001all right um i'd like to call the meeting to order uh please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh we're going to start with recognitions yes um miss hanlon yes sir could you stand up for a second i know you don't want to all right so i have the pleasure of speaking just for a couple minutes uh this evening about our chamber of commerce educator of the year ms jan handlin who is a school psychologist at tara phil school retiring in just a few days [Music] a couple hours there you go um so jan i just wanted to a little story but there was
002a an event to celebrate um this with the town i know that lydia went you went and sue lemke went i was not feeling well so i wasn't there to celebrate with you and then we had the retiree dinner at the district and you were not feeling well so at least we get to me one final time yeah but it's 18 years at terrafil school really i would say an illustrious 38 year career dedicating uh herself to kids and working with families and jan i just want to thank you so much when i think of tara phil school we all think of jan hanlon there are three principals that have worked for jan for 18 years and i've got to know them all extremely well the renowned character education program at terrafil jam was really
003at the at the center of creating that plan and other schools have picked up on those tenants over time and it served as a great model um and i would just say this because jan can't stand when people speak about her so i know this is this is painful and she's being a good sport but uh coming into this year we knew we were going to have our challenges right we knew that we were still in a pandemic cases were rising kids had different needs staff had different needs we came up with a motto all kids all staff always and i can't think of anybody that epitomized that more than you jan i've gotten to know you very well over the course of the the past 18 years you've been a a treasure to the
004district and i'm glad we could do this little uh thing for you uh on the way out because you really are a model for our younger staff in terms of commitment you you know in you know tongue-in-cheek about the principles but really um principals are successful as as the staff that they work with and you set each one of them up for success and um i can't count or even think about the number of staff students and families that you've supported over the years at that wonderful school up on the hill so thank you very much and enjoy your retirement all right we're going to move it to sue for the mcgowan scholarship awards terrific so as the board knows we have the mcgowan educational enhancement fund that was established by the generous donation of
005ms kathleen mcgowan who was an educator in the simsbury public schools for over 35 years and she left the simsbury public schools a very generous gift and the board has decided through this fund to utilize these dollars in different ways to support her legacy and one of those ways is through offering each year five scholarships one for a student who's attended each one of the elementary schools here in simsbury so we have a full committee that comes together reads scholarship applications and then decides upon those who would like to pursue their education in the field of education or a related field so very excited that four out of the five recipients are here this evening so when i call your name if you can just stand and be recognized that would be terrific first from
006central school meena rajish who will be attending purdue university next year from latimer lane school alex vargas who will be attending fordham next year next a very familiar face to our board as she was our rep olivia aunty dormie olivia will be attending the university of new hampshire next year and she is receiving on behalf of two in hills and then finally michaela mikayla fluster who's going to be attending the university of tennessee and she is our squadron line rep so congratulations they shared very eloquently in their scholarship applications how they will use the funds to pursue their interests and their passion and give back and continue to be a legacy of miss uh kathleen mcgowan so thank you very much graduate congratulations to all of you in high school best of luck we appreciate
007all your hard work and uh we know you'll make us all proud thank you thanks for coming out have a great night well i should have mentioned thank you mr sullivan that she wasn't able to be with us today but from terrafil school madison rivera who's attending the university of vermont so we can give madison a round of applause too [Music] and now finally our yearbook editors so we have olivia olivia creighton and maddie pinnell hi hi hi um so we have four yearbooks two assorted people um you can give them to mr watson and he'll make sure they get to the right people thanks that's me [Music] so we are two out of three of the yearbook editors this year um charlotte berlin i couldn't make it today um but yeah it was a
008really good process this year with the yearbook um we had a lot of fun with it as you can see how many people just did that all day right it's a little hard to resist a few of them have come off but you can just talk back up hot and move them back that's crazy so yeah we had a lot of fun with it um usually sometimes they're black but we wanted to have a lot more color so we we had a good time designing it um and it was really um i don't know what else to say um our advisor mr nielsen is retiring from yearbook not from the school um and he had a really big part in the whole process throughout all four years of our time and um just throughout the
009entire i think this is his 10th year book so yeah wow he's really doing a great job were you girls working on yearbook all four years you were in the high school six years i didn't stay back um that's great well thank you so much for coming and giving them to us hope you had a great time doing it and uh we look forward to cruising through them all thank you congratulations congratulations [Music] the great seat swap now plenty of room grab any seat all right so now we are on to public audience is there anybody who'd like to address the board yes it's me hello i'm lori boyco from 15 0 cursed road i don't have a big speech tonight i did want to just say a couple of quick things so i looked
010through the agenda somebody really does read that in advance katie even if it might just be me um and i noticed um i don't know if it was a motion or what to not meet over the summer i think that is typical board protocol and as a simsbury resident and school parent who is aware of many many issues and controversial topics that are going on right now i know everybody would really like to be done on the heels of the pandemic but i'm going to ask as a resident that the board seriously consider meeting over the summer i think there are a lot of things that need to be discussed that don't necessarily get to the table in the midst of the weekly presentations from the administration and also while school is going on and
011issues keep coming up so i'm going to ask that um you consider that when you're voting about that tonight i also have been observing that cabe and the legislative prop pro priorities keep coming up in meetings and we've heard about what the legislative outcomes have been but not what our inputs as voting members to cabe have been and i would be very interested to know if cabe is truly aligned with our priorities as a district when they're putting forward their recommendations for legislation and it would be really good as a member of the town to hear more about what exactly cabe is putting forward as their legislative priorities i've done some research on their website but i'd also like to hear do we vote on you know as a board do we vote on how
012our input is going to go into that priority process i also wanted to point out that in the health class that i've talked about before i've been trying to do a fair amount of research into where some of the material is coming from and i'm curious whether the board approves in addition to books do they approve ancillary materials and and look at some of the handouts in the curriculum one of the topics that is being taught in depth in at least freshman health class is about there being indefinite genders and all of the sources that i can find in the class material are from non-profit organizations none of them seem to be from scientific citations so students are being taught that there are infinite genders as a social construct a year before they've even had
