Board of Education Meeting

001okay you're all set thank you very much all right i'll call this meeting of the region 15 board of education uh for monday may 10th 2021 to order maybe please sign uh stand for the pledge of allegiance i need to get longer micro earbuds because i keep on falling out when i stand for the pledge of allegiance all right um i see we do not have our student reps here tonight unless i'm missing it i do have uh they had some opportunities last minute so i do have substitute updates while i won't look like a student i'll do my best foreign sorry give me one second here while i have it's always update i'm going to read you zoe's update because she wrote in a nice paragraph form i don't think i can on the

002fly pull everything out we could hear you better without your mask josh too yes can you hear me now mr spirto no okay so this is uh zoe speaking some channeling the transition into the rest of the school year after spring break is going very smooth all students are being flexible and thankful for these strategic ways the ap testing has been handled all accommodations regarding the cdc guidelines are being done actively and appropriately during testing in other news students of all grade levels are very eager and excited to know that there will be a problem for both the seniors and the juniors this is going to be the first school oriented event that they've had all year it's nice to end the crazy year on a good note and it definitely gives hope to the

003younger grades who will soon be able to have their own prom and future events overall these past few weeks since april break things within region 15 have been looking very have been looking up not only in regards to the events and testing but also the abilities to get vaccinated we are definitely grateful of how flexible everyone has been this year and the great work behind the scenes are keeping us hopeful for a great send-off thank you all right thank you josh next we have student recognition superintendent smith so for a digital meeting i have lots of paper so i apologize as i jump from paper to paper so there are two sets of superintendent awards because region 15 sits in two different uh counties uh we spend time with both the litchfield county superintendents group

004at the western connecticut superintendents group it is tradition for each superintendent's group in the state to recognize students within their district that offer exemplary leadership skills we have i believe these are going to be there we go thank you mr nelson so we'll start with the western connecticut group from pampered high school jessica rodriguez and joseph bellavacqua have been recognized for memorial middle school kama kaima karethavasan and lauren anderson i am sorry i did practice that name earlier but i got a little flustered now and then uh for roshambo julia gang and uh avonish salakumarian have been recognized those students will all have a plaque and certificate sent to them and i do apologize to students this year that normally they would be invited to a reception at the amber room in danbury and look

005forward to having uh those ceremonies once again in the future from litchfield for the litfield county group we have caitlyn lewis and avoc hedge from phs ava phelan and alice sugden from memorial and charlotte murphy and brendan fenn from rochambeau i thank all of our students for representing region 15 and establishing their own leadership skills in all their endeavors thank you well congratulations to all those students it's wonderful again i do miss the time when they used to be here and we could shake their hands but congratulations to all those recipients it's a very high honor and we're very proud of all that you have done so thank you next we have uh the global citizenship presentation with dr carrie chiapeta okay so good evening madam chair members of the board and members of the

006community thank you very much for the opportunity to present an update on the equity and inclusion work here in region 15. so for tonight's agenda i'm going to share a brief history of the equity and inclusion work here in the region talk a little bit about how and why it started um share some work that happened this year um particularly our teacher in residence position and some examples of her work explain a little bit why our global citizenship and character advisory committee is now called our equity and inclusion council talk a little bit about why this work is important and say a thank you to our equity and inclusion council members there's really a lot to explain about this work that and about what's happened over the past few years um so i've tried to

007condense this information into hopefully about 45 minutes um to an hour presentation we're very proud of the work that we've been doing this year in the region with the community support and so i wanted to share with you a brief history of the work and so as some of you may know we talked about this in in previous board um presentations but the global citizenship and character advisory committee actually was established in the 2017-18 school year and so while being accepting and inclusive of others has always been a school and region goal supported by federal state and local policy and guidance statements population changes embracing 25 21st century learning expectations and isolated events affecting individuals over the past few years led to the district elevating this work and making it a priority and so um

008we learned there was a need for education regarding bias and intolerance because of incidences that not only happened here in region 15 but that happened across the state the country in the world and so our committee originally started with 20 members back in 1718. and so one of the things was we went back and looked at the region 15 demographics and the reason that october is shown here is because since our committee started in 2017 we went back 10 years and so we looked at the demographics from 10 years from when we started our committee in 2007 and we updated each year and so what you can see is the demographic changes here in the region and so there's been an increase in um our asian population a slight increase in our african or black

009african-american or black population an increase in our hispanic latinx population and the reason the reason native hawaiian and pacific islander and two or more races are blank in 2007 was really because the um state wasn't collecting data on those specific groups at that time but they do now so those show up and what you'll notice is in 2017 about 6.82 of our population was was um not white now um the latest information that we have 16.85 of our population is something other than white but we don't only look at ethnicity and nationality we also look at other groups we look at students whose language first language is not english and you'll see that that has increased we look at students who receive free and reduced lunch and that has increased and we look at the

010total number of students who qualify for special ed and that has increased and so our committee originally looked at four areas of focus and we made sure that we want or one thing that we wanted to do was to ensure that students felt welcome in our schools felt safe in our schools had the opportunities to participate in everything that we offer here in region and that they have the opportunities to learn and with that we developed a three-year plan with action with goals and action steps and so these three goals listed here were the original goals from the committee um in 2017 and 2018 and we wrote a three-year plan and so that first goal was to nurture in students lifelong respect and compassion for themselves and other human beings regardless of wrath ethnicity gender

011social class disability religion appearance or sexual orientation and our second goal was that same goal except in staff and our third goal was to revise our curriculum to reflect reflect a broad range of knowledge and information which illustrates varied and diverse contributions to history the arts science mathematics and literature but one aspect that we noticed that was missing from our original three goals and one thing that we kept saying was that we needed to have the community involved and so here we noticed that we really didn't have a place in any of our three goals to involve the community and so we felt that we needed to revise them so um these are some examples of the work that happened from 2017 to 2020 and for more details you can go on the district website

012and look at prior board of education meetings or look at the region 15 equity and inclusion council and if anybody would like more information i'd be happy to share with you at um another time all the work that's been done but these are just some of the activities that happened in that three-year span and so i wanted to share with you a timeline and come up to last spring so i already mentioned that in 2017 2018 there was the establishment of our global citizenship and character advisory committee in the fall of 2019 um superintendent smith and i came up with the idea for a teacher in residence for cultural competency and diversity we really needed someone whose full-time job was to focus on this work as you know um last year it was an unusual

