001e e e uh Marissa can you moved all the way down there you can take the attendance right all committee is here with the exception of Mr uko and as usual a lot of people and we welcome that crowd always uh approval of the agenda will someone move to approve the agenda please so move second discussion all those in favor I we have an agenda uh minutes so mov second discussion anyone find anything should be noted all those in favor we have minutes uh Josh anyone out there in cyber land uh no there is not okay and is anyone here got to consider himself herself a part of the public to speak which case I don't have to read the paragraph and now we move into the actual agenda which is which is sure only
002three items tonight one of which will take next to note time a couple of which which is good though because we'll have the time to actually get into some of these things without policy following us and I think we will start with Forbes and Southwest school report Kristen you visited Southwest would you like to say something about your visit before sure I was uh at Southwest on Monday uh met with Dr B was reading day um just let me know next time because I'll come and and I'll read for Southwest as well i' read for Forest today um yeah I continue to be impressed by Southwest and just how neat and organized and efficient and clean and the use of space as someone who has OCD I can really appreciate that so um I got
003to see some guest readers um Mr Wilson was one of them um and actually what was really cool was there was a Spanish reader there reading to A group of uh Spanish um students so that was very nice to see um that they were able to um have a reader just for them um what else oh the food program the food scraps that was really cool so there's an animal rescue not far from where you live and the kids they know that they have to finish or eat what they can on their plate and anything additional goes in a bin and they're learning about um you know the the rescue animals and they're giving the food to the pigs and how many pounds is it 18,000 something no it feels that way when I haul
004it just told I'll be hauling it tonight um after today we just hit 1600 lbs been donated 26 days so that's that's really cool and it's it's teaching that the kids about the animals too so that's nice um and yeah I had a really nice visit it was it was great to see that the teachers in action and they all seem to be having a great time and the kids are respectful and learning great visit thank you and I got to say Kudos because no is here I think I saw she orchestrated the whole read aloud and all the teachers pitched in and invited family relatives to come and help out as well um and it was great to have our Spanish classes so don really she's the rock star in this so thank you
005thank and Bill and I visited Forbes on Friday and had a very pleasant tour of the building Mr kin walked us through showed us a couple of programs and it was just as always and it's not that it isn't true every time I say it but I say it every time you you walk through our buildings and it's just things are things are happening people are learning they there's purposeful activity going on all over the place and it's just a very pleasant place to be and it's good to hear about all the all the good things that are that are happening we will hear more about both schools as we as we go through and have a chance to talk about those and ask about those uh Bill do you have anything to add uh
006yeah I uh I do uh I was impressed with with what I saw we spent some time with uh with um uh with Mr Klein he was telling us about the students and the and and and the uh the progress that that that they've been making from from year to year the most interesting thing I saw was this was it well we saw uh was a self-contained classroom with about 14 students one teach one teacher and they were uh working on on on um on on on on on different skills which was uh which was real uh really uh really impressive uh they U they they were um they were working when we were in they were working on their uh on their vertical vertical whiteboards they were doing some reading and some math um
007one of the things that struck me was the creativity of the teachers we uh one of the rumors we went into um they was was during math and they were talking about and and trying to figure out probabilities by throwing dice which which which which I thought was an interesting interesting way to um way to do that and um another room we were in um they they were working on on tenses in English uh uh pres present past and future and and make and uh developing sentences uh using using those using those tenses the first time I so was it was the first time that I that I've been in in um any any of the classrooms here and I I I was was really impressed thank you speaking for somebody who was there yester
008night was quite a celebrity too well known I just met everybody in the building too so it was great to see terrible to go any place build he knows everyone everyone knows them before I turn it over to Maryanne and Michael I should have given you the chance to you said you wanted to introduce people who were yeah we we introduced we're so happy to have our new directors of humanities and stem we did do a shout out and an formal introduction at the recent full board meeting but both of our directors are here Mary guide raise your hand is kayada 12 Humanities and Linda Tran in the bright pink is math and science so thank you very much both of you for being here tonight and welcome aboard they've already they've been here a
009month right it was a month on Monday um they started February 3rd and we just like immersed them they have been doing a a world tour if you will around torington they've spent several days in each School they've met the staff they've gotten to know our climate and culture a little bit and I think you know Joanne and I met with them yesterday and I think we're ready to rock and roll right yeah so thank you thank you for being here thank you and welcome and now Michael and Mar your turn thank you so I know Mr K's typical Mantra to the point and uh we will do our best to to keep the abbreviated version but we've got a lot of great things to share in terms of the progress at both schools and
010we're excited about the vision that we're having right now so thank you guys for the opportunity to kind of share and brag on Southwest and for progress okay um so this one obviously just shows the leadership team of Sean caviston is our supervisor student services that we share between both of our buildings and our work with everything geared to our portra of graduate so like when we met with our teachers this year our goal initial goal setting things how's it aligning with our portrait of a graduate and we've been doing work as an administrative team and our Port graduate work so just quick Mission Vision and values I think it's always important to to ground our work in the in the things that we believe in and the direction that we're headed truth be told
011it all aligns with the p work that maryan just talked about and we're having conversations with our kids with our staff and especially with our parents on a daily so it's been helpful so here's a couple of the things that we've been really striving for and working towards um again I'm not going to sit here and read off of a a slideshow for you but a couple things that I do want to point out especially down at the bottom the last two years Southwest and fors have both been schools of Distinction for their growth um I know Southwest for math last or two years ago and then for us for ELA growth last year for us I can tell you that it meant that collectively we were 37 out of about 1100 schools in the
012state in terms of student growth our kids are growing at a rapid rate and we are very proud of it I know that um Southwest had similar growth in Mass side um two years ago which is what got them into that same boat but it just means that the work that we're doing is translating to kids and it's really having an impact on them too we were in the bottom half of the state the year before so we had a huge to me I think that there a lot of again great continuums of support here in torington especially our schools couple that I just want to point out um that transl uh transition class approach that's something that we're piloting here at Forbes that Mr Knight kind of referenced as well with the 14 kids
