5-17-21 BOE Monthly Meeting

001okay everyone we're live okay um we have a quorum so i'd like to call this may meeting of the western board of education to order we usually start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance 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 okay we um first item on the agenda are recognitions i will start with one today sadly is gina albert's last board meeting and i just wanted to on behalf of the entire board of education thank gina albert for her service on the board of education for the past four and a half years uh serving as a chair for many of them she's a strong leader and a good mentor uh she's definitely

002had her fair share of mentoring um new board members i think every single one of us may have been mentored and trained by gina but uh we will all certainly miss her voice of reason and experience gina is a true giver and a cheerleader for weston and the board of education she always sees the positive and challenging times and she's a champion of the students and staff she fights tirelessly for what she believes is right and we've all been lucky to have her fight for us she loves weston and pours her heart into everything she touches in this town she's been an active volunteer in town well before joining the board through various pto positions and has continued to volunteer while on the board through many youth sports organizations and i'm sure she will continue

003her volunteer volunteerism long after we hope she enjoys this time with her family but i know we will be seeing her around town gina loves weston too much not to lend a hand so gina on behalf of the board of education we are indebted to you for your service uh we do have a gift for you that um that is at the board of education and we will deliver that to you shortly so thank you very much for your service does anybody else want to say thank you guys thank you i i don't need any of this you guys know i do this because i i love this town and i love these schools i don't need any of this oh you deserve it gina everywhere i just want to say a huge thank you

004gina you i i i actually can't top what um melissa just said because she said it so perfectly everything from a to z but um just to reiterate you have been an amazing mentor and i have so valued your perspective um you just bring such a wealth of knowledge a 360 view of weston into all of our conversations and dialogue and i just want to thank you for that perspective i've learned so much from you and i only wish you nothing and your family nothing but the best moving forward thank you melissa if i might on behalf of the administrators here i don't again for any other board members want to make comments i was going to go afterwards yeah so i'll come up after the board said melissa just before you go go ahead

005hillary please i i melissa said it beautifully um but i mean i can't thank you enough personally you are enjoying to work with you are for me such a great role model in the community for your kids for your family like gina you know you are just a classy woman that i'm glad that i got to spend time with and get to know you really are an incredible asset to the town and to your family so thank you for everything i'll jump into and just say best wishes to you gina for the future with your kids you are going to have such what do you do with all your time well i have a trip to the florida keys with sarah before she goes off the couch excellent excellent we figured you had some plans

006it was kind of rhetorical what i meant was i i i have lots of lacrosse in my future to go watch i have lots of parent weekends to take advantage of so i have yeah i have joy enjoy every bit of it and um and don't look back and we thank you with all our hearts yeah and on my behalf gina thank you it really has been a pleasure and bringing that everything to a granular level and you know it was great being on committees with you as well thank you very much thank you victor so um if we were in person gene as you know in this case melissa and i would be up front we'd have the gift i'll sort of act it out but we actually have it because i've seen it

007the team planned ahead meredith planned ahead actually um so on behalf of the administrators i want to thank you i'm going to be specific just like melissa was uh you were the chair and the chair and the super have to work very closely together and you brought this super truth you are not shy to say hey bill you gotta do this better we gotta do this better we gotta do this better and we i always listened because we knew it fundamentally as melissa and your fellow board members have said you're in it for the students you're in it for all of us you're in it for western uh so bringing that truth with what we've always wanted and you also brought us some treats there were some surprise times you'd go down in the kitchen

008pre-covered and there'd be some nice north carolina treats there that just kept us going she brought us the truth sometimes hard to swallow but then he brought us the sweets that really made it worthwhile so i know i'm joined by all the administrators in this so thank you and i know you're going to be uber busy dancing amongst multiple states where uh your fine fine children so congratulations thank you thank you everyone it's i mean i've been saying it in committee meetings as i'm moving on it really it's just been such a pleasure working with all of you i have learned so much from all of you and you know i wanted to do this job originally just to serve my community but i truly found in in doing this role that i really had

009a passion for education and i totally welcomed um just the acceptance from all of the administrators and the willingness to help educate me on the nuances of what it takes to educate our students and just the collaboration and and our work together over the past five years has just been phenomenal and i just thank you i mean thank like i i really truly appreciate everything you guys have done for me um so it's awesome thanks guys we'll miss eugena um just in keeping with recognitions um i also the board and i wanted to say something on behalf of the staff appreciation week just a week or two ago since our last board meeting so we just wanted to take a brief opportunity to publicly thank the teachers and staff for all that they do we've

010obviously spent a lot of time this year discussing the creativity flexibility and selflessness of our teachers who all stepped up in incredible ways to learn new technology to teach our children in challenging times and we are very grateful for each and every one of you i also we also wanted to make sure that we thanked and appreciated some of the other superstars who've gone above and beyond this year in ways that may not be quite as noticeable to the public uh to our administration and leadership team and our principals laura kim patty nicole dan drew lisa matt and julie you've put in countless hours reworking schedules and floor plans to ensure the safety and continuity of education for the children juice lolino and the it staff you've worked miracles in the building you've we've put

011out fires at homes for people dealing with the technology sheryl zokelski our medical liaison and nursing coordinator and the entire nursing staff for all those late night and weekend contact tracing and parent phone calls i assure you parents that cheryl worries about the health and safety of each of your children as much as you do thank you to tracy maggie and patricia for advocating and ensuring that every special education student received a modified plan and services to meet their needs in a remote environment our guidance staff and social workers who on top of ensuring the social emotional health of our students have also helped our juniors and seniors navigate a changed college application and admissions process mike and phil and the entire security and maintenance staff who've basically become traffic cops in short order ensuring

012the safety of our children including the increase in walkers and the efficient movement of hundreds of cars daily in rain shine snow sometimes all three we as a board and a community are humbled and impressed by all that that you have accomplished this year so we just wanted to give a very big and heartfelt thank you to everybody um so with that we can get back onto the agenda oh i see we have one more recognition um the student representatives of course uh ava and natalie are they here i know there were some sports this evening yeah natalie's here okay fantastic um well we'll let this is the time where they give the report anyway correct yep okay fantastic we'll do we'll do the recognition a bit first then you come back they come after

013public comment oh they come after public comment okay fantastic well first let's i'll hand it off to lisa bill to thank them but um on behalf of the board we wanted to thank them for their their great service to us we always enjoy your reports they're they give us a real glimpse inside of uh the building and the schools and from the students perspective um it's it's very helpful and i you know personally i've been very impressed with your your professionalism and how you you present your material to us it's it's great to see the western education in action so so lisa i'll just say a few things then please pick up it and this is actually where we do it every year lisa and i would tag team at this point so because she

014helps identify the student reps and it's been a little different this year godzikova 19. we've usually sat in person several times with them but ava who's uh is not here natalie i just want to thank you very very much because i know every meeting and it's a theme that i just celebrated gina for you would bring us the truth every meeting and we need that truth and you would bring it from the student perspective and you bring it away we want to listen uh i think another theme for all of us right now is we all need the truth but bring in the way that we'll listen bring away that's not off-putting bring in a way that doesn't tear people down you always were lifting up with the truth you brought and and that's why

015we want to keep listening and i know you're both going off to grand places you've worked so hard to get there and i congratulate both you on that and please always just remember these months of you being a leader as a student but a student for adults and all the younger students but you're a leader and keep that going in your next steps please be it academically on the pitch natalie please you know what i mean by pitch uh and also then out in the lacrosse field where i know eve is right now so uh ms wallace superintendent elect please pick it up from here thank you dr mccursey um and i i'm really i'm so proud of both of you uh next week or this coming week rather next week is our senior awards

