001we'll call this special meeting of the Stonington Board of Education to order please stand with me in the Pledge of Allegiance un [Music] States first item on the agenda tonight um will be board presentations uh academic Benchmark and performance data um as you'll notice this will be delivered in two parts one tonight and one of our next board meeting um van yes um I'd like to thank our principes for putting these presentations together tonight we'll be talking about performance data and in December we'll be looking at um follow-ups strategies we're using to improve and where the board can help our administrators move forward with our Student Success so we' like to start out with Stonington High School and Mr Freeze with this new long hair Mr Freeze all right good evening thank you for having
002with me here tonight um tonight we're going to just give you a little bit of data about how the kids are doing so far this year and like Dr R said really give you some information on things that we're going to be needing and we're going to have to discuss in the future which one is this all right as I said right now we have been putting a lot of strategies in place you know this is a a very difficult time for everybody and we understand that uh things are not normal but we do have a lot of good success stories to talk about here um right now is at the high school level at this time of the year we're really kind of concentrate on grades as the primary indicator of how we are
003doing and this is our grade distribution for the first quarter um as I as it shows there we had 45 500 different individual grades for all students in all classes we have 613 students currently in enrolled in our classes um and right now we're really looking at the as a as a focal point the number of D and Fs we are looking at on the left hand side you'll see that overall if you really think about it with 4,500 grades having roughly 67% or 2/3 of A and B's we really doing well and that is consistent with what we have been in in previous years the difference being really that that lower Spectrum down the DFS where we're having 15% of the students that are enrolled having multiples DFS and the ones that we're really
004focused on right now is we have about 60 kids that through for a variety of reasons whether it be uh a lack of Engagement for numerous reasons um there some issues with just the actual the mode of instruction that they're going with has been relatively difficult that we have about 60 kids that we're really targeting right now that we have to give a little extra special look into how we are providing them their their instruction because clearly it's not working for everybody all right I do want to kind of share that overall if you think about you know just looking back to March and everything that all of these kids were have gone through you know we do have some you know some success stories on the top of that graph there is our SAT
005data uh we had one cohort of the senior class reports back from the sa the school day sat as you know last March they didn't weren't they did not have the ability to take it so all the seniors had to take their sat this year and as you can see there for that half the cohart half the class anyway are the average grade that they got back with 1108 is higher than what we've had in many years so the kids were able to see their way through the spring and the fall since you know in our current environment and they're still being successful if you look at the the the erw in the math grades with erw being the English grade you know once again we're higher than what we have done in the past
006so the kids are doing well now I'm anxious to see what the second Co heart gets in a couple of weeks on the bottom graph there you'll see basically our last several years of AP uh grades and as as a whole stoon high school has been very successful the last eight or nine years where we average in excess of 80% of the students uh who take AP tests are passing them which means they have a grade three or or grade three or higher uh this past spring you once again we reached that Milestone with 82% of the kids getting that three or higher so even with the spring and All the Troubles that we had the kids still Prevail and I attribute that a lot to the the relationships that the kids have with the
007teachers and the work that the teachers are putting in now they're getting the job done however like you said on that like I showed on that previous slide we still have work to do primarily in that that category where those some of those students are not being successful and that's where we're sort of targeting our efforts on right now these I know you guys probably see them better on your computer but on the screen I just want to kind of show three specific areas that we are looking to on the left hand side there this is we're just targeting the dnf information right now so these are just the DFS that system body and on the left hand side it looks at the instructional model the pyra on the bottom shows the overall percentages of
008how many kids are in hybrid how many kids are in uh the full distance and how many kids are here for 4 days we've been able to bring back we have uh was it 100 and just under a 100 kids have been able we've been able to bring back into the four-day model you know because they needed some some extra work all right but as you see in the graph in the top though the one thing that isn't kind of showing us is that just because they're here 4 days is does not necessarily mean that they're being that much more successful right if you also look at the the kids in the full distance learning you know the percentage of those kids are disproportionate with the number of kids enrolled with as compared to the
009kids that are in the hyrid R so basically what that's telling us is that while we have everything that is we have everything in place there is still room for improvement we have this Cadre of like 60 or 70 students that need something more need something different um just the the by virtue of having kids in in front of the teachers having kids at home the variability within the class makeup on a day-to-day basis and how it changes this is a really difficult task to make sure that we have the level of the level of instruction that we want and desire for our kids every day because there are just so many variabilities that the teachers are having to deal with you know sometimes they come into class and they might have six people in
010front of them and then six people at home as a part of their cohar just for example and then some days they might come in and there's only one person there and then all of a sudden there's eight or nine more in the uh on the at home learn so this constant changing is making very difficult to not only give instruction but also to make sure that we are giving supports to all the students and that's where I think a lot of this uh problem is see being seen if you look in the P graphs in the middle you know that's looking at the students who receiving Ds and Fs by you know whether or not they have IEPs 504s and once again it's disproportionate uh number of the kids that are in DFS are
011IEP students to 504 students and once again theic of the supports not being as as uh effective as they should be and then finally the last section is the DFS by race and it's not near as much we have you know basically 15% of our students are are have a race other than Caucasian and 20% of the DFS go to to that those categories so that's not necess that's not as much of a disparity between the the overall but amongst looking at all of it as a whole it shows that you know some of the resources need to be looked at and how we provide certain students with their their learning opportunities so what we have done so far is you know we're starting to look at these kids you know much more on an
012individual basis we have weekly data team meetings looking at these kids we brought a lot in for four days however not all of them have necessarily improved just because they're there more we've been sending people to home visits in order to try to engage our disengaged Learners because there are a few of them that are have still you know are having difficulties um we have created a Learning Hub in a library where stud students that are having an extreme amount of difficulty are being pulled out of classes and we're giving them much more focused individualized attention in order to help them reach the goals that they have but and and we also are providing more supports to our special Educators for those low those non-engaged or low engaged students and to return to the hybrid
013we have a good amount of kids that are full distance Learners they having difficulty we've had some success bringing some of those back in when when uh they're grades have not been where both the families and us want them so looking forward you know we have to try to find different ways in order to provide the resources that we need right we're triaging curriculum you know we understand that time is is especially with the model of the instructional models that we're using it is not going to be the same thing as it has been previous years the teachers understand that the expectation is not to fulfill the same level of content by by bread but you need to really focus more in depth on what they are doing um we've not going we're not going
014to have midterms and finals this year again just in order to provide more time and a a better potential for success for students we're starting to repurpose some of our positions we're looking at how we have the the the par professionals and also bringing some other people in to help provide some of those more individual supports in learning library the learning within one of the things that's going to be especially important to us is this Blended learning schedule we understand that just based on the the the students schedules that know certain courses are going to be difficult so we are going to be combining a mixture of inclass and some online work in order to make sure they have everything they need to be successful Le forward but also at the same time understand that
015that's not necessarily an easy task doing online work so we have to have the supports of of of an adult in order to help guide students through those online programs and also we've had you know the luxury of having some Easton uh the from the educational resource center Upstate to give us uh some more guidance and and training on helping kids deal with trauma and academics at the same time so we really kind of looked at our practices in order to make sure everybody understands that these kids are not having it easy right and then also we're looking to this hasn't started yet but this bear Academy we want to put in place in order to provide some after school alternatives for kids just to help get them some extra instruction all right so you
016these are these are things that we're putting in place you know some of them already there some of them are proving to be successful but we know there's a lot more more work to do these last two slides I'm not really going to talk about these are really just for information purposes we're going to get much more in depth with this in December but you know there are some significant changes that we need to try to incorporate in order to make sure we can reach these the students that ens sure they get the resources that they need some of it being uh program driven some of it being Personnel driven but we we do know that you know we want all of our kids to be successful and we have the this this Cadre of
017students that are going to need some extra supports you with this particular environment and we'll talk a little bit more specifics about some of these things in the December meeting baring any questions that's update from the high school any questions from the board from M Mr fre right Gordon any questions on your [Music] side for [Music] the yeah I can get that yeah I can do that this is Higher by about 5 to 7% between the D ands that was that was was 72 so was roughly half the class the whole class exctly just question what do you attribute the higher SAT scores to do we have an SAT class that we've implemented or is there that is strictly through our classes and our superb teachers and students mark one question I have so you
