Board of Education - June 12, 2025

001You guys good? I'm good to go. Yeah, so anyway. Yeah, we were thinking the same. No thanks. My glasses today, which I never remember. I know. I forgot. always. Call to order this special meeting of the board of education, June 12th, 2025, 7 o'clock um in town chambers. It's wrong on the top. Uh first agenda item is a pledge of allegiance. If everyone would please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, moving along to agenda item number two. Tonight we have a special guest um to present uh regarding the model UN club at Rocky Hill, newly started. Um Mr. Don Bosley. Mr. Booseley, please. If you want, it'll

002be loaded up. It should be loaded up there. Should be coming up. Should have a mic right here. Let's make sure it's on. Sounds good. Um, okay. He'll advance he'll advance the slides for you. Okay. He'll advance it for me. Okay. So, I'll just sit here. Okay. So, hi, my name is [ __ ] I am the founder of the Model UN Club. at my school. We founded it um two years ago during my freshman year of high school thanks to the support of many in this room today. I'm grateful for all of you guys to be here and I just want to give you guys a little bit of a recap of our conference. So, it was hosted on April 27th, 2025, so just a little bit over a month ago. Um it was at our

003high school and we welcomed around 40 plus students from various schools in the region. We had Glastonbury High School, AMD High School, and we had many of these different schools come and participate in our event. So for those who don't know what model UN really is, model UN is basically just a simulation of the United Nations and the general assembly and just many of those topics that we need to discuss. We get to do them as kids and as delegates and as representatives of the UN. So that's kind of what model UN is. And luckily for us, we got to do it fully student run. We had the help of Mr. Fod and Mr. Dudis in running kind of the logistics of it, but it was largely studentr run. And we're so grateful for that

004cuz we learned a lot of stuff that we'll I'll be presenting on later. But it was it was truly a magical experience for me. And um yeah, go. So I just want to start off by saying um our opening ceremony. So we had um our feature speaker, keynote speaker was Dr. David Simons of V University. So we were very fortunate to have him there. And we also had a charity event that was hosted to Interval House. I'm not sure if any of you guys are available um aware of what Interval House is, but we raised around hundred so dollars to kind of donate to the charity event just to create a community experience and we'll be submitting that check soon. And also we were able to do um introduction of chairs and secretariat members. So

005I just want to kind of create a feel for how the ceremony kicked off. It was um it was a great event. I had luckily Mr. Pash was there for us and he was able to support and act as a liaison to um from the board of ed to um Mr. assignment and it was a great way to kind of just start off our event and from there it kind of just got even better as um I'll keep on going through. So basically a committee recap. So we have like a different topics here being discussed. So we have the EOS which is like project 2031. I don't know if anyone's aware of that but it basically has to do with making space neutral and that was one of the topics that was heavily debated on

006because of just the recency of the event with so much space exploration going on. So we were lucky enough to have that in our topic. Also we had IAEA which is the international atomic energy agency. So we talked a lot about nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and especially just how to go about everyday life when it comes to nuclear um as it relates to our life in today's society. And we also had protection of press because as there's many conflicts and wars going on, we were able to discuss that in great detail. And also we had a crisis which is a kind of like a simulation in the moment live action kind of thing where we did the Faulland Islands. So I'm not sure if you guys know around 1980s during Margaret Thatcher's um time in

007as the PM of the UK she was had to deal with that entire situation with the Faulland Islands near Argentina. So we also had to um do that but we around had around seven hours of committee. So the event lasted the entirety of the day and we're fortunate to have all the facilities there for that day. So um it was great. And uh next slide. Um so basically I just want to talk about the student leadership that we were able to have not just us but the delegates as well. So we kind of had a 15 member Rockel High School team that was put together. Um I was fortunate to lead the team and we just kind of try to break apart our tasks into different stuff just like the government works and functions is

008you break apart your finances, you break apart your technology, you break apart your just different agencies. That's kind of the way that we operated. So we kind of a function like you guys did here in this panel today. So that's the way that we wanted to function kind of as a board. And u we spent countless of hours actually planning and going through logistics which was I remember having the meeting with Dr. Zto. We were discussing we wanted to do a two-day conference but then we compromised a one-day conference because that just seemed as it was best fit. So that was kind of the intention and fortunately that's where we went. Um here are also members of the secretary. But um yeah, so with that being said, also we were fortunate to have volunteers who

009were also instrumental in our success because it allowed for more community experience because these are many of the kids I never even knew or met in our school and they came they came to support our event and they participated in just making sure the logistics ran smoothly and that's something that really helped our event um just be an amazing event and with that also we had many of the delegates who developed like skills in public speaking, global affairs in negoti appciation. So, not only did we just learn so many skills from this event, we also had Glastonbury High School students learn skills amity and even I think many of the chairs who were college students who came, they learned so much about model UN and so much about how our world functions. So, um yeah,

010that's student leadership. Um so, personal reflections, I just want to talk about a couple of things that are not really on the slide, but as a leader, I think I grew so much from this event because I had to put a lot of trust and faith into everyone and they all executed to their best of their abilities. And that was something that I was a little bit hesitant at first to do because of, you know, you always want things to run your own way. But that's not how the world works. The world works by having faith and having trust. And that was a skill that I was able to gain. And I'm so grateful to even have the opportunity to learn that at such a young age that I was able to gain that. And

011also public speaking um has been a pleasure to do in model UN. We've hosted our conference and we also attended conferences at Boston which we got a lot of support from the boards to do that. That was another way that we just further developed our skills and that's why model I think is such a great experience. It has negotiation, communication, even writing and research skills and it makes you a much more civically minded person as we know how important that is in today's society. But I'll hand it over to my other peers to do the reflection. So um hi, my name is Anvie Bose. I was the deputy secretary general at this event and I want to start off by apologizing for a bit of our delay. Uh we were finding parking and you know

012how it is when we're students. We don't really know how to reverse park that well. So, um, yeah. So, it took us a little bit, but we're here now, and we are so, so blessed to be able to be in this space getting your guys' feedback and letting you you all know how our event went. Um, I'm sure did a phenomenal job explaining it already, but I think the thing that I learned most, um, was the value of working as a team even when they are not shared interests like or there's conflict. Not all the time like N was saying, we didn't always agree on everything. And although our event went extremely smoothly for how like novel it was, uh the best part about it was that there was always a time when somebody else

013had a different perspective than you. And even if your perspective was the one that ended up making it through making it making it through the whole uh conference, you still got to hear somebody else's input. And next time we do this event, which we hope we can do it um next year and then carry it on ours as a legacy after we graduate, um we have all these different perspectives. We took a lot of notes on them. We have a lot of organizational skills now that we built from this event that we're probably going to use next time we do this. And who knows, maybe next year we'll do it completely differently. But either way, a different way doesn't mean it's the wrong way or a bad way. Um, and I think that's the spirit

014of Model UN in in the whole. Um, I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with model UN, but uh when it comes to making resolutions and finding solutions to these problems that you know are orchestrated by the chairs, um, it's not always about finding the one right solution. It's all usually about finding the solutions that work best together to help the most amount of people you know. So making this conference that was exactly what we did. So um yeah that that's my personal reflection on it and again thank you for for your time. Thank you. Uh hello my name is Suhan so I'll keep it a little short. Uh I had the pleasure of serving as the director general of technology for the conference. So if any of you have seen the website or

015any of the technicals behind it that was me. Um I guess for me the conference was definitely a very rewarding experience and serving as a part of the secretary was as well. But for me I think one of the most inspiring parts was seeing the growth of the club from its founding in our freshman year. Um at the beginning I feel we were still kind of fighting our footing. Last year the idea for a conference was proposed but we never really had the organization or the ability to follow through with it. But now in just a year we've grown to be able to have a conference with over 40 delegates from four schools. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that that is an accomplishment that we should all be

016really proud of. And not only was that something we took part of, that was something the students brought forth. That was something that we created. And I feel that's also something that should be appreciated as well. And thank you for everyone here who gave us the support to bring that vision that we had come to life. Um I feel like the conference was definitely a very strong form of true collaboration whether it was the student chairs who were leading discussions or the volunteers who were helping us behind the scenes or even the secretariat who are working tirelessly in the weeks uploading the conference. I feel that that truly came together and we can all look back on that and say that is definitely something we're proud to have participated in. And uh once again just

017a thanks to everyone here and the lovely secretary who made the experience not only enjoyable but also possible. Thank you. Uh I'm Pritika Gopal and I was the director general of committees. So uh I helped develop the ideas which the delegates actually debated on and did uh hand those delegates and everything like that. So I had the personal privilege of going into each of those committees and asking delegates their actual feedback on the conference. I don't know how much you know went into that, but I got to talk to the delegates one-on-one. And that truly was an experience cuz it's different when you're seeing them actually in the committee and versus when they're actually talking to you about their committee. And I learned a lot about what they appreciate in a model conference versus what

018they don't. And I think it would be really uh not really cool. Sorry. Well, yeah, really cool. But it's going to be really helpful next year when we bring exactly what those delegates said. Like, I've never seen a more inspired group of students, especially in some of those committees where they really just took the idea and they ran with it. I don't know how much of that went into it, but some of the committees got really uh inspired with the topics that they were given and they took it in a whole another direction starting nuclear wars and just fully went off the reins. And it was beautiful to see honestly like I never thought any of the things we did would lead students to so much like happiness and just it was really cool to

019see and it was one thing which I was really shocked about. I wish I wasn't shocked about this but um seeing everyone's talents like so many varying abilities come together. Like I never thought the art team could help so much. like we have he's not here with us right now but Tyler he helped make um all the logos and some of the decoratives regarding it and it was just truly impressive to see everyone's abilities come because we had Isan the finance team we had his stem abilities come in handy um Suhan's IT abilities and of course an leadership seeing everyone's varying abilities just come together to create such a beautiful thing was very impressive so all right hi um I'm last speaker don't worry Sorry, we're almost done. Uh, so I was the co-director, general

020finance. My other co-director was Sid. He can't be here today. But, uh, so working on finance was honestly an experience. I've had experience in business before. Not too much though. for this. I think it was really fun because you know meticulous months not only to make sure that the conference is made possible with you know food and being able to purchase gavvels and awards and whatnot but also making sure that it's done comfortably so within a certain budget and making sure that you know everybody has a positive experience within the amount of money that we've been given. So I think that was fantastic and I think that was really fun to make sure that it was almost like a puzzle solving it. So that was really fun. Uh along with being the co-director of finance

021I was also able to be a co-chair for uh the conference. So I was in the protection of press and so with that I was actually able to see the delegates develop from you know from the starting point of the conference to the end point of the conference and I think that as all my fellow secretary members have said was a really inspiring experience because I mean you know you're walking into a room and you see these people you don't know them they're from all over the state and somehow along the way they become best friends with each other they make relations with each other sometimes they start fighting with each other as Pithico was saying things got really heated nuclear warfare uh we even kicked North Korea out of a committee once. So that

022was pretty funny. But uh you know it was overall just a really inspiring experience seeing people from around the state being able to come together, work together and you know it was even better that it was our school that was able to host this conference for us. So I think it was just overall a fantastic experience and a great growth opportunity for the district itself. Thank you very much. Yeah. So be before we close out, I just wanted to mention uh our gratitude, our esteemed gratitude because this wouldn't have been capable without the support of all of you guys. I remember meeting u Mr. Slatterie around two years ago at a fall fest event and that's kind of where this entire thing kicked off, right? Um some small opportunities where I got to meet Mr.

