001for November 28 2022 Maybe please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you Mr Smith I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [Music] thank you the mission of region 15 a collaborative Community committed to Excellence is to educate every student to be productive ethical and engaged in the global Society to proven an Innovative learning experiences supported by a strong community we'll start with our student Representatives Mrs Hazel Fitzpatrick and Miss Grace um we're going to start by talking about Middlebury Elementary School and they've been up to a lot the past two weeks they are having their Polar Express night this Friday which should be a lot of fun to take off the winter season they also did a stop the bus food drive where they were able to raise a ton of
002food for those in Need for the Thanksgiving holiday the nespto sponsored a Bubble Mania show where students were able to learn about science while also having lots of fun and I will admit I was looking at the pictures and I'm a little jealous it looked like a lot of fun and last Tuesday mes had a school-wide grateful day where students dressed up in Thanksgiving colors and explained what they were most thankful for and showed appreciation for their peers and their teachers gamefield Elementary School raised and then donated nearly 4 000 pairs of socks to the Saint Vincent De Paul shelter in Waterbury for the colder months coming up and pomperak high school had their senior Summit semi and bring dance and it was held Saturday November 19th and was a great chance for the upperclassmen
003to dress up and get together with their friends I know we've been talking about it for a while and it was just a really fun night bro and five of pomperak student athletes signed National letters of intent on the first day of the ncaa's early sign period all of which will be participating in sports at the division one level we are so proud of our student athletes and all of them played a huge role in allowing comparat to have such a Monumental fall Sports system good evening everybody um this past Friday Saturday and Sunday or this coming Friday Saturday and Sunday our Theater Pub is putting on uh show notes called Naza sorry if I butchered that but um we're very excited to see what they have um worked on for us they've really been
004putting in a lot of her receiving practicing all the time they're there every day after school um and we're really excited they're gonna prepare for us and so that should be really interesting um the ice skating event for seniors is coming up in mid-December seniors can buy tickets online and have a fun night on the ice making memories especially before we leave for college so that's super exciting our student council has been doing a lot for us this year so we're really grateful um the seniors are also holding another Spirit Week in December Monday is holiday and Hawaii Tuesday is Ski Lodge Wednesday is every sweater day Thursday is New Year's Eve Friday is Snowden where we were PJs and we're watching a movie in the AP room during lunch and um our amazing fall
005Sports season have come to an end and our winter sports are just beginning there's been tryouts for girls basketball boys basketball they're girls basketball for scrimmage is next week boys the following week indoor tracks first practice is December 1st voice from practice is this Thursday so we're super excited and hope that they can bring in more swc's titles and follow the fall Sports um the class of 2026 is holding a Canon bottle drive on December 3rd and the PHS bowl from 9am to 12 P.M so we asked that everyone starts collecting their cans and we'll sort them out for you so that's really exciting the boys swim had a bottle drive this past Sunday and it looks like they're going to be promising numbers and fundraising so that's exciting as well the science National Honor
006Society members volunteered at the annual turkey trial we helped direct Runners and chew them on gave out water bottles and snacks after the race and help set up and take down the Finish Line um the impacts Powder Puff game ended in a 20-0 win by the volleyball soccer slash cross country team and this is the first year we did this and it was really fun and I think everyone's going to come back and it's going to be a bigger thing next year um the coaching staff went all out for the game and even showed up in their suits which is really fun to see that they were involved as well as well and everyone just had a fun time and we've raised a good amount of money for the Salvation Army that's wonderful thank you
007all right thank you so much uh next we have a student presentation of the we've just selected part questions for Jimmy Nelson um students come and talk about what happens in our schools um I have to say that um I'm going to turn it over to Mr Napoli The Tech head director who helps pick crew maybe and guide the students on their Journey but the joints a couple years ago this was important we had a program that would allow students to start to participate in the electric car competition and to represent power Broward so I'm glad they're here to talk about it and I'll just let Nick talk a little bit about the program so I'm Nick navley I'm a tech day teacher here at Pop Rock High School and we just wanted to Showcase
008where the electathon team and we just wanted to Showcase a little bit about what we do what this big monsters machine is in front of you and what the race is and everything we've been working on getting the race sorry hello you guys have any questions hello I've been so Richie I'm the Junior [Music] um so you may be thinking what is elected about the elections on America is an organization that provides Hands-On opportunities for participants to learn about stem principles as they design um some of the objectives of RS uh we try and go as many laps as possible in a time span of about 40 minutes it's in two segments with two different drivers they take 20 minutes each um and we try and build the most aerodynamic lightweight efficient car possible and
009we're only allowed to use two different batteries and we try and go on to different rounds and we are only allowed to use those student matters as I said um but yeah we try and make it affordable so it's easy for everybody to do it uh so race time first all the cars will have to pass in detail or the safety inspection the driver will have to pass a flag test and we'll be at leaning the car starts with a maximum of 1000 watt hours of electrical energy we get those two batteries up there are already back behind the seating area um it's a competition of how efficiently A Car and Driver can travel with Oxford explore traffic in a very real world course one hour after the green flag the checkered flag of waved
010and the team team car that traveled the further um ask for costs we obviously have all the costs associated with building the car um but then there's a membership fee for the electric fund USA uh thirty dollars um and uh the first team can cost 30 hours and we have a second one that'll cost 15 registration um and uh entry being screened from zero dollars to study any kind of price my name is Luke and the electathon club has taught us a lot of important life skills like Engineers communication that we all have to work together to build it like welding skills that you can see in like the whole car and building the process and then team building collaborative activity metal fabrication time management we have to build it and make the races on
011time and then like basic automotive where I trade them like meals and all that stuff um up next this is a short video of our car battery system so the race is held at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville Connecticut they have like a smaller crack on the inside of the field um that we race on a lot of times or most of the time in past years before cover there was up to like 40 40 teens grazing we went to one about a month ago and there was 15 or so teams which is more than the previous year I think it was only like eight or nine so it's getting to be a little bit more popular as everything opens up now this is yep this is a short clip of just like everybody device
012car looks completely different um to redesigning this Mark correct this turned into more of a welding project and being a little bit too much metal got well for the car to make it a little too heavy to be competitive so we're looking into redesigning this although we did make we came in about mid-pack we were able to complete the race um but in order to win a little bit lighter questions thank you so much any questions so the the race that later on in the school year so they do two races per year one in the fall one in the spring the one in uh the ball already passed that was October the 20th or something around that on a Friday and then they usually one in May April or May they haven't really designed
013a car for me um this one we're trying we're probably gonna try and modify this card try and lose some weight um this way we can still raise in the event because this car took like two years to build to get to this point so in order to probably start designing a new car and then hopefully buy next year at some point depending on how much time I have to work on it it's a very the other part of the world and uh this is a relatively new club um for me there was a teacher that did it but that card kind of got wrecked and we kind of started From Scratch so I guess it's a fairly new club a couple of students came to me my first year here years ago and um
014they they wanted to continue with the books and I had always been a part of this event when I was a student at Central Connecticut State University they kind of host and help run the event so I knew about it and I was more than willing to impressive okay can you say sort of the Fall it's a club and then in the spring it's Incorporated with part of products yeah it's it hasn't been like that would be the first time that we're going to start doing it this year we're going to try and incorporate the transportation technology class into like electric band I think that would be intended um how that class and depending on running originally so we're going to try and do that now that we can now that they're holding the event
015in the spring that was the first time they've run the event in a couple years so it didn't really make sense yeah but introduced to it and have some some space yeah just trying to say like we talked about stem all the time we talk about 21st century skills we talk about kind of that Comprehensive High School and you know tonight we're going to talk about uh that transition of student data from third grade through high school and we're going to talk about AP numbers and we're talking about SAT scores we're going to talk about a whole lot of epidemic stuff uh that's all represented and so the advantage of being at Robert High School is you can work on this car in the morning and if you want to take an AP Chemistry class
016in the afternoon and learn what how those batteries are made you can do that as well so when we talk about opportunities for students these students represent a pretty impressive program that maybe it's a little heavy at this moment but uh you know we're only a couple of pounds away from pretty pretty sure I'm saying thanks to them for coming any other questions or just say I actually went in October of 2016. I was at one of the races so I believe it was October one so we pop rock was not represented um so I'm glad you're all working on this and I hope you're all getting something out of it uh that's gonna you know go with you for the rest of your lives but the support member I remember being here thinking like
017that's why it's not represented here that you know now we are so uh thank you very much for representing the school as well how do you guys decide who gets to drive so you have to have a license so that narrows it right now and then we kind of just go from there yeah exactly I hear you're going to give board members an opportunity to rip off the parking lots later right yeah thank you so much for coming appreciate it thank you best of luck against it yeah all right next we have um the election for the board of education secretary um Mr John cookson used to be our secretary and um as you all know he uh passed away so we are voting tonight to fulfill um the rest of his position just for
018the remainder of his term which is until next November um as far as the voting process for secretary we will be using a signed paper ballot for all of the votes everyone should have a paper ballot in front of them um each board member will write the name of the nominee for whom they are voting sign their own name and indicate their talent if there is more than one nominee for an office then we will take a five-minute recess as ballots are counted by either the chair I'm checked by superintendent Smith if there is one nominee for an office you will still have a paper ballot vote um and the chair will announce each vote by every board member so I'm going to go ahead and open the floor for nomination for the office of
019secretary for the Board of Education would anyone like to make a nominations decided as the secretary of the Board of Education okay thank you Richard and do I have a second for uh John Jenny Silas yes second okay seconded by Steve thank you very much are there any other nominations great um can I have a motion to close the floor for the nominations for the position of Secretary of the Board of Education Heather and do I have a second so thank you Richard um and everyone can then fill out their paper ballots and give them to me and looking forward to me okay [Music] you don't know all right so I guess [Music] unfortunately all right I'll go ahead and announce each vote by each board member um so Mr spirito has voted for Mr
020geniusitis Tom Marks is voted for Mr geniusitis um people your signatures this is okay that's Jonathan Denise is headed water has voted for John genocidis Shannon Cavallo has voted for John geniusitis Marion Manzo has voted for geniusitis Heather Rogers for John geniusitis Steve siriani John Denise and this must be shared attic yeah so John you said this has been elected for secretary congratulations John we're going to have a discussion about signatures right um all right and thank you Jen to Mike Leo for arranging all of that initially orderly appreciate it next we have our region 15 assessment update with Dr chappetta Mr Nelson I should say when the battery dies the presentation's over that is correct but um before yes foreign presentation in front of you minus the excellent commentary from actually better myself um
021we try to anticipate a lot of your questions so it um if you have a burning question you want to ask while we're presenting that's fine we're going to hold some to the end you may have a more complete picture when they fill in some of the things that you may ask um and with that uh so thank you for the opportunity tonight for us to present assessment update for region 15. so for tonight's agenda we're going to go through a couple things like looking back so uh what was the focus for the last few years which is research say about the pandemic and its impact on students um we'll take a look at some data three types of data will explain those and which ones we're going to take a look at we'll look
022at some data from last year some data from this fall and then we'll take a look ahead so what's research saying about the future impact of the pandemic on education and what are the region 15 focuses moving forward so we'll take a look at uh looking back so um the last few years as you know have been about pandemic pandemic and pandemic um and the interesting thing is when we take a look at um the months uh the total number of months and for the last three years 77 of our time has been focused on a pandemic and so that ranges from um contact tracing to quarantine to um illnesses um to masking not masking mask breaks whether to vaccinate on the whole idea of vaccines so um you know and and we're still in