013that we have what we were able to do is at forbs we redeployed our staffing allotments a little bit and looked at our students based upon need and we found kids that had always been struggling always been in intervention and never able to kind of hit some of those grade level marks yet and while they weren't necessarily so far behind grade level that we were at risk of retaining they were right on the cusp and one of the things that we've done is um Mr Knight's dear friend Mr Bader um again one of those rock stars that has been just shining the light on he's been working hard with these kids in his class they came in averaging about the 20th percentile in both reading and math he already has them up to the 40th
014percentile they've already gained a full Year's growth in math they've gained a full Year's growth in reading and that's in a half of a year so when we look at that growth and we translate it they're on track to make two years growth in one year absolutely incredible he's closing gaps and getting kids back on grade level and getting them back ready for Middle School in a way that we could have only hoped for about a year ago um so we're really excited about that piece what we did is we just limited the class size we limited some of the distractions but we also made sure that intervention blocks and his support around him continuously wrap around kids so you might go into the classroom and instead of seeing all 14 you might see five
015because he's got nine or so that are off at different intervention groups in Pockets but it's working and I think that to me is the most important part is that and I know it happens at Southwest too it's what I need it's the instructional coaching it's the transition it's all of these things that are connected in together in terms of a scheduling approach that make sure that we're thinking about about kid first and it truly makes a huge world of difference can't stress enough the work that our instructional coaches do um they are a godsend they are true instructional leaders they are modeling really um Dynamic lessons they are putting teachers on coaching Cycles to improve instruction strategies um once again we thank the district for even getting the vertical whiteboard so now we can
016see learning in action and see the thinking classrooms it's really cool to see the kids engaged and taking ownership of where they're going it's really cool so here I'm going to get into a little bit of data and it's just some of the numbers um the best way to read this is to kind of stay on color and then within the the grade level reference if that makes sense so Forbes is the blue columns and Southwest is the green columns the beginning of the year left to right um so for example that 44 in the top left for grade four Forbes we had 44% of kids reading on grade level at the beginning of the year in fourth grade at the midyear point we already have 55% of kids reading on grade level up 11%
017from the beginning of the year that tells me we're making a huge Headway the fact that we're on Pace to have 20% more kids reading on grade level by the end of the year I am ecstatic about when you look at the percentage in that next column over that 66% that means 66 6% of kids are making their personal growth targets it doesn't matter if you're above grade level below grade level and the typical prog or the typical projection is 50 so for us to be at 66 68 52 65 it it's really incredible to see that we continue to exceed some of those expectations across the board um here at Forbes and also at Southwest too when you look at the next column over the part that as a parent that I see that
018next little part that's in the parentheses is the average amount of growth per kid so in a half a year that number should be 0.5 so when you look the average kid in fifth grade in Reading both at Southwest and at Forbes have grown by a full grade levels growth in a half a year when you think about the improvements that we have the amount of kids that we now have working at grade level when you're looking at it on my half of the chart you're looking at about 40 to 50% of kids now I'm at 50 to almost 70% you know like we are making a huge Headway here and it's only making a bigger difference for us preparing the kids as they go up to the middle school and high school and getting
019them ready for the path that they have ahead now we get into our SM Smarter Balance reading in a math and our percentage at each the gr little benchmarks um it's hard to see it it's very hard to see these numbers and I have a hard time see but there been ups and downs so um sue you brought up a good point several years ago where toron used to be way at the top of the scales with all these U assessments and things have changed over the years and we've had a lot of things happening in Co and we're going to get back there again though because I think the fact that we've invested in some really good curriculum while we're investing in our coaches and our structural models our testing scores are going to
020continue to climb and move up we have we have a ways to go and we're going to get that the part that I would love to add on to that too is it's not unique to torington too look at the state look at where the state was um that black line is that covid Gap that you had where the two years weren't reported on so if you look back to preco the state was at 55 almost 56% kids at grade level now as a state we're at 48 49% but again we continue to close that gap on getting more and more kids at level um and again the same is happening in math too and I know that we're having conversations around instructional materials and as an admin team we had some great conversations around
021that today and I know our instructional coaches and um OTL group as well are having those great conversations um but we see good things too um we see great things in our classroom in terms of the work that kids are doing and I think it's anchored in the standards and it's anchored in the expectations of what we want kids to be able to do to me that's the most important part and um I'm going to shout out to my staff right now for the first time the last two years Forbes was above the state average and and that had not happened way back when um you know when I think back to even pre that 201819 and you go back way before then Forbes was in the 10th percentile statewide right now we are in
022the 60th percentile give or take and we are moving in the right direction but a lot of that is because we' got the right resources in play we've got teachers that are all moving in the right direction together and a lot of it as marann talked about is our instructional coaches too they push the needle every single day for our team Michael can you just share some of the engagement that you're having with families so oh because that's I think one of the the key Parts too is that we've had some great conversations with our families I've had about 40 to 45 meetings over the last three four weeks with our parents we're bringing parents in to talk about where the kids are at and having honest open conversations and talking about what it looks
023like in terms of their star scores their state scores their local unit scores right in front of us and our parents are really appreciative because our team does a lot of great work and they've been working at some parent communication reports that go home now with every unit assessment that have been tied in with our Ela and our math assessments as well but the best part is that there were times last year when I would have a meeting with a parent and say hey so you know Johnny got a a 64 on the the reading test did and they would be more surprised than anything else but now I'm having these conversations with parents and I'm saying hey so you know we got a a 52 on the most recent math test oh I know