018spoke to the DFS for last year but in that IEP 504 category is it still you thinking about 7% variance between the two years or no that one I'll have to get back down that one I don't know it's it's much higher that that particular one is much High the overall is that but the disparity between how many of the special kids and F fortunes have these NES compared to population is a lot more yeah that's what I would expect okay thank you um Mark I don't know if it's an explanation but typically the more people take a test in a cohort the average decline so the reason it might be a little higher is because perhaps uh you know typically often times the better half of a cohort first people take St I don't
019know if that's the explanation in this case why part of the reason why the grades are higher but you might find if the entire class took it the average might come down a little bit oh that's that's very possible yes no it's basically since the Juniors didn't take the test that is the state test for the school accountability so they're taking it as seniors early on in the year so they have to take well they can say no but they're strongly encouraged to take it um I have a question hi um did you are you still considering doing like uh things with Wednesdays I don't know there was discussed a little bit that you were going to take them away I know the Marine Science school just doesn't have them at all um I was
020just wondering because you mentioned that Wednesdays were going to be used for like a 5day plan if you needed but have you also considered the other I just don't know where you are with that but no W Wednesdays right now our schedule is going to remain the same on Wednesdays where they have the individual classes I think there I think in time there's going to be more resource opportunities that we might have to pull some kids out on Wednesdays in order to give them a little bit more targeted resources but overall as the classes as the classes are we're going to maintain the Wednesdays in order to keep moving forward right okay that's thank you thank you Mark Mr Smith I have to do not okay so I also want to thank the board for
021the opportunity tonight to uh talk to you a little bit about what we're doing at the Middle School uh at the middle school we're really grappling with two questions uh prior to the pandemic a few years prior we had made some great strides improving student achievement so our first question is how do we keep our student achievement on that trajectory and the second question is how might we reach the disengaged students so one of the things that I looked at is I went back to the last time we had State testing data available um which was in May of 2019 and uh as a middle school all students grades six seven and eight uh we had 76% of all of our students at or above goal uh in reading and 63% at our above goal
022in math and then what I compared it to is our star Benchmark assessment generates a scale score uh that then can map on to uh the scores that the State Testing generates and looks at the correlation so we just gave our uh fall Benchmark assessment using the star assessment in reading and math uh in the middle of October uh and as you can see uh in reading that assessment put 78% of our kids on track to be at or above goal in reading and 52% on track uh to be at or above goal in math I'll talk a little bit about the difference between Ela reading and math scores in a minute the other thing I did which uh some of the board members were just asking Mr free about is I wanted to get
023a better comparison both for the students we have now because that comparison compared to the kids who were in 678 in 2019 to the kids who are in six seven and eight this year which is completely set different set of kids so I wanted to look at some data with the same cohort of kids and compare their growth from year to year pre pandemic to what it was this year so what I looked at was I looked at how much the average scale score Grew From one fall to the next other words representing a full year of academic growth so in 201829 that's fall from 2018 score compared to the fall score for the same students so in other words that sixth grade score is comparing what their fall grade score in fifth grade was
024to their score this year in sixth grade uh on average sixth graders grew 106 points seventh graders grew 114 points eighth grade uh had a bad year they only grew about 50 points uh and then what I did is I compared that fall 2019 number to their new fall to see how much they grew even considering losing uh all of the fourth quarter and part of the third quarter last year to the pandemic uh as you can see uh overall in reading we still actually had a small increase due to the large increase in what the kids were able to produce from seventh grade year to this year our current eighth graders and I'll talk a little bit more about it in a minute but you can see that uh our younger students no surprise
025are the most vulnerable to the change in instructional model on math again the numbers are not as good good news is in both reading and math the average scale score increased kids showed growth even with the change in instruction in the third and fourth quarter last year uh but across the board it was less and again younger students showing kind of the most erosion in their academic growth compared to the older kids so here's a couple of the explanations for the difference in the math and Ela scores number one kids interact with text way more in their normal lives outside of school uh than they do interact with math at home online with their friends uh especially in the way that we teach math now it's not as natural uh for them to manipulate numbers
026in that way uh out in the real world as much as they are constantly Reading Writing of sorts uh the main reason for the difference in the scores is the way the curriculums are shaped so the analogy I came up with is that the reading language arts curriculum is kind of like the game of Uno in Reverse it's a spiraling and Scaffolding curriculum so the blue seven in picture there is a sixth grade standard the green seven still a seven but it's a little different it's the seventh grade standard and the red seven is the eighth grade standard so that each year it's really the same standard it just keeps getting a little bit more complex and a little more detailed as you go through the years but they're working on the same things versus
027the math curriculum is really a learning progression of very Street skills that build up on each other like the game of Jenga and that's where our concern is we're we're clearly in better shape with reading uh than we are in math and our concern is with some of those pieces missing from the foundation as you get higher up in math as you get higher up in the game of Jenga you need that Foundation to be firmer to make sure you can get as high uh with the building blocks and the learning progression so as far as uh disengaged students and chronic absenteeism um again I looked uh for the years prior uh for chronic absentee students uh the Middle School generally averaged either from year toe just below 5% or just above 5% in what
028the State considers to be chronically absent students students who Miss 10% of the school days or more so right now we're at 5.8% so it's almost a 1% uh increase from the average of the prior years it represents 26 students uh in these students are a variety of learning models we have some hybrid students who are chronically absent either they don't come to school when they're supposed to be in school or they don't attend classes on the days that not in school we also have some students in full distance learning who don't attend classes uh regularly as far as additional concerns we've got concerns for additional 19 students we're about 4.3% of our population who are inconsistent in what they do um and again it goes across the learning model we have some five-day students
029I mean four-day students uh we have some full distance students and some hybrid students whose uh engagement in the classwork uh is very inconsistent and typically uh we work with those students we contact those families they get back on track uh but the recidivism is very high there they're very easy to fall back uh into disengagement so knowing all that we put in uh kind of some Universal ways that we changed our instruction and that's represented kind of representation of equality there on the left where all the kids come to the baseball game but only the tallest kids can see it if we all do the same things it helps some of the kids but not all the kids and so our challenge is what are we going to do in this additional box as
030our equity aspiration to make sure that all the kids can get in the game and similar to the high school uh the effects are disproportionate uh the numbers I showed you before were average scale scores uh if you looked at the minimums and maximum scores the maximum scores on that star assessment are pretty much the same but the the lower performing kids uh are struggling more uh some of our special education students are struggling more regardless of their learning environment uh we're a little bit Limited in what we can do with four day offering people four days a week because of physical distancing requirements uh our eighth grade is almost 180 kids so that would be 25 kids or more in the classroom under normal circumstances 10 to 12 kids is as many as we
031can fit at that 6 foot interval uh so adding kids in eighth grade to 4 days tends to violate our protocols we have moved some kids around we've gotten some parents to volunteer to change cohort days to kind of equalize those numbers so that we can make an opportunity for someone to come four days we have a similar problem in sixth grade much smaller group but we have uh fewer teachers fewer classrooms to spread them out in uh six grade so that's what the data that we've been looking uh at shows us that we're in a pretty good spot in Reading uh we're not going to be in a good spot in math unless we do something very different to catch kids up and make sure that they have those building blocks to keep doing
032higher and higher math um we know that the impacts are disproportionate with our high need students whether that's special ed elll free and reduced um and we know that without some more varied and substantial interventions our most vulnerable students will still uh fall behind and that's what we're going to be talking about in December so what we're doing right now is our traditional interventions we do have a block of time built into the uh schedule twice a week for Extended Learning time where interventionists and teachers do some targeted instruction with small groups of students we're trying to bring uh students in for four days when we can uh especially some of those disengaged students uh we've had some pretty good success of bringing some of the disengaged full distance Learners into the hybrid model at
033least get them in the building two days a week uh our district social worker Paula aen uh Neil kurlin and uh the school administrators have been contacting all of these families we've gone out and done home visits we've uh we had some families who never picked up their new Chromebook uh and we ended up doing some delivery and making sure uh our Tech folks have been great supplying some people without internet hotspots so the kids could uh to join we had uh Chris and Steve doing some great work on un fortunately once they had a hot spot in their house uh they used it to watch Netflix and sucked all the data up and we had to you know kind of figure some of that stuff out um but we've been supporting the tech department
034has done an awesome job in supporting families who do not have or who normally would not have high-speed internet uh in their homes with hotspots uh the way they've supported the kids with the Chromebooks has been outstanding uh and like Mark freeze mentioned we have a stand uh Consulting going on with the folks from Eon and one of the things that we did uh is we kind of shifted their work a little bit and they spent a lot of time before the school year uh opened with our teachers giving them tips and tricks on engagement in that hybrid model where the teachers in the Middle School are teaching 11 kids in front of them and 11 kids at home via a Google meet and being able to to interact with both groups of kids and
035being able to let the kids in both groups interact with each other uh I can't say enough about the job that the teachers at the middle school are doing with that of trying to keep everybody engaged uh and involved whether they're at home that day or in the classroom questions lady uh yeah I I'm just a little confused by your comparative graph of fall fall who six those students are not the same students who's what students are those so then that must be SE the next year's seventh grade yeah it's the same kids I'm comparing their growth from year to year as they move up the grades so that those kids in sixth grade looking back to last year it was their growth between their fall fifth grade score oh so that so the 106.6
