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yeah I guess concern is that a lot of our electric teachers a lot of different things today you know and just looking at how things so continue to look at ninth grade so you're proposing 10 additional school choice plus it is already 13 there in that class so that's 23 school choice students who which come from any Town Worcester Clinton Hudson is there only limited on the talents let me take and also any town in the state so that's 23 students from out of the district versus 61 current residents so that's a that's over a third over a third of that class would not be even Berlin or what is that how many current eighth graders do we have that will become 61 9th graders next year I I don't know how many kids okay um seven applications were received that was probably three weeks so out of that 61 you have seven is my readings right the current the ninth grade 61.
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those are our current eighth graders is that right those are our eighth graders right now yes 97 are passive applicants right okay we're doing the same number there's a question on the 9th grade yeah I think that I think 71 is wrong is it 10 around the 13 or the 61. because of the numbers I have 61 plus 13 plus 10 is not 71. 10 suggestions the total numbers all right I just want to make sure that the suggested number is correct yeah all right okay so for ninth grade so for ninth grade you've got over a third of a class is from out of town so most of us and so we have a problem right now with the towns in the Hawaii to fund our own kids yeah but now we're asking the fund the third of other countless kids right it's filling empty seats but it's still taking resources and detention and time for teachers away from Resident students and I don't know what types of services those kids need or if not we'll need anything or what when it comes to taking School choices students in is there a selection process or is it just random whoever applies somebody is there a lot yeah is it a lottery is it who's taking it yeah I'll answer to everybody it's a lot there's no sort of selection criteria whatsoever you can't take too long enough we have two men oh yeah so more advocates you could have like 50 kids question can you get in other District places yep sorry yes oh that's a really important question however we we would not be fiscally responsible for another District policeman yeah not even if it was a new place if your school choice we get five thousand as a minimum the they have a special ed increment which basically covers their costs and so so if they come in we're getting 5 000 if tomorrow they go out two days later they go on out of this replacement which is replacement is going to be an increase to our school choice money we're going to pay the bills by starting school choice the other town is going to pay or we're going to pay we're going to pay it for the optical Choice funds will be reimbursed once a year late it's yeah so it's a cash flow issue so is it a one for one reimbursement in that case or is it the threshold in the 75 percent sure so it's not guaranteed if you get a child that is special education you can have increased funds and it is not always covered that is not 100 I saw this happen in advance is there any way to know that before making the decision no okay [Music] you will get additional organizational funds but it is not entirely covered because you don't always know the needs until the child comes into play it can be a little risky can I have your suggestion to decrease that number the recommended school choice number there it doesn't read right anyway at the total so it's 84 right yeah should be more of nine total it should be 84 not 71.
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okay great great night yeah so that's uh 25 additional school choice recommended next year out of um I mean the hard part is not even a number the hard part is you never know what you're going to get so you might pull 11th grade yeah I mean it's still a swings great and great so this brings in strings like in 125 000. oh yes that's the current numbers it's a school choice buckets are all separate but yet learned Aboriginal District so seeing that we're not adding at the elementary levels like is there a consideration like making that school choice bucket a district document UK so for the elementary schools you cannot do that but for Toronto you could oh interesting I won't ask why so yeah meaning to Hondo's school choice funds could be allocated to a different town or emergency for emergency use if needing if need be not right now gotcha so we have a motion to accept the school choice recommendations any further discussion 11th grade is five short of fighting the average one thank you so why don't we put five in there Sally if we were to add five more to 11th grade but does that make you panic no okay is that more like if you get like AP Bio or one of the smaller classes but not kids to run that class or that doesn't work that way anymore added to that grade level she's a little low so yeah did kids I mean do they apply to that I don't know if you know that but like did a lot of the graders come in uh I I I actually never seen the the whole you know the whole I couldn't tell them to be honest with I mean I can tell you after this year so for these are these numbers here it ranges anywhere from 15 to 40 of each class is not brown boys and students at these numbers just throwing that out there for I mean I wish we could get uh so the cost to educate a school choice game I'm sorry is not the same so that are going into the per people expenditure so whether we have a thousand kids in the building well I guess this building we have 750 kids in the building or 650 kids the cost to pay the heating bills the same the cost Financial cost yeah there's huge costs that are the same right you might need more books you might need one or two more teachers hopefully not but if High School class kids swing like it could have like five kids or it could have like 35 kids and I would think a high school class of 35 kids would be okay I don't know I don't know I don't have anything else you need to get those 25 new kids Chromebooks okay well all right so yeah yeah anything you get a resume um but it's an increment what I'm saying is I don't think the cost is 20 000.
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I think it's probably like is it more than five or less than five I don't know financially the teachers already paid for they're there it's a teacher has 10 kids in class she gives one tenth of her attention to each kid you can get free kids to the class she's no longer giving it's not a one for one example but you're taking we're claiming that we already have a problem with our students being able to compete After High School and after graduation getting into doctor universities why is that I don't know does this help I don't know maybe I think you're saying it does help but if the kid is not trying to get into an Ivy League school where the kid is struggling it needs extra attention from the teacher and we don't five additional kids into that class can that kid get the attention that you use or she needs right well with those kids would fund the vice principal at the middle school thus eventually the only thing on fire High School population right now yeah because I mean if that's the only way that we're going to be able to tap in and get things that we want us by dipping into the school choice so on that track then using that logic why not jump every class up to 100.
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yeah I mean it's certainly the facts have been like 67. 67 75 we've got 95 right here 5 84.80 so let's just add the 5 and 11 to call it a day somebody want to make an amendment I'd like to make an amendment to the motion um so the motion was to approve the school choice to approve 25 School choices kids right so I'd like to make an amendment the motion and approve 30 school choice kids with the five years is there a second oh second anyone discuss it I'll enable that Amendment that Amendment passes so number is 30 so we need to improve now the motion the ferry any more discussion on that on behavior of improving 30 School choices all right that motion passes as well um the next one here uh it looks like it goes under the choice but it's actually a separate business item to uh could have a motion to accept the high school student council check for 150 donation and pass it to the power elbow Tampa Gardens from the Clinton Savings Bank Laurie seven okay very poorly first anyone want to discuss this thank you give some background to it thank you all in favor all right all right that motion passes or anyone against it I didn't say anything is really I want to say it's during the discussion they're really good to us yeah very good to us um motion to approve the 2023-2024 school year calendar exploring second Julie anyone want to discuss it there seems to be a lot of TV in the spring which doesn't seem historically true I used to know that's because I was half days um didn't they say that they didn't like having all their professionals we're gonna have another conference and instead of Justin before we're having a conference that's why in March yeah we added that that was part of the teacher's contract oh that's right it's just one extra half day I think right yeah it's because New Year's Day falls on a Monday but there's a PD in January before we always had a PD in January and won March if the only add-on is the half day in February I think we just have one that's more interesting and we try to avoid them because there's something oh it was like a week ago with the testings yeah all right any more special on that one else is good I do like the start time I will say like is it like four days four days and then five days teachers all right that passes uh all right so the boy was an Education Foundation Bingo nights um they're looking for information to serve alcohol at their bingo night events and they are if we do approve it they will make sure they get uh a permit and everything Carol before we make a motion on this do you have any concerns reservations comments um make a nice book about this early on and I I definitely don't want the alcohol in the school building but I had a little bit of reservations I had reservations about it outside but I think it is manage well and that's a key to this I think we have to see how it goes this year I think this has Mr controls around it who's who's serving you know what they're serving I don't know yeah no so I can yeah so I can talk to it a little a little bit so I got a little bit more information so I'm I'm going to speak on behalf of the bef um because I'm part of the group so um and I'll be really quick so uh we're looking to hire a dog father he's going to do a food truck for the hot dogs and he also is in the process of getting his license from the state to serve alcohol he doesn't have he has the license he has tips started by people but he doesn't have the permit from the state so if he doesn't get it now obviously we would never have him here without he wouldn't do he doesn't want to do in this um so he's confident he's going to have it by the data video but because this is the last school to remaining before Bingo and then I got it almost left board on Monday so um he would have a separate truck we were thinking of doing tickets so that nobody would be over served um absolutely the alcohol would not be allowed inside the building in the event of rain we would have a tent we'd either cancel the truck or we'd have a tent and like a little beater Garden outside and people who if they wanted to go out and have a drink um it depends on like it was a total washout or if it was just a little drizzly out um but we also have an attorney on the EF and she's already looked into obtaining uh secondary insurance policy so that we have insurance for serving alcohol as well so the idea behind it just so people will be we're really feedback we got from previous years Bingo is always great but it was loud it was very kid-centric and we're trying to make it more family Centric so you come out on a Saturday afternoon you have a drink with your friends and the kids can run around and play outside we try doing it outside last year for the first time we got fairly positive feedback um because you could kind of it wasn't so uptight it was a lot more relaxed so the kids could go funny and parents could enjoy themselves and we just figured you know we have slushies for the kids maybe have beer and run for the parents hopefully entice people to stay a little longer more people to come and make it like a family activity and at the end of the day what all we're trying to do is raise money for these brands are you gonna do a bit go outside the circus weather for me that's exactly what we're doing yeah it's not going to be inside because we've allowed up the alcohol inside yeah so yeah again it's a plan for outside we don't have a rainy day just because there's I think it's that's Mother's Day weekend that we have Bingo um so if it rains it would be inside and either we'll cancel the truck we got a great deal from the dog father he's not charging us a minimum so um so as far as the alcohol yeah a lot of motion I think you should be condition on making sure everyone involved as an old necessary state and town permits yes the group make sure they have a secondary insurance policy in place covering the alcohol which you just said yes yes and the Dog Father sent me his insurance policy he has an insurance policy for his alcohol and then it doesn't need an area which is absolutely outside the building maybe even in a broke up area or be regardless you said he said he could put up a camp again we could do that but then we usually have tables set out in the parking lot so it might be tough to just stand there because hey who's going to check and make sure all of these documents are in place so I have the insurance policy right now the board of selected it requires that their policy from the Dog Father um I guess the BDF would be responsible for checking so should we say that we need to get copies of all this on file in central office would you like that I would like to do that yeah yeah right so we could we could either if we're gonna give tickets and I don't know how to work because we want the people to pay directly but I'm sure we can work things out with Mark so you said the services they're awesome certified I mean they also have those bracelets that have the one two three tabs on them so we that's a great idea Jess so we we've already been thinking about doing trying to do something like that so that nobody will be over served to make sure that was adults only and um all right well how's this promotion if you have a motion to uh Grant permission to the boys and Education Foundation I'll say this slowly to get it correct a motion to Grant permission to the voice and Education Foundation to serve alcohol at their bingo night event on in April 2023.
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sorry in May 2023 I've intended on all parties having all necessary permits in place bef having their necessary Insurance in place that the alcohol server has his food permits that there'd be a designated area for drinking which is outside only no alcohol in the building and then all necessary paperwork for copies of all necessary paperwork should be given to central office a week before the event three days before the events yes yeah and I'll be there yeah that'll be the responsibility of the bef so it can come from yeah I'll make sure you have it but yeah do you have that whole thing are you allowed to make motion um I asked for the motion I'm so moved thank you so should I abstain from voting okay Lord Glory because I've made the moment second Julie Laurie Julie all right any more discussion all in favor against us and Education Foundation yeah good job uh okay that's all of our business items future agenda items before anybody asks for anyone I just want to remind everybody we do need to set the set the committee calendar for next year um so we talked about two things that they have possibly changed in the day and possibly changing the time um I don't know how to handle this I really don't want to get a little long discussion about it right now but we do need to get it done before June um is that on the agenda for next month it should be yeah yeah so I'll put a 10 in the calendar out there and then we can discuss it next meeting maybe we should I don't know if somebody could like I don't want to assign Lisa anything else but or maybe I don't know maybe if I have time out of taxis that I can do it like just pull people like what's it no that's not doing nothing [Music] it would be for next school year same but honestly you can't even plan for that because it's going to change season season why doesn't the policy committee take a stab at it and uh all right we'll put something out there all right and then um yeah it's only going to be once a month oh yes the other thing uh we're going to go into an executive session soon and then we're going to come back but I want to get this the upcoming meeting date is May 16th this is going to be our next meeting however top meetings are May 1st if the budget doesn't get approved we're going to need to go through that process that we discussed with notice periods additional meetings additional meetings additional needs so I'd like to propose that we set right now a meeting for May 2nd as our budget hearing if needed in our regular meeting for May then we can make sure we get the necessary notices out beforehand in case it's the because there's a seven day window uh 45-day window essentially it's convoluted is that okay with everybody yeah so you'd have to post on Friday yeah with post I mean it's over it's just about a month away so there's plenty of time to get the postings out and it's a seven day newspaper to notice and all that end up on um or it could be earlier or later I mean well no this would be to react to a budget not faster oh no because as a meeting goes for Tuesday night could we hypothetically well if the budget hasn't passed or not passed by that point there would be no point I think Joseph suggest me having a later meeting time for us for us well so I'm saying like if you post a meeting for 6 30 on Tuesday May 2nd but say the meeting goes through Monday and then continued on Tuesday is there any penalty or whatever the galley issue to just postponing the meeting to the end no because period you need no experience yeah yeah you're right so who we should we meet on Wednesday May 3rd all right let's do it we could do Tuesday and then Wednesday as needed or whatever yeah yeah to cancel all right that's good uh is anybody have any future agenda items and non-union Personnel Carol Costello and to return back to open session so second Julie and Megan uh Jess e sorry there's a motion to head to exactly the session all right Glory bye thank you okay we're going into protective session yes
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[Applause] good evening we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order Dr Foley roll call a president Schultz members of the board please let the record show that all members are present please join us in a moment of silence in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States please okay I make a motion that we approve the agenda second okay all those in favor superintendent's report president Schultz members of the board tonight we've got several student and points of Pride celebrations so we're going to start this evening with we're going to start this evening with Bridges and I'm going to invite Mr Bickel and Mr Berg to come on up so that we can celebrate our bridges points of pride and I will help you thank you I will help give I will help you thank you thank you Dr Foley president Schultz vice president Anderson and members of the board thank you for this opportunity Dr Foley cabinet thank you as well first up I would like to call up Giuliani Julian is our student point of pride [Applause] Giuliani is a flat out amazing student and human being Giuliani is one of the nicest students I've ever met as he has always wanted to say hello ask how my day is going and give me a fist bump right every day every day I see you anyway Giuliani exemplifies our keys to success at Bridges as he is always safe respectful responsible and a true 21st century learner as one of the hardest workers on our campus he leads by example by demonstrating growth mindset every single day when it comes to his peers Giuliani demonstrates kindness and compassion at all times Giuliani has a bright future ahead of him and I can't wait to see what he accomplishes in middle school and Beyond congratulations Giuliani and thank you for being such a tremendous leader on our campus [Applause] you bring today I brought with me my mom and dad [Applause] we got you some cookies buddy next up I'd like to call up Jen Lloyd yeah Jen Lloyd Super Mom PTO president first place winning cheer coach and business owner Jen Lloyd does it all despite wearing many hats Jen pours her heart and talents into everything she does as a school we've been fortunate to have Jen on our campus in numerous capacities as she has helped coach our cheer team to earning first place in the district she told me at the beginning of the year it's going to happen and it did and has done a tremendous job running our PTO Jen has taken our PTO to new heights as she is strategic Visionary resourceful and dedicated to ensuring our students staff and families have nothing but the best elementary school experience sadly Jen and her family are moving to California tomorrow talk about timing right but she and her family will always be part of the bridges family you will always have a home here thank you for all that you've done for our campus [Applause] who I brought with me is my husband and my three little girls who I love to call my tiny sorority [Applause] our certified point of Pride winner is Devin Ellsworth [Applause] come on Devin Ellsworth is a master teacher who goes above and beyond for Student Center School Miss ellsworth's classroom is built upon a foundation of relationships as she strives to ensure every single student in her classroom is loved and cared for along with the relational foundationship is Devin's ability to deliver a top-notch engaging differentiated instruction day in and day out every student in Ms Ellsworth class grows immensely every single year due to her ability to meet their individual needs as she does so in a manner that Fosters a love for learning around campus Devin has forged lasting friendships and has garnered the respect of her peers personally I can always count on Devin's words of encouragement and positivity Mrs Ellsworth is a stellar teacher and Beyond deserving of this Bridges Elementary School certified point of Pride winner for this year congratulations David [Applause] foreign I brought my husband and my little girl my son and my mom and then my team is here so thanks [Laughter] [Applause] and Brooke Travis is our classified Point surprise winner [Applause] even though this is Brooke's first year at Bridges you will have a hard time finding a more knowledgeable Professional School office manager than Brooke Travis Brook continually goes above and beyond for the students and staff and everyone in the bridges community whenever a student staff member or parent comes into the office Brooke is there to greet them with a smile and offer whatever help or support is needed I truly appreciate all your hard work and energy that you put into making sure that every single person she interacts with daily is supported and ensured that their needs are met I personally want to thank you Brooke for everything that you do you you keep our school running so thank you who did you bring with um I brought my husband my daughter my son and my mother-in-law and I will give Miss Donna a shout out there because uh she's always with me okay we'll take a picture okay now we get to celebrate our HTA Point surprise so I'm gonna miss the face here come Miss bacon and Miss day good evening governing board cabinet members of the community we are here to celebrate our four points of Pride as well and we're going to start with our student Avery Kaiser [Applause] so Avery we are so very proud of this sixth grade student she began her husd career as a preschool student at the Coulee preschool and has attended HTA since kindergarten Avery is led by example every day for as long as she's been in our district she is kind and she's a loving friend I see her outside every morning when she gets dropped off taking care of a first grader and she does such a good job they have such they have great conversations out in front of the school she's a responsible student always has a smile on her face she cares deeply about her school and she has served on her student council and led many initiatives and even conducted research from start to finish and she has seen to fruition the purchase of a new piece of playground equipment just did a PowerPoint we had a board meeting everything it was amazing when I think of our husd portrait of a graduate that's this girl right here she is an Innovative learner a responsible Citizen and is certainly a College and Career ready scholar thank you Avery for seven wonderful years at HTA and I'm so excited to see what you're going to do next president of the United States all right [Applause] um I brought my mom my dad and I also brought my amazing sixth grade teachers [Music] [Applause] okay I'll just do so the next point of pride is Miss Kelly Earl come on up Kelly [Applause] she is our parent point of pride in our PTO president um Kelly is amazing and we're so lucky to have her at our school She's a great leader along with her PTO parent board and they've brought so many amazing things to our school this year um in addition to collaborating with student council on purchasing our playground equipment she's planned and executed a fall Carnival Child's Play performances a book vending machine for our library supported classroom initiatives hosted a school Community glow dance donuts with grown-ups coffee carts lunches for our staff uniform donations and sales of spirit wear fundraisers parent newsletters and the list goes on and on and on Kelly is an Innovative thinker a great communicator and her partnership has been so valuable to help our school do great things for our students and our Learning Community thank you Kelly [Applause] and today I brought with me my husband and my wonderful daughter Aubry [Applause] okay for our certified staff member for points of Pride we have Miranda McCabe [Applause] Miranda McCabe is one of Higley traditional Academy's outstanding kindergarten teachers she is passionate educator who is intentional in her instruction focused on supporting her students in every way possible Mrs McKay builds positive relationships with her students and learns about each individual and what makes them tick these relationships paired with her effective instruction allows each child to shine Mrs McCabe accepts every challenge that comes her way treats each experience as a moment to learn and grow her positive mindset flexibility Forward Thinking and mentorship to her colleagues does not go unnoticed Mrs McCabe shows humility and all that she does strives to grow professionally and personally while always keeping the focus of what is best for her students Miranda we appreciate all that you do with your students and their families your grade level and HTA congratulations [Applause] um I brought with me my husband my daughter Harper and my parents thank you [Applause] so next up for our classified staff member we have Miss Irina come on up [Applause] so Mrs Irina is such an important member to our HTA family she began her journey at HTA as a lunch Aid and later became a paraprofessional supporting our students in the classroom and is currently a one-on-one Aid in each of these roles Mrs Irina shows kindness warmth and supports students in being successful she celebrates each milestone for her kiddos that they make Miss Irina has such high expectations of herself she strives to learn each new role seek feedback fulfill each Duty with the mindset to learn and grow she never settles for status quo and she exemplifies the qualities of an outstanding paraprofessional who cares for her students their families and the staff her willingness to support in any way possible is greatly appreciated and valued Irina truly is an asset here at Higley traditional [Applause] I have with me my husband Tony and my two daughters Zoe and Harper and I see a lot of HTA family representing thank you guys [Applause] Miss Bacon yes okay we now have some student athletes to celebrate and I'm going to have Mr latzenheiser introduce our leaders to celebrate president Schultz members of the boards with great pleasure tonight first of all wow thank you all for being here coming to celebrate wonderful athletes and accomplishments but I need to let the stars of the show Truly Come forward so with Mr Keeling and Mr Potts would come forward hmm somehow somehow I knew that would happen all right uh District cabinet and governing board thank you so much for having us here tonight give us the opportunity to celebrate our amazing students first and foremost I would like to invite up coach Del rosau and Coach Wells and the cheer team [Applause] so just a little bit of backstory coach Wells actually uh used to coach cheer for me as well and is a fantastic math teacher on our campus and Coach Del Rosal has been an amazing dance teacher on campus for several years and so when word got out that um coach Wells was coming back to to coach cheer I was being reached out to by community members and members of um our husd staff that were so excited to have her back and when she told me that she wanted to bring coach Del rosalon as well our amazing dance teacher I knew that this year was going to be very very special and they did not disappoint so they set such high expectations for these girls and I was so impressed to watch them come in um every single not every single morning but Monday Tuesday Wednesday mornings yep they overcame injuries they worked hard on their grades to make sure they stayed eligible and they met the high expectations that were set by the coaches and so um not only um did they accomplish great things across the campus and represent Spartan Nation with respect and accountability which is our motto but when they got done competing my phone started blowing up from ads and athletic trainers and the competition that said our girls absolutely killed it and so it was so great to be able to celebrate that night with you guys and unfortunately I had to go home after they competed and then I think I got a text like 9 30.