023that that time right now when new variants keep coming up um you know it seems like every few weeks so really our Focus the last few years has been able has been about how do we maneuver through this pandemic keeping things as normal as possible one of the things that I'm trying to quit is that our goals is that in the last two years talked about that on a regular basis we're going to reflect through this um and talk tonight but we while we get that is important and student learning is important and how you measure that we understood that the consistency to families to students into the community right keeping schools open so you know everybody has a pretty short memory and while that was really important two years ago as you look through
024data it's a data point in time and part of a conversation not an end result and so these are some pictures of trying to keep things as normal as possible um during a pandemic and while instruction and academics did continue like Josh said the focus really was on keeping students in school keeping staff safe um and making sure that things were as normal as possible during a pandemic and so um we want to take a little bit of look at what research says and how that's impacted uh how the pandemic has impacted students academics as well as their social emotional well-being and so we wanted to share a little bit about um or a little bit of research so in this in the summer of 2021 the state of Connecticut put out um uh I
025guess I'd say an article called accelerate Connecticut framework and so they said all the things that we know that there was a substantial disruption to learning um to the profession and to everybody's life and so um in July of 2022 um NPR had an article where they they talked about this learning loss that had happened they called it missed learning or they called it a learning a lost learning and they said that students in grades three and eight were hit the hardest and that students in primary grades K12 were also hit hard but that the good news was upper elementary students and students in grade six seem to have been doing okay and at the end all what they ended up saying was more researchers needed um October so last month October of 2022 NPR
026had another article um that talked about um the the nape assessment and so um nape as you may know stands for the national assessment of Education progress that's given every two years to students in grades four through eight and it takes a look at reading and math fluency and so um some of the things that they have said was that there was a slight dip in reading scores and a drop in math and we're going to take a look to see if that holds true um for our students here in region 15. um they said that the average fourth grade math score decreased by Five Points well the eighth grade decreased by eight points and that reading for some grades only decreased by three points so again they're saying that leading slightly decreased um where
027as Matt according to this nationally really had a drop um but they said that nothing in the math or in the reading scores should really be a surprise to anybody because of what happened over the past couple of years um in November so this month there was another article that came out that really talked about what was important during this time and they said that a teacher was important they said that a quiet place to study was important they said that internet access at home as well as if school was important and that when all of these things are done right that they have huge impacts on students and something that we already kind of knew was that higher performing students seem to continue to do well during this time were students that struggled seem
028to continue to struggle during the pandemic um The Institute of Education science came out and said that those make results really underscores the importance of instruction in being in school and and having this in-person in school rather than doing things remotely um and what they also said was that there and we are likely looking at years of research to see how this pandemic has affected our students and so we wanted to take a look at data but before we do that we wanted to um go over the three types of data that um that um come out of a book called Street figure that joke was just published last year and so there are three types of data that that schools look at the first they say is uh they call satellite data so that's
029that view from really high up and that's that large date that large set of data and those are really used to look at patterns of achievement or things that we would do like from a system-wide view and so uh it really does point us in the direction of where we should be kind of looking and taking a deeper dive into things and so some of those examples are like Smarter Balance assessment which we'll look at tonight in attendance data which we'll look at tonight and really that's one data point in time and that's really the farthest set of data away from the classroom the next set of data so we're going a little bit lower is map data not to be confused with nwea data although that is part of map data but that's going
030down to that next level and that really helps us identify a skill or instructional gaps that we're seeing and it points us to a little bit more of a focus and again so some of that is like NW mini map which we'll take a look at um at today and so while that data provides a little bit more specificity and the last the most focus is Street data which we won't take a look at tonight that's really classroom data um that teachers that teachers conduct and it really requires us to listen and observe an inform informs what we do at next steps and teachers do that work along with their coaches but um but tonight we'll take a look at a first two that those higher level uh sets of data and so that first
031set of data that we'll take a look at is the smarter balance assessment so next charts get a little bit complicated but I'll try and explain them as we go so this first set is for um Ela scores um for grades three through eight and that first that first row is the region 15 average for each of those grades for ELA and that's the percent of students that receive a three or higher and so as you know from past presentations students that receive a three or higher are considered goal or higher that's what we want students to be able to to attain so that first row was the region 15 average for each of the grades right underneath that is the durg average so durg is the district reference group that we use and so
032those are um districts that are similar to us in socioeconomics and so in our dirt there's about 36 different districts and so that's the average that second row is the average of all of those 36 durgs um for each of the grades just looks at average socioeconomic factors so student populations have documents these districts are more similar to us than size and student enrollment and I would say that four years ago prior to the pandemic we sat slightly below the third average which is where we finished this past year but that data is the same data as ours at the same time period yeah at the same time period same tests yeah and then what we did underneath that is just picked out some some districts that we normally take a look at so um
033and there's their um their scores for each of those grades for the same test that was taken last spring so this is that same chart except for mathematics and again um it's the region 15 average for each of the grades that durg average and then we picked out some of the different districts and so to dig down a little bit deeper into the S back scores we're going to look specifically at elementary school and so a few years ago uh the board asked for um a breakdown in the different representative students that were eat that or in each of those four levels in svac so we know that there's four levels we know that three and four is where we want students to ideally be but there are some students in the levels one and
034two and so um with this slide shows is a comparison between um the currents the 2022 um levels on your right and the 2019 levels on your left the reason why we chose 2019 was that was the pre-covered um year um that we have data for and so there it'll show you um what what percentage of students are at each of those levels that number at the top so if you look at the Lexus 78 that says 85 and 55 and 64. that's the percent of students that were at three or higher and again that's ideally what we want students to build that two or higher and these aren't the same students obviously cohorts of students but when we talk about the overall impact of having two years or two and a half years uh
035the pandemic this is where some of that data starts to show up and so back to our grade three this is the same chart except for grade four and again you'll see um about 73 for ELA in 2019 81 from map in 2019 compared to 61 and 65 . this is for grade five CLA maths to 78 and 68 and then 64 and 55. one of the things that um svac also does is take a look at student categories so um uh Asian population um black African-American population Hispanic and so on including special education and students with limited input proficiency the reason why some of those asterisks are there is because um for student privacy purposes in some of those cases we have such small numbers of students that the asterisk is put there and
036if you look on the um public site too they do the same thing so as not to point out one or two or three um students so again this is um third fourth and fifth grade for both math and Ela for this past spring so you and I just because I wrote it down but I think I miss her are we saying that our we were below dirt before so these 2019 scores of like 17 and 69 for example on slide 17 was still below the dirt so everyone was much higher yes okay so we'll talk a little bit about that slide it's not the same in every District there's a lot and this is where I brought the chipetto talks about the research being done there are a lot of different factors that talk
037about how big that slide is and which type of students live in which places a lot of it also had to do with where you were as a district prior um the experience of their staff like there's a lot of factors that go into that so it's hard to say like when people use the term learning loss then here on the news or like others make it's so much more refined than this broad brush um and the idea that it's lost and we're going to find it and we're not going to correct for some of this loss in one year or two years and for some students that were also is less significant brothers and so that's where like when we look at this data it's important to have a conversation about it it's important
038for us to talk to teachers about it as far as large scale changes and we'll get into some of this tonight some of our curriculum is stronger than this all began and some of it maybe work but if we had gaps before this the pandemic was a big magnifier so if you struggled as a student writer this exacerbated that if you had act limited access to technology or areas of curriculum that weren't strong this made that even in a bigger issue for several students this was good I had the same question or a similar question because I'm a slide and I don't want to get I know you're so good but at site 12 you can get the comparison against the girls about 15 to 17 you only present region 15. but do you think
039it's important to understand how those numbers compare from 2019 to our job um just as a point I don't know if we're going to get to that but but that's important to me it's an important Baseline because to your point it does amplify gaps but it also allows us to see how we're how we're doing relative to our Partners in 2022. it's challenged so we didn't put that in here in part because when we start to talk about variables people say like with being in school important well for some students it was really important for some students it was less important in some districts they had other structures in place like it's hard to do apples to apples comparison over the last three years because nobody did the same thing and so that's where like
040we can use them as Baseline data but I don't know that they really tell any story about where anybody's at some districts saw very little uh regression and some districts saw great amounts of regression how fast they bounced back is going to be more about this year and where we're at the end of this year and this year will be the first more typical year that we've had in three years so we can we can do those pieces and put those comparisons in so the challenge is like the so what so like what decisions is that data going to provide to us as a district what we focus on and what we'll kind of walk you through on some of these slides is kind of how we're looking at the students in front of us
041and what we're going to be in support now right what some of these other districts are doing in the comparisons don't necessarily apply here because you started in different places but we had a different experience over these last few years and the students they're facing are different so like we put them in some of that like satellite data comparison but as you start to move through these layers what in the end is important is who the students are in our classrooms where their gaps are and how we address them so we can put in um some of the bigger comparisons more than likely hearing average uh even when you look at the during comparison so the state has moved away from current comparisons as a whole in part because of this conversation like that Dirt
042has 36 districts in it some of those districts have two or three high schools and 11 000 students some of those districts had 80 students and no high school and so you get into these complexities around what the school look like and so I think it's important for us to pay attention to what's happening in the districts around us that are like us but how we actualize that data um is not linear and so that's one of the challenges why the state moved away and they had a calculator in over a decade now maybe two um like calculated by hand so like those comparisons are debatable you know from uh from a community standpoint we understand them um which is why we picked the districts there but those are districts that we see ourselves like
043uh but it's hard to get into the leads to do those comparisons I I think like just to kind of piggyback up that what's helpful like so you just look like great if I broke you know 50 to 64. there's a 14 percentage Point differential if it was always 14 I'm a little less concerned if it was one and now it's 14 like I'm a little bit more panicked so I think that's right that's kind of where you're going with like is the is the differential the same because if it if it grew bigger then I think there's more conversations yeah I would just saying that like so that's hard to do because every year is a difficult case so when you start to look at like the trend over three years like you have
044to start to look at if you looked at every year let's say that differential is 14 points math and they're changing their math curriculum they're changing the like the variables are all shifting and the students are all shaking so if we map this out over time some of those gaps if you pick the same cohort of districts to always compare us against we could do that which is kind of where we're moving in this that comparison set is a subset of the 36-13 admissions but to look at to say like I would tell you right now I think that region 15 is a better than average District so over time we want to live in the top 50 of our third or of the subset but there's a lot of pieces of that professional development