036is their fifth grade score yes okay and then the the 64.8 is there was the score they got this year as sixth graders correct so um so in other words from fourth to fifth grade they averaged 106 points in scale score growth and then from fifth to sixth grade this year they averaged 64 65 points in scale score growth okay so that's all growth yes that's all growth I thought it was discrepancy right that's pretty good and they I don't I'm not familiar with the this test but is it mostly comprehension is it fluency what is it what is the the star is a benchmark assessment in Reading uh it's not fluency it is mostly comprehension it's vocab good but it's definitely not fluenc it's a time test yes Jack so for the distance Learners
037they would just take this star test at home correct correct and did you find any interesting results I mean did did you did at the distance Learners compared to the the the students that come two days a week versus four days and so forth now the results are the same deck and part of that is is that uh if if we looked at the the students who are in distance learning they are a beautiful cross-section there are some of our highest performing students who are in full distance learning and some of our lowest performing students who had chronic abs and tbsm problems before the pandemic are full distance students uh because of our fabulous tech department and our investment in Chromebooks so this is how it works with the Chromebook the teacher it syncs up
038with the power school schedule so the kid's Chromebook knows they're in math class right now and I as a math teacher can say to the Chromebook the only thing this thing is going to do for the next 30 minutes is this star assessment it's the only thing that now they could take out their phone I suppose and use the calculator but it it is you know and it's a time test so is the controls on it are obviously not perfect at home but I I I don't doubt the veracity of the scores we didn't have we didn't have an uptick uh thank you any other questions yeah I've got something really quickly I'm just wondering because I I don't know if there's plans like this in place have you considered reaching out to or just
039matching um middle school students with high school students I think that's what Miss da and Miss SCH are doing a little bit with voice but just as far as like an academic standpoint I think that it may help some sort of motivation just to have a peer um I don't know we used to do Middle School tutoring I don't know where that is right now um but I'm just wondering in the future if matching oneon-one like if that sort of thing is in place we'd have to do that virtually and our problem really is with those kids who aren't engaging virtually in anything but certainly take a look at that any other questions from the board Gordon anything from you r toine hang on one second Gord by the way I have personally seen this
040happen in our classrooms and I got to tell you I have seen our students help troubleshoot with our teachers and collaborate with them in such meaningful ways it's it's amazing uh you know if you're looking for Silver Linings to lean into uh in this situation that's one of them the collaborative nature of of getting the kids involved uh and especially with we have a sub teer in the classroom sometimes the the kids at home help get the Google meet started and pretty pretty much help run the class go ahead and try now Gordon you guys hear me now yeah thanks going than ever thank you yeah that mute feature is something my wife is trying to uh impose upon me um yeah so so Tim I think you mentioned it was a as the kids
041get a little bit older so they go from sixth grade to seventh grade you know the material gets a little bit more complex it ties a little bit into Heidi's question because when I first saw the numbers I I I I I kind of sat back a little bit they look alarming but then you explain that the growth rate um you know seem to seem to decrease is that fair to say that as the kids get older that the the the growth rate is going change because the material gets that much more complex um not necessarily that the material gets more complex but as they go up in the grades and achieve more they get to the higher end of the scale score and so there isn't there's a maximum that they can they can
042reach in that scale score so they they the potential for growth um Gordon one way I can explain it sometimes what we look at is um a student growth percent and so a kid who's at the high end of the scale score uh say he's a a 1345 in ela and he goes up to a 1348 or sometimes we even see it where the next time he takes the test he he goes down two points and he's a 1343 and you look at his growth percentile in that star assessment and he's it's like 93% growth and the numbers don't match it but it's a norm reference it's across the country with everybody who uses it so everybody at that level uh has that same you know one or two point growth U got it yeah
043once you're at such a growth rate then it's hard to comp a a high growth rate to begin with right yeah got it okay and then I guess a follow on question to that would be is you talked about it being the curriculum are there things that neighboring towns like East Li and Waterford and others are are doing around the math piece because it it feels like math is something that we we do struggle with a little bit maybe that's not a fair comment but maybe that's just a perception so so are we are we looking at others to see what they're doing yeah we have uh and I I think I think it is a fair question I think the uh real answer to that is the math curriculum that we're using the Eureka
044Math um that we switched to a few years ago because it's aligned with the common core and with the State assessment now um is still a fairly new curriculum for us um as opposed to the Wonders reading curriculum which was adopted much uh many more years ago so the teachers are just more uh Adept at administering that curriculum with uh Fidelity so we've looked uh when we made the decision to go with Eureka Math the math Specialists looked around at what people were using um there's an argument there to be made I guess I know some of the other districts use something called illustrative math um my whole thing is like if you look at Westbrook uh Connecticut has some of the highest math scores in our region and they're teaching out of a 25y
045old textbook turned to page 27 kids so I I don't know if there's a silver bullet out there uh I think it's really uh math achievement is really related to the professional development uh and this and the teachers uh ability to work with the curriculum it's one of the reasons why uh at the elementary level uh the elementary principles instead of having the traditional model in like grades three four and five or just four and five three four and five have two teachers so that one can just specialize on the math and get really good at teaching the math uh so we'll we'll we'll get that benefit in a couple of years because they just started doing that a couple of years ago uh and and certainly their math scores have borne out that that
046teacher specialty on that we have uh Tina Eisen Bice at the middle school who is a math coach uh and curriculum person who works routinely with all of our teachers um so I I don't think there's a silver bullet out there if that's yeah no no that that that helps and I guess just the final thought would be is you know as we look ahead to next year you know we move into into budget season are are there things that you would have as an Ask of the board you know to to help with that right I mean it sounds like you have some Key activities there but I guess yes yes and yes and that's be doing in December awesome thank you Tim I appreciate it problem okay thank you Tim principal MCC you're
047up next well thank you um as you know Mark and Tim highlighted what I we're going to highlight for you today just sort of a snapshot we actually have quite a bit of data at the elementary school level um overwhelming so give you a snapshot a little bit about some of our fall Benchmark data um and sort of what we're seeing as trends at the elementary level so um see if I get this here we go uh just to kind of give you a quick overview we've heard a lot about STAR testing um STAR testing we are using throughout the district it's a computer adaptive Benchmark assessment so in it starts with start early literacy where it's read to students and that's measuring students read reading readiness so Concepts about print phonological awareness those beginning
048phonic skills word recognition um and that's just showing us our students ready to be readers so all students take that in kindergarten and they continue to take that through first grade until they reach a score that shows us that they're a probable reader that um assessment is read to them so it's more of um you know the computer will give them the sound and then they have to click which letter maybe is making that sound so things like that once the students become a probable reader they transition to our star reading a benchmark assessment so that's traditionally given in grades one and it continues gr going all the way through grade eight um again as Kim said that measures more of the reading comprehension and vocabulary so it's definitely where the students are reading it
049themselves they're having to interpret information they're having to make meaning out of what they're reading um we we're using this at the elementary level as a screening tool but also to inform our instruction so what are our students that need those additional supports and then what are those students that have already mastered some of those skills and what are the next steps for those students so how can we use this to continue to move all students forward whether or not they've met the Benchmark um so we use it to monitor student growth to identify Trends and then to look at individual needs also Tom uh Tim shared it's a great predictor for our esack performance so we've noticed in grade three four and five that the students um how they're doing on their esack Source
050give us a really good indicator on how they may score in the sback assessment obviously there's some variability but we definitely utilize it for that purpose um before I share the data just a few thoughts um just to kind of going into it is as we also shared we have some distance Learners we started the year with um 69 students learning at home right now we're at 53 three so that's about 12% of our student population um and we have about 25 students that are in school four days a week like Tim we struggle with um some space some of our classes are a little bit larger and in many of our cohorts we're at that 11 12 Mark so it's hard to bring additional students back um we are very fortunate that our attendance
051and engagement remains really high we're probably I would say around 97% or higher um we're actually seeing our daily attendance be much higher than the past and that's because families are taking advantage of the opportunity for when their students sick or at home they're able to still log on and participate and get their work done whereas before if a student has a sore throat they might be out sick for the day um many times those students are well enough to at least log on and complete their work so that's kind of working a little bit in our favor um we do have some disengaged students we're working really hard to re-engage them and we have made a lot of progress during the year so our numbers are continuing to go down sorry it's hard to
052breathe with the mask on um so again start early literacy you'll see I looked at I wanted to really see where were kindergarteners last year in the fall we went through this pandemic the kindergarten year was disrupted and we're our um first graders now so if you look our kindergarteners last year in the fall started at 57% our curent kindergarteners are com in really strong so again they're not really impacted by the pandemic some of them Miss preschool but they're still coming in really strong so different groups of kindergarteners but it's showing where they come they're coming in you can see in first grade the dataa is a little bit different here um but it's really promising 71% of our students met Benchmark on early literacy in first grade however again that's that that funny
