Uh which isn't the case. And having a list like that partially anonymized uh may um help the legislators understand that uh you know regular Joe's and James also live here that may need additional assistance that uh uh traditionally may be uh refocused towards traditional areas of help. So, I just recommend perhaps if if there's a way to supply that to our legislature uh or our local legislature to help them uh motivate them to uh lobby for us might be helpful. We did I um when we did meet with our legislative lobby, it was on our legislative list some of the recommendations that I just mentioned to make some fundamental changes to that, but we haven't provided data beyond that. And I I hate to bring it up, but there are some other legislative proposals around food service this year in in including a a proposal in which uh school lunch and breakfast would be free for all students.
And those teachers who co-taught it this year will teach it on their own next year with some coaching on the side as needed. So that we can decide and and we're we're talking about that now and working with teachers and principles to say where is the need next and what grade level will that be in. So, it's always two-pronged, students and teachers. And I I just want to thank both of the Stephanie's because I thought they did an excellent job really breaking this down tonight. And, you know, we have such different people in front of us. Stephanie Lopez Smith worked at um the Connecticut Science Center and served as one of our coaches and has worked a lot with adults and teaching adults and Stephanie Kungas has worked at the at the high school level and worked with high school students. And so I feel like the yin and yang of what they brought together when they came in and worked in an elementary school, I mean, what they what they're able to do and the time that it takes to write one of these units, I think you can see and based on their answers can see the depth of knowledge that they have.
As you can see, you kind of already looked at this and you're like, you see a flat line, but if you look from on the first one, it kind of dipped and you can see that we are dramatically increasing as the time is going on. And just another note, when we do a 45day goal, we have 15 questions that I showed you on that um on the on the rubric. we are only looking at two things usually for a 45day goal. So two of the 15 questions we are really looking at um as you go through 13 14 and 15 those are ones that as we progress and our teachers progress through the MOI progressions those are ones we'll be hitting at a later date. So it's like the seven eight and those questions we have to get those in place before we see movement on the other ones.
Unfortunately, that doesn't come with funding attached. And so if that were to pass, the implications with for our budget would be quite substantial. So there's been testimony um against you know that obviously people are for and opposed. There's been testimony submitted against that. Um but that bill is still moving along. I forget the it's House Bill um 1417 or 18 I believe. The number just changed because it got folded into a different bill. the um you know we are uh in regular communication with the delegation. Um just earlier this week I emailed them all about uh I heard back from some about the U bill that was reviewed yesterday 1511 uh which addresses ECS funding. Our current level of ECS funding is about 9 and a half million. uh by 2035 it would be seven and a half million on the phase in plan. We're currently um about four years into that plan that has been held harmless uh for the first couple of years like uh they put it off put it off.
It's it's really incredible. Um, and when I said to them tonight, are you nervous? They said, um, nothing's worse than for, you know, having to fourth working into a fourth grade class. We got this. So, um, it's it's a different it's a different role. and I just want to thank them for all the incredible work they've done. And I want to give Mr. Hanland a shout out because the scheduling was um certainly tasking and he really was a communication person between all of the schools and all the principles to make this happen. So, thank you all. Thank you. And we're going to wrap this up because we have another meeting. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. I'll receive a motion to adjourn. Take your choice. And uh Emory seconds. All in favor? See you in five minutes.
So data trends, we did have a dip in implementation. So we have something called an action board and you'll see a picture of that. It's a board where we have our 45day goals, our um then we break those down into what we call milestones and then two week sprint goals. And then we have uh action steps for those that we work on every single day. We have standup meetings. Where are we at? What are we looking at? what is the trends telling us in the classroom? Um feedback and discussions with teachers regarding what we see in the classroom is taking place. Stand-up meetings with the staff regarding goals and expectations are done daily. So we have daily standup meetings with the staff to go over goals and expect expectations benchmarks. I'm going to just kind of go to the cohort. So, it kind of is a little deceiving.
The bill that was discussed yesterday would totally recalculate how ECS is um you distributed across Connecticut. And in our case, it would basically restore to the 9.5 million um including in the next fiscal year, which uh we're slated to go from 9.5 million to about 9.3 million. Um it's 211,000 I think off the top of my head is the exact number uh that would get reinto restored. But to your point, uh there are a lot of communities across Connecticut, um blue and red, who are feeling the impact of reduced state funding. Uh there's a great article today in uh CT Examiner on there or CT mirror, I can't remember which, but um I know that the legislature is feeling um the local feedback. Um, but I did make a note to follow up tomorrow. We have a massive PD day, PD day that I'll talk about later, but I'll follow up with the delegation on the lunch stuff uh come Monday.