045consistency of budgets you know other curriculum shifts so it's hard to say that we're going to shift anything that let's say the Gap is 14 points this year one thing we did two years ago could be and I can tell you the worker we did five years ago in our map instruction and the change of elementary school is going to close that Gap because there's some systemic curriculum professional developers that's not a one-year change that's a three-year trade and that's one of the the challenges with this satellite data is that we can't turn it into that street and this satellite data tells us like systemically what are things trends that we're looking for patterns the student plans that are long-term they're not going to do like a one year unless there's a huge problem but
046it's really not going to do a one-year shift because this data is only captured once a year and these students are never going to take this test again so it's hard to say in last year's third graders how are they doing this year like we'll look at that but we're going to look at them as fourth graders you know and so like that comparative set shifts a lot now I hear what you're saying but we should be able to look at those kids fifth grade compare them to when we were a certain whatever and then the variables that we spoke to about you know I know that we spend a lot of time in school last year um and the importance of that prism and the importance of that is is not just how people
047do academically it's the social interaction and the face-to-face interaction with the cultural piece so I understand all that is multifaceted but those are some of the variables that I would like to understand like compared to some of these other people or other nerves like how do we differentiate how were some of our variables related differently than maybe some of the other districts just to kind of level set how we're doing clearly there's you know it was presented that already there's shifts over time as a result of everything that we've gone going through I think we just want a few more on the polls to say how are we really doing relative to other areas in our communities because I I have to say that those 15 through 17 some of that was striking right of
048how we did 15 is doing relative to some of the other community challenges yeah so we'll show you a couple of charts I would say like one of the so that when when we thought you kind of talked about the research like that's going to be one of those big concerns like I would tell you but there are districts that were remote more often than we were that outperformed us and um and there were districts that were in school as much as we were and didn't perform as well so but why right so and what are the other pieces what was the impact of families like what about jobs and social emotional and illness like that is a very hard thing to tie um and what was the reason for that they're remain more accustomed
049to an online learning environment they have stronger uh curricular resources when their teachers that are trained to make the shed I don't know any of those answers so like that's the we can give you some of those comparisons but it's that other layer and there's a piece of any there's a piece of the research that also says and and what are we going to do right so let's say we can tie some of that how are we going to build resources to prevent the next pandemic maybe or what does that look like are you going to do teacher training on an online tool that we're only going to use in a pandemic and how much so like there is this all of that research is happening right now um and I don't have any of
050those answers what we're going to do is tell you what we did and how we got here um and I'll probably say it was five or six times like to me the important reason is so what and what are we going to do about it is all of those variables whether they whatever they tell us is somewhat irrelevant because those students are coming to school tomorrow so to figure out where that Gap turned because the teacher they had in first grade or the internet connection or the family Dynamic had an impact you need to help them recover from that but we're not going to necessarily undo or fix that and that's not a problem that faces us tomorrow so like what trends can we pull out of here that impacting things are in front of
051us and that's the hard part about cyclone So speaking of trends right um so this slide is for elementary Ela for for a five-year Trend um so just a couple things about this slide you'll notice that in your 2020 is not there because that was the year that we were all home and we did not do us back you'll also notice that the year 2021 has an asterisk next to it and so um as you know that wasn't a normal year for any of us and neither was the testing situation so um this was due to the fact that there were a variety of models happening um in schools across the state so some were remote some were in person some at a hybrid and so while the state didn't publicly um report this data
052for the school system we have it um they sent it to each of the districts and so this is the data that yellow bar that we have if you went to look for that on edsite public you won't find that data because that was sent to to the districts so what you'll notice here is that prior to covid um things were in the 70s or 80s so if you look for um Ela for third fourth and fifth grade um 70s 80s and then that 2021 bar and then this past year so you can you can see the impact that covid or the pandemic has had over the past few years on um on some of the uh assessment data and kind of the father at that point doing a three-year analysis that is not available
053[Music] is in traffic so like that's where we start to look at kind of that piece uh and even through here like I would argue that the three years prior we had pretty consistent or solid performance the last two years the last two years were different and I would say that in 2021 everybody expected the numbers to go on what we found some of you heard of a certain reports that last year was actually more disruptive families and so this is a similar slide except it's just for elementary math um where you'll notice um you know the same things with that 2021 asterisk but you also notice fifth grade math is something that we were focusing on even before the pandemic um to make sure that it was you know that we did some work
054so it's at the levels of where we were in third fourth grade math curriculum and professional development that we've worked in its way through the school district and so you can see those Trends in grades three and four start to show results from that ship I haven't really reached grade five in Earnest in 2017. um so uh to the questions earlier about District comparisons that fifth grade was kind of an unfair comparison because we knew that we were underperforming because we had a curriculum and a professional development deficit that was working its way through and you'll see significance following a similar process that we followed for elementary school um still with the smarter balance assessment through sixth grade ELA math and comparing again the 2019 pre-pandemic scores to the 2022 to these past years from
055both map and Ela um for seventh grades or the same thing um interesting is the 61 in 2019 for that and the 61 percent in 2022 from that and then the same thing for um for eighth grade math and Ela one of the things that we did realize um prior to Kobe was the need for a different resource in middle school math which is why last year we piloted um the illustrative map and this year um implementing it fully realizing that there um there was a resource that was better aligned to Common Core than what we had and one that was better aligned to the instructional strategies that we use at elementary school to carry those through the middle school so we realized that before the pandemic and working on uh making sure that we
056have that after pandemic so this I'm trying to talk as this um is the slide uh with the different student categories for Middle School Ela and Mathematics and again that asterisk there or the um students where we had um single digits and again this five-year Trend um and again knowing that we had some uh this is English language arts and if we go to the next one's on map we knew that we had some work to do with that yeah so this is the scatter bar that I referenced a little bit before where the state is a new chart that was State put together to try to capture the effects of a pandemic and so for English language arts what you're looking at is as compared to where you were before the pandemic what your
057regressions analysis kind of shows um and we do kind of mirror the trend is that middle school students had significant events Elementary School especially primary and had significant times so when you look at where we were as a school district that shift on that performance index talks about where we were in relation to what high performance high growth economically about 75 were above is considered high performance um and the same as a group you can see down here this would be the performance you want to make 75 percent achievement overall and show a 75 growth you fit with that kind of magic quarter uh we had a bunch of schools our elementary school is kind of close to that and a bigger shift coverage yards maybe look for math you did a little better in
058the growth piece and in the performance piece which bucks National friends yeah I know that drought about a lot of kind of getting into the impacts of the pandemic you put a lot of energy into mapping structure prior to the pandemic what our hypothesis is is that that investment in teaching professional development and in curriculum resources helped insulate our students as they move through this disruptive period it also allowed our teachers kind of a higher level of Competency in their ability to adjust because we had strong recruitment how much growth did you make from where you were in the room before so this started a few years ago and pretty Progressive we beat up our state department from time to time um but they were one of the first in the country to really say
059that student growth matters especially when you're looking for students that might be lower achieving if you're a student at 20th percentile and you grew the 40th percentile if we weren't tracking growth we would look exactly the same in that Performance Truck because you've never met gold so you would always show up kind of off the charts and it wouldn't be until you hit uh at remote goal that you kind of registered and so that growth metric kind of gives credit to the students who are making 20 growth even if that's only 20 percent so I know you're in the middle school section um um for to include high school but the water on the side for the SAT up to grade 11 is included so how does the PHS fall into this graph so the
060high school piece of this is a little different because not every school district has a high school like that data is less reliable um and so we haven't really used that to discuss student growth the other things is there is no growth data in SCT for high school so because we only take it once um as a junior and then you don't take it again so where this data shows that growth piece they only show achievement fees on the SAT certain charters it's not the same students if you see the text on the right yeah it gives the impression that there would be the ability to include high school students right the high school because there's a high school office chart even if technically we can put them on here where this is all magical
061work right I'm sorry sorry oh yeah sorry I don't see that other assessments to get through yeah right so we've talked a lot about that it's a tough comparison because the cohort is a little different every year in the trade level when I look at grade 6 of 2017. I fought on that I saw that forward to 2018 grade seven I see a 23 dip in proficiency and that one class which I know this is before most of us were here before you were here but if you were to see a 23 dip in one cohort year to year set off crazy alarmed I was like how do we how do we address that in one grade level cohort this is such a precipitous problem here over here so I would say that we saw
062this coming I wasn't a surprise our bells and panic went on kind of before which is why you started to shift in elementary school about construction on the ship that really didn't go into place from our formal standpoint to this school year last year there was had a pilot used to it um there was a trade we shifted it you know whether we didn't have a middle school map coach you also until 2018 didn't have any math department chair so in 2018 I believe in 2019 18 19 student it was the first year of the high school department chairs were made 612 and the first 1920s the first year dedicated [Music] by Theory um since buildings but we didn't have any before so I think like to your point like we saw the trend come
063in and those adjustments were made to help address this and they probably got to leave by a year because we didn't push hard to implement the new map curriculum while we're trying to just keep the wheels moving uh and so that's why this year is the first Implement invitation of that six through eight map structure and we would have liked to put in place two years so that's that's true you want to look at the grade level cohort um obviously it's going to be some variants just in but what would you expect that margin of error All Things Considered equal to be year over year so yeah I mean I don't know like maybe a percentage but significant I mean I would say that uh based on what we saw at our elementary school shift
064probably 10 to 15 percentage points yeah okay that it's not just it's not just our math curriculum our instructional practices really were an art before this year or in tight alignment with common core standards and what students have been measured on on this exam so while we have student clinical level cases this test only captures really that Mastery of common core standards and our curricular housing type I think I could get ahead of myself but when you look at kind of the work that our high school does to make sure these gaps don't appear on the SAT and students are held back if we're able to erase those guys uh but where we think that if we can not have those gaps then how much further our students can realize uh and that's not a
065it's not a teacher problem it's there's so much there's professional development and curricular checks that really that they were teaching curriculum that hadn't shifted enough to reflect whatever we've mentioned and then Statewide you'll see a nationwide you'll see it in middle school scores I mean it's just a complicated time for a lot of reasons um Bruce Springsteen never wrote a song about the Glory Days of middle school you know for a reason and both Middle School teachers here would tell you that it's a different footage but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be performing higher even if there's a small bit and I think the structures we have in place are going to address that will it happen this year it'll be able to see how much of an impact one year has um you know
