Board of Education Meeting 2021-10-27

001miss lonsky here Missy here thank you nice drum roll for the roll call entertain a motion to approve the agenda second all those in favor I School Community Service public participation board members of the community to speak on topics to be addressed in the agenda or other topics of Interest beginning of your comment your name and address must be stated for the record the board will not allow comments regarding specific staff members parents students or personal grievances courtesy is expected in this limited public forum the participating time will be limited to 3 minutes per person and 10 minutes overall to guarantee efficient operation of the meeting James Cino yeah hi you can come right up to the table please pleas just state your name and address for the record uh my name is James Cino

002I'm from 219 East Main Street in town um okay so I was born and raised in torington and while growing up I always thought the schools the schools I attended were pretty good overall we would say the Pledge of Allegiance like we did tonight every morning and they would play patriotic songs over to intercom before we started our day at the time I never realized the importance of such a routine but looking back is such a good way to bring our class together even if it was just for a moment I have three children now four six and eight and I'm glad to see that for the most part our schools still remain patriotic by celebrating Veterans Day and Memorial Day Memorial Day and things of that nature Iris my eighty eight-year-old girl occasionally sings

003us the song You're a Grand Old Flag and warms my heart it's important for our children to learn about the sacrifices made to make this a free country lately though there are things that the school system as a whole is doing to divide our children and those things are coming a little old torington but they need to be resisted by us as parents and by you as well on September 30th I received an email about joining the new tton Public Schools Equity committee I F I filled out the application to join as I want to know more about what this committee is for and how they plan to achieve equity in our schools the basic definition of equity is something that is fair and just and this seems reasonable if you're talking about providing low

004income children tools such as laptops or if you provide extended teaching to help slower Learners meet educational standards but the minute that Equity is applied to the outcome of kids education regardless of that child's actual achievements this is where the line is crossed the job of our teachers is to teach and and to give the kids the tools needed to learn and that's it the new Equity committee consists of a subcommittee targeting equity and diversity I'm sorry but if you start hiring teachers based on skin color or give children special attention based on their race you've lost my trust a few days ago I received another email with a link to a survey for the torington public schools most of the questions were valuable regarding our thoughts on the performance of our school system and

005such but a couple questions stood up what is your child's race or ethnicity I understand this question may be harmless but why do you need to know that really is it going to change how teacher teach our children will the teachers need to meet some standard created by our new equity and diversity committee I've been pay paying close attention to other school systems throughout the country and it's not farfetched to think that critical race Theory will be next to invade our schools the second question I stood out was what is your child's identified gender well the fact is there are only two genders regardless of how a child or anybody feels it's built right into our DNA but I want to know what do you plan to do with this information are you going to

006teach children about gender fluidity fluidity do you honestly think a child has a capacity to decide what gender they are are you going to be letting boys who identify as girls into my daughter's bathroom at school will my daughters have to compete with these so-called girls in sports I'm extremely concerned about this survey question and I expect you all to be concerned as well and I also expect you to do whatever is needed to keep this out of our schools the last thing I want to voice my concerns on our mass and vaccines we're quickly coming up on two years of this pandemic and our children are still being muzzled for no proven good reason the onus is on new to prove that mass do anything to help our children as opposed to the glaring

007negative effects it has on them I can cite many studies on the side effects of children wearing masks but I've yet to find a single one that proves they benefit children in any way but uh I have a few statistics that I'll just put out there uh the cdc's own February 20 21 MTH study reported that masking impedes breathing and cont trigger a variety of other problems include including anxiety attacks which are more likely to occur in children particularly smaller children a recent publication from professor professor Avon Kosar the department of infectious disase diseases stated that face masks masks become nonconsequential and do not function after 20 minutes due to saturation and I quote those masks are only effective so long as they are dry as soon as they become saturated with moisture in your

008breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets in 2020 emergency room visits linked to mental health problems for children Age 5 to 11 increased by nearly 25% and the last one Jordan's Department of Public Health status reports that of all the flu deaths only of all the flu deaths 1.9% of the flu deaths were made up of children and for for covid only 079 uh children died versus you know getting covid so the last statistic is interesting because even with children who mostly always get the flu vaccine each year they still die at a higher rate per infection yet I never saw schools mandate mask for the flu season I'm sorry to say but our kids do not live in a bubble and they do not wear masks after school at the

009store at play dates at church at restaurants at the park and so on and guess what Co is not spreading like a wildfire amongst the children here since our schools are all in on forcing kids to wear masks I have to ask now that the FDA has given emergency use authorization for the fiser vaccine to Children 5 to 11 will you be mandating vaccines for children if they want to attend public school if that's the case you can count on me to take my kids out of public schools in a heartbeat despite the fact that many parents do not come to these meetings doesn't mean that they aren't involved in their children's education for the most part we trust our schools but as all the concerns I just spoke about slowly creep in you better

010believe I and my close friends will make you known to other parents utilizing social media groups which we have already begun to do and each month you will see more and more parents showing up here thank you thank you very much Nick Perkins I'm Nick Perkins from 127 FR Street it was uh brought to my attention that there is a possibility of starting a curriculum about white privilege which I believe is completely ridiculous especially for my six-year-old because he has multiple friends of color and they don't see color at this age so to bring in a curriculum about white privilege or differentiating race at all is in fact racism so I don't think that should ever be brought into play if anything I I still believe in you know teaching about the war and everything

011what happened there was wrong but these kids should not be made to feel different from each other from something that happened from their ancestors White Privilege is wrong and racist thank you thank you that's we can't I just wanted to say that um if all board members are not here tonight that comments can also be emailed to the board members and email addresses are available on the website if commenters want board members who are not present to hear them a point of information is a point of order so the board cannot respond to public comment we will take it under advisement um but we cannot communicate regarding your comments so thank you okay recognitions this is my favorite part of the board meetings we actually take some time out to really recognize some fabulous things

012that are going on within the district last Sunday we had a wonderful event that was our kids Marathon this w we had a year off because of Co unfortunately we were able to get back together on our very own torington high school field and celebrate our students who have been working so very hard practicing for their marathon it's a K5 initiative at this point so they were working toward their 26th mile on Sunday they did their last mile but they did it with a lot of support more support than we have ever had before and we decided to honor our students whether they could be here or not because of this very fabulous participation from our older students working with our younger students so the students that are going to be named tonight were students

013who you can see and I'm right in the way this was that's how many students we had on Sunday helping our little kids and helping them run helping them stretch inspiring them getting them around the course being inspirational just really helping them feel better about what they were doing and being good role models and mentors for our students which was really incredible and I know some students are still coming in now and fond down uh and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to come up and get recognized in addition to that it was really phenomenal because we had our coaches there now our coaches give an inordinate crazy amount of time to our students yes to build their skills in their Sports and to really make them better and they practice and they train and they

014do all of that but even more importantly at least to me is that they build our students in terms of their character and help them really be inspired each and every day to participate and to be good people and to be good community members good citizens and to really grow their people character skills and I see Rick dad back there who has always done this in his years at durington high school it's been such a great inspiration along with Rick on Sunday we also had Amy Farrar uh Conor Sullivan Kaya Bianca Janice Harrington was there for those of you who have worked through Forbes Flyers um and know her just throughout the uh District uh Jim pepper and our elementary principles and a lot of other staff as well so come on in we haven't

015gotten to give certificates yet but we're just so excited that you're here we're talking about how wonderful you are we're showing your picture somewhere hopefully we can show their picture again Ally um so that we can see it all together but we really really appreciate that and all of this would not have happened without this man right here and that's Tim Gaffney who has been so absolutely fabulous for our whole entire Community been so very supportive been our our positive motivator getting that positive news out about torington about our high school I love his energy and his enthusiasm Mr G fun say so this is the fourth year that I've uh coordinated Kids Marathon and every year it's a practice in oh my goodness what's going to happen how do we get this thing set