024and they struggled here here and here parents are more engaged they're more in the noest what's going on but the best part is we're setting them up for Success at the middle school and high school and we're having that vertical conversation because truth be told when we're looking at kids that are even stagnating they might not be doing well on their unit test but they've got tremendous upside in their score and scores on state test and they're scoring in the 80 90th percentile but then they're scoring like a 65 on their unit test because they're going hey I don't really have to do too much we're bringing them down and actually having conversations around you've got potential here and we're reminding parents and having great conversations around Pathways up at the high school in terms
025of Yukon courses and advanced courses of what that trajectory looks like and what that sets them up for in terms of the college pathway too and we're having conversations around things like SAT scores and PSA scores if you're in the 90th percentile here you're most likely to have somewhere in like the 13 1400s on the SATs and parents are leaning in because we're able to articulate that piece out but then the interesting conversation comes into like hey this is the piece of work yeah I understand that it might have gotten you a two on the Rapport card however when you go up to the middle school you're probably going to get like a 60 on that and they go wait what do you mean I said they didn't elaborate they didn't give the details they
026didn't stay on T on topic on on this piece here and they're missing this this and this the parents go oh yeah I can see that because this is what a a sample might look like and the kid goes but when you connect it back to things that make sense and are the reality that we all grew up with parents really resonate and it's been very productive so thank you sir thank you okay you want yeah so this is again where Southwest and forbs have shined the last two years this is our growth and this is what we really hold our hat on we understand that our kids come in from different backgrounds and different expectations but when you look at the state growth targets and percentage of growth achieve or Target achieved the state's
027hovering around 60% on both Ela and math the last two years Forbes has been around 75 um in both Ela and math and Southwest has even cracked 80 a couple times too with the mass side there the work that we're doing is moving the needo for herid and we're seeing that across the board both on our local assessments our unit scores are higher this year than they were last year for year two of a reading curriculum and program we're seeing about 10% higher scores across the board and we're also seeing it on our store scores we're seeing our state scores all of our information is kind of connected and it feels good that we're heading in the right direction this talks about our chronic absentees over the years we look back I mean back at
028201 18 19 year and you just look at the visual you know you need to see the numbers we were low then then went very high especially throughing those Co years which was very challenging and we're trying to get these kids back in the classroom get uh families being more comfortable sending their children to school our leap Grant has been a godsend sending teams into homes getting more these home visits um we have a I'm going to brag about a student who had well over 80 absences last year and has this four days this year did you say 80 zero yeah Y and has done remarkably well loves coming to school chrism is 10 or more right what's what is 10% 10% of trans 18 days give or take and what Maryann just said doesn't
029happen without a child feeling welcome and loved right to come to school yeah so that's the that's a special sauce and then saying to the family I gotta get to school I got which is really cool so come far we've had a lot of success lot of individual success stories on attendance we have some more to still work on um so this slide is our uh RTI or response to intervention process so um our interventionists work very closely with our teachers and our students we look at the data and we div IDE up the grouping to see where how to best service our students so this this year grade four 57 students to be in service today in grade five is 42 um 31 of those 57 are meeting goal the SPG 27 grade five
030the ones that in we had to increase support based on our last data team meetings in grade four we had to add four more students to get a little more extra support and five students in grade five but then to um decrease sport where they're back in the general classroom more often for that tier one um RTI we're pleased with those numbers that 16 in grade four and 20 students in grade five so we it's heading in the right direction we have 16 students in grade four and 12 and grade 5 that are currently in the SST process where we're it's you know when some kids go out there's more coming in that's just how it works there's a lot of kids who um we work very closely with one student in um fourth grade
031has qualified for special education we have one currently in the referral process based on the work that we've been doing all the testing and then we've had two that um did qualify for special Educational Services after going through all the tiers of intervention and support so the the process works and once again those interventionists work like crazy and Kristen got to kick out of their classroom because it's three teachers in that one classroom so we call it the Threes Company classroom and uh they service our kids really well and they know those kids they know them to hold and at Forbes we've got very similar numbers in terms of percentages but the part that I just want to kind of stagnate on and stay there for a second look at that top line that means
032that collectively there's about 110 kids in my building that's received intervention support through the first six months of school not only are they receiving in just one cycle many of them are receiving in for two and three Cycles you're talking on average their case loads are 30 to 35 kids per cycle they're servicing a ton of kids it is a huge piece of why we have the huge growth and why we have more kids working at grade level today than we did yesterday and that's part of the magic sauce of what's going on can you just describe what a day in the life of an interventionist because I don't know folks they start their day at 9:00 they go back to back to back I believe they have nine sessions where they have 30 minute
033blocks it goes 9 to 9:30 9:30 to 10 10 to 10:30 and they go over and over and over and continue to work with they do get breaks they do get their contractual get PR time they have all the things that they're asked to do but a lot of the scheduling that they asked for and especially um I I know one people they said Mike I just want to go back to back to back to back because I want to maximize my time here and if I have 10-minute blocks or 5 minute interruptions in between my sessions it means that if you piggy back those together that's one less group and I don't want to serve one less group I want to serve one more group and that's the mindset that we have here and
034I know over at Southwest it's the same but it's all about kid first and when you think about those 110 kids that we've been able to get I have roughly 310 kids in my building four or five you're talking a third a third of this building goes through intervention support and there's no Stig too it's not about a an I got your a look at this it's about what do you need that I can do to help you and teachers are filling skill gaps left R Center and exping the the for our kids RTI is not that is only for regular headed students right correct so it's even more impressive really because you have 310 kids at a 15% prevalence rate that's like 260 270 regular kids you're reaching over 40% of them in both
035schools in their rotation so really you are getting to a lot of the kids and when you look at both mine and maran's SPG the percentage of kids is supposed to be about 50 we're both cranking away at 75 to 80% of kids hitting their individual targets and goals which means it's moving the needle not just in the classroom but also for them wholeheartedly across the board what's SPG uh student yeah percentage of growth the other impressive part is that you removed the the stigma when half the kids are doing it you know when you're reaching so many people it's not that little Johnny got pulled out or Jeff got pulled out or it's it's normal for these kids now 100% And The the part that I would say that really speaks to me as