016and we will be um honoring again natalie and ava who unfortunately couldn't be here but you know she would never not play lacrosse to be at it you know to come for a recognition i guess the thing that i appreciate the most about natalie and ava and i i work very closely with the um the student reps for um you know now it's been many years actually that we've had them is that one thing i could always count on with natalie and ava is that if they felt they were relentlessly um vocal about what the students needed and they did it in the most polite courteous respectful way there would be times where we would have to kind of figure out and come to an agreement talk through the schedule decide what we needed to

017do and and you know they would they would ask to get on my calendar and it was always mrs walk you know we want to share with the students the student perspective and i think that because of that collaboration and that willingness to talk and discuss key issues that were important to our school community that um that our partnership with them uh was very successful and we were able to provide such things as the absolutely gorgeous prom that we had on saturday night when a friday night sorry went on that saturday a couple of months ago they drove up in the morning and went to the prom venue with me and saw it and we walked through it it's that kind of thing again that collaboration with respect and the willingness to um push my

018thinking um in a very uh uh polite way but i think that because of that um we hopefully are going to end the year on a positive note and i will really miss you natalie and ava um miss you and you both just as a side note had stunning dresses on on friday night okay um can we have a motion for the recognition of ava and natalie oh i'll go here uh moved at the western board of education recognized eva paulo papulus and natalie haythorne for serving as the 2020-2021 western board of education student representatives can i have a second sorry sorry if i butchered the last name [Laughter] any second all in favor hi taffy hi gina hi victor hi hillary hi melissa all opposed okay motion passes thank you ava and natalie we

019will move on to the approval of minutes and we'll get to their uh natalie's report after public comment um can i have a motion regarding the approval of the minutes sure uh move that the western board of education approved the april 26 2021 executive session and regular board of education meeting minutes can i have a second backhand any comment all in favor i pray hi victor i'm melissa all opposed okay the motion passes i think we're still gonna say i and our names when we're in person again later possibly i tap even though i'm here in the room with all of you okay let's move forward to public comment um june i understand there are some comments yes can you hear me we can okay first comment is from greg haythorne six winthrop road tonight

020we'll be calling for the resignation of boe chair tony pesco because on may 11 2020 board of finance chair steve eze's emails the following to the boe chair samantha chris tony you should be ashamed for your message to the dtc and facebook posts if the message to the members of the dtc wasn't bad enough samantha's facebook postings questioning gender and h took it to a new low level the meeting held on may 2nd was not an atdm nor were there votes by those who chose to participate if you thought it was anything other than an information meeting you are incorrect and your actions after the meeting between the call from chris saying he was going to contact the governor to invalidate the executive order to the messages and facebook posting undermined the responsibilities of the

021bof york you complain the republicans public politicize the budget your actions raised whatever the republicans did to an even higher level this public record obtained only through the public protections of the state's freedom of information act documents that the fy 21 budget district budget is illegitimate and since the improprieties documented in this record of this day remain unaddressed and you have yet to be corrected by extension the district's fy 22 budget is also invalid the bof chair tells every western parent and voter in no uncertain terms your actions undermine the responsibilities of the bof boe member samantha nestor first selectman chris balding boe chairman tony pesco and bof chair steve ezes are the elected leaders of the western community and school district they are also unpaid volunteers however just because they are volunteers and not

022trained professionals does not absolve them from accountability for knowing the difference between right and wrong the public records obtained in the freedom of information process over the past 12 months also documents as follows boe chair tony pesco on may 8th implores bof chair baldwin as follows in my opinion the budget would pass in a referendum in a 7525 vote what tony pascal fails to acknowledge in his opinion is that he and the other board chairs have collaborated with the town administrator to withhold their knowledge from voters of 775 thousand dollars in documented cost savings from a change in the district's health insurance provider which they identified months earlier hindsight proves that boe chair pesco was indefensibly wrong both in his opinion that emails are the equivalent of votes as well as in his prediction of

023passage of for the budget which only passed 58 to 42 percent or fy 22. this despite that the potential for seventy seven hundred and seventy five thousand in savings was again withheld from western voters in this year's referendum two in december twenty twenty first selectmen spaulding emails the following to us in response to our foia requests records request about this email as vote charade there was no official in quotes email as vote end quote tabulation process set in place by the town there are no resulting documents to produce i now believe i have commented i have provided all documents unfortunately this is not accurate in the months since december the western district and town administrator have come been compelled by the state of connecticut freedom of information commission to produce scores of previously withheld documents

024which demonstrate that a boe chair pesco was advised by the boe member albert on workarounds to proscriptions against direct lobbying of the pto leadership and its members b boe chair pesco was cognizant of the potential for violating state election laws and sought legal counsel through the district superintendent to sanction his public budget communication strategies he then proceeds in collaboration with first electman spalding to draft and implement a voter and parent communication plan that presents his requests for residents to email budget support to the bos members as if his pleas were those of just an ordinary quote western citizen end quote but chairman cusco disingenuously contradicts himself by signing some communications as quote boe chairperson end quote and in others asks residents to copy his school-issued boe email account so that he can quote personally and

025quote oversee and collaborate i mean sorry and corroborate the email as votes tabulation in doing so chairman pesco formally acknowledged his official boe chair role authority and influence as author of these written budget communications yet another in a growing list of budget misrepresentation fee for your records also document in detail boe chair pesco bof member amy garr and bos member samantha nester's coordinated efforts to develop and conduct a residential budget email quote tabulation process end quote the results of which are then improperly and accurately broadcast by ms garr during public bof budget hearings as the equivalent as a uh public referendum consideration of our three-minute public comment limit we will conclude by sharing that freedom of information records all also document that in addition to at least at least 20 000 dollars chairman esses and

026first selectmen spalding have authorized in legal expense to defend eec and fic complaints and inadequate foia records production boe chair pesco and superintendent mckersey have now authorized at least twenty thousand dollars more in legal expense the district while occasional poor judgment and errors by volunteers are expected and are forgivable this avoid avoidable waste of tens of thousands of dollars other educational dollars which will increase exponentially in the coming months during formal commission investigations and hearings is indefensible the overwhelm overwhelming and still growing weight of the contents of the freedom of information records demonstrate that anthony pesco is unqualified and unfit to serve on any western board or appointed committee eight months since we first requested in writing public statements of correction and independent audits after repeated refusals to set the record straight for western parents

027and voters we call for tony pesco's immediate resignation as board chairman thank you okay thank you june for reading that public comment um we don't typically do this but i think in in this circumstance um the full board would like to make a statement in response to to what was just read um we do not take lightly allegations against our character whether collectively or individually first we as a full board want to emphasize that the actions of this board have been bipartisan and unanimous to single out anyone individually is misguided and unfair further we feel compelled to underscore that this board has acted at all times in what it believes to be the best interests of the students and families after thorough analysis and careful and extensive debate and deliberation to suggest anything to the

028contrary is irresponsible and slanderous the prior writer may not agree with every decision we have made but it doesn't make those decisions wrong relying on snippets of email without consideration of nuance or context is deeply misleading and irresponsible conversations and meetings prior and subsequent to such communications complete the picture as a board we welcome questions and concerns from members of the town and we are always happy to find time to discuss key issues coming before us as we have done for example with so many of you who call during covid to explore the schooling scenarios the prior writer has had every opportunity to engage directly with members of the board but prefers to attack us publicly this is not productive regarding foia we wish to set the record straight the prior writer asserts ironically and

029seemingly without a modicum of self-awareness that the board is wasting taxpayer money by responding to his request through council that couldn't be further from the truth and the claim betrays an ignorance of school matters and administration we use counsel to respond to legal complaints filed by the previous commenter and also when we have questions regarding his requests our email notes and documents sometimes require consultation with attorneys because they often contained privileged and confidential material personnel matters special education data student specific information disciplinary actions and attorney-client privileged communications none of which can be released publicly the writer has made 91 91 requests over the last year covering thousands of pages of documents we take our foia obligations seriously and to appropriately discharge our foia duties is enormously time consuming and without the additional resources of counsel