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foreign [Music] which it stands nation under God indivisible with liberty welcome to anyone that's watching on our live streaming here at the Bethany Board of Education we Inspire to empower children to thrive in the World of Tomorrow our first call to order on our agenda would be our PTO report there's friends everybody [Music] thank you hello my name is Melissa zaldo I am the secretary for the BCS PTO I'm also a mom to a third grader cool um just provide some updates of what we've been doing and what's going to be happening we have a busy couple months coming up um the PTO recently provided some grants we provided a grant for Unified sports to go up to Duncan Park where they'll be honored on their field with other Unified sports teams from other schools we also provided funding for their end-of-year celebration we've also provided funding for a storage unit for the Pre-K kids I guess they're they're outdoor toy storage unit is like falling apart and is not safe so we're providing funding for that we've also provided funding for Reese's toys for the fourth grade for their request and we've also provided funding um for some field trips for the third grade to um they went to the Connecticut historical society and the fourth grade went to Eli Whitney Museum so now our limits for grants for the year has been reached which is good so thank you for all of that we recently sent out a parent interest survey to all the parents in the school to get a sense because we're starting our budget preparations for next year just to get a sense of um where we should spend our money what kind of fundraisers and the good news is that they really like our events they really like the book fair Amy uh the snowflake shop sweetheart dance Spring Fling and they really liked um our pie fundraiser that we have in the third around Thanksgiving restaurant nights in our apparels we also got a lot of good suggestions on um additional fundraisers and where we can spend the money for next year because you know we want parents are very generous with their money we want to spend it how they want us to spend it um as far as clubs and assemblies go we've really got the ball rolling on that Lego Club continues to be a big hit they meet every Tuesday I think there's 40 plus students who attend weekly at our Lego Club we're also planning on funding two assemblies for the students um one is I'm gonna I'm I'm I apologize I'm going to mispronounce this gentleman's name Manny no Guerra he's a BMX performer and he's going to do a BMX show and also provide messaging on working hard preparing for your dreams goal setting and the other one is going to be mad science they do a bunch of crazy science experiments and that's going to be focused around Earth Day and they're going to be doing something with an Earth Day reduce reuse recycle [Music] we also did teacher appreciation on parent-teacher conference we provided dinner for the teachers for their Late Night with a team of talk about our awesome teachers it was a taco themed dinner where parents and the PTO provided tacos and all the fixings and everything and dessert so thank you to all our parents Who provided the meals and provided the funding for that also at our parent teacher conferences we had an apparel sale a table set up by the office to sell ECS spirit wear and we're also looking to get our spring online shop up and running as well the big couple events we have coming up which are well underway in planning is Spring Fling I know everybody's looking forward to Spring Fling that is scheduled for May 26th we have received a lot of donations from local businesses so thank you to all the businesses who have donated there is a flyer out there so if you're looking for local business and support please look on that flyer to see if one of those businesses meet your meet your needs we would love to support them the way they support us um also in conjunction with Spring Fling we're planning a Senor Pancho's Restaurant night to help support funds for that as well just for people who don't know Spring Fling is an awesome event last year we had 700 people attend we had bounce houses we had food trucks we had sugar cupcakes we had Touch of trucks and everything was included in the price of the ticket there is a link up now to purchase tickets it's gonna be five dollars per child ten dollars per adult which considering the amount you'd get that's a pretty good pretty good price we're also um we're encouraging our teachers to attend teachers will be able to attend at no cost to them and their families there's also a link for when parents purchase their tickets if you would like to support a teacher there's also a way to do that on PayPal the other big events we have coming up is quasi night that's going to be May 19th uh quasi night is held in conjunction with Beecher Road School in Woodbridge the park is shut down exclusively for our use it's a super fun event kids just basically run around get to ride the rides all night again everything the it's the price of the ticket there's almost no lines except for the roller coaster that's another fun event we're also planning our baseball game sometime in June we don't have an exact date for that yet our other event coming up is our mother day Mother's Day plant sale which is scheduled for May 10th this is a chance for students to come and purchase plants to honor uh women or anybody in their life that they want to give a plan too and also the other thing is yearbook orders the link is up and running for that so we have a lot going on visit our website and um thank you for helping thank you to all of our parents for allowing us to support schools opportunity for anybody in the audience if you can state your name and your address for the record something because answer back thank you hi I'm Shannon Lane I have a second grader and a fourth grader and I just wanted to say that I know April is such an incredibly hard month to schedule in um tonight's the first night of passover and so I would love it if that if it's possible to schedule a round Passover in the future so that parents can come to things like these if they're observing the holiday I think that would be a great thing to do I know our bricks don't always line up with Passover it's wonderful this year that our break does so that families can have some more time together and it would be great if families who are observing the holiday could be able to listen to or come to board event meetings as well thank you submitted on March 10th by Dawn Stark and she writes it was a great speech given by Kimberly wilkett on March 8 2023.
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[Music] thank you [Music] all right good evening everybody I'd like to welcome you all to the regular meeting of the Brookfield board of education for Wednesday April 5th we have a big crowd tonight this is kind of fun to see we don't always have this much company so thank you all for coming please join me in Rising for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] um so on our agenda first up we have our roll call we have six of our seven members of the Board of Education Mrs Bhutto is not here due to observance of the holidays this evening um and uh um Dr Pearl did you have something you wanted to say yes I just wanted to let the board know um our wonderful High School company everything etched um put together this wonderful gift for you it's a gift from the TSO team for each of the board members it's for board appreciation month we couldn't get the Tumblers in fast enough and get everything etched to get the work done by the March 15th meeting so they came in and we have them for you and their their personalized so please feel free if you'd like to open them or whatever you like doing certainly we could thank the students for putting them together for us and certainly Mrs gramling and the team for and Mr neuhausel our technology teacher customized for everybody thank you and all the volunteer hours you put in thank you very much thank you very much you're welcome [Music] foreign [Music] next on our uh agenda is public comment um we do very much welcome public comment um we do have a process uh for public comment uh that we reserve the early part of the meetings public comment to things that are on the agenda and so I'm actually it's one of the reasons for those of you who are new to this when I do the sign up we do ask for the agenda items that they want to talk to and there's a lot of items here but only one of them by my judgment is has to do with an agenda item this evening so those of you who are here to speak uh we will probably will get to you at the end of the meetings public comment period I will tell you we have a short agenda so you're not going to be here until long hours of the night um it's uh there's only one business item on the agenda and then our kind of standard things the rules for public comment are simple um uh which three minutes per speaker and as I said the beginning section is for the part of anything on the agenda um and we just asked that no no discussion of school Personnel or individual students or individual members of the board because that wouldn't be appropriate in this kind of forum so the only person who's on the agenda for uh the early part is Mrs Matthews you'll hold till the end okay thanks that'll be at the end thank you um thank you very much um so the uh so with that we will move on to uh um the student Spotlight and uh so Dr bro I'll let you give some opening remarks sure so we have we are we're super excited to have a team from Center School kindergarten Mrs Knapp's class here with us tonight I've been going to invite uh where is Mrs ferius there we go Mrs Ferris to the podium to introduce everybody I think the theme of tying into the Brookfield seas in the Strategic plan will be very exciting uh especially regarding the topic of science tonight so Deb I'll let you take over thank you Dr Burrell I am super excited to be here with the amazing crew of scientists in Mrs Knapp's class along with our K-8 instructional science coach Rachel Cohen and along with Mariah Rivera our ABA prior for para professional and by the way power appreciation day today so right um shout out to Brown powders anyway I just really want to introduce I have the honor of introducing our amazing inquisitive scientists who have used inquiry and curiosity and science to solve a real world problem so I don't want to give away the spotlight I want to introduce Mrs Sean Knapp our kindergarten teacher extraordinaire and Rachel Cohen Mrs Cohen to talk about the spotlight so I'll be brief I had the amazing opportunity to work with Sean and her Wonderful class and we worked on their forces and motion unit and the students really were inspired and utilized their play Workshop along with stations and centers in the morning and traditional lessons to solve a problem so without further Ado I'm going to introduce Haley [Music] okay [Applause] good evening we are here to show you how we built pickles feeding machine This is Nico nobody [Applause] we have a problem because he's not getting fat this is my friend Evan [Applause] we needed a machine to remind us to feed pickles this is my friend Anthony we needed a a Bell on the bottom of the Martin to remind us to feed pickles here Evelina foreign [Applause] ERS work together to make different parts of the machine we helped each other I would like to introduce Joey [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] the machine doesn't always work we kept trying and trying again really excited yeah [Music] Georgie [Applause] here's our video come on down Georgie [Applause] [Music] play [Music] thank you foreign communicate it's Chevy ideas with other [Music] um thank you [Music] forever leaders work with the class for the goal [Music] s [Music] here are our blueprints [Music] I think that car had more Force to push the lever careful thinking with the information creative thinking making something new we made a Marvel track [Music] so it doesn't go crazy [Music] inspired me and me to to make this life Sage maker solving the problem [Music] s [Music] I feel excited because I had fun building a fish machine I am happy that we made a machine to feed pickles I feel happy because we work so hard I feel happy because because everybody did a good job I feel super duper happy because we work together thanks for watching [Applause] Deb you good do you need to say anything else that is you're absolutely right yep holy thank you all and please come by G6 and help feed pickles you can try the machine he's he's thriving as Joey said he's excited so please come on by we had a wonderful time working with Mrs Cohen and exploring through play so thank you we're going to show your or show you our pictures now so Jesus come on up here guys come on come on come on up you can bring him here wow oh yeah look at that you're with Mrs you're the marble on the floor oh my gosh let me see wow you got what what did the car do [Music] this really that's cool and and was that part of the how to feed pickles that's great here take your pictures thank you let's see what you got oh man look at that good job okay and that's how I built that's how it all starts so get Pickle stuff okay that's let me see what you oh [Music] you both of you seem to have pictures is that's your Design This is how you kind of decided what to make and what is your picture doing it looks like you have got your vehicle going down a ramp right push the car cool is that what I saw on this on the pictures that's so neat good job guys [Music] well that was really really cool and I'll speak for the board to say that that was not only uh one of the most fun exercises we've seen but it's also hits some of the things we've added to the strategy and for those of you who haven't watched our strategy presentations it's um it's really clear we've got really good education of subjects you know good Math teachers good English teachers these are the skills that surround that you know how do you make critical decisions how do you collaborate how do you communicate and to see it starting with the kindergarteners it's just fabulous so we're very very happy to see that any one from the board want to add no it was great okay okay all right so um we will continue on our agenda uh and it's any it looks like all of the kids are heading out because it's a late night for them already so um all right next up on our agenda is uh the student representative report Caitlin this is a tough act for you to follow but you will you will you will rise to the occasion I am sure it's always the elementary school kids that are like doing so so good and I'm so proud of them too um okay so hi everyone uh to begin updates today I'm pleased to announce that the junior prom was a success um it was held at the Amber Room this past Friday complete with dinner a DJ and a photo booth um preparations continue for senior prom being held at the Kenwood Inn on May 12th and um that event has a red carpet theme and also student government elections for the 2023 to 2024 school year have commenced um the current members are passing down the responsibility to diligent capable students who will successfully lead our student body at BHS um the sophomores within Student Government currently are working on a Mario Kart tournament fundraiser to raise money for their class which is very fun um last week all students at BHS were presented with a training program in our ilt and this educated everyone about the Sandy Hook promises say something this is the anonymous reporting system and so students were taught the importance of reporting suspicious or threatening activity that occurs on or outside the school grounds um so we are encouraged to take these necessary measures to keep ourselves safe at all times finally the performance for The Little Shop of Horus has come to an end they had a successful run and a great audience turnout so the dinner and a movie night was a definitely a hit so for athletics the spring Sports have commenced and the Brookfield girls lacrosse team won their first game against New Milford this week yay um I'm sad to announce that coach Brian Reeve has retired at the end of the swim season um he spent 31 years in the Brookfield Community coaching boys swim and six years coaching the girl swim so he has led the team to 11 state championships six swc's championships and had 60 All-State swimmers and five All-American swimmers in his career so I work as a lifeguard at the YMCA so I experienced his talent and devotion firsthand while watching him work with the team and it was just really great to see um so he was an amazing coach and will continue to be loved by all that's all for tonight thank you Caitlyn one question I know we don't normally no yeah questions anytime how was it received by the students with the see something say something app yeah yeah I figured you guys might want more elaboration on that so um it was delivered during ilt we did have technology issues so we couldn't actually play the video until about 10-15 minutes into iot um so it didn't grab much of the student's attention right away because we were kind of like antsy about it um because it did also lead into some students lunch time um so that had nothing to do with the actual um thing but just the system uh the video was taken okay I feel like um teachers were definitely told to direct students to really pay attention because this is important um so I would say in my classroom like we didn't have phones out we weren't doing anything else it was just like we were taking this time to watch the video um and yeah and in my specific class we there were a few kids who had some questions after I think they um some were answered by my teacher and then she told the ones who didn't have questions to go to like some or who like knows more information um but overall I think it was an informative video um yeah I would say that it was organized very well and they did incorporate students into the video too so it wasn't just adults like talking to us because usually that doesn't really grab the kids attention so I would say that it was really informative good yeah very good thanks for questions for uh Caitlin thank you thank you for doing a great job following kindergarten [Music] all right so uh next up is written correspondence okay Denise rice wrote regarding a complaint Jeffrey Katz wrote regarding building conditions at the high school Marnie mcneff wrote regarding the correct survey and focus groups Sarah Coffey wrote regarding school security positions Nick Schmidt wrote regarding cardiac screenings for athletes and explicit books at the Brookfield High School library Jennifer pink wrote regarding increasing substitute pay Michelle Santos wrote regarding connect kids Transportation Jamie klavins Monique Matthews Lindsey Davis and Irene Korea wrote regarding the correct focus groups Tanya Stanley and Debbie Pizzo wrote regarding the BHS Library circulation Howard Lasser wrote regarding meeting dates Carrie Colombo wrote supporting vetted access to Library resources Jamie clavens wrote regarding mental health and the lack of support in the high school Andy Correa wrote regarding the failure to oppose an sro's accelerated Rehabilitation application and Monique Matthews wrote regarding a special ed petition okay thank you next is approval aboard minutes I'll move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on March 15 2023 and the special meeting on March 15 2023 second any discussion on the minutes okay all in favor all right it's unanimous uh superintendents update Dr Burrell I'll turn it to you all right thanks Mr Belden so um a couple of items tonight and then I'm actually going to turn it over to Dr rudel our assistant principal from Huckleberry to share some information uh that's going on at Huckleberry right now but I'll start with uh just letting everybody know that we have two of our 11th graders who have projects qualifying for the international science and engineering Fair which will be in Texas on May I think it's May May 3rd and we are really looking forward to them uh coming to the next board meeting if they can and sharing with us their projects and we're just super proud of both of them and really excited they are only two they are two of only seven students in the entire state that have a project qualifying to even go to this National Conference so we're really really proud of them and really excited I can't wait to have them introduced you I know Mr belanda and certainly Mr Hill are quite proud the next piece is Debbie fairies already mentioned at para education para educator day it's that time of year where we start to recognize our different Educators and celebrate all of their work and we began that today with spring kickoff with our para Educators and starting to recognize them we thank all of them and certainly I want to thank our Union president for the para Educators Mrs Kramer she's been an absolutely new president and an absolute pleasure to work with the next piece is kindergarten enrollment update Mrs Ferris and her team are doing a great job over there can't thank them enough we have right now in the pipe line no one's formally fully registered all the way we've begun registration 130 students for this time of year that's a pretty much a typical number so we continue to monitor enrollment pay attention and then the next piece is the pick my kid or pick up my kid app that we are going we just started last week over at Huckleberry working with not only it is a technology efficiency item to help with dismissal time it also is a Safety and Security tool and Dr rule is going to share a couple of slides about it You Gotta Dance thank you good evening it has to be up hello there we go good evening I am excited to share our new dismissal management and safety system called pick my kid uh that was just rolled out to our wonderful families and staff last week um it is a dismissal Community among other things it is a dismissal communication um program that allows parents and staff to have constant communication regarding a student's dismissal plan whether it is a change in dismissal how students are going home every day if a parent needs to pick up the student early this all can be done on an app that is very parent friendly from what I hear and various staff friendly so no longer do we need to rely on phone calls or emails or notices from the office to alter a student's dismissal plan we are now as teachers able to see it in real time so how this works is um it well it's also aligned to the Brookfield seas in terms of communication and collaborating there are different features available like I said no more dismissal changes eventually we can roll out absentee reporting so you as a fam a parent do not need to email the office for absentee reasons you can now do it right on the app God forbid we ever have a crisis that needs family reunification processes we can do it all on the app we can push out notifications to families saying there's something in place where evacuating to so and so please meet us at wherever um there's a messaging option to keep families in the loop which is nice so if bus one is late or some reason um delayed we can send out a message saying the bus has officially left the lot so you know how to plan backwards um which will be turned on eventually so these are just two examples of what the app looks like on the left you'll notice that is the app for a parent pickup um the way that the app works is there is a half a mile radius geofence around our the front of our building when a parent pulls or whoever is designated to pick up the student pulls into that half mile radius an alert pops up on their phone that says you can announce yourself if it is after um three o'clock I believe we have it turned on for at that time you click on that green button announcing yourself which then sends a notification to the staff members running dismissal so that we can then notify which students need to go out um for parent pickup it allows us to verify the Guardians that are picking up a student or in the case of um someone out of the ordinary needing to pick up a student mom and dad got caught up doing something else grandpa has to come grandpa doesn't usually pick up we're able to Mom and Dad are able to notify on the app that Grandpa's going to pick up the child today we will see exactly who's picking them up we can check ID before we release the student out so those are just a couple of the features for parent pickup side um what's nice is we are doing this all in anticipation of Candlewood Lake so we are going to have over a thousand students to dismiss all at once so we're trying to work The Kinks out over at Huckleberry right now getting everyone at Huckleberry trained all of our parents have been very wonderful we have over 359 parents registered for the app which is about 42 of our apparent population or whoever is the first and secondary contact in PowerSchool So currently like I said we're rolling this out for parent pickup we are on day four I believe of parent pickup after spring break we are going to be turning off that Google blue note form and all this missile changes were going to be managed through the app what's also nice about pick my kid is their customer service and tech support is outstanding so if anybody has any issue with the app and we can't answer we're getting pretty good at it but if we can't answer it um tech support is available for parents um at the touch of a button which is nice and they'll walk you right through exactly what needs to be done we're also hoping to roll this out for bust dismissal so that's coming soon um over the summer we're going to get more families and more staff even more comfortable with this so we'll be utilizing it for stem Adventure at CES and hopefully for esy and then we'll be fully rolled out for Cle s on day one on the staff side this is what dismissal looks like so this is what parent pickup is going to look like when goofy dog and Daisy Duck I know the names this is from the company come down Candlewood Lake Road and say that they're here to pick up their students they we see them in the announce queue and we are quickly able to push them over into the active line where we're able to get the students out and ready for parent pickup to go that much smoother and faster granted it's a work in process right now and I can't thank the families at Huckleberry enough for being so patient with us and willing to go on this adventure um but it is all in the name of safety and ease for dismissal so that we can get your student out of that line as fast as possible like I said what's also nice for the teacher view we can see dismissal changes Any teacher in the building can see dismissal changes as they're happening or I believe two o'clock not 11 A.M two o'clock is when we will be cutting off dismissal changes that you can do on the app um so we'll be able to see at 2 30 2 45 3 o'clock before you go out for dismissal exactly where your students are supposed to be so you'll see if dismissal changes have been made who's staying for an after-school program who's taking which bus if there was a bus change that had to be made at the last minute um and in addition if there is a sub we have a plan for that as well we're able to print this out and hand this directly to a sub so even a substitute teacher will have seamless dismissal um at the end of the day so we are super excited about it my dismissal staff has been amazing teachers were trained in this today um Dr P has been an awesome champion of this as well we um saw this in action in Orange and we were sold there they were able to dismiss 60 kids and or 70 kids and 60 in six minutes I believe something along those lines it was very fast we're hoping to get there um other districts like reading and Darien Greenwich I believe Bethlehem um orange obviously you just pick my kid like I said but other districts in the state do use a School dismissal manager for ease and safety of um dismissal so we're able to track exactly who goes where so thank you that's a course questions this is great having sat in that line having satin that we're trying to cut down that time the parents are sitting in so this is no uh depending on the district people at different schools use it across the board I know Darian for example uses it across all their schools high school middle school included so we could be the test the test for uh our district yeah thank you thanks Daniel thanks for listening thank you and that's the report all right thank you very much Dr Burrell any questions for Dr Brill on this report this evening all right we're gonna move on uh next up are subcommittee reports uh Rosa first up is finance okay okay as usual the check registers um and just for everybody that knows that is where we review any of the expenditures that the district had in that particular month anything over a thousand dollars we then reviewed the February financial report the deficit as you know has been running for since the beginning of the year I'm happy to report that it is 139 000 less than it was the previous month and the most significant change that contributes to that is an increase in the estimated excess cost Grant Revenue so that is how special education is partially funded by the state and so we received essentially more than we had anticipated receiving so that was good news we talked briefly about the 2324 operating budget and as well as the pay rate guidelines which we still have some open questions about so we will be reviewing at our meeting later this month that's it okay any questions for Rosa just pertinently that pay rate guidelines the we've gotten a letter or two on substitute rates and what we pay substitutes that's part of that process right so that'll come out as the as we finish that and it comes here to the board for our for a final approval okay uh next up is the security task force agenda um and we met on I'll do this one we met on March 30th um it was mostly an executive session where we reviewed the karma vulnerability assessment um went into a lot of detail on things that they found and corrective actions and stuff and stuff that we generally wouldn't do in public session we then at the end of that we moved back into public session and and just kind of talked about some of the accomplishments that we've done this year including not just the hiring of the sros which we got a lot of support from last summer and the security monitors but a lot of capital projects in terms of the more cameras on the schools more lock sensors on the school doors the gate at Huckleberry the the security film home on the Windows which helps in case of somebody trying to be an intruder those actually started we heard tonight's facilities meaning they'll start getting installed next week um which is great um and we talked a little bit about the the say something app and the rollout which we heard from uh um that uh that it went uh that it went well um and uh and we're now talking about the bollards that we'll put in front of doors um so there's a lot going on there so next meeting will be on May 18th and we're going to actually go through in that meeting uh training and uh and human factors you know what are we doing with staff what are we doing with students in terms of Readiness training so that's the next topic we're going to have I will say a funny little Side Story my wife is a um is in a book club and she came home last night from her book club and she says well the new security monitor is a member of our book club at the high school and she says she spent half the evening raving about you know how secure the high school is so I think some of the and really citing door monitors and cameras right so those are noticed which I think you know it makes our kids feel more secure when we do that so which is what it's all about okay oh that's it on the do I have any questions team okay um Joy did you want to talk about the boys locker room I know it's not on the agenda but just uh it's a long time coming the first walkthrough was in 2017 and we just did a walk through tonight great to see it finally come to fruition a lot of demolition has happened so far oh joy you're Mike sorry okay um so it was exciting to walk through there tonight and to see all the demolition happening and it really coming together it's been a long time coming so we're excited about it the ETA second week of August we're looking at it to be completed in time for football season the all sports so it's exciting so definitely a construction zone isn't it okay so that's it on subcommittee reports consent agenda is next I'll move that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires transfers resignations retirements and the February financials second Dr Brill any comments on this month's uh yeah I have two really excited they're they're bittersweet because you're happy for people when they retire but uh at the same time you're going to miss them and their contributions and their institutional knowledge and everything they've done for for the the community and of course our students um first uh Lee Morgan after 27 years at uh in District at Huckleberry she is retiring and um it was uh it was bittersweet when I started in the hallway and she was kind of waiting she knew I was visiting and she waited for me and uh had her uh had her letter and we had a nice conversation there in the hallway so we're excited for Lee in her next adventure and um wish her well as she finishes up her last spring uh over at Huckleberry and then uh thinking of Mr zapor another retiree Mr zapor is finishing up uh almost 20 years here at the high school as our technology teacher and done a great job with the program for two decades and we're excited for him in his next chapter and just thank him for all of his service thank you any other comments on the consent agenda all in favor okay there's no new business this evening so we'll move on to Old business and the first item is policies uh and the first item it's policy number 5118.111 children of non-resident staff and qualified tuition reduction I'll move that the board approved policy number 5118.111 children of non-resident staff qualified tuition reduction for a final reading as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee the first reading was on February 15 2023.
