001[Music] okay [Music] what's up brother heidi how are you feeling took a spill energy yeah are you okay no i'm serious okay i went i went down hard at the dealership the other day when i wasn't paying attention so i know how to feel so i'd like to call the stonington board of education a regular meeting to order on august 11th at 6 30 2 p.m and i'll ask sarah baker to lead us in the pledge of allegiance [Music] thank you i'll turn it over to marianne for any communication or recognition thank you farook i have a few first of all i would like to congratulate the class of 2022 for reaching 100 graduation rate um and that's a as a result of four youngsters attending summer school and so that's something we can be
002proud of i'd also like to thank tim smith for uh planning and executing a successful job fair that's assisted us in recruiting para educators and substitute teachers uh he's also planning on participating in our regional job fair september 1st to cast the net again so we are still have a shortage on our para educators one at the high school seven at the middle school five at dean's mill two are two of those five though we are we are waiting just on parapro test results so we're very hopeful that that will help the cause and four at west fine street school i also would like to recognize kristin olivario tina eisenbeiss and alison van netten for a very successful summer school program had a lot of happy families happy teachers and happy students attending all three
003of those programs and i would like to recognize alicia daw and myself for her being accepted to present at the association of supervision and curriculum development the ascd summer not summer leadership summit in national harbor maryland the third weekend in october we'll be presenting on improving student engagement by creating trauma-sensitive classrooms and leveraging student voice and then finally i'd like to recognize our colleague in zambia chalufa mulanga tulufa from the nem poon wheat secondary school we had um alicia and i had an opportunity to meet her in person she was over from zambia this summer and we planned our next year of collaboration between the two secondary schools and actually we're hoping that the students will be publishing a book both on their experiences as being women in leadership roles and also some artwork if
004they choose to display their uh experiences in that modality thank you mr kelly do you have any recognition a short list um i was just looking i was trying to find out that stonington had two scholar athletes out of 54 national scholar athletes out of 54 students nationwide nationwide there was 54 students two of them were from stonington wow i think that's i it shocked me when i read it um so uh kudos to them kudos to their parents and kudos to our teachers in our school system here i'm not sure i think it happened in july but um nutritionists i'm not sure proper title becky fowler is leaving us after several years and she's the one that with a team that she has together has been feeding our children at for lunch and sometimes
005breakfast and on the weekends so we'll miss her on the personnel also on the personnel report was a nice list to see full-time paras on there quite a few of them we have a couple pairs here tonight and i just recently understood that our current pair of the year has unfortunately left our school system for a better job with better pay so it's something that has happened before where we have these great paras and they leave us for higher aspirations and i think we need to do what we can to keep them present i of course with all the other board members attended the graduation ceremony in june but i also had the pleasure of going to the all night graduation party which was great for all the kids and there was a team of
006parents that put it together but the leader of that motley crew was dead bruno harris i just like to give her a shout out and then to our chairman i like the new setup here it's it's nice i think it's going to be better for us it's good to see the cabinet up there and uh you're sidekicked mrs simmons sitting next to you so that's all thank you mr kelly chris i don't have much to say i'm just excited for another productive innovative successful school year you know working with the parents the teachers and the administration so looking forward to that just before i left the house my 18 year old son getting ready for college asked me where i was going i told him to a board of ed meeting he's like already i'm
007like yeah and then his last comment was have fun and i'm like really kevin do you have anything sir sarah okay mr simmons yeah i just wanted i just wanted to recognize the policy committee for meeting several times this summer when you should have been taking off i guess it was during the month of july particularly and you've really done a mammoth job and and it's something that has needed to be done but it was critically thought out and i'm impressed so there we go yeah thank you i'd like to recognize our superintendent's schools it's her first official meeting as our superintendent schools she has done a tremendous job since she took over the helmet and personally very proud of her communication skills and hardin work on behalf of all the children and the sbs
008family so thank you marianne we appreciate you all right i'd like to open the floor for comments from citizens and regarding items on the agenda i'd like to ask citizens from stonington if they have any comments to come on up and limit them to three minutes please we're also part of innovation and continuously improving is we've decided to add a sign-on sheet today for anybody who comes up to speak to please put down your all your information so we can track you i see it here part of the reason for the sign up sheet just to be clear is we often hear from our citizens and we don't have we don't have the mechanism to have a dialogue about your comments so our secretary graciously agreed to [Music] record those comments see how we can
