mrs. Fitzgerald is busy working with her faculty on developing their units k-8 they're in a really good place she actually we had some conversations over the last couple of weeks and she's developing some kind of summary materials to update dr. Ruby and I on exactly where her teams are in their curriculum development and then we would obviously go to cape committee and share that and then we certainly will be more than mrs. Fitzgerald be more than happy to come bring that forward and come share that with the Cape committee in the board yeah I just I mean that's really the arts are really interesting because I'm a believer you don't necessarily have to spend a lot more to have a vibrant arts program you just have to have focus on what is that you want to deliver with staff yeah yeah I really want to enhance things by saying I want to have this extra thing this extra program but is the questions I would have is what is our program for music through the grades how does it grow you know our strings part of it or they're not part of that sure you know there's a lot of stuff around that choral programs how do we enhance skills and get kids excited about that arts and Fine Arts sure know what are we doing there art appreciation drama doing their drama weren't the Giants with middle schools and I actually having had kids who've gone through this I think I actually think we have a pretty good program and it's underappreciated and we don't talk about it I don't know what other other people feel about it but my actually my my kids all look back with great joy and the arts programs they had so can I ask a question about from going too far stop me but on question 11 we asked about curriculum writing is that something we could talk about tonight or actually we prepared that was something Reds that's lengthy enough that I actually asked dr.
president member Pritchard I would state that the courses are offered for our high schools sometimes of course may not make at a certain high school but the courses are offered at our high schools okay so some students may not then have the same opportunity if that class didn't make at their high school to get credit for like like let's say band potentially but I will tell you that our arts programs are growing in numbers and they are making significantly more than these do and then under I know in the section regarding the examples you gave for extracurricular activities you do stay on there stay on there that they they're not limited to these but I was just thinking just as far as like just consistency or just equality I noticed that unless there was a reason for this but I noticed that under visual arts and theatre there were student clubs so Art Club and Drama Club but under music and dance like choir club wasn't on or dance club dance company clubs those weren't listed on there but would those students be able to count in those talents they will so basically when we sat down as a committee I had those individual disciplines kinda list what they thought so if somebody said dance club they might have been thinking also about their so it's not necessarily something that they're limited to we're open as soon as students turn in their list they can have conversations in their initial mentor meeting to find out if they just say you know with this count for me the teacher will be able to say yes or no so pretty much if these kids are doing hours in the arts and it's not even limited to like if you've got a student in choir and they choose to go and run the lights at a dance concert they're gonna get credit it doesn't have to be in their own discipline so there's so many things we could have listed we just tried to do our best to hit as many as we could and that's why we have been not limited to so they'll have those opportunities they just have to have discussions with the teachers if they're doing ours in the arts outside of the class day they're gonna get their hours okay and I like what you said you you referenced meeting with their their mentor because that was one of my questions actually is there going to be like a faculty advisor or someone that is gonna help these students be able to meet their requirements just touch base with them on their journey to get the seal yeah so part of the capstone requirement is that they're doing a weekly reflection so they're gonna have to do a check-in with that teacher either through Schoology and doing an email or whether having a sit down I don't expect the teachers to sit down every single week with the kids that's gonna take too much time away from the rest of students but at least I think we said three times a semester is what they are sitting down and doing just a check-in to make sure that they're along the way with that capstone process the only other question I had is in regard to these extracurricular activities how far back does that go like if they're can they starting as a freshman and they can count all those so starting as a freshman yes our seniors this year are going to be limited to this current year because that's what the state has told us so we can backlog to the beginning of this year most of these students are going to have the those hours because they do so much outside a school that doesn't actually count but we it's gonna be a case-by-case basis this year is we figure this out and the state same thing with them too they've got you know didn't I don't want to say it's a pilot cuz it's not a pilot for them but it's their first year rolling this out so there's gonna be some bumps along the way so we'll be figuring that out so are you saying than the seniors this year can only count this year's extracurricular but everyone else can count back to their freshman year I'm gonna have to check with the state on that but that isn't be fair I understand it wouldn't be your you're absolutely correct so I will do some follow-up with the state and find out how they want to handle that maybe that's why they're only doing the thirty hours because this progression well and I appreciate that they don't have to do all eighty obviously cuz I'd be impossible right but you'd think that they would if they were doing it ever since a freshman they'd be able to count it because they're counting those classes correct yes they will count those classes because they wouldn't be able to get four full credits well I guess they could but they wouldn't be taking much out okay so okay so like some of it they're taking but and then the timeline you kind of already answered that question that I had again thinking of the seniors for this year the tenth is gonna be here in a couple days right so and we so the approval came from the state the Friday before we went to break so we didn't even know that we were okay to go so when we turned that in we were thinking we would have that back sooner so I did meet with the teachers on Monday we have gone through this entire presentation they understand that the plan is for them to have conversations with the students next week about it and then the following week we're gonna set up some parent meetings at each of the schools that I will attend to answer questions and kind of clarify for parents that are interested to attend so we're going to be a little bit behind this start date the good news is the majority these seniors that are gonna apply have already been in the honors by contract and have met that capstone for the most part already on that semester not all of them there will be some exceptions but our goal is to get this out to them as soon as possible we're just on a time crunch based on the scene so by next week then when you meet with them you'll have more information on how far back they can go for their yes yeah I will put an email in tomorrow they're good about answering quickly so thank you so much I think mr.