066it usually teachers like specifically are those we do like things once each year that lesson isn't going to be taught again so the teacher learns from that it's really like next year that you get to implement and see how that works so while we have a coach in place right now to help some of this and some of the things it's usually a two to three year implementation current but I do think that some of our gaps more substantial and some curious to see what just one year science sorry so so another assessment is the next generation of science standards so again like that same process that we used when we looked at back scores so comparing um region 15 averages to our drug in a few different districts so the ngss the Next Generation
067science standards that assessment is only taken in grades 5 8 and 11. so that's why only those three grades show up on there and so um and you'll see um the region 15 compared to the dirt and then a few different districts and those again are students that received it three or higher um again taking a look at um 2019 to 2022 with those three grades and what percent of students were at each of those levels and then that percentage at the top is what percent of students were three or higher I think next Generation science assessments 2019 yeah yeah um or the next one yes so we've only done two really two official um uh implementations of the ngss assessment um but this right this here on the screen right now is five eight
068and eleven those student categories again um if it's n a we didn't have any students in that category it's the asterisk we had single uh digit number of students in that category right and then the reason why there are only two bars here is because that 2018-19 was year one um where we did that assessment and because of the pandemic this past year was only year two and so there's only a two-year uh two years worth of trending up to the conversation before and apply it was here looking at where we formed in the dirt versus our peers and what curriculum they're using or construction they're using we've made some of those shifts oh but I can't tell you that all those districts would do all of them today was the first year of this
069test some were a little ahead of us somewhere behind us over the last two years have been definitely a struggle but not something that we forced on our visitor again we want we wanted to keep teachers safe and we wanted them to show up every day and give them space to make them adjustments they needed today so this year is really the first year they were implementing the new science structures that we began in the fall of the year before that engage 2017.19 is when we started uh with our new science implementation right with the brakes on that yeah and I would even say later in the presentation I would even say that we started training elementary teachers in that 1920 school year and then everything hit so really this full this first this year
070right now is their full year of getting trained to implement the science curriculum so it's a few years later but um but they're able to get the professional development on our OPD days to be able to implement the curriculum we just weren't able to do it at that time and what Josh said to say to teachers that you have um to teach during a pandemic and learn a new curriculum would have been overloaded we couldn't do that to our teachers so we waited and we held off to your question before that was our performance before we lined our curriculum we're getting any systemic professional development so again this year there's a lot of curiosity as to how well um there's a lot of speculation on last year too um again this is not research-based but
071there's a fatigue Factor it was an exhaustion Factor like I've seriously that students did it with us I seriously did stop um there was a lot of energy to come to work and manage schools over the last few years how does that exhaustion and fatigue reflecting those numbers and I don't know that answer I know that's a question a lot of people are asking but it may be a couple of years before you know that um and I'm more worried about where our kids were at the end of this year but so um we'll move on to the the map data which is the NWA map data um and we took that in the fall of this past school year um and so we'll take a look at elementary school first and so um one
072of the things that we talked about was not giving the NWA map assessment to kindergartners in the fall um and getting them used to being in school and and working with them so you'll notice that um on the left-hand side it's grades one through five and so last year when we had our nwba presentation we talked about the five different levels that students could fall under um for their their scores ranging from low or way up to high um you'll look at you'll see that a column is labeled percent of students at average or higher and so that um column that column is um is determined by the three that um are underneath that bracket so average high average and high that percentage equals that common with students that are average or higher and that's
073one of the things we looked at what percent of our students in the fall were considered average that last or higher that last column one of the things that nwea does is do a predictor so if students were to take the S back um uh assessment what would be the prediction of them getting a three or higher and so that's what that last column is that last column changes whether it's a um uh for a fall implementation of nwea a winter implementation or a string that number or that percentage changes so we're able to see right now that um 60 or more of our students are considered average or higher and anywhere between almost 50 percent to almost 75 percent of our students if they were to take the um the aspect predicted to get
074it we were higher it's the Nuance of the mwea map assessment he scored national average or an S back is scored information to state standards and master of course there so like you'll see that the average column from the end of the a side gives you the 41 to 60th percentiles would be consider average that's a national average calculated through them through like a million points across the country over time correlation of their study is that if you get a 65 or higher on the map assessment that gives you a high probability of being at a few or higher order so this is the same thing except for mathematics um for elementary school where again you'll see um anywhere between 66 to up to 83 of our students are considered average or higher based on
075the map scores and then um what percent of students are would be predicted to get a career high on this fact so one of the things we took a look at was last year where students were last year in the fall compared to where they are this year in the fall and so I I just want to explain this um this table a little bit so where it says current raid and it says grade one for example their fall of 2020 was their kindergarten score and so the fall of 2022 is their first grade score and so and it's the same student so it's a cohort of students so you'll see for math that 13 um decline and so for grade two that fall of 2021 was their first grade score in their fall of
0762022 is there is their second rates going to see the decline of nine and then it's the same thing um for third fourth and fifth one of the things that we found is that goes along with what the national research said says which is Primary students and primary grades struggled a little bit more than students in Upper grades and then if you look over to ELA that same thing so in kindergarten those 85 of our students in the fall of 2021 were at a you know we're at average or higher all of 2022 is first graders 68 so you'll see um that pattern there so in a typical year you would want to see those numbers the same effect so 89 of our students in Fall are 21 and first grade were at average or
077above you would want that number to be 89 or higher when they take that advantage so that did we talk about what's regression what's learning loss what's the impact of the pandemic that tells and short if you get at least for primary grades that matches with natural change but it doesn't matter National Trends are grades 55 or especially in math we shall growth music and most districts saw a map of the biggest with the regression or loss and in dla even though we saw a loss it's much less significant including binding K2 and in grade three we actually said words and um between four and five in ela should know it's negative decided yes oh look at that yeah yes thank you very major secretary so just want to go back and I'm sorry should
078I go back one side okay so this predicted value if I understood the exactly so if I I internally so it's on slide 15 right so where we see in 2022 for grade three math for 55 or Ela where 55 and that's 64 percent so basically if we were to take the grade two kids from the map the protective values when you're in third grade we would be going from Ela of 55 to a 47. and I understand that message because they're predicting a 47 will be free or higher and if you look at slide 15 currently we're at 55 that's if second graders took the assessment so they don't take the assessment to the end of third grade right but is it so is this so that's saying if they took it today as
079second graders not what they're predicting thank you okay so like the positive news I said they took it now they would be actually really doing 47 of them would need a third grade standard okay so it's not predicting them they're not taking it so we have a year so our current third graders yeah right now in the fall if they were to take it they predicted that 57 of them would get three or higher so we still have the full year to help them be able to do it because they don't take aspects on the fall until the spring but so and maybe I misread this because you said it was aggregated for them I thought you meant that they like backed it up to level it up that we didn't have extra time that
080this would change come spring yeah so what will happen so in Winter and we administer the map assessment again it'll recalculate a prediction of how well they'll do at the end of the year yes yes that's how I took it I took it as it was calculated as as everyone got backed up and calculated that this is going to be where they landed unless we did above and beyond what everyone else was doing yeah so the idea is that those three that's okay I'm glad you asked that question so in I was Fanning so we have six or eight months of instruction now to move that 57 to 75. so like when Mr Marks asked the question kind of about how we predict this year and our questions about kind of the impact on the
081pandemic over time the question isn't so much how we did last year the question is how quickly do we start to recover and this data isn't horrible in that at 57 if we took it today would pretty be pretty close to where we were last year so what I expect is that over the course of this year especially in math where we've made a lot of shifts from Ela as well um that 57 in third grade is really going to be back to maybe close to prepare so I don't know if it will be totally there um but I would say you know north of 70 is where we should like live and Northern 80 should be our goal and that puts us where we would be if you want to look at their comparison
082uh but how fast we recover is the second question in that research project about how we got here um um so again um 678 there's five levels of the percent of students are average or higher and then um the prediction for a career environment aspect foreign thing um [Music] and so then moving to this full day sat that we took last spring um this is actually looking at the scores that students receive in averaging those to the region 15 average score per map of ela compared again to the same 36 um districts in our durg and then picking out some of the um same districts that we looked at for S back we did the same thing here for uh for the school day sat so the question before about administrative math challenges uh thank
083you this speaks to a lot of different things but you moved from a significant Gap in of how we compare middle school math to how to compare and I miss it again in Connecticut or one of the few states in the country that require every Junior to take this assessment if you want to do like National Trend comparisons Connecticut's SAT scores on average or lower than some other states but in those other states only self-selected students who are going to colleges that require SATs take the exam and then Connecticut so Connecticut's average of a 1050 nationally doesn't rank that high and we look at the fact that every single student hits that best there are very few number of exceptions uh it's actually speaks pretty well of the state and to hear about about the
084same as our dirt average in ela and a little bit higher um in our dirt average than that and so this is the percent of students again that received a three or higher um the region 15 average the drug average and then some of our um some of the different towns and then like other tests this is not cohort movement of time yes so how do you explain how we've done so well at the high school level for this one I think despite not having any lying standards and Middle School teachers do a better job and is reflective purely on a smarter balanced assessment and I think our high school teacher is doing a really good job of identifying the codes and gaps that may have been created through a lack of curriculum of course
085that I mean we gotta just specify this step we've always feel like as a district somehow we could some sort or not recoup but uh re-identifier uh at the high school level um the s.a.t is a national they're both aligned to Donald core national standards so to some extent that's the the constant in that um the grade level appropriate but Connecticut's math standards aren't almost identical to Common Core State Standards and those are natural not every state subscribe to them but still a majority view um and the smart about or the SAT is aligned to use and when States adopted Common Core you were allowed to change 10 to 10 percent of it so in Connecticut did they stay pretty close to pretty true to what was put out is we did this with curriculum
086that wasn't aligned structurally to what students so the hypothesis is as we shift the curriculum and future instructional models to standards that students are being measured on like we expect to see work over the next couple years and if you layer on what's happening in the elementary schools that's held true so the extrapolation if that's going to continue moving forward you still have to think I don't want students feel very faster than they need to and and so again um interfept 2019 um for ELA and map for um at the school the SAT and then compare that to this past year sorry question if we think about it in terms of the Middle School could it be as simple as that social emotional piece of middle school where the kids are you know they've got
087a lot going on and then High School will kind of get them together like you have that Middle School experience not to simplify it that much but could that be a factor as well it's absolutely the other piece though which is before every Middle School in the country has the same kind of demographic of hormonal reprogressive middle schooler that's going through all those pieces and we're out performing for some of our employees work so while you're we're probably never going to correct from the complete dip in achievements Awards the Delta will be is fine so fine we'll close some of that which again if we extrapolate the assumption is that the Gap isn't as High when they enter high school if they've been able to achieve at higher levels yes I mean this is an