009communicate back to you about your comments in a formal way so the sign up sheet is designed so we can capture the information so mrs simmons can do her hard work as always in following up and making sure that you get the answers for your comments how about now yep perfect as everyone knows i appreciate any additional communication so i appreciate all of this and the efforts seems like there are some really great things coming from the board of the administration with parent involvement so i really look forward to that i want to welcome marianne now officially to the position and i've seen posts with you all throughout town throughout the summer and involved in things and at the mystic ymca and so i think that we have some really great steps forward in community
010involvement and stuff like that so i really do look forward to that i had a couple of things that i just wanted to comment on um from the i guess i forget what it was called it was the engagement um i'd like the family engagement di stuff what was that i'm not the welcoming schools or where are you talking about the district improvement plan district improvement that's the one um so i think that it was great to see that there's you know a focus on community engagement family involvement there was just a couple of areas that i had a little bit of concern with one of the it was a goal to diversity equity and inclusion and it talked about the staff will build capacity knowledge and skills around culturally responsive practices an immeasurable output
011was that the faculty will present a sampling of sel and dei events and lessons at a minimum of one border bed meeting a semester i don't obviously have an issue with that but i just want to make sure that we're not pushing faculty to an area that maybe they aren't comfortable with or i just want to make sure that we're being very cognizant and not making these things an issue where they would not be so i just i just wanted to be it just made me a little hesitant to see it and to say that as with so many things this could be really positive but it could also then lead to something that could be negative so i just want to make sure that we're very aware of that also in goal 2 it
012said the district will partner with experts in social emotional learning personal safety and cultural responsive practices it said social emotional screening data and i know that in the past that there was a lot of stuff that came from the teachers and i just want to make sure that if there's any screening of students or surveys that went out to students that we made sure parents were aware and had the opportunity to choose whether or not their student would participate i think in the past has only been at the level of the faculty and that's fine just to make sure if they're seeing anything and students get the help that they need but i just saw that screening data and wanted to point that out and then my favorite goal three family engagement that talked about
013said the district will improve family partnerships to support teaching and learning and i said each school will implement a minimum of three parent engagement activities links to learning throughout the year and i was just wondering if there would be a committee of parents that would help design what these activities would be i like the idea of like a curriculum night or um because it talked about curriculum specific nights in the outcome and i was just wondering how that this would go about how would these ideas come through where would the things come from i know it you know one of the things was you know back to school night which i know we have at the elementary schools i'm not sure if they happen at the other schools but i i love them um but
014it's not a two-way communication it's a you know a chance for the parents to get in there see the school meet the teachers do all of that but i was just looking for something that had more of like a two-way communication of room for parent input so i felt like that was an area that i wasn't sure got hit on completely and then i was hoping to get a little bit more clarification on um i said the sternton public schools this is going forward with community engagement sorryington public schools will continue to foster a collaborative partnership with the stonington public schools and will foster a positive relationship with the sterlington police department and other first responders 100 love this a measurable output was the director of finance will explore avenues to support the auxiliary police
015by january 2023 i just want to get a little more information on that just know what that was and i hope it's what i i'm thinking it is and then i just wanted to say going in the teaching and learning committee meetings that they've been doing an amazing job working really diligently in our curriculums for our schools and putting a lot of work and effort in and it's been a joy as a parent to see the amount of work that goes into it so i've thoroughly enjoyed that and i you know look forward to some of the changes and a lot of the communication that they're adding in so that parents can really feel comfortable when they're sending their kids to school so i just want to say as a parent i appreciate that i
016think they've done a wonderful job and i look forward to this upcoming school year and i hope everybody had a great summer thank you thank you any other comments okay hearing none uh move to item five on our agenda which is consent agenda and um i'd like to note that in an attempt to continuously improve again i'm going to use this word often tonight is that we i added we added the word vote required to the items on the agenda that requires your vote just to make it clear and easy for everyone to see it right there so um if there are any items on the consent agenda that you would like to be removed otherwise i'd like to ask for a motion just removed second second all those in favor please indicate by saying
017hi hi hi those unanimous thank you um and then number six is welcome ming schools update mr smith the floor is yours sir [Music] it's always good to have a guy who can help you out with things uh good evening thank you chairman rob for that introduction so for the welding welcoming schools update i just want to give everyone a quick review of what happened back in may and then talk about next steps last spring the district contracted with the capital education council capital region education council creck to facilitate what they have what they call the welcoming schools protocol here at stellington public schools the initiative was aimed to ensure that our schools are ready to genuinely welcome parents and visitors back into the school buildings as part of the pandemic recovery and to be
