June 22, 2020 Board of Education Meeting

001I'm gonna call this a meeting of the region 15 Board of Education to order from Monday June 22nd may we please get in for the Pledge of Allegiance for which it stands we're in this conference there now be recorded thank you um 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 a strong community whose decision making is based on the best interest of all students um we're gonna start with our presentations and update on school reopening mr. Smith thank you - if you're in the room we apply it for new year speakers and I just need to give myself like why are you scream [Music] checking the audio on this

002livestream Oh [Music] this computer is also you to Joe Marty all right so tonight tonight I'm going to take you through a little bit of where we are hopefully I'll give you some indication of what we're talking about where we're going excuse me Josh over the next okay so three three main areas that we're looking at for the Fall first is health and safety we'll talk a little bit about the PPE equipment that we're looking at and purchasing we talked about protocols I'm not going to get into our protocols tonight but that's part of what we're doing for the planning some of that is really driven by our extended school year or summer program a lot of the protocols we're putting in place for that will carry into the fall the local health director and

003medical advisor are part of that process as is the planning team curriculum and instruction I'll talk more in detail about this but the things that we're looking at space intervention training and then transportation and logistics tomorrow we should release a survey to parents and students in grade 6 to 12 the questions in that survey will speak about the experience is this spring what worked what didn't work more of what less of others and then some of the questions will also be about what school looks like in the fall and for example transportation we think is going to be an issue so what percentage of families would be willing to drive their own children to school are you able to do that or you're not able to do that nothing's binding but and situations will evolve

004but at least to give us an idea of what percentage of parents might be able to do that curriculum and instruction in our planning along still getting feedback I for those watching at home I adjusted the speaker volume please let me know if you still reading feedback so we're looking at some software that I'll go over in a slide or two that software will allow us to better individualize instruction we need to be able to differentiate from where students are at and some of the software that we're looking at will allow us to function better in a remote environment some of the software is the same software we're using now but vendors have made that software available at no cost this spring however that's that a long term solution and most of those vendors are

005going to switch to a fee based model in the fall so we need the budget for that training we're front-loading right now as much of the mandated training so you're blood-borne pathogens the anything with OSHA anything that teachers have to do or other staff have to do that we confront low now they were doing that over the spring through that Safe Schools platform that we have it's a web-based tutorial where we can assign modules for teachers and staff to learn through they do that at anytime remotely and what that will do is that when we do open school we can reprioritize the time that we have with people to review safety protocols some of those safety protocols we may be able to distribute through the safe schools platform and then when teachers get back we

006can do a lot more training in Google classroom and online learning or whatever other things face us as we get to the fall and we'll have got through most of the kind of mandated training when we look at curriculum planning we currently have about 71 teachers scheduled to be involved in some type of curriculum writing over the summer some of that will be for new courses that were approved by the board as in any other year Ries ought to write that curriculum some of that is part of the annual review process where we go back and look at how that curriculum was taught what needs to be evolved what needs to be changed assessments that might be a part of that right now we're looking at some of those learning objectives that are normal let's

007say for fourth grade what can we take out of that so that we can fit more things in we're not going to go back and reteach everything that was missed this spring but we can reprioritize what things do students know what are they going to get taught again that we can maybe create some space for and then over the course of the summer we have teams of educators that are going to look at where that curriculum ended on what units were taught different units different grade levels different amounts of space were either not taught or we don't feel that students got really the depth of learning so that's up we're gonna adjust and then we're looking at the calendar we may adjust the accountant next year and that means a lot of different things it

008could mean that we have an extended winter break because there's a reoccurrence that comes it might mean that we front-load a couple of additional professional learning days for staff the calendar adjustment will depend on whether a state provides flexibility to the hundred and eighty days of school we can't extend school year for whether that's contractual obligations or bussing costs it's very cost prohibitive for us to add dates next year so if the state allows for leniency on that 180 and there's no longer mandated then we can adjust student days and I don't I can't see people so dr. Chiappetta if you want to weigh in on any of this I know that you can speak to some of the curriculum when we get to a couple of slides after this but I can't see you

009so text or wave or ping somebody jump in so these are the distance learning tools in tonight's on tonight's agenda you'll see a transfer for about ninety five thousand dollars that will cover the cost of these software tools so epic is an online book tool so when students are home we can still distribute books to them Raz kids symphonie math and dreambox I need to put them in order are all student tools for either direct instruction or reinforcement the SmartMusic is a tool that allows and we can use all of these tools in either an in-person environment or a remote environment SmartMusic is actually a tool that allows it listens to students playing instruments and it will give you feedback on how you're doing Lexia is an online reading program that students can read and

010get feedback on tsums an interesting one we're going to transfer the money it's night hopefully to put money aside to purchase soon but we're going to hold off a little bit there's a couple of other products that are being developed that might allow us some of the same tools some of them like Google classroom for example some of their early release notes or that the features in zoom may be available through Google classroom and in purchasing the enterprise version of that you actually get some additional tools not just video conferencing and then that twelve thousand is about where we'd be for the inner version of Google classroom and so that total cost is about $95,000 that's going to come from other accounts outlined in the transfer there's $100,000 there for Chromebooks we handed out about

011a thousand Chromebooks some of those chrome boats were end-of-life some of them are gonna come back damaged some of them need to be replaced so Chromebooks are approximately three hundred dollars apiece so that'll get us about a third of the Chromebooks that we handed out again some of them back well and we did have some in the budget for next year in addition to these some other costs so cleaning supplies we're estimating an additional one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in cleaning supplies some of those are short term you know disposable kinds of things and some of those are new equipment that we'll have for a longer term the cost of masks this is a big conversation right now I don't know that these are real costs okay so there's a lot of question

012about what the rules around student masks will be right now who will pay for them how much of that burden will fall on school districts how much that will be subsidized by the state how much of that will be subsidized by the federal government how many of our students will bring their own masks and we'll provide like a backup mask that's part of the question that we'll ask in the survey additional custodian hours some of that was back in March we're doing cleaning and some of that is for what we anticipate going into the fall now all of those come with that asterisk in that we do believe that some of that will be reimbursable through FEMA at this point though none of those FEMA grants are clear as to what the reimbursement is going

013to be and we have to expend the other grant opportunities available to these municipalities so these are broad estimates that over the next two to five weeks we're going to get a lot more clarity on I don't if you want to add anything for that Joe yeah I would reach the dress thanks a lot no drinking a lot of questions on it's gonna be what's gonna qualify and what's not so I mean ask some some of the easy stuff hand sanitizer those things will be easy some other thing curriculum so we had about 600 students participate in the pilot assessment that we ran this spring actually tomorrow dr. Chiappetta and I have a conference call with nwea to begin looking at some of those results this week later this week there'll be some training and

014analysis of those results by the rest of the staff that will be working through the summer and those again aren't specific to any individual child that's really broad we did have a pretty good representative sample in students in grades 2 through 9 and those assessment results will be used to look at broad-brush in grade 6 language arts for example what content standards that we feel students really mastered and even as we go into seventh grade maybe there's some content standards for seventh grade that our current our incoming seventh grade students have already demonstrated mastery in and those would be standards that just the amount of time we spend in seventh grade teaching them and use that time to redress things from 6th grade that weren't totally mastered for certain grades especially elementally mentary language arts

015we've already had a consultant in working with some of the staff at towards the end of the school year and so when they were in grade level teams or department meetings they've already started looking at the end of your units and what content standards they feel were addressed enough in the remote learning environment and what kinds of things can be taken out of next year okay can I jump in for a second Josh um so our consultant also worked with two instructional modeling there's a wide range of what schools gonna look like in the fall we expect state guidance somewhere between last Friday and two Fridays from now I think you're gonna see a mix of what is on this list so the governor said multiple times schools opening in the fall the soundbite stops

016there and no one talks about what that means I do think again we're gonna get guidance in the in the short term some of it's going to be some version of traditional in-person education again what grades how many students are you going to the school that you went to last year or are you going to be a classroom that goes to another school all of those are plausible right now but it's clear that especially elementary age students need to have as much face time as safely possible in our schools with teachers and direct instruction on virtual education we'll probably be some component of next year will that be the primary delivery will it be the primary delivery for all students will it be high school students will it be middle school students will it be

