Weston Public Schools Board Of Education Meeting 12-15-2025

001It is 7:00 on December 15th, 2025. So, I'm calling the Weston Board of Education regular meeting to order. Let's all stand and say the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Right. [clears throat] Before uh we start our regular meeting tonight, it's important that we recognize uh two former board members who have recently served. And I'm going to turn it over to Sharon and to Lisa uh to say thank you to very special people. I actually wanted to start Whoa. A little too close. Um, and in case you're watching, although I'm not quite sure he's gonna watch it live because he is in Australia, I wanted to say happy

002birthday to Steve Ez. Although the day has passed for him now in Australia. Um, however, >> true. It's the next day. >> It's the next day. Yeah. [laughter] But I hope he had a happy birthday. And I wanted to say that um, working with Steve for the last few years um, on the board of ed was really actually quite a wonderful and and a great learning experience for me. Uh he was the second board chair that I worked under after Tony Pesco and he picked up the reigns and ran with it and um I think we got a lot accomplished as a board and he handed the baton to a very capable person in Deb and um yeah I just really enjoyed working with him. He had a a wonderful temperament and um and working

003with him was was uh always a positive experience. Deb or did anybody else want to add anything about Steve? Um, Steve was uh warm, really intelligent. Uh, coming in as a new board member, he was able to make me feel comfortable and not stupid um and really educate educate me and and help me um become a a board member. But one of but he was always thinking about um the board and what was good and policy and and [music] thankfully he met Deb Low and got her right on board as an interim acting. Um and and that was Steve always um thinking about what was good for the Western school. So we really had to appreciate him. uh you >> oh I'll I'll second that and I'll just add I think a good word is

004diligent >> uh and very dedicated and I I had also the pleasure of as his vice chair you know we would have sidebars and you know it'd be really uh fascinating what we would have to sort of cover in the breath of it just just to just to get to the point of uh of of distilling out a pretty good approach to a few things. So, I want to thank him for that. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, and I'll just add my two cents just because I was lucky enough to know him in it with a different hat on that I always found him very steady, very quiet, but incredibly informed and wise. [music] So, thank you, Steve. Uh, we'd also like to thank Chad. So, I Sharon and Lisa again. Well, I had the

005um you know, I have to say Chad um he's in DC tonight, so maybe you are watching this live tonight. I'm not sure, Chad. But um I want to say it actually was uh a a privilege to share to work with Chad. But it was also I think one of the most interesting things was when Chad first joined the board, he was pretty adamant that we get rid of cell phones. And [music] I think pretty much all the board members at the time were like, "Chad, you have no idea. These kids need these cell phones." And Chad was right. 100% right. And Chad had the ability to see around the corner on that one. And um we always gave him a hard time because technology was his nemesis. Dan can [laughter] agree with that, I'm

006sure. Um but Chad's voice, he was not afraid to speak up and he was passionate about um what was right for the kids and what was right to really ensure a safe, healthy environment for these kids. And that was always appreciated. No matter what, no matter where you stood, if you agreed or disagreed with him, you always knew that where he was coming from was a place of passion and a place in which he was really putting the kids first. And as a fellow board member who was one of the ones early ones to come around and say, "Hey guys, Chad's actually not crazy. that's a really great idea that he's got to get rid of the cell phones. Um I have to say I really appreciated his leadership and um unfortunately you know we

007missed him at some of the meetings because he was on a book tour and not many of us can say that we've had the honor of doing that in our lifetimes but um he his his voice was a very valuable voice on the board and we will definitely I personally will definitely miss working with Chad. So, >> well, I I worked with him [clears throat] um on the curriculum committee and he was thoughtful uh and smart, asked really good questions and was always open to listening toward a different viewpoint. He and was willing to change. And that's unusual in someone to be that thoughtful and a and a really good listener and open to to changing his ideas and his opinions. He was really great to work with. Um and I'm sorry he left. >>

008Thank you for those comments. Um I too enjoyed uh working with Chad briefly. You know, his energy and his positive spirit and he definitely had his own ideas. So, it was always fun to fun to listen to those. Um, Chad did realize we were going to do this tonight. So, here is his response. Uh, I want to make a special call out to all the teachers and staff who keep the the West Western Weston Connecticut's school system running. Thank you for your dedication to our community and our kids. It's been an honor to support you in whatever ways I could. Teachers, you are the engine that make our schools go. Thank you for all that you do. So that's from Chad. So thank you. Turn it off. I'm just This is going to be interesting.

009All right. Uh now, yeah, speaking of technology, I can't work it. Um we're privileged to hear the student board of education representatives. And Jack and Izzy, it is all yours. >> Hi. I'm going to try to figure this out. Is this like a normal volume? >> Okay. Um thanks for having us. Um, I'm Izzy. >> I'm Jack. >> Um, and we're going to say a bunch of things that you guys might not understand. Um, so this is our recap of the past few weeks. >> All right. So, we've recently had our pack the pantry event and we've raised lots and lots of just non-p perishables for the town of Weston and overall it's just been a huge success this [music] year as we've gotten I how many have we gotten? I think we got around

010500 donations and we had um Annne Bigen from the Western Food Pantry come and speak and we had a few members of the board of ed also come to our assembly. So, I'm sure you guys got the gist when you were there. And during that same pep rally, we also had our first king of the court volleyball match which was a huge success where we had the junior and senior boys do a volleyball tournament which I think everyone enjoyed personally. And last week we had our orchestra chorus and band concerts which was another huge success for the Western High School and everyone just really enjoyed that. And we had our lobby concert in the morning which was just like such a fun energetic way to start the morning especially with this delay that we had.

011And this Friday, we're actually going to have caroling across the school, which is just another fun way to liven up this holiday spirit that we have at Western High School. >> We heard about a lot of kids practicing outside of school for all these things, and all of the musicians are super excited about this. Um, midterms are coming up the week that we get back from break. We're super excited. Um, we have a new midterm review schedule which I think will be very helpful where we have a lot of flex time. We're going to be meeting with our teachers and then um, right after that I think we go right into Portrait of the Graduate um, which I should know how that works really well, but I'm kind of still iffy about it. Um, but

012we just submitted the early um the early deadline and then in January we have the second deadline and people are very excited about being able to finish it up and they're starting to like it because they realize there's a creative aspect to it. Um, and then we have our spirit week this week. So, we're getting kids to dress up and get excited for the break. Um, which is part of again like our bigger initiative to raise school spirit and just getting people excited. Um, we have a lot. Actually, you were talking about the phones and I could not stop smiling because it really has boosted our school environment. Originally, we like as a student government, we post a lot of stuff on the social media and we post our spirit days and we worried for

013a while about how we were going to like get the word out and get people excited because we usually post like people dressing up. But since we've started doing digital cameras, um we download the photos, we assign people in student government to take photos throughout the day and then we we'll download them all at the end of the week and then post them on Instagram. And it's very cute and nostalgic and people like it better, honestly. [music] And it is so much more fun because people don't worry about literally being photographed in school if they dress up, I guess, weirdly. I don't know. But it's nice to not have the phones out. Um, and then we have X period which is our traditional like it's like a little flex time and each teacher will host

014their own activity. And so one of those activities is going to be um it's the day before break. So, one of those activities is going to be um like an ASL um like teaching thing and we're going to incorporate like American Sign Language into one of the um classes because our for film fest this week or Yeah. So, we have film fest before break and I'm all over the place today. Um, we have film fest before break and we usually um like watch a movie about like current events and so our film this year is KOD and it features like a lot of American Sign Language and so we're incorporating that a little learning aspect into our fun time. And that's all we've got. Thank you for listening to that ramble. >> Well, that's tremendous.

015Thank you. What a high school. That's great. You know, sounds fun. Sounds like a great u setup. And I have a question for you guys. Getting in the holiday spirit here. You guys are Christmas caroling or carolling, correct? >> Yes. >> And where are you carolling? Just around the halls. Are you going out to places? >> Um, we are going around the halls. I think that you can buy a carol is how we usually do it. >> I think that's great. >> Yes. >> That's fantastic. Great job. Great job. Thank you very much. Um, all right. We're moving on. And um Jack and Izzy, you're welcome to stay, but you don't have to stay for the the remaining uh portion of the meeting. So anyway, thank you very much for your time out of your

016busy skate >> for having us. >> Um can I have a motion to approve the minutes from November 17th, December 1st, and December 11th? move that the Weston Board of Education approve minutes from the November 17, 2025, December 1st, 2025, and the December 11th, 2025 meetings. >> Second. I second. Thanks, Lisa. All in favor? >> I. >> All opposed? All abstain? I >> I have to abain from some I have to abain from the >> So, should we do it individually? >> Oh my gosh. >> We didn't meet we were there for and others we weren't. >> Oh. All right, my bad. Um, can we undo that motion? >> Yeah, we can >> just like Yeah, take it back. >> All right. So, here we go again. Um, November 17th. Go ahead. Go for it,

017Dave. >> Move. Let me find it. Move that the Western Board of Education approve minutes from the November 17th, 2025 regular board meeting. >> Second. >> A second. >> All in favor? >> All abstains? December 1st. Move. >> Move that the Western Board of Education approved minutes from the December 1st, 2025 special meeting. >> Is there a second? >> I second. Thanks, Lisa. All in favor? >> Any opposed or abstensions? >> Okay. Thank you, Sharon. Next. >> Move that the Wesson Board of of Education approve minutes from the December 11th, 2025 special meeting. >> I second. All in favor? I. Any abstensions? Two abstensions. All right. Thank you. All right. Public comment. Uh I just need to read this preamble. Uh the board welcomes the opportunity to hear from members of the public about matters

018concerning the Western Public Schools. Public comment is an important chance for the board to receive input and feedback from our school community. We listened attentively to all comments. While we value and pay close attention to public comment, it is our practice not to respond substantively or sometimes at all during public comment. There are several reasons for this. First, engaging in a discussion on a non-aggenda item could violate the board's obligation to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Second, the board or the administration may not be prepared to discuss certain matters raised in the first instance by a public comment. And third, the board develops its meeting agenda carefully to ensure that the board addresses matters that are pressing or relevant at the time of the meeting. We encourage members of the public with specific

019questions, concerns, or complaints about our schools to reach out directly to our superintendent [clears throat] 40. You may also email the board at our email address, board of education [music] westnps.org. Additional details about public comment can be found on our website. Are there any public comments or comments from the public? All right, hearing none, we'll move on. New business, uh, Slam and Collers are joining us. Oh, old business. Sorry. Um, these are second reads of required policies as I understand. All right, let's take them. Do you want to take them one at a time as well? All right, let's do that just to have a clean vote on each one. All right, the first policy is 4113.2 duty-free lunch for teachers. Is there any discussion? Is there a motion? Move that the Western Board of

020Education approve policy 4113.2 duty-free lunch for teachers. >> I second. >> Thank you, Lisa. All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? >> All right. Policy approved. Next policy 4212.42 drug and alcohol testing for school bus drivers. Any discussion? Is there a motion? Move that the Weston Board of Education approve policy 4212.42 drug and alcohol testing for school bus drivers. >> I second. Thank you, Lisa. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Policy approved. Last one. Policy 5118.2, Educational Opportunities for Military Children. Any discussion? Is there a motion? Move that the Weston Board of Education approve policy 5118.2, educational opportunities for military children. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? All right. Policy approved. All right. New business. Uh we do want to thank and welcome Slam and Collier's representatives

021here tonight. Um, I know that we have set aside special meetings to talk about facilities, but in our uh um process of wanting to move forward fairly quickly, uh, any new information that we may want to pursue, we need to do that in as timely manner as possible. The SLAM report last year was presented in late spring, am I right, Phil? Um, and then it was reviewed at our at our special meeting in December. So, they are coming here tonight and Phil can introduce people to talk about phase 2 renovation and ask uh for the board's consideration in a vote. So, Phil, do you want to introduce and and ask our representatives who Thank you very much for coming out on a cold night. Thank you. >> Uh today, tonight we're joined by Scott from

022uh Collers and Jim from Slam Cooperative. Uh so, gentlemen, please wanted to push the table up a little bit. You know, you sound like seem like you're at the bottom of a football field way back there, but okay. >> Okay. >> And I think there's a mic, too. So, >> so would you would you like me just to provide a just a kind of a quick recap of where we are now? >> Yes, we um we've read the memo, but it would be great just to hear a summary and the main points about why you are recommending what you're recommending. Thank you. >> Um yeah, so um you know there was an additional document uh along with the recommendation letter. We we updated our summary of everything that had been done to date the end

023of November uh going back to the 2017 silver Petraeli studies as well as the studies done by Tecton and um their process. And the the one thing that we noted uh within our review of all the work done to date is there was really never a an adequate comparison in review of renovation status and how that would compare to costs and and impact uh to a new building and and certainly um you know understanding the communities having you know been doing this for the past 39 years um that is a question that the public is going to ask is did you look at renovation status status. And the reason that's important is that can get you um at this point you're based on your current numbers eight 8% additional support from the state of Connecticut.