Ruby and mrs. fairies to put together a brief overview presentation as a district and where we're at and then each principal to come up and specifically talk about where they're at where they anticipate working with their teachers in developing their curriculum this the remainder of this year and then for next year you know that which was the specific question what is the curriculum writing the extended duty actually going toward are they share that so when we're ready we're certainly ready conversation as well when the board is ready so are there anything is there anything in any of these items and these are non mandated items for the most part that you guys want to go through may comment on anything that you see doesn't align with our values okay there was another question which was what was the reason for the fluctuation in electric costs do you have an update the electrical costs were lower than they were in 1617 and lower than they were in 1819 two factors in June of 2017 there was an overpayment of about eighty seven hundred dollars with the credit taken in the next year so that kind of artificially inflated 1617 and reduced 1718 and then during 1718 there was less electric usage at both the high school and uncle Barry I don't know specifics and I do it every year totaling about 20,000 dollars that's a lot less yeah but it wasn't just one I thought maybe it was you know I would see it in one block but it was we thought it through though here burst we were trying to isolate that yeah that was one factor but it was multiple months mm-hmm yeah it was just those two schools on the other two schools were relatively consistent all three years more snow days what's up those years more snow days and the last question was regarding curriculum writing so don't you ready for that weekend yeah sure yes so dr.
president I could also just add that and this presentation this evening is for the board's information and will be brought back at the next meeting for approval of the the seal excellent thank you anything else thanks so much all right we'll go ahead and jump back in we're going to go action item j1 policy governance board monitoring of adopted policy section 7 personnel dr. Kellis Thank You mr. president well mr. Dean to introduce this item mr. president members of the governing board dr.
dr. Rudy did you do the honors please thank you mrs. Ferris as well thank you that's my favorite thank you so the missile it so what we want to do is give an overview which I don't think it's working hello okay so we want to give an overview this is a very high level because it would take days to go into what goes into the creek in writing but a very high-level overview of what we've done over the past three plus years to set up the principles delivery of what they're currently doing this year and then what the extended duty money that they've put into their individual school budgets for curriculum writing is what what is proposed for so the first thing you know and this might seem very simplistic but we really need to be on the same page for what curriculum is because you use the word curriculum I see Joyce head and it means different things to different people so what do we mean by curriculum and curriculum typically refers to the knowledge and skills that our students are expected to learn and that includes the learning standards or the learning objectives or you could call it learning targets that they are expected to meet and then the units and the lessons that the teachers actually teach and the assignments or the projects that students are engaged in asked to do also the books materials videos presentations and readings that are used in a course and the tests and the assessments that measure how students do all of that is part of curriculum so sometimes and that definition is lifted right from that that address sometimes people use the term curriculum when they're referring to a program that they purchase from a vendor so you might hear some people say we use the teacher's college units of studies curriculum that is not a curriculum that's a curricular tool so if you look on your PowerPoint where you see books materials etc etc that's a part of curriculum some districts actually buy curricular tools and use that as their curriculum but that's not what we mean when we say curriculum so this is really important as a foundational understanding because it's the it is the foundation upon which we are building our curriculum PD for our teachers and the process that we're using for curriculum development so just to talk about the curriculum development process here in Brookfield whether or not you know this or not most teacher preparation programs do not have a course in curriculum development there is a course on curriculum but it doesn't teach you how to develop curriculum so when we were embarking on the process of looking at you know redesigning our curriculum so that to make sure that it was aligned with standards we embarked on with your support and with our community's support consultancy with Marie Alcock dr.
Kelsey and members of cabinet this evening we bring to the board for second read policy 7.0 7.32 with the change that was recommended in 7.22 there is no there have been no changes to this since the first read but just as a quick refresher to the board and I'll try to be brief this policy revision will allow our school district to give credit for up to 7 years of teaching additionally upon hire when when we hire when we have a new hire additionally this policy allows our Human Relations Department to count private school experience as years of service as long as the teacher was a certified teacher in the state during that time and so that's just a quick review we haven't been together since the middle of December so that's well first read was and there have been no changes for second reading excellent any questions I moved the governing board approve revision to governing board policy 7.22 as presented second reading that was Jan tenner motion and Kristine Pritchard second it's because I'm used to the president motion carries thank you we'll go ahead and move on to action item J - recommendation to approve certificated and licensed employee contract language and benefit packages for the 2020 2020 and 2021 year dr. kaylis Thank You mr.
Marie Alcock in 2017 so that teachers could actually own the curriculum so that we're actually teaching teachers and empowering teachers to develop the curriculum as well as be being the end users of that curriculum along with their student learners and that's pretty important because it really provides for a much more meaningful experience for the learners both the adult learners and the student learners and it's actually what we're in business for right as a board of education as a school community curriculum is our business curriculum instruction and assessment is what we do so we really starting in 2017 with dr. Marie Alan Cox consultancy she's an international expert on curriculum development some of her books that she is authored or co-authored are on this slide and Maureen found this little clip art that says got Alcock on this mug and in fact we have so we got her already and it's interesting because a lot of our you know sister towns in Connecticut are looking to get out so she has started from what I understand to work with the Wilton School District so I guess they've jumped on the bandwagon of trying to make sure that their schools also have a standards aligned curriculum and that empowering teachers as developers as well as end users so we've got dr.
president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening the board will be presented with several contracts for approval just as a quick review about a year ago when we went through this process there was a change made to the amount for amount of cest for liquidated damages for employees who broke their contracts without meeting certain criteria that amount was changed from twenty-five hundred to a thousand and with the expectation that administration monitor how the the frequency of of employees based on that new amount if there is any variation based on our review there has been to date an increase over last year and the year before of employees who have left their contracts and so with that we bring these contracts back with a choice for the board to make in each of the contracts and that is to keep it the same at 1,000 to move it back to 2,500 or there's a blank you can have a conversation of another amount that the board may choose so with that introduction I will ask mr.
