Board of Education Meeting - October 10, 2023

001I call our meeting to order uh can we begin with the pledge please I pledge alleg 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 okay thank you um public audience you got your phone out can you run it for me kid thank you ma'am hey let you go first this is this on or do I have to push this no you're good you're good two three oh okay hi I'm Lori boyco from 15 o Cur Road um I wrote part of this and part of it I'm going to go off script maybe so if I run out of time just cut me off give second morning I'll start it I'll take it back up at

002the end yes ma'am I'm not sure exactly how we got here but it seems to me that to be so inclusive of everyone we've managed to completely Overlook that in an overreaching attempt to be kind and empathetic we're completely ignoring and obliterating the values of others while striving to be so moral we're facing principles forcing principles on others or expecting people to just live with it for me sex and sexuality is an incredibly private relationship for others it's a deeply religious topic and in the schools we're dealing with children minors under the age of consent as a topic sex and sexual orientation are areas of concern for bullying and harassment so much so that the board has some very explicit policies around action leading to disciplinary action including the use of obscene or profane language

003or gestures The Possession Andor display of obscenity and or pornographic images pictures or photographs depicting nudity conduct prohibited by the board's policy regarding Title 9 includes display of sexually suject suggestive objects or use of sexually suggestive or obscene remarks in ations letters notes texts slurs jokes pictures cartoons transmitting or displaying emails or websites of a sexual nature the policies Define quote prohibited sex acts for the purpose of the definitions used as nude performance erotic fondling sexual excitement sadomasochistic abuse masturbation or sexual intercourse in uh written policies for student conduct include internet usage and even what cannot be in school performances or school newspapers including vulgar indecent or obscene language but the curriculum contains this content and the library is actually absolutely full of it so this is where I'm going briefly Off Script um I

004had a conversation with some of the board members members about not wanting to ban books I understand the complexity of that I understand the concept of not wanting to ban something but this board and the school district is in charge of purchasing the library books of carefully curating the content in the schools and from what I can tell they've handed that off to the American Library Association so I think the Board needs to relook at that in the context of all these other policies and get everything in line thank you pick it up at the end okay thank you um no other public audience we're going to move on to committee reports and Communications how are you Sophie I'm good how are you welcome to your board seat thank you okay so the elementary schools

005began their return to camp juwel we started with terl and ladimer everything was successful ran smoothly kids seem to have a lot of fun and then moving on to Henry James they're going to be hosting a youth mental health aids seminar on October 30th and November 6th which I personally think is really incredible and then at the high school level we had a really successful spirit week and the first pep rally in a lot of years and bleachers were in for the homecoming game which is really good uh there's a choir concert on Thursday October 12th and the one-act Play Festival will be on October 21st and there is also a new chapter of a historical Honor Society opening and they will be holding a haunted and historical walking tour on the weekend before Halloween

006on the 29th fun I kind of like that idea Sophie make sure they find the one one act playay festival at yes at Henry James oh really yes oh because the theater Guild needs the space oh they're using the high school yes it's good that we share our space um can I ask about the mental health clinic Mr Baker do you know about that I can actually comment on that sure so uh the Farmington Valley Health District is really putting a lot of time and resource into developing their mental health supports and there is a specific training it's a 7-hour course we're breaking it into two uh evenings of three and a half hours each and it's youth Mental Health First Aid so Justine Ginsburg who is a um health Outreach coordinator for Farmington Valley

007Health District will be providing this for the first 30 uh parents or Guardians it's actually a message that went out in all list serves on Friday at all of the schools okay and the course is around kind of um mental health issues 101 how to look for signs and symptoms what resources are provided for families um this is I think a a great training I went through it years ago and again offered to the first 30 parents that signed up so if you missed the link check out your principal lisser from last Friday and you will see the Google registration there very cool great thank you H Sharon ran not right now okay Tod Jen I got to say I loved the pepper Alle I thought it was great I thought they did a good

008job I don't know if everybody's on there but I thought having a Trojan and having that mascot dude guy I thought that was awesome I thought it was great and so I was go to high school the that whole group has done a great job Fant my daughter um Brenan Russell all those guys do a fantastic job so they did a great J organiz did they organize the pepper Alle they did did mhm yeah really really good energy and it's been a long time it was a cool envir I mean the Highlight was Miss ly trying to protect the band during dodgeball in high heels we had the over under on the other side if we were going to fold an ankle and be out on short-term disability but L she did a very nice

009job she rocks those shoes I was joined by multiple members of the math department it was bus Department it was fun it really very cool game the bleachers were awesome you can't fall through them anymore so that's always positive we like if you don't if you drop your phone it doesn't go all the way down we've saved parents of Simsbury thousands of dollars I thought it was great so did you go to the game Sophie yeah yeah and you had a good time it was good okay they didn't win in the end but I thought it was good there's a lot of good energy and people were really positive and it was fun there right very cool how you that up I don't I don't know Jen's got a lot of energy exactly tired just

010listening now I don't know what's in there it is te he it's te I just I briefly want to you mentioned the Honor Society I just wanted to give a shout out to there was the national Coral or choir Honor Society last week did their performances just congratulations to everybody there just again I I've said this from time to time just it is amazing what our arts department in this district is doing and that was further proof uh of all of that so con congratulations to everybody well as one parent who did lose a phone through the brand new phone last more than a week did go fo down so I I I see the enthusiasm is needed absolutely so um I had the opportunity to attend a um a fall meeting for the um

011New England associations um of our uh fellow um State associations up in Boston and it was great because there were probably about 200 of us there and we were able to you know talk about beginning of schools you know starting in September and and about priorities in education Dei policies that are going on state to state you know School boards at the center Center of polarized Community debates and some of the districts and and um towns and cities Financial Trends and legal updates state and federal so it was it was a great way to to kind of convene start the year to hear what's going on around the other fellow New England states before we convene again in N DC um also on the federal front front Federal front um in September nsba we send

012out alerts and um we send out blasts to 92,000 school board members around the country and in September the Congressional delegations all received over a thousand um blasts from Board of Ed members around the country we got and I shared some with you and and some were about um protect learning recovery and about supporting the newly introduced bipartisan idea full funding act so that was really great for September that when Congress was off session came back into session was able to receive that from um from the Board of Education members around the country and we are full um Full Throttle moving along with our cab conference in um in November we have over 600 attendees so far so um board members superintendents and anyone else associated with education so we also have the da the

013delegate get assembly the day before so we are fearlessly working on those resolutions that were going to be used for the legislative session starting in um January this year so um so that's what so that's what's moving moving along very quickly so thank you ma'am mrsy all set for now just want to take a moment to uh congratulate our longterm uh longtime SRO school resource officer Todd kushman who um received a promotion in the department is going to be promoted to uh shift sergeant and um he's excited to begin that work but it's been probably with us about eight nine years as a SRO and it really um made a huge impact um I want to thank the police department for including Scott Baker and I in the interviews uh for his successor and uh

014if you know officer Mike Lanier he is going to be our next SRO he's been with the Department a long time has raised kids through through the Simsbury public schools and is very excited to uh take on this new role so congratulations to Todd and welcome to officer lary when does that today I was gonna say when does that change take place so as of today and Todd's promotion ceremony is at Henry James tomorrow at 10:30 which really which is very nice that's very cool very cool perfect Mr Curtis I'm good you're good I'm good I'm good all right everybody's good tonight all right uh then we're going to move on to recommended actions um approval of the minutes of the September 26 meeting please I get a motion there to accept those minutes and

015a second please second any discussion on the minutes all those in favor I I I any exensions says it right there on the minute all right um motion carries approval of a collective bargaining unit agreement so this is the collective bargaining agreement with our administrative group uh obviously a small group but um an important one in that it uh is represented represents all of our principles assistant principles the directors on Sue's teaching and learning team director of Athletics so um uh the our group of Administrators in the district um and we had to get at it early this year the statutes on this one uh require a fall negotiation so early in the school year we started in with uh the group and were able I was able to announce a couple weeks ago at