013year for for the budget approval process so in april uh late april the budget was approved the third week in may was when we actually started doing the interviews for the selection of the teacher in residence and and we selected someone and a few days later you'll you notice that that was the death of george floyd after the death of george floyd the superintendent and i received many emails so some of these emails were from people who already knew about the work we were doing here in the region and wanted the work to be faster and wanted more of the work to happen but still some of these other emails were from people who didn't know about the work that was occurring here in region 15 over the past few years and some of those

014actually were from region 15 graduates and so i wanted to share with you a letter that we received probably about 20 of them from um graduates from the 2016 class here at pomparog and so it was the same letter but it was really impactful and so they introduced themselves saying that they were from the class of 2016 and they said that they're extremely great grateful for their education here in region 15 but they felt that it failed to teach them and the rest of their community about racism intersectionality and privilege in the united states and they said that they were writing to us to demand the implementation of programs that promote race awareness learning and anti-racism in our school district and including adding diversity compassion and anti-racism to the core curriculum in the region to

015increase diversity training for and diversity of teaching staff administration and disciplinary figures and to hold students who say or do discriminatory or offensive things accountable for their actions and they they begged us to do our part in creating a better educated more compassionate community and so in the midst of a global pandemic and in helping to write a plan to reopen schools i offered to meet with each and every one of the people that emailed either mr smith or myself to explain to them about the work that was happening in region 15. um the graduates came with a plan uh they were um well researched they had a bunch of sources that they thought that we should look at and i had time to explain to them the work that we've been doing over the

016past few years including the courses that we established at the high school over the past few years we invited them to attend our meetings and some of them actually did attend our meeting since they were on zoom and you can do it from anywhere so i want to talk a little bit about this school year so 2020 2021. as i already mentioned this was the first year of our teacher in residence for cultural competency and diversity and as you may know um the person that we selected is dr aaron burton here with some of our students she was a second grade teacher here in the region at lmes and was also an original member of the global citizenship and character advisory committee and she's our teacher in residence and so i wanted to share with

017you a little bit about what the job description is for the teacher in residence so her job is to assist teachers in grades pre-k through 12 in developing their cultural competence and also in developing and delivering lessons through this lens she assists the curriculum committees in designing and developing curriculum so that it is inclusive and that it addresses diversity she assists with the overall training of diversity initiatives and programs and develop strategies for improvement she works in the planning for our advisory committee on global citizenship and character and the strengthening the bonds of our community meetings the strengthening of bonds we haven't been able to have this year because of the pandemic she develops ways to foster community participation and support for our work acts as a resource for classroom teachers in the implementation of

018cultural competence within the classroom and she works with teachers either individually at each of the schools or by grade level by department or an entire group to provide practical supports strategies and instruction on inclusivity and so i wanted to share with you um her work at a glance and so the classroom collaborations um include co-planning and designing instruction it could be co-teaching it could be modeling it could be visiting classrooms and or helping teachers reflect and she's done this with 66 different staff members in at least 108 classrooms and this uh is multiple collaborations throughout the school year we didn't count the ones where she just went in uh one time and so we estimated if each of these classes has about 20 students in them that you've reached approximately 2 160 students here in

019region 15. he also has had professional development sessions with more than 300 staff and so um this again is more than one time so we've included just the ones where she's met with teachers multiple times and so this professional development has been with classified staff it's been the secondary math teachers it's been secondary science teachers it's been with elementary classroom teachers it's been with the music department and it's been with various community groups within the equity and inclusion council the total engagements to date is 657 total engagements and that pretty much is looking at her calendar across the school year and i want to put that into perspective that this is the 153rd day of school and she has had 657 total engagements so some example of the work that she's been doing and the

020professional development that she's been providing so on the diversity equity and inclusion new hire series so she's been working with all the teachers that we hired this school year starting in oct in august and working throughout the school year with them on uh diversity equity and inclusion um she's worked she had anti-bias and anti-racism racism five part series with all paraprofessionals secretaries and general assistants on pda pd days that we have here in the district she's worked with the music department and we want to give a special thank you to dr joe abramo who is a region 15 parent and also a professor of music education at uconn and a member of the equity and inclusion council representation matters the inclusivity in read-alouds and mentor texts she's worked with the reading consultants who have also

021worked with elementary classroom teachers and we've looked at the um the books that we use in our classrooms or that we ask students to read to make sure that they're culturally responsive and that in the session teachers explored the representation in the text that we have in our curriculum and she's offered a wide range of different pd opportunities on the mou wednesdays which are voluntary if teachers want to attend but she offers those just in case people want to and lastly she's worked with the phs pe department on gender inclusivity and what the recommended practices are and so those are just some examples of the work that she's done and so i wanted to share some collaborations that she's done with different teachers and so here's a high school example and so it's the 10th

022grade u.s history classes along with the fourth grade social units book club that they're doing in english language arts and for one of the assignments in unit six four sections of u.s history have collaborated with our teacher in residence to design and implement a cooperative learning project with an authentic audience and the authentic audience is our is our fourth grade students who are currently studying social issues in their book clubs and their reading units and so over the past few weeks the high school students have been involved in this project where they've been learning about the goals individuals and tax and tactics used in the civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s here in the united states and currently they're working to apply what they've learned to create a book that will help educate

023the next generation about one individual from this movement and so although most people think of the larger figures like dr martin luther king jr or rosa parks there are countless other people whose stories aren't necessarily always told and the high school students task is to tell a story of one of these individuals and to work collaboratively in small groups to create a children's book that's aimed at an elementary school audience so that they can teach children about their selected figure they'll ultimately present this to a group of elementary students from region 15 on the live virtual google meet among classes if we take a look at our middle school example this is an example from our middle school global communications class and so that global communications class is rooted in four areas so global awareness