017some days a week will be all of those are good questions to ask and I would say no one knows for sure yet what that continuum is going to look like and I would continue to remind people of what I'm calling the the barbershop scenario where a day or two before we're ready to open some piece of information could influence that plan and force us down a different path and delay we could open school more traditionally in September but in October or November have to flip back to a virtual environment so all of these plans are degrees of fluidity and we need to be able to move back and forth between them the staggered schedule piece some countries are going to school for two weeks and then taking two weeks off this way there's an

018incubation period and a period where symptoms would show and they could test whether it's be you know we alternate weeks two weeks the half-day schedule the modeling around number three here is probably the most the most complicated and maybe the least likely but it's still possible um and then you have this this eclectic design where basically different students followed some version of this if your student that may meet need more intervention or need specific services you may end up in school more often than students that may not you know and then we listed some groups there there are certain classes that we can't teach online so if you're a ceramic student maybe you come in for some of those lessons in other classes are taught in a virtual format so some version of these four

019is most likely to evolve out of this on and it's probably most likely that some version of this will exist for different students if you're a immunocompromised student you may have a much more virtual education available to you than a student that may not be then maybe true staff as well some our curriculum writing so this our curriculum writing is what was planned during the budget cycle and this is what we're going to continue to move forward with all of this curriculum work again were you have a short-term pandemic that we're working through but all this curriculum work long term still has to happen and some of these courses are new courses and we need to be able to have curriculum for them because students are registered to take I'll pause that you want to

020weigh in on that dr. Chiappetta can you hear me can you I don't think you can hear me so Kerry this is Sharon I can hear you but I don't know if the room can hear you oh okay because I was I didn't know who's just me I don't think the room could hear you this is Jennifer okay so I'm gonna text Josh the room can't we can't we get her oh you can now okay um so I wanted to see something a couple slides back but I guess I couldn't get through so um we've actually been looking at our curriculum um since the spring on what that would look like for next year so we've had our consultant for English language arts from grades K all the way through eighth looking at what next

021year could look like based on what we were able to to teach this school year and so teachers actually worked virtually with our consultant and has then they put a plan together on what the beginning of next year will look like based on our curriculum and so really it's what we're going to spend more time on what we're going to spend less time on based on what we were able to cover this spring in addition for secondary um the department chairs have been working with the different academic areas to keep a list of content that they were able to cover completely content that they were able to click cover partly and things that maybe were not the the major standards for that grade level for that content area that um we didn't have to spend

022that much time on so we've been keeping track of that as we've been going as we have been going through the spring the curriculum writing that's listed here like Josh said is actually all of the curriculum writing that we planned before cope in nineteen it so you'll see there are some revisions there's there are some new courses your revisions that we do are usually courses that we've taught for a year or two that we then find we need to go back and either redo a unit or two or you know or add in some different activities or some assessments one thing that we're really excited about for the math and the math department is looking at middle school math and algebra and coming up with some common assessments district-wide so on we'll have some teachers

023this summer that actually virtually do a professional development on what makes a good assessment and they're gonna start writing some confidence estimates this summer for middle school and an algebra one so we're really actually excited about that so I think the next few slides are also curriculum that's occurred curriculum revisions are writing that are occurring this summer and so one thing that you may see is grade one hell so you may remember that we started this past school year health in kindergarten in first grade and we had the same curriculum for both of those grades so now that we're we're gonna be continuing that what we need to do is to develop the grade one health so it's different than the kindergarten we're also developing an adaptive PE course for middle school so you'll see

024that listed there also world language you'll see a couple new courses that the board approved so thank you for that we're going to be developing those and for developmental guidance we started this work last summer um in elementary school revising developmental guidance to include the social justice standards so we're going to be continuing that work for elementary this summer you probably want me to start talking now right yeah all right so now we can talk about the transportation and logistics so these are again models that are modeling that's being done number of students on a bus that will have a massive impact how many students are able to transport to and from school each day which then will tell us how many tiers we have to create maybe how long the school day would be

025if we had to build in more bus routes back and forth one of things we're looking at is altering our routes so one model and what some states and countries are doing or keeping students in a cohort based so instead of having a school bus route based on the street you lived on you may have a school bus route based on the grade that you're in or the school that you go to so it's possible that like Longmeadow second grade alright two buses and then we'd know that if there was any outbreak that those second graders would be together and we'd be easier to do the contact tracing again a possibility that we're pursuing but I don't know that any of these are actually going to come so most of the the planning review kind

026of comes in a here are some general broad ideas here's kind of the steps we would go to make these more specific and then as time plays out we spend more energy firming up those plans some things like our cleaning protocols are going to be similar no matter what happens again if we pay a number of students in the class pretty classy me use depending on what schools are used for which grades those things are going to be altered slightly but certain things are going to happen no matter what so for example installing hand sanitizing devices on our buses is going to happen no matter what the model looks like putting more hand sanitation stations in our schools is going to happen switching out water fountains with water bottle fillers is going to happen regardless

027of what school looks like we had the fortune of others misfortune in another school district lost their bus contract and had been well two-year old buses in their Lots because mr. Martino and I have been very vocal about the age of our buses and the are our bus contractor has moved all of those buses to us so all of our fleet will be upgraded to 2017 or newer so I want to turn my camera on because I want to I want to be able to see mr. spiro when I tell you that the advantage is that the property tax on the new buses will be double or maybe a slightly less than double of what our 1969 buses and that's an estimate but our older buses as the values more so the those are registered

028in Middlebury so there will be some additional tax revenue in Middlebury for us getting those new buses and then driver training we're going to have new driver training depending on our regardless of what we open we're going to have drivers that have to pay more attention to cleaning protocols and maybe have some other pieces that they're going to have to include whether it's safety recognition currently I don't think we're going to put any type of medical onus on bus drivers there have a lot of responsibilities but they may have a monitor on the bus there may be other pieces with that staggered arrival departure as I mentioned before with the parent survey we may have more parents driving students or picking students up they may go to a different entrance than our school buses drop

029students off at so there's some logistics on how our bus routes and our parent pick-up and drop-off run at each of the schools and each school is a little new on some of that looks like and then we may have staggered drop-off into parts of time so it may mean that first grade starts at one time and 20 minutes later second grade starts and 20 minutes later third grade starts to try to stagger the amount of students that are being dropped off at building food service is another whole kind of rabbit hole to go down there's a possibility that we will not be serving lunches in our cafeterias next year so if that's true can we use those spaces for instructional space and then reduce the number of students in a classroom in order to

030do that I need more instructors and we'll probably need some support from Hartford on teacher certification or you know kind of the allowable certifications to be with students we may have to adjust our food service staff because if we're doing box lunches and they're being served in the classroom we won't have hot food in the cafeteria so we may not need maybe we may need fewer staff we may also put all of our staff in one building and have kind of a centralized more efficient production setup where we're pushing out box lunches across the district from a centralized location reduce the need of storage and ordering and staffing of the buildings there may be altered schedules staff may be coming in chips morning or afternoon they may stay later and prepare food from the next

031day we may serve again maybe their stations throughout the school where students can get lunches all those things or kind of scenarios that are being explored right now some of that logistics type to school lunches again student drop-off and pickup that may include some type of school lunch program it may not it may just be altered school schedules traffic flow patterns within the building so if you're some grocery stores that you're in or other stores have certain aisles that flow one way that could happen in our schools where there may only be one way traffic in certain hallways we're in the process of replacing all of our water fountains with bottled water bottle filling stations where students could bring their own water bottles and fill them up during the school day we do believe that

032that will qualify for some FEMA reimbursement again not verified yet but we do believe that that will qualify we're modeling some classroom structures what does it mean if we reduce the number of desks what does it mean if we put ten students or twelve students or fourteen students in the classroom what does it mean if we turn the cafeteria or parts of the library or parts of the gym into classroom space what does it mean if students aren't going to share material like what does art look like what does music look like what are the PE what are those classes look like if students we have to either minimize or eliminate any shared kind of student supplies cleaning again back in January we were increasing our cleaning protocols based on flu season so what of

