001you're good to go all right thank you very much good evening i'm going to call the meeting of the region 15 board of education from monday october 19 2020 to order maybe please i'll stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states the mission of region 15 a collaborative community committed to excellence is to educate every student to be productive ethical and engaged in a global society through proven and innovative learning experiences supported by its strong community whose decision making is based on the best interest of all students next on our agenda are our new student representatives miss zoe baltrusch and mr will ruff you guys are up go ahead uh good evening board members my name is zoe baltresh and i am in the 12th grade here in region 15.
002over the course of my schooling with this region i have always been more than grateful for the opportunities this particular region has offered me i am a starting varsity player for the school volleyball team the manager of the school hockey team the youth ambassador for unified sports vice president of the international club best buddies officer of sustainable southberry social media manager of mobilized youth and a member of the history honor society all of these activities i participate in today revolve around the points of friendship leadership and communication it has always been a goal of mine to see how these such beneficial activities flow through the process and discussions to keep the relationship between the student body and the officials open and communicative thank you okay everyone can hear me good okay good evening board members
003and attendees my name is will roth and i am a senior here at palm prague as well um it's a privilege to serve as one of the student representatives on the board which is one of the many opportunities i've been given through the region through the school um i serve as the tournament secretary of the debate team the president of the french national honor society the president of the helping hands volunteer club at pomp frog the section leader for the clarinets and oboz in the band um along on many other roles and i'm also an active member of both the mock trial club and the harvard model united nations committee i'm passionate about civil discourse and tackling contemporary issues and ideals um with individuality and open-mindedness which kind of parallel with my pursuits in law
004and trying to become a criminal defense attorney one day hopefully i strongly believe that all voices need to be heard and fairly represented which is why this position really does align with my views and values i look forward to transparent and meaningful discussions um amongst the board that reflect mine zoe's and the overall student body's thoughts opinions and ideas thank you it is a pleasure to have both of you joining us we've missed having student reps um in the midst of all of this pandemic so it's nice to see that you guys are joining us and we definitely look forward to hearing um what you have to tell us about what is going on in schools in the middle of a pandemic thank you yep any of the board members have any questions no all
005right you guys are all set normally we would let you leave the room so you can go and do your homework or studying or whatever but you can stay on the meeting you can log out whatever you'd like but we will see you again at our next meeting thank you so much thank you very much thank you next we have student recognition national merit commended students mr smith and dr jones all right we're going to try to navigate a lot of virtual stuff here tonight so in a minute i'm going to hand this over to dr jones before i do that i just want to bring up there we go our nashville barrett scholars uh very proud to introduce these students tonight to be able to recognize them and with that dr jones do you
006want to speak to the students and a little bit about what the commended student means to region 15 and how proud we are of these students good evening it's a great honor to be able to speak uh on behalf of these students i was able to meet the cohort b students today um and recognize them with a gift from the board of education and i'll meet the cohort a students in two days and do the same with those students to share with them the appreciation that our administration and the board of education as a whole has for these students but for joe emma ben avic drew and carolyn we're very proud about 1.7 million students take the psat as juniors to qualify for national merit scholarships of that 1.7 million students uh 4.25 are narrowed
007down as commended and then semi-finalists and finalists so that leaves uh these students in the top 4.25 percent of 1.7 million students across um uh this this country that take the psat for the national merit scholarships we're very proud of the work they've done um and we're excited to be able to celebrate them it's been awesome to really celebrate the class of 2021 in athletic events over the past two weeks um it's been great to see our theater program getting started it's been great to see clubs and organizations starting up and and i'm beginning to find what normal looks like in all of this and amidst all of that it's very exciting to be able to celebrate the academic success of of these six students and how well they represent paparazzi high school and how
008far we know they'll go with what they learn here thank you dr jones i echo those statements and look forward to what is to come for these students while this is a virtual celebration of what you've done i'm glad we can at least celebrate with the community your faces and your accomplishments congratulations to all the students any questions comments all right thank you uh next is president's questions the 2020-2021 board of education goals mr smith all right this should be screen sharing now hopefully you can all see my screen um we met two weeks ago to talk about um board goals i tried to capture those goals from the workshop and the conversations we'll start with these elements of effective school districts and we went through them in the workshop i think it's good to