013high school biology so they really have no appropriate foundation to be equipped to analyze critically what they're being taught and i'm not quite sure what they're being taught has been established as fact i think it's being talked about in the freshman health class as if it's established fact but i think if we even surveyed the people in the room we would find there was a fair amount of controversy about whether that actually is a fact or not so those are some of the things that i would like to ask the board to consider and and look at and answer um at some point and i would just there's only four or five meetings that we would have over the summer if we continued throughout the summer i realized there are vacations but there's you know
014not every board member is here every week and i'd like the summer off too but i kind of feel like we need to keep talking that's it thank you thank you just as a point of information as we go through the summer we do hold special meetings as needed when things come up there are also central office administration retreats and a board retreat as well so it's not that we are not talking over the summer we just don't follow our regular every other tuesday meeting schedule so all those meetings would be noticed as appropriate and but they're not public not retreats but if we do a special meeting it would be a special meeting is public as any other meeting would be um okay anybody else for a public audience okay with that we are
015on to committee reports and board of ed communications mr watson so no committee reports um just quickly want to say you know friday night graduation was fantastic um a few of us were there obviously it was great for me i got to give my son his diploma and i also noticed like this year it seemed like i was talking to my son tim about it a lot of kids are going to like universities university of vermont university new hampshire university penn state um clemson auburn it's just caught me i thought it was kind of cool like the year of the university you know it seems like when i grew up was everyone was going to small liberal arts colleges etc now it's like they all are going to the big universities i thought that was
016really really cool so um yeah it was a great night it really was it was a beautiful night and our high school does a really great job with graduation and i actually got complimented from a former administrator in granby whose granddaughter was at graduation and she appreciated our lack of beach balls so lynn sure just quickly tomorrow is will be the last council meeting for the year and i have been attending various graduations from from early childhood to elementary to to middle to high school and also the um continuing adult graduations because craic also provides services for our adult um adult students so that will be tomorrow and then uh recently i texted the cave collective bargaining workshop and and uh so we had discussed birchman moses one of the law firms that uh that
017we contract with um was there and presided over this and and as i mentioned before during the legislature which which is now concluded that there was senate bill one which was a very very important bill and that got under the radar at the last final hour just before the stroke of midnight and that was the mental health bill so there were many pieces that were that were meshed in to senate bill one and one of them that is probably a really very important bill is the guarantee of 30-minute uninterrupted lunch for teachers and and matt has spoken about that before and neil and that is something that um that did get on there but it is something that we are going to be taking much focus upon throughout the state as this progresses forward so
018that is the one piece on that bill and then of course there are many other pieces on that mental health bill that will be coming forward starting july 1st starting october 1st starting january 1st and of course starting for next school year the other is uh we talked very greatly about the labor shortage which is even impacting even more so so we've all experienced labor shortage in all our districts in a number of different areas from pairs to transportation to cafeteria to um to to to teacher shortage so that was one area and the other is the health insurance trends and strategies after kovid after the two years of covid um shipment goodwin presented a very informative workshop about that and what are some of the trends that are going to be happening that that
019we need to be prepared for as we move forward within the next next year especially under the auspices of a lot of the mental health pieces so so this was the um this was the workshop it kind of gave a little bit of an insight of what we're going to be experiencing moving into the next year within these areas so that is uh that's my report thank you man i have a couple more updates so another aspect of the kathleen mcgowan educational enrichment fund is also to support innovative grants from our teaching and staff so on may 2nd the grant committee also came together to review applications for innovative ways that educators want to do some different kinds of projects in the community and that committee awarded nine different grants in the total of about
020twenty three thousand dollars for some pretty exciting new kinds of ideas so if anyone would like particulars about what those grants are i'd be happy to provide you those details but certainly wanted to share that you also might have seen that henry james was in the news specifically their family and consumer science eighth grade classes who came together to create some teddy bears in their family and consumer science class and they created over 40 stuffed animals and presented them to our school resource officers and our simsbury police officers are going to be keeping them in their cruisers and then when they are on calls where there might be a kid who's distraught and needs a little extra tlc they'll hand him one of the bears from the henry james students so i thought that was
021very cool to share with you and then finally at our last board meeting i had mentioned that our students in career in tech ed were up for some nominations for fox student news and they were awarded the 2022 challenge to educational citizenship award for their pentathon piece so just want to say congratulations to those students as well great great wonderful yeah when we go through the personnel exhibit at each meeting it's about certified staff but um it's um we your bylaws don't require actions for non-certified staff and most but occasionally we have a retirement that's worth mentioning because it's somebody that faces the public in a really robust way and um i know the tuten hills community wants to congratulate lori blomberg who will be taking her retirement at the end of this school year
022lead secretary of tuton hills for a long time has taken great care of that school and broken in a few principles over the years and we just want to congratulate lorienna well-earned retirement that's great very nice wonderful thank you also thanks mr kurtz all right then we are moving on to recommended action so approval of the minutes of the may 23rd special meeting can i get a motion please i'll make the motion to approve the meeting the special meeting of may 23rd second any discussion all those in favor hi even edstein katie um may 24th meeting can i get a motion to prove those minutes i'll move that can i get a second a second any discussion all those in favor aye aye okay carries uh personnel mr zelda yeah so here are our certified
023folks um two resignations to begin with um tonight what the first is lisha cryer who um has served mostly in our district as a school psychologist at tootin hills but is now in the position of special ed department supervisor lisha has a less than one-year-old child at home and is deciding it's time to take a step back from those um responsibilities so her resignation is effective at the end of this month in addition morgan pierce who was a a teacher at central school that we hired last summer she did a great job and it just wants to take some time to kind of assess the next step for herself but hopefully morgan will make a long-term decision to um stay in education because we'd be interested in having her back she did a great job
024if that's the choice she makes so if i could have someone move those two um items move that the board of education accept the right resignations of lisa cryer and morgan pierce effective june 30th 2022. i'll second that motion any discussion all in favor hi thank you very much and then two um retirements to talk about tonight um the first is uh one of the motions where um it's it's based on an incentive in the teachers contract that they can announce three years in advance and it helps us with our planning to know um succession planning related to retirees so uh chris medvey who is a pe and health teacher at henry james has been with us for 22 years um many more in torrington before that so it'll be 25 in simsbury by the