018welcoming and inclusive for all parents and visitors the way this process worked is that each school identified a group of staff parents and a community member back in may to be part of their school team to go through the protocol those teams came here to district office where facilitators from crack conducted a two plus hour training on how to use their protocol and what to look for in this checklist instrument to evaluate each school in four categories the physical environment school-wide policies and practices welcoming school staff and the written materials and written is one of those things that includes electronic uh texts such as things on the website and in parent square messages that go out to parents the correct facilitators then led these school teams on site at each school divided the group into
019four groups each group worked independently on those four categories and then came back together with the correct facilitators to report uh their findings and their ratings to the whole group and then a whole group in discussion was was held with the correct facilitators and then the correct folks created an individual report for each school identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement [Music] their instruments rated those four categories on a scale of one to four our average total was about a 2.6 the one consistent across every school is that the staff the welcoming staff was a strength in every school in our highest rated category with an average rating of 3.6 the written materials category was consistently rated as an area of improvement across all four schools so as far as the outcomes a review
020of the findings was identified a few of the easy to fix issues with the physical plant such as better signs more user-friendly signs like how to actually buzz into the building with some plain language and arrows after the buzz used this door peter is working with the principals to get that those signs signs for like office hours welcome signs in multiple languages near the front entrance all of that those works are in progress some of the recommendations on those things we found to be in conflict with safety protocols now the correct instrument is a little old-fashioned i guess if i can use that term where typically in the past you might see in a main lobby a directory of names and room numbers and arrows for our safety protocols we don't want really to to
021follow through with some of those uh recommendations but there were many that we could to do that could update those uh one of the biggest concerns we're addressing our website both from the district and from the individual school sites was in need of a major overhaul chris williston created a plan where we hired someone and are paying them to overhaul all of those sites give them a refresh and some of the stuff that looks old that is still applicable will be updated with new dates so that everyone knows it's current uh and we've got a lot of work to do but that work is in progress and will be completed by the end of the summer the most significant uh piece of this outcome of this um initiative is we felt that um and our
022facilitators from crack commented on it quite a bit is that because they just they do this they go to schools they they do this protocol a lot is that they found that our working groups of staff and parents administrators and most importantly every group had students included in it worked really well together uh and they were they were very uh felt it was comment worthy of the positive atmosphere of working together in collaboration with all of these groups and even as a whole group here at district office for weather training so we're going to continue those groups every school will have a welcoming schools group that will continue to meet every other month through the school year as part of the superintendent's plan for increasing two-way parent engagement uh to uh quote uh mr agnello
023it's one of those on-ramps uh for parents to have [Applause] kind of a seat at the table where we talk about curriculum where we talk about school activities from kind of a more academic standpoint it doesn't replace pto pto it will still do all of their normal ptos but this will meet kind of opposite weeks of the pto organizations the board liaisons for each of the buildings will get an invite to those meetings as well and we think it's a it's a great way to just keep building on this collaboration uh in two-way communication uh with parents and so some of those initial meetings will to take take a look at those other areas in need of improvement and make some final decisions and come to some other ways in which we can make our
024schools more welcoming but we'll also use this group to talk about curriculum and other things so that we can have that parent voice at the table in a more meaningful way thanks thank you any questions for tim thank you all right um moving on to item seven on our agenda is the subcommittee report and as you will notice that we um now listing each subcommittee and the work they have done and i'll move it over to the chair of teaching and learning to give us the update on his subcommittee absolutely thank you so the teaching and learning committee has made tremendous progress in assessing district curricula and appearing preparing them for full board approval last month we discussed a few courses that are part of our tremendous special education programming and today the committee reviewed
025a marketing course and a pottery course we also recently have discussed a new k-8 mathematics curriculum called eureka squared last spring teachers of mathematics and k-8 were offered a two-hour overview of the first unit of eureka squared to familiarize themselves with the new features of the upgraded program and also to assess similarities and differences between the legacy program and the upgraded version on august 17th the district math specialist will be participating in a workshop to learn more about the program and to plan professional development sessions for all k through 8 teachers of math scheduled for august 31st informational and interactive sessions for parents and families will take place in a myriad of ways either at open house nights or curriculum-based nights welcoming schools committees are also via recorded tutorials that will be posted on the
