The mediation arm recommends something to the court. We will be still in a court situation. Um, so the approval of our plan will will come from the superior court uh in Mammoth County. And then it creates incentives for compliance to the law. And when I say incentives, um, it's more of a carrot, sorry, it's more of a stick than a carrot. Meaning that the in while Jeff had mentioned it's a voluntary process. Uh, if you don't comply, uh, you are open to what's known as a builder's remedy lawsuit, which we just we just, uh, talked about. You have a couple of them now. So, um, while it's voluntary, if you don't comply, you could be open to lawsuits. And so I always I tend to call that a stick. Here is the obligation. This obligation, the large number that you see there, 419 affordable housing units.
How will we know if they have learned it? What will we do if they have mastered it? And what will we do if they haven't? These questions guide teachers discussions clarifying the skills students need to master within each standard and allows for collaboration on best practices and highquality strategies throughout the year. With support from our guiding coalition and an instructional leadership team, grade levels have been receiving training, coaching, and feedback on high impact instructional strategies. As a result, we've seen significant improvement in differentiated small groups, explicit modeling, the use of manipulatives and thinkaloud strategies. Manipulatives are once again embedded in our practices, helping students develop concrete understanding of abstract math concepts. We also use engagement strategies to keep students motivated and involved. In addition to our core instructional practices, teachers have utilized our new curriculum and their suggested math centers such as the ones shown here to provide students with additional opportunities to practice the skills they have learned during core instruction while allowing teachers to walk and provide feedback as well as informally assess students understanding or to p pull small groups for intervention and enrichment.
So we talked about um how successful it was, how good it was for the kids to participate in these types of events and it was so successful um and so well run with um the support of our our food service um company Sedexo and support from Jan High School culinary students came down to support cheer on and help with the prep with the students. Um, so it was just an amazing event and uh we're looking to scale that out next year so that we have sort of a chopped competition across using the nutrition using it as an education tool about nutrition and food tying in the farmtotable um initiative and then at the same time I had an opportunity to talk to the kids about the academy that's coming down the line and opportunities when they get to the high school and the programs that'll be there for them if they're interested and passionate um about it even if it's just a hobby.
Um that represents a 48-year obligation. And I don't know if you can see it, but it it is made up of three different rounds. There's a prior round which covers 1987 to 1999. There's a second round, I'm sorry, there's a third round which we are just ending. We will be ending it in June of this year which ran which was the longest round um between 1999 and 2025 and then we are moving into what's known as the fourth round which will cover the next 10 years from 2025 to 2035. Um you can see the numbers up there they are they are big numbers uh 159 16 sorry 195 and and 65. um that all is pulled into one large number of 419 uh housing units. Generally, the way that the obligation is determined uh it's been since 1987, there's been lots of different ways of doing it, but generally the way that the the way that you take the regional need and you divy it up amongst the municipalities has to do with three main factors.
Our classrooms utilize a variety of high impact instructional strategies to engage students in meaningful mathematical thinking and learning. This year we have began retraining on the use of math talks. Math talks provide students opportunities to deepen their conceptual understanding by moving beyond the rope memorization. Math talks By requiring students to critically think and make connections about mathematical concepts, math talks have also helped to boost students self-confidence and engagement around mathematical thinking. In this fifth grade math talk, students review prior concepts and share their knowledge of two given math sentences. They make connections between prior skills such as multiplying whole numbers by fractions, dividing fractions by whole numbers, and understanding division with fractions and whole numbers. This brief activity prepares them for the main lesson of solving word problems involving the division of fractions. See if we can get it. While they work on that, I'll continue on.
hobby and not a career. So, um, all good things to come. There's a lot of nice things happening programmatically, um, that we're looking to scale. So, I just wanted to share that that that was a special event. And with that, um, I think that's it on my list. Anyone have any question for the superintendent? Seeing no moving on the standing committee uh Kate community relations. Before we start community relation, I want to thank um the chair for that committee Kate, the superintendent, Michael, and all those that work to make sure that we had the presentation set up to do tonight. Even though we didn't have the auditorium filled, we had people that came out and want to ask questions. So, uh you know, we learned over the time that when we put things together, people have reason they don't come. But we have to make do or at least inform the ones that are here.