025time he's done he has coached a slew of sports for us i mean he has coached football tennis track basketball baseball i mean he is really connected in the athletic department as well and we congratulate chris but he's got three more years to put in so if we can make that motion i'll move the board of education accept the notice of intent to retire of chris medve effective june 30 2025 second any discussion all those in favor aye thank you and then the retirement for the end of this school year in our school counseling department uh pam sickager has done 23 years at simsbury high school as a school counselor including thank you to the sullivan children who had banned as a as a school counselor as we went through that school and um just
026someone who has he just really gets the big picture of what high school is about and um i think is a really trusted voice for both kids but and a trusted voice for parents too so um pam is going to be doing some other um uh adjunct teaching that um she's been interested in pursuing so we are uh uh eager to congratulate her and see her move on to something new so congratulations to pam can i get a motion please sure move that the board of education accept the retirement of panelists signature effective june 30 20 22. a second any discussion well the tidone children also had both chris medvey and pam sickinger as i think most of our so we do uh we do thank thank them for their years of service and and
027uh and and being with our children absolutely all those in favor aye best of luck to pam in her retirement well-deserved uh superintendent's contract todd okay that's me so as the uh as the chair of the personnel negotiations committee i uh i get to talk about this but this is a very collaborative process um a little bit about this since we're talking about meetings and stuff uh most of the personnel negotiations meetings because of the nature of what we're talking about aren't aren't public but um a lot of time gets spent we talk about contracts um union negotiations um and with the with the superintendent's review we uh we spent a lot of time together as a board and together with with matt to just kind of go over we do it now twice a
028year we do it in in january kind of mid-year how are things going and uh and then again a much more comprehensive process at the end of the year going through the district goals and individual goals and and just the things that we just want to want to talk about um and again as chair i get to i get the pleasure of just telling everyone uh how fortunate we are as a community and as a board to get to work with matt as well as his team but uh the the leadership that uh that he presents and the openness i know that as a board member there's never a time that i don't feel comfortable reaching out and i feel comfortable getting answers and i know that um from people in the community um matt
029is always open to talking to people as well uh to make sure they understand what's going on uh beyond just what you see at the meetings so i uh i thank matt for all of the hard work and uh and uh i'm i'm thrilled that he's here and uh i'm gonna uh recommend in the in in the notes in in the motion i don't know if anybody i'll move and then we're going to make the motion yes i would love to make the motion i'm going to move that the board of education approved the superintendent's contract for 2022-23 with a salary increase of 2.5 percent for 2023 can i get a second i will second it yes anybody else want a third hit okay there we go um any discussion agree 100 with what todd
030said we're lucky to have matt yeah we are we recognize that it's been a difficult time and you have been steadfast and we appreciate that i appreciate your support thank you all right with that we have to vote uh all those in favor aye aye unanimously passes thank you sir you're stuck with us for another year uh textbook adoption great that's back to me so at the last board of ed meeting i had shared with you for our textbook recommendation and adoption process a series of texts that are explained in the exhibit and tonight unless you have any questions there is a motion for your consideration of those texts any questions for sue before we i just want to say sue thank you very much as always for sharing the proposed textbooks with the board
031before we adopt this evening um it's always uh it's always very educating and interesting to to to he to see what what the district will be utilizing in textbooks from k k through 12 but obviously this year is nine through 12. thank you all right uh can somebody make a motion please i'll make it move that the board approved the textbook adoption for the 2022-2023 school year as submitted by administration [Music] a second any further discussion i appreciated the fact that you tied the textbooks to the units it was really helpful to read that in the exhibit so thank you for doing that you're welcome um with that said all those in favor bye all right motion passes policy revisions yeah we're uh ready to vote after this has gone through its readings um the
032alcohol tobacco and drug-free workplace policy came to our attention actually through a contract review that's kind of what brought it to the forefront so it's a personnel policy and needed to be updated based on connecticut's laws and changes due to cannabis and needed it needed a modernization so it got that and it's been through the process with the policy committee through the readings nobody has contacted me so it should be ready for vote tonight okay [Music] something embarrassing move to adopt the revised board of education policies as noted effective june 14 2022 i'll second that motion any discussion of the policy all right all those in favor all right thank you and end of year fiscal authorizations okay so this is your annual um end-of-year authorizations for our state grants our fund transfers and then
033our hiring so that first motion is for all of our state and federal grants all the ones that expire as of june 30th 2022 we need to reapply for for fiscal year 23 so that's giving us permission to go ahead and do so the transfers of the funds as you know as we've talked about some of the deficit transportation for example is over budget but then we have other line items that are under budget so it's just giving us permission to move in between those accounts to offset this does not address the deficit you all took care of that at the last meeting it's just to zero out the overages and underages of the other accounts and then the last one is to give permission for us to start the hiring process for the fiscal
034year 23 school year and we need these read into the records so all right i'll take the first one i'll move that the simsbury board of education authorizes the superintendent to act as the board's agent in renewing applications for state and federally funded programs can i get a second please any discussion all those in favor aye aye next week yup please i'll move that the simsbury board of education authorizes the superintendent to transfer funds from those accounts in which a surplus is anticipated into those accounts in which a deficit is anticipated i'll second that one any discussion all those in favor aye aye and finally okay i will move that the superintendent with the approval of the board chair be authorized to hire staff for the 2022-23 school year during the period of july and
035august when the board is not in session okay any discussion there uh all in favor bye okay and now the board of education summer meeting schedule so as i said after public comment we generally cancel the meetings for the regularly scheduled second and fourth tuesdays and um we'll call meetings as needed so if i can get a motion to cancel this regularly scheduled meetings that the board of education cancel regular board meetings scheduled on july 12th july 26th august 9th and august 23rd 2022. okay i'll second that motion any further discussion all right so that is uh all those in favor aye aye we do have a meeting on the 28th we do have a special meeting on july 20 on june 28th yes that's our sorry it's our regularly scheduled meeting but it will
