4-28-25 Board of Education Meeting

001All right. Good evening. I'm gonna call this meeting for the um region 15 board of education order for Monday, April 28th. Will we please stand for the pledge of allegiance? Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Mission of region 15, a collaborative community committed to excellence, is to educate every student to be productive, ethical, and engaged in a global society through proven and innovative learning experiences supported by its strong community whose decision-making is based in the best interest of all students. We will start with our student representatives, Miss Pes Gerkins and Mr. Brendan Fenton. Right. Good evening, everyone. As for top, our seal of bi literacy students were recognized. And this week is spring spirit week

002until May 2nd, which is also the day of our pep rally. As for Memorial Middle School, their eighth grade students just returned from their Washington DC trip last week and their fifth grade classes from LMS and MEES will be coming to visit MMS this Friday, May 2nd, for an orientation and tour of the building. Thank you to the art department, Miss Pinto and Miss Mahatcha for a wonderful art show this past weekend as well. And for Roshanbo Middle School, their spring sports are in full swing. Thank you to their art department for a spectacular art show this past weekend. The RMS production of Susicle Jr. is scheduled for Thursday, May 1st. They're excited to see the talents of their students on stage. Eighth grade world language students will enjoy a cultural restaurant experience which will

003allow them to practice their target language in an authentic setting. The learning center students have visited guardian farms last week to meet their adopted path fearless and the RMS PTO has been very active in recent weeks for bus driver appreciation last week and the RMS plant sale next week. Eighth grade students are off to Washington DC next week for the monolins museum in sight of interest with their grade level peers. All right, thank you Tess. Moving on to the elementary schools long meadow wrapped up the month of April with lots of memorable events. The PTO hosted a scholastic book fair and every student volunted lots of their books. They also welcomed the talented author Deborah Freeman who shared her secrets for writing. Um also the family funo night was a great success at PS. It

004is an exciting and busy end of the month. Uh last week the PTO hosted dancing under the stars. Um they also donated to the South Korea food pantry uh held a bus driver appreciation breakfast and welcomed Idi Saka and award an award-winning West African dance and music performance artist and teacher. Mr. Saka shared a rich culture of Ghana with students in a truly memorable experience. Um at more at Mbury Elementary School, they've enjoyed a number of exciting events recently that have enriched the school community. The school chorus performed a wonderful concert for families and friends, highlighting their hard work, musical talent, and dedication. Also at MEES, students challenged staff in an exciting basketball game. Um students were also treated to a high energy assembly featuring a professional beatboxer from the Academy of Law. Um, and

005then also in the past couple of weeks, visiting authors shared their experiences, creative processes, and their love of storytelling, encouraging students to read more and explore their own writing talents. Coming from the fine, applied and technical arts department, just want to give a big thank you to everyone who attended the spectacular art show this past weekend. There were thousands of attendees who came to view the thousands of art pieces on display. And then from the athletics department, spring athletics are in full swing. So good luck to the athletes with finishing up their businesses. All right. Thank you so much. Any best students that get you have a question? Yeah. Um just and I asked this last year uh so you're you're both here obviously because of certain qualifications and principal Jones put you in the

006spot and um be great if on the last meeting so if you have the time to think about it the last meeting that you were present um if there's anything you want us to know as board about I mean you're you've had 12 years here you're in school districts you're representative of high quality tell our students, you know, what has what what would you want to tell us after 12 years that you think we should know? You know, it could be good things, it could be bad things, you know, constructive stuff. So, you could maybe just I mean like a couple sentences just what would you want to let us know as you you know that's great. Give us some thoughts talk to each other. Thank you. Yeah. You have any other questions for Jax

007may speak brutally honest. All right. Thank you very much. Next we have student recognition. I'll turn it over to Mr. Smith. I'll ask excuse you Mr. Nelson to join me. We're gonna recognize a couple of students tonight. you up here while we talk nice about you. Okay. All right. So, uh the Destiny and Sophia um were recently recognized by CAS which is the Connecticut Association of Schools for the uh arts awards that they give out every year. They give out one to two to each high school, one for performing arts and one for um fine visual arts. And uh these are our recipients from region 15 park high school this year. Um something new this year is that they did ask their teachers to write a little bio about them. So I'll read that out

008loud if that's okay. Um so Justin is first um is creative, intelligent, sensitive, hardworking student with a winning attitude full of drive and perseverance that goes unparalleled. She has been at the top of her class when it comes to creative thinking. She can understand concept complex concepts and solve creative problems. She has always been able to manage her time superbly and produce outstanding work. She has been a role model for her peers in all of her art classes. Congratulations. So Sophia starts off the amazing the amazing Sophia was a triam officer for two years, chamber singers for three years and in the coral for four years. She has worked in props crew for one year. She was props crew head for one year, assistant director and stage manager for two years with theater. This fall,

009her talent brought her to the rare opportunity as a student as a student to direct the fall mainstage show and she is heading to college next year at the elite EFA directing program. So, we want to congratulate both of you guys. Congratulations. Congratulations. I've done the arts just out quite so I'm going to read directly again from a teacher um Mrs. Sloan wrote um that she wanted to take the opportunity to notify me at this point but all of you um that that Julian a 10th grader composed a piece called the bird and a leaf which is a string quintet and piano piece and it was selected to be presented at the Nap which is the national association for music educators eastern division conference drunk showcase. This is an even bigger deal because he was

010selected not just from the entire state of Connecticut but also the entire eastern region of the United States. Julian will present his composition on this past Saturday the 26th at the convention center in Hartford. Um Miss Slo could not be more proud of you as she writes here um of Julian below. Um, she did send a recording of it which I can send out to all of you. But, uh, better than that, Julian is here to perform it live for us this evening. So, That was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. So, these three individuals represent a much freer and broader um arts program, which um I wanted to take just a moment to thank all of you that came out to the art show this past weekend and supported us there. Hope you see the

011the talent that is all over region 15 and then all of you guys and what you do to help support that. So, thank you all very much. Thank you. Um, next we have security in crisis management uh by Superintendent Smith and Mr. Martino. Piano introduction to security. This is the screen that's going on. All right. So, I'm going to turn most of this over to Mr. Aino to walk through. Um this will be a combination of questions kind of we've addressed in the past some of the updates that we've gone over enhancement we put in our schools so far this year and then opportunity for some questions. Okay again just a second a refresh and update and kind of current things in place. Um so obviously um we did a major upgrade to our phone

012system about three or four years ago which had caller ID and made 91 9 more accessible throughout the building. those significant update. School dismissal manager um elementary parents know that's our uh our pickup app that we use which is actually super handy as far as verifying you know kids pick up going through the line there's a number I think still in the last we use it in the Latino home but I know that was super handy in the last three four years. Uh rave software I'll touch on a bit here and I have a little example too. um that is a uh security app that basically allows two communication with a staff member. It also allows the staff member to issue a either a panic like a panic button for you medical classroom you can

013push those different options on your phone. So think of kind of a panic button but for your phone. It's geo fenced so it obviously if you're off property hit the button or just call 911 like any of us would normally but inside the building it tracks locations and there's also a way to do a communication kind of all call staff app just for us rolling it out um it was a little more complicated than originally thought but we put on staff probably later this week to roll that out district wide pretty neat technology I see Bethl New Town there's several district they're using it so School Messenger. Uh that's been around for for many years. Additionally, we use that for all of our instant alerts and obviously all of our emails and snow alerts throughout

014the year. Walkietalkies. Uh we continue to kind of refresh and review these. Um you know, the walkie-talkies, a lot of the uh key folks in the district have a like a red button to walk. So that actually connects directly to PD almost like an additional panic button that works the walkie-talkie frequency. It also allows communication back to the police department and to the police car. So if you are coming on scene, they can switch to that channel for instant communications uh with the police department as well and also works with the rob. So it's kind of a big um interface with the radio. So that's pretty cool. Um security tools um obviously a bad system that all employees have including the card swipes. Um our lobby guard significant upgrade new tablets on the lobby guard