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okay I like to call the meeting to order at seven Workshop to order at several degrees thank you foreign what Terry present Michelle Kate your Gladys come here Jesse Julie here Ralph president oh Bridget sorry okay so before um more Spotlight in school I just wanted to say something and just just publicly that um we got the good news last night about the budget and wanted to thank um mayor Esposito uh all the council members that attended the workshop and really um you know heard us out um a finance committee led by uh Mr alamuso with the vice Chair King kineta Kevin and his um and John and the whole Finance team here really put a lot of in all the important members on the finance committee and the importance also and especially the the parents and students and teachers that all went out and you know let their voices be heard and advocate for um the budget so we do we all take a lot of time and effort and take it seriously and put a lot of time and and make some hard decisions where we're putting through the budget process and um it's it's refreshing that uh you know where the voices were this year and I'm happy to be a part of that and I just want to thank everybody for their role um in that process so so thank you guys [Music] [Applause] thank you um so Spotlight at school East Town Elementary come on [Applause] good evening thank you for having me here this evening [Music] thank you for having here this evening surprised by some of my teachers back here so I just wanted to thank them for joining us this evening as well [Applause] so I'm just going to briefly introduce you to my school and highlight a few things so um I have our our core value statement of their his town is an equitable and Safe Community of empathetic courageous respectful and responsible Learners and we are proudly the haystown dragons we are a category 2 School of Distinction this year or from last year of high growth our needs in ela we also have our second year in a row of one of our fourth graders winning our fire prevention contest District winner 2022 and 2023.
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foreign ER the April 5th 2023 special Board of Education meeting and workshop we will be going into closed session and we'll return to convene Open session at 5 pm okay okay good evening I will now call to order uh Open session we have been in closed session and during closed session no action was taken with Open Session called to order let's please stand for the flag salute absolute pledge foreign Ty and justice for all agenda item four is announcements um does the board have any announcements regarding upcoming student events um Awards accomplishments they would like to make not on that but I do have an announcement okay um I've decided it falls on me to make known what I think is an important development in our ongoing court case of Regina versus Staley this is a case in which I myself am named as a defendant in my official capacity when legal action is taken against the school district like ours we have an insurance policy that covers a portion of the legal defense the coverage on this Regino lawsuit was a hundred thousand dollars I'm informed that as of April 1st we have exceeded that amount this means it has taken about two and a half months to spend a hundred thousand dollars against the plaintiff in support of our position and actions if Chico Unified allows this case to go to trial I feel it is likely to cost much much more and could last for years I am now of the strong opinion that is not in the interest of our district or the community to continue to pursue a defense in this case against Ms Regino it is apparent to me that current laws are ambiguous to say the least and we should now make whatever concessions we can to avoid a lengthy trial we should come to terms with Ms Regino and find Middle Ground so that we can put precious School resources where they are needed most Chapman Rosedale Citrus Hooker Oak Inspire etc etc etc what is the point in our continuing to Shell out hundred thousand dollar paychecks to attorneys and Consultants trying to defend a cloak and dagger secrecy policy that keeps parents and families people we are supposed to be serving and partnering with in the dark about their own children school districts up and down the state will be watching the outcome of this case and will benefit from any rulings that come from it there is no good reason for Chico Unified to be a test case for the legality of these internal procedures on Parental secrecy which I believe have become relatively standard but are not actually codified as law additionally I feel that further advocacy against Ms Regino is totally inappropriate given the nature of her claims she wants responsible parents to be notified in the event that their child's school has acted upon a change to that child's gender identity she objects to an apparent practice of intervening publicly on a child's behalf altering their identification and treatment by staff and fellow students while at school but keeping those interventions a secret from the child's parents I like to think Chico Unified has always had a culture of transparency when it comes to informing responsible parents and legal Guardians about what happens with their own children in the classroom I've always felt this has been the case with my own four kids but now I'm not so sure we are apparently saying we will not be transparent with parents when it comes to gender Transitions and identities parents will not be told a thing even if the entire rest of the school is in on the secret needless to say I see this as morally reprehensible and will oppose any further expenditure of funds toward this cause fighting to keep secrets from responsible parents about their own kids is an expensive luxury we shall have to forgo as far as I'm concerned thank you [Applause] do we need additional announcements moving on to item five consent calendar do we have public comment on consent calendar in a public comment uh would anybody like to pull an item for further discussion on consent I need to move this away from my face it's too loud for me um okay I've been seeing no changes desired I will ask for a motion set calendar you need to make sure your microphone's on please I move approval of the consent calendar we have a motion second Ed by uh member konkin we'll do a Voice vote is there any discussion on consent okay well starting with member Lando tennis eye Dobby I Robinson I honk and I it passes five two none moving on to item 6.1 we are um in a board Workshop this is an informational item for a presentation on the multi-tiered system of support mtss overview presented by Tina Keen good evening board good evening everybody I'm happy to have the pleasure to introduce the multi-tiered system of supports for tonight the overview that focuses on what mtss is as a whole and then a little more focus on the gifted and talented education piece or gate as we call it Junior High honors and advanced placement AP academic programs we'll also look at counseling and positive behavioral intervention and supports that we have through our mtss framework we had two board Liaisons oh oh next slide slide please look at it sorry about that we've got the clicker now so our board Liaisons on this uh presentation today were Caitlin dalby and Tom Lando so we thank them for their attention to this and good questions that came our way to make a a presentation that hopefully answers questions and provides information I have worked with a great team of people here at Tim Carris Jenn Scala Christie bankson Chase Chevalier and we have some other guests that we'll be talking about the programs that I'll be highlighting in this presentation tonight as well so a little background as we all know our community has gone through its share of some some interesting things and times uh starting with a campfire we have experienced some tremendous loss and Trauma in our own Community the pandemic shortly followed which created some enormous challenges but I also highlighted a lot of resilience during the unprecedented times that came with that in response to the recovery from both of these big big things that happened the multi-tiered system of supports or mtss became the framework in which we support our school communities with the learning recovery and wellness that we knew would come So based on this need and framework mtss framework reflects the three goals that we represent in our local control and accountability plan that's our lcap the first one is academic achievement the second is social emotional well-being and third is behavioral supports these are for each and every student in our district and the action services and expenditures Based on data are used to meet our students needs as we continue to heal with our focus on academic achievement for each and every student and additionally we look for every possible way to fund this work including grants which continue to come our way in in these in the spirit of solving the learning recovery programs that we have in place multi-tiered system of supports mtss this is a definition that encompasses what it is in the spirit of it it's a district-wide data driven framework for improving learning outcomes for every student in our district it's a layered Continuum full of evidence-based practices with intentional design and redesign if necessary of services and supports that identify and meet the needs of our students I know the board has seen this graphic uh before we use it quite often we look at every student every day and mtss does provide a whole child framework as I mentioned with those three pieces it does align systems and initiatives a lot of a lot of positive things that have been happening for years and Chico Unified are now pulled together and aligned in a more systematic way to work it does include collaboration and teamwork and it is proactive and preventative which is probably my personal favorite part of it this is a graph that does support all of what we've just said and what the program is designed on the framework is designed on and and tier one you see in there all students that's Universal support those are the things that we all do to support all of our kids and that's teachers it's it's everybody that works in our schools we are all tier one teachers and all of our students are have tier one services some students may need a little bit more Based on data at various times and those come in turn in the in the form of what we call tier two and then tier three interventions are used and supports if if needed for more support and again these come at different times we never know what things come our way where there are ups and downs with academics or other pieces that we need some support on for our students if you are interested to learn more about our mtss program after tonight we do have a pretty comprehensive website already on our district website that is continuing to be added to obviously as we we refine and learn more and more about this so I wanted to point that out to folks if they wanted to find out more information please look onto our website and search mtss and tonight as I mentioned we do have a lot of our team here and I'm going to hand this off to Tim Carris to talk about demographics good evening to build on what Tina mentioned earlier about the increased needs for our Chico Unified students over the past five years or so we have seen an increase in socioeconomically disadvantaged or other another term for that would be unduplicated students so for the last nine over the last nine years we've seen a low of 45.1 percent unduplicated percentage in Chico Unified so these are students that are Foster homeless English Learners or are receiving free and reduced uh lunch at school we are now up to 57.4 down a little bit from our high of above 58 percent uh last year so we've seen a significant uh increase in students in this category and across the board all of our measures on social emotional well-being academic achievement Behavior we've seen students that are socioeconomically disadvantaged achieve lower so what this really points to is an increased need for services for our students just to put a little real number on on that about 10 percent increase 12 percent increase is that's about 1200 students and for reference you know our Bidwell junior high is a little under a thousand so that's that's a lot of students um bringing with them higher needs to our district so I just wanted to give a little context to the um changing demographics in Chico Unified so when we think about mtss it is a very large a very very large topic and as evidenced by tonight all the different staff and some students that we have here to speak it is a very large topic and so last year sorry as you have new speakers come up can you please introduce yourselves so the crowd everybody knows who who you all are thank you yes sorry about that I'm Christy bankson I am the mtss coordinator for the district and I'm Chase Chevalier I am working with um Christy as a 0.2 tosa coordinator with her so when we think about mtss this very broad topic last year Chase and I worked with our ed services team some teachers some administrators a lot of staff to kind of identify what is going to be our focal point and so we have a three-year plan that we've put together really focusing on these main components of data based decision making tiered interventions and evidence-based practices professional development and coaching and a high quality curriculum and instruction and you'll see that woven out woven through the presentation this evening and then um the way that we've also set up aligning to our lcap goals are you'll hear some academic supports um and things happening at our elementary junior highs and High School in terms of advanced placement the gifted and talented and honors courses behavioral and social emotional I hate to be critical bottoms to those backpacks look like the diapers I put on grandchildren something a little different we can always look at updating those Graphics absolutely absolutely yep yep so with that being said I'm going to turn it Chase and I will be back later to talk about how we're looking at all of this data at our school sites and with some of our teams I'm going to turn it over to Ted Sullivan who will be introducing our speakers for the gifted and talented education piece hi good evening I'm Ted Solomon I'm the elementary director and I guess I'm healing clicker so one of the first three areas we really kind of started looking at a couple years ago related to mtss kind of meeting these of all of our kids at kind of that extended end kids are ready for some acceleration with our GATE program and we looked at the kids that were going into our GATE program we did some self-reflection and we really saw they were coming from a very small handful of schools so we kind of looked at our process we changed it before the gate process used to be teacher or parent referral and they would get pulled and assessed so we did a flip-flop we actually assessed every third grader now in all of our schools we give them an nna T3 it's called it's kind of an online IQ test for lack of a better term and that gives us a starting point to look and see who may be eligible and who may benefit from this opportunity and we pull them in and we've seen a pretty significant change with kind of the makeup and composition it gives in our gate class now we actually have this this year we actually have kids from every all 12 elementary schools are in our gate class with it by kind of broadening that look and seeing who may benefit from that opportunity so it serves for and fifth grade students over at Parkview one classroom for each of those grades and I'm going to invite up Heather safuentes the principal and Tammy Janos and they're going to talk a little bit about like what kind of experience the kids are getting when they go into that gate class talking good evening everybody I'm Heather sufuentes principal at Parkview Elementary School and I have Tammy Janos I'm a fifth grade gate teacher at Parkview so we just wanted to share she's going to give some insight into the classroom I just want to share a little overview of the program so the gate program is really designed to encourage students to grow and accelerate in their academics as well as their social emotional and behaviors are all part they're still fourth and fifth graders so that's all included at our school they are given though more opportunities to dive deeper into their standards we have a big emphasis on project-based learning they are encouraged to support one another there's a lot of team building that goes on and it really is an environment of differentiation and they are working hard and become part of our school Community immediately it is a really neat thing to have 12 elementary schools represented on August 16th when we start and see the relationships that the kids build immediately they are accelerating and moving quickly through curriculum and totally engaged every single day so I'm going to pass it off to Tammy to give you a little more insight to the day-to-day classroom research shows that gate students have a surprisingly high high school dropout rate and there are many reasons why but gate students show characteristics that differ in numerous areas of functioning including cognitive physical and social emotional Gates a special opportunity for Unique students to find a peer group that can be challenging to find in a typical classroom setting meeting the various needs of gate students when they're in elementary school can help them to create positive feelings about school that they can carry on through their education gate students students can often feel bored within the traditional classroom and pick up basic learning quickly this program allows students to move past the basic knowledge and apply analyze evaluate and create although there's always a transitional period of adjustment adjustment when students come into our gate classrooms from other schools students find a safe community of Learners within the classrooms many students that have struggled in regular classroom settings find themselves challenged and engaged rather than bored many behavioral issues that are in the traditional classrooms are often eliminated and reduced because of this gate students are often the first to finish in their previous classrooms the regular curriculum may not have provided them enough challenge in the gate classrooms we're teaching students grade level standards but we're going much deeper in our GATE program we do this all with a focus in the growth mindset to teach them that um they have the ability to continue learning through those challenges when we look at Bloom's taxonomy which gives a hierarchy of cognitive levels from lower level cognition skills at the bottom of the pyramid which would be recalling facts and basic concepts and higher level level cognitive skills at the top such as analyzing information evaluating learning and creating new and original works we see that the gay classes are able to move their way up that pyramid for students to spend their time in the classroom focused on the higher order of cognitive skills this is achieved through projects with great with content and grade level standards but with this focus in the top levels of Bloom's taxonomy I have questions about the gate program just one actually um so in my experience as a gate teacher when I taught at Marsh I was a gate teacher for four years three or four years um it was really common to see students that were in that program that experienced high levels of anxiety and stress and perfectionism and I'm just wondering if that is something that you also have acknowledged and and have have have processes in place to mitigate uh so I think that's part of that growth mindset like she mentioned oftentimes they're familiar with being the first one done and now you're in the classroom environment where that is everybody's kind of at that same level so we work through that social emotional aspect too of it's okay to make mistakes and we're learning and that we help support strategies within their day to help ease that and there is a little extra added because they transition to a new school in fourth grade but for the most part we are able to provide them the correct tools that they need to work through those and set them up hopefully for success in junior high and high school yeah and I would I would add also that we we also didn't continue the gate program at the middle school program so obviously that was in the past because it's been a little while since I've been there but um I just was curious about that as we have talked more and more about that social emotional Wellness um I was I'm happy to hear that that is at the Forefront of the of the program that that really should be addressed you know at the core of of the program um and not just academics because um it was something that was very prevalent and in in the Middle School level when we when we get to honors which we'll talk about in a minute um it continues and so to make sure that for those higher achieving students as well as any student that we are addressing those um those students who tend to over exert themselves put too much pressure on themselves or maybe experiencing too much pressure outside of the classroom and are providing them the tools to mitigate that within themselves so they're not experiencing high levels of anxiety and and um I was going to add one more piece that I think our our classroom teachers do extremely well is their communication with parents so right as elementary kids we're all learning what's the best for our kids so they support parents too with hey these are strategies and we work really collaboratively outside of the classroom as well to make sure that there's cohesiveness for all of their needs great thank you okay we're playing the microphone dance here a little bit I also want to just why we're staying on this slide to point out that the all the elementary schools have counseling assistance and having that resource for those elementary students is really important so students who are in need of some additional support uh they're there for them so I think it would be remiss while the title of the original board Workshop was about gate and about AP we felt like we needed to talk about what we could probably all agree is the most awkward portion of our educational experience and that's Middle School so we wanted to talk a little bit tonight about specifically that track of Junior High honors and accelerated math we wanted to point out that about six or seven years ago at least seven years ago we made a transition for the metrics for students to move from fifth grade into honors level coursework and the major shift in the metrics was from just using grades and just using teacher recommendation as you can see here that we're really focusing on the uh the the S back scores smarter balanced test scores and our our local our local measurements so we just wanted to highlight that tonight even though originally it wasn't included because we feel like that's a major transition for those students going from fifth grade all the way up to ninth grade I would like now to invite our Chico hi folks to come on up while I talk about our advanced placement program as you can see here it's really important for people to understand that as AP students when they take a course not only does it earn them college credit but it also prepares them for those work skills that they're going to need in college and I know some of our students will be will be talking about that rigor here in just a second um just some really quick data if you look to the left of the slide you'll see we have 21 current courses and if you remember you already voted in as a board an additional course so be we can't say we're offering it right now but it will be the there will be enrollment next year I think it's also important to point out that we had a dip in our enrollment and we can all blame different things I think the idea of online AP coursework during the pandemic was difficult for students to to to capture like how am I going to get get help with that so our numbers went down a little bit but as you can see they're skywriting skyrocketing back up as importantly that pest that pass rate is incredibly um exceptional for our students we look at the state level we have some kids here and I'm going to have principal Doug Williams come on up and introduce them and they're going to talk a little bit about their experience as an AP student in our program thank you Mr Shepard hello I'm Doug Williams the principal of Chico high school and which is the beauty of having my AP students here is they speak much better about themselves than I do so I'm just going to introduce them and have you guys ask them questions as you would need to I have Ashland fortino as our first student I have Summer Sun who's our second student and I have Jackson Tomlinson who's our third student and I would like them to just come to the microphone and you guys can ask them whatever questions you would like about our AP classes nice to see you back summer yes nice to see you um do you each want to share just your brief kind of experience or journey to get to the point where you felt confident to a b classes and and how you're feeling like your your success is in in those courses like I don't know 30 seconds I'm gonna let Summer process that summer was a student of mine as was Jackson yeah sure so um like before high school I actually Jackson and I were both in the gate program so that was really cool um and then I took honors classes in middle school and I know that because you were my teacher in middle school and uh that took me to high school my sophomore year I took one AP class my junior year I took two and this year I'm taking four and I feel like that actually makes sense because I started off more on the light side and getting progressively heavier each year has actually helped me manage my course load and also all the other things I do outside of school thank you um basically my experience is very similar to Summers um obviously both starting the gate program and I took honors programs at Marsh Junior High which was very joyful um as I progressed into High School my sophomore year I took one AP my junior year I took four and this year I'm taking three I would say that through the progression it the course load has been significantly more than if I were to not take an APS but I definitely think that prior schooling prepared me and a lot of it was just having the confidence to take those AP classes thank you yeah my experience for like the course load was basically the same as summers in terms of taking like one two and then four this year but I went to Chico Junior so I transferred in as a seventh grader so going in I took honors classes for English and history but I did not end up taking the like advanced math so going into like AP calc this year it was a whole different ball game I had never been in like an accelerated math before so yep I have a question for anybody that wants to jump in it's obvious that it takes a lot of time management and a attention to what your goals are what do you think and where did it happen did you get the most help from the schools to begin to help you organize those thought processes and and get yourself in a position where you could handle the kind of AP load that you have now um I think that it's the most helpful when the teachers are the one who ones who are the most supportive so um like for example in my AP statistics class right now which is one of my harder AP classes um my teacher is offering to have a full-length practice exam on the weekend so he's literally offering to take time out of his own weekend to administer a test to us which I think is really great so I think that if like more teachers did that and like did that even outside of school I think that you're going to find a large group of students who are actually going to want to show up on the weekend to to take those practice tests and to get the extra help um I guess for me I think that something that was really helpful for me and getting motivated to do all this work was uh my first AP teacher that I had um she was really she was very kind and she was very not like oh my God you have to do great on this test she was like I want to support you because I know you care as an AP student like you're putting yourself out here for a reason because you already care so I think that just having that form of experience at AP is not just about being a smart kid or a good test taker it's about being articulate and becoming like a more educated person I'm so glad you said that yeah because um sorry you go ahead first that's fine no I was just gonna I was just gonna acknowledge that taking an AP class really is a demonstration of your personal willingness to go on that Journey it's um it's not something that has a firm requirement to get into it or you know maybe parents are pushing for for you to go that route too and supporting you in that way and so maybe they're not but I think that to to stay the course and take the load that you all are talking about doing you have to really um