016our board meeting that we had reached a tenative agreement since that time the uh the association has ratified the agreement so now it's up for your vote and I'll just go through the exhibit here and give you a few highlights um obviously we focus mostly on the wage settlement and we do that by comparing um in the market and what settlements around the state of Connecticut were so for this three-year contract um you could see settlements um that will increase the salaries uh at the top of the scale by 3% in the first year and then 2.95% and 2.95% completely in line with where the local settle settlements have been coming so it's a appropriate and fair settlement um a uh one of the uh fringe benefits for our administrators is that they do have

017a tax sheltered annuity the settlement put a few more dollars annually um in the tax sheltered annuity um in terms of the other most important issues when we negotiate it's a health insurance um it was important goal for us to have this this group take um part in the medical management program that we've asked other groups to take part in so the administrator's group agreed to do that um and we uh had a very slight increase in their um the uh premium uh cost share that they pay uh made made uh some improvement to the dental care to um have a little bit of a uh a higher Max maximum consistent with what we did with the teachers last year um and actually increase the amount that annually um they can um get reimbursed if

018they attend a professional conference or take a professional course because we sort of had gotten we had not done anything with that line item in many many years and it was kind of getting uh behind the times so um and then some cleanup around some of the positions that have come in and gone since the last uh uh time we negotiated this we've actually been under a four-year contract for the the one that is expiring in June 30th this will be a three-year contract um and we think that that's probably a good place to settle so um again I will say as I did two weeks ago the spirit of this negotiation was acceptional and that um was very respectful very um businesslike people knew we were there to um not to squabble but to

019get to a fair deal and it was um really exceptional so two of the negotiators Scott Baker and Kemp per are here so I want to thank them along with Meg Evans who helped um negotiate on their side and um hopefully your affirmative vote and we could say congratulations to the group The threeyear that keeps it still off cycle from the teachers C correct so they will now fall in the year after the teachers do okay I just want to give my thanks as well to to team on sass side for all his work uh mentioned it last week or last meeting as well it uh it was really good negotiations and uh you know the conversations especially after I had forgotten that it was four years I mean you know it was four years

020worth of uh you know updates and changes and things to to talk about and uh the conversation uh focused on on on the end result and uh it was uh I really appreciate uh all the time that everybody else put in the result so thank you absolutely great all right um can I get someone to read the motion please just keep going you do that I'll move that the Board of Education ratify the proposed changes in the collective bargaining agreement between the Simsbury Board of Education and the Simsbury School administrators and supervisors Association for the period July 1 2024 through June 30th 2027 second that okay uh any further discussion all those in favor I I thank you all very much appreciate everybody's efforts um approval of Simsbury High School graduation date walk in that

021Friday that's a beautiful thank excited so in 2019 the Connecticut legislature passed an act that local Boards of Education to set a firm graduation date for students in grade 12 as long as it is not earlier than the now noted last day of school of that school year so for us our last day of school is currently noted as Friday June 7th and that's when we would recommend that we set our graduation date so there is a motion there for your consideration with the smile on the parent of the scene over there soon they'll be in that's it it is a beautiful thing not to have to wait till April 1st yes it is a lovely beautiful thing not to be on a Monday there I love it been there too um so uh Mr

022Watson want to make a motion I'll move that the Simsbury High School graduation date be established on June 7th 2024 2024 second I'll second all right all those in favor hi congratulations seniors check done all right so now we're into information reports and Jenna Neil's favorite presentation of been waiting all day for it thank you to all eight board members for being here for uh it seems like just yesterday we were here um but uh what I want to be able to do is sort of quickly move through uh the report have a few places where I've got some things to highlight but I think it's fairly straightforward I know I tipped a little bit of the headline last time that one of the things we do need to talk about is the kindergarten number

023and projection so we'll focus a little bit on that but um I do want to start by uh introducing to the board my uh my guest that I've invited for the evening who's hiding in the back row it which is Laura shelman who is our director of uh enrollment and transportation um and uh really the person who puts all of the detail into this work to make sure that um we are recording things properly we are welcoming families into Simsbury and that all of these working with the building secretaries and the principles and making sure that this is all accurate and she does a tremendous job and I uh asked her to be here tonight because I thought she deserved recognition but she probably could also answer some of your questions too so we'll see

024um not to be hon not gonna for you're not gonna forgive for that next um so as you know October 1st is the annual day for the counting of the children um th this October 1st Do You Know Where Your Children Are so uh this year it was celebrated on September 30th uh Friday September 30th as opposed to Saturday October 1st so a little bit like celebrating on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas but just a special and um as we usually say that this presentation really is the first in the budget cycle because this is the one that is going to determine much of what we talk about over the next few months so I will start with sort of the key number that you will uh compare all the rest of the slides to

025which is the one in the bottom left corner here which is the final count ended up at 4,14 students so everything else you'll see is going to compare to that actual number of 4,104 um and you can see this slide shows that that was 40 students more than October 1st of last year uh almost the exact same number at the uh elementary schools very close at the uh Middle School where there were seven more students and 32 more students at simsberry high uh in terms of why there were 32 students more at some very high it was a pretty small graduating class I mean it's really oh so the ninth grade bumped to yeah so it's really pretty straightforward why that number went up a bit to uh look at the elementary um in particular

026you can see that um the school that had the um biggest increase was ladimir Lane with 20 more students than it had a year ago where as Squadron line has 23 fewer students again this is all about the end classes Vladimir Lane actually had a very small sixth grade that moved out in sort of a normal siiz kindergarten um which caused that number to go up and Squadron ended up with a much smaller kindergarten than anticipated so the the number uh and they had they actually had a very full sixth grade last spring so um that's why that number went down by 23 so pretty remarkable that we were within one after a whole year but whole side presentation for you wait I'm not letting get on the kindergarten thing because I know you're so

027here's the uh here's the look at um now now instead of looking at actual we're looking at comparison to the projections and you can see that overall the projection for um the the elementary missed by 98 students we were 98 students lower than NASDAQ thought we would be in particular we were 58 students lower at squadron line than NASDAQ thought we might be and 29 fewer at Tuton Hills almost all of that can be tracked to kindergarten again um you know it we have three very I mean sorry four very manageable kindergartens at Squadron line last few years we've been pushing into five kindergartens so it's a whole class less than um nezda was expecting and you can see um they were right on the money uh with the projections at the secondary level for

028Henry James and the high school so overall their projection missed by 105 fewer students um I'll show you where that compares to how they've done historically in in a couple uh more slides so um this is by grade um where the uh where the differences are and so you can see there that the kindergarten projection is almost 80 students off and that is a number we have not seen in these projections in a long long time like that's that's a real Miss uh to be 80 students off so I dug into why that missish happened and um you what what happens is that the way this all works is that it's based on a ratio of how many students who are born five years earlier than then what's your number of kindergarten students so you

029have to take any student born in the year 2018 and say how many kindergarteners in October 1st of 2023 is that going to produce and based on they figure that out based on well what were those numbers in the five previous years in 2017 how many were born and how many kindergarteners did we have in 2022 2016 and 2021 and that's what they do um if you do that for the last five years our ratio was a a a number that is 1.54 so for every one 100 births you would get 154 kindergarteners in The Last 5 Years so there were a lot of births in 2018 in Simsbury there were 230 births and so what NASDAQ did is take that 230 and they multiplied it by the 1.54 that has been the historical average

030and and it was the exact number last year and they got that projection that you could see up there of 354 at the end of the day the ratio only ended up as 1.2 so what we ended up with is the 275 that you could see on the left hand uh column so 1.2 is not an unheard of ratio that's kind of what we were seeing in the uh earlier part of this decade in like uh last decade in like 2010 11 12 that's about what that ratio was um it it's called a persistency ratio in the business um and that's um but it's not it did not look like 1.54 and therefore they were off so we dug in did more people hold kindergarteners back it does not appear so like we don't we

031have um evidence that Melman came uh uh dug into that we can prove right now that 51 people people did not send their kindergartener this year who had a a child that was eligible but did not send them but the year before we had 48 and the year before that we had 67 so it doesn't appear like an unusual number held their kids back um and you know it's going to it's going to take a little a a time to see I I suspect the number of 230 births that there were on unusual number of people whose children were born in Simsbury and then they bought a house elsewhere before the kid enrolled in kindergarten that's unusual normally they stay in Simsbury but you know given the housing market they may not have been able