009remind the community that these are elements that all school districts that become effective have been shown to exhibit are four theories of action with the board reviewed at the board workshop the annual cycle although maybe annual slightly delayed this year i believe the this slide here we had added uh some of the changes that the board had requested um both in the presentations that we had talked about making sure that were available to the public and provided opportunities for the board to comment and reflect on the different initiatives in the district this is a slide we can spend a little bit of time on we had talked about if we start on the 19th here we talked about adding a presentation of special education so there's a couple ways that we could do that a
010lot of them mean doubling up we could look at december 21st often oftentimes when there's a board meeting right before the winter break that's um a complicated time and the board doesn't always meet that time so i don't want to force that meeting on the board if we need it obviously we can keep that available uh so we talked about perhaps not going up uh presentation sometimes it's a lot for a board to do two presentations with this magnitude in one night um food service you've never had a presentation or at least not in recent history is my understanding we could add special education that night uh you will have snacks assuming we can be in person on the food service night so that might give you fortitude to stay later or on the january
01111th i don't foresee the audit report taking as long as it has this will be the third time now the board's seen that report we talked last time about compactness of that presentation and not going through uh some of the background uh and some of the state reporting requirements as much as we had in the past so we could put special education on that night as well um i think from my purposes i would encourage us as a board to review the special education program long before we get into the budget season um i think it's important to understand the special education program um outside of a budget cycle and so that's my kind of thoughts uh on those two nights the other piece that we added was a summary of student achievement as we
012talked this year although our traditional academic drivers may be more complicated this year we don't have certain reports and assessments that would be in there i think we talk on a regular basis of what student achievement looks like in a global pandemic both at the end of last year and as we go through this year um so dr chiapada and i feel that by uh that february 8th date that we could do kind of a mid-year check-in as to what assessments we're going to look at and some of the benchmark indicators that we're using to drive instruction so far so i'll pause there if anybody has any questions or thoughts about that cycle of presentation go ahead steve thank you uh steve ceriani here so for the special education um when dr skereda did the
013presentation as part of the budget um i mean granted there were numbers in there but um i felt like it you know you know it did explain what special education encompasses maybe you know all the different high higher level pieces how would this presentation whether the 23rd or the 11th of january how would this be deaf how do you envision this being different i think the idea of the special education overview is to talk about all of the different programs under the people personnel umbrella all of the different initiatives and while there's some overlap with what you might see at budget time i think that our people personnel department is so broad um and there's pieces of it that are fairly technical that it gets really complicated and a lot for you to digest when
014we're talking about um the difference between a 504 plan and an iep in the midst of a budget conversation or we added social workers two years ago to the district to get an update on what the social workers are doing um and how that's helped us move forward as a district outside of the night that you're speaking about specific budget impacts the social workers for example may not have a specific budget impact for next year's budget but they certainly have an impact on who we are as a district and so to hear those updates outside of again there'll probably be some overlap in budget time but it should be a refresher there's a significant number of new board members and so to have to learn all the vocabulary and terminology um the complexity of some
015special education laws in the midst of trying to adopt the budget i think it's it's a lot heather and i think also i'd mentioned i was interested in hearing too how student services has been impacted by the environment that we're in if we could include that in the presentation um let me just see if any anyone else for now yep go ahead steve so if it's given what you just talked or uh superintendent smith just said about sort of learning about it maybe the 11th would be better because it is a lot to learn and you want to have it still kind of have it in your head for maybe you know late february early march um especially if the audit is going to be shortish and food service is going to be longish but
016that'd be my two cents tom did you have a no you're all set okay all right so we'll look to put the special education on the january 11th unless anybody has some concerns with that feel free to share them with me after the meeting um and same as mrs dwyer mentioned tonight if there's specific questions that you would like answered in any of these presentations and that goes not only for board members but for for the public as well part of the main driver of this is to help us better communicate with the community at large about these different areas so if there's specific questions that people have um the point of sending this schedule out and sharing it is so that people know if there's things that they feel they want to discuss or
017share that there's a night schedule to do that uh and i think that in the end uh that we wanted to capture some of the other work that the board is doing not necessarily tied specifically to the work that happened in the board retreat um lowercase r uh retreat this year um the couple hour night that you had reflecting with uh cave on the role of the board but i think it's important to note that this year embarked upon a fairly um rigorous review of policies uh that we started a roofing study to look and assess where our buildings are and to start a five-year capital plan uh and that the pension committee's undertaken some um review of the whole structure and management process so i don't want that lost in the work that the