Alcock and we've got this program going to develop a core team of curriculum developers in the school because we want to build capacity in our district and as I shared with the board when we put this into the budget it's not like it's it's not going to be forever and ever and ever because we are going to be building capacity and weaning ourselves off of dr. Alcock support at the level that we've had and in the budget this year there is a decrease in the amount of funds that we're looking for to to spend in working with dr. Alcock because we're building capacity and expertise with our teachers so we'll have we'll get a new cup or we'll just let her go to Wilton or Weston or Westport or any other W that might want her you are oh yeah we are so so so now Deb is going to talk about what learning has occurred so that you know what the teachers got for them Fiat money and the support that we gave them yeah so it was really hard to fit all of what we've learned into this one slide and as Maureen said at the onset this is really a very high level you know presentation on really the curriculum development process but core curriculum design teams consisting of both teachers as well as administrators from all of our schools again we're empowered to become both the developers and the end users of curriculum and I can't stress the importance and the appreciation and this and the appreciation for the support by the board and our community to really allow teachers that that yeah yeah that privilege to really own the curriculum so that it's not just this you know store-bought kind of curriculum that's given to you in a binder and you go and you implement it because going through this process of curriculum development is really giving us so much more than just a standards aligned curriculum it's giving teachers the professional learning to really be better teachers and really understand the standards which are out there minimum grade level expectations but really beyond just understanding the standards but really becoming and developing a better expertise in assessment literacy and best practice instruction evidence based instruction so it's really in the three years or so we've really seen and teachers really feel much more empowered in an intimate with the curriculum so it's really done a lot not just given us this end product that we're going to use in the classrooms okay so we started off with collaborating to bundle or gap put together the standards in a way that made sense developmentally neurologically for students and we pasted them out basically within the context of the nine and a half month school year was at the nine and a half year school year I know and again the standards are the bare minimum end of year grade level expectation so we were able to bundle those paste them out according to you know again the context of the school year we then deconstructed did a close read of the standards just deconstructed them so that we could look at what within what's the knowledge what is it that students needed to be able to know and what was it that they needed to be able to do so the knowledge the knowing and the skills the doing then we were able to develop assessment item or events that were aligned very precisely aligned as you can see this is a very precise systematic process the assessment items were aligned with the standards and it says their bucket one and I'll talk a little bit about the buckets if you will up in the next slide we also prioritize standards and that was for the reporting purposes only even though all standards are explicitly taught and overtly assessed throughout the school year we prioritize standards for the purpose of reporting only we also identified instructional materials basically the activities and the resources that are aligned to the standards which is really the knowledge of the skills and as Maureen referenced the curricular tools and the programs the district approved programs such as the Teachers College units of studies those are certainly part of and integrated into our curriculum but those are not out curriculum and all teachers so even if the teacher wasn't a core curriculum design team member because obviously we can't pull every single teacher out of the schools for professional development that would really give what's es the SS run for their money as well as our budget we the building principals have really been very thoughtful in the capacity building rollout at the school level so in terms of exploring the next steps we're looking now to get into bucket two and that's really developing the context for the curriculum so as I was sitting here listening to some of the conversation around you know global themes certainly that would be part of our bucket to in terms of developing context for curriculum and certainly looking to you know make some of those themes or the case studies that would be involved you know culturally and globally relevant and then bucket three it talks about the student engagement for self navigated learning I'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide or two so this is a graphic that really shows the relationship because this is sometimes confusing to folks the relationship between standards curriculum instruction and assessment because we throw all these words out and they may not mean anything to folks so here's a quick example the standards so the common core standards the next generation science standards the social study standards arts standards music snail whatever standards were talking about those if you want to think about architecture if we had Paul chuckle here he could deliver this this so those are building codes okay so building code is the bare minimum I don't know anything about building well let's pretend you know you have to have the foundation has to be this thick and it has to be made out of stuff that's got these things in it and you have to have at least X number of windows and you have to have at least X amount of outlets and they have to be this high off the floor those are building codes so the standards are building codes most people if they're going to build a very high level house they're not going to just be at the at that level of building code but they have to meet that or they're not going to get a certificate of occupancy when the building is done so if you meet the building codes then you want to build the structure the architectural design of whatever it is you're envisioning you want to have for your own building whether it's a home or a school or a hospital and I think all of us have a little bit of experience with that having been through the new school building so once you have that building code then you need to have a blueprint the curriculum is the blueprint okay so the blueprint is much more sophisticated than just the basic building codes so we are building that curriculum it embodies the standards which we must assess to make sure that everybody is reaching the minimum but that's not where we stop and that's what why we had have to do professional development for the building of the curriculum and we gave you a little bit of an overview about bundling the standards and all the things that Deb talked about on the previous slide if you have a curriculum that doesn't really do