088interesting chart right when we talk about instructional gaps and learning loss problems aren't the same students three years of different students if you go back to some of the trendy that online language arts from three years ago where it wasn't that great even with the Pandemic those students perform at the same level as the students before they read that I don't know when you go back three years and look at that graduating class like those are some pretty high-powered kids you know so to say that like this coborn is stronger or not stronger those are hard conversations but um Master is a little bit of a different story this is a little more typical of what nationality you saw um the fact that our students didn't progress as much says a lot to maybe this
089is the consistency Factor again I don't know what the answer is um so the Gathering appear here like people are you Africans or a meeting that's where I would say like this this year is senior class which was last year's junior class you don't notice statistically stronger than the class so like the idea that we have kids kind of bringing it up um I don't know that that is a factor because that class in 29 or 20 maybe the 2020 graduating class at juniors in 2019 it was a pretty high performance those would be interesting things to see like some of them sat is a whole other beast in itself compared to some of these other Assessments in my mind so I just I always I'm thinking that same thing you know like what does
090that bell curve really look like is it really smooth and and are there numbers that are really pulling it up to maintain those averages but if you're I mean I trust what they're saying but I do think it'd be kind of interesting to see that at least the media well when you look here like here's a trend from 16 to 22. so when you look at those Ela scores like that represents five different cohorts of kids they're all different yeah so if what you're suggesting is true like it doesn't pan out over time right so um and the same thing with the map like I would argue that like last year was one of the hardest instructions since it leaves World War II you know I don't go back much further than that in my
091memory but um at least since then um and our students perform at the high school level as well as they did in 2016. like that says a lot about our staff and our SAT scores are not terrible from uh from a national standpoint so it's not like we were performing at a pretty low level and in 2016 that was the last year when it was optional it was like a first year of management so that was you know the fact that we mandated sat for everybody in the school district and the Forum at the same level last year like I do think students still work with our teachers and it kind of calibrates a little bit the the median mode had a conversation and the bigger question is how do we uh to that 61.65
092or 70. and that may be an indicator that's 68th grade it shouldn't be worse I'm in the high school ad I hope they're ready to learn but to dovetail on that point so if you look at the average scores on Ela and meth they were both 550. but that represents an 18 point difference in terms of the number of students who are exceeding the standard versus you know an Ela so that tells me sentence unless and I'm not familiar with the SAT is railing against a deficiency standard like I don't know how that they don't give you threws and fours you have a number up to 800 so I don't know if the cutoffs on meeting a standard whatever that means in the SAT is stiffen for ELA versus math but this tells me these
093two 550s are not equivalent when I see that you know that's 80 percent over here in 61 that's exactly yes so being at or above goal is it the same score right right I do know that I so like 550 puts you and uh right yeah so and the slides are different so the 550 is the actual score um where and that's not saying that you're like you're average or higher or you're a provision or higher it's just the actual score whereas I think we should in one of the slides but we're sending students that were at each of the different levels we go back to yeah so here I'll show you like the percent of students that are at the different levels and you can clearly see this 79 there are way more students
094at that level three in ela than there are in that um so yeah that's just the actual score of of each of those things which doesn't necessarily mean a three or higher in improving the cases aren't SATs measured on the performance versus everyone not um you got a 550 you got 55 out of 80 correct it's it's high use for it versus everybody who took it like in 800 doesn't mean you got every single question like this means you do better than everything else I thought that's always that's how it was 30 years ago so now it's against a fixed yesterday yeah percentile right when you get further into this presentation because you get 200 for putting your name there yeah so you know so AP are also naturally so um this is the uh
095um a six-year Trend so looking at the total number of AP students over the last six years the number of exams that were taken so students could take multiple AP exams um uh students with a score of three or higher and the percent of AP students with a score of three or higher and so um we actually looked at this today and we're pretty excited that when we look at 2022 and 2020 it's you know 80 percent of our students had a score of three or higher so the first line is the number of students and that second one is number of exams so you can see that many of our students are taking multiple AP exams media I'm still getting or higher and so this next slide are the the 18th scholar um so
096that first one gave 50 students that were AP Scholars and those are students who receive a score of three or higher on three or more AP tests so 50 students and their average score was a 3.25 um the next is AP scholar with honor and so those are students who receive an average score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams that they take and scores of three or higher on four or more of these exams and so you'll see we have 31 students and their average score was 3.64 . so the scholar 80 scholar with distinction means those are students who received an average score of at least 3.5 on all the exams that they've taken 80 exams and scores of three or higher on five or more than anything else and their average
097score was 4.17 the Capstone is for students who earn a score of three or higher in the evening seminar and 18 research and on four additional AP exams of their choosing and their Avatar was four and the a b seminar and research certificates for students who earn a score of three or higher in AP Seminary research but not on four additional income exams and there's always a 300 so we had a total of 124 students um that were um AP Scholars outside of 340 students so almost 30 percent of our student population take their AP exam um that's a year that was not constructed with short engage right I remember from prior years that we were hoping that like more students would take AP classes and I see like in 2020 there were a lot
098of students taking AP classes and that went down and kind of gone up a little bit but what what's the story with that and what's the code so we have a lot of conversation over this um and it's interesting so um AP courses our college level courses to office in high school there's a lot of research that says a student that takes at least one AP class during their High School career is better prepared for head School regardless of the score even if yeah sorry even if you get a 200 exam at least been in this exposed to a college level class and your ability to succeed in college has improved obviously um there's also a conversation about what being ready for college is or what other options there are so over the last two
099and a half years there's a lot more students talk about Gap years or Alternative High School alternative College settings classes at a local University or um free courses being offered by community colleges so where that AP class fits in I think you asked me this question in 2019 I would tell you and that we want to get to about 60 or higher of our high school population taking at least one AP class in their High School group you asked me today I would say still believe that but maybe not as firmly as I did a few years ago and part of that is how many students are college ready and something that as a district can get kind of evaluated on and right at a Statewide level how many students take college level courses is
100part of how we get assessed at our conflicts the AP exam is one indicator on that College medical student so from a measurement standpoint and when you want to compare us to other school districts on a norm State evaluation that matters if you're going to college I would say taking an AP class matters how you do on it the universe help students understand what would be expected special technology if you don't take an AP class in high school that mean you're not going to be successful in college statistically not as well and if you're not going to a traditional four-year college does this matter like to some extent it does speak to your ability to read write think analyze Community but there's a lot of pieces of that that are valuable but I don't know
101as an indicator that it's going to be seen today this gets into that research and volatile effects of government even higher education is reevaluating what they look at as a pressure and you know depending on the school you're going through this is very important and then the school you might be looking at maybe less so I think we need to help students understand what their career path is and what they might want to do from a competitive standpoint on how we looked at other districts I do think this is an indicator of how ready our students are for college the number that's really important to me is how many of our kids return a little sophomore year foreign I think what's also not captured off is that there are a lot of kids that come
102back regardless of what classes they took here and so they were so prepared for college because VHS are no matter how it looks like that so I hear that from a lot of parents that a lot of a lot of students that they feel more prepared than their peers in that college setting because of the education they got at VHS regardless of whether or not they took the AP classes or what that you know the Richer Heroes is good and that they're they're caring so I I don't think we could mess with that either look like so there's value in here but you know the fact that about three two percent of our high school students have taken and AP exam and our state of our perseverance rate the seventh grade perseverance rate in college
103losing the third right now but um is I want to say it's 87 13. so this isn't an indicator how many kids are successful in their freshman year of college or how many graduate on time um but I do think that if you are planning on going to a four-year College exposure to an AP or college level class is valuable and taking that exam is valuable and but I think that we're having a different view of what that Arc is and what it means even that we're actually through ecology you talk to kids now kind of important questions but it seems like I don't want to be that far away from home it is a factor that I could talk about it any other college there you go here's the graduation you just got it
104today um so uh the percent of students um and the graduation rate so uh there's the category of students arranging all students and then the different demographics um the four-year um graduation percentage um which students are still enrolled in other and so as you can see almost straight down um the column is almost 100 for each of the different groups with all of our students um having a 96.3 graduation rate more comparisons yet I don't have a state average that's a pretty impressive number um when we talked about high school graduation and we talk about all the challenges that our seniors faced last year um and the fact that they graduated at a very high level um I do think that it's increased over the last couple years and I wanted to highlight the work
105that the high school's done really as freshmen this is what these students are and make sure they're on track the practice it's really hard to enter your senior year not knowing what credits you have or um knowing that you have a big hell to find if you fail in English class for example you need four years of English try to do two years in one year especially about GCC so I just was really working and maybe to the Mr Mark's question a few slides ago how do we see things coming with shifts and this is one of the trips that that data crunching applies that may be a factor that Iris this might be my favorite site I know that a lot of yeah you have seen this before but I think that it's just
106shocking um and it should be and really speaks to some of the research that's happening and this address question before about what that impact is so this is attendance over the last four years of students with 10 or more absences um and so if you go back to that 1819 care you remember that was a really bad food here anybody had an elementary school child who had a number of classes that only had like five students in them because everybody else was home with the flu or or two because everybody was holding the flu um that was a really high watermark in Elementary School attendance um when you look at the attendance last year now there's some research that came out in the last couple of weeks really about the 2021 year because remember that's
107the year that like remote counted as present uh you were a little hybrid you could choose to be home and you choose to come in so I do think that attendance rate is underrepresentative of what really happened uh because attendance had such kind of amorphous definition but last year I don't know that we've had attendance rates that poor since we started tracking students the fact that you're almost 50 on average in this district and this isn't you need for other school districts that we're absent 10 or more games and that is you know whether they had covered whether their family had covered and then they were quarantine or like that triple whammy if I had it then my sister had it and my dad had it and I missed 15 days of school those students
108are all represented in there we talk about burning loss last year the fact that we were able to keep stability I have no way of doing this permutation but I think that it's very rare that you would have a full class of students including the teacher for multiple weeks you just don't think that happened very easily but we weren't really looking to track last year's data that way we went into last year remember we thought we were going to be normal um but we weren't and that's where like all this data uh I think this slide tells a bigger stories of all that academication when you factor it in here with our staff absences and again this isn't because teachers were abusing sick days or anything like that we only had the first half of
109our 1920. when we started averaging and extrapolating out a day there are a lot of absences that absence of 14 000 you know that's that's individual so one Sacramento for like 30 days or whatever um and we didn't track it in a way that going back would allow us to answer these kinds of questions that they gave me last year when you're driving your data uh but I think that tells a huge story and so it's kind of like so like the so what um Dash yeah I'm a little concerned about that stat increase that's over 20 absolutely and so that's very unusual work I mean I'm a respected as well you know that's really a news for teachers take that much time probably like in the last 100 years it's just a trend or