018board's doing but as i heard the work that you did with cave this is kind of the takeaway that i had as the focused areas for this year any other questions for josh all right next um we have approval of the minutes um may i have i think we're just going to do them all at once may have a motion to prove all three dates heather rogers does the motion to approve do i have a second all right heather dwyer seconds only because i just saw your hand late sharon sorry i couldn't find the mute button it's all good all right um any changes to the minutes as there have been presented to the board any discussion all right all those in favor hi hi hi any nays any abstentions no so they're they're oh
019did you hear something yep tom go ahead i'll abstain because i wasn't here for some of the meetings all right so we'll have tom is an abstention thank you tom all right next information and proposals board committee reports finance and facilities mr john cookson [Music] john we can't hear you we can't hear you can you put your mic on just hold on one minute we're having a little bit of technical difficulties nope do you does anyone hear him yeah right now here we go now general do you want to just do it i can't for two seconds um the financing facilities couldn't even met to review the um the september financials still reviewing our coveted expenses as being a main driver of the area of our costs from this year we also did review the
020adm which is the average daily membership for the two towns uh there was a shift of about 0.73 of a percent of the population back to south bury solida that'll help us set the budget to the two towns once we do adopt our budget in april and may our next meeting is november 11th thank you very much mr martino and john sorry that your mic is a little messed up any questions for john all right thank you uh next we have policy and curriculum mr steve ceriani thank you madam chair uh pnc met a month ago and we had a presentation by mr vincent marstoro of cabe regarding the review of all the region 15 board policies and how we would go about tackling that and then we began that work tonight at pnc just
021before this parent board meeting and the work will continue thank you thank you very much um next we have pto advisory ms heather dwyer hello pto advisory meant on october 1st um we had discussed with the superintendent calendar changes um the remote present status that students can report under chromebooks sports um and also amongst the ptos how to maintain nonprofit status and also confirmed the new treasurer amy reifsky that was it the advisory will meet again on november 5th great thank you very much and next we have the superintendent's report mr josh smith you start by saying um i'm thrilled that we have our student representatives joining us tonight that uh there's even at the board meeting there's a return to the school year and a little more i'd also like to say that i'm
022thrilled that instruction is happening in our classrooms and that our doors have been open to students uh both real uh and virtually uh since uh september 1st and i can't tell you how appreciative we are of the community the students the staff that all are part of this process that we continue to move forward and create a sense of normalcy in a very complicated time i know that i sound a little bit like a broken record but i can't say enough that everybody should be prepared for whatever circumstances may arise i think that our state and our nation are seeing cases uh on the rise i think that as a district i'm so happy that we got in september first and then we've had um you know approaching two months of education happening here in
023this community and it is because everybody's worked so hard and we're so thrilled to be able to have this i would encourage students who are not feeling well stay home and that it's our collective diligence that allows our groups to be open uh we've watched time and time again as these complexities of student and family and school relationships interact with each other and the better we take care of each other the better we can keep this experience of school as normal as possible you heard dr jones tonight talk a little bit about the high school level some of the other things that are starting to happen that should happen part of the student experience but that diligence applies in all areas of our schools um dr shiretto mr martino dr piapeta myself have been working
024with all of our schools to do contact tracing tabletop exercises while we can't predict every nuance and every situation of may fall upon us in the near future or hopefully very distant future i want board and the public to know that we've practiced and rehearsed the potential scenarios so that we're better prepared i think that there's an importance and an urgency in letting families know and our staff and our students know that should we have a positive case in our school community that we're able to respond to it in a rapid fashion um and then i don't know if there's you know 15 people online or 5 000 that may be watching us tonight but we search every day for some storage facilities to free up some of our gyms that are storing furniture right
025now as we moved furniture to make space in our schools as the weather gets cold if we want to bring students inside for mass breaks that real estate becomes far more important to us so if there's anybody watching out there that may have an opportunity for us to store some cafeteria tables and other desks please feel free to reach out to me and we'll be happy to talk to you and you know go to school thank you all thank you very much mr smith um next we have board member comments anyone steve go ahead marion oh hold on a second richard we got steve first and then you'll be up next um marion i have a comment about the uh uh you might can hear me yeah i could hear you but richard is going