anything for children unless you can engage them with the curriculum and so that's the instruction and that's where we are also providing professional development and have been doing so for the past five years since we got here on the gradual release of responsibility model and you've seen that in our strategic coherence plan how are we engaging students with the curriculum so that they are actually learning from it and we are we talk about learning targets and the activities all of that is in the curriculum so that it's not a lottery of who your student gets for a teacher there are insured experiences that are embedded in the curriculum so that we have equity and then and we've asked this question here tonight how do we know that it's happening how do we know that it's working and that's the assessment piece and what we really like Mr Belinda would know better about this than anybody because his teachers really gave me one of my greatest moments of work here in in Brookfield because we have as teachers we really haven't had in pre-service in the becoming teachers a great deal of learning in designing assessment assessment literacy among teachers cut is is not high and so we make up tests that we think measure something but how do you really know and so this great moment was when we did a lot of assessment work how do we design the assessments which takes a long time and you have to know everything else before you can get there that really measure what we think we're teaching we had and I'll just say it was the English teachers it was a great day so they have these tests that they give and they've been coveting them and they give them back to the kids after the corrector but then they take them back because they're gonna use them again and when they really unwrap the standards and went through this process with one of their units they started looking at the test that they give and they realized that the tests that they were giving don't really measure anything that they're trying to figure out if they taught and to see teachers really sitting there in these work sessions and having that aha moment and saying oh my goodness we have to redesign this because we're doing all this teaching but this test doesn't really assess what we're teaching was really showed us that what what we are trying to do we were getting at so this process is something that takes a long time to do and I would invite any of you to invite us back some other day or a Saturday or a weekend and we can give you a deeper a deeper dive but we can't go into it we love to talk about ok as promised we're back to the buckets so the buckets are there to really illustrate the evidence the assessment evidence of standards assessment evidence of curriculum and assessment evidence of instruction so that's what really these buckets represent and they also correlate or align to the three big reasons for why we would embark on standards aligned systems so the number whatever necessarily in order but number one on this slide reason for the why of going to standards aligned you know systems is that it provides transparent and honest feedback to the learners and it's the feedback is relative to that those building codes of the bare minimum end of year grade level expectations that really allows us as teachers to be diagnostic and prescriptive to make sure that there are no gaps in the foundational skills those bare minimum expectations and as Maureen was saying when we were going through this professional learning and really reviewing some of the assessments that we were in fact you know giving we recognized that they were really more of a mix of standards so he really couldn't be very precise and diagnose and isolate a particular standard the systems that were doing now we actually use alphanumeric coding from the skills which is derived from an exact precise language from the standards we then use that same alphanumeric coding to create an assessment item to be able to measure the skill that we just aligned it to and we also have the same alphanumeric coding to the activities learning targets and resources so you can really see that it's very very precise and it's really a very systematic system that really works so that we can really be sure that we are measuring and observing relative to the standards as I said bucket one evidence of standards that brings me to bucket two which is the assessment evidence of the curriculum and as Maureen was talking about that's the bit of the blueprint that's really going taking those building codes right they're still part of it the standards are there but we're going above curriculum should always go above and beyond standards right we certainly don't want to have you know a system that just just you know teaches bare minimum right so we want to go above and beyond standards and we also want to make sure that we have because we're being so efficient in this process that we no longer have to give assessments or embark on any kind of other activities that are fun but are not really giving us information relative to the standards we can be that efficiency affords us more time to be able to spend on relevant and authentic meaningful learning experiences that allow students to engage in real world you know experiences to be able to take those building codes those bare minimum grade-level expectations and connect them and transfer them into context so that's what you know bucket number two is and then bucket number three which is assessment evidence of instruction as Maureen was talking about that's really the engagement piece you know what am i is a learner what am i learning why am i learning this how will I know if I did learn it and you know what do I do if I didn't learn it and how do I feel about this learning experience so really instruction to use dr.
croto to provide more information Thank You president Leonard members of boards Brinton and Callison cabinet tonight's first we have items 2 4 & 5 is dr. Kalas mentioned four contracts tonight's first item is bringing you the contracts for certificate and licensed employees before you you have a contract for all certificate employees certificated JROTC employees licensed employees school nurse school psychologists and school psychologists in turn we do have a change on the intern which we will pass out Luisa will pass out to you it is labeled school intern when you look at the words it is not the school intern contract so before you you have a copy of the school intern contract and and in your motion to accept these should you choose we just need to accept the intern contract that was handed out also I'm open to discussions for the liquidated damages that will have to be in the motion for these contracts so I stand for questions or any information you need any questions in regard to the intern employee contract mm-hmm just is there anything in particular that has changed or is there there are no changes the the discrepancy was the wording for a licensed contract when you open the document it is labeled interned but there are no changes to that contract the only change is the bracketed part on all these contracts you will notice a bracketed section for your discussion in your direction on liquidated damages and that occurs in every contract so mr.