030would require crippling commitments by members individually of note we have never once complained about the volume of foia requests made nor the amount of time and energy spent in responding to them largely by school staff who are taking time away from student and district responsibilities to attend to these voluminous requests that said we will take the opportunity now to advise the previous commenter that if he has even the slightest actual concern for taxpayer resources he will reconsider his approach and find more constructive ways to engage with the school finally the seven of us feel compelled not as board members but as parents and residents to express our concern with the accelerating decline in civil discourse in the community grandstanding by the loud angry few threatens to drown out the reasonable many and public public character

031assassinations risk the destruction of volunteerism and governance in weston at a time when we need to pull together especially in a small town like ours civic participation is essential that's all i have june you can continue with the remaining public comment okay the next public comment is from jamie zappernick dear members of the board thank you for hearing the following comments for from a very concerned parent as i am new to town politics i am attempting to catch up on a procedure so thank you in advance for your patience i understand i have only a few minutes of time this evening i have recently learned from principal doke and assistant superintendent craw that the western school administrators and boe and the boe adopted new goals and new or revised mission statements for the next school

032year and beyond all of which were officially posted on the school's websites one of the goals for the westin school children is as follows the districts has had an ongoing commitment to ensure that the learning environment is safe healthy and welcoming to all students regardless of race gender sexual orientation or disability questions number one does the school district or boe have any measurable evidence that you can share with me that clearly illustrates that the learning environment is unsafe unhealthy or and unwelcoming in western schools now or in the past two if not how did the administration slash boe decide that the new commitment was needed three what is the reasoning behind the major push for a new committee entitled diversity equity and inclusion or dei four how much of the school budget will go towards

033funding this committee and all that it entails to achieve the new district goals five what has been spent from town funds to create this committee to date and how and who approved expenditure six will some current teachers slash administrators lose their positions to achieve this diversity quota to achieve the published goals of the district or will the town be adding jobs and staff to achieve the quota lastly what is percentage that you hope to achieve so that you may say weston is diverse and inclusive of all a statement on critical race theory in our schools in the advisory class for wms a topic of instruction that was approved by the administration sought to teach that white students are privileged one the lesson required students to answer the following two what is white privilege three are

034there areas in which you are privileged because you are white four can some things only be achieved by being white five if so what can white privileged children do so that non-majority individuals also achieve these things due to backlash from parents and this vile and racist line of questioning and teaching has been removed from the advisory class what the school administration and the boe must understand is that this ideology also known as critical race theory is toxic racist and neo-segregationist in every shape and form my children are not racist are not oppressors not privileged white people and they will not be held accountable for the sins of the past moreover children of color or non-majority individuals as westin has classified them are not victims nor must they be treated as such there is a rapidly

035growing majority of parents in weston who vehemently oppose this method of teaching and reject critical race theory that espouses that we must all view one another and interact with each other through the lens of race this majority believes in fairness understanding and humanity for this growing majority of western parents and for many black intellectuals in parentheses greg laurie john mcwhorter thomas sowell coleman hughes shelby steele etc end quote and black parents alike critical race theory is hurtful to all children incompatible with our democracy divisive and potentially devastating to people of color we will be working non-stop to ensure that this pseudoscientific ideology never enters our schools pollutes our children's minds or drives them apart we encourage excellence not racism and segregation as you can see from this simple statement that the division in our town

036has already begun changes to the school curriculum slash school mission must be transparent involve much more public notice and more opportunity for parents to engage in the process of what we are ultimately in charge of our children's future and our schools respectfully jamie zakrinik sorry june can you repeat that name one more time i didn't get it both times jamie zabernick uh i'm sorry zippernick ze yeah thanks okay i have a comment from [Music] jennifer haythorne six went through uphill tonight we'll be calling for the resignation of bohemia sorry june i don't mean to interrupt you but are we adhering to the three-minute um uh policy that's typically in place and if whatever isn't uh said within the three minutes obviously all comments will be uploaded for public viewing i can put a timer on

037it i mean i mean sure i can set a timer i just that's typically been the policy so i didn't know uh why tonight would be any different that's up to the board i think you publicly state there's three minutes and to handle the way you advise ruby so if the board's in supports that then that would be reasonable it's still in the public record but it's only the first three minutes that are right but that's that's for the board to decide how do we feel i think you should just read the comment and if it's close you know if it looks like you have five more pages june and we've already hit three minutes make it make a call okay otherwise i think that's reasonable okay we have work to do okay tonight we

038call for the resignation of boe chair tony pesco because on february 14 2020 in the midst of the 20 fy 21 budget cycle boe uh um i'm losing my place sorry chair tony pesco uh email superintendent mccursey and finance director phil cross the following after having several conversations with bof and bos members over the last few days i am of the opinion that we need to go deeper on the following topic health insurance cost and our plan to shop it around with no promise that there will be savings several weeks later in early march finance director phil cross generated a spreadsheet comparing districts costs for providing staff health insurance through the state of connecticut partnership plan to quote from blue cross for identical insurance coverage at an identical out-of-pocket cost to district staff that spreadsheet

039detailed annual cost savings of at a minimum 330 220 and a maximum of eight hundred and forty thousand two hundred and seventy six dollars on three eighteen twenty town administrator jonathan louise confirms the scale of the documented cost savings potential in an email earmarked quote confidential end quote to first legman spalding and bof chair esses when he writes that there is the confirmed potential for a seven hundred and seventy four thousand nine hundred six dollar reduction in the boe operating budget in consideration of the boe going with a fully insured high deductive health insurance plan from anthem despite repeated official claims to have provided all public official records pertinent to the fy 21 budget process chairman ez's town administrator louise and first selectman spaulding all claimed to have failed to produce this email in the

040eight months prior to quote or oversight and quote three weeks later on april 9 anthony pesco is relieved to learn that he will not be required by the bof to implement these 775 thousand dollars in savings when chairman as is informs him quote by the way chris does not want to spend one minute on offering proposed reductions i had a conversation with jonathan louise in quotes about it yet despite this assurance boe chair pesco remains sharply aware all right three minutes three minutes has passed i'm going to stop reading that comment thanks june are there any other comments june yes um travis warrell 44 birch hill road shortly following the board of finance approval of the requested boe spending increase on june 9 2020 gina albert writes the following to chairman anthony pesco quote i've

041been mulling over my concerns about our budget process for a couple of weeks now neither of quote your statements are true end quote followed by it quote it is also 100 accurate that you misrepresented information to the bo f end quote that is no excuse for misrepresenting the position of the boe to either an individual or another board what is so shocking about the above public records is the unequivocal nature of revelations the evidence is in quotes 100 percent accurate end quote that the boe chair publicly misrepresented budget data there is no question in the mind of the prior boe chair as to the tony pesco's purposeful inaccuracy and misrepresentation worse it goes without saying that anthony pesco is not only misrepresenting budget information and data to the board of finance by extension is also

042then misrepresenting the data to western parents taxpayers and voters during a cancelled public budget referendum as a result these misrepresentations were instrumental to passage of the fy 21 budget and because miss albert and other boe members had remained publicly silent in their objections and concerns for yet another budget cycle by extension these misrepresentations and concealed records such as seven hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in overspending on district health insurance were again instrumental in passing this year's fy 22 budget as well the wps district is now operating on two entirely invalid budgets due to public misrepresentations as well as the delays and divulging records those misrepresentations publicly before the fy 22 referendum boe chair pesco has preoccupied himself with backroom political intrigue with his western tri board counterparts with while in the interim avoidably wasting

043on healthcare insurance billions of dollars quote desperately unquote needed according to these cils in quotes for direct it okay three minutes is up i'll go on to the final comment okay thank you june um this is from 27 stonehenge road on behalf of team weston thank you for bringing this vital conversation around diversity and inclusion in our school curriculum to the community we look forward to engaging in conversations learning and growth as we evaluate these vital issues as a community and we hope the boe will include varied constituencies including team going forward no other comments were put forward excuse me do you have a name for that one i don't i just had an address okay um if that concludes the public comments let's uh move on to the student board uh reps natalie thank