023Slatty just for like two three minutes. Um really turned into entire story for the next two and three years and hopefully a legacy that we can create at Rockill High School. Uh Principal Fod has always been behind us, behind our support. He's always been there just to kind of support our ideas and continue to just champion our goals and our dreams and our ambitions. Um, our adviser, Mr. Judas, who isn't here today, has also been a great supporter that we've had. Um, I've I don't know if many of you guys know this, but I asked around 18 teachers to become like our club adviser. Uh, unfortunately, I got rejected um all 18 times, but regardless, Mr. Dudus was there and he gave that yes that we needed to kind of start and kick off the

024club back in our freshman year. So, he's been at the pinnacle of this entire program. uh town council member Pash has also been monumental in just allowing me to connect with Mr. Slatterie and just kind of also at the conference being a liazison. So he's been just foundational to its establishment and kind of its growth over the years. Mr. Chabra also came in attendance that day during our conference. So he was able to witness kind of what was going on and I really am grateful for that and just your all of your guys' support and approval in this program and I hope that in the future we continue to support the model UN club and not just our club in general but the clubs at Rocky High School. I feel that clubs are just a

025fantastic way to kind of step back from the traditional academics and go to something more important, something more um some of the soft skills that you can gain from clubs is unlike an experience like anything else and um hopefully you guys can continue to support us and we are so grateful for having you guys um right behind us. So, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I just have a couple couple silly photos from the event. Just wanted to show you guys uh just to kind of put it out there. But we have like a couple of our other delegates from the other schools. So it really showed how to me I know many people when they step into like um Magic Kingdom of like Walt Disney World they'll be like wow this is such a

026special moment for me it was kind of stepping into the conference room. Um so it was really a magical experience for me and uh a couple of the photos just for you guys to take in. But thank you guys so much for having our back and thank you for having us here. Thank you so much. Mr. Is it Bose? How do you I want to make sure I pronounce it correctly. Uh Bosley. Bosley. Mr. Bosley, I have to say when you first approached me with this idea. Um I knew it was a good idea, but I am astounded at how far you guys have taken it. Um I think it's fantastic. Um I think hearing about it before tonight, uh I was excited about it. Uh hearing feedback from uh Mr. FOD and but listening

027to you guys tonight talk about it um clearly you guys hit the ground running um and really turned it into something special. So um I do hope that it continues. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. And shout out to Mr. Dudis, too. He's always willing to step up. All right, moving along to agenda item number three, audience participation. This is the uh portion of the meeting that is open to the public. Uh set aside uh speakers are asked to limit their comments uh to two minutes on any topic. Anybody here to address the board tonight? Mr. Pash, please just give your name and address for the record. Of course. Thank you. Uh thank you Mr. Chair. Um thank you for uh this time to uh speak to the board of ed. Uh I

028just want to uh uh start uh here like and I'll be putting uh these comments uh I'm going to reading them in so that I keep within the time limit and don't uh go over like the two limit hopefully. So u pankage prakash 82 Andover drive uh member of the Rockill town council chair of the public safety committee uh school leazison and majority leader uh once every two years uh like clockwork uh the democratic town committee members complain about my job uh the job that I'm doing as a ski school liaison uh writing letters um engaging in personal attacks to score political points uh this This is a bianual ritual uh reserved for election years only. Uh as I'm not aware of these letters uh being written in the years between election years. Uh so

029I would like to take this moment and uh respond to a recent letter and uh certain FB posts, Facebook posts uh circulated by the Democrats on the board of ed here uh signed in their personal capacity. I'm always engaged in conversation with several POE members uh who are here uh pretty much everyone uh from time to time uh regarding school safety, curriculum, infrastructure and of course the budget which is the big ticket item. This year is no different. Over the last several months, I have had multiple discussions and numerous text exchanges with Democratic BOE member Mr. Mr. Tom Costker here centered around this year's budget. I met with Mr. Costker many times in person to understand board's needs and to advocate for a responsible school budget at the town council. Considering this fact, it is

030easy to conclude that the Democrats on this board were aware of my conversations with one of their own, but willfully ignored this fact and misled the public by signing a politically motivated personal attack with several false claim, including that the town council has cut BOE budget this year. Mr. Costker and I have not always agreed on everything, as you can imagine. But I think we do agree on this. The BOE budget was increased by $1.9 million this year, which is $3.6% increase over the last year. Those are just the facts. Look, showing up for the kids in our community doesn't stop at BOE meetings. It is about being present for them in real and meaningful ways. Sometimes that means having hard conversations about BOE budgets with members like Mr. Costco and sometimes that means cheering

031for the kids as they knock it out of the park. Whether it is at high school events, sports events, or at the first ever model UN conference here in Rocky Hill, it would have been great to see at least one of the Democrats on this board showing up for our kids at these milestone events. It is truly disappointing that many of them don't. I reject the suggestion from the Democrats on the BOE that me being a school leaison is about checking boxes. I am proud of being out here in our community, going above and beyond and doing my job, listening, showing up, and caring for our residents both in public and behind the scenes when nobody's watching. I suggest that the Democrats on the BOE do the same. Get out of this boardroom and show

032up in our community as I will continue to do whether it is an election year or not. Showing up when it matters, where it matters for all our students and for our residents. Thank you for your time, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Pash. Is there is there anyone else? I reply to that. No, we don't. There's no deliberating on the All right. But we do show up, Steve. We do show up. There's no deliberating at the meeting. I got you. I got you. We show up. We We're very much in the public. Is there anyone else uh who is here to address the board tonight? Crazy. Please, if you could just state your name and address for the record, please. Thank you. Country. Hi, my name is Amber Sapparoso and I live at 16 Coral

033Farm Road. Um, I was on my phone the other day scrolling through Facebook and I saw a post about um from the Rocky Hill Democratic Town Committee um posting about Rocky Hills 2020 2526 budget and the cut of $650,000 and where those um cuts were made and how it impact the school system. Why I am here today is um the section where it says merging elementary school special education program. West Hill and Steven schools currently offer a special education program for students with autism and other disabilities in grades K grades K to three for the upcoming school year. These programs will be merging for a better delivery by one certified staff member and their team. the reduction in spending will be 91,771. I'm not happy with that. Um, I'm a special ed teacher, a former

034Rocky Hill special ed teacher, and I taught one of those programs, and I'm sorry if I get emotional. It was very emotional for me. However, we have the neediest the most impacted students in these classes and to merge with one certified teacher. It could be done because you have the best teachers in this district. It was my honor working with them. I learned so much for them and I hope I taught them something. They're good. No, excuse me. They're great teachers. However, when you take away the support staff and even a teacher of a classroom with those needs of those students, it's I'm going to be honest, it's a lot on that teacher. These are individual programs and individual lesson plans for each of those students that needs to be made up daily. So now

035you're going to take two student, two teachers, merge them into one and expect them to do that. I would really encourage you to think about it. And I know you said you can't respond, but I have a few questions I would like to ask the board. And if you could quietly just raise your hand if you can answer them if it's acceptable. If not, I'll just read the questions. Excuse me, I got to If you could just read the questions, we can take them at at another time. That will be fine. I understand. So for all the board members, it doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, you are a person in this town. You are a resident in this town and you have an important part being on the board of ed. Have you

036visited the compass program at West Hill? Have you visited the special education resource classes at West Hill? Have you visited Sorry. Have you visited the life skills program at Stevens? How about the KIP program? That's our autistic program which you are considering merging. Many of those students have oneto ones. Many of students are non-verbal. their lesson plans that the teachers need to create daily is an amount um a massive amount. Moving to and in Stevens, have you seen uh life skills programs? and I believe life skills. Kip, have you been to the special ed resource rooms over at Stevens? Right. Because we're all a team. Special ed in this school system is a team. Have you been to Moer? Have you been to the life skills program over at Moer? Have you been to the

037compass program over at Moer? Compass is the behavior program that we house. Do you understand that there is a life skills program and a compass program at Moer with one certified teacher? Two different functions, two different types of students. You never filled that position after I left it. you filled it with one teacher for two programs. Think about it. How about at GMS? Have you visited any of the special ed programs? I know I'm sure you guys all been a part of the challengers, right? That's wonderful for our students with special needs or special education. Have you been to unified sports and I believe Moer has a unified theater now. Have you been to that? Sure. I'm I'm sure. But we also need to look at the day-to-day programs that are going on in this

038district that affect the special education students. Whether they're impacted immensely or whether they're impacted maybe they see a resource teacher once or twice a week. These are children who are living in this town. And I know a lot of the times parents can't make it to these meetings or watch it or don't speak up because if you take a child out of the home and go somewhere else different, it their routine is off. Some may not understand. So parents may not have babysitters either. So I am here to speak for them when some don't have a voice. So please consider that section of the budget. Thank you, Miss Eparosa. I would encourage you to stick around. Miss Stevenson is going to be doing a full um a full report on special education services and actually

039um part in the agenda. The presentation that I'm going to do tonight is actually going to answer uh some of the questions that you asked and and tie right into a lot of things that you said. So you should definitely stay. Thank you, Miss Epusa. Is there anyone else here to address the board tonight? Mr. Russell. Uh, good evening. Uh, thank you for the opportunity to speak again on behalf of the rock of the teachers of the Rocky Hill public schools. My name is Douglas Russell, co-president of the RHTA. We would like to take this opportunity to address the survey results in further detail and to follow up on Mr. Slatterie's closing remarks at the May 15th board of education meeting. We appreciate and agree with your acknowledgement of the importance of following the district's

040chain of command or hierarchy as you described it. As teachers, we have decades of experience with changes in policies, state legislation, and addressing the everchanging needs of the students. Whether it be least restrictive environments, safe school climate, or restorative practices, we have always been fully committed. However, in order to implement initiatives effectively, we need clear guidance and support from central office along with sufficient time and professional development. Our members are eager and willing to rise to the occasion as we always have. um but we cannot do so without the direction and the part partnership from those leading the way. We have always rolled up our sleeves and done what needed to be done. We also want to clarify that our teachers concerns are not with the concept of hierarchy or the policies themselves. Rather, they

041stem from an increasingly difficult and unhealthy working culture that has been developed over time. As reflected in our recent climate and culture survey completed by 132 out of the approximately 250 members from all fi five schools, many teachers report a lack of transparency, communication, and adequate training related to new expectations. This is not due to a single event, but rather a buildup of ongoing issues that have led to frustration and concern. Furthermore, results from the survey confirm that at best, teachers believe there is a lack of direction, communication, and transparency to the specifics coming from the state. At worst, teachers are not feeling valued as trusted professionals and are working under conditions that promote tension and intimidation and a fear of retaliation. These conditions are not conducive to the healthy collaborative environment we want for

042all our schools. To be clear, we would like a culture of collaboration, not one of blind compliance. 90% 90% of the respond respondents answered yes to the question of if they feared retaliation from central office. Survey comments reflect that teachers are hesitant to speak up, raise concerns, advocate for students, or share ideas, which is damaging collaboration, morale, and innovation. Over time, this has eroded staff well-being, has weakened leadership credibility, and has negatively impacted student incomes outcomes. A healthy school culture depends on open communication, innovation, trust, and the freedom to voice concerns without fear. We have had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Zitto where we were able to voice our concerns and begin a productive dialogue. While this is a positive first step, both sides recognize that much work remains. We are hopeful that continued

043collaboration and changes will help us move forward in a way that supports students, teachers, and our community. Our students our students deserve to to go to school in a place that fosters trust, respect, and open communication with all of its stakeholders. A place where educators feel safe to speak up, collaborate, innovate, and advocate for what's best for learners. When teachers thrive in an empowering, safe, supportive environment, students benefit from a stronger, more responsible, more responsive educational experience. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Russell. and uh Mr. Russell. Well, this isn't really in response to Mr. Russell, but it is part of my committee report, my chairman's report, and I in case you can't stick around for the entire meeting, I'm going to say that part now. Um my idea for next year is

044to um meet with central have a delegation of the board of ed, the central office and um uh yourself if you're still in the position um probably every three months and this way we all have uh a a we can all sit at the same table. So that was going to be part of my uh chairman's report. Um thank you for coming out last uh last meeting. Um I didn't know you were coming. Um, obviously I had some time to think about what you said. Um, I think everybody uh at the table agrees that collaboration is key to success. So I think that that'll be a good step in the right direction just to make sure that everybody has a voice. So um, appreciate that. You're welcome. All right. Moving back to the agenda. Well,

045actually, is there anyone else who is here to address the um the board tonight? All right, seeing none, we'll move along to agenda item number four, which is approval of minutes. There's a few on here tonight, so bear with me while I read through them. We have the May 13, 2025 Board of Education Facilities Committee meeting. The May 13, 2025 Board of Education School Safety Committee meeting, the May 13, 2025 Board of Education Policy Committee meeting. the May 15, 2025 board of education special meeting. The May 15, 2025 board of education meeting. The June 2nd, 2025 board of education special uh special meeting. The June 2nd, 2025 board of education facilities committee meeting. The June 2nd, 2025 board of education education personnel and negotiations committee meeting. June 5th, 2025 board of education special meeting. the