al Cox terms isn't it is what she referred to as an invitational art teaching teaching is an invitational art so the extent to which that learner accepts the invitation is engagement so bucket number three is really the assessment evidence of instruction or engagement and really you're getting that information from bucket number one and bucket number two so the assessment evidence from the standards the assessment evidence of curriculum the descriptive feedback that the learner gets in consultancy with the teacher helps that learner to set goals and be an active participant in their own learning and the product of that is a learning plan or a self navigation tool so now the learner well again along with the teacher at the very young age I mean it starts with kindergarten can really be thinking about okay this is how I did with this standard I've got this I don't have this yet this I need to practice this and I still need to learn that and these are some learning activities that I can engage in in order to help me practice but I don't have yet so that's the learning plan so from the previous slide that's still the learning that we're embarking on in terms of the professional development so I'm going to give you an example of what would be a bucket to type activity and when I illustrate this I think it's going to if you're wondering as we've been asked sometimes by teachers because it's exhausting work can't we just get this on curriculum from some other district that already did this right that sounds like a good idea especially if they already paid for it so and I love that question so let me give you this example so when we start we're going to be moving in and the principles are going to talk very briefly about we're going to be moving into bucket two for the curriculum work that we've done where we have bucket won't we have all the standards aligned assessments etcetera are all done now we need to go to the curriculum level and look at how do we make the standards that everybody has to to learn in you know in the state or in the country that use the same standards as we do how do we make it relevant and engaging and have students have the opportunity to apply what they've learned that's the that's the context so there are several districts in the state who have been working with Murray Alcock and Heidi Hayes Jacobs for a number of years New Haven is one of them so on your slide you see an iteration of a unit from grade 2 which is this is a math math unit and that unit is titled me my world and measurement and it's and the subtitle is all aboard miles of measurement at Union Station so they took they and and we started to do this you'll hear a couple snippets about how we're following this type of a protocol they looked at what so we learned these math skills we learned about measurement we learned about time etc etc that aligned to standards in second grade how do we contextualize this to Newhaven how do we integrate this with other learning that the students are doing in second grade so Jen I'm not going to ask you but you know that in second grade they're studying about their community right and there something about transportation and there studying all these things so these teachers wrote this curriculum because you couldn't buy it anyplace just look what it's about and they looked at they were looking at some of the things they were studying history the historical part of their social studies program and they have the beautiful Union Station train station in New Haven so they developed this so that there was a field trip to Union Station there were interviews with some of the folks that work at Union Station there was work with the train schedules and weather and they used the the second grade math skills of time and measurement to solve real world problems about what happens when mr.
croto was there any difference because I know you had given to us last board meeting the district comparison of liquidated damages so that those that still remained the same nothing has changed on that yes there was well there's no changes right now if you look at the the document we handed out last time last year of total comparison on liquidated damages we were as 67 people in 17 paid the liquidated damages currently we're at 52 in 17 as we sit to date this year so we're actually ahead of it ahead of it actually that total was for all of last year 67 17 we're at 52 17 I can tell you when we got back on Monday we have two additional so that's actually 54 we do not know if they will be paid or not we are waiting documentation okay thank you the other discussion rather entertain a motion well because we need to discuss this to work but don't look what data damages whether it's a thousand 1500 2500 we even have one district that was San Carlos that was like $4,300 so I don't know if you guys remember this our last thing so it's something that we need to discuss us to if we do all the same mr.
Jones needs to get to New York City by 8:30 and his train leaves at this time and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah something's on the tracks here what is the impact of the climate if it snows and trains don't get to leave until this time all real world problems if you look closely I don't know if you can see it it's very light it says hold off this component for revision next year globalization ok clear because their plan is after they they teach this particular stage of development of this unit there it's not going to stay like that it's going to be iteratively revised and improved and what they want to do is have a global connection and they they were injured the teachers knew about the Japanese train system which is very much different than ours and that their trains go much faster so they were going to do a comparison of the train system in and the timing just what a second grader who do with their math in New Haven and compare it to euro South America and they were going to do skyping with partners that they were going to find in those other countries this is second graders in New Haven so the money that we have in the budget in the individual school budgets that's for extended duty is for teachers to work after school on Saturdays we have teachers that work on Saturdays we have teachers that are so enthused about some of this that they work on during vacation and we are able to keep track of what they're doing because it's every all of our curriculum is entered into an online platform Rubicon Atlas which makes it available to everyone makes us able to embed links very comprehensive yeah we so we can we can we can run reports to see which standards are being addressed what the frequency of the of how many how many times they're being addressed in a unit which standards aren't being addressed that we have to go back and and look at further and so they are working on in ela and math k4 this level this example that I'm giving you here about New Haven early I'll tell you one other quick story Berlin has berlin school district has been working with the same consultants that we've been working with for years and they've done they've actually won some awards for some of the content that they put together for their curriculum and I remember one of the elementary teachers asked me two years ago well if they did such a great job couldn't we just borrow it and see what we can do and I said yeah that's a great idea so let me tell you about one of the things I want an award for it's their kindergarten social studies curriculum and it's all built around the Berlin Fair it's amazing that's not gonna help us so our our curriculum is going to have this level of context at the next stage and that's just part of the work that the teachers will be doing so we're gonna the principals aren't going to talk for long they're just going to tell you quickly what they're doing so that you have a better understanding but I hope this wasn't too confusing but that it you know there's so much to talk about but it's very complex and where we're doing it because it's what's right for kids any questions we can I just ask before you move on so do we have any units that are Brookfield relevant like this that's what we're working on now that's our next step yeah and we have and there's some ideation that's already taken place and I think Mary Rose is shaking her head she'll tell us all about that maybe we start with mark questions we could start with mark I start with whoever you want yeah we can start with mr.
president mrs. sourcing fell on that point as you just have this discussion I think it would be wise for the board to come up with a liquidated damages amount or I guess it could be zero but that that then applied to all the contracts just for consistency they're coming back because we said we want the board asked at the time that it be monitored and I appreciate the fact that you all follow through with that and tracked it and brought back this information I my concern is always the students and what happens to a student when they lose their teacher as far as just the emotional impact with the academic impact the impact that it has to the school team in general for people that are having to shuffle around I just think there's a lot of dynamics involved when that happens but I remember years ago when we brought the liquidated damages into contracts it was we are very very cognizant of not wanting to use it as a punishment it was a matter of recouping like recruitment costs I know contracted teachers cost more than a teacher that is on staff or salaried with us so there's more cost incurred with that so but also I guess realizing that we allow so many reasons they're allowable to get out of your contract if you're you know you're sick you're retiring or you're moving or military experience I mean I think any valid reason Under the Sun we don't charge liquidated damages or so unless I'm missing something mr.