036be virtual yes okay [Music] all right and now we're on to information reports yes so i am going to invite uh dr teresa batchelor up to the table to present so tyresha as you know is our director of equity and access uh just wrapping up her first year with us and the board was interested in an update in her work so teresa's here tonight uh to kind of work us through a presentation and the way she has organized it as a member of the teaching and learning team just like the other presentations we have had she will align her updates with the strategic goal so she'll talk about student growth and success um building our premier workforce uh and really taking a look at uh developing a compassionate and connected school culture so those are
037the three goals we've put before the board over the course of the year and teresa we kind of work through we call them buckets right work through the buckets of her presentation and she has quite a few slides so the way we've organized it tonight is after each kind of bucket we'll pause for any questions that people have um that way we figured it would flow allow her to go section by section and then give people an opportunity to organize their thoughts and ask any questions that they have so welcome thank you and i just say thank you so much for the cheat sheet you're welcome so we appreciate that so the floor is yours thank you for giving me the opportunity to share um the first year so i will go slow and of
038course i welcome your questions so i'm going to start with grounding myself in the work as superintendent curtis mentioned the three goals that i primarily focused on this year was student growth and success compassionate and connected school culture and of course the premier workforce so this is my roadmap for the work that was done this year i'm sure you recognize the goals and i want you to pay close attention to at the top before the strategies and looking at who the population is so many times people ask me what does equity and access mean so i have to specify that we're looking at all students having access to opportunities we're looking at all members of simsbury public schools being valued for their unique this uniqueness and perspectives and all staff engaging in meaningful professional development
039um so the strategies are here and it's embedded throughout the work so the big buckets of the work um there's four categories first teaching and learning i am a part of the awesome teaching and learning team and so you know equity for throwing awesome in there so this just categorizes the work into these buckets um remember equity work is not siloed so it lives in all of these spaces but i'm going to particularly talk about these four buckets this evening okay so here's just a graph to just show um where equity lives and the five year goals so you'll see in the circles we have the four sections of the five-year goals that i was focused focusing on this year and in black you'll see where the four buckets live so i just want to
040pinpoint a couple of yay hurrahs that we accomplished this year in each area so when we talk about compassionate and connected school culture that's all climate um and so some of the things that we did is we worked on the equity week engagement forms and the climate survey so those all fall under that bucket if we look at equity indicators under sustainable and strategic investments there's three here most importantly starting with the equity council in addition to my roadmap i was very careful to embed the work that the equity council already had done great work in terms of already identifying some of the next steps and so the work there was how do we sustain some of the practices how do we take a closer look at what some of the the barriers are in
041the roadblocks and looking at the premier workforce this year starting an affinity group minority recruitment and of course professional development so here's the alignment with the equity council's recommendation so the equity council recommendations and the principles one pager data dives all of the work is connected but i just wanted to give you um some information about the data and the research that also is going into some of the decision making and some of the strategies that we're focusing on so there's two powerful books and the reason why i like the books the one on the right building equity is more of looking at the technical technical work and on the left street data it looks at more of the application so my focus again this year was on root causes not big data quick fixes
042but really looking at what is it that we're talking about we're talking about engagement what do we need for all students and so i just pulled out a couple of pages from these books the minority recruitment if you look at page 41 and street data that gives you a great road map to what other districts are doing what have been some of the pitfalls what are some things to look for so not reinventing the will but looking at what matches our population how to use the wheel for you yes how to make how to make it work in our world house and then on page 99 for over representation of black and hispanic males in special education some great research and looking at how to really do data dives and to look at just not
043the quantitative but also qualitative data and on the right for building equity that's a great resource for looking at increasing access to honors and ap courses professional learning and decreasing student referrals for students with adhd so again this is just some resources with some great research and people that are already doing this practice this work and ty if i may you bring up those data points because the over representation and special ed the number of increasing referrals and the number of students accessing honors in ap those were data points that our equity council kind of unearthed in their data dive that we saw as an area to delve into more specifically here with in simsbury in our community thank you and i my teaching and learning team members are here too so i invite them
044to hop in at any time please pop in so under the bucket of teaching or learning um the terms again are there but this is just some examples of what that looks like working with teaching and learning team professional learning so professional learning is not just sitting in front of a presenter and receiving information professional development is me being a thought partner for staff and parents and also mentoring students but i did categorize it again into four buckets in terms of where i spent the most of my time working on professional learning so that is restorative practices culturally responsive curriculum and instruction equity indicators and social emotional learning now to just give you some idea of what that means where i spent my time and who i spent it with um i've also included a
045graph so in terms of where i spent the most of my time in professional learning it was definitely what certified staff 30 39 um then with the administrators and working with administrators then gives you access to work with the teachers so non-certified nine percent and then pl cycles and appeal cycle thank you now you're really going to get me okay [Music] and so appeal cycle as in the exhibit encompasses the teacher who is working on a special project and the teachers determine what they would like to focus on so that's where my time was spent when you didn't see me in my office so i'm sorry pl cycles is that like a team of teachers that you're working with yeah so it's a professional learning cycle where so like a professional learning community the plc's
046we've always talked about yes it can be and i will definitely um can go into it in in more detail um but it is different than one professional learning because it's a cycle so it's me coming multiple times it's us being able to talk about the data and then going back to check and see what's working what isn't working it's us doing some of the research together so it's a longer period of time spending on a specific single issue yes thank you you're welcome so equity indicators when we think about equity indicators we have to explore um student topics and one way that we're doing that is through the connect period and through equity week so equity week was definitely um an artifact that i want to talk about in terms of not just students
047but also staff so this required teachers to take a look at equity within their discipline and to decide on some things that they would want to help the students to present this year we made sure to get some feedback from the students the students have a great voice and let me actually just move to that data so shout out to rebecca saltzman and carol weiser because they were the co-chairs we offered 71 sessions and 714 students took their survey so within the survey what we found was that sessions filled up quickly students had some trouble deciding which um to select so that those were good problems to have and students provided a list of ideas so we do have a list from student voice in terms of how can we make equity work how can