024Um a renovation project gets reimbursed at at a higher rate. However, if you um you know, if you move forward with the the evaluation that's in in front of you this evening for action um and it's proven uh through this phase 2 study that renovation would actually be more costly than building new, there is an avenue to also capture that additional 8% from the state. Um you know so when we look at this um you know I think the the studies as far as looking at grade configurations options there's a lot of information that was provided by the previous architects um but when you look at now current escalations I mean this project is really started in earnest back in 2017 um and and you know if you look at and I'm just going to

025this is not the cost of the project but I'm just going to grab it an easy number. Let's just say you're talking about a $50 million project right now. We're still looking at escalations in around the four to four and a half%. So the the the value of the work um from the SLAM collaborative in front of you this evening to complete that evaluation and that study for renovation status is I believe $40,000. If you look at at 4.5% escalation on 50 million, you're you're talking north of $4 million. Um, and again, I think without doing this study, um, I I would strongly anticipate that the public's going to request it. Um, delaying it anymore, I think, is just going to push things down the road a little further. You won't have the, um, information

026and the tools available for this board to make an educated decision, recommendation to the town on how you would like to move forward with uh, with renovations or potentially constructing a new middle school. All right. Thank you. Um, Phil, do you have anything to add or should I just open it up? All right. It's now open up for discussion. Um, any comments, questions? We have the experts here. >> I have a couple shockingly. [laughter] >> A couple questions. So, I think you mentioned $40,000 is the cost of the phase two, >> correct? >> Okay. How do you know? So, uh, number two, determination from the design team. If a renovation project would cost less than a new building, how do you know what you're looking for if we don't know what we're building or renovating?

027>> Part part of the phase 2 scope is to develop a conceptual floor plan, conceptual site plan, and, you know, present those options to you. So we would do a new option and then we would take your existing edspec that was approved and backfill that into this existing building based on the enrollment projections that you saw last month. So we backfill that and then we have um we have estimators that will look at that in detail and we'll look at current dollars right now. Um, a lot of the information that we've been given and been sorting through, as Scott alluded to, started eight years ago. So, some of it is somewhat dated. I think it's important for this group to go through this exercise right now. And the state provides guidelines that we follow. The

0283520 form is a form that we can go right through, meet all of that criteria so that as you go back to the public, you can look everybody in the eye and say, "We looked at both options and these are the numbers." Um and and I think it's really important to do that in today's dollars and be able to say, you know, within the last few months or six months, we've looked at the cost of both options and then based on how those numbers come in, you can make a decision as to which direction you want to go. >> So, but if we don't have a known design, right, we have I think there was 12 con 8 to 10 conceptual designs. I think two wound up being moved forward to the board of ed

029under facilities optimization committee. If we don't know which of those we're going with, we don't even know, for example, are we doing three buildings, four buildings, grade reconfiguration, a conversation came up last week about or sorry, at one of our previous meetings about a magnet school if we don't know what we're doing with the building yet. Is is it is this the right time to be doing a phase two? Well, the the scope for this phase two is for a middle school 6 through eight based on enrollment projections that you most recently had. Um it this this scope does not necessarily expand and look at four schools or grade reconfiguration. We can certainly expand that study if if you wanted, but but contractually what what we're obligated to right now is really looking at the

030middle school, grades six through eight only. >> So new verse renovate. >> So what does happen if there is an interest in exploring a grade reconfiguration whether it's just one grade, maybe it's fifth grade, maybe it's multiple grades. How would that impact the phase 2 study sort of in two parts? I assume that there's some time that is required between approval and actually having someone come in and complete it. And is that somebody slam or or who is that >> slam? Yeah, we provide that service. >> Okay. So what happens if a grade reconfiguration became of interest to at least explore if not um if it's not part of >> yeah I I think >> I think yeah I just I don't mean to interrupt but I I do think that um that may well

031happen but that's not the issue for tonight. So I don't want to go down a road of talking about something that's not an option and not on the agenda. So, I just want to focus on should we do phase two of the slam study that was recommended way way back in 2024. And part of it was done, as you know, last spring and completed. And in my way of thinking, this gives us more data just about the middle school building. um what it would cost to renovate as new, which is a huge question and conceptually, but a better updated estimate of what it would cost to build new. That's it. That's not talk about any of the other options that you mentioned, which are not off the table. It's just they're not on the table

032right now for this particular question tonight. So, would that then push us to a phase three if we because I I'm with David and as far as um clearly phase two is going to be necessary for us to move forward, but should we have our plan tightened up a little bit more before we go to a phase two so that we don't potentially have to go to a phase three, which could be another $40,000 spend? Should we as a board have more of a discussion about that? If if I may, um I think what we would suggest is as as your board chair um recommended moving forward, if you chose to add an additional grade level, and I'm just going to say fifth grade right now, not knowing what you're going to choose, but bring

033fifth grade up. Um you know, you would have to work with with SLAM and work the board would have to work and modify the educational specification. However, I think a lot of the conceptual planning in layout um necessarily wouldn't change dramatically by just adding one grade level. I mean, certainly you would upsize cafeteria, some other spaces, kitchen area wouldn't change um adding additional classrooms. So, I think the work that would be done in this phase two could be modified, but you're certainly not starting over. And a good portion of the work that the SLAM team is going to be performing is a more detailed evaluation of this building to get a clear understanding of is it really appropriate to renovate this building or is it do we go so far down the rabbit hole that

034it's just not going to make any sense from a cost standpoint. So it it in in addition to the planning, there is a lot of still further detailed evaluation of this building with renovation status in mind that you would do either way. Either if it was a five, you know, a 5'8 or a 68, you've still got to do that whole component. And then I do believe planning for that is going to give you a good baseline of discussion. Certainly, if you add fifth grade, you're going to need to go back and revisit the edsp specs and provide the design team, whoever that may be, in this case, SLAM, with the additional criteria of what you believe you're going to need to add fifth grade to the to the school. But, um, again, I would

035encourage you, I think, to move forward to start getting that information to help you make an informed decision. >> Yeah. And I I think the base of the study contractually exists in in what we're talking about right now, the new build verse, renovate to new within this building. And I think that's the the heavy lift that you need to do. Um we're anticipating a six to eight week process to get all of that done. Check off all the boxes for the state criteria. So if you do want to explore, you know, bringing fifth graders up, the enrollment projections that you saw last month, it looked like it looked like it added about 200 fifth graders potentially to the middle school. So we could take those plans, adapt, bring in, you know, accommodate 200 classrooms for

036fifth graders and then look at all the core spaces and make sure that the schedule works for music cafeteria is right size. So we could then take that schematic or conceptual floor plan and expand it to accommodate that. Um, but I I think this board probably has to have a conversation. Is that the only scope that you want to explore or is it more wide ranging than that? because I I think it has a big time implication because we're anticipating moving very quickly based on what we're contractually obligated to. So if that changes I I think you need to consider that. >> So I if I recall correctly I was I watched the meeting. I was not able to participate in the meeting on the first but um right sizing the building obviously is a

037priority. I thought that we had already found out from previous studies that the building was we we were able to it was eligible for renovate to renovate, right? Because we at one point in time were like can we even renovate this building or is it too far gone? And we had it was determined that structurally the building had good bones. We could renovate but there were there were substantial um uh there were a lot of areas in the school that weren't necessarily acceptable for today's educational practices. So classrooms without windows and things like that. Um so having said that um we know that we can renovate this building right. So now we're just taking a look when you talk about so now we're just this phase two is just putting a price tag on it.

038I'm really just I just want to understand fully >> it is the the first the first phase was a preliminary assessment and we spent a day in the building. Um I I I was here personally walked through all the spaces and I was looking at it with an educational lens. We had an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer and a structural engineer walking with us and they were looking at their disciplines. And so that first [music] phase was really a result of that. We saw it. We said this building could be renovated to new and meet the state criteria. The big question is how much does that cost? So if if we get into the edspec and we're looking at classrooms that are 600 square f feet and the edspec says they need to be 650

039ft, do we assume that we're then moving a wall over slightly to accommodate a 650 foot classroom? What does that do structurally? So there is a snowball that needs to be considered from a price standpoint and every single one of those little decisions has a cost associated with it. And that's really the intention of the comprehensive assessment is to spend a little bit more time in the building, come up with a plan that we can then price, you know, accurately. >> And and and you know, just to build on that, um, you know, again, can you renovate the building? I mean, right now what Jim is saying is structurally, yeah, it would appear yes. The answer is yes. But if you want state support, you have to have the architects. They they have to they'll

040sign and seal an estimate form that says, "Yes, we truly believe and we'll work with them on that. We truly believe that it's cheaper to renovate than to build new." If it is not, you can still renovate the building, but you're not going to get any state support. And that's the key. The the silver petrol and tecton reports talked about and said, "Here's an option where you could renovate." Yes, you can. But they never did the detailed analysis. There was some very high level numbers where they used the exact square footage cost in both options and both options they said was was in essence the same. They never went through the detailed analysis of looking at it how compares to an edspec and how it would really work and if in fact it would be

041cheaper than building new. So, >> so I was a little confused by one of the things in the last meeting in that um uh obviously the state prefers a renovation over new construction if possible. And um there was a part of the meeting in which you someone said that if you can you mentioned it tonight if you can prove that new construction is cheaper than renovation then you get bumped up to the renovation reimbursement. >> There's precedent there's precedent for you to get it increased. It's, you know, I'm not going to say anything is a given with the state of Connecticut. Um, but, you know, we've had success writing a letter saying it's cheaper to build new than, um, and there is some statutory language that would support that [music] movement up to the higher

042reimbursement rate. >> Okay. >> But again, without the baseline information, we can't form that argument. >> And that's found in phase two. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Any other questions, comments? >> So, I'll jump in here. Um [clears throat] and to your to your question before Sharon I think when I asked the same question during that meeting I think there was only one instance right I think there was only um one example that you guys had come across whereby a district had a building that it would actually cost more to renovate than to build as new and then they got the step up let's say um in the grant from the state I think there was only one example So there's there's not much to work with there. It's it's not it's not a foregone