046June 5th, 2025 Board of Education Policy Committee meeting and the June 5th, 2025 Board of Education Special Education Committee meeting. Does anyone uh would anyone like to add any um make any corrections, deletions, um anything to any of the minutes? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Motion to approve. Motion to approve the minutes. All right. Moved by Mr. Gavin. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Miss Manella. Any discussion. All right. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. All right. 8 Z. The minutes are approved. Moving along to agenda item number five. Uh correspondence. Dr. Zto. Thank you. Number of items of correspondence report tonight. The first is a note of appreciation from Kathy Briggs who's a car educator GMS to the Rocky Hill Board of

047Education and central office. Thank you for the various uh for the very generous gift card to Carbine's Prime. I will enjoy a delicious dinner with my family. It's been a pleasure working at GMS all these years. Thank you again, Miss Kathy Briggs. Uh this is a tough one to read. Dear board members, this is from Christine Flynn. Thank you for the gift card to one of my favorite restaurants, Rooster Company in Newington. Kim and I love going there, and we will enjoy another visit together. With deep appreciation, I thank you for your support, encouragement, and friendship over the years. Rocky Hill is a wonderful community, and I was fortunate to be a part of it. Wishing you all continued success in keeping our schools the best. Finally, Christine Flynn. Christine is at her niece's college

048graduation tonight and could not be here, but uh wanted me to read that note. Another tough one to read. He's at the table here. Chuck, board members, so grateful there are amazing people in this world. People like all of you. Thank you for the generous gift card to Home Depot. That seems like something Chuck would enjoy. Will be good use to us. A good use now that I will have time to go do projects around the house. Thank you for all the support you've given me during my time in Rocky Hill. And then a note from the incoming uh principal at West Hill uh personalized to each board member by name. Dear Steve, Amber, Maria, Jessica, Sean, Thomas, Brian, Jay, Jennifer, thank you so much for the opportunity to serve as West Hills new principal.

049I'm beyond thrilled and can't wait to get started. Thank you for your support and trust in me. I'm so grateful to be a part of such a wonderful team here in Rocky Hill. Thank you, Carrick Quinn. So, very nice notes uh in correspondence from various people throughout the school system. That's it for correspondence. Thank you, Dr. Zto. All right, moving along to agenda item number six is the consent calendar. On the consent calendar tonight, we have the adoption of the Rocky Hill Board of Education 2025 2028. Yep. Uh the approval of recently recently negotiated contracts between the Rocky Hill public schools and the Rocky secretaries and Rocky Hill pareducators. I think the microphone's going in and out. I'm not touching anything. I uh approval of the 2025 2026 uh lunch breakfast prices. Would anyone like

050anything added or removed from the consent calendar? All right. Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. Moved by Mr. Gavin. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mr. Shabra. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. All right. The eyes have it. 8-0. Consent calendar is approved. All right. Moving into committee reports. First, can I make a motion to take five minute break so these guys can get out? Oh, yeah. Let's do that. We usually take a fivem minute break so that uh people can so that people can take pictures and uh do that thing. So, let's I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn for five minutes or for a fivem minute recess. Hard five. Hard five. Uh moved by moved by Mr. Shabra. Do

051I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mr. Costco. All those all those in favor say I. I. All right. 8 Z. We're in recess for five minutes. 746. Think it's not a five. Understand? All right. Call back to order this uh special meeting of the board of education, Rocky Hill. It is now 7:47. My apologies, Mr. Costco. Good. Very good. It was a hard six. Um all right, moving along onto committee reports. Um agenda item number seven is curriculum committee. That is Miss Tucker. Um we did not have the a uh any reason to meet for curriculum uh since the last meeting. Number eight is uh facilities committee, Mr. Gavin. Uh the facilities committee meeting uh had a meeting on June 2nd and we got a very nice update uh from Ron uh regarding the

052Hback uh the HVAC system continuing project at Steven School where they're going to uh begin work shortly. He also gave us a great design for potential upgrades at the GMS media center and technology classroom uh which looked great. And if you've been in those rooms, they need a good rehab. Um, we went through and discussed the uh design process for the West Hill roof, which is next summer, right? Next summer, not this summer. And also uh we got a very nice uh presentation on a lacrosse rebound wall that has been requested so that the students don't throw the cross balls at the high school any longer. Um that was an interesting one. Uh but want to thank Ron for all the great work he did and uh putting together all the projects and designs and

053uh the presentation that he gave us that evening. Thank you, Mr. Gavin, any questions? Mr. Costco? Yeah, thanks Sean for the update. I appreciate it. Um, I just want to add two little details because I was at the meeting that the HVAC, just so people are aware, it's the gym that's happening this summer. Just want to add that little detail um that once school's out, which is now, so next week or so, the HVAC will be extended to the gym area. So, I just want to add that detail. And yes, it's next summer it looks like. So, the West Hill roof uh design is this summer and then we'll get around to doing some of the work next summer, which you stated. So, thank you for the update. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Mr.

054Costco. Yeah. And with respect to the roof um with the West Hill roof, because I know that was um talked about um the the obviously there's a process. So, the funding has to be in place before we can apply for grants. The the design is set to be complete by the uh by September of this year. Uh from there then we can apply for grants, plan and review, go out to bid in early 2026. Construction is expected to hopefully start um the last day is it the the first day schools out 2627 uh so next summer. Just want to be clear so that everyone I know that was an issue that was uh concern that people were concerned about. um in the pro in in the interim and I had this in my chairman's report

055as well but um in the interim the um Ron our fabulous facilities um facilities guy has been addressing any issues as they arise. I want to assure the public that there's not any unsafe condition at uh at West Hill that he is on top of it. uh any issue that does pop up, he deals with it um and uh is constantly making sure that the school is safe and effective for learning. Um right now it's costing the board probably $4 or $5,000 a year roughly per year uh to deal with those repairs. Um but it is not a catastrophic emergency. Um and Ron is on top of it. Uh and if it if if if circumstances change, he'll let us know and obviously we'll it'll be brought to the board's attention and we'll and we'll

056deal with it appropriately. Um, so big shout out to Ron on that. Um, and for uh for basically playing whack-a-ole while we while we uh go through the process of uh of doing it the right way. Um, and the reason it's important to do that is the grant would cover a significant portion of that 2.2 million. So, of that expected cost. Yes, Mr. K. If I might, I'm sorry, just one more thing because and I again just as more detail and I appreciate again Sean mentioning the the Grizzled Middle School Media Center because that was a great presentation that they put together. So, this is in the design phases. Again, just to be clear with the public, this is in design phases early on to get those designed so that they can eventually go out

057to bid. It's kind of a down the road project that the board has to set aside money for. So, that's kind of a a down the road thing that the board will will work on figuring that out, but it was a great presentation, but it's in the early stages for that. I think I'm think maybe Mr. Kosker makes a good point for the for the public to understand that when we're planning these projects, we have to plan them out in uh years in advance because they do take time as far as uh lining them up and you always want to be our goal is to always be work have always have one project in design, one project being done and one project in the queue. And so the the presentation that Ron gave us gave

058us a lineup of about three or four projects going out to I believe it was 2029. doesn't mean that those are priorities or that they're necessarily going to go in that order or that they're nec but those are those are the projections uh of things on the horizon and the radar that the board will consider um as we move through um as we move through the years. Thank you Mr. Kusk and thank you Mr. Gavin. All right, moving along to finance committee. Miss, that is Miss Tucker and that committee did not uh meet. Personnel negotiations number 10 and Mr. Gavin. Yes, we uh personnel negotiations had a meeting also on June 2nd. Um at the time, Dr. Zto went through uh the board policies uh for hiring certified staff and hiring non-certified staff so that

059we would have a better understanding of the process. We also reviewed the uh proposed agreements uh for the secretaries and the par educators which we just passed in the consent calendar. Thank you, Mr. Gavin. Any questions? All right, moving along to agenda item number 11. That is the policy committee report. Mr. Shower, uh we did have a meeting on June 5th. There are seven policies that are on the agenda later on for a second reading and board anticipation on the vote and we have one policy that is being repealed. It's an old policy which one of the new ones is replacing that. Correct. Um and I guess we could talk I'll say a little bit more about that now just because I think we're just going to adopt it later. um for the purposes of

060so so those policies are school school security and safety visitors and observations in the school prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment place personnel uh prohibition of uh sex discrimination sexual harassment the students Connecticut school climate uh plan and administrative regulations that's one of the new ones uh and uh restorative practices response policy which is another one of the new ones um and then uh student discipline um the repeal that Mr. Shabra is uh uh discussing or or was mentioning is the I believe it's the bullying policy and that's because it's being replaced by the school climate plan and administrative regulations. So, it's um and and all of these policy uh either updates or additions are in direct response to either changes in leg legislation from the state legislature uh or uh new new uh

061laws that were passed by the state legislature and are being added to our policies to comport with the law and those policies uh adoption of those policies is on the agenda for for later. All right, Steve, any questions? Yeah, more of a comment if that's okay. Sure. Yeah. So, thank you for reading them because there are a bunch of them. There's been a lot of policy work. Um, this board has meant a lot as you saw by our adoption of the minutes. There's been a ton of meetings over the last couple months, but there's a whole bunch of policies. Uh, and I do appreciate all the work that admin has done in the committee going through all those because we had a lot of conversations back and forth about a lot of the details in

062those. So, I really appreciate that. Uh, also I I'll mention this that because one of my questions is how do we know about these policies as a public right with board? We know so you know many of these are or maybe all of them you can correct me if I'm wrong Dr. Zto or or Chairman Steve are either on our um website on our board website or in the case of student policies end up being referred to in our student handbook. So so for the public out there that's you know wondering about these or whatever you get the student handbook. I know I have trouble reading it because it's pretty long but it's it's in there right? So the stuff's in there and it's referred to in those uh handbooks and it's also on our

063website. So, if you have any questions about these, um, it's out there. Um, so I just wanted to mention that certainly and they are the policies are essentially the law of the land in the district. It's it's the equivalent of our statutes here in Connecticut. Thank you, uh, Tom. All right, moving on to number 12, special education. That is Miss Tucker, and I'm cover that for her. Uh, we did have a special education meeting on I believe it was June 5th. Uh at that meeting, uh Jesse Harmon was uh um was present and presented to us the state the results of the state audit that were um that was done. Uh I believe it was a random audit if I remember correctly. Um and those uh the results of that audit were uh presented to

064the board. Um and there were, you know, we learned about a lot of the things that were doing really well and then some of the things that we can improve on which um every everyone uh any district can always improve. Um so uh I want to thank Miss uh Harmon for that uh presentation and then also um with respect to special education, Miss Stevenson will be giving a full uh report uh at her uh point on the agenda uh later tonight. So correct. All right, moving along to agenda item number 13, if I might on special education. I'm sorry. I think we can hold the questions until Miss Stevens and talk about the audit. Yeah, until Miss Stevens. The presentation has nothing to do with the audit. So I just want to make a couple

065comments just to fill in some blanks on the audit. That's all. But um I mean if you have a question I think a question would be some more comment. I'm a member of the committee so I was just going to comment on the discussion at the meeting. Yeah. With Miss Tucker being uh being absent tonight I'll I'll allow it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I just wanted to say yeah. So the audit is I think it's every three to five years. Every school in the state district in the state gets a special education audit. So that's what this was part of. There was an unannounced visit as part of the audit. There was a desk audit which is them, you know, kind of doing work behind the scenes looking at records that

066the district provides which are extensive. Um and and overall it was very positive. So I did want to say that and mention that it was a very positive audit. The results there were some classroom observations as well. There were staff interviews, there was parent interviews. So it's fairly thorough. Um again they can't look at everything in the district district of course but they went to I think it's four out of the five schools they they looked at as well and visited. So it was pretty thorough and and overall it was very positive. There were some, you know, corrective actions here and there um that the district is taking action on, but nothing major. Um so overall I thought it was very um positive. So I just want to comment on that. Thanks. Thank you, Mr.