015system. Um there's still adjustment to it. iPads and a little we kind of put a cradle in the back of it for scanning. So that gets scanned and obvious to see if there's an event that happens alerts out to all the administrators um if there's any um issues that pop up checking the door and also allows traffic for emergencies as well. Buses we actually have a significant upgrade coming out to parents in the next couple of days. The first few app migrating over to a new first few app we have to do it really to do some of the summer rollover stuff. So the email going out uh kind of one app is going to go away after we install a new app. But obviously that that allows for the bus tracking app a lot

016of parents do use today and obviously the GPS and the camera system on our buses today. Um also includes um audio recordings on on the buses. So parent tracking for the bus track the buses. Yeah. gives you a little delay, but pretty close um on on the track. And the new tablet sitting on the bus is actually nice, too, because it it links the driver when they log in and download the route and it has like a little audio thing. So, it's kind of looks like kind of like GPS in a car, but but not as cool. Um facilities items that were either doing or underway. Obviously, all gate location and central office have cameras and recording available. Um the window film we continue to add. Um we have some additional pieces going in uh

017even going into the spring and into the summer uh to adapt additional window film that is resistant glass in key locations or mir seeing some uh principles request or teachers time. I'd like to have this added and if we work with the vendor to kind of slowly continue to grow the footprint of those of those areas just add more security, more visibility. Um, one of the key pieces that we've kind of run gone into is our um, PA systems. So, high school PA, which was pretty much there was dead zones in it. There was other issues inside of it. So, we did a full upgrade rolled over to employee use system, which allows for we can actually adjust volumes. Now, it ties into a fire panel. Um, the all call system works as it should.

018So, it really went from analog now to the digital system that also now includes the bell system. So we could actually uh Dr. Jones could actually like modify the bell systems on the fly and actually put wave files into it. So high school administrators had lots of fun with the new new bell system there. Uh so that was super handy. Memorial Middle School that is there was an upgrade for that system. Um and the PA systems are usually very old in their architecture. They're what called analog and I kind of say think like your television like 15 years ago super grainy TV super bright. So kind of the same thing even the PA systems. Uh so Memorial will be uh replacement kind of coming spring into the summer for their system. We're also looking at

019two of some of our um our shops that have like our wood shop in our con have a lot of noise. The idea of adding like a almost like a flashing stroll over the PA they can see it. Um I don't think they put that in the high school yet but we talk in not super expensive but again it's handy if using the saws in the shop can't hear anything. Um so that's that's a nice technology. So PA is a big upgrade. Uh criminal exterior doors. Uh we've done a lot of work on this. I mean obviously throughout the day ASOS is always checking doors, check for prop doors, monitoring um monitoring events, uh security alarms. They're active every evening. All their schools are. They see armed alarms tied back to central monitoring stations. Uh

020the card access on the perimeter doors. We've also added some cards. Um, we did migrate that system this summer to a new system kind of again leaving the TV from 15 years ago. Uh, and the new system now has a cloud-based solution. We can actually add additional u locations to it for um areas for so for card access. For example, we're adding it down like a metal building down by shed for north emergency just an example. And also it's it allows staff better access to schools. There's some uh off the recess door shambo to allow them to come quicker. Um so again, we added about maybe six or seven doors more coming this summer. Um we did also re key all the doors. Um I think every so many years you kind of have to

021go through this exercise really try to hold back on physical keys in their keys that get lost or they're bad deactivated in a minute. And then went to a very specific key where you can't go to Home Depot and make a copy. need actual um certain only certain vendors could issue that key strike. It's a very unique key and it's designed so that it's kind of handy too. So good stuff. Um a couple things I want to touch on um which I thought was pretty neat. I was telling Mr. Smith uh the vigilance system which is now in let me think two middle schools long metal more um the middleware elementary and I was just in the process put in elementary and gainfield. Uh if you look at some of the schools, it looks like

022actually a UFO. It's like a 360 panorama uh zoom. So it's actually three or four feeds in one. And just the ability the clarity in it and the ability to search and log events has been very handy. Available to smartphones. So a lot of technology there. And actually box the night run the exact same system which is pretty interesting. Different boxes probably a few more features than we have in theirs count the uh poker chips but I was pretty surprised. I looked up and it's not the same. We have the exact same. Uh so pretty cool. That's been really great. We're just wrapping up uh Pop Elementary and Gainesville Elementary. And that was nice to school security grant. And that's actually a picture of the Rayback. That's what staff will see on their phone. So

023can I use some choices on events if an event happened in the classroom in the hallway? Um you've got items you can push there. And there's also the kind of like staff assist that you can push that kind of sends an all call out to everyone else inside the app as well. And it kind of gives a like private communication between like the principal and staff. So if there's something going on, they don't want to go to school message or like email, they can just shoot it back to the staff. So pretty cool technology there. Um and that'll be coming hopefully next week kind of you know where the money comes from. I was always mindful to visit those pieces. Your arm security, you obviously have a 10 10 district wide. uh your middlebury rover

024which obviously covers the three the three schools and also does traffic uh in front of middle elementary school. Uh Southbury does have a youth officer which also functions in the rover role which does those three um those three schools and obviously the SRO of the high school. Few grant opportunities which we've been working through is obviously the school security grants that we received for the camera systems. We also have one to do additional upgrades at the high school. We're still working our way through. Um the kind of capital items that we work through 2020 the big phone system upgrade. Um the camera systems have been kind of 24 25. We did a big storage upgrade for storage of data in 22. And the security upgrades really just ongoing. They're saying security film again as as

025items come up with staff. We kind of review them kind of add whether it's you know an additional card strike on a door recess or those sorts of things. That's kind of always always undergo value. Um kind of human capital pieces. Um obviously background checks. We do that all employees that are hired. Um volunteers as well. Um again some run through just the um the regular record system. Obviously if you're hired by the district though you're fully fine printed uh DCF background checks offenders registry as well. Um administrating staff training. Uh we do obviously a lot of lockdown drill security drill training to do with staff. Uh there's a big one the other day at the grand memorial. Um so it's pretty common. Um obviously we do review all the guidelines for school security which

026is in state statute to comply with all those uh findings and filings we have to rule based kind of a re recap but not obviously your high school SRO. your armed security folks. Uh they go through an annual weapons training every year. We go to the south range and re-qualify with their firearm and then obviously also go through uh their yearly state training. Um and actually as well there's actually a I'm going to script the number of years every five years they go for a new psychiatric valve as well when they're hired as well. We also look for a cycle. So have a lot of steps go through that. There was talk at the state about adding more trainings. I haven't heard any more on that. They were going to add a few more. Um,

027haven't heard much more on that event, but I, you know, they're talking about that. Um, I think our weapons training is really good the way they do it. Plus, it's just another refresh for all to come together and kind of practice their own drills. So, it's a it's a it's a good they spent a whole day uh going through all those events, which is good. Um, obviously the annual monthly drills, um, all the schools do do drills at different times, uh, which is very good. Staff and, um, safety teams, your um, mental health teams, Dr. I'm sure I know talks a lot about those items in our schools. Um staff and subs handbooks. Obviously, you know, we want staff members and subs come in. We want to make sure they they're aware of protocols and

028different drills that are run or events that happens in schools. Uh and obviously the rolling officer, which adds kind of additional outside presence and you know, obviously they are now the middle office in the schools a little more. They've been visiting more. Um obviously the the soccer youth officer Liz has been out of the schools as well. So kind of you're kind of seeing those folks working through the buildings to understand familiar faces and all sorts of things. So kind of goodness on that front. Josh and I very regularly chief and chiefly as far as just kind of keep them busy. Um and obviously kind of towards the end obviously uh Steve Schnell is the emergency manager here Southbury. He does also cover the emergency drills for the um middle schools as well. sits on

029a number of the uh um school security committees. Uh Steve and I talked already about drills and different planning. Um also obviously all those state security plans get filed with Steve. We work our way through any updates that happen to those every year. Uh the fire marshall's office uh I know particularly both fire marshal crew and um and Derek and South talking pretty regularly about different things they find in our schools. Um you know they've been they're present for most of our drills. had an issue with one of the schools the other day where they thought the annunciator on the upgraded one of the new fire panels was too loud. So make an adjustment on that. Um so that's been really helpful about their presence kind of in things as well because state statute now