024perspective communication and citizenship and so the critical skills in this class are that students are able to investigate the world beyond their immediate environment that they're able to recognize their own and other perspectives that they communicate their ideas effectively to diverse audiences and that they create an action plan to improve the world based on their understandings and their findings into an ongoing collaborative planning and instruction has taken place with the teachers of this course and with our teacher in residence and the example that you see here on the screen is from one of the courses on the um is from the course the unit of education and students are introduced to the declaration of human rights and before examining the articles in student-friendly language they're asked to consider whether they believe education is a human

025right and the class holds space to dialogue students study article 26 the right to education as a springboard for exploring education around the world case studies are shown such as malala are used in addition to films such as the pbs's time for school and the award winning documentary on the way to school in order for students to study in context the experiences of young people in their quest for learning in this course of the unit study students also select a specific place in which they are interested in exploring educational experiences of children around the world they conduct research and apply communication skills and presenting their findings to their peers and these are just three quotes from from students who've been in this class and so one of them says when i was younger i never

026understood that every place is different and everyone's different i mostly thought that kids can always have access to go to school and learn but growing up i realized very fortunate to be able to to do school every day and learn i also would take things for granted and now from experience i've learned never to take things for granted be grateful but you can't count on everything always being there another student said i value education but i don't value it enough because there are some students in the world that don't have the opportunity to have great education so i think i should be more grateful that i have access to education and third i just wanted to let you know that i really enjoyed your class i was talking to my mom about it and it

027made me realize how much i want to be a public speaker and help people all around the world with global issues and so the last is an elementary uh collaboration and so the elementary collaboration is about mathematics we chose mathematics because on more than one occasion you probably hear people say oh i was never very good at math in school or parents telling their students it's okay i was never really good in math which is very different than what you would hear about reading or literacy you hardly ever hear anyone say or admit oh i was never good at reading or i'm not really literate and so we thought it was important to focus here on the messages that students have and receive about mathematics so i wanted you to share with you before i

028show you a video a little bit about the background of this project in the late 90s there was a national council of teachers of math article where a teacher explained how she asked her students to describe a mathematician or a scientist and the students usually um didn't describe themselves in the project they usually described a white man in a lab coat working on math problems all day um and how she said it was really important for her students um to learn that they too can be a mathematician in the fall speaking to erin our teacher in residence and annie smith who is our elf one of our math coaches we talked about this idea of students views about mathematics and about mathematicians and did students know that there's so much more to mathematics than just

029adding subtracting multiplying and dividing annie and aaron developed this project with the help of classroom teachers and our technology integration specialist and so i asked them to create a video of this project so i wanted to show that to you this evening but before we do that i pulled out one of the slides that's in the video and that's here on the screen and i think it's important for our students to know that no one is born knowing math and no one's born lacking the ability to do math and scientific evidence suggests that the difference between those who succeed and those who don't is not the brain that they're born with but it's their approach to life the message they receive about their potential and the opportunities they have to learn and so i'm hoping

030that this video works so i want to show this to you so the question is can we teach mathematics in a way that students can connect to themselves and to their communities and to their identity can we teach in a way that empowers students to to challenge injustice and most of all can we teach in a way that honors students and their cultural and their intellectual greatness for the first time i realized that i'm not just using math in math class i i know i for the first time i really realized i'm not using it at school the mathematician keith devlin says there is scarcely any aspect of our lives that is not affected to a greater or lesser extent by mathematics for abstract patterns are the very essence of thought of communication computation of

031society and of life itself because not all mathematicians have to be white and not all mathematicians have to be black all mathematicians are girls and boys and anyone could be a mathematician the mathematician's project is an instructional series focused on building positive math identities and expanding understanding of who mathematicians are and how they impact the world students begin by unearthing their initial conceptions of who a mathematician is we launch the series with inquiry posing the open-ended question who is a mathematician and asks students to express their ideas via drawing what are they doing how do they spend their days why is their work useful what do they look like students engage in a gallery walk and follow up with small group discussion focused on patterns and unique ideas that they notice in one another's drawings

032students leave this session knowing that over the next four visits we will deepen our thinking ideas and knowledge about who a mathematician is and how they experience and impact the world both in thinking about ourselves as well as others after exploring their initial conceptions of mathematicians students build on the insights that emerged in their drawings to then consider how they see themselves in mathematics through engaging in math identity interviews with a partner students dig into their attitudes self-perceptions preferences and interests related to mathematics students then engage in a broader whole class discussion on their math autobiographies we hope that this lesson helps students to make some of their current ideas about themselves in math visible and that it serves as a springboard for inspiring students to foster an unlimited view of themselves and others in

033mathematics so to be a mathematician you need the right mindset yeah i'm not sure what does it mean to be a good artist so maybe you can help me think of an idea i think it means to like have good [Music] um yes i do consider myself a mathematician so i just think that kind of like uh that's kind of like with me like when i do math problems sometimes they're a little hard for me but like once i get past that hard that like hard part it just all flows it just all like flows into me students move from exploring math identity through math autobiography interviews to then selecting researching and celebrating the brilliance of historically excluded mathematicians such as black and or african-american mathematicians hispanic and or latinx mathematicians women mathematicians and many

034more the mathematicians project offers an opportunity to lift up the deep funds of mathematical knowledge within our own community through relationships with students and families we can invite folks from our school communities who are willing to share how they apply mathematics in their lives you know like you know the importance of math and it blooms almost like a flower but it takes time so right now you don't really understand it i didn't understand it but as i practiced it through time it became very beautiful and fun layla's grandmother and grandfather are both both chemist her great grandfather was an electrician her great aunt is a mathematician so math just is for us it's just part of being a brown we love it the mathematicians project culminates with the collective sharing of new learning after researching

035students created a flipgrid video this way there is a curated collection of classmate conducted research on a range of mathematicians students take time to reflect on how their thinking shifted or evolved over the course of the series and have an opportunity to revise their construct of who mathematicians are what they do and the nature and possibilities of their work dr patricia bath inspires me to help people and make the world a better place and she's a mirror for me because i want to be a doctor when i grow up too i have a mathematician i just thought of a white man doing math equations i never really thought that the mathematician that mathematicians could be anyone i used to think i used to think i used to think i used to think i used to