Blandon from the high school thank you dr. Ruby and mrs. Ferris thank you I don't have a presentation so thank you and I just I want to make a quick comment before we you know one of the conversations we talked about Spanish and I was you know sitting back there it's k-6 it affects we talked about global things I just want to thank the board in Cape because our social DS curriculum you know our two courses for our freshman course is global themes now and our sophomore courses Human Geography so on talk about human connections and it's just it's something that's connected directly to the work that we're doing so want to bring that up but I appreciate Deb and Maureen you know introducing this for us because it really kind of gives context for what we're doing here you know certainly the high school is at a different place than the other schools we are the kind of last in the line of succession you know as we start to roll out report cards and changes and standards aligned work but we have been part of the training right and so just to provide you a little bit of context in the program of studies which I'll present to Cape and then in 28th there's a hundred and sixty three courses on the books right I'm requesting curriculum work for 23 right that's a start it's a dent so I just want to be you know we talk about the big picture of things just want to make you aware that this is this is gonna be a long process at the high school and it takes a lot of time and effort and all the requests that I have really are level funded from the same kind of from what we've asked for the previous years so there's no increases in curriculum expectations in terms of work so we were lucky enough we had a couple individuals I believe Mike Smith was one as well as mark Jewett at one point in time went even prior to the Maury coming to the district and they were in orange and got to spend some time shadowing the orange school district and seeing what this process was like we're also then fortunate once Murray came to district initially we started training core groups of teachers the core team of teachers that were going to be involved in the curriculum work that would eventually help to train the rest of the department and when worked together initially it was really math and social studies teachers were the first ones that were really there English and science eventually came on board but that first core group was really math and social studies and then as we move through the years phys ed was there as well phys ed in health was there as well and as we move throughout the year over the last three years really English and science attended more frequently and now we're at the point where our other core courses are other courses like our extension courses our family consumer science you know they haven't been trained officially yet they've had a very little bit of Murray and they're just in the beginning stages of their work there you know so really to establish a baseline this is some really good professional development for our teachers to really truly dive into standards and really make sure we understand them and see what we were doing currently what we needed to change and then really establish a baseline is it aligned and you know we have vetted the courses took a look and said okay as Maureen talked about which is great you know we talked about bundling standards that's step one that's a step one because the curriculum is what we do without it there's nothing there's no purpose for us being here without curriculum we might as well go home because there's nothing for us to teach we just be making it up on our own so it's really important to do that piece we walk through that established bundles and then we looked at you know over the last three years and now last year was a unique year because of me ask and most of our professional development time and everything was focused entirely on that so we did not do a ton of curriculum work from that perspective so what I come to now is that you know the requests that we have and for example I have I'm looking at about you know the average if you're looking at I'm gonna pick one out here as I'm looking at it if like we had two teachers that worked four to five hour days on exam at $40 an hour you're looking at $1,600 $1,600 for two teachers working five out to five hour days you know there you go there's $1,600 like that and the amount of work that can get done if you sauce if you see some of these products it may look simple but once you bundled standards and then you start getting into essential questions right and skills and ideas and then you start moving on to assessments it takes an ordinate I'm and we're constantly revising you know we have a structure here at the high school with collaborative learning teams where as they teach you know during the course of the week they meet every four days and they're talking about the curriculum they're reviewing and what's coming up next and they're making notes like this the globalization go back so it's a living document so even though we may have developed curriculum for let's say English 1 which is gonna be further along something like US history which Mike Smith is involved in from the ground up or they're a little further along in terms of the buckets right so they've bundled standards in history they're done essential questions and skills they've looked to develop P scales and aligned assessments and now they're moving to the next step we have some that are there but they're still going back and revising to make sure it's aligned whereas when I look at like marketing 1 and intro to business we're gonna be bundling standards that's where we are at the very beginning of that process and so I'm looking across this you know I'm looking at courses in business world language you know we have French and Spanish pre-ap three or four classes in English four classes in math for classes in science and I have a fifth class we're looking to really tweak US history again because that's one of the ones that you know is probably the farthest along and all our courses but the interesting pieces they need to continue to do more it really shows how this evolves is a living document that we need to continue to work to make sure this stuff happens one of the other things too that's important to know is that when we do curriculum work it's not just that's great you three going to work on curriculum and usually it's teams of two to three here at the high school there's an action plan that has to be submitted an action plan has to go to Maureen and Deb and they give feedback and they give they give feedback right sometimes