030requires them be present at all our drills were years ago. Um it wasn't require they were still there most of the time but now they're there for all of them. Um and then obviously they do orbits in the drills. help with even timing out schools if in evacuation they should get to a certain point certain amount of time before their school like fire doesn't have criteria they working so good stuff there um well other than that I think I think the districts are committed obviously for what we did here um you know as we talked about we've had armed security here for I think six or seven years um they are definitely just a part part of our buildings and a part of the general you know of the place we had a good redund

031See now with the ability there's an office at ASOS out the building ability to to rotate a sub through so there's always coverage in those schools so that works really well but yeah we're you know translated thank you very much any questions for Mr. Shar questions. So the app can um add up there. Yeah. Um can you speak a little bit to what the requirements are for the phones from a lock or authentication perspective? There is it's it's the same as so the any alerts that are pushed have to be held down more. So in other words, it's not a it can't be inadvertently like touch. So when when you go to push in the buttons on it as he held probably four four to six seconds on it there is the user would have

032to put a um an additional password if they wanted to. But if it was used outside off the geo fence because every single we would draw our property lines on it. It would just trigger a 911 event. So for example staff member had a kid playing on their phone or something hit it. It wouldn't put our lock down. You'd have to be actually on on property to have that event. more concerned if someone who shouldn't have access to that phone gets themselves. Oh yeah. With same same security whatever the fingerprint or however that person accesses that phone and it's like someone in a who's creating harm in the school who has access to it like how can that be managed? I mean if you be shut down like Yeah. Yes. Everything is there's a basic

033a user list that exists you deactivate. that our left for example, we just go in and deactivate that. We're actually automate that for our systems. So, I realize I've asked three questions. That was only No, that's sorry, that's like six questions. Um, is there an extension of that utilization? You said it was geo fenced, but I'm thinking in terms of you have after hours activities, whether they're in this building or on our campuses or in situations where sports teams are going to other campuses. How are we ensuring that there's appropriate communication channels so that we as a as a district are aware of what's happening with our students either on premises or off? And as a followup to that, um is there anything should an emergency arise, is there also an app so parents can

034be appropriately alerted rather than getting it by email? So yeah, so this is this communication management is police school communications. This does not have a parent facing side to it or a student facing side. This is strictly a staff and it would not work outside of our campus from a alert standpoint except for the 911 call which we just general. The dovetail to this will be the um shift from away from school messenger to um a different communication tool that will start rolling out really all of next year. staff are going to start getting some previews over over the next few weeks that will have um communication abilities that are group specific. That will be phone, text, email, um other communication. Um but but more than just an email or a phone call and that

035can be done so that um we can build specific groups that would be off campus. So we're going on uh like sports teams. The situation that created some of this was this very specific sports team. We didn't have the ability to say hit like alert this team. Um this new the shift to the new tool will allow us to build any group based on anything and that's coming in 26. It'll be we're going to start training staff on it probably in the next few days. Staff are going to get an email tomorrow. But we're not going to roll it out to parents officially for the beginning of next year. Um the when is the PSGs? Uh those are they were doing equipments in they were doing wiring. You'll probably see those live. Yes. I say

036miday. Yes. And then the um the money that's mentioned the grants 8,000 for six schools. That's not EHS. Yeah. Correct. The lower one is PHS. Yes. And then but they're both 50/50. Yeah. Yeah. We've matched our money already. We actually held up because the PD transition state. Okay. But so the grants 188 and we spent money but that's not out of the operating operating. So it's out of the operating. Thank you. And then um thank you for mentioning 1022. Uh just so you mentioned the um school security plan submitted yearly in the statute just says that there has to be um a security and vulnerability assessment every two years. Is that just something? Yeah. Uh Steve has an app where we kind of go through a checklist of the PD. They have to be done

037by an officer or someone because that's not Yeah, I pretty um and then um two more. Uh what I assume with the you mentioned so if new people get hired then they get like new teachers for example they start a couple days early fall and August is that when like they get orientation to safety the principles do that usually it's kind of holding me until and then lastly um when does the so that each school has the school climate committee that they're supposed to um collect and evaluate information relating to instances of disturbing or threatening behavior that may not meet the definition of bullying and report this information to the district. Um does that how that does that mean I want to say well I know the security means meet quarterly but I think those

038other means meet the monthly quarterly so what there's um multiple Mino and I just talked about having a more discreet definition because what happens is the school climate committee bullying committee especially some of our schools are small they're the same people on every committee and so how do we differentiate some questions like the protocols that are asked. Uh but I would say at least monthly and then the um all of our school administrators, resource officers, mental health professionals uh have been trained in protocols and how to identify risk assessment. We wouldn't wait to report that and so the meeting happened. If something happened, we would do that assessment immediately and then escalate that to the appropriate um direction based on what that assessment said. But like if there were a meeting like that would be

039an opportunity like if someone the committee at this particular school noticed some trends or some behaviors that were increasing that that yeah we do track that along with like attendance data and school data that's part of that assessment that happened. So you talked about the public address the PA upgrades um oper high school memorial middle school other than obviously PES and GES because they're chambos lists are possible um we're kind of evaluating um and I believe all the challenges original like they're all they all sit in their original state so um right now it's 15,000 a building upgraded which actually pretty reasonable. Um I had thought numbers of a lot higher than that. So they they worked really well. And the other question I had had to do with substitutes. Um do we have like

040a fail safe? So you have a substitute teacher and I know sometimes it's hard to get subs. Um is there like a backup plan for when a teacher is absent to make sure there's somebody in the building that goes to help that teacher in case of a you know a lockdown or whatever? everyone's aware that there's a sub in, you know, grade two classroom A. Um, is that something hopefully that's communicated out pretty well? And I mean, most of our subs, too, are not like I mean, again, theory, everyone starts everyone starts a day one sub and a lot of our folks have been around. So, I think they're they're pretty well versed. But, yeah, I do think they're they're mindful and people start. with our our substitute tracking system allows us to run a

041report that would say like who are the subs in this building today. So in in the case of a drill like that's easy, right? But if something was production um we could run that report from from any computer it's web days we will run that report and say with everybody accounted for and here are the subs you know the school secretaries would have that but there's redundancy so it doesn't fall on that one but they get a key the kind of Heather Toys. Sorry. Um wanted to ask about lobby guard. Yeah. Um just because I' I've heard some buzz about it's slower this upgrade or it it is it's it's not perfect. Um, but we've also kind of looked at what else exists out there and it does take a little bit on the getting

042it behind the iPad and get just right to get a kind of a cradle on the mound. Um, they've added a few upgrades. It it definitely takes a little bit of, you know, angling the license just the right way to get the pod. Um, we have like visited what else exists and a lot of people use guard. So, it's kind of that's what I wanted to ask. There was another like Yeah, I'm always looking we're not we're not linked to a contract. The iPads weren't super expensive, so it's not like it' be a lot, but yeah, at least for the moment, that's that's what we sit. Good. Um, so couldn't help but notice a lot of the new software and technology upgrades, uh, we're making, everything comes with an app now. Y, so we talked

043about Rave, you know, the pass system, Power School has an app, Messenger has an app. Um so my first question is I'm assuming when teachers are using these apps they're using them on their personal devices. We don't provide devices for our students. Yeah. So the next question would be um what do we do in terms of device management to make sure that those personal devices are um secure. One kind of ask that. Yeah. One of the challenges we had with Ray originally was we kind of thought it was a how do you say here's an email like here's a code and put our code into your app when we're done. The problem is actually we have to kind of allow the app to get pushed to your phone send your number and push it over

044and we didn't want to send load staff numbers because then in real reality I'm kind of like giving your number to a third party so we thought so we're going to actually like a kind of an opt-in feature so then we'll push those over. Um but yeah, that in the mansion piece that was um again we can't require people install on their phone is is is your personal cell phone. That's right. I was just going to weigh in. So these will be opt in um apps that staff will have the choice to install, uninstall, choose, not choose. Um there's redundancy. So um depending on the application, some applications don't have to run on a phone. They can run on a Chromebook. They can run on uh not all the app obviously can't run on a