036say i used to think mathematicians were just just solve complex math problems but now after this project but now i'm thinking but now i think but now i'm thinking that all girls and boys and same skin colors or different skin colors can be a mathematician even you i thought math was just like subtraction and addition but it turns out there's a whole lot of math out there so annie showed this video to the consultant that we have working with her and jay who's our other math coach the person who's working with them is actually the president of the connecticut council for leaders of mathematics here in the state and he asked if he could actually show the council members um this video because he thought it was so well done you heard one student in

037the video mention about mirrors and how the person he researched was the mirror for him this year we've been talking about mirrors and windows and so i wanted to share a little bit with you about what that means so amir is a story that reflects your own culture and helps you build your identity while a window is a resource that offers you a view into someone else's experience and it's been said that it's critical to understand that students cannot truly learn about themselves unless they learn about others as well and so moving on i wanted to talk a little bit to you about the reason we changed the global citizenship to become the equity and inclusion council and there's a few reasons for this um the first reason is because our theories of action so

038um the old name was based on our learner expectations that the region once had and now with the incorporation of our theories of action we wanted to make sure that the name of our group reflects inclusion since it's part of our theory of theories of action and so um theories of action one and three really are the basis for our work so the first one we talk about all the time if we foster schools that are welcoming and inclusive to all students then students will feel valued and they will be better able to access their learning but we also bring in theory of action three which is if we embrace communication transparency and collaborative relationships within ourselves and the community then we will we will improve trust and participation in supporting our students so also

039during our first meeting this year with our equity and inclusion council we talked about the definition of diversity equity and inclusivity and we use the definitions from the national equity project and we went over these um these definitions to make sure that we all had a common definition and so we said diversity includes race ethnicity gender sexual orientation age size socioeconomic status ability language etc and equity is truly inviting all and ensuring that all are and feel welcomed that they're able to participate fully in in decision making and development of the organization and inclusivity is promoting just and fair inclusion and creating conditions in which everyone can participate prosper and thrive we also shared the definition of culture cultural competence and as our teacher in residence always said this always comes with humility um so

040for the first part we look at the attitudes towards different uh cultural differences we gain knowledge of the different cultures and practices and worldviews we develop cross-cultural skills and awareness of world world views and so that cultural competency really is the ability to understand and effectively be in a community with people across cultures and while some say that we all should be culturally competent now people are saying that we need to be culturally proficient and so i wanted to share with you on the updated goals for this year and so we updated goals for a few reasons first the first set of goals expired we said it was for three years so through 2017 to 2020 and so a lot of the action steps that were underneath each of those old goals were either being

041worked on or we achieved and so as long as we're saying um you know we've been saying that this work can't be done in isolation that it can't only be region 15 um staff doing this work that the community needed to be needs to be involved and as i stated earlier we needed to make sure that we had a goal where the community could be involved and third we wanted to redo these goals to make sure that the committee had input into the goals and what they wanted to work on and so our goals were for region 15 students region 15 staff and for members of the middlebury and salisbury communities and that those goals are to respect and have compassion for all aspects of diversity race ethnicity gender social class ability religion appearance and

042sexual orientation and under each of these three goals has action steps and along with those action steps or timelines for um things that could happen this year next year or even the third year and it also lists the people that would be involved and the full almost 20 page plan is uh on the region 15 website under equity inclusion if anybody wants to go um look at the details that are in that and so i wanted to share this slide with you because this is only some of the work that was done this year and so um if you look some of the work happens in collaboration with members of a group that sharon work who is a south berry resident started over the summer and so together we collaborated with sharon and her group

043and explained the actions that we wanted to do and we asked if she had any volunteers that would want to help with us and so things like the stem panel and the tribury reads are a collaboration between members of her group and members of the equity and inclusion council so again we did ally training at the middle schools this year we piloted a high school mentoring program at one of our elementary schools we have our monthly eni newsletters that come out we have posters in the bathrooms at the uh the middle school and high schools that were done in collaboration with smart that help students know where to go if they need help we actually printed and have bound a book that a high school student created in one of the classes here at the

044high school and we provided copies to the elementary schools the committee has worked on and they will work at the next meeting on developing questions related to equity and inclusion for both administrator interviews and region 15 staff interviews and we actually have an equity and inclusion website that's coming soon and here are two pictures on what that's going to look like and there'll be a link on the region 15 site to this to this website so why is this work important so this work is not about pushing a liberal agenda um some say that being inclusive and culturally competent is the moral and ethical thing to do and i'm not here to tell you what's moral or ethical what i am here to tell you and share with you is some reasons why being culturally

045competent is important um if we look at the the first bullet um there's a safety and mental health um reason to be culturally competent because her kids hurt kids and then they grow up to be adults and so if we look at the article how bullied children grow up into wounded adults what it says is that depression suicide attempts physical health problems reduced academic achievement are all the results of not being included and not feeling like you belong and that goes for the children who are victims of bullies and that goes for actually the bullies themselves another reason is that colleges and universities are looking for students and staff who are culturally competent so college university admission essays are asking students to write about diversity and inclusivity and i'll give you a few examples so

046texas a m's question has a two-part prompt it asks to describe the benefits of diversity and inclusion for you personally and for texas a m campus students will have to focus on their personal experiences what kind of diverse communities have they been a part of how have those communities helped them how did they personally grow from those experiences within those communities and then they have to think about why it's important for a college community to be diverse and inclusive students need to think about themselves in an environment where people where they're with people from a wide wing range of backgrounds experiences and beliefs in what ways will they make their college experience richer both inside the classroom and outside the classroom and students have to write this in about 250 to 300 words and if

047they don't come from a diverse background they can use this space to talk about why it's important for them to be part of a diverse culture on the campus and how it can help them grow a side note on the a m website they actually define diversity as inclusion and supports of individuals from all groups encompassing the various characteristics of people in our community diversity is the exploration of differences identities and ideas in a welcoming and nurturing academic environment the educational benefits of diverse learning environments include civil civics learning engagement and preparation to live in a complex global setting the essay question from duke so duke university says that duke is seeking a talented engaged student body that and that embodies a wide range of human experiences we believe that that diversity of our students

