch on that how you see this set of goals and objectives tying into our master agenda so the the the master agenda would certainly have those time periods where the where the feedback has to be has to come back so that is on the master agenda there are things about student achievement and reporting back they're all curriculum updates they're all just yes they will be on their master if they're not already they'll be on the master agenda go ahead mrs mccammon but from i think the strategic plan really in some ways there's an update on the strategic plan but the strategic plan should set up your work for the year that's correct that should really inform

113the master agenda insofar as as work is completed or hit certain milestones it should appear at the board as appropriate so i would think we would see three different kinds of update there's work that gets completed or brought to us for further review based on its timing and the strategic plan there's a review of the strategic plan at whatever increments we've determined and then there's this which again is more board level work and and defines how the administration works with the board so maybe the go ahead mrs doctor so i think that's really what we need to tease out if we're because what these have always been is the board of education district goals and so it's the board saying to the district these are the goals we want you to hit this year this

114year i do like and appreciate that we actually have some board goals for ourselves which helps us evaluate us at the end of the year how did we do on that and that's probably been lacking in the past so i'm actually happy and i think we talked about that at our retreat to incorporate those but what's missing for me is the charge to the board that these are what are the charge on the boards the district this is what we'd like you to accomplish this year the strategic plan is and should be high level we'd like you to i don't have it in front we'd like you to move curriculum forward right but in the past we've seen things like we are going to implement math and focus k through five that's the granularity we

115don't have in these now i think that at times our goals got too granular right like i don't know that i need to know that mr riddle counted all the pennies and stacks of ten right i mean that's too granule but i would like to know as a district what we're accomplishing within the framework or as a board what we're asking the district to accomplish within the framework of the strategic plan those would be the annual year-to-year goals that i would look in and i my guess is we could tease them out from here but i think we need a little more specificity and then we also need to recognize that it's nice to have some some work for the board to stay focused on but there's two different things and i think where this

116document focuses very much as mrs mccammon points out on the board's goals for itself and not the board's goals for the district thank you mrs just a good doctor i see that as i'm just trying to look at the board governor's governance responsibility and to you to make sure that you do have that responsibility and oversight and so on i i think i'd be listening we'd be less than quite a lot here if i take out strategic plan and take all the year one side of it and put i'm just i mean it's just me a lot in here so i'm happy to lend it so i i think basically underneath the strategic plan you're going to have some sort of work plan for the district right and it's it's multiple years correct yes so

117i think really what the board is looking to understand is what is your one of the strategic plan and how do we talk about that as we progress through the year so um i i think we are again we are almost two different things when when or even if we go to um goal three um that oversee the implementation of the district's strategic plan that is probably one of the biggest things that we would be doing this year what does that look like and so what kind of deliverables would we be seeing so that we understand that the district is actually progressing through the strategic plan in an appropriate way so just like just a couple of examples off a company had nothing to list them here but could you be talking about things like

118developing the learning principle development the dei groups uh so so all of those types of things under each of those have each of the goal happens so i think maybe what you would do then are you going to bring us was your plan to bring us the strategic plan at for example at a quarterly pace or are you planning to pull things out i think back to ms richie's question about how does it inform the agenda um well certainly certainly that the regular three times the falls uh the winter in the spring at the board fields we would like to do that like a more for a quarterly basis right um that's okay too i mean i can just throw that on there whatever but but i think to the to the comments i think

119to what mrs mccammon you just said in a little more definition mrs ackman like you just mentioned some of the stuff under the district's strategic plan and to guide policy and decision making so i think you know as we get those updates defining a little more of the specifics within the strategic plan that are occurring in the first six months of the first year and then projects issues of course any dollars or cents that are going to come up around budget time and stuff like that so i just think a little more insight into that in terms of the plan go ahead mr senior i mean i'm looking at the strategic work and says provide government support for year one strategies i'm sure in the plan there's year one strategies outlined right so why wouldn't

120we have that document next to this one and go down that checklist yeah i just i really lost why this i don't know i just i think some of it is just you know we were what we saw on the progress we were able to see them talk to them it's just a change so i just think something like that taking and tying it together in terms of the strategic plan and our goals and you know helping us with the update but i mean i think we got to go through one of these allen will do a good job of showing the document that's guiding him on the street to your plan we can take and tie this goal yeah but i think we should get the sense of the board if there's anything else