uh want to be there and your your teacher's showing up for you is because you're showing up it's reciprocal I guarantee it so they're they're excited that you're there and want to put the work in so they want to be there to put the work in for you sorry I didn't mean to cut you off no you're good all I was gonna say was that a big draw for me was the idea that you could transfer your credits if you end up passing and like getting a four or three or four or five on the tests to college credit and then it can help like accelerate that experience as well as thing you're like it helps your transcript which then helps your college experience it is either I'm not using it properly or it's not working okay um we're lucky to have a lot of uh parents of students from elementary middle school here as well tonight I was wondering uh if maybe you could do a little pitch for them if a middle school student or an upper elementary student came to you and said hey I'm thinking about doing AP in high school what would you say to them what's the experience actually like I I am a big advocate of AP classes um although my mom will say that like I spent a lot of very late hours studying for them um I feel like that doesn't Encompass like the actual draw of taking an AP class which is that you get to explore really specific interests that you would not be able to explore otherwise so like I know Chico High doesn't have AP Computer Science but I know a lot of people who would be interested in taking that and like there's really no other class like that in some other high schools um so for example this year I'm taking AP environmental science and that's another very specific class that I really think that if you start that interest in high school um realizing that you maybe really love that class will help you pursue that major that career in college so it can really help introduce new specific interests especially to like young people like if you're 13 or 12 around that age and um I think that one that's like if you're in junior high if you're in elementary school and you're thinking about taking AP um a lot of times I know that I certainly was you're very uncertain about your future but being able to take an AP course or just taking these AP courses is honestly a stepping stone into a more like a higher education so seeking to take these AP courses even if you're not sure what you want to do or where you want to go in your future you always have these options now versus if you don't take those courses sometimes your options can become limited so I just definitely just encourage students to take them because I think that a lot of times they have a stigma of being too hard or I'm not smart enough for that but I definitely think that any student is definitely capable um it just takes some work and obviously if you can't dedicate the time to that that's totally understandable but I think that it's worth trying to fit into your schedule and seeing how it works for you and AP classes definitely help you with your time management skills because I know that like uh last year I was taking two AP classes and I was also on two cheer teams at the same time which was an insane schedule and insane hours for studying and doing homework on top of all of those practices but it's manageable and it eventually manifests in having a pretty good schedule and you have pretty much everything planned out as well as helping you just it kind of leads you into your path for like what's happening next and what's happening next and getting ready for your college applications and just getting everything going and it taking like higher level classes help you for I mean I guess I'm not really sure because I've been taking college level classes yet but it's hopefully going to help transition to where it's not quite as terrible going through to the higher level speaking from experience they those are you are taking College Longwood classes speaking from both as the student of AP class and as a teacher of AP class like you're in it so you got it thank you I just want to give a thank you to the students but also to Chico Unified because there's always a balance between making AP classes rigorous but also making them available to all students so all the programs that you've seen before are prepping students coming from different schools honors gate but all AP courses are open within Chico Unified so it's important to have prerequisites so kids aren't overwhelmed but it's also equally important to be balanced there's a duplicity that we have to follow and The Duality in allowing as many kids to take on that challenge that are willing to but also making sure that they they have the economic ability to do it and I think we're doing a pretty good job of that and these three students are great examples thank you for your time I have one sorry I have one question on that or I guess clarification or just emphasis um you saying that it's open to all students which is I'm just confirming that is true and I love it because that's the way this it's supposed to be um and that it's from my understanding sections get added as the interest grows is that pretty accurate or at least in some circumstances that's been accurate so it's extremely accurate so I just sat with my math um Department chairs today and we looked at obviously we have what the kids want but when the numbers crank out that means they want 12.3 classes or 5.6 classes and then as adults we have to step in and think are we going to have five math threes and two calculus are we going to go with three calculus and four because ftes are ftes but it starts with what the kids want and then from there we try to make it happen and thank you guys so much for being here really appreciate it [Applause] so as our next speakers are coming up they're going to focus on social emotional learning it'll be Jen Scala and Joanna Ming and I just want to encourage people to consider that block schedule having an impact on the ability for AP students to also take drama and also take welding and all those things that they may not have been able to do while they were just in the sixth grade day all right we're all yours good evening I'm Jennifer Scala and I'm Joanna Meng we are both special education coordinators so tonight we're just going to go through with you social emotional learning hopefully to clarify some of that it's um can be a little bit different let me see I go that way oh look at that okay so I'm in around 2018 the California social emotional learning framework was introduced to schools and it really was intended to provide that direct instruction and support to students to teach them a few skills necessary for life because what we know about students being successful in the workforce is how many soft skills you have in getting along with others and encouraging and growing as a community so that's what the SEL or social emotional learning framework is intended for and we also know that when students feel socially and emotionally connected to their school their academic growth and achievement grows significantly so there's a lot of evidence as to why we provide direct lessons and activities that help students work together that help build their sense of community and connection to everybody around them we also know that our community our world has changed significantly post covid the CDC released some very new data for us just in December of 2022 um some of it was a longitudinal study from 2009 to 2019 that showed over 10 years our students had experienced over 40 percent increase in those feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness amongst our high school youth so that really directly correlates with a number of our students who are having ideation and thoughts of suicide and self-harm in addition it's higher for female students 50 percent of our female students in high school experiencing feelings of hopelessness and then 66 percent of our students who are lgbtq youth so on the good side of that however is that we know when we provide protective factors and we build in those resilient skills so 60 percent of our students are less likely to engage in those Health risky behaviors once they are connected so the social emotional learning that is woven into everything we do every day throughout schools is really intended to build those protective factors for our students so here is this year's data because we're hearing across the board everybody that our students are really struggling in our community and we're not alone it's not like Chico's having an issue that everybody else isn't but this is real-time information from our school counselors who as part of their positions gather data and monitor what we are doing and whether that's working or not and this data shows you from August of this year through February so we cut it off gathered the date of the beginning of March what this shows you is that 170 of our students have reached out in crisis to their counselors on campuses so that is a significant number of our students who are at the highest level of need on campus the 362 number tells you those are the number of contacts so when we just count the number of times students come in and identify that they are in immediate crisis so thoughts of suicide thoughts of self-harm 362 contacts up to March 1st for our students so roughly in the elementary years you can see it's one to one so one student coming in having one experience and we were able to make connection help them find support resolution Etc unfortunately what the graph shows you is that as the grades go up so do the number of contacts for students so our students who are in distress who are having these challenges are having them more frequently than just the one-time and and being supported yes um so just to clarify when it says count of contacts that's not individuals that's that's actual con like number of times that the contact occurred we've got both for you the bottom line is a student so Jen walks in the counseling office I'm counted once I'm on I represent the bottom line the top line is the number of contacts so you might see me five times so I've got five contacts so you can see the difference there okay and then another question that I have that um it I mean it's not necessarily important it kind of comes more into play Maybe in the next slide um but uh do we know what kind of correlation there is if any or maybe based on Research exclusively about um the accessibility being represented in the data so as as these counseling sessions have become more accessible students have been able to engage in them more leading to more contacts and and so that we have that data so that's that's a good question and I think we're going to reflect that in the next slide what this is for you is our counselors are are really diligent in gathering specific data so we can piece apart this is a contact with a student versus this is a student coming in in crisis which in our world means we are engaging in some level of assessment and that that's um can be a little difficult to understand we're not testing the kids but we're having those really specific questions asked we're following a specific protocol and then making immediate contact with family members with additional Mental Health Providers with crisis line so that's what we're referring to here that's the level of students that we're connecting to outside care to ensure safety for that night okay our next slide shows you over the course of time exactly what you are referring to Caitlyn so what we're finding is I think impossible to figure out the chicken versus the egg so we built it and they are coming so are they continuing to access services and is it because we continue to offer more and more that they continue to come forward or are we responding it I think it's impossible to tell what we can see from the first graph and really over the course of all three graphs is this is five years worth of data looking at the number of students who are receiving social emotional contacts with counselors so this isn't somebody coming in asking for assistance with class changes or challenges with a teacher this is a student coming in asking for some sort of emotional or social difficulty so numbers of students is in the first one you can see that increases significantly in the past two years then the total of number of contacts with students so again numbers of students and then you have numbers of contacts right there next to it and then um the number of contacts combining over the course of five years yeah I think I just it would be good to acknowledge that that um that 20 21 to 20 22 years the year that we added so many more counselors yeah and I I think that that was the best decision that we could have made and it is something that we continue to hear in every parent meeting that we are in part of so whether it's lcap or otherwise parents students they're asking for more social emotional support and so um responding to that and being able to engage in nearly 30 000 contacts with students for social emotional support in a year is huge and then I want to also just real quickly remind it may look like we kind of dip for this year but I want to remind you we still had three months left of data for this year that's not reflected in that last data point so there's really not a dip at this point any other questions about our data so what we're hoping to talk about with you tonight is kind of give you an idea of the the counseling history in our district where we are currently our counselors all follow the American school counselor Association we've attached the link to their website here so we follow their standards for preparedness their ethics their professional guidelines we do have multiple tiers within our counseling systems at every single School level so at the elementary level we have counseling assistants doing different fun activities with students everything from award nights to Promotions you'll see character of the month all of those activities follow into social emotional learning we clubs site activities and programs fall into what we would consider that tier one where all students have that support and then from there we have additional support that are provided at the tier two or the next level and so that might be friendship clubs or maybe students or um struggling with managing conflicts with their peers or something like that so there's some a special group that's put together for a short amount of time to support those needs and then we have all the way up through tier three which is our most extensive needs and we're really providing that individual service and it's intended to be short-term again my name is Joanna Ming I'm one of the special education coordinators for the district this slide and the following slide look a little wordy there's a lot on these and that's because these were developed as a potential pamphlet to give to parents to explain are the role of our school counselors and what they do so that's why there's a lot of content here highlighted here on this page are our school counselor qualifications our school counselors have master's degrees and a PPS credential which is pupil Services credential or people personnel Services credential um and they must also meet California state certification and licensor requirements they also must fulfill continuing education requirements to maintain their credential our School counseling support team does include our school counselors including our Wellness counselors also includes classified staff including our targeted case managers and counseling assistants my favorite quote on this page is in that that top right corner where students who have greater access to school counselors and comprehensive School counseling programs are more likely to succeed academically and behaviorally at school um so this is the second page of that potential parent brochure um and as Jen said our school counselors are really um the key staff members that monitor the implementation of programs that support the whole child in terms of academic success behavioral success and social emotional learning our school counselors as Jen said again serve students at all three tiers of mtss so they're providing that tier one instruction and social emotional learning or possibly positive behavior supports through PBIS instruction they're also providing supports for available to all students and again this is more so at the secondary level in terms of individual student academic planning individual student academic goal setting and then tier two supports are going to include some again clubs groups friendship groups um that again are operating on a short term and then our tier three are is going to be that individual support for our most our students with most intense needs so our our counselors do small group counseling they do referrals to long-term support through Community providers and Community agencies for our students with the greatest needs they collaborate with families teachers administrators and that happens at all tiers in terms of tier one supports available to all students and then tier two supports for some and then tier three for of the few they also look at data to analyze student issues and needs on this site each of our school sites is unique with unique challenges and our school counselors are really key employees to look at the data and identify site specific needs our school counselors don't assign discipline consequences they're not transporting students to community appointments they don't provide long-term Psychotherapy or clinical therapy and they don't do formal student testing like in the same way that our school psychologists would for a special education assessment I have a question I feel like I have a question for everybody I'm sorry to hold it up um do you do all students have access to all counselors um automatically uh yes is the short answer yes and um and that's why you know we say our counselors are mtss providers they a tier one all of our students have access to our school counselors in some way like on an elementary campus that might look like a school counselor doing classroom lessons or you know the counseling assistant under the direction of the school counselor doing a social emotional Learning lesson for the classroom it might look like facilitating recess play or organizing recess games that are again available for all of our students to access it might look like a Wellness Center that's open for drop-in appointments for any student can drop in hang out in the wellness center and the school counselor is facilitating that interaction so that's more at the elementary level at the secondary level Junior High and high school all of our students have an assigned school counselor typically based on their alphabet last name and um and so and that is designated it's in Aries and so um if parents are wondering who's the school counselor assigned to my child they can check that in their students Aries profile thank you any other questions great thank you before I introduce Jessica Capen to come up I do want to thank all the folks that have been here presenting information to you tonight I hope it's informative to the board and to the public that's here behind us um thank you to the board we you can see we've built quite a comprehensive counseling program that is serving hundreds of students when they need it so thank you to the board members that were at that time that voted this in Mr Lando Mr tennis Miss Dolby and Mrs Robinson it has made a significant difference in students lives and I sometimes think we will not know the impact actually that you have made the positive impact so uh with that I will introduce Jessica Capen hello there my name is Jessica Keepin and I'm the assistant principal at Chico Junior and I also have the privilege of serving as the PBIS coordinator for the district um I usually is kind of little disclaimer I usually use many activities to introduce all these Concepts um when I'm doing presentations so just imagine that we were doing lots of interactive um things and um just to give you kind of an idea about what what PBIS is with that said I'm going to be focusing in on many of the Essential Elements for PBIS um do I use this little clicker I guess yes okay all right awesome so what um the first essential element of PBIS is teaching students how we want them to behave just like we would teach them math just like we would teach them any other subject matter content we want our students to come to our school and learn about our our expectations for Behavior our rules all those things because let's just face it everybody comes from a different diverse background and so we don't we cannot make the assumption that our students are coming to us knowing all of our rules that they got sat down at the dinner table and taught our rules before they got to our school so it really levels the playing field for all of our students from diverse backgrounds and different family situations um so one of the other key aspects when we talked about social emotional learning about infused into PBIS is making sure that our students are available for the lessons just like we would want them to be available for any other lesson so are they are their needs being met do they know how to self-regulate in a classroom are they able to take those deep breaths when they're feeling you know not not focused and be able to focus back in on the lesson when we're teaching expectations about Behavior just like we would with math and I think that's the important piece here is just realizing that behavior needs to be taught so the other thing we want to do is also make sure that our lessons are very diverse so that all of our students can see in our lessons like if we're doing a PowerPoint or we're doing a video um they can see themselves in that lesson because we have such a broad diverse amount of students we want them to be able to go oh yeah that's me that's me and and they're they're showing somebody that looks like me or talks like me um and and they can see their backgrounds in our lessons and this is also something that set um when we look at our um our when we look at PBIS and we reflect on our be on our practices this is something that we need to reflect on are we really encompassing those cultural backgrounds so um another key component is using data to inform our decisions about what Behavior seem to be popping we can definitely say hey the cafeteria is just a mess and all these kids are misbehaving in the cafeteria but we do we really know that if we don't look at the data and have it be captured in our minors and our majors and the data that we're inputting into edu climber and or Aries we really don't know that that's an actual issue so when we come together as a team all of our schools have teams and our PBIS tier one team looks at that data and says oh no the issue is that it's on the playground and they're throwing you know dirt at each other that's the issue we need to think about and then we re-teach those lessons we put more campus supervisors out there and then we have clear consequences for students who don't meet our behavioral expectations that's another essential element um so the other thing is that we have diverse Learners right so we have kinesthetic Learners we have students who do better audio visual we have to make sure our lessons are also approachable for those students um so what do we do if a student's not responding to our tier one stuff right so they keep misbehaving well we have all of our schools have tier two teams and so our tier two teams that just kind of we up up our intervention strategy so we look at the student what are their thresholds that they're meeting maybe it's that their attendances is poor maybe it's at their academics are falling maybe it's that they're they're way ramping up in all their behaviors and getting lots of referrals so then we look at those students and we assign um interventions that would meet those students needs our our tier two teams are generally called teams and do you need me no you're good okay um so anyway the other um the other people that are there so the counselors the school psyches they are all helping us to assign these interventions when we have students who have interventions we look about four to six weeks for that intervention to take to take place and we want to see if they're responding they respond great if we start a fade plan if they don't respond then we might have to up the ante and and go to tier three tier three actually consists of behavior plans just like you would see in an IEP um we have student Behavior contracts we have intensive counseling just like they spoke about with their Wellness counselors who are doing therapeutic counseling and then sometimes we do have to refer out to different agencies or have a behaviorist come in and perhaps go to different alternative education sites as well that's the last thing we want to do but it is something that sometimes we have to but hopefully we've made a huge impact on some of the interventions and all along the way we're including our families in these conversations so that their key players in our interventions and they are getting the feedback too as to how the student's doing with the interventions taking place I would like to introduce Miss Jennifer Scala again she's going to talk about what do we do when we we as the comprehensive site cannot reach a student and have maxed out our intervention possibilities okay so one of the things that we have heard overwhelmingly at all schools is we have had a significant increase in behavior that is disruptive in some way and so like Mrs Capen was saying we're doing all of these things prior and there are some students that continue to struggle despite everything that we're doing this year and ongoing we have Gina Payton who has created this really amazing program for us that we're just in the infancy stages of developing and we're currently calling it The behavior intervention team and so I would really love to talk about that with you Gina really wishes she could be here unfortunately she's homesick rather than me really do no service to explaining what that program is I'd like to bring Gina back and have her walk that through that with you it's I think a really exciting opportunity because it's a lot of coaching and supporting teams to really address these really difficult behaviors rather than putting students away from their General Ed peers or away from their home schools and those kinds of things so I'll bring back Gina and she can explain the program to you thank you any questions okay moving along here uh we're going to show you quickly how we look at all the data that comes in how we organize it to serve students all right so we first wanted to touch on some of the overarching theme that you've heard from all of our different speakers when we think of the different levels that we're servicing and supporting students we have this tier one level and that's all of our students receiving the Core Curriculum the coursework at the various levels and it's the day-to-day accommodations and supports that teachers are doing in classrooms every single day as you've also heard every school has a team that meets very regularly to look at student data and that might be our s-back assessments that might be our local assessments and looking at that data to determine which students are in need of additional supports and then that's when we look at the supports we have at our school sites and or in the district to offer that additional support in addition to that tier one their classroom or grade level work and then that team continuously working together to look at the data some students even need more specialized focused instruction and again we're looking at what do we have available on our campuses what do we have available across the school district that we can pull in to really support all of those students and then if as uh as was mentioned sometimes that might be an outside a person from our school site or it might we might pull in some of our special education teachers and say you know do we recommend or what are our next steps with this student I thought you mentioned um you know the parents are very involved with with the communication on what's happening in my experience um when the when the the interventions at the school was trying in the beginning don't seem to be clicking that quite often there's some kind of an emergency at home somebody's lost a job somebody's you know um it are the parents do they have available from the school somebody that can help with them to deal with with their own at-home crises because that's probably what's behind the difficulties the students having at school what what kind of support for parents are we able to provide so I think on our school sites our our Administration administrative helps our Administration team helps support parents I think our targeted case managers are really that connection to support families given the variety of circumstances that may you know be happening but our targeted case managers are really those who can support families and kind of connect them and with things that we might have available at our school to support any additional ones I I would just add too that having been at a school