053year star early literacy our hope is is that more of our students are taking star reading in first grade we want those students to be probable readers by first grade typically in the past we have a lot more students that take that star literacy star reading test in first grade we did see a lot of students didn't reach that Benchmark quite yet um which tells us that certainly the pandemic is impacting our instruction from kindergarten to first grade we know that that's a vulnerable age K to2 learning reading foundational skills through a computer is extremely challenging if anybody hasn't never seen trying to engage uh 20 kindergarteners on a computer screen I can tell you it's definitely challenging um but this gives you a really nice look at where were students last year's class so
054again different cohorts of students but for example second grade last year's second graders came in in the fall and 56% of students were at or above Benchmark this year's second graders came in different group of students but again if our curriculum is strong we want to see where are students coming in and 64% of the students met that Benchmark so um we were pleasantly surprised I mean it really is showing us that our curriculum was strong even despite a school closure last year or I should say a transition to distance learning um students are still able to come in with those same level of skill and they're continuing to grow we looked at this at our school data team and there are certain hypothesis that we sort of came up with and the big one
055is that what it's showing us is that K2 obviously has the most impact we know that learning those foundational reading skills in a remote environment is really challenging but the good news is is that once students have mastered those foundational reading skills it's like learning to ride a bike if you master them and you can do it automatically you're able to hold on to those skills so if you look at fourth and fifth graders you're seeing that our fourth graders came in this year higher than our fourth graders did last year so they again different cohort of students so the needs always vary but you're seeing that they're not really they didn't really regress a lot through that Co they're coming in really in a strong place and that's what you know we're hearing from
056the teachers as well in their classrooms is that students actually came in this year ready to learn and ready to be engaged in the grade level curriculum are there some gaps absolutely we'll talk a little bit about that more in math um but overall we're seeing you know the students are coming in in a really great place some of the data that we didn't represent here just because our Co our sizes are so small our samples in terms of like special ed and not wanting to identify students is very similar to what tin shared our more vulnerable students are struggling the most so we know if you haven't mastered those skills and you're not automatic in those skills any disruption to that intensity of instruction is going to impact their ability to grow um so
057we're working really hard as a team and we're going to talk a little bit more about that in December um and one of the big changes we're doing is really focusing on our art R TI interventions a little bit differently and planning for what happens if we're remote now and how can we support these students in a better way um star math again similar to what Tim said we're seeing a lot more variability um we can see in a lot of instances our students usually do start the year a little bit lower in Ma and reading we usually are starting around that 70% at or above benchmark in math we're usually more at that 60% but we're seeing this year students are down that 50% more at that 50% at our Benchmark um and then
058we have that great dip in fifth grade and again it could be a cohort thing but um lots of lots of different things you know we weren't in a position last year where how do you teach math remle it was a learning certainly a learning style one of the things that we're really focusing on this year is we noticed last year that the students were really struggling with just learning math on the computer and so one of the big things we'll talk about next month and one of the things that we're doing is we're making sure that students have that practice and that ability to also solve math on paper and using those models our math program is highly built on conceptual models and visual models and using arrays and um number bonds and things
059like that and that's very hard to teach on a computer so having students have paper in front of them having them actually handing sending home with packets where they're actually practicing math and writing it and working out their problems and solving it um I think will really help and we're going to talk about some other different things we're also seeing that fourth and fifth grade there's a lot of application a lot more problem solving again problem solving and learning how to problem solve and solve word problems on a computer is very challenging um one of the other things that you know we did notice that isn't really represented in this data is that the students that we had identified last winter before closure that were're needing additional support was very consistent with where the students
060came in in the fall there were not many outliers so again that winter data was a good predictor of where students were so the students that had those grade level skills continued to grow and came in and were right where they expected to be those students that were a little behind and struggling last winter before the closure came in and they're continuing to struggle and we're seeing that that that progress that maybe they were making really good progress has slowed and now we're working really hard to try what can we do differently to try to give them those additional boosts to build that progress back um so for next month we will be highlighting a little bit some of the changes that we're making to our instructional model we've shifted a lot of different things
061from our um instruction last March through the end of the school year in our hybrid model and also since school year has started our data team has looked at this and we've created some action steps um and each member of the data team goes back to their grade level to talk about that and tweak some of their instructional practices right now so that we can hopefully improve and Target some of those areas that we know we need to focus on um and I'll just give you a little preview for example we talked a lot in first grade where the end of kindergarten is so the big important skill is learning how to decode CBC words with automaticity so cat you know looking at the word cat and can the students will take all those individual
062sounds blend them together and see the word cat and say it's cat not say hatat and that's really hard to teach on the computer so normally at this year our first grade teachers saying you most of the kids would be able to look at that word and know it and they just don't know it now so what do we have to do so we have to kind of back up and back fill and really teach that and go back to using visual models and going back to using chemesthetic opportunities for those students and really Pride opportunities to drill and practice so that those skills are automatic Because unless that skill is automatic it's very hard to move on to BL bowels and blend and some of the other skills so we'll talk a little bit
063more about some of the instructional shifts that we're next month any questions any questions from the board yeah I just think it is pretty impressive that the grade K last year and then the grade Cas this year which is dealt with remote learning so I I why is that I have a few hypothesis just from talking with families I do think um there are some families especially our families of some of our younger students that shows not to enroll their child in kindergarten this year because of the instructional model so I had a lot of families whose students were four borderline five that were going to enroll in kindergarten and families have said you know what we're going to use this year just to to work on things at home so our enrollment in kindergarten
064is a little bit lower than in the past and I do think some of those families whose birthdays were a little borderline might have waited um and also you know the other piece it is a different group of students so obviously you know like for our third grade is a little bit of an outlier cohort that class's data every year has been a little bit lower um so it could also just be based on that that group of students but um I also think we're very fortunate we live in a community as Tim said where kids are immersed in reading and listening to stories and all of those pre-reading skills which are so necessary for kindergarten so obviously that helps us in our favor getting H that Readiness is is really high this year I
065do will say Heidi I think the concern with the kindergarten in the first grade tee is are they going to be able to sustain the rate of growth that we would see if we were in a Traditional School model and realistically I'm not you know I think we all know that that's probably not going to be possible um learning to read in person two days a week is is challenging and you know keeping those kids engaged so we're trying some different things with them and kind of you know changing our instruction I know this for example on tomorrow they're starting their Wednesday schedules a little bit differently and at the younger level they're doing a lot more small group instruction virtually then whole group just because they can Target skills and keep the kids interest
066and keep their engage and really measure their understanding a little bit better any other uh questions so Jen I I have one so if if we wanted to follow the same pattern that Tim was talking about if I'm looking at grade one for fall of 2019 if I want to follow those students I would be looking at the orange grade two this year yeah yes okay so the one consistent thing that we're seeing across the district regardless of grade level is the challenge in map which is holding consistent regardless of what school you're talking about or what level you're talking about yeah and I think again I I would age 100% what Tim said you know kids are just so much more engaged in literature and reading and those pre-reading skills even when they're not
067in school than the math I will say one of the Math teachers at our data team one of the big things was saying even just um like understanding of facts in in number sense you know if you're not practicing that and if you don't have a strong number sense and you stop practicing math you're losing your number sense right it's kind of like those foundational reading skills if you have a strong number sense you can build off it much easier so we we are seeing some of those same patterns of you know students needing a lot more additional practice with their math facts really building those that their number sense a lot stronger that they maybe you know those gaps I think definitely impact them don't you think that the parents as well feel more
068comfortable working with literacy rather than the new math and if we were going to continue this kind of instruction I think that we would have tutoring for the parents and that then you Dev up yeah our Eureka Math our Eureka math program is definitely um intimidating for a lot of parents I know even myself when I helped students with math when we first started this program I would say to the students oh let's see if we can find a video that'll show us because they just teach it in a very different way and um it does do a great job of building number sense but again in the primary grades we're working on building that number sense and so when you don't have that continuous practice and that opportunity for a teacher with immediate feedback
069it's really hard I mean math is a is a also a subject area that you need that immediate feedback you don't want students practicing math the wrong way 15 times because guess what then they learn it the wrong way so you need that immediate feedback so that definitely is going to be an area that we're going to have to continue to watch in monitor Gordon anything from you m it you're muted again maybe all right Frank I just quick quick question I'm sorry no um I just thought this you know we' received some letters over the last couple of weeks with parents for frustrated with the situation the hybrid situation and there's really no good answers I think our school system is doing a really nice job trying to balance all the competing interests but