032to find the house in Simsbury so the fact that we only got 275 is certainly shocking I don't think nezda made a bad projection based on their methodology but they got a bad result um and as a result this was pretty far off um when we look at these things as you can see on the rest of the column the other grade levels are far more predictable and so um could Neil could this I'm just my wheels are turning as you're talking could it be maybe that in coid families moved to be closer to other family members like is there any sort of recognition of a coid impact on these numbers so these were 2018 births right so you have a two-year-old in the pandemic go visit go stay with Mom and Dad um but

033we would not have captured that as a birth in 2018 if they weren't born here those are that's Department of Public Health Data that they pull to say how many kids birth certificate said that they live in Simsbury and the answer was two I think I'm saying like during Co I know a lot of people's whose adult children moved to them stayed with them them because they could all work remotely and nobody needed to be in a particular place so I'm wondering if there's a CO impact to be had on some of these live birth numbers going forward for a little while anyway I think perhaps for a little while so the more interesting thing is right what do they do with the algorithm moving forward right they probably adjust it to 1.2 and then

034what does that do to that five-year projection we've had that looks like we're going to shoot straight up and maybe we won't grow as significantly as we thought right so that'll be interesting for us to the first grade next year I'm trying to think about where they've gotten that far off in the past if that does anything to the first grade with when we look at rolling sections it's hard to get very far off after the kindergarten size is established right right consistent if you're looking it was projected to be the biggest class in our entire District correct and now it's the smallest class in the entire District correct but here's so that that 230 births big SW just did not yield yeah kindergarteners when we I don't know if you have it in here

035somewhere but like when we looked at the now third grade that year that we did this little presentation I'm almost positive that that class was the smallest at like 269 or something but now they're all the way up to 2 295 295 where did all those kids come from they were the smallest at 252 correct so then now they're 29 now they're 295 right in row with but there's always a natural immigration from K to one that's always a big jump year okay or bigger jump year in terms of um projections after that it's it pretty much stabilizes moving and probably a handful of those you remember it'll come up later people chose to homeschool too and that was not going to be a long-term decision those kids were coming so there might be a

036little bump in that CU a lot of people kept their smallest kids home what are we getting reliable answers to that enrollment survey we're sending out in the winter before kindergarten so um I I'm it's hard to know I mean we certainly send it to um you know everybody who works to all of the dayc carees to seed to our elementary community communities I mean um we we do pretty well with knowing who's in town but um you know it's not an exact science in terms of how we're um really that starts we already have um about 175 kids who we know um would would under the old system be eligible for kindergarten next year under the current system we're going to talk about that too tonight um and um I can tell you that

037next so when we start talking about how many births were there in 2019 it do it dropped again it went from 230 in 2018 to 210 births in 2019 so that number also goes down did I mean I I know we knew before October 1st that the number was going to be low but do we and that 79 gets spread over all of the kindergarten classes but did we staff for 354 and have to adjust so we staffed for 354 you'll remember that we added four new positions into the budget two were for special edit two were for kindergart so we ended up not needing those two for kindergart so what we ended up doing was actually turning one of them into another special ed teacher and we did three Elementary special ed teachers and

038then when we did a cut we were supposed to take an FTE from the high school and because of increase in American Sign Language in PE we actually weren't able to realize that cut and I said don't worry I got an extra kindergarten section like so washed it out great so it washed out yeah I think that's that's good good to see how that works out though right right all right so that's my big ratio persistency ratio Theory that's one of the highlights of the presentation so I hope you liked it clearly we did uh let me see where I am here can I sure we we have had uh issues with projections with them in the past to the degree that we went to a different vendor at one point and came back I

039am I am just baffled that we have a they miss by 80 um that's a huge Miss as we're all suggesting are they the only game in town is there only any alternative because that's so that's this slide Jeff this is segue thank you so this is one of my favorites but now it might be one of yours too um where this is just looking at how do they do over time and you can see that the minus 105 is a pretty bad result compared to um the last two years have been excellent they were right on the money in the last two years everybody gave a pass in 2021 because it was the co year so your projection was everybody's was low so um so I can tell you that you'll you'll remember we

040used Malone and McBroom um and they went out of this business they stopped doing this work um I did pull out Malone MC brom's projection from um November of 2020 was the last time they did this work for us uh they were 11 off as compared to 100 5 and they were three years out from that now they don't do the work anymore but there are others that do the work in terms of nezda I mean I think this one is um you know you're you've you they've done accurate projections the last two years I think you have to turn this back to them we we it's a membership organization and then they do the projections because you're a member so we've already paid for the membership this year and we ought to get the

041projection um and you know I think we I I need to have the conversation with them about where did we air here how are you going to adjust and then we got to see how they do but I don't want to overreact by saying but there are um the the gentleman that used to work for Malone and McBroom now works for another company down in glastry that does do this work so that that is a possibility for the future conversation to be had good but you know I I want to give it another chance you you don't fire a coach just because he started one and four yeah not with not with six Super Bowls maybe conversation after for the season but that's exactly that's a discussion for another meeting think just like I amess

042you bless you th this is one that we've historically Tak taken a look at just where are we in the last five years and you can see we have recovered from the Dip of the co year which is now um showing as the low Mark was 3960 but from where we started 5 years ago we're we're within uh 80 students so again very it's been it's been pretty stable um but did work through that dip this is the elementary enrollment y go back to seven for a second I'm not done Tod's got more out of curiosity do did they comment on this persistency ratio whether it was lower than they expected everywhere or in other districts or was it just a Simsbury thing I haven't had the conversation with them yet usually what happens is

043you now turn in your next set of data and then you have a conversation with them okay yeah so I can report back in November about that I'd be curious to answer yep I'm very interested to see what they have to say and to hop on SL slide eight I was curious do you have like an increase of 79 students over eight years is that typical of Farmington Valley like is everyone see that is that a bigger were we growing faster than others or that's a pretty stable number um that would not be considered that would not be considered very aggressive growth in any way okay you know like this was a 20y year example of aggressive decline before it turned around I mean so those of you who have been on the board a

044longest will remember that decline of students um and uh that was a very rapid decline of elementary students at that time going from um over uh 2600 all the way down to um fewer than 2,000 before it rebound rebounded so right now it's obviously exactly flat but we'll continue to monitor that um as uh uh we always talk about there are also prek students they don't count in our count to the state but there are a hundred of them full-time part-time a mix of um there are um 42 who are special education students and 58 who are not so that's the makeup of our preschool right now it'll change over the course of the year as new special ed kids become eligible uh when they turn the right age and uh um as you pointed

045out the the largest cohort is the current seventh grade and also the current 12th grade but the current 12th grade is a little bit of a misnomer because it does count those 18 to 22 year old students who still so there are students who are um really sort of in grade 13 as we like to call it so um there's no to report a grade 13 for the state so you end up reporting them in grade 12 so that's that's what that's about and then as um the smallest cohorts are indeed the kindergarten cohort and I hate to call them this the co cohort but that's the year they started and that's why that that is that number is 295 because they started in 2020 we'll be talking about them till they graduate um we

046did have 177 as a final count on October 1 for open Choice students um I move to this slide to show you that it now represents the first year that we were able to get to the board's goal at that time of 4% of the student body as open Choice students was 20178 so we are now on our seventh consecutive year that we've been able to maintain that 4% goal um the prek students are proving to be a challenge they just aren't coming at that uh young age anymore I I I think parents are more reluctant to send them to prek so we've struggled the last few years we open 12 seats and we don't fill them so um but we had a lot of sibling seats this year um and we're able to pretty

047safely keep it above 4% that would be an area where Miss shelman works very hard to make sure these families get what they need to be be able to register in the simbury public schools so I want to thank her for that effort um I do uh there is a a point uh in your more detailed exhibit there is a whole sheet on magnet schools that lists a lot of uh different uh schools we we don't send a ton of students to very many there are three that I would say of a critical mass um uh two in Avon and one in Bloomfield which is probably why so that the ones that do attract Simsbury families really at the kindergarten and prek level are the anag Grace Arts Academy at the at the base of

048the at the base of the Hill there um uh uh at rout 10 Regio magnet and then um winberry Early Child Center so those are the three uh and again they're attracting mostly prek andk students we also have part-time magnet students these are at uh places is like the academy for the Performing Arts and there's just a handful of them the 131 at full-time programs do not count in your 4,104 but the seven who are part-time do count in the 4,104 I was just going to ask on the magnet schools with the Regio and the winberry do we generally get those kids back in first grade the winberry kids definitely okay the Regio kids May link for another grade or two because they have those grades yeah they it looks like they go up to