016up I'll give you a quick Sunday Morning Sun doesn't come up in October on that field until quarter after 8 we're here at 7 o'clock in the morning setting up we figure out the fact that our home leachers are iced so no one's going to be able to sit in those great improv by the entire team we just move everything over to the buiness visiting side where the son had and I've had tons of volunteers over the four years but this year's group headed by the coaches right and I had tell nothing right they just were I need four football go over and do this and me four volleyball so I had 17 football players I had the entire varsity girls volleyball team was there and most of the cross country team there and these

017kids you should all be so proud of because they just a they had so much fun because that's what I told them I said your job is to tell the kids to go run and go run with them and they did a tremendous job uh they set up really well at the end I think Sue and I were talking and I turned around and everything was gone we have to set up tables they were all gone there wasn't a drop of paper on the rer age for us by the time these kids were gone and I never had to speak twice to anybody they just did a great job so I I thank you very much this has my day going on the office ball so um thank you guys for your support of this

018every single year to get out there and have fun Janice Harrington who everybody knows from the forest flers was amazing uh the energy that all the kids had you know during the warm-ups and the rest of it was tremendous and I was home at qu to 11 come on anybody that's going to do this next year you be home before lunch on the Sunday so it can't be it's not a bad thing so uh we have another one scheduled for next June so we'll start in March and we'll finish in June so the same volunteers that were here this year maybe we'll get even more and we'll look for more of our grand school kids uh to enjoy this experience two more seconds like the sports guy ever talk right rod Dix Rod Dixon yeah

019right the music starts Rod Dixon for those of you that don't know is a former Olympian a bronze medal Wimer in 1972 won the New York City marathon in 1983 and created Kids Marathon because 30% of the American population and worldwide population is already considered to be obese so what Rod did because he was a marathoner did let's start a program in school that from March until June they all run a mile or two during G gym class after school and then they get to us that last day for a final mile the final mile is an Olympic celebration that the parade of Champions there's the final mile of race we don't call it a race but every year they seem to kind of like make it into a race and it's just one of

020the greatest things you can ever experience on a Sunday morning with our community so thank you very much to all of you for for doing this and whatever kids are here come on out just been is practicing so I know you were in the building right so that's good we're GNA we're going to go through the names and then come on up and Tim and Mrs CA are gonna help us pass them out so Matt Adams chriso stay up here be nice no social distancing for the next few seconds Chris Alama Sydney a Trey L bu Marissa Berger Alex Bush Sophia calary Justin CH ol duen Patrick hman Mikey Isaac Mohamad kir Ruby lard boo Hannah luell Trevor lell oh good idea Brendon M Brendon MC Faith McKenzie VI Patel Hector pel Shanley Richardson Scott

021Rana Jacob Roes David rude Alissa Saia josa Fernando OA asley [Music] bad Logan Wilson Emily zarone Adrian Cilla thank you so much students awesome [Applause] job you you get in there yeah you got to get in there you go aut autoc I can't see [Music] it sorry so look through there take go [Music] so this is a night for the high school thank you so we have a student who has been nominated to the State student advisory Council on education which is a incredible honor so this student out of all the students in the state is representing us here in tton repres presenting other students and on the advisory Council just to give you an idea the state advisory State student State student advisory Council on education was created by the general assembly to give

022students a voice in education and what's better time to do that than during Co and they really are focusing in on the impacts to students around covid and how students have responded fed and the implications and I know that Leah's working in terms of community and family and all of those impacts so we're very very excited that we have our own representative from torington and in order to be a part of this group all of those students have to show good citizenship leadership responsibility advocacy on behalf of their more than a million and a half PE so just absolutely amazing we want to acknowledge Leah for all her accomplishments and all that she's about to do so come on down better [Music] pictures information sharing superintendence report so I know that was a little bit

023longer but it's just um wonderful to really acknowledge our students in their leadership positions uh and you can see that our kids just building some great character from our oldest students down to our youngest students so just really phenomenal and so appreciate the the older students appreciate our staff our coaches who Foster that each and every day um so some other good news uh the leap I know that we've talked a lot about that during our various budget and sick needings and things like that um but I just want to um acknowledge someone for all of her efforts Sue Ferguson has been meeting weekly with the state to ensure that the leap project is successful this year and little do we know when we were talking about this Summer that it would be it would

024take a lot of time lot of paperwork lot of energy uh because it's a federal and then it's overseen by the state as well so it's kind of filters down and anything as you know with FEDS takes a lot of paperwork uh and a lot of training a lot of documentation a lot of working with and coordinating with people so currently we have over 65 staff who are supporting these home visits in this program um Sue is going to provide more information about the program and updates over the next few months but I just want to acknowledge sue for all of her efforts we have been recognized as a leader in the state for our work and I truly believe that's because of Sue's diligence and really working so hard on helping this be a

025success um she has been asked to present TPS and talk about our success at the state level at the performance matters conference this year uh I greatly appreciate Sue and all of the leap staff who are doing Outreach to our families some families are even calling to ask if they can be a part of the program now because they really do want to access those resources so it is very exciting um couple of other things to really get excited about and to CH to celebrate uh our TMS Fitness Trail if you've been up there we have our 10 new elements that were added uh the equipment was donated even though uh you may have noticed in one of our grants we had to take toally have it installed but just the fact that we have

026those extra 10 elements that was really wonderful um back to school nights went very very well and we were able to welcome families back so that was very exciting parent conferences are coming up and student and parents will have the option of attending virtually and in person person so lot of good news nice to have people back any questions on that thank you I have just questions um I know last meeting we kind of talked about um mask breaks and stuff um so I don't know if that was going to be part of today like we're kind of going to get an update on what the status was based on kind of yeah we can over time um Elementary is very different than middle which is very different in high school just because they're older

027Elementary it's very easy because they have the recess time um they also for all grade levels obviously you're not wearing a mask during lunchtimes um we no longer have the plexiglass at the elementary levels um we just that uh dph and CSD don't recommend it anymore don't say that it's necessarily A mitigating strategy um Within Elementary classrooms they will do Mass breaks every other row to kind of say Row one and three alternates with two and four when they're having their snack um and they'll have a snack in the morning and in the afternoon um and then middle school has a actual rotation schedule where they can do the the mass break time periods and that's for no longer than a 10 to 15 minute period so they're in they're out they're basically getting that

028stretch they're getting that time outside it's going to be more challenging as we go into Colder Weather obviously uh but I know that last year just to get the mass breaks in people were having their kids put on their jackets when they could and go outside and get some of that time within the classroom they can certainly take their breaks as well obviously when students are older then it it's much more easily manageable because you can just say okay if I need a break then they can rotate it yeah I think just because the students are older elry is more the the snack the recess the lunchtime and that's consistent throughout s did you have a question um no because when Sue answered the question you answered the question everybody else set before we move

029on toot hi everybody um yeah so I don't know if you remember last month I shared that we were going to use a little different format at the full board meetings to present on OTL and try to just have it more focused um before we start um Joanne Cen is here and she's gonna come up and she's going to share some like an overview um now that we have our October one information just on the E number numbers but before she getss started I just want to say we're getting excited and gearing up for Tuesday election day as you know is our districtwide professional learning day um our well second one of the school year um so we're very excited about that um I know it's going to be a smashing success um the groups

030of teachers that we've worked with so far just to get input from them from them in planning are also very excited so more to come on that next month and then we'll turn it over to Joan who G to wow us with all the e numbers and this is in your packet too you have a copy of um what she put together this is kind of just an a a very broad overview of something that she'll share in Greater detail at an upcoming School Improvement meeting thank you so and it's great to be here in my new role delighted I'm delighted to represent the 430 plus English Learners or multilinguals in our district um that's an exciting opportunity and um I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet with school Improvement Committee in the next