070for those students that perhaps are not and I don't know the educational jargon but they don't have IEPs they called right but they're struggling is there enough room Tim said there's not enough room at the middle school but if you have the room not necessarily unfortunately so in certain grade levels we do have a lot more um a lot more leeway for example our fourth grade is our smallest group um but in third grade and even in fifth grade we're in MO I brought back um I would say 98% of our special ed students so that's 25 students so in a lot of our cohorts we can probably fit about 12 students at six feet apart and many of our cohorts were already already at 11 and we also have to save room because at
071any point in time our full distance Learners could come back so um we are at the point where we have um have some students that are we have identified as really struggling and needing that additional support that do not have an IEP that we've been able to um to offer that to but it's unfortunately I wish I couldn't have all of our RTI students back we just don't have the space to do it in a safe capacity any other questions or comments thank you Jen appreciate it Kathy IR is up next I would like to just let the board know in December we're going to be talking about um not only some of the things you've heard tonight but following uh Jack what you're saying is if we don't how do we think out of
072the box if we if we don't have room for more than 12 students in this room and they need to be somewhere where do we go how do we staff it so we've been for three months we've been making lots of adjustments anyway uh as you know just the four days for some students we'll cover what we've done and we'll cover some of the other ideas that when we come up with a roadblock we don't have enough math interventionist so we need an extra space or we need some more time on a weekend or a summer or whatever we're going to be looking at all kinds of different ways to help those students particularly the ones that are falling behind but really all theud so that'll be for the December meeting West certainly last uh
073thank you again to the board for your support um West Vine has undergone a lot of transitions in the past year as you know close West Broad um all merged together to A prek through five last year very excited to start the school year off um and then of course we have new Staffing this year we have new Administration and then we have a pandemic so it's been quite a start for this new principal I'm not going to go through again because uh Mr mcer did a great job of talking about what the benchmarks are that we that we're using the computer adaptive uh star but I just want to remind the board as well that the first four to six weeks we really did uh focus on social and emotional learning we thought it
074was very very important that students come back to school and feel safe about this new environment in their early year they had uh the past year um Coming losing out on all of that instruction being with their friends so we really did a nice soft opening with getting the students to feel safe using this the new protocols in school navigating the platforms um imagine teaching a five and six-year-old how to get on to seesaw how to check their assignments how to um find the different links and go on a Google meet so the teachers did a great job of of working with that and knowing in the back of our mind at any time we could shift to all distance learning so we really had to prepare our students for that um the one of
075the biggest challenges that West Vine has faced is we have a a great deal of students who are all distance Learners so 22% of West Vine population 72 students are distance learning so those are students that haven't entered the classroom um the teachers are trying to build connections with those Learners because we know that students need to feel safe and comfortable in order to take on the learning um and then that's been a big hurdle um we'll go into a little bit of the data next but I did want to preface that because you know Elementary it's just really different you really have you have that whole child that you have to think about so we've been working on very hard to make the students feel safe and comfortable and now ready to learn and
076we've been making a lot of strides the past few weeks with small group instruction and really trying to drill down to where they're at um I used the growth model uh similar um to what Tim shared for Stonington metal we wanted to really look at the cohorts and and how the students did last year and then those same students um and how they did pre pandemic to now um using that growth model so again as as um Jen said the early literacy is given in KAG garden and this year all first graders also took the early literacy so in 2020 in kindergarten uh we had 58% of the students were on or above Benchmark um of those students just uh 29% of our current class did not have any prek experience so um and last
077year the 2019 kindergarteners that were 30% of our students are coming in without any prek experience which next month I get to talk about support so I will be bringing that up again um and 177% of our kindergarten class um right now are all distance Learners so they have yet to step foot into school um and we have 11 students um in kindergarten that are age four uh so if you look at um first grade um 2020 we had 67 and then that same cohort of students in kindergarten um last year were at 44% so we were I actually I was pretty impressed with the First with the how we did in um first grade comparing um how they did last year in kogar so moving on to the star reading um if we look
078at again we're looking at the same cohort of students so if we're looking at grade two you can definitely see a dip there um in grade two we have 31% of grade two are all distance Learners those again those are students who are being just taught virtually uh you know we had a a good a big slide um in grade two grade three 177% of our students are distance Learners and fourth as you can see is uh certainly an area of concern for us um also as a reminder last year westvine lost a classroom uh teacher and we we had decided to look at the numbers great the current last year's grade three had the lowest amount of students so we cut the fourth grade position so we're uh we do departmentalize in grades three
079four and five so the teachers really become specialists in their subjects we had to um take a teacher from fourth grade and now we have the departmentalizing with three teachers which means that if you're teaching math you're teaching it basically to all the students in fourth grade so we've been looking at that model we'll talk more about that in December and adding more support so that those students who seem to be really the neediest group um as the and they were also um not as proficient last year so really looking and and deeply into what we can do to support those students through RTI small group instruction um we have had good success with our 4-day instruction we have currently 57 students and we are adding more um this week we do have some smaller
080class sizes uh in first and and second grade so we are able to invite some of our students in RTI as well into for four days and I honestly haven't had one parent that said no they've been absolutely thrilled and as it it was um mentioned earlier that is a struggle we we did have a lot of parents at the beginning of the year begging saying what can I do how can I get my child and I so that they can come to school and um that it's very hard to say no but we we obviously had to keep the cohort small and we really did look at those students with the highest um at the highest risk and and invited them back so we are continuing to work on that as well um fourth
081grade has 19% distance Learners and fifth grade has 20% distance learners right and as everybody said tonight in here and this is also certainly goes the same um very disappointing with the math scores and again the I think the as U Mr Smith used that great analogy earlier those discret skills the learning progressions with Eureka um it's really been impacted um I had to sub one day in fifth grade because we've been had a lot of problems with finding coverage and I had taught previously taught third fourth and fifth and I I was really looking to the students to say what do you think how do you think we're going to solve this because it is it really is very different and I'm I am concerned about the parents at home trying to help their
082students work their way through Eureka it is it is difficult it's a great program but it does really build on those progressions um we are working on Tri triaging the curriculum really looking at those priority standards and and what where we really need to fill the gaps as I said small group instruction um we have sent home kits to distance Learners with math manipulatives they have binders they have a written work so it's not just all in the computer because that's been a concern for parents as well as my students are all day just looking at a screen um we you know we we've really been been trying to address how we can uh strengthen that math and give students more time um with the manipulatives and really being able to um get to where
083we need them to to be and and again this is the growth model so we're seeing some some a little bit uh stayed the same but certainly like in in grade four grade five very very concerning that those are areas that we will be focusing on and continuing with our data team and then just again thank you for your support um I have to commend men my the staff and also I think the pair of professionals have kind of been our unsung heroes they go into Google meets with kids every day at school and and work so hard with the students in in the classroom as well to see how we can get them to grow and um we need to be mindful that school still has to be joyful and we're still trying to
084do those same some of those same things that kid makes students want to come to school and then those distance Learners can still partip at at home um we we're continuing to um look to see how we can meet the needs of all Learners and and seek that continued growth we will be talking more in December about some resources and supports that we will be requesting to see um how we can um be able to meet their needs are there any questions Jack just looking online so it looks like Eureka provides some tools for parents with their students do we you know give parents that information and links and so forth yes we do we do provide that they have parent letters and yeah homework helpers um they're they're available I'm not sure how often
085people are referring to them but I think it's when you grw up teaching math a certain way and then you're you're showing your child and then there's that confusion of that that's not how we do it in school so but yes those are available Heidi yeah um I just want to be clear with one thing did you say that your teachers don't specialize words it's Dean Mills y specialized so you're you have classroom teachers and they teach everything in that classroom yep so in we as same as Dean SM we've been departmentalizing for the past four years um which means in third fourth and fifth okay we do departmentalize the only issue we had this year is since we had to cut a teacher and uh we only have three kindergarten first and second grade
086um classes and actually we ended up getting another kindergarten because our our population really boomed from the year before uh we did have to we did had to eliminate a fourth grade teacher so this year I only have three fourth grade teachers where I would normally have four sections and four teachers that was a a cut from the from the board of Finance Gordon anything from you yeah I guess you know you you guys hear me now yes all right um yeah I mean it seems like a common theme you know on on the surface it feels like we we have a math problem but I also wonder you know how much of this is pandemic and you know if we Benchmark this against other Schools are they seeing similar numbers so I guess you
087know before we look at a lot of do differently of course we got to do the best we can for our children I know that all our teachers and administrators are um you know are other schools dealing with the same percentage drops you know and is it a matter of time and we have to you know bandaid things until we get through this pandemic or is is this its own you know big problem in our more of a com right just just they concerning numbers for sure just a quick uh answer to that Gordon we have talked a lot about you we we have a goal we have a this is where we want our students to be and I know in talking to some other districts even the state they're talking about well if