044you um so basically like ms willock said earlier we just had prom last friday which was actually such a great way to um come to an end i guess of our senior year just because one it was without the junior so it made it kind of special just to put our grade and the teachers we've had over the past couple years and we just really appreciate all the work that went in like i know we were on the planning committee and like ms volak said we took a trip to the amber room and we really put a lot of time and effort and just being there on friday with our whole grade um was really something that was memorable and special um this week we are doing a kind of spirit week type of thing

045so tomorrow we're doing um a baked good pass out to the whole school where basically everything's just like individually wrapped at the end of school um so when kids dismiss they just go out the main entrance and pick up a treat on the way out and then wednesday we're doing a tourist type of dress-up day so like a hawaiian day because everyone seems to love that dress up and we're also passing out mini candy bags because we did that a couple weeks ago and everyone really loved it we had kids like taking full bags so it was really great um and then thursday we're doing a gear day type of dress up so like any merchandise you have any kind of college gear you want to wear and then friday is powder puff which we

046are so excited for um and the rest of the school while all the girls from the senior and junior class are dressing in their powder puffs like jerseys the rest of the school will be in a western gear day so blue and gold stuff or any kind of like western merch um and we just kind of wanted to do this spirit week just because usually with powder puff the whole school is invited and everyone sits on the bleachers while the girls play the uh game but because of covid we only are having the juniors and seniors participate so we wanted to make sure the rest of the school was still included so we put together this mini spirit week for everyone else and then on june 1st is a senior picnic type of thing that

047our advisors have been putting together with the senior student government and it's going to be like food trucks outside in the parking lot and that's pretty much it besides what the pto is planning for the pg after graduation so that's pretty much what we've been up to graduation details natalie um so for graduation what i know of um is that there are it's obvi it's outside on the football field which we definitely pushed for and we are very excited um it's actually happening um we are having there's some kind of map that was sent out um and the parents and the students are going to be on the football field with the stage and then there's going to be an overflow type of seating in the bleachers and it will be a live stream for

048the people who cannot come along with a video of some of the like clips of singing and other speeches that are not actually going to be performed live and then there's also going to be a cap on the number of people each student can bring meaning four people per um student and i think that's pretty much it in terms of what i do for graduation but we're very excited and appreciate all the work that was put into it because we have not exactly had the most normal year for senior year um but being able to have a graduation on the football field is something we are looking forward to great uh thank you for that natalie um are there any comments from anybody on the board any questions for natalie okay um thank you very

049much we will move on to new business first i see re retirements um bill ken are you going to walk yeah um can you lead in does you want me to communicate you can start it okay yeah so they're they're we present for acknowledgement by the board here and a vote on a motion five retirements uh the individuals are listed these are five who came forward as part of the part of the early retirement incentive program uh previously acknowledged with the board or two other individuals who also will be participating in the early retirement incentive program um each of these individuals the five plus the two the seven will be honored and celebrated in each of their buildings and by their colleagues so let me just generally say we thank all of them for their

050incredible service and i've written all five individually and personally to offer them my thanks and acknowledgement as superintendent can you want to add anything to this prior to the board taking the motion no i think you hit it on my head perfect okay uh can we have a motion move that the western board of education recognized the retirement of sydney geraldi art teacher weston high school ellen horwitz speech and language pathologist weston intermediate school penny mcnulty first grade teacher hurlbutt elementary school garen muner school counselor weston high school and patricia nislek science teacher weston middle school effective june 18 2021 can i have a second second taffy any comment all in favor aye copy hi gina hi victor hi hillary i'm melissa all opposed okay the motion passes um just want to on behalf of

051the board of education thank uh those individuals for their for their years of service thank you i see also um that we have some resignations bill do you want to walk us through those or there are two listed here again i've formally accepted those resignations and it's the practice for certified employees who've resigned for the state for that to be acknowledged by the board uh first is megan skeleton social worker western high school who will be with us until the last day of school and then the others thomas ragusa western middle school and high school transition coordinator and tom has an opportunity which will bring his service to the district close to close prior to the end of the year um let me say that in both situations here uh big losses but they had

052wonderful opportunities and so they were they're leaving the district uh with very mixed feelings they love working here as they both expressed but they had opportunities come before them personally and professionally which they just had to accept so they too will be celebrated uh in each of their buildings and by their colleagues with the much deserved thanks but i do want to stress to the community for both the retirements and the resignations these were opportunities these are wonderful people who've had a chance to move on it's it's not any sort of critique on this district other than they had opportunities elsewhere and beyond great thank you can i have a motion regarding the resignations recognize the resignation of megan skelton social worker westin high school and thomas vergusa transition coordinator weston middle and high school

053can i have a second second any comment all in favor hey taffy hi ruby hi gina hi victor hi hillary i'm melissa all opposed okay motion passes and again i'd like to on behalf of the board thank um megan and thomas for their years of uh service of the district thank you sorry i read the motion wrong should i go back and re-read it because it had the effective dates in the motion yeah i saw that i don't know well i need to redo that gina do i need to redo that to be technically correct you should okay move that the western board of education recognized the resignation of megan skelton effective june 18th 2021 and thomas ragusa effective june 4th 2021. okay can i have a second again again thanks any comments all in

054favor hi ruby hi taffy hi gina hillary hi victor i'm melissa all opposed okay the motion passes again and i thank them for their years of service again moving on update on staffing for 21-22 school year lisa and patty will carry this let me just do very quickly a framing for you in the finance committee it was discussed there may be an issue as to the number of sections as we head into next year uh there was a good agreement among at the finance committee that informationally so this isn't a vote for you tonight but informationally you as a board should get an explanation and update on what both lisa is your incoming superintendent patty fauber as your wisp principal have identified as a particular issue for staffing and it's important for me to say

055the following but when i arrived here i inherited the need to in august september add several teachers that was several weeks after arriving so i think the good news here is again you're not necessarily going to vote tonight's informational but the sooner you as a board can grapple with what is indeed your decision the adding of sections uh the sooner you can start grappling with that the better so that even though you know lisa well as your incoming superintendent uh this decision is made well ahead of of of that very difficult time uh if indeed you choose to make this decision so this is i think a good forward-looking move credit lisa for asking for this and credit patty for stepping up to give the information uh so thank you luis wanting to proceed thank

056you dr mccarcy um one of the um tasks that i asked the other principals to help me with was um when we look at the projections of maloney mcbroom um i wanted to kind of break it down also looking at the the projections far out to get to start beginning to get more of a global understanding of um you know what those projections are in terms of sections because you know we look at total numbers in buildings or at grade levels but how does that kind of convert into the number of expected sections um we may have and so i want to thank um patty and laura and dan for helping put this together for me and kind of breaking it down so we could see that you know if there's 191 kids in grade

057seven then that means nine sections and 21 kids i think that that's helpful in in sort of um moving forward and looking at um appropriate planning so if you look we have um the k-8 um projections broken down by that but the one that i'm we're most concerned about this evening is the line in red which talks about the upcoming year and in particular um at the um at hurlbut now this year currently between herbert and the intermediate school and i'm seeing as i'm learning more and more about those buildings the how the staffing is inter-related with the sections um it's about approximately 47 sections um between both uh buildings we originally had put in for six sections of third grade um and patty fauber every week we've been looking at the numbers and meeting

058with dr craw and going over and looking at the staffing and looking at um you know the how we're going to proceed taking into consideration um some of the retirements and things like that that are happening in the district and patty um has continually said i'm worried about third grade and given the fact that this is a transition year as far as moving from second to third given the fact that um we are coming off a pandemic and given the fact that when we look at some of the data in particular for that third grade class we do have concerns about having that class size be so large so um patty if you would um kindly kind of clarify some of the things in the memo that you put together sure so as promised i