site it's a lot of people on that site that kids can go to or people discover that somebody's having a rough time with something so it can really come it's in my experience come from anybody on the School site staff wise to bring attention to the fact that as students needing some support some help what we can do to go forward with that with the family so it's really when we say it takes a village it really does so you've heard this term a couple of times edu climber is an online uh like a platform where we have all of this data so you know as a teacher I've you know we've got the reading platform at our students use we've got Aries where we have student you know where we take attendance and um last year we started using edu climber and what edu climber does is it takes all of this academic data local state assessment data our social emotional data and our behavioral data that Jessica touched upon and it puts it all into this one spot so we can and when I say we cite teams Chase and I as mtss coordinators can look at it and look for what are the patterns that we're seeing you can pull up a student and see how are they doing academically maybe they need some more social emotional support maybe their amazing academically but are um you know in need of more behavioral support so it's a it's a platform that really allows us to pull all these different data pieces together in one spot and so one example would be for those positive behavior interventions and supports so when Jessica was mentioning entering minors and major incidents last year Chase and I worked with our mtss site leads to identify the process because all of our school sites have different needs and are have different processes in place but all of our sites enter their minor incidents into this platform called edu climber and a minor incident are those things that happen you know in the classroom on the playground that don't that don't make it to at the office level it's just kind of a little note this happened today and so when that data is entered in edu climber this is an example from one of our school sites for the month of February the team can sit down and say okay we've been hearing all these things about you know issues on the playground but in in February it looks like um the the graph to the right is broken down by weekday so we can say oh Thursday was the day that these These are minor incidents these things were happening and then it will also show oh what hour of the day so this one I think is the third one over is 9 A.M and 11 A.M so what's happening at nine o'clock I need 11 o'clock and then the last one is the location so in this particular School site it was in the classroom so what 9 A.M on a Thursday in the classroom what can we do and that would be a conversation that the team can have they can go back to their their staff and say hey what's you know how can we help problem solve this how can we put more supports or you know change something to see that decrease in the next month so that's one piece that we've been using as you climber for and then the other piece that we've just really started utilizing this year which is really exciting I'm going to let Chase explain because he's been spearheading some of this over at his site thanks Christy so one of the beautiful things that's let me address this um one of the more beautiful things that's come out of our mtss initiatives has been the um the ability for us to collaborate across grade levels um not a lot of times do you get people from an elementary world in the Middle School world in the high school world all sitting together to solve problems for kids and so one of the cool things about the thresholds is um I kind of like to think of it as an early warning system so I teach at Fairview so that's our alternative education high school and so a lot of the times kids are coming to us well most of the time they're coming credit deficient and so a lot of the times kids are exhibiting behaviors of good attendance but poor grades and a lot of the times we want to figure out who those students are as quick as possible so a threshold for in many ways basically allows us to set parameters that once a student meets that so say a student is attending 90 or more of the time but they are now failing for classes the moment that third or fourth class triggers it mines the system and sends off a an email or notification to counselors and admins so that we are aware very quickly who what students are kind of falling through the cracks because we tend to think of students failing as students that aren't at school but that's not always the case and so our thresholds are really cool in that concept because you can apply that to pretty much anything that edgy climber can mine from Aries in our other Data Systems and so what you guys are looking at right now is um kind of based off of what we do at Fairview called the academically disengaged process where just like I described student is coming to school often but they are failing multiple classes at Fairview we use a minor intervention tag in there so we would input that as a behavior that's not always the easiest thing to do when you have 38 students and six classes at a comprehensive site so we've kind of adapted that idea and we're trying to work with the high schools to figure out ways that we can continue to monitor students so they're not falling through the cracks and one of those things would be say at PB High School a student is attending 90 95 of the class time um that would we'd set that up so their their academic counselor would be notified that we are now um failing a class and so that we're not waiting till uh progress reports to identify those students and communicate home we're now able to have that early warning system to really kind of Target that communicate with home and make sure that students receiving the services they need to be successful at school so as always we we've got a lot of great things that we continue to work on and that K-12 system but we always have additional pieces that we continue to work on so as we continue to move forward with mtss and our district really looking at our espit process at our Comprehensive High Schools that's going to be a big um a big task for us next year and we already have a lot of that started especially with those thresholds and looking at students with through edu climber continuing to evaluate is what we're doing working and are we supporting the students with what they need in any one or multiple of those areas of academic behavioral and social emotional and as always receiving and getting feedback from our partners from our families because ultimately we are here to support our students and make sure that our our students are successful and can be as successful as they can be by the time they leave us in Chico UniFi side thank you so much for your time I'm going to turn it back over to Tina and we're happy to answer any questions that that you may have thank you again board members and public for your attention tonight we were hoping that we could share some information about the mtss framework for you we're happy to continue to talk to it if anybody in the room has any more questions or or wants to know more about something you know where to find us and I want to thank the whole team that was here there were quite a few folks that that joined in on this as you saw from our students to our counselors that we have over there as well and our staff here and uh thank you again we love what we do and we love it it's supporting kids I I just thought of something the Fairview person Mr thank you Mr Fairview yeah um how long have you been working with the threshold um uh status looking at at Fairview well um quite some time the threshold just allowed us to have a mechanism for which to do it but back in the old days it was all paper at Fairview um and so we've been we've adapted this process and again I will mention that whole idea of getting all of these mines in a room has really been wonderful to be able to um really Target and help students out so that's something we've adapted that Fairview and the alternative education campuses I've been doing for quite some time it's just now we're trying to really streamline it develop it into something that can actually be working at all School sites I I do remember back in the days when I was one of those office people running um failure notices came out and you could you could tell immediately okay there's a problem there's a problem and you identifying them early while they still had time to look at not getting that F or that D minus at a probable failure thing was huge because they they don't give up if they think there's hope they tend not to give up quite so readily oh I absolutely agree with you and like the last thing we want students to be doing is filing into a pit that they feel they cannot crawl out of and the more that we can do to ensure that everybody all stakeholders involved know that that student is struggling whether it's behavioral social emotional or academic that's that's our number one priority thank you um does oh sorry you're adding okay I just wanted to say a quick housekeeping item for anybody that is wondering at restroom facilities are outside these doors and around to the left so just wanted people to know that as the evening goes on thank you that is important information um does the board have any additional technical questions for clarification purposes I don't have questions but I I do have a just thank you for bringing all of the alphabet soup things more into Focus it's important you know for me at least as a board member to understand what's happening below the surface and I see so many wonderful things to support kids at all level and I am so thankful that we instituted mtss it's just it's going it's going to get us through what we've been through these last few years and I thank everyone that's working in support of it we appreciate it thank you very much do we have any public comment for 6.1 multi-tiered system of a support mtss overview okay seeing none this is informational only and no action is needed with that we will move on to item seven this is our discussion action calendar the first order of business is 7.1.1 an informational presentation about the facility master plan overview yeah and we are getting a presentation by Julie Kissel good evening thank you for allowing us here tonight to work on the planning for our exciting update of the facilities master plan tonight we have Laura Nas with linakis Architects here to walk us through the presentation I'll go ahead and let Laura take over thank you Julie oops I'm gonna make a mess here great [Music] hello everyone and thank you for having us here again today uh last month we presented a very long presentation on the progress on the facilities master plan and today we're here with several action items um we left you with a little homework at the last meeting and that was a list of those action items we'd be looking at today how to address our Surplus capacity interim housing options our approach to the Inspire campus size school size and capacity issues the master plan Elementary School prioritization process and what to do with the remaining bond funds of your current available Bond so item by item we do have the lead sheets in here do you want to introduce them Julie yeah just one quick thing I wanted to clarify we did plan on um working through the action items one by one while presenting on each item if that's allowable yeah sorry I'm just processing that request um because this is uh on here as a separate item informational with the overview and then the next which is just informational the next item on the agenda is discussion action for item one so it are you envisioning that it will be more cohesive of a conversation and and efficient if we just kind of Chunk it out and go kind of one piece at a time yes please okay um then in that case I think that we do have some direction well we do have a speaker who has requested to speak to 7.1.1 so we will need to go to that then when we come back if we're going to do it separately let me just I apologize my apologies um okay so I would say then if if we're gonna do that then um the way that this reads to me is 7.1.1 is informational and is really just those first two slides and so in that case we would go through our our Rules of Order which is to ask if the board has any questions for clarification at this time seeing none I can call for public comment on 7.1.1 we do have one that has signed up which is Audrey Bakke hi I'm um was a little confused as to how to sign up and make sure I could speak tonight so I'm kind of just talking about all of the things that are happening sorry can I just question of clarification um will you is your comment just addressing the facilities master plan it's addressing hooker up possibly closing or repurposing do you would it be okay if we moved you to the Hooker Oak item that is totally fine okay I like I said it was confusing on the Google it happens it happens we we try to be clear but it just is challenging so I would I will definitely call you back up when um when that item comes up thank you [Applause] okay so since this is informational only it doesn't look like we have any additional public comment now I'm going to introduce item 7.1.2 which is a discussion action item this is called item number one facilities master plan identify Elementary Surplus capacity and now I will ask you to make your presentation on this item okay we have put the lead sheets in for reference and specifically the district we are looking for a recommendation that the Board of Education designate an elementary campus to be repurposed so we have some information to share with you before that decision the first is at our last meeting we talked about model capacities and a lot of that was triggered by our discussion around transitional kindergarten and the number of kindergartens and making sure we could have a consistent cohort of students through all their grade levels at their campus and we developed a small mid-size and large scaled campus for each of the district's elementary schools those start with either two three or four kindergartens and are agreed upon transitional kindergarten of a capture rate of 65 percent of those kindergarten classrooms there are some other new nuances regarding special education two at each campus and some campuses designated for moderate to severe students but generally these these models hold when we look at the projections for student enrollment between now and 2030 you can look at the bottom line there and see when we apply the model capacity we generate a capacity of about 6 100 students or spaces for students at the district which is a surplus capacity of 581.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we won and a great picture and it was our first ever state championship for SMS cheer and so please give them a big round of applause [Applause] yourself [Applause] slide in there oh hey how's it going it's good to see you March Madness [Applause] all right up next I have the honor of uh recognizing our seventh grade uh boys soccer team so coach Hamilton and boys soccer come on up [Applause] so we're super proud of this team uh coach ham this team was led by coach Hamilton who was a the first year Spartan on our campus uh they had a tremendous season they got into the playoffs uh it's it's always a good day when you beat Castille so they beat Castille to head into the championship game uh it worked out really well that our girls basketball team and our soccer team both played at Payne and so we had ability to go over there Mr Keeling and I and some teachers and got a chance to bounce back and forth and be able to support both teams but they they got up early in the game and there was a sequence at the end of towards the end of the first half where it felt like Payne had like 10 shots on goal it was probably like five if you guys remember what I'm talking about when they were like right in front of the goal and they kept well I do and it felt like 10 tries and and but it was probably five uh and then they held on you know and as a super exciting game and so uh we're super proud of this team uh we have high hopes for them hopefully they're all coming back next year and we can go back to back championships but congratulations seventh grade soccer [Applause] congratulations boys I do not want Center I'm hidden in the back in some of the high school what I was just curious who like the teens you play we play in the east side conference so it's Chandler and Queen Creek schools okay yeah yeah and then Cooley yeah [Applause] all right and last but certainly not least uh coach Flores and Coach D and the girls basketball team [Applause] laughs so uh this team is coached by uh first year Spartan member Jada Flores and sixth year Spartan member coach Lena D and so um just a little backstory on this team um we had a combined basketball team last year that was seventh and eighth grade um I'm sorry no last year we had a seventh grade team that only had six girls on it we were debating whether to scrap the season or not because there's not very many players when there's five on the court but we decided to hold the season and so we had six seventh grade girls go all the way to the finals and lose in the finals and so we were so proud of them this year they were hungry for Redemption and we didn't have enough players to have a seventh grade team and eighth grade team so it says on the trophy right here that they won the eighth grade Championship but we also have several seventh graders on this team that beat a team of 8th graders and so we are super excited about what they accomplished and we're super excited to have our seventh graders come back next year and uh and again go the back to back because that would be fantastic I'm gonna be 100 honest I don't think I told you this coach D and I'm sorry so when we were out at the soccer field someone had come out and it was about half time at the soccer field and they said hey the basketball game it's halftime it's 18 to five Payne's winning so I'm walking over and I'm kind of like all right what am I going to tell coach what am I going to tell the girls when this is over like hey good job you guys had a great season I'm still proud of you and before I even got to the gym I think you guys had closed like a 10 point gap the team went this is their motto hashtag beast mode right and scored over 30 points in the second half and so they absolutely tore it up we had six free throws made down the stretch to ice the game and put it Out Of Reach and uh so we won two championships at Payne on that day and it was it was a great day and so we are so proud of you guys and what you accomplished and it is our first ever girls basketball championship so [Applause] so that concludes our student and points of Pride Celebration tonight while you are welcome to stay if you have other plans this evening you are also welcome to go thank you for coming tonight we're proud of all of you [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] board member Schultz uh boy president Schultz members of the board as we wrap up this this evening's superintendent's report this is just the beginning of um it feels like the 90 days of may start earlier and earlier every year so by no means is this an exhaustive list of upcoming events because we would be in multiple Pages here at this point but we have a few highlights in the next couple weeks obviously this is a busy busy time of year as we begin toward the end of our final quarter so that concludes the superintendent's report thank you Dr Foley we will now move on to requests to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize District Personnel policy Keb provides a process for complaints about Personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-4 31.01 H action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and to set and a decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes and our first speaker is Marty Bender good evening thanks for the opportunity to speak and address the board and the community my name is Marty Bender I've been watching the district for about 18 months or so and so I wanted to come tonight and give a little feedback as to what I see with the board and with the financial team and with the district overall so first of all with the board I've noticed a lot more interaction and that's great the community likes to see that we like to see the different ideas that you all have and how you all interact with each other I've also seen a lot more interaction between you and the financial team also great obviously you're a go-between for the community and them so we really encourage you to ask a lot of questions and make sure you feel really really positive and confident about the decisions that you're making for the community I've heard some issues about making sure we're following state law which I'd never really heard before from the from the board so that's good and I like the fact that there's a lot more discussion and not so much unanimous votes like I say that's an indication that there's different ideas up on the board and that's what we want to see in the community as far as the financial and the district team I can't say I'm as as happy about their progress as I am about the board there's a couple things that have happened here recently that really make me concerned the first in the recent mno budget you gave the board one option for salary increases only one in the 18 months that I've been watching that's the only time that's happened almost always you've given them a range of options and I would certainly encourage you to do that in the future and I would encourage you all to ask for that um I think that the lease finance that you I've heard from the people in District they've been very very interested in getting rid of that lease for the whole time we've finally done it but I wonder if we did it at the right time and I wonder what the cost is going to be to us now versus if we had kept the lease in place and finally we have a five million dollar budget increase this year I came to understand from the last meeting and a hundred percent of that increase went to the m o budget well we heard a lot about really the main issues that we have are in the capital budget and issues that we have with the buildings so I'm kind of flabbergasted as to why that happened moving into the future um the state seems to be trending towards more funding for schools and that's a great thing we all agree that schools need more funding and I certainly hope that we can take advantage of that and the state does give us more funding our bond and indebtedness right now after this school year should be down to around 72 million and that's because the community turned down the last two Bond proposals that were out there I'm not adding to this new debt if we can avoid it at all it's going to help reduce everyone's property taxes and allow the community to make sure that you guys are functioning within your means tension coming up and it's going to be very very important to the district we're going to hear a whole lot about it I said when I was talking about the bonds and I'll say it again that an override if the school district needs more funding and override is a much better way for us to get that versus going out and borrowing paying interest on that debt so I really encourage us to do that if we can thank you very much for the time thank you John Mr John Mason thank you it's a pleasure to be speaking in front of you all again I think that we're start based on the last School Board election I think we're starting to see some movements in the right direction and I really like it when I see people thinking independently and challenging the district and asking the right questions I'm grateful for that however I'd like to talk about social and emotional learning and uh indelving that today on March 8th board meeting Dr Dr Christopher treat explained how a portrait of a graduate is integral to the district's strategic plan the district created a portrait of a graduate that lists numerous social emotional learning goals as we saw from the last School Board election social and emotional learning or SEL is a controversial topic thus I do not understand why the district would under would list so many controversial social emotional learning goals do these goals truly represent the broad Community residing in the district's Geographic boundaries the district should explain the rationale for the goals how the community participated in creating the goals and how the district plans to measure the achievement of the goals I request that the school board set up at least three open meetings that would allow members of the community to ask questions and make suggestions for improvements about the Strategic plan according to the Strategic anchor of the district's marketing plan the district will quote engage all stakeholders through transparent respectful timely and consistent communication unquote I'm not asking for much I'm only asking that the district follow through with the marketing plan I'm asking the district to take advantage of the wisdom the knowledge and the experience of the community please hold open meetings to enable all stakeholders to ask questions and make suggestions for improvements about the Strategic plan thank you very much for your attention tonight [Applause] uh Miss Heather bock good evening board members and cabinets good to see you again last time I was here I mentioned that my son went to State Robotics and while his team did not make it to worlds one of the Higley team did so we're excited about that I'm actually here to talk to you today about um a really exciting theme that you get to do on the board or on the agenda tonight and that's approved classified work agreements our classified staff and our parent professionals and our transportation and our front office staff are so important to our district and providing support to our teachers and our students and I have a little poem that I wanted to read for you all tonight it's called Because of You written by Heather price because of you a child will feel loved because of you a child will believe they can reach the stars above because of you a child will feel worthwhile because of you a child will learn to love and not fight because of you a child will want to read every night because of you a child will learn patience when someone is driving them crazy because of you a child will learn the value of work and not to be lazy because of you a child will learn persistence when the going gets tough because of you the child will learn the gift of kind words and love is enough because of you a child will find comfort in loving arms because of you a child will be safe from words and hands that harm because of you a child will learn as they play Because of You a child will make a difference along life's way because of you a child's life will be forever touched in ways you may never see because you help them to become the person they were meant to be thank you and I'm so so very thankful for all of our professionals and classified staff thank you yes I agree uh Mr Roy Morales thank you good evening board members members of the board and Dr Foley uh just a few items here tonight I want to uh thank Dr Foley for uh being able to update your clubs and activities on your website both at Higley and Williamsville but especially at Higley spelling out the GSA Club to the gay uh sexual Alliance Group on there and I'm happy that you're able to also add a phone number that parents can contact to inquire about such clubs and activities at the schools I only hope they meet perhaps you could take a next step further and as putting in hyperlinks into these clubs where you can actually a parent can drill in and pull up perhaps a a charter of that club defining all of the prerequisites of the clubs and the do's and don'ts and the parameters of the clubs and perhaps the structure so the parents can review that and I only asked also is to see is there an audit mechanism making sure that these clubs are within their their Charter rules um so good movement on that I appreciate that um and it it seems to be an in light of the State statues and making sure that the parents have access to the nature and the purpose of the clubs and I appreciate that number two when it comes to finances I only asked everybody to give respect to board members who happen to be scrutinizing the finances probably more than others there was a comment made by a local newspaper guy Bob logic kind of dismissing the behavior that uh Miss Vanna Hoke is questioning the budget line by line and the thing is is that as a constituent I appreciate her questioning um a lot of us don't understand what's going on the budget it's a foreign language to us and we appreciate the hard work and that she's putting in even addressing routine items I think it's important that she does it and I just hope that you guys give her the respect to scrutinize the budget because we're going to be heading in some tough times and the budget is going to get large that leads me into the uh line item that I saw on the budget on computer refresh a 1.3 million dollars plus software update of 600 000.