043conclusion. Um my my question is just okay two routes here to to David's point. So if we decide to move forward tonight, let's just say just with this phase two, this is just for sort of evaluation again of the um the middle school as is. Okay. it's not addressing any of these other configurations that we that we may want to consider [clears throat] if we move forward with it tonight. Does this study and I think one of you had mentioned it. Does it actually do the bulk let's say of the analysis that could then be largely applied and again we don't really know what we're what we're going to come up with if we go to three schools but um that could be largely applied let's say to a further study for three schools um

044and what is the sort of the cost there so there's that that's one avenue the other the other avenue is of course is for us to delay here for us all to have a conversation figure out what actually we want to do. Um, and then maybe it's expanding the scope of what of what you guys would do, which is maybe it's looking at, you know, two scenarios. For example, you know, the middle school as it stands today versus an expanded configuration. Um, I'm not sure I don't know if you guys can even answer this question. what which which route would be cheaper because it does sound like we are at least um strongly considering the expanded the expanded evaluation for um um of of the middle school to of course um look at potentially you

045know other grade levels. So, um what is the you know for you if we go if we move forward tonight $40,000 let's say for this um and we need let's say another phase three I think to Sharon's point um is that another $40,000 for you know assessing you know an expanded you know let's call it middle school building um if we wait so that would be 80 let's call But if we wait, can that be done more efficiently and at less cost? If we wait and we decide, hey, maybe we want both. We want you guys to to do that both sort of at in in one fell swoop. >> Talk to me about just the sort of the economics and the process on those lines. I think and from what I've heard over the

046past couple years, this board's made coming out of the master planning exercise, you made the middle school a priority >> and I think that's why you're moving forward with this this scenario and this exercise. Um, I think whatever you do with that exercise and you learn from this process can be applied to those other scenarios. Um, I don't think that throwing numbers out. I'm I'm not sure exactly [music] what the scope is, but like I I said before, I I think that the lion share of the work will be done through this exercise and the $40,000 that you're spending would be able to be utilized in other scenarios. Um, you know, if we pull fifth graders, I'm not sure what the scenarios are. So, it's really, really difficult because there is a snowball effect. if

047you're pulling students out of other schools, are you pulling students out of three schools, two schools, one school? And I think that'll affect the overall price of the exercise. So, I I don't see any reason why you can't move forward with this. Learn what you need to about the existing middle school, compare it to a new build in current dollars, current budget numbers, and then layer in other scenarios on top of that. and and I think you would get some some good value for what you're spending on this exercise and I think it would translate to the other scenarios that you're looking at as well. I I think there would be some efficiency there. If is is is there efficiency let let's say not not just for let's say from the cost standpoint from a

048timing perspective if you did the initial phase evaluation let's say this one and then we came back to you and said okay actually we're considering the six-minute configuration um because now you have a a a baseline of evaluation does that shorten up the next time period I guess I guess it depends on what [music] the what we decide or what we want evaluated Is that >> Yeah, there there's a good chance that it would be a quicker exercise. >> Because we would be building on what we learned. >> Yep. I I I guess to your point, David, I guess we just we just don't know what we don't know >> at this point. >> I like to build on [music] that comment. We don't know what we don't know. In >> in your proposal, is

049it a more of a paper exercise? I thought at one time you were actually going to do some physical analysis as part of phase two. So not the one day but really a deeper dive. So let's clarify that. Correct. >> Yes. Yeah. Phase two includes conceptual floor plans, a conceptual site plan for a new build, a renovate uh renovation, renovate to new project, as well as narratives that would describe, you know, mechanical systems, electrical systems, and all of the information that we would need to assign an accurate cost estimate to both both of those scenarios. >> Do you do any on-site physical examination beyond what you did? Yeah, we'll be back on site probably for a couple days. >> So, you'll dig a hole below me and find the old cables that have been there

050for 60 years. >> The reason I'm going down this questioning path is because you y'all were involved in the Central [music] Middle School project in Greenwich if I recall a couple years ago, >> right? >> And that building was condemned. >> So, did that go through a phase two? Did someone go, "We're about to condemn you and this is post analysis." Or was it condemned by the public health official? They came you they you they brought you in and go do you want to renovate it or do you want to build it? So why don't you walk us through that because it could be you do an analysis here and we stumble upon something we really don't want to find out and we have to god forbid condemn the building. This is a extreme case

051but now we're down the path of what you did in Greenwich. Go take five minutes and walk us through >> that scenario, how you were involved. did involve a phase two and and we we know the outcome is they built a new middle school in Greenwich. >> Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was a much different scenario. Um we weren't involved until there was actually architect selection. So what happened there was there was some structural damage that was identified. They brought in an outside structural consultant that analyzed it and made the recommendation when he saw the damage that the building had sustained from from the event and that's why the building was condemned. So the town had to react to that immediately and they went through legislators and they pushed some some things through

052at the state level um in in an emergency condition and they were actually able to move very quickly on it. Uh they were able to create some funding or or secure some funding that would do the temporary repairs, but those temporary repairs were only warranted for a certain period. and there were there was an inspection period just to make sure that the students stayed safe. Um so once that was underway they realized that they wanted to proceed with a new school. So then they went out hired you know an owner's project manager and the whole process [music] was accelerated and they advertised for architect. So by the time we got on board the decision had already been made that they were taking the old building down and they were very clear that they were building

053a new middle school on the same site. you know, clear separation between the two and that the existing el existing middle school be fully operational through the entire construction process. So that was the criteria that we were given as as we stepped into the program. >> Right. Right. Right. They actually dispersed they actually dispersed the kids for to the wind month in a couple weeks I think. >> So that's really putting all our sixth, seventh, eighth graders in every other building. Uh and then uh uh they got 20% reimbursement, which was I think what you've alluded to that if we're savvy, we can go up from 12 to 20 on the new build. Hopefully, we don't have to be savvy in an emergency scenario, but we should have a plan B. Um I I actually

054like the idea of uh a rigorous analysis post this this assessment. Uh, and this is maybe a little self- aacing, but you know, I got my truly my back of the envelope [music] calculations from last meeting, right? And I I I like to put in the hands of the professionals who can drill it down to, you know, a a number plus or minus a million. So, uh, I'm I think that's it's a very worthy exercise and and I'm listening that you can scale it out if you have to, right? So if you have to scale it out to some other choices uh whatever avail oursel to that's great. I mean if we need to add students because we have a different educational model or if we decide to add you know different grade configurations it's

055all scalable. So um I like I like the idea of adding that discipline. And then for a little levity because it's on agenda, I do have a pop history quiz that's fully uh in parallel with this because you actually opened up the door when you said the focus has been on the middle school because it needs the most attention. Right. So, here's my pop quiz and just laugh along with me because it's actually it reinforces your point and I think it reinforces the concerns of the board on the fi financials of the of the building. So, here's the quiz. who published a pamphlet in Philadelphia almost to the night 249 years ago this week which was then read a couple days later to Washington's troops before their at Valley Forge before their famous crossing on

056Christmas Day. So, does anyone know who wrote that pamphlet? >> I think Slam Shans is a $40,000 question. >> [laughter] >> It turns out the name of the pamphlet was the middle school crisis number one and the famous first line from that pamphlet was this is the building that tries taxpayer souls. It was turned out to be Thomas Payne. But I think that like that like summarizes the the diligence that we're going through, right? because it's no matter what we do, it's still, you know, trying their souls. We're going to ask a lot of our fellow residents and citizens in this town. So, thank you for your proposal. >> Thank you for your [clears throat] creative time travel and still relevant comments. I appreciate how you wrapped all that together. Are there any other questions?

057Um, discussion? >> I just have one follow-on question. I promise to be quick. >> Okay. Uh, so I don't know that our focus is entirely on the middle school. That's been what we've talked about, but it's really on facilities. So I think the question that Sharon and Michael started a asking after I maybe opened the door, we have to do something. We had to do something in 2017, right? So at some point, we got to do something. I think we're at that point. I think the concern that we have is if we approve the $40,000 spend, we're not entirely sure. We know what we're going to get out of it, but we're not entirely sure what we're even looking for. So, I think Michael asked this question or maybe with Sharon. If we start this

058process now looking at edsp specs that are 678 and we're not 100% sure those are going to be the ed specs we ultimately put forward to the state. So, if we do 678 at $40,000 and we kick around some additional ideas such as what came up at the last meeting we had with you, which is this building's 120,000 ft² to rightsize it 90,000 square ft. But if we had additional grades in this building, it's not to me about enrollment changes. It's about taking a building that's 120,000 ft² and chopping 40,000 ft off of it because that's or sorry, 30,000 ft off of it. But we could potentially move another grade level into this building. And what we wind up with is a higher reimbursement rate because we have an additional grade in here. So the

059question I'm asking is we're not sure what we're actually going going to do with this building and we don't know what we're doing with the other three buildings. So if we spend $40,000 looking at edspecs for 678 and we really want to focus on or at least we want to run to ground whether or not we can move fifth grade into this building or any other grade. we're going to have to come back to you and ask you to do the study again further because you said that the number of classrooms that you'd be looking at is the number of classrooms based on projected enrollment for 678. So my concern is spending $40,000 on something we're not certain is the right solution and we're going to come back to and then we're going to be

060looking or staring June in the face and we're going to be saying well now we've pigeon holed ourselves because we have these other ideas we want to run to ground but it's going to cost us more money more time you said six to eight weeks to get you in to do phase two. So, my biggest concern about the money about doing this is not solely about the $40,000. It's about spending $40,000 on something we're not yet certain of. At least I'm not yet certain of. And we're going to have to come back to you and say to you, we want to do something different. >> Say no. So, so that that's my concern. It's just I don't feel like I know what we're doing yet to say to you do the study, but I'm also

061somewhat paralyzed with we have to do something. And that is my that is how I'm conflicted. And I've been on the board five years. We have to do something, but I'm not sure this is we're ready yet. >> Okay. Um I want to We're getting into a chicken and egg thing. um is a little bit what it sounded like, David. And I get it and I sympathize those of us that are a little newer on the board. Um I think that you know just sort of coming in a little bit a lot later. Um I think the fact that we out of this phase two would get some valuable information that's actually more specific and updated and talks about two important things that we have to know matter what we do is how much is

062it to renovate this building as new which we don't know. we don't have a a good upto-date comprehensive detailed look at it. I also heard that even if you wanted to put you know then say you want to put 58 here that that's not as hard to do as the initial work on 68. So that I'm sort of okay with saying okay we can revise it to include fifth eight as necessary but it gives us a vital piece of information. The other vital piece of information we need is how much because the estimate was very conceptual and very vague about a new middle school and we have sort of this number that frightened the community and may yet again frighten the community. I get that. But we need to know what those are. And so

063we have to start those are two big information pieces that we're going to need to know no matter what we do. No matter what we do. And I also think it helps us in our grant application process. The firmer those numbers are, the more solid those numbers are, the more we can say yes, we, you know, we think these are good numbers. The further down the road we can get with reimbursement rates and some of it's on paper with the state department. there formula there's formulas but there's also advocacy that we can do either with the state department of education or state legislators and the the closer to kind of real upto-date uh numbers that we can stand behind that we have that helps our argument no matter what so I think no matter what

064we do we need these two pieces of information and no matter what grant process we end up with whether it's renovate or new or you know arguing and convincing somebody to get off of that ridiculously low rate for Weston that we need those two pieces of information and we have to do it in a timely manner. We have said at our last meeting that we want a referendum in November. So we have got to start putting some you know some solid stuff on the table and I think we are not going to abandon looking conceptually at 5'8 or putting 8th grade you know somewhere else or we'll do all that but we still need this information to do anything. So that's why I'm looking at it and I brought it on the agenda tonight and