026district and school websites more generally the two other board members who sit on the committee with me sarah and heidi and i have really enjoyed learning about the depth and breadth of our of our district's program offerings and are consistently impressed with the organization rigor and overall quality of the curricula that gets presented to us by our two curriculum coordinators and the teachers of each course each committee meeting is not only productive but we have a blast lastly fellow board members and everyone here tonight i encourage you to check out the bulletin board opposite of the meeting room on your way out it's a display from mrs chin's encore class called the wonders of water the students created tab art out of aluminum can tabs to demonstrate the prevalence and contribution as humans to stressing
027the shoreline ecosystem and also to how on to demonstrate how to repurpose materials often discarded without thought so be sure to check that out on your way out it's right outside the meeting room here on a bulletin board that's all i have as far as an update can i make a motion to approve the second read of the pre-vocational volunteering annex life skills and community experiences curriculums motion to approve the three curriculums mentioned second oh do i say all in favor [Music] all right that was unanimous thank you mr ignac um you also noticed that you have a graphic deal design exercise science and those are for your first read oh actually can i make a comment on one of those uh marianne i had somewhere in my notes i don't know if it's about
028this textbook adoption though do is this the textbook adoption that it would benefit the district to approve now without a second read in order to order it ahead of time okay so then may i make a motion to approve or to forego a second read and approve now the textbook adoption for child development early stages through 12th grade i'll second them with that was your emotional second yes again any discussion okay all in favor all right all right thank you thank you and uh moving over to finance and facilities subcommittee and move it over to mr donahue to give us update on his committee yeah um so it was a bit brief for this week we had an update from peter about the stonington middle school acs he should but by the end of september
029we should have a more concrete cost on what the project would be if we went forward and also we had an overview from alicia that was laid out in these charts i believe everybody has one of the remaining opera funds thank you mr donahue any questions for chris the chart for the opera fund is part of your packet please have the chance to review it uh [Music] alicia is uh has all the answers so if you very very clear and easy to read and of course if you have any questions please reach out to marianne and she'll get them for you um next my favorite subcommittee it it's the bossy and the policy subcommittee and mr kelly would you give us an update on your subcommittee what more fun than to have policy committee meetings
030on a weekday morning to go over some policies that some were 20 plus years old some were 10 years old but we plowed through them thanks to farooq and kevin for being on the committee and helping out as well as marianne being there guiding us through we i don't know over several meetings we went through a lot of the policies some were mandated by the state we tried to make sense of most of them edited and deleted some optional information try not to get too wordy with them the list was just long i don't think any of them were financially cumbersome to us and they went from the improvement of fafsa completion rates in the district to sudden cardiac prevention programs to the civility code and some of the some others so they will be
031once passed they will be added to our policy link on the school website district wide website and for those that need to review it the one policy that we have up for discussion tonight it says on subletter i i guess policies for discussion and reaffirmation was 9160 which is in your packet and that included uh the blue one blue did i put it so many papers at the end it's here somewhere thank you uh which was um something of discussion and heidi and craig could probably enlighten us a few years ago on on the appointment or the how a student representative comes to be on the board of education in our discussion we kept it at the member will be recommended by the student government subject to the approval of the principal such student and
032it doesn't necessarily have to be the president of the student government if the president of the student government [Music] feels that he or she has too much on her his or her plate um that they could appoint someone else from the student government or from the student body whether it be the vice president or somebody else so the student representative should be president of each meeting if it's not possible the representative will advise the superintendents in advance of the meeting the board reserves the right to dismiss a student representative due to poor attendance and call for the selection of a new member the student representative will report to the student body through their student government representatives on deliberations of the board board of ed the student representative should be available for attendance at board of
033education meetings beginning with the start of the year the term of office shall be for one year the student representative shall be able to attend and sit on all meetings during said meetings they will be able to speak on any issue on the agenda or motion before the board unless deemed inappropriate by the board be able to recommend resolutions to the chairman prior to the meeting for the board's consideration receive copies of the meeting agendas minutes and other pertinent publications be expect expected to attend all board meetings and be accountable to the student body by the student organization a student representative shall not be able to cast an official vote on any emotional resolution resolution and shall not be allowed to attend executive sessions negotiation sessions or personnel portions of the regular meetings of the