121we want to add sure you know as you go forward and prepare to present or update to us this is parent so i'm just looking at goal two into mrs zach's point about specificity to advance curriculum across content areas of grade levels and monitor levels of performance and student achievement that's education every single day all day so is i would love to know what is there a particular focus is there a particular grade level that you're maybe you're focusing on middle school english or whatever is there something that is the focus of the district this year that in our role as of governments like how do we make sure that we know what you're working on yeah well generally speaking i tried to use language that was larger than what's in the strategic plan because

122the strategic plan had specific deliverables and that because that's called area one and institutions found that to be confusing uh but we had a specific goal to update the template for curriculum and that's a deliverable that would drive how we're writing curriculum and that's so the next level above that would be advancing the curriculum so that's the thinking that goes behind it but as far as is there a new instructional focus there's not a new instructional focus because we want to define what our teaching principles are before we define an instructional focus and that's also part of the goal but are we doing new things absolutely so math and focus is still in its infancy uh and grade five did not have a traditional rollout so all of our professional development that we would have

123associated with year one of fifth grade math and focus is happening this year but that was more fine-grained than i thought you would want to be but that's certainly those are the types of things that can be there i know that the high school english department has a focus on writing but if i go every department again it's it's a goal by department potentially so the the grain size is what i'm so i think um what i'm struggling with as a board at the end of the year when we we have actually a framework to evaluate our goals what i don't have a framework for right now when i see things and remember the board out added the school last meeting things like annual the measure is an annual presentation of curriculum updates and student

124achievement data in anything in any area of curriculum are we are in some areas at every level at any level so i know you went broader i think generally we were looking or i should speak for myself as a strategic plan is kind of the broad goal the year to year is where the board can evaluate at the end of the year how did we do did the district achieve its workflow now maybe this year is a little bit different because that's not all flushed out you can smile i'm smiling right back but i do think that i mean the board added this goal last meeting because we were missing that discussion of curriculum and rigor where is in our goals we always want to see that in our goals um i think we need

125to tease some of this out would be my advice or to understand that this is a different year but we did that last year too so is it year three where we're going to really see some meted out goals but i went back the two years prior to look at district goals and i feel like we just had a lot more to measure up against this is very vague if we are at the end of the year to measure up against something like there are things like approve an annual budget well we approve an annual budget by statute now we're approving an annual budget inside the strategic goal so we can all think about that while we're approving a budget this year but they seem very vague very broad and maybe that was purposeful but

126to me as a board member for a long time these seem particularly broad so i can tell you some of the department ones that i work through seem very mundane um at some sometimes working with my department members i would say this goal right um so we're a tremendously high performing school district for student achievement right um so the the idea of looking at the student achievement dating yes right we all we're always looking at student achievement data part of this for me would be because because we do smack we do ngss we do sct we do ap what would we be looking for now you may look at the super temp you tell us what we're looking for but in the high performing district we're doing extremely extremely well right so if we're looking

127at achievement we might be looking at smaller populations of students in some ways right so part of this might also be working through with the board to see on an annual basis or other ways what would be the data working collaboratively together that we would like to to look at on a classic basis because i'm not sure if we have one other than what has been presented before mrs mccammon um i think what's challenging about goal 2 is that we haven't really had a discussion at the board level so if we think about accepting the fact that this these are board goals and really defines what the board is looking for this this goal really describes administrative work so it's a little bit of a mismatch with some of the other goals i i appreciate

128the attempt to define it i think that at the board we might have conversations like we want to make sure that our stem pipeline is robust and we want to make sure that we are doing i'm making things up so now that's in a strategic plan so that's good that you know the board wants to make sure that we are emphasizing stem in a way that excites young men and women to pursue that field because we feel that's an area of focus we might say something like um you know i think some of the some of the gifted stuff that was brought up might be an area where the gor board wants to make sure that it's a little bit different from what was defined in the strategic plan but but i don't think that