088we can't get there because of the pandemic let's lower the bar to somewhere and we don't want to do that we think you keep the bar you keep the standard you keep the you know where we want our students to succeed the level keep it where it is and if we and we'll make growth toward that if we don't get right to where we want we still keep the bar there and we do whatever we can with uh additional um Assistance or with summer school or more intensive focus on reading and math I mean there's a lot of things that we can do but we are not going to lower the bar for our students no and and I'm not suggesting that at all van not not not for a second it's just more just
089understanding right where where are we and understanding is is it is it pandemic or is it curriculum right so that that that's all I'm asking but no I I would never suggest lowering the barn I think we all agree especially an elementary pandemic certainly had a lot to do with it we missed three months of instruction the students we weren't really ready at that time to go into a whole virtual uh learning environment where we are now we're prepared to do that and if if that happens our instruction will certainly be uh much more improved than it was we have more of the technology tools and the students are more Savvy they've spent a lot of time working through those platforms but certainly it's going to take a while and it's not just it's going
090to be this year we'll feel that effects I'm sure next year as well we can get back on track any other questions or comments okay thank you thank you all uh next item on the agenda is uh Communications and recognitions um I have a you that I'll get started with tonight um I received three letters uh one from Mr John Turner which I shared uh with the board and um we we will make it part of the uh record where he is sharing um his concerns as it relates to um the uh Timothy chokis matter um I did have the opportunity to uh talk to him uh last Friday and I did uh tell him we would make it part of the record and I did share it with the board and then there were
091two other letters directed to me uh that I shared with the board from Mr Ed hcel um both of these letters concerning um the letter that was provided to the previous board from uh Alexandra Capel and um he was not able to find it on the website um and it was because it was never put on the website uh we did attach it to the minutes of the appropriate meeting so he was able to find that his follow-up letter uh was concerning comments related to sexting and uh wanting to make sure that you know we were educating the kids appropriately as it's a Class A misdemeanor and what the punishment uh could be uh so those were three communications I received directed uh to me specifically um with that Heidi I'll pass it on to
092you any uh recognitions or comments I I just wanted to recognize our girls in um in their soccer and hockey I think the large headline pretty much says it Stonington rules so that's um something that we should certainly celebrate that I here we are in the middle of pandemic and they are winning all these games so it's it's something certainly about their um Spirit motivation Jack anything for you uh yes talk about spirit and motivation uh Stonington drama Department uh in the middle of the pandemic uh put on a play last week uh it was called the still life of Iris and it was a full production um and you kind of felt they did a marvelous job you felt a little sad for them as we do with a lot of club sports and
093teams and because they did all that work and there were perhaps a handful of people in the audience du the restrictions but they uh they did a great job and and um as Mrs Stanley said she did it for the kids it wasn't for the audience the kids seem to enjoy themselves and and it was top-notch as usual so congratulations to those kids that were involved in the play Alisa anything far uh I want to recognize the uh Stonington High School uh band they they had a small band ensembly play at the Westerly Sunday Funday on Sunday October 25th from 1 to three and they did a fantastic job I think you were there filming so they were they were great and uh truly uh you know rewarding to go watch them play in public
094and try to make it better for the community I'd also like to uh recognize the students of the ston team public schools for their resiliency in the age of Co and uh incredible U work they've been doing um I know some of them are struggling with distance learning and but some of them are also doing very well with distance learning so I'm very proud of them I want to recognize the teachers for their adaptability and commitment to our kids safety health and education uh they've been remarkable and I'm personally very appreciative of them and if there's a reward for communication I would like to give it to the administration because they've been fantastic in communicating with the families uh with the teachers I've heard from teachers uh told me personally how good it's been uh
095and how informative they've been and by the administration and um I'm sure the families as well appreciate the constant communication thank you Craig anything Gordon anything on your end yeah I just like to Echo what Heidi said uh big congratulations to the girls field hockey and soccer teams um I'd also like to acknowledge the the boys football teams or I should say the football team you know very creative with the 77 leagues and um you know I thought they showed a lot of resiliency and and dealt quite a bit and then uh finally I'd like to acknowledge the boy soccer team who had another tremendous season and unfortunately was cut cut short of uh the EC final to due to covid but uh no doubt I think uh I think they would have won another
096ECC title uh give the opportunity but uh all across the board I think everybody in the Administration the teachers the students I mean everybody's doing a great job considering you know everything that we're uh we're all dealing with so thank you to to everybody and uh you know to the administration and teachers I meanful thanks you guys are doing tremendous job anything from Student Government no Dr Riley yes thank you I have a couple individuals I'd like to recognize first of all I'd like to uh recognize and thank Gloria Murray deasi our health services coordinator and Allison van etton who have spent their entire lives I think the last uh 247 weekends um keeping our our covid issues um certainly communicating working with the ledge light working with all of the staff administrators um we
097couldn't have done it without you Alison thank you you very very much I'd also like to recognize Tim Flanigan Tim seems to be recognized a lot around here he's he's one of our stars and he just received a transatlantic cooperation Award with a a German School um and so we want to thank him for this uh teach about us team so Tim congratulations on that I'd like to also uh two more I'd like to have Peter uh share a new program and uh from the custodial maintenance group Peter yeah what we what we' started is a uh what we started is a custodial and custodial maintenance Rec recognition award that's going to be every three months um we our our team has done an awful lot of work keeping the schools healthy and safe and
098and disinfected that's for sure I don't know if we're still in the orange bubble or not but we're surrounded by Red um I kind of believe partially because the amount of disin disinfectant we sprayed in the whole town of sonton but we started off with a new award for custodial maintenance and I don't know if you've seen in the hallways here at administrative in the district office we have one custodian who's here during the day and another one here at night but Jim has been with us for since 1981 so nearly 40 years Jim has been a part-time custodian with the town of Stonington and he is our first recipient of the custodial award for the first [Applause] quarter thank you Pete and next I we'd like to recognize a special fifth grader and Kathy
099if you could share that that award in the name of that student so at West Vine Street School 11 of our fifth grade students ran in a primary election for Connecticut's kid Governor kid Governor is a award-winning Civics program created by the Connecticut democracy Center that teaches fifth graders about the history of voting the voting process and about our Connecticut government students get to choose a community issue that's important to them and develop a three-point plan for their platform students ran on platforms this year including water pollution children's mental Health childhood obesity and racism the winner of our school's primary election was Claire Lee who ran on a platform called stronger together regarding anti-ra racism students assisted in preparing a campaign video for Claire and then we received the thrilling news that she was Advanced
100to The Next Step as one of the seven finalists in The State all of our fifth graders voted in November to elect Connecticut's next kid govern govern we're keeping our fingers crossed when the election results are announced on November 19th you meet Claire she's passionate about her platform she's articulate and we're very proud of her congratulations to Claire and all of our fantastic candidates and we'd like to show you that three minute video [Music] this is C [Music] okay [Music] e e e my [Music] second okay uh next item um is comments from citizens relative to items on this agenda uh there were uh no uh comments from citizens um consent agenda there are uh five items a through e uh typically there's no discussion unless you wish to remove something with your pleasure I
101move we accept the consent agenda is presented can can I just I don't understand about the parent and family engagement so just let's remove the minutes oh sorry I thought you removing everything just the minutes okay go well if you have a question on the minutes we'll remove sorry you don't no I misunderstood do do you have a question on the minutes you want to remove them I do not let's remove them okay goad so I was suggesting we move the consent agenda as presented item a three there's a motion is there a second all in favor I I oppos motion [Music] carries you all right with that Heidi or I I so we're not so we're not going to speak of any specific you can it just has to be removed from the consent
102agenda before Oh I did forget it okay next item on the agenda monthly reports uh there were five in our board packet uh any questions for any of the authors of those reports go ahead ja so i' been on the board of education for three years and I always find it interesting to look at the enrollment numbers when will Dr Riley do you have any idea there been a study along the way that will show when the numbers May level out and they just keep going down and down and down question yes every month or two I update a 10year projection I'll be happy to send that to you um obviously the hard thing for us is what's going to happen in kindergarten so we just you'll see on the chart I usually just use
103whatever the current year is going out and then all those numbers just moved down each year so I'll send that up to the board any other questions hearing none we'll move on the next item on the agenda is the approval of the Board of Education 2021 um Regular meeting calendar any questions on the calendar hearing none I'll entertain a motion motion to approve the Board of Education 2021 meeting calendar as presented motion meting is there a second any discussion on the [Music] motion hearing none all in favor oppos motion carries uh next item on the agenda is the approval of Stonington Middle School uh roof specs and estimate cost faroo I believe you were the chair of that committee correct y there is a state requirement to have a committee uh so we have a
104committee and we reviewed the uh Stonington Middle School roof replacement and we do recommend to the board uh we had a motion to approve the plans and specification and cost uh so we move the final plans and projected manuals as prepared for bidding and dated October 16th and the professional uh cost estimate completed in accordance with level three of asdm international standard E1 1557 standard classification of building elements and related site work unir 2 for this project dated October 16 2020 have been reviewed and approved uh by that committee for the project on the dates which is today okay so is that a motion that is the motion okay is there a second on that motion any discussion on the motion Jack so when we walked in there I I just had to think about