they're done over again so it's it's something that you know is vetted it's not something we're doing on our own I just want to let you know that when we do these things and I could go through the list of the 23 courses that I'm looking to but you have a general idea and my request is somewhere around $27,000 is what I'm requesting for across these five departments business world language English math science and social studies which equates to a work on 23 courses it's not 23 full courses there's no big polished model at the end and I've got 140 something others I got to figure out how I'm going to do that next so there it's a vetted process we're working together and it's constantly evolving and it's this the staff is invigorated right and to take those next steps because they see it we're far off the rollout really starts down on K and is working its way up and we're gonna have a lot of conversations moving forward but that kind of explains where we are now I think that if that makes sense questions you want to be here later than usual okay all right going down the line it's a little different as you know from the elementary to the middle school to the high school but I'm gonna try to focus on what I put in for the extent of Duty for for Wisc and here are the if you want to say core content areas we are further ahead than the high school we've been I've been hitting the button on this thing we we have been able to work a little bit more with our teams and we have our math team say we do by grade levels I have two people two teachers say for each grade level so they're working together on these things so for instance we were when we're talking about I'll start with our English Language Arts those were in the lower grades we have four teachers but when they work together like Mark said we submit plans to administration to let them know exactly what we're going to be working on at that time one of our big shifts this past year for fifth grade as you know is we have been able to get an open court is one of the foundational skills instructional tools that were working about working with that they had spoken about before as a curricular tool not the curriculum but a tool and that's been something I know that is really our 5th grade teachers have embraced and feel that it's been it's been a great asset to us but again when you have something like that with that tool we're trained in it and then once you do you need to learn how to use it and then also figure out with how we are going to incorporate that within our within our curriculum how we're gonna put it into our year-long context of the curriculum another area even for ela for all for grades but we've been doing some PD with Amanda Aaron's and also with that learning the changes some of the instructional changes that we've made or decisions that were made in we've made and also assessing students and when you do those things all of those things go back to changes in the curriculum along the way science and again I'm trying to make the connections here but as you know because we've talked many times about the Smithsonian science could that again that's a tool that we're using the PD that has come along with that and things has changed our curriculum in different areas in how we assess our students and we still need to make changes in our curriculum based on some of those areas we had just our last grade 5 has now has all of the science kits and there's going to be a lot of change for our and the curriculum part of that that still needs to be done social studies something that Maureen brought up before something we're very excited about we have made changes in the past to schedule a context of the sequence of the curriculum based on those decisions we had spoken before but really the newest one is we've developed a relationship thankful thanks to dr.
croto really is there any other reason that a contract would be broke broken other than change my mind because even even career advancement we waive that we let if it's gonna advance your career there's typically no liquidated damages attached to that either so really this would just be capturing those who just speaking to that group of people that just decide not to complete their contract because we're pretty lenient otherwise correct mr. president member Pritchard that is correct if you look at our numbers about a third just say at one point I think I'm done this is not for me and they don't meet that criteria of the reasons and we hold those two liquidated damages but we do offer a variety of reasons life happens we understand that and there are reasons that people need to move on and we do recognize that and ask for that documentation and give them away if something really is serious and they need to get out so yes that is true and knowing the cost that it has to our students and also to our staff members who are in those buildings who have to compensate somehow for that absence I am very disappointed that we lowered our amount to a thousand and since then more people are breaking their contracts just personally on a personal level that just is disheartening to me do we have a number of what the increase has been of people breaking a contract the difference is mr.
ruby through a grant with the connecticut arts for learning and what we're trying to do we met with two of their staff members and some of our arts teachers we had our art teacher one of our music teachers theater arts teachers and two of our social sites teachers happens to be mike smith was one of them in seventh grade and mr.
president mr. Tanner the information that was provided mr. croto can you review that to date the numbers of how many have broken their contract are you between when we had the liquid like maybe up by your comparison wasn't at the sixty-seven yeah the 67 was from 2018-19 whole year o year oh yeah correct but then your today dear today okay was it yeah that was okay more okay can you remind us what we were reduced it from $2,500 I mean I'd be I'd be willing to raise it a little bit but my my and I understand there's a lot of reasons why people you know how they can if they have advancement or things like that but if it's just because someone's just they're miserable and they're just done like I understand like not leaving you know holding people to contracts and and not wanting to disrupt the kids but I also see is an equal disruption if somebody won't leave just because they have to pay more money and what kind of teacher or contract employ or they get a B if they're just miserable and just sticking around because they don't want to pay another thousand dollars so I I can kind of see both ways mr.