129necessarily we have a board as a board have agreed to strategic work around this so i think you all were trying to capture what it might be but i think we have to be careful if these are board goals um then it's really kind of what it would be capturing what discussion we had at the table i again if i were saying if we were to take a point in time i think really on to a certain extent we're trying to just keep moving forward post pandemic specifically in this goal and to set some seat you know kind of plant some seeds for for the future um but anyway all right so the gifted one actually is a good example here uh that's that would be included either directly or exactly included directly in this

130one yes say i said the gifted program the review of the gesture program of of conducting that which which is done and then what are we doing with the recommendations the data the data center decision making how does that matriculate into implementation which is which is in here that's a perfect example of it so maybe one way i'm sorry no go ahead mrs doctor maybe one way to move forward given the time of year that we're at and the school year started you know i get itchy when we don't have goals and objectives in the school's about to start is that we as a board could recognize that the strategic plan is really still informing the work and and that additional column we're looking for in the updates is that the board is really going

131to hold the administration accountable for specific updates i like the stem example um if if that's what we decide as a board i mean that actually means that we're going to have another conversation as a board what we're looking to say but we're going to need very specific updates on programs to measure up against because it can't be at the end of the year or we need x y and z we're going to need the updates might be more specific because the plan is more general and maybe that's a way to hybrid it and move forward and then next year really come up with some some goals and objectives that feel a little more um i don't want to say robust because i know you have work behind it but it's hard when we can't

132see the work behind it and then we're asked to be governing it um i mean i'm trying to find a way to move forward so my suggestion would be that these updates are going to have to be quite specific why we chose this how we're looking at it what's the effectiveness it may need to come back the second update does the board agree i mean unless anyone else has a different way to move forward can i just add to that just to provide some further clarification and it also connects to mrs richie's comment about the master agenda so with the measures with goal 2 specifically with and to your point this is often about everything about what there's a large commitment that the board makes to curriculum development every year so my thought was on

133the annual presentation of curriculum updates would be on what were those updates this is rich you asked for that at some point too so what actually is getting updated what's different so that would be the presentation of it's a huge resource that's dedicated i think that there would be it would be important it would probably not be just one it might be several presentations by level of what were those updates and what are the changes over the course of the year with systemic implementation of co-teaching we have a specific goal about differentiation and meeting the needs of all learners one of our big professional developments is in the co-teaching model and we have the pd plan this year so that would be a time where we provide that update specifically to those things so i'm

134articulating what's in my head that i clearly didn't articulate well on this paper but i think that i'm connecting to what you're saying i just i went backwards and made broader language than what was in the strategic plan in part because what we spent some of our time at our admin retreat doing is working with administrators to develop school improvement plans so that grain size gets smaller then all the department leaders are creating department improvement plans so when we talk about what are the metrics that's where they're creating specific metrics where it makes the most sense based on what the new programs are so i was trying to create that clear through line yeah and i appreciate that i would say actually what we're seeing today is very much like what we used to see

135and then we worked away from to try to get more detailed plans so i don't i don't know if we're just back where we started or the board is willing to make that ship i just need the specificity the council may talk about this for years and probably mrs ritchie i think i think your updated suggestion is a good one and we're we recognize that we're working through a strategic plan um a lot of a lot of people actually do strategic plans and don't do anything with them i have no doubt that we are not not doing anything with it that's the whole plan for us uh and the board's gonna have a uh obviously a big participation role in the governance and oversight of that so that to me is where the work is

136that's where the robustness of it is i threw in other ones because uh i tried to identify things that i thought were priority and also just self-improvement um whether you like those or not um but the big ones for me is like help and support the plan of the kids coming back to school and the amplification of that plan i can't ask the staff to be doing like we do all this stuff anyway but i just can't overload everybody that that plan is like there's a lot in that um so i'm happy enough to do the updates in detail i think you know the sense i'm getting is in mr tranberg you actually gave some of the update in the way you just described the business and the development plans that were going on so

137i said that's some of the stuff that you know i'm used to hearing which is leading to why we're changing or updating or moving to a different type of curriculum so i think if we we're in agreement that we're looking for a little more detail around that as the updates come and making sure we you see the progress from the strategic plan standpoint and then we can tie it back to what as a board we're feeling we want to do from the goal and objective standpoint so is that mr scene i'd like to make a motion okay to accept the i have one more question i i'm in the middle of making a motion please and then we can discuss it after making motion good proper proper governance so i'd like to make the motion