034board of ed only those privileges and powers enumerated previously shall be regarded specifically as such and any all powers and privileges that might be deemed appropriate for the student representative shall be decided by the board of education and it references connecticut general statutes 9-2 number and term of members of board of education um so i don't know if there's any discussion on that um january this was from january 12 2012 so i was 10 years old so we didn't make any changes to it in our subcommittee but we brought it forward to the full board to see if there was any need to make any changes to it it does not have to be approved tonight if you want to take a look at it and get back we could take a look at it
035at the next regular board meeting if anyone has any questions if there's no no uh concerns you can vote to a motion to approve have a it to run this past attorneys to make sure it's up to date because we always reference the statutes and i just wonder and i know it's expensive and slows [Music] all the recommendations that we got for all the new policies were um suggested from cabe and they compiled policies and then we mostly deleted some extra stuff that was on there so um way back when when the series started to be looked at the the cave models were always looked at so we try to try and catch that and you'll see some of that some of the ones that we're going to be working on are it's not so
036much the content that has dramatically changed but the statutes have changed or there's been additional legislation so as part of our process we go back and say are these what we have right now that we're working off of are there any changes we also on some i'm going to i'm going to use the maternity leave example we've circled back to shipment on that one and it's not required and so we're going to pull that because what's under there is not correct and it also fits under our fmla so there's no need for it so this committee has been really good about just because something's recommended doesn't mean we're going to put we're going to adopt it the mandated things are different um so it it is and it's it's going to be continuous craig as
037we as we get through the mandated things then we're going to have to start all over again and and double checking each series that um to make sure that we are up to date on those second just part of the discussion sorry is that um we've read statues when we went through these policies we really actually went online and tried to pull down all these statues to make sure that they aligned to some of these statues and where we found where we got like some of the language we didn't you know it wasn't mandated we took it out because we wanted to meet that statue um so it's to so that that really is just i just wanted to give you a flavor of it the the reason we bought this policy 91602 to discussion
038is that we owed it to the board to open it for the floor for discussion because the board not necessarily this board the previous board had different views on how and and you recall those conversations so we felt that it is appropriate to bring it back is that we felt the policy committee felt 9160 is appropriately worded and we did not feel like we needed to change it but because the board previously had brought it up for for discussion we felt appropriately we should bring it back to the board and make sure that the board is comfortable with 9160 and and that's the only policy that we're asking for information on and that's i believe the vote that chris put on the rest of the policy are first read take your time digest them they're
039going to come back in your for you in september meeting thank you all those in favor for the affirmation of 916 so please indicate by saying aye hi hi so that was unanimous thank you and then um policies to be admitted will be 41 18.2 in 9 400. they're being admitted because there was replacements for those policies 4118 is uh mandated the replacement was mandated and updated to on the alcohol drugs and tobacco policy and 9 400 was the sbit which will now be the board self-evaluation but it's a major rewrite from the 1999 2000 revised version again there's our first read on the ones that will be be replacing them so we go from 41 18.231 will be replaced by 418 232 and 9400 will be replaced by or just edited yeah it's what
040omitted yes because we don't have sbits so that's the first reading at the next meeting we'll have the second read and ask for a vote that's the report from the subcommittee on policy and we'll be meeting again on the 25th before the special board meeting thank you mr chairman thank you dan um so please take the time to review them and hopefully you know we'll have the chance to discuss them i just have one question of a term used and we're going to discuss some questions that i have about the tag program and advanced programming just how they intersect i think that we as a board need to understand this because throughout it says that we that the board supports the board provides the board creates so we should understand what all of it is
041and we're going to discuss it in the um and teaching and learning but i but there's one thing that i didn't understand that was the connecticut automatic admission program although it talked about it i didn't know what was being admitted where they were being admitted so this is something new um from the from hartford and um what it is is there will be a series of metrics that will allow for our seniors to automatically be entered into the application pool for our state universities so it's a it's a positive thing but that's all the information i have heidi but that's why that's why that new new policy was is before you so it's a really kind of um and what what will happen is you and we will see a handful of this some children
042who never thought that they were college material might that door may open for them yeah when i find out more i will share it with you so they don't have to even apply right it's almost like a screener right goodness okay that's interesting any other question on uh policy subcommittee report thank you and move it over to maryann for a report from superintendent schools great i'm just going to rearrange these items under the superintendent's report to make a little bit more sense so i'm going to start with an update on the district improvement plan and i want to thank the board of education who took this statutory obligation extremely seriously this summer with two separate meetings a total of five hours putting these goals together really understanding um how these goals define what the focus