110just a bump in the code they were they weren't home because they wanted people they were hormone quarantine you know because they tested positive they went because the kids tested positive but spouse that's deposited so it's a bump then it's not a trend okay and I would tell you that if our scores didn't drop us like they should drop when that happens like our scores should drop our scores didn't drop I would ask what was happening before cobit that we could teach in the same way because last year I would argue was the most disruptive year and at least 50 or 100 years of education so if our scores didn't drop by 10 or 15 points I'd be reevaluating like what we do as public schools because if you could have missed that much school
111and still performed at the same level and we should question what happened uh and the fact that our students didn't drop in a lot of those places our students are committed um and our teachers have committed to minimize um but to some extent yeah but yeah how's the attendance been this year much better I think we do still have some some struggles I call them so those of you that may read like Friday or my Sunday uh emails from time to time I'm empathetic with the fact that I think people are even looking at attendants that do have families that when two and a half years of foregoing Vacations or going time off because especially if you were in um um an appointment area that couldn't take time off at first one time those things
112gathered their families so I think there are families that have said we're going to take time whenever I can now take it uh to do some of those things I would encourage families not to take trips during the school you know on times of a good school vacation but we also understand that families are all different places and all have different pressures that they need to work through what I would ask is if you are taking that time off um that's his family choice and it don't pass that on to your child's teacher to then you do all the things that they may miss but we'll work with it when they get back and if it is you know we have families that are traveling overseas for a multiple weeks of time again I I
113can understand that from a human aspect from an education standpoint that's disruptive and it's hard for us to catch your student out when they get back but you may also be participating in an experience that you can't representative I mean I feel like personally to like nobody was sick for a while unless it was fun so I'm assuming that the absenteeism this year will not be fantastic you know I think the difference this year ago the quarantine piece really factored into that uh where if you have the flu or and The Sibling doesn't they come to school yeah you know as long as they're symptom-free or fever but like the difference before was that exactly extended I had coveted I waited my time now my sibling has it one point and that really impacted those
114numbers and the staff members as well where we're seeing virus and absences they're not at that level at least like that I can't tell you what's going on if you're feeling better you're going yeah as opposed to you feel fine but you're home but it was more reflective in those numbers ownership all right what's next what's next so um let's take a little bit of a look at what research says moving forward so in the summer of 2021 the United States Department of Ed um put some recommendations on for educators and he said that we should have time to learn new instructional strategies that we should be using children assessment and that we should be differentiating our instruction um this month the Harvard Graduate School of Education put out an article um titled to get
115kids back on track after covid shoot for the movement and it was really interesting that they compared the task that public schools currently base to the space race of the 50s through the 70s and they're saying that the greatest challenge right now is that normal is not enough that we're gonna have to do more than than normal and we just keep doing what we normally have done that's just going to solidify some of our losses and that that amount of time to quote fix that student achievement varies because the pandemic like Josh said before um exacerbated achievement gaps and that right now the research really is focused on the impact of school closures and other factors such as the death death rates um occupations of parents access to broadband internet at home so that research
116is is happening now about the effects of um the pandemic but really like what are we doing here in region 15 to move forward and so um the first thing is the continuation of purposeful planning for teachers you heard a lot about that last year one of the things um that we did was we changed the structure of purposeful planning based on teacher feedback um so middle school has a full day where both middle schools Come Together by Department to work together rather than having um teachers work individually um that that point of purposeful planning really is to work together by grade level or by Department um and they're supported by either a department chair or an instructional coach um it's really based on the students in front of us so in the classroom what
117do my students currently need and that's different each year because our students change each year and it really is about learning new instructional strategies differentiating instruction with the US Department have been recommended um the inclusion of priority standards Josh mentioned what you're looking at those common core standards and what does that mean for the grade level and reviewing data so looking where our students are and where they need to go the second thing that we're doing is that use of data for instructional purposes so planning lessons being able to different differentiate and scaffold you can't do that unless you have data about your students in front of you and determining that the additional supports do they need tier one supports where they're in the classroom do they need tier two or tier three where they
118get additional supports with an interventionist and how are we monitoring what students are doing and how students are doing we have to have some data to find out how students are doing along the way rather than waiting till these big satellite uh data pieces that's too late we need to do um we need to monitor students as we go and to determine their growth um is the United States Department Ed recommended formative assessment so we've been working on that and that assessment is exactly what it says so the letters in their help it's it's assessment for learning which is what formative assessment is how do I determine what students mean and how do I identify that into my lesson plan one of the things that we're doing is implementing the interim assessment blocks or the
119iabs which are from smarter balanced and so those aren't for a grade and they're not um they're not going to be on the report card they really are for students to get number one familiar with the svac platform because um there's a lot of um tools that are on that platform especially for mathematics being able to pull a calculator being able to pull a ruler but also to look at the way that the questions will freeze so I can give you a math example um so in the Middle School um um in middle school math we talk about y equals MX plus b for online but in the IAB there it's not y equals MX plus b y equals Ms Plus okay and so students just not knowing that the K stands for um the
120let a different letter is something that um once we showed students that they were like oh so we need the same thing as y equals MX plus b we're like yes so we're not knowing that that b is if our s back is K is something that we really want to get students used to so we've been trying to um do a couple of the interim assessments just so students get used to the different languages and the way that the questions are phrased and again that school-based uh we're having school-based data conversations so um teachers are meeting with their admins or with um their coaches to talk about the data that's in their building rather than us talking about the data that's up here they're talking about their classroom in their school uh something else
121that we're doing is supporting new teachers um we had two days as you know in August of new teacher orientation um in addition to that they meet with their mentors on a regularly scheduled basis the new teacher and their Mentor determine those dates um um to meet together Josh and I and along with Becky veraci I've been doing quarterly meetings um with the new teachers to check in with them to see if they have any questions to help them through um uh any of their questions that they have I'm just saying that one of the things that I wanted to point out here this was the Mr Mark's question before a lot of these pieces started in the fall of 19. before covert came they weren't a covered response they were instructional shifts towards best
122practice so when you get to like School comparatives there are some school districts that have this in place for five years before us and we put it in place literally as we went into a pandemic and then kind of back off during the pandemic last year I know that's during the middle of I don't know but we put some of these things back in place if we anticipate validating pieces and showed my research he effective in that learning loss but in a lot of ways there's just strong instructional practices that get maybe filtered through and then because of covid or were effective before that so um this slide's really about curriculum so we talked a little bit about science and so this school year working with elementary teachers on those full PD days to um
123to learn the um the science curriculum that we didn't get a chance to do in the 1920 school year um just I thought in October High School teachers and some Elementary science teachers received the second level ngsx training and so um I think we talked here a few years ago where some of our high school teachers got the first level of ngsx training which is really how do you teach the the Next Generation science standards we had some teachers that opted to do that second level of training and our Middle School Math teachers are using a new resource this year that's more aligned to ngss so they're getting training this year on that and we take a look at our Middle School Ela curriculum we finished our Ela curriculum in the the um spring of
1242019. so that 1920 school year when coping hit was the first year we were trying out our new curriculum so we never really had a full year a full normal year of using our Middle School Ela curriculum this really is the first normalish uh school year of implementing that new curriculum and so our coach is working with our new teachers together importing suggestions um for summer revision so you'll probably see in my budget presentation sometime for the ELA Middle School teachers to get together to make some of the revisions on our Ela curriculum for Middle School we talked um about our new resource for middle school math this is the first year that there's um implementation of that it's more aligned to Common Core it's more aligned to the instructional strategies that are being used
125in Middle School um the assessments that are there are more aligned to the priority standards for that grade level we have our instructional coach working with our teachers on how to implement that with Fidelity and our coach um actually today was the first day that he worked with middle school special education teachers in our inter our map interventions to ensure that they're using the same instructional strategies in the same language when they work with students that um students are getting in their math classes we're continuing our work in elementary math and Ela so I mentioned about the use of the idbs so those interim assessments um this um our first this is really our first full year I'll say of the phonics program K3 we started that in the 1920s school year and then go
126get hit but so this is our first full year of implementing the phonics program um nwea comes with a weeding fluency assessment and so this is to see um phonemic awareness it's um there's also a dyslexia on screener so we're gonna pilot that this year with a few students and then roll that out as the school year moves on um uh that's something that we just received training on we have continued support for our map and reading coaches and we've restructured our math coaches so um you may know that we have two elementary math coaches um one works on the Middlebury side and one lives on the south area side one of the things we realized was for one person to work with all the teachers came is really difficult to get to the schools
127so what we ended up doing with the in consultation with our math coaches was to try and figure out a way that to make it a little bit more Equitable and it's not it's a little bit more Equitable I'll say so we have a math coach on the Middlebury side that works with teachers in K4 Prince cake before and we have a Southbury um uh macros that works with teachers in those two schools came for our Middle grades math coach works with teachers in grades five six seven and eight while there are less teachers in five six seven and eight the difficulty comes in when he's willing to six buildings so um our K4 math coaches work with about 30 teachers which is a lot of teachers um but our element in our middle school
128math codes Works in six buildings so there's the kind of the conundrum there but knowing that um all three of them do a really wonderful job in working with teachers and scheduling timing in each of those buildings to make sure that they're supporting the teachers um question before about like how do we see what's coming like I would argue that we saw a lot of what was coming in 2019 and a lot of these things were put in place in August and September of 19. what we didn't see coming was a two and a half year Global pandemic so okay this isn't well our numbers dropped like I'm not panicking because once all of this is in place which wasn't there three years ago and our Gap while we're below the average and the durginess
129gets that question before about like what that analysis is a lot of those districts and we compare ourselves to had a lot of this in place before they've had them and despite that our Gap isn't what I would call like the grease fire or you know I'm not not overly concerned because all of these things we didn't have and we still like did okay so while we put these things back in place and adjust for some of that I do think that whatever that Gap is whatever that comparison is we're going to close it and we're going to be again where our goal was to be before the pandemic you know in that uh top 25 to 30 percent of our dirt again pick a grade in a Content area and we're going to move
130around a little bit but we should live in that place and I do believe that once all of these things are kind of uh systemic that we're going to live in that place and we're within striping distance without any of it and I think that speaks to the quality of our staff the structures in place the attendance rates by teachers that come to school on a regular basis uh you know that we have a lot of Administrators and teachers that are here there's not a lot of turnovers once we move these things into that systemic piece we're going to be able to run much faster with maybe the districts that we compare ourselves to that are particularly so part of the work in ensuring access and opportunity for all students which is about um during
