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thank you good evening everyone and welcome we are just about to begin our ceremony and to get us started we're going to have one of our Rising eighth graders foreign [Music] my name is Ryan Austin and I will be the president of the class of 2024. we're ready to begin the ceremony at this time so please turn off all cell phones the emergency exits are in the back of the room thank you [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign too good evening Welcome to our eighth grade graduation my name is Cameron lindstra and I'm the 2023 class president I would like to say I'm incredibly proud I am of our graduating class congratulations we've made it I think we all deserve a lollipop from shocks whether you're like me and you've been here since kindergarten or joined us only a few years ago it has been amazing to watch everyone become the people they are today I have no doubt that good things are coming for each and every one of us and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future this kind of goodbye can be Bittersweet especially since none of us many of us are going several ways in high school but someone should tell me don't be sad it's over be happy it happens so I can so I hope we can all leave because this ending is a new beginning thank you and I wish you the best of luck [Applause] good evening family friends faculty and guests my name is Emily Omen and I'm the salutatorian of the Brielle Elementary class of 2023 .
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good evening we'd like to begin tonight's regular board meeting Tuesday June 20th 2023 at 6 PM I will call this meeting to order and then ask that we begin with a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Chad Thompson if those of you here would stand with us for a moment of silence thank you 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 thank you I will now ask Miss Wilson to please call roll Mr Chad Thompson here Miss Laurie wood here Miss Sheila eugetti here miss Jill Humphries here Miss Rhonda page here Madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you very much that will take us to tonight's agenda the public hearing is what we'll begin with for the proposed 24 proposed budget for adoption presentation let's start with that Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members as we presented in our work study at our last meeting proposed budget we will have our public hearing and part of that is to review the budget once again and anybody that wants an opportunity to speak can do that thank you okay board members Dr McCord um president wood you have seen this presentation in totality we added one or two slides since we proposed so we're going to go a little bit quicker over some of the items that are repetitious and get into the nitty-gritty of the things that are important to remember about this budget adoption and then a quick reminder that we will need you to sign off on the cover sheet at the end of the meeting this evening there is an action item associated with this presentation and finally I wanted to introduce our brand new budget manager Mrs Lauren torska and she's here with us tonight and so she will be asking you guys to sign the cover seat so so to begin today's presentation the only thing that we added at the end was the estimated assessed values we did not share that at the last meeting and then to go into the introduction just at a high level note that this is the first time I think since I've been here that we're actually adopting a budget or we're actually asking you to adopt a budget that the legislature is fully done with so that's very exciting and they were able to complete that um before we even proposed which was also very exciting and then overall just a reminder that all of the proposed budgetary changes on spend are fully aligned to the Strategic operating plan as well as to the mnl override commitments that we made back in November of 2019 and that's reflected in the next few slides so finally the basis for all of our budgets of course is our student counts which is defined as our 100th day average daily membership so note that when you look at the fiscal year 2023 revised number two you note the 31 233 in-person students and then note that the 2024 proposed includes a reduction of 400 students you can see that the Arizona online the part-time and the full-time have been changing but you can see at the bottom are expected total ADM is 31 171 but I also wanted to share that the fiscal year 2023 data is still changing and just a reminder that the department of Ed does a final recalculation in early July we are expecting positive news associated with that and that will result in a higher than what we are proposing budget balance carry forward so we already know that our budget is going to be better than we're sharing with you tonight so that's good news so this is just a graphical representation of our student counts over time we always start with fiscal year 2019 that was the year in which there was the spring of 2020 that that we entered into the pandemic the coveted pandemic age and so you can see that in fiscal 19 we were at 32 933 and we actually gained about 150 students for the first time in a few years but then you can see that we have seen some decline since that point in time so budget parameters so the Gilbert Public Schools budget student accounts assumptions again I've already shared this average daily membership decreased by 400 ADM the aoi and full-time and part-time are set equal to what we had before we proposed and the same thing with the total add-ons weighted student counts also based upon the recalculation we are expecting more add-on weighted student accounts as well not just an increase in the average daily membership Miss betz real quickly did did that change significantly now that we know that the budget was there any change to that by the state no no okay additional decisions it was just our data our data that's continuing to change thank you but fortunately it's continuing to change in a positive way and not a negative way uh so the approved State K-12 education budget the 2023 bla base level amount was 4775 dollars and some change an increase of 2.92 percent gives us another almost 140 dollars per student giving us a total of 4 900 and almost fifteen dollars per student the reminder that two percent is statutory it is the lesser of two percent or inflation but there was a 0.92 percent increase approved replacing the results-based funding allocation okay uh then the approved State K-12 education budget parameters so there is a free and reduced way uh a free and reduced lunch weight increase classroom site fund was 708 dollars in the current year going up to 758 for next year the district additional assistance K8 and 912 slight differences in those two but a note that there was a 9.4 percent increase to the district additional assistance um that was a very large increase that we have not seen in a while and then the additional one-time funding we should note that almost 8.8 million dollars of one-time monies that was allocated out and our budget puts that eight point nearly 8.8 million dollars into unrestricted Capital again for the same reasons that we've made those decisions in the past one-time money going into a arguably one-time spending fund but we have flexibility with that 8.8 million dollars so our m l budget capacity so these are just a comparison of all the parameters that go into our calculation and note that the transportation Revenue control limit stays the same the teacher experience index note that we do continue to see a decline again this is a calculation that looks at the entire State and Compares Gilbert Public Schools against the average of the state so we're still above the average but still decreasing slightly also important to note the transportation support level feeds the information into the transportation Revenue control limit because of the the fact that the legislature improved approved excuse me a two percent increase to the transportation support level we have narrowed the gap between the revenue control limit and the support level which is a savings a direct Savings of over a million dollars to our taxpayer just wanted to remind you of that as well and then budget balance carry forward details this was one of the slides that we did add this is just a reminder that over the past couple of years you all have made decisions regarding changes to policy DB is our budget policy so we're always looking at our budget balance carry forward and we are looking to see how much we believe we're going to assign for school carryover you all approved that any discretionary dollars that were remained unspent at our schools would come back to the schools in the subsequent year so we're holding that in reserve against our budget balance carry forward and then we're adding the assigned to the four percent carry forward Target note that we purposely put in language that it would be a Target and that dollar amount is about 10.7 million so unassigned budget balance would be 1.2 million dollars but remember that that um four percent carryover carry forward is a Target and we still have flexibility within that but we wanted to share that we're honoring the policy and express that information to you so before I go any further do you have any questions on any of that okay great so um here's the maintenance and operations budget capacity with the budget balance carry forward bbcf is the budget balance carry forward so note that the revised number two with the budget balance carry forward showed a budget capacity of 302 million dollars against the 2024 proposed which is 286 million remember that that 15 million dollars though is subject to one-time spend with one-time money we made the decision to pre-fund the Arizona State Retirement contribution so so that we eliminate the impact of the budget balance carry forward we actually do the same grid with out the budget balance carry forward so you can truly see the new money that comes into Gilbert public schools that almost 5.5 million dollars of new money okay so proposed maintenance and operations spend changes so the premium holiday credit back to maintenance and operations so it says here up to two holidays but you all have approved two premium holidays one will be implemented in the fall and the other in the spring in addition we have made an assumption of 400 student loss so we should see about a 20 FTE less of a need for teachers because of that student loss and we are monitoring our enrollment almost daily right now so that as otm is going through their process of allocating out FTE their accounting for changes in enrollment on the school by school basis so total budgetary savings about 3.1 million dollars in addition these are all the non-discretionary budgetary increases areas that we have minimal um if any control over so the premium increase you all did approve the premium increase estimated hourly increase for minimum wage we did increase or made a recommendation to and you have approved a dollar per hour increase to hourly hourly workers we are still concerned though that that will not be enough and so we put in a half a million dollars of monies in the event that it is higher than that and then General inflationary increases we've all seen the impact of increases in fuel and and all of our costs district-wide and then always budget for special education increases and then there's a small increase to Arizona State Retirement of about sixty thousand dollars district-wide so a minimal increase there so a 3.6 million dollar non-discriminary budgeted increases and then discretionary budget budgetary increases so again due to circumstances in which we had to respond to additional needs we have teacher mentors moving them to mno based upon the fact that federal funds are are being used up I guess uh the recommendation of principles High Junior High Assistant principals moving to 12-month short calendars again to facilitate movement across the organization and then the Title IX coordinator making it truly a title man coordinator and not a function under the office of talent management set aside for hard to hires and years of experience due to the difficulty of hiring math science mostly special education professionals we have increasingly been increasingly using hard to hire additional salary Awards and so we put two million dollars aside for that you will all approved 12 additional art teachers to ensure that all of our elementary school teachers have the same planning periods as all of our secondary teachers have but also to enhance the experience of our students in art at the elementary level and then because of the inflationary increases as well as the increased need in art materials also the recommendation of fifteen dollars per student more in the allocations out to our schools so that they have the necessary resources to counteract the costs of inflation as well as the additional day of art every couple of weeks every week so a total of about 3.8 million dollars and then and then the approved pay increases already that you have approved hourly staff I mentioned increased a dollar per hour exempt staff increased by three percent and then a total of about 9.8 million dollars in additional salaries associated with the pay increases again the note there regarding the fact that we don't know for sure whether we're done on the hourly staff due to the minimum wage we have not heard anything yet about what that minimum wage increase will be but we will know by September so so now what is our total budgetary increase need so available budget new money from the state of Arizona uh 5.5 million dollars about proposed budgetary savings about 3 million total non-discretionary increases and total discretionary increases leaves us with a deficit of about 8.6 million dollars district-wide so what is our next step to solve that that budgetary Gap so other fund contributions we know that Community Schools and nutrition services pays for their own employees and so the the hourly the dollar per hour increase will be absorbed by those two two funds also jeted is in there as well as the three percent salary increases for any exempt staff in those departments classroom site fund contribution we are now seeing a significant contribution from classroom site fund and so we are able to allocate out five million dollars towards our certified and exempt student support professionals at our schools so that will be offset by contributing five million dollars from classroom site fund and then the Medicaid fund contribution so we have estimated that we are receiving around two million dollars annually so that is an ongoing two million dollars to an ongoing two million dollar expense so you can see ongoing monies are 7.8 million dollars and then a one-time money need of about eight hundred thousand dollars so remember that this budget does already include though that we have taken 1.2 million dollars out of the district additional assistance and applied it to the revenue control limit or maintenance and operations budget so it's a total one-time need of about two million dollars so before I go any further are there any questions on any of that so all so all in the way of saying that we do have a balanced budget that we are presenting before you okay so proposed understand capital budget capacity uh note the district additional assistance is a little bit higher going into the new year remember that the district additional assistance is always calculated based upon the prior year average daily membership so even though we saw a nine percent increase in the dollar amount per student it only resulted in about a three hundred thousand dollar increase in budget capacity just because of the change in average daily membership year over year between 22 and 23.
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or Sydney would you please call the roll here Mathis here Meadows present present next I would like to invite and I don't know Ally to Our Guest today to please lead us in the pledge don't worry your mom will help 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 nice job Ali thank you next is the consent oh no um items to be removed or added from the agenda are there any items the agenda is correct okay public comment welcome to to the meeting there isn't any is there no you're doing great why don't you read it for breakfast yeah I know we'll skip all right then BPS partners Drew I hear you're filling in today okay good evening everyone um for the school board junkies watching at home you're probably wondering who is this person what has he done with Todd Swanson if you don't know me my name is Drew Ray and I'm the vice president of the Batavia Education Association Todd is currently spending some well-deserved time on vacation with his family in Cleveland which I'm actually super jealous of I even offered to go to Cleveland and Todd's place so that he'd give his monthly comments to the board and so that I could go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but we both agree to be easier if I came tonight to speak on behalf of the Bea so tonight I'd like to briefly address the Board address my fellow union members and to say a few words to our incoming superintendent and to a few words to superintendent Lisa Hitchens at her last BPS board meeting um to the board you recently voted to approve our collective bargaining agreement uh with the Bea our Union is thankful to the board and their negotiating team for some truly good faith bargaining I think it is the hope of everyone involved in the negotiation process that this new contract will help us retain our already amazing staff and to recruit the best and brightest Educators in Illinois to become members of our BPS family I am particularly excited about the district coordinating Council the DCC is something that's been tossed around for almost a year now as a means of monitoring our district standing committees and the ba is very happy to see it make its way into our new contract for those who have not had the opportunity to look at some of the specifics of this Council I wanted to highlight some of its key purposes number one smooth collaboration number two consensus-based decision making number three alignment of committee recommendations with the bargaining agreement number four proper coordination and scope management of Duties across committees and number five incorporation of an equity lens in all decisions and actions and I'm going to say that last part one more time incorporation of an equity lens in all decisions and actions I think that everyone in this room would agree that the best way to support all of our students is to do it together while making sure that all voices are heard considered and acknowledged in the collaborative process and I'm hopeful that the DCC will be able to do just that uh to our membership your ba officers hope that you are enjoying your well-deserved summer break this last school year had its fair share of ups and downs for so many of us and we hope that you are taking this time to recharge spend time with your family and friends and to do the things that make you happy so you are ready to come back in the fall to do what you do best and that's teaching supporting and caring for the students of Batavia the Bea would also like to again welcome incoming superintendent Tom Kim to Batavia the Bea is excited to roll up our Collective sleeves with Senior Management and to do the good work together it may be summer but that doesn't mean that there isn't time to work towards addressing the needs of our students and staff and finally to Lisa this is uh the last board meeting which is capping off 19 years in the district correct whether it was in the classroom as a BHS administrator or as the superintendent you've had an impact on thousands of students and staff members and I know you're a math person and I'm sure that's gone through your brain that it's thousands and thousands I I I'm not a math person so it's up there all right on behalf of the Bea I would like to say thank you for your service to our district and we hope that you cherish every moment of your retirement and revel in this new stage of your life happy pride month happy belated Juneteenth uh thank you for listening I hope everyone is enjoying their summer thank you thank you drew all right next is committee updates anybody have any summer no committee updates right that's right now is the consent agenda so according to our board policy we designate a portion of the agenda as a consent agenda for the items that are usually do not require extensive discussion before board action these items are generally routine recurring and can be grouped together for efficiency Steve here we go 4.1 and 4.2 are the approval of the May 23rd 2023 regular meeting and closed session meeting minutes 4.3 is the approval of the May 31st 2023 special meeting minutes 4.4 is our monthly Personnel report 4.5 is our monthly payroll and bills 4.6 is the destruction of our closed session recordings from December 21st 2021 4.7 is our donations we'd like to thank Richard Carl and the Batavia mothers club for their donations 4.8 is our policy second reading 4.9 is the approval of our Cisco smartnet Flex renewal 4.10 is the approval of Microsoft volume license renewal 4.11 is the approval of our PowerSchool sis and enrollment Express renewal 4.12 is the approval of the school Erp Pro subscription 4.13 is the authorization of the intergovernmental agreement with HFS 4.14 is a certification of our hazardous bus routes 4.15 is the resolution solution authorizing intervention in a property tax appeal and 4.16 is the approval of the consent agenda anyone have any questions I'll jump in because couple questions about the policy report and then I know Raquel had a couple questions so if I don't capture them please thank you very much for reading it first of all that is it is you know 300 pages that comes at us every few months and one of our goals as a view board meeting junkies know that our goal is to try to align our policies with the Illinois Association of school board version of it because there are so many things that change and so this one um so there's nothing substantive other than some of the things we pointed out with face law changing but some of the curriculum pieces what happened was we tried to Homegrown grow our own policies over the years and so what you see is policy 6040 curriculum development you see 6 220 instructional materials and adoption you saw 6 to 10 and 2 220.
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it's a Croco a thief here Falk present and Phil yes Nolan Papas here vote Gorman here we need a motion second to approve tonight's agenda so moved second Nolan yes Pappas yes Gorman yes all right please join us as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice forever all right thanks to everyone coming out tonight nice beautiful day thanks for everybody at home watching Dr sir um thank you we have our CEO president with us tonight we have committee members thank you for coming out we have the administration present for various reports including the handbook and some school instrument plans so thank you for joining us tonight we'll move on to public comments we have a couple this evening uh Gene Meyer first no just hit the button there June okay so green light green light it doesn't really like to go down for a short person okay hello Gene Meyer Masters prepared registered nurse Christian I'd like to thank doctors Morgan Stern and Nolan for greeting me on my first and subsequent visits and today um Mr Gorman greeted me in a friendly way and that makes a difference in 1971 at age 11 I was called the sexless sixth grader I walked and dressed like a boy and I went through severe that's all capital letters emotional distress at puberty changes I'm sorry this is emotional leading to insomnia nausea social anxiety hair loss there was no one else in my school like me I am so thankful that I had no encouragement to decide my gender or change my gender because I got over it by early High School I was a quirky tomboy who accepted and celebrated my Womanhood I hope you can hear the love and compassion in my voice when I talk about these young people with gender dysphoria there are many young people who like me got over their dysphoria and are detransitioning studies show that youth who experience gender dysphoria often ultimately become comfortable with their birth sex so I was not unusual two young women in the news are 18 years old and are suing the California hospital system for mutilating their bodies at age 13 and 15 with bilateral mastectomies we consider this a tragedy when my mom had bilateral mastectomies for breast cancer having had her breasts removed at age 13 Layla Jane says nobody none of my doctors tried anything to make me comfortable in my body or meaningfully push back or ask questions they only affirmed why is it acceptable for 13 year olds to mutilate their bodies these young ladies want their breasts back now and they will never breastfeed a baby their body parts are gone this young man willfully castrated himself and had his penis removed three months ago he says I started this dream nightmarish hell that is sex reassignment surgery dilating as hell everything is sensitive or sore my leg movements are while better than before still pretty limited I feel constant stinging unburning Sensations pretty much around the clock in my crotch area this is probably the most suicidal I've ever been since I actually transitioned this vaginal Canal which is actually a blankety-blank open wound has given me nothing but Grievances and blanky to blank I'm tired of it I've actually been considering asking my surgeon whether or not it's possible to just close this pseudovaginal canal or just get rid of it all together I wish somebody had told me even just a third of what a hell ride this was going to be but nobody did and now I'm stuck with this nightmare I pretty much consider just stopping dilation the canal will shrink so what maintaining it is pretty much keeping my whole life prisoner of this thing while I don't like what I've read what I had before it still allowed me freedom for comparison this is like going from parole straight to solitary confinement this young man three years into post-sex reassignment surgery still having discharge and pain I find life very draining these days I have to clean my vagina with isobatadine to keep smell away and to keep the discharge at Bay I have to dilate once a day still I should have thought things more carefully through I thought sex reassignment surgery was a wonderful end point to a difficult Journey it opened up a whole other can of worms I could have I I wish I could have just had the vagina closed up at this point I don't see myself ever having sex again either way I know I should be grateful for having had a surgery of 22 thousand dollars for free paid for by the government but I feel lied to I feel stupid encouraging young people to decide their gender and begin transitioning without parental consent is not what the vast majority of we the people of this school district want making special groups of people is divisive it's not inclusive we want academics taught in the school district not social engineering it's Marxism I will be praying for each one of you thank you all right next week Dave Chapman uh good evening uh on behalf of CA I would like to thank you Dr Stern for your years of service I know you've held many different roles throughout your time here from Principal all the way to superintendent so we appreciate all your time and commitment over the years in the district also as a union we would like to wish you the best in your next chapter in life so enjoy retirement thank you thank you all right next up Mike McMahon hey John Mike McMahon I'm just going to talk with trustee for Plato Township um there's been a few things um that I'm a little concerned about that the board doesn't really talk to the township very much a lot of communications aren't very good and um you know I we had an issue at the at the township or excuse me at the county the other day with um solar panels and the dispute was with citizens not wanting them citizens wanting them and so on and so forth and as I sat there I said you know this is right next to where you guys wanted to put the school and it's probably not the best place for school we kind of decided a lot of people decided that apparently why don't you think out of the box a little bit I thought there's no reason the school couldn't have said hey Solar Company maybe we can use this cup use this and get some Revenue out of this for 25 years I mean come on let's start thinking out of the box and talking to the township as well we have ideas that all right let's move on to action reports you need a motion a second to discuss and approve the consent agenda so second so in your board packet you have the revenue expenditure reports revenues are currently at 52.41 compared to 52.28 a year ago expenditures are at 70.69 compared to 66 66.48 a year ago um this past month we received 134 362 dollars in Impact fees for 17 home starts um and no transition fees also included is the bills payable report for Central and Northern Kane both are typical in in the month of June we're wrapping up the school year um so there's a lot of there's a huge volume of them we're preparing for next school year for anything that we can get shipped and get in before the end of the year and then included in there I always try to point out some of the bigger payments so you have bond interest payments for 462 thousand dollars you have Chromebooks and monitors for about eight hundred and two thousand dollars and then we've got some the final construction bills for the new Transportation Maintenance building of 343 000.