048we make equity work be the combination of what we did all year or things that we've learned and not just one event similar to what we're looking for when we talk about having equity with um with some of our our monthly events so the students really give us great feedback for some next steps we're also looking at how we can bring other people into a committee and make sure that we are including all students and all voices okay so i'm going to pause for a moment to see if there's any questions before i get excited about climate on the on that surveys the 714 students that were surveyed are those students that we targeted and said just you 714 or you were offered it to the whole school and that's those were those were the
049so the seniors were were very busy um in programs and getting ready for senior activities so i did have a listening tour with seniors to get their idea of what would be great for next year what i also asked them what would you say to the teachers now that you're leaving will it be different than when you were a sophomore or a junior the reason why i was really interested to get the perspective of the sophomores and juniors those are the ones that i really push when i saw that they weren't completing it is because they're going to be here again next year and so in order to really re-engage them i want to make sure that we have their voice and we're addressing some of their needs great i think it would be great
050to share the survey results because it'd be interesting to heat to see what those students that you was surveyed the 7 or 14 what they have you know written and put down as you mentioned that you you interview them or survey them from what sophomore and junior year so be very interesting to see and some of the some of the big buckets were the big questions the findings let's go back oh you got it what was it on that chart is it on the chart it's on that terminal okay you see it on the chart this is specific to the topics because as we think about engagement and offering students topics of equity that the students are have interest in and also have some understanding we really wanted to get their voice and again the
051problems that we have were great problems um we also asked quite technical questions was it easy for you to sign up was that difficult so those questions were asked also these are the questions that would help us to determine what do we have to do throughout the year in terms of understanding equity for the staff and the students so that this can be a meaningful event for all of them but we did ask those technical questions about the process as well excuse me is there a non-watered-down version of what equity week was about because i feel like there really wasn't any transparency i tried looking it up and it was tough excuse me ma'am so this is really for the board to question if you have some questions a public audience who are more than
052welcome no no this is really an exchange between the board and staff so if you want to make note of your questions you're welcome to ask them a public audience i can't promise you we'll have answers for you but someone would circle back sorry okay and then i just had one more question on that first chart page seven the book the decreasing student referrals for students with adhd we're seeing less of those or we're just saying we want to see less of that we want to see less because there's an over representation of students being identified in that disability category specifically males of color thank you you're welcome any other questions okay okay thank you so next climate and culture so engagement is an equity indicator i use the word engagement a lot we've done
053forms around engagement we're thinking about re re-engaging how do we re-engage our entire school community um so in looking at engagement it tells us how our students are doing how all of our students are doing it describes the quality of their involvement and their guaranteed experiences and also their sense of belonging so when looking at culture that was the beginning that's where we started and i want to share some information that came from our forum summaries i'm going to start with terms and phrases that were widely used so some of the words that came up quite often was work grades activities stress level or social emotional learning and you can see it was different for parents students and staff but those were terms that were widely used from all groups so we looked at engagement
054and what we found was that engagement can be two different things we're looking at engagement in terms of completion of tasks and participation and a sense of belonging in the school community disengagement as a symptom of a stressor that may not be really too related to school environment but something that might be a barrier that's impacting the ability for some students to engage so those were some of the notices that came out of the engagement forums so tell you just to set a little bit of framework so you may recall that in communications and listservs taya um kind of shared that she wanted to meet with parents right and to have these forums i want to say they happened in december am i recalling that correctly and then people could come to these forums and
055she had a set of questions to ask and dialogue to happen repeated those forums with staff and repeated those forms with both middle school and high school students should they choose to participate so these are some of the outcomes of those forums and what it tells us about engagement and we're looking for engagement of all students um so i think that that that really resonated with me when you shared that engagement is an equity indicator right are all students engaged how do we know um how do we get more information about that so ty is listening towards started that process terrific so the other ways that we receive information about climate culture again thank you through the listening tours and a listening tour is basically talking hearing people's perspective and their experiences some things that
056you don't necessarily get by just looking at the data we've included high school mediation groups a middle school mentorship student survey choice parent meetings and then of course our follow-ups with the listening tours would you throw out a question to were they directed or i'm just curious how that worked so with a listening tour some of the topics came directly from the principals so whether it was something that the the teachers wanted more information on or something that they were working on for a plc a principal would say these are the things that we're working on these are the conversations that we're having um and so another way to get that information is to have a listening tour and be at the table and allow people to to talk about whatever topic that they have
057and then it helps the principal and i to determine professional development to provide books for plc to think about some of the next steps um so a listening tour is really just that listening to what people have to say um and providing the next steps based on what we what we're hearing okay okay so with professional development we talked about professional learning which is ongoing there is also some professional development in terms of looking at spaces to begin having people think outside of the box that's what the equity work is looking at how do we engage everyone how do we ensure that everyone has access to the great experiences and so some of the things that we worked on this year is the minority affinity group a minority recruitment team and i've looked at two
058models meridian and farmington so the why is because one meridian has been in session for a long time and they had some great outcomes especially in looking at recruitment not just of minority recruitment but just in teachers in general as we have this mass exodus of teachers leaving and then farmington public schools because they are they have a similar demographic and they have two affinity groups one affinity group is hispanics and the other is more global so making sure that we're using again the right model that could match our district and then interest so we had eight initial surveys and we're going to be more formal and invite more people in year two and that minority affinity group is an adult verb it is an adult group for for staff engaging staff and this equity