105some questions about the yeah no that's perfectly so um years ago um my memory is kind of fuzzy on this but they put a temporary roof on Dean's Mill it's like a flat membrane roof is this something similar to that where it's a I don't believe it is a flat membrane roof and I don't think it's temporary because it comes with 30-year warranty and I'm happy to have Peter elaborate from the what it looks to me as a the way I is for replacement of [Music] the and what's the life cycle of a roof like that of yes get either 20 or 30 for 30 warant and then then have you if we end up putting air conditioning into that building have we planned for that in terms of you know if you put down
106the rubber we've been working on using the existing there so would be any disturbance the RO working on called a chill be system which is a chiller inst out back piping and do we know the reimbursement rate from the state to the roof 31% 31 I believe there was the town reserve for the approve there's a a certain amount I believe it's if my memory Ser correctly Jack it's $500,000 off to reserve for that proof replacement plus the 31 % uh State reimbursement Ed it this is going to sound funny probably inapproiate question it come with some kind of a warranty is it warrantee so if it leaks if it leaks four years from now is it [Music] result inst on flat roofs do they I only bring this up because I I own several
107houses and the only house I have a TR trouble with is the one that has the flat roof and I put membranes and I know it's a different the residential but have they thought about repitching what they do on really not okay and that's already there so that's a big Improvement ja this document I don't know it's part of the uh agenda if you click on it on the last page it shows the base layer of insulation and the TA insulation uh cost as well because that's the biggest bulk of the you it's a good portion of the cost about $300,000 just to make sure that the pitch and the insulation of the rof is appropriate and is there insulation on there now are we putting more installation other words we going to have a
108okay any other uh questions Gordon any questions on your side you good okay all right hearing none there's a motion and there's a second all in [Music] favor opposed motion carries next item on the agenda is the Sip preview yes each November we bring to the board our recommendations for our Capital Improvement programs um this is the time for the board to make any suggestions changes additions this will come back to the Board of Education in December for approval so um we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have any questions from the board on the set no questions I'd like to thank Peter Gary and Chris for putting this together and if any board members have any questions between now and December please uh let us know and we'll be happy to go
109into more detail you do have a narrative uh for each item on here that summary as to what it's all about thank you okay thank you next item on the agenda superintendent report Dr R yes there's four items on here I the first one um I would like to ask Maryann to give us a summary of the diversity equity and inclusion work while you're doing this man can I ask some questions of the specific bullets so I don't have to go back through them I'd be happy to um entertain any questions after I do my highlights and go over um some uh answers to what the board asked of me at the last meeting so um before you you you um have a Dei inclusion uh Equity diversity Equity inclusion update um this is the
110work that we have undergone uh since the last Board of Ed meeting and it includes work on person uh professional development uh grant opportunities that have come our way um some student programming work and some curriculum development work instead of reading those nine items um if you do have any questions Heidi maybe this is a time that I could clarify something for you you're just talking but what are you talking about the first page oh just the first page um I just I wanted if you could elaborate on shop talks sure shop talks are something we started um uh probably three or four years ago now um it's an informal uh opportunity for teachers to take advantage of professional devel velopment is totally voluntary it typically occurs before uh the start of the school day
111uh and typically uh we have used them in the past as uh the only entrance fee is that you bring something uh from your professional reading or your practice to share uh as an informal way to to share best practices this particular shop talk was uh specifically around conversations around race at both of the elementary schools um then also I wondered if we could I guess we saw Claire's video so that was what that was about um the soliciting feedback from the Connecticut State Department of Education I was wondering why it was just the eighth grade and is there an assessment board in the Connecticut statement the Connecticut State Department of Education how how does that work they come here and read the curriculum or is only grade eight throughout the state assess no no
112no um we have a curriculum revision cycle and one of the seven curriculum that are ready for your review um is eighth grade social studies we actually thought that that one would be a perfect um opportunity for us to uh take T tap into the talents of our State Department of Education social studies curriculum expert Steve um Armstrong who has agreed to take a look at our curriculum and give us any feedback for any unintended biases as as social studies expert at the state level um we picked that one because it has a lot of um information about slavery in it already and we wanted to make sure that we're delivering that curriculum in a balanced way it doesn't mean it will be the only curriculum that's going to be reviewed by an outside consultant
113it's our first pass at doing that realizing that we only know what we know and our eyes are only our eyes so there will be other curriculum that will be reviewed by external experts as well we've actually asked him to help us in identifying some appropriate Consultants to do that work yeah and we'll be able to see that it will it will go through the curriculum review process absolutely and what we'll do is we'll Shore it up uh before if there he has any feedback for us we'll take that feedback and make our final revisions but then it will come to you and we can certainly highlight any comments that he has at that time nice and then the final one um the member of the senior class that is meeting the curriculum specialist and
114she's doing that research could she possi share some of that research with us what her approach is and so she ironically I just had a meeting today a phone call with her advisor um and who is a professor at Yukon Avery Point and her specialty area is is psychology yeah uh she and I had a very extensive conversation about shaping the particular project that this girl wants to do um as of today the the idea that was knocking around was that um the professor thought maybe she might want to do some identity Circle work with our high school students and I exp explained to the professor that that work has already been done through our voices program at the high school and it's already been done through our work um at the district level with
115our our staff members so we got into an extensive conversation about what other kinds of projects might be appropriate for her or of interest to her to to do so we have another call that is going to be scheduled uh to meet with the student with the professor in the curriculum uh Elementary and secondary person so we can tell them about all of the different work that's going on so that she can make an informed decision about which direction we can support her in um as an added benefit of that uh the professor has asked uh that if we might be of interest in providing some service work to her graduate her her students as well so it's it's uh an unintended consequence of the conversation is that there'll be another partnership with Yukon uh
116that will benefit Yukon students as well as our students so this this is part of the program where the senior are actually working at in college they're taking college no no no these are this is part of the graduation requirements where each student each senior actually identifies an area of special interest to do a senior project and presentation in this is just a particular area of interest to this student and we thought it would be appropriate that we support her in that um then the Stonington High School voice is that on this second on the next page does I highlighted at the bottom of the first PL page just some of the activities uh there there's many more than that this is an ongoing uh K K12 effort and uh there's certainly numerous lessons that
117have have been taken place I just highlighted some of them well my question about that was everything that you've been doing is quite fabulous so that Title Nine has been doing and I'm just um wondering how we as the board can be better educated and everything that you are doing without appearing to micromanage or um hover or interfere but is there a way that we could participate or observe some of the items you enumerated just a few things like sexual harassment online course self-esteem lesson former students perspective so I think that's a perfect segue hiding into what I was asked to bring back to you folks from the last meeting which are uh the supports that we can expect or ask of the board around diversity and Equity work um which would be a written
118statement from the board in support of the diversity incl inclusion and Equity work that's underway um in the district to support teachers and administrators in the inclusion of anti-racist content in the curriculum and uh creating an anti-racist School District that's something that we hear over and over from the teachers and the administrators that we are we are really committed to this work but when we put this in the curriculum we don't want it to be something that um is opted out of this isn't like grade8 sex ed we want this to be part of our curriculum we want your support in a public fashion around that work uh secondly we would ask that a board goal when you I know you have an upcoming Retreat when you get to the point in that work at
119your retreat that your crafting board goals that there be a goal specifically to support Dei work not only this year but beyond this year also a board Workshop in diversity equity and inclusion content to support and inform all members of the board about how to create and sustain an anti-racist educational Community we would also ask that you direct the public to our Dei web page our Publications in the appropriate staff when questioned about programming or instructional practices and finally we would ask you to continue funding as the budget season approaches for professional development to support the implementation of trauma sensitive strategies to hold our student engagement and student voice at the center of our work the second charge that I was given last last board meeting was to come back with you to you with
120some specific um uh asks from the administration around how to support our hybrid and distance learning model we would ask that you publicly support proactive shifts in the use of our time within the current schedule to support teaching and learning we know especially at the elementary level that our teachers need more planning time uh and collaboration time in order to sustain a model that is the most difficult and challenging to implement we would ask that you publicly support proactive strategies to mitigate the spread of covid-19 vir of the covid-19 virus by maintaining sufficient Staffing to support the hybrid model and to celebrate our successes afforded by the current model we would also ask support in funding of supplemental resources teachers PA professionals supplies to support the optimum instruction under the current conditions and current model
121we would again finally ask you to refer parents actually not finally almost finally refer parents and families to the appropriate classroom teacher or a building administrator should they voice concerns or have questions about covid-19 or about the current instructional models or supports for their children and finally we'd ask you would support a budget that will afford US the opportunity to offer a robust six we summer school program for children in G grades K through 12 with transportation and we and supplemental instruction next year especially in the area of reading and Mathematics do you have any questions so on on those last five items I am assuming um that we're going to get much more detail and information on that in December and as we move into the budget season because certainly when we talk about