031couple of months to provide greater context for just the numbers that you're going to see here because this is this is just numbers these are not you can't see the faces of the kids and get an understanding of who we're really talking about um but I just was asked to present the October 1 data so um um here it is and um in all schools uh the numbers are here for you we have over 430 students as of the October 1 date plus new registrations um and as with our non-els or non um English Learners you know the door is always open so we have new students coming in all the time so these numbers may change over the course of the year um what's not is uh notable this year I think is the

032number of newcomers from out of country that we have received into all of our schools um this uh as of October 1 it was 75 um Coming primarily from Ecuador Dominican Republic those were the two largest groups but also Guatemala Honduras Mexico Bangladesh and Pakistan and then we have some students that come to us from Puerto Rico who course that's not out of country but some of those students need English as a second language Services as well um the chart on the on the bottom of that page I think is quite telling just to show since 2012 the growth and this is this is not like numbers this is percentage of the school population of the total TPS population so we've had steady steady growth um 2012 it was about 7% and as a of

033October 1 it was more like 11.5 our current Staffing level uh we have 15 certified teachers distributed in the six schools we have 13 El or bilingual Paras we have four tutors who work part-time uh and we have five translators working throughout the district in checking what the home language what the primary home languag is of our English learners it's probably no surprise that 85% of our English Learners have Spanish as their home language but the other 15% represent 20 other languages and um just in case you were wondering what the top five are I'm going to tell you um so banga is number one which is spoken in Bangladesh and parts of India erdu which is spoken in Pakistan and parts of India Vietnamese Arabic and Portuguese those are our next top five um

034and related to all of this information I think is the cultural data the uh chart on the bottom shows the growth of our Hispanic Latino population since 2012 and again these are this is just a broad brush of this this is the numbers as of right now uh the State of the State and I'm looking forward to delving into it and to be honest I have to have to just say this that I started out with a 37 slide presentation and I was told to cut it and cut it and cut it and so this is what you have but I will be meeting the school Improvement committee Mee at some she's ready for part two to te one more slide you just wait minute question um of the 75 newcomers do you have a

035general gist for their um exposure to the U uh to the um English language like do they speak any you know or most most not all most of the newcomers come in with um little to know English and depending on the country depending on the age some have had a good deal of schooling in their home country and so they've got strong literacy in their first language and so um two quick questions the 432 total does are the 75 included in that 432 yes they are okay and then um this is as of October 1st correct will we get an update for through October 31st in our next meeting in November sure does it seem like a lot ofers came in October right didn't we get more in October the reason we we always reference

036October 1st is because that's the date that the state has us pull all of our data enrollment date and that sort of thing so we kind of use that as a benchmark but we can absolutely update monthly if you would like that just for I think the next this month and maybe next because there's still an influx it feels like so maybe we could get a better feel for how many more children are coming into district and it honestly it's EAS enough to do it might be interesting just to see it monthly right so that you can see that there is that um that as Joanne said a revolving door right you know of of children regardless of what their language is right and not like a detailed just high level this many came in

037that many left okay not the 37 slid no that's thank you for the effort one more question I know we added some translators fairly recently how are we doing with making sure that we have um all of our key documents translated like uh the student handbooks and things that we should have espe primarily in Spanish I'm thinking um for the various sites at the various levels uh We've traditionally had all the handbooks U translated into Spanish um and I think the one at the high school is just being finished right now but I I believe the others are but that's that's always something that we do and we have been promoting for many years now that every official communication that goes out is in English and Spanish thank you one other I guess it's more

038of like a comment and maybe it goes more towards budget but with 75 newcomers that we probably didn't plan for should we be having a discussion on additional resources we know we can't you know fund everything and we definitely making improvements but of the 75 new kids that we didn't plan for do we need to look at some of these additional funding to support I mean I did the math 29 students per teacher it's higher than our classrooms right and these are all spread across so I just think we need to maybe have the discussion in budget about some of this additional funds and if there's I know we don't we weren't looking to use it for Staffing but I think in this case you know this is significant especially if most of them are

039coming with little exposure we'll review it during the budget season we always do in terms of I'm talking now or like with the monies that we have coming in for this year we could talk about we can bring it up during vet please thank you any other questions for thank you thanks Joe thank you yes thank you very much thank you for your work on those thank you it's exciting stuff yeah okay special education update we don't Mr Craig go ahead all right I'm not I'm filling the shoes the very big shoes of mki tonight but um I'm happy to announce that uh this is you know really our our our third year as an administrative team and a third year of kind of changeing practice and as uh spus was kind of alluding to

040our October one numbers or that big poll and uh we have a update to to show you that's in your packet and uh the overall numbers in general have generally gone down both in terms of students that are in District students that are outplaced um and even students that are now um choosing to uh pick other schools such as Magnus schools or go schools uh so in general we had a 43 overall uh from the past two years had a drop of 43 students in total in terms of all of our students in special education a drop of 10 students uh from um October 1 2019 overall and then a drop of 26 students that were outplaced and then we stay the same in terms of our agency place and just as a reminder the

041agency Place uh students are not within our control those are students that are placed by other outside agencies uh and then in terms of our our magnet schools or our choice schools we had a drop between from 61 which was consistent over the past two years to now down to 54 and in terms of what we're kind of really proud of in this way if you look at the bottom of that page actually in terms of our prevalence rate as our overall percentage of students that are in District in October 2019 we had 18.43% students um with our was our percentage of students with disabilities um pretty pleased to announce that we are now under 15% by just aeir at 14.99% so that is a differential drop of 3.44% overall and we are now officially

042below the state average and continuing now in terms of our progress from last year if you look at the second page um our students outplaced we are also dropping in that way as well there a little bit of a subtle drop from October 2020 to October 21 but in terms of a twoyear look back back to 2019 we uh have a drop of 3.22% overall uh the current outplaced average is still being calculated by the state at this point so we're looking to add that in when it comes uh in terms of uh other information we've already exited one student um and graduated them out of special education this year uh no new students at this point as of October 1 have been identified and then uh in terms of students moving in and out

043as Miss C was kind of talking about we have an influx of students for uh need of special education so for every one student that has moved out of the district that's been identified 1.6 students have moved in so a total of 23 students have moved in and 14 students have moved out um so that number is also fluctuating we're still continuing to see an influx there as well but as past practice we're going to continue to present that information questions I just have one question so with the number of students both elll and other students moving in I would imagine that we have not gotten through IEPs for all of the new St yet would that be true question would go to so in terms of registration um that is usually part of our

044process in terms of uh when we identify on the registration package parent actually says yes to special education um we then request from the prec sending School District the thep information and so we usually are able to get that in a pretty quick turnaround and it usually is right around or in time with when they're registered it's a rare occasion that within a week we'll get that IP and then we'll have uh a program in place until we can have a 30-day review meeting to actually review thep so at this point the October 1 should be real numbers in terms of what we have but similar to our elel there's Mobility back and forth there's influx and so it's helpful to have that monthly update because it will change and then we'll start our review

045our own District review of the yes because in a sense one of the things that I I can share is that we have had a number of referrals in the past month that are in District and in part I feel like it's it's a result of a combination between coming back fulltime towards the end of the school year to now having um a showing of of need in the this first month and so you know there's likely to be um a little bit of a change in some of the numbers going to next month's overall than youe and then Nikki do we know and I think you asked this and I didn't hear the answer and if I missed it I apologize but of the um no I guess it would be the 75 plus

046the new registrations do we have a an approximate figure on if any of those or how many of those fall into the bed program the 75 new e no 75 new well yeah there would be e and then any of the new registrations because we're up I don't know how many registrations this year but I guess my question is how did that impact these numbers at all so from we had a rough estimate as of the beginning of September to October 1st the October 1 numbers are the real numbers that we have of all students that were registered at the time um we have had 23 students move in with IEPs uh now in terms of cross registered as both El and IEPs I don't have those numbers for tonight I do know that there

047are a select number of students that would qualify under both categories okay um but that's a minor okay for students that are new to the district how long is that t turnaround time for the teachers to kind of you know get to know the students begin to evaluate them before the possible referral to to spend I guess like what I'm trying to get at is these numbers look great but since we've had so many new students move into the district or should we be expecting in the next couple of months to see a spike just based on the time the turn around time from the process sure so I I don't want to misspeak because in some ways what I was saying in terms of some of the referrals that have come through it's not