131that we're teaching the priority grade level standards we talked about our Middle School um content with our special ed teachers and our interventionists and um just recently last week region 15 was asked to present at the council the Connecticut Council leaders for math on the Excellence in the math classroom for all how to make sure that we're addressing all of our students in our math classes um there's been work on the IEP gold writing um we've been providing support to teachers on how to write improved goals and tie those to grade level standards a stronger use of data to articulate growth and individual objectives um we've had continued support for and from our instructional coaches so um monthly meetings they meet with me once a month um uh to talk about um different things like
132either content or ways to schedule or what the professional development should look like they have regular meetings with their building administrators um they're continuing to work with an outside expert so to know what the IM program is about or what leaders and Writers Workshop um it should look like and we have continued support for our teachers during purposeful planning or by our coaches in our department our department chairs and teachers get to request additional days if they if they so choose um we also have been working with our instructional teacher leader so I quarterly with them and that's based on uh those meeting topics or based on their suggestions and their feedback so like what do they want to talk about or what are some of the um issues that they would like to kind
133of brainstorm around they have been receiving professional learning regarding welcoming inclusive Schools they're actually the lab site classrooms so if someone says I want to know what a third grade classroom in region 15 looks like we could say go to the itl at um one of the elementary schools and we can uh show people what that looks like and some of our itls will be involved in a community of practice with admins and this is a way to help with the work on supporting our students after the pandemic um you've heard a little bit about the revisions of our srbi process that started last year and it's continuing this year um we developed a criteria that's based on more than one data point and includes progress monitoring um we have more and more flexible process
134where students can enter and exit srbi they don't have to stay there for a certain amount of time once they've met their goal um they're released from srbi we've been talking a lot about tier one strategies for classroom teachers so tier one is what happens in the classroom and so we've been talking a lot about how can classroom teachers differentiate um or support students that may be struggling a little bit but not enough to go into tier two or tier three swvi we restructured the middle school interventionists we now have one that focuses on Ela So reading and writing and we have one that focuses on math and so and those interventionists from middle school go between the two middle school buildings and this year um we're developing a high school process for slti and
135one thing that we're continuing is the professional learning for our administrators we have monthly sessions where all the admins in the department chairs the principals the directors um meet in central office for two hours um with Josh and I in the partners for educational leadership Josh and I also have individual um principal meetings each month with each of the principals and um the principals also meet with um Us in cabinet once a month and this year we're focusing on how engagement which was last year's Focus how that fits into task development what does a quality task look like when you walked into a classroom and those components of what a quality task is so with that um if you have any other questions thank you very much because um and I can remember sitting here
136in our scores would be like they would just be that'd be really good it'd be fantastic uh you know we have all the dirty schools and like there have been occasions where we'd be like the highest you know we you know on a rare occasion you know we would be about eight month or Monroe or something like one percent on some some Metric somewhere I'm so surprising that we did not really care about all the other data you know we didn't worry about you know I don't know means or modes or like is it just why were we honest um and we did that when there were no I'm not I'm not I mean we should ask I'm just saying like like why would you if everything's good uh we didn't have coaches we didn't
137have horizontal or vertical um we had all these islands that you know I know you tried to collapse um and and it went that well and then um then we had like the Paradigm Shift where we had like Common Core came along and the ngss the whole like you're not gonna every kid must learn thing and I feel like we went into a tunnel as a district and um and that's where we got LeapFrogs because I don't and I'm not blaming anyone but I think like we just we didn't tackle that as well as we could have um or whatever for whatever reason um I think we certainly we dragged our feet we didn't have a consistent approach because we had all these islands and we didn't have alignment um I think the culture and
138and Josh just talked about the culture too I think the culture was resistant to the change that was forced upon us and um pet peeve is we didn't have enough technology and I only finally got it we didn't really implement it we just kind of you know we had it to class whatever um and then so we did kind of realize at some point that we were now losing grounds uh relative to other districts and we would we would start to throw Solutions and problems but like I still couldn't tell you why like yes we need small class sizes okay that makes sense but like well really why do I need a smaller processing why does a teacher really need professionals um and I just would want to say that um like please don't take
139for granted like if definitely yours passed itself isn't it great that the SAT scores by the time you get to high school like it kind of looks like we fixed it right we certainly ten years ago we absolutely had sort of a middle school dip and then and then you know we we finished strong with SATs and the high school level but we did not have um a superintendent or assistant superintendent that would then go on to say well we think in Middle School like we're probably doing a little better than we then the scores say we are but we're trying to like kind of resolve that um and then trying to understand what are we doing right at the high school um so we have you know I understand there's no one specific formula
140like it's not like you're a baking a cake and you want to make it sweeter so you're just going to add a little more sugar in it um but you know now at least we can point to we've got vertical alignment we have the purposeful planning we are differentiating an inspection we have PD days and here's why we need them because we're we're doing um you know it could be the illustrative map or whatever it is able to see all these pieces and why do we need coaches like that's I think we're very clear as a board like what these coaches are doing and we had no data we had no data there was just no data it's a data free world like which is probably why we didn't dive deep inside this probably didn't
141have it right so um and now we've got like these these assessments that are aligned and we're doing them at intervals and like the the three levels right the satellite the so I do I look forward to where this is going um I think as long as we are showing growth um you know you compare ourselves to ourselves I think we'll eventually catch up to you know some of the other to their terms I I do kind of think to just conclude that um like because we had the pandemic the bar has been reset and I just think you know let's just focus now on like all this stuff 2019 a little delay but now we're gonna go let's just see where where it takes us let's not look back at the pandemic is really
142good I'm sorry really good perspective because as you're coming into someone new right you wouldn't get that perspective because when you're at the top and you're really great you're like why would I change right like so the resistance piece it's like well you've been telling me for 15 years on the top I'm not going to change and data's so lagged right so even though you have data I mean data can be real time but this data is very loud because they have to do the pulse testing right it would take a couple years to be like oh my God maybe we do have a problem with these things change so that's really good perspective because without that perspective and you've seen this I was like okay we're going to take a deep breath but that's
143good perspective being at the top you are resistant like how can I do anything that's better if you're telling me on top of it with the class and then shifting so thank you very much for that because going into that without the history it don't I didn't come in with that same perspective but that definitely makes me see this in different ways sorry no no totally agree um and just thinking about where we are as a region and where we want to be I always go back to my question and I know it's a very hard one to answer is at what point will we start to see the improvement over time what will that look like forget about who we're comparing ourselves to but do we also have the right infrastructure and benchmarks and
144pressure points in place so that we if we know something that we're doing isn't working effectively we can work in Greater I don't know momentum to course correct and I know that that's a big ass but I always go back to the same question you know what is a realistic expectation to start to see that because all of these districts are dealing with the same things in different ways they had some instructions they didn't were putting it in and you have more in school days less whatever it is but at the end of the day would you want to see the growth and all the changes that we've happened that's a realistic time frame to say like oh yeah we should start to see the benefits of what we implemented at this grade level three
145years ago we should really start to see an improvement down there and I know it's a hard ask but that's really I think it's a fast story um my brain is I don't know I don't remember you can see like [Music] um but I was trying to think about the first series what also is wrapped up and um look back but it was also in there was a shift from CMT which was a master test and started balance and the national norm and kind of that two or three year lag where even under CMT like we used to look at proficiency rates we didn't look at necessarily goal rates which would have been a little deeper dive in a thinner way so there was this like artificial and listen this is a really strong District
146it's done a good job for a long time but there was kind of a lack across a lot of hypothermic to give into that difference between proficient and goal in CMT and smarter balances of recalibration and a reset and for a lot of different reasons people ran at different rates and shifted uh a lot of high performing districts were right where you were at like you know if you're already successful when you want to change the formula so there was some time um how long will it take for that reinvestment is not a linear conversation right so I would argue that pre-coded our shift in math instruction uh was showing room in our elementary schools now we don't test or we hadn't tested K2 so we couldn't measure that now we can um but we
147were starting to see that third fourth grade math numbers start to move uh I would reject that certain grades are going to shift faster than others there are a lot of different factors like in our Middle School we don't have a lot of middle school we know a lot of Middle School teachers so when we have a subject area that went had two or three first and second year teachers sometimes that has a faster curve because they don't have any history I would argue that a lot of times that has a longer occurred because they don't have a lot of experience there are some of our more experienced and Veteran teachers are going to take new standards but they have solid instructional practice classroom management so are they going to run faster I don't know
148what we don't do at this level is break it down by classroom and by school we don't do that it's very identified or we can tell you from the back end we can look at some of those things and part of that purposeful planning is not from a punitive standpoint but if you're a teacher if you're looking at your kids and Kerry I teach the same subject to what are you doing that your kids are getting this and my kids are struggling or look at last year's kids that had holes in these areas like what are we going to do differently that's what happens in that purposeful planning session and the more effective we are of that the faster some of those ships are going to take place so like some of the the ships
149around special education we're changing how we write IEPs we're changing their goal structure that's to make that access to Great local standards more linear so it's hard to say this is the the lesson recursive part of Education if you do these one or two things it's going to affect these one or two things we talked about middle school students like they're a different child every three hours maybe less today like I'm gonna do this and it's going to work for this group of students that's our shift to that street and we want while we look at students as numbers here when we get to the classroom level I want our teachers have a relationship with who their kids are and the grade level standard and how that's that scaffolding and differentiation that we talked about
150it's really easy to use they're really hard to do it takes a lot of time to figure out what makes a child tip where their gaps are what assessments you're using and to layer that all into a conversation about classical construction so like we know I shouldn't say that I'm very confident that as we do these things can I tell you that next year all of these numbers are going to change I think a lot of them are because I'm confident that even if we go back which we're not doing exactly what we did before the pandemic you're going to see return to those Saturdays meetings you do I mean the frustrating part you've heard me to talk about the reason mandates coming from the state of commission we can all agree we want all
151children to read that but when we talk about the fact that we invested in a reading assessment and a phonics program that really this is the first year we're implementing why are we going to we spent years looking at that training teachers analyzing data in the school district that was performing in the 70th percentile to throw all of that away and go to a different direction uh again at any of those programs show at a guaranteed learning growth that we're not seeing I might consider that does that gets back to where are we or how do we do better but when we look at what we were doing and what we were achieving and the shifts when we haven't been able to implement that I would say that it's a massively unfunded mandate tell us
152to give all that up because we are an action research reflective practice what's working what's not working you don't read a year to save instead of working that's what that is weekly monthly meetings are happening so the frustrating part about my answers but again and that's why we have these quarterly meetings to kind of do that real-time reflective next year's test are going to be able to answer your question so I just have a comment s all this data you're right um but um I I just wanted to say as we were going through the first part of this conversation I did find it so great sure that's something um and you know this is alarming you know how how much students have been impacted by these last couple years um but the comments I