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hoping that things change at Bethany Community School as it is going downhill and issues with teacher retention for years but lately I never understood the 4K slope just how badly the teachers were paid I knew that you couldn't afford to live in the town that they teach in as they weren't paid enough but I didn't see just how low a salary it was I guess this is a school board issue and a town finance issue let's get this corrected ASAP as our children deserve better the teachers we employ deserve better not to mention that your personal real estate will be affected by the ranking that the school gets so it affects everyone in town not just those who have children in the school now public comments typically we go on to the approval of the minutes however our packet has February minutes we need to March minutes so we're going to table that for the next meeting at this time our first report would be Aces Susan is there anything to report in Aces have you guys met recently uh well I I attended two of their meetings okay that EJ gave me a link for the March meeting and I basically just showed up and introduced myself because I didn't know what was going on and then they had another meeting this morning and between the two meetings let me see they passed 12 budgets in the March meeting and 10 budgets in this morning's meeting so they if they're busy making budgets uh they had some Appropriations from the legislature for some construction they wanted to do they were very happy about that and they are having some struggles with budgeting for health insurance increases and worker comp increases which are causing them to lay off some teachers for economic reasons yep we met last Wednesday I always feel like I'm going to steal Miss kiesel's thunder so I won't say much but we actually had um came present test because you were somewhere special which I will let you talk about Bethany got a very special honor at the New England Symposium of teachers so I'm sure we'll hear from you but we did get a professional development and Grant update and really the majority of the meeting was we had asked for a Spanish program update which we were so thrilled with uh Senor koku came and gave us a an update wonderful slides kind of going from grades K through six and telling us how she was involving these children in Spanish and she's really kind of taken it to be multimedia she's using things such as songs videos coloring charts student of the month and really kind of an immersion aspect of Spanish and I've been on the board a long time and we've heard many you know Spanish updates and we were just blown away by her presentation it's students really seem to be thriving in her classroom so it was really nice to hear that these facilities was supposed to meet last evening Paul Garcia was not able to make it and due to the board of finding the final thing so we take all the facilities but there's nothing major on facilities that I believe Finance we also tabled last night's Finance meaning because we would not have had a quorum but there is a finance report to be read that Randy in the path that you will see or the numbers that there is your operating budget summary as of March 2023.
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second it's moved and seconded Debbie you want to give a brief overview and what changes came in um thank you very much those were good points to raise we Dr Burrell reviewed them and we did make some minor adjustments to the second bullet that you see on the policy so I think all of the questions were addressed and those were the only questions I got were from Joy and I think the point to emphasize with the amended from first read point that we put in there and it was a point well taken we struggled with it a little bit of policy committee and Joy's question helped us fine-tune the thought process on that which is while we're lowering tuition for non-resident staff as a retention and recruitment um strategy we're excited about that for for that opportunity our first Allegiance no matter what has to be to our students who live in Brookfield and so we can't have class sizes that balloon up in any way and so the the strategy is at the time of enrollment we need to make decisions that are in alignment with um class size guidelines from the board so that's one thing we wanted to be clear about and we added that in so that's the only difference from when you saw this on February 15th and that's the second bullet point I enjoy that addressed your question okay any other questions on on this policy okay we've had a month to read it and for those of you who haven't sat through our uh our our meetings we actually run through a process where we get the policy changes in a for what they call a first read we read them we have a month to review them and then they come back to the board a month later to um for final approval and this is a final approval and the reason for that is first to let us have a chance to absorb it the committee is a policy committee which does a great job by the way Deb um in terms of getting through these um has really vetted it gives us a chance to internalize it but it also gives the public a chance to hear it one month and give us any input that may come up don't get a lot of inputs on policies but uh but that's why it's there all right is for us to have time and the public to have time so all in favor of approving the motion uh for 5118.11 please say hi hi hi okay it's unanimous all right next up on the agenda is an update on it's an action on updating uh on the uh the budget um and I will um um the last at our last meeting I reported that the board of Finance had finalized the budget um and you know we our budget actually came down from what we submitted because we've locked in along with the town we've locked in better heating rates and diesel fuel rates and secondly the insurance costs came in a little bit lower than we expected those were pretty significant savings and then we took about twenty five thousand dollars of reductions in the discussions with the board of Finance voluntarily and with that they adjusted the budget and it came into at that level so it's acceptable I think to us as a board we do need to meet with Ken after the budget's approved to go through the line items as a board right it won't be final until we get to through that but so at this point that 25 000 is just the placeholder until we vote it is gone through the board of finances recommendations they've had a public hearing on it there were no questions about the education budget at the public hearing um and uh and so the next step is to the I think the board of Finance has to convene and decide if that's what they if they learned anything that would change it which I doubt they will um and then it goes to the uh um to the town meeting on the second Tara yeah second of May um and uh and then to a referendum on the 16th of May which the board of selectman just voted to set the date of the 16th of May as the referendum Nate although that's not that that's a recommendation until the town meeting actually approves that so so that's kind of where we are on the budget any questions on that okay um Candlewood Lake Elementary School building update okay so um I finally was able to take a tour um this past Friday and I think we've got some updated pictures that we can show which I'm very excited about because you can really start to see some of the major oh sorry some of the major changes so as soon as we get these up we can go through them all right [Music] so over on the your left you'll see sort of the artist rendering and this is probably the most dramatic change of the site is starting to actually see what the front landscape is really going to look like as you know there is actually a water um it's called the East Brook and that has been underground in a pipe and that has started to become exposed it's still mostly in a pipe but we have this sort of dry River bed that's going to have two Bridges connecting sort of the parking and driveway area to the actual building which is a really beautiful feature um this is some of the um the back playground area obviously we still have construction vehicles in there but you can start to see some of the um the canopies that are over each entryway the main stairwell has not gone in just yet but you'll see a lot of the drywall and the window features are in the terrazzo on the main floor is going to be the absolute like last thing that goes into that building um so but we did start to see in some of the hallways going down to the cafeteria something similar to what you're looking at in the in the renderings that sort of Terrazzo flooring looking like a brook starting to um they're starting to kind of take shape with that um this is the stage that you see on the far side if you can see it in this picture we were looking through into the cafeteria and you can kind of see the servery area and this area in the foreground is the multi-purpose space so the band rooms are off of this the music rooms are off of this this is a going to be a phenomenal space to entertain both on either side and then even behind this is the media center which is also wide open to this entire space and it's really you can see the wood finishes on the wall and the lighting for the stage in so that's really exciting this is the terrazzo flooring that's going in in the cafeteria this was actually being poured when we were there um so um it's really starting to look really beautiful you don't really see the wall so much in this but the walls are really you can see some of the wood finishes on the wall going and it's really nice this is the entrance to the admin area so a lot of that is getting finished up the interior doors are in glass things like that the gymnasium again this is still kind of a holding place for a lot of construction but the gymnasium is not going to have a whole lot other than the wood floors that's also one of the last thing that's going to be going in is the the gym wood floors but the basketball hoops are in those are adjustable so we were able to see that and that was really nice this is the gross motor area so you can see they're starting to build the trees that will sort of make up this area and this is a very big space and it's right next to the gym so it's almost like another gym honestly um this space has just got so many potential uses for it so that was really nice to see um this is the lower school cafeteria so um kindergarten and Pre-K you'll see some of the the trees that they're starting to build over here this is also adjacent to the gross motor area so that's why um you have that continuity with the the trees tree design this is just an entryway into one of the neighborhoods each of the neighborhoods has a theme so what you're seeing here is kind of an example of um maybe the grasslands area so there'll be an art installation sort of at the corner and the color scheme throughout that entire neighborhood is coordinated so the walls and the carpeting and all of the other features are all sort of color coordinated which is really nice to see the classrooms the classrooms we saw were pretty much done the carpet is being protected obviously by plastic but aside from the furniture everything from ceiling to walls to the Cubbies has all been installed the whiteboards tack boards are there as well as the Smart Board that goes up and down adjustable that's all been installed so that was really nice to see also just another view of a classroom all of that is a lot of TAC board so teachers can feel free to tack anything up there that's pretty easily um another classroom oh this is one of the classrooms at the end of one of the neighborhoods so in each neighborhood there is a sort of a larger classroom that has if you can picture sort of almost a garage door that can open up into the neighborhood sort of shared space so that can really keep collaboration with other other classrooms or other students and kind of just make every single room sort of multi-use and very adaptable some of the lighting features at the end of that sort of shared space where there'll be a lot of adaptable Furniture different tables and chairs that can be reconfigured in any number of ways this is one of the walkways so each neighborhood is one of the very big long arms that's connected to the main part the main sort of body of the building but from the very end of each neighborhood there's also one of these walkways on the second level so that you can get to each neighborhood more easily just just a close-up of some of the terrazzo flooring that's going in there's like a protective sort of Sandy coating on it but once these are polished up you can just tell they're going to be really beautiful and again they're color their color and sort of schemed coordinated with um the neighborhood themes so um there is an ocean neighborhood so you'll see Fish and sea turtles on the floor and it was just it was really beautiful to see so a lot of a lot of really good work went into that just some more this is Terrazzo flooring before all the polishing takes place so this is maybe the grasslands and the rainforest theme and this is sort of you know all in that in those areas near the neighborhoods this is the media center so one of the big progressions I take was the um this sort of presentation area where it will eventually be carpeted that's the stairwell that is inside the media center and students will be able to kind of grab a book and sit on these nice steps there the media center is really kind of coming along looks great one of the um restrooms so there's Terrazzo features as well on the wall which is again color coordinated and it looks really fabulous the teacher prep room so there's space for teachers to keep um you know there's some teacher storage in here teacher collaboration places for them to take a break as well the entry canopies we actually debated this a little bit back when we were still in sort of the design phase and I think I think they came out really beautiful um there there's this really nice exposed Timber Wood that has a really nice warmth to it that matches what's the wood colors and Grains that we're seeing inside the building as well you can see on in that photo over there a lot of the stonework brickwork on the exterior of the building is really coming along and I think that was it that was the last photo so it looks great thank you nice job [Music] thank you very much for that that's uh we uh I'm expecting John you told me that uh the next time we as a group will be able to go into the building is like the end of April I'm thinking because of the holidays because it's good Friday this week and the in Ong uh for next week they actually stopped access so they could do a little bit more work knowing we weren't going to be uh in and out uh quite as much um did you want to talk anything about the last walkthrough at all Bob or are you you're good it's really impressive okay I had a few things I wanted to share and a lot of it is important for the public to know which is just this is such an exciting project we do have a web page on our website for the new school and the mission is on there the actual rationale behind the design of the school the security of the school security that we can share but it's very public information there's a whole presentation any historical documents that people might have interested in are interested in we have the ecosystem scheduled there for the neighborhoods um also the the school is going to be used as not only a center for voting like many of our schools are but also as a shelter for that side of town so we we're ready to go we have a generator in there and so there's really some good stuff going on um things we worked on this morning was continuing to work on small Wares and all the all the little pieces that if you turn the school upside down and shake it out all the things that have to be purchased for the school and getting those ordered as well as the play areas and playscapes um there's some uh items we're working out with the NBC through budget and design on some of the exterior play areas we're working through that right now the administrative team and a teacher leadership team are working on a new Consolidated handbook bringing the fifth grade all the way down through Center school together with Huckleberry so that's going to be wonderful when we have that all organized this Monday uh probably half the boxes that the teachers and staff will need are being delivered to all three sites so when the faculty and staff come back they could begin their they're already on their purging they could start their packing and there's a whole mechanism in place for that really important for people know and I hope it all is able to seamlessly happen next week the beautiful mosaics on the outside of Huckleberry were going to be taken down put up on the outside of Candlewood Lake this should be this week that that happens that's on the schedule so really just super excited about everything going on one of the other things I can't fully promise it yet but we're excited about and I know Dr P is really excited about is maybe being able to have some representative students as long as it's safe and in alignment with regulations on a construction site be able to tour them maybe with their teacher or something like that through the school so they could share in the experience of what we've all been able to look at and then as soon as that school in the summertime is ready for administrative and custodial and Technology staff occupancy we are really looking forward to figuring out the schedule on the plan for the public to come through and I see Mrs Carr over here she was with us on Friday on the walk through too thank you for coming with us Tara so um we're really excited and thank you for that presentation Rosa I don't know if there's any questions or anything okay hearing none um thank you all right we're back to public comment again so we didn't have a lot of stuff on the agenda tonight other than our reports to one another um and again I'll just reiterate the Board of Education welcomes public comment each speaker does have three minutes I do have a sign up sheet that we're operating under and at the end of the meeting it's for any topic that's under the board's jurisdiction um the uh I'll just repeat it discussion of school personnel and develop individualized student and individual members of the board shall not be considered appropriate now before we start I I just got to say I see a lot of items on the sign up list that are about books and library and the like there's been some email correspondence and I uh I know there's people who are here who are going to are here to urge the board to take action um and I will just I just got to say before we start that the topic of the books that have been talked about on social media is not in the board's hands yet we are not in a position where the board could or would take action and I wanted to briefly read from the board policy how we handle library books and uh just and I thought it would be better that I do that before we do public comment than to wait until after because I just think I want to clear the air on that well for those of you who are here to say please take a book out of the library that's called requests for reconsideration that's the terminology that is used in the library world and in our policy and it's policy number six five six three if anybody wants to go look it up on on on our website it's out there there's a whole procedure that we operate by as a as a board of education I'm going to read it it's not going to take me very long it says all requests for reconsideration will be handled in the following manner one all requests are referred to the library meet us media specialist initially the library media specialist will supply the requesting person with a copy of the selection policy and Supply the requested person with the library's request for reconsideration materials form and that form should be completed then they will take the completed form and meet with the library media specialist then after the completed form's been returned and discussed the library media Specialists discussed the request with a committee assigned by the principal to read or review the material to re-examine reviews and determine any action to be taken the principle well then is are now owning this will notify the person making the request of the action taken if the issue remains unresolved to the satisfaction of all parties it will be referred to the superintendent upon review of the parents request and all actions taken and the superintendent may choose to present an appeal to the board of ed for final decision or recommendation or may take it to handle it himself um and then there's some things that continue in about the different organizations we have to communicate with on this on these matters including the Connecticut Library Association and the American Library Association uh office of intellectual Freedom so there's some rules that we have to apply I just wanted to read that to everybody because there will be some people who will say you board go take action today right and there's a reason we step through the process the process that we do because we have professionals who are degreed in library science who who hold responsible for what goes on in our libraries and we have principals who are responsible for what goes on in their school and we have a superintendent who's responsible broadly for the operations of the schools the board is an elected board we're parents like all of you we all have our opinions but it would be far too easy for a board to take emotional input and try to act immediately without having done the professional leg work that needs to be done right and we do trust our staff to do that leg work as I understand it as I talked to Mr beland we've had I think Mark you said five Communications to the library they haven't all been a request for reconsideration some have been questions um but that process is at this point starting and there's a board I'll speak for the board we welcome that process starting right it's we take this stuff really really seriously we need to get it through getting the professionals to do their job and before this board I'm not even clear that they might take actions before it even comes to the board but we I'm sorry and this is not a give and take ma'am um so you'll have your chance um so so this is uh so I wanted to read that to make sure everyone does it so those of you who are here to talk to we're very interested in your input we really are um all of us are interested in hearing everybody's input I'm sorry we'll get to you when we get to you this is not no I'm not you can't you can you can ask it when you're up Sir no no but it will be all of our policies are reasonable you know please act reasonably I don't have a definition of what's reasonable and Mr Montero Mr Montero you're out of order so please yeah so look guys um we're going to open it up to discussion I have a sign up list we'll go through them one at a time uh people have it's not all on books by the way some so there's a couple of other topics in here um and uh it's three minutes per speaker we will we have these handy dandy little uh um uh things that are sitting in front of me and your job is to remind me to turn it over when I do and the reason there's two of them because because I I'm talking away and I'm I'm not uh paying attention um when you're up please name and address for the record so that we can do the minutes correctly um so first up is Mrs Matthews you you said you wanted to wait up wait for the end do you want to go now or do you wanna okay no that's okay is this on okay perfect foreign excuse me good evening I'm here tonight to present the petition which I did email to the board of um Ed tonight for the resignation of two special ed administrators since one has already given their resignation this is now just pertains to one that we are asking for the immediate amen for their for her immediate resignation we have received over 330 signatures from parents and staff who have agree that the direct impact of the children's learning environment is being effective non-compliance regarding the delivery of services per students IEPs non-compliance by not assigning paraprofessional support to all students who require one per their IEP attacks on parents questioning appropriate programming failure to keep our students personally students personal information safe by committing numerous FERPA violations which continue to happen leading with a hands-off and passive aggressive approach when made aware of issues this administrator has been instrumental in disbanding a self-contained classroom by forcing children out of the program that worked for them prior to them being hired and changing the entire structure placing untrained staff in situations where most vulnerable students require socialized training not attendance to I at IEP and team meetings non-compliance by getting parents IEP documents outside the legal time frame refusal to hold IEP meetings when parents requests run referring to paraprofessionals as pokers and continuing to do so after being asked multiple times to stop inaccurate and falsified documents given to parents for Progress monitoring as well as submitted to the state of Connecticut for review in a compliant complete process making changes to student services and schedules without notifying parents forcing staff to resign that are unwilling to participate unethical and unnecessary changes that distributed that disrupted students and services as well as overall classroom climate hostile management style with staff as well as parents and IEP meetings and unfair policing unreasonable and unrealistic demands on teachers and staff thank you Mrs Matthews name and address for the record if you if you don't mind no thank you so much all right next is Mrs Pizzo okay I won't trust me I I usually start it when the name and address is made but this is Matthew's kind of throw me for a curve there uh can you hear me Debbie p09 Arapahoe okay um I'm just going to give a short story I used to sub and years back I accept I was called into sub for a special ed student so when you have a special ed you have to go to all the classes and then you have to go to lunch so I went to the lunch cafeteria and I was sitting beside the special ed student and it was Ash Wednesday so I had ashes on my forehead so one of the students said to me what's that dirt on your forehead and I lifted up my bangs and I said it's across I I'm Catholic and that's my belief so it's beginning of Lent so you know that was it and then I I always I always say grace I say thank God for the food and then I got a complaint I was an administrator said I had a complaint because I was pushing Catholicism to a student and then I said God at the table which one of the children found offensive so I was told I would not be able to substitute again if that behavior happened again this is true story so I wouldn't be able to sub again if I said God in presence and I was not pushing Catholicism with that said that's my segue into the book of this book is gay now a lot of folks will be like oh lgbtq blah blah blah but this actually has has information about gays versus religion so I read this chapter I'm like get out of here so yeah literally it says gays versus religion and it goes into Hinduism Christianity Catholic methodists and then it goes into how to argue with a Christian it has a little duplicate picture of a Bible and then notes so you can take notes on how to attack the Bible when it's presented to you if you're a gay then it goes to how to address it and then it literally how to argue with Leviticus okay that's in the book how and then how to argue with Muslims like personally you don't want to argue the word argue number one argue against religion because of what they believe I just I can't even I can't I can't even and so that was I probably spoke too fast because I'm nervous about this but at the very end of that chapter that said it said haters will be haters and I'm like really it said uh final note a dear friend once told me you can't argue with crazy so Catholic Circ Christians are crazy Muslims are crazy because you're going to argue with them well I couldn't talk about Catholic because some student asked me and I said that what it was but yet it's deemed okay to say you can argue with a Catholic with a muslim with the Jewish and in this book I won't even I can't even depict these pictures I'm like what's up but one of the pictures during you know they're having you know oral sex here we go and then on the top it says lesbian terrorists and then there's a bubble above it says from a recent woman approach from a recent one person one woman protest against some visiting Christians lesbian terrorists is the T-shirt that's above the oral sex people and then we have just saying you know you're protesting a visiting of a Christian well you know hello so this sort of thing in my world this is what's wrecking things I'm just my opinion this book should not be in neither of them because you know both books are pretty lame because they have terrible am I older yeah I'm too Italian I talk too much all right well [Applause] next up is Mrs Amaral uh Sarah Emerald 34A Old Bridge Road uh so I just wanted to get up here tonight I wasn't going to say anything because we have a room full of people parents that are really passionate about this and we're going to get here and uh speak their minds however I saw a communication that went out and the communication just really bothered me it basically said that there is an attack on lgbtq books happening in Brookfield so I just want to say this is not an lgbtq issue I think what you've just heard clearly shows that we are here to talk about is the content of these books and its appropriateness and it has nothing to do with lgbtq and in my mind to do that is just a distraction and it's a way to politicize the issue and a way to demonize those that speak out against it um I understand that we need to have books that basically talk to and can students from all different walks of life can relate to fully understand that and I embrace that however I think that we can do that without having the sexualization without having the step-by-step guides on how to do various different sexual activities without the graphic images and without the crude language um is there a book in the library that has the same style of content that is heterosexually related I've not heard of one but if there is I would like to know because I would be here speaking out speaking out against that one as well so basically what I'm simply saying is that we're asking for there to be a standard of content for books in the library we would like for it to be defined and enforced I know many of you sitting here tonight had nothing to do with this book being added into the library many of you probably didn't even know these books existed but now that you do I would like them to be looked at reviewed each one of you to sit take it home and decide is this something that we really feel belongs in our library does it really provide educational value a value that cannot be found in another book and that's it thank you thank you very much [Applause] next is Jillian Doherty Mrs Doherty here okay Jillian Doherty 49 hopbrook Road I'd actually like to thank the Boe for their work recognizing and protecting students First Amendment rights to access information through our schools libraries and instructional materials thank you for also for recognizing and supporting the many well-trained school librarians who put thought and time into the books and other resources selected for students in our schools libraries I urge you to continue to recognize that while it is each individual parent's right to censor what their own children read it is not their right to make that decision for all other parents thank you thank you [Applause] and Mr Montero and Dr Rowell he's coming up let's make sure we get the message on this topic to everybody that fast means as quickly as we possibly can right on this side Mr Montero asked a question of if there was a standard for response time I think we need to move this one quickly all right good evening Austin Montero 17 Dairy Farm Drive I'm here tonight along with many other parents to express our deep concern concern about some of these books and I use that word lightly and sexually explicit pornographic materials invading our school library most notably this book is gay by Juvenile Dawson I have reached out to the librarian on Monday morning I've not heard back yet so if that is the policy I would like to get a response there the concerns I have are as follows and there's really two main concerns here is in what reality is it appropriate for pornographic material to be okay and readily available for minors to access freely in our schools and where does having this in our schools lead us in two five ten years the push to hypersexualized children as we were witnessing in real time throughout Society is a dangerous path to take and I see no moral standard or Reason to move any further down this path than we already have and like Sarah said before I read a few excerpts from his book I want to preface this by saying this in no way shape or form is an attack on anyone's sexual gender identity or sexual preference um does not matter at all if the book was called boys have a penis girls have a vagina I'd still be here saying the exact same thing so with that being said um I'm going to read a few excerpts from this book because I think it is powerful so this book is gay Juno Dawson something they don't teach you in school is that in order to be able to come at all you and your partner may need to finish it off with a handy a good handy is all about wrist action rub the head of his back and forth with your hand rubbing two pins together wasn't far off the mark rubbing them together in one hand is awesome should not be in a school two oral sex is popping another dude's peen in your mouth or indeed popping yours in his it's more about sliding your mouth up and down the shaft of his letting a guy come in your mouth is a safe sex no no get away from the volcano before it erupts well in the absence of a vagina and here's the good part gay bye gay and by men make excellent use of the back door so now we're talking about adults in school adults having sex and minors reading this and the last one the clitoris really does like being licked and kissed again girls can take it in turns to perform oral sex or feeling adventurous they can perform it at the same time toys dildos vibrators and strap-ons all fulfill the same purpose a prosthesis to insert into the vagina now I mean call me crazy but there's no place for that in a school and after listening to that I think everyone can agree that's clearly pornographic material it is clearly obscene material pushed on miners designed for adults and there's another word for that um okay I'd like to give the board one thing we need to print ideas out today that's the Connecticut penal code regarding uh obscenity to minors which is a class of D Felony and I've I've printed out I printed out 10 of these so I mean this is absolutely garbage to have in a school so um I'll give these guys to you and you can it's obviously on the internet here just give them to me I'll make sure everybody gets them weird thank you I'm glad I did too hard call me back okay so next up next up next up is Mr Lasser [Music] good evening Howard Lasser 116 Tower Road um got a couple of things first of all I just want to remind everybody it's almost about three and a half weeks to Mother's Day and The Craft Center has great gifts for everybody uh the other thing is um I know you mentioned that I had sent an email um about uh observing people's religious observance days and I hope you'll take that into account in the future future days it was it was just a slip I'm sorry it was we usually try to avoid Phyllis Schneider's not here to to police it so yeah I'm doing this for Phyllis um anyway about books um you know I heard this this controversy and in my opinion there's only two ways a book can hurt you one is if somebody throws it at you and the other is if you ignore the lessons um yes books content can be controversial and provocative and in my experience that's an opportunity for conversation and communication I know I don't need to lecture you about bringing up your kids I have my own experiences I'm glad to share it with anybody who wants to know but one thing I learned is every parent has to make those decisions for themselves about how they're going to raise their kids and it is not within their authority to tell somebody else how to raise their kids unfortunately I'm learning that because I've got two kids who each have their own kids and you know butt out dad so I'm sure some of you have that experience right Bob so um that's really all I have to say thank you next up is uh Mrs uh Stanley good evening Tanya Stanley 31 Laurel Drive thank you for the opportunity to address the important topic of Library materials available in our Public Schools most specifically at the high school on Tuesday morning I began the inquiry process of the acquisition practices with an email sent directly to the two library media specialists in the Brookfield High School staff directory as well as the principal the books of my inquiry included the book uh this book is gay by Juno Dawson and fun home a family tragic comic by Allison Bechtel I'm pleased to say I received a response this evening from the BHS principal according to the reply this book is gay ebook was made available to students in 2022 through the Connecticut State library and fun home a family tragic comic in 2008.