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so worth it all right called me in the order it is 4 31 pm thank you all for joining us for the special board meeting you call a roll please all right uh Noreen Friedrich is absent uh Andrea Corey here Lisa Schumacher is that Greg Meyer here Tyson search is here Adam himkin here and Kelly Moyer here we have a quorum thank you very much for base stay with me and recite the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America choose the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty perfect thank you Welcome to our visitor that just joined us appreciate you coming in exactly exactly right all right and I think public comments hearing on we'll go right into the items for Action our first one is the approval of the survey for the high school expansion yes and that is for I think I believe 32 000 correct dollars and that will be the survey that does the topographical um the the lines all of the things that are needed for the construction that we are doing at the high school I will say that I looked at the survey a year ago when we discussed to do it with the parking and whatnot and the road expansions and it was about the same amount the surveys are a little bit different because this is more for this there'll be a aerographical 3D and whatnot um but as far as the price they didn't go up that much so okay Administration would recommend that we approve it as presented perfect not to exceed the 32 750.
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off icer testing testing testing you hear me test test thank you [Music] not gonna fall asleep we call the meeting to order would you please join me in a pledge of the flag and remain steady for a moment of silence I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God an individual with Liberty justice for all please keep in your thoughts this evening John rayon Peter kazalakis and Rick godella all past teachers employees of gray Lawrence who have passed in the men and women protecting us around the world hey thank you very much okay would you call the uh roll for the purpose of attendance please Ms Fitzgerald here is this one yes president Jay would appreciate a motion to accept the minutes of Jude 6.
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tonight will be a good uh a good meeting but a brief meeting uh as we move uh through a very uh short agenda so uh we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance and I'll leave that in the flags to the back and the right I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [Music] no I think it's my uh my grandson is in first grade and he can recite the pledge I just think it's so cute when those little guys get up put their hand on their heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance you smile and cry at the same time it's just a great uh great thing so okay so um in the summer there'll be no student reports so we'll move right to the superintendent's report sir okay thank you very much um Lou good evening everybody great to see all of you um it's great to be here um at Canton High School for our last board meeting of the school year and in a few minutes we'll look forward to hearing from Mr depipo and Dr Kidwell on the highlights of the year at Canton High School um I'm very proud to say that we had um a fabulous High School graduation on June 9th thank you so much to Mr depipo and Dr Kidwell for all of your outstanding planning and the weather Gods cooperated in the way the rain stopped before the ceremony and went around us thank goodness so it was a beautiful ceremony Outdoors the senior graduates then went to cherryburg Primary School where I had the pleasure of helping to serve them dinner which is a tradition where the elementary school teachers who the students love to see their favorite elementary teachers from Cherry Brook Primary School in Canton Intermediate School they were there serving dinner as well before their post-graduation substance-free party which again was a success we also had our promotion Ceremonies for grade six at Canton intermediate school and I thank Mr Daniels for being there and saying a few words and we also had our grade 8 promotion last Thursday night and I thank Mr scheidler for uh for saying a few words during that evening as well so we've had a we had a great smooth end to the year with outstanding celebrations as I work to to close out all of my tasks as the ear finishes I want to let you know that Dr Grossman your incoming superintendent and I had a great transition meeting this morning so we've been communicating all along and I know we'll continue to communicate as the transition and Leadership evolves those are great meetings today um it's hard to believe for me that this is my last Board of Education meeting with all of you having been in the Canton Public Schools for 16 and a half years it's really hard to put into words what the past 16 and a half years has meant to me I truly have had the privilege of serving you as board members and serving the community partnering with the parents and as I said at my retirement party and as I said in my emails I truly am a blessed man I'm a blessed individual so grateful to have had this privilege over the years I have had the privilege of working with outstanding board members such as yourselves the most outstanding administrators teachers and staff members in the state of Connecticut and I know that to be true and I know that the district will be in great hands as Dr Grossman comes on board but I do want to take this opportunity not only to thank our community and our parents for your partnership for allowing me to come into your homes when when people thought you know I was crazy going to homes doing neighborhood coffees the community really responded well and I want to thank each and every one of you for your partnership and your support over the most rewarding times there have been many highs and many successes I'm proud of and then there's been many challenging times the most challenging of course being the covid years and I thank you for your support with the difficult decisions that had to be made during that time thank you I believe being a board of education member other than being a selectman is one of the most important ways to serve the community and I thank all of you for your service I thank you personally because you have continued to challenge me you know I thought I'd be in Canton just for a few years but I woke up every day still feeling challenged through each of your thoughtful comments and questions you continue to allow me to grow and for that I am eternally grateful I have grown both professionally but most importantly personally working with each of you has made me a better person and I thank all of you for that so it's hard to say goodbye but I know of the district is in great shape and I'll I will continue to hear great things about the district because of all of your service thank you very much [Applause] foreign that's all I have to report tonight okay so Kevin thank thank you and uh so much has been said but I'll just say it again that when you were here when we hired you and now you're leaving you you are leaving this District in much better shape than when you got here and that is through all the improvements and ideas and help in the mentoring that you've done and the way you've LED your boards of education and I've witnessed it now twice so I feel that uh I get it so thank you for all that you've done and you will be missed the good news is you're next door in Avon we hope to see you around town and check in with us from time to time and um you'll always be a a good person to run an idea or a thought by so uh if you don't mind we may do that from time absolutely so thank you thank you okay um as far as the board chair uh report goes I've asked everybody to come up with a couple uh goals and you know the term goal was probably the wrong word um I I re uh I took your input those that have given it to me and I changed it to board areas of review and attention and the reason why I've made it review and attention is because we will go through a goal setting process uh in September with our superintendent of schools that will talk about long range and short term and and more wide uh wide brush type things but for tonight I thought that we could at least provide the new superintendent with some areas to review and attention and I'm going to pass these out for everybody I think I have 12.
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here playing all right you know the United States [Music] thank you okay yes just so you know that there was no audience email so item three on the agenda is to talk about Elementary classroom expansion next steps and we do have Lisa and Michael from antonizing Associates who did the study they have brought a copy of the study this is the same that was presented at the board nice one so um you know the goal tonight is really to answer any final questions at the planning committee you know may have around study and then you can talk about you know from here I will add just one piece of information before we can open it up and that is that the Town Council has been reviewing the capital public board in its capital plan have recommended that we have 300 000 for this 23-24 fiscal year for classroom expansion to use however it's determine the best use right and trailers is one of the options certainly that's been presented in the study and then 250 000 next year because the board requested that Capital plan and approved it back in late January um and then we got to study I have recommended to the council that they've increased that 300 000.1 to 450 to give us at least a little bit more room based on the results and the destination travel will cost children the council won't welcome July 11th but there is a meeting tomorrow night I don't believe that the council has the desire to change 300 to 450.
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door please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance congratulations to God indivisible with liberty Justice song Jesse Yeah Gladys here okay here Bridget here Lauren here Ralph Louisa here Al Teresa present Michelle here Julie you are esteemed guests and friends um would you like to introduce yourselves for the group in case someone wasn't here last night uh good afternoon and thank you all for having us my name is Brittany Edmondson and I'm in National National Public Schools I started at the Academy coach and attorneys foreign good afternoon my name is Cheryl Mays I am a member of the board of education for Metro Nashville Public Schools and my name is the director of education and talent development guys good evening everyone uh so we've had two days to really enjoy a deep dive into what you mean to see what he had me so I just want to give a big thank you and Shout out onto the board of ed for making time to make those learning sessions and also to build City and Community leaders for making times love and big bang guitar and Nashville team um it definitely was a deep dive in all of our sessions to really understand the nuts and folks Miami academies and how to fully sustain it we know that our our national team has a sustainable model with its work they are 17 years in the making we are Danbury and we're looking for ways to make sure that it's sustainable for us and so we've given tons of information today and so as we have this board meeting I do ask that as we finish our presentation will take about 15 minutes maybe we do ask kindly that you take notes while we discuss some of these things and hold your questions until they end so that we can get through the presentation when we really address those the things that you want to address so um so yeah please they can't take notes and we'll just open it so uh what we want to do is just let the community know that with this model of course we want student engagement to be top tier of this model impacts the economy it impacts the workforce it also looks at the social aspect of students and also really emphasizes what it means to be a smaller learning community and this is something that we're looking to have with our high school we know that we're probably at 3 600 students now and we're gonna have huge 10 plus coming in year after year but we want to bring this model into that we can ensure that our students are not only Workforce ready but when it comes to Social and emotional learning and just being a general citizen you're being the most productive as possible so referring back to this this idea of having the academies I want people to know and I'll refer to Dr Brittany Evanson that this is just not another program that we're bringing today all right this is the transformation and I want people to really understand that this is a transformation of Danbury public school systems and I wanted to kind of talk about the difference between that thank you Brad so I think it's very important when you think about transformation to think about the impact and so before I really dive into um the difference between the program that we've had before and how we've tried to approach education or to that comprehensive model how we Implement a program in it it's not something sustained or not all students are engaged or it's not touching um very threat of what you're doing when you think about families and community and the workforce that are involved in every all of your stakeholders I want you to get a glimpse of the impact and so I am going to defer back to Cheryl Mays on this to talk about the impact because I think that it allows me to really talk about transformation in you to see the difference that there's something there yeah okay so overall I want to share a quick story with you so that you understand just a quick example of the impact uh in the first year that we implemented the Academy's model and uh one of the high schools that I am a represented that I represent um what we do as a business partner what we did was we developed a program specifically to engage the students in a Workforce Development type of environment we asked them to submit resumes for a particular job that they might be interested in with our organization and from there we would go to the schools and interview these students as though they were going to work directly in our organization before we got to that point we had to make sure that they understood how to write a resume so we sent a team to the school and we held a resume writing workshop with each of the students as a result of that what we found out with one of the young ladies who was in that Academy she reached out and she said oh thank you for telling me show me how to write a resume she was one of the first young ladies who went through the entire process her father as a turned out had applied for a job and he needed a resume in order to complete the process because we had gone through that that Workshop process with her she taught him how to write a resume based on her experience and he did get the job that he applied for so the impact is real it is extremely important that we pay attention to the Small Things um because we want to make sure that our children that we can see that ongoing impact I could share lots of success stories but I won't take up all of your time I just wanted to share that information with you so kind of going back to this idea of transformation what we're talking about is now with your schools which is the academy model you are involving all stakeholders and so it requires that your business partners are involved it requires such a Community Partners that your parents are at the table that students are part of this the teachers are part administrators your board of education your superintendent all of those people are required to be on the table and um as the transformation happens it is important that during that struggle your thing always you know Student Center and that cycle of continuous Improvement and you are thinking about that systems change right is going to have to happen so even this growth minds of pedagogy that's going on in classrooms and how do we support teachers and how do we put structures in place and resources in place to ensure that this model is successful and impacts every student that impacts a community that I keep talking about the threat of your schools and your workforcement and all of those things are impacted when before I'm doing this work and transforming the teaching and the learning that's happening that not only are your students learning their general education but they're learning it through the lens of they're learning it through the land of building we talked about earlier their social capital and position themselves for self-actualization and equipping them but we're also positioning teachers to grow something that you can Will as you expand on this model that you all give to that is necessary to train on is that distributive Leadership Model right because you're going to have leaders throughout the school so yes you have your executive principles there and now there are Cathy principles those assistant principles are taking more relationship well and your teachers are agreeing more leaders and your Community Partners are taking leadership role English students now as ambassadors are being leaders in this model so that distributed leadership aspect about the transformation where does it fall you know who's responsible for and we all share some compatibility every single teacher that's on the common planning SLC small learning community has a role and a responsibility you know that may look like you're a secretary or like if you are leading the work when it comes to interdisman planning or interventions or identity you know to your convention or the workforce part of it so that is a part of the transformation I also wanted to speak on leading that change and that is going to require what you who you all understand you know as a board what it looks like to change and think about Community we are now going to be leaning on and empowering equipment our teachers to leave that change and then positioning our students to help elimination can be talking about student boys they are going to be a part of this model and our parents to help you know in leading that change and so that truly is where talk about the transformation it's different when it comes to your partners and how they are involved in your school so no longer is it that as a partner and I'm a guest speaker now I'm intentional you know as a guest speaker because I'm in line with this apple in this Academy and I know these students that I'm working with they have a sense of the skills and knowledge that we're talking about they have interest in and so if it's intentional when I'm showing up or if I open my space for a field trip field experience that as it is industry related for the students and I am sure that every single student right has this opportunity to get out of the building that is transforming as a partnership as a business but also I'm going to go back to transforming the workforce and thinking about students assets and positioning them with those faculty and credentials and how do we make sure that they have the soft skills that their resumes already that they're interviewing they're a walking away how do we look at teaching and learning I'll be closer to prompted in our classroom supplement that mean that or how I get students engaged to increase that literacy and their members and how is that aligned to us our plan industry as well and so that's why it's so important that every single stakeholder internal and external part of this work is always a part of the conversations and the changes that may happen as you bring them Pathways when you look back at is this pathway still one that is viral when it comes to students being able to track into like post-secondary you need to come back to that and all of those people are at the table and then no decision moving forward is made by one group right and so if there's a transformation and reverse is just a program to be implemented and it's a sustainable model to where you think about succession right through those problems going with the board or your teachers or your management groups or even your students that graduated come back and live in Danbury and pour into the education system that they understand the impact because they have those stories and transform the way they show up and you see the benefits thank you for that because I want to let everyone know that this process didn't happen overnight they are again 17 years in the making it they're doing great things and so I can prefer to either share an orchard range what was that process like to get started with the academy how many schools did you start with was it all 12 Academy High School what was that like so it was um it was a challenging start because a lot of the the community did not truly understand the process and they didn't understand the the mission uh initially there was a lot of conversations that had to be had with community members of parents Partners about what the impact could be what it could look like and where we were trying to get to it was important for us to have those conversations because we wanted to increase optimums and decrease the overall absenteeism it was important that we had those conversations so it was a slow start and just for transparency I I've been a partner with the academies of Nashville for 16 years and I've had my children go through the academics model so I'm speaking to you from several different lens uh that the lens of the parent School Board member and a business partner so I've been heavily involved in the academy for a really long time and as a parent I can tell you it was a cost savings when my son decided to go to college he already knew what he wanted to do he didn't have to guess at it because he had spent time with business partners to learn to get a more of a deep dive into what a particular industry looked like from him and he found out if that was something that he really wanted to pursue so it saved me as a parent money from him changing his Majors when he got to college because he knew when he got there what he wanted to do it did not take long before I Community to get on board once the once there was an understanding of what the outcomes the expected outcomes were and what the mission was we wanted to improve academic outcomes for our students across the board and this was the best way that we could do that and it came with increasing our public private Partnerships that assisted in helping us get to that goal so um I can't say no clearly I'm invested and uh it's absolutely going to be um key for your community to be invested as well so um so with this whole process you see the numbers you see then and now there had to be some kind where people have to sit back and celebrate sub reflect on current practices that's what I'm doing now effective when I can look at what I'm doing to take it you can see if this if this is going to be effective for the due process it just happened look at your demographic of students look at your community look at your business and take all of them and see what's best take and I want to allow Sharay to talk about that business instructor how they came into play when it came to the academy saying how that structure was now thank you um so what's the business engagement structure and I just want to point out that it's catching up about what Cheryl mentioned and what Britney it is truly a collaborative effort um it's a you know when we started the academies of Nashville it it's called academies of Nashville on tonight academies of Metro Mountain Public Schools would all be safe it's for the community and so it requires all of these different Partnerships to make it work and with that we've had a different groups that help support this work it didn't necessarily start with these four different structures necessarily it started out with two and then we ended up building on it as we grew because we started office four high schools in the beginning and now we have 12.