048necessarily in relation to the students that have come in this year as new to the dish District so much as just the need has presented itself in a different way because we had structured environments that was not allowing a lot of movement and things different levels um and now we're at a stage where we have early intervention teams that have been in place that we're now referring out from there from school referrals and we have parent referrals that are referring as a result of what they see at home um and and so it's a combination of all of those now in terms of of a timeline and and Spike for referal or what we expect as a school district um you know really we're looking to provide uh those supports if they not already in

049in process of having those early intervention supports and from their sending to school and we don't get that information we're using the SST process that um is given to all students that are in need to try to provide some interventions early on have a few trials that would specify their interventions on how to help those students and then at that point if we still feel like at that point we need there's something more that we're missing we're not seeing the growth then we're looking at a referral from a school angle to special education um to usually a good intervention is anywhere between four to8 weeks usually don't try just one um so if you double that triple that that's kind of your timeline at some thank you excellent very good than you [Music] question thank

050you in appreciate itj [Music] great report June 30th 2021 um for the prior fiscal year still be returning 199 that that has not changed and I believe that we will have the prior year closed in the next report for this fiscal year the extrapolated amounts for f per month ends 9:30 I'm assuming that without any unforeseen expenditures that will have approximately 274 457 by yearend thank you ly any questions for ly September 2021 financial report Tyler technology budget we um presented the Tyler Technologies software overview and I'm not sure how much you want me to go go into it for the full board almost everyone infinite Visions is a financial management software that has a complete Suite of financial management applications for K12 schools it um will fully ENC payroll so that you will know

051exactly what you're spending and how much you have in your budget from one month to the next it's completely integrated it has advanced analytics it's increases efficiencies and it's adaptive user experience and and has browser Independence so that it can be utilized anywhere you have the internet Al can you do next slide one more one more um as you know time equals money and um most of the time people spend looking for something is wasted time you need to be able to get the information efficiently to do your job effectively infinite Visions it allows District professionals to have access to resources that'll support their work and facilitate best practices there's greater transparency with infinite Visions you have the ability to create reports and run them ad hoc at any time it integrates with our applicant

052tracking system the HR dashboard has proactive alerts for staff so that they know what's happening when and can react in a quick manner no more paper processing going through everyone's hands has school-based employee functionality and has very powerful reporting in analytics Tyler also helps us save money I'm not sure if you're aware of this but currently we're having problems getting copy paper because of the supply chain shortage infinite Visions allows you to store things in their system in the cloud so that you do do not have to print them so that you can email purchase orders directly to vendors so it it saves a lot of money um in Pap costs school districts spend about 80% of their instructional Budget on staff and benefits so with this system you have enhanced decision making simplified reporting

053and streamlined workflows IT addresses our complex needs and the unique challenges for school systems with easy to use tool tools um such as smart grids Precision drill Downs oneclick personalized grids that export to Microsoft Excel easy custom SQL reporting with infinite Visions info link Global searching and budget forcasting it allows you to evaluate compensation strategies against budgets for better planning and performance every pay period it reduces is the encumbrances and we'll show you reports that that for open positions that will show you the savings that are happening as the positions are unfilled it'll also show you the savings that happen when you bring in a new person at a lower level than a higher person the reporting functionality is superior to any I've ever used you can increase your emplo employee efficiency by utilizing our

054technology to simplify the budget development increase participation reducing duplication tying positions directly to the budget so that you know every position that is on each budget line item it integrates Union step and grade tables so that there will be no mistakes because they're tied exactly to the grade BL and and step on the table automates the purchasing process with vendors and has an employee port that will enable employees to go online get their paycheck information online and their W2 information online anytime 247 it's transparent and completely accountable and has exports and imports that can be easily used to reconcile with the city's general ledger system and our school accounts and it also it can be set up to provide controlled access to the group of school accounts wherever needed there are quite a few Connecticut

055districts that have this there's a list of them right up there and um along with this software there's a a support which from Tyler for one year you get free Tyler University training after the one year it costs $200 to have it and um there state Regional user groups where people can learn from other users and there's a annual user meeting for all Tyler users once a year you get together and learn tricks and tips from other people using the same information for the um after the first year the $200 per year fee is that per license or for the District it's for the district so which of our staff members would be interacting with this program directly other than if like a a building level staer wanted to see their W like on a

056regular basis who who would be using this mostly the people who are using new world now it could be expanded further if if um everyone wanted to do so um in other you can have the instructional leaders entering their budgets or um department heads entering the budgets I'm not sure how it's done here but they would do it right into the the budget module it can be as many people as need be because it is um web based like initially this would be something that just central office principal secretaries central office what's about this is I found it strange when I came 17 years ago that I didn't have access to the budget as a principal so there wasn't a way to just look at that and to just see the accounts which is unusual

057for a school just because the it's not a school-based system um and so this would allow principles to really see in real time what's happening with their budget which is very very helpful and obviously their secretaries as well so it's it branches out in terms of what's happening at the site as well as what's happening at central office other questions still love it I like in our accounting system that we've been using to trying to create an Excel worksheet in word overdue this like will bring everyone together rather than each school being a when trying to give the board a much better handle on Staffing fluctuations and changes really need and reports that are more friendly right and timely efficient and timely right yeah absolutely so thank you guys for your work on this any

058other questions Elementary dismissal traffic up John and ly CH so whoever wants to jump in and give it a start okay so as presented in the uh facilities uh meeting um there was a need to address uh the traffic concerns on Charles and toring West Street for both dismissal and pick up toring for school um uh there was an idea that was brought forth by by Lynn to take a look at the uh front yard area which is depicted in the picture there of adding a another driveway um approximately 14 foot wide driveway uh where that yellow line is in the front d uh yard area uh to gain extra parking to uh alleviate the stress on the intersection at tford West and Charles Street um actually went through there today uh the cars came

059up touring for West around the corner down Charles and they actually went all the way past uh that driveway where the yellow line starts where our buses exit uh where students get put on buses that's where they would exit and they they went further down Charles Street so uh there's a lot of stress a lot of people are bringing their uh children to school and uh we need to see if we can make that intersection safer before somebody gets hurt and so that's the um that's what the goal of this is is to try to alleviate the stress on that intersection uh we we've gotten um comments um we've gotten comments from uh the uh City uh traffic control uh people that they're they're happy with the decisions that were made here as far as

060alleviating the stress um the principles on board with it as well um I think it uh it's a good project any questions we just we had talked about kind of roping off or um I guess you put you know some kind of fence or something right so they can't go in from touring for West during this time now would you block this pathway off from Charles Street 2 when it's not in use because I would imagine like the kids you know kids are out there so would you block it off one night yeah there's no children that really use the front yard that's not a an area that gets used okay um and what we would do is uh um actually believe it or not I found a complete set of gates up at torur

061middle school that could be used to block off uh at no extra cost do that love that um yes we would put a set of gates uh to to uh discourage the use of coming in on the torringford west right we want the traffic to come in on Charles and stay away from that intersection to make it safe for for people it's it it's really unfortunately it's it's an accident waiting to happen it's very very congested up there at at the dismissal time so we don't want that uh we would like to to resolve that issue yes I've sat I have too what kind of time frame would we be looking at to be able to get this completed no pressure like is it approved and uh if it gets approved and funding wise I

062already have the bid document made and the bid document would be instantly put into the paper and we would go out to bid and I would assume that um um you know two weeks to Bid And depending on the time frame of a contractor we might have this completed by the end of November provided that that the weather stays on our side and they don't close the asphalt plants down so that's really uh what we're up against right now questions time and attendance presentation yeah so if you can do I think a brief overview lended because I think the majority of the people already heard the presentation that would be great y I'll I'll go through it I don't think I've given it but you have it all in your packets so um so that's