067Moving along to agenda item number 13. Correct. Council, Mr. Shaber? I have nothing since the last meeting. All right, Mr. Shabber. Moving along to agenda item number 14, school safety. Mr. Clemens, uh we have not met since our last meeting. However, uh, Officer Jordan, one of our phenomenal, uh, SRO's, has made the decision to go back onto patrol. I, uh, ran into Chief Collect the other day. He will have a replacement for Officer Jordan within the month. He believes, excellent. Officer Jordan will be greatly missed at our elementary schools in Moer. I can vouch for that. Isabella goes there. My Isabella goes there. Um, we have a round of Um, but let's I guess we take a moment just to thank uh Jordan uh officer officer Jordan. Thank you. Officer Jordan for uh his the

068work that he has done there. I mean he really has connected with those kids and I think gone above and beyond uh what anyone would necessarily expect from uh a school resource officer. So we certainly wish him well in his next endeavor. um and and hate that uh hate the fact that he's moving along, but thank you for uh all the service that he provided uh to uh to the school district. All right, moving along to agenda item number 15. The last committee report is Mr. Gavin on technology. The technology committee has not met from the last meeting. All right. Thank you, Mr. Gavin. Moving along to agenda item number 16, the much discussed board of education policy additions and revisions. Um, any questions or um I guess I Dr. Zto, do you want to

069do a a quick rundown? I mean, I just laid I just laid the policies out. Um, I think we So, with that, I'll entertain full committee meetings on it. So, yeah. So we did full we did have full two two full committee meetings working through them. Um again there are two new policies. So we we really wanted to make sure that uh we fully understood the breadth of those. I would encourage the families out there uh to read them as well because they are new. Um and uh if does anyone have any any comments other than discussions we've had during the committee reports? Um all right. With that I'll entertain a motion to uh adopt the uh addition the policy additions and revisions as uh as previously stated. So moved. Moved by Mr. Costco. Do

070I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mr. Clemens. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Any oppose say nay. All right. Those new policy addition new new policies and revisions to old policies are approved. 8 Z. All right. Moving along to agenda item number 17, which ties back into our adopting those policies. Now that those policies are adopted, uh, agenda item number 17 is to reveal repeal the board of education policy number 5310, bullying prevention in and intervention policy. Uh, and uh, 5320, safe school climate plan. Um, and the reason that these are again just to touch uh, I don't want if somebody just is hearing that that part. Um, the reason that those are being repealed is because they are being replaced by the new the new policies which uh, adopt the

071new legislation. Um, any further discussion or uh comments on that? All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion to repeal uh the policies as stated. So moved. Moved by Miss Lefredo. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mr. Shower. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. All right. Those policies are repealed. 80. Agenda item number 18 is approval of food service contract with Sedexo. If there's any discussion on that, bear with me one second. This is We want to give you an update on Yeah. Chuck, if you'd like to give us a quick update on this. Sure. Yep. So, uh, as you can see, in accordance with the USDA guidelines in Connecticut State Department of Education, uh, school districts are required to go to bid for the management of food

072service programs every 5 years. Uh, we had six companies that participated in our mand mandatory walkthrough and three companies who submitted bids. Upon review of the bid documents and scoring each submission, it was determined that Sedexo or current food service management company uh be awarded the bid. Um these agreements are for a period of one year with the option of up to four additional one-year renewals. U you can see in your board packet on the second, I just put together um a highlight as to some of the um things that we went through as a committee. um to determine you know which vendor district should select. Um it is quite an extensive um process uh very lengthy um and there's a lot of um things that go into the process but in the end um

073we did feel that Sedexo um was above and beyond the other people who submitted a bid. Thank you, Mr. Zedigrine. Anyone have any questions for Mr. Zedigrine? All right, seeing none, I will entertain entertain a motion to approve the food service contract with Sedexo. Motion to approve the food service contract with Sedesco. All right. Moved by Mr. Gavin. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Miss Lefredo. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. All right. food service contract with Sedexo is approved 80. And I will say uh I I shout out to them. I think they're doing a a good a great job. Um since they've taken over uh how long have we been with Sedexo? Long time a while. Too long. They're doing a great job. And they and

074they helped out with um ch big shout out to them, too, because they helped out with challenger day, which is which was great. All right, moving along to agenda item number 19, which is adoption of the 2025 2026 board of education budget and capital improvement plan. We have had uh we did have an extensive meeting to go well, we had extensive budget process and then we had uh a meeting uh to go through uh the um adjustment based on the reduction from the town council. And so we have a resolution uh prepared based on that new number. Miss Manila. Yep. Be resolved that the Rocky Hill Board of Education hereby adopts its operating budget for fiscal year 2025 2026 in the amount of 55,491771 in accordance with the town council fiscal year 2025 2026 budget

075resolution adopted on May 15, 2025. All right. Do we vote on that? Yes. All right. With that, I will enter uh entertain a Do we have to second that? We do. Do I have a second? Seconded by Miss Baron Morphia. Uh all those in favor? I I. Any opposed? All right. The eyes have it. 8 Z. The new number is adopted. Thank you for reading that. I know that's a difficult number to read. Every year I stumble on it. It's going higher. We don't usually talk in those big of a number. All right. Along to agenda item number 20, assistant superintendent for personnel and student services, Miss Stevens. Okay. Because it's written under control. Just because I saw it written there, I was like, thank you. I saw your face. Yeah. Did we miss that?

076Okay. So, um, good evening everyone. I actually I have two reports to give tonight. So the first report um is a video, very short video. Uh Mr. Costco had asked, I think it was a while ago for some pictures of the students at the Dream Academy that weren't just at the cafe that were um you know throughout the year because I tend to focus on the cafe a little bit. So uh we did not when I say we, I do not mean me. I mean the staff at the Dream Academy put together this short video. So we'll go ahead and watch this and then I'm going to go ahead and um do the second report which is a PowerPoint. So we can go ahead and press play. [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey,

077hey. [Music] dance. [Music] Oh. [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] All right, we can I think it's replaying. Okay, so the kids had a great year. Um, lot of great experiences. And I I know you guys probably didn't notice, but there's one student in there that was in a lot of the group pictures and the trip pictures who was not going on trips previously. Um, and this year he went on almost all of the trips with the kids. So, it was pretty amazing to see that. So, I'm very excited. Okay. So, um, I'm going to give you a report tonight. Um, and it actually ties in with with some of the things that have been said here tonight. So, I think it's it's good timing. Um this is the end of the school year. It's

078June. It's our last board meeting. Um and I've been reflecting a lot. Um this is my eighth year in the district and I've been reflecting a lot about you know the work that I've done here. Um and I was thinking about it based on some of the questions that um people were asking. Um this is a completely different board than was the board when I was hired. Maria is the only person that was on the board when I was hired. Um, and I remember uh the night that I was hired and um Frank Morse was the board chair. Um, Brian Dylan was was the vice chair at the time. And the question that I was asked at the interview, um, Frank asked me a question at the end of my interview and he said, "Why

079should we hire you?" Um, and my answer was, um, because I'm going to be the strongest advocate for students that you've ever known. That was my answer. Um, and a couple hours later, Dr. Zto called and said, "You got the job." Um, and so I've thought about what that advocacy what what that advocacy like looks like like what is what does that mean? What does an advocate mean? So I just typed it in and a wordle came up and some of the words that were there um defender, supporter, upholder um and then I started thinking about how my role became a dual role because now I oversee HR um which was also under some of you I think were there for that but it was a different board as well. Um and and I started

080thinking about the all the things that that that I oversee now. And one of the things is hiring um because I am now responsible for all the hiring and the onboarding and and all of that. And I started thinking about some of the questions um that were asked about some of the specialized programming. And I I started really thinking about it. Um and somebody made a comment here tonight and said, "We have the best teachers in this district." And and we do. We have amazing staff in this district. And when I came here, um, and I know I I talk about this, but I want to give you a really close glimpse of what this looks like tonight in this PowerPoint, um, we did not have what's called a continuum of services. And what a

081continuum of services means is that you have to make sure that there are programs in every school from prek all the way to age 22. And when I came here eight years ago, Rocky Hill did not have that. We had Bright Beginnings, there was Pathways program, and there was a a kind of a very small version of of KIP that really was mostly preschool. Um, and you know, in my commitment to advocate for students, I said we we have to create programs. Um, and that's a a real leap of faith that the board put in me. Um, because when you add programs, you have to add staff. uh you have to hire people because you need staff to run the programs and you have to hire teachers and you have to hire paras and you

082have to get space. Um there's a lot you have to do which is why sometimes some directors just say hey we'll outplace the students because it is it is a lot of work to create programming because you have to ensure that the programming is sustainable. That's that's very important. Um but I I think that that's that's an important goal. Um, and I want to show you over the eight years some of the programs that we've created because as board members, it would be great if you could just walk into West Hill School and walk into Compass, but you can't do that because that's that's a that's a specialized program and you can't just walk in um because it's it's kind of there's some confidentiality there. So, that wouldn't be appropriate. Um, but it is appropriate

083for me to kind of show you some of the pictures of what the kids do and the the amazing staff that run these programs because we now have programs all the way from preK all the way up till age 22. Um, I've been here. I've hired almost all of them. They're amazing teachers. Um, and I really I I want tonight I want to to showcase to you these wonderful teachers who work so hard to put students first and and advocate for our most vulnerable students that we have in the district. So, we can go ahead. I I don't know if I have a thing to click. Are we clicking? What's going on here? Every time stay close. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Okay, we're good. All right. So, the uh the first program um and I know

084there was a question about this um in one of our meetings um a couple weeks ago. It was Kids in Progress, which is our KIP program. So, I just want to clarify something. KIP this year is at both schools. It's at Stevens and West Hill. This is the first year it's ever been separated. It's never been in both schools before. That's never happened. Um it's always been at just one school. It's always been condensed. Always. It was This is the first year that it ever was. And the only reason it was is because we did have an influx of kids. We had a lot of students. So we tried it out to kind of separate it. Um it condensing it makes a a lot of sense. It's completely appropriate. The enrollment has gone down. Um

085and it's very manageable and the teacher actually one of the teachers um is wonderful and she did ask for a different assignment. So we are honoring that. So it's it's a it's very appropriate. Um but this is our kit program. Um, and this is the one at West Hill this year. And oh, okay. So, I had asked the staff to put together um a little PowerPoint for me. And it was interesting. Um, Amber Dupont is our teacher for for KIP. Um, actually, uh, Mr. Rand and I hired her about a year and a half ago. She's amazing. Uh, Ron and I were just talking about her. Um, and she wrote right here, "Our dedicated staff always put students needs first because that is what they do. She's an amazing teacher." Um, and you know, the

086related services staff and the pairs in the program, um, who my office also hires are simply amazing. We have, uh, Emily St. John is our BCBA, Elena Rapaort, they were new this year and they're, um, wonderful additions to the team. They're great. Um, so the kids at Kip, so what they do is a it's called structured play. And this is something that is really amazing because they have their peers come and play with them so that they can have access to their peers. Um they would not get this in an outplacement. This would not be something that they could do. And this is something that they're able to do in our schools because of this program. And Amber Dupont is amazing and and runs this and the staff at West Hill is amazing and they

087embrace it. It's it's great. uh the the students at KIP got to participate in the fun run. Um so this was uh you know one of many opportunities that the program that the kit program the kids could participate in. They would not have been able to do that if they were out of district. Meals on wheels Mustang Meals on Wheels. I think this is awesome. So, Kit partners with Sedexo and the Learning Center, which is another program, um, to start the Mustang Meals on Wheels program so that our students could have access to valuable vocational opportunities that would set them up for success later in life. Um, they sold snacks to teachers throughout the school and partnered with the PTO to get teachers free snack coupons for teacher appreciation week. So, this is amazing. So,

088these kids are well known in the community in the West Hill community. Um, and when I got to the district, these kids, they would have been they we said, "We don't have any programming for them. They need to get out place." And that was kind of what had been done. And this program has been well sustained and is run by Amber Dupont, who's who's awesome. Uh, Stevens School Kip program. So, this year we do have we do we did separate KIP. It's the first year we've ever done it. Um, and Kate U runs Kip at Stevens. She's awesome. Um, she actually I did not hire Kate, but I did put her in the program. Um, and she had a great attitude about it. She she's flexible and she, you know, took it on with with

089open arms and has done an amazing job. Um, every Friday students and kip work together to prepare delivery bags, pack orders, and make deliveries to teachers around the school. So, again, they're well known in in the community. Um, it's a it's a great program. They also do structured play with their peer groups um so that their peers know them and that they can be with their peers and be active members of their school community and the paras in in Kip are amazing. Um mostly they someone said tonight they are mostly oneto ones. They're amazing para educators um and they work really hard. So you see them working hard laughing and um they got to participate in field day. So, our students had the best time participating in field day with their general education classes. Everyone

090had so much fun. So, um again, they never would have been able to do this if they were outplaced. So, this is really truly amazing. And yeah, I want to thank Kate Ule um and her staff for the amazing job that they do again with our most vulnerable students. This is the learning center. Um the learning center. So, this was also the first year that we separated the learning center at West Hill and Stevens. Um and we are continuing that model for next year because the numbers are very large. Um and so we cannot condense it because they are too big. So um the learning center is we have one at Westill um and these students receive a wide range of services onetoone small group paraprofessional support. Um Lauren Miranda is the teacher. Um Dr.