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for your life good evening and welcome to open session is now seven o'clock this is the June 20th 23 meeting of the Azusa Unified School District governing board we'll now proceed with item 4.1 our flag salute you please join me in saluting our flag place your right hand over your heart ready begin moving to item 5.0 report action taken during closed session in closed session the board approved by a majority four to zero vote uh immediate unpaid suspension and dismissal charges against the permanent certificated employee TX 6116493 the board has authorized and directed the superintendent or his designee to serve the charges upon the employee and to provide all appropriate legal notices and otherwise effectuate this process the employees shall be given a period of 30 days after service of the charges to request a hearing before the commission on professional competent in accordance with Education Code section 44934 if no hearing is requested the board shall proceed with the employee's dismissal since this matter involves sensitive employment matters and given the need to respect personal privacies the board will not comment further on this matter at this time the roll call vote was as follows the eyes arianis Beau Greer and Rodriguez Pena the nose zero abstentions zero moving to item 6.1 Mr Ortega thank you Dr Beau um tonight we wanted to recognize uh Daphne Pineda Mr Sanchez is definitely online you happen to know I do not see Daphne online thank you um so I'll move forward um we wanted to recognize Daphne for her service uh on the school board as a school board member representing Sierra High School but I also wanted to take a little bit of time to also share that she sits on the student advisory Council uh happened to be at Sierra High School during Awards night and she swept uh the night uh winning uh and being recognized uh for various scholarships and for uh various accomplishments at Sierra High School she also has a distinct honor of making all of our eyes watery at our last uh board meeting I'm just so proud of of Daphne of her service and what she has been able to bring to our district and so just want to wish her uh as she embarks on the new chapter of her life uh the best thank you um I have a certificate that we were going to present to her but we will be sure that she does receive it it's this is a unified school district certificate of recognition is probably to present Daphne Pineda for outstanding service as a school board member on the Azusa Unified School District Board of Education dated June 20th 2023 signed by superintendent Ortega and what president Dr Sabrina ball and I want to let uh Daphne know that she did a great job sitting here with us and we did appreciate her input she always had something to say which is good this is the reason why we do like well want students to be sitting on the board because if they you know they they're at the school site we're not there so they have firsthand input on a lot of situations that are going on so she did a really good job on that and I really appreciate her and and I wish her the best of luck in her uh future Journeys thank you good evening Daphne if uh oh I'm sorry oh I did it everything of course uh Daphne we wanted to uh tonight uh take a quick uh time out to thank you uh for your service as a student board member uh I have had uh the awesome opportunity to not only see you in this role uh but to see you in the role of a student advisory council member uh I have been able to see and hear and listen and appreciate uh your voice and the voice that you bring uh to Azusa Unified School District as a student of Sierra High School you're a champion for that high school um also shared that I was there the night of the award show where you took so many awards uh rightfully so for all your accomplishments and your scholarships and we were just super thankful for again the ability to partner with you over the course of this year and now as you begin your new chapter uh in life we just want to wish you uh the best thank you and and Daphne I'm here to present this certificate this is a unified school district certificate of recognition is policy proudly to present Daphne Pineda for outstanding service as a student board member on the Azusa Unified School District Board of Education June 20th 2023 signed by superintendent Ortega and what president Dr Sabrina bow and I also wanted to add that we do appreciate you sitting here and giving us your input because you always have something to say and I think that was great because that's the reason why you sat there right I mentioned that you um you students know what goes on in the school sites and we're not there but it's great that we hear input from you and we do appreciate all the luck and God bless you in your future endeavors so um Daphne as as you were walking up it was my turn to say something about you and I was actually going to speak to a the video the TV or with the zoom like Daphne if you're out there you know what I really want to tell you is that um I I Echo what has said about you uh this year actually this school year because our school year um does not align with just the year I Met You in I believe it was uh right before you came on um you had already been elected and um we went out for uh some training and it was a lot a lot of training but you were so excited you were so excited to represent you're a high school and that enthusiasm and that Charisma we saw throughout the whole year whether you were at home giving you know giving your update or you were here and keep up that leadership quality that you have because it's it's big it's big I can't wait to see what comes next for you good luck just want to thank you for your input uh my mind goes to at least at least a handful of just critical moments when there were things that were being discussed and apologies for the times when we don't always always think to ask but but with what the student preferential vote is but there are a number of times where you said actually wait before you before you all vote I I have some input I there I have an opinion as well and uh just very very grateful for the opinions that you shared and the ways that you've LED and so um just bless you as you go and as you continue to lead um in your endeavors uh moving forward from here thank you Daphne I echo my colleague sentiments your Poise your confidence your presence your insistence on embodying and representing your student peers has been an invaluable learning experience and it's been such a pleasure to serve alongside you congratulations and best wishes on everything that's to come you have anything to say Daphne come up to the mic if you like I know you have one last word to say to us yeah I wanted to thank you guys for not making me feel uncomfortable speaking up because I do like speaking up and I did like representing Sierra and it was nice that I got to do it with this district with these kind of people you guys are very considerate of like getting my input even if it doesn't seem like you guys are doing it I really appreciate when you guys do want my input and thank you for the experience I like really enjoyed it and I hope I can take this experience with me in the future so that I can I don't know it was good advice everything that all of you have given me individually and I thank you all thank you Daphne moving on to item 6.2 Mr Fernandez good evening uh Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees uh my name is Gabriel Fernandez proud principal at Azusa High School we have a room full of CIF competitors here tonight as well as some other students from Azusa High School that we want to recognize and thank you for your time in recognizing our students and our student athletes um first of all if I can have our our coach for cross country our coaches for cross country come up to the mic cross country one league and sent many Runners to CIF competition but I'm going to let our our coaches do the talking for themselves about their team good evening my name is Patricia Dorsey and I am the proud coach of cross-country team for 26 years and this team um won a league championship and got to participate in CIF this year mostly seniors but we also have a freshman on the varsity team really dedicated we were out there 6 a.m every day in the summer and on Saturdays during the season they just are a very special group to me because this was my last year of coaching um and I'm saying goodbye to some seniors here that are going to do great things appreciate it I'm a coach loera um I just want to say uh congratulations to our seniors that are graduating an amazing season uh these students are really uh really what we would want to see you know more of a high school just the work ethic they have both on and off the field you know with full work they were part of the reason why our cross country team had the highest Collective GPA on campus and that's something I'd like to continue I want to say a congratulations so honor working with you guys great he's being humble but coach larae is going to be taking one of our approaches taken over for Coach Dorsey next season continuing the Aztec spirit with cross country uh next I'd like to have a coach uh Falcon come up for track and field oh good evening Miss team board members of the cabinet parents in attendance student athletes it's been a pleasure to uh take our uh a lot of our athletes again this year to say I have prelims um the 15 years that I've been coaching I've had a good Mentor in coach Dorsey uh we actually brought me along uh groomed me to be uh to help become the the head coach for the boys Varsity squad um every year as far as I can remember we've always had somebody a number of our student athletes attend uh make it to a CIF prelims uh We've also had a few of them go on to a CIF finals uh my biggest pleasure was having one of our students actually break a School record that stood for 30 years um Angel Toscano she now holds the girls discus record at 108 feet and I think seven and a half inches the previous record was held by oh I can't remember the student's name but her record was a hundred feet and eight inches so when she broke that record I said okay my job is done but it continues um so I'd like to recognize a few of our uh athletes have made it um to uh prelims Alexa Sanchez please stand I know you're here somewhere yeah those were the only ones that were able to show up we have we had seven uh seven athletes uh make it to prelims this year and it's been a pleasure coaching them and we'll see what happens next year thank you our head coach for softball was unable to make it this evening but see our softball team made it to Second Round CIF competition and we wanted to give a huge shout out to our girls softball team who has enough extraordinary record for the last couple years um competing representing Azusa with pride so our hats off to our softball team for the lady Aztecs as well this evening we're gonna turn over you Dr Bill yes Mr Fernandez um will you help me gather all of our uh awardees and Broadway Ernest will be presenting certificates you want to start cross-country first yeah okay so all of our cross-country athletes as well as coaches thank you a Souza Unified School District certificate of recognition is proudly presented to a Souza High cross country team for excelling in Mountain View League Play and advancing to the California interest in interscholastic Federation playoffs CIF so June 20th 2023 um congratulations you guys how many of you guys are seniors wow amazing amazing let's give them another round of applause I I don't know how you guys like how many miles do you guys run Allah yeah yeah I I'm running a mile and I'm I'm dying I I you must be in a great hit headspace to to be able to do that and I commend you for that because not everyone can do that I can't um maybe I could but I I don't want to so we're gonna go ahead and take a picture um colleagues uh board members foreign I want to congratulate all the students um on this a great award and also I want to thank coach Darcy for her time and her service at Jesus Unified School District and you're passing the Baton to the perfect person Mr Louis right and congratulations to everyone in your future endeavors thank you and this certificate a Souza Unified School District certificate of recognition is proudly presented to a Souza eye track team for excelling in Montague and Mountain View League Play in advancing to the CIF Playoffs today June 20th 2023 we could have the track team come on board members and for our final recognition this recognition is proudly presented by a Souza Unified School District two the Azusa unified sorry start again okay Azusa Unified School District certificate of recognition is proudly presented to a Souza High softball team we're excelling in Mountain View League Play and advancing to the CIF Playoffs today June 20th 2023 let's give them a round of applause and no no softball okay um I I um I'll give this to you to say one of the Mrs Dorsey I I don't know if you remember me um I I was not your student but I I I know a lot of your students and those students are my nephews and nieces that absolutely loved having you as your coach and as a teacher so as you are now going to depart and not be a coach anymore um you know all all the lives you've touched um now they're grown and have their own kids and to this day they still remember the amazing person that you are so being you and don't forget to come and visit that's right and to all you athletes whether you're here you're at home just remember it's not easy being an athlete and having a GPA of what did you say at cumulative of a right that says a lot that's that means you didn't get home to like 6 6 37 you ate you did homework took a shower and did it all over again so give yourselves a round of applause and to the parents give yours uh guys give your parents a round of applause for all the rides okay and the food I just want to congratulate all of you students Azusa uh high school for putting Azusa on the map all you students did a great job and it's true you have to go home and do your homework keep up your studies keep up with certain GPA and still run fast and play bar whatever you do keep up the good work when you go on to college and keep us on the map thank you foreign yes and I similarly just want to say congratulations incredible love love to see this and once again another night where we're not even done um there's so much more to celebrate and so just so grateful for all of our students for those that are seniors and so therefore graduating as you go on to to what is next uh keep keep doing all of this um just in a kind of new places in a new settings and you have uh set a laid a foundation for those that are following after you um to to have as high school continue to to be strong and great so just thank you for for all that you've done and congratulations and congratulations to all of our scholar athletes you've shown that you are not only uh tough physically uh you have meant the mental perseverance and endurance to take it the extra mile and so on this night we congratulate and recognize you we also have the honor of recognizing one of our top students at Azusa High School tonight uh going to matter uh move on to 6.3 sorry we're on 6.3 uh we're here to recognize one of our top students at Azusa High School graduating senior Elias El hoyek if you can come up Elias is our one of our members of our IB Program diploma program students he also received a quest Bridge scholarship which means full ride to University of Penn with for their engineering program he is on a plane in August but going to Canada to relax for a little bit before college starts but I just want to say I didn't have much time to know you but knowing the hard work that you put into the IB Program knowing a little bit about his life story his family moved here from Lebanon so it's not an easy path to to make it and then achieve one of the hardest programs in terms of the IB program and just persist with the help of the IB team and all the teachers at Azusa High School his parents and his sister who's videoing him right now just the amount of love and support and both the right program in place to get a young man with a full ride to UPenn we do appreciate your hard work good job sir if I if I if I can add something to that uh just for for all of our knowledge uh according to the U.S news and World Report uh the university uh that Mr El hoyek is attending is ranked number seven in the nation on behalf of the entire School District board and cabinet Azusa Unified School District presents this certificate of recognition to Elias El hoyak for academic Excellence earning a quest Bridge scholarship and a full ride to University of Pennsylvania this 20th day of June 2023.
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and then became the assistant superintendent for curriculum instructions which has been ever since Mrs Fisher was instrumental in the development of the instructional practices that we followed today she has also overseen she's been involved in many initiatives that the district has embarked upon in the last 10 years some of those initiatives have been building playgrounds at the elementary schools having Jax Courtside elementary schools and additionally during the pandemic especially was the main point of contact donations to families in needs these are just the highlights anyone who knows Miss Fisher knows that she's all about helping people whether it's the students the teachers administrators especially the organizations and the families in the community we really appreciate it I'm going to let uh Mr DeMarco he wanted to say a few Brooks well it's going to be a hard job to replace her because uh she's been here in a stalworth for the last 10 years it's been a pleasure to work with her she will be missed students staff and the community are going to miss Mrs Fisher we wish her the best of luck rumor has it and she's moving somewhere warm on a beach by the water you know somewhere that she loves um we will miss you and wish you well wonderful long retirement with all your endeavors [Applause] there are quite a few people here to see I'm gonna try not to cry but um I just want to say thank you um I was a teacher in Lebanon Township for 20 years and I thought that I um you know would never find somewhere that I could truly call home again and then I came to Bound Brook and um it was just an amazing experience from the moment I started here um the community is so warm and so welcoming uh the staff is incredible and um I'm proud to say that I've had a good hand in hiring many wonderful wonderful teachers to the district um to say that it's been a smooth Road for me is is not something that I could ever possibly say I've had a lot of challenges while I've been here um one was losing my son in 2015 and the way that the community embraced me was um just incredible uh it made it easier for me to move forward and to be where I am today so um after 31 years in education uh yes I'll be retiring to Florida sooner than we think and living in the sunshine which you know I fully really need to do but I'm blessed and I'm happy and I I feel like I've made an impact and an everlasting impression on many aspects here but I'm hoping that you know we just remember moving forward if you can do anything here you can take care of each other and I think that's something that I would buy from the moment that I started here and the last thing I just want to say is to Mr Demarco scarecrow I'll miss you most of all [Applause] let's have one last round of applause [Applause] so at this point we're going to ask everybody to come down towards the stage so that we can take a big group picture for the appropriately so for all of our students of the month our educator of the month please come forward [Music] today about what it's about the school 2015 Vice assistant I worked with the legislature in New Jersey for over 20 years exception and even though we didn't have pandemics we I got to know a lot about what was going on in different school districts the character so the families was cooperated with the branch rotary that had helped collect Foods branch of the food bank we also set up we have that executive chef with Maggiano's in our church kitchen and made entrees we had to sign up on their website uh that allowed families to sign up for Soups and entrees every week uh and this went on to start I think January of 2000.
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since so much of what Steve Jobs created is part of our daily lives I want to share one of his famous quotes as we take the next steps forward in our academic don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own as we all head in different directions next September I want to share the idea of being yourself whether that means playing a new sport exploring culture groups taking up an instrument doing volunteer work taking part in a school play or joining the course the four years are ours to explore learn and figure out what makes each of us who we are and maybe even what we want to be when we get older I know sometimes it can be hard we have all had those moments even here at Brielle where we feel most comfortable and safe when we've been to what other people are doing or saying because it feels easier than speaking our minds but is it easier I don't think so especially seeing you doesn't match what most people are doing or saying staying true yourself is always the answer I remember first coming to Brielle when I was just five years old and starting kindergarten in a new unfamiliar town here in Brielle I've made friends and learned many valuable life lessons and I know everyone else has to I believe that having a mentor in life is crucial to success having a person you can always count on the turn to can help you thrive in your career personally I would have to say my parents were my biggest mentions personally my dad is my mentor for soccer well my mom is my mentor in academics both my parents have helped me through getting into Communications and for that I am thankful and I guess I can't forget about my sister who is someone who I tend to have ups and downs with but always will have my back no matter what as we look forward to going into our high schools I know our parents teachers and administrators will be proud of us I know they have given us the road map to being our own unique selves and have instilled in us the importance of respecting other kids and their own path forward I'm really proud of us all we have all worked incredibly hard and deserved to have greatness come into our lives I know we are off to do great things who knows maybe the next Steve Jobs is among us but one thing I do know each of us will bring a special gift Talent idea or thought forward that will make this world a better place to the Brielle Elementary class of 2023 remember always dare to dream and never forget to be the best you thank you and good luck to everyone in high school [Applause] thank you good evening my name is Cecilia Scaris and I'm the valedictorian of the class of 2023 when I sat down to write this speech I initially struggled with what I wanted to say one message I wanted to leave with my classmates as we close our chapter at Brielle Elementary and head to high school I then thought of the Ed Sheeran concert I went to last weekend you might be wondering why is she talking about Ed Sheeran her graduation speech but he said something that really stood out to me he shared how a man once asked him what's the best song you ever wrote and his answer was I haven't written it yet I stand before you today with the realization that while we are closing an important chapter in our lives our future is a blank slate the best of our story has yet to be written I would like to take a moment to remember and honor this first chapter in our narrative most of us have spent eight full years at Brielle Elementary School and others have joined along the way we have seen the same faces every day and experience both highs and lows together throughout our journey at Brielle we have grown not only physically but intellectually I went from learning the alphabet and Miss Max kindergarten class to being able to write a research analysis tasks with Miss silver I first learned basic Edition and usually they learned how to factor quadratic equations and use the Pythagorean theorem with missile May at this point I think we can all agree that Nails on the chalkboard would sound more appealing than hearing a teacher announce it's time to take I ready once again but we balance it out with fun activities like field days and valuable Blazer events along it's hard to believe we just finished our eighth grade year where perform wraps about American history in Mr furcado's class and presented our science fair projects for Miss carton Mark cardamom and I know I will always remember hearing the funny stories from our favorite lunch lady this month as we've grown along the way there have been many challenges we had to face we survived the pandemic and those crazy months of virtual learning we wore Mass to school and even forgot what each other looked like we experience changes in friendships and learned a lot about ourselves in the process we were all one small scared kindergarteners and have evolved into mature eighth graders some of us more mature than others but we've grown up together class of 2023 all these memories are part of the first chapter in our story we now need to take our Collective experiences and knowledge we have learned at Brielle to face and while I am excited about this next step I sure am scared about the unknown how we approach that next step is up to us so go out find your passion and what excites you and follow that to the end we all have something to offer this world always be compassionate and kind as you find your path to success in this crazy world I want everyone in this room to remember that your future is a blank page your best song is still not written congratulations class of 2023.