048makes our community stronger if you'd like to share a perspective you bring or experience you have had to help us understand you better perhaps related to your community that you belong to your sexual orientation or gender identity or your family or cultural background we encourage you to do so real people are reading your application and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to do the essay from rice so rice says rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community the residential college system is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings what personal perspectives would you contribute to life at rice all of these schools are asking how students will contribute

049to their communities so if we take a look at that second bullet it says that colleges and universities are requiring training related to diversity for their leadership for their faculty for their staff and their students and some colleges and universities are actually requiring students to take certain classes but why would colleges and universities just recruit diverse students and not have faculty that is culturally competent and so um so that's where the training part comes in for staff in addition to students so for example southern methodist university in dallas says that all graduating students have to take a human diversity co-curricular course the university of illinois urbana champaign says courses for first-year students and transfer students have to work on skills to collaborate earn and work in a diverse environment and the university of mr mississippi

050actually has onboarding for new students and um and new employees and actually have optional support programs there are also economic reasons to be culturally competent and companies are expecting cultural competency this information shown on this slide comes from the mckinsey report titled diversity wins how inclusion matters and i want to thank gretchen schmidt who is on our equity and inclusion council who provided me with this report the report looks over a thousand companies in 15 countries in various industries so consumer goods energy heavy industry finance healthcare transportation and tourism this is the third report in their series so they did one in 2014 2017 and this one in 2019 and so they um are looking at and companies are looking to ensure the representation of diverse talent they're looking to strengthen their leadership and accountability

051for inclusion and diversity they're looking they're making sure to ensure a quality of opportunity through fairness and transparency to promote openness and tackle microaggressions and foster belonging through unequivocal support for multivariate diversity and they do this through investing millions of dollars in their trainings of their employees in being culturally competent and taking actions to strengthen both inclusion and diversity and according to this report companies in the top quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity are 12 more likely to out outperform all other companies in that data set so for example citigroup went for from eight percent gender diversity on their executive team in 2014 to over in 2019 in just five years another example is pentair which is a water treatment company and they said that their definition of diversity is encompassing race gender ethnicity

052country of origin age personal style sexual orientation physical ability religion and life experiences it also translates into a stronger focus on company culture creating a space where employees are unable to leverage their unique strengths and work in ways that suit them best their executive vp and chief human resources officer said that inclusion and diversity is not just about setting targets and having women on the sleeve we're spending significant time on education building business case for inclusion and diversity and pointing out why it's not just about being politically correct they're also working on developing a shared language on includes inclusion and diversity the focus fits easily with what the company's existing commitment is and what it calls win right culture and values the report states that it's just not about hiring diverse people but it's about

053ensuring that they feel included that there's a sense of belonging and that's where the training comes in so we can even go back to what we heard from the 2016 region 15 graduates who said that they entered a diverse world that they were not prepared for and we owe it to all the students to prepare them for the world that they enter region 15 and the community and so diversity is a fact i showed you at the beginning of this presentation um the the demographics for the region and it's changing it's becoming more diverse equity is a choice that we can make and making sure that we are taking action and being inclusive and welcoming as our theory of action states and when we do this the outcome is will be that students and staff

054and the community members feel that they belong and so in closing so um i shared this slide with you way back when when i first presented to you about um global citizenship at the time and it now equity and inclusion and i love this slide by john cotter who's written um a few books about the eight steps to successful change and i think that this is a great visual because these are the steps that we've gone through we created that sense of urgency by showing that there were incidences that were happening in region 15 across the state and across the world and how our demographics are changing we created that guiding coalition that group that said they want to work on this that this is important we developed a clear shared vision with goals and

055with action steps and with timelines and we created that uh communicated that vision to as many people um that would listen to us we empowered people to act on the vision and so we included them in the three goals whether it's region 15 students staff or community members we created short-term wins and i showed you a list of some of the things that just happened this year and so we're working on consolidating and building on those gains and institutionalizing this change to make it part of what we are and who we are and so i end this evening's presentation with pictures of some of the equity and inclusion council members there's about half of them here on the screen we have 60 in total and with a famous quote by margaret mead that says never

056doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed it's the only thing that ever has and so i just wanted to say thank you to the students to the teachers to the administrators and the community members who are on this committee the work that they've done this year especially in the middle of a global pandemic is absolutely amazing and i want to thank you very much thank you so much dr chiapada i know you've been doing this report annually now for a few years i always look forward to hearing from you your enthusiasm is just contagious so thank you so much does any anyone have any questions for dr chiapada marion i have something to say sure richard go ahead okay i've i would like to thank carey for this

057very informative and comprehensive report it's uh it's eye-awaking if you want to call it that and it's comprehensive and it's all-encompassing and i think she did an outstanding job and when our students get out in the real world they understand what's going on in the real world not in an isolated situation again carrie thank you very much thank you go ahead sharon attic hear me okay great um so yes carrie thank you so much for such a thorough presentation and i very much support the initiative and the work that you and the entire team are doing i did have a question a little bit about what type of resources and support are provided to the teacher in residence that are perhaps outside of the region 15 knowing that this is a really innovative program clearly

058you seem to be a little bit ahead of the curve in your planning you showed that from a timeline perspective and i guess where i'm going with this is the content and some of the theories and some of the activities are of a very uh they need to of a sense of nature right and they need to be communicated very carefully and also very age-appropriately right when you think about just the range of our students from kindergarten to high school so how is the curriculum and the content of what the teacher in residence is sharing with our children kind of benchmarked for appropriateness and just keeping that what i would say that sensitivity in mind um from an exposure of content perspective because i would imagine that that's a that's a careful craft and so

059i'm just wondering what type of guidance um or benchmarking or resources this teacher in residence has to ensure that we are exposing children to these ideas and concepts at the right age at the right time and in the right way so so thank you for that question so um first i just want to make clear that she does not have a curriculum so um the work that's done fits into the region 15 curriculum and part of um part of her task and part of her job is to make sure that the region 15 curriculum um reflects various perspectives and so that was all in the the um the job posting that i shared all those different bullets so and um i do have to say that dr burden is probably one of the best uh