036an educator too when I first got here four years ago the the kid the the high or the highest kid that we put in intervention because of the number of kids that we had in terms of like volume would have been like the 18 15 percentile now I'm able to reach somebody at the 35th percentile 30 80 uh 38th percenti 40 percenti they're not yet at grade level but the skill gaps that I'm closing are a whole lot closer to being at grade level and that's what's also getting more and more kids over that threshold too which I absolutely love but it's that continuation from K to one to two and continues to move forward for us this is our Behavior referral data um I appreciate Michael broke it down by the months between the
037past two years so you can just see the the drops from last year to this year which is wonderful I know Southwest we have dropped 40% in discipline this year um I will also like to add that uh when we keep track of our data our in our building we really stress that the teachers enter the minor referrals as well because that's part of our Behavior team data process processing to start looking at um students who may have Behavior referrals that we have to look at that is interrupting the learning too and what can we do to get them to help in the resources so when you enter data into Swiss you can do Majors which is just managed by the principles that's like the uh reach that level and we enter that data is
038Major behaviors or minors is teacher enter data so this is a reflection of all the data that sense it does and Forbes we're entering both as well and ly I think we're excited on both schools I we're both seeing a downward trajectory in terms of behaviors but kids are engaged in their work so it's great to see and it goes back to the coaching and the instructional strategies and there's less interruption in learning I think kids feel more successful right as Learners even and I know this is about grades four and five but even when we visit kindergarten in first grade and they're actually reading a book and they're reading it out loud and they're so excited you know to say look at me I'm a reader I can read you know and it really
039does have an impact on their social situation so again we've talked a lot about all of these things whether we're talking about coaching whether we're talking about intervention EL support I know Miss pron is here tonight and our team at Southwest and Forbes are both doing great things um I think we just got hot off the presses at 20 or so of our 50 here at fors have tested out because they've done so well on their last links testing and um again not final numbers nothing that we're going to report on officially but we're excited to see and the mental health Team the attendance team that maryiam was talking about with leap that collaborative planning time with our coaches has been huge um meetings exactly and to me that last one that Sue asked about
040earlier that that parent Outreach piece that we've talked a lot about turning gears here at Forbes we turn the student gear get them moving and get them shaking we talked about the teachers with getting them with the instructional strategies in the new curriculum but a lot of that next gear that we're starting to turn are the parent gears too and get the parents into to have those conversations because when we fully wrap around both here at here at school and also at home it's making a world the difference y so just having fun a lot of great events over the last couple days thousandth day over there we had a basketball game where Mr Wilson thinks that he beat the teachers but again we we have fun and I think at the end of the
041day we we see great things in our buildings we we have a lot of smil but most importantly the work that our kids is are doing is moving the for this will be our kiddos having fun um once you can see the vertical boards on the far Lev corner with the kids um working together collaborative on that was a Ela lesson I believe that I was watching um below is a school spirit day uh we have I got to give our kids credit they're climbing the rope in gym class God I hated that in elementary school but the kids love doing that they get up there and they tap that ceiling so um they love that uh our music students it's so nice to have our fifth grade ensembles our Orchestra working there um Mr
042Marl has done a great job he came on board late in the year but we they oh my gosh he's so talented so the kids just love working with him and aim to please him and there's more kids working together in the classroom and then we did a shark tank type challenge also where the when kids had to present their uh business proposals and got to get PA money so that was fun too thank you very much I will exercise chair prerogative and start with with a question and a comment the comment is on that transition grade that I saw the bill and I saw uh and that really is the spirit of the social promotion policy yep that's why we did it y make sure that kids are functioning at the level they're supposed
043to be at and if they aren't there are a lot of things you can do in that program to me it was an example of a very good idea with the right people Staffing it I know the question about the fast Academy is well who's going to be teaching and there are many teachers who do very well whose students do very well uh at at the level of kid we're talking about approach that's necessary and if you get people who are made for those programs not a problem it's it's good for everyone my question is okay all these great things are happening and next year we're moving all the fourth and fifth grades how are we going to keep this going it's it's going to be wonderful right it's going to we're going to have
044everybody in one place we're going to keep sixth grade in this mix which is going to Sol in my opinion it's going to solve many many problems um we can use the resources that we have the instructional resources in a more efficient way because all the students are going to be Under One Roof I don't know if you have anything to add but that's kind of where I'm at I think the the vision of the district in terms of painting that picture for curriculum painting that uh picture for instruction has moved the needle for our kids right I think when you look at the work even around some of our PD days that we had recently up at the high school it was fantastic watching the southwest side and the forb side collaborate in terms
045of instructional materials both in ela and math and I think when you put these great people together it's only going to make it that much more of a Powerhouse for for but being Under One Roof not splitting staff sharing staff scheduling is a challenge when you share people uh coaches are split so there's a lot that being Under One Roof is going to make AIG and there's really bright spots in both four five buildings and if they come together we can learn from each other right and replicate all of the great things that are happening in both places so that all kids have that experience we have a our teachers part of their goals this year was that make sure they got into peer classrooms to see their colleagues teaching and other instructional strategies and
046it's been great because you leave there so invigorated and excited about what's happening so I just see that growing in a different school yeah I'm too worried about the teachers I'm I'm worried about the The Talented administrators who've got these programs started and going and running well and we'll have to make sure that we don't lose anything in the transition and the translation to to a new building but I'm sure we'll figure that out be ashamed to lose any part of this yeah we don't we can't lose momentum at all agreed anyway uh committee questions comments great presentation thank you um I loved visiting Southwest so thank you for the hospitality there and of course Forbes is has a special place in my heart um as a torington native I mean I've lived here jeez