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there's the one-time state aid supplement I had shared that that about 8.8 million dollars we have opted to at least for now put into unrestricted capital and then the budget balance carry forward you can see the um about 26 million dollars and then interest earned and this is another point that we've we've been sharing with you as well not that we're that our our goal or our mission is to is to save money and earn interest um but we have been a judiciously placing the available resources in the fund in which we are able to record and expend interest so you can see the difference between the 23 adopted of estimating twenty thousand dollars and ending up with nothing versus an expected 350 000 in interest earnings to be reflected in 2024 so you can see the budget limit friend restricted Capital this does include the budget balance carry forward again we're going to do the same thing with unrestricted capital this is what Sean really hates when they go backwards um so now this is the grid without budget balance carry forward so you can see the budget limit is about 26.8 million dollars so roughly close to ongoing available resources for and understood capital excuse me so now how are we spending understood capital so thank you [Laughter] she's just so excited I'm so excited right so the um the spending grid here before you are those items that that we feel that we absolutely need to spend for the for the 2024 school year so note the Chromebook and computer refresh dollar amount and note the school's request we are allocating out a soft cap to our schools again note the athletic equipment uniforms library books the reading allocation as well as district-wide technology and operations that are not necessarily planned but need to have some money available to them for unexpected expenditures technology of course houses most of the district-wide software Solutions so um infinite Visions as well as Infinite Campus which is our student student accounting software I do have one question on that question for Miss Newman ready Jen is this like I know we were breaking that payment into three payments or is this just an ongoing cost good evening um no that this actually is money that we allocated um to our schools we did purchase some additional materials yes for reading um foundations was another one that we use this money for okay all right thank you so in addition you should know that the the ready gen portion of this which is about nine hundred thousand dollars I think is actually a prepay for the next three years so we would see a commensurate decrease in 2025 and bond on that particular budget item okay yeah so right now with the 18.8 million dollars and knowing the budget capacity of about 26 million leaves us with about 8.8 million dollars held in reserves which excludes the budget balance carry forward and this just shows you in the pie chart how we're allocating out the resources that we know of today the fun budgets I'm going to go through these fairly quickly wanted to show the classroom site fund of course and this is why we have an opportunity to utilize classroom site fund to help us provide the salary increases to our staff um this is the history of the classroom site fund so you can see how quickly it's ramped up over the last three years Chris I mean what how it's not allotted by student necessarily how's the classroom site fund fun funded so it's funded um in two ways so at the state level it's funded by a 0.06 sales tax increase that has been ongoing since 2001 and then there's also a portion of it that comes from the state land trust based upon the rental earnings that the state receives from the use of State lands um so and then they allocated out based upon our attending weighted student count and it's also prior year student counts not current year so that's why we know what the budget capacity is right now for classroom site fund because it's set on last year's student accounts okay so it is it is student accounts but it's the reason it's so variable is it depends on how much they collect in sales tax or how much they collect in Revenue we don't know they're not they're not gonna set a certain number and then text to it they're just saying this is what comes in from it that's correct okay and then the joint legislative budget committee does that analysis every year and then they determine the allocation to school districts usually in the March time frame is this um both of these were voter approved the 2001 and then the land trust by the state of Arizona correct that's correct by the voters in the state of Arizona yep and then Medicaid again here is the confirmation you can see the estimated revenue of two million dollars which is the amount that we are allocating out to towards balancing our budget for 2024.
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all four of those policies talked about curriculum and instructional materials in some way and in some cases they didn't say the same thing and they were stepping on each other's toes and so which policy do we follow when there's three different places where we're talking about instructional materials so this is um us trying to say curriculum development belongs here our committees which CAC was in two different places in the contract and Raquel noticed that it was being crossed off of the one policy but it's still in policy in a different place and it's also in the teachers contract um and then that was the purpose of some of those things so they're trying we're trying to match press I think another question was about you know sometimes it says superintendent and sometimes it says superintendent or designee and I would say whenever possible we'd like to have designee I'm not sure why press crossed it off there but we can certainly um you know swap it back because there isn't I don't think um the new guy is interested in having that much detail about everything in policy a lot of it is or designee and then um there's also the part about goals and philosophy and that one is that's the board's work and so that is you know some of that strategic work you guys are going to do coming up here in your strategic plan is actually LinkedIn policy so policy is your law and so whatever you decide is our new strategic plan actually gets linked into the policy there's a section for it so that is upcoming work and if you want to know what our educational philosophy is now that's kind of where you go to find that like the Strategic plan is what we believe in and where we think we're headed um what other questions did we have about the policy there's one but um and it just said about the list of textbooks which I know that they're doing the curriculum work right now so then hopefully by August 1st we'll have a list of what each grade levels like textbooks um instructional materials are used in the district exactly that was a great point because like back in the old days it was when we were just very textbook based there was a list of textbooks but now it's curricular materials that are embedded within there's um Drew thinks I'm good at math but I couldn't even tell you how many Google docs there are right now with our curriculum and here's links to the different um learning letters and all of the curricular units and they all have the curriculum resources linked whether it's a textbook or some other resource and so they're working on so we just had our curriculum week which was very collaborative I can't remember how many people were there like 101 people 101 people worked on our curriculum for a week this summer and then Brad and his team will spend the rest of the summer trying to organize it and communicate it out including to the board about they're trying to curate all the resources in one place for One-Stop shopping 101 is that for all grade levels or only all grade levels all grade levels remember another quick question about that is um if there are textbooks or workbooks or actual like physical instructional materials will they have the publisher or the copyright date and any like the additions out of how many editions will that have that on there typically it does there's a list of items that we provide to the board um I think last month we approved the AP one the AP textbook and that's kind of the stock list of stuff that we have and the only other question I had is um will any of these changes be able to up have allowed this actual schools to update their own instructional material but I understand if he still has to go through CAC forth and then so so if there are like supplemental resources like a team or a PLC is working on they can bring those materials in in the philosophy behind that is like teams know what the kids need and it's constantly changing so they would take it as a supplemental material and then that would become over time hopefully an anchor material that all kids would get exposed to the harm in having it not go through some kind of process is that if there's a great material then all kids should get exposure to that that's Equity so we want to make sure that it's always working its way up towards an anchor material that all kids will be exposed to so there's responsive material so if something happens in the world or the community teachers can bring in materials to address that in a responsive manner but those things are like very time-bound right something happens we talk about it we process with our kids and then that material isn't brought back every single year the things that are going to happen on a more regular basis or that are augmenting our curriculum become supplemental materials and then hopefully they work their way up if they're successful with kids to Anchor materials where every kid gets them and I think that was in also one of the policies where it's like it's brought to the superintendent and presented to the board like we would like to try this out and so forth okay um uh no I think that's it good ones thanks for bringing them up anything else from anyone else that came out okay all right um hearing no further questions I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I moved second moved by RJ seconded by gilberg all in favor aye thank you motion passes all right time for reports all right so annual or monthly foia requests are up there we're required to show you who asked for whose foia's we answered during the prior month and treasurer's report same thing every month we bring those to you any questions on either of those before I turn it over to Tony for the preliminary budget the first of four times in a row that you will be talking about the budget but the first of last times the final time for me the first of four for this particular budget for you so every month you'll go back and revisit it yeah so this is the preliminary budget for fiscal year 2024 which starts on July 1st in terms of the timeline this is our first look at it it's still under development and will continue to go undergo revision for the next few months until we adopt it next month in July you'll see a tentative budget which we will put on public display in more of an official form we'll use the state's official budget form that we have to submit to the Kane County Regional Office of Education and to the Illinois State Board of Education we also use this summary document to accompany it so it's a little easier for the public to interpret and understand what's going on then in August we'll hold a public hearing which we're required to do so members of the public will have an opportunity and specifically have an opportunity to address the budget itself and then the board will adopt the budget in September and of course then in October there will be one more action that the board takes and that would authorize the administration to begin but at September we're going to be a full quarter into our fiscal year at that time so it makes it a little easier in terms of planning but the challenge with that is you think we would know more about our revenues and our expenditures and the reality is we don't until we're well into the fiscal year so we use this preliminary and tentative budget as kind of a blueprint for the blueprint as we start the fiscal year this uh attached to this item agenda is the summary there is an estimated 130 million dollars in revenues and 127 million dollars in expenditures in fiscal year 24.
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um and then also um Central 301 was awarded a fy23 digital Equity formula grant last year we did not qualify because we were in tier two but because we moved to tier one there was another round of funding that came out so this year we did qualify for it um it's an Esser funding so it's a one-time shot we were awarded 1.5 million dollars and it's more for technology use so in a in a sense some of these grants were trying to get schools to be oneed one one-to-one and because we were already done with one to one we couldn't capitalize on a lot of these grants so we've always we're kind of watching to make sure if there was ever something that we could use I mean we tried and we kept questioning could we use it for the next cycle because we're always cycling them and that was because we're already one-to-one we couldn't so some of our other Kane County Schools got to get that based on these funds so this one it was similar but we were able to get some other technology things so we actually talked to the state and found some things that do qualify that technology wanted to get done in the next maybe five years so we're able to push that up and some of it's the wireless connections between all of our schools Network switches and firewalls so it's kind of locking down security and things that they've been wanting for a while and eventually we're going to need we're just going to use this money for it when does it have to be used by um June of 2024 so the grant was 1.5 in each there's three parts and they're about five million 500 000 each so it gets you to that 1.5 um yes so we're just getting quotes and getting the best prices and trying to figure out what we want I mean they've already had their wish list so the work's been done has just kind of been waiting for the go um so now they got to go good which frees up our this from our own local funds so great the motion second to discuss and approve the middle school overnight track trip I'm sorry okay Falk yes info yes Nolan yes Pappas yes a thief yes Gorman yes second to discuss and approve the middle school overnight track trip so move second so um this is a trip that we mentioned last month's meeting we missed the board packet because of the the weekend before the board meeting is when they qualified for state of course the board agenda was already posted so we couldn't take action on it because it was within the 48 hours so that's why it's spring grew up forward now um along with the next action item as well all right hemp film yes Nolan yes pepis yes a thief yes both yes Gorman yes you motion second to uh prove the boys overnight track trip all right Nolan yes Pappas yes a thief yes Falk yes Hemphill yes Gorman yes we won vet agreement so any motion second to discuss and approve that affiliation agreement second and these are annual agreements have to be renewed annually for any um of course new clinics and then existing ones so that our students in the Veterinary assistance program can receive their externship hours all right Pappas yes a thief yes bulk yes Hemphill yes Nolan yes Gorman yes any motion a second to discuss and approve the refuse bill did someone Jack so um the bid went out to four different companies uh we usually do a two-year bid for our refuse um we got two back Groot and um Lakeshore recycling systems group came in with the lowest responsible bid um they had our current vendor so it would be almost no change so we recommend that you accept this bid and then there's a recap in the services agreement is attached all right yes Falk yes Hempfield yes Nolan yes Pappas yes Gorman yes second to discuss and approve the financial depositories second so this is an annual um an annual thing that we have approved every year we do it in June so you'll see a bunch of annual things come through here um these Old Second Bank and the Illinois funds the state treasurer's investment pools where we currently have all of our money um I always leave PMA Securities on there they did do our referendum money they gave me a better rates for that so these were the three that we're recommending from the new school year a thief yes Falk yes hemp film yes Nolan yes Pappas yes Gorman yes are you in a motion in second to discuss and approve the Student Activity fund treasurer come on second um another policy to sure um a year or two ago we moved all of our accounting for the bank Rex check request everything funnels through the accounting department now which it never used to um and so since I have treasure I'm Treasury and I'm bonded then that makes sense to appoint me to be the charger for it and then in the memo I listed all of the admin assistants that do all the legwork at the school so like Amy Rodriguez would be at the high school so they would put the PO in get the order from the thing put the POS in they get approved by you know their supervisor and then it comes to us to do all the legwork Central Middle Schools to be determined because they're in the process of hiring a new admin assistant Danny do you want to address why uh two of the schools aren't listed and two of the schools don't have activity accounts so we'll be another memo once CMS gets her the assistant are we voting on you're really voting on me being the treasurer this was just more information for you I can share with you who the new hire is but yeah we'll see you right all right Mandy folk yes Hemphill yes Nolan yes Pappas yes a thief yes Gorman yes we're gonna hear the motion in second to discuss and improve the audit committee so moved second so each year the Border points two board members to basically take phone calls from our Auditors they like to just um have a quick phone call it doesn't take very much um they would do it both for Northern Kane and for Central last year was Falk and Nolan and then Nolan Gorman the year before that so um I just need two volunteers I'll do it I'm happy it's a three minute phone call I'm happy to do it okay I'm Phil yes Nolan yes Pappas yes a thief yes Falk yes Gorman yes like Sydney Ocean second to discuss and approve the business approved business manager fluke and Dr mongan to be prepared for the tentative budget second so this is uh school code requires us to designate people the recommendation is myself and Dr Morgan it's kind of a team effort from a bunch of Administrators admin assistants we have Athletics we have payroll we have a big group of people that input on it so it's a pretty massive undertaking and um yeah your excitement is palpable more to come in August right right yes M Phil yes Gorman yes next to motion second required to discuss and approve the Resolute resolution designating interest in the Education phone operations and maintenance fund that Transportation fund working cash funds second so the board of education is required to approve this resolution in the four main funds which um Mr Garmin just the Ed fund o m transportation working cash funds and basically it gives us the flexibility to transfer this interest to other funds that might need it if that time arises in the future all right papis yes a thief yes folk yes some Phillips yes Nolan yes Gorman yes promotion second required to discuss and approve the resolution authorizing payment of custodial maintenance salaries and utilities so I moved second so in the isby budget normally operation and maintenance salaries and utilities are paid out of the education fund so it has been our history that we've always done this resolution to be able to pay custodial the maintenance and benefits or the salary benefits and the utilities in the O M fund which is where all of the other their expenses are but does require an it does require a resolution yep a thief Falk yes and Phil yes Nolan yes pepis yes Gorman yes they would need a motion a second to discuss and approve contracts with homeless vendors that exceeded a thousand dollars in net revenue so moved second and this is my last one for the night um so this one is for vendors that we do fundraising with that we net more than a thousand dollars worth of profit or we anticipate not that we will but um so it's all the same vendors as before um the mattress company that the football team used to do we took them off because there's no plans to do that in the future or this next year and then we added Scholastic Book Fairs so in the past some of the ptos have handled that a lot of the schools have taken that back in a lot of it in the past when they had the book fair the money would come back as a credit for more books but this year we were they were taking the cash and then using it for other things around the building so um so that's why I put it on here because they could net more than a thousand and some of them like Lily Lake they may or may not make it but in CMS it depends but at least they're on here yeah all right a thief yes Paul yes Hemphill yes Nolan yes happens yes Garmin yes any information items principal Christine Barr we'll share a presentation regarding pv's School Improvement plan hello everyone I'm just going to connect real quickly to the display all right okay this is my inaugural board presentation so I'm I'm excited about this this is this is good so I think my my parents are watching on the the YouTube channel so it's like my my uh eight minutes of fame here I know so it's good so I just wanted to uh first of all thank you so much it's it has been an amazing year at Prairie View we've had so much fun and I just want to share a little bit about what what happened to this year is our year in review so the agenda that I have planned for this evening is the theme of our year I want to talk about that which was our moments some student progress social emotional learning our attendance and then looking ahead to next year the theme for our Prairie View was our moments and it was based on the book The Power of Moments by chip and Dan Heath and so I I love this book for for several reasons it focuses on creating and celebrating the meaningful moments that will be remembered and so you know as you know as Elementary as you you know you've had elementary students or currently have them you know they they think about all those fun things that they do at school and those are the things they're going to remember um while we are you know also focused on their student growth we also want to focus on how you know just the power of moments so the staff was all given this book at the beginning of the school year that they were able to read if they if they chose to and then um we had a bulletin board so when you walked into our front hallway there was a bulletin board that said PV moments and so throughout the year we posted pictures of everything that happened during the year and the kids love to be able to see themselves so some of the moments that we had were this is just a sampling of them the first one and I think the most important was that we welcomed 100 students from hbt the the Twisters Twisted into PV and so we had an event at the very beginning of the school year that welcomed all of them so they could come in and get to know their school and feel part of the PV Community right away some of the other events that we had were PTO events the Fall Fest the VIP and me in the coyote crawl we have a really strong PTO at Prairie View which I'm really proud of and they do a lot of great work for all of us we had our family literacy night our Book Fairs and um a very moving Veterans Day assembly where the kids all participated and were able to create some really great moments for our our veterans that we had invited we had 100 day of school I think a really interesting uh numbers that we included in our moments was that our librarian checked out 33 031 books throughout the course of the school year so that's a lot of books in in kids hands to read and we also served 46 474 lunches so I think that's really interesting facts to and to include some of the great moments that we had so now it's our moment to learn our student progress one of our goals at Prairie View was to increase our percentage of students achieving three by three so students at third grade reading at a third grade level we had over a third of our students who achieved this metric one of the things that I'm really proud of with this district is that we set the bar really high for our kids and our kids achieve it and so we are as you can see from the the data from the bar graph that we had growth in almost every grade second third grade had substantial growth which was absolutely fantastic with the implementation of the new inter-reading curriculum the the teachers embraced it and the kids embraced it you know it's something new so we're all learning together as we went through this and they did a great job at the at the end of September with our weekly assessments which is one of the data metrics that we used to um to measure the three by three the students overall K-5 had an average score of 66 percent on the the weekly assessment by the end of May we were at 75 of that was our score and so that was um we had uh the metric was 80 of our students achieving at 80 on the weekly assessment so we just we just almost made it which I'm so proud of them because we made so much growth um so it was really great to see and I'm really excited about moving into next year now that we've all had a taste of this interreeding curriculum and know how great it is for our kids and the teachers have embraced it they're going to really do a great job next year for a 5x5 that was another goal that we had this year 43 of our students achieved the 5x5 one of our data metrics that we used to measure this is the our common unit assessments and those are the assessments that the kids take on Otis I'm at the end of a math unit at the beginning of the school year the unit 1 the average score um sorry 62 percent of our students achieved 80 or higher on on that unit test by the final unit assessment 78 of our kids were achieving at 80 or higher so I think that's really fantastic growth we also implemented a new spring math intervention this intervention allowed for kids to have authentic math conversations and so it was really fun to go into the classrooms and listen to them talk about math and teachers could hear what the kids were actually thinking and how they were processing through through their math scores I'm sorry through their math problems by the end of the school year the final screening that we did in the spring we had 80 to 100 percent of our students achieving at um on target for their for their grade level instructional level so those are really fantastic numbers and I I think