091Zitto and I hired her a couple years ago. She's wonderful. Um, again, she embraced this role with open arms and is doing a phenomenal job. And the students are, every time I go in the classroom, it's just the kids are amazing. And her staff is amazing. Um, these are the PAR educators that are in the program. Um, Jamie, Mary, and Caitlyn, and they're really wonderful para educators. We have Maggie um, Bombachi and two occupational therapists, Lori and Stephanie. Um, and again, we have BCBAs, Bruce and Emily St. John. and again our speech and language pathologist Elena who's been a great addition. So the students um you know they spend a lot of time when you have a specialized program and kids have specialized needs. A way to kind of help them learn in a non-traditional

092way is to use kind of play-based learning, arts and crafts, movement, um music, things like that. So the kids are really engaged and active in their learning. Um music and movement is an important time. So these programs and again that's great. I am an advocate for kids. I have a I can have a vision. I can say, "Okay, I have a vision. This is what we have to do." The board places their trust in me to say, "Okay, we're going to trust you." But at the end of the day, it's hiring the right people who can sustain and make these programs what they are. And that is truly what we've done. And this is our life skills program. Uh oh, no. Don't go. Where are you going? I don't know what just happened. Okay. What's

093going on? Okay. Okay. So, this is our life skills uh program at uh Stevens. Uh Rachel Veerano is our life skills uh teacher and she's new this year. Uh Miss Rand and I hired her over the summer. Um she's wonderful. She embraced this role and she's done a great job. Uh the PAR educators are amazing. Um I've been in this classroom a number of times. The kids are super engaged. Um, and they're doing a she's doing a great job. And again, while it wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for you guys to walk in the classroom um, as board members, I wanted you to see what these programs look like because I think it's important that you have an understanding of what these programs are and what it does take to sustain them in terms of staff,

094equipment, space, all of that. Um, life skills serves students from K to three at Stevens School with various disabilities, providing instruction and support. It's a wonderful space. Our staff is very talented at creating spaces. Ron Lamontine, our facilities director, is very helpful with this and is always does a great job with staff helping to create the spaces that we need for our students. So, this is our life skills students learning at their stations. They also do structured play. So um this is again they do structured play at Steven so that they can spend time with their peers and develop communication skills, social skills and play skills. And they do adapted specials. Okay? So sometimes they can't always participate in some of the specials the way everybody else can, but our specials teachers are wonderful and

095we do adapted specials and a lot of times the OT's and the PTs assist with that so that the students can access the specials. This would not be happening if the students were outplaced task box bins so they can have engaged learning. Oh my gosh. Okay. um special events. So, they participated in glow dance, holiday fun, and the hundth day of school. Again, they're participating in all these community events with their peers and field day. They all got to participate in field day. So, the compass program was mentioned tonight. Um so, Compass, I will never forget this. I went to Mark after this was my second year here, I think, and I we had three students in uh the elementary school. Um, and this was actually some of the work that ca that came out.

096Mr. Kusker, I can't see you, but this is actually some of the work that came out of, uh, the parent group that we had, um, and when we were meeting, uh, remember with parents and we talked about how we didn't have a program for students with social emotional needs at the elementary level. There was nothing. And I went to Dr. Zitto and I said, I have a person who I think can run this and create this program. If we don't do this, I'm going to have to place three students out. Um, and again, he we went to the board. I showed everybody, you know, my plan and the board said, "Do it." And I did. And I actually brought in Rachel Nye, who I actually had hired in my previous district and she came here

097um and she created the Compass program and she's um amazing and it is wonderful. She's since left the district um to to raise her children. But um in her place uh we hired Ann Emanuel who was a parah and trained under Rachel and she is wonderful. She is a wonderful human being and she gives everything to these kids and she runs the program with Amy Fain who's a social worker that um I hired a couple of years ago. Shelby Zukowski um was here when I got to the district. She's just a rock star and um has assisted with this program because she just has a heart for these kids. And then um so it's important I I want to explain this part to you guys. It's important because this came up um Mr. I know

098Mr. Gavin was mentioning this the BCBA because we kept talking about the BCBA and and the budget. So what happened was um last last year Dr. Zitto and I met and m and Mr. Nosk now Dr. Nosik met with the Compass staff and we said, you know, obviously the demographics are changing. The kids are really challenging. Just so you know, the program started with three students. It has 10 now. So, it's it's grown. What can we do to support you? How can we support you? What do you need? And they said, "We need a BCBA just for this program. We we just really need somebody that has the skill set to really help us manage the behavior." And we said, "Okay." Again, went to the board. Hey, we need this BCBA. It was We got

099it. And now um this program is doing really really well. Since the creation of Compass 7 years ago, one elementary student has been outplaced in seven years. One it's it's it's very significant and could not be done without these people. Um Mr. Lamontine had to create more space for us this year because we needed more space. Um, so he we called him on Friday and I and I think he had it done by Tuesday. So, um, this was we said, "Listen, we need this done." And he did it. Um, so we have a nice big space, which is amazing. Um, so, uh, this year, um, I had actually planned a retreat for a number of staff um, up at the Story Barn in Summers, Connecticut with um, uh, Rnado Bowers, who's a children's author and

100a story coach. Um, and the purpose of this was to kind of give our staff who are really in all of these specialized programs a day um to kind of talk about their experiences and and everything that they're dealing with and to kind of um, you know, just kind of gather strength from each other and it was a really positive experience and this is the four of them um, going up there for that. Um and so some of the student accomplishments encompass uh the students participated in concerts, field trips, funr run and field day. Um and then they also have a social skills group and they create their own social emotional learning toolkits that they use throughout the day. Um so this model and I'm going to talk about Moer in a minute, but the

101model with the BCBA and the teacher has been working really really well and again this was at the request of the staff. They said they wanted this and we we followed what they wanted and they're very happy. Um so Moer School, so Moer School um obviously when it was um when it was it was opened um just had the life skills program. So students from Kip and TLC went to that um went to that program. It's only two grades so there were less kids in there so it was manageable. Um and then we realized that we also needed a compass program uh for students with behavioral challenges. So we did hire a teacher. Um and um that teacher actually um also came from my previous district and trained under Rachel Nye who created Compass. Um

102Alexis Lion. She's awesome. She's amazing. Um and so we did have two teachers. Um what happened when one of the teachers resigned um the um Alexis came to us and and Dr. Diaz and said I want a BCBA. Um I want to combine the programs and I think we can work together with a BCBA and that's what the staff wanted. That's what the Paras wanted and that's what Alexis wanted and we did that. Um, and now the program has been renamed connections. And there are going to be, and I'm going to give you numbers in a few minutes, 14 students, 14 in this program next year. And they are a combination of students with behavioral challenges and students um, with autism and students that that need life skills instruction. Um, and we hired an amazing

103BCBA, Tina Cornwall. Um, Dr. Zto and I hired her last year, and her and Alexis run the program together, and they're they do an amazing job. Um, so this is our uh new this year at Moers is the school connection. So they did rename it. So this is the program and the kids are doing a phenomenal job. Program highlights. This year we have learned to use functional communication, built friendships, requested to go to home room independently in consistency, walked to classes independently, independently used I want and I need statements vocally, independently used augmentative and alternative communication devices to request and comment, increased IRA scores, learned to read short stories and demonstrate comprehension, adopted a cow. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to get clarification on that one because I don't know what that means. Um, and

104created a monthly newsletter. So I don't know about the cow but I will get a response about that. So um this this is a a wonderful program and is running very very well. Um so we do have a program at the middle school. I was not able to get um pictures um of the program but we do have a life skills program at the middle school. Um it has about nine or 10 students in it. Um and it's been being run for about seven years very successfully. Um and the kids are doing very well. We do we don't have a full-time BCBA with the program, but we do have a BCBA there several days a week um who's very involved in the program. Um oh, and so this is the unified um this is our

105high school. So we have a life skills program at the high school which we did not have. Um Allison Berseron runs this program. Um she was also somebody that I had hired previously and um she's doing a great job running this program. Um the kids are you know with their peers doing unified arts, unified sports. Um the pairs are amazing. You see inclusion. They have got the people as the eyes which is pretty cool. Um Gabby Brzowski does unified sports as well. She is awesome. They did an Eric Carile mural which is pretty cool. This is divorce with their peers. Um, and they went to Old Weathersfield to see the scarecrows. So, I'm going to just give you um a quick update on the Dream Cafe and then I'm just going to give you a

106few numbers and then this will be over. But like I said, I I wanted you guys to have a really have really have an understanding of these specialized programs because like I said, it's a new newer board and it occurred to me that you may not have a full understanding when we say KIP or Compass of of what that means. Um so Dream Cafe update, we did this update a couple of months ago um to a committee to the special ed committee and um I know Miss Lefredo had wanted us to show the whole board. So this is an adapted version because it's just it's too long to show everything. So, it's it's adapted. Um, so the first year um closed out its first year with $41,968 in sales. Um, and since then, February, March,

107April, and May, uh, the cafe has done a total of $14,556. And again, you know, um, Aaron, someone that I've hired, is is amazing and wonderful, and she is she's a rock star. Um, she's great and and she does a great job. the tips from year one equaled $3,446. Um, and 2025 year-to- date tips are uh already at $1,755. So, the community is supporting this initiative and the kids are really having wonderful experiences. So for the first year we did ESY breakfast, new teacher orientation, parks and recck pickle ball ribbon cutting, convocation, unified sports banquet, uh PD Valentine's event, and administrative meetings. So that those are just a few of the things that the kids did. Um this we got the van, so it was a pretty big accomplishment. Um and the kids are going

108on deliveries. Um and that's been a pretty regular thing now. It's amazing. Uh Aaron did tell me today that one of our students graduated and we were going to rent a convertible, but that didn't work out, but she did let one of the students that was graduating sit in the front and pick the music. So that is what we settled on and it worked out very well. Um so that was great. Um Aaron, you know, because she is a she's great with the kids, but she's she also was a business owner, so she does these, you know, the Thanksgiving pie sales, the holiday cookie sales, the Valentine's Day cards, and the Mother and Father's Day cards. very successful and the kids have amazing opportunities to learn how to bake pies, make cookies, and do crafts

109and cards. Challenger Day. So, um last year we did Challenger Day and it rained and it was a little rough. This year the rain held off and um we did $470 in sales as compared to 140 and we had student volunteers um Justin and Kaden um which was great for them to come out and help. So, it went really really well. Uh so, we're excited about that. So, I want to thank everybody for that. The unified sports fundraiser. So, this I I want to give a shout out to Allison Berseron and Gabby Brazowski because they really did all the work with Aaron. Aaron did a lot of work here and Justin. Um was a huge success. It sold out both seedings, 1,184 in net sales. Um we donated 20% to Unified Sports uh which was

110$237. Nixella. I don't know what the deal is with the PowerPoint and I apologize because it's like cutting off Nixella in the piano. I'm sorry. I'll I can send you the PowerPoint if you want. Um but Nixella played and um student volunteers from Dream and Rocky Hill High School were awesome and um you know, so we do want to do some more Saturday events because this one was really really successful. So, I just want to thank everybody for giving up their time on a Saturday to support this um because it it went really well and you can see the kids uh that volunteered. Okay, so I just showed you all the programs. Um you know, we have programs. We have what's called a continuum of services, which is which is critically important in any district.