047be 45 years God help me um I'm just so proud of our schools um and and I wish more people could see the great things that our administrators our teachers our Paras our coaches everyone is doing um because it it really is remarkable um and it's a testament to your leadership so I I thank you for that um and um I just couldn't be more impressed with the presentation tonight so thank you my my kids are lucky to be in this system even though they're out of that we're lucky to have the teachers we absolutely we are other committee members yeah uh great uh um it was it was a great um great presentation um I really enjoyed being um being here being here at Forks the other day and getting and getting to see
048um different classrooms and and and different grade levels because each each one that we went into was um was was was doing something different and the the um the teacher and the students were definitely engaged with one another and uh as I said ear earlier just a um just a creativity I you know I I wouldn't have you know I I I I I wouldn't have thought to to to work on probabilities you using how how many times you you you throw that I thought that was a I thought that was a a a a terrific strategy to teach it and I was um I was um as as I said earlier I was really impressed with with the with um with with the self-contained classman and um and and and and and and and
049all all all that went on and um in in um in engagement between the the teacher and and the students who were who were U not not necessarily working on the same thing and and both the the student and and and the teacher being uh being able to keep it straight so you you know I'm you know I'm I'm really happy that I that I had the opportunity to to u to go through some of the classrooms there committee members or board M questions or comments one quick one when we move fourth and fifth to there Intermediate School will that help the sixth grade with Benchmark Benchmark it's is sixth grade it's kind of its own I want to say it's own orphan but do you find that do you think we're going to have
050an improvement in sixth grade because now everybody in the building is using the same materials and the same more collaboration yes we rolled it out in sixth grade this year and what we were able to do was reassign one of our four or five instructional coaches to grade six to go up there and just help with the initial year one implementation because this is a very different way of teaching for folks who are used to a middle school model so they're having sort of this initiation um a maiden voyage with with Mrs Martin um and thank you to Don paluto who is straddling Forbes in Southwest so that we can make this happen but yes they're getting there we're going to be able to do all the PD in one place as uh Michael just
051mentioned yes we envision that it's it's going to be because we're going to have our coaches up there it's going to be great and our four or five teachers will be in year three so yeah so the hope would be that we'll see this fantastic result kind of carry itself forward into sixth grade oh I fully that to happen I also see better growth this year in our classrooms than they did the year one of the program too so our unit tests are 10% higher on so our students are more but they also had the year prior's learning experience in The Benchmark program so some of it's the student and some of the teacher if that makes sense too so I I think the combination the longer that we continue with and the more consistency
052that gets out through it's only going to breed better results thank you other board members or committee members okay I don't do wait time the way Michael does so we're done with this thank you very much great presentation and as the pile of Kleenex bills in front of no no no keep them there it's a good indication need get you out of here to keep you health keep everybody else healthy yeah Sean's measuring this by time here your pile when the pile gets so high joh ending it yeah to keep my to myself now we move on to the World Language present it's my pleasure to welcome and introduce Katherine hus um Catherine is a and she can tell you a little bit about herself but she is one of our world language teachers at
053torington high school and we have been having an ongoing conversation with Katherine and her colleagues for a couple of years about sort of a vision for what World Language could look like in torington right so what you're going to hear tonight from Katherine is really more philosophical and aspirational um because there are clearly are budgetary implications Mrs ceden has actually been in conversation with folks from across the state of Connecticut about exciting things in the world language realm and you know we now have as you know more than 50% of our kids speak Spanish right so or a a language other than English um so anyway with I I don't want to speak for you Catherine but thank you for coming and sharing all of this I don't know it's kind of exciting to think
054about the possibility yes very so yeah thank you my name is Katherine hos I'm a Spanish teacher at tton high school and also the World Language department chair um and as you said I'm excited to share with you and grateful for the opportunity to kind of share um a vision of potentially expanding our world language access to our students so I'm going to kind of go over the research that's out there the ways it would benefit our students and where we might go in the future so so I wanted to go over currently what our program looks like in torington public schools so at the middle school our sixth graders currently receive um a trimester of either Italian or Spanish um some of them received one of each um this is more of an exploratory
055course same as in seventh grade um in e8th grade there's no longer the trimester courses but there are about 97 students right now who receive a full year of either Italian or Spanish and that gives them um a credit going into the high school so they would actually start at level two um and then at torington high school we have Spanish and Italian in levels one two three and four and then we offer Yukon ECE courses for Yukon 4 and five we offer Spanish for Spanish speakers courses at level one and two and then we have people places and languages for both Spanish and Italian can you just describe that a little bit so folks understand what our people places and languages course um is still focuses on language but has more of a cultural
056um exploration to it than our traditional level one courses So currently um in Connecticut every graduating um student needs one World Language credit um and then fouryear colleges and universities if a student is interested in pursuing that route like to see two to three years of the same language studied so I wanted to go over some benefits of increasing world language teaching and learning um in torington public schools and kind of the three main benefits um and then some other benefits as well so academic achievement is one of the main benefits so starting World Language um learning at the elementary level has been shown to increase um how students do in their achievement and other disciplines including their reading and math scores it also has been shown that students who are um learning more than
057one language are in an ER bilingual education that their cognitive processes are benefited and then also any student who is learning another language um has been shown to have a more positive attitude towards the world outside their own so there are economic benefits to being multilingual so employers are relying more and more heavily on their employees who know more than one language especially a language um that is like Spanish or Chinese um and so they tend to earn $2 to $3,000 more than their peers who are monolingual um and then I also wanted to point out here that they also tend to excel more in the workplace because they can communicate with more people they have access to more information and they're able to create products that reach a larger audience um in the workforce
058um it also is a huge benefit so nine out of 10 employees employers excuse me this is from a study from 2019 um rely on employees who have an acquisition in a language besides English um and that's only been increasing and then 56% of employers say that the demand for um multilingual employees will increase over the next five years so again this was from 2019 so I think we could probably say it's even more permanent now um and then students who are College Bound there have been multiple studies that have shown that they outperform students who um have taken at least four years of language study it's been shown that they outscore their peers who have not had that um Opportunity by in the verbal section and the math section they outscore their peers and