063totally fine and some of the links like I said I gave them to you but I wasn't going to click on them here but um I appreciate the opportunity to share an update with you guys I was pretty excited when you asked for it last board meeting so um because I'm really excited about where we've come so um what I wanted to start with on the first slide was just kind of letting you know where we started with our implementation team and so I actually invited some of them here tonight so that you guys can raise your hands when I call out your name but I wanted to thank them for their hard work with us so Tyler Estus was our Frontline guide um myself um Amanda porer our finance specialist C Hart is our

064payroll secretary Lisa Shimmel my secretary Kristen gagnan our cafeteria bookkeeper I don't think she's here um Chris McCarthy the secretary of the high school I think she was here I don't know if she's still here she was here was well so she uh I had her as a secretary representative because they do the work at the schools um font Clark Cole uh our BT at the middle school and our president of local 1579 um Ally Harold director of it to help us with the technology integration um miam you can't principal Southwest and also the uh president of the administrators Union uh Ed arum the interim business manager and the person who I know first introduced the time in attendance system implementation and then Lynn took over in July and then tea Walker my new HR

065generalist so she took over in July as well and helped with all the summer work so big huge kudos to all of them lot of work over a year's time and I think it's going well so I just wanted to thank them all publicly so the next slide is the implementation timeline that we were given from Frontline and they worked with us to set this up and they were very flexible as we moved along and moved it as we needed but you can see we started in August of last year and the go live was January but you'll see as we get through the slides that that was kind of a phase roll up okay the next slide um I won't read this all to you you can read this at your leisure but I

066just wanted to give you an idea of what the different modules were that they had us do they have a very um intense training where they give us access to an online system where we do the modules so that we can learn how to do it as we go so that we're prepared to run live in on the 1 of January so but you can see all the different aspects of the setup and how intense it was so okay and the next slide um this was one of the exciting parts of the integration is because we had some other Frontline programs that we were already using we were able to transition to What's called the Frontline insights platform which meant we were able to create a single on for all of our staff who use

067our Frontline products so we were able to kind of transition that um some people had to set up new passwords and logins but once they did they were able to toggle between all of the different Frontline platforms with one single sign on so that's been really positive feedback about that so the next slide so our initial soft roll out was in February and we um based on the feedback from the implementation team we opted to go with the secretaries only just to start with a small group to see how it was working um and just some of the um things that we looked at we had to work with Kelly Services to ensure that all of our campers uses users had the right access to be able to see all the time and view all

068the time um the time clocks were one of the issues we had at the beginning um and Ally was tremendous with her support on that um they had to be mapped some of them weren't working we had to reset them a few times Allie had and her team had to ship them back but um allly and her team did a fabulous job of working with that and getting those Kinks out and she's still coming up with some brilliant ideas to make it work even better so the next phase we added the custodians in May of 2021 and the next issue that kind of came up was there was a problem with the exporting because the custodians do a lot of those extra Duty events on the weekends and you know alarm calls and things like

069that so the exporting of those events didn't quite work right the first time out and so uh Amanda and Kathy did a tremendous job working with Frontline support to kind of resolve those issues and get that working correctly and then absence management enhancements this is another nice kind of bonus that kind of came along with this so um we were able to implement our online workflow so we have eliminated the paper time off request forms so now everybody submits their absences online through absence management and the approvals workflow through their supervisors up to me and HR so there is no more paper time off request forms so that's been wonderful um we also were able to with tremendous work from Amanda and Kathy and Kristen we were able to import all of the ACR time

070so now employees can view their ACR Time online so they no longer have to call central office to find out how much sick time or personal time they have they are now able to view that online and bonus we were able to offer the mobile app to everybody so they can now look at their acrude time on their phone and they can create their absence on their phone so and we've rolled that out to everybody and they love that summer 2021 was a big work project for us because we had to roll it out to everybody else to the cap workers the Paras and everybody else that clocked in ourly so there was a tremendous amount of work that went into that so um teina was a huge help on that coming up with the

071design for the time cards which I brought samples for you so you can see them pass them around so um but we um so we had to make the time cards for all the employees so that was 250 plus employees that we had to get them into the system import their names their information everything and then make sure that they had the right time card attached to the right number um we had to enter all the new hires into the system and as you know because I've reported we hired almost 100 people this summer so um and you know good portion of those were the hourly employees so we had to get all those people in the system um and then updating locations for staff who Moved assignments and changed locations that was another thing

072that we had to make sure it was right and then importing all those time card numbers into the system to with the right employee so lots of work that went into over the summer and again kudos to my staff for doing an amazing job um August 30th the roll out plan we wanted to make sure that everybody understood it so what we did was six members of the implementation team actually divided and conquered and on the August 30th PD day um we went out to the sites and actually pulled every single employee that was getting a time card in and we actually showed them how to use the time card how to clock in gave it their time cards checked to make sure they were working and tried to work out all the BS so

073that was really helpful I think to everybody and we gave them a little handout that kind of showed them the basics and so the initial results of the roll out of course produced a few glitches um in hindsight I think one of the things that we wish we would have done you know looking back is we probably should have taken one location and gone live in like June or May with just one location and some Paras and cap workers so that was one thing that we thought would have worked better um some time cards weren't working because of the bulk import um duplicate card numbers we had to kind of figure out what was happening there uh one time clock was not in an Optimum location but John came to the rescue and helped us

074move that time clock uh along with Ally and her team um ensuring that the employees were entering their absences correctly in absence management and working with people to confirm their logins and passwords that was a bit of a technical glitch and then we had to re-educate our staff on our eke keeping rules because just not something that they were seeing every day because they were clocking in with the hard copy time cards so we just kind of had to make sure we explained to everybody how we've been doing it all along um and then we rolled out all the absence management enhancements that I was talking about um designing and building the approval workflows importing the acal balances um designing our monthly acral rules so that that automatically happens every month um and the results

075are you know that we did have to kind of decide whether we wanted to do it as hours versus days so we did a little shift on that and we had some old data living in the background from when we first partnered with Kelly Services apparently there was some old data there and we had to kind of figure out how to get that out of there so that the data was fresh um you have the link on this page to the little screencastify that I created so Sarah kage taught me how to do that it's long so you don't have to watch it here but feel free to watch it um but we tried to really detail to everybody how to do everything that they need to do um I wanted to share some of

076the staff feedback with you just because I've gotten some tremendous very spontaneous feedback uh with some of the rollouts um this is amazing a long overdue love being able to use my phone to create my absence uh love the app definitely fast and easy um and I love being able to see the acrs um and the acrs have now been uh imported originally inaccurately and we've been resolving that so I think that's pretty well said some of our issues that we're still working out doc time it's just a way for us to kind of keep track of the negative time so so um and the Frontline people have been really wonderful working with us so we're trying to get that up to date um we are trying to make sure that we finish up those

077approvals and get that working right um now that we're in the second month of monthly approvals uh the time approval periods we're just trying to navigate the best way to do that we may continue to work with Lynn on adjustments maybe for next year um the approval data and then uh Ellie is exploring some ways to maybe uh enhance the time clocks maybe using our own devices so and that is basically it any question yeah any negative feedback so I think the negative feedback was that the data was wrong like on the acrs and things like that and so we've been trying to deal with that pretty quickly and then like I said the re-educating on the time rules that was you know something that people were questioning but once we explained it they understood

078it completely so nothing on goal no no I think everybody's been really happy with how quickly we resol things when they bring them to our attention any other questions yes do all of the staff have access to the app I mean I know yes likeing do they all have like phones that use apps and fake well I can't tell you if everybody has a smartphone but everybody has access whether it's online in like on a computer in the school or they can do either way yeah so it's the it's the login that they've always used to log in so create their absence on the computer but now they can use that same login on the app on the phone and they can do it either way so it's really it's actually helped improve some of