059know since our budget um uh meetings i had promised to keep an eye on not in the enrollment for the whole school but really um with regards to that third grade section because we did reduce a section from seven to six um so um the numbers are creeping more and more of our families are enrolling and um so i uh as of right now if uh everything stays current we will have 143 students um in grade 3 as of may 12th that was a friday we have 126 students currently enrolled in second grade i have eight students already enrolled and brand new students coming into the district um and then there are nine students from pearl but who are currently uh doing homeschooling where um that laura eagle has reached out to at hurlbut that

060by all indications they will all be coming back into the western public schools which brings us up to 143. with six sections of um students at 24 in every classroom that's 144 so we are right now one spot away from being at the very top of the board of ed um guidelines for class sizes and um you know i i if you look at historically our trends we have parents enrolling not only through the end of june but all through the summer and actually throughout the school year um this year we had 67 new students enroll at wis throughout the from last april through until a couple of weeks ago so it is a concern that'll be very large class sizes is as lisa said it's a transition year not only um academically but you

061know certainly physically moving from hurlbut to us and um and if we have to be mandated physically distancing um 25 in a classroom we will not be that far apart from each other so those are my concerns for grade three for next year so i think that what we are trying to do is continue to monitor um this situation um on a weekly basis um and also to bring this to you so that you are aware of um of this trend um as dr mccorsey said it's not about clearly making a decision tonight but really informing you in that because frankly we don't want to be in a in a position if we wait too long and the trend is going up we certainly want to get a highly qualified teacher to fill that spot

062i think it's also important to note that um one of the reasons we did this task was because i wanted to to deepen my understanding in the flow of sections and as it equates to fte and it's important to to say that um because this is going up a section we staff for the sections that we have um this doesn't mean that now moving forward and you can see that in the total number of sections that that necessarily will be sustained by the by the enrollment we we try to meet our needs in a fiscally responsible manner thank you so so quick question so um the projections you're doing right now which are um you know hitting the the uh the limit essentially patty um did those take into account what happens in july and

063august i mean are those projections all the way to september are they as of now sorry these these numbers are as of now i don't i don't have any i don't have any project i didn't put in projections i put in the purely the numbers who are students who are actually enrolled for the fall right so so you you are likely going to be advocating for another section i mean that's that's essentially what you're doing now and and if you get more than one which is also likely uh because every summer i know we get a lot more uh kids and even into the fall once the year has begun we get more kids right so this is just a discussion that we had some months ago obviously during budget time now we're pushing the

064edge of the envelope this is actually i mean fiscally it's it puts pressure on us but it's actually good news it's an enrollment bit of news which is good news um we want to see more kids coming to our district we want to see more families opting back in after covet so you know as curriculum chair it's easy for me to say it's good news the finance people are going to figure it out but thank you for this update thank you um lisa you've been here the longest um i i know the guidelines are in place they are just guidelines has weston ever gone over the guideline for a year that's just been an anomaly you know ruby to be frank because um i i have been here the longest um uh however my foundational

065knowledge in k5 is not um as strong i would say as it is in 612. so i know that over the years class size is always looked at i remember sitting at many board of ed meetings where um people talked about the guidelines talked about the impact if it was higher patty you probably have more of an insight on that than i do i would say that um my guesstimate is that yes there were times where it might have been a little bit over the guidelines and um the public wasn't pleased with it but sometimes it just for um lack of a better work would happen depending on the enrollments patty i don't know if you have anything to add you know i um obviously i've been here obviously a long time too i don't

066remember ever starting the year being over the guidelines where we might have had another student come in like halfway in the middle of the year they might have tipped one class that might have happened but i don't remember ever starting off with 25 in a classroom um but i i would have to really go back and look yeah and i know that we discussed third grade um a lot right during the during the budget season and it's just the one grade where i think i'm not going to speak for the entire board i myself had um the least amount of faith in malone and mcbroom's projection not just for next year but actually going forward all the way up until 2030. um i just couldn't understand their the way that they got there um and

067and so you know before we um make any knee jerk reactions right because that's not the fiscally sound way to operate i just want to understand what's at stake what have we done historically in this kind of predicament what are our options today knowing you know all of the new resources that we have the way of teaching that we've you know learned how to do over the past year i just obviously we're not going to make a decision tonight i just hope the next time that we do have this discussion the only solution is not just um well we need to add one more section because whatever we do this year it just starts our budget that much higher for next year and i just want to be fiscally responsible if we end up having

068another then that's a decision that we come to i just don't want it to be the only um decision on the table to consider so i just hope that by next time we kind of have a 360 view on these are our options yeah and i think that's right ruby and with with that i you know i know later on the agenda we have the you know assertive conversation which is the funding that comes to us for covert relief and you know i think that's going to be part and parcel of this as well you know what what do these sections look like i mean the most important thing is making sure our children are catching up where they need to catch up and excelling where they need to excel and it is a transition

069year for that for that grade so we want to make sure we set these students up for success but i don't know what that looks like and maybe some of the esser funding and how we're going to be using that money may play into what third grade looks like next year so i think ruby's right let's before we do anything let's really understand how we're approaching education for you know in this case k through five but um obviously for all of our students well if i may i i agree that's why we wanted to at least bring this to your attention to look at it and how um how it's playing out the one thing i um i know that um the administration um feel strongly about is is that um the western you know

070the western school district values in-person learning and we really want our students in person next year and so in keeping with that um we would look to what kind of academic sports do we need to provide the students and um when we talk a little bit later about the s or next month about how we are addressing because clearly there are some very specific academic needs that we have to um you know look at and um support um but i would say that that in-person learning is what we are hoping for we're striving for because that is the most effective for students and uh keeping those numbers lower especially in third grade is um a big part of that but we will keep you informed uh i can um i have probably i'm sure you

071do patty too and i know it's in the files all the past budget books to look and see where the sections were and how they came out and they go back probably at least i probably have at least 15 years so we can go back and see if we can gather any more information it's really i think challenging this year especially because of covid um and the influx if you will of um students that came um that we in some grade levels we were not expecting because parents moved into the community so it will be hard to predict where that goes over the summer um but our commitment is to review it every week and look at it through different lenses i think it's probably also worth looking at you know maybe consulting the demographers

072too to understand the you know whether this is how much of this influx is related to covet and is temporary versus uh in terms of the trends for you know where these students how these sections are going to be filled you know two three five ten years if i mean it may be premature to make those kinds of projections but i'm just curious what they're seeing across fairfield county what they're expecting for weston because it's easy to say that we're getting an influx of students and i know i know patty that you've you've definitely seen it in the intermediate school for sure but i also i don't think there are quite as many homes for sale um into having talked to some real estate agents as you know to sustain that level of continued influx

073into town so you know let's just make sure we kind of have all the facts at our hands before we make a decision but i think it's really important to consider this the only point i would add in that obviously i don't want to get into the weeds of it but i i think it rather than spending the time going back to budget books as to whether we did something in past years i'd rather see that time spent saying saying okay what's our footprint right now what what were what were some options and why did we rule them out right i think that's better time spent but that's just my opinion and the the other question i had is that the eight school home school kids that are that are assumed to come back do

074we know how many of those were homeschooled prior to covid or were all eight of them went into home school as part of the pandemic i think maybe laura could speak to that but i my understanding is it was purely for the pandemic they all withdrew um at the beginning of this year correct okay thanks yeah i mean statewide there's been a this year there's a quite large jump in homeschooling and i think that was born out here in western as well we have very few homeschoolers every year other than this year okay um does anybody have any other further comments on this i know this was informative so we're still watching and learning but does anyone else have anything else to say before we move on to the diversity recruitment plan yeah i might