045computer. Some of the communication devices have a web interface that you can log into the RA anything that's geoenced um have to and then dual factor authentication on those pieces. Um there's also some um like so the alert piece is the to me the one that is um the most um valued proposition, right? We're going to put in some ability for people to make alerts. It's also going to create the opportunity for a false alert. One of the districts that rolled this out. Um had someone that was testing it not realizing that it was going to go out. So the ability to communicate out to staff and to families. We're going to be installing this. You know, this will be a test. Um but for the most part, the um the alert app won't that

046rave app won't go to families. There's there's intermediate steps. So there's someone that panic button um it would go to school if we go to but we still have to say go to training you know this is a test but there is kind of a the other side of that is we've had multiple situations uh where in a crisis teacher in a classroom has a specific question when you're in lockdown how you communicate directly becomes challenging and so this will allow direct communication and that field can be brought so um that teacher or any staff member really will be able to say listen I'm in this situation and that can go to police ambulance administration um and create conversation support isolated areas where in the past they might have to go through your phone or

047something like that which would be maybe less accessible on that true lock and the beauty of the panic buttons on phones is obviously in prior places we had like wireless panic So hope they work the battery's good like never handy but again some days you know you sitting there pressing on something big cow's coming. So the advantage of the phone is you've got redundancy obviously it's a lot more fail safe depending on be a hardwired phone or a wireless phone. So just to summarize, I think the the point of my question is, you know, I'm most concerned about um making sure we have protocols in place so that if someone were to get a staff member's phone, they don't have unfettered access to some of this. So two factor authorization is good. If you require

048login every time I open the app, right? If you if it just stays logged in for seven days or until you turn that off, then you could potentially have a security problem. So I guess the final question is do we have a protocol for onboarding new software to make sure that there are security measures in place so that people can't perhaps get into someone's device and access all of these apps. So I'd say it's not a blank because some of the like so they this security software is geoence. So getting into it when you're not on our campus creates a different level of access when you're on Sure. Um things like the communication app is going to require uh multiple level levels of authentication. Um where like you might be able to hack them with

049a phone but it may not you know again need the secondary whether that's depending on the price it may be face fingerprint it password some of that is going out of our control based on how the user sets up their security. So that is going to be kind of as you said before as all of these tools start to include apps as they start to include multiple interfaces um how we manage those different pieces with an evolving conversation. Um and some of it also is this is going to be a choice by staff. They own the device. We can't necessarily require them to do that. And so when we start saying these might be core mission critical um we did it even with two-factor authentication when we rolled that out and said this is mandatory

050there was kind of a transition period where we had to provide staff with at least um it was pretty short but provide them with at least some alternative conversations on if you don't want to do this because right now our two-factor authentication includes your device your own personal device. If you refuse to do that or um you don't have a device um we had to provide small to I don't think we have anybody now using those alternatives was a few things in the beginning which is why all the things anyway you know which is we're on the the uh early adopter phase but I would say now on the media edge phase we are adopting apps uh after there's some track record and some kind of user experience that we can learn from how we

051will use them. Now, I want to piggy back on Tom's um and back to the substitute teacher because if we're using these apps and they're coming in, they're not going to have it on their phone. We're not going to sit there for 15 minutes in the morning and put it on their phone. can we ensure that there are alternatives for them when they're in the building so that that's provided and then again um a staff member that doesn't wander on their phone. Um I just want to make sure that our substitutes have every opportunity for safety that our regular teachers have um and staff members have every day. So if there's something maybe you have to purchase something um that's handed out like your key for the day. um you get this, you get this,

052this is your date, give back the end of the day. There's a spectrum, too. So, if you're a building sub, well, that would be a little different if um we haven't necessarily, as Mr. Martino said, the roll out of this has created some interesting conversations of what what does a permanent sub mean? Like, we have building subs. We clearly have defined permit subs. you're here for six months for a teacher that's out on the lead, but you might be here daily, but you come every day or 80% like at one point and the communication apps you would not give to subs unless they were that permanent sub. You take over the responsibility of the teacher. As a building sub, you would not necessarily have the communication where you could text back and forth with the

053parents. But when you get into the security app, you know, what does that look like? What's our protocol? because whether you have it on your device or not, where you are in the building, how much training you had, you may have again that protocol on in um in middle school, the team is responsible. The instructional team may be responsible or, you know, there's someone in that building that's tagged with there's a sub here and this is how we're going to end. Even if it's grade level, you know, they're but it's probably not going to be the app itself because that will require some training. Um, and again, if you're here all the time, but if you're a say a college student that comes home for three weeks and subs with us, you you may not

054get that app on your phone, um, there'll be another protocol that you follow for that rave specific one, but those are things that we haven't fully worked through yet. Um, so maybe there is a way for them to do that. All of our phones have phones, there's always dials. I mean, there's all all the old school stuff still exists that exist, right? This is going to be in in addition to not instead of any other questions. All right. Thank you. Um, next we have portrait of a learner. club. Um, so Lauren will remember that we started working on this back in the summer really. Um, and we had multiple surveys that went out. Um, one at the beginning of the process, one at the end, and we conducted 12 student focus groups, we had five

055staff focus groups, three community focus groups, and a board presentation back on January 27th. Uh the process was overseen by a representative a group that represented a variety of different constituencies including Dr. um and an outside consult a lot of districts. Um we've sent multiple surveys out um again at the beginning of the process and at the end. Overall the feedback was very positive. Um some of the questions that we had um were based on clarification specifically things like uh what is an empowered learner and an innovative problem solver and those are really good questions that we um are going to work to define over the next few years and it will look different based on the age appropriateness um of the students and the class they were in. There's going to be a lot

056of different kind of iterations of what a um a problem solver looks like. And that may look very different in um our our wood shop class or our um drone class than it does in an AP English class, but we want our students to be problem solvers and empowered learners in all the different environments. So, um, we created a cooling off period just to make sure that we give community opportunities for feedback that was shared. Um, it's on the website. Uh, the plan moving forward would be to give the board uh the opportunity to weigh in and officially adopt this uh this evening. And then really a whole next school year would be these conversations about what grade do you teach, what classes do you teach, what is an innovative um learner look like, an

057empowered learner, what is an innovative problem solver, and to give teachers time to practice and talk through what that looks like in the curriculum and see it show appear. Um, and then you'll start to see that work into our curriculum. uh it'll work into conversations like tonight where our students uh the ultimate panel student come and tell you um what that innovative problem solver looks like and when you look at I know a few of you were able to attend the senior project really the goal is to have some version of it's not that sophisticated at different levels but you should be able to walk into a classroom um they're going to say to you today I'm an innovative problem solver and this is what we're doing or um this is how I'm collaborating and

058and where it's a metacognitive. It's not just something adults build in for students to learn, but the students know why they're learning. So, that's kind of where we're at. The screen's like Oh, you have that in the handout. Um, I didn't make a handout for you for tonight, but um on the website and certainly send you the link to all this. Yeah. I apologize up here. Um, so this is the presentation I can go through. I'm happy to take a lot of time, but I can send a seat. So this is the presentation they gave to the board back in January that talks you through um Dr. Mchuan's work about what this is but um okay that's our yeah in general we want to make sure that when students leave us uh that these are

059the traits um that they're prepared when we say you're prepared to function in a 21st century environment these are the skills in addition all the curriculum content knowledge you may forget who started World War II based on multiple different perspectives but these are the inner character traits and mindset structures that we want people to walk away with. Was it a requirement for the NEAS? This is something that NES wants to make sure that districts are thinking about and you know um we're not doing this just because of NAS but it is um a component what NES wants us to speak to. Anyone else have questions? Thank you. Um, next, may I have a approval of the minutes for April 7th, 2025 regular meeting for the board of ed? That the board of approved the April