026no i'll be quiet so sorry go ahead go ahead richard okay mary and i had a comment about the student palace the policy dress code now i am in favor favorable dress code this especially when it comes to safety but however i'm reading this over and i find that's going to be very difficult to enforce in school because there's going to be different interpretations by either the staff the parents or the students the second concern i have is there's no state department of education guidelines or state laws regarding student dress codes and therefore we might be open to legal action those are the only comments i have on that great thank you richard i think another time to bring up these um you know comments would be at a discussion point when we're um we
027have a motion to approve that policy we're gonna have a discussion about it so you could definitely bring that up again or that point could be addressed is that okay you know i ca i can't comment i mean i'm not against through the dress code i just don't i don't like the way it's written because i feel there's too many it's too difficult to enforce i know as a retired teacher that they we had dress codes and everybody looks at them differently and they're very difficult to enforce in a school situation the only thing you could really enforce is the safety part of it in other words you can't have loose clothing in a let's say in the shop so it gets caught in machines but anything else be surprised that it becomes iffy and
028that's why you only comment thank you richard yeah all right go ahead steve i just wanted to thank the superintendent and the principals for the board tours and uh just that i think we had a comment last board meeting about um the cafeteria at the at rms um and just that uh you know when we were in there um i felt like it was very appropriately distanced certainly and you know conformed to the distancing we're doing everywhere else so um why thank the caller who reported that last time um you know in my own personal opinion i feel like we were meeting you know we're meeting the the distancing needs and the cafeteria thank you any other board member comments just seeing anyone else no um i just had two comments that i wanted to
029make um i echo steve's appreciation for the board of education tours board members were allowed to go in tours i went on two tours on september 22nd and there were small groups of board members that were allowed to go in the schools with mr martino and mr smith and we got to see the elementary schools and the middle schools we saw the high school at a previous meeting and i know it's not the most most fun thing to have board members walking around in the schools but it was a very impactful day for me it helped me i think become a better board member because i have a better understanding of all the changes that have been happening in our schools and there are so many changes and it was just very obvious to see
030all the herculean efforts that have been undertaken to get our schools opened um that you know they say a picture that has a thousand words well a tour has ten hundred thousand words i would say and i just i learned so much and i appreciate how the board was welcomed in the schools i know it was not easy having us there because things are not normal and it's not our normal every day that's going on it's a very new fragile route with tension but i developed such an appreciation for all the actions that have been undertaken to get our schools up and running and continuously running every day and and it's not over it's an ongoing process you know walking around you know you see the tents that have been rented to get kids outside
031and we know winter's coming so we're gonna have to make adjustments for that so it just helped me understand our school so much better i feel i'm better prepared to handle conversations about the budget um and i also want to say it was just amazing to see the kids just acting like normal kids and learning in class with masks on i was so nervous about that but they seemed completely not phased and it was wonderful to see education happening and to see teachers with kids in the class and friends on the computer and trying to do it all at once it just gave me a great appreciation for everything that's been going on so thank you so much for allowing the board to come into the schools and welcoming us it means a lot my
032second comment has to do with the global citizenship committee which is now known as the equity and inclusion council so um and i know dr chiappetta will be doing a presentation later in the year about it but um i just wanted to update the board um that the equity and inclusion council it's going to take me a little while to get used to it met on october 7th and we are in the process of evaluating goals um for the future we've been um active now for over three years and as part of that process um dr chiappetta went over what's happened in our schools over the last three years and i was just very impressed and i wanted to share with the board some of those things it's not an all-inclusive list but um just
033that the board and the public has an understanding of what the equity and inclusion council has been doing and this information i got from um our website hold it up here i printed this out from our website um it's all that all information is up there um and we're working on inclusivity which includes race ethnicity religion gender sexual orientation age size socionomic status ability language etc so it's a very hard working group and they've made progress on new high school courses on equity and inclusion they've done middle school and high school presentations and assemblies adl ally training restorative practices school-based character initiatives um meetings with libraries historical societies chambers of commerce there's been new guidance curriculum there have been high school semester projects uh there's been conversations at quinnipiac university there's been new club meetings
034at the high school on lgbtq plus and students of color which i think is a wonderful thing that we're providing space to for our students feel safe there's been numerous workshops attended by region 15 staff including nccj anti-bias workshops responding to hate and bias dismantling racism best practice in social just justice workshops on human rights culturally responsive teaching building holocaust instructional materials there's been professional development on delivery of new content related to differences there's been ruler training there's been harvard classes on race equity and leadership in schools and we have a new teacher in residence that was approved by this board in our last budget cycle we've been revising curriculum and ela and social studies and there's been revisions of english books to include diverse characters authors and situations um i was and this i