049grade four three um and I think Anna Grace Academy has gotten a little more popular so we'll see three or four five s mared kids in oh yeah okay but but with winberry they all they all come back they don't seek another magnet school they come back here okay so we had never tracked homeschooled students in this report before you asked me to during coid so and we saw a pretty significant increase between 1920 and 2021 went from 20 homeschooled students all the way more than doubled to 46 um and that number did come back down and has sort of come has sort of settled in the 30s and so this year um 36 students um I'll continue to track this but at this point I think anything that we felt due to co has

050sort of settled out um um at on this particular measure and then we transition into the newer developments that we always have some conversation about um and you can see here I'll highlight a few of the newer developments Carson way which is uh single family homes near The Stratton Brook area um it's finally complete all 74 units have been built and um uh our local real estate folks are very happy about that um and it is not an it is much more it's not totally over 55 housing but it trends that way so we're only seeing 11 students out of 74 homes in that development the others um highcraft place um in that same geographic area uh is uh a little bit of an uptick this year so um that's important and then I do

051want to talk about Dorset Crossing uh the board knows that we've we've almost completely finished the transition we transitioned Dorset Crossing it had been placed at squadron line and a couple of years ago we made the shift to um bring students who live in that complex to teril they're only you could see only a couple left at squadron line and they'll age out um this coming year um and then that will be a terill school which is how it's zoned it's in the terill zone um but please Point uh note that 72 more units at Dorset Crossing have been approved this has gone all the way through zoning and it's approved and it's when a matter of when they want to break ground are those straight up apartments or town homes they are Apartments okay

052there are three buildings of 24 Apartments each sort of behind where the current complex is okay um and the person at Dorset Crossing who was the receptionist did not know when they might be starting that I can go downstairs and dig a little more if there are plans to start that but um you know it would take probably about a year to get up and running before we knew what that was so that's 72 more units approved do we have room at terill uh we would have enough room at terill for that that yeah okay yeah I'm not concerned about that and then Cambridge Crossing was another property that we started to migrate toward terrail school as well because we were concerned that it was producing a lot of students um it's not a secret

053here I can speak publicly about it because it's been in the media that Pro that development has ran run into financial disaster I mean they are really up against it in terms of so the the project has stalled so right now there are 33 completed units and there are a few sort of shells of houses that are not completed and they don't even know if they're going to be able to complete them um and then there were some that were under contract that people are trying to get out of the contract is that the one behind Antonio's yeah yeah so um we had started in fact the you could see six of of the kids this year had moved in there within the last year and we had them zoned for terill and sort of

054the plan was anybody else who moved in was going to go to Terell I don't think anybody else is gonna be moving in anytime quickly I I think this thing is really ground to a Hal for a while until another developer comes in and tries to rescue the site so right now um and they're I know the town is doing some things to try to help the current residents um to uh make sure they are are taken care of but um unfortunately the the development has really faced a crisis Point um in the last year or so so um and then um Aspen green uh down on the Avon Border pretty significant increase this year I'm going to show you that on the next slide and then we definitely have to talk about the ridge

055of telat mountain which is now complete with 300 units and is producing a lot of kids 51 kids um in the school system um and at the elementary level you'll recall that even though that site is geographically very close to laimer we have been um sending it to Central School for the last three four years um and so that was a good decision because um It produced a lot of kids and the room was available at central school but please look at the bottom number because this is not approved by the town yet so unlike Dorset Crossing where the 72 is approved the proposal for the next site at the ridge of Tel Cott mountain is for 580 units including like 68 single family homes that would definitely more attract more kids so we have

056definitely got to keep an eye on what happens with the ridet they're calling it The ridet telat Mountain South do you know where it is in the process it is um early proposals right now zoning or with I'm not sure they've uh I don't think it's come to I don't think it's come to that yet okay but they've definitely had some conversation and they have site plans and I I mean if you want to see them stop by my office I have site plans and it's um scary it's a lot and if it you know they asked me to estimate how many I thought and if you just take this ratio and the fact that some of them are single family it will be well over a hundred students that that if if that number

057of 580 comes true you look at the ratios in Cambridge Crossing yeah they're so much higher than the other ones right right right so we've definitely got to keep an eye on that so then this is the comparison to um where they've been since since I've been tracking this data since 2017 and you can see it is an uptick of almost 40 students this year um mostly at uh the Ridge and Aspen green and highcraft is where you see um the increase and a little bit of cabridge Crossing before that stalled so um 196 students from these developments these developments didn't exist before 2014 so it's about 5% of your population now lives at addresses that didn't exist 10 years ago so definitely interesting to track I don't think it's uh I don't think we're

058in any kind of danger zone but I think we got to really watch that next I mean that's like a mega development of just like a bullseye on Latimer yeah I have two questions sure those are on the slide before this the Cambridge Squadron kids will we move them to terill too or we're only going to keep those six at Teri and leave the others at squadron we're letting the others kind of age out of Squadron we're sending two buses in there for the next few years a teril bus comes and gets those first six and then like a half an hour later the bus goes back in and the Squadron kids go so and then Jr Salter said he's willing to do it for a few more years he's not happy about it but

059he's he's willing he's willing to do it isn't Eli place and Hoskins going to Terell anyway so it's not like the bus is going uh far out of the way no I think they no they go to Squadron they all go to Squadron okay and then my other need thank you la and as much as I love graphs I wanted to ask on slide 13 you just didn't pause long enough for me to interrupt you so I didn't want to slide 13 it's okay to go back there any way um is there any way to include like how many families that equates to homeschooled families yeah because I'd be curious like how many those kids it's definitely they is it like four kids in one family many it just makes it more you know so

060you can see how many yeah how many families are making that choice yeah just curious right so we end the enrollment report uh with the same sort of again that the data now has to be submitted to nezda for that very important conversation we talked about earlier and we've got to talk about what adjustments they're going to make due to not only the K projection that was off but the new legislation about kindergarten that we're going to talk about later tonight saying that if you were born between September and December you're no longer eligible to go to kindergarten next year so that's going to deflate the number even more so we're going to cover that in the next presentation but um it's really not not and nezda would be used to that because that is

061how it works in the other New England states so they would have done projections in the other New England states are the other or districts that they were all September one most are really and like that 230 births in 2018 like does that take out those kids that were September you know what I'm saying like could some of those kids they didn't come because they knew this was com 51 kids that were held are going to be part of our number next year were they held because of that or were they held just because they're a septe they're a bur a bur baby many are H many are held because yeah it's pretty you could it's pretty much July and on you'll find an occasional right kid that gets held who had an April birthday

062but not it's usually summer and fall birthdays that parents decide to hold we we actually track it this is one of so if you take a school this is how Laura does so green meant you got held back yellow is within the range and then these are kids who next year would be in eligible and so we just visually can see at each school like we track the kids of who's that is a nice chart and I love the colors I like that nice job and it's literally just listing chronologically it's the this is the oldest kid down to the youngest kid great cool can as your chair of your facilities enrollment um committee I'm having heart palpitations at the thought of 500 units going on in the south end of town especially when we

063just went through the collegial process of having Vladimir Lane renovated um just anything we can do I mean I'm just I think we should talk about there has to be there has to be some conversations between us and Zoning or or the select Tel I mean this is yeah it's going to put us in a serious box right so I do think that it would uh be I was talking to Matt a little bit about this I do think we should probably meet once or twice this year just to sort of talk about what's on the horizon because and this too um I think we as a board and you did it at uh the workshop last year it's like looking at where if Squadron line is our next priority where does it get placed

064on a capital Improvement plan right to get you know so I think there's two big conversations absolutely I think it's the Squadron conversation and the potential of a massive new development and I just want to be clear I'm not here to to to aine on whether we should build or not build I just think we have to there the communication has to be there well we have to remember 51 kids out of talit go to Central right now no no no fewer than that go to Central that's that's K2 51 is K2 51 oh these numbers are all K12 yes but the kids that are Elementary right now are going right so we have to think about that too when Latimer's renovation is complete in terms of capacity as well all right and then the