138to accept the goals and objectives as presented okay is there a second mr maroney second all right all in favor no no no discussion thank you all my policy gurus so discussion i just have one quick thing as we say advanced curriculum across content i've kind of heard some whispers some concerns i would like our community not to go down the rabbit hole of some others can we just make very clear that at no point in time at least as a board member have i ever heard the district say that they are going to adopt or bring in a critical race theory curriculum to the darian public schools so when we talk about advancing curriculum in an annual presentational curriculum that is nowhere on the docket for the next school year as far as i

139know is that correct that is not a euphemism for critical race theory no thank you okay thank you okay all right any other all right any other discussion okay we will move forward on your vote yeah so yes oh sorry all in favor of mr sini's motion [Music] thank you uh jill so that is unanimous okay thank you for the discussion thank you for all the comments i think mr tranberg dr adley mrs klein you understand kind of a little more from an update stamping standpoint and then we'll we'll continue to i guess morph that update in terms of what we're looking for so thank you all very much um we will move forward on the update on enrollment for the 2021-2022 school year um it seems people want to come to darien and have

140their children educated based on the numbers and people love that we're building a new school at oxford ridge based on those numbers so dr hadley so at the last meeting the board had approved the administration's use of an additional 1.0 for the sections we haven't made that decision yet we'll make that decision on monday so there's been some changes that happened even between whenever this memorandum was written it looks like uh tokenic uh has dropped a student or two uh so we'll play that out but in the meantime oxford has added two students and there's one away from breaking the section so uh we're just monitoring that at the moment but we'll make that decision on on monday so that that's really the update kind of where we are at the moment i do have

141to bring to your attention uh another dynamic that has occurred i thought we were going to be able to solve this but uh haven't been able to solve it as of today i think the final nail in the coffin so to speak um with the addition of the sections that we have so we have like 109 sections potentially 110 sections where we budget for 106. the pe i'm gonna need a we have done everything i could possibly do to ensure that we're scheduled properly or otherwise but with the addition of this section i'm going to need an additional either 0.2 or 0.3 why the difference if we go to another section either one of these schools it'll be the 0.3 if we don't it's a point two you don't really need um just given those

142additional sections and i know we haven't accounted for that before but that's uh that's that's a need that i've tried everything we can possibly do with the schedule and to make it work and it's just not gonna work at this point when you say pe just for everyone's clarity physical education physical education sorry and the other one is a point to for contractual purposes as you know uh one of our uh great teachers jasmine uh was appointed the vice president and with that comes a point to fte because at the high school at the secondary level that comes the the teacher who takes up that role by contract has a 0.2 release time and for elementary it's different there's a compensation associated with it so essentially uh come tonight just a flag that i've got

143minimally appoint to elementary physical education or a 0.3 depending if another section breaks and then the 0.2 for the contractual okay thank you dr abbott uh mrs ritchie um first of all thank you and it was mrs parent's recommendation that you add that column with the average class size i love it it's very good um so just for clarification so we're looking at at least in addition to the four potential budget control sections an additional 0.4 at a minimum fte potentially 0.5 yes yep thank you mr richie mrs achman where will we pull the money from at this point i mean at this point early in the year i haven't identified the money i would have to have to sit there in salaries for the moment until we see how things play out in line

144items i can't identify that because i don't have surplus at this point so you'll have good understanding but we'll have to go and hire so how are we going to handle that well right now you'd be running a deficit for the 0.5 if that's what it comes to if i don't use this other section uh implicitly i could use it for the point well in this case it'd be a 0.4 if i don't use this action as long as the board understands it that's what i'd use it for if i don't tip uh if i do tip i need i need a 0.5 so i'd have to just take that out of salaries and it would run a show as a deficit until and if we have to make a transfer or some description and