We had 57.8% in red. So, we did go up to 59% um on midyear ELA data. This one we did go down from the 74% down to 64%. And that moved the yellow and the green higher for our cohort for ELA data on the eighth grade. And math data, we dropped the 64% the the the red down to 58%. And we moved those students over into the yellow and we actually put 7.4% up into the blue. eighth grade midyear not quite sure this is conversations we've been having and really looking at it um something you'll see in the presentation a little bit is our data board looking at Galileo looking at the standards and going back and reteing has been um something we instituted in February and I don't have the data to show you here but I can submit it later when they went and retested we had phenomenal growth so it being very targeted Ed looking at data has also helped move instruction as well.
And um and I'm sure all of us here would be more than happy to submit uh written testimony if needed. Yeah, I can send you a link actually bills that are impending. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Any other board? Um, thank you for coming to the town council meeting. There was a question that was posed that evening about some of the efforts that we're um currently implementing to support specifically the medical benefits portion when you spoke of Sigma. If you can kind of reiterate some of those things that we are doing in district um to encourage healthy lifestyle. Sure. I'll start. Actually, Dr. Solen did a good job to talk about the the health and wellness programs. Um, Sigma does fund $80,000 per year that is split between town uh and board of ed and we actually work collaboratively with the town. You know, we'll use those to do some, you know, fun things that, you know, have a a health and wellness purpose like yoga classes.
Science, we had a a drop of 20% in seventh grade and then eighth grade we actually had a drop of 40% in science in the eighth grade in the red. So to me that looks very promising for where we're heading with seventh grade. Now we just need to move the yellow up into the green. just keep pushing. Um, this is our updated SIM data. The previous one that we had originally done was an older version. One of us, um, beginning of the year, we started off with a We have pretty much a new staff at Fox Creek. I'm new to my position. Mr. Burgess is new to his position. Twothirds of our stu uh, teachers are first or second year with us at the school. Um, we had a third of our teachers being new this year at Fox Creek. So, implementation is one of the reasons we saw the dip as well because of having such a new staff at the site.
Um, we are sponsoring some memberships to the YMCA. Uh but then we're doing some more um specific things like diabetes management. So employees, we actually have two different programs. We have a pre-diabetes program that employees can take advantage of. And we also have a diabetes management program for individuals who do have diabetes. And it's not just employees, it's their dependent as well that ensures that they purchase their prescribed meds to make sure that their diabetes, you know, doesn't progress which leads to, you know, possibly different symptoms or if they have some other catastrophic event, the diabetes just makes it much harder to manage and much more expensive. So, you know, that's something that we've had in place for many years. Sigma still uh provides a health coach who's a registered nurse that's available in our town and our schools two days per week and then three days per week on alternate weeks.
Um, when we redid the sim data uh last uh two weeks ago, we did see growth on where we are going on the sim data. So leadership systems has moved dramatically over as all three of us have really learned our roles, responsibilities, uh data for improvement. We are constantly moving. By the way, the blue is like the movement. The orange is where we were at the beginning of the year. So we are seeing movement on our instructional maturity model. Curriculum and assessment. We moved again over. So we're looking more at standardbased lessons in the classroom. Teachers collaboration has moved not a lot but it is moving in the right direction. Again we do have a lot of teachers who are new so you know there's a lot of things that need to be in place to help them support them. core instruction we're still moving in the right area and then the self-regulation and agency we're kind of stuck on and that is something that we are con we are working on right now so we have a goal for that as well so celebrations core instruction teachers have shown growth from teacher directed to facilitated there's new roles so we're seeing growth there collaboration our staff does a great job of collaborating they are really taking the MLI strategy ies and they are really running with it in the classrooms.
And you know, her name Coach Jen is is what she's known as. She'll do individual sessions with employees, but she'll also come and she'll do different programs about, you know, healthy eating. Um, she does this great class every once in a while where she brings these vials with fat in them and you could see how much fat is in a McDonald's French fries and you look at it and you say, "Yeah, I'm not going to eat that anymore." versus a burger and a hot dog, you know, versus some healthy options. So, there there are a number of other things that are done, but that's just kind of a a brief summary to say that, you know, we we look at claims, we also look at health and wellness to try get people to be healthier so that, you know, at some point it reduces our claims hopefully, right?