035could have kept on going there's more stuff that was done this is the stuff that struck out for me um and i just want to thank dr guppetta mr smith and everyone in region 15 that's been working so hard on these initiatives um it has this to show for it i'm so proud to stand behind you and all the work that you guys have done um and one of our meetings over the summer um our one of our high school teachers mike zerodiac said a quote that really struck with me and that was we have to crawl to judgment and sprint to understanding and that kind of mentality has really been what i think is a really good goal for us on moving forward we're you know we're crawling towards judgment but we're trying our
036best to understand everything and that's definitely what's been happening and it's just overwhelming the amount of work that's been done so thank you so much very proud of it and i'm very appreciative of everything that you're doing so thank you that was a long comment sorry hello to say anyone else all right next we have comments from citizens the board of education will recognize 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 and mr nelson i don't see anyone that's called into the meeting am i miss missing anything no you are correct there is no one called in right now all right thank you all right next we're going to move to new business requiring board action i have
037a motion for approval of policy one two five one a visits to school uh move that the board of education upon recommendation by the policy and curriculum committee approved policy 1251 a visitors to schools as presented do you have a second [Music] second right steve ceriani seconds any discussion questions i'm in at home all right [Music] i think we should do roll call um so steve ceriani yes heather dwyer yes tom marks yes john cookson heather rogers sharon attic sharon attic yes sharon shannon cavallo yes uh and marion manzo i am a yes so that passes okay did you get richard oh richard i'm so sorry richard richard what's your vote yes thank you i apologize you're gonna be first next time all right so the policy passes thank you um next may i have
038a motion for approval policy 5132 student dress move that the board of education upon recommendation by the policy and curriculum committee approved policy 5132 student dress as presented so i can see here thank you any discussion or questions so i would just uh madam chair so in regards to mr spierdo's comments uh so the policy has been around for um [Music] a long time in its current form and we're really only adding a few words to it uh regarding the swastika and the confederate flag so um i think in terms of if the policy is difficult to enforce or should be changed that could be something that pnc um can look into uh it may pay for us to wait until we get to this policy as part of um the cave review and i
039did pull up the policy cape's policy is actually quite different so be curious to see what cape has to say about this but um in the meantime though we are just amending it um not as a deep dive but just to add the the uh the flag and the confederate flag and the swastika thank you well steve why don't you just table it for now uh because i believe uh we would like to at least get the swastika and the confederate flag on there and then um it's not really altering the policy all that much and then we can come back to it for like a significant review as part of the cape process because the policy is still there like i mean whether it's an effective policy or not isn't i mean that policy
040is there presently so i mean that's that's what we have to work with right now okay any other comments or questions i would like to thank pnc um and the administration for putting forth uh this policy um you know basically saying that a confederate flag and the swastika have no home here in region 15. so thank you i think this is a a good policy change and i welcome it any other comments or no all right we'll go to a vote on that i'll do a roll call uh richard spirito i can't vote for for the reason stated no so no for the reasons stated thank you steve siriani yes heather dwyer yes tom marks yes john cookson yes heather rogers yes sharon attic yes shannon cavallo yes and myself i am an i so
041it passes thank you very much uh next may i have a motion for approval of policy 4118.237 a four two one eight point two three seven and five one four eight point eight face masks and coverings it sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is um move that the board of education upon recommendation by the policy and curriculum committee approve policy 4118.237 a 4218.237.5141.8 face masks coverings as presented [Music] all right second by steve any discussion or questions on this motion all right we'll put it to vote then richard spirito yes steve ciriani heather dwyer yes tom marks yes john cookson heather rogers yes sharon attic yes shannon cavallo yes and myself i am a yes as well so it passes thank you very much next announcement of future meetings there's a meeting monday
042november 9th of the policy and curriculum committee meeting at the pomparock high school media center at 6 30. also on november 9th is our regular board of ed meeting at the high school at 7 30. we will be doing a presentation on the enrollment of our schools we also have a meeting on november 23rd of the policy and curriculum at pump rug high school media center at 6 30 in november 23rd our regular meeting of the board of education at the high school media center at 7 30 talking about the food service presentation possibly special education um next may i have a motion for executive session for the purpose of discussion of superintendent smith's goals for 2021 school year and to invite oh no well someone's got to read the promotion as it's written move
043that the board of education move into executive session for the purpose of discussion regarding superintendent smith's goals for the 2021 school year and to invite mr smith into the meeting is that second by heather rogers any discussion or questions all those in favor aye aye all right it is unanimous