111But I want to show you that in those programs, we have a total of 77 students. 77 that weren't here seven, eight years ago and they're here now. If you look at a cost analysis and you look at keeping the kids in district, which is what we've done, the board has trusted my vision, supported, brought in all of these wonderful people that I just showed you to sustain to create and sustain these programs and to put these kids first, to advocate for these vulnerable students. Yep. We have to hire teachers, paras, bcbas, related service staff. We have to add staff. Yes, we have to add staff. And I know that comes up every year at the budget. Why are we adding staff? Why are we adding staff? Well, this is why. But that is approximate

112cost is 3.4 million. If we were to outplace those kids, those students, you're paying for tuition, transportation, related services, sa extra staffing, ESY, your approximate cost. and I backed out excess cost. You're looking at probably over 9 million. 9 million is a conservative number. If there was no continuum of services and no specialized programming, the board of edge budget would be increased at least 5.6 million, most likely more. That's what you would be looking at. if we didn't have all those programs and we didn't have all those staff that are every day coming and their their focus is 100% on the students that is their focus and I know somebody asked about hiring protocols and because I am HR and I I am very involved in the hiring protocols the number one the number one

113thing that I look for when I'm hiring are people that are going to put kids first and people that are going to advocate for students because that's what we need and we are very fortunate to have so many teachers in this district and staff that do that as I just showed you. It underscores the need for promoting student advocacy, especially of our most vulnerable students and hiring administrators, teachers, and staff who put students first. Doing so will allow all students the right to have access to their peers within their community and it supports efficient spending which is the board of ed's obligation to be a responsible steward of taxpayer funds. So while yes this is this is a cost savings and helps you with your budget but it's what's best for kids. So I just

114wanted you guys to have a full picture of that so that you could have really have an understanding um of all these programs when we use all these kit compass TLC and BCBA and all this kind of stuff. This is this is what it means. So I'm happy to take any questions if anybody has a question and I just want to make sure that I got everything. I believe that I did. Does anyone have any questions? I have a comment. Yeah. I wish you had um presented this to the town council over a month ago because that really lays out all I know. I You know what? So, it's funny that you say that, Maria, because a dollar short. Well, I think it's it's funny because when you're in the world so deeply, you're you're

115in it and I've been here and I've been talking about it, you kind of think that everybody it knows it. And then when I know Mr. Chabber, you asked a question about KIP and I was like, you know, I don't know that everybody really knows what what these things are. So, I thought it was important. Um, and I don't know if this would have been appropriate for the town council because it's pictures of the kids and everything. You lay out the numbers and the dollars and what would have been saved and yeah, I think it would have been Yeah, that part is probably a good um Yeah. So, so it's important information and again, you know, I I've been thinking about it. So, I sat down and did and did the dollars. And this is

116not exact because I didn't include some things and I didn't, you know, I just went through the staffing and added up all the staffing and what tuitions would be, but it's very close. Yep. Thank you, Miss Stevenson. All right. I I do have a question. Can you just That was a great presentation, by the way. Thank you for um for putting that together and thank you for everything that you do and certainly thank you to all of our staff who make it all happen. Can you with in particularly talk about the combining of the kips? I just want to make sure that that's clear because I I I have got some questions uh in the public with regard to that and I just want to make sure it's perfectly clear what what's happening there. Okay.

117So KIP to go way back KIP used to be when I got here it was mostly a program where preschool like there was kind of a thing here if you were preschool if you were a preschool student and you had autism you like went to KIP. you didn't get to go to preschool like everybody else. So, the KIP was really for pre like preschool kids. And I remember coming here and there were a couple of like first or second graders and people were like, yeah, they really need to be outplaced. Like, they don't really belong here. And I was like, we're not we're not going to do that because the kids that have autism need to be in preschool. So, we expanded the preschool. That was another whole thing that we did with the board.

118We expanded the preschool and we said, KIP is going to be K3. So, we need to again, you need to have a continuum of services. You can't have a program for preschool kids that have autism and then say when they become first and second grade, they can't be here anymore. You can't do that. So, I said, "Okay, we've got to have KIP K3." So, we did that and it was just one KIP and it it was just at West Hill and there were like three or four kids in it. So, there that's it. That's what it was for years. So, there was never two Kips. There was never a there was never two Kips. It was one. And then a couple of years ago, we moved Kip to Stevens and there was only one Kip.

119There was Kip at Stevens. Um and and it started growing and it started growing and growing and growing. Um and then we had up to 10 kids and we were like 10 students I is is is kind of a lot. So we were like that that if if it continues to go like this, we're going to have to separate it. So we did add a teacher and we separated it this year and so there was one kip at West Hill and one kip at Stevens. Next year the numbers are going down because that's what happens. Kids move on to Moer. Our numbers are Moer are quite high. So we have high numbers. We have 14 kids going into Moer. And so we've got we only have eight at KIP. Um, so we are able to

120accommodate all of those eight students. The teacher is totally on board. She's 100% on board with it. The pairs will be supporting the students. We have the space. So it it is something that we are able to do without um, you know, sacrificing any any anybody's program or anything like that. the other teacher that was doing KIP um was was ready for something new. So, she is um has been notified of of a transfer and is looking forward to to doing something new. Thank you, Miss Stevenson. Within the special education program or somewhere else in in a special education role. Okay. Yeah. Within a district, right? Within the district. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Which she was doing before because she she was put into Kip. She was transferred to Kip. Um yeah, she was she was

121transferred to Kip. Um because and we met with her and we said, "Hey, I think you would be good for this." And she's great. And she said, "I'll try it. I'll do it." She did it for several years. She did a great job. Um she puts her heart and soul into it. She's wonderful. And now she's ready to go back to doing what she was doing before. Thank you, Miss Stevenson. Yep. Mr. Ker. Uh yeah, as you can imagine, I have a number of questions, but um I appreciate the the the presentation. This is great. Do you mind if you can can you go back to that slide with the numbers in each program because it went so quick I didn't catch it all. Right. Just a number and I know it's in flux. I

122know it's not it's not static. I totally I totally get it. It changes every day. I get all that. But this is a snapshot as of Yes. whenever. It's probably going to be different the first day of school. This is what are we? This is so what we do just so you know is we create a spreadsheet and because this drives our staffing our parah educators our transfers like we you know we just notified paras we have we have 100 parah educators we have to tell everybody where they're going what their assignment is next year my office is responsible for that so we sit we spend a lot of time so we have to have this information to know what we're going to need for staffing space you know I have to tell Ron what

123spaces we need if spaces are changing so all of these things you Oh. So, just a couple quick clarification. Um, it's like uh it's about half and half roughly. Yeah, it's about half and half. Yeah. I mean, my son's in the high school one, so I'm familiar with roughly half. It's about like 98 89 something like that. Yep. Um, so that that was one one part of my question. Um, and I appreciate that this whole presentation has been great. I do agree with Marie. I think it would be great. Um, and and I know this presentation obvious this this thing that you just presented. So I I think town council seeing it would be great, you know, for them and so certainly hopefully they watch this and can see this and uh we can get

124to some information. So no, I understand it's too late for this year, but still but still it's important regardless of this year. I think it's great. Um on the BCBA, I know you mentioned a BCB being there in Compass and in the connections are those two BCBAs full-time for those programs? Okay. Yes, we have an additional Yeah, I thought those guys are full time. So, in connections, we have two full-time staff, right? Two full-time, one BCBA and one full-time teacher. And in Compass, we have a full-time teacher, a full-time BCBA, and then we have another teacher who goes in and assists. Not all day, not like she just goes in and kind of assists because she's That's awesome. And and then um so another I mean, I guess kind of question comment, but there's, if

125I recall, there's about 440 students total in district with an IEP. Yes. Just special education students. and we're speaking about 77 of them. Correct. And these are obviously the students with the most needs and the highest support needs. So, I appreciate the detail, but I just wanted to point out that there's another, you know, 300 some odd students that are so receiving services. And I know you're not ignoring them at all. I'm just acknowledging that for the public or whoever is watching this. That's all. Right. But the point of this was to kind of explain totally the to showcase the the staff who spend all of their time with these students and who are able to sustain these programs. I mean, it would be great if I was like, "Hey, let's create this program." And

126we didn't have the right people in it and it was like a disaster. You need to have the right people in the programs and you need to have hiring protocols that support putting the best people in these programs. It's it's critical because then and only then can you sustain them. No, my point was just to point it out that there's a whole bunch of other students. That's all. And then the other thing is I know this as a parent and I know this as someone who sort of works in this field that none of this is easy work. So I really appreciate all the staff. I mean I know none of this is easy. When it's a program with six students and someone says, "Holy smokes, there's one-on-one staff and there's these are students that

127have high needs." I know you said that and I just wanted to say that as as a parent, as someone who works in the field, it's extremely challenging work. It is and and at the same time it is extremely important as you've pointed out some of these things here today that these students remain in district to the greatest extent possible and I know that's not always easy. Um I would like to see at some point our numbers on outplacements as well. I know we've talked about that in committee meetings. Uh I think it'd be helpful for us to also understand those numbers as well just to see where those are. Historically, you've gone to a couple historical numbers here as far as the other programs. Um, and I know those numbers have been on the

128rise as well, uh, recently across the state and and and also in in Rocky Hill. So, I I just wanted to acknowledge that as well. But, thank you for this. I appreciate it. I think it's really important that we all know as a board that board members that the public knows at town council, etc. So, uh, and thank you to the shout out to our parent group because we worked really hard over the years to get that parent group going. Hopefully, we can get that going again. The dream academy was also, um, born out of that parent group. Yeah. And unfortunately that parent group kind of waned um as I moved on to a board of education role and hopefully we can have a parent out there take that up and and get that running

129again because uh I think it was a very valuable and important group. Well, and I just want to end on this like funny little story because this is funny. So this happened probably like four times throughout the year. I get a call from a principal. I won't tell you who it is. And he calls me and goes, "I I don't know. I don't think we can keep so- and so. I don't think we can keep so- and so. I think they have to be outplaced. They did this. They did this. I I'm really concerned. I I don't know. I think the staff is really, to your point, Tom, I think the staff has really had it enough enough. Okay. Well, we want to support the staff. So, okay. Well, if we have to outplay someone,

130I like let's look at the data. Okay. Let's outplay someone. Jesse, go meet with the staff. Let me know. Jesse comes back. This happened like four times. They don't want to. They don't want to outplace anybody. They don't want to outplace anybody. So, the principal will be like worried about the staff like I'm worried about them. They're dealing with this, this, and this. But then when Jesse goes and meets with the staff, they're like, "No, we want to keep them." No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. So, this is the this is the level of dedication that you have with the staff. It's they're unbelievable. And I always I laugh with them about it because I'm like, "Guys, like, are you really okay? Like, are you okay?" And they're like, "No, we're good. We're good. We we

131got this." And I'm like, "I I hope so. If you need us to, like, let us know." So, it's happened like four times. They're extremely committed. Just one other quick comment. I'll be brief. Sure. Quick. I'll be brief. It's already almost 9. I understand that. My son's already in bed. Um the So I just acknowledge I mean this is hard work. Yes, I've said that. Um it's hard on staff. It's hard on everyone. Um but it's important work and I think we've made a lot of improvements. I think there's always room for improvement as well. And I think hopefully we all acknowledge that that it requires focus from us as a board. We've talked about this focus from administration, from teachers, uh, etc. to to keep doing this hard work and and I I just

132look for you and and for the district to continue to do that to support the staff and stuff because it is it is it is tough work. So that's all. Thank you. It is. Yeah. Can I just ask one? Oh, go ahead. Thank you. Uh, Miss Morphe, just really quickly, um, the Dream Academy and Dream Cafe, not everybody at the academy is at the cafe, correct? Or is that or are they all? So, there are kids that are at the academy. Most of them go to the cafe, some don't, but most of them are involved in the cafe at some level. Okay. Thank you. Yes. How many how many kids are current seniors seniors that are moving into the Dream Academy Cafe? Um I think it's like four or five. There's Yeah. Yep. Four or

133five I believe. So because And the reason I say that is because there's 11 kids right now. One just graduated and it's going to be 15 next year. So it must be five. So five. And then how many are being aged out this year? Yes. One. Okay. Which I think I know who it is because my oldest son graduated with this person. Yeah. And I was asking Dr. Zto the age. So she's the one that got to sit in the front today and picked the music. Thank you, Miss Thank you, Miss. Sure. One more. You mentioned the admin who called and you know going back and forth. Um going back to the um Mr. Russell's comment. Do you think that there could be a correlation of of kind of fear from the staff to of

134any kind of you know between central office and the front staff? No, I don't. You don't think so? Absolutely not. No. When the staff when when when the principal is calling me, he's he's not calling me on behalf of the staff. He's calling me on behalf of his worrying for the staff. And then when we meet with the staff who I have excellent relationships with who I hired most of them and and as far as Mr. Russell's comment, you know, I mean that's, you know, that's that's their comment. That's their their that that's fine. I think it's really important to focus on facts and and just to give a couple facts. Um, which, you know, again, I I do HR and and and I will give you these facts and you can consider them and

135you know, that's fine. Um we have had uh zero staff resignations this year. Zero. The only resignations we've had are a couple retirements. Um some people that are retiring, we've had not one staff, not one, I'm sorry, certified teacher resignation, not one this whole year. Um that's not the case in many other districts. Rocky Hill is unique. Typically, when you have very stable teacher retention, it speaks to positive working conditions. We've also had no grievances. There is, it's outlined in the contracts. Multiple contracts are outlined a process. If people feel they've been treated unfairly, there's a grievance process. We want to resolve things at the lowest level. Of course, we do. So, if there's a concern, that concern can be brought to the superintendent. That's step like one of the grievance. We've had no grievances.