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uh I wanted to share our growth for our last links which is our assessment that we use in the district for our English language Learners it's a yearly assessment and as you can see the blue is our growth rate and the green is our average percentage of Target achieved so we see that and it shows we're doing some nice work there to just share our data over the last from 2017 2018 and then 2021 as back growth and you can see the last is post-pandemic blue is our school um the beige yellow is the district and the purplish is the state and our group is above average of those other areas above the state of the district as well in our growth in both the LA and Japan just to highlight some of our compute Community Partnerships we have a food pantry at hayestown that we are very proud of it's quite large and that is a partner with Stop and Shop we also work closely with the Lions Club for our eye exams and also they you know donated many things to our school over the past few years we have an active member a venture program within Danbury student and Business Connection several of our students participate in that the Knights of Columbus provides brand new wonderful coats many many coats for our students and that is we actually have a closet that we use and we are also partnering with Jericho to support our students in after school and with a lot of activities and special events that take place at hagestown I just highlighted a few this year we had three extremely successful math nights broken up to k12345 the month of January February March uh attended by over each of that had over attendees we also had a very successful trunk Retreat we do a monthly spirit days students and staff we have our PBS program called Dynamite dragons which the students love there are extrinsic motivators you know prizes but one of the things that seems to be the most popular is when they can get to do things with either me or other other staff members visit classrooms they had clipboards they go around and that seems to be very popular we We Do seasonal drawer decorating contests which are kind of fun teachers and students get very competitive about those we so to come to Haze down you can see it's a big deal there um we had a fantastic starts with a low week our support staff works great with the parents and the teachers to organize this we need to address like a book character day in the fall we have several family activities that this the students do with their parents and then bring them into showcase the big one this year was our leprechaun traps that the students did with their families and then we put them all over the school to try to catch leprechauns um we have a we had a very successful food drive in the fall last night we had a fitness Night American Heart Association the gym was packed parent-teacher conferences open house and then we have a special program going on right now with parent University grade two math focusing on some of our new newcomer families so how to support our our families who are not native English speakers with navigating their children in the area of math oh so I have a little video that will end my presentation but I did want to highlight so we had zero indoor out-of-school suspensions at all last year and we currently have non-ess of today and that is hard work of the staff and since the taste down so just enjoy our little presentation there was music that the audio is now currently working now and we just highlighted the different events like this was the 100th day of school this is some of our math nights math nights and they were centers the parents walked through the centers that the students do in school I don't know if the chairman deaf and teachers and students wore their ugly sweaters which is always interesting because the kids don't think they're ugly [Music] this is one of those eligible and the kids have to read their books we have to guess the book characters so it's it's pretty fun the older students go and read or we have other people go read the books for the kids if it's not a book at their life and then you can see the kids which is great because they come in and they're in their little kiddos [Music] Trunk or Treat parent participation we had to stop cars we had to cut them off we had so much involvement and for all of these activities we've utilize parent Square on our monthly newsletter and then a week before and then during the week to make sure parents are aware of what's going on to start to flow our Bean is let kindness be your superpower so that was our theme for this year [Music] I may or not may may or may not be the orange character I can't confirm original [Music] and this is haystown [Music] [Applause] thank you so much thank you um just explain quickly on the pancake pantry you guys have this what that means for you and your staff the pantry that you guys have at this point when you walk us through what that means and yeah so that's something you just have to work on yes so last year and mean um you know approached approached me about starting closet that's that's how it's kind of presented you have a closet that we can start you know like a mini food pantry and um so I don't I don't do anything small so the closet became yes but I have a room so we actually um and and some some board members have seen it I invite you to you know come and check it out but so what we do is we have um partnership with Stop and Shop where there are gift cards through a grant and uh and we shop um my social worker my family liaison are really the the two that Junior will say this and they shop and we speak with different members of the community families and we kind of like surveyed what the food items were that we needed we have everything from toiletries to to Rice to peanut butter to bread we sometimes have fresh vegetables but we know exactly who's coming to pick up that food um but the community outreach has been amazing I mean we get donations I mean the Dallas secretary knows who just shows up in haystown for people in the community that heard about this and so all of our families um they can access it on Friday so we have times during the day my family is on calls family said we've identified and then also teachers connect with families so we have served anywhere from 11 families a week to 22 I think families in a week and what's great about it is um I think for the families is we don't ask any questions so someone says they need something short time short term then we're there for them we have some families that we've been supporting a good part of their groceries for a couple of months and that's fine too so but I mean it is wonderful and our staff and their families the donations that have come in it it's amazing so president Elena what just one more quick confirmation would be great and what I would thank the staff for coming out this evening it's really wonderful to see you so thank you and I don't know if you can be honest with this principal collection did anyone get hurt in the leprechaun trap activity I'm still trying to understand what that is for them yeah but there were many sightings [Music] thank you so much thank you I don't know if the board has any other questions too let's go um I would just like to ask a question because I've seen this on a presentation before what part does Jericho Center place in dealing with the youth and how many staff member is it from Jericho Center that deals with the student at age time so the number differs based on the parent enrollment so last year we had the start of the earth I think three three or four students that went to their just their after-school program that went on they were picked up and transported by a band and then there was another handful whose parents brought them later in the day this year all of our students go to their after school it's like a homework technical program but they're all transported the band doesn't come and pick the kids up anymore so um because the parents didn't need the transportation help so it depends on what the what the parents say so I don't have an exact number of this year like I have names in my head of who I know goes but there could actually be a greater number okay you would have that back in East town thank you I I really just wanted to know but Jericho quiz in the field and if I'm hearing this right it's more about mentoring and supporting students that need help am I right along so for the students that that I'm aware of that go it's academic support and some I don't want to call it child care but you know maybe you know they spent an hour to two hours there after school and for our students the mentoring doesn't come through them it comes from the um that's who we use okay but there could be mentoring going on at Jericho but not for the students that I'm aware okay thank you and you're welcome thank you have a nice evening [Applause] thank you so we have one more question sir always it's not a question please with the food pantry so many folks are struggling and I want to add my thanks to the team for the acceptance success environments thank you very much thank you thank you [Applause] all right public participation so the boardwalkman's public participation as the speakers please look at their comments in three minutes speakers may offer objective comments or School operations and programs that can serve them the board of government and the expression of personal complaints on the film touring comments about Board of Education personnel students more against any person connected with the Danbury School we have one name on the list Alicia Malone Maloney [Music] so I just wanted to I know for a minute I wanted to quickly tell you how I almost lost myself into choking yeah I just wanted to quickly tell you how I almost lost myself but um he was in the kitchen and I was in the living room and I heard him muffled and I knew where it was something was wrong with me right over to him and I could see her always reaching because he was only like you know just almost two of that like going like this so I grabbed and I told my husband I said please grab and flip them over back rules do what you want to do with Grandma nothing nothing more to try to get in his mouth couldn't get anything out so when I was pregnant I decided that I was going to buy the strange old device called a letter back and I took it out after the mask on pretty long space pushed down and pulled and his head would be a little bit and I thought I should come out for now and I looked and he had put the ice cube into the front of his mouth he sent it out started crying sir who were called crying in the kitchen before so fast forward to him going to preschool at granco she wanted him to have this at school and it's a special needs preschool I think that it should be interested already I have to go to the doctors now I had to you know do all the leg work to just have it in the nurse's office we spoke to the nurse about it I said you know I think this belongs to you like you know you guys need this you have special needs children here and they all choke you know at one point or another and she said you know it's a little long tasks so it has become my mission to get it into our schools and I actually worked with Senator Kushner to try and get a bill put together and it was actually done we would have built for schools police fire ambulance and everything and it never left the desk so um I'm gonna go to uh kathyodo um she said that I should come to the meeting and talk to you guys because you guys kind of do your own thing as a district and don't necessarily need um you know the state to do anything so I wanted to start with you guys I want to give you guys a life back so you guys can look at it I brought you and you know I'm just looking to see if we can get this here in all of our schools I mean there's children's who are special needs that think about you know the kids in the high school who might be in a wheelchair anywhere too large to lift up in high life we can take the mask there's a bigger masks than this one put it on their face as they sit there put it please help and save the child that way anything to the universe's offices they there's been children in schools down the South who's eight years old and he's in school and put a rubber ball in his mouth adjusting these are avoidable things and we need to do to protect our face [Music] thank you there is [Music] they would do a different price of like whatever they you know I I don't work for the company I just know like I'm working hand in hand with others to get to work out but they would do like a price and they're so like you know they whenever they I say like I need life back give me something like you know they send it right over I mean no questions asked like they're just the ones giving people and it's just I love advocating for them because they are just an amazing woman and they seems like it so like you know how people bronze shoes I want to bronze this thing so thank you all right thank you so much [Applause] foreign okay any student Representatives here today come on up hi my name is [Music] um quarter three ended up on 3 30 and April 3rd was the first day of court before cars will be available on April 10th a theater production of Once Upon a mattress was held on March 30th March 31st and April 1st spring Sports have started Black History Month celebrated in Hamburg High School through three consecutive games and Appliance programs with different objectives last night danborough students launched an initiative Express concerned back to school funding course registration has been completed for great students as well as incoming fresh informed public May 12th is Junior Prom and May 26 the senior prom senior award tonight is June 5th Ward Fest was today on April 5th and tomorrow on April 6.
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and so when we apply that kind of piece of information we have a couple we have options right the options are taking those demographic enrollment projections and looking at repurposing that capacity generally and the ways we can look at repurposing that capacity we can use it as interim housing for example we talked last time a lot about trying to accelerate the improvements at the existing elementary schools if we can find a location for interim housing of those schools we can move faster the second was is there any District support facilities or under housed District facilities that could be looked at for that interim capacity and then the third was a new location for inspire all of those things remain on the table but this is kind of the options for the district to look at its Surplus capacity we have options though we can continue in the status quo and address a surplus cap capacity on a site-by-side basis and by that we mean as they come up for renovation replacement or improvements we acknowledge the Surplus at that capacity or at that school and keep making them smaller to address that it changes the model capacity Model A little bit but that's an option that still exists the other is to repurpose an existing School reclaiming that capacity at one particular site and redistributing the remaining students in order to make that space available for other uses and the two that we had identified initially were Citrus hope Citrus and Hooker Oak so this map if you recall is just a bit of a density heat map if you will the the schools in red are the ones that are currently under their capacity by at least 10 percent or more and you can see by their location it's a pretty dense amount of student capacity in one location again so when we look at that choosing one of the schools in red as a potential for that repurposing makes a lot of sense with the overlap two of those McManus and Neil Dao are recently or currently in the process of being made like new and so on those quickly came off the table for this discussion we also looked at the engineering team architectural team went out to every campus this condition assessment map is organized by kind of best condition and by that I just mean physical condition as Architects we're not evaluating the educational condition we're evaluating the physical condition Marigold McManus assuming we're complete with the work there and Neil Dao are all good to go yellow means there's things here and there right they might be due for a systems upgrade or something like that the oranges are all as you can see a mix of red which puts you close to replacement value for the improvements that would be needed and orange which is about 75 percent of replacement value and then of course in red Citrus and Hooker Oak the oldest of the district schools we did however look at other assessment factors such as the um uh unduplicated student count the English language learner percentages as I mentioned the condition assessment and how the capacity currently aligns with its um with its current enrollment and sorted them differently this particular map sorts them by condition assessment so um from best condition physically to worse condition physically but we also have sorted by population the number of students served but and by unduplicated student count or percentages and by El percentages on the campus Because all of these factors do matter in your decision making about how to move forward we did however um come to a recommendation and that was to Repro repurpose the Hooker Oak Elementary School site as potential interim housing or other future uses I mentioned the central dense location I mentioned the condition assessment at sort of the the lowest level of the of the schools there would be need to be a lot of careful planning between now and whenever this happens how do you relocate an educational program that's popular and perhaps merge it with another site that's again above my pay grade as an architect but certainly There's an opportunity there but also just how to phase in the students from that campus and how they transition no boundary adjustment would be required as that's an open enrollment school and if the program moves and merges it could remain an open enrollment school and that the enrollment in the long-range projections is shown as declining so the board action is to get feedback from the board and to take action on the repurposing of an elementary school campus I just want to mention that the Hooker Oak program is a very important program to the district and that careful consideration and planning will need to take place if the board decides to repurpose the campus buildings that doesn't mean that the program will be going away we would be working hard to create a transition plan that's beneficial to students and families and the program yeah we're we can ask questions of clarification okay uh Julie and Laura thank you um I too value that Hooker Oak program that has been um yeah don't don't need to say anything other than it's been amazing still is it's not a bin it's it is an amazing program um I was sitting in on a committee meeting and the questions were being asked about is there um a school that's not on the got to do something with it list that could house that program because I don't want to see that program Disturbed dismantled whatever but if we can take that program in you know in whole and put it on another campus as as a separate program but on a you know do we have that other campus this is a loaded question because I know the answer where would it go we don't have an answer to that question right now let the board decide on this point and then we go to work on the how and the when and the where and we bring it back in the floor in the form of draft master plan in early May for the board to evaluate the plan for consideration in the incorporation into the facilities master plan so this is an action so if the board said we two things we want to repurpose Hooker Oak and we also want to see that program maintain program would that be a direction that would fit your request for Direction yes I'm I'm going to move okay will you let us know when it's okay she's so good Mr Linda did you have a question for clarification I suspect others will say it better okay um I have a question for for clarification for myself [Music] um I feel like it might be beneficial to understand better um or to be able to grasp the long-term need to scale back because of our Surplus and if we have a if we have a um like a cost benefit that goes with that so that we can understand better why this is a critical decision to make so there likely are a number of financial impacts to the district regarding the operation of a School site however from my perspective it removes an elementary campus from our implementation plan so we're we're running 60 million dollars at campus around for our elementary school renovations right now so that would mean that if we did not renovate Hooker Oak campus that money would flow down to the next campus in line in the implementation plan so in a way saving money for the schools that we you know are continuing to serve so it would consolidate future monies that become available for facilities updates to those other school sites because of the Surplus capacity and then the second point or the first point technically you made was that just the long-term costs of maintaining a school would be a savings in that regard and then the third point that I don't think was addressed yet that I remember from the presentation last time I think and please correct me if I'm wrong obviously is that um that there would be some benefit for using that for interim housing possibly because if we can use that while we're rebuilding a whole new school or two or three that would also be a cost savings allowing us to use those dollars for even more work to get done on the other schools yeah says Laura mentioned in the presentation utilizing a surplus campus for interim housing would allow us to move more swiftly through the elementary school Renovations and being able to accomplish them quicker saves money so that would mean saves money that goes back into the project absolutely it gets pushed down to the next project so we get further in our implementation with those dollars if we can tackle the elementary schools more swiftly which we're presenting on very shortly on the interim housing item as well are there any other questions for clarification I do now thank you um even if we choose to designate the Hooker Oak site to be repurposed we still own it we're still using it for something how is this not just kicking the can down the road or I mean is it [Applause] we think that thank you we think that um we would not be kicking the can down the road Hooker Oak is a campus that would be very difficult to transform to the standard of that we have been renovating to for Equity with our elementary students and we do not intend to have to spend those kinds of dollars on Hooker Oak it would be very difficult to do so so no I don't believe you're kicking the can down the road does that mean that we should expect not to see hook Rook as a site for students at all in the future I mean at some point if we're going to use it for students again we're gonna have to fix it up right right so it would it would need to accommodate the interim housing of students from other elementary schools for a period of time and then it would be repurposed for something else in the future as Laura mentioned it could be District uses or it could be potential site for inspire High School in the future foreign I'm not trying to be difficult here um given any of those we will still need to make some some renovations right I mean if it's in um that red category for condition it's still going to be so I mean just taking a saying we're not going to spend money on it doesn't magically make it fit for some other group of people to to use it right correct [Applause] yeah so um this isn't something that we're asking the board for direction on but it has been kicked around the idea that Inspire will need a home in the future and they do have their own funding source both through State funding for School construction and measure K dollars that are allocated to Charter Schools so improvements that may be needed if it were to become a high school campus for inspire there are funds available for those renovations big if let me chew on for a little bit I'm not hearing any additional questions for clarification from the board so at this time we'll open it up for public comment thank you for your presentation um I have a feeling we may have further questions for clarification so of course be on the ready um so I'm going to call up actually before I start calling anybody up um uh just a reminder about our civility policy and just to make sure that we're being respectful of everybody's uh place and and perspectives and that that this is should be a space where we should be able to feel that we can share our perspectives and our experiences and respect those of each other um and so with that also a reminder that you get three minutes for public comment you will hear a bell at the 32nd Mark I always question myself if it's 30 seconds or not 30 second Mark um that is just your indication that you need to wrap up your statement and when the second Bell goes off I will interrupt you just by saying thank you and um that is your cue to finish up your sentence and take your leave and we'll move on to the next person so that was the longest explanation I've ever given for public comment but I have a feeling that that it's necessary tonight so uh we will start with Jessica hunt on a public comment for this item I just feel like there's probably several people here who are new to giving a public comment which is why I felt the need to give a little deeper explanation [Applause] we'll call her too yeah they're on my list hi most of you know me my name is Jessica hunt and I am a proud former hugger Oak parent all three of my kids were in attendance at Hooker Oak I am really concerned about this possible plan of moving Hooker Oak space to another campus as a former parent of Hooker Oak when I look back at our time at Hooker Oak it is with great happiness I'm not going to lie leaving Hooker Oak to go to Bidwell was really scary but there's no doubt in my mind that the open structure program gave my boys a leg up the key to that program success is the students the families and the highly dedicated staff the staff at Hooker Oak want to be there and that family feeling continues long after a family has transitioned to Junior High Urban structure is successful because they are together Under One Roof moving the program to another site to share space with a school that is not an open structure opens the door to a whole lot of other issues and it saddens me to think that the Integrity of the program could be put at risk because there's no guarantee that every staff member and not to mention the highly involved Administration will move with that program to the other site and rumor has it that Ho's current principle is a former Hooker Oak student how great is that has the board talked to the families have they talked to the staff have you taken a tour of Hooker Oak and seen it in action if you haven't I highly suggest you do that before you make your decision and I'm proud to say there is one person on this board that knows the good things that Hooker Oak has done and that's Tom Lando who was my daughter's student teacher at Hooker Oak and he's seen it in action and I'm begging you to not make this decision