060researched uh person that i've i've ever met she she uh um applies to be part of every single professional development opportunity that um that comes by that is about equity and inclusion she actually is part of the anti-bias um educators group um at crack and uh there they meet um almost monthly i would say um to learn about how to deliver this information and so it's her along with superintendents assistant superintendents curriculum directors across the country um in addition to that um there's been a lot of uh this is a hot topic so there's been a lot of professional development on it and i do think a lot of the times we say that how do we make sure that things are age appropriate but i think lots of times we say age-appropriate because we

061as adults are a little bit nervous about having that conversation and so um she does have um lots of research and references to say that we do have to start having these conversations at an early age and early ages elementary school because we do have students who um feel like they don't belong for whatever reason whether it's race religion sexual orientation appearance um socioeconomics um ability etc so um she we do have a lot of research that says how that should be addressed um and and we go by that in addition to that we've been working with different organizations so we do that through um ces so that's the cooperative education um group down in fairfield county so we work with them we work with ed advance we work with the different regional education uh

062groups in the state of connecticut and so she's attended um various um workshops with them and when i say workshops they're not just a one and done it's all multiple days um that that she does that in addition to the 657 activities that she's been doing with staff so she really does live and breathe this um this work and um everything that we do is based in research it's not just something that we just randomly go do um or randomly uh put together but it's it's looking at um what does um glsen that you know for lgbtq what do they suggest what do um different groups for race and religion suggest all based in research right any anyone else all right i think uh we will continue on with our meeting um thank you so

063much dr chiapeta for your presentation and i look forward to getting another one next year all right thank you for all the great work that you're doing for our region and along with everyone else that's helping thank you all right next we have approval of minutes may i have a motion to approve the april 7th uh 2021 regular meeting minutes of education approved the minutes of the april 7 2021 regular meeting have a second heather rogers second any discussion all right all those in favor any nays abstentions all right all set next we have information and proposals board committee reports uh financing facilities mr john cookson and the finance and facilities committee met on april 21st to review the finance march financial report which mr martino presented we are monitoring spending closely due to the

064coven 19 expenses as the will will be a large area of focus this year we received an update on the mes parking lot design which is part of the transfer on tonight's agenda mr martinez mr smith presented a breakdown of our parking lot fees which we will be which we will present um okay in one of the reports that we will give lastly we received an update on the money that we sent back to the towns our next meeting has been changed from this wednesday to next monday i believe that is the 17th all right thank you very much next we have policy and curriculum mr steve ciriani thank you madam chair uh pnc tonight finished the 9000 series uh so um at its meeting the preceded the board of ed meeting so right now

065on the current agenda you will see policies for first presentation uh and then next uh that our next meeting you will see the last set of policies uh that will be uh on the agenda for first presentation and then pnc has two meetings left uh one of those meetings we'll have uh mr jeremy nelson um giving a report on the cte and then after and then another one of those meetings will be our place giving report on uh the humanities thank you madam chair thank you steve uh next we have pto advisory ms heather dwyer thank you pto advisory met on march 6. that was the day after referendum day i was asked to pass along a hearty thank you to all the board members for all our time and effort budget meetings through march

066and early april um we also discussed grad night which is a structured chaperone event put on for phs students on their graduation day so they have a fun social and safe way to celebrate their achievement this year do the due to the pandemic grad night will be held outdoors at quasi this has added some expense to the event and there are still funds to be raised and volunteers needed so the council discussed getting the word out for donations um if anyone listening would like to learn more or to volunteer check out phs grad night that's nite.com we also discussed with mr smith pending legislation and the expected vaccine eligibility for students 12 and up um and i just wanted to editorialize a little bit and just acknowledge that the pto advisory is a group of

067people who do so much to spread awareness of referendum day and not just to parents of public school children but through the whole community they distributed flyers they funded and set up signs in town and they stood out in the rain with signs reminding people to vote today and i just think that level of dedication and community service is admiral admirable and i would like to return the thank you for all their efforts pto advisory will meet again in person on june 3rd that's it thank you um next we have a smart update mrs heather rogers i just want to thank everyone for the may is for manor success thank you to the region for their collaboration and the guidance department for their help and also to dr chiapeta for her help as well with

068that um grad night smart is going to commit to donating a thousand dollars to towards grad night also look out for parents who host lose the most campaign to coincide with the end of the school year and graduation and we also have a new billboard on mental health focus on main street south and south bury so as you're driving by try to take a peek at that or waiting in traffic for pick up or drop off at pes thanks so much thank you uh next we have the superintendent's report um mr joshua smith uh take one out so i can hear myself talk sorry um i said let's start with a couple of thank yous one to talk to chipetta and the equity and inclusion group i think their work has really gone above and

069beyond what anybody expected it to be when it started and that group's work and the evidence that's coming out of that and the artifacts like that video tonight are really uh being recognized around the state and dr giopeta didn't do any of this work to be recognized around the state she did it to serve the community here and the same goes for those folks that joined that group but it's nice when our work is seen as a standard across the state of connecticut so thank you for representing all of us proud and doing that work to help students here i'd also like to thank the community the pto and all of the parents and community members that turned out to support the budget the margin in both towns was substantial and i think that the

070support that comes through a referendum really helps validate and define the work that everybody put into the building of a budget the transparency and commitment we made to answering the questions that came in and the mandate to go forward and do the work that we said we were going to do so thank you for everybody that supported and questioned all aspects of the budget collectively that process is a is an important one and i hope everybody help felt heard through that process um when i made my wrote my comments for tonight i said that we expected the vaccination to be available to students starting at age 12 later this week that actually has happened while our meeting started and the fda had made that approve approval tonight and although i haven't actually read anything other

071than the headlines of the twitter and news feeds that came across my phone it looks like that happened today so the clinic that we have set for friday is definite we were pretty confident when we made the link available today i can also tell you that that link filled up in two and a half hours and the 360 or 380 sessions that we had or vaccination appointments we had are now completely filled the good news is that lots of communities around us will also have access to vaccines and create their own clinics we definitely know that the torrington health department and the milford health department will both hold clinics that we won't be able to get access to so if a family didn't get in today there will be opportunities for you to get appointments