043areas are for our work not that we're going to ignore everything else that is not involved in in addressed in these goals but that these are what the board wants the administration and the staff and the faculty to be working on and the district improvement plan is our work that we bring before the board to tell you how we're going to get that work done that you have charged us with so the goal is it's important for folks to understand that the goals are based not just on academic performance data but they're also based on the data that was collected through the interviews conducted with all sorts of stakeholders faculty students community members about what they wanted from their next superintendent and so many of those are folded into these four goals they also address
044the legal requirement that the board has of having some some one of the goals address social emotional learning and they were also addressing the urgency around some of these items as uh kovid has brought them to our attention and made them more uh uh i guess urgent to attend to so um that's the the again the the purpose of these goals is to have a focus for accountability and improvement initiatives across the um the district i want to emphasize over and over again not just to the board but to the public that's listening this is a working document and it will change as we progress through the year so that our metrics may change based on where we find when we look at benchmark data it may be higher or lower than what we anticipated
045and our trajectory may may change accordingly so i just want you to understand that uh and again it's not the only thing that we're going to be working on but it is the is the focus areas and we'll be reporting back to you on this in november as well as in march so that you'll have an idea of where we are on that particular progress line under goal number one under academics we're going to continue to prove improve our academic performance growth and experiences in mathematic mathematics and english language arts the good news is and you haven't seen any of this data yet but the good news is our performance data district-wide is very very close to our pre-covet performance which was our highest ever under this assessment so the dipstick is looking the dipstick
046looks pretty promising that we have bounced back however i say that with cautionary notes that we don't have all the demographic data and we also don't know how our neighboring districts did not that i'm competitive and we don't know how the state results look we typically outperform the state without much much difficulty but i'm really interested in how we're stacking up in the area of the state as well so that's that's the positive news we'll be looking at those benchmark assessments because they're excellent predictors of how our children do on those state assessments so we'll we'll be reporting back to you on that and we're also going to be looking at creating some more thoughtful incentives for children to come to school because our chronic absenteeism numbers are upsetting to say the least we're up
047around 18 which is really not great so we know that we've learned through the pandemic that the kids do better when they're in school and so we need to do something a little bit more creative in addressing those needs it is not out of line in fact when and the number that i have have for you in the district improvement plan is not scrubbed yet from the state they we should be adjusting those numbers shortly um but when we we got our initial number i know dr osgo was sharing some other districts performances and they were they were more dire than ours so um it's it is again not a problem that's unique to stonington under goal number two which is our diversity equity and inclusion goal it is stated as following that the stonington
048public schools will continue to develop students who have social and emotional competencies needed to be successful citizens in a diverse equitable and inclusive society we're going to be continuing our work with east con on the implementation of those trauma-sensitive practices to improve student engagement we measure those by the amount of opportunities children have to respond in any class and we also measure those by um how many uh positive statement praise statements are made in relationship to uh corrective statements uh to children we know that highly engaged students are not disruptive students and so uh that's that's how we believe we're going to make the performance and engagement increase we also are going to be looking at more professional learning for our teachers on how do we develop those social emotional competencies in in schools and
049children under family engagement the the goal is uh posed as such so donating public schools will provide safe school environments that engage stakeholders and facilitate family partnerships in learning you've heard about our welcoming schools work we're going to shift shift how we partner with families so they'll be more actively engaged in teaching and learning you'll hear the term links to learning over and over again that's based on karen maps from harvard university's research around actually teaching families how to be partners in the educational process so when we talk about eureka squared we're going to ask the parents to come forward and do a little tutorial work with us as models and also provide opportunities for families to come in and learn how to actually teach mathematics and sport support mathematics instruction at home again family
050engagement we're going to be looking at working more closely and building on our positive relationship with the stonington police department following their safety audits that they are conducting and giving feedback to our individual schools on how to improve safety and we're having conversations with the town about looking for some supplemental funding to increase police coverage at our buildings and finally goal four community engagement stonington public schools will engage in partnerships across the town to promote a sense of oneness among staff agencies boards community organizations optimize resources and promote forward thinking we have standing meeting times now across departments that our first select woman has established so we meet to all the town agencies meet together once a month it's a nice way to put faces with names but also be open to listening to what