One is income, the household income in the municipality um as it relates to the region. U non-residential valuations, the amount of commercial valuation that you have in a municipality and the amount of land that you would have to develop and they average those what what are called factors to come up with your percentage of the need. Um and that's how it it's very it was very clear in the new fair fair fair housing act the amendment as to how uh that the number 65 came to be for for the fourth round. So, while this is a large number and you all may be like, how the heck do we do that with not a whole lot of vacant land and you know, how do we accommodate 419 new units, there is an adjustment uh that the uh regulations allow for towns like Bel who have what's known as a scarce resource, which is vacant land.
At the conclusion of this math hog, Miss Ansley leads students into further rich discussion that provides them opportunities to utilize these skills in context as part of standard 5 NFB7C problem solving problems in real world context. So with the math talks, teachers are going to utilize whatever skills that they're currently using or what standard or skill would they could use to start the lesson that would benefit the lesson that's going to be the main lesson of the of the of this um time period. So, it would look different in every classroom depending on where they are in their um instruction, but they're going to want to make those math sentences relevant to what they're learning so that it builds. The purpose of the math talks is for students to be able to um kind of get their brains warmed up so that when they get into the core lesson, they they've already had that time to reflect on prior knowledge.
And I want to thank the superintendent uh and Kate for making sure that we did some type of presentation to the table. Thank you, Mr. Cooper. I just wanted to uh basically say thank you superintendent as well um for putting that presentation together. That was the community relations committee meeting that this evening. We don't currently have another one scheduled yet, but we will have that conversation here and figure out when the next [Music] time. Um, so we have our next curriculum meeting on April 9th. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. Uh, five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Yes. I'd like to call your attention to the packet with the extensive notes on the the minutes of the finance meeting. And I want to thank Kate for great job in doing that. During the finance committee meeting, we discussed the February statement. Basically paying a lot of attention to the large favorable variances and according to Mike Wea, he's continuing to look at the reasons that these variances exist and make adjustments to get the statements a little bit more in line so that we know pretty much why the variances will occur.
You don't have enough vacant land to support that obligation. Um, it we do what's what's known as a vacant land adjustment. Um, so we look we look through uh what really is vacant, what parcels are vacant that could support an inclusionary development. An inclusionary development basically is a development that would allow for at least five units of of of development with a set aside of um 20% for affordable housing. So when I talk about inclusionary developments, and we'll talk about it tonight, there's a couple of them that that we're going to go through. It basically means that about 80% of the development is market rate units and 20% is affordable housing to so it's some it's what's known as a set aside for affordable housing. That's what inclusionary uh development or zoning is. Uh we when we do that vacant land analysis, we look at parcels that could support affordable housing.
And so it kind of just gets them ready and it using and how they're thinking about numbers and math concepts in general. And the purpose of it and I wish it's such a great math talk. Miss Ansley does an amazing job. But yeah, so they basically will they'll put a number sentence up on um either a whiteboard or in this one you can see that she's using um chart paper. Um, and the purpose is that she um puts something that's relevant and then the kids throw out any concept that they can think of that is relevant to that. So, they may say what they notice about that math problem. Maybe they'll say um if they're talking about multiplication, it's it could be groups of or how it refers to repeated addition. So, they're throwing out all of those things and those strategies that they've already learned so that when they get to the content, they they've already warmed that up so that they can build upon that.
The other thing we did was pay a compliment to Angela on her excellent job to present to us a new format for the grant statements. Uh so we want to thank her for that. I also want to call to the attention that come September we were looking to have a seminar workshop on board accounting. Um but who's going to do with the cave or in advance that yet to be decided? Mrs. who thought September would be good because our agenda this year is kind of hooked up and I just want to make a PS to that for those board members who feel that a lot of wages member cave a number of months ago did a thorough job on many aspects of financial reporting board members you could probably contact them and get their downloads of the pres the webinars that they had uh presented.
Doesn't necessarily mean that they would be built on those parcels. It's kind of a theoretical exercise. Um but based upon densities that we apply to those parcels and what that set aside of affordable housing would be after we do that um that is what actually is what is your number or your realistic development oper excuse me realistic development potential. So this 419 units that very large number is broken into two pieces. uh one is the RDP or what I just mentioned the realistic development potential and that's based upon a vacant land analysis and then the remainder is the unmet need 395. Um we treat them differently. The RDP is uh a a number that we has to be realistic. We have to create a plan that will realistically produce uh units in a in a in a realistic time frame. The unmet need is we provide uh mechanisms that provide for meaningful capture of affordable housing into the future.