059on all the sections about by 100 points they outscore their peers from the SATs um and then I thought this was interesting students who studied four or five years of foreign language scored higher on the verbal section than students who studied that many years of any other subject so I wanted to talk a little bit about the seal by literacy which is something that we're super proud to have at torington high school thanks to Joan ceden um she brought it to our school in 2022 thanks to our kids yeah absolutely um but the skill by literacy is on Mark of Honor for torington high school students and it provides them with a credential that um it's to celebrate multilingualism it shows their proficiency and another language besides English and it's a credential that they can
060put on their diploma so it helps with college um applications they can put it on their resume for employment and any even our students who are going into the military it's an honor to have this seal of by literacy um It prepares students to be 21st century Global Citizens in a multicultural and multilingual world and it acknowledges the Mastery of T more languages which is a value Asset to both individuals and communities um I want to share with you some of the data from the last three years so in 2022 21 seniors were recognized um with the c literacy in honor with that and seven languages in 2023 22 seniors were in six different languages and in 20 24 we had 29 seniors who earned the seal by literacy in three different languages um I
061know right now there are 19 seniors who will graduate with it because they qualified as Juniors we test Juniors and seniors and then I know J did you say 56 about students yes 55 are signed up for yeah this spring so we're excited to see in a multitude of languages I think it was like seven or eight um and so we're excited to see um who will earn it this year and honor them um and so we have that and then I thought it was important since we're grounding all our work in the portrait of a graduate um to show how World language education directly connects and um supports our Port of graduate competencies so as for conscientious learner World language education encourages curiosity about other people and cultures and one of our um standards
062is comparisons and so in World Language education students um make comparisons between their own culture and the one being studied for responsible risk taker World language teaching encourages students to taste risks in another language and then for confident Communicator all we do is communication whether it's interpersonal presentational or interpretive so we are constantly making to build our students communication skills for critical thinker World language education requires and encourages higher levels of abstract thought and reasoning for Creative Problem Solver it the world language education increases creativity effective collaborator we are one of our um standards and our is to increase their Intercultural competence one of our standards as cultures so developing empathy in our students to be globalized citizens and then courageous leader we promote interaction and collaboration within the community and the globalized world so
063where do go from here in our long-term Vision um I'm going to kind of let Brian talk about the pros and cons to both of these options but we could potentially um start with World language education at the prek level and move up to sixth grade or we could start at sixth grade and move down um but I'll let Brian kind of give some facts about that so districts typically look at one of two options U which Katherine just mentioned both of them which is just a continuous roll down so currently of course we have it down through the middle school which would mean we would next bring it to the intermediate school and then down to the elementary schools the other option that a lot of districts um opt to look at instead um
064and it's usually because it's a cost-savings measure is to start actually with your lowest grades and roll the world language program up rather than rolling it down uh this does save a considerable amount of costs over the long-term roll up not only in terms of number of teachers needed uh initially but also in terms of rewriting curriculum ordering new textbooks ordering new resources um those all become an obstacle to trying to accomplish something like this so those are the two different options that different districts have looked at uh across the state so this is a really um helpful graphic that shows um in World language education we have a proficiency Continuum so students range from novice low which is like you just started um and into you can get all the way to Superior but
065in um public education in K through 12 really the highest you can get to is an advance range so this graphic shows the correlation between time studied in a language and the potential um proficiency level that that student can achieve based on the amount of time they've studied so obviously the K through 16 you're going to get all the way into the high Advanced High K through 12 is more like an advanced low Advanced mid um and then 3 through 12 you're at the intermediate high level 6 through 12 is the intermediate mid level 9 through 12 is intermediate low and 9 through 10 you're looking at Navas High maybe intermediate low um right now if we we do have students that sometimes don't start language learning until their sophomore year of high school and
066so really we're seeing them not get as far as we could um and just to understand the sale by literacy in order to um get the stamp or to get the scale by literacy you have to score in the intermediate mid-range on all Reading Writing listening and speaking so um where do we go from here this is some um suggestions from the American Council for teaching for foreign language which is our overarching Organization for our standards for World language education um and so really the what is in order to reach that advanced proficiency level we would need to start at elementary level um and have a well articulated sequence of study the why is because starting as early as possible is how you get to that advanced proficiency um and so um it's the to
067provide that opportunity to get there we would need to start at a younger age and then the how there's four main ways so begin World Language programs at elementary schools design a well articulated program from through 12 provide multip multiple entry points into the curriculum so they can begin their study of additional languages and set exit stand standards such as the seal by literacy um so yeah that is our presentation I would love to answer any questions if you have them thank you very much 'll open up to questions in a moment first I need to comment your predecessor was one of my students when she was in high school and now she is retired yeah so I think I've trumped your wow I'm very old but um so welcome to uh Welcome to The
068Faculty you're welcome to your position thank you and uh Okay who wants to start who wants to start with questions or comments thank you for the presentation by the way very very good uh not that language teacher s always thought we need more languages we do it's one of those things that I don't think anyone could possibly disagree with uh but nobody suggest what we stopped teaching in order to start teaching langu we've stopped teaching French but that's so we can offer other languages fren Latin and German were all no oh Latin that's I've been if I fought that battle that horse was so dead we were still beating it I can still conjugate oh I used to walk by the Latin class in cring very useful you can't really speak English if you don't
069speak Latin but that's another if you haven't studed Latin but that's another story that's that's an argument I would love to see World languages at the elementary level and um I'm going to speak personally my goddaughter who out of state started in early Elementary um she's 30 years old now and she wanted to learn more languages so she's got three languages under I don't have a question um but just some comments um yeah speaking I'll age myself too I was there with Mr GR Latin but um yeah um my my oldest didn't get a chance to take a language in Middle School um but she is as a as a freshman and she's enjoying her Italian class and she um will continue with that but um she's really enjoying and I I'd love to see