051is the work and concerns are of other departments and then uncovering potential collaboration opportunities and providing new innovation across the town there's been a lot of conversation about working with the police department about offering programs in our encore classes in the future and at the high school on how to give kids more information about public service and opportunities in the in the careers that we know our police department our firefighters and other first responders are having a lot of trouble recruiting and retaining folks so you're going to hear a lot about that down the line again in november and march the second update is about parent square and student square that focuses on goal number two and three that were just mentioned thank you dan who actually kind of planted the seed in our mind
052we've been working all summer long with brian marone to to uh land on a platform that would be a uniform one for coaches to communicate with athletes and their families and thanks to chris and tim we landed on something that we actually don't have to pay anymore we're going to use parent squares feature of student square and so that will give some predictability to all athletes and families that there'll be one platform that we'll be communicating on the nice thing about it is similarly to what they're used to already with parent square they'll be able to identify the families and how they're going to get communicated whether it's email or whether it's via text it's also a nice way for us to make make sure that we're protecting not only our athletes but also our
053coaches so that the communications will always have two adults on there at any given time so the assistant coaches will be looped in as well and we can also archive these message and if there's any question we can look into those those messages between the the coaches and the in the players so we're pretty excited about that i want to give a nod again to our tech team that is providing technical support to our coaches who are more reluctant uh to transition to this platform and we couldn't do it without them so thank you very much the next update is on our covid health updates goal number two i was hoping we won't have to even address this this year i panicked when there was this emergency phone call with the state department and department
054of health the good news is there's not really much change from how we landed on school last year at the end of the school year so masks are still going to be voluntary to where we will be respectful of of children and family choice around that matter the goal again is to maximize in-person learning we know the the benefit of vaccines and booster shots is the way to go we will provide the vaccination clinic information on our website as we have in the past um there is we're moving forward our recommendation is to move forward with what we call a hybrid model of the department of public health's test mask and goal policy it aligns with what we did at the end of last year so if children have mild symptoms without a fever if
055they have a stuffy nose we if they just test negative at home they're they're free to return to school the the test mask and go calls for daily testing rather than just one testing thank you my frog voice is taking over the water thank you anna yeah i have got to get back into my teacher voice modality um so again uh if we're going to recommend if a child has a fever they're going to stay home um until symptoms subside and they have a negative test we are leaning on the parents to take the responsibility for reporting positive tests to us the cdc does have a new really funky feature available to families that's going to take a lot of pressure off of our nurses it's a it's a calculator so depending on when your
056positive test came back you can go in and to this link that we will publicize for the families and it will tell you the return date for the student which is again that's probably 95 percent of the calls that nurses were fielding that way so a big um big big positive stride there and as of today the students of this cdc literally this afternoon said that when further advice of when a student or staff member has been exposed to a positive case they don't have to quarantine it doesn't matter what their vaccine status is but they'll they'll be asked to wear a mask for a 10-day period so i anticipate this will be a dynamic situation not only with the cdc but throughout the year as numbers change but what we've learned is that we
057have great stamina in our in our staff in our community great great cooperation from our families and uh and we we have uncovered our unparalleled flexibility to deal with the unexpected uh and last and i don't think it's lastly uh transportation this is uh something that peter really helped me prepare there's some concerns again about busing not busting but transportation as we had some stressors last year with the difficulty in finding drivers our contract with first student is for 27 drivers so that's our ideal situation um to pri to provide provide us with some coverage as far as substitute bus drivers because they too have personal lives and life intervenes sometimes they get sick we currently right now have 22 drivers ready to go three more are being trained and we hope they pass their
058tests which would bump us up to 25 just keep in mind that six of those drivers are committed to transporting our stonington students to schools such as the voag the the magnet schools things like that so it really leaves us right now with 16 drivers to deal with our our four our five schools basically um we we got the stressor last year peter correct me if i'm wrong the tipping point was the 12 drivers when we were left with 12 drivers that's that's was the uh the the stonington shuffle there after uh new year's weekend when we just couldn't get the school the kids to school in a timely fashion and so we're in much better shape so that's the good news but the kova did afford us the opportunity to look at efficiencies and