065you and I had this conversation when we were making the agenda is if the sooner we get this information the better and that's why we that's why we're sort of pushing it tonight and not waiting for our January facilities meeting. I'm gonna say in defense of David, which I frequently am. Um, not [laughter] No, I'm gonna say in defense of David, I certainly understand where you're coming from, David. I hear you. Um, as a town and as a board member who's been here for a while, there's a certain amount of um of consulting fatigue that we've that we're experiencing, right? And so, we've all been like, "Okay, we've done enough. We don't need any more." But to your point, Deb, um we don't have any current numbers and it's it's hard because we don't know

066exactly where we're going to go. I wish we did. I wish we as a board knew exactly, no, we're only going to have three buildings or we're going to have four buildings. We're going to rightsize buildings. We're going to reconfigure the grades. I wish we knew what we were going to do, but we it is a chicken egg thing. What are our options? And affordability is definitely one of the things that's going to steer our options. And I don't think we're going to really get any true affordability numbers to at least start this with until we've completed phase two. I was hesitant about, you know, saying yay on this as well, but and talking it through and listening to what the comments are and and you know, we've got to start. We've and as a

067board, we've committed. I mean, we're now having twice a twice a month meetings. We've committed this is going to be the year. this is going to be the board that's going to push this thing through. And um and the only way we're going to do that is with current information. And um so yeah, I agree. And unfortunately, you know, my fatigue, I'm going to have to just push through it and we're going to have to get this information so we can move forward with this project in my opinion. >> Hey Deb, I have just one more question. Um, if we voted tonight to move forward, how long until you start the study? And that you said the study the study itself would be 6 to 8 weeks. What is the when would you start the

068study? So, I'm trying to understand sort of what our time frame is to get that number back from you guys. >> Once we got approval to proceed, sure would we would start tomorrow. All we need is a letter. And I think that's how it worked with with phase one. you know, Phil just sent a letter and say proceed and we started the next day and we started making arrangements. I think we're in the building within three days, I think, after the letter and we turned that report around in less than two weeks. It it was a much smaller effort, but we would we would want to start right away. >> So, we would have a number early February, >> early to midFebruary. Yeah, >> early to midFebruary. >> Are there any other questions um or

069comments? I I also have to look at the um agenda remaining which is at arms length. Um, so again, I am, you know, sorry to have to sort of just push this um to a vote, but I'm looking at the time. I if there if I've missed anybody's comments and new points, go ahead, Michael. >> Just one last question. Um, because we're having these separate meetings now on a monthly basis. uh if we decided in the next before you guys completed this assessment and we decided I know it's a tight time frame especially since you know you [music] guys now are saying that you could start immediately but if [clears throat] we decided that let's say before you complete the analysis that we wanted to explore something something different right the the the different configuration

070um could we amend that to add on to sort or expand your analysis when you're evaluating the building. Is that something that could be done or do we have to do we have to pass do we have to go through a separate um a separate phase to do that separately? >> I I would suggest amending it and just I I think that would be the most expedious way expediious way to do that. you know, I think we could move quickly because once [music] we get moving, I think if you throw some curve balls at us or some options, I think it just becomes part of the process and you know, if we might add a week or two or, you know, extend that deadline, but Yep. >> Okay. I think that's a good point and

071we'll know more in January when we have our next meeting. All right. Um, is there a motion? move that the Weston Board of Education move forward with phase two of the SLAM Weston Middle School renovation analysis as presented. >> I second. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, David. All in favor? >> Any opposed? All right, unanimous. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate that. And thank you for being in being here in person tonight. Thank you. All right. Um, next is the consent agenda. And I know that on the consent agenda is a staffing update, but I'd also just like uh the opportunity to just list the donations that are made just because I think they're so impressive. Um, one is uh Indie Robots for $2,000 at Hess from the PTO. Another is a donation to Hes from the

072PTA of reading zone furniture. Sounds comfortable and cozy and ready to go. Um then to the Weston Middle School. This is a private donation um from Can I name the names? >> I think so. >> It's public. >> Okay. All right. Um which is uh Travis and Kate Whirl uh for a hydroponic garden which sounds fascinating. So, thank you to them. And also a donation from the PTO to the high school for Annef Frank Holocaust exhibit. Uh, which sounds very uh worthwhile. And the final donation, Chinese New Year celebration. Who doesn't want to have that? So, thanks to the PTO for that. So, anyway, um, is there a motion to accept or approve the consent agenda? >> It is. I was right that time. It's okay. I was wrong. >> Yes. Move that the Western

073Board of Education accept the consent agenda as presented. >> I second. All in favor? >> Any uh abstensions? All right, that looks unanimous. Thank you. Um the next item, I think I have lost my pages, is retirement incentive program. All right, this was discussed in executive session. Um, we received an update. So, I do not think there's any action since we've had our update. So, moving on. Graduation date. This must be near and dear to a lot of people's hearts. I'm not sure who wants to talk about that. Erica. >> Sure. Um the board of education set the graduation date for June 16th as the class of 2026 graduates. [music] Um this is the last day for students. Um there are a lot of things to organize, a lot of equipment and furniture and seats

074and such to secure. And so we're asking for the board's consideration this evening and setting the date so the planning um can begin and and be finalized in advance. >> Any questions or discussion? All right. Is there a motion for that? >> Move that the Western Board of Education set June 16, 2026 as a class of 2026 graduation date. >> I second. >> All right. Thank you. All in favor? Yay. All right, get your caps and gowns ready. >> Just have a quick comment. >> Yeah. >> Can we double check the World Cup schedule before we set that? I'm only kidding because I think Scotland opens up at with Haiti at Rutherford that day. So, if we can get there [music] and back, I'm just messing. But the World Cup does open that day. >>

075The look on your face is priceless. >> Okay, thank you for that, Peter. >> The public set it to record. If I if I had to predict your comment, that would not have been it. But thank you. [laughter] All right. Uh, moving along, the charter revision commission. Uh, this is the town charter revision commission. They sent us a question that I think everyone read, which was, um, how does the board of ed feel about the number of members on the board of ed? How does the board of ed feel about the term terms of board of ed members? And is it difficult to reach a quorum? So, I'm just prepared to write a very general response. Um, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. I was thinking that we think our seven member board is

076a good number that um four years seems like a workable term and that in general it's not hard to um come to a qu or make a quorum. Jody just need to be quiet if you have any disagreements on that. Jod has to hurt us all into the meetings. Appreciate that. Uh anyway, are there any thoughts or u additional uh comments that we want to make? >> No, I actually wrote back already talking to you because I didn't know we were around, but >> Yeah, that's fine. Absolutely. >> I think we're great. >> All right. Yeah. I just want to make sure that as well. >> Maybe not you though. >> Yeah, we No, I think it's great. I think seven is important. I like the whole setup. I think the four-year term is really

077important because um people would drop out faster if they could um if they did. and we need continuity on the board. It's it's a lot of work and so we need continuity on the board and I think four years is a good a good term. >> Okay. All right. Any other comments? >> I I'll just reiterate what I said at my public comment [music] at the uh inaugural meeting of the charter revision when they were discussing five member boards. And I was like, you know, if if I had my brothers and we had a board of ed, I'm not going down [music] to five. If I had a choice, I would go up to nine because the load to work is so high at times. And I quoted the hours that we cumulatively put in

078for Erica's hire, the budget, and now these discussions about the middle school that if you're going to swing the number, swing it upward, not downward. So that was in the public record. >> Okay. [music] All right. Thanks. All right. Uh, moving on. Next generation accountability system discussion. I'll leave that to Erica and probably Tina. Yes, I I am gonna turn it over to Tina time who's prepared a great presentation for the board. >> Perfect. Let me get out of the way. >> Great. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Good to see you all again. Um while Dan pulls up the presentation, just want to give a brief [clears throat] overview this evening of the next generation accountability system. Um this is we talked about the state has multi many different um [clears throat] um algorithms and

079calculations for different things and here's another one. So this is the next generation accountability system that was adopted in 2015. Um the purpose tonight is to provide you with an overview of the framework and also provide you with Weston's results from the 2425 school year which was released um at the end of October this year. So, our goal uh goals tonight are to explain the structure and intent of the Connecticut um accountability system. Um to review Weston's results and look at some three-year trends, and then to also highlight some areas of strength as well as targeted areas of focus that will guide our continuous improvement efforts efforts. Um just to give a little background and context around the evolution of accountability. We know that accountability systems have been around and evolved significantly over time. Um

080a lot of the early systems focus largely on compliance and inputs and later models eventually emphasized proficiency and test scores often in punitive ways. Um, however, back in 2015, Connecticut adopted the next generation accountability system, which rep which represented a shift toward a more balanced growthoriented approach. Um, it recognizes that school quality is multifaceted and that meaningful accountability must include academic growth, engagement, readiness, and access. So, um, as we share tonight's results, um, for the 2425 reporting year, our goal is to provide a clear and transparent analysis of how our schools are performing across these indicators and how this information aligns with our ongoing school and district improvement planning. Um, the purpose of the next generation accountability system is to support improvement, not to rank or label schools, but it is designed to provide a

081more comprehensive picture of school and district performance, highlight strengths and progress over time, identify areas where additional focus or support may be needed, and promote transparency for families, educators, and the [music] community. Um this system aligns closely with our commitment to continuous improvement and educating the whole child. Um it elevates the performance of all student groups including our high needs super group as the state calls it because it includes students with disabilities, multilingual learners and economically disadvantaged students. So when we speak about the high needs uh subgroup or performance area that includes all three aspects of students. Um so this can be quite comprehensive. Um I just want to give a brief overview of the way in which schools and an overall district earns points to um measure and be reported out on an accountability

082system. So Weston at the district level, which is the far right column, is evaluated against 12 indicators, and a district earns a total of 1,450 total points across those 12 indicators. Schools also earn points on various indicators, but depending on the grade levels that they serve, it uh determines which indicators that they're going to be measured against. So, Hurlbutt, for example, um has kindergarten through 2 grade. They do not have any indicator other than indicator 4, which is on chronic absenteeism because they do not assess students on smarter balanced. They do not have on track to high school graduation indicators. And so, as the grade levels move up, the indicators change. The district, however, is scored on all 12 indicators. So this evening's presentation focuses on the district level indicators because as a district we

083are rated against all 12. Um you can see that this accountability framework um does not only focus on academic achievement but it also focuses on growth. It focuses on absenteeism. It focuses on um post-secary preparation. It focuses on physical fitness. [music] It focuses on arts access um and also tracking students into their post-secary um education paths. It definitely provides a more holistic and compre comprehensive balanced approach to accountability versus just only looking at achievement. Um one thing you might notice here before we move on is that if you look at the numbers there's no three. Well, actually there is a three. Indicator three is on participation. So districts are scored and rate rated on their participation rates for all students in all content areas. So math, science, and English when they are assessed. And they're

084also scored on participation rates not only for all students, but also for the high needs subgroup as well. You may be wondering why is this accountability system important to us? um not only because we like to dive a little deeper into our um the holistic approach to the health and well-being of our district, but also this is how schools are uh determined whether or not they are a school of distinction. Okay, so this is another um just visual representation of how the indicators are weighted because as I mentioned earlier, each indicator may be scored um differently depending on if it's an elementary school, a middle school or high school. So you can see um it's a little blurry, but you can see some the distribution and the balance of the percentage based on the academic

085achievement, which is in green. That's indicator one. Um, indicator two is academic growth. So, you can see that at the elementary level and the middle school level, there is a larger percentage of weight that's given to the overall accountability index. But at the high school, because it's only student achievement in grade 11, there is no growth indicator. So, that's why you don't see indicator 2 there. So, just wanted to show a little bit of a visual depiction of how the weights change depending on the indicators that are scored. Um, we throw out a lot of different terms in education. So, I just want to make sure that we're all have a common language as well as we look at some of these scores. The accountability index refers to the overall um possible points that a