033that can we hold on to what if that needs to evolve they kept another slide actually health and safety so one of the positives there's a lot of positives of having a student program in the summer and I would say that our special education departments work really hard to bring the plan together that's going to allow students to come into school the secondary advantage primarily being we get to bring students in this are um but we also get to put into practice some of the protocols that will stay with us and so a lot of the work that's going in and collaborating with our school nursing director our local health director and our school medical advisor is looking at the same types of protocols that will stay when school opens in September we're currently ordering

034and acquiring as much PPE equipment as we can some of the is easy to get somebody has a long lead time we don't want to be in September and not have things on-site training I mentioned a little bit before there's some training in PPE and health and safety and wellness that's happening remotely and we'll be doing more of that as the school year starts I know that the special education staff went through on the first part of their training for summer last week and so the feedback we get from that as we roll that out will then inform how we make adjustments going forward there's a lot of different types of cleaning that we're looking at so the term deep cleaning I'm not a huge fan of because it implies that we aren't doing a

035deep cleaning many times but what does it look like during school hours what does it look like in case there's a positive situation either an employee or a student is tested positive how do we clean separate isolate what's the difference in their daily cleaning and nightly cleaning how's our custodial staff structured and then the social distancing piece some signs are being ordered do we need to put markings in the hallways I know again if you're out in public and you see like at the cash registers there's markings of six feet we're in the schools and we have to put those things what's starting to happen is it looks like certain places certain countries masks usage is may be dependent on the amount of space available and it's required in places where there's not a lot

036of space and so how do we show students that this is a mask zone this is not a mask zone those kinds of pieces so how are we working through this so right now I have scheduled meetings for several days per week and as we get more definition on the plans those groups will come together for more and more periods of time to work on specific so you might be part of the transportation group you might be part of a curriculum group you may be part of a PPE group where you'll you might health and wellness where you come together and work on a specific component of the plan again that survey is going to go out tomorrow we expect state guidance in the next couple of weeks I think that the nurses the health

037directors the director of pupil personnel have met multiple times with each other and will continue to meet we have the director of guidance and pupil services the school psychologist again there's a huge social emotional component to this there's anxiety and students and staff that we're anticipating there's what happens now what happens right before school starts what happens once we get here so they're working out different scenarios protocols and supports for those I'm starting this week I'll do a biweekly office hour with staff where they can ask questions I'll update them on parts of this plan as it rolls forward and there's a ridiculous amount of variables that we don't know and so all of these plans are fluid subject to change and talked about every single day with that I can take some questions all

038right so John Cookson has a question so they could turn your mic on at one question yeah you see that bread dipped out there yeah yeah I know just one question where you you know where the state on transportation just that we have to have a seat these two can Adam bus is that gonna be eliminated I think like you saw this spring they'll be I think this seems like a wide range of flexibility and while we may need to have a seat I think things like attendance rules may be relaxed again it's all speculative right now but I think you'll see some of that flexibility provided anyone else in here yep go ahead Steve this is Steve sorry I'm sorry about that that's a couple things and you may already be thinking this but

039please don't hesitate to think about coordinating volunteers maybe through you know the PT OS or some other district-wide mechanism I know and you've mentioned that there's laws or restrictions right that prevent just a regular volunteer from you know doing certain things in the classroom but you know if you need volunteers to maybe help distribute the lunches because you've made them in a centralized place so you need people to show up every day for an hour to like run them down the halls or people to take temperatures or something and record a number or a direct traffic or however I think you might find a lot of community support for committing to times to meet you know to help out if you can't I know you can't always depend on that in a plan but you

040know you you know you don't know I'm also wondering about the list you had up there you know you go back to the other list of all the plans sorry the tools that the could be like Lex called ring marks or something that what of any of those were free this year I'm just curious I know a lot of them were free and one of the reasons we didn't jump to a particular tool right away was because you want to get locked into something I mean but we can't afford later so my question is really just I'm just curious which ones we're free that are now not that's really all I'm asking well I can answer some of that the short answer is all of these that were free okay what of the 71 I

041think I saw 71 teachers and and and we we had a thorough overview of what was written in terms of courses new courses or things that were cycled to be adjusted with curriculum and also writing assessments and the new tool and you know how do you teach fourth grade and knowing that you missed some a third grade I guess I have a question about how if there's any virtual component I mean to me that means your education that you're sitting at home and there's you have your Chromebook you have these tools are you going and you mentioned extra PE days how are you gonna improve how teachers can deliver the curriculum because I you know they can do it better and maybe I'll start and then you keep at it please feel free to you

042hear us here I can hear you can you hear me okay if I tried to talk before and it didn't work it's probably a boy so one of us is historically used so Google classrooms are primary constructions delivery experience in the past we don't have standard protocols or have instructions so these teachers develop process things in how they had some things how they communicate thinking and it wasn't a big deal because the teachers were able to show the students in class like tonight your homeworks here let's talk about it and this is how I want to turn it in in a virtual environment I got a massively complex especially if parents had multiple students grades medical schools just figuring out where your student was and how that course was structured it was really complicated and

043so when we talk about professional development at the beginning of the year one of the things that we can do is say all second grade is going to structure their Google classroom the same way as a district we're going to collect assignments this way we're going to assign things this way there's tools in there even with how we assign things where communication messages are pushed to parents not all of those were turned on in the beginning and not all teachers had a common understanding and a lot of times those questions weren't even necessarily embedded into the professional development we're doing because we allow the autonomy for each teacher we've developed their own process and again in a hybrid environment where that students in your classroom or predominantly in your classroom and Google is a supplement

044to your classroom that we can allow that autonomy however when Google is the primary course delivery tool we can't allow that autonomy we have to be standardized so I would say like even if you take all of the curriculum actual learning out and you just talk about how we structure tools for learning that those were big roadblocks for families and create a whole lot of frustration that we can fix I think then you get into kind of the arc that at least we saw from more of a signing work to instruction and when you provide instruction that happened over the course between the March 13th and June 15th or 12th there was an arc of teacher capability of what's the good balance between video you don't want a 45-minute video for students to watch on

045a regular basis maybe there's something that they need to do on but even then there should be breaks and questions that students respond to as opposed to just watching a 45-minute lesson and so I think those are the kinds of instructional practices that we're going to speak to and what translates to a digital environment and what does and then within those tools that I showed before some of those are direct instructional tools but they need to be supplemented by teacher-led instruction if you want to weigh in there thank you better I would just say you know one of the positive things that we have on our site this time is time um if you remember you know it was Thursday the 12th where we found out you know the next day we were not going

046to be in school so people kind of had to figure out how to do things you know on the fly I think with this and the preparation that we have we can make sure that the Google classrooms are set up in a similar way we can make sure that we're posting things all in the same place um we we we've had time to and we have the time to actually be more prepared than we were this time around and the teachers did a wonderful job this time you know trying to figure things out and working together and posting you know everything that they can post so I think one of the great things is having is knowing that this could be a possibility and that it has to be fluid going back and forth from

047in person to you know to online teaching and that week and then work together to make sure that we put things in a consistent way so that both students parents and the teachers find this to be easier once once we have to go back into a virtual environment hi this is Sharon we can't hear you Steve now if I'm you you should be able to hear me so I appreciate that when you had to slide up with who was gonna be in doing doing what over the summer in certainly administrators nurses dr. Scott I like people that I would expect that work through the summer teachers I believe right I mean school has ended they are home they are under no obligation to come in for PPE until that first day of school so if

048we talk about who's you know people that are working on saying this is how we're gonna set up Google classroom and make sure all the teachers know it like this is that who's doing that and then this I could pushed out in those first few days of schools so we do have some teachers that have like I tiel's are instructional leaders interventionists they usually do some work over the summer anyway and we'll have asked ITSs ten days so they may provide some of that now again some of those days we're going to need during the school year so we don't want to exhaust them all but some of that work our groups are much more comfortable working remotely now so you know they don't have to come in for a whole day and they can

049just spend parts of the day I don't know something else in that question all night so interventionists or their reading specialists may provide some of that work as well and then I do think as the school year starts again we're going to need help from Harford to take some of the state mandates back but if they're if they do that you know I can't add an additional day to the teacher's contract without paying for it which it's cost prohibitive but if we can readjust some of the professional development that happens later in the year and front though that in the beginning even things like are normal a lot of our especially our elementary teachers like to come in and do some prep work for classrooms over the summer that may not be possible this year