153want to make is just that I'm so grateful that we get to the end of this presentation and um we're talking about systemic things that instead of those issues and we're talking about um system how it's going to work and how it's going to address um you know whatever gaps that we have um because it's very easy to see how this conversation could go you know well we have these problems and and you know what we're going to do is here's a list I've worked on add some books to the library we're going to purchase a program or we're going to do an extra day of people here um but I really appreciate that this is very it's well thought out I know that there was a lot um groundwork that's taken years to put
154in place um that has informed what things what these website and there's some things to be concerned about the basic tenants um good teachers good curriculum who are knowledgeable in our time to teach make a huge difference and that was true before the pandemic when we do truer now but as far as like what do we need like time we can do this thing and that's the one thing you really buy or making sure there's a good place to work and keeping a good staff here and providing them resources and strong curriculum those are the things that we need like that once a year it's that you know time um to give teachers the space um how much we can afford is how is the energy prices are next year which I think the community
155can support it but those are going to be the balance that we cut through but the good news is a lot of these changes and structures we already put foundations deck chairs and trying to help through some of those pressure points but um I think the other thing that we say you are not factoring is the stress level of families and just the survival mode that people are sending students teachers families at home so and engagement I feel like we've had a lack of Engagement hopefully this year we get back a little bit of that books as well I just keep going back to that that there's a lack of Engagement outside of school as well the most important sets like a month to get a couple of wires that should be done 10 weeks
156ago um that adds pressure and stress to teachers to kids that were not planned no matter how much I yell stream you know email frame like I can't fix that right and that's true when PNC we talked about food distribution Cycles but we are not back to the game and I don't know when or if we're ever gonna like this might be normal but Parts you know whether it's rolling blackouts or food inconsistencies and supply chain issues those things impact again it sounds ridiculous every day literally like a couple of copper wires are preventing us to use four classrooms that we needed at the end of last year and we've been sitting ready to go all of this has been active how much things go away all I know these are the things that we
157can control and even prior to the higher coding the thought of saying balance sometimes with the kids like okay we're going to work on this homework today and the fight that would ensue who has that patience right now after two and a half years so I can see where you know we need to get that back so it's not as surprising to me I think I almost expected some of this because it's not been easy foreign all right so next may I have a motion for approval of the minutes of November 14 2022 regular meeting minutes um any comments or discussion yes Richard I think there's a topographical error what you've said about the election of secretary it says December 14th thank you Richard all right all those in favor with that Amendment um next
158we have information and proposals board committee reports policy and curriculum committee Miss Heather Dwyer uh policy curriculum met earlier this evening um we discussed a very exciting uh upcoming national parks field trip you could read the minutes um that's a good one yeah um so it's a great opportunity to review another another new field trip opportunity for our students so it's very exciting we also took some time to review um just one policy in the 6000 series system 142.101 which is a wellness policy around physical activity and nutrition great any questions and next we have superintendent report audience members that um persevered through the longest presentation probably of the session then I want to thank Mr Napoli and the students um breakfast on December 8th it's a good opportunity to move it some of the
159legislators that were used to be elected and talk about what happens in Hartford and how that impacts the work that we do I appreciate and Advance those legislators come in um and just wanted to highlight the game conference more detail but thank you for those uh to get there and um there was an opportunity to meet with other people doing this works better or worse about the work that we're doing here if you have any questions great um board member comics I'm tired we're ready next we have comments from citizens the Board of Education more recognized citizens of Middlebury and Southbury and citizens are asked to State their name their town of residence and to limit their comments to three minutes in accordance with region 15 Board of Education bylaw 93-25a speakers are asked to
160express themselves in this civil manner um with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others who may be affected by their comments violence method board's intent to stifle public comment speakers should be aware that if their statements violate the rights of others under the law of defamation or invasion of privacy the speaker may be held fully responsible uh good evening my name is Ed Edelson is this honor I don't really need to worry about this so I'm very pleased to be the coordinator of the e5th anniversary of when Southbury said no to the Nazis I know a few of you were able to attend some of the sessions I believe that everyone who did attend found to be well worth their time and came away with a new understanding of why this previously obscure
161story is so important from an educational historical moral and religious perspective in a time when we find a vocal minority spreading misinformation through our hate and fear of others much as the german-american bond and other the Nazi sympathizers did in the 1930s in the United States it's important to show that communities can stand up to eight and say no weekend could not have been such a success if not for the cooperation of so many region 15 voting superintendent State and assistant superintendent you did it they saw the value of this story and the act of commemorating the anniversary from the very beginning which was about a year ago and we're so generous with their time and resources and ideas from region 15. I want to also thank the staff of Opera high school starting with
162Dr Billington there and I would like to give a shout out to Brian majanski it was so helpful and always had yes as an answer to any request finally I have to think that's all you read the fifth grader at Longmeadow Elementary School you're a founding of the upstanding club last year showed how successful region 15 is in implementing its diversity equity and inclusion program to the benefit of all students each time I read the outstanding pledge I realize how profound and direct it is and it was a thrill for me you know on the stage with Natalya and her sisters as they lived a pack ballroom at the Wyndham Hotel in the place personally I recommend that in addition to the Pledge of Allegiance we should at all be saying this pledge before each
163meeting and just to remind you it says I pledge to be an upstander when I see something wrong happening to someone I will say something or help in any way that I can simple and direct I think that's all in everyone to do and thank you and if you don't mind I do have a couple of uh extra brochures I definitely want to give one to but Kerry who wasn't able to be there that night share those around six months I did I did find your way home um I know what it is thank you very much Mr Edelson is there anyone else um next we have regular business that requires oh I'm sorry Mrs Branch I'm sorry about that that's okay um loving your resident and uh performing honors a new student from older
164to 10th grade excuse me I'm a sole parent I wanted code that's never fit Easy Living to afford living or renting in Southbury I can struggle but when June 15 school system is the number one reason I am here for my daughter tonight presented data on the pandemic impact no one can deny it was hard on everyone's students teachers parents faculty staff get my remote student that was able to walk away from the way behind eighth grade with an armful literally armed for awards and she continues to thrive at people the data presented tonight is everything I believe very hard [Music] I'm confident you'll take this and use this data for recovery and growth Forbes Magazine recently released Connecticut is number three the number three state in the education Nationwide with New Jersey and Massachusetts
165region 15 has always ranked high for Great Schools no system is perfect but I appreciate you all and I wish more parents would look at the big picture of how fortunate our students really are I have heard I too have heard many from many exceptional former students out prepared they were for college and adult life I sat in a meeting a week ago with the Board of Ed members attended and there were many questions posed an example does rejective team Foster anti-American environment do teachers promote puberty blockers as region 15 required to accept the student who changed his name due to gender identity our students reading inappropriate books and a dozen other questions I just want to say thank you to Marion Manzo for doing a great job answering these questions I do love the
166board of admission statement and surprise to see how far back it was actually written um and the end of the quote says at the end of the statement decision making is based on the best interests of all students all meaningful so I just wanted to thank you guys I know we have a teacher appreciation day we don't have superintendent today but I was you know I chopped so but um but I think that you need to figure out that it's been a tough time you know Nationwide worldwide but I think we're doing a great job I appreciate that Richardson I'm a secretary resident of my three daughters who graduated from broad High School in 2016 2019-2020 um and I remember the region 15 Equity institution Council then they tend to speak inspired by a fifth
167grader intelligently an Upstate or inspired by Roberta Grant and who thanked Marion and Mr Ford for standing up the questions last week I just wanted to add my voice um I did attend that that meeting and spoken public forum last last Monday and faced over a dozen questions about the state of region 15 and education and some of the things that are going on um many of the questions are very straightforward others were hostile either implicitly or exclusively Alaska Marion did a wonderful job professionally calmly nationally answering the questions um in a way that I think will make everyone here around um and certainly we had a number of supporters there through our group Justice out there um who were extremely supportive or appreciative of the answers that Marion gave and the efforts that the
168region is moving on these lines so I wanted to add my voice of thanks and to say that as long as the board is supportive of all students as long as the teachers are encouraged to teach the truth as long as the teachers are showing children where to look I'm not telling them what they have to see and as long as they're encouraging our students and our community to feel welcome to feel heard you'll seemed to be able to provide to feel valuable offensive management and we're doing all of us well and recognizing that that not all voices believe that just in the last weeks and more of this in the next few days um there have been a lot of great materials circulated in the town of separate and so to the extent that
169this board and the members of regions Traders and teachers and children to stand up and upstanders and stand up against the types of things that you'll you'll be called upon and stand up against um you'll have a lot of support that our allies in this community and we recognize that we're Hank is powered love must not be quiet thank you thank you and then a couple comments all right thank you very much um next regular business that requires board action um may have a motion for approval to apply for the HVAC replacement at comparab High School Board of Education resolved at the top Rod Regional School District 15 authorizes the Board of Education to apply to the commissioner foreign um when I was reading the thing it said pretend classrooms yeah yeah there's another unit
170there's more the challenge is though you have to have money identified to apply so I'm going to use some of our Capital money if not you'd have to go for like an off cycle you have to go actually for a bond referendum before like February yeah well there's more yes it's just it's just that system that's just a piece because I want to apply for some of the money and not miss out um yeah not get optimistic but our chances do you think we have a shot the grant is 150 million dollars and it's you can actually back pay projects about a year and a half that you did prior we heard that a lot of money was there was a whole pile of grants that were already in that would take up a chunk
171of that money I think this will be multiple rounds of this funding setting being in lets the state know how much money is available what's the needs going to be um yeah I'm hopeful we could be a different position based on our discussions last board meeting about applying for a bigger piece of the exactly right now um I don't know you can't wait for y'all play I guess I'm worse [Music] yeah a little better so this fist is not this is a very small piece no this this will this will the state will approve us for this and I'll come back to you folks for a capital allocation there's about six hundred thousand dollars a statement that they have so it does committed right it does commit us to if we get the matching fund
172from the state and so we do not know yeah if you don't get the grant yeah which is yeah thank you any other questions all those in favor all right any days extensions the carries next we have approval a motion to approve to establish a proper organization 15 building committee move that the Board of Education resolved with the proper art relationship building committee is hereby established as the building Community with regard to the HVAC replacement um so can you just explain that membership will be just our finance of facilious manual function in this role any other questions all those in favorites [Music] thank you I may have a motion for approval to apply for the HVAC replacement that the Board of Education resolved by the conference in June 15 School District nearby authorized as a
173piece of preparation of schematic drawings and outline specifications for the HVAC replacement outcomes Shannon um any questions extensions thank you and finally you may have a promotion for approval of the education specifications for proper wage factoring movement of the Board of Education improved educational specifications to talk about high school respect but thank you John any questions all those in favor aye um next we have announcement of future meetings Monday December 12th PNC's meeting at the high school at 6 30. also on Monday December 12th we'll have a regular meeting a report of Education at 7 30 where we will discuss our enrollment update and then on Wednesday December 14th finance will meet at the mij building executive session with possible action in terms of the Board of Education breaking to Executive session for the purpose
174of discussion second thank you all those in favor aye aye all right we are in executive