136I haven't even had a call about a possible grievance, nor is Dr. Zitto. So, that's important data to consider. Finally, a third data point to consider. We have 6 over 600 employees. Mhm. My role is to take corrective action when an employee violates board policy and or does violate state law or does something this year 2% of employees have needed corrective action. 2%. And there's been no grievances. So that tells you that if it was an unfair there there would be evidence if if it was if it was arbitrary then that that should be grieved but they're not arbitrary which is why there's no grievances. So you you really you really have to focus on data. Data is really very important. Um, and to go back to this situation, um, I was telling you that

137story because I wanted to highlight the commitment that these that the staff have. Um, they're wonderful and, um, I have excellent relationships with them and they really really are committed to these kids. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Stevenson. Thank you. And I will say, Miss Stevenson, I've been on the board uh several years now, and we've talked about special ed. I think there's, you know, the saying, a picture's worth a thousand words. And that slide laying out the specialized program, I think really does kind of crystallize exactly what we're talking about in those budget meetings as far as um the cost savings and um also the benefit we're providing to the students by keeping them in the community with their friends, with their neighbors. Yeah. Um, so that was uh thank you for that

138that presentation. Um, and also I wanted to comment that following up on Mr. Costco's comment as far as I don't want the public to be left with the impression that 77 students is all we have that have special education needs, right? that that 77 does not include those are the ones who have the more significant special needs uh special needs um um support and we still have um I think the number was in the 300s uh or something of that nature 440 total 440 it's up to that have indivi individualized education plans PP require PPTs and uh have 504s um and I think that's important as well because I I wouldn't want either the town council or the public to think that we only have 77 special education students within our district. That's a that's

139a good point. And the reason I I focus on the 77 is because those 77 students were not here when I came when seven years eight years ago we didn't have that level of need. Um and and had we continued the what we were doing seven or eight years ago, you would be adding $9 million or $5 million to your budget. Correct. And when you say they they were not here, that means they were outplaced. If they if they had been here, they would have been outpaced. Speaks to some data. So we've gone over this if I may numerous times. Um 12 13 years ago, we had about 230 identified students, students with IEPs. That does not include students with 504s. the mic. We're at We're at 440 now. Um we had roughly 20some kids

140that were outplaced with only 230 kids identified. The outplacement number was was 20. So if you if that statistic stayed the same and that was in the past that was this is 12 years ago 13 years ago when I first came to the district about 20 kids were outplaced. If you historic if you if you roll that forward just to do the numbers you'd be looking at basically doubling that number. We're not close to 40. We're more at like seven or eight nine max in that ball. It's very low number. No, we have more than that outpaced. Uh right now we probably have we're by the end of this year we're going to have like probably 15 15 but but again we had 20 with half the number of IEPs. Correct. Correct. We have roughly

14140 kids now. If you just kind of follow that line of thinking, the majority of those 77 kids would if we were seven years, eight years ago without these programs, without these staff, without these resources, they would have been outplaced. There would have been uh there would not have been I mean the point is that these programs are allowing kids to stay in their home district and be educated with their peers. That that's the point. Correct. That these appropriately that's absolutely fair. They did not they did not. And I mean, and it was sad because some of these kids they would keep be able to to to keep it was not exactly meaningful or appropriate instruction all the time because they were just be in regular classes with a parah with no programming. But then

142once they got to be transition age, they would have to leave. Like you have a child from that you've made a commitment to since age three and then they can't. That's that's the other sailing factor that for the transitional there wasn't a transitional program. There was no program. Every single kid entitled to education beyond the high school program was outplaced. All of them were that now either and that was really what I focused on because we didn't have a transition. I looked at what was coming up and I said and I was like we we have to create something because the this is going to be so so you know again the the credit goes to the support of the board for trusting me to create these programs and to hire the right people. Um

143it it's a leap of faith that the board took in in me and and I appreciate that. Um, so thank you. Thank you, Miss Stevenson. And thank you to everyone on behalf of the board who makes these programs happen. All right, moving along to agenda item number 21, assistant superintendent for finance and operations report. Uh, Mr. Zedren. Okay. In your uh, board packet is the regular financial report reflecting year-to- date figures for the month ending May 2025. We're in the process of closing out our financial information for our fiscal year ending June 30th. At that at this time, I am anticipating that we'll end the year with a small very small balance that we plan on returning to the town. As mentioned previously in our discussions, uh work has been scheduled with our contractor on

144the HVAC project at Stevens School that will begin uh this summer. Um, also the auditors will be in the week of June 23rd to perform preliminary work on the audit for the 202425 fiscal year and be back in early September for two weeks to conclude this work. And this being my last board meeting, I just want to say thank you to all the board members for the support that you've given me over the years. It's uh very much appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Zedigrin, for everything you've done. It's bittersweet obviously. I mean, uh, you know, I've only known you a few years, but, uh, you've been great to work with. Um, and I know I can speak on behalf of the entire board and saying we wish you luck in whatever your next chapter may include.

145Thank you. I have one quick question, Chuck. Do we get a final like after school's over? Yeah, but it's not typically until The board doesn't usually uh meet until um August July. So sometime in August is typically when it's given. Okay. Thank you. And he'll be retired by then. So it's tough to know. All right. Uh Mr. Clemens has a question. Uh just to clarify, you said the the small balance we're going to have to give back to the town. We're actually pre-spending that as part of the the adopted budget. We did part of the offset. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right, moving along. Uh, any other questions for Mr. Zedek. All right, agenda item number 22, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Report, Mr. Din. All right, thank you. Good evening,

146everyone. Um, it's a lot of fun going last at these meetings. I just want to say so I will um condense my my comments but one of the things I did want to um mention is that what our goal for this year was to implement the new educator evaluation program and throughout the school year I surveyed the staff twice um to get some feedback and the first survey we had 95 um staff members reply to and the second one I only released uh yesterday and just before the meeting there were 97 responses to that second survey. Um so we're we've received some good feedback and we have what's called a PDK committee that helped to create and write the plan and worked uh over the summer to put the forms together that we used this

147year. Um and we will convene that committee in the fall to look closely at the survey data that we have. Uh we've also met we had one meeting um in the spring where we were able to look at the first uh batch of survey results and based on that we have some work that we're going to do over the summer um to revise the program that we're using uh to administer the pro the um plan the any anytime you roll out something new you have glitches and so we have some some work we want to work uh accomplish with that. So, I did want to take a minute to thank our IT director, Chris Gay. Um he did last summer um do a tremendous amount of work to help digitize the evaluation plan. Um and

148a lot of other software programs that we had that we needed to get um to be digitized pretty quickly as far as rostering. And um it was a heavy lift and it was a lot of work that we continued to uh finish as the school year began, but um we couldn't have done it without him. So I I wanted to mention him tonight. The other thing I wanted to mention was that um the curriculum team um has, you know, we know what we need to do with Chris over the summer and that's going to be a collaborative effort. So, I want to also shout out to um my team, Danielle and Mary, who will assist with that work with Chris over the summer. And then I wanted to thank the PETA committee um who worked

149to create the framework um that the state provided and create a plan that focused on educator professional learning and that all of the uh and there was a lot of required criteria that was listed in the state's non-negotiables. We couldn't have accomplished the plan without that input and collaboration of the administrators. And I wanted to share with you that um our administrators are evaluating a total of 250 250 certified teachers and we have 17 administrators. We knew that it was going to be a heavy lift for them and they worked collaboratively with myself throughout the year um to create presentations and support staff with each component of the plan of which there are many. We conducted like I said earlier the surveys and we're going to use that. I did want to just point out

150two data points from the survey with you. One was um we asked them for feedback on um whether or not they had a clear understanding of the goal setting process and 808% um scored that the process with a three or more on a scale of 1 to five and 80.5% reported that they feel confident that they can complete the process again next year. So, um I have additional um data that I will share with the staff um as well. So, included in your board packet tonight, um, at the request of the board in a in a subcommittee meeting, I've included a, um, list of professional learning opportunities that the Rocky Hill teachers and staff have been provided from 2021 to date, as well as the planned 2025 2026 professional development trainings that um, are aligned

151to the new um, state legislation regarding safe school climate. And um all of the the sessions that are listed there, the titles might not mean a lot to you. Um but they are part of the educational word salad that I've been talking to you a lot about in our subcommittee meetings. So they align with the MTSS and the PBIS and the SEAL and restorative practices. Um and we had some sessions that we also offered to both our students and staff on wellness um that also align to that work. So um I wanted to make sure I shared that with you. As you know, the legislation takes effect on July 1st of 2025 and it's requiring districts to provide professional learning on these topics. We are fortunate that we're a little ahead of the curve as

152you can see by the list provided. Um and one overview training on restorative practices was the requirement in this school year 2024 and we are proud to report that we did successfully provide that training to all of our certified and non-certified staff this year. Um, we've talked about it in subcommittee and I'll say it again here. Um, this is probably the most robust legislation we've ever seen and it's going to take us time to fully implement it. The safe school climate um, plans that are going to be developed at each school, the legislation requires that those be completed by December 31st of 2025. So, we have some time and we will continue to do the work um to get everybody comfortable with the components of the legislation and it's going to be a collaborative effort.

153So, I just wanted to thank the board for asking really good questions in subcommittee and working hard to understand all the pieces of it because it is complex. So, thank you and I'll entertain any questions if you have any. Thank you. Mr. RGO, you probably know I'm going to ask you this. Um, I'd like to know if you could just give us some information about the wellness coaching for admins because it's on here quite a number of times and I'm just curious what did that entail? Sure. So, we um hired a wellness coach to work with our administrative team throughout this school year knowing the demands that we have on um not only our teachers but our administrators um with all of these new legislative mandates. So, we had some whole group sessions that um

154focused on um basically uh a little bit of a of a story cycle like we all have a story and when you're in the pit, you need your helpers to take you along. So, we did that that session with our teachers, but we did it with our administrators as well. We also did a session where we focused on just their daily practices and routines and how to manage the workload um which is ever increasing and um trying to help them to prioritize themselves um in order to be able to do the work and be there and be present for everyone else. And um we then offered um if they wanted to do individual sessions because that work is private and personal. So we did offer that um to anyone who wanted to take us up

155on that. And can I just um I worked I worked with uh with Wendy on this initiative. Um and uh something this these were the people that the uh retreat that I was just talking about. these people worked with the staff on that retreat. And part of it was kind of recognizing how challenging that work is and prioritizing self-care. Um, and part of what we did with them was to kind of set goals. We gave everybody a journal. Um, and the health coach worked with them to kind of say like, okay, what are some things that you're having a hard time doing because you are so bogged down by this work and let's set some goals. And we did that with the administrators, too. And then I just want to reference the part that um

156Wendy was talking about about the pit. Um because you guys can look this up. It's really cool. It's called the heroes journey. Um because basically the message is that um all of the teachers and the administrators do the work of heroes. That that is what they're doing. That everybody is living the hero's journey. And um we had this woman Ranatada that I mentioned come in and talk to the staff and to the administrators about that work. And really the purpose of it is to kind of understand the helpers that are around you, the colleagues and the different people that are around you. So that when you're in the pit, you can reach out and learn something from the hard work that you're doing to kind of flip the mindset. So it's not like, oh my

157god, this is so hard. Oh my gosh. It's more of, okay, what can I learn from this? It's focusing on resilience because we understand and recognize that this is really hard for the staff and for the administrator. So that was the purpose of why Wendy and I partnered um on this initiative and hope to continue it next year. Yes. Thank you for articulating that. Sorry. [Laughter] Thank you. I just know Oh, I'm sorry. Sure, Miss Miss Manil. I don't know. This must be a typo. I just noticed that you had the wellness coaching for admins on January 1, New Year's Day. Yeah, that's a typo. Made them all come in on New Year's Day. Did they do that on New Year's Day? Really? on a holiday. Okay, that would be a typo. Okay. All right.