079our staff who weren't using the absence management 100% right because they struggle with it being able to use it on their phone they find so much easier so it's actually helped with that is there any connection between Tyler and the system they they integrate so yeah and like this system currently Imports into new world but my understanding is it does a better job it'll go into Ty press a button and it Imports the data same thing with the the um HR data that off of app track it seamlessly integrates which is another Frontline project any questions imagine that everything working together it was really it was great I was really proud of it was really proud of everybody um so that's why I was really excited when you asked for an update because I'm really

080proud of where we come I think this is huge so and feedback has been tremendously positive and a lot a lot of work goes into getting it I have no idea honestly before going into it how many different decisions we had to make but it was great so and it's nice to get the the feedback on something we invested in too so to like kind of hear how it went so really good thank you are we going to blend these even further together right now these products require different usernames and passwords that may be different from the staff you know Google usernames and passwords we're going to over the next two months make this through single sign on so that they won't even need another set of usernames and passwords they'll use their Google account

081they'll sign in once they'll click on um you on on front line and everything will be right there it's not going to prompt them again to sign in make it really really easy okay I think it's best if we take h i j and k as one bundle discussion because that's how it was handled in policy just so there's not confusion of what's happening with the polies but do you want to discuss it soon sure so this is um and Kim feel free to jump in this what you might recall what we're doing is we're trying to align um better with what is recommended by Shipman and Goodwin so we've um Kim did that beautiful crosswalk a couple of months ago and we've been through the policy committee looking at a series at a time

082to compare um you know what Shipman has what we don't and make sure that we've got all of Shipman's recommended policies and then look some of the more archaic ones that we have that the attorneys don't believe that we need anymore um also sort of at concurrently as legislative updates are brought to our attention we are taking a close look at some of the policies that we do have and that we're required to have and making sure that we are you know staying current and revising and updating those policies at the same time is that just about yeah I think so hi and J are the ones we're taken together right and so those basically all I thought she said okay right so I think I just touched on all those so you know there's

083a couple that we don't that we no longer need that policy committee decided that we no longer need at the recommendation of our attorneys and then there are some that we do need to have in our policy index um that we didn't as recommended by the attorne and the only comment I would like to add is the removal of these policies does not mean that we are removing adult education or violing by cultural education it just means that it falls under another policy or it's statutory and we don't actually need a policy so those programs are not being eliminated right and then there were some um updates to The Bullying law so we had to make sure that we were current with that and that's all reflected in your packet anybody have any questions on

084um page actually go to the The Bullying excuse me the bullying and save School clate plan in the policy meeting we talked about removing repeated and repeatedly from that paragraph right did we miss one no there was a lot of other language or did we we just adopt Shipman's period one we added our own section of Roman numeral for this one yeah yeah because there were updates that needed to be it was just easier to take the whole thing right for any other questions okay I need to ask the board if they would mind if I read a short public comment because in my error I forget when we're here that there's people on the zoom calls so during the public comment I did not ask if anyone on the zo had any public comment

085so someone has sent me a comment is it okay with everybody if I just read it quickly so that we have record this is from uh Jason laer and he just wanted to encourage the candidates running for office to attend tomorrow's Mee in greet and ask he also wants to know who gets and Aggregates the survey results for the survey sent out earlier this week end of last week thank you for letting me read that I'll have to be better about remembering people around the call talk about the faces I know I menine it seems to me but here I will make a note for myself in the future so thank you committee reports budget committee arment um budget yeah so we we got the reports on how we are financially which we're in good

086shape um and we have some things uh coming up uh next in the next few months got the we got to talk about the propane contract uh asss contract and elevator contracts uh besides our normal business so we got a lot a lot of items to review any questions does anyone want on facil and Technology want to discuss what was discussed at that meeting prob Ro window what we talked about correct yeah we did talk about the roof one of the things talked about the roof uh John gave us the the breakdown of going with different materials and um uh and various things so we did discuss that so we're just kind of we had some questions so we're waiting for more information timeline on the window window is uh that uh we'll be going

087out to bid in December on the Windows um and uh uh project start should be uh somewhere around the 20th of June I didn't say that I didn't say that word and uh substantial completion on August 30th any questions for facilities and Technology Improvement joh School Improvement uh there may be a paper supply chain problem but there is not an items for this committee supply chain Middle School uh Improvement plan last month went very well we learned a lot about going on and it's comprehensive report if you haven't had a chance to look at it yet it's it's in the packet for the committee last month please please look at it uh our meeting next week is um at logal Wetmore and we'll hear the report about logal Wetmore uh we'll hear Ali's miracles on

088the uh agenda item uh presentation meeting minutes presentations I mean um I went to the middle school today had a very good time there very very efficient meeting there we talked about the Washington DC field trip which was task we were tasked with and we will do that and uh just looking way ahead uh Mrs cedon December 1st we will be at your old stomping ground it'll be at for school so I think put you on the agenda for that to hear more you get to one more slide you get have three slides for them and we will hear about what's going on with your program so that's about all and I continue to appreciate the number of people who attend and participate in those in those meetings going very well thank you oh see

089we're moving on to the 2000s and anything else that comes along going well great discussion appreciate all the input and all the work building committee update so this was a lot of information that we received at the last building committee so what I thought we would do is provide it to the Board of Ed tonight and then give you guys an opportunity to look through it and then if you have any questions we can bring it back next month unless people have um specific question now but it's a lot to kind of absorb so we thought maybe it' be better to receive it and then discuss it next month um we'll also have additional information next month that we're kind of waiting on that didn't get finalized at the last meeting so we can kind

090of Encompass it all John why just as as a reminder if we could send this out with next month's packet too that might remind people and give people a chance to right so I'm sorry go ahead is this just is this something something that's um like a final report or is it what are we looking at no so what we had wanted to see and I think it's helpful because the graduation requirements changed at the state so we were trying to get a better understanding of what courses would fall within something that kids have to take to graduate so for the F future sorry future planning process that we knew in our minds what exactly would be needed okay so like you couldn't cut I'm just going to use English that's not something we would

091ever cut but you couldn't cut English space in the building because that's a graduation requirement okay so it's just kind of laying the foundation for the upcoming months of things and then as this moves forward we'll be bringing it to the board to discuss any curricular changes or anything that impact Board of Education okay so we just wanted the board to basically have that information we gathered at for building committee I think it's helpful for all of us with the changing graduation requirements yeah because they're going to change over the next couple of years too it's not you know straightforward as it's been for a very long time go ahead and some of this may come up as part of the school Improvement committee discussion on Pathways we have a Pathways update schedule so there

092there might be a chance to ask questions or discuss things there too and then um we have by next month an update from the like the meeting with the state we're hoping so yeah so that's kind of fig we can kind of Encompass everything yeah that's great and I just wanted to say like these help so much to see because some of the classes that are associated with some of the you know requirements I would have never I wouldn't have known that so it's really good and a lot of that's due to the change in the graduation requirements so that's why we thought it would be best to just put it on paper so that we could all see it and there'll still be overlap between some courses just so that that makes sense too

093but this identifies specific spaces that are needed as well yeah the amounts you need to because some subject areas there's more course requirements morees because multiple years any other question and also so after reviewing it if you have questions it might be a good idea to email me the questions if you know them in advance because some of the questions I may have to go to The Architects or uh some get to answer so if you have any you know that you know of Prior if you could just email them to me that would be great and that way if I don't have an answer I can figure out who may have that answer s i just one one last so um we had that special meeting I don't know where I am these days

094we had that special meeting right about the building and then that went to kind of the building committee right so I I know this is probably part of the outcome of that discussion but will we get like a recap of because I mean we kind of threw out some ideas on how to accommodate space right so the building committee basically decided they were going to Halt those discussions until this meeting with the state happens okay and then we'll bring that back to the next meeting to talk about I mean and the the work with the state may not be resolved in one meeting um so you know we'll keep moving at some point we'll make a decision if we're going to move forward without a resolution on that side or wait for a resolution um