you know you can see that all students in all grade levels grew and I really attribute that to the great teaching of course that goes on and then also um just to the new intervention that just helped to solidify some of those math skills that that the kids um we're using the next section that I want to talk about is Our Moment to grow and our social emotional learning our goal this year for social emotional learning was to decrease the number of office referrals from unstructured areas so the cafeteria the playground the hallways the restrooms we did have a decrease in incidents in the cafeteria the gym and the bus but we also had an increase in a playground in hallway so I I think that for the hallway you know any given moment we could have over 100 Kids moving through the hallway so there's bound to be something but those two spots are definitely on my radar for next year are those total referrals for the whole year um correct yeah yeah and this was an interesting piece of data I looked at our discipline our office referrals um over the past uh from 2020 on and in last year we had 615 students as our enrollment we had 13 of students um overall discipline incidents this year we had 100 more students and we only had nine percent of incidents so that's a 31 decrease in our discipline incidents for this year and as you notice in 2020 um to this year we are actually lower than what our 2020 uh numbers were and obviously that 2021 that is the year that we were in school during the hybrid so there was there weren't as many opportunities for office visits during that time and then um we had a slight increase in well a significant increase in 2022 but it's come down and so I'm really proud of you know our kids and um my assistant principal Mr peretta he brought this year restorative practices that we implemented and that has really been fantastic for um for our kids so one of the things that I attribute to our decrease in the cafeteria office referrals is our golden spatula and our Cook's choice and um so those are the kids I actually bought a golden spatula to um to show you know for the kids to to really get excited about but it was a a good opportunity for them to practice our be respectful be responsible and be safe in the cafeteria and then the cook's Choice Award is something that a student could be awarded if they were you know observed being exceptionally good following our rules they would get a Cook's Choice and then it could go into a drawing for the playground we implemented zones supervision and that's something that we're definitely going to carry over into the next school year and Beyond um the teachers signed up for zones and they were able to observe and you know monitor those areas it also let the students know that there was always an adult close by no matter where they were playing on the playground there was someone that they could go to some of our other methods that we have for our our school for our SEL is our Three B's so the be respectful responsible and safe and then we have posters that are uh that talk about what that looks like in different areas of the building so the cafeteria hallway restrooms there's all those visuals that are are around so that is definitely something we will continue to carry over to make sure that our kids feel safe and um and that they know what the expectations are and those are reiterated you know throughout the course of the the day and and the school year something new that we did this year that I was excited about was the student ambassadors so teachers were able to nominate students from their class who they thought would be really great leaders and so we met once a month and we had lunch and the kids were very instrumental in talking about ideas that they had and they were like they were really good like you know boots on the ground like what's actually happening out on the playground and they you know they were happy to tell you and so it was really great to to have that and um the kids were just they were so proud and they just really stepped up and it was so great to observe them being leaders you know outside of our our once a month lunches they were observed in the hallways being leaders and um cafeteria so that was really that was great we also implemented the everyday speech and then the Satchel pulse and that everyday speech the teachers could utilize and implement it within their classroom and then the Satchel pulse screener that gave us an opportunity to um you know find out if there were some kids who needed some additional support that we could we could help out with so we identified some kids and were able to get them maybe some supports that they that they needed so our moment to shine attendance so overall Prairie View has a 94.17 attendance rate which is great um however we also had 88 of students who were regularly present but 12 percent of students who are chronically absent um you can see from this chart that the EC and kindergarten had the highest rate of chronically absent students and then fourth grade had the lowest level a lot of our absences were due to vacation or illness or doctor's appointments we had a lot of we still had a lot of covid at the beginning of the school year and then you know all those uh like stomach bug that type of thing that we saw throughout the course of the year that that land of kids at home for for several days this year I want to really address the importance of making sure that all the kids are at school all the time um you know obviously there's things that are out of our control out of the kids control and that's that is definitely okay but I'm going to address you know through parent uh parent information through newsletters encourage involvement through volunteer opportunities and then also begin a parent advisory committee this year now moving forward exceeding expectations our theme for next school year is we all belong and this was inspired by our diversity equity and inclusion Institute day that we had in March I I was so inspired by the speaker that we had um and he referenced a book called belonging and it's a fantastic book about making sure that everyone feels like they belong and that's what we want that's that's the one of the beautiful things about public school is that we we include everyone and so I want so the kids are you know everybody belongs at at Prairie View the areas of focus and the goals that I have for next year are to increase the overall attendance rate and then decrease The Chronic absences and I already laid out roughly how I would do that for ELA I want to have 44 of our kids achieving at three by three 50 of our students achieving five by five and then for SEL we're going to continue the trend the downward trend of the office referrals with a focus on our playground oops whoops okay that's all I have thank you so much thank you thank you all right thanks [Applause] all right next we have the PK um School Improvement plan presentation you guys got all the slides in here [Laughter] good evening uh I will do everything in my power to be punctual and efficient but uh my name is Mister that's for sure my name is Mr Matt newquist I'm the proud principal of prairie Knolls Middle School uh joining me this evening are Ms Megan minehart and Mrs carry allstat our assistant principals from this past school year um and yes I do have a bit to share to celebrate the hard work from our students and teachers from this past school year um this picture uh was taken within the first couple weeks of the school year you see a lot of uh really happy Expressions ready to get the school year off to this good start and I would like to share or showcase I don't know if the volume will work hopefully it does [Music] we've been up to this past weeks [Music] here [Music] 's pictures foreign [Music] I do have to know any cuteness in this presentation all credit goes to Miss Megan meinhardt so at the start of our of our school year the three of us honed our focus on three areas School connectedness achievement and special populations and that's what I'll highlight with you this evening uh first school connectedness uh so as a first year principal and somebody that throughout my own educational background it was important to me quite frankly to my parents to make sure that I was always involved in something um so I still remember one of the first days the three of us got together uh Megan and Carrie looked at me and said Matt what do you want kids at PK to feel and I said when they walked through that door I want them to feel accepted and included and to be part of something so from our end one of our big pushes was to get kids as involved as humanly possible and that is with our clubs and activities um now you'll see the GPA is up there now as a principal I wanted to see if there was a connection between um you know student achievement and being engaged engaged in the building now it wasn't really a surprise to me that you know students that were involved in star student council PEP Club or band yearbook Art Club Dei and the principal advisory committee finished off with 3.43 GPA cumulative throughout the entire school year that that's good what really did surprise me though is the average GPA cumulatively for a PK student was at 3.3 so I think that's something to be said about just the students that go to our school they're very motivated academically and they get their stuff done because they've got good teachers and great support at home specific to activities and clubs um I want piece that I took away from this year was we brought back the art club which we had 44 students participate that in that throughout the duration of the school year the addition of the diversity equity and inclusion club which we really got off the ground second semester we capped that uh with a really good opportunity for the 15 members of the Middle School Dei Club to meet with the panel of high school students and you know in my opinion once the adults kind of stepped away and we stopped talking and we just let the kids mingle I can't think of a better word but just just to see those can actions being established was just really cool for lack of a better term and something that we really want to prioritize as we move forward other school-wide events we noted Comic-Con already pentathlon uh virus day our science department does a great job with that uh Veterans Day that's something as soon as I set foot in uh on PK's campus a couple years ago I knew that this community um and the school took a lot of pride in we do a great job with that uh Falcon day at the end of the year and then Falcon Fest which is kind of turned into more of a district event where we invite and embrace our fifth grade families to come in to learn about everything that goes on at Prairie Knolls opportunity to meet with administrators but let's face it kids don't want to talk to me they want to meet the teachers they want to see what they can get involved in that's the opportunity for that it also gives our seventh grade students an opportunity to meet and connect with Central Middle School administration as well so it's important that we continue to keep that going um I'd be silly if I didn't mention our social emotional learning team that we have at Prairie Knolls um it's really led by members of our student services team being Mr Charles Brooks and Ms Kayla kapetsky we also have a host of teachers that are very passionate about social emotional learning and we've got a couple of Administrators that'll weigh in as well but goals this year were self-awareness self-management mental health and teamwork in terms of mental health uh mental health month October 2nd through October 8th we had members of our well I'm sorry that's a week we had members of our CL team uh come into the main office and take the PA microphone away from me and provide some tidbits of information to our students and staff they also presented some opportunities for some mini lessons to be had during task towards the end of the day so that was very important uh that visual on the right Mr Charles Brooks has a knack for technology and what he does is he invites members of our staff down to Student Services where we perform voice-overs for animations and instead of you know somebody like me coming in to talk to kids during lunch or in a class uh Mr Brooks will work quite frankly very hard to create about a two-minute video where we share with teachers and they share with their students during task my guidance for our teachers is guys simply watch this and then it's going to organically turn into a very good conversation with students during that 36 minute period that's been a real winner for us over the last two years lastly teamwork the visuals uh up on the projector right now that is when our SEL team partnered with our math department and I really enjoyed popping into classrooms on this day because the task was to uh take a dry erase marker work with two or three of your friends in class here's some string and I want you guys to figure out how to write the word teamwork on a desk without touching it with your hands so our Math teachers did a wonderful job as did our scl team making this work for our kids really understand what teamwork was all about Falcon Athletics as a washed up College athlete I do have a soft spot for athletics we did have a very successful year in the ncjc conference we were highlighted by some first place finishes with girls cross country girls track and field wrestling finished in second place boys cross country and second and our Scholastic Bowl team finished second as well and instead of talking about her or showing um just a picture I like to show Miss lariah Cunningham Duncan with her State title jump of nearly 17 feet that brought home that for PK so certainly um some pride there and I think you know in addition to just really talking about uh the student athlete there I thought one of the um coolest things I saw uh when she got back to school was her math teacher Mrs japlin um you know I didn't really know what was going on because as I was walking through the hallways I just saw a bunch of kids talking and you know not yelling but being boisterous and I walked by that seventh grade hallway and Mrs jacklin's like oh come here come here come here and the doors open and you can see she's got a starting line and then she's got it marked off where loriah actually jumped to so every student that walked in that classroom was like this is what she did so I was just like that that's just really cool and I like how we celebrated that um so that was great so that was PK Athletics and now I'm going to turn things over very quickly to Miss Megan minehart all right so one of our goals is obviously to see continued academic improvement in our students so one of the ways that we focused on that this year was really having some conversations about data using that data to drive our instruction so we were able to offer 13 different professional development opportunities for our staff members a lot of this was in connection with our instructional coaches some of these were on like Embark Otis student engagement and then just overall data analysis as a whole um we met with our Ela and math department namely and then met as a entire staff to go over our iir growth percentages kind of having that conversation of how many students are meeting and exceeding standards comparing ourselves you know what does it mean when we're comparing ourselves to the state you know what you know what metric is that how are we doing in comparison to neighboring districts as well it's really great to see that we are outperforming most of our neighboring districts and schools so our goal moving forward now that we are seeing such success is now to move towards that mtss model ideal um so that's our goal for staff moving forward so we've been working continuously on Embark and Otis we have six different subject areas that are fully completed with Embark and have all of their common Assessments in Otis so that's really exciting we're starting to see kids you know diving into Otis utilizing all those features things like that um Embark obviously was a big um Focus point for us we had some teams seeing growth as high as 68 of getting their Embark uh completed so our next goal is working on 100 100 completion of all common assessments into Otis and then fine-tuning and wrapping up Embark you know that'll be a continuous Improvement as we keep moving um our final you know next year looking forward is looking at rigor and Alignment trying to make sure that we are increasing that rigor trying to align with our standards to see that progression with iar and then also alignment from sixth grade to fifth grade and the alignment from Seventh to eighth grade as well so projected on the screen now you'll see our 2022 2023 iar data and what this displays is the percentage of students that meet or exceed on the iar so receive a four or a five on those math and Ela tests now we chose to display this via cohort so the class of 2029 that would be our last year sixth graders in the class of 2028 uh last year's seventh graders and it's important to note you know how many or the percentage of students that met or exceeded as fifth graders and then on to sixth grade so you'll see with our class of 29 in fifth grade they were at 46.4 percent meatwork seeds as sixth graders 4467 in ela 54.1 as fifth graders to 65.26 as sixth graders uh class of 28 45 4 as 6th graders forty five seven four as seventh graders and then 55 6 to 64.08 as 7th graders what do we do with this information well aside from just sharing it with our teachers we use it to lay the foundation for how we're going to attack next year and I don't use the word attack lightly our teachers are very motivated because of the excellent work they've done on Embark and Otis we are able to analyze our data from the common assessments that have been approved and that are in Otis to really take a peek at it as a group and get better and our teachers are motivated to do that now I'll turn it over to Mrs Kerry Alstead who will touch on our special populations hello everyone so a big thing that we did this year was to implement a change with our co-teaching what we really focused on was moving from what we had been doing which officially is called one teach one assist to a new more inclusive way of working with our students so to explain one teach one assist was basically having the classroom teacher do the instruction the special education teacher be in the classroom to help random students throughout the lesson to pop around the classroom instead of doing that we wanted to more fully capitalize on the experience and the expertise in the classroom and had both of those Educators really working with all of the students in a more Hands-On direct way so we went through a lot of training at the beginning of the year and put a lot of changes in place with our staffing to allow us to switch to a more true co-teaching model so throughout the day on any given day you may see the classroom teacher and the special education teacher maybe dividing up the classes and taking half the kids to this side of the room or to that room you know next door or back to this bedroom you know they're going to be mixed together you're not going to know which one is a sped student you're not going to know which one is a sped teacher they just have the class divided in half to work on the concept that they're learning you may have one of the teachers maybe the general education teacher pulling a small group aside while the special education teacher continues with the lesson and then working with that small group on a concept they're maybe struggling with or maybe they're just bouncing ideas off of each other kind of doing more of a teaming or complementary teaching with both of them kind of leading the lesson as they go throughout the day in doing these changes yes how did our how did our sped teachers I mean that's a big it is I'll get to that no I see the data I'm about their comfort level I know I'll get to that I knew you were going to ask that Eric I'm all over that gotcha no worries all right so First Data is it working so what we um are measuring this with is the percent of students who are meeting their IEP benchmarks each quarter so you can see in the blue what uh the students were at last year in the red with what they are this year so in all four of our main areas that impact those special education teachers we saw an increase so that was great news for us it showed us what we were doing was working granted we're not at 100 so we can always keep working to get better but to Eric's Point how did the teachers handle it because yes that is a huge shift um throughout the year it was a big shift for our general education teachers for our special education teachers for all of us we did a lot of talking about this we had a lot of conversations a lot of really honest conversations about feelings and how they were handling these changes um as a general education teach teacher you are welcoming someone else into your most Sacred Space that was very big change for them like oh you're going to come in here and see what I do all day every day and and I'm gonna have to let you see how I teach and you're really opening yourself up um so that was a huge leap of faith for for all of our staff but what I have here is just a couple um quotes from both of our special education and general education teachers about how um it went so pardon me for reading this but I know it's hard to see um from the back so I feel co-teaching was successful for both the co-teachers and students this past school year as a special education teacher I feel that both my co-teacher and I learned valuable insight into teaching all students the use of scaffolding and differentiation was really put to the test and we learned through trial and error what works best for our students I enjoyed having more participation within the general education setting and feel that having two teachers helped in most lessons students had more opportunities for small groups one-to-one check-ins movement and change of pacing some could work ahead with one teacher versus those who needed more review overall I enjoyed co-teaching and look forward to building on with my co-teachers um another staff member said that co-teaching gives the students an opportunity to learn at a deeper level and help students who struggle to keep up with the pace by breaking the information down more when working in small groups it offers a fresh perspective from the sped teacher point of view and they can bring in more ideas on how to differentiate and our last teacher said that the co-teaching model is a wonderful opportunity for the following reasons individualized support and interaction for students with and without accommodations collaborative opportunities and peer interactions to enhance comprehension and mutual respect building trust and competence in facilitating their academic and social growth and students willingness to take risks in a more supported learning environment and broader attention to students by having two Educators willing to try various teaching and learning approaches with them does that answer your question Eric okay thank you you're welcome giving teachers who expressed interest with the model shift that would like that we're open to saying I'll take on as one as a new co-teacher let's say somebody to monitor different sections so we've chosen to keep all of the Staffing the same maintain the same yeah we just started we want them to kind of roll with it uh the way that it was described to me and one of the trainings I had gone to a year or two ago was it's like a marriage you're going to have your honeymoon period where you're trying to both be nice to each other and play nice in the sandbox and then you're gonna realize oh we're stuck with each other here we both have to figure out how to get along and you're going to have your fights and your arguments but then you're going to learn how to live together so everything that they've told us and recommended through our training is to have them try to stay together as long as possible but that being said we are actually going to have two new Jenna teachers and two new sped teachers that's coming here just two shifts in other areas yep great question though um the other big shift we had this year in special education was to expand our continual Continuum of education at PK by adding the Aspire program so what we have done I have listed here with the bullets we have our Genet classes then supporting those we have our code talk classes that I just described a step below that we have our self-contained classes for ELA and math what we've added in now at PK is our Aspire program advancing student performance and reaching Excellence which is a lead in from the Star program at hbt to uh most likely the life skills program for students at the high school not necessarily but that's the the piece that we were missing was for those students to progress from elementary to high school so we are housing students in sixth through eighth grade so if a student were in the program for eighth grade instead of going to CMS they would stay at PK uh these are students who have intellectual or Global severe learning disabilities they receive a specialized instruction at their level in ela math science and social studies most likely the day is set up so there is the opportunity for students to move to a different level within the building so for example this past year we had a student who actually was in gen Ed math but he was in the Aspire program for all of his Ela science and social studies so it does have that ability to really meet their specifications customized yes um and so the reason we um had that put in place was that we really did not show that what we had without this program was meeting students needs um who were at this level they were really struggling with the programming that we were using for the self-contained classes uh so we really wanted to add another level in to better support their needs and to fill in that gap between Elementary and high school and as you can see the programming that we're using there um is also working very well uh the blue that you see those are the quizzes that they take with their Ela reading selections and then the red is what they're getting on their Ela tests at the end of each unit those tests are they're hard they're really hard even for uh you know our I'm sorry our self-contained students so that is something that we're always continuing to work on it's a change between having a passage that they are familiar with and used to on the blue on the selection quizzes to having a cold read a test that they're a passage they've never seen before so it's something that's a struggle for them but we're still working through um and then the math curriculum that we've implemented this past year focusing more on number sense has worked really well for