158Thank you, Mr. Rand, and thank you, Miss Stevenson. Any other questions? All right. Moving along to agenda item number 23. Doc, uh, superintendent report, Dr. Zto. Oh, very good. Thank you. Just a couple quick items. First of all, um, reminder, the seniors graduate on June 16th. That's uh, this coming Monday at Central. Uh, board members, we'd love to have you there. Uh you should plan on arriving a little early um to be there on time. You've got the reserved seating as board of education and uh it does get very packed over there but it's air conditioned and we don't have to worry about the weather. So we look forward to seeing you there. I want to thank our staff for their efforts this year. Uh I can't not believe tomorrow's the last day of school

159and I hope that everybody has a peaceful and welldeserved summer break. Um, Chuck, I was going to mention it. Last meeting, you will be missed. Christine is at a graduation tonight, her last board meeting, too. So, I want to thank them both for their efforts. Um, been here a long time, both of them, and they will be missed. Thank you. We have a special meeting on Monday, uh, June 23rd at six o'clock to address, uh, some questions that have come up regarding, uh, the specifics with the school climate legislation policy that you just adopted. So, we will be scheduling that for Monday, June 23rd. As you know, that legislation goes into effect one. And then I want to thank the board um and the I see some members of the teachers union. This was a

160difficult year uh with the budget with the um just to get the facts out for the public. The board had requested a budget increase of 4.87%. The council ultimately appropriated a budget increase of 3.66%. That differential between the board's request and the council's appropriation caused us to reduce $650,000 to what I term the board's spending plan. So that was a significant uh step we had to take. Um the union um understood that. I worked with them after that meeting. We are you know there are some things that are happening here. We're down 5.4 teaching positions. Uh the positive is Nobody lost a job. And with 250 teachers in the district, um I'm glad nobody resigned. You're right. I was going to talk about that, too. There's a lot of research on school um on teacher

161retention. A lot of professors over the years, uh University of Texas has done one number of studies. Eric Hinesek is a professor who works on this. Teacher retention is one of the top indicators of school climate. So when you see a district with large turnover where people are leaving to go to other districts, it tells you there's probably some problems with climate. I'm very happy that nobody left Rocky Hill this year to take a position elsewhere, but it did create a challenge to come up with the $650,000 because there weren't many spots where I could find attrition. So we did do some program consolidation. We are taking a little bit of a step back in some areas. There's no world language program that we can offer at Moer uh next year. We know this. Uh

162that's that's a loss in my view. U numbers will tighten up a little bit. We're down three elementary classroom teachers. Uh but with all that being said, every single certified teacher in this district that's in a permanent position has a job next year, which is important to me. That despite the reduction to the board's request, everybody's still employed. Uh, I want to thank Michelle Bartha is here. She accompanied me to several of the meetings. Um, I met with 14 people. Every single person that was transferred had an individual conversation with me. 13 of them I met with in person. Uh, one person wasn't available. She was tied up. She services students um all day and she was on a tight schedule and we had a phone call about her change. So, Michelle, you're here. I

163want to uh publicly recognize you and thank you for sitting with me. There was a range of emotions from super excited to people that were upset in some cases, but at the end of the day, um I think it was a collaborative process. 14 people were moved. Uh but again, the bottom line to me was that everybody still has a position, which was really important. And I had told several board members that I think Miss Lefredo asked me about that at one point during the budgeting process. And I said, I'm pretty confident uh we're going to be able to come up with a plan that keeps everybody employed. So at the end of the day, it was a challenging budget cycle. Uh but we still had an increase of 3.66% which is more than a

164lot of towns received. Um and we were able to uh make some consolidations and I thank the board for their effort because it was a really important meeting we had. Uh I think it was June 2nd where we went through that list and really came up with how we were going to get to that point. And uh you know again I I look forward to to next year. I think uh we got through that that situation and I I think we'll continue to offer high quality programs really based on the the strong teachers we have in the district. So those are my comments for tonight. Thank you, Dr. Zto. Any questions? All right, seeing none, move along to agenda item number 24. That is my report. Um, first off, congratulations to all the students in

165finishing another year of school. Congratulations to the teachers for uh having another year uh under the belt. Um, and also thank you um thank you from the board of ed. Um, I know it it has been a difficult year. There's a lot of changes going on and I think um it's important to remember and and to impress upon you that the it's not lost on the board that uh the staff and the teachers um and and the administrators uh are all uh the ones who make that happen. And so uh we appreciate you and um thank you. Um obviously shout out to uh Chuck um and Christine who couldn't be here um been on the board uh since I came on and it's been a pleasure uh working with both of you. Um, as it's

166the end of the year, there's a a couple things that, you know, I was able to go to that I just wanted to shout out. Um, was not able to go to everything. So, I certainly if if I don't mention it, that doesn't mean I uh um it just means my schedule uh didn't permit it, but Challenger Day was an absolute success. Um the weather did hold out. Um big shout out to Rocky Hill Little League for um for putting that on. Um Mr. Costker, uh thank you. uh you were um pretty intimately involved in that process. Um big shout out to Erin at the Dream Cafe. Um it was I she was there that day uh selling as you heard. Um and that was the first time I was able to experience the raspberry

167crumb cake which was absolutely phenomenal. If you can if you next time you go to the Dream Cafe, you got to try it. I think Mr. Clemens um also the high school sports awards ceremony. Uh this is something that was new this year. Um, I did have the, uh, pleasure of being able to experience that. It was a big shout out to Mr. Fod on that. Um, that was his brainchild. Uh, and I spoke to him about it. And of course, being Mr. Fod, he just gave a big shout out to to all the coaches and all the staff that, uh, helped to put it together. Uh, it really was, uh, an experience to be in that gym. Um, the the energy was electric. I think that I hope that it continues. Um and uh

168I think that it it really helps to the sense that I got was that there was a there was really buyin from the students and building a culture, you know, a Rocky Hill culture. Go Terriers. And uh I think that uh it it motivates those lower, you know, may help motivate those lowerassmen uh to continue in their sports and to continue, you know, so that hopefully they can participate it uh in in it throughout their years. So I hope it continues. Thank you again, Mr. Fod. It was absolutely uh fantastic. Um all right. Additionally, I was uh the high school academic scholarships awards. Congratulations to all those winners. Um eighth grade graduation uh was uh a big shout out to Mr. Maize. Uh he did a great job uh with the graduation. Uh also huge

169shout out to Isabella Lefredo who was the keynote speaker. Um she did a she did a fantastic job. Um really really killed it. Um so it was uh very well done. So big shout out there. Um Mr. or Dr. Dr. Zitto um talked about some of the budget cuts. We did have the special meeting obviously to cut uh to to to reallocate the money that was um allocated to us by the by the town. Um there have been some misconceptions out in the public. I think Dr. Zitto uh did a good job of of laying uh some of that kind of putting the facts out there. Um but I did want to go through uh you know we're expecting to pre-spend 160,000 uh as we discussed in our meeting. Um uh additionally um we found

170uh some internal efficiencies uh in moving things around as Dr. Zto explained. Um unfortunately we uh we are going to eliminate the world language at Moer which uh nobody is happy to do. Um but it's not a a um not a required program but obviously it is a step back a step back. Um, and uh, I think those are the those are the main points um, that I wanted uh, I wanted to make sure that everyone uh, was aware of and that they were put out there. Uh, also I think it's important to understand and Dr. Zto touched upon this. You know, the language that we use when we're talking about this. Um, I often hear cut cut. Um, it's important to understand that the the the council did uh they didn't fully fund our

171request uh our requested increase, but they did uh give us a 3.6 increase. And so although they didn't fully fund that request, um I think it's important to understand that uh that difference um because when those roads words get thrown around, I think it um uh it it carries a connotation that I don't think uh aligns with the reality of the situation. Uh so I did want to uh make that statement. Um another misconception that was floating around is uh dealing with the CIP. Um since I've been on the board, we've always phased projects on the CIP. Um and I think uh we've done that for two reasons. Uh to reduce uh or minimize uh the disruption to the school environment and then also to be fiscally responsible. Um and I think it's important to

172understand that uh you know there are limited and finite resources uh just like in any household or in any business. Um and you know this is the way that the board uh has always agreed and I that's at least since I've been on the board uh voted unanimously for these phase projects. Uh so I I just think it's important for um for the public to understand that you know we do have facilities meetings on these things and we have voted unanimously um at least since I've been on the board for those phase projects. Um we did have a meeting to finalize our board of education goals which we um adopted tonight. Uh sh for Mr. Costco's behalf. I want to let the public know that those board of goals, those board of education goals will

173be available on the website in case anybody wants to find them. Um, they were just adopted tonight. So, the old ones are on there now, but the new ones will be up there shortly. Um, also want to briefly touch on restorative practices because I've gotten a lot of questions about restorative practices and there's a lot of misconceptions in the public and I think it's important to at least give a brief overview uh of that. Um so it's a new statutory requirement state legis legislature impro imposed and the general idea the gist of it is to focus on creating meaningful relationships with students in order to develop open lines of communication in turn creating buyin from the students uh with an eye on not removing them from uh those students from the educational uh setting unless

174it's absolutely necessary to do so. there's a misconception out there uh that it's this loosey goosey lzas fair plan where kids can do whatever they want and suffer no consequences. Uh well that is not true. Um and I think uh the public needs to understand that and I think I want to make sure that the students understand that that the parents understand that uh that the teachers understand that and that the administrators understand that. Um what has un what is unchanged under the new policy is that behavior that is significantly disruptive to the educational uh environment, behavior that is threatening, behavior that is dangerous, violent, behavior that is assaultive or criminal will absolutely still potentially result in suspension or expulsion in accordance with the board policies. I've gotten multiple calls on this uh since the

175legislation came out and I think it's important that everyone understands uh that that those things uh still remain unchanged. Last part of my report was just going to talk about um you know since the union uh since Mr. Russell came to the last meeting been thinking about uh you know what he had to say. Thank you. I didn't know he was coming tonight. Um thank you Mr. Russell for coming tonight. Looks like you did have to leave. Um uh but I uh had spoken to Dr. O uh since that meeting um I do intend to put together uh the loose plan is to meet with uh uh central it will be a sit down with the central office board of uh board of education delegation and the union reps at least I'm thinking every 3

176months uh just to have a a line of communication where everyone's sitting at the same table and um and I think that's a good starting place and then we can adjust how how it how it sees fit and Dr. Zto was fully on board with this idea um thought it would be a great idea. So, um, with that, I'm looking forward to graduation. Um, looking forward to the summer as I'm hope, as I'm sure everyone is. Uh, we don't have a meeting. Uh, we don't have an official meeting in July. Um, but we will, uh, I'll see everyone in August. Well, I'll see everyone in June because we have our special meeting. But, uh, everyone have a wonderful summer and, uh, we'll see you next year. With that, any questions for me? Motion to adjurnn.

177All right. Move. Moved by Mr. Kosker. Do I have a second? Second seconded by Mr. Clemens. Any uh um let's say uh let's uh all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed, nay. The eyes have it. 8 zero. adjourned at.