059there will be some of the more populated neighborhoods have those hubs will still be in play this year leaving flexibility for more individual service in the more remote areas of the town please know that first student does have a safety liaison who looks at the safety of each stop and and now so confers with peter if there's any question about the safety that is first and foremost for our our students when this is happening we're hoping um the we know that the bus schedules will be out the third week in august we're hoping to deliver before that um so families will have some uh opportunity to review their plans and and make arrangements if there's any changes in those uh pickup spots for this year that they need to address and then finally i just
060wanted to give a quick recap of summer school that addresses board goal one two and four we had approximately 20 students participate in the high school program four of those were seniors who again successfully completed either their credit recovery or finished the coursework that they needed to to give us that hundred percent graduation rate so thank you margot crowley thank you alicia da and manny for getting that in play it makes a big difference to our our our kids and the middle school again tina eisenbeis always with her slick marketing campaigns had the most highly populated summer school with 90 students participating in the stonyton middle school summer school academy and if you want to know why it's because she creates these high interest course like graffiti math to do a photography one or two
061international sports and games the art studio invisible math which is my favorite kind soil and science soil science and spanish culture club so uh that's the way school should be right interesting um and then finally west vine hosted the elementary summer school with enrollees in summer academy thank you kristen and 67 in our extended school year program so very well done and that's it from my end any questions i just i had a question about the the transportation um uh it looks like we're almost at back to full capacity there when is our when do we renegotiate our contract with uh that's another welcome present to our new director of finance that that is up this year along with the teacher contract got it because in the past they just refund us back if they
062don't have by run correct by bus by bus okay cool can i brag a little bit um we we did have a resignation yesterday but we um barring any other unforeseen we have hired some amazing new teachers over half of which and tim can attest to this over half of which told us that they were very happy in their current assignments they were waiting for an opening in stonington so we're in pretty good shape don't jinx us it's the para educators that's that's what we're struggling with but again um we have a splash on our website that we're accepting applications we're looking at another job fair it made a difference thanks to tim on that initiative so i would say we're in better shape than most i'm not sure it's on the calendar yet anna
063do you know that teacher negotiation first meeting oh they're not set up completely waiting to hear back from nick i think i had a couple of questions um one is on the parent square now are we doing that district wide not just with coaches but with band chorus drama any other clubs and activities that happen out of the norm i see mr smith saying yes all right i don't want to see we just we just haven't had the opportunity to discuss it with those folks yet it's only the coaches that we you know are more timely let's see if you can make it work this time yes i can i can be taught it's great uh i wasn't confident but there it is mr kelly yes uh just the focus uh right now was on
064the coaches because we have team night coming up on the 18th and we wanted to make sure everything was in place for their rollout but all extracurricular clubs and activities that require communication between the advisor and the students will happen within parent square student square environment so that it is all completely self-contained in our approved communication vehicle rather than on private text messages phone to phone thank you on letter b the district improvement plan the the goal sheet is now laminated in color on our tables we'll be here at every meeting and um just so that we can stay focused on our goals and and um you know make sure that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing and then getting reports from the superintendent on what what she's been doing to work on
065towards those goals covet 19 do we currently have tests available for parents to families to pick up we do have tests and the state is actually going to be delivering them to district this year so they'll be available probably in greater quantity and being delivered on a regular basis yes any other questions all right we're going to move on to our next item which is monthly report and i have a question um did we have a 23 611 dollars left over in june or thank you the 23.60 um bear with me sorry okay so it was higher than that but like i mentioned during the finance committee meeting we were able to replenish the health insurance account does that answer your question what happened to the 23 000 so did the 23 000 also go
066into the health account no that that is still remaining there are still some invoices coming in trickling in so until we know 100 that got it that that squared away we'll leave that there thank you three hundred and seventy thousand [Music] i think mr kelly had a question on july report it's sideways i just asked it on your behalf mr kelly it's easier to see them when they're scanned in one direction on the phone any questions on monthly reports [Music] air comments for middle school is there an opportunity here or is there any money also i wonder coming to new improvement for all schools it's uh highly unlikely that we'll qualify for it but that still hasn't we don't we don't have the outlines yet so we don't really know what the story is behind
067it you could put heat pumps in the school but there's no reason to since we already have a a fairly good heating system in the school any other questions item 10 on our agenda is board comments and items for future agenda items for future agendas okay hearing none i'd like to ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting second second all in favor please say aye hi