065rest of this is contining to monitor one more year in one year laimer will be done and we're going to have some space and that will be a good thing uh help with some of the crowding not only at Latimer but also at squadron I think so that's sort of we're currently using six preschool rooms we currently use six preschool rooms one of which is an RSG room and then you have two RSG rooms listed so is that three total those are k6 okay so yes three total RSG rooms sorry for other people who don't know Ready set go I just whispered it to Jen that's what RSG means for anybody who might be wanting to know our Ready set go program okay all right you had so many questions while we went along I

066feel like I can move forward and look at the class size slide before I invite our secondary Folks up here so our elementary slide uh uh really the numbers look great um this year I just have to say that we uh staffed appropriately we have uh by not adding those two kindergartens we ended up with the exact same number of teachers at the elementary level number is 110 out of those 110 none of the classes are above your class siiz guidelines we were close at kindergarten at Latimer but they the 2 2222 was where they came at the end um and then only four of the classes are below your class siiz guidelines um all in the grades three through six level sort of nothing you could have done about them um so very efficient

067too like the the class siiz policy is serving us well in terms of we're hiring the right number of teachers at 110 and this is then the slide you could just take a look that that's a really clean look at what the classes in Simsbury at the elementary level look like I mean they're appropriately sized there's a lot of 18 192s that are um a comfortable size for an Elementary classroom so I feel really good about where we are on this one this year um and we'll have to monitor that that Latimer at 22 each in kindergarten may have some growing paints until the the new building opens we will cross that bridge when we get to it so I am gonna invite Mr Baker and Mr perah forward for a few minutes substituting in

068not really I TR is usually on top of this report so don't ask you too many questions too many pointed questions we like um all right so we can start with Henry James um I think I'll start with just the headline in that um our overall enrollment um was very similar from um last year to this year and but the enrollment in the individual grades is not um so we had we let go of a large class and then seventh grade a smaller class came up to to e8th grade and then in came a larger class that large class that um Neil referred to um coming up um as seventh grade so we remained the same um but we um had to shift some things around internally so I was going to talk about that

069a little bit what we have generally done is we have um 3.0 team so three full teams um in seventh grade now we had three teams in eighth grade so I switched that around and had that had the 2.6 team follow that small cohort up to eth grade so now we have three full teams in seventh grade and 2.6 teams in e8th grade and the reason that's important is because I think it drives some of the some of the things you'll see um this chart's different than what I've got in my but so the numbers of classes that exceed um are at 21 I think those really come from a lot of the single tens so you have like your honors algebra class there's only one of them or your um you know some of

070the laat Latin classes you only have one of them at each level so some of those come come into play when you have your your exceeding range and your below range those so those single enss complete um can drive some of that um and then also the fact that you have that 2.6 te in the e8th grade gives just some scheduling pieces where it's difficult to to figure that so we have a number of classes that went up exceeding range and again I think that's partially because of the limitations in scheduling in eth grade um but also partially because of those single ton classes um in the UA um in the wellness classes um and such that's where you see um some of that the below range stayed fairly stable um as well um and

071so that's where where you see those numbers um I think what we've seen in Prior years is a lot of those numbers in the family consumer science teched and art classes as you can see we've only got one um it's really only one class one cohort of kids in that art family consumer science in teched so it looks on this chart like there's three classes but those are three third same class moving three times the class that moves around right so that's one cohort of kids throughout the year um that is over enrolled and then we have none that are below um which I think is is excellent um The Wellness classes um part of that um I think you can see for the exceeding range is our ability to get all those Wellness classes

072on team so those teachers the wellness teacher teaches on the team with and meets um with the academic teachers on those teams so that creates some schedule constraints um sometimes in there and that's why you get um some of those that are that are bumping up against the guidelines and bumping under under the guidelines and that's really the story of those classes that are over and under um when when they're over it's hard to one two yeah they're not they're not bursting um and some of that is be just because of like well in the art family consumer Science and Tech is because you only have so many um machines right sewing machines um or in in music sometimes you'll get that you only have so many keyboards in the in the class you can't

073go over in those classes um because there's not enough there's not enough seats um for the kids so that's why you have some of those numbers the way they are the wellness classes are pretty easy to accommodate for um in the numbers when they when they go over so I think that's the headline there um just to talk about a couple other pieces I think what we are going to have to think about next year this report's going to look very different because we have this this very large seventh grade cohort coming up and there's a large sixth grade Court behind it so total enrollment um for Henry James next year AR like if nothing Chang should be around 660 it hasn't been that big since I've been principal um so we're going to have

074to start doing some mock I think um loading of schedules to see what this is going to look like um and and move around the teams to maybe not a 3.0 team and A 2.6 team like we have now but two 2.8 teams see if that'll do it and if it doesn't then like where are we right so that's something we're going to be keeping a close eye on um right now in the fall and running some some mock um enrollments with the 660 and see what we can create as a schedule see what that going look like so that's something we have our eye on um another thing we um are taking a close look look on is our connections classes and this doesn't necessarily have too much to do with this report but

075I just wanted to highlight it is that this is something we do at the middle level where we assign a teacher to a small group of um students somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 kids where we do a lot of our work we meet twice a week um and one of our wins this year scheduled we were able to get we've done those randomly I think ever since Miss ly was principal um by the alphabet and we decided this year we're going to do something different and make sure that the connections teacher so say you're you know Brian Foreman some last year he would have kids in his connection that he never saw so they just come to him for that so we did a really complex exercise to make sure that every

076connection teure had that um teacher for something else so every student that's in connection with Mr Foreman has Mr Foreman for the first round of the trimester so they really get to know the kids um right off the bat so that was a big win we're happy about that um but suggest by spreading um everybody has a connections if you're a classroom teacher at Henry James so that keeps those numbers down um for those you know conversations that they could have about some heavy things sometimes um so that's excellent um the other piece that um Jack and wanted me to just mention is something that you could hear something about is um that we've had to increase the number of our reading classes um this year and so we have um a few extra reading

077classes that special education teachers are delivering which then has bumped up the size of our um of our study skills classes um so where the study skills class would have had eight kids it's got more like 12 to 13 kids in there now so something we're looking at I think it's going well um we've got plenty of PA of support in those classes but it's something we're keeping an eye on on because it's related to enrollment and it is um and it's uh pushed those classes just a little bit higher uh so I think that's everything I've got any questions are those in the core class Group which ones this reading ones reading classes no that's in addition to their um English class that they are getting additional reading support in terms of the range

078on here if doesn't fall into if they're not above any range that is established okay but like I said just something we take we keeping an eye on all right all right Mr perah take us home he great so um I'm happy we we're moving in the right direction from where we were last year in terms of uh getting classes within the uh limits that you had set our our drive is to make sure that we number one part of our build is to make sure that we don't exceed the the limits and 99% of our classes fall into the fact that they don't exceed some are below but 99 9% do I think the number is it I can't six six yeah so four core classes uh one technology one fizzed the the four

079core classes it's a Spanish three class 26 or 27 there are two AP psychology classes at 27 um I can't recall what the fourth one is it'll come to me but pre-cal pre-cal yeah a pre-cal let me help you yeah thank you usually get a lot of um uh Geo classes that start above it depends on when we do this in terms of the ad or not the ad drop but the level change window this we we pull we waited for the numbers but we pulled this about three two or three days into the um first window so it's it's a pretty accurate number that we we have here as well um we were able to get fewer classes uh below we at a from since I've been here on all-time high at 108 um

080we we were down to 90 in the core um and all of the other classes are kind of uh fewer or or where they've been from from the year before again reiterating what I've said in years past and what Scott just said many many of these classes are the single classes that fall um in the below category um a lot of the other ones are the you get 30 people sign up for a class and so one of them ends up below or or or the case so you can get 80 sign up and the way the numbers can play out it it's just an odd number so that's where most of those that fall below go the other are the um the the uh elective courses those one of the comments I had made

081or one of the notes I had made on this is that we're we're understanding the impact now that um our graduation requirement of our Capstone has on the schedule last year we were feeling that out a little bit that impacts some of the visual art classes that are below um some of the business in that if the class limit is 15 15 isn't always 15 what I mean by that is like you can have 15 kids in the class you could have uh 11 kids and four Capstone those four Capstone kids count kind of a little more in terms of uh the demands on the teachers uh that they have and they so that has some impact but it's not a significant impact it's balanced itself at least for two straight years now um the