086district andor school earns across all the dis across all the indicators that they can earn points on. So the accountability index is all of the indicators that you can earn points are on versus a performance index which is just the score that's related to indicator one which is based on performance whether that be an ELA, math and science. Okay, so we're going to get into it a little bit. Um this first slide shows you Weston's accountability index over the past three years as compared to the state. The state is on the left hand side and Weston is on the right hand side. Um [snorts] the goal or the target for the state is at 85 or higher. 85% accountability index uh rankings for districts or higher. Um and Weston's index has increased from 85.7 back

087in 2023. That's the end school year 22 23 and this past year we've improved to 87.1. The state benchmark for high performance as I mentioned is 85 or higher and Weston has consistently exceeded this bench benchmark demonstrating stable and sustained performance with incremental growth from a very high [music] uh baseline from three years ago. So I gave you a cheat sheet um because as you look at each indicator it gives you a summary of all the 12 indicators and what they represent. Um, as I mentioned, does this have a little laser on it, Dan? Maybe. Well, if it had a laser, um, the first six rows are 1A through 1F, and those are your accountability, your accountability scores, um, excuse me, your performance index scores. So, ELA performance index for all students and then your

088ELA performance index for high need students. and it goes from ELA math and then science. So um in addition uh then you go down to indicator 2 which focuses on growth which is from one year to the next um across ELA and math because those are looking at growth scores when there are students in grades four through eight based on smarter balanced. Um and [music] then indicator four is on chronic absenteeism. Again, broken out from all students versus our high need students. Um indicator five is preparation for college and career readiness, the number of courses that kids take, and the number of uh exams that are passed based on the students that take those exams. Indicator seven is on track to high school graduation. Indicator four, four and n um excuse me, indicator eight and

089nine is our four and sixyear graduation rates uh for all students and for high need students. Um indicator 10 is postsecary entrance. Um indicator 11 is our physical fitness where students have to perform on all four um physical fitness um exams in order to um achieve all the points. And then indicator 12 is arts access. So, it's all the options and courses that we offer in our district um both in music and art and um um and the number of courses that we offer for students in grades 9 through 12. So, down at the bottom um you can see that the state provides this very robust calculation on how districts earn certain points across those indicators. You can see that there's a max number of points that you can earn across each one of those

090indicators. And then based on the total possible points, which is 1450, how many did we earn based on our performance and the different indicators? We um earned 87.1 percentage of those points. Um a couple additional pieces of information here. The performance index over the past three years has seen an upward trend um across all um ELA with all students, our highnee students, [music] our math all students and our math high need students as well as our science all [music] students. One area that we'd like to focus on um and we've been focusing on is our science um high needs growth. We saw a slight decline in that from last over the last three years. Um this is just another example of maybe an easier way to look at some of our performance and our growth

091from last year to this year. So the state provides us with a um a um it's an Excel sheet that provides us to do some simple calculations based on last year's um index scores and and this year's index scores. And then it basically provides us with an accountability calculator to help us understand maybe what are some areas that we are really strong in and what are some areas that we might want to focus on. So here we did our comparison from last year to this year. We changed the notation a little bit because in um at the state level if you um if you maintained um an achievement of plus or minus 1% the state basically gave you a um you know horizontal yellow arrow but in Weston all of these yellow stars we've earned

092all the max points. So at the state level they want to give us a a yellow arrow but the reality is there's nowhere else to go. So, we gave ourselves yellow stars. So, um you can see that we earned um nine yellow stars here because we've earned the max points possible that you can earn in those indicators. Um we have [music] eight green arrows um out of 22 possible, which is 36%. And we have four red arrows that we would like to focus a little bit um a little bit more specifically on. And as I mentioned, one of them is our um science performance with um our high needs population, which again includes special education, multilingual learners as well as um economically disadvantaged. But overall last year to this year, we've improved um greater than

0931% from 85.6 to 87.1. So in addition, the next generation accountability system also provides and monitors information around um achievement and graduation gaps. So when disparities are significantly larger than state averages. [music] So Weston is not identified for any achievement gaps from last year. Um nor do we have graduation gaps. Um this reflects strong instructional supports and consistent [music] expectations across student groups. Um so these are the two definitions for um whether or not a district is deemed as having an achievement gap versus a graduation gap. And then um I provided these results here. The top chart um shows an analysis of our uh if there's any gap indicators and how the state calculates that is looking at our non high needs population compared to our high needs population. Basically, um, you look at those

094individual performance indices. If you've scored more than 75 points on those indicators, you have a max score of 75 as outlined by the state, right? And then you subtract 75 minus what our current high needs performance index is. And if it's greater than what the state gap is, then we have an outlier and therefore we have a gap. In this case, we do not in any one of our um um content area specifics performance areas. [music] In fact, um I analyzed it a little bit further. We're seeing that our gaps are slowly declining in ELA and math. ELA performance gap declined by 2.3% from last year and 2% a decline in math. Um, as I mentioned before, we are going to be highlighting and looking at our science performance over um, this year because we

095are seeing that we had a slight increase in our um, [music] in the size of the gap by 2%. We don't have an overall gap as a district, but we're noticing that that number is slightly increasing. So, that's an area of focus. >> Quick question. Um, so you have this the state numbers that the state that the state provides. Does the state provide also numbers by dur like composits by DIR? >> I anticipated your question, Mr. Guido. We will get there in just a slight moment. Okay. And in the chart at the bottom, >> quick question too. um we're focusing on um the science performance for high need students because there was a a use of two or 3% or two or three point change but what about there's also a substantial change in the

096um English proficiency and both literacy and oral. >> Yes. So, as a district, we have we have a very small population of MLL students in grades K through 12. That proficiency rating, and I analyzed it a little bit further as well, we have a total of um we have a total of two students in our population for our subgroup for high needs um in science in the high needs area. So, and across the district, we only have about 20 25 students in the MLL population K through 12, a multilingual learner, which is also um our English language learners, right? And so typically what happens when the state tracks the ELLL or MLL students um they have to grow within one year in order to receive um in order for the district to receive the highest

097points. Um in Weston typically an MLL learner or an ELLL learner exits the program within three years or four years. So they take a little bit longer in order to meet those proficiency ratings on the loss links which is the assessment that we use for oral proficiency. Um and so we monitor them closely. Um but based on this indicator and this framework it's only based on one year and we've seen that trends here in Weston it takes more than two years for students to gain the language and language acquisition >> again. So they're typically in the program for three years and they change they leave it. So, how many students do we have in this program? Right now, >> we have about 25 students in grades K through 12 that are identified as MLL learners.

098Most of them are in grades K through 5, >> right? >> And by the time that they graduate fifth grade, depending on when they enter, that's when they exit the program because they've ma they've grown enough to maintain the language acquisition and they're no longer identified as an MLL student. >> Correct. >> Does that make sense? a little bit because I'm still confused as to I mean we've seen a decline there. So why is it that that's not a concern whereas you're talking about in the science area for high need students it's a concern but there are only two students that you're looking at there. >> So it's a different population right because for MLL it's over 13 grades [music] >> okay >> in in science it's over three grades grade four >> grade six

099and grade eight that's where they take the assessment for um I'm sorry grade grade five and [music] 11 sorry for NGSS. >> Okay. Um, and so yes, we are looking at all of them. They're all important. Um, and we're looking at individual students because we have the ability to actually drill down by student um, on the back end of the database. And we're trying to match and look at our different resources to help support those students that are identified for MLL and for students that are in um, our high needs population for science. Those are two areas of focus that we know we want to work on. Just wondering why why there would be only two students in a high need science population if you just identified 25 students who are MLL's who would be

100in a high needs population. So there's two different buckets of students, right? Um we have 25 students that are MLL identified in grades K through 12. In the science area here, there are only students in uh 35 students in the high needs population for science in grades five, eight, and 11. [music] And of those students, two of them are MLL. >> No, but I guess why but why wouldn't it be did you just said 25 high need students in those grades of science? >> So, a high needs population includes special education, MLL, and economically disadvantaged. >> So, shouldn't So, shouldn't they all be in that three grades as opposed to the 12th grades, >> right? >> So I test. >> Wait, you said there were 25 students >> across 12 grades. >> 20. So there's

101two different indicators. One indicator talks about science performance and Sharon was asking specifically about a different indicator which was indicator um what? No, she was talking about the right about uh English proficiency of of L's. But I guess I was wondering if there's if you just identified 25 L's, which would be high need students, then why would the size of this science high need students be so much smaller than a group of 25 high need students? So presumably L's taking science, students with disabilities taking science, and economically disadvantaged students taking science. You would just think that would be a larger number than two >> because the years only have three grade levels, >> right? >> 5, eight, and 11. >> So there's only two and five. But I thought you said there were 25. >>

102So there's two different indicators. One is indicator Oh, I thought she meant 25 in the three grades. No, indicator 2E and indicator 2F is what Sharon kind of shifted our gear towards because she was looking at that number. That's okay. Right. Which focuses on our 25 students across the district K through 12 that are identified as an MLL learner, an English language learner. And we use a different assessment to measure growth. It's the lost links and that's what I was referencing before. Most of our students are in K through five at that in that indicator [music] and they take more than a year to exit out of the program, right? In order to develop their language acquisition and um exit out of the last links as an identified student. Um, I will say the state

103tracks those students even if they're not an MLL identified for four years even afterwards within our high needs population when they're when they're um calculated in our accountability system. So, it's a quite complex robust system that um there's a huge guide that goes along with it as well. Um but >> couple different combinations of how students are measured and you can hear me our high needs population MLL special education and [music] um econom economically disadvantaged they're scored multiple times in in various indicators depending on the grade that they're in and depending on the assessments that they take. >> Okays and the growth that they make eventually they exit as And that's when they're at proficient and they're no longer categorized in the bucket that you those two indicators that you were referring to. So they've

104met the growth, they've exited and new ML students are always coming as they said it takes like three years typically for them to graduate. >> Yep. And then on the bottom, this is just a quick uh chart of our participation rates, which um we are well above 95% which is um the requirement in order to um um which is the target for the district. Um participation rates impact school classification. So we'll get to that in a minute. Um so the state then looks at your accountability index overall and gives you a classification based on that rating. a school that would otherwise have been classified in category one or two and has a participation rate that is less than 95% [music] um for either all students or students with high needs in any tested subject automatically

105gets lowered to a different classification. So that's why participation rates is important. It's also important because um in order to be deemed a school of distinction, you have to make uh you have to make sure that your participation rates are 95% or above or they won't even consider you regardless of how high your accountability index is. Okay. Um so I put this indicator as a focus a little bit because it is the one indicator that all four schools um are accountable for all the way down to Hurlbut. Um, chronic absenteeism talks about um the percentage of of missing days um that is greater than 10% of the total number of days enrolled in the school year for any reason. And so um the state as a whole has had a goal of reducing chronic absenteeism

106over many years. um in Weston US too we have been focusing on chronic absenteeism and looking at um reducing our numbers for all students as well as students with high needs um because we know that being in school directly correlates to student achievement and also building a strong sense of belonging and well-being for kids. Um if you just a quick note on how you receive all 50 points in each of those two indicators. Um you the goal is to be less than 5%. So if you are less than 5% you receive all 50 points. Okay. So here is where Weston is um over the last three years compared to the state. You can see that we are well below the the state um the state scores and the state chronic absenteeism rates. Um but um