Okay. I don't know if I'm advancing now or if just moving more than I'm pushing. Okay. Okay. As part of our PLT process and commitment to strong instruction, our team decided to implement quarterly grade level CFAs to monitor student progress. In addition to district assessments after reviewing the assessments available for the essential standards, we chose to create a quarterly common formative assessment through school city for grades 2 through 5th in both math and ELA. We ensured that the questions were aligned and rigor rigorous for the standards selected in K1. We selected fastbridge to track progress in those foundational skills along with other informal measures in both subjects. So here is some feedback from one student. Um, Ryan is in Miss Ansley's fifth grade class and he said that math talks help him to grow his brain. They help him to grow his understanding of mathematical concepts and connect old concepts to new learning.
Thank you. I would like to certainly thank Mr. Janelli. We don't get a opportunity to thank one another, thank one another personally because we always running here, running to a meeting and um it's very important that we thank each other and I want to thank Mr. Janelli uh for his long service and devotion to the finance committee and those members that have joined the finance committee even though you know sometime we bump heads we don't see things eye to eye but we talk it out and I'm going to thank you for the dedication thank you policy committee thank you we've not had a another policy committee meeting since the the last board meeting. Our next meeting will be April 2nd. You'll see that there are several of the uh policies that were approved for the first read on the last board meeting are now on the uh meeting agenda for a second reading.
We may never hit that number ever, but we have to at least put into mechanisms that would help to capture affordable housing if development were to occur in the future throughout the municipality. Um and so this when we did the vacant land analysis, um I'm coming up with an RDP of 24 and we're going to talk about how we're going to uh meet that obligation and and then an unmet need and we'll also talk about uh how we're going to meet that. So this is the proposed affordable housing plan. Um we are uh looking at two two boxes. The first box is the RDP, 24 units. Uh within that RDP, uh the law allows us to take what's known as bonus credits. Um and so while we're still in the third round, this is what's known as our third round RDP. This will be our only RDP, but we are running by third round rules.
I also asked Miss Seammens who is one of our kindergarten teachers to talk about the impact of her math centers. Um, and she stated that math centers are fun and motivating for her students. They can't wait to do them daily. that they help students to reinforce the skills previously taught in a meaningful way and that they are preparing them for future readiness. By focusing on intentional planning, engaging instructional practices, and data-driven decision-making, we are confident that our approach will continue to improve math outcomes for all students in grades preK through fifth grade.
Thank you. Thank you. Um we did not have a sites meeting in March. Our next meeting is scheduled for April 23rd. And um as Dr. As mayor talked, we are looking to have a tour of the academy um in May, May 28th is the tentative date. So, we're looking forward to that. Thank you, and thank you for your dedication and supporting the position as vice chair. Um, at this time I'm going to ask Teresa. Teresa attended a fair last week. Would you like to break down? Sure. Report on that up there and we were glad that you went to represent the Thank you. Thank you for um uh history day. Uh the district uh competition or regional competition was up in uh Lewis Mills High School up in Burlington. Uh it was characterized as the Torington area which we are a part of and I sent everybody a um copy of the uh summary of the Danbury winners.
We get bonus credits, meaning uh one for one, you you provide one rental unit, you get a bonus credit for that. So, what you'll see up here is that there's actually 18 true units that are being proposed and then we're taking advantage of six bonus credits or what is also known as paper credits. Um, so they the third round rules have uh incentivized municipalities to provide for family rental housing which tends to be the most accessible uh housing for low and moderate income households. Uh so what you will see here and I'll go through this uh by step by step for these projects but I just wanted to give you the summary and the overview of it. Um we have 628 um Higgins Avenue that's also known as what we've been calling it as the M &D site. Uh this is and I'll go through it in a second but um basically uh it includes that is that's an inclusionary housing um project.
And now I will take any questions. Board members, any questions? I I just have one. First off, thank you for the information. Appreciate that. Um and this was all about math and a lot of our um presentations that we've received um from elementary schools has been focused on reading. So how is this incorporated with our with your reading interventions? Is that incorporated at all or is that separate? How is our math? So this presentation was the focus was on math instruction in general. How we implement our PLT process. Um we do have all we also do have designated time allocated for um reading intervention and extension in addition to our math intervention and extension as well but they don't ne they don't necessarily overlap. Okay. And what what has been your biggest challenge with this this year? Um I don't want to say our biggest challenge.