072uh the sr-3 or the american recovery program details have started to emerge mr martino and i were in a conference call this morning uh we uh began meeting to review the planning for next year and review our plans that we put in place for this school year i think that for the most part the plan that we created for this school year has been very effective and that that is really kind of the high water mark that it will be a less restrictive reopening plan next year so we have from now until probably mid july to refine our planning for next year and that will evolve based on everything that's happening around us a reminder just as we go through the end of this year that even as the state begins to reopen and this

073is going to be the challenge for school districts across the state that our standards remain higher than that of the general population and so our end-of-year activities our schools are still going to have more restrictive mitigation protocols in place than most of the state and so while families feel kind of the emergence from the pandemic outside of our schools a lot of our year end structures are still going to be informed by those more stringent mitigation strategies so i would just ask people to be conscious of that and and to work with their schools even if there is maybe some frustration that builds because we're we have more restrictions here than you might have outside and other than that i think that um we're geared up for a nice end to the school year and

074i just want to thank everybody for your support and the work that's happened to the state thank you thank you mr smith next we have board member comments anyone um i'd also like to echo the comments of heather dwyer and thank everyone who helped um get the school budget passed we really appreciate it um last year was not fun not having a referendum and the board having to do this vote ourselves so it was very nice to hear the voice of the people this year and we really appreciate the support and a special thanks to you know pto advisory and ptos who helped get the budget vote out as well as other volunteers and a particular shout out to those that even got people out to vote wearing a squid hat you know who you

075are next we have comments from citizens let's see there is one caller okay caller number one six five zero you can unmute yourself to talk so there's a caller on you have to press star six to unmute yourself and then you could talk and i forgot to add this but the board of education will recognize citizens of middlebury and south barrie berian citizens are asked to state their name their town of residence and to limit their comments to three minutes so the caller who's on can go ahead with your public comment hello my name is robin wright my son is a seventh grader at mms um first of all we'd like to thank you all and to show appreciation for all that this school has done and the region has done to support him because

076we know this has not been an easy year for anyone he did remote learning for most of the year but went back to school in march it would have been nice for the district to reach out a little bit more to the voluntary remote parents to get an assessment or a survey like they did last year on what kids needed to be more successful i know some surrounding school districts had implemented a remote liaison or peer tutors were set up because my a student pretty much shut down and was really not engaged and i tried very hard to get help but there really was excuse me wasn't any backing now and catching up and i just had a couple observations that obviously digital devices are you know the way of the future this is where

077we're heading but i thought that i had some feedback on the way that it actually is working i mean i know that we have a lot of parents on the board so i'm sure you're familiar with it too but it would seem that digital textbooks would be very helpful there isn't one place that kids can go to to reference the material they're learning it's spread out over all these different links which becomes very hard to keep track of like my kid would end up having you know 10 to 15 tabs open and every time they leave a page they lose focus also many of the teachers are using youtube as an aid and i can understand why this has been very helpful during the pandemic but it doesn't seem the most beneficial way to teach

078so while there's a lot of good content on youtube teach been able to manage previously without it my thought is if it is used the content should be copied to another location to reduce distraction because i need to know that when i see my kid on his chromebook that he's actually doing his homework and not looking at youtube or having to watch ads on it and once my son got back to school in person he said that so many kids are just playing video games during class on their chromebooks this i think is unacceptable and it's also not fair to make teachers police this it would seem that there should be some stricter filters put on the devices so that this isn't even possible the kids also get so many emails dozens of emails a

079day which is very overwhelming and i think we're expecting too much for them to know how to manage all of this it almost seems that we should be teaching them how to be organized with their technology all of this can result in a lost interest in actually learning rather than technology it's our job to keep them in an environment where they can focus on learning so i'd love to be able to speak to someone more for more than three minutes on this but i just wanted to give some of my feedback and um i'm not sure if i should be going to policy i missed right yeah yeah you got your three minutes are up okay thank you for your time thank you very much for your call um you're definitely welcome to call or

080email mr uh smith and i'm sure he can guide you to the right uh person to talk to okay thank you are there any other uh public comments mr nelson any other people i think that's it there are not at this time all right thank you next we have new business requiring board action may i have emotional motion for approval of transfer entry for april move that the board of education upon recommendation of the signing on recommendation of the finance committee approves transfer into the capital improvements for capital projects the amount 500 000 from health insurance for the middlebury elementary school parking lot all right that's heather rogers who's second john cookson who made the motion any discussion or questions on this motion no okay we can put it to vote then all those in

081favor aye aye right any nays any abstentions thank you it passes unanimously next may i have a motion for approval to apply to the commissioner of administrative services and to accept or reject a grant for the roof replacement at the mary i johnson building central office john cookson moved that the board of education resolved that the paparog regional school district 15 authorizes the board of education to apply to the commissioner of administrative services and to accept or reject a grant for the roof replacement at the mary i johnson central office second heather rogers is second john cookson made the motion um joe would you mind speaking to this really quick for the people who are not on finance or this evening everyone this allows us permits to go to the state of connecticut for school

082construction dollars roofs and building modifications for certain criteria are available your reimbursement rate is about 25 percent for central office projects for school work it's 48 uh so the roof is approximately two hundred thousand dollars based on our these are our last tests we'll try to get some new ones because pricing has changed significantly so about fifty thousand dollars worth of reimbursement from the state for construction dollars just this begins the process as we go down the journey of a building committee it's all formally dictated by the state of connecticut thank you any uh question or discussion yep go ahead steve uh so the motion wasn't upon the recommendation of finance but it i i'm gathering it was discussed in finance you mentioned that okay and then um uh maybe this is a reading ahead

083because there's a building community uh so i could you know i can ask the question we get to that motion about and i understand that may be part of the process because i normally don't remember i think we've replaced roofs before and not had us a committee in involved but um also i understand that if the roof needs to be replaced needs to be replaced um and even if we were to magically be able to you know discharge or get you know transfer ownership of that building to some other party we'd have to do it with uh you know a new roof um but i was just wondering um maybe at some point like is there um are we going to have a discussion about the future of that building like how long do we