070this program progress because I do think it's really important and I really like some of your points here um yeah the more languages are kids can learn the better so I'm on board as long as we can afford it yeah it's rooming the curriculum that's always the problem and the money to hire the teachers how large is the language staff right now across the grades sure we have seven of us at the high school and two at the middle school so nine in total not too many not enough um are there any private is there any private availability of language lessons if a parent wants their child to start early I mean learn Italian you could do it when I was a kid by talking to your grandmother once in a while but that's no
071longer the case I mean there are programs out there um but I don't think you anything replaces a classroom experience with with a no I'm not suggesting that they're interchangeable I'm just asking if this is available for someone who wants their child to get it but it isn't offered in the school so we would be it for offering language I I agree that you really need that classroom um I took my kids to Italy um between my oldest was between seventh and eighth grade and she tried to teach herself on an app and when we got there she was like I can't do this but now she's much better in the classroom so yeah I agree we definitely need that classroom instruction yeah we've explored online options and and tried some out over the years
072and they just don't work yeah yeah Kim can testify to that I think I think what Joanne what you've been doing is talking with people from across the state in other districts to see how they do it right but one of the one of the possibilities not not right now because the planning takes a couple of years but we need to have a dual language program um starting in one of the elementary schools um where both your Spanish speaking students and your English speaking students are taught in both languages in content so that they're not learning languages something apart from what they're doing and this has proven to be the most effective bilingual kind of programming research is very clear that so um I'm just for whoas no hopefully for um Good Reason uh I'm
073doing some initial just exploration to get some information as we progress along um actually one of the most renowned and respected uh World Language programs in the state in the country is located right here in state the Glastonberry Public Schools is considered to be one of the most premier World Language programs Across the Nation actually even outside of the nation um I went there a few years ago to do a visit and U spend the day with them um the day I was there there were representatives from school districts from across Canada California and Utah uh all there to see what glenberry does so when we do get a little further down the road um I think it might be a great opportunity for some board members and some central office folks to spend a
074day over there and really see how they approach World Language certainly just as when I was in Milford I I went there we can't jump into what they're doing uh overnight uh obviously it took them decades to build the program that they have but it's really nice to see what the foundational elements are decades and big bucks very wealthy District very wealthy Joanne this is probably a question for you how much of our staff facult teachers Paras Etc are bilingual I don't really know percentage do you feel that there are but it is certainly been increasing over the years certainly many many more than when I first started um you know I would say uh guess is to% um but it has been increasing um and you know happy to say that now we have
075bilingual Paris who are not necessarily part of our bilingual program but our special ed Paris who also are bilingual lunch monitors got yeah lunch C monitors um a couple of the social workers are um and so we translate everything into Spanish and well well not for all of the students just to be clear that it's for what we sent home for example communication at home right is to really build on that that engagement piece that was talking about to make sure that all of our families understand Mr to give you a reference St members in this building I want to say I've got about 10 to 12 which was better than having only a okay uh Maran I was just I was glad you brought up the employability of that because um let's face it
076as we you're even screening applicants candidates who it's a question on our application process you of a language behind you and we get excited when we see that um I I I love I have this one in my cafeteria who speaks fluent Italian and Spanish and she's building such great relationships with our students they feel so comfortable that school climate we talk about why you love coming to school they they can come talk to her about anything and she can get the help that some of their kids may need because you just build relationships with kids and you doing it in their language that's great and if you have a bilingual teacher it's easy to incorporate especially at the elementary level throw half an hour of your strong language uh high school I guess is
077more of a problem were distinct at the high school done or in the middle school too yeah which is expensive well other people i' I've been doing too much talking who else committee Board General Public a I'm always for for looking at ton compared to other districts around us in our competition if you will you know where students leave our district so always great if we can offer more we can offer here more likely they are to stay here and the more they are to stay here the more likely to come back and work here so I look at as just trying to keep the students in the district I think it's a huge benefit um one of the reasons why some people do certainly makes you look more academic to offer a strong language
078program Jeff you were going in I did have I have one more um you look at we have 65% or so of the employer looking for Spanish I saw in your chart and then it's 30 so% for Chinese then you look down the list at all the languages that torington has been known to offer in the past 12% 11% Italian today is really honestly it's the heritage of the town right we' we were a very Italian Town christen's Grand my grandparents John and we all have Italian Heritage in us but if you look at it if you expand the program do you offer a language that's most useful to the kids to the future we'll say like Chinese on your chart or maybe this is a Joan question do you focus on the people who
079are living here I the diversity of this town is very different now and you see the chart you give us every so often with the language is spoken as the world the World Language person what do you aim for moving like what direction should the board be suggested to go I think that there's a few different answers to that so I think that you can look at you know critical languages that um are needed in the world at the moment I also think student interest is really important to find out what they want to learn um and so and I I do think there's a lot to be said about where we're living so I I really think we'd have to kind of survey who we're teaching and and figure out what they would be
080most interested in um because ideally like when we're building a world language program you eventually want students to be interested in taking another language right so like they're going to become proficient in Spanish but hey I'm also going to take Mandarin um and start that Journey so I think it really depends did you want to add any um there's certain unfortunate realities to trying to offer certain language programs um Mandarin Chinese is next to Impossible uh to offer um when I was in Milford we attempted to run it uh the only way to get a mandar room teacher right now in the state of Connecticut is that you have to pay for their housing you pay for their salary and you have to pay for their personal Transportation um I don't think that's an expense
