The chair will entertain a motion to adopt the adopted agenda on June 1st, 2026 and regular meeting as presented. Do I have a motion? Second. Aaron and Jason. Any discussion? It was automatic. >> Oh, I'm sorry.
>> Good evening everyone. Glad this just popped up. We're going to do it s technology for a second, but we'll think we'll be able to do this uh slideshow tonight for you that accompanies the rest of our award ceremony. I want to introduce myself. My name is Mark Banda. I am the principal of Brookfield High School. And it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2026 Brookfield High School Academic and Athletic Celebration of Excellence. This is truly one of my favorite evenings of the school year because it gives us an opportunity to pause, reflect, and celebrate our students extraordinary accomplishments. Tonight we recognize excellence in academics, athletics, leadership, service, the arts, and countless other contributions. I would like to extend a special welcome and thank you to our board of education members who might be here tonight. I apologize that light is right in my eyes, so you can I don't even know.
I pledge allegiance >> to the flag >> of the United States of America >> and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Um Um, I don't think we have anybody from the audience. Do we have any emails or anything from the public? All right, moving on. Dr. Soulen, I will pass this to you. >> Thank you very much. Uh the first policy, [clears throat] what you'll see today is a number of these policies are fairly straightforward um and reflect the fact that we're shifting names of schools in the 2627 school year. So this is petty cash funds policy which hasn't been updated since 1996. Um so we're changing two items um you know from director of management and personnel position that no longer um exist to chief operating officer uh in two locations at the top and then the fund limit for petty cash at the building level to have cash on hand.
Um before we get into kind of the the details of it, just a huge kudos to a lot of people. Uh that again, this was our main district uh focus. Um as you look at the our statement of work for this year, attendance was our main area of focus, right? And so everything that we did really focused in on that. Um we had a ton of uh different things that we put into place this year, right? Um lot of assistance from a lot of different people in the building. So everything that you're going to see is the culmination of a lot of efforts, right? It's not just one uh department, one group, one building. It is all hands on deck. So, I'm really um proud of our district and how we've attacked a lot of this work uh looking at it as um individuals and how can I support it and then as teams and then as a whole, right?
If anybody would like to get up and speak now you are welcome to and we will give you three minutes to talk. Seeing none, we'll move over to the presentations. Superintendent. >> Yeah, I am so excited for these uh students to be here this evening. Um you know, when I started uh superintendent student advisory group, um really just wanted to be able to build out a platform for students to be able to share their their ideas and have a voice um in the way we do school and um and have an impact. And one of the biggest pieces of feedback from the kids last year was that we do a whole lot of talking and not sure we've acted upon any of the ideas that they they had brought last year. So, my two huge goals with this group this year was to be able to go visit some other schools that doesn't look like Brown County High School and um get some ideas um be able to talk to kids u from other schools and and have a little bit of validation of of what we do here is pretty amazing too, right?
Any discussion? All in favor say I. >> I post. >> Item five, minutes from the May 4, 2026 executive and rigger board meeting and the May 18th, 2026 rigger meeting. Do I have a motion? >> Motion, >> Wendy. Do I have a second? >> Seconds it.
Um, but also to our central office leadership. I know our new superintendent, Mr. Besie, was planning on stopping by at some point tonight, so he will be here eventually. Also want to thank my administrators who are here with us. Uh looks like I saw before I couldn't see. Uh Miss Abrao, Miss Shidy, Mr. Hill, Dr. Spencer, Mr. Baldwin, and Miss Galves. So, thank you for joining us here tonight, the six of you. I also want to recognize the individuals behind the scenes who worked to prep prepare for this event and are here now to ensure everything runs smoothly. You'll notice Mrs. Jennif is the one with the sweat dripping down her head because she was worried the technology would not work. But also joining her is Rosa Hopcraftoft and Mary Negri. Ceremonies like this do not happen by accident. We are incredibly grateful for their dedication and attention to detail.
Um we're you know making adjustments as you see here. This should actually be, you know, we're not junior high school anymore either. So, um, we'll take that out. Again, we're just kind of adjusting um for the for the times um and then adjusting the names of the building.
So, it's been it's been a great um great focus and and we've really seen uh some great things come about from that. So, just to recap a couple of things. um our our work with EAB has been really helpful in helping us to frame what it is that we're doing, why we're doing it. Um we actually in the beginning went through and and determined like what are some of the challenges that we might run into and then how do we plan for those and that really helped us in our in our process. But just to recap some of the new things, remember um Infinite Campus is a brand new student information system for us. Um most districts again first day if they can take attendance um and the the the bells ring and everything works and day one it's a success. Well not only did we do that but we also instituted scanning.
So, we accomplished that. Um and then the second piece was for our kids to be able to look at um either polic or procedures or programs that we either have or we don't have and they want to propose um or maybe make changes to and so they have worked really hard all year um and they have presented for in front of Mrs. Roberts and and Mr. foster um because we had a conversation about chain of command and we don't ever just jump to to get things across or or approved without going through that chain of command and and so they were able to present to them. Um so we have two groups tonight. We have um Addie Young and Maggie Spoot are going to talk about the Belltobell cell phone policy which is timely. The board will be approving our policy at the next board meeting.
Any discussion? >> All in favor say I. I >> have six accountability uh model overview overview. The superintendent and principles will discuss and give an overview of the accountability model. >> Yeah. So A to F grades are fact. Um if you remember back in 2019 2020 right around COVID time um they had every school got a letter grade A to F. It was based upon test scores about the state test scores. back then it was IEP. Um and um that was pretty much the sole contributing factor to getting a letter grade. Um the state has now approved a new model, a new accountability model. The interesting thing about this model is that Indiana is actually leading um this work. There's other states that are watching what Indiana is doing. Uh so we will get a letter grade that is kind of a baseline grade for us.