059work is just important as um planning for the teachers in fact i i think that you have to do that both at the same time subs you see teachers engaging and understanding and developing their terminology and understanding of what is our vision when we say equity what what are we talking about for our district what is it that we want for all students are you also engaging the non-certified staff the power professionals in the building yeah so um we've had i've had two meetings with the non-certified staff and they were also invited to a forum and we did have some attendance for them as well so for equity indicators there's several that we found so far one is through the recruitment fairs looking at how do we recruit talented staff to come and and to
060sustain the staff that we have second we've updated the invitation to apply so i've worked with neil who does a great job of recruitment and then our recruitment team has four members and i've attended conferences working with the state dei team on the connecticut teacher shortage so what i'm looking at is part of the reason why there is a shortage is is geographic and so um getting people to come to connecticut is not always easy so like instead of us alone trying to compete for the same 10 people that are coming to connecticut to connecticut let's look at ways we could talk about housing transportation and things that people would want to come to connecticut for and and do that work together but i am not opposed to stealing people from neither am i start
061playing fair but you know but the percentage of overall in the state minority teachers is extremely low like only 11 of the teachers in the state are minority teachers so to be able to get a large pool of minority teachers into into a very suburban district it's just it's just a numbers challenge that you're up against what about in the in the school in the colleges the education program they have just started putting pressure specifically on the yukon and the other state universities to you know help solve the problem at its root by bringing more minority candidates into teacher education programs and uconn did not have a very good record on that front and there they have really challenged the niag school of education over the last few years and i do think that when
062we go to the yukon fair down the road we're going to see a different population than has been there in the past and also what do we have that's different than other districts well we have a mentorship we have people that are here happy successful um and and so those are the things that the minor minority recruitment team are working on to make sure that we show how inviting our community really is [Music] a quick pause for more q a from the board anyone else i think we're interrupting you so we're killing your q a right now this is this is fine this is fine okay all right i know we're not good at waiting we have two affinity groups you said we have we only have enough staff right now for one but they
063have to they have two so that's we eventually would like to pair off and even in thinking about membership like how are we defining affinity how do people self-identify um and so that is part of what we're doing as a group is it just people of color is it people who have um who present um ethnically so you know we want to leave it open i want to make sure that that everyone is welcome and if you need support you would like an affinity group less let's have one but as of now we have enough membership for one when we recruit more people from out of state then we will have to go so one of the the teams this is a one of the committees that i sit on the teaching and learning recommendation
064review committee and the chair is amana amanda torina quindici and i have to give all the credit to her but in this group what we what we're looking at is the policy and practice for recommendations and overrides so we've talked about an equity indicator being access to honors and ap courses and we're looking at not just the barriers to address the veritability and recommendations but also what do we have to offer what ap courses do we offer why do students who could possibly be enrolled in these courses either choose not to so again looking at root causes and barriers not just looking at the numbers because they tell two different stories some students absolutely could be in in these courses but we want to make sure that um that they have the support they have
065the resources and that the teachers have a protocol of practice to help support the students and the families so i will share some of the work so mrs lemke is always saying we must look for pathways and on-ramps so i i hear that in my head and when i'm in the committee meetings when i'm in my vertical teams i'm always asking so what is the ramp what's the pathway and what is the pathway for specific students um so when people ask what the road map looks like i go back again to my to the five five-year goals but the teachers are also looking at course selection looking at coursework looking at how they engage parents and understanding where students go and why um and so here's some information looking at junior so the class when
066it says the class of 21 2021 those are students that are graduating um at that point but we looked at their junior year and we've had an increase a a small increase a slight increase so um we're not taking credit for the increase yet but at least we're coming to the table with the right questions and developing the process that the counselors will use to increase the amount of students enrolling in the courses do we know yet if there's an uptick for this incoming junior class in enrollment that is yet but we also have a new course um so i want us to survey the students in terms of did you know about the course ask the parents did you know about the course um why would you select this course over another so again
067those listening tours are are great um avenues for me because sometimes you have to having the right question to ask is just as important as getting the data so the listening tours allows me to it informs the questions even the way that we we drafted our questions for the survey that people are taking now and if you have a student and you haven't taken it please check for the email and and take that survey but that's how we know what questions to ask and then to develop some of our next steps have you have you gotten answers and feedback from from people that are actionable or you is it you need to wait a little bit more just to make sure that there's enough feedback i we have received some feedback um but again we
068have to receive more feedback so the feedback is helping us to ask more questions and to look a little bit more closely but we we have seen that the counselors now um have a different roadmap to asking questions for students and we also have to slow down the process because we want to make sure that as we move students into the courses that students are successful that they feel successful we don't want them to just go in and be frustrated either yeah so the equity council we've identified three prior prioritized areas of focus for measuring our pro our progress so again the equity council have they've already done the great work of identifying some of the concerns and now we're looking at root causes and also we're looking at so how what does it look
069like when it's in process so we may not have achieved all of the goals but how do we know that we're making some of the right steps towards it and so we've selected three one is creating the systems and structures for ongoing analysis of the data and again that is an example of taking a look here and then looking at how do we what do we do for course enrollment and recommendation so that's an example of taking a look at this and then unpacking it the second is providing implicit bias training for all teachers and staff members with fidelity and i learned very quickly that fidelity has to start with the building-based fidelity what we have for middle school students is completely different than what we have for high school students when we're talking about
070professional development so making sure that it matches the student star in front of you and then providing culturally responsive training for staff members in order to aid in developing cultural competence and educating all children so these were things that were already lifted um and the equity council's recommendation and now we're trying to look at so what are some of those indicators so that we'll know that we're hitting the right marks so now my year ahead so i'm always thinking about where does where does my work show up in the data what are my measurable goals and what am i working on next so here are some of the recommendations and what i'm going to be working on next year identifying equity indicators that address engagement across groups looking at all groups looking at the research