082number of kids that end up taking the actual course itself to reach Capstone is it's been pretty level uh some student like the number of students who are doing it through a project lead the way or are doing it on their own that that that seems to played itself out or are starting at junior year it seems like it's following a pattern so that's been helpful to us when we design all of these classes overall um we had done I was working with Neil it's about 70% of our classes fall it's it's closer probably to 75 from when I was doing it but about 75% fall absolutely within the guidelines like I said about 1% fall over and the rest uh can fall below and um in terms of overall where the classes fall below

083the the the class that the discipline that has the most is our world language department they have the most Singletons uh in that as well um and and that's kind of where it falls and and we we have this all the time being a we we pride ourselves on our offerings and um because of that some classes fall below very few classes fall above except for that that AP Psychology uh course so that's where we're at um I don't know if there's any questions or anything I missed is is the reason that the there's fewer classes exceeding guidelines in the high school compared to Henry James because you have more electives so you'll fill a class and say find something else that could absolutely that's definitely a difference between the two find something else right

084classes yeah yeah I had a question um for the Performing Arts it looks like there's a big drop off in the number of classes is that just because last year's was so high or does there seem to be like a downtick trend because I know like I'm in a theater class that got combined yeah there's definitely fewer students taking that particular course really I could give a i' have to put more time into it but I give you a fascinating it how much things have changed over the past few years um our physics numbers are down quite a bit our Performing Arts numbers are down quite a bit um our family consumer science has grown tremendously overnight uh pretty much um so it's it it's been interesting over the past few years and with the

085three math credits and with the new credits overall we don't know how it's going to play itself out either as as well do you have any ideas why or you're thinking on the physics part like why there would be yeah um I think based talking to Mr Stillman uh head of guidance um it's a lot of kids are choosing stats stats are going into that that's the number that's growing but kids are choosing hey this isn't worth it this isn't worth like like I'm going to limit what courses I'm taking how High Lev courses I'm taking like I'm either going to get into this perhaps band one school whatever terms we use I'm not sure anymore if I'm not going to I don't know if I need to take AP Physics I don't know if

086I need to take so kids are starting to really take a step back look at where they're going and kind of create a path forward from there so so so is it that they're not even enrolling or they're starting and then they're changing their mind and dropping and not even enrolling okay so is it happening enough that it would end up going away our physics won't go away no but fewer sections okay just few I mean this year we offered the physics AP one and two we didn't offer it the year before okay so in a sense that's growing but our overall numbers for where they were years ago like our level two physics are people who are there really want to be there andbe two senior year don't isn't that the time when you

087have the option of is physics is senior right and so is an environmental science environmental science do we see more people taking environmental science um we have the same number of students in science overall environmental science more kids have started to take the um forensics A and B as well that they go into right because the kids think that that environmental science is like an easier route an easier AP my daughter's taking AP environmental science stats instead of calculus so that's that was I was just curious I see yeah the stat SCS have grown tremendously those numbers and and you know it's there's a free market in some ways and um you get certain teachers that kids will flock to a particular course um or a particular discipline that that's tied definitely to family consumer

088science um so it all kind of plays itself out I think also the graduation requirement you didn't need four years of science so a lot of people I know a lot of my friends didn't really see a point in taking physics or science senior year if they could take a halfe elective or psycher stats right and the Capstone didn't also deter you at all from taking a science or you think that that Capstone credit takes into account that I'm kind of a different case because my Capstone is in my theater class but I know a lot of people have had or not a lot but I know some people that have had scheduling issues with Capstone so maybe impacts the decision yeah yeah it's one factor and a lot of factors that influences it there

089are many other things all right thank you to all three of our tonight thank you thank you coming I could do air um all right we are back to our public audience no no no no oh legislative Ral this is yeah I spoke about this at the last meeting with the heavy legislative uh agenda and number of laws that were passed just to select a handful to get them in front of the board prior to any policy revision so you can understand some of the specifics yes uh and some of the things we're wrestling with as we uh we start our planning so Sue's going to take a piece Neil's going to take a piece public audience sorry I we'll see I was so lost in my numbers of class sizes get exciting sorry I

090said I need a smack soon soon so I'll kick it off uh certainly there are a number of dis different disciplines that fall under the office of teaching and learning and one that I find consistently represented in legislative mandates is special education so this year was certainly no different and I want to highlight three different aspects of special ed legislation that came out of these past sessions first of all um eligibility extension so this has had a couple of different iterations even since I was in the office of special education so we used to hit an age of majority or aging out for our students with most significant disabilities at the end of their school year in which they turned 21 as I was transitioning to the office of teaching and learning uh the legislation

091extended the interpretation of that age of majority to the 22nd birthday so that was the next iteration in this past legislative session they've extended it once again so they're saying students with more significant transition needs with more significant disabilities each reach the age of majority at the end of the school year in which they turned 22 so it's one more eligibility extension so I'll give you one point if my birthday I was a student receiving services and I turned 21 uh last year on October 1st my services would end on October 1st I would be exited from the Simsbury public schools on my 22nd birthday if I'm the student that has an October 1st birthday this year I stay through the entire school year okay so that is definitely a change in the special education

092eligibility the second is around there is a lot of um updates relative to transition and when I'm talking about transition I'm was that primarily so they wouldn't I mean it's got to be very disruptive to leave in the middle of the of the school year is that I think that's part of it Todd I think it's also has to do with the connectivity of adult Services right so you have heard uh from many of our families before about kind of the drop off of services and opportunities that their children with young adults with disabilities face in that adult world and I think it that has a a big chunk to do with it as well the second kind of category around legislative update and special ed is with transition and we're talking about transition from

093the Simsbury public schools into post-sec Work World college career and whatnot so the legislation calls for a couple of things first for the state to have a transition coordinator a new position that would kind of be in charge of all transition Services um in the public school setting so that's a to be determined about when that person will be hired the second is it requires each district to have a district coordinator for transition services we've had one for a number of years so this is not something of New Impact to us U Moren Casey who is an occupational therapist is also denoted as our district transition coordinator she has an incredible skill set what it does though additionally require is that this district coordinator have specific training and specific parent Communications that need to go

094from this district coordinator to families relative to transition services so more on that to come is it is more practically defined in in practice um but that is another component of this transition legislation the final is that there are many additional requirements of kind of I's dotted and T's crossed at planning and placement team meetings so things happen at very prescribed times in very prescribed detail through this legislation again all centered on the transition of our students with disabilities the third major category in special education is this component of audits so the state in the past has done random audits on special education services in certain districts so every once in a while you knew that as a district you might be chosen for an audit previously this consisted of them pulling some IEPs um

095of students reviewing them giving them feedback and whatnot this legislation calls for a much more developed audit process districts will still be randomly selected it may include things like teacher interviews staff interviews parent interviews and the state can make unannounced site visits and do unannounced IEP reviews that's what the legislation says we have heard nothing about how this will practically be implemented um and as we do we will certainly share updates with the board so there's a lot that is undefined here uh Katie coula as the Director of pupil Services is keeping a very close pulse on any developments and we'll make sure that we get that information back to you as board members Su do you know um going back to the uh requirement for a state and District transition coordinator so is the

096state's coordinator going to be sort of the point person for all districts we don't know yet all it requires is that a state coordinator be named and a position be created so it's interesting and I we had the commissioner at um a local hassa uh meeting of area superintendent uh just talking about the overwhelming amount of legislation and that the result of that is like 950 actions or committees that the State Board of Education is first up in and trying to even make a move on any of this stuff to the district so that's what we're trying to get out of is a little bit of the volume and a little bit of the man mandates and the lack of resource even from well not even funding the the the lack of positions even at

097the state level to support truly support any of this in a reasonable time frame so it's just it's all supposed to be effective as of VAR various States states in the next year um it this one is eligibility Starts Now Starts Now transition it's supposed to kind of start the ball will start rolling after July 1 audits after July 1st but no with with a pinpoint of all of the boxes must be checked by X so it's a lot it's a lot it's a lot so Neil had mentioned the changes in kindergarten eligibility so this one begins next July July of 2024 so students must have turned five on heral before September 1st so our current practice is that our students in order to be kindergarten eligible must be five on or before January 1st