050so we're going to provide space for them we also feel that the for staff to come into our buildings then we they need to be some training on safety protocols so normally if you're a third grade teacher like August 2nd you like to come into the classroom you might have to say no one's allowed in until August 13 and on August 12 you have to go through one of these mandatory training before you're allowed to come in so that's the kind of structures that were working on now what we're looking to do it within the teachers contract or the availability of teachers time we also have many teachers that are saying whatever you need like please check with us we happy to weigh in and be part of the solution as opposed to not being

051a part of it and showing up and finding that you know especially the teachers were maybe more nuanced our teachers for example library media specialists want to be included in that planning so that their voice is heard in the plan and that's part of that every other week kind of video office hour that I'm going to offer the staff so that any concerns they have we can make sure we hear them as soon as possible that works I just unplugged it was that working okay so the question I wanted to ask that was was about cohort a cohort and I just I think from the health and safety perspective a lot of that makes sense from a logistics perspective that sounds like a lot a lot of things to think through so even you know

052picking up and dropping off you know a family doesn't just have a second grader they [Music] 12th grader or tenth grader so a lot of that can get complicated pretty quickly but I guess even more so than that I'm you know we just talked about adding adaptive PE to middle school you know a lot of these things that we have pullout services for children so in a Corvo Hort model like how impenetrable are these cohorts and how do we balance giving services to these kids without completely isolating them in a place they can't get those services these are all really good questions they're all really appropriate questions so I would say the the cohort model is really I would say think of it more about contact tracing that what some other countries have been successful

053in doing is really setting up the ability to very quickly trace anybody who becomes ill and who they've been in contact with and reduce the number of people that come in contact with so that then you can go and kind of stop it and so yes there's variables of families so if a family member is ill they wanna be able to say what's the sphere of its how many people you know and then do we do things like everybody in mrs. so-and-so second-grade class stays home for the next week you know or two weeks or anybody who's sibling is you know those are the kinds of questions I don't know that there's a good answer to right now I know that there's some softwares using an app or maybe it's all of the top-ranked health

054district there's using an app to start to track for lack of a better word these are this is where I went today so that if you become ill they can quickly kind of backward map where you went again there's limitations there's talk for example that maybe we can have some fall sports but you you're kind of the CIA sea conference is going to be based on your geography instead of your school size no they don't want students from Eastern Connecticut traveling to southern therapure County so how do we limit where people go and so that cohort modeling is more about limiting the number of different touch points reducing them their teachers or students ease and so you know how do we provide some of those services it may be some hybrid where you're part of

055this cohort but on Tuesdays and Thursdays you're going to go to school in a different time and go get some real services again I mean it depends on adaptive PE might is very different than maybe like an intensive reading program or a dyslexia service or something like that where that is primarily delivered in a one-to-one or a small group where adaptive PE the whole point of it is to have larger group so I mean PE in general is going to be a conversation of what it looks like if you can't share a basketball um you know I guess everybody's double dribbles you know like I don't know so I mean that's where I think and at some point some of these things maybe don't happen you know maybe PE doesn't happen for the ball maybe

056music doesn't happen you know who's not chorus and band and orchestra maybe it's smaller lessons you know so I think those are the kinds of broad thinking that we kind of put through a sin on each one of these different models and come out with specific questions that's where so far like as an administration we don't want to go too far down any one of these because that's not a region 15 issue that's a state of Connecticut you know and so the conversations we've been having with the State Department and kind of whatever filter into that planning process is it's more helpful to have specific directions for school districts like we want you to do these things not those things every day so it's gonna have some nuance as far as what that looks like

057in a school district based on the number of school buses you have or a number of schools or grade configuration all that stuff's gonna have some kind of local nuance but there are general things like if we're going to do a cohort model how do we serve these students if we're gonna go every other week you can't have region 15 going two weeks on and two weeks off and not going every other day and Bethel going there three weeks on and three weeks off because the transportation the staffing Lema that works you have to have some general kinds of things for some school districts their populations small enough in their building capacities large enough they can do that today they could put six feet and put four kids in the classroom and they could run

058school tomorrow most school districts can't do that again southern Fairfield County between the the impact and the population density is very different than northeastern Connecticut so that's kind of where we need to have some some guidance that's broad but specific in some of what they want us to drive towards and then we can start developing those very specific things and then again they're gonna be a little bit adaptive based on families school like a preschool model that's very different than a 10th grade model you know we added more parking spots slice well maybe we give everybody parking at the high school that can drive and we run a shuttle from the community lot and we don't run any buses at night I mean those are the kinds of things again but that's not really something

059that we're looking at is gonna be clear but those are the kinds of like thinking that you have to go through marry encompass that's how the Rogers kind of piggyback on Heather Dwyer the cohort model sounds easier with an elementary school but once she gets the middle school or even high school you don't have just your homeroom teacher you're moving there's so many moving parts to their schedule just that complication alone kind of makes gives me hives just thinking about it so I think that it's going to be some kind of complication there as well and you may see different models based on different age groups so while kindergarten model like you know and these are all hypotheticals at this point most of these models exist somewhere in the world right now you know again

060we've done conference calls with South Korea with Germany with Australia countries that have done some of this now some of those countries South Korea specifically have now seen I can return for some of it so even some of the modeling that they did early on has evolved now I don't think and again I used air quotes or asterisk because I don't know that I'm an authority in this in any way but I don't know that the reoccurrence in South Korea is really due to schools so I don't know kind of the tie-in but there is kind of like this constant evolution of thinking and like a kindergarten classroom could have a music lesson taught through a videoconference from a music teacher who's in the same school in a different room just with something like this

061and so again like they're still getting a music lesson but their exposure to number of staff now again when you get to high school you know you're probably not going to have the permutations available but those students and some of those courses are more conducive to being taught online so some of those classes if you're a chemistry student at high school you might come in for a lab but you might stay home for a lot of the lessons and you'll see some kind of hybrid so like I don't think right now there is a this is what schools will look like for five-year-olds 12 year olds and 17 year olds it may look different I think there's a clear message that in order for our economy to fully open and for parents to be able

062to get back to work especially like pre-k 5 students need to be serviced that being said there's also a whole lot of parents that have admitted that they cannot teach six-year-olds all day and I would argue that there is no good distance learning model for kindergarten because doesn't work that way and so we need to get our youngest learners in school for a lot of different reasons and then as students get older and they have more independence you know there might be some more hybrid version of that and honestly whatever we start with in September could go back and forth based on kind of where we are as a health and safety piece and maybe even where you are in the state remember back in March we watched it kind of move from New York

063right up kind of the 95 84 corridor and that may be some version of you know maybe not a snow day but we're watching the outbreaks come and we're going to start to shift to a virtual model until we know it's safe to come back so I do think like and there's no easy way to wrap your head around it other than this is going to continue to be flexible and fluid and the more our businesses and our state department and our health directors or our schools are in alignment the better it's going to be for families to be able to plan and manage and for businesses to be able to plan and manage and I'm optimistic that we're moving in that direction but I do think there's still a lot of those gears that

064are not working and they're grinding against each other all right anyone else from home there's one time let me try again yep okay so Brian and then share an attic I think you touched on it a little but I just want to make sure sigh I think we all know that there's a good chance that we might go to distance learning there might be some component of distance learning in the fall that there's going to be an increase in expectations around synchronous learning and a service learning and maybe a more cohesive expectation amount of great levels or the appropriate grade levels I should say and then my second question is around just cybersecurity or student security online I should say you know I saw that all the new programs and things like that and I

065just want to make sure that we are providing the right security services for our students that they're going to be spending more time on their Chromebooks and from home or within the classroom so I think I can speak to most of that and then I'm just trying to refresh my screen here so I can actually see people so the synchronous piece I would say that where we're evolving towards is at least common expectations and structures by grade level I think there's a lot of to be liked for kindergarten how much direct construction their screen time versus videos on that students watch I think what was clear to us is that especially a younger grades there's a lot of pressure on parents and they have to do most of the heavy lifting so like we don't