122a robust six we summer school program you know understanding the details around that and what that all incompasses and what we're hoping to achieve as outcomes out of that are critically important yes you will in December that will be the beginning of it some of this will be in the budget uh but you'll hear particularly about the summer school and there there's some other things there's additional Staffing additional facilities needs Etc so we'll have that for you in December and in December it'll be what we need now and for this year and then we'll also talk about what will be in the budget for the following year we'll start talking about both of those things yeah I mean there's a lot here which is all good stuff just the detail behind it okay any other
123questions for Maran Gordon anything on your side I think I read his lips and he said he was good so I'm good thank you okay the next item is the covid costs update um as you know every month we update what the costs have been to take care of a number of different covid related items we also put on here very various funding sources um including uh the SPs ending balance from last um June 30th that continues to go up a little bit I think y we're probably pretty close to finish now right we're at 572 57252 3 um and fortunately at this point we're right on that Mark with the needs that we've had so far you can see each month we add a few things this month um we added um a cost
124to the startup the summer school that's not the cost of a summer school that's basically the first week of a summer school we'll have again the full details on that next in December we've also added a paira help at the high school library for students that are falling behind so um be happy to answer any questions you have but these so far these costs are covered by either our cares act our state Co money or what we are expecting to get from back from the board of Finance um at least up to the amount that was returned to the board of Finance to the town on June 30th so I have a question uh yes Dr Riley so the the projected SPS spending balance June 30th 2020 right now it's five sitting at 572 23
125that was for yeah yes I'm sorry yeah this is last yeah last year this was the ending balance that when we have an ending balance it goes back to the town's budget right and the reason that change is there's some incumbrances and some bills that were still cleared that kind of thing so it has gone up slightly yeah no I was just wondering what's the $100,000 swing was it just just like you said the bills that were there things like we'll have an encumbrance for a say a non-public school tuition and transportation and we get in an initial bill and then it's not clear there there was a CO and so they didn't transport and so we're finally getting in some of the bills that were incumbrances that were Gary was able to clear those
126which adds money back into the ending balance and was that was that money given back to the town the 572 or we're holding on some of that and then we're going to use it towards that all goes back to the town all of it and then we have to ask again for um this reimbursement and we're thinking that'll be at the end of January or February somewhere in there thank [Music] you and let's see a discussion regarding the December schedule I want just wanted to bring back to the board and to the public that we are making a change um then the two days after uh the Thanksgiving vacation we will be all distance learning on that Monday and Tuesday and we're already at Wednesday so it's really the three days um after and so
127I just wanted to to bring that up um I'd also like to just share with the board while we're talking about Co and schedules um you know I mentioned Allison and Gloria the work that they've been putting in um that's also gone been a responsibility of Mark and Alicia and others at the high school in particular uh and the Middle School actually every school we have um at the high school we've had five well let me just say districtwide we've had 15 students or staff members test positive and that's spread across um most this one school we didn't have any so yet but the other ones we've had some however because of exposure primarily through um sports teams and players on other teams that play our students make our students uh close contact currently we
128have 62 students and one staff member quarantining at the high school and let's see 18 students at the other three schools and six staff at the other schools so what I'm pointing out here is we have an increase in actually the test the positive test have been relatively steady and relatively low but the exposure of our students and staff where they have to quarantine for 14 days has increased drastically and that's also caused um a concern by parents and staff members about what what exposure is going to be coming next um Mark I think was telling me today let me check this they've had or at least was saying there it had 13 students that moved from the hybrid to full distance because of concerns that parents and students have um we have yeah you
129have 153 distance students right now plus you know another 60 plus students that are uh being quarantined plus a a cohort so of your of your 613 students in the high school enrolled today there were 173 attending on campus so we've done an amazing job of controlling this doing all the checking that we have to do but I just want the board to realize how where where we're heading with this and another thing that I have shared with you but I want to make sure anyone from the public that's watching ledge light our health department had been doing all of the contact tracing they have told us now not just us but all school districts that is now our responsibility they're looking at moving on to how to distribute a vaccine when it's available so
130there was a a workshop last night a zoom um from ledlight I think all of us were on that Zoom we took up there were only 100 spaces and I think we had about 50 of them no we had uh and our nurses uh I really appreciate that too honestly we had over 20 of the 100 spaces and this is all legl was East lime and Waterford and leer um administrators and nurses were all on this uh workshop on how to do contact tracing so that's another responsibility that we have um so I just want to bring this to your attention U we've never had any quarantine like this and then we have Thanksgiving coming up and people that leave or have excuse me large numbers of people visiting um also have some quarantine requirements
131so this is um I I don't want to say overwhelming but it's certainly a big issue for for us and we should congratulate our our staff our nurses our administrators and and others for keeping on top of this and doing the very best we can for the safety of of our community I just wanted to share that with you along with a reminder of those two days after after Thanksgiving so Dr Ry how how are you doing that contact is there a committee that's doing that that's overwhelming we need a volunteer heighten it no we have it it depends um we've had well the people in the back row there have done a lot of it when with the athletic teams the coaches did the notifications to to the teams but then we had to
132monitor that to make sure that that that happened and then our nurses uh check after the they do some of the contact tracing also but then they have to keep a record of you know John Smith had to do this test or he's coming back on this day I mean there's very detailed records in follow up with parents and students for every one of these students so there's there's a whole lot of work and I know that the height the high school is is right now is the busy the busy place and I know our nurse at the high school had a spreadsheet much bigger than our sip spreadsheet Peter so really a lot a lot of work a lot of detailed work and a lot of work that has to be perfect it has
133to be accurate it has to be followed through so really it's it's a whole team it's a whole group it can be a coach it can be a nurse it can be us calling um but it it's a lot of people we just make sure that we're managing it and doing it the right way overwhelming so the last thing on my list was uh Chromebook insurance I uh thanks to Chris uh he put together this U um option for parents if they wish to for I think it's 20 yeah $25 they can purchase Chromebook insurance and you'll be sending this out soon to parents and they'll be able to P pay through um a program called parents Square where they put in their I guess their credit card number and the charges and then that
134way if the if the Chromebook is is injured in transit or something um it it covers a lot of those costs so we've had a number of requests from parents about that so that'll be very helpful and that's my report thank you Dr Riley uh next item I have a question go ahead I'm sorry Jack it's okay um I do read the letters you sent to us and I find them very informative and one of the letters you sent I think it was last weekend uh it mentioned that a couple of child care facilities have been shut down and weer sure how that would affect glob staff um also just in general could you talk about I know the big struggle for a lot of families is child care and I know we had discussed
135just we had a discussion at one point about how we may help those families or even staff members so whatever came of that did you just touch on that yeah we were uh attempting to provide a a child care here for our staff members for children of our staff members and when we put out the uh the survey we had people by that point already had it taken care of either the relative or the Como or whatever it was but we did work with Beth at the Como to come up with um a a pricing structure that was beneficial for for our staff and I know I think there were only one or two people who had inquired to come here and we referred them on to the Como and and yes the there was
136a at least one closure of a prominent daycare child care center and we it did affect some of our staff members who had children there so we get these and we get a call at 10:00 in the morning we're closing in a half an hour come get your your child so things like that are happening uh all the time and what just just one other thing I didn't mention this I I wanted to talk about the uh the Staffing the substitutes um I get a report every morning as to the number of employees that are out that day and whether or not they've asked for a sub there are some people who don't need it and how many asked for a sub and didn't get it U an example the last two days have been
137approximately 40 individuals out that's teachers Paris custodians that's everybody and there have been uh 17 today and 18 yesterday that had requested us sub and we were not able to fill um yesterday that was about 10 teachers today it was four teachers so that's a lot you know that is that could increase too I know there are a number of districts who have had to close or go go virtual because they couldn't do the St laughing um we're not there yet but I just want to alert you to uh and you know and what we do those folks out there would call we try to share we we put a par in a class to cover for the teachers home and and doing the virtual from home but we need to have an adult supervising
138in the class so we'll move people around um sometimes administrators or counselors or others end up covering those classes so right now it's U it's a real J juggling act but I thought you'd appreciate that when you're looking at over 40 people out every day and then half of those have requested us sub and we weren't able to get it that could end up being that and then that this uh quarantining you know we're we're dealing with it every day so good question Jack thank you any other questions before we move on all right next uh item items for future um agendas uh these three items will appear on the December agenda so it's the second part of the academic Benchmark and performance data uh the Sip approval and then there'll also be a report
139um from the Food Service Department uh any other items that we want to add to a future agenda all right next item board comments uh um any board members have any comments they want to make all right and uh the next item uh was uh to happen tonight was the executive session that's been moved to Thursday um did notify all board members about that um and the next item is a motion to adjourn motion toour the meeting there's a second uh motion made there's a second all in favor opposed motion carries thank you