071on the connection between the student engagement and achievement working closely with leaders to organize the existing seo components into a cohesive district-wide structure we have great structures at each grade level but now we're trying to bring it together so that we can present a k-12 that everyone understands and make sure that the high school principals and teachers are speaking a similar language to middle school so that as students progress we can explain what we're doing for social emotional learning using the referral data as a baseline to identify trends so being very careful and cautious not to just look at this year's data because we know coming out of them pandemic things were different for sel we had to make some changes some students needed more time to adjust so being very cautious and looking at
072data so i do want to accelerate some pockets where we make great achievements but if i can't tell you exactly how we did it so we can replicate it then we're going to study it a little bit more and i would love to create a community calendar with pto so i have gone to visit a few ptos um and they're they're ready and that just helps us to be more inclusive i don't know what i don't know um and so working together with the p2 i think will be a great opportunity for us to lift the cultural calendars again looking at guiding the curriculum review committee and providing more opportunities to increase engagement of all stakeholders meaning i'm going to be talking with parents talking with students sustaining the work of the equity council and
073i think definitely sharing my experiences in my new home i always say my new home simsbury um i do feel a strong sense of belonging i'm on the teaching and learning team the members came here and so we are doing this work together so i thank you for allowing me to share some of my buckets and if there are any other questions i just wanted your slides were fantastic the the style um it's like you know you've got the bubbles on the bottom saying okay this is what i'm supposed to get out of it so make sure that when i'm reading it it was very effective uh thank you i want to just point out the different pictures of the one of myself and the backlighting of dr batchelor we'll have to you know she
074said give me another picture i said it's fine you look youthful we're going to work on your thoughts on my thought bubbles go ahead on the slide page 20 i think it is or 19. um the expected enrollment buckets how do you determine expected did i miss that there's little tiny writing underneath there but i cannot sorry yes so it's based on the percentage of the population so based on the population of the black students of the this is the site that you're talking about yeah right yeah so based on the number of students that you have in your population and based on how many students have already been enrolled and these courses you can predict how many you should have now we're not the only district it's an enrollment basis right and based on
075simsbury's enrollment like historically we've had five percent or historically the state has seen five percent of this population in this class if five percent of your population is black students your ap courses should have five percent of those students and they like there it shouldn't be only one percent so five percent of the total population should be enrolled to mirror your population exactly exactly so that's how you have projections and although we haven't met the projection for the the black students we've come close to closer than we have in previous years so if you look at the top the class of 2021 there was one student and again i wanted to put the percentages because if there are only eight students then i i wouldn't want to put the number but in the yellow you
076can see where there is movement there is an increase i just wanted to you know you mentioned engagement several times throughout the presentation i think that's important and in a year or even a two-year period as a district and we've talked about this at quite a few public meetings where so much of our communication to parents and staff has been pushed communication around protocols and procedures and coveted and much more informative we need to think about ways to get more pull communication and a lot of your work this year boots on the ground i thought was great in terms of reaching out to parents getting some full communication working with staff getting some pulled communication so that idea of engagement as we launch next year you're going to continue to hear about that we're going
077to message that with parents we've sent a survey out i think that information will be important to get back in terms of climate and culture and what we're looking looking at what our next moves are but a lot of that is cued off of this work and i just kind of want to make that connection as we move forward as in the district so thank you will we see the results of on who to ask the surveys that are coming from the schools will we get that in the fall or will that yeah we're going to work with um principals at the retreat on that and then we will do a presentation of that data and bring it back to the board yeah for sure okay thank you thank you thank you thank you very
078much great great presentation very very informative after a year's worth of work thank you can i just ask you is there anything any other support you might need from are you getting what you need from us as a board i am getting what i need from from the board um but i'm really getting what i need from my team being being a part of a teaching or learning team i think is important the structure that you have i go to dei meetings once a month with dei directors from the state and one of the reasons why people don't stay in the position is because it's lonely um and the work is siloed and it's like you're the person responsible for equity but the way that you have the structure here it's equity is is as
079everyone it encompasses everything that we're doing it's always looking at from an equity standpoint are all kids we say all kids all kids and all staff getting what they need and having access so that they can you know have these great opportunities so the way that it is structured in terms of teaching and learning like i i'm not working alone maggie and i work on the survey together um katie comes in with her lens and says you know you might want to tweak this and so it is a part of a team and that's the real type of equity work and then of course we have great leaders who give us feedback and support us so yes they'll support it and that i can do the work we're glad we care we can do the
080work i appreciate what you're doing thank you thank you thank you very much thank you okay so with that we are back to our second public audience anybody you'd like to speak [Music] hello i am laurie boyco from 15 oakhurst road um quickly i wanted to mention for anybody that does have a junior or a senior that is ending their year having taken a class particularly seniors that are on the clip list i would recommend that they take a look at their their college's list of acceptable clep exams and see what they might have just taken in school that would make it worth taking a clep exam because you could get full college credit at most schools for taking clep and i'm finding that you can almost get through an entire year of college taking
081classes and save a lot of money um does that mean is that your psa no but i wish i had known because i could have saved literally tens of thousands of dollars and so i i'd like to pass that on to somebody else that might take advantage of what i've learned a little too late um and and i appreciate the presentation that we just had but i'm going to say something a little bit controversial [Music] i have watched and listened and tried to learn for the last year what we're teaching and what we're doing and why we're doing it and and what the results are that we're finding out you all don't you all know me a little bit you don't know me really well and the people that are hearing me out in tv