the population as well foreign thank you for your time uh thank you Dr Stern Dr mongan for your leadership this year and most importantly thank you to Carrie and Megan for helping a first-year principal uh get to the finish line thank you very much guys [Applause] we have the elementary handbook changes yay okay with Kim Lewis oh is that Kim um I know that's how it was listed I know yeah surprise we have Kim Lewis okay okay all right well good evening as dee pointed out I'm Kim Lewis I'm the principal at hbt um Teresa kolkelbeck is um the one that had done all of this work so I cannot take credit for it she put in a lot of time um to get this completed for tonight um but I'm here to present for her um because she was unable to attend so in your board packet there's a memo with a lot of changes in them most of the changes that we made are to align with the middle school and high school handbook as we look back at our handbook and started to compare the high school had done a huge revision a couple years back and there was not alignment with elementary school so many of the revisions um that you'll see in that memo are a result of just trying to align some things with the middle school and high school and then other components that Teresa worked on was aligning unless the board policy and making sure that what we have in the handbook aligned so anything that you see on that memo that is related to those two things I'm not really going to go over because you're already aware of those changes as they've been made in in previous years the two big ones that I um wanted to touch on has to do with our electronic devices policy on page 26 and that was really a change to add in smart watches when we're talking about cell phones and other electronic devices these smart watches have become a very big thing at the elementary level and have become a distraction so we've added smart watches in and align that with our cell phone policy so they will be treated just like they are our cell phone so that was a major change this year in relation to all electronic devices we also um struck out a line that said electronic devices may be used during um things such as passing periods and lunches at the elementary school we really don't have passing periods so we took that out and we have I've been told have never allowed cell phones in the lunchroom and in these last two years I've already been down there they have not been brought to the lunchroom either so at the elementary level we struck that out um we want to encourage that socialization in the lunchroom and the communication with peers so I mean I brought this up a couple years ago with Steve Moore when the Thompson first opened when they did the audition four years ago they were not allowed in Middle School sixth seventh and eighth they have their phones out at lunch that was his rule kids respected them I walked through the cafeteria with them when there were students in there a couple could send them out they happily put them away it was a zero issue with somebody who just said during lunch for that social time yeah I think the number of fifth grade kids that had phones this year were strikingly different than yeah I'm aware of it second graders are coming with them it's um extremely pleased that this is now officially in policy and I'll be interested to see if there's any pushback just in general about parents insisting their kids be able to communicate with them anytime they need to during the day yeah at the elementary school level I should say right so that was one of the major changes and then the other one had to do with prohibited student conduct on page 36 and that was really some language that we were changing to be more inclusive so at the original language said harassment and sexual harassment but it didn't talk about other forms of harassment so we struck the sexual harassment component so that the word harassment can include all forms of harassment and it's not as exclusive of some of those other areas as well as including some specific things regarding racial slurs religious sexual orientation and specific disabilities so we cleaned up the language there to be more inclusive of some of the things that we've talked about through our Dei conversations so those were the two big ones the rest of them are all just updating to match board policy and aligning with the middle school and high school handbook any questions would it also be smart to also throw something in there regarding applications or something like that what do you mean like in in addition to all this other stuff you know kids are using those social apps um they're different would it be beneficial to return like Instagram yeah all that stuff just to include an application or software application right so we usually fall back on inappropriate use of um like social media or anything fit the sign off on that on the appropriate news policy yeah students that's fair thanks Kim I'm sorry thank you thank you thank you I think two or the other thing Mark is if you look at um 36-37 where she's got it targeted there I need a prohibited student contact it says updating what we didn't have in there we hit the 7180 so it says a prevention of in response to bullying intimidation harassment bullying using a school computer yeah or a school computer network so that's where we tie in that social media piece where you may see some of those elements that come alive so they're using an app to Target another student that's where it would come right here okay yeah I just want to make sure it's gone thank you all right actually a middle school that's a good point sorry uh it's a parallel what Kim said a lot of our changes are to align with board policy or to align with the Elementary and high school handbook we really wanted to make sure that if a parent has a kid at differing levels they can basically flip through and kind of see the the connection between elementary middle school and high school so a couple of the bigger changes that we made the first one was with regards to book bags and backpacks um currently the they are allowed to have small bags or purses but it has to fit into a particular sized box we changed the language to add small bag or purse instead of just purse as it refers to the small bag up at the top we also asked that if the purse or the bag doesn't fit under the desk that at least it's hanging on the back of the chair this is just for a safety issue for students trying to walk in between desks staff to walk in between desks things like that we wanted to make sure that we were eliminating tripping hazards if we could um another change was talking about grading um there was a section that said semester averages will not be reported uh CMS has to post semester grades because they align with the high school for some of their classes and some students are able to earn high school credit so in order to align with the high school they needed to make sure that those were posted for transcript purposes another another change was for the honor roll um we kind of have a little bit of a differ between Prairie Knolls and CMS so it's not going to be completed at the end of each quarter for both middle schools at Prairie Knolls it will be completed at the end of each quarter but at CMS it'll be completed at the end of each semester again to align with those those transcripts and things like that 8th grade is running more on that semester schedule uh and the last major one is the eighth grade credit recovery program this is not running during school days anymore this is running during the summer hours at summer school so we decided to cross this out here as it is listed in the summer school section in the handbook above that section those are the major changes any questions thank you thank you next we have athletic and activities update from uh activities High School [Laughter] our apologies no trying to skip over man I'll forgive you this time all right so as it's already been stated a lot of this is to make sure that we are aligning it all the way from elementary all the way through the high school I know Megan said it already but I'm going to reiterate if you have kids in multiple different levels it's going to be a lot easier for people to flip through and find specifically what they're looking for a lot of it is making sure that we are aligned with school board policy there was a couple of cleanup items in here and a lot of it was just to make sure that all of our information was stated in a similar manner a couple of the changes that I did want to make sure that you guys were aware of there were some health um pieces that needed to be updated that was um on page 10 about the home and hospital we had to make sure that that was updated to the current board policy um on page 14 through 18 it was 7 100.
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okay perfect any questions comments concerns if you're not entertaining a motion to approve the survey for the high school expansion not to exceed thirty two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars I'll make that notion thank you Andrew here a second Kelly second thank you roll call please uh Andrea Corey yes uh Greg Meyer yes Tyson search yes Adam himkin yes Kelly Moyer yes perfect that passes our next item is our approval for the survey of the high school parking lots and this survey would be of in the boom shoe Croft Park so that we can look at that expanded parking there that was for 5 500 I believe um and so Administration recommends the board approve that for the amount as presented and there are no incidentals in that one so it's not it's not a not to exceed it will be the 5500 perfect any comments questions concerns would it be like to make a motion to approve the survey for the high school additional parking lot in the amount of fifty five hundred dollars I'll make the motion thank you Adam Jerry a second I'll second take some seconds roll call please uh Kelly Moyer here Adam Hampton yes uh Tyson search yes Greg Meyer yes Andrea Corey last thing on the genders approval of intergovernmental commitment we are tabling that perfect because I can't pronounce it so that's perfect all right any other new business all right whatever you like to make a motion to adjourn all in favor it is 4 34.
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second of a discussion all those in favor anyone opposed give us a cash balance report please um account balance May 30th 2023 808 dollars and 73 cents deposit May 31st through June 13 2023 3 942 uh and 91 cents transfer in and out on May 31st to June 13 2023 2 million dollars less payroll of June 8 2023 1 million 705.68 payroll our warrant uh number 44 of June 6 2023 467.68 book balance June 13 2023 578.28 28 cents bank balance June 2013 950.81 account balance May 30th 2023 10 million three hundred thirty one thousand three hundred seventy two dollars and forty three cents uh a year-to-date interest May 30th 2023 446.26 a total of 10 million 631 818.69 transfer from concentrated concentration account two million dollars interest forty seven thousand two hundred and seventy dollars and Thirty One cents mmt DT balance June 13 2023 12 million six hundred seventy nine thousand eighty nine dollars in total operate operating cash balance thirteen million one hundred ninety eight thousand six hundred sixty seven dollars and twenty eight cents Joe appreciate emotional acceptance second discussion all those in favor aye you were opposed okay moving right along I could solve there's a handout for Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report revolving fund report budget report any any questions on any of those documents okay donations to see none articles see great allowance Tech uh dedicates the second base of alumni fields right okay public participation let's see uh first name up right here Chris here just to give the guidelines of public participation we allow usually two three minutes I'm usually not very easy strict on that depending on how many people have got to address the committee uh you address the committee you can give any your statements that you want the committee will not answer any of your questions it will take it under everything under advisement but it did but this evening they will not give you any answers or rebuttal whatsoever okay just to see you good evening my name is Chris sear and I'm here to address the grading policy that's coming before you this evening most what I'm saying tonight I've spoken to leadership already um I'm here because I believe this committee is also an impetus behind the change those of you that know me know that I advocate pretty strongly for something that I believe in I'm here not to just raise concerns I've already put my name forward as to be part of the committee that will be part of the solution for the record I'm not here as VP the union I'm here as a parent of a graduated student one that hopefully will come here as a teacher of 16 years coach Club advisor and teacher mentor given my background in Industry where I was a VP of a high-tech firm and an organization driven by data I appreciate data-driven analysis and the fact that we're moving in that way to understand data is to understand root cause to find meaningful change and reflective change this is what happens in many CPT groups throughout the school yeah when it comes to the grading policy I've heard comments like there were too many failures it's not just about failures we need to do something and my question is why what is the problem the data behind the statistic that identifies and defines the problem when you attempt to dig beyond the surface it's just not there let me say up front there are many ideas in the book that's referenced that are worthy of discussion yet before jumping into a significant policy change that will affect our students and behaviors in the classroom what is the root cause of the problem we're trying to solve let me offer a few suggestions and thoughts let's assume for a minute as a baseline that it is failures what is the cause behind the number have we surveyed students understand why they failed or to correlate the data to see how we could fix that have we checked with teachers about those students to understand what they've done because that's an important piece of data as well look at a few variables over the past four years we were here for half a year and got dismissed doing remote teaching when no one had any experience with it we spent an entire year doing remote teaching with very reduced curriculum we came back with again reduced curriculum because we had to get the kids back into school this is the first year we've implemented the full curriculum in four years is that part of the struggle we don't know life schools across the country we are re-teaching our students how to learn so there really isn't even a constant to measure over the last four years let's go further this year we've implemented the full curriculum with two hours less a week did that have an impact we change the schedule meant to reduce time between academics but end up with no real consistency and flow with two virtual Mondays and two virtual Fridays with a lot of interruptions was it did it help the way it was meant to did it hurt again there's no data from the students or the staff to really understand what the impact was on grades and learning let me ask you this the students are coming in are they struggling more than prior years because here's something very important to consider middle schools across our districts are implementing policies like that that are being suggested maybe just maybe that is a significant contributor to the struggles it we're seeing with reduced Vigor expectations and accountability and if that's the case what does that mean for our graduating students as they go into a world where deadlines matter effort is rewarded and you don't just get to make things up without a cost again we don't know we haven't asked we really haven't measured we don't know how to quantify and qualify the problem in enough detail so that we can propose meaningful solutions to address the root cause without this you we are guessing at the high school level implementing these middle school policies that could have a significant contributor to the problem May severely impact Beyond these walls heck I have a student who's in middle school she groups together her work because it's allowed now it has killed her learning but it's helped her grades all of us want to see our students succeed but the time to learn about deadlines responsibility effort and accountability is here when they leave here the cost of failure and work in college is there and it will it is our Collective responsibility if our guess is wrong but let's not forget failure is learning it is actually some of the most important learning that we can do I had to go to summer school for Math and at 61 I remember it vividly because it was a lesson I learned to never get into that situation again an essential problem with some of the policies on the list is that there isn't any data none of these policies have any academic research behind them with demonstrable results and measurements of impact to high school students post-graduation never mind for inner city schools if it exists I've looked I haven't been able to find it even using artificial intelligence search engines to help me what I did find is that Leominster just stopped implementing these policies because quote students were not learning to be responsible some of the policies on the list have a tremendously negative message to our students and to behaviors into the classroom as a senior teacher all we hear is how do I get my 240 you know the 60 times 4. and as soon as they get there many skates imagine the message to our kids we realize getting to 240 points is hard so we're going to spot you 200 points a student that gets a 90 in term one they're done for the year they can pick and choose whatever assessments and assignments they want to do because they have what they need that will impact learning and behavior in the classroom the issue of making up work is it about learning or the grade we have to pick one if it's about the learning then we require work that engages them in that just making up work when a filing assessment is done is busy work it's about the grade not the learning taking a test over again is really not about measurement of success and learning it's about knowing the questions ahead of time any of us can pass an interview when we know that questions are going to be honestly I'm no traditionalist everywhere I've LED prior to here I challenge Physicians but it was always about thinking the root cause understanding that and suggesting changes to address that root cause but the process starts there I want to leave you with a recent event a girl who failed for the year and would be attending senior completion when she heard about these coming changes she said and I quote they need to stop treating us like children we need to be held accountable understand the irony there and when she left on her final day of senior completion I asked her why when she had so much time and opportunity to fix her grade she simply said I could always do it I just didn't want to it was my mistake I learned in the end I ask you to think about the implementation of this with the lack of real world positive evidence and data on the impacts of these policies post-graduation do we really want to implement the guests in an experiment on a student even if that guest is a program from the desc not all changes are positive I think we can all agree that the idea of participation trophies Mr Mark let's not turn a glts diploma into one thank you next we have Angela Santana good evening good evening all right brought some handouts I came as the I'm here as a Lead Teacher for the business technology department and um I'm just going to go over a couple bullets we really want to know why we are not having a fourth teacher this upcoming school year um we can't hear you oh you want me to talk louder not a problem I can talk louder so we do I need to start from the beginning okay so um we really want to know why we are not having a fourth teacher we believe that we have been performing and the our Advisory Board recommended that we receive a fourth teacher an email our chairperson sent out an email to the superintendent the principal and the CTE director to discuss this further but is an attached email and just to let you know 33 of our current juniors are in Co-op and we're estimating in the beginning of the school year about 50 percent will be on Co-op as incoming seniors 17 out of 21 juniors are certified in social media marketing all sophomores and juniors are certified in at least one Microsoft Office application there's a report attached and our curriculum has been revised targeting those jobs that are going are forecasted to increase in the next 10 years so we would really appreciate having a fourth teacher for next year thank you thank you very much okay you see no other names on the uh on the participation your report superintendent please uh first on uh we have our uh Equity grading team that's going to present to you a uh PowerPoint uh ins and uh support of your vote to implement grading uh grading policy changes presentation what else is it yes [Music] so uh the equity administrative Equity team has been working over the Year this past year to put this new policy together they're going to go through uh the um slides that will explain some of the work that they did some of the research they did and the rationale for the need for this change uh Jen Stefano our Ela principal vice principal overseeing Ela in social studies will be leading the presentation and we'll introduce her team to you thank you Mr Lavoy um tonight myself and members of the team are going to be presenting to you on our work on grading for Equity um I have with me tonight Kate Burnham she's the special education director Lindsey Gangi one of our CTE coordinators and Ryan Brown the assistant principal for Math and Science there were also other members of our committee um Dr Jill Fawcett who is our director of culture equity and language was also a member of the committee and Lauren Jones the CTE director was also a member of the committee this year um so we're going to be presenting to you so are you gonna okay so what we're going to present to you tonight is based on some extensive research and also some other things that are going on in the state that greater Lawrence was beginning to explore so um in this Massachusetts Jesse has started a rethinking grading cohort basically this is language from their site um where they're saying schools of assess student learning and growth with essentially the same grading system for over a hundred years since the system was created the field has learned so much more about the way students learn and what type of learning leads to success in life what we know now is that the current system does not assess the true student learning and this comes from the office of college career and ah there we go office of college Career and Technical education at Massachusetts Jesse also this year Jesse put out a request for Grant applications for districts that wanted to be first involved in the rethinking grading cohort those five schools there Melrose High School Monument Mountain Regional Revere High School Springfield International charter school and South Shore Vocational Technical High School are all working with the Department of Education in a two-year grant program to rethink grading in an attempt to begin examining how communities across the Commonwealth support the student learning and growth and to Envision a new world for Massachusetts schools it's time to rethink grading also from the Department rethinking grading cohorts what we're hoping is that um having grading of this type will help students take ownership of their learning experiences and be empowered to use their voice it sounds like Lively and vibrant Buzz of student enthusiasm and curiosity and it feels like a welcoming and empowering place for Learning and I think you will agree that um much of what their vision is First Student Learning in Massachusetts does align with greater Lawrence's core values of supportive environment high expectations lifelong learning as all of those are part of this policy so if Massachusetts and the Desi is doing this why would greater Lawrence want to do this at this point so why the shift to grading for equity so we're looking for Equitable grading practices and Equitable grading practices give students hope support and opportunities for Redemption but they are above all accurate reflections of what a student knows resistant to our biases that can lower or raise grades because of students circumstances or identity basically we want to make sure that ultimately a student's grade is a true reflection of what they know and are able to do because ultimately as Educators it is our responsibility to be measuring and assessing if our students are meeting the standards that are set by the state or the competencies that are set by their the state as well so as Educators we have to be measuring this and we want to make sure that when we're measuring it what we're getting is accurate information um the book that we used as the anchor text for this work is called greeting for Equity it's by Joe Feldman it is a literature review that includes over 150 different citations from various leaders in educational research who have been researching on policies like this implementing policies like this across the country and you know Gathering data about how it's impacted their teaching specifically when we're looking to do Equitable grading the three pillars of Equitable grading the things that we hope is that our grades are accurate so we want to make sure our calculations are mathematically correct and sound we want to make sure that it's bias resistant so that all students have an opportunity to succeed regardless of privilege our vision of grading requires grading practices that not only counteract the biases embedded in 20th century grading but that also act as a check on those biases we each bring to classrooms and Grading should be motivational although we don't want students to be myopically focused or fixated on the grade we certainly want grades to motivate rather than demotivate students and to orient students to the value of learning rather than Point collecting and you can see we have a little icon next to each one one for accuracy one for bias resistant and one for motivational and you would see those icons as we go through the practices I think what is most important and what the real goal of our work has been is to look at grading practices that reflect these three pillars as well as give our students opportunities to continue their learning and extend their learning until they are satisfied with it um if I take a test and I get a 75 maybe I know I could get a 90.