084do we keep it is there somewhere else to house central office or some other way to do it um because the building is you know is is mostly you know probably at least what 50 percent empty so i'm just i'm just wondering about the future of that building so that you know uh we don't incur other expenses going down going down the pike um it's like could be more of a comment than a question because i know we have to replace the roof regardless of whatever happens to the building josh do you want me to address this i can answer it a little bit um so i would say just to clarify so i would say the building is not close to 50 okay so we're pretty full um as far as office space goes

085and there's uh with food services and special ed um in that building that there's a lot of space that's taken up there we do have two conference rooms that are available but as far as office space goes there's really not any empty offices as it sits today i would also say that we've explored a little bit for the cost implications of not having that building um and the reality is the rental of office space even close to the amount of squares footage there would far exceed the 200 000 that it would cost to replace the move so i think mr martino and i are trying to do that kind of cost benefit between repairs and maintenance versus selling the building and looking at something else i think the biggest piece for me is recurring costs

086and i don't at this point think it would be prudent to sign a long-term reoccurring lease for office space and our schools right now are full enough where we don't have enough space where we could relocate the amount of office space and central office into one of our schools and so you know a building that needs some repairs still doesn't create a monthly cost other than utilities where if we were to look at kind of leasing office space i think we'd get into far more in rent each year than we would pay even if you advertise the things like the roof over time and look at like annual maintenance costs for the building it's far less than leasing office space thank you very much the problem is steve where do we go where do we

087go the cost of moving from that building is enormous okay and then what we would have to do to it based on our new phone system and all of the other things that are in place uh would be a very very expensive project in order to do it and don't think we haven't looked in other areas to look for space it's it's just not out there all right it's just not out there no that's those are all fine reasons to keep the building i just we haven't really discussed it and as you know uh enrollment's going down or maybe coming back up but we you know i always like to just let's just make sure we talk about the space that we're that we keep and how we take care of it so thank you

088we have looked for buildings elsewhere around in the area but they just don't exist for the space we need and everything understood thank you any other questions or comments or discussion points no all right all those in favor any against any nays any abstentions all right it's unanimous thank you next may i have a motion for approval of the pomparo regional school district 15 building committee when we had a move that the board of education resolved that the pampered regional school district field team building committee is hereby established as the building committee with regard to the roof replacement at the mary i johnson central office all right so we have heather rogers second um joe can you explain this one a bit yes um as per state guidelines you're required to have a a building

089committee for all state projects so even though this is obviously kind of a small roofing project it doesn't matter if you're doing a small roof or constructing a brand new high school you need a building penny per state statute for reimbursement so the finance committee members will serve as that committee we'll probably have one or two very brief meetings just go over the drawings it's a pretty simple process for at least this what we're going through with the roof um but yeah this all these three motions are required to begin the process for the application all right just to add to steve's question before historically as a district when mr martino and i look back we have not repli applied for state reimbursement on our roofs so they're smaller projects and they take a little

090more um legwork and hoop jumping to make sure all the pieces are in place but whether it's 48 for a school building or 25 for a central office building we feel that it's worth the effort to get any type of reimbursement in those projects and i would appreciate i appreciate the um going through this process uh and that the fact that you're doing that and that finance is doing that um i mean it makes sense we should we should definitely do it last last state construction dollars that came in the district was when longmeadow was built yeah and we've i'm sure we've had roofs since then so that was good by all means all right any other comments or discussion all right all those in favor aye aye any nays any abstentions all right it

091passes unanimously thank you next may i have a motion for approval of pomperon regional school district 15 to authorize the preparation of schematic drawings and outline specifications for the roof replacement at the mary i johnson central office john cookson moved that the board of education resolved at the pomp rock regional school district 15 hereby authorizes at least the preservation of schematic drawings and outline specifications for the roof replacement at the mary i johnson central office heather rogers second thank you i think joe kind of explained this before any other questions this lets me go get an architect draw a big picture on really wide plans [Laughter] any questions comments discussion no all right all those in favor any nays any abstentions all right it passes unanimously thank you finally may i have a motion for

092approval of the trust agreement between webster bank and regional school district 15. john cookson moved that the board of education upon recommendation of the pension committee approved the trust agreement between webster bank and regional school district 15 as presented thank you thank you heather any yep go ahead joe this allows us to transfer our current pension system into a trust account webster bank so we can begin to transition dollars in with the new pension company this kind of intermediary account will eventually will dissolve in time uh the account and fees were bid out through our vendor um webster bank stepped up and actually were the lowest on the fee structure overall uh our shipment and goodman already reviewed the contract this is just obviously permission from old packs you open up the account all right

093any other question or discussions yep go ahead shannon i just want to make sure that it's not an issue that i'm a senior vice president at webster bank i just want to make sure it doesn't create a conflict of interest because usually i have to disclose and get information from legal if anything i'm doing on a volunteer basis um does any business with webster bank so i mean i think that from a school district standpoint you didn't have anything to do with the bid process but you can certainly abstain if there's any concern it makes it cleaner okay i will do that thank you any other questions discussion all right all those in favor aye aye any nays any abstentions nation cavallo thank you for the abstention it passes thank you everyone announcement of future

094meetings i think we heard mr cookson say earlier that the financing facilities is on uh monday may 17th at the um central office okay and our next uh policy and curriculum meeting is monday may 24th at the high school media center followed by a regular board of ed meeting i'm also at the high school media center at 7 30 where mr smith will be doing his year-end reflection then we have monday june 14th pnc is meeting at the high school media center at 6 30 and then monday june 14th will also be a regular board meeting at the high school media center at 7 30 and it's canceled the 28th so okay yep that the june 14th meeting is not canceled but the monday june 28th pnc committee meeting is cancelled and um i'm not

095ready to cancel it now but most likely the monday june 28th regular meeting will be canceled but we'll announce it next meeting after i talk to superintendent smith about it a little bit more to make sure that that's what we want may i have a motion for executive session with possible action i move that the board of education goes into executive session for the purpose of discussing the superintendent's nominee for pomparock elementary school principal and to invite superintendent smith into executive session thank you do i have a second second oh i heard heather rogers second any discussion yeah we invited superintendent smith and that's that's all we're inviting yep yep any questions discussion all those in favor all right so we are going to move into executive session everybody and we will be back