0607th, 2025 regular meeting minutes. Thank you, Steve. Do I have a second? Thank you, Heather. Any comments or questions? All right. All those in favor? Any nays? Right. carries. Next we have information and proposals board committee reports policy and curriculum committee Miss Heather Dwire. Um this evening policy and curriculum met um to discuss more 5000 series policies under the category of student rights. We did complete a block of policies that will be coming to this committee as a first read once we got those okay. Um the other thing that you will see before you and I apologize our committee is the reason for that for today's handout um but we are um up to our second read of um several policies. So that included the uh 3292 investment of funds policy and this was regarding

061the inclusion of an educational expense account um alongside our capital expense account. Um that was the um that was the amendment to that existing policy. Um, and we also have a number of policies related to student health um that have previously been reviewed by BNC and have been looked over by Pave. They were also um, as a reminder, many of them were also reviewed by Dr. Samor. Are there any questions about policies? Y so I have a question on the um investment of funds. So throughout this document there's reference to majority vote of members. However, when we get to the educational expenses, it's twothirds majority vote. Um so a couple things. One the deviation in the the language and are these weighted votes because how twothirds of my mind with the way to go it

062starts to get really complicated. So can you please walk me through um the the committee's thinking? So the reason for the deviation and that is in the educational expense account because we wanted because this this account is much more open-ended than a capital expense account. We put money into a capital non-recurring expense account. We must spend it on capital. But as for the statute to put it in an educational expense account, there's very little guidance on what you can use it for. You could use it for complaint really. Um and so um the committee's feeling was that we wanted to have some restriction on this account. We didn't want it to be extremely open-ended. Our thought was that we wanted it time being to be um reserved for special education expenses. Um we felt like

063that was a good use of this type of account. Um but understanding that you know there may be situations where you know want to hire staff, you know there may be other situations that come up. Um we wanted it to have a higher bar to clear. to use this money for other things. So 2/3 is considered a higher bar than a vote. Yes. So again though it's a weighted vote. Yes. Okay. So yes there would be mask situation. Yeah. I mean many of our policies are majority. Thank you. Sometimes you'll see me with a little stretch for voting. We could change that policy the way it goes. That statute state that but 10 years ago was was the same. I'm less concerned about the weight. I'm just concerned that that's a that's that's a it's

064just different from the rest. I don't want to I understand that would be theory. Um and I s even at at budget referendums, you know, figuring out math, you know. Yeah, absolutely. So, I just it starts to get a little um as long as there's clarity in Yeah. That is the reason for that is the reason we did it that way. If anybody here feels that there should be a higher bar or should be the same bar as a regular vote. I guess that that's something we could discuss. Why is the bar higher on that educational because it's so open? Yes. Let me if I could I'll share what influenced my thinking on that and that was a story that Mr. Smith had told about when this legislation first came out and I'll let you

065tell them if you're willing, but some of your colleagues actually had concerns about this uh legislation passing. For example, this board that I think is extremely fiscally responsible could spend five years building this account up. The next board could decide we want to make the budget zero next year. We're going to use that fund to buy down any cost expenses. Um, and then kind of that backs stop that we've spent a lot of years. Now, you might need that. Let's say there's a hurricane or there's something or we have some emergency. It might be reasonable to spend some of that on all of there's a true emergency, but there's also going to be this attractive u narrative of let's use that because we want to get to a 2.9 budget. And so that's kind of

066where the the conversation around twothirds is. But on the flip side, right, what I'm also concerned about is is it that and I totally understand that thinking, but it also then um empowers the chipping down of budgets in other areas. So, I just want to be very conscientious of the double side to that sword because that's exactly what potentially could happen, right? And I'm not saying it's not important. I'm not saying I'm not behind it. I just want to make sure that there's full clarity why the bar is being set higher on that relative to other potential uses of that money in situations that it could be used and you know frankly another board come in and revise this policy. We wanted to set a baseline this is a higher bar use these funds Can

067I just ask is the overall consensus that that is appropriate that the two/3 is appropriate? Certainly was the consensus and we can certainly pass your suggestion. you've been talking through your concern about it consult. I don't know if there would be, but what I heard is they want to the higher bar has been set so people can't come in and use that money to whittle down uh a budget. So if that is secured revenue, you don't get the twothirds. So you that's maintained, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that budget isn't going to get whittleled away in other areas. So that that's the piece in my mind. It's it is it's a safeguard of that revenue of that money, but at the end of the day, if people want to cut the budget, they're going

068to cut it. That's protected, which has and it's protected in a good way, but it also has the potential to have implications to other areas of the educational community. And I I just want to make put that out there. If that's a concern, I feel like then, you know, you could lower that standard if your philosophy is I support lowering the budget by, you know, taking reserve funds to buy down next year, which I think this board doesn't feel that way. I mean, but you to your point that chipping down of the budget, if that's going to happen in future boards, that's going to happen one way or the other. So, I'd rather kind of keep the reserves. We've I just wanted clarity because as I read through that document it's majority majority majority majority

069but then you get to one other section it's twothirds so I needed to understand the rationalization of why that was different I appreciate the the energy and the thinking behind it um and the rationale behind it just I think also what came up is you can suspend any policy for any predetermined amount of time right so and that's a twothirds vote so even if it wasn't like so we could just make it anything and just be like you know what let's just that policy so our policies have to be approved two majority majority so we could change the spousity that would require two or you're suggesting the suspension came. No, that's what we just heard. Majority you said I can change the policy anytime but majority first and second but you can suspend it policy

070requires two things. Yes, we could write a new policy, bring it through first and second rate and policy. Yes. All right. Any other questions on these secondary policies? We're also going to have an opportunity to discuss it again when we come to some time to vote. So, um, all right. Next, we have the GES PES feasibility study committee. I think Mrs. Rogers is giving the report tonight. The GES PES feasibility study committee met on Tuesday, April 22nd here. Uh the primary goal of the meeting was to review the current status of the study and Tecton presented their initial concepts for possible renovation or new construction. They shared multiple scenarios along with the challenges that each scenario presents. Further research is um is ongoing into possible suitable alternative sites. The overview is on the web page.

071The committee has added a meeting on May 5th at 5:00 to further explore some of the possibilities and solutions to the challenges the scenarios present. This meeting is open to the public with the exception of an executive session. In addition to the May 5th meeting, there will be a meeting on Wednesday, April 30th, this Wednesday from 4 to 6 at Gamefield. That meeting is by invitation only and board members are invited to attend. There is a community conversation on Thursday, May 22nd from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. at LMES. Sure. So, the last two community conversations, the question about whether or not there would be polls happening within the teach by the teachers in the district has come up and I believe that in both instances, it was communicated forthcoming. Um, I'd like to understand what

072that status is because I definitely think that there's a very strong pulse at least in those meetings and people that have approached me um in the community about really ensuring that the voice of the teacher is heard when we start thinking about this concepts. I know that the think tanks are happening which I think is great and and the fact that those have been shared is is really good. But um could you just speak a little bit if you know and maybe that's coming up and what the status of the poll is and how that feedback is being taken into consideration. So there actually was um quite a bit of discussion about this at the meeting I believe. Is the video online? You can watch the video to hear Mrs. Megley and I don't think

073the video is up was up today. We're okay. I was going to say you can watch um the video online to hear some of the um talk about that, but Mr. Romeo had a couple of good points about um maybe I guess was tapping the brakes a little bit on that for right now and not necessarily giving teachers the having them both something that they didn't understand fully yet. So just so that you're aware I think there are people in the community that have gone through this. We've heard from two districts, right? And I think their perspective is how incredically important at some point that teacher perspective is relative to the height of things the placement you know as much thinking and information is being digest ingested and digested into these plans. Um I think

074maybe an update on that's kind of the status of that poll could be shared if it comes up again because I anticipate it will be asked again. Go ahead, Heather, and then Sally. Yeah, I I mean, I think the value of the committee, the values of the committee were definitely, you know, we want to hear from staff about what their opinion was. I think really the big concern that came up see that were to watch the video, the big concern that that came up is right now all options are on the table, but several of those options are not going to be um just due to um site constraints um you know that sort of thing. So before we go out and pull like hey we like this option and this option and this option