095but we decided it was primature to start cutting some other spaces until they had initi meeting yeah okay thank you any other questions on thison report I think Mr Michael here did not reach out to him before but I did a little stalking um so I can have some fun facts um conferences are the week of November 8th this Friday October 29th is fall fund day so kids can wear kind of a festive attire and they can pay a dollar to wear their favorite hat or headband to benefit Veterans Day Veterans Day they're planning a schoolwide parade um last weekend they had a PTO Harvest Festival which was held out outside there was pumpkin decorating face painting potato sack races snacks and all the pictures looks like everyone had a blast do you know will

096there be a zoom link or something for the Veterans Day Parade that the board could maybe see yes Veterans Day Parade actually combines three buildings it combines loal W more Southwest and fors um once we have the parade route it'll be sent to you and it will be live on a stream as well as channel 22 so would you mind sending that to the board when you have the information absolutely as soon as great thank you um I have mine and Gary's um I'll start with mine and this was at the end of my report out regarding the Veterans Day Parade they're doing kind of what they're calling a reverse parade where the veterans are going to drive by the schools which is really cool something different um so that'll be fun to watch and

097I think is it Rob Simon that um is on the motor the I don't want to call it scooter he's going to lead it so that'll be fun um so Southwest and bogal PTO hosted an in-person family event they had hundreds of families that attended there were Games photo booths pumpkin painting everybody had a great time um the Kids Marathon that we heard about at the beginning of the meeting uh they had 35 students that ran together and they all wore their medals 35 of them were from Southwest they all wore their medals to school on Monday very proudly their weekly Home Room contest that I mentioned earlier I think in our September meeting um with passing the Dragon for the week is still going strong uh Mrs Bruno's class won the Dragon for this

098week the staff also participates at a smaller level they hand it off to each other um let's see the three since our last meeting were uh Laurel Laur Le mcguy cafeteria manager their head custodian Tom Alero and this week's uh Heather Stewart RBT has their dragon and all of it really kind of goes around the same concept of caring for self caring for others going above and beyond and just helping each other out and that's how they pass the dragon around um they had their second emergency fire drill last week the students were very responsible following all the rules um again promoting promoting the care for self care for others Mantra of Southwest School love uh picture day has been moved around a few times uh it's been I don't know if the other schools

099are facing the same challenges trying to find a space big enough for all the kids when gym isn't going on so they've decided it is going to be the 19th of November um and that's when Mr Maher will be at forb school so the gym will be open they don't have to worry about any of that who knows if there has to be retakes or God for there's a snow day right um 1029 Spirit day dress as your favorite author um which sounds like so much fun they there's going to be two assemblies again just to keep for social distancing um the dragon winners are going to be announced bus recognitions that they have will be announced and they will present the winner are you going to have a winner of the author dress up

100or is it just recognizing the different yeah favorite character be yeah I can't wait to see some of the authors um parent teacher conferences are the 9th 10th and 12th and there will be options for inperson and virtual and then um the Veterans Day Parade which we already talked about so that's the Southwest summary and let's see touring Ford I thought you had touring for some reason uh here this weekend touring Ford second and third graders went to the Kids Marathon at THS and completed the mile the final mile of the marathon there's a book fair this week parents are able to come and purchase books which they're doing right now teachers and classes made story book pumpkins this week families will vote on their favorite pumpkin during the book fair they have started pawsome

101rewards that must go with the tiger Applause is that it um we have started pum rewards students can earn cards for being safe responsible and respectful cards can be awarded in the classroom on the bus in the lunchroom recess hallways Etc students who earn will be entered into a raffle to win some great prizes uh let's see they're on the second cycle of what I need now um in addition to grade level wind blocks interventionists are able to support the kids in classrooms during reading workshops as well teachers are using grade level meetings time to collaborative collaboratively write weekly lesson plans that's a good idea maybe the all the schools could do that the higher levels too to save some time last month teachers spread positivity in the T touring Community each team of teachers

102chose a community partner to recognize and support some examples were torington fire department Susan Bethany the public library library and the bus company they should have won like those the award of the Year iPad training will take place on Election Day for all K and one teachers that's exciting Ali we are excited for this new technology resource for our students and staff for for school that's it thank you so at Forbes the student leadership began their meetings this month it was great seeing students were collaboratively and building their leadership skills through some team building activities the our chair shairs Miss Cleveland and Miss legasi are working hard to develop an extended Community within the forb school and they're proud and we're proud of the team's efforts Forbes PTO made a generous donation to our school's

103recess equipment and with Mr Bader's help they're investigating building a GaGa ball court outside for the students it is fantastic to have a wonderful partnership with our PTO community that is helping our students and our entire School community two weeks ago they began a whole school initiative to accentuate and acknowledge the positives of our Student Success we began a whole school weekly contest where classes can earn points for positive behaviors and attendance and at the end of the week the classes go into a raffle for a class reward through two weeks our attendance has improved by about 30% and discipline referrals have reduced dramatically that's a good thing forb is looking forward to our parent conferences coming up in November it is it was great to see our families come out strong last month during

104the open house and we look forward to continue to build our home to School connections even deeper they are also looking forward to honoring our veterans for Veterans Day Celebrations with classroom activities creating a schoolwide video montage a reverse parade with Southwest school and Bogle and sharing of thank you notes and letters to local agents agencies and VA hospitals good Stu I'll good stu um the Middle School the middle school is is going to uh do student L conferences this year on the 9th 10th and 12th okay uh the National Junior H Society is holding its induction ceremony for 8th grade due to covid on December 16th e8th grade members are involved with PTO food drive and spirit week to raise money for food p um the National Junior Honor Society will hold an induction

105ceremony for new seventh grade members in the spring as usual spirit week is going to be the second week of November uh TMS fall sport Sports programs are off through a great start and there's updates and highlights on the TMS Facebook page um T TMS PTO had their first meeting of the year and are actively planning events and fundraisers for the year uh and they're encouraging parents to join them for upcoming copy with principal event and virtual bingo bingo uh Thursday night for torington high school um as of the beginning of the month attendance was still averaging 90% progress reports have come out and quarter one ends on November 4th hard to believe we're almost there um on October 8th the school did a pink out school spirit day which culminated in special performances at

106that night's football game to erased awareness for breast cancer uh the high school had a college fair that was attended by over 250 parents students over 40 colleges and the military were representative were represented they also have had a career fair and a financial aident there was a haunted theater on October 22nd and we had many student athletes volunteer as mentors For the Kids Marathon on Sunday the 24th ongoing um THS students have the opportunity to receive free tutoring for math and science courses through a grant in partnership with North Northwestern pity College the students can get tutoring either during or after school hours and sign up online extracurricular programs are going strong fall Sports except for football are getting towards the end of their Seasons the volleyball team made it to the state tournament

107for the first time since 2017 and I will get better I will have more updates on other stes for next week a lot of time with the volleyball team um so coming up tomorrow night is haunted hallways from 5 to 700 this is held by the Leo club and it benefits fish it's for kids I believe up to age 10 um homecoming dances November 5th parent teacher conferences are on November 9th 10th and 12th there's a student faculty volleyball game on November 23rd which is a fundraiser for the volleyball program uh THS drama is working on a play called Puffs which will be opening on the first weekend in December and just as a side note the school governance Council and the torington high school poto are are looking for new members so if people

108are interested um you can contact principal Li verus or myself and we can point you towards the people you need to to thank you at Advance had its annual meeting on October whatever the first Thursday in October pass the budget just uh heard and saw the staff there got introduced to the board of directors and the other visitors from the U member district and I would have said something about the LEAP program but Sue covered that beautifully and I'm really happy with the roll out and going very well in so that's about it for the thank you action items um monthly financials including the budget report 6:30 2021 and the September 2021 Finance report entertain a motion to approve so Mo Nikki I'll second aren any discussion all those in favor hi still here you