075just ask him lisa i mean since you and i because as prince we've had to be part of these decisions i don't know board if i i think i've heard some things that may guide lee sin team and and what they need to come back to you with because i think i think patty's going to be back with the recommendation when we're this close and the historic patterns are the board's going to have to grapple with adding a section or not what i think i heard lisa if i may quickly translate is what other options are there if you don't add a section and that needs to be part of the next conversation uh beyond adding the section i think in shorthand that's what i heard is that fair summary yes okay thank you bill

076for that um that was helpful in framing it so we will uh look forward to discussing this at the next board meeting and obviously we'll be discussing it you know in between now and then you know certainly at the chair meeting and um other committee meetings as appropriate yeah that's what i was say is i would think curriculum should be involved if you're going to be talking about you know allocation of ester grant money for supports in place and i just it might be helpful if patty you know for that curriculum meeting and can to build in some background information about the importance of small class sizes for elementary education um you know just from an education standpoint about why the guidelines have been put in place for so long um and and and how

077those guidelines are implica are are impacted after covet as well i would imagine um and just from a little bit of history i mean i've only been on the board five years but as a very involved parent prior to joining the board and obviously with seniors who have been in the school district for 13 years um we have not started a year over guidelines um when i first joined the board though there was serious conversation because we had a class go over during the year and there was concern because of the pressures it put in that particular classroom being over guidelines there are space constraints at wis even though that is a beautiful building the classrooms were not built as big as they probably should have been built um so they're just some logistics that

078should be definitely post covid considered because they were issues even in a non-covet environment with space in those classrooms and i do think just making sure that all the board members have an understanding of the of the pedagogical basis and professional basis for why we have guidelines in place no that's a good point i was actually just going to ask i mean since i've been on the board we haven't really talked about revising those guidelines or looking at that how often is that done can you just tell me a little bit about that it's been one of those things where every time it's been broached there's been an understanding of the basis for that for those guidelines and just a reaffirmation of them um but this is a very new board so i think reviewing

079the basis for that would be beneficial for everyone i think it's a good question hillary because i mean education modes of education have changed probably over time and how how things are delivered whether they're smaller groups um how things are are um carried out inside the classroom could be different now than it was when these guidelines were first instituted so let's let's really understand because we want these these children that are transitioning to a new building to to be set up for success but let's let's understand how we're achieving that um and what our options are before we just um add a section which we may end up doing but let's let's look at it thoroughly okay anything anything else on the subject all right so we'll move on to the diversity recruitment plan draft

080lisa i know you've got got this thank you sure um this is the draft that the board saw at the um workshop that we held a couple of weeks ago and i thought that um you know it would be important also to um to just uh share the draft at a regular meeting um so that would be posted this was um a draft that had some specific goals and i guess that you know you can um look at sort of the the introduction to it which speaks to the idea of hiring staff that um hiring recruiting retaining outstanding and diverse staff and i think that the reasoning behind this is is because that um you know if our mission is to prepare students to be responsible citizens of a global society and one of the

081key things of success in being able to um to function in society is to being able to um get along with many different um types of people people that have different perspectives and everyone valuing um the uniqueness of those individuals so along those lines um we um did work on this draft of a plan that speaks specifically to how we can expand our base for when we go to um to recruit and to expand it at um and it goes through different ways um when i look at um quite frankly um some of these steps um there it's just more of a mindset than that they have a price tag attached to them uh the idea of um broadening our base with advertising reaching out to specific universities and organizations to make um people aware

082of weston and our community and you know the amazing place that it is and so um this is it goes through um you know our intent as a district and um there are three i think specific goals one of them does relate to looking at policies the other one to make sure that um we have hiring processes that are inclusive everything from um you know ensuring that um the interview process is um you know sensitive to all applicants to the flexibility of scheduling of interviews things like that just some some norms now um i also want to say that isn't that we haven't been doing this i think that we want to make sure that we are doing it at scale and that the approach behind doing it is um is very clear to um

083to the public as well as to um the staff um that we um would like to recruit i don't know if anyone has any uh questions or if dr mccarthy you wish to add anything i i think i'm i'm glad lisa you thought it'd be important to bring this forward kind of a few weeks ahead of you becoming superintendent because this is going to be a vital issue for the district going forward and i think it's vital for the board to get an update on that regularly and i think it's vital for the community to have out in the public record the work going on here and there's ways to get this work done right i think this plan is is on the way to that so i think it's good news for all this

084is getting shared now for ongoing discussion and i would reiterate it's a draft and work in progress and i think it's the sign of a very very good place that drafts and work in progress will be shared for board comment in the public i also just want to mention lisa that you know as you well know and i just want to say for the public record that you all have our we all you have all of our support on this work around um around dei and and recruitment and and i really uh thank you for doing this hard work on it i would be remiss if i didn't um also do a special shout out to jen ryan um as well as dr craw um jen ryan as our hr manager i believe that was

085her title attended different workshops and really started a draft of this plan that then um we were able to kind of sit down and go through it still is a draft so um you know we would welcome any feedback um because again the goal really is is that um in order for our students to be successful and have the preferred futures that they want leaving west in okay in this ever-changing global world we would like um to ensure that we broaden our base of the staff that we have to include um diverse hiring when possible clearly there are um people out there that um you know some people perhaps don't even know about weston i i don't know i still am amazed when people say oh i'm the principal of western high school where's that

086like why are we saying where's that it's like it's the center of the universe um it's right you know in connecticut um north of west for it um so hopefully this will get the word out to again attract really um qualified candidates that can help enrich our um students um learning experiences you know since i've been on the board i've always been talking about what's what's what's the newness what's the percent newness it's just in my line of work that's every year i had to talk about the percent of newness in in my business anyway i remember when we went through this original document or this document originally um i think jen had asterisked some of the new things that we were doing and it's not on this particular draft but i bring it up

087because i want the public to know um that these are the new initiatives that weston is going to be um strategizing for and you know it's it is our percent newness of what what it what we're doing differently to um to hire so do you have that with you or or can you just talk about is it you know 50 of new uh uh uh strategies or you know attraction strategies that we're we're putting in place um you know what ruby i don't have that um that copy but i do remember it and um i apologize for not making sure that the asterisks were in there i don't know if dr crawl remembers of any of the new things i know where it says things for example like when you look at goal one um

088well go when you look at goal one about the annual goals to just to ensure about the policies that is something that has to be done every year anyway um so that's that's kind of something that um needs to be done um on an annual basis but when it talks about expanding the use of the handshake platform under with recruitment partnerships i think that's where the idea is is to go deeper in some of those areas that's new um because i you know i questioned jen about that what exactly does that mean um how do we go about doing that the idea of looking at more um community organizations that are not just local but but beyond that um that kind of thing the idea of actually um bringing together um people on a district

089committee to and that committee is is not something that's going to be around forever but just to sort of review those practices and ensure that at every um building and also with any i'm hiring in in the other departments for example finance um or facilities that that um those kinds of norms are um taking place and then the whole piece about the um social media is another interesting thing about where to post and things like that um i know that or joining specific key groups on social media that jen has already started to do some of that and fortunately for us she's leaving all of her copious notes for us and what she's done but we really have to um dig deeper into those particular areas i think yeah no i just wanted to make

090it noted that when we looked at what was new there were more uh initiatives asterisked as being new than a continuum of of the old and so i just wanted to recognize the effort that was put in to developing these new strategies for recruitment okay does anybody have anything else on the [Music] draft of the diversity recruitment plan okay next we are moving on to the annual instructional update and before we get to that i just wanted to mention for for um any parents listening that this was also emailed out so uh in your inbox you should have a copy of the slides accompanying the annual instructional update it was also discussed at our last curriculum meeting which i wanted to mention for those that are interested in the curriculum or how the curriculum is

091created there is opportunity for public comment at our curriculum meeting which meets monthly also our curriculum is renewed on a set schedule based on the subject matter so at any given year math could be the subject that's up for in-depth analysis and renewal or maybe it's english language arts but they're on a set schedule and they are reviewed periodically and we welcome you know the engagement of the public if anyone has an interest or concerns or questions about the curriculum also our email addresses are available on our district website you can always email us and we'll answer any questions that you may have about the curriculum so that being said let's go into this annual instructional update which is more of a comprehensive analysis of where our children have fallen this year compared to last