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so that way and if you see something there you want to uh modify or something you think should add um please do um but these are the things I'll communicate back uh to you have an extra Orchestra um does anybody want these I have an extra I have extra okay so um these again are these are these are just areas to review and the first of course is the school space issues in central office space I think um we're working very uh hard and I think John Bishop for his help on this in trying to um we're coming up pretty quickly on to what we're going to have to do as far as space and it's leaning more and more towards at least temporarily Portables uh maybe that's long term maybe it's not um so we'll be able to give you more information on that as we go on I might call on John just to give a quick report on that when we get to the and I skipped over you John but I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to you all right um I just think I'm right after this nope all right uh in any event so um so space is going to be underneath and also central office space uh if you've been to any other board of education we are so cramped down there and so tight uh in the old police station um and we really need to think about and we're disjointed we have a technology somewhere else we have our pupil Personnel somewhere else we need to have our management team together we are the largest uh part of the budget we are the largest uh employer uh here is part of the town so for that we need to bring our management team together so at some point we need to come up with a plan that covers uh central office space Also uh second on the list is budget forecasting the development some of you have mentioned that um how we do a better job forecasting out the budget maybe it's over two years how we develop the budget how we put our reports together and then we need a better plan for communication and approval what we heard um what we heard really pretty consistently for from uh the community is they didn't feel that there was a good job communicating I disagree with that and I can give you all the reasons why I think it was well communicated at least the Board of Education side and I do believe the town side too but in any event we're going to pay attention to that thirdly we're talking about measuring academic achievement and data analysis some of you had mentioned that is is a concern and we've talked about consistency in the reporting from our our different schools and how we're going to be looking at that we have contract negotiations coming up um and we have to be mindful of that and I'll get it's more about that on the teams that we put together but contract negotiations are coming up it was also suggested to plan for continuing the Dei work that was done in 2023 2022-23 what are going to be the things that we're going to do going forward to continue uh the um the progress that we've made in that area um we've also talked about hey Ryan we also talked about calendar meeting uh calendar meeting invite system that syncs with other systems so that everybody can easily just download onto your outlook or your Google so you know where the meetings are make it a lot easier that way uh we'll continue with the facility Improvement we've we've had the public reach out to us in a couple cases um on the fact that they want to see Improvement to our fields in other places but I have to say the improvements that we've done in the high school which is beautiful if you walk in I think I think our high school looks wonderful and it is our Flagship we did do some work at Cherry Brook but it's kind of Fallen back we've done some work at CIS that has fallen back we have to stay on top of that maintenance so we'll have to figure that out and then we'll have to review which kind of plays off of that review of the shared services if that is in fact working on how we operate with the town and is that being as effective as it can be both from a financial standpoint and from a practical uh standpoint on the services that they provide so those are the things that I've taken from your goals the the things that you've outlined uh to me I've kind of synthesized it down to those eight things anybody have any comments on those or something you'd like to add I know you want something you want to add not had something but okay you can what would you like to say I one through eight is great and those are so essential um it's almost like to me they're like a given but that is the priority um I didn't know if there was something for like culture climate I wrote culture climate mental health behavioral it's kind of a big a lot of stuff but just like you know reinvigorate student and staff um covet I think really exhausted people and teachers and staff and we've heard you know through our planning and stuff you know [Music] though sometimes the lack of uh I think I think that's a good one the word I'm trying to use so I'm going to put that motivation to do some extra things and you know we've talked about some things that have been you know Fallen by the wayside so that's what I thought I don't know the proper thing I just put culture climate um I like what you said reinvigorate students and staff yeah I think that and I wrote the word fun and then we can get into the detail of that yes and the mental health and behavioral might be another one another like number 10.
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I believe that a leader of 300 and so if we do need to go forward with trailers as an option Capital non-recurring emergency fund so that is one potential source that we could tap and we're certainly not there yet we're not making that decision but um I did want to give you an update on president of the discussion standards this particular item so with that on Michael and Lisa do you want to just provide a quick summary and then we could open it up for a discussion based on what you found in the study summary we kind of I think we provided that previously so maybe um uh just some Reflections if that's okay uh you know just in terms of our um understanding of the schools clearly I think uh Highland of the two that we looked at really has the greatest challenge in terms of spaces uh that they have lack uh much flexibility because really we only Identify two uh smaller spaces that you could even be modified internally and they were even contemplating the modification of the core verse to accommodate breakout spaces so they were really maxed out that also I think is a couple from the exterior with regard to traffic pattern issues that we have as a result of the single Ingress egress Point um the uh shared drive with the adjacent residential property I'm sure it contributes to some of the traffic I realize that's outside of the purview this particular state but but I think it's still relevant relative to the challenges it's also a bigger school and the population also is larger relative to the special needs students which some ways to consume addition the um so that school for certain I would say needs some means of addition to accommodate the educational requirements but I'm sorry the instructional space increase I would say do a little um you know it has similar constraints uh a little bit more flexibility on site in terms of where things can go but they do have uh setback issues relative to proximity to adjacent property lines that could impact them and I think they we think they have greater interior spaces to choose from to modify but that comes at a cost of specials or some other curriculum based apartments that may have been part of a disparity with other facilities around Cheshire so you know you have to really kind of balance all of that if you look at the drawings of the plans not not focusing so much on the affordables it's just even just squinting you know there there are fewer smaller circles or places where you can stay and we have more options than we've discussed and they all have their problems but there are more it was my Mantra I'm going to college [Music] so I guess um what you're saying one of the options if we lost some special class es in general there appears to be a greater possibility for that yes more Specialties but areas that are dedicated to special groups like what how many classrooms are we looking like how many questions like that's kind of the things can we absorbed by adding an x-ray two students to a flat surface process up to 21 versus 18.
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and so with that we get a lot more support and resources and I'm gonna go starting with The Advisory Board and now this is a note one and we could go I'm just gonna start advising for um The Advisory Board is going to school level and this is a great way for our teacher sister um and I should award it in a way that advisory boards are there to assist I'm in this group we have business partners we have teachers Academy coaches and we have even parents that are engaged in this in supporting what are some of the needs on the ground and then we have so whatever information that normally comes out of that if I do more moving it to partnership Council or partnership Council to advise so with 400 business partners that's a lot of great that's a lot of businesses and so to capture those voices we can be partnership Council about 50 business partners to get their perspective with partnership Council it could be them on a quarterly basis we have uh clusters is what we call them so we have Arts Media communication cluster and we had business manufactured Information Technology health and public service hospitality and tourism engineering manufacturing National technology so those five clusters are representative of how our schools are structuring their Pathways to their academies we have 10 to 12 business partners in each of those bring them together and ask them what is happening in your organization what's happening in your industry and how can we help you support take that back to the ground in this group we are also looking at those Workforce instructions um we're looking at what are some of the five tenure Productions and some of those high-wage high demand sectors and that informs the pathways and the academies that we select for our schools these are a lot more higher level conversations that we're having and again is it specific for those business partners certificate to the advisory boards whereas the teachers from Canada and then we have the 18 so this is even a more again it's not an advisory level but the conversations that we have in the partnership Council and it's safer examples of the engagement for business partners are decreasing and that's something so after covet a team let's get a look at okay how do we create a succession plan for those business partners so that we could if we have one person at Nissan and Cheryl ends up leaving how can we make sure that there's going to be somebody who's going to be just as invested and that we don't use that connection so 18 is having that high level conversation and then we have the CEO Champions and they played a larger role in the beginning when we started like captains of Nashville they were an advocate for the school system on a policy level so and CEO Champions we're again the C Level executive so CEOs who are able to bring other business partners to the table because we started out with five Tia PMS but we needed some of those larger organizations to bring in other applicants and so and again it seems like the CEO Champions the role that they've played in National may be different because it seems like you all have a lot of support so the conversation may be different about the role that your CEO to the community today and that group played a large role for us in the first five years and then that conversation changed so we now it's been 17 years and they haven't been as active for the last seven years but that's something that we're having a conversation about as this model is changing because our demographic is also changing the needs are different so we're having a conversation about living like that again the structure is dependent on your community so this is really so this is a really strong framework one that I'm not trying to copy but we Danbury had to start at some point uh the goal is to definitely have advisory boards six advice rewards for each of the academies and then in time filled out a structure in which we can look at things through a whole school level to see what those needs are so the apartments can jump in the city where it needed so just want to give you an idea of what they do and how we move them to have exposive housing boards so that will happen within a year or two uh and as care puts it we are currently dating with agency partners right now uh we want them to know that this is a coming model and they all have shown an incredible amount of Interest so again we're working with the Education team to make sure that we do have a solid framework of what an Advisory Board looks like and who can sit on that so that we can reach the masses so as we go even further uh we want everybody to really understand that this is I always say this is not just the Danbury public schools initiative right you have you have to have an alignment a stakeholders to a series about that this works you need your city leadership right we need to keep the parents and Community we need businesses all the buying because at the end of the day what do we try to do do what's best for the economy right build the workforce and also make sure there are two conservical College and Career ready we want to give our students opportunities and the only way to effectively do that is if you have a strong framework as shown from a previous colleges this is something that's worth going damn period so that we can make sure that our kids are good and ready to go but when we talk about the alignment of goals why is it so important to have that 100 why is it so important to have it before I'm gonna start I'm going to talk um speak to you all from the school level when we talk about goals so remember I talk about the straight event leadership and in this space this is where the teachers are coming together because they really truly are getting that water they are working with the students and they are taking the information the baby is given from the business partner as far as you know feedback they're looking at their data they are still held accountable right to those end of course tests they are still held accountable to what the ACT looks like and so we they need to make sure that it's benefiting them and that their work is aligning with the goals and so that first thing is that every teacher understands what that North Star is what is our vision for our students and I saw you lost mission and I know that you want to position your students to be College and Career ready but as you all work this model that mission may look different as you start seeing your student and singing in those spaces and what that Vision looks like and then those missionary statements aren't going to be specific to each Academy and how it's aligned to the workforce a thing that the students aren't working for and that's really important when I think about how do I support my student in making sure that they are career in college writing right and how am I address the resources I mean how do I make sure that they can pass the certification test I want to make sure that they have the experiences with our students Freshman Academy they have certain experiences that are part of the identity right the career fair and the experience some type of college and then in 10th Grade they actually want to build the experience field trip within the industry of their pathway and they have a college experience where there are Majors right and we think about college different it's not just four years you've got technical colleges you've got the two-year colleges you now have job and better training where I am going may not be having specific classes and so that's happening and of course it look like through my classroom and how am I um teaching through the lens and so that's the transformation I've got to make sure again that those goals will have from our students for intervention and for meeting those experiences aligned with the North Star like how we're working toward that so that we can say here's our promise to you community here's our promise to you students that before you leave this High School you're going to have these experiences you're going to have a network of people you're going to have the skill set to actually position yourselves to work have a better opportunities at Workforce or be successful in college so that when we look at persistence so that when we look at post-secondary if you see some success if you see it on a larger scale right but it's not just for a certain group of students right sometimes we call them Iceberg students that we're not just targeting those but we're thinking about every single student and we're thinking about how do how does our Workforce how does our leadership we talk about resources and funding into this position in the school and who's positioning with with this particular Academy or pathway what are those needs there and and those are all the things that are going to be important you think about success and that being aligned with students and you really truly see impact and impact is more than just those top 30 students the impact is and nothing else like I said earlier that all of my 10th graders when they graduate they're going to be able to say that at some point in my high school career I left this building and I stepped foot uh in a been a work of business partner's building right or I have someone that I can reach out to and say I need a recommendation or I know how to write a resume or I'm I'm successful in that act or I'm going to college and I know what that looks like and what I need to do before I was taking early class credits or our status credentials and I can support my family immediately right whatever your needs are you now forget to do that and on the flip side teachers are in that position to where they're able to realize right their goals and see themselves teaching in a different way with leadership and the resources you see teachers become team leads and they become administrators you see teachers take the leadership role in the sense of I like supporting infilmeric planning and I like you know seeing students read and for me that's a goal and here's what it looks like and they're able to work with the partners um Partners you know just more engaged and that really is is how you start making the transformation in the community you know starts looking like what you like like which is that your students graduate and even if they need to go to college they come back today we'll be ready and I continue to grow and you see them in the future foreign from a business partner perspective uh let's talk about the goal or as we'd like to say to return on investment the goal there is uh could be the future Workforce pipeline as a business partner you're looking at these particular Pathways thinking about your future Workforce what is my future Workforce look like and how do I incorporate these students into that that could definitely be the goal creating a pathway for these young people whether it's through field trips or whether it's through internship opportunities and the beautiful thing about internship opportunities for a business partner is that these students already have an experience with your organization and once they make a decision once they leave high school or leave College think about and they think about employment the first thing they are likely thing to think about is who offered me an opportunity before I got to this point and so they will very likely go back to that employer and it's a two-way street as an employer you've already provided an opportunity for these young people to get to know you and your teams so when the opportunity presents itself to seek employment post uh college or post high school they will likely go back to that to that business partner that provided an opportunity for them so one of the goals as I said for business partners is definitely the what is the return on investment and let's be clear business partners may love this idea but they're not doing it just because it's good a feel-good situation there has to be a return on their investment what does that look like how many hours have we spent preparing these young people how much time have we spent how much money have we spent what does that look like we want to definitely have a return on our investment when it comes to our young people and I can't think of a better one than preparing them for that future Workforce and Industry so this is our last live and in conclusion I just want people to remind you that as we go through this transformation and we develop a curriculum and we develop experience or learning opportunities for students and we just develop these academies as a whole that we really look at our demographic kids and make sure that we target every single last one of those who speak in different languages no matter what culture you come from that we tend to each of those kids because they all deserve to follow the education and so that's what I could say and I've seen impact I've done it with my colleagues of seeing the transformation of work when it comes for all of those students exam it can work it can work with us so let's just continue the great things that we're doing here and just make it even better so we don't want to speak the whole night but hopefully this is a pretty good overview for you to understand what it takes to really build strong Academy so if you guys have any questions I'm sorry ladies and gents if you have any questions feel free to jump right a question so what percentage or how do you track students at brn1 Academy so how do you track or what percentage of students that are in a certain Academy when they leave the school and moving the academy going to that actual field so Arts Career and Technical education teachers a part of them demonstrating that they're offering and quality program is that the students from SC nurse they take a exit survey and then a year after they graduated those Career and Technical education and teach their part of their job is to reach out and follow up with the students are you working with industry are you using that certification are you in college you know where are you working what sorts do you need so that's a way that we're tracking it and that information was reported back and they have to be above 85 report so this means that we are finding these students to make sure that we get the best contact information that is a part of their graduation survey as well now what's helped now as for an accurate count because with our partnership so we have those Partnerships where students are tracking right into Workforce and they let us know oh these students we know apply and they were hired and so there's a way we're tracking it and then post-secondary as being one of our key Partners right especially like a national state and it's a possible Applied Technologies they also keep up with what group of students are going to be as graduates what year did they graduate what programs are they and we know we're able to track it it also helps to advise us on are we offering the right Pathways when we talk about student boys and what indeed so that's how we're tracking our students one way thank you one question uh so how do you know with your business partner how do you get the buy-in from the parking like is it an agreement is there an actual contract like how does it just don't shake hands and take their word for it right no absolutely not um it'd be nicer to work that easily but no it does not so we have to talk to from a business partner perspective what I did is I went to the school to find out exactly well what's in it for me what is the bottom line what what do I get out of this uh and the one the first Academy that we partnered with was and we use acronym schemeth the engineering manufacturing and Industrial technology uh Team or Academy because it was a direct correlation to automotive and we had um in having a conversation with the academy coach and with the Educators in that Academy we determined that it was a great fit for us because a lot of these students wanted to go down an engineering pathway which was absolutely perfect for us so what we did was talk to the students about what it is they wanted and we built a program around that so that we made sure that they were connected and they were engaged and it as a result we were able to create a six-week summer program that brought them in and they were I don't have time to tell you the whole story but it was a really great um uh internship because it provided an opportunity for these students to help develop a resolution for a problem that we were having that is actually still being utilized today so when you think about high school kids going into an international company and fixing something that says a lot about those young people but it it took us making sure that we understood what the students needed before we could get bought into it and we understood that it could potentially build our Workforce develop our Workforce because we had several uh Engineers that were close to retirement and we had to make sure that we were watching those numbers but attrition was real so how do we avoid complete and total attrition without having a backup plan we utilize that program so we had a organization that was not there initially and remember the Cheryl said that she's been there around 16 years so that is initially how Apartments were involved now we have a structure in place for pencil and so the pencil Foundation actually works with the academy coaches and we're keeping up with our Advisory Board and what students are being offered right like where are the partners and how are they supporting but if we have a new partner maybe that I I know I know I'm going through pencil because there is a document it's an articulation agreement to say this is my capacity as a partner here's how we can support I can be I can help a tutoring you know at the elementary level or I can help a tutoring the entry certification at the high school level I have the space to offer job Shadows or internships and that's where they sign that's also a place where they look they're able to see we don't ask for money um we ask them to be hours if you want to get a branded partner this is the in kind that what it looks like from that space and then there's background checks is what we do and pencil is our intermediary for that and so you can have teachers right who have networks but we know as a structure and as a model now that we go through pencil when it comes to soft regulation agreements and of course they've grown like I said those job embedded programs but I'm still making sure that you know pencils at the table even after we've had the conversation specific to maybe that school's programming great things so I will I will just say um employers across the board are having issues filling their child pipeline so it shouldn't be hard selling that to a business partner if they're aware if they're cool in Nashville specifically with a lot of businesses when we've had they're realizing that we don't have a lot of Talent that's prepared to grow those positions so there was a need just as much as it was for the school system to be able to work at a weird age and investing in the school system now we've had businesses who have come to us and wanted to start the process right away and say you could see that and then there are some that is more of a high need and it is more of a demand like health care that we've had to approach to our folks and it it had to go back to leaning on some of those tools that really had mentioned that were able to get from those intermediary organizations like those Community investment hours here are some of those business es for so much time it translates into this much amount of money so this is how much a business partner is investing and this is a return and their investment this is how many students they were able to hire this is a great way internally that you can sell that most I'm sure even for Nissan we might have Cheryl who's a huge advocate of it but internally it might be hard to sell so we have tools available for our business cards to be able to take that to sell to their Partners but then also just mentioning the importance of having those intermediary organizations are able to take on those onboarding and management and the insurance use of it now if it's something that the district is going to be taken on assuming it'll probably need a 10 rent days that will need to be in place to be able to manage some of that relationship aspect especially if we're at Danbury is looking to scale and that's something that natural has to do so if we had to scale it then we had to make sure that we had a middle organization to do not matching activities because all right and we could barely handle one print paper it's recent uh you mentioned that a company called pencil uh are they the ones that kind of put everything together for you or like said read the articulation agreements and is this the code to uh piece it's our go-to now um for what the last maybe 10 years okay so like I was saying initially they were not in in place what happened was that this model and the impact that the partner saw and the importance of it was so important you needed a space where it was handled during a background check because we wanted to you know protect our students and protect the employers and make they want to be in the schools they want you know to get in there but also to manage what they were doing to make sure you know sustainable and it was impactful we were intentional when it came to with the work the teachers were doing as we thought about this model long term so pencil was an organization that was already kind of helping the school of the community in the sense of like giving teachers supplies but now they're in a space where they have built out those agreements so um before it was more of as a as a business partner I'm coming in and I'm agreeing and I'm showing up right now signing in the front office and here's what we were able to do and it was the school and partner now you have something in place that is consistent at every single school with every single partner and it allows us to track and have a a a way of doing things you know a lack of Good Works moment and it takes the oldest of business partners and I got involved because the school that I'm referring to was the school that my children went to so I had a relationship with the Educators and the administration at that school which allowed them an opportunity to come to me and say hey can your business partner with us yeah absolutely I've seen the work that you're doing but it takes the open soft business partners and having to go through identifying and vetting those Partners to make sure that our children remain safe at all times sorry one more thing so how what do we have what do we have in place to get the sound committed from the business partners are we implementing something like like pencil right now we're just being anxious from businesses because we have to create no stressors so that we can go once we get branded at the Academy is a Danbury then we can start having those conversations for the chamberlaining are you suggested me a person of the ages don't know except it's a beautiful name it's very pretty it's obviously was worried about the snacks again the are you the point person in your chamber for education is that it or is the whole chamber involved or Europe go-to person so I'm not the go-to person or the only one I do representative Academy so Nashville along with my my colleague I the chamber in our leadership team I just took the importance of Workforce Development and education plain as usual they're hand in hand they're not separate so it does start from the leadership side um we are a team of 10 now we started team of five at the time and when the desert College was part of the chamber when we first started off 17 years ago it's a smaller team but our education team is now a team of the 10 um two of us focusing on specifically the academies of national and two other individuals focused on one of the grants and that helps support again but it was not always right it's been such a good job covering all media questions in the presentation great so I have a couple of questions that I thank the board with advice and clarification elements on slide two what this model impacts and talked about I think Brands about benefits of social emotions so how does the model address social emotional development of students maybe Brandy always you actually can you just kind of expand upon that for our board members so they can further understanding I needed to talk about um kind of our teachers kind of cohorted together with the team and they would be available to work together if to have the message such as kids to provide interventions Etc videos so first like we're talking about a structure of change as well and as a structure changed at some point in time it may not happen right away because you're working on a master schedule they say the principal is and the building and Logistics and all those things but when it does get into a place where those that group of small learning communities are together that means that this group of teachers are all housed in the same area and they're able to see students and there's that basic tier one intervention of how are you doing I know who you are then what happens is that in the space of smaller in communities and common planning time there are the three eyes that you that we work around in the model interventions identity and interdisciplinary that intervention is Keys is yes you're addressing attendance and you're addressing Behavior but you're also thinking about interventions in the sense of every student you know what does every student need and so if I am over intervention as a teacher as far as my role I've had a spreadsheet and we're looking at does this student have Flags I want their Flags or has a student been attending class or what's going on with them and at some point time the student as team even if they are just showing up and they're that kid that's always there to turn their work in you still are intentional about spending that time with the student and I'll tell you what it never fails as a student regardless if I'm an age student and I have perfect attendance or I am failing for my classes and I'm hardly there to walk into a room there are seven people there seven eight people there who know my name and you've been talking about me and you are thinking about me and you want to be successful but you're also asking me questions what's going on how can we support you what do you need and from that being able to build on what what's going you know can we support at home do you have mental foreign mentors do we need to put extra support in class I mean there are IEPs sometimes that have problems from that there are we use our Community Resources right where you at work later I don't have a job and we're about to lose our house or I really do want to go to college I don't know how to but I know that I'm very good in in my advanced classes and what does that look like and so there's that aspect and what you do is you number one let students know in the small community that there are a group of people who care about me and they're thinking about me and the teachers actually have the time to get to know their students and identify right some of those kids who are calling from The Gap but on the flip side would allows for a student to be a quick to be more of a self-advocate for themselves to speak up in this space and say this is what I need and to identify write um their needs Even in our classrooms now with our structure we have a place called the five spots because we are a restorative District in the SEL district and so we do training around social emotional learning we'd be trying it with our business partners without Community Partners our leadership our teachers our students our parents and so in my English classroom I have a five spot and we're intentional about that space But students also know that if it's not in my opening opening ticket that we're in this hot spot if I'm having a momentum you can step away I am now aware of my needs and I can go to this last slide just take a break we should school like I said for SEL day and when I say shut down it means that in this moment our learning is centered around social emotional structure and our need but more like I said bounce around maybe housing fulfill this moment because some schools work five miles or right across the street from that high school you know everyone at school they had the shooting right or we know that our students in this school you know are seeing a lot more no violence and what does that look like and what do you need to do or are we seeing students who need support around jobs and other houses being you know or just how do I engage and have come to stations with my peers and get to know about them and so that is where it's been very intentional and we are using our partners and like I said the students are engaging so there's that social emotional piece that I keep talking about physically students and there are adults writing and having gone to a place of self-actualization but as you will quickly leave that place right that's right thank you could you talk a little bit about like where the Staffing means to be like for us on a community because that's a phrase like I'm familiar with it but in terms of like what kind of Staff like staff to student ratio and also the different years exactly what right so in our small mind communities every one of them has an academy principle that's your assistant principle and now becoming Academy trained on what leadership looks like and that's you have an academy counselor that is assigned to every single Academy and so you know if you're looking at then of course we have your general education teachers right English math history that's basically then you have your pathway teachers so what are the pathways that are offered in the Academy of their part of the group then you start thinking about your Global teachers right so are they a part of it Community like I was saying earlier everyone has a role I know it's a possibility so you have a teacher who's a team lead sometimes that's a tte pathway for internal education pathway teacher sometimes it's an English teacher and typically they have more than two years of experience teaching and they are trying you know in that leadership position then you have supports so when I have a meeting I think about what's on my agenda of course I'm dealing with those three of them talk about before in the kitchen not maybe if this is married but also there's a session about parent and Community involvement so while there's teachers who's leaving it usually my um [Music] we achieves or Family Resources Center if they're in the school buildings and they are in all of our school devices that are at those meetings or part of the conversation or have engaged with the teacher also we have members from our Special Education team who are supporting with the individualized education plans like I said our Global Teachers Community Partners we really think about the languages and support that I needed there but those are your basic level of the small learning communities and then what you're doing is what are the other needs our students have as we are meeting together and thinking about supporting and aligning our goals around our students today how many students per account again my name is Mr generals it's going to be different I'm under part of you but I'm at a school what we're looking at is I was sustain that pathway and it just depends on your involvement so let's talk about a high school maybe I'm going to do a low number if I have a um [Music] foreign classes I want to make sure that I have 50 students and that happened they're broken up so it'll be like 25 in a block and 25 -hour class so that 50 students will allow me to ensure that as they track even if they move through the district that I have enough students to keep that athlete going so I'm going to become a senior it's not to recruit students in the pathway right because they move around or they've changed Pathways at some point in time and so that's exports that number students 175 as freshmen and I'm offering 22.3 four Pathways I wanted to be you know 50 maybe a little bit more because we don't want to override because I got to make sure that I do not exceed that 25 or 26 you know range of those pathway classes and I wanted to be able to sustain and interact with our students of course if it's different when you have larger schools right but you really are looking at those numbers in long term 10 11 12th grade health and taking into consideration that we are at a district of mobile accidents oh Brent Carol what's our what's our break 450 to 500 so and don't forget one Academy that has four Pathways the rest of them had three so there's the balance a little bit skew there um you know we're looking you know where our enrollment is you know we have to kind of a fixed number that we're planning for but um you know once we have some of the selection process there'll be a kind of a give or take um in each pathway as well as the academy and what each can can hold and sustain and I would suspect that over time um and I'm sure you've experienced that some Pathways will be more popular than others and potentially sometimes you expand one right to meet the growing needs but that happens kind of over time it's pretty hard to shift in my understanding uh immediately right all of a sudden we've planned for Staffing around um 450 kids in a particular Academy but the demand is higher so you can claim it you know a year after year or two out but or make those ships but um the goal heading in is about 450 to 500 given the size of the academy and how many pathways are in each one okay does anyone else have any more questions foreign two words consistent messaging additionally every single one of your board members needs to have the same message that is going out to the community at all times so you need to make sure that what you are sharing about your Academy's model is being shared at the same at the same way by every single board member every single board member every time and make sure that you are engaging your students and your parents if they're not at the table they need to be make sure that they understand the importance of the academy model so that they can share within their own communities as well consistent messaging is the best way that I know to get it out there with that message yes we do we're at the Academy model and preparing their project career but we also have community so we have um we have an event called PC get lifted and it is where we open up and you bring your bring your children and bring the community and the students are going to you know perform and the partners are involved and so we're doing a lot of events like that and we do it um you know on a weekend and there's messaging and practice during the daytime and something else we got giveaways sometimes we have events for teachers as well because they are a part of community sometimes we go out like we we had the tornado happen a week before we cut counties at pandemic and it really hit some of our hardest neighborhoods right and so the community came together we were a space in the school where you can drop off your donations but um families do that this is the place I can come to pick up water pick up a hot spot pick up food and diapers and so really opening your school as well um to be a resource you know for your students to know that we are here for learning but we're also here forward to if you are a part of this I'm thinking about the times that you're meeting how being strategic about who you're invited like showing up um to those Community meetings as well and and inviting your parents in right to parents we got Pat but they're in advisory committees that support Illinois middle school and high school one thing that I have saw as well at work is as we've you know moved and taken the cabinets to the next level is engaging with the parents of the elementary middle school level so that they are tracking through and there's our kids come into high school they know that this model is going on they understand the importance of being involved and then of course like I said listen to those parents and what their needs are even in the workforce programs that we have in certification programs we had and that really came from the support of our mayor you know and his budgeting supporting and support of the director of schools at Nashville State Community College to put some of their budget toward the community and then take advantage of some of the things that we're looking to our students as well thank you okay quickly for us but we have our business partners employers like to learn about the different school systems in our place to actually look forward to that and so they have depend on the business they have days where it can be like a of some practice into place and so that's a great place to go especially if you have your business partners that are looking into Danbury that's a great place to start and going to them and actually telling them about your school system okay so you guys have our first step back that there have been a few times the district transformed to meet Community details students um can you talk about you know one of those transitions of what uh signals you saw that that told you you know decide to happen I know you guys are talking also about four times ongoing conversations but I'm wondering if they were you know things that came after those conversations that sort of nudged you to get ahead of what are the next characters so I think uh I'll speak to you and get that slow level and then being a partner in those conversations what we were saying so we have seen grew up in our students who work in this college Learners while that work was happening when they were if they were staying right in the new graduate and we're looking at the graduation length and how they affected or what supports they needed and what we needed to change and so do we have enough English language teachers in the building do all of the smaller Community teachers so all of our general consultations continue teachers understand how to support those students what it was the testing um what's the onboarding that families get when they first come into much and I'm responding to is that is that piece of set to all the parents know about it right so now you've got different partners that I can add on you have spaces for you know who we call Vita testing and our students are going through and helping to understand it but also a general content page for like an English teacher I understand we get it and they're now supporting making sure the students are testing um send their data get based on their age now they're coming in so that that was a number that you looked at and thought to get ahead of the response when we still are and it is culturally making a change I mean that's like Mexican America is offering Spanish 101 right for our teachers and our leadership to take you know over the course of the month so they have that General conversation so that they can engage with the families and actually call them reach out but also invest in the translation headset so that when parents are activity meetings they don't feel like they're just sitting there so when I have a senior night I know what my senior needs to graduate is having a conversation around college and careers that are here directly toward our students who maybe right now they don't have the necessary paperwork or status right to go into your career in college immediately but what are we doing with our post epidering conversation will be happy with the students but they know that you still do have options and here's how to take advantage of that and these are going to be your support systems is the top of the teachers and thinking about what are your um how are you including those students in your instruction so really in our common planning time when we're spending time uh planning around that lessons that we are our conscious of including the student construction and how they're engaged and not just you know having a little expectation there um they're just in the back of the classroom and they use it in the parking whereas they truly do are just saying that right onto the funding of the certifications that we take now those certifications are offered in more than one language as soon as I can take advantage of it because you respond to that any other questions in the comment do we have enough money to budget could bring him from Nashville all right the last question is from my panel here knowing that we're environment on this model uh he had one of the ones about board members who've had it with our community members we have parents that are listening if you have any last words if you think of reflect on them Beyond two possibilities of change um also always put your students first find out what they need and do your best to accommodate those needs and your students that's the best of us I can give anybody I always drive on the community effort in the truly collaborative initiative and I've seen that just by you know you all being in stages and just me and everyone people speak to the Academy's model and it's a great start I mean just having to be you know in Nashville and learned about it can't find us that's where it starts it seems like the advice that will give you each have already taken so uh best of luck and you'll already do it with the foundation will work to say that as you start seeing the impact of students you know just showing up my classroom and I think initially just this this big group that's going to happen right is curiosity isn't going to happen it has a part of teaching and as a teacher or someone in the classroom you want your student to be curious and you want them to be engaged and show up and so for that they're going to show up but then really thinking about that transformation right taking a learning or how they're involved there is nothing better than seeing that student that gets it or and make a connection or they have their first time out the building they reach back out to because now they have a job or they scored higher on the test or they pass a certification and you know to succeed I think about students you know in 10th Grade and they have this when they get their certification is hashtag certified and they understand the sagging of it and so in 11th grade they know like they just keep posting it on their social media you know now you're changing the conversations at home like you know something that's basically a CPR that he was able like but also hey parents now we have this community class for CPR but again my students now and 11th grade have two certifications and then I'm going to be a senior and I've got three and I'll take them to college classes and so we didn't really see and take pride in it as well for me um it's huge and I think that you will see just the investment and impact that keeps my impact students but then to see like that never continue to grow it really does put a ripple in um what used to be right and the stagnation that sometimes can happen as we do things the whole way and to see the possibility and choices just kind of people grow and the elevation that happens here it was truly like I said a transformation on office I cannot write it to see what you guys do we need to hear back from you so I wish you all the luck and that's where okay I just want to say thank you so much for uh you know immense our great at getting your point of course and the passion that you guys you know show is just it's something that we're really looking forward to we have a great team here and uh we do a lot of support from like you said City officials and stuff like that and at the end of that day school in some kids Community I mean I mean you know it's it is in this District but like our size um I just wish that we had more Community involvement I think something like this will definitely bring that I just want to thank you for all the time and come out there like I said I hope next time I make the cut to make it down to Nashville um I just thank you so much for for uh you know sharing your thoughts with us and I I would just like to add um for a new show I'm sure thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come up to visit and see what they are very we truly and generally do appreciate you coming up I know I can have a relationship with that Brandon previously like we as a beneficiary group we really want to thank him because uh I heard it mentioned earlier there was a conversation about it's important for the district to identify it's not a stock okay so I I want to share with you a couple of years ago I think you'll be pleased to hear this a couple of years ago we improved our fortunately we're advocate and uh maybe a year later around the same time it was the vehicle to help reach this North Star for students grades 9 through 12 was this Academy model and we had bought into this transformational model in every way and to Rob's point when he was talking about trying to find ways to mobilize this community around this community around this work that that has started and so I'm I'm really happy and excited and quite frankly proud of this community in a way folks are beginning to come together however right now we're in a safe folks are still trying to learn and understand the model and so I appreciate your guidance your support in this journey that we are in right now um to Ross Point we have an amazing team here we didn't hear all about your why why you um Financial Public Schools entered into the model in the first place I did share with the board previously some time ago your high school graduation rate uh two of those people 60 percent I just want to applaud you all of you for whatever role you may have played in the success of that District I understand you're an 80 plus range in graduation now actually that's on the running backs of a lot of hard work in that school community and I think we're talking about outcomes in terms of successes of the program we have a little different reasons for answering it but it's important for us in terms of Engagement we're having considerable concerns around finding absenteeism right now um considerable concerns around just overall engagement in school and so that's playing itself out as kids get into trouble in school particularly post pandemic when we really feel like this level of Engagement that's going to be often to kids who's been truly going to make a difference but again to our report cheers point the fact that we're going to be able to have the opportunity to mobilize our school Community around this we are really excited about it but thank you for your kids your guidance and your support throughout this process and hopefully we can lean on you again really soon in the future so thank you and thank you thank you thank you so man would you like to say something oh no okay so thank you very much Mr chairman thank you very much for the word of Ed I would just again again thank you very much for being here and doing this with the knowledge and the wisdom that you've uh you've learned in the past with your garage schools uh it's just a matter for you to be here I'd also like to take up this opportunity to give you some news that I got just recently for me it's it's huge there was a statement released this afternoon by the governor of Connecticut Ned Lamont hosting that Danbury it's been selected as one of the top cities in the country to live in in the country the reality is that that doesn't happen by accident and I'm just so happy I was here tonight to be able to share that with you the board event our superintendent our assistant superintendents and our whole staff and especially our teachers and the staff of the city because it doesn't happen by accident it's uh we all know the first thing people say when they want to move to your city house day education right we are good and I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you thank everyone in this room for all the efforts that you put forth to put us in that position and the future is now this educational system is now we move forward thank you [Applause] all right thank you everyone have a great night Kevin I just want to clarify my man John says I didn't say top 100.
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