066prior to now didn't give email addresses or Google classroom accounts to k2 students one of the conversations is maybe we should and then provide some video instruction for parents on how to get in there part of the survey questions that we're gonna ask are gonna help drive some of that and to have some flexibility I think as students get older and can access it more independently that becomes a little easier again we found that specific times each day for students to log in for some families was very important and for other families was very complicated and so how do we find a balance between those I don't know that I can see here it's late and tell you that I have the answer for that I think what we found towards the end of the

067year is that a lot more teachers are doing synchronous types of activities but there was a huge spectrum of how often that was occurring and I think that's where there's got to be some consistency even if it's a challenge for a family if they know this is the expectation or they know this is going to happen that's an easier thing for them to plan for and we thought that so that's the synchronous and asynchronous part we did office hours secondary and had that worked for some students we would need more and I think the state department's going to require more of synchronous learning for some of the credits you know we talked about you know basically one quarter learning if we're gonna be doing this for more and for kind of more intense high school

068credit type things we're gonna have to have more accountability in that structure when it gets to security we're gonna increase the amount of Chromebooks if it's a school district device I can ensure security if it's a home device it gets a little more complicated and so do we have to change the way we're using some of our tools our students gonna have to login to our network and then go out I don't know again that I have that full answer other than the more students that use our own Chromebooks the more we can assure safety and security I think that some of the video conferencing tools over the course of the year not only got better but we also got better at how we roll them out so like the Google video conferencing tool currently

069isn't that great there's a lot of features that it lacks but from a security standpoint from the ease-of-use standpoint its compatibility with Google classroom it's far easier for teachers to manage some of that although I think there's a couple of backdoor things that we learned and we'll get that or at and I think that's probably part of the new continuum as we use new tools are very creative and motivated students are going to find ways to utilize those tools a ways that we may not desire and we'll have to build a better mousetrap and again it comes back to good practice you know the nice thing as a district canoes to the board last year you changed your acceptable use policy to a responsible use policy which speaks less about the device or the tool

070and more about the behaviors so I think that lends itself to kind of an online learning environment and we'll probably have to look at more of those types of protocols you know detention doesn't really mean a whole lot if you're in a remote learning environment so how do we uphold student expectations you know I do think that we saw you know discipline rates plummet in virtual learning at least ones reported to the school district in the state I know my own students may have had some attentions or other disciplinary measures during their distance learning but you know as a school district how do we provide standards for kids and then kind of hold them accountable those are questions I don't know that we have full answers to again I would look to say the more

071consistent we can be across school districts the better it is for students for families and for staff know if that answers your question it doesn't little I guess I did the part about the security I guess I just didn't see on any of the new programs like an increase in you know some of those programs that monitor kids while they're online or their Google you know things like that are we looking at any of those is that going to be extended to next year I just didn't see anything goes on the list I want to make sure that we're providing the opportunities to make sure kids are safe obviously I understand that kids are going to get around everything there's nothing as failsafe you know they're you know kids they just have to youtube it

072but we want to make sure that we have the structures in place to make sure that in general kids are safe online we added two tools those text across because I don't remember off the top my head we added this year we added goguardian which keeps rule to help do some of that and we added another tool Thank You dr. Chiappetta and we added a second tool that allowed us to do some backtracking and some security remotely again most of that though they have to be on our device or they have to be at least logged in to Chrome their Google classroom and then we can do it if they're on their own device like that's where I would say we have a much more limited ability but at least the tools what was the

073second tool we added we added two tools this year I have to go back to this year I just want to make sure that we're getting this stuff like Don every product you know has its ups and downs I just want to make sure that we're getting products to like look at that and I just I would recommend or and ask you to look into some of the actual programs that actually monitor kids in the in their Google suite because if they're going to be spending more time in Google suite you know we want to make sure that they're being safe and appropriate so one of the tools that isn't on that list but with that remember when I talked about zoom at twelve thousand if you buy the Google Enterprise which is about twelve

074thousand there is a host of security of tracking of messaging and and I can get you that list of what's in there the challenge for us is to do both of those right now I don't want to go and do the Google Enterprise if we have to buy zoom and so we're kind of watching and hopeful that Google has a room full of young brilliant minds trying to build a better video conferencing tool and then we can put all of it into Google Enterprise the other piece that we've explored that I don't know that we've come to consensus on Google has a whole lot of plugins that you can purchase some of those are most of them are made by third parties so there's a concern that if you put too much emphasis in some

075of the Google plugins that as the Google tool develops your plugins don't keep pace with it and you have like assessments for example built with a plugin that no longer works with Google so I can't speak with a lot of authority on it right now but there are people in the district looking into kind of which direction do we start to put resources behind all right Sharon attic hi this is Sharon attic thank you so much for entertaining all of our questions and for all the work that you're doing and I recognize that this is a very fluid environment you touched upon one of my questions with your response to see Steve suriani related to training right of the teachers and staff but my question is really more related to the overarching communication plan you

076spoke quite eloquently about the fact that it is very dynamic that things are changing and that to me speaks to the heightened level and importance of how quickly information is conveyed to the community even if it is understood that it is dynamic and is changing so can you speak to what your plan may look like as far as as we get closer to school how that will be communicated out to the community to the parents to the teachers and then also during the year because you spoke in your plan about a lot of things what it could maybe you know we don't really know what it's going to look like but if there is a need for tracing if there is positive cases if there's a change to you know how we have to go

077to distance learning what is that going to maybe look like or what ideas are there related to that communication plan because I'm very concerned because of the vast amount of information and how dynamic it is if people are getting it at the last minute how will they be able to absorb it ask questions prepare for it and actually be able to maneuver around the changes so I know it's kind of a lofty question I know you don't have a crystal ball but if you could kind of speak a little bit to what your thoughts are related to communication it would be really helpful yeah I'm gonna do my best I think there's there's things that we do know so for example in some of the school districts that we're talking to that have opened one

078thing that's been very successful are short videos of like what school looks like when you get here I've explained to parents this is what drop-offs going to look like like some of the protocols so like short videos that we can send out a post to the website and tweet out or our websites probably a different conversation but it's a factor in here we're pretty limited we met with the company like that we have that back up on track and running but so some short videos that explain what school looks like and some of the questions that you're asking I think the hard part is and it's not the answer that you want I'm sure but again with that like barbershop scenario I think we have to be able to say to parents here's how we're

079gonna plan here's how we're gonna look but I don't want to under sell the point that it's it's very likely that we're gonna come up with a plan and that could be changed very quickly by factors outside of all of us and so I think what we're gonna have to help families do is here's the the plan and then here are the contingencies and some of those contingencies are going to be very family based you know we suspended the BAS the before and after school program but we let it run for a week or so I don't remember the exact amount of time maybe two weeks after we shut down our schools there may have to be some before and after school Support Program for emergencies at the same time again we need direction from

080the health directors on how this is going to work I talked at length on Friday with one of our health directors and right now there's a lack of coherence between the health directors and the health regions in the state and so some of our school districts were one of them for example we have two different health districts that were in South Barry's in one health district middle Barry's in another if one health director and the like they work very well together but they need to tell us the same advice I can't keep South Ferry schools open and close Middlebury schools and so these are the kinds of situations that I do think they're not unique to region 15 not unique you know they're really not any unique to our state but so far our state

081has been slow to put out those types of directions we can come up with a plan we can come up with kind of that process but we're going to need I would argue and we've been putting pressure is some direction from the state on what what actually just Friday you know doctor rather asked I'm sorry dr. Xie reto asked a whole bunch of questions of our health director and of the State Department but kind of the what-ifs as we go to open summer school and there's some lack of clarity as to who answers those questions is that the state medical adviser is it our local medical adviser is it the health director we're going to get some clarity on how that works by running summer school so some of your answers I think we're going

082to have in place by probably like the second or third week of June of July and be able to put that in our communication plan but right now for example if there's a there's a student that tests positive in a third grade classroom I can't tell you if that means that school shuts down if the classroom shuts down if it's contract contact tracing if we shut down as a district those are questions that really we need to answer before we can open school and I would tell you that the list of answers that we need before we open school is extremely long but we're gonna start working through those I do think that to me having students in this summer is massively important because most of those students are the ones that were at least