Schadt and we're starting to fight we're gonna start there finding a way as we start to infuse the art into our everyday curriculum and social studies so we've started that process we would want to continue that process you know if you think of it as an intern more of like interdisciplinary type learning and units that we have and also as a part of that I think about this ties in great to the social-emotional learning that we've been talking about trauma sensitive training as you talk about arts and music and in theater arts and stuff like that so that's part of the extended duty for there and then in math and in most of these other areas we are still working on we have excuse me some PD with Murray coming up is work starting tools a little bit more with the item banks and the assessments using those to create assessments that are better aligned to the standards that we have so that's the money that I have put out for extended duty is really based on those four areas at this time we do have other times where I know mark spoke about some of the other courses that he has our peon health has have done a good chunk of this work some of our other areas have not had the chance to do as much so they'll be doing more but it may be not as much that as needed as needed in these four areas for Wisc and ear at least well again and for my extended duty part it's the the main courses that we have for ela science social studies in math and I should actually say we also have extended duty for world language I know that there's work that you know if Kevin had spoken about and they're further behind in us mine I think was 12,000 altogether yeah I think I was 12 thank you so since we've been working so much kata for we thought we'd share what we've been doing together that okay any questions let us know and we'll kind of just kind of throw everything yeah so we've really been at the forefront is Maria and ever saying of the work that's been happening has been happening really Kate for so our teams have been there from the start having all the training and really the last two and a half years been working closely with Marie intimately intimately with Marie to make sure that we are following the process and you're getting everything done that needs to happen but I would say over the course of the last year we've really been working on three things continuing to build the professional learning and understanding of these special practices that are relative to curriculum design for the core team so you know all that the slides that Deb went through today that didn't happen overnight that's taken a you know many years at this point to kind of get everyone's understanding because the first time as you know with learner's we're all learners the first time you hear something you know that you hear it and then you need to hear it again you hear to get you know I mean so now I would say our core teams are I mean you I would challenge you to talk to any of them about this process and they would be able to explain it very explicitly so the next step that we're actually next week or two weeks Maria's coming now to talk about the learning plans which is that self navigation that that Deb and Morgan we're talking about earlier so that will be the next step of the learning for our core team the other thing that they're really doing is designing the curricula which were you know kind of the bulk of the work and then I was at the last piece at both schools are really building the capacity of colleagues to be able to have the same conversation about the work that the core team is able to have so it's been incoming embedded within our s RBI teams within our data teams as you know many of you who experienced the report card this trimester or last trimester that's all you know every teacher has had to be brought up to speed whether or not they work with Marie from the beginning we needed to make sure that they had a common understanding of all of these documents and terms and what that would mean for instruction and all of that kind of stuff so that's really been a lot of work for the core team so all of that has really kind of been in really reading math and writing we haven't done a lot but this our specials areas have done some work but it's been primarily in again reading writing a map Deb described in depth those documents we've been putting together but it's been the year-long context so deciding when each stammer standard will be explicitly taught and evaluated or assessed over the course of the year the proficiency scale for each standard what does it look like what does it mean that a child is able has met this standard or not met the standard and what does that look like I'm the kind of that graded scale the banks of assessment items with examples for each level of that on the proficiency scale so all of this is taking time and you'd be surprised the level of debate you can get to in kindergarten when you're discussing like the very basic counting and cardinality and it really brings up so many things that you knew on set that you don't realize that you know when you when you just think about it on the surface and then it also includes all our unit plans which would be the bulk of our work this year essential questions big ideas the daily teaching points outlining how the curricular tools are implemented within the curriculum so that's kind of what Maureen was describing earlier but we don't we didn't just take open court as our curriculum it's our tool and now we've dried that you were making everything fit in a line and that's where a lot of these instructional activities and resources come into play and also again obviously the assessments and all the scoring guides around the assessment so when you when I say that it's it's a weeb weeb stops really printing things out for teachers because there's there's a volume of documents that they need to be able to manage and understand and put together just for their own knowledge so that they can then instruct instruction students so that a lot we have Google Docs set up and you know we're using rubicon and there's a lot of this very intricate in that way but I think that the two overarching themes are alignment with the standards and making sure that we're efficiently using our curricular tools with fidelity to make sure everything is really I mean done clearly is there anything you'd say up else about like the work we're doing now no I mean as everyone now has discussed in great detail there's just been so so much work as you can imagine to just prepare for the standards aligned report card this this past year this current school year and I think for the k4 teams and you know merit rose you can add to this as well really for next year like when we're looking at extent of duty it's going through the current units that have been created and kind of tweaking and revising them building upon the assessments that are geared towards the self-navigate learner and then also the contextual piece right making it our own you know what makes our curriculum stand out as Brookfield's curriculum versus you know another district as Maureen and Deb kind of described and you know we were having a conversation about this yesterday because our teams meet huckleberries team meets every Tuesdays and Thursday and we started talking about this work and we're kind of lucky because we have a news building being built in our back yard so we talked about how you know when we start developing this work but you know from a math standpoint you know oh my gosh there's so much we can do in math in regards to area perimeter building even how much does supplies cost will you have enough develop the building we talked a lot about writing how do we incorporate that into persuasive writing you know writing letters to dr.
president an ER on that point the board was provided with a letter from the Mesa School District in a previous weekly update that alluded to that point in Mesa at least they don't charge any liquidated damages for the fact that if somebody is vacating their position they probably would rather not have that position that person in front of students I guess I just assume the level of Professional Conduct though I like to think that all of our employees are professionals and and yes we all have jobs where maybe we're not in a good mood when were there or maybe we're thinking oh I'm looking for something else but I just think people of integrity still uphold that Professional Conduct and I I guess I'm assuming that that's what's happening in our classrooms that you know maybe some people are like okay this is my last contract year but from my own integrity and for the students in front of me I'm gonna do my very best and I guess I'm I'm maybe I'm naive but I guess I'm just not picturing that happening in Dicer call me call me sunshine and the roads I've had that experience firsthand so it's not fun no I know any other comments anybody want to suggest a dollar amount I think at a minimum we should go back up to 2500 that well this is kind of a trial we said we'd revisit I mean it looks like there's a there's some districts that go way above that would you say it was 4200 or fort well I mean they went from 7500 down to 4,300 so 75 hundred was Penn State but they're out on the reservation you know quite honestly I would I would not want to go below 1,500 1,500 kind of what I was thinking I would be okay with I'd like to see it go back to the 2,500 can we strike a compromise at mm mm ooh okay well there still needs to be that accountability and and I'm sorry this was another question for mr.