075I think we really have to do a good job of understanding those constraints communicating those constraints and saying and presenting it more as a here's some options here's the pros and cons and and then what's your feedback um based on that. So the work of the committee right now up until this point has been very opened and everything's on the table and I think you know we're going to start you know coming up against barriers and road blocks and we're going to be steered to some options just based on practicalities of where what and where we can build what yeah I was very or stuff, but I said I can't remember who said it, but it was we've been sitting in all of these meetings and you know there was this sort of like nine

076by9 matrix of of all of the different things and like I couldn't actually it would be hard to voice an opinion one way or the other even that were there with all that information. So it was the idea of yeah there was going to be real space and like can we actually do we have the space to do a compliance school should that even be an option having people vote on kind of thing that it was kind of setting people up to be teachers up to be in a spot where they're voting on something that we actually don't know if it's feasible we don't and having carry the weight of it having rest that weight of that decision and that full resting on well the teacher said this um I think so it was more

077getting things paired down into like more what what other way most realistic options but not not not listening to that. That's that's role one. Good job. Do we have sites available for building our school? It's a good question and we're looking into it. Yeah. Well, you know, we we're exploring different things and this committee will talk about it and maybe the board is going to talk about it to a meeting near you. Yeah. I like the meeting point. Was that going to do it? The think tank I think I think it's going to come up at I mean the think tank the whole purpose is to have the town officials and the board members and administration there talking about what's on the table. Um we are very right not specific sites. Yeah. But they come

078up even in the community conversations. Yeah. Any other just So I was at happened to be at that meeting and I felt like the consensus was you if you're going to pull a very specific group of individuals such as say teachers that you would want like no one should be given an option to certainly vote on narrowing down the plans. You know we could do six things and the teachers come in and said well we should do these two. I thought it was articulated that we pull at some point, make sure the teachers give the input and then the committee takes that input and then comes up with the recommendation and then this board votes on. So don't want it to seem like they're sort of voting early on one of the solutions. You just

079have to go to a public a referendum. So the the the process is that the feasibility committee is going to hopefully come up with a recommendation to the board, right? And then the board will come to a decision and then whatever the board decides, if it's a new school, a renovation or whatever that needs a bond, that will go to referendum, including if it's going to buy property, sell property, all of that has to go through referendum. That's the ultimate goal, right? That's true. Yep. Any other questions? Yeah. I know um John and uh Sharon, you RSVP that you're coming on Wednesday. Thank you so much. If anyone else wants to go to think tank, please let me know so we make sure there's um space for you. But um if possible for you guys,

080if you can come to the May 5th feasibility study meeting, um I think it's going to be a good one um for you to attend. here. So, it's Monday May 5th May at 5 o'clock. We're working on taco salad. Yeah, something like that. Um, but there will be an executive session and the board is also invited to that executive session. Yeah, I'm gonna have to pick. Yeah. So, there's Bates and it's a committee meeting. those people who sit in towns on the board of selectment at that meeting they won't be able to attend we did if he goes me he go to board what we we we pulled the committee members this is an added meeting it was not original so we pulled all the committee members on a series of dates is the date

081that had the most attendance so I can't speak to specifically I I know I mean I know Ed and Vinnie are both on I mean Vinnie does Yeah. Uh, next we have superintendent report. Superintendent Smith. Like when we get to this part, a lot of it's already been shared a little bit. I just want to reiterate what Mr. Nelson said about the district art show. Um, that is a massive amount of work for our students, uh, staff and volunteers. And I think it's something very unique to region 15 that we have in one space K12 um art actually I want to say even some preK um art that is all in one space and it's a massive space. So um it is not small it is a huge undertaking by a lot of people um

082to create something very special for um our district and so I just want to thank everybody for that contributed and for our students. Um remind everybody referendum is May 7th. Uh we will not have a whole board meeting before then. Uh it's a full board meeting. There'll be clearly lots of committees that meet before it then but um May 7th is the referendum. We started this week with smarter balance testing and then um and final stretch and now it's the end of the year. There are a three-w weekek stretch, four-week stretch that it's going to be a spring. So, take a deep breath and um appreciate the time that all of you always dedicate but in advance for the next couple of weeks uh for your time and I hope your families remember what you

083look like and you can see them all again. Any questions on the superintendent report? Nope. Uh next we have board member comments. Go ahead, Steve. um just the feasibility but I saved it for board member comments because it's it's really kind of just communication. Um so as mentioned I went to the community conversation um and there I learned that the June 2026 there is potentially and it's hard for legislation so but potentially a bill that may come to pass that would go into effect that may alter the reimbursement rate perhaps. I don't know. Do something in terms of funding. Um, so that uh I think that was mentioned in one of your superintendent uh weekend emails. Um so that sort of made me a little nervous for the first time um because of course now

084there'll be some deadline that we have to in my mind at least have to work. Um then I started to think about how much we will meet as a word to have the foster a community information campaign. Right? So whatever the final option is that is whittleled down. I would have to go to referendum. I imagine it's not like we vote on the we vote on the budget April 7th and then a month later we hope it passes. It's four weeks and three because people are really on spring break, right? So like how much how much of a run run runway are we giving to people to get themselves in forms to vote on this building project right so I also feel like you know the so it's like about a year from now but

085not really because we have to give some time for this public information campaign um I also um went to the feasibility meeting last week and um was thinking you how we're all really new to this um as a town and as elected officials. We haven't done anything like this in a long time. Uh I started reflecting on the scheduling that we went through for the current capital bond. I know there were a lot of meetings where you know we have to like the motion be written out. It was half a page long because it had to be perfect because it had to and then there were deadlines that you know we had the bonds consultant or bond agent come in and and then we had deadlines I think for the architect pool and I'm not

086even sure if that was tied to getting the bond in place in time and and maybe the bond for this new project have as tight a time timeline but I was thinking is there a timeline or we want to We want to get our proposal hopefully past referendum and submitted by the end of the month so it beats this deadline that Hartford now may give us like so I was this all sort of swirling um through uh through my head and I started to think I know Tech has a a schedule like these sort of high level dates but from a board perspective like I I would really like the committee to be able to give to the board like a list of sort of board meetings like we know when our board meetings are

087right through pretty much here now we figure them out and say like okay by this date this board meeting you will have this because you are going to need to take action or do something like like I really would just feel more comfortable we just started to sort of flesh that out because we may need time like I don't want to get something on you know March 1 and then have to be like okay this is somewhere between I don't know millions and millions and millions of dollars and have little time to sort of digest it or push back and I don't so I I am just really asking my board members that are on that committee to think about can we get a schedule for board what what are board actions that are going

088to be required and that way you all can let us know behind schedule. So, um, so I'd like any other board member comments. Okay. Next, we have comments from citizens. The board of education will recognize citizens of Mbury and Southbury, and citizens are asked to state their name, their town of residents, and to limit their comments to three minutes. Any citizens? Um, next we have regular business requiring board action. May I have a motion for approval of policy 3292 investment of funds? Move that the board of education upon recommendation of policy and curriculum committee approve policy 3292 investment of funds as presented. Second. Second by Heather Rogers. Any comments or discussion? Right. All those in favor. Any nays? Any abstensions? unanimous. Thank you. Um, next may I have approval of the policies that are listed

089on the agenda? Move that the board of education. Can I do the same thing? Probably not. Go ahead. Just read it. Move that the board of education upon recommendation from the policy and curriculum committee approve policies 5141.2 administering medication 5141.231 231 Psychotropic Drug Use 5141.25 Students with special healthc care needs/ food allergy management 5141.27 First aid/emergency medical care use of automatic external defiills 5141.28 Sudden cardiac arrest 5141.3 health assessments and immunization 5141.4 4 reporting of child abuse and neglect. 5141.7 student sports concussion and head injury. 5141.124 breathalyzer testing and 5141.5 suicide prevention and intervention as presented. Thank you. Thank you. So seconded by Heather Rogers. Um, any comments, questions on any of the policies that are listed? No. All right. All those in favor? I. Any nays? Any abstensions? All right. It is unanimous. Thank