083able to access online learning so I'm really proud as a district that we're going to be able to stand up and serve students but parallel with that is also what we're gonna learn by opening school and what happens when parents say here's the every scenario that you can think about is going to happen with a hundred students instead of three thousand students so some of what you're asking and I know it's not the answer that you want but I do think that by like the third week of July we're gonna have like a whole lot of practical learning experiences on what those questions mean and how we can best answer them and I really appreciate this is Sharon attic I really appreciate your response and certainly I understand you need to work through a lot

084I think it ties back right and it's not for something for further discussion right now because I think you addressed it earlier but it ties back into how that message is conveyed and and how as a region that information is it like what's the uptake of that information not only with the parents the community the kids but also the staff the teachers the administrators the nurses and clearly you know more information will come as you said as that starts to get worked out I did have a question you spoke a couple times about the survey that's being done and I might have misheard you I thought you were said that it was being done like for transportation thought through six through twelve per second through twelve I was just questioning why that wasn't being done

085at fall grades um when I think about a parent you know who's sending their child to school for the first time I think I probably have more guardrails up than maybe some that have a little bit better understanding of just the school logistics in general I would be very interested to understand what that survey looked like and how I could you know even help you know if there is a issue of her transportation and you needed volunteers to say yeah you know noncommittal but I can you know drive my child to school I would think that that would be valuable information so I may have misheard you but it didn't sound like you were capturing that information for all a grade level so it's just curious the rationale behind that so the survey will go

086to all parents in grades K through 12 I'll go to students in grades 6 through 12 okay okay thank you for the clarity I'm is that okay um and one other question I'm sorry you mentioned about the vulnerable populations and you touched upon the fact that if there is a teacher right that is part of that and as you work to reopen school and you promised I'm just assuming you do some type of evaluation or maybe something comes to fruition well that that could have a significant impact I would think on the way in which children are taught right it could be more distance learning or are you thinking that there would be basically piggyback teachers where you'd have certain teachers cover for teachers in the classroom can you speak a little bit about logistically

087how you'd manage some of that I can speak to the conversations they were having I think that specifics get really complicated you know there are collective bargaining there are t RB as teacher retirement and there are restrictions as to what you can teach based on their certification I think you know it's plausible that you would have a students in school and a teacher remotely it's plausible that the teacher could be in school and the students could be remotely it's plausible that the teacher and students could be different spaces in the building teaching I don't know if that's remotely or not remotely but you know I think those are things that we're going to work through there's who decides what a [Music] medically high-risk person is is that a doctor's no there's an individual choice is

088it where's the there's a there's some labor issues in there do you use FMLA type does that cover if you're not symptomatic and you're not sick but you have high anxiety and you're worried um where does that come in I think there's like there are those conversations have literally every single day there was a meeting last week between the it was last week - a week before between the state teachers labor unions and the planning groups as to what flexibility might be accepted I don't know that answer and I think some of it is we can't we I can't plan so for example if we're gonna have class sizes of 8 because that's the number that we need it because the classroom space we have I can't and we have classes of 16 just to

089make the math easy I need twice as many staff so but if I'm not gonna offer music does that mean I can repurpose that music teacher or some districts are saying we have openings why not hire a music teacher and I keep that and I hire another elementary school teacher so those questions are local questions when you talk about state certification for example if I'm currently if you're a music teacher and you're certified as a music teacher and you're teaching PE you don't get credit towards your retirement or your pension for the classes you're teaching outside of your certification so that has massive financial implications to staff members we're not going to put and that would be a grievance or a labor suit so those questions are gonna have to be work through kind of

090outside of our school district and be consistent across school districts if those things are going to be even plausible and there's probably a lot of varied conversations as to which direction that might go thank you is it possible I have more questions or is that it I'm sorry Marian sorry so two question I'll put them both out there the first is enforcement of PPE you spoke about mass and that all any indication on how that would be enforced if it is not done or implemented you know is it a zero tolerance or how is that maybe that's part of the communication plan and the second you spoke a little bit about the higher level of anxiety of course with everything that's going on I was just curious from a socio-emotional support the resources that may

091be available next year for students or others if you could kind of touch upon that I'm sure maybe that's also part of your communication plan but I'd be interested in those two things thank you so the enforcement piece were kind of working through now you think it's going to change dramatically when right now our buildings are pretty empty there's custodians or the central office staff you know we can alternate space and if you're in a room by yourself and or can stay distance in a room I think that's one level right now again so once a week I sit on a state conference call with the governor that is a constant conversation you know whose responsibility is it what's the terms you know are we going to suspend kids I'm gonna kick kids out of

092school if they take their masks off what happens to staff I think they're I don't have an answer for you is the short one except that began it's part of the long list of topics that are being reviewed and who owns that and what's the personal responsibility of each other to take care of each other I think that factors into school buses it factors into common areas both for staff and for students we have students that don't follow dress code you know we have students that wear hats you know we have a progressive discipline plan for that I don't know if that's going to be the same for masks but it could be right now I think there's some debate state and nationally about you have to wear masks or is it suggestion and is

093that personal right or is that the right of government to say you have to wear one again I think we're in the beginning of this conversation and we're region 15 is not going to be the one driving that conversation but we're going to be following kind of directives and best practice from other places as far as the social-emotional we have a whole group of folks that are working on those pieces I think we're working through them now for summer school both with students and and families that want to come or want to participate but have some either medical facility or anxiety and we're working on a case-by-case basis it's hard to say we're going to work on a case by case basis for 3400 students but I do think the lessons we're learning and the

094structures we're putting in place now will have some kind of transfer when we go to scale that up thank you and thank you for taking all my questions I apologize Thanks sure no Heather Dwyer do you still have a question and just sorry did want to ask about kindergarten registration and orientation because these are people who are coming into the district for the first time and just how is that going I mean alongside all of this art it has it is it paused are we able to continue with that I'm just conscious of you know new families coming in at this time this is these are pretty big hurdles to overcome so there's like two arms of kindergarten registration there's kind of the mechanical paper-based and then there's the kind of human side um so

095the paper-based mechanical is happening if you move to town you want our website you can register I just talked to a family the other day um you can the schools have either in-person secretaries coming in or remotely we have the capacity to do a family the second piece specifically for kindergarten is there is usually an opportunity for the student to come and meet with a teacher for the parent to come in meet with the staff so the Elementary's and this is the hard part about a virtual meeting is I know dr. Chiappetta is on here somewhere I just can't really see her but I'm pretty sure she was at the meeting with me when we were talking about different potential models so could we put some big tents outside with small tables could we do

096kind of a social distance version of a meet-and-greet in August could we get kind of the big tents that some restaurants have outside and a couple of tables so right now we we feel that it's very important for kindergarteners to come in and meet with teachers and that they need to have some version of that what that version is I would say we haven't settled on is that fair dr. Chapin yes yes that's yep we do discuss all that sometimes I think we had these covers anything else right my head but I do think like when I tell you these are the conversations that we have people thinking and talking about on a daily basis there's there's a lot all right I think that's everyone all right thank you very much mr. Smith for your

097update next we have the approval of minutes for juni 2020 regular meeting minutes do I have a motion to approve the minutes or the minutes of the 2020 Rachel err meeting second Steve second any discussion all those in favor hi thank you passes next information and proposals board committee reports finance and Facilities mr. John Cookson we did have a meeting but we haven't got everything put together that we have however as part of it you're gonna see tonight when we get down into new business requiring board action that was a big big part of what we had on the finance meeting and then we're going to have we'll have another report as we get a little bit further into where we are at the end of the year which we will give to which we

098will give to everybody anything else show you know what's updated the board on some on some of the bids we had out and just some of the into your activities and the transfers that are on for total time all right thank you John a next policy and curriculum mr. Steve seriani thank you madam chair [Music] hopefully everyone on the board took a look at the cave policy audit reports on the legal paper I'm not gonna summarize it if there are any questions I guess we could go over those during the discussion of the motion that the end um thank you next board member comments any comments from board members Steve suriani here speaking and I just wanted to mention that the cave Journal had a good article on board's role in in these times right