We have some teachers who are doing some phenomenal lessons with the MOI strategies that have been brought to us from IE. Uh without consistent opportunities to work in teams, we have not seen movement on the growth pillar yet like that's not like mine like oh it's not passing period. This is our action board that I was talking to you about. We have our 45day goal at the top and then the smaller pieces and then the post-it notes are the action steps for those days. So it goes in the to-do or the doing or goes to done. So this is like the action board that we stand up as an instructional team every single morning and we discuss celebrations in classrooms. There's increased student talk. We have had a a big shift in the coalition of the willing has really increased and the movement of MOI teachers on MI progression has increased as well.
And there aren't any cost implications. Not in those programs. It's funded by Sigma. Great. Thank you. Any other comments? If I could just jump back to Adam's point real quick about the written testimony. I will say, you know, the I know Tony's done a ton of lobbying. Uh Ann Marie, Robin, Carrie, and I met with Senator Gadcar Wilcox, what was that, like a month ago or so? Um, and you know, it's it's conversations like that that helped spur the $40 million contribution to excess cost grant reimbursement to communities. that was recently passed. So the lobbying, the letter writing, the stuff that does matter. Uh and they do listen and just want to thank Amory again for that and and Robin for taking the time. But just underscore that point that I'll I'll share out, you know, any relevant links and all you have to do is go on.
Teachers are innovating ways to ensure that resources are available for students to use. A lot of our teachers have taken the MOI strategies and created notebooks so that students have resources. They know the sentence strengths how to talk with each other in groups or they have the structures. If they get stuck, what do they do without having to rely on the teacher all the time to get them unstuck? So they have the resources from MOI in there for them to use. Attributed to we had period sweeps feedback. We were going in the classrooms as a team. We pick a period for the day and just always go into every single classroom and then we talk about what we saw. Lesson plan feedback. We do feedback on our lesson plans every single week about the look force. And we'll look for are with what the rubric basically is on the river walk.
It's pretty easy to submit testimony. Does that conclude finance, Dr. Harrian? Mr. Masiana, are you completed? I'm completed. That concludes the finance portion. You complete me. Jerry McGuire together. Thank you. All right. Awesome. Next uh committee would be uh personnel. I think I'm forwarding this to you, Dr. Solen, right? Oh, this is uh a really exciting not with all due respect to the finance report um moment in our in our meeting. Yeah. Well, the curriculum stood on its own, but um so um you know, this is a a personal thrill for me having had the opportunity to not only serve as Cheshire High School principal for four years. It was a a lot of fun, great ride. Um but also having, you know, worked closely with our candidate this evening. Um, as you know, um, back in January, Dr. Gad stepped away to take a new position.
Courageous conversations with teachers. Teacher engagement during PLC's. Noticeable changes. We're adhering to calendar tasks. We're increasing our collaboration with one another. The coach is now really focused on coaching cycles. The teachers are highly engaged in planning conversations. There's been a lot of work and we're still doing a lot of work. Um my um Stephanie who I work with from IE has been really phenomenal in looking at like okay let's do a vision statement. So now we have a vision statement for instruction. What is it that we want for that? We've been looking at the structures of like I said the lesson plans. What do we need? What are we missing? What do we need to continue to do? So there's been we are continuing to just to look at the data, keep looking at it. Um, to me it's been invaluable. I would not know what to do if I did not have Stephanie from IE on campus with me to work, especially as a first year principal.
Um, and we knew that she had been retiring. Um, but we kind of kicked it into high gear. We were very aggressive in uh, advertising the position and had many uh, excellent candidates. um 50 applicants, which was really kind of unheard of for uh high school principal ship. And we went through the process um and got down to a really talented group of four. Um and the day after that interview, I I said to Mr. Hanland, who's the interim principal, you know, the door is closing on this quickly. Are you sure, you know, you want to be on the other side of the door? And um he said, "Well, I'm going to talk to my wife about it." And I said, "Well, you know, let me know." And early the next morning, he was in my office uh enthusiastically asking if he could be included in the process.
Having her as a resource has been without a doubt one of the best things that I could have ever asked for because she is a wealth of knowledge that she, you know, because she's very honest. She tells you what she sees in the classroom and then like what are you going to do about it? What are the plans? What are the steps? what are the things so we are making great stride and I believe it's because of the help of IE so it's given us the structures it's given us the ability for the instruction to get better in the classroom and it's also made it where kids are more excited because when they're actually doing like you said when the kids are excited especially junior high level kids they don't want to be talked to so they they enjoy being able to take the learning and being able to use it.