090you. Um, and finally, may I have motion for approval of regional school district 15, Portrait of a Learner? Just going to keep going. Yep. move that board of education approve regional school district 15 portrait of a learner as presented. Second, thank you, Heather. Um, any questions? Yes. Yes. So, um, and I'm sorry I know we had the brief earlier and we've moved past before I was able to kind of formulate my question. So, sorry for not getting out earlier. um when you know I had raised a question earlier um more of a concern that um you know I I do worry with this that it's another layer it's another structure that we put on our educators on top of thinking classrooms on top of theories of action on top of you know curricular changes that

091we've been making um you know and I know our educators are up for it because they've you they they run at the space and I I see them thriving at the space but I do I do worry about that. So when I raised that question at an earlier presentation you had talked about and maybe even showed us a draft of like a stained glass window like mandala kind of infographic you're working on. Um, and I haven't I haven't seen the the latest on that, but that's um that's information I probably would have liked to revisit tonight just to understand again how this layers in. Kind of set my mind that we're not overwhelming people with yet again another structure here. Um I don't know if you can talk to that briefly for the vote. Yeah,

092it's I would say the short answer is that you're gonna walk in order to run. So you start next year with really just helping like the entire year to say that we like we do a lot of what's in that document is not something new to us. This is a way to make it clear the community, parents, but really to the students. when you do this activity, you think you're in math class learning 4 plus 8 was 12. But that's true, but outside of that, there's a whole that that teacher designed that lesson so that you and I work together. We're going to bring Sally in and we're going to be able to work with different people and those skills. And so, it's not so much that this is like a new um educational approach.

093Some of those things in there might force us to expand some of our approaches, but a lot of it is how do we become more like um metacognitive about the work that we're already doing and we're not going to force this a retrofit in. What we're going to say to staff is take some time to think about these things. Those questions that came in from community members about what does it mean to be an innovative problem solver? I'm not walking into convocation next year saying as an innovative problem solver and as teachers we're asking you to do that. I would tell you that those structures that you mentioned about thinking classrooms and illustrative mathematics and um a lot of our other the the SIED work a lot of that is about being an innovative problem

094solver but we don't talk about it with students that way. And that's really the shift here is the dialogue that students are going to have with each other. they're already embedded in a lot of our pieces and we're going to give staff next year um to really wrestle with that and to think about that and space um to do all the things that like you said they're doing right now um and just to kind of have it as a lens that we look at the work that we're already doing and then what things do we need to bring in to push a little bit on are we really can we be stronger at our innovative problems? could you take that lesson that we did last year, that we did last week, and could we push

095on that a little bit um and make it an incremental piece? But this is really like a three-year plan for us to start to look at and in some ways even longer than that. Um because there's there's going to be a journey when you talk about what do we want a kindergarten in our schools today to know and be able to do when they graduate. I can't tell you what the world's going to look like 12 years from now. I can tell you it's going to look different and I can tell you that some of the things that we're teaching to seventh graders today are going to be obsolete when our kindergarteners graduate now. And so how are we preparing them? You know that Gretzky analogy. We got to skate to where the puck is.

096And this is to help us start to push our own thinking about what we're doing. But it's not going to be like some new initiative um for an initiative sake. I think if anything this will be a bucket that we can start to take a lot of the things that we're already doing. That's why that mosaic um next year maybe that's a commun like communal as far as like our schools are how do we start to connect dots so that you don't see parents staff students I'm going to math class and then after math class I go to language arts class and then I go to science class. There are through lines that run through all of those things about how you think, how you work with others. That's what we want to start to

097to decompartmentalize how we teach students because once you leave high school, like no one goes to math class at your job, right? Like math is woven in to the conversation with everything else. Um, and so that's kind of the the structure that this becomes the foundation thing. Some of that helps. No, it does. And there's nothing in there that's offensive bleeding. Like it's it's all it all makes a lot of sense. But when I hear you talk about kind of an incremental path of the next couple years, you know, if the board takes action on this and this becomes really the transformative, you know, platform I think you you're describing, you know, I cur I'm curious because some of these are so such abstract concepts, you know, has there been thought given to how we

098are going to evaluate them? Like what does success look like three years from now at the end of the three-year plan? How do we say like yes we are thinking more creatively because you know we're using this benchmark to measure the effort that we put in the last three weeks. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the um maybe pitfalls that we are very conscious of is I don't want a rubric or a checklist that says Tom is creative. You know because I think there's so many definitions. So what does that look like? And I think that's when you get into that senior experience, we're going to have lots of different ways. Here are some curriculum documents where we talk about how we build in innovative learning. Here are some videos. Here's some students that

099are going to stand in front of you and tell you how they're able to work with others. You know, and I think that's the piece is, you know, there are metrics uh that we can look at. These aren't in isolation. Um but they're also not discrete skills. There are some of within these concepts creative problem solving. So if you look in our illustrative mathematics curriculum that again maybe we're going to push on, but there's examples in there that force students to be creative, right? Like you have to explain to your find three people that solve that math problem differently than you. That gets into how we kind of assess students are being able to be creative in their thinking. But it's not a right or wrong answer. It's a continuum. And so like there's not

100gonna be a test that a parent gets home that says here's my test on innovative problem solver, you know, I got an 87, you know, I think it's going to be more like what does that look like and what does that look like when you're in 12th grade and what does that look like when you're in third grade? Where did you start? How you growing? I think that's some of the the reason of adopting this is to start that conversation. No one's going to hand that to a teacher and say start doing this. That is, you know, failing, right? and and we're my my friends in Hartford and Washington are going to give us some new things to start to do in July that I don't even know yet. Um I think one of the

101other questions that we're going to come to this board with is and and this is a start this document. We're going to have to take some things out because if we continue to teach I was a history teacher, we teach chronologically the students today have a lot more history to learn than the students 20 years ago did. You can't just keep adding new dates. You have to start to look at what are the things that we want students to know to be able to do and what are we able to remove because we know students are going to be able to learn that just in time. You know, I'm looking at some people here who I don't know we're computer programmers and know you're not coding today in a language that you learned in college.

102It's not. So, you have to be an adaptive learner. And that's something that we need to teach to our students um and make sure that our curriculum encourages that. Otherwise, we're going to create a generation of students in the world that happened when they were in high school, not when they're in. That's great. So, you clearly have like a strong vision for how this would be used. Um certainly a better understanding than what I have. Um, I would ask if the board would entertain maybe an amendment like this almost makes it sound like it's an endorsement from the board, but this was obviously recommended to us either from the committee or from you. So just like a previous motion, you know, upon recommendation from policing curriculum, I'd love to put in this motion who's recommending

103we pass this because I don't feel like I have the deep enough knowledge set to just endorse this blanket without, you know, acting on someone's. So, so who could we say this was recommended to the board by steering? The the portrait of learner steering committee. So if if it pleases the chair, I'd like to make a amendment. Are we still in discussion? We're in discussion. The motion on the table is to as read on the agenda. So there's a motion on the table that's been moved and seconded. So Tom wants to do an amendment. I'll withdraw if you want to keep going. Okay. All right. Thank you. So then I would make a motion to amend this motion to read uh move that the board of education upon recommendation from the portrait of a learner

104steering committee approve the regional school district 15 portrait of a learner as presented. All right. Is there a second Tom's amendment? They all shouted at once. I'll get Steve. I heard him first. All right. So, we'll have a discussion on Tom's proposed amendment. Any discussion? Go ahead, Sharon. So, so I I appreciate the amendment. So, thank you. Philosophically, I'm behind it conceptually, right? Um, it's interesting because my mind kind of went where Tom's was in the the discussion. What is the impact to educators with this document? Because if you're telling me that we're actually already doing it with a lesser of math, like what else? What else is coming? And is it that the things that we're doing are going to continue to evolve and adapt, but there'll be extra consciousness or conscientiousness, whatever, to