107three years ago um orange represents the students with high needs and blue represents the all student population. So our district goal for both all students and high need students is to obviously remain below 5%. Um since 2023 our overall chronic absenteeism rate has dropped from 7.6% to 4.3 which is a 3.3% overall improvement. And among our high need students, the rate has declined from 8.3% to 6.7%. Which [music] is again an overall improvement from 1.6 uh 1.6 percentage [music] points. Um so again um we're happy that we have uh made significant improvements over the last three years overall, but we still have um some some areas uh some work to do around our high needs population to ensure that um we try to meet that target of lower than 5%. I'll give a quick shout

108out to Hurlbut and Weston High School because uh the past year they had notable um contributions in reducing their district uh their school chronic absenteeism rates. Hes went from 11.1 with high needs population to 1.8% in one year. Great job. And Western High School reduced their high needs chronic absenteeism [music] rate from 12.4 to 5.4 excuse me 5.5. So, they've been really focusing a lot on um um you know, building relationships with families and understanding what needs are for students and and really focusing on getting them into school. Um so, this really has been a consistent and a proactive communication with families over the last three years talking about the importance of attendance. We also have been really working on our multi-tered system of support which includes social emotional learning and attendance and behavior and

109those systems have significantly helped support some of this work as well. Okay, this is just a brief overview of the overall accountability um scores for our districts, our schools. Um and um this is where we made a notable um um um school of distinction where Western Intermediate School had an overall accountability index of 85.4 and they received um school of distinction for high performance and growth in their math area for all students and for um their high needs population as well. All right. So to get to your question about some of our comparison, we did add a couple additional slides in here around our accountability index comparisons uh uh compared to some of our neighboring districts. Um so you can see that uh Weston, I didn't put the orange arrow here, but it's the fourth

110column down. Um that's Weston compared to Derenne, Newkan, Richfield, Westport, and Wilton. Um you can see that we've had steady um incremental growth over the last year and we've always maintained our accountability index above 85 um%. And so you can see that while some districts I I I know it was kind of hard to look at the chart in this way um the graph. So, I did put a chart on the bottom and looked at the number of points that have um either increased or decreased over the last three years um across the districts. You'll see that some districts do show a larger percentage increase, but those districts began at a lower baseline, which allows for a more upward movement. And Weston, in contrast, has consistently, as I said, remained at the top performance tier,

111demonstrating both stability and sustained high achievement. So um one indicator um in in in addition that we wanted to drill down a little bit more into was um our indicator 2 which is around academic growth for both ELA and math. Um this is in grades four through eight where we are assessing um smarter balanced for students. Um and you can see that growth in particular is um something that we've been focusing on not only at the district level but also at the school level. We've been writing our goals around achievement as well as growth. And we're really proud of some of the way in which that we've seen some of this significant improvement and the gap between our high needs population um and our non high needs population over the last three years. So there's

112the little orange yellow arrow there. Um so how do you look at this uh chart? Right? The goal obviously is that the lines have a positive slope, right? You always want the lines to be going up. But in addition more importantly here is where we see a gap between high needs performance and or high needs growth and non- high needs growth. You want those two lines to start coming together closer so that the gaps get smaller. So the dot at the end of those lines you want to see that last dot get closer and closer together. So um over the last three years you can see that we have closed that gap by 11.7 points. Um I put that um chart at the bottom here for Weston. We've really been focusing on um our growth

113for our high needs students [music] and we're really proud of the great work that our teachers and our students have been doing over the last three years because we know that the amount of growth that our high needs population has to grow is typically two and a half times their peer in order to close that gap um in a in a shorter period of time. So we've seen some great um progress in ELA. And what would sorry just a quick question what would you attribute [music] that to? I mean obviously we have a skilled staff but is it programming? Is it small groupoup time? Is it different strategies? Do you have a quick answer? >> Yeah, I think it's a combination of things and Tracy can add into you. From my perspective, there's a couple

114things that we've been working on over the last three years. [music] One is curriculum alignment to standards. um making sure that all of our grade level uh curriculum is aligned to standards so that when it comes to accessing grade level content all students have access to grade level content on on a very consistent and a um regular basis. also our we've done some presentations on our multi-tered system of support um that has deemed to show a lot of growth in this area because we've been identifying the individual students that need support and we've been deploying staff whether it be an interventionist whether it be um a curriculum instruction leader to help support in the classrooms to really focus on smallroup instruction so we can identify the programs and the support that the students need. >>

115Did you want to add anything? Yeah, I think one of the uh biggest game changers is we set it as a goal and we called out this subgroup in our district and school improvement plans. Um and that gets people talking about the data, thinking about the data in different ways. We have access to a lot of data for individual students which is extremely helpful. And I think in conjunction um with that work, we've also improved our evaluation process within special education in particular to more effectively um identify areas of concern and remediate where there are deficits while building on strengths. So I think it's been a combination of a lot of different things. May I add one more thing that I recently learned in the past few weeks and that is the strategic nature for

116which we're utilizing staff ensuring we're matching their level of expertise to student needs and being flexible in our thinking there. >> Absolutely. And look at this one. Save the best for last. So um again you can see that a positive trend a positive trend line here for both um high needs as well as all students but look how much closer those two dots came over the last three years between um the two groups and we've seen such a great um improvement and growth uh for our high need students uh 12.7 points over the last three years which is definitely the positive trend that we hope to see and we know that a lot of our practices are working and we need to continue doing that. And I think as Tracy mentioned um you know the

117power is in analyzing the data down to the student level, helping students build their own accountability systems for themselves, taking ownership for their learning, setting goals and um having adults support them in understanding where they need to go and um you know changing their mindset to to believe that they can do it. I still I believe that that's a part of it as well. Okay. So, um just in closing, um we have been doing um Tracy, Erica, myself, and the principles, we have been meeting um and diving into each one of these uh school level accountability systems for them, and we've been unpacking the data and the indicators on an individual uh basis. And um we will continue doing that this school year. We will continue looking at and unpacking the data and identifying the

118individual students that are in our high needs uh groups um and our subgroups to really match um schedules to match curriculum and deploy staff and resources to individual students that need it most so we can continue seeing those gaps uh grow and and close over time. Um, I did link in some additional resources that I talked to you all about when we were meeting with different um, uh, schools just in case you were interested. All of this data is on Edsite public. You can actually manipulate the data and actually see things on your own if you're interested. Um, and you can actually the estimator tool there that we used with the state where you actually can use it as a predictability tool. you can put different numbers in there and say, you know, if this

119if I earned this number of points, how would it change my accountability overall? So, we've got some great tools that we've been working on to actually see um how our accountability system can change based on all these indicators. Thank you. I know it's a lot. Appreciate your time. [laughter] Poof. Oh, and have a good holiday. >> Thanks. >> I I just [laughter] I have a question. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> First, I want to I want to comment that we got off easy because US history wasn't one of the indicators with this crew. >> You're on fire. >> Oh my gosh. [laughter] >> Brutal here. >> Oh yeah. >> But uh [music] is there are is there a something you need that's beyond what you have in your grasp today to address anything specific? I

120mean I mean to be frank we're going into budget season, right? Is there like have you said I could really use that? If I got that I could do that. >> So I'll be honest there's one thing that we've been talking about over No, I really we really didn't. Um we talk we talk about data a lot. Um we talk about the ability to analyze data easily, seamlessly and and in a way that triangulates as we say in education triangulates the data. We look at academic, we look at behavior, we look at attendance, we look at a whole bunch of different indicators. Um we currently are we do not have a massive data warehousing tool. Um a lot of what we do right now is on um Excel sheets. Um we do have a visualization

121tool. We have Power School. We have a visualization tool called Tableau that is lay layered on top. Um, but we could we're going to be looking at a a rob a more robust tool to help us more efficiently analyze data in a very efficient and easy way versus using some of the other tools that people are trying to manipulate and put formulas in. So, I would say that um that's one area that I've been meeting with different groups at the schools that the multi-ter system of support teams that are looking at all of this data and trying to be very efficient in a very short period of time. That's one aspect that they would like. Um, we're going to be looking at whether or not there's a more efficient tool that we could [music] maybe

122sunset some tools that we have looking at software and looking at a more robust tool over time that could help us more easily and readily have the data at our fingertips and identify those students faster. >> I have a question. The thank you for this presentation. Thank you for the detail. Um the improvement in academic growth was really nice to see. I did notice and I know it's not a priority per se, but I did notice in the you know in the drill down of each indicate in each indicator that arts access went from a yellow star. >> Mhm. >> Um and it's now an area for growth and I'm wondering if you know what happened there. Great. >> We asked that question too. It was a conversation when we went to the high school.

123Um, and Erica and and Tracy can definitely chime in. Um, the arts access indicator specifically talks about the percentage of students in grades 9 through 12 that participate in at least one dance, music, theater, visual arts, or media arts course in the school year. And so, while every year we go to the curriculum subcommittee, we have conversations about the program of study. We just did the program of study at the last curriculum meeting. We've been having more um conversations about how do we um uh not only increase the number of interest around some of our arts access or arts uh courses like ECE, early college experience courses. Maybe that would entice students. Um that's one piece of it is looking at creative ways of offering um courses that kids are interested in taking. That's one.

124Um the other piece though is scheduling. One of the conversations that we had was that sometimes there's just not enough time for students to actually take all the graduation requirements and um some of the passing classes that they're looking um to to put in their schedules. So it's a conversation that we've been having over the last couple years. Um we haven't reduced staff. We've tried to increase courses that we've offered, but it's not about the number of offerings, [music] it's the number of participation, who is taking the CLA, the number of students that are actually taking [music] the class. So, it is an it is an area that we've been looking at also. Yeah, good question. >> Thank you, Tina. Thank you. >> One quick thing, two two quick things. [clears throat] One is being

125on the board for as long as I have along with my friend Sharon over there. It's good to see progress in the right direction. We're always highly critical of why are we here? Why can't we be here? So, I just wanted to say it's good to be able to see things moving in a better direction because it takes a long time. >> It does. >> So, >> slow incremental growth. >> Yeah. And my other quick question is just about chronic absenteeism. Yes. Is there any correlation to that and February break? No, that's not really the question. Is there any um correlation between that and mental health? Because I feel like we have spent so much time on mental health. I cued this right up for you, Tracy. >> It's a good question. >> Yes, I

126think is the answer to your question. Um, I also think that our chronic absenteeism numbers for high need students are impacted by the fact that we identify students with mental health challenges which are medical challenges and can impact their ability to attend school. And that population is also um where we support student with students with complex medical needs who unfortunately also tend [music] to be absent more frequently. And I think while there's celebration in numbers in particular buildings being reduced, some of that is an indicator of students transitioning to a different building, their medical needs remaining consistent. [music] Um, but we're like every other surrounding district. We're seeing a significant increase in mental health needs, especially at the middle school and high school level. I think we have a lot of um robust supports in

127place to um enable those students to access learning in a variety of different ways, but it's going to be really important that we continue to do that. That's not a trend that I see decreasing unfortunately in the short term. >> Any other questions? Um I want to say thank you for a great report and um you know most importantly the results by and large are headed in very impressive directions. Um I was very heartened to see the gap between special needs students and the general population uh narrowing and also I thank you for the hard work in um I always like to see trends. So, thank you for showing three years and I also like to see comparisons to our neighboring towns which you did very effectively. So, thanks for including all that. I know

128probably extra data but I find it helpful. So, thank you. Um, okay. Next on the agenda um are policies. The first group is a first review of policies that are not requiring any changes and I don't know if Sharon or Erica or someone from the policy committee wants to speak to those. So these are all policies that um some some were passed back in the9s. um others more recently. However, we just wanted to review them and not leave them as policies that had just been dangling out there for decades, but actually had put had somebody put eyes on them to make sure that they were still relevant. And um so these were policies that we looked at that we felt that there was no need for any changes, but we would like to be able

129to say that we had revisited them and that they were still relevant. >> Okay. Um I just had one question on one of them. I think I think it was the filling vacancies one in the 9,000 series which I think [music] are bylaws. >> 9221. >> Yeah. I'm just wondering why the board of selectmen does that and if that's by town charter then it's by town charter. But >> town charter. Okay. There we go. >> That came up during policy. >> I did it. I'm so sorry. Oh, that's great. We're all on the same page. >> A friend who's in Ridgefield and I think uh I think I asked Jessica or who did I ask? No. >> No. Jessica was >> okay. I asked Erica, you may have I right I brought this up because

130I have a friend who's in Ridgefield and he said the board of eds >> and same things same thing's true in Wilton >> but you but but those are very few most towns have the select men actually appoint. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions besides my dumb one? [laughter] >> All right. Next one. All right. These the next trunch is discussion of policies for review with updates and changes. This is a first review. Am I right? >> This one. Yeah, >> there's a first read on all of these. >> Okay. All right. Um >> just a light read. >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] >> Um and I got through a lot but not necessarily all. So I will go through it again and send the policy committee any questions that [music] I might

131have. >> Absolutely. You can do that. Um so this is the first read. So, we want to make sure that we're maintaining two reads >> um so that uh this has all been part of the public agenda as well. So, hopefully everybody who's watching um or a recorded meeting or live um will have the time to go through any of these policies and if they have any feedback, they can of course send it to the board as well. I'm the chair of the policy committee. feel free to send anything to me um directly or to the other members, David or or Michael, and we can um we can make sure that we address those in committee. So, that's that and hopefully we'll be back second time around unless anybody has any discussions about any of

132these aside from um the replacement. If anybody has any discussions, we can talk about it now, go back to committee and then come back with the second read. >> Okay. >> Any comments back? So, I have one comment that I'll continue to bring up that Sharon and I maybe don't see eye to eye on this one, but that's okay. Um policy number 9325. So meeting conduct [clears throat] um it looked like when we were going through this in the in the policy committee um that there's a section uh termed public address where I guess we were changing and I'll I'll highlight this now. I don't know if we want to discuss it now, but um page five >> page five under public address. So, this this pertains to public comment. >> Mhm. >> And I

133noticed during the policy committee uh meeting that there had been changes that were [music] made um I guess before we met and um we got into a debate I think the three of us and Erica as well just with respect to you know what we're trying to accomplish. Um I think I think I took one end of it. I think Sharon, you took the other and David was probably a happy median in between us. Um, [clears throat] but we we reduced the number of minutes uh per person um that could provide public comment from five to [music] three. And then we also reduced the number of minutes I guess it looks like we went from 20 minutes per topic which typically then in you know in terms of how we've done in the past we

134would vote then to let's say wave that top wave that time limit if there were such you know number of people that would continue that discussion. Um but we changed that from 20 minutes per topic let's let's call it and we replaced that with 30 minutes of total discussion. Now I I also think that um there's another change that was made that I guess gives the chairperson the ability to go ahead to decide um as to whether or not if we exceed 30 minutes to move part of that to the end of the meeting. Is that correct? >> That's optional number six. >> Optional. Correct. Um, so there were, so those are three pretty significant changes. So I guess my question is, um, where those originated from. I think I I think Deb, you had

135some input into that. Is that correct or not? >> Um, I certainly shared with Jody and maybe Sharon >> and thank you Erica. Um, probably last spring. Okay. um in terms of the length of speaking per individual >> um that five >> seemed excessive and I'm not sure that five minutes is that widespread. >> Yeah. >> So the recommendation was for something less. So it looks like three. >> Yeah. Most other district surrounding districts do two to three minutes. >> Okay. So [music] so so the the three minutes I've sort of come around to this. Um, look, if if it were up to me, again, I think the spirit of the law here is that I want to give people in the community an ability to express their concerns or frustrations. And I think as

136we've seen over the last few years, every once in a while, there aren't many incidents, but there are a few where I think you have to give people an opportunity to just express concerns and vent, for lack of a better of of a better description. And so while I understand we want to be sort of efficient with with everyone's time, I certainly do. Um I I don't know that this is the best course of action to go ahead. In fact, I was going to go the opposite way that I mentioned the in the policy committee which was to actually way eliminate the 20 minutes per topic altogether. So we don't have to get into the situation in a heated discussion where now we're voting on whether or not to allow additional people to speak about

137a topic. I don't think it happens often, but I think it's important when it does happen for everyone to give everyone a chance to speak. I understand there are also concerns on the other side that sometimes people take advantage of that. >> Um, and I also understand that too. I think that's probably a minority of people that would even do that. And that for, you know, if you're weighing giving people more time to speak versus, you know, let's say cracking down on people that would, you know, let's say abuse the public comment. I would rather I would rather lean in the former than the latter. Um, again, I I just think it's a it's it's a small community. Everyone knows each other. I want to give everyone a chance to speak. I'm not saying we

138don't necessarily in this way. Um, but I do think in those in those rare circumstances where people are passionate about a topic that look they take time out of their day to to attend the meeting or to come here in person um that we should give them the opportunity to speak. So that's that's my sort of opening salvo to this >> and I I agree. I think we should give them time and I think expanding I think we rather than looking at it as confining or taking the 20 minutes per topic away we're expanding we're allowing them now 30 minutes per topic if they so choose but it's 30 minutes overall and if it's if it's uh depending I think that having number six on here which is the optional area where if it's a

139topic that you can see the board like the room is full right and there are going to be tremendous number of people and if we don't if we have a light um agenda then we can the chair can we can either do one of two things either we can as a board vote twothirds to open up um to extend it beyond the 30 minutes or if we have a heavy agenda the chair can say we want to hear what everybody has to say but we do have board business we need to do first let's get through the business and we've moved the remainder of the public comment to the end of the meeting if they're really passionate they'll stay around um it's not trying to silence anyone it's trying to say that we still have

140business that we need to get done as a board as well and 30 minutes is a substantial amount of time um to have public comment especially you know again we have two options we're not trying to silence anybody but we do need to have some sort of control for the odd chance in which we have seen where people have been abusive of our time right and I think that you know sitting here and listening to a group of people read the names of everyone one and their address and the names of their children that signed a petition is a blatant abuse of our time. >> Can I couple things uh on communication committee back version one? We did spend a lot of time from like literally the opening of that subcommittee because that subcommittee had

141been dormant for quite some time and then when the subcommittee got put back together uh one of the biggest things that we worked on was improving transparency and it's not that I think we had a transparency problem. I think we had a uh uh people thought we had a transparency problem. It was a perceived transparency problem and it came and we spent a lot of time making sure people knew when subcommittees were as far as the public comment goes. That's actually where this really long- winded opening public comment came from. It came from the communication committee and it came from the place of >> Thank you, Chad. Yeah, [laughter] I I think my concern is we're undoing a lot of the criticism we took, whether placed correctly or not, that wound us up into having

142a higher level of transparency, being more inviting to the community, explaining to the community why there are times where they make public comment and we look pokerfaced and why we don't respond. So I think that what I was suggesting during policy was I think the three minutes per per speaker is appropriate. I think 20 minutes per topic sorry total that's >> 30 minutes 30 minutes. We expanded it to >> per topic. I think that's unfair and I'll give you a quick example of why. I attended the board of finance meeting a couple of weeks ago and I from what I understand there were a lot more people who wanted to speak than there was availability or or time and the chair said we've hit the time now the community who was remote had no way

143of knowing who was actually in quue to speak and that raises questions of transparency because if you don't know who didn't get to speak you only have the opportunity to hear those that did speak and so I think that a fairway there. There's two mechanisms here. I think the three minutes per person is reasonable. I think that there should be um 20 minutes per topic. We don't generally have more than one or two topics and it's usually just one that's very uh highly >> emotional. Um but 20 minutes tends to be on a per topic. And what we can do is we can ask the community if you're here to speak on topic A, you know, please, you know, talk in in that in in that 20 minutes. I think I think we're just we're

144unwinding a lot of the work that we did to increase transparency by limiting people. And I think when we talk about what's important to the community, if they're going to show up here to our meetings, we owe them the if to the right to speak and it just it's just not a good look. we cut them off. We say we've hit our limit and it although the chair can wave that uh there can be questions of is this being appar uh being applied equally and fairly all the time. So I think that the the happy medium on this policy and I think what the policy committee was going to do was bring this up tonight because at the next meeting the full board's going to be asked to vote on it and so kind of

145go home and think about this between now and next year in January when we meet and I think what I was offering as as Michael said sort of place in the middle is three minutes per uh speaker uh 20 minutes per topic. So, so, so the only the only thing I would say to that is that, you know, in the throws of an of an emotional meeting where a lot of people want to make a comment. It's it just seems it seems callous or coarse for us once we hit the 20 minute limit to say okay should we allow should we continue to allow discussion notwithstanding of course I know you have examples of let's say you know times where people have taken advantage certainly um you know that'll happen in anything um but for

146the most part I think again putting it on us then to actually take that vote in the heat of that discussion I think puts a lot of pressure on all of us sort of in a moment where emotions are high and whether it's we take a vote on it or it's the chair and it's a unilateral decision and you know moving some of this around um I I I I think personally and again people can disagree with me and that's fine I I I don't know that it um it supports the, let's say, transparency and the communication that we're striving for ultimately with the community. Again, reasonable people can can disagree on this. I'm trying to take some of the emotion out of it from our standpoint because again, when when things are when emotions

147are high and then we reach that limit, everyone's going to look at us like, okay, so you're not going to [music] extend the 20 minutes. It's just it feels to me like we it would be a bad look. A and B. Um I think that like David said, look, I ran years ago on transparency and [music] communication. And look, there are certainly topics there are certainly topics that, you know, um let's say I'm more passionate about than others, >> but I do think we owe everyone an opportunity to speak. And you know, I I would I would like a little bit more sort of latitude in sort of what we're trying to do here with respect to giving people the [music] opportunity. So that's >> I definitely think I mean we need to give people

148the opportunity to speak but we also have to have the ability to control our meeting >> and that's that's where these policies come in so that we can if need be at 30 minutes or at 20 minutes per topic put an end and say we have to get on with our meeting and we want to hear what you have to say but let us do this business and continue this conversation afterwards and sometimes during the meetings we may actually answer some of the questions that are going to be discussed during public comment. So, whatever we decide as a board, we I personally think that we have to have we can't just have an open-ended. We have to have some sort of control over the meeting. Um, so that's those are my thoughts. As you can

149see, it was a very interesting policy committee meeting. >> Well, it seems like the meeting's continuing right here. >> I'm I'm sorry. Just just >> Well, I just just as I like stew over this, Michael, what is it? I'm sorry if you said it before, but what is it that you What is the total amount of time? I know I understand the three to five minutes per person, but what is the total amount of time you're in favor of? >> Unlimited. >> I'm in favor of open time. >> Okay. >> Correct. >> And Nicole, just to just to double down on what I was suggesting, there's typically only one or two topics that really people show up for. And so my suggestion was 20 minutes per topic. And there are some failsafe mechanisms such as

150if the if we start receiving comments that are uh was a wording it's uh boisterous which I thought was kind of an interesting word. [laughter] Um but you know I think that >> well well >> if it becomes disorderly >> I mean >> yeah I I mean I think that one thing we I being on the on the board with three different chairs the chairs usually have very good control of the meetings and people in my opinion who start speaking out boisterously they're emotionally charged and sometimes it's just bringing them back to we're your neighbor we're you know so anyway so my suggestion was 20 minutes per topic and generally speaking we don't have I can't think of a single scenario where you really have had more than two big topics at one meeting. >>

151No. >> Oh yeah. As far we usually only have one big topic that comes up. >> Yeah. Right. Right. So one big topic and then other people may be be present because the one big topic is not why they're here. They're here for something else. So two two topics. >> Peter wait. Peter, let's hear from people. We have >> Thank you. I actually got to back up a little bit because I'm struggling where five minutes is transparent, whatever that means, but 3 minutes is opaque. So, I think uh we're pretty transparent. We deliberate, right? The public listens that they could speak for three or five minutes. I don't see how that translates to the language of transparency op or opakeness. I think it's it's a misuse of whatever we're trying to convey with that. So,

152I'm, you know, I don't think we're opaque because we we steal a minute from somebody, how does that make us murky? So, I I don't like using those terms at all if that's the argument that's being p being per perpetrated here, right? I rather just say, can someone make a decent point in three minutes or do they need five minutes? And I'll listen and I'll take notes. I don't I don't see not taking notes or not listening as not being transparent or opaque either. So >> I I don't think it's a matter of opakqueness and transparent. This group of professionals here is incredibly transparent. So I I just see a disconnect between public comment and the use of the words transparent and opaque. Maybe someone can explain it to me sometime. >> Okay. So the

153policy committee will clearly continue and we'll send you our questions. Um [music] it seems like what I hear anyway is >> we need to do in person. We're going to have like an arm wrestling or something like that. thumb wrestle. >> Well, I do. Well, you bring up a good point. You do have to figure out if it's remote or not, which then gets into the problem of how do you know what somebody wants to speak on and how are you ever going to keep track of that? >> Um, great job with that. >> Yeah. Well, she can tell us how many people. She's not necessarily going to be able to tell us what they want to say. What topic if anybody is has got something to say off >> topic. Okay. All right. Okay.

154All right. But it seems like you all are agreeing on three minutes versus five minutes. >> All right, that's good. Good. Good. Good. >> All right. So, the the concern is 30 minutes total is somehow um not being open or transparent >> [music] >> etc. I have seen this board extend the time. >> So, I think people are sensitive in those moments. What I don't see is it written down here. So, maybe include it in the language. And it doesn't need to be twothirds. You can make it a majority. You can you can figure out a way to vote to extend. Another possibility is also making it at the end of the meeting. >> Just putting it there, public comment, end of the meeting, every meeting. And I'm saying this because we are trying to

155get through an agenda. We are keeping staff here. Um we need to be cognizant of their time. So it's a balancing act. And if it's really like a hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot topic it needs a public hearing in which case that's all you do >> and that would be a special meeting that's another way of [music] dealing with it >> I I think that's a good point all right so anyway I think I I'm looking at time we've all had our say um so let's move on and um stay tuned right you're going to meet before the next regular board meeting okay good good um all right so where does that leave Oh, yes. That was just All right. So, other comments

156we can send to you then. >> Yes. >> Like questions, comments, suggestions. And I I thank you, Michael, for bringing it up because I think how the board handles public comment is really important. Um, but I do think everyone's intent is to respect the public and hear [music] the public. It's just how to organize that in a way that's realistic. Um, okay. District updates. Uh, superintendent. >> Yes. I just have one quick update. Um, tomorrow night I will be joining Patty Powers at the Bushnell uh to celebrate her as Weston's teacher of the year amongst all other teachers of the year from the state of Connecticut in every other district. >> Oh, that'll be happy. >> It is a real inspirational and just energetic night. Um, it's just hard to capture the moment in words,

157but I'm looking forward to celebrating her, honoring her, and walking her across the stage in the presence of so many other amazing educators, including our very own. >> That's great. That's a great update. Thank you, >> pupil personnel. >> Hi, everybody. Couple of updates for tonight. Um the day after our last board of education meeting, you might remember that we held the ELC lottery for the 2627 school year. Just wanted to rehighlight what we've discussed previously. Um that we are planning for five classes, two threes, and three fours. Um and just so you're aware as a board, this year we're asking for deposits to be returned by February 1st. Um which is months earlier than we've asked previously. so we'll have a better sense of who's attending for [music] the next school year. Um, in

158the area of school climate, just so you know, each building is working to finalize its school climate improvement plan. Um, that's part of the requirement of the school climate policy that we adopted last year. Um we are also working collaboratively as a leadership team to recommend revisions to the discipline policy which you might have seen on the agenda uh which was just introduced to the policy committee last week. Um and just um a heads up that that will also lead to some revisions to the code of conduct when we get to a point of actually adopting that policy. In partnership with the special education PTO liaison, we had our parent workshop for Hurlbut families on December 2nd. The presentation focused on the special education process and services available at Hurlbut. Um I very much appreciated

159the families who attended that presentation in person. A recording is available on the website along with a copy of the PowerPoint. >> [music] >> Just a reminder for families that we do record the presentation but not the question and answer period for a variety of reasons. Um so I do encourage families to join us for the meeting so they have an opportunity to um ask questions and clarifying qu and obtain clarifying information about what was presented. Finally, I want to thank the special education PTO parent leaison for taking the time to recognize the special education department um districtwide on national special education day which coincidentally was the same day as the presentation. Um their thoughtful messages and sweet treats were very much appreciated by the staff. Thank you. Questions, comments? All right. Um, moving on

160to money. [laughter] >> Um, not so happy news. Um, just want to report that we have a slight change, slight change to the deficit projected for the end of the year, approximately 50 plus,000. Um, primarily driven by we had a change in our revenue offset. Uh we had one family that moved in became a resident and we had another student who withdrew from the program. So that's going to reduce or offset by approximately $40,000. This is the year of uh un unexpected things. Um also unexpected was our 10-year renewal for our for the xenon plant. So we needed to engage a engineer to do that work for us. That came in approximately $18,000. and we had a slight adjustment to the estimated FML savings for the full year. Our goal is just when we return

161in January to start working on on ways to mitigate um this deficit with hopefully to have the entire deficit hopefully the entire deficit um fully mitigated by the end of March. Um last year we were in a similar situation. Um we were able to mitigate mitigate some of that deficit early on. Um this year is a little bit more challenging, but um we're seeing ways that it could be possible. It's still early in the year, right? We still have six months to go and there's still a lot of unforeseen things that could occur. So we don't want to be um premature in um freezing budgets and stuff like that. So we want to be mindful of all the needs of for the entire district. Um so we definitely will do our very best to mitigate

162the deficit. Any questions or comments? Okay. Um, obviously Phil, you have a challenge and keep us surprised and the the sooner you can put put uh gears in motion, the better. All right. And then we look forward to the next report. >> Yes. >> Thank you. We'll keep an eye on that. And if there's any kind of emergency or something that that happens before a regular report, please don't hesitate to bring it forward. >> Absolutely. Will. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh committee updates. >> Before we move on. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Jeez, >> we got to approve that. I'm so sorry. Is there a motion to approve that? >> Move that the Western Board of Education approve the November 2025 financial report as presented. >> Second. >> Thanks, Lisa. All in favor? >> Okay, I

163think that's unanimous. Uh the budget calendar. >> Uh so you have in front of you the calendar for uh fiscal year 207. Um we have started the process as you know back in October. So we're deep in in in the process right now. The heavy work for the board will begin in January. Um and that will continue pretty much the entire process will continue through April. renewals. So, we have started the marathon. Um, so the calendar here is for the board to review and approve. >> Okay. Any questions or comments on the calendar besides the fact that there are more meetings than there are days in the month of January. [laughter] Is there a motion to approve? >> Move that the Western Board of Education approve the fiscal year 27 budget calendar as presented. >>

164Second. All in favor? >> All right. No opposition. Thank you. Uh committee updates. Um communications committee. Do you have any other updates? >> Sorry. >> Uh communication committee. So we we have reconstituted it again. >> Yes. It's like making sourdough bread. Um, our big thing for uh the next six, eight, 12 months, whatever it is, is we're going to focus on getting communication out to the community on where we're at with facilities and and I think uh Nicole is going to be sort of that summarizing the facilities meetings that we have. We're going to then kick it around at communication. Then we're going to forward it on for um approval and every month there'll be some sort of update from us on the facilities. Okay, I agree that I um it's got to be [music]

165timely. So, thank you and hard work for that committee. Is there a cape update? >> Doesn't have to be. I just >> Okay. Is there a CES update? >> Yeah. Quick one. So, we had our legislative breakfast uh last week and um it was fascinating in that the topic that mostly came up. So, legislative breakfast is basically a bunch of superintendents, chairs, um, non-chairs. Uh, and the topic that was really talked about a lot among even our own duray districts were unfunded mandates and other costs to operate that are uh, really making it difficult for superintendents to do their budget. And I found that to be really interesting because it's the first time in the four years that I've been attending this where there seems to be a the other superintendent are talking about trying

166to offset things like it was the first time that actual cost to operate due to state mandates was really squeezing the local districts. And I found it fascinating that the superintendents were willing to talk up about it. The legislators were basically like and we're going to give you more unfunded mandates. But it was really interesting to hear superintendents willing to say you we need money to keep doing all these things you're asking us to do. >> Did they mention any specific mandates? >> Yes. Uh >> out of curiosity. >> Oddly enough, one of the biggest ones was um food services and lunch programs and breakfast programs. That was one of the biggest ones. even uh not just like Norwalk where you might expect it where I think it's critically important but even uh I believe

167Fairfield and New Cananan brought up a lot of unfunded mandates. So it was a lot of it was around uh lunches and breakfasts and other ones were um what was it called? It was the uh the reimbursement rate for um >> excess costs came up. So yeah it was it was interesting. y'all updated. I I stood in for our chair, Lisa Lu, who is off on urgent business in the tropics. And uh I I actually Tina T did a fine job. we we we're really looking at the program of studies both from a course offering and uh also uh scheduling and it's a complex mix and then I think uh opening the door to uh larger consideration of early college experience EC is really going to benefit the district and I think that will that

168will uh be quite interesting to see how we we expand the course offerings uh across the board. So, I look forward to that. >> Um, the uh EOC is meeting Friday, just just so you know. Uh, finance and operations, >> excuse me, finance operations. So, the magic word of the of that committee meeting was HVAC where we talked about the North House HVAC project. We talked about, speaking of unfunded mandates, we talked about the new unfunded mandate of testing and evaluating HVAC systems. Um, so it was it was really riveting, frankly. And, uh, now and then we talked about obviously the uh the budget. So, >> okay. Um, policy. Well, as you saw tonight, [laughter] we're currently um funding a construction of um ultimate fighting ring [laughter] >> and we're going to hash it out

169in committee. >> Okay. >> Time limit. Time limit. No time limit. >> That's what we're hashing out. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> that's it. >> Safety and security committee. Did you meet? >> Uh we did. Um it was good. We uh we basically recap some of the uh some of the progress we've made since the beginning of the school year. Um anonymous reporting system, enhancements to the emergency comm system. We talked about a new student accountability system that's going to be rolled out in the middle school. Um and then just some other, you know, major projects including sort of the radio infrastructure for the entire district. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And Weston Education Foundation. So, I was not able to attend, Tina. Oh, I know that they had had their circus at um at the

170high school here for their fundraiser and um I actually attended and volunteered and helped and it was really cute and the kids had a great time. I don't know how that flushed out for them financially, but I think that they did okay. Um but uh yeah, unfortunately I wasn't able to attend their meeting this month. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, you have your schedule of meetings there. Um, all right. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> Yes, please. Is that how you say? [laughter] >> So moved. Is there a second? Sharon. >> Second. Yeah. >> All right. All in favor? I >> All right. Thanks everyone for a long evening but productive meeting. Thank you. [laughter] >> Now we're going to roll.