082land don't know me much at all but i have an extensive background dealing with many many many people of all walks of life and i love all people of all walks of life and if you were to stop my kids with their friends group in the halls at simsbury high school you wouldn't believe the data that you saw on the screen because their friend group looks like the united nations but that doesn't reflect on the screen and i would tell you more about myself so you would understand that this is coming from my heart but i have always learned that while we are all different we are also all very much the same there are as many differences as similarities but that what that is what makes us all unique individuals and i have heard
083an awful lot this year about equity which to me means equal outcomes not equal opportunities and i thought we lived in a land of equality of of equal opportunities for everybody to make the most of their own opportunity i realize some students need more help than others i have three children of my own that have all had different needs and we do the best we can to help all of those but i am trying to figure out what changed and who decided that it would be a better idea to emphasize all of our differences than our commonalities and think that that would have had a positive outcome when in the history of the world dividing people into racial ethnic religious sexual and class groups and pointing out the differences while suggesting some are oppressed and
084others or oppressors serve to bring people together rather than pit one another against each other and drive each other apart why would we not come together as unique individuals and and stop dividing everybody into their groups we have been told that we are not teaching critical race theory in simsbury and and we are not teaching critical race theory critical race theory is a is a um legal and college-level theoretical construct but when we are looking looking at everything through a racial lens we are looking at it in a cr critical theory construct i have heard more this year about equity and sel than i have heard about math but the math scores have fallen tremendously from what i had seen in one meeting because of covit if we were spending more time on math we
085might understand that a half of a percent of eight students compared to a half of a percent of hundreds of students is very different you can take the data but it's not accurate analysis when you're looking at eight students versus hundreds of students and saying oh only one student from this group of eight made it into an ap class about 20 seconds so i think moving forward we need to ask are we asking the right questions and are we looking at students as individuals or are we looking at them through their race their ethnicity their gender their sexuality their income thank you thank you [Music] april smith 44 climax road um i'm really interested in knowing what went on during equity week what were the questions that you were asking i emailed the school before
086equity week to find out more about it didn't find anything about it i read quite a bit i read things that are given to educators all over america all about crt i don't like what i'm reading i think some of the books that they're promoting at simsbury high school some of the authors i think some of these books are very racist and i just i think we're going down a very bad path and the fact that there's no transparency and it seems like it was a very nice you know presentation but it seemed like it was redacted for anybody that doesn't really know what's going on and i just you know not telling us what's going on is uh it's upsetting i i don't know what what you're going to be producing in four years
087from these kids but my question is can i find out what kind of questions were asked during equity week for the students so i can find out [Music] evan arsenault 47 notch road this is my first time at a meeting like this and uh i gotta say that uh there was there was a lot of good i think you know everyone here is concerned about the children and have their best interests at heart and uh it is easy when you look at a thousand little problems to you know focus in on the wrong things and i think that's what is happening from what i've observed not just tonight but over years and uh from talking to the community and others i am uh i am noticing that we talk a lot about you know numbers
088of people entering ap classes uh but we you know laura was right april's right absolutely and the fact that we're not talking about math we're missing the basics we're overlooking things and i think right off the heels of you know covid i think we could all relate to the idea that sometimes you know when there's a lot of information sometimes it's emotional information uh sometimes it's just the sheer volume of it it can make you focus in on the wrong things like teachers we have a teacher shortage why are we looking at skin color we need to be hiring the most uh the best candidates you know especially when we're short on staff so i think that also what helps people learn is not necessarily the color of their skin or how you know they
089you know what they're being taught from a certain equity book but where they feel comfortable being there one thing is that the math scores are down that's you know that's important but also what's down is the social skills covit has done a lot of damage on a lot of levels that we'll be spending decades learning about and this year especially is the worst i'm hearing all around town from parents saying this was by far the worst year students are coming home my teacher doesn't care the teachers aren't paying attention they didn't even you know listen to me i mean these are things that i think a equity you know director should be concerned with i think these are things that can be actual equity issues to be solved so i just want you know us
090all to go into the summer thinking about this from a different angle and the fact that we might be focusing in on the wrong problems and just realigning to education learning math writing creativity and when you focus in too much when you magnify too much you find problems i am a a big proponent of saying that when you look for problems you find problems it's not necessarily a good thing i yield my time thank you hi everybody stacy goodness stacy walzack 35 banks road um yeah you know i guess i share the same concern like i think all the work that's being done is good i think we all come from a good place but are we over correcting for something um you know perhaps there's something like more middle ground um i did i
091guess you know i'm a numbers person i get i got a little bit lost um because i'm wondering like you know we want obviously children of minority to have access to these ap programs it sounds like perhaps there is access but maybe they don't have the support they need and i'm just wondering if some of those issues like are at home because i'm thinking that a lot of the issues begin at home i'm a new parent and i'm learning that for myself as my child grows up and i'm like oh goodness what did you just say we need to fix this right so um i don't know those are just some kind of top of mind thoughts and like like i think parent commitment is huge so i think like reaching out to the parents
092is like a big big thing because if you don't have the parent commitment and you don't have you know home kind of holding these kids feet to the ground and you know making them hold their end of the bargain up like i i don't know how much we could really do you know in the classroom like a teacher's you know portion of their day right so um i think that's really all i want to say right now um it's been a long day so thank you all i hope you're productive this summer sounds like you will be thank you hi mike smith 44 climax road i just have two questions how are we going to judge success on this what what when we understand this is is that possible we'll be able to know how
093this is working i mean watch this it was a great presentation i can't say i understood a lot of it but i it was a great presentation so i was just wondering it does seem to me like the other people there's a lot of focus on race and not on individuals and we know in other words if if there's more ap classes for uh minority students that will that means it's successful that's what it seems the mentoring part seems to be the best part of this i think that's a great idea recognizing something early on and focusing on them and i also agree i think math all these you know the hard sciences really should be pushed okay thank you anyone else okay with that um our next board of ed meeting will be tuesday
094june 28th it will be virtual so please watch your emails for links um and with that i would take a motion to adjourn i will make a motion to adjourn for this evening all this in favor thank you all right thank you very much