105pull that thread through. Because if you're saying to me that it's happening in a less sort of man and I see it right when it comes home like how the answers are being written just the the things that you've presented here I'm like okay so this is structurally on paper now okay paid but how is it going to impact the teachers dayto day what's the impact to the student in the classroom and that's very different than how are we evolving our curricula to ensure that they walk out of here with the skills they need, right? Um so so I do have I just want to piggyback on Tom's um comments. I do have concerns over what this could end up looking like and I don't want it to be like a checklist and I know

106you're you're saying that it's not but something else is coming right TV days other things and how is that actually being integrated into the curricula that we're already invested in. So that's my my thought there. The other piece is I'd like to better understand how this is just like education evolves, just like how our environment evolves. How is this document going to be evolved? Because um when I look at that, it's very aligned with all the things that you see in business, innovation, communication, collaboration, you could literally take that and synthesize it and you're seeing that in business, private sector. So, how is a lot of this is going to change just every five years, every three years? What is the committee's plan to revisit this? Is it annual? Like, what's the return? How are

107you seeing the pull through? I really like to better understand philosophically because I don't want to endorse this and let it just sit there for however many years. Nothing drives me nuts more than a lot of nice documents that are not operationalized. you know, I think we could put together a really nice infographic laminate, make some nice posters of it, but if it's just something on a wall, then what might be different, right? So, and and to your point, a lot of these are um kind of uh nebulous words, right, that we all think are really important, but we really um have a hard time defining what they look. And that's where I think one of um the things that's really important. So I say us in the district, I'm speaking on behalf of a

108whole lot of people that I'm not rolling this out like we're adopted this start implementing this next week. Like that is not how this is going to roll because I think to your point I don't want to tell kindergarten teachers who've been teaching it for 20 years. They've been teaching collaboration. Like you cannot teach kindergarten without collaboration, right? like that. So, but one of the things that we haven't done is talk to students about why it's important in kind of these this lesson today isn't just about fill in the blank. It's also about these other things. And when you if you remember the and I I think there's a link in it, but when students start talking about I grew this year as a problem solver or I was afraid to work with other people

109in my class and now I know I can't like I need students to be able to talk to that. And I think to to your point like and this is going to a lot because 20 years ago like 20 years but those weren't necessarily corporate buzzwords either. you know that um we're going to continue to look at what is it that our students need to do to be successful when they because we have some tremendous students and we saw some play our valictorians were good schools they are are top 10 however you want to rank your class if they don't leave high school and college and be able to function in who cares right like and I think that's the piece that while it's really important. Those hard skills, a lot of those soft skills,

110um, which is kind of what's identified in this portrait, um, are also a difference maker between students who become successful, however you define success. So, I I totally support that, but it's the implications of the how and that's what I'm not hearing. So can I just if I can just add though because in order to create that environment you have to coach and upskill the professionals that are delivering it in the classroom. So is that a PD day? Is that going to come around in our budget? Now we're looking at other coaches like the I'm not saying that that's happening but good right yeah gets good and you need a starting point for sure but we need to understand the how or at least I do I need to understand the how and while we

111can endorse a piece of paper um not to make it so simplistic it is I I really need to understand the how and the implication this goes back I maybe to what I heard you from you what is the impact in the classroom what's the impact to our staff and how is that those those fundamental competencies and behavior is going to be implemented so it actually becomes effective that's what I'm not hearing and I'm sorry if I missed it so um to get very granular um we talked about a three-year plan so there's three years first year is an awareness of those actual um competencies or or the criteria So that's next year. What are they? What are the words associated with them? So that's that awareness stage. Then the year after there's an implementation

112stage. So how do we start to put these into our classroom, into our curriculum? Um and then that's our transition year. And then the following year like full implementation backing up. So next year that awareness is to make people aware of what those are, the words that go along with that working with the ITL or our instructional teacher, the leaders that are in every academic area. um that range from um kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade working with them on I can statements and I can statements from from a student's point of view. So looking at what that would look like for K2, what does that look like for group five, what does that look like for middle school, what does that look like for high school for each one of those um

113competencies that are listed up there. So building those I can statements um as an ITL group and then at the PD days spending time to then share that out with the rest of the teachers. So the teacher the rest of the teachers have input on what those could look like. Taking that feedback back from the PDJs with all the teachers to the ITL group. So, we're refining those I can statements by grade level. So, by the end of the follow of next year, by the end of um the following year, we have that awareness of what they are. We have we have input on what those are. we have feedback on how do we make those better so that for the following summer some of the things that we can do to start infusing those

114into our curriculum documents where those show up and working with teachers on how do you make students aware because part of um teaching is making things explicit and so that idea of like being able to like work collaboratively like while kids could do that I don't know how many kids could actually explain what they're doing sometimes when they are working collaboratively with one another when they are talking about um you know thinking about their thinking when they are being able to um share something in multiple ways being able to for them to actually say I can do these things and so um that second year really is working with teachers who then work with students to implement those knowing that it's not going to be perfect but we're we're working on that transition phase for

115the following year to be like full implementation everybody has had professional development and you have the statements written out they're in documents where people could see and it really is helping teachers understand that you're doing a lot of these things, but it's helping students understand that they're being that they that they can do these things. So there there's a multi-year plan with making sure that everybody ha everybody sees them, everybody has a touch point, everybody's able to get feedback before it then begins incorporated into curricular documents. So, there's a lot of work to do in the next couple years because if you go back and look at things that we've had previously, you're right, it was a piece of paper with a list of words and a and a definition. It never went anywhere. And

116so, we don't want this to end up being something like that. This has to be usable. And one way to do that is to put it in kid-friendly language so kids can talk about it, teachers can talk about it. Um, and have students be able to to say, "I'm able to do these things." And it looks different even though it's the same um you know same attribute but it looks different in the different grade bands from K from K all the way up to high school. And so what does that look like on that progression for each one of those things? So that's the work next year to do with its feedback from from all the teachers and all the different academic areas. Any other questions on the amendment? So, and I'll just say thank

117you for the explanation and again I don't want to speak for anyone other than myself but I you know so in passing this passes and this passes um you know yes it's not the blanket endorsement but it's like yes we we trust your vision on this and like anything else I think this is one where I would benefit from checking whether that's a PNC or at this board like you know a presentation at let's check in and see how this thing goes and you know Yes, it's going good idea for next year. Yeah, I mean it took some of us five or six years to get coaching. So, I think you're g there's a a knowledge gap between your current vision and where I am on this that you know I just appreciate if you

118help me fill in in the next couple of months and years. If we y if we actionize the way it should be, you're going to see it in a lot of presentations, but not specifically about vision of a portrait of a learner. But it's going those elements you're going to see similar to how we talk about theories of action. You know, theories of action are even higher than this. And then this starts to translate down into All right. Any other discussion on the motion to amend? All right. So, we will vote on the motion to amend the original motion. All those in favor? We're voting on the motion to amend the original motion. Yeah, sorry. No, we're just voting on the motion to amend. Tom has suggested or moved to add upon recommendation of the

119portrait of a learner steering committee to the original motion. So we're going to vote on that motion to amend. Right. All those in favor? I. All right. Any nays? Any abstensions? All right. Okay. So now the original motion has been amended and the original the motion now reads move that the board of education upon recommendation of the portrait of a learner steering committee approve the region regional school district 15 portrait of a learner as presented. All right. Any discussion on the amended motion? No. All right. All those in favor. Any naysay? Any extensions? All right, it carries. Thank you. Um, next we have announcement of future meetings. Monday, May 12th, financial facility meets at MIJ at 12:00. Also, Monday, May 12th, PNC meets at the high school media center at 6:30, followed by a regular

120meeting of the board of education at 7:30. Um, where we will be having the end of year review and reflections of the superintendent in executive session. Monday, May 27th, PNC meets at the media center at 6:30. So, it's Tuesday, May 27. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. So, Tuesday, May 27th, um PNC meets at the um 6:30. We're not going to be there on Memorial Day. And Tuesday, May 27th is our regular board of ed meeting. I'm at 7:30. May I have a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor?