So if they were with another team and they had more pros in their unsustainable article, if they were able to back their statement up, then then we would talk about it as a class and say, "Okay, uh, is more pros better or is the quality of the pros and cons better?" And it would be a great conversation to have as a class, but yes, it did happen. So, not to dig too deep into it, but is it like organic farming versus petroleum based fertilizer or is is was that sort of the difference between the two or is it like organic farming uh tillillage um using manure, dispersing manure, um cover crops, cover crops, um fertilizer, green houses, hydroponics, hydroponics, um monoculture, hydroponics, um I want to say that we had 16, there was like eight and eight how we divided them up. You really covered quite a bit of methods.
You're at 50% or more. So you're getting there. I I have a hard time with that. You might want to get come Fred. You um you getting that. Well, Julie, you might want to come up here and stand behind him for just 25 seconds. Yeah. So, we know what we're looking at. I have no idea. Can you see it or Oh, I I can see it. It's just I didn't take Greek when I was in school. So, a lot of these words are really new to me. Like taxonomy. I've heard taxonomy gets used a lot. I don't really understand what it means. It's the level of what this of understanding the level of understanding of the item. So we don't want kids to be at retrieval. That's like a teacher doing direct instruction and you're just filling in information. So the higher the taxonomy level the the more it's challenging to the student.
But we'll receive an additional 200,000 in prescription rebates. And if I were to add that into the balance, you know, we're at about 2.23 million in reserve balance. Our goal is to end the year where we started in the reserve which is 2.3 million. So you know things are looking pretty decent and hope hopefully March and April claims come in a little lower than the 1.18 million average expected. So you know we'll we'll have a reserve balance at around the 2.3 million mark when we end the year. And that concludes medical benefits and finance.
So yeah, that's that's really great. Thanks. Thank you. So, I just want to thank you for bringing this presentation to us tonight because Marlene did push really hard for this program to come to our fourth and fifth graders and now we can see what what she saw beforehand and and Kevin as well, what they saw in the advantages of offering this to fifth and fourth and fifth graders in our school district. So, thank you so much. They chose the right people. And it's not lost on me that our fourth and fifth graders also got science and robotics instruction from two women who are tops in their field. And one of them who was seven, eight, eight and three/4ers months pregnant. and the and what they learned was that women who are nine months pregnant can still think and can still do their jobs. So, thank you um for being the role models also that you were Oh, I'm sorry.
So like if they are creating and they are analyzing and they are doing that's the level we want them at. Well, I can I can say one thing about my observations. I've been in some of the classrooms and I think Miss Veila was uh very very kind to me when I was first visiting the school and she took me in and I got to see a fourth grade classroom and I think I've mentioned this before and I don't think and I I did do my share of instruction. and I was an apprentice instruction for my uh construction craft. I taught apprentices, different classes. I need to kind of watch. But I've never seen a classroom that had the students as engaged. Yeah, we've done I need to go do the the learning process as I did in that fourth grade classroom. So I have to believe that that kind of interest and participation on the student level, it it has to it just it just has to bring the stuff the the whole comprehension level and all the grades and everything that goes along with it up.
If there's any questions I'll be glad to take them. You thank you. You had mentioned the 70% for discretionary non expenditures nonparal expenses instructional expenses maintenance training types expenses. That's that's where that applies. Okay. So, it was only in the past week that I came to realize just what a situation we have in that we have for our budget for next year. Um, it just strikes me as it might be something to I'm wondering if you're considering it raining in that spending and then that money could go into the medical benefit trust fund. Just I'm going to hit on that. Okay. When I get to my report. Got it. Good. Thank you. What I will say in response to that, because I know Dr. S's going to speak about it, it, you know, 70%, we have room to go higher right now. So, what we would look at as we're preparing summer purchases and projects, we would say, oh, we can't do all of those because we may need to add funding to the medical benefits reserve or some other reserves.
I didn't even look to my right. Uh thank you so much. And um for the the board to see um the results of what we were asked to put up money for really helps us to go out to the community and say this is why we did it. We you know this is what the students did and what they learned and and it really gives us the ammunition to to support more endeavors like this. And to that uh Miss Cullen I I just also want to thank you. Um this was a great presentation this evening. I particularly liked um the information from the students, how heartfelt that was and and obviously the teachers. A couple questions. Um how did you choose or which how did you choose the NGSS the standard to work on for fourth grade and fifth grade? And the second follow-up question is next year.
It just it it's I I don't see it reflected a lot in in a lot of the data, but I can see the enthusiasm and the engagement of the children and I think that's amazing myself. So for what that's worth. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Maybe gives you an idea of what we're looking for the rubrics we call them theors when we're in the classroom on what we are actually looking at. Um I forgot Julie stand closer to the microphone please. So I forgot to add my other two uh members of my team. So Miss HGY and Mr. Burgess are also part of the team. This is our students doing student teaming on campus. So they also have the resources and the different um strategies that they have been taught on how to collaborate, talk and you know for this case with language arts they are looking at um a book and they're analyzing a passage and trying to find evidence and they're doing that and they're um basically sharing and comparing and then coming up with their their um final product as through implement.
I think that's what Dr. Solen will talk about later. So again, even with all that said, we're in good shape. Even with% now. Yes, I'm talking about this year. Thank you. June 30th will be here very soon.
What is the plan for your fourth graders who have already had this right? where do they go next year or how what what does it look like? What's the curriculum look like? And again, thank you to Marlene and to Kevin for um bringing this forward for us to vote on last year. So, the standards directly from the framework. outlined uh for three through five and when we were tasked with an aggra science curriculum this was the the I think we had something initially in mind in terms of what we were expecting out of it and when we really dug into the standard we saw a sort of a different direction that we had to go in order to meet that standard in terms of how are we uh bringing in this idea of sustainability how are we having students uh investigate the effects of land and so I think our original idea was oh you know Cheshure is a farming community plants are fun and how can we incorporate the greenhouse at central office but after really unpacking that standard uh we saw that we needed to go a little deeper did you want to add on yeah um for the for the three-dimensional learning to take place it it was a lot for Steph and I we really had to think hard about the direction we were going to go in.
Yeah, sorry it's been a long day. Implementation dashboard summary view. Um, again, Bella kind of went over that with you already. We had a little bit of a dip on this. We and so we are coming back up on our numbers. Look and learn data again. We had the dip um November, December, we had a transition of uh the SLC coach on our campus which from one person to the next who we work with. So we as we worked with that person and started really diving in working with her and now we're starting to see things really starting to move at this point in time. Miss V. Yes. Can you go back to the last slide, please? Is there a a reason for that spike in October? So, in October, apparently, we were on it. We were going in and doing a lot of look and learns.
Anybody else have any questions? I would note that in our packets there are also the list of energy price locks. If anyone has questions on that, I'm sure Vin can address those as well. Mark, uh, just out of curiosity, how we doing with the lunch program? Okay, that's coming up. You're talking about negative balance, I assume. Uh, we're holding steady at just over 21,000 owed from parents. Um, as we always do, you know, parents do get an update that they have an outstanding balance. We are making phone calls to the larger balance parents. We got to about 24,000. It's dropped down a little bit now, so we're continuing to manage. If you remember uh last year, that's about where we ended at around 20, you know, 21 22,000. So, doing our best to try and collect without um upsetting people too much. Thank you, Mr.
So, we actually found a contact um through Kevin at one of the events. He was passing out flyers. So, we met with a woman from another high school that does not only agriculture, but um she works with uh animals, too. It's livestock. Is it Lyman? Was it Lyman? Lyman. Anyway, so we really collaborated with her and we broke agra agriculture down into these like we subdivided it and then we were like okay well we have 12 days what do we want like what would we like to do and Stephanie was like dirt I want to play with dirt and I was like okay but it has to li like let's line it up and we had to just search we had to go through the next generation science standard patterns and then go into that like environmental human environmental. There's a section in there and we started flipping through and it really does divide it for you.
Uh, November hit. This is when we had transitioned into a new person at our site. So, we were recalibrating re doing um all learning new processes with the new person. Basically, we had to recalibrate different things that from one person to the next. Also, in December, we have testing. You only have 2 and 1/2 3 weeks. There are November, same thing. So, November, December, there's a little bit of a decline for testing, recalibration. And um also the look and learns went down. Miss HGY, our instructional coach, was gone for two and a half weeks because she got really, really sick as well. So, some of that data was from that. Okay. Thank you. And our numbers have come up dramatically in March and we are going in the that direction. So look and learns what trends are you seeing? We are currently experienced a dip in implementation.
Eki, for jarring my memory on that topic. Um Oh, no. My only question is, so since you make phone calls, that also means that you track the students andor families that are affected. Well, not track, but you know who they are, right? Our food service director and it actually is a very limited circle of people, but yes, we do know absolutely know what the balances are. Uh so my question isn't one isn't one of persecution but one of uh would has an analysis been done or would someone know are these approximately the same families that were affected last year? Is there a pattern? I don't know specifically. Um and you know we try and be sensitive to each family's needs as they come up. I I know I had mentioned in previous meetings that, you know, the the thresholds in Connecticut are really, you know, way too low for families to qualify for free and reduced.
So then you can go to three through five and that's how we picked this and then because it was so big there's no way that we could have hit it all. So because we wanted dirt we wanted that's how we just broke it down. We went through a lot of brainstorming. We came up with a lot of questions. Um, and then we just had to hone it down and slim it down. For robotics, it was particularly the same. We were purchased the robots. It came with some material, but we really wanted them to be solving a problem. So maybe Stephanie and I knew that they were never going to build an actual robot to drive through the school, right? Which is what drove them. and motivated them. But it was like if you can't figure out a program for a prototype, how could we possibly invest in the money to build something that would actually navigate our campuses?
So we had experienced a dip but we are coming out of that as we have been working with Stephanie from IE who's our SLC. She's our Skype site leadership coach and we have been really um putting a lot of parts and pieces into things. IE is not only just kids collaborating in the classroom. Um IE um has also been a huge support and teaching teachers and the admin team how to make instruction better in the classroom. So they are they're a wealth of knowledge. They are very experienced people. they've had, you know, a lot of time in education. So, they are teaching us how to be better on teaching our teachers and then that helps us teach our teachers to be better in the classroom. So, this is a lesson plans and looking at the components of lesson plans, looking at the success criteria, looking at learning targets, really looking at student evidence, is it aligned to standards, what is it that we're seeing in the classroom?
And we know that some of the parents that aren't paying are, you know, unfortunately don't meet the the threshold. Um, and then yeah, are there are there some parents that, you know, should be paying that haven't paid in the past? probably are, but I I'd have to, you know, have somebody take a closer look at that. And and I only ask because the legislature is still in session and I'm sure they're still considering where funding goes and um if uh you know uh as we saw was that this week with town council was that okay as we saw this week uh let's see our funding has already been cut like $4 million I think for the entire town. Um, and uh I guess that means that um uh the legislature believes that uh uh regular folks don't live here and that everyone can afford everything that we have and everything's just fine here.
So, it was really talking about criteria and constraints, right? This is the real world. This is the materials that we're given, right? And unless we're 100% with our prototype, we can't go anymore. and it was wonderful. It was a wonderful engineering design program. It just worked out so well. I'll answer the second second part of your question, which is what does next year look like? And so when when we undertook this endeavor, we knew that this was two-pronged. that we wanted students to have hands-on experiences, but we also wanted elementary teachers who are generalists and teach every subject to get coaching from people who had depth of knowledge around the NGSS because we'd done a lot of PD and some coaching at the middle school and high school, but our elementary folks needed needed more of that. And so next year, this wonderful aggra science unit that they've written will now replace something that was in our curriculum.
So this process is is something that we keep saying to the teachers because our lesson plan keeps evolving. They're like, "Oh, we got a new template." Well, as we keep working with the strategies, things have to keep evolving as we are learning more. So this is a constant moving cycle and we keep trying to look at and this is what the look and learn trends are is to see where we're at. What do we need to do? What do we need to continue to improve on? What is it in the classroom? So, and we have made changes or intentional calendar during for the week so all of us know where we're at, which classrooms we're going to, who do we need to be in, those type of things. creating protected time for our instructional coach to hold consistent PLC's using the empowerment central courses coaching cycles we focused on MOI progression moving the teachers through the progressions coaching conversations with teachers on improvement plans setting expectations and behavior managements and that is not reflected in the look and learn data but it does if they don't have classroom management then they can't do the the teaching our rigor walks.