092year particularly with an eye towards covid and what's going on and bill i know uh later on in the agenda we have the sr arp grant to discuss it might make sense to give kind of a brief overview here uh so that the public can understand the funding associated and we can bring that into the conversation about what we want to do now that we've seen the um the outcomes from the annual instructional update and the data that we have now gathered yeah and i thanks thanks so much i can be brief i was going to be briefed later in the meeting but i think you're right this could help the board in thinking about what they hear from ken lisa and the rest of the principals about the aiu all these acronyms the annual

093instructional update up just to understand what our besser is going to provide is an opportunity for the district to to tackle aspects of what you may want to tackle as a board in a community you know coming out of this annual instructional update um and i'll be really clear and specific posted for you as a board and now for the entire community are documents that superintendents only receive last week monday um there is as most people know that now know through the american recovery recovery plan arp and the elementary and secondary emergency reform act that's arp esser this is actually the third influx of esr monies uh coming into connecticut will be 1.1 billion dollars coming into connecticut will be 1.1 billion dollars that's our best that's this third influx that is divvied up amongst

094the 160 districts based on the formula that'll form that formula will bring to westin roughly 522 000 dollars that's our best or two we already have other two other amounts of money in work in here but this is this third amount um there are a couple deadlines with this money the first deadline is actually fairly straightforward and i've committed to lisa that i will get that deadline met before i depart as superintendent by the 23rd of june we have to post not submit we have to post publicly what the safe return plan is and in materials posted listed for you tonight on page three of a certain document is listed the headlines for it has to be in that that is simply a health and safety safe return statement also a statement about continuity of

095services most districts around i know as of friday are going to make that very very brief it does have to be shared for public comment there has to be a stakeholder process our task force here has agreed to meet once more in early june to review this draft it'll be posted for public comment but that's intended to be quite brief and focused on safe return we're planning to be all back in in the fall as most of the districts are around us so that actually makes this document even that much more minimal the critical document is due and we got just before this meeting got the deadline it's due august 16th that larger plan is due august 16th that's the plan in which you as a board the administration will lay out the plans for

096the 522 thousand dollars now you can submit that earlier than august 16th but that's the real critical work and indeed that is as you have ideas from what you hear from the annual instructional update if you have questions on how things can get done differently and if our passer 2 can be of help it's that planning for that deadline you want to focus on i would politely suggest as i'm knowing from the other districts most districts are trying to end this year and then get into planning on that oppressor uh our best money so if i mean clear here you're about to hear annual instructional update many of you heard already earlier in the quick meeting there's a very health and safety simple update but the work plan is due mid-august and lisa as the

097incoming superintendent will guide you all through that thank you for that that uh update bill that i think that's helpful context do we want to start with questions on the annual instructional update because most of us i think we're at the curriculum meeting or does ken have kind of an overview he wants to give i'm fine going either way thank you melissa no i i think keeping it brief so that we can respond to your your questions just uh recognizing that our curriculum committee meeting was a robust discussion it was a lengthy discussion with all of our curriculum leaders and building administrators this is you know an annual process and this year what's different is that we infused a snapshot of student progress at this point in year recognizing that we'll continue to look at

098data and at the end of the year we'll have a fuller set of information we'll be looking at internally as well as through the external assessments that the students you know have been taking this have been taking this spring so um you know i think you know one of the things we tried to do was give a sense of uh where we are now in this pandemic here uh in comparison to where we've been in the past and in the past we've trended uh fairly predictably in terms of our performance but this year we can certainly see um you know some impacts related to the the various learning scenarios that we had to toggle between so we did talk about uh that performance information and we looked at where we go from here next steps

099and i shared uh i shared a a one-page document looking at and it's included with the uh the annual instructional update agenda item here for this meeting on uh several several areas we're focused on for next year so um just trying to be brief so that we can respond to questions i'll leave it at that okay thank you ken um fellow board members let's um let's ask any questions i was i wasn't there but i did go back and watch the video thank you so much for taping it um i just have a i have a few questions um the first tacky made a comment about um it's going to be very interesting to show um if we follow the cohort if we show the three pie charts um as they've kind of evolved right

100pre-covered covid and then post covid um so i just wanted to make sure that that is then the expectation that the next update that we have we will see we will follow these cohorts to see how they've evolved and how much makeup if you will um well you know in terms of percentages we'll we'll see hopefully actualized so will we see the three pie charts absolutely yeah that's definitely the longitudinal view that we like to look at and so um you know where our kids were pre-covered during covid and then next year is i think what taffy was alluding to is to see that that picture and then you know we can even extend you know looking you know historically you know where were we where are we now where are we going that that

101is key and i think the the snapshots the pie charts give a really simple visual to show that my next question is then around the spring data when when will we understand sbas and the performance around those right and maps and maps that took place this spring too sure so um map testing uh will take place before the end of the year so you know the middle school's going to be moving into that shortly and then followed by the west we will have that information uh sooner than we'll have the smarter uh balanced information that comes at the uh the middle end of june that information will all be uh you know analyzed in the the early summer know that i am starting to get some preliminary information on the school day s.a.t the next

102generation science assessment that'll come like the sba towards the end of june um i will also at the end of the year have more information related to the fountains and panel reading assessments and in addition we'll also have some information on the writing portfolios which is an internal assessment so um you know i i think what you received as part of the annual up in the instructional update is the snapshot uh we could be you know when we get the full picture of multiple measures could be trending either higher or lower depending on how we look at all that information together and that is i think really critical all analyzed you know as we get into the early summer and then the late summer we start to get uh the ap the act and the

103sat results as well for the class of 2021 um so we would have to just you know working with lisa will find the appropriate point to provide the update to the board and then what are those next steps right because that's that's the key what you know how are we responding to the data we've outlined the general plan for moving forward next fall but through the goal-setting process that's going to become much more detailed in in july and august and then obviously teachers will build on that as they come back when they see the kids in front of them right right away in those first first few uh first few weeks yeah for those of you okay let's just say for those who have not seen go ahead finish your thoughts sorry i was just

104gonna say i encourage you um uh i know you'll probably be talking about this in the curriculum committee uh but i also encourage you at these updates as well not to just wait until everything is ticked and tied with a pretty bow on it because i think as you start to get sbas back now and as you start to strategize and we have this gift from the state with the grant um we can do a lot with it and so i would love to start those conversations sooner rather than later and and you know obviously make sure that the public understands you know kind of what this district is doing and how we're funding and how we're to get back on track yeah and i i just want to jump in just to say that

105i and lisa sorry i saw you put your hand up there too um um the i think you did say you listened to the curriculum meeting there you know we we really focused on on bullet three which was the implications and the strategies um for moving forward so it is already well in the works um ruby as far as you know we're not we're not sort of waiting until september to see that for sure everyone's you know needing extra support or what have you like it's happening now including with the summer academy and other strategies yeah no i have no doubt i just wanted to say to in terms of presenting to the board um because not all of us can make the curriculum committee so i'm just saying even if you want to give

106the board updates periodically that would be helpful too but i think i mean i couldn't agree with you more what i think is really important and what i've been trying to get a deeper handle on is looking at the cohort like for example if we have the students in um you know grade one and how they performed in grade two that's the grade moving forward in grade three that we're going to have to make a decision also about another sector so when we look at that the thing that we also have to keep in mind is and this reminds me of when we did on the connecticut performance test way back in in you know i'm talking like 99 2000. when we looked at like why are some students in you know um the two

107highest bands and where was the drop there as well like it's it's not good enough to just say all of these students are at grade level we have to look at how many are were above it did that drop to try to figure out within that cohort and how to you know you want to be able to move everyone forward but especially the higher bands should be our highest percentage um if i'm explaining myself well so it's at that level i think we really need to look at it so then when we are making decisions about math intervention and how we are going to do this with reading or um you know do we need another section we really have to look at what does the cohort data say about those particular students so that