099related to the pandemic and what a board Rahl would be and just wouldn't want to throw out there though I know normally we don't meet in the summer but I don't particularly want to come back in September and and find out you know kind of all the decisions that were made and maybe not have had a chance to give some input so you know I'd be open to having a meeting in July and I'm meeting in August thank you anyone else [Music] all right thank you next we have comments from citizens the Board of Education will recognize citizens of Middlebury in Southbury and citizens are asked to state their name their town of residence and to limit their comments to three minutes the Board of Education does not respond to comments but please know that

100we are listening and that we welcome your comments are there any is there any public comment I think josh has to unmute them actually I see Sophie Stingo yeah so hi my name is um so Stanko I'm a resident of South Ferry and I'm actually an alumni of the region I graduated pomerode in 2016 and I know several kind of alumni have gathered together and kind of talked about our education 15 and we just wanted something that we support the initiatives that the region has kind of created in terms of the Advisory Committee on global citizenship and character and just that as a community we are there to support the region and discussions around racism and racism discrimination inclusivity equity and all those things and that we want to continue to see these changes in

101region 15 we didn't see them necessarily during our time but we want to see them for the future generation so that they have the ability to have the language and vernacular and the resources to be good global citizens thank you very much Sophie and I do see someone named Emma yes hello my name is Emma Jones of Southbury and I am a 2016 grad of Tom Barack High School along with other members of my family myself my brother father uncles and my grandmother was also an educator in the region so region 15 has been a huge part of my family's life for many generations and I had the honor along with Sophie and others in my cohort to have a really wonderful discussion with dr. chiapetta and Aaron Bearden who's the teacher in residence on

102global citizenship and character for the upcoming academic year we spoke to us the Committee on global citizenship and issues they're looking to tackle in both curriculum and school culture and certainly coming into this school year there are many many challenges the most prevalent within this meeting being Kovan 19 but the region is really facing other challenges well and we have really important work going forward so I want to state that myself and many in my community support the diversity and inclusion initiatives that are being presented and we are looking for constant active changes within our school system to uphold inclusivity acceptance of all humans regardless of race religion sexual orientation or gender identity and we want this to be reflected in our schools so it is my hope that the committee for global citizenship as

103well as the Board of Education is given the power and support to make continuous improvements for the coming school year and beyond particularly in response to the cruel injustice that's been brought to light with the black lives matter movement in our community and our world so may we foster a community of awareness and ensure that all children within our region are nurtured and valued thank you thank you very much miss Jones I see that we have other callers caller number 4 hello hi can you see your name I don't see my name but my name is Tonya Miller I'm from South Bay can you hear me yes okay hi um so my name is Tonya and I'm from South Barry I graduated from Palm Parag in 2017 and my other two siblings also graduated from

104the high school the region since elementary school and this past May I graduated from UConn and so first I want to say thank you for all of your time and what an excellent job you are all doing these are this year has been crazy and you are all doing an incredible job it was a pleasure to listen to everyone talk about the different models about the upcoming school year and so I feel incredibly thankful to be a part of such a tremendous school system I also wanted to express my support for the region 15 Advisory Committee on global citizenship and character I think it's incredible that you have resources online about how to promote social justice with your children and I'd love to see particularly with the English department more black authors incorporated directly into

105the curriculum such as James Baldwin I took a course about James Baldwin during the high freshman year at UConn and it was absolutely incredible so we would be wonderful if his working to incorporate Iran on me thank you thank you very much miss Miller and hello caller six hello hi can you see your name yes hi my name is Abby Lee I live in South Mary and I graduated from Prague in 2017 I also have a sister Olivia twice who graduated in 2019 and I'm here today you know on sort of the same with the same motives as many of my peers I'm here to express my support for the Advisory Committee on global citizenship and character in their work towards creating curriculum extracurricular programming and staff training that addresses racism in our schools I

106feel so incredibly lucky to have gone through this school system I mean just you know obviously backed by such a supportive and involved community but the lack of anti-racist education in region 15 is one of the ways that I feel my education there failed me when I was there you know we had largely optional programming that focused on diversity and inclusion which sort of treated racism as a series of individual actions diocese and attitudes and I think region 15 can go further by addressing the systems institutions policies and history that makes these attitudes so prevalent in the culture of our community and our nation so I am so impressed with the work the committee has done so far but I'd really like to see the anti racism and anti bias training become mandatory for all

107staff and faculty I want to see the Board of Ed advocate for core curriculum that tells the true story of settler colonialism and systemic racism in America I want to see region 15 standing with its black indigenous students of color and providing spaces where their experiences are Center than value I want to see more black teachers in our classrooms I want to see programming that brings in professional leaders speakers and educators on anti racism yeah and if there's any way I can support region 15 and accomplishing these things as an alum and community member even you know the fact that the majority of teachers and educators and administrators and faculty and staff in this school system really care about the community that they're fostering I'm absolutely interested in learning how and so thank you all

108for the work you've done and continue to do thank you afternoon caller number seven can you state your name please hi there my name is Alicia MacDonald can you hear me yes yeah my name is Alicia I went to this I went through region 15 K through 12 so pretty much all of my education before I moved on to higher education and I graduated PHS and 2015 I just wanted to say that I to support region 15 in their efforts to make a more inclusive environment in our public school system I was also excited to hear about the existing global citizenship and character committee because that was something I didn't know about I believe that integrating race and culture into region 15 is curriculum and how they fit into the current political climate is pivotal

109for a student's education and their for growth and 20 funny and while it's been important since the beginning of time I do believe that a lot of people are waking up to the racial injustice in this country now and the systemic racism we have all been a part of just by being white people in South Barrie Middlebury area I guess what was most upsetting for me was I never realized how troubling it was that I went to a school with the majority of students students being white until I went to college and although my my school suny brockport was still 70% white students it was just a little bit more diverse than pom Prague and with that being said I learned so much that I didn't even know I was missing out on not only

110was I missing information and you know American history in high school but I was also learning misinformation and while that's like a problem with America Americans education in general I do like focusing on South Barry because it's where I'm from and it's where I still live today and I was just really saddened to have my first black teacher in academia my senior year of college and during my 12 years at in South Korea I don't think I had one teacher who wasn't white so in addition to creating safe spaces to discuss race privilege and culture I do believe the lack of representation for minorities and the teacher and administrative positions is evident in our school district and I would love to be a part of this positive positive change for region 15 as possible thank

111you thank you very much miss McDonald caller number eight can you please stay hello can you hear me yes yes hi my name is Savannah Moore I live in South Ferry and I graduated from punk rock high school class of 2016 my younger two siblings also came up through region 15 and my sister is currently a student at PHS what I am grateful for the education that I received while in the region 15 school districts I like several of my peers and concerned with the lack of education about diversity and social justice I'm currently a student at Central Connecticut State University majoring in music education and at CSU anyone who enters enters the teacher preparation program is required to take classes on teaching in diverse settings in these education courses we learn about racial and

112social issues found within Connecticut and at the time I was caught off guard and I was unprepared the information I was learning was brand new to me I had no foundation on what life was like outside of my suburban bubble from previous schooling and the question I often find myself asking is why are only teachers required to learn these important issues about race diversity equality and equity other college majors aren't required to take these courses the reason we instill these values into educators is that we want them to be open and welcome to anyone who comes in their classroom but this should not be the sole responsibility of educators love and acceptance is a responsibility for everyone it is important that our students are taught from a young age about life outside of their bubble

113town and examine their privilege I have had to examine my privilege in pretty much every single one of my education courses in higher education but I never had to in secondary education or primary education and that change begins with a change in curriculum and our classroom conversations why are there not more conversations about diversity in our school classrooms can provide a safe space for students to learn and discuss these important issues where as a household conversation may not present the same opportunities so as a future educator I strongly believe that teaching raise awareness and diversity especially in a predominantly white suburban school district is a sin and making the world a better place for everyone understanding the lives and privileges of one another is a large key to changing the system what we are asking