right now you have to put this off you have to do more research on what damage could be done to this program because if you lose this program you're losing a lot more than a program you're losing families and students that's all thank you thank you now we have Audrey Baki [Applause] all right hello again I'm Audrey Bakke I'm the parent of three current students at Hooker Oak and I'm here to tell you why you shouldn't repurpose our school and try to move a program first of all it's not a program it's an alternative school of choice School of Choice and it offers more than what most neighborhood schools can because of its focus on integrated instruction looping classes and thematic learning the parents of students in Hooker Oak actively chose this school for our children because we knew it would meet our children's needs and would Foster the kind of love and passion for learning that traditional schools simply can't we make the commitment to drive across town in morning School drop-off traffic through multiple neighborhood schools to ensure our kids get a quality education because it's worth it we are willing to meet the volunteer requirements some of us volunteering well above that requirement so that our children can participate in multiple enrichment opportunities and receive the best instructional program they deserve we do this because we love this school and what it offers our students you may say the traditional neighborhood schools can offer these same things to our students but I'm here to tell you it's not the same our students thrive in their academic and social emotional learning because of the looping classes that they have for those who don't know what looping is it's when the class stays with the same teacher for two years in a row this enables teachers to truly get to know the students their needs their wishes their desires their challenges their successes their family life their learning preferences so many things when teachers have the same students for a second year they have the opportunity to start real teaching so much sooner because they can skip the typical getting to know you stuff it means our students ultimately have more time dedicated to teaching and learning and let's not forget the positive effects that looping has on our social emotional health of our students which is in dire need right now a second year with the same teacher gives our students a sense of normalcy structure and routine that simply doesn't happen in our traditional schools when students feel loved and know they can trust their teacher they are able to better focus on their learning the traditional schools in our district don't offer as much as the active Hands-On thematic-based learning that Hooker Oak Prides itself on traditional schools focus more on math and English because of State Testing which leads to curriculum and teaching that is disjointed and unexciting at Hooker Oak kids are actively engaged in their learning through projects field trips and instruction that purposefully connects across the subjects my children come home excited and passionate about what they are learning in school I know other parents in the district can't say the same thing about their kids reactions when coming home from the traditional neighborhood schools I can't tell you how important School choices for our students in this community alternative schools exist because they feel a need that other schools can't if you take away this amazing School of Choice you are pushing parents to make another Choice do we stay in Chico Unified a district that has shown us They Don't Care About Us or our school as evidenced by the poor planning for our facility updates and desire to close her Crooke or do we look at charges that's your neighboring districts for enrollment for our kids [Applause] thank you [Applause] Stacy Bono also please before you start I have to give the little speech that I don't like getting people's names wrong so please correct me it's for now it's fine thank you sorry it's okay good evening my name is Stacy Benoit I'm a special education teacher at Hooker Oak as well as a mother of three Hooker Oak alumni as someone who is involved in many aspects of our school I would like to share some of the amazing things happening at our campus Beth geise was just named outstanding social studies educator of the year for the State of California she and Katie Yancey brought their fourth grade classes to Sacramento yesterday to tour the capitol building and visit the California Museum our fifth grade teachers are busy planning the annual ship trip in May their students will set sail in the San Francisco Bay visit the Marine Mammal sanctuary and tour the bay model this month all students are participating in the Royal Dance Academy tomorrow is their performance second graders just presented their positive Heroes Museum and our NPR our principal Emily Mullins is an amazing leader and our school is an example in this District in many ways we initiated the math pacing guide that is now used by the district we have implemented the number sense math screener that multiple schools are picking up we have a PBIS Platinum Status we have a robust Garden where students receive weekly instruction we have a nature center in the middle of our school we have a sensory room we have a wellness team that meets every week in a Wellness Center available to every student I encourage you to please visit our campus and see all the good work we are doing and how important it is to our community my heart is so heavy knowing that all we have worked so hard to build and create is under threat now and honestly it doesn't make sense we're in exemplary School in Chico Unified we offer an alternative program that keeps students in Ada funding in the district closing Hooker Oak will mean more students leaving for Charter Schools yes our enrollment is down but that is mostly due to covid in 2020 we had 365 students enrolled at Hooker Oak you're projecting decreasing enrollment based on post-covet numbers but is the School of Choice our enrollment is driven by the quality of our program and we have families new families interested again we are in the brink of recovering and our enrollment will go back up to pre-coveted numbers it's really the lack of improvement to our facilities that is holding us back I know there is a plan to merge with another school but we all know that's not going to resemble the school or program we currently have you can't just pick cooker Hooker Oak up and put it down somewhere else if you make this decision it will have an immediate negative impact on our current enrollment and tie our hands behind our backs if I were a kindergarten parent I certainly wouldn't enroll in a school with such an uncertain future I would choose one of the many charter schools in three or so years when it's time to move it's hard to say what our program will look like I know that closing Hooker Oak checks a lot of boxes in your Innovation plan but it discards a school that has thrived in this community since 1948.
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that's a large bit of money I know there are school districts and charter schools that do not operate on a one-to-one laptop for their students I don't think it's necessary for the success of students academic career look at the Gen X generation we do not have laptops and we were going to school yet we brought you Microsoft we brought you Dell we bought you all of the electronics convenience of today I don't think students need one-to-one laptop and they could save this District a lot of money let's get just back back to basic get back to teaching in the classroom and out of the textbook that would be a discussion I would love to hear you guys have and then on the I'm going to reserve here for the next meeting but thank you so much for your time tonight it is Linda Payne this is one clap this time yes that's Reese I'd just like to make a quick correction GSA is great um gay straight Alliance not gay sexual Alliance so just to clarify we don't have a club that is the gay sexual Alliance it is the gay straight Alliance so I just wanted to clarify that Mrs thank you for catching that I apologize that I did not and our final speaker is Miss Linda Payne foreign I got in here late and I don't know what happened but I think some people had some celebrating it done outside so I think that's really cool what was happening that was really cool I just wanted to talk about the bond again a little bit and then a little bit about something that I learned from some professors from ASU um I'm just really concerned about the Bond as I was going through the budget after our last meeting it seems like there's like 200 something dollars that every student in this district is paying for interest and the only interest that I know that they would be paying on would probably be the bond interest and for that reason the more you get more bonds the more interest they're going to be paying instead of that going to the students is going to pay for bonds and I think that we just need to learn to live within our budget if we have to cut at the top we have to cut at the top I think it's good you gave raises if we have the money for raises I don't know but another thing I wanted to talk about was the education of our kids I was talking to two friends of mine who are actually in the graduate program they teach at ASU and they told me that last year they tried this the lady especially tried very hard to get lots of scholarships for our kids in the whole area here to be able to go to ASU in the graduate program they could not get anybody that would even be interested they couldn't qualify they ended up giving 90 percent of those um of the what are they called where they give money for but for scholarships and stuff ninety percent of it went to foreign students because of the fact that our kids didn't want to uh couldn't qualify and it makes me kind of sad it makes me wonder what's going on in the school districts down here that are they being taught I you know the Common Core was really strong a few years ago I don't know where it stands now but I know it's not a very good education it's kind of a I mean compared to what the education used to be our education of our kids have really gone down they're not reading as good as they can they're not writing they're not learning history from the view of the founding fathers who's you know worked really hard to give us the Constitution we had so that our kids could do well and so if you could look into what's going on there that would be great because I think our teachers are really good but we're going to be losing a lot of them if we make them teach some of the things that they're starting to make them teach and so I hope you'll try to do something in our district maybe we can be a lead lead program I know that I was talking to a friend of mine and he said here and I don't know if you're even aware I don't know if um Mrs Follies even aware but we could have prayer in our schools if we would take the prayer that is given at this legislature every single day and come and read that same prayer in our schools when prayer was taken out of our schools it started it it started the downfall of the of our kids and they have not learned as much as so you might consider doing that and bringing prayer back thank you foreign if I can try and get some information from you because that the scholarships really interest me um that's very concerning so if I can get your contact number so we can talk about the information and and data you have regarding the scholarships um I have two students at ASU actually one just graduated she was able to graduate ASU in three years she was able to graduate two of my kids graduated from Williams Field with their Associate's degrees in science from Chandler Gilbert even before they graduated high school and so I know we have some concerns with scholarships regarding Financial qualifications that a lot of our students don't meet the need scholarships but I've been very passionate about the scholarships regarding um our college students our kids that go to college and everything so if I can get your contact information so we can follow up on that um I don't know if it's a generality of this area or if it's Higley specific so for for undergrads we do have a lot of students who get ASU U of A NAU scholarships so I would be very interested in that to follow up and then we can work with our career counselors to make sure because I know they Hammer the these Scholarships in there but I want all of our students to have the best opportunity that want to go to college and I don't want finances to be the reason they don't go if they're eligible for scholarships so that's very near and dear to my heart so if I can get some information so we can try and follow up on that and just regarding your comment about history um my daughter who just graduated from ASU graduated with a minor in history and that's because she had a great Foundation here so I think we are doing a really good job um and I see it in in the kids that are coming out of our schools so it is different than when you went to school when I went to school but I do think we're doing a great foundation for when they do go on to high school or go on to college so um I'm sorry well we can we can talk about that so after her yeah if I can get so otherwise we'll go back and forth all night the contact information so we make sure we follow up on the scholarship information perfect thank you all right awesome all right moving on to uh 5.1 through 5.15 I make a motion that we approve the consent agenda items seconded questions comments concerns I have a couple of questions yeah absolutely um for um agenda item 5.3 um and I apologize for not getting these out earlier but it's hopefully just a simple question um I noticed that there were in my count at approximately 400 instances not 400 teachers but 400 instances in which teachers had to cover a class I mean I know the date range is from 224.
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under general education the salary surplus of 68 810 from last month has changed to 23 810 due to the year-end projections of our certified staff substitute costs benefits remain the same showing the surplus of 166 622 dollars Services is now showing a deficit of 13 290 which is slightly more than last month due to the unbudgeted costs of the Quinnipiac intern for the fall semester fly's Line is now showing a deficit of 32 100 for the unbudgeted cost for the new power school and schoology software for next year other mine has held with the deficit of five thousand six hundred thirty one dollars which was reflected last month general education has ended the month with a total surplus of 139 311.
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unfortunately the reply did not address my request for the specific criteria identified for the two books upon acquisition as outlined in the Boe regulations as such nor was my question of whether or not any additional staff members or departments such as English or health were consulted when these books were chosen to be added to circulation for Board of Ed regulations quote participation in the selection process is encouraged by the collaborative efforts of the school's staffs unquote I will be sending a follow-up email as I am trying to gain a better understanding of the process in which books are introduced into our school libraries moving on it is important to make reference to the Connecticut General statutes 53a through 193 through 53a 200. these statues were developed using court cases centered on Free Speech right to due process and right to protest in the court case Miller vs California of 1973 a 5 to 4 decision upheld that obscene materials did not enjoy First Amendment amendment protection leading to a modification of the test of obscenity the language set forth by the Supreme Court is a part of how the Board of Ed policies were created around acquisition of materials for school libraries in the Connecticut statutes the following language is included quote whether a material or performance is obscene shall be judged by ordinary adults applying contemporary Community standards in applying contemporary Community standards the state of Connecticut is deemed to be the community unquote we are the community we make up the state we are looking closely at the materials offered to our children in our schools to be sure the laws are being adhered to definitions set forth in the statutes make it clear that the intent of the law when creating such statutes was to prohibit sexually explicit material to make their ways into the hands of our school children the question now is what is the next step perhaps it would be the best interest of all to reevaluate acquisition regulations to put a new procedure in place one that extends beyond the control of a few people when it relates to controversial books with sexually explicit content available to our students thank you for your time [Applause] okay next up is Mrs Orban foreign 95 Stoney Hill Road this isn't what I plan to start with but the email one of the emails that you received about um I'm not sure which book but it was um related to this whole topic of book Banning says this is the first of more emails to follow that deal with lgbtqia plus themed books in the high school library a search of the library catalogs has been completed for 75 of these books 14 were found that is targeting lgbtq material so yes this is about targeting lgbtq books whether or not parents realize it and that is an issue but I'm here tonight I'm here tonight because I believe in participating in the process and I believe that we need to be advocates for the things we want in our community and in our schools whether we benefit directly or not Public Schools need to serve all schools equal all students equally and not every student fits into the same box our teachers our classrooms and our libraries have to be ready to meet the needs of every student before they walk through the door the potential for diversity is one of the things about public schools that make them great and it's also one of the challenges we don't necessarily know as a community how we're going to meet the needs of every student but that's our job education is not about telling kids what to think it's about teaching them how to think so they're prepared for what lies ahead administrators Board of Education members and parents should be the example knowing how to think is a process and it requires asking questions our community is facing challenges right now with special education and with book Banning but our job Remains the Same it's to ensure that we're serving the students who walk through our doors whether they fit into a box or not when people come before this board asking for books to be banned from our libraries we should ask them to do what Any teacher would do show their work go through the process as you said at the beginning Mr Belden how did the book come to their attention is it even in our library have they read it what did our trained Librarians and media Specialists why did they choose it education is not only for the Young when this board Administration and community's time is spent on outrage that is manufactured and targeted students pay the price especially students whose needs don't fit neatly into a box the opportunity cost to our community every time we go down one of these rabbit holes is that the important things get less attention we should recognize that and push back thank you for your time and your service [Music] I'd rather not have my daughter a quick ma'am could we have a little order here please next up is Mr Zimmer uh Aaron Zimmer 50 obtuse Hill Road I'm sort of going to riff a little bit too uh I I think it's I think it's worth saying that that some of the some of the passages we've heard from this evening could be construed as sex ed for somebody who doesn't know uh yeah I mean okay maybe I'm not gonna riff okay all right thanks well we're gonna give him more time could we we don't need commentary when we when when from the audience when somebody's speaking please and like everyone who's in favor everybody has a chance to speak I'm sorry like everyone who's in favor of banning these books to imagine for a second that their kid has questions about their own sexual identity and imagine they don't feel comfortable talk talking to you as their parents where do they go my point is a book that doesn't have value to you doesn't mean it's not valuable to somebody else and a bunch of parents stomping up and down online about about the lgbtq pornography books sends a devastating message to the kid who might find that book helpful it does real damage we know that lgbtq youth are more likely to commit suicide than straight kids Falls it's not Mr Montero I'm gonna ask one more time please keep it to yourself some kid is going to seek one of these books out identify with it and learn something about themselves in the world around them thanks so sorry for the interruptions [Applause] [Music] Mrs Peterson Tara Peterson 18 Westview Lane yesterday was national school librarians day and um I just want to say that there are professionals who are in charge of curating a collection for all members of a school community a high school library's patrons are students from age 14 to 18.
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casilla baller is testing testing 2019 after Springfield the National Honors Society where people like Mr DHS after spring break on April 24th and all proceeds will go to scholarship peer leadership voice for Change and passionate projects robotics for the senator Southern New England Champions that are now traveling 155 X competitions in Dallas Texas AP testing is during the first and second week Sunday and surveys from the state of Connecticut went out to students this year [Music] [Applause] thank you good eve good evening everyone oh wait we have some more student Representatives oh okay come on up foreign [Music] students [Music] creating horse funding from both the district and the state for our Public Schools it seems that the funding for Charter Schools seems to be empowers has some comparison to the funding for our Public Schools providing two buses for Charter Schools would remove six hundred thousand dollars from our public school scholarship those 600 000 could have been better spent on funding the order credit always for discussing an unusable bathrooms or if you're paying for the Overflow classrooms and for our overboard teachers it could have been better spent on buying supplies and textbooks for our classrooms through using the more app copiers or providing is not Humanities for sequence personally I've experienced the shortcomings of the school spontane one of my classes consists of more than 30 kids all taught by one teacher let's go evident that the schools under South for me I feel like it and here's my academic growth that I can't do anything about it it's hard for me to feel comfortable in such a large group of students since the school cannot afford to hire more or even attract more teachers large classes have become the norm additionally during that time as a student athlete we have several various fundraisers throughout the year for our team because the school did not provide enough funding for sports and social warned us that without this funding we were not able to have team t-shirts which recognizing us as a productive team dealership with funding for their own fundraisers as well as from our approaches for personal subject we are finally able to buy a new equipment there's some equipment and apparel benefit our team is always in one issues and I'm quite familiar with all of a lot of them because I'm active within a lot of the school's laws it can become difficult to run as a result the school's likely investment high school so does UNICEF which I'm the treasurer of Houston collectors because otherwise they want to even be able to find in addition before we even think about raising money for others we have to raise money for ourselves the school didn't provide any sort of financial acting for us to support ourselves with furthermore teachers in the other districts are alive are paid for advising clubs where the teachers in Denmark in the school systems do not receive this I think that it's unfair that artists teachers spend the same amount of work and effort into these centuries are a lot more reward for their work although of course not enough to have my dad driving to and from online studies some students enough for this luxury and can send after school meetings as a result since the school does not offer enough Transportation students are deprived opportunities across the same as their loss even though we have received an additional payment it can't just be a one-time thing as we have a lot of ground to catch up from to catch up on from the last decade there has to be constant improvements in the GPS system this budget increase can't just be a one-time thing our education needs to keep improving which is only possible through the infuses in our school's positive [Applause] so I think if if we can state your name because I think this bowl I think this belongs on the public park because the student representative section is for the um you know high school student um yeah um so we'll just if you just say your name we you can just take it hello I'm Ella orgero and I am a junior high school and I wanted to take the classroom education today and I'm quite active amongst our school to participating in three Varsity Sports and multiple clubs sorry guys short um and especially UNICEF which led the rally yesterday at the Sleep Hall with this the funding among stairway pipeline has been prevalent to me since I was a best friend because three years since professional year and specifically with my field hockey team we have consistently struggle to gain the funding to making the equipment put hold games at our home stadium as a team you have to hold fundraisation between spendings or game balls not broken that's and knee paddings for new players without the funding of NR sports teams students who are economically disadvantaged and intimidate to join new sports in the expenses that they make is unable to subside another topic inability to find coaches to voice the costume to struggle to find a place and to continue their 2023 season but thankfully to considering before their ending the season to start they had found a replacement no member of any sports team should have to worry about these aspects But Not only would they pursue on the field these Finance also essential and civilizing the area ritual in the sports two students that should all have the accessibility to participate in outside of the classrooms which is why we need to pressure enough not only the district but the state needs to fund our Public Schools specifically since Dairy is the largest school in our state High School's room population is 3 340 students which has substantially increased by nine percent over the past years primary funding for those additional students is only decreases the new Charter student Summit is alone will move 600 000 from the public schools budget using our budget within our Public Schools integrate with implement but PlayStations and classrooms a student detective ratio is according to the 1601 whence the Sleep average is only 12 to 1.
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