098uh this legislation also denotes that parents can ask for exception requests in writing like hey please um I think that my student my child uh should be eligible and here's why it also this legislation requires that staff conduct an assessment to determine if a student is developmentally appropriate we don't know what that assessment would look like we are trying to keep a pulse on whether or not there would be a state defined assessment um so there could be some consistency across school districts it is a major to be determined and we just don't have those answers yet but as they become clear we will certainly share so if this was this year you know Neil shared a little bit about that we have about 45 students in this year's cohort that would be impacted about

09916% of our students if this legislation were to be enacted in July of 2023 versus July of is yeah the number ended up up at 48 so instead of 275 students if 48 had not been able to go to kindergarten this year you would have been more like an incoming kindergarten of 227 what's the problem they're trying to fix with this um the wide range of current students that are kindergarten eligible because you can have anywhere from fouryear olds to six year olds and there is quite a developmental Spectrum um of kindergarten classes depending upon that eligibility currently so I think they're trying to decrease the potential developmental Spectrum or gaps that can be currently um actualized in a c classroom and aren't Most states yeah so like if you're moving from state to state

100it can I think it theoretically it it makes sense but you create bad policy by by then giv in and out yeah right um which depending on where your community is socioeconomic backgrounds of people there are various reasons why people feel at a certain point in time they need to send their kid to kindergarten or keep their kid in kindergarten student back so as you can imagine across districts in the meeting I was in the dialogue is very very different um in early indications back from the state after this meeting I mean we were already prepared for this board meeting prior to that meeting are is that the state is not going to provide a universal screen tool so it's it's really going to be each district or you know what I mean we'll see

101I mean I we'll we'll come back and we'll provide more information to the board on that but it can really create some dilemas moving forward for communities our is are any I'm sorry are there any rules on the on the flip side saying you can't hold the student back more than one year like I mean you can't be older than seven to get into kindergarten I I it sounds like a silly question but there is something out there so yes that's not the problem the problem is the is the young age I mean when you talk about the Educators it's the behaviors it's the uh you know emotional development of of kids that are very young and just like Sue said this the wide spectrum of what the teacher is expected to manage in that

102classroom I I I totally understand that that I now I just start thinking on the other side you know how long can you hold some that but sounds like there is everybody knew but me when when the child turns seven you have to denote what your wishes are so you're going to send you're going to find an alternative way to educate you might homeschool right okay okay so we will keep a close eye and it's a very hot topic among my assistant superintendent I'm curious if how the preschools feel about this because now they're holding these kids for another year like space considerations but space some of them don't have room to add another classroom or you know I that's have they been brought into the conversation some just don't have spaces we've had very

103informal conversations with some local preschools so depending they might not be bringing in newer families or newer students into their space be they might not have space or they might not have the open seats like I'm thinking our our own preschool that's got a 100 kids in it yeah we don't have capacity right and that's a that's a problem for parents seeking preschool as well the opposite conversation we had when we went to F day kindergarten where we were pulling people out of right right it's true and evened out over time so it does it's a shortterm problem but it's right but it's a but it's a thing it's a thing so it's thing something that we're watching very very closely and uh we'll update you accordingly um other updates I had mentioned most of

104these I think got our last Board of Ed meeting but there's also um a legislative mandate to incorporate play based learning into your curriculum starting in kindergarten we already do that um in K in1 but it's something that's suggested to be considered through Elementary so again there are more defining discussions that are happening at the state level we actually um there's a kind of some Round Table conversations about what do we really mean about play based learning what does this look like developmentally appropriate through the Elementary grades and we have some of our um language arts consultants and math coaches involved in those upcoming discussions so more on that uh I shared with you that starting with the class of 2025 the Fafa form will be a requirement for uh families to complete as a

105graduation requirement there's also a waiver process so we're talking through what that might look like uh financial literacy which the curriculum committee said do not get rid of that requirement that was great foresight because it's now a point5 requirement so we have the curriculum this actually schedule-wise I think if Ken was here he would share it as well it it helps to balance out because you typically have a uh semester course choice that could go opposite of financial literacy and again we already have the curriculum so some districts are scrambling to develop we already have and uh what it will require is an eventual update to our graduation credit policy because right now it says a 0.25 and that will need to be changed to a 0. five so we will bring those um recommendations

106to curriculum committee initially and then here to the board as far as what that might look like and that's effective class the Juniors or 2027 oh okay so not till freshman it's the current the current freshmen that usually don't start taking financial literacy until junior year so we have some time on that one and then finally the Mastery based learning requirement which we Define as Capstone has gone from what was required for graduation to now optional so we had an initial discussion in curriculum Council in September and we will be coming back to that discussion this month um I think our meetings on the 19th was question oh on the financial literacy you're saying currently we're 0.25 and it's going to five. five so would you be looking to the state to give the additional

107or is someone internally working on how we would oh we have it we have the curriculum um we always try to fit in more than um is that we have time for so it's not like we're scrambling to fill in another kind of C order we can go deeper in our current units of study uh maybe a little bit broader but more deeper than broader so we're we're not concerned there I also think a lot of the financial literacy classes that people take are half a credit anyways I know a lot of people that do that just because they think it's kind of not worth it to just take a quarter year class y we have a pretty popular course in the business department called personal finance that fulfills this requirement and that would be

108then and then if you take the 0.25 you kind of get the best nine weeks of personal finance okay that's just how it works I don't remember we look to roll that out are you going to wait sooner or later or just so it's again it's not a we have a couple of years to roll out so we will start a communication okay right but one of the first things that will have to happen is a slight adjustment in your graduation credit requirement policy policy which currently is at 0.25 so we have time to change change we have time to communicate um you know it wouldn't necessarily impact those kids signing up now for financial literacy because they don't have that requirement of 05 right it'll be kind of two years out from now this

109year's current freshman okay did we change other graduation requirements because we knew the Capstone was going to be a requirement so then with it not being a requirement are we have we have to fill that back in so Todd what we did do it was already always at 25 and last year the board uh voted to create some more flexibilities right so we did a a very close analysis of what districts were doing across the state and we found that for example it was mentioned here uh math for example we had required four we were an outliner outlier the majority of districts required three so we changed the amount of flexibility we still had to say that students had to complete 25 credits in order to graduate but that's how we created some more flexibility

110to um give students some more choice and some more room what I'm sharing is now that Capstone is optional we have to discuss um I would say first at curriculum Council or curriculum committee whether or not we want to say it remains as a required credit or as an optional credit right or even look at other areas right yeah correct yeah okay okay Neil okay teacher so major change um coming for um The Way teachers are going to be evaluated the last major shift um was about a decade ago where they tried to make the process I would describe it as a little more scientific with scores and so that you could see on the second bullet there what we are required to do now is to rate teachers on a number of scales of

111the standards are do they do they uh profile as exemplary proficient or Exemplar we use the term accomplished exemplary accomplished developing or below standard um for us we use the word emerging I believe so and I can tell you across the State teachers almost universally dislike being ranked like that so this is a major change at the legislative level to say revamp the system um using more M uh multiple indicators of student learning growth these were often based on fairly narrow um test score type of measurements um for one one portion of the evaluation and then during coid they changed to a lot more of like social emotional goals and so they're trying to create like a balance of that um they do the good news is that the way all of this is written

112is it's to give more local control of teacher evaluation um um however they've given scant guidance of what they're really what a plan would really look like so the S the it's such SBE State Department of Ed is supposed to adopt sde is supposed to adopt a mod model program and right now they have not tipped a hand at all on what a model program would look like so we're on a little bit of a wait and see on that in theory every district is supposed to develop a new program and implement it by next fall that to me is extraordinarily ambitious and um one of the possibilities is to just wait for whatever the state program is and say we're going to do that for a year whatever it is and buy ourselves some

113time to create Simsbury own version of what it wants to do because I don't want to take us down a path um because that would involve our professional development and evaluation committee or administrative counsel go start writing a new plan that's not going to necessarily meet the guidelines that the state puts out so it's a big change it's a lot on districts Sue and I are headed to two days of training like at the end of this month uh and end of October to learn two full days I we'll see how I do take pictures that that's supposed to be the start of of us being trained at this uh and that's with the state yes yeah okay and Now for Something Completely different we turn from teacher evaluation to another mandate around um HVAC