081that we would be looking to take on right now uh and even then you go into a a literal Lottery and they they pull districts at random there's no guarantee even after you've made all of those arrangements but you're still going to get te and people don't necessarily they're not banging down our our doors to come way out here honestly people view the northwest corner as just like wood the yeah yeah they don't want to come here we tried the virtual thing we had one we did a semester of a language with the students R all the room we did a virtual teacher know that didn't quite pan out the way we I was just hoping to get some guidance on what we thought the future of as we have the conversation what is the
082future of tour what what languages should we aspirationally offer just to kind of piggyback a little bit on what Jeff is saying um you know and I think that's a really great question you want the kids to be interested in what they're learning because otherwise they're not going to learn it um but as a parent I want my I I'm pushing my kids to take Spanish because let's face it that's the future you know and it's going to but one's taking Italian so whatever um she doesn't listened anyway um but you know I think you make very valid points there's so many different um there pros and cons to everything and Jeff is Right toron used to be so separated like you had the Italian section the French section the Slovak the Irish the it
083was just yeah and we offered all those languages in school things have changed so we need to change with so barial schools did a better job of teaching the European languages but uh anyway I was just going to say I think even before we think about adding more languages I think starting potentially Spanish at the elementary level would make a huge impact um on our students academic achievement overall and also their Proficiency in World Language through their education here maybe not I I did have my hand up to not really to answer you Jeff but to to make a comment and you know like how do you decide what languag is of the future well I mean a few years ago years was it Russia did everybody need to know Russian was it Chinese was
084it uh whatever Arabic Arabic isn't you know and then do you consider what's happening in the world and where the future jobs maybe um you know so does it connect with career Pathways so I don't have an answer to your question for sure she justy to make your question because it is that complex but I would say I with Catherine let's start with Spanish at the elementary level as starting and a huge Advantage is you don't have to learn a separate alphabet to learn Spanish the Roman alphabet as opposed to Mandarin where you have to learn it sounds yeah ceril etc etc this is actually a a matter for the curriculum committee isn't it well I was just going to say John that this excites me and thank you Katherine that was lovely and thoughtfully
085done that the school Improvement committee would be pondering this sort of thing right it's just oh no it belongs here but the curriculum committee can actually do something we could I think what we'd have to do first honestly is look at the budgetary impact not going to happen next year exactly exactly but I love that we can have a meeting about something like this that is just philosophical and thoughtful and truly will it is about school Improvement right what can we do to improve our the experience for all our kids so thank you thank you so much thank you for your very much you planted seeds tonight and made some really great points thank you I appreciate that okay uh next item on the agenda up to you Mrs Ferguson and when you go on
086our website now bang right there in the newspaper a couple times in the last Maps you right in the face right so how are we doing we must have doz what I got an email today a reminder yes I sent out the reminder today Mary graani did the press release again at the beginning of the week Monday or Tuesday um but this is what this is the pattern we typically don't start to get the nominations until I send out that second reminder saying hurry up you know time is a wasting and then we start to get nominations so but we have some from last year we have last year and the good ones from year and we have two that just gave two we know we will get more and we are on schedule to
087to look at that as a committee at the next meeting at a at a non- meeting before the actual meeting is the way we always do so please be alert to uh finding an earlier starting time for the next meeting and because we're at no we're not at M we're at the middle school middle school yes right across town so I just bring those packets to your folks um at the March board meeting right we get those a week ahead of time is all we need it but we do need it ahead of time yep you're going to get those packets Mary's putting them together I will bring those to the March board meeting and then on April 2nd at the next school Improvement committee meeting the sit committee gets together just the sit committee
088members I just want I think what I've suggested in the past is that people pick their two or three and then we argue those out yeah which will still give us a large group because yeah they're not necessarily the same for right any further discussion on distinguished columus distinguished columus and I guess we are too topics for future meetings uh math curriculum we will be talking about the math curriculum you think yes we are going to bring forward a proposed textbook adoption for math at the April meeting okay anyone else have something they want us to talk about next time there be new courses or we're pretty much done with those no no we're good we're all set for this year but we are we doing the the middle school report we'll be doing Middle
089School report yes Middle School report we need to schedule yeah anyone else have any okay moving right along comments for the good of the order start with Jeff oh great meeting great uh great presentations tonight thanks for entertaining all the questions as always okay anyone thank you next thank you um the presentation on the language was great and I I agree I think that elementary kids including myself would benefit a lot from we have we I work at Ville and we have a ton of Spanish speaking kids so to have the other kids be able to communicate with those new coming Spanish kids at that level would be awesome I think that would be a great thing thank you great thank you the presentations were great tonight appreciate it once again I always impressed with
090what our high school offers so this will be another offer Joan I'm Junior for that bilingual classroom at the elementary level but great job thank you um not much more to say than than others have was it it was a um great meeting I um the presentations were were well thought out and like everyone else is that I I I think would be important for for languages to start at start at the elementary level I wish um I wish that I had had that opportunity but but but didn't Josh good meeting Marissa great meeting didone said s Last Words uh just thank you so much to Michael and MaryAnn and to Catherine it was a great meeting thank you all you you know excellent presentations the World Language and the great things going on at
09145 so awesome meeting thank you great meeting um thank you for your time coming tonight um I know you work hard all day and I appreciate you coming here to present to us um I actually texted my daughter about the people and places and I said you need to take this if you're gonna go against my wishes at least learn about my culture um so I'm excited about that thank you uh huge thank you to Mr Klein and Dr B you guys continue to do awesome things at your level um and huge shout out to high school CU you got there's no place I'd rather have my kids thank you the offerings continue to impress me the the school the admin I'm I love thank you any of the backbenchers want to say anything backer
092says great presentation and yay Catherine thank you for bringing word language to to say and my turn Michael thank you for hosting this Maran and Michael thank you for your presentations for your presentation and uh I guess I'm looking for motion to adjourn so move second all favor thank you for