109have a comment on the Tyler Technologies but I first want to entertain a motion to approve Tyler Technologies second second thank you just as a discussion item all in favor no we're going to discuss before we vote um so the budget committee had asked the superintendent to talk with the city about the Tyler Technologies which they did them and the city has requested that Tyler Technologies come out and present to the board of fin him um so just as a point of clarification um the Board of Education decides the software that the Board of Education uses and as long as it's compatible um with what their their requirements are for the audit um the decision is really ours on whether or not we want to roll out Tyler Technologies so we have two choices on

110this vote we can vote now to approve it or we can wait and have the presentation at boorder of Finance get their input and then bring it back to the board for approval so go ahead ni what was um the reason for them wanting the presentation I just wanted to gather more information um mayor was sharing that 20 years ago we went with new world and it was a consolidation and just trying to work together on a system that was that both could see and use and talk to each other kind of thing and at that time and this even came up during our meeting Ivy wasn't or the was infinite solutions was not even in existence it was really in an in in its infancy and that it was called something else at that

111time and then it was called something else after that so it kind of evolved and grew so I I think they just wanted more information um but I think that it is a little murky on who makes that decision so um getting that clarification is helpful just a follow up I guess to that um I think we saw on the list um I'm trying to find it right now but that some cities were using it right like I think John pointed that out so do you think of the intention is like maybe they would adopt like maybe it would be a full adoption in torington or did you they they might they seemed interested Lynn actually shared the districts the cities where they are both using the system so it's a possibility I I think

112it was an information gathering I think this is a question for we already know it's compatible with their software right right yes so then if we know it's compat compatible the decision is ultimately ours as to what we pay for what we use correct they were most concerned about bank reconciliation and really making sure that that capability was there so that they could do that piece because we do have the One bank account so that was very important to them but Lynn confirmed today in writing from Tyler that it's seamless and they're able to do that I think that's clear that it seamless all across the board it's the same company techologies right I rather than put it off for another month or more we should probably vote on it right there an advantage to

113getting it rolling sooner rather than later the more time you have to um transfer all the information the better accuracy you'll get because you're not rushing we aren't thinking of doing it for this year that we're actually inbody understands that you need a full year or more a system like that to switch right any other questions go ahead did we um I guess schedule that meeting like are we talking like it's not going to happen until March because of schedules or have we even investigated any of that like are we talking it's just pushing up to next month's meeting or in terms of the city well yeah in ter ter of getting TI technology yesterday or the day before I can't remember sometime this week we met yeah and um that was the first time

114that they were hearing this information right so they were saying possibly having Lynn present or possibly having a representative from Tyler Technologies come out to the board of Finance to hear the information about the system but no date no time was really given we just as a straw pull see if people want to move on this item tonight or move it to November understand that we may not have the information in November but would you prefer to vote on it tonight or wait John I prefer to vote on it tonight V tonight yes tonight November Tonight Tonight November so all those in favor of approving Tyler technology system I those oppos motion Carri entertain a motion to approve the elementary dismissal traffic proposal so second discussion discussion did we decide how we were um paying

115for this I requested that we take the money from the capital plan where we were going to put in the okay um curbing because there's honey there that should be for the curving we could some of that to do this project okay thank you any other questions all those in favor I enter entertain a motion to REM remove the adult education policy but not the [Music] program all those in favor hi hi hi entertain a motion to remove the bilingual bicultural educational policy but not the program second all those in favor anded are you in favor yep entertain a motion to approve the policy manual revisions which is the numbering 1 through five second all those in favor entertain a motion to approve the update to the bullying and safe School climate plan policy number

1165010 second any discussion all those in favor I entertain a motion to approve the Board of Ed regular meeting minutes there remely okay discussion so Mercy can you amend the minutes to include l so who second that I thank you will you guys withdraw your first and second and resubmit with the amendment of adding second all those in favor I I I I'm a motion to approve the Board of Education special meeting minutes of October 4th 2021 second any discussion all those in favor and I um Iain I was okay perfect sorry about that one exstension okay entertain a motion to receive the committee meeting minutes okay nck all those in favor thank you by entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda second Micky any discussion all those in favor I [Music] I items

117for upcoming agenda have monthly Financial items for uping are you looking for is that an open yeah let's first get the ones that we have to have on financial mon financials budget timeline yes more policies so what did you have oh um it well probably before that before our next meeting but an update on the buses if it's ongoing for contining to see ongoing problems getting regular updates and then um with ref reference to the surveys that went out to the families and the staff if we could get an update on see the results of that okay comments are the good of the order Ed I'm GNA start with you because I can't see your face I yep I'm here uh I have I have nothing for tonight um things are a little bit hectic

118right now everywhere and I really appre appreciate all of the all the data especially um that folks were able to to bring to us that's all I have thank you than you thank you um thank you janne for your update I love data makes me happy um it's great to see the kids recognition I think that is so exciting about Leah it'd be awesome if she could come speak at one of these meetings kind of once they get up and running and just give an update because that's really cool and seeing all those volunteers I know my kids when they see the big kids they're so excited so it's so cool to see so many um I wanted to thank the parents that came to talk about some of the tough things and they did

119it in a professional way which a lot of boards can't say these days so I want to thank them um but I also want to acknowledge that I view torington as an open place a place that accepts everyone we need to teach our kids about that we need to teach them the acceptance to be kind to anyone and everyone regardless of race gender sexual orientation and everything else that makes each of us special and unique and if Gathering that information and a survey helps us to get closer to that level of kindness and then thank you good meeting thank you it's a great meeting we got a lot of ACC I thought we going be here much later I'm excited for uh touring for families with this new Drive the new driveway and the transportation

120that's been an issue since the build was built when I went to school there second so that's very exciting and Lyn and Kim I'm excited for you and the new programs and thank you for bringing those to us thank you to everybody thank you and I want to add I'd love seeing when they were doing the lon reports of the kids from those schools it would be great if we can do that like every meeting just to have a picture from the school of anything you know it just just makes it more real two things I enjoy the emperor Jones component at the beginning of the meeting and uh also please for anyone who's watching or anyone who's here might be forgetting it the referendum question on the ballot on Tuesday upper leftand corner we

121need to move that money so we can do the Middle School roof with without having to worry about where the money thank you and then I just have because I'm going to address it because it's happened a couple of times now so we have procedures protocols that we follow relative to public comment and if we want to change the way we handle public comment then we should bring that to um School Improvement or policy it gets very tricky the public needs to know know either we're going to interact with them or we aren't going to interact with them and I don't think that we should be making decisions based on what public speakers say so I'm going to ask that we not do that and if we're going to want to make a change the

122board should unilaterally make a decision that we either do want to interact with the public or don't but we're supposed to represent everyone and we should be giving everyone the same equal opportunity um regardless of what they're coming to speak about or what they're here for um there isn't supposed to be a back and forth and if we want to change that I think we can um but if we don't change it we should not be making decisions based on who speaking um that's the first thing secondly I want to wish all the candidates left on Tuesday um regardless of who people vote for please exercise your right to vote um it's an important part of local government um so please get out there and vote on Tuesday and lastly uh thank you for the

123administration everybody in the buildings I keep hoping this is going to C down and we can say we're back to normal but each month seems to be getting um a little bit more intense um so thank you for showing up every day and um kind of jumping when everyone's requesting everyone to be doing a do things at one time go for the teachers parents secretaries central office princip um all of our special ed staff it's been a tough time um and I know that all of us on the board greatly appreciate uh your willingness to continue to work with all of us through this m and you know John and I have been sitting in on the dph calls um with the superintendence and um it's you know it's getting frustrating so thank you also

124for trying to work with these other groups uh to kind of push on some of this stuff to get to something that makes more sense for our schools well thank you for that all right future meetings Wednesday November 3rd at bogal Wetmore School Improvement policy Wednesday November 10th M Avenue we have facilities and budget and then Wednesday November 17th uh regular Board of Education meeting so because of Thanksgiving our Board of Ed meeting is a week early and then Believe It or Not it'll be thanks to Second All In