114systems and indoor air quality obviously you know during coid schools there was a ton of talk about schools and fresh air and the HVAC systems and opening the vents and what and so now you have the legislature trying to say how do we codify all of that so that this becomes a mandate that school have to do those things um and I'll start at the bottom with the HVAC inspections they had passed some legislation a year ago saying that you were going to have to do an inspection in each of your schools um every five years and that you would have to do it by January 1st 2024 this piece of legislation actually extends that piece to January of 2025 and I think it'll get extended even further because here's what the uh word on

115the street is about this mandate they came up with this and 169 districts with however many schools and there aren't anywhere near enough vendors in the state no do this work so right now they're trying to rebound on a plan to potentially Jason Casey and our new um supervisor of Maintenance Kyle Loveland are following what's developing it may end up some being something like okay 2025 is Fairfield County's year and 2026 is Harford County's Year and that and develop a schedule that that's sort of where they think it might go but nobody knows for sure um and then related to that too is the indoor air quality piece where now you're supposed to get an annual indoor air quality report which is tested basic things like um fresh air so it's it's testing for uh

116carbon you CO2 it's testing for temperature it's testing for humidity it's trying to see how much air flow is um coming in the building you would have to do that annually and then you would have to form um there's a very formalized program where um like the maintenance people head custodians lead a a formales program called Tools for Schools which is about um making sure that you're paying attention on an annual basis to any improvements that were recommended about air quality so all of that is um going into place and this one is a mandate that really had no idea the capacity to like actually get this work done in a thousand schools across Connecticut like this is um this one's going to be uh one we have to keep an eye on um they

117did pass new legislation there always had been a requirement that you had to have what they called a minority teacher recruiting plan they're now um changing the terminology a little bit about um an educator diversity plan having to develop a written plan we actually went through a workshop six of us last year um a GU a set of guided workshops actually so we have a really good plan um and our plan is our plan is not only about recruitment but retaining those that we're able to recruit um and the new thing that you never had to do before is that by March of 2024 you actually have to turn your plan into the state and it's going to need to be approved and if they require you to make any revisions to it that they

118would suggest revisions for you to complete by May of 2024 and then every district has to upload its plan to its website I should have said that about the air quality stuff too all of that air quality stuff once you have your report has to be loaded to your website so so they're gonna submit it in March and they're goingon to turn it around in time for you to make yourie I've heard them say that before okay I'm glad I don't have to make the commentary anymore tra well we're all here for you um and then and then this is all Jes once again uh new legislation tinkering with what has now been about a 15 or 18 year established bullying policies that you're aware of they're going to make significant changes again in um

1192025 is when most of this comes into place and go going to require that first the state department of Ed needs to develop a new school climate model policy and a complaint form for how you you take in any kind of bullying complaint and then districts will be required to use that like you're not going to one Complaint Form for all 169 towns correct correct that that is and then a significant redefinition of um The Bullying legislation right now I mean a lot needs to be worked out but the the definition that went into this piece of legislation talks about um aggressive behavior that leads to power imbalances so go about defining that and that's going to be so that I think they knew how come this is the first time I've seen bullying legislation

120that was passed and whether somebody from the state department of Ed or from the school climate group said you need to give us two years this has all been pushed out till 2025 so but it is going to get a lot of talk I think you'll see a lot of this in the news um and uh and then of course there will be new trainy there will be new training requirements for all oh I'm looking forward to it more time with Neil um and then lastly I did just want to point out that um one of the things that the legislature does for us is um suggest just a lot of mandated trainings that have to happen so you like the one that is kind of the cliche is bloodborne pathogens that has to be

121done every year right so there you go everybody has to be trained in bloodborne pathogens even though a 30-year teacher has now done it 30 times um but and then there are certainly mandated reporter trainings and violence prevention trainings and um the there were more added this year um uh seizure response TR trainings were added a second sort of mandated reporter uh through DCF another 30 minute course that everybody needs to take a course around human trafficking and the impact that that so you're trying to make sure that you comply with these mandated trainings which obviously are things that you want to comply with and they're important topics and you want to cover them but you also have a professional development calendar around teaching and learning that has to be paid attention to and if

122you use all of the captured time to be doing these kind of mandated trainings you're gonna you're gonna run out of time right um so we do use a platform called safe schools which I'm sure many of your Human Resources human resource departments out in the corporate world do it it's kind of the training where you click the next slide and it and you and unfortunately it's a lot about compliance and making sure these trainings happen our folks are pretty good about getting them done when you know usually I will um Cindy and I will assign an hour and 15 minutes worth of videos and you have the semester to get them done like at some point when you have your time you go in and then we rotate those through but some of these

123are required like no you can't it's not a can training it's something and it's an hour and a half long like we had that when the new title 9ine requirement came in a few years ago it was two hours for everybody and you and you had to sign off that you had done it so these can be challenging for human resources department they're challenging for a teaching and learning menu to develop um and these all come out of legislation that um again people well-intended people who you know the understanding of there's not unlimited time to do these things so I'm just could you maybe get us a list of all the trainings you have to get the mandated trainings you do in a year I can because that might be something to share with our

124state legislators who are voting on all of this legislation I would be happy to pull together the list thank you that's my piece gives you a little flavor right yeah it's going to be a busy couple of [Music] years um all right so now we are back to public audience number two what tired are we all I'm tired from just listening to that all I can think is a lot of companies lobbyists got their way this year ambient air monitoring and teaching companies I'm Lori Boo from 15 ois road so part two is again on the topic of having inclusion inadvertently create an environment of exclusion to address the topic of the library when appropriate policies are established upfront Banning doesn't become a topic of conversation we acquire a limited number of books each year

125and presumably have a limited budget so it would seem smarter to carefully select and curate a high caliber collection somehow our standards have become books with text and pictures with extremely explicit sexual content with relatively no educational value unless the standard for educational value is simply that it's something to read Simsbury needs to have higher standards than that Switching gears only slightly an email was sent to High School staff last week letting them know that tomorrow is national coming out day and providing progress pride flag artwork that the staff could post in support of LGBT students it was a club email that slipped by and Matt has addressed protocols for emails but I want to use this as an example of how sincere attempts to be inclusive and supportive can potentially be divisive in in

126the culture not all LGBT students are out or ready to come out does promoting coming out day put undue pressure on those students not all LGBT students want attention on themselves not all students by High School even know whether they are LGBT or heterosexual to students who are not LGBT how do they feel when it's pride month in June and then LGBT History Month in October and then National Coming Out day did the school celebrate bisexuality day on September 23rd will we be celebrating transgender day of remembrance on November 20th or pansexual Pride day December 8th or Day of Silence on April 14th did we celebrate are we celebrating intersex Awareness Day on October 26th are we celebrating Italian American heritage month this month or Polish American heritage month which is also October we're spending

127so much time and attention celebrating very small groups of students and differentiating them by some category rather than looking at students as individuals with their own unique identities we need to shift the mindset to celebrating what we may have in common as a whole while looking at individual students as unique human beings instead of members of identity groups thank you thank you I wanted to add one more more publicly comment if I'm allowed um and of the board of the Board of Ed members who have kids in the district did any of you get while we were in this meeting this text yes but I haven't opened it yet okay so did you get a text that you can listen to just in case for those that do pay attention I don't know um okay

128I won't say anything probably about PSATs tomorrow um it is about the PSATs tomorrow right but question is is that I don't know if all parents get right how I signed up for this Neil I'm going to ask you because I don't really know at the beginning how did I sign up for this was it on the power or that that portal it was a box to do it because I think this was so helpful and so awesome and it's just a little voicemail that you get via text to tell you what's happening or whatever with your kid and I thought it is a great Improvement and good job to whoever included it last year I love it love it that was it that was my little PSA all right so if you are not

129getting those text messages right I didn't know where that one was going I [Music] didn't sometimes I can get a little crazy off topic but this was important text message at the board meeting I je was trying to cut we'll talk after it went all right I didn't even get him so you didn't get it oh see now you know um I think you can get it on the website right yes Wednesday yes right there you go oh I miss Berke calling yeah I do miss B I do miss B Miss B's calling but yes you gota close all right everyone I make a motion to journ thank you and a second please and all those in favor I I done thank