As we move through the program, scholarship providers here with us tonight will be invited to come forward uh when their awards are announced. Students, you're wondering, what do I do? When your name is announced, you're going to make your way to the front. We're not going to make you walk up and across the stage. I saw enough of that at National Honor Society and the heels and it it makes me worried about stability. So, I want to make sure everybody's safe. We're going to stay on the floor and walk across the front. You'll get your award and we'll take a picture in front of the banner. All right. We have an incredible amount of achievement to celebrate tonight. So, let's get started. Quick agenda. There's some people that wondered how we're going to do this tonight. Um, it reflects, this program tonight reflects many ways we celebrate excellence.
Any questions on that one? No. >> Okay. Uh the next item is uh our policy around Oh, sorry. That's the wrong policy. Close that. Ages of attendance. Um, as I think most everybody here is aware, the uh state law used to indicate that you had to be five by January 1 of the upcoming school year in order to enroll. And they've subsequently shifted that back to um by September 1st. So um this is basically the update is what we're doing in our policy is taking out the transitional waiver language that's been sunset and um other than that so now we're saying you have to be five by um September 1st per the law. So other than that, everything else is is straightforward. Um and it uh reflects the change in starting age for the school. This is the um CAB which includes the summary as you guys have probably seen if you opened up the the policy posting.
Right. So we took um we took on more uh with this and as we learned throughout the school year we were able to take on more and more. So, I'm really proud of um our tech team uh for a lot of the work that they they were able to do and troubleshooting um and the buildings for troubleshooting like they identified an issue and they would say here can we make this happen and uh most of the time was we're not sure we'll try it and most of the time we were able to come back and say yes we can or not yet right so we were able to prioritize along those things so you can see a lot of those things uh related to our use of infinite campus. I talked about the the entrance scanning. We also did classroom and office scanning throughout the day.
Um and and then I'll introduce the second group. second. So, I'm gonna turn it over to you guys. >> We're talking about policy for next year. I'm Alison Young. >> I'm All right. So, we um have done all our research and we know that the like law itself is not negotiable, but we want to like talk about where we want our books stored because that is and that is up to you guys actually. So, >> okay. So, the bill says that students don't have access to any devices during school life. This would include phones, smartwatches, or any wireless devices that aren't from the school. Um, basically they get to decide between two policies, which is the no device policy, which means no devices are brought to the proper district at all, or is their storage policy where they're in the school, but they need to be locked up.
It doesn't mean anything. Um once our ile learn scores and all that are officially come out, uh the state's going to give us a letter grade. It's just a baseline. Doesn't mean anything. They will hold us accountable the following year through next school year. But what does this mean for us? Um and how is the model changed? First of all, they really adapted for all students. They they wanted they want to give multiple features for students to earn points and that's pretty much how it does. um you still have your baseline of the iLearn test, but then you're able to build points for each student and each student will get a a grade basically on a 100 point scale. Um and that grade will be factored in into your school grade. Um so what are these points? Right? You can get points for annual growth for accelerated accelerated growth.
Uh, after the pledge, we're going to recognize department scholars and the Connecticut Seal of Biiteracy. We'll then honor presidential award recipients and outstanding underclassmen. And then we're going to present members of the class of 2026 with various awards for their athletic and academic achievements.
>> And this is this is a new policy or a revised policy of ours. >> It's just a revision of the ages of attendance. So like we used to have um ages uh you had to be five by January one because that was the state law. We allowed transitional waiverss uh for last year and this upcoming year um for this current year and upcoming year and now the state is dropping the transitional waiver piece and you got to be five by September one. We've done a lot in district actually for the last um two years with the transitional K program to get people prepared for this. So at this point you were probably two when the law first really changed if you're going to be enrolling for next year. Uh not this upcoming year but the subsequent year um at the at the oldest you were two.
Um we talked about the unaccounted for report at the at the last meeting. Uh that gives real-time information for our deans and administrators and able to find uh students where they are in the building. Um some of the other stuff that we talked about, I think that was in January or or one of our earlier meetings when we gave an update on our attendance. Uh we have weekly and monthly data reviews and I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well as our teachers um an emailed report was created to them every Monday and Thursday that came to their inbox and it and it showed how many uh for their students during that time span if a student had a tardy if a student had a single period unexcused absence in their class. Right? So that information went directly to teachers so that they could then make contacts based off of that that information.
So these are like our four things because we me we and Addy did a lot of discussing on what we've heard or what are some possibilities of where the phones could be kept. Um so like the cars um a lot of uh schools are talking about like cubbies in the office. Um a lot of people have also been talking about leaving like phones have to be left at home or then like in lockers. So, we do not like the no bias policy on school because we researching from the National Parents Union about like parents concerns next year and a lot of them are like these numbers show like why they're concerned if they're left at home completely like people are scared about like emergencies or like communicating transportation after school or like for appointments. Um so some of our possible solutions that we came up with when we first presented this um we talked to Miss Palan and we were like okay so what are some other things and then me and Addy came up with other things we're like oh we didn't think through this so some possible solutions for like communications when we don't have our phone is um like you guys were like uh why don't you just email your parents but we don't have access to email outside sources so we were like why don't we just get parent square on our computer so we have access to our parents need.