145when when do you think you'll be making this decision well i'll make the decision about whether whether the class requires additional section of monday okay and the point two is contractual based on the union president being a secondary teacher that's correct yep okay all right any other thoughts or comments okay yes mrs barron if this elementary sections do not tip has there been any consideration to adding an aid to each of those larger classrooms uh explicitly we haven't had but we'll have that discussion on monday i think that would go a long way in uh easing parents discontent with large classes thank you mr parent any other comments or questions around this thank you for the update dr adley we will move back to public comment michelle good evening if you would like to speak

146during public comment please click the participants icon at the bottom of 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 michelle i'll just uh pull the audience here first anyone in the audience uh to speak okay thank you uh thank you michelle miss liz haynes you are unmuted and recognized [Music] hi everybody um thank you for letting me speak tonight um if you could speak your name and your address machines thank you so much sure so my name is liz haynes i live at 279 rhoden avenue um in darien thank you can you hear me okay it looks like thank you okay so um i want to start and let you know that i really

147do have the utmost respect for all of you on the board and appreciate your dedication and commitment to it um i'm actually on the board at norton presbyterian nursery school so it is not lost on me the time and effort that each of you take in the work that you do i am just here tonight to provide a point of view to help you rich in your perspective as it relates to health and safety of our children in the year ahead as we deal with um the continuation of the pandemic i will let you know that i had a little time to prepare so hopefully my thoughts and comments are um make some good sense i am juggling um obviously being a working mom and so i'm sure you can appreciate that so let me

148get to it the headline is that i believe that parents should be given the opportunity to continue being the caretakers of their children and by that what i mean is that parents should be given the option to either mask or not mask their children when they attend school as they do many other decisions for their children's life a year ago when kobit was a new virus and we were unsure of the impact and there were little precautions that we could take i can understand the argument at the time for wanting to require and mandating that children be masked in school however while i recognize that this is not a black and white argument the logic points that it is unreasonable and quite frankly unacceptable at this point to mandate that children be masked in schools

149i will give um four specific reasons why one those that they are interacting with now that might be of high risk specifically i'm speaking about the teachers and the support staff have been given the opportunity to be vaccinated and therefore quote protected from any severe impact that they may have had before two children are of extremely low risk of any negative impact for covid i have articles that i can point you to to the new york times and wall street general wall street journal journal if you provide me access of sending you those three children are not the main cause of spreading the virus who by the way are currently unvaccinated and four the negative effects of masking produces primarily social and emotional as well as speech issues i'm sure many of which you are

150probably more educated than i am as to what those impacts can be so i just want to close with a few things there are many other things that i believe in today's society we have lost perspective on that provide greater risk to our children than that of covid and yet we do not mandate parents to protect their children against those so for example things of childhood obesity or diabetes i'm sorry you're almost at time okay thank you i only have a few more points and then i'm done um so i just want to kind of make sure that we're keeping in perspective our masking policy against other risks to our children to i understand genuinely that your position is a challenging one you have experts and i put that in quote such as the cdc

151and others who are telling you one thing yet you may have your own point of view of what's logical but yeah i'm gonna okay i will just leave you with a thank you and i just encourage you to please fight for what you think is right and not necessarily what the quote experts of our government do and i genuinely appreciate you fighting for our children and for us as parents thank you for speaking this evening mrs haynes thank you ms daria chase you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us miss chase you're on mute okay can can you hear me now yes i can hear you just your name and your address please thank you okay uh so dr daria cheese and hollywood in darien so thank you for giving me a chance to

152speak what was the address again miss chase ken holly 10 holly lane thank you so much so i'm a licensed clinical psychologist and i see in my practice every day the detrimental outcome uh that wearing masks has on children so namely high anxiety and depression and for younger children wearing masks uh has a negative impact on their social development so they cannot read each other's emotions uh and uh you know it just limits their social interactions and how they can connect to each other so as a mother and as a psychologist i worry about the long-term consequences for children of wearing masks and i strongly advocate again as a mother and as a professional who works in the field to make wearing masks optional so each parent can decide for their family based on the

153level of risk of their family members thank you very much there are no more raised hands at this time okay give them a second okay um i will ask for a motion to adjourn mr ceni uh second by mrs parent all in favor that is unanimous thank you all for attending this evening thank you for our friends that showed up in person this evening thank you and thank you for all the folks that have zoomed in