114of the board is to implement programs into the current curriculum that promotes promotes raise awareness learning and anti racism in our school district I do recognize that the region 15 Advisory Committee on global citizenship and character is a great addition to the region and I saw from the slides that the K through 5 curriculum will be revised to include social justice standards thank you those changes will hopefully inspire our youth to change the world please continue doing your part in creating a better educated and more compassionate community thank you thank you very much next next caller is caller number 9 please state your name my name is Meghan Casella and from Southbury and I graduated from Tom Prague in 2015 I'm also here to have fun what a lot of previous speakers have said and

115express my support for the Advisory Committee on global citizenship and character and their work to begin to address racism in our school system they've been doing some putting out some really wonderful research resources and a response to the current national climate on racism as a region 15 alum I do believe that my education though failed to teach me about the ways that racism continues to persist in America it failed to give me a critical look on US history and the racism that continues to persist in covert ways and not obvious ways like a previous Booker said teaching racism as an action of individual or something that is done like as out of hate versus something that is embedded into the system in the society that we find ourselves in and again also being from the

116school and going to UConn and having the first conversations about race and white privilege and the first realizations of these kinds of things or even going on Southbury can very much be a bubble and it's just we cannot exempt ourselves from these kinds of conversations any longer especially in our school system so to also restate what previous people had said I really think that the board needs to start pushing for continuous and mandatory anti bias training for our educators because it is those educators that need the tools to open up the conversations in classrooms that have these really difficult conversations about racism and privilege that we might not be able to see in our day to day in south grade but that is very much present in the world around us especially and I would

117also like to see programs bringing in professional educators on anti racism and allowing them to speak and allowing the public to come to these events as well so that we can all as a community start to be better educated about the world that we find ourselves in and work to be more anti-racist and all our education thank you thank you very much and next caller is caller number ten can you please state your name hi can you hear me yes hi my name is Linda Marshall and I graduated from Palm Prague in 2018 Kovac 19 and to all of the previous callers I'm miss Marshall you're going in and out are you're moving can you hear me yeah now I can oh okay yes I shared the same up feelings as many of the other

118paparella my callers shared time because of all the work that's needed for dealing with the hell pandemic at hand that administration teachers will not be able to put a time and effort needed at this time especially to face and implement real change in our schools regarding the racial injustice and lack of education on these racial issues in our region and yeah as I in my experience I went to Longmeadow Memorial and graduated from pomerode it has been a real struggle especially now coming at the call of student and still living in South Ferry it's it's very eye-opening to see the real changes that are needed in our school system so yeah that's it thank you any other colors no okay um I would just like to add for anyone who's still watching from home I'm

119sure dr. Chiappetta would be saying this but I welcome all of you to contact dr. chiapetta if you have questions about our program or curriculum or all the education that our educators have done regarding diversity training so dr. Chiappetta at region are you know see chiapetta at region 15 org thank you next new business requiring board action um may I was asked if we could split these two transfer moogle so we're gonna go ahead and do that and mr. cooks is going to lead the way with motion so I may have an approval for transfer entry a one who did the part of Education upon recommendation of the Finance Committee Heather rod real second any discussion all right I think we could go for a vote so if you could raise your hands all those

120in favor aye okay any nays any abstentions all right it passes thank you next may I have a motion for approval for transfer entry a to move the Board of Education of home recommendation of the finance policy review second Heather Rodgers second any discussion I have discussion Mary yes Richard okay we're asking for $6,300 to for additional K policy review however I must say a few things one is that I have no confidence in cave cave sena saw an audit which Steve showed us and it doesn't address all the issues in our policy any important issue if it was that important I'm sure Josh were Steve Joshua Carrie would have addressed it one issue that they do not address is the strengthening of the financial controls and transfers which we know is very important to

121region 15 as to what has happened last year so I would ask all my board members to really consider not using tape because of we have no confidence in their ability to do the job correctly thank you if you Richard anyone else Heather Dwyer Richard because I don't think what we in policy curriculum talked about was doing a wholesale adoption of the cabe recommendations the fee that we are paying for is for a wholesale review of our policy and their recommendations but the report that they gave us showed I think there was 110 policies that needed significant review and even if I don't have even though I would want as a member of Colosseum Kirkenes to understand those policies doing that work independently and that was one of the options they gave us was this

122is how you as a board could do this yourselves doing that work would be monumental without the expertise of cabe they did refute me they did they did refer us to a resource that we could buy to help us do that ourselves but at a hundred and ten policies at the clip that we normally work through policies and policy curriculum would take I would say optimistically at least five years of a lot of work on policy curriculum I think this is transfer and this what we're asking for here is really to move this process along so that we can get our policy book up-to-date and clear with very with needed policies and some of those policies you know all 110 of those policies are not but some of them are and and I would want

123to get that work done as quickly as we can so there's my comment thank you Thank You Heather any other comments go ahead Steve certainly have the option to review them or change or add it's it's not like we'll adopt them in one fell swoop it's gonna take a couple years we'll go on stages where the ones that are needed more urgently will be dealt with first so you know there will be an opportunity to you know if there are ones regarding finance that you know we we need to put a microscope on them we can do that so I just wanted to throw that in thank you all right Thank You Sharon etic hi this is Sharon Eric I just wanted to add an addition to what cave identified is what was mandated and

124recommended I believe that the the option also allows for if we move forward that any new policies that may be needed right particularly as we think about some of the things related to Cove in nineteen that those would also be integrated as part of that service so I just want to echo Heather's comments that the magnitude of work to bring our current policies up to date is quite large and then if you think about adding what I would say is probably myriad of additional policies that could be coming as a result of the pandemic I think that is adding another bolus of work and I think that this could really help us ensure that our policies and a lot of the heavy lifting are done in a timely fashion yep thank you very much any

125other questions or comments yep okay Richard rich richard spirital again let me reply to you people excuse me I'm sorry to my fellow board members you have to remember we are asking Kay to do what they normally should have done years ago but they never approached us with this policy number one number two I'm sure Kerry and Josh know what's the correct way of doing it number three and this is the most important one I told you I have no confidence in K at the workshop meeting when cabe showed up I asked three simple questions and see no simple answers all they did Stonewall me and dance around and not give me a complete answer so therefore if they can't give me a complete answer one board member how could they address 110 policies that

126Heather mentioned I'm not gonna comment anymore so Marion you could continue with the meeting okay thank you Richard any other comments um I think I'm gonna do a roll call for this cuz I I think I missed a Shannon and Peter last romp because the videos are not on so I'm just gonna do roll call just to be clear um I'm on this motion and then we're going to go back and make sure I have Shannon and Peter's vote on the record for the first transfer motion so for this motion regarding the Kade pile additional que policy review a Steve suriani hi Heather Rogers aye Heather Dwyer I Brian Watson sorry aye aye Sharon addict aye aye i Richard spirito name hey Shannon Cavallo I i Peter vaccarelli good day and for me I'm an

127I so the motion passes thank you very much and Shannon and Peter um just to clarify your vote on the a transfer a one the transfer entry of 95,000 for the new educational software can you just state what your position was on that motion just so I could know it for sure for the record so Shannon I I and Peter no no thank you very much um announcement of future meetings um as Steve mentioned earlier I do think we're probably gonna have some summer meetings particularly probably a finance meeting probably a PNC meeting on July sometime in July we haven't planned any dates yet I'm probably also going to have another special board meeting for board of education goals again nothing has been set yet we're waiting for you know mr. Smith dr. Chiappetta to

128have DAP data and all that information and we will communicate that to you as soon as we know those dates but as far as the next regular meeting um we have Wednesday August the 19th finest in finance and Facilities at 6:30 Monday September 14th policy and curriculum at 6:30 and Monday September 14th a regular meeting of the Board of Ed at 7:30 may have a motion for approval to move into executive session to discuss superintendent sets contract move the Board of Education go into executive session for the purpose of reviewing and discussing superintendent's contract the board would like to invite a travois icon if needed to have a second shot it could cause in second any discussion all those in favor cannon and Peter Shannon and Peter with your position aye I'm sorry Shannon and

129I publicize the assignments there off so can you speak your position on the motion for executive question i Shannon I Peter I thank you very much or passive we're going to move into executive question is um mr. Smith splits us up so that we can have a conversation amongst the board thank you this conference is no longer being recorded