108we can best you know differentiate what we have to uh make sure that that kind of uh progress is made here in the video where you know obviously that the tracking the data student by student there tracking the data cohort by cohort is there i also want to just understand is it um also just understanding under a particular teacher or within a particular classroom um to see if there's any deficiencies in one particular classroom do we do we analyze the data that way so we we have the ability to analyze data at all different levels and we do and you know my experience has been so for example seventh grade math the two teachers are asking us too and chomping at the bit to see how their students have done so we do look at

109trends across uh the board you know in classrooms and you know know that you know we did have and we're interested you know what was that impact of having long-term subs for periods of time during the course of the year what's uh you know how how did that play out because you know our sills really worked hard to try to support uh those teachers who are coming in to fill in so so yes answer to that question i'll just also add previously as you mentioned you know not holding on to the data until you have a full set what i've always tried to do is as soon as the data is is is available going public i get i try to get as much advance notice to the board as i can to say hey

110here are the school day sat results or hear the sba results uh here's weston's results but in and shortly i should have the durbs results to go along with that i i do share that with the board so that you're you know generally getting that information as it's becoming public if i could add i think one of the greatest things about our district is its size so if you have 145 third graders that you're looking at and you're you know when we start breaking it down we can get down to the granular level of who is this student what are the supports this student is getting um you know a percentage for us is um you know it's a lot less of a number than for example in a darien so we really do um

111have that um you know ability and responsibility to get to it at the granular level um in short you know we know our kids and we have to make sure that we're meeting them with the appropriate differentiation strategies to be able to move them up so just on that point lisa one of my questions was about um especially because we have this estrogen like do we have the right data analysis tools and on top of that like can you go in and say okay this is the unit that we saw students score the weakest on like are you able to get to that level great question hillary and i'll have dan come in on this but i'll just answer this um generally at first so if we're talking about uh standardized types of assessments we

112see with some of the internal ones such as the math strands that we can look at and see you know those skills areas whether it's geometry or operations or things of that nature our internal assessments unit tests for example for math the teachers will look at at a grade level meeting with the curriculum leaders and and see was there an area where students had some challenges and now do we have to reteach that or address you know a small group of students who may be missing something so there's the distinction between our internal assessments and how we use those and then how we use the larger assessments dan yeah and our data analytics tool which is called tableau allows us to get as granular as possible or we can look at everything from a helicopter

113perspective we can break it out by cohorts by subgroups so we can really look at the data in multiple fashions to pinpoint exactly where we're seeing that there's a problem so it's not just math but what specifically in math what subgroup is having a problem in this portion of math how about in this portion so we have we have a really powerful tool on our hands and and we're going to be utilizing it to its fullest uh i had a question um taffy's point at the meeting i feel like was i i just hope everybody really understood it because to me it really concerned me it was we're not just teaching the curriculum in fall we're also getting everybody up to speed and teaching the curriculum in full so it's like you know missing a

114day of work and then you come in the next day and you have you know to stay late and you know come in early the next day because you've you know you need to catch up on everything so knowing that i mean what is the plan for that so hillary just to clarify you're asking um you know if students are behind with certain skills how do we address that it's it's if you have the full school year and you're teaching the full curriculum there's still more that needs to be taught so how are you addressing you know what she's she's asking specifically about the learning loss challenge which is what this entire strategy is designed to address hillary but ken or patty or whoever you can answer sure so um you know there are a

115few different strategies that relate to this i mean one of them is we have ourselves who are going to be identifying in their areas where there are skills that maybe they couldn't have gone in depth as much as they would like to this year and where they will need to do that in the subsequent year or if uh you know there's an example of a standard or skill that wasn't necessarily essential this year but is something that could be built on in the future so we need to get that in so the exercise for curriculum leaders is to outline what those what those areas are and for some you know for some disciplines it it it's not necessarily as much as others but but you know we heard that from the cells but having that

116and then communicating working with the teachers to make sure uh we don't just kind of you know add it on top and then it's just overwhelming to kids right that's this is that's that's one thing we do second thing is and this is where the esser funding the sr2 funds that bill was alluding to is we are increasing our intervention support in both reading and math next year through the esser2 funds and we are you know already looking at that that data now and with the end of the year information we'll know which students beginning of the year we need to capture and support with that additional resource that we have um and and that's to very you want to capture kids early quickly and accelerate their progress as soon as possible to get them

117uh back on back on track so and earlier and earlier than that there's a summer academy opportunity right ken as well where kids that are you know self-identifying or their families along with teachers are identifying them as might really benefiting from that extra support before the get-go in september um there is that option as well right and that's really you know a bridge in the summer between the two school years that's available the other bridge is one that um you know our sills and reading and math are very passionate about and that is providing through the websites links to resources for kids to just continue on enjoy to read and do that independently and also math practice which are both very important and our commitment was out of that meeting was to collate all that

118information so that we can have it in one place for families and you know and also partnering with the the local library in doing that as well i think those are those are good points ken um you know what i think what i'd i'd love to see and i don't know if it's possible i would hope so um you know what i worry about when i look at this data is that there's just kind of like a general slippage and to be clear i'm sure every board of education across america is having are experiencing expressing these concerns so i don't think that this is a a particular failure unique to westin in any way but it is the hand that we've been dealt and let's let's let's use our you know take advantage of our

119size and our flexibility to be able to address it and i think where i would look would be to maybe be as student specific as we can be you know we can start with the summer but is it possible for for teachers particularly in the k through five to you know to to draft a quick email to to to their parents and of the kids in their classrooms saying you know this is this is the area i would focus on you know to the point like you know yeah and give parents the option and there are plenty of parents i think that maybe traditionally look at the summer as a time of relaxation and they don't want their children to be doing any work and they may still feel that way and that's totally appropriate

120other parents may be saying you know this summer in particular i i think i may want to do a little bit extra and you know just buying the latest kumon book may not be the the best strategy i think it would be nice for parents to hear from teachers about kind of a student specific approach to what they could be doing over the summer and then i would carry that forward into the fall what are we doing student specific specific-wise are we are we starting to kind of can we tell where specific students are struggling and can we can we group them together for hillary's point to kind of take advantage of the efficiencies if we have a bunch of kids that slipped in certain areas of math and other kids who defined in math

121but maybe slipped in reading can we can we group them together so that they're in a classroom with the teacher who has the skill set to work with them most effectively so that rather than have everybody spread across all different grades i mean all different uh teachers within a grade ability abilities or abilities yeah i mean you know i know there's downsides to tracking and all and all that and i get it but this i think is kind of a unique circumstance and everybody could benefit from being grouped with with kids that are um experiencing similar difficulties because you know the the charts that that bother what bothers me the most about the charts you know is kind of the you know take the blue area right the 80 to 100 percent um effectiveness i

122guess is the the metric uh you want in a you know in a district like ours where we have such high per pupil expenditures and we have such a small um teacher to student ratio like this is where we should be seeing growth and more uh scores increasing not not decreasing in terms of kids that fall into that category i mean that's that's what i look at the most and those are the students that may not necessarily be targeted for for interventions right because maybe there are at the 75th percentile the 60th percentile um but i think i think those are students that need um just as much attention if not more um because the slippage is kind of uncommon for them so it may be a challenge but i mean that that would be

123kind of where i would be thinking of going with this and if it's some of the yes or money it's somebody else or money if it's if it's just how we structure our classrooms or our placements but i don't know if anybody else has any thoughts on that yeah melissa something you said really resonated with me um and i did watch uh parts of the of the uh update and i i think there was a section where they said well the summer is really long right and reading is easier because there could be leisure reading but when it comes to math it's just work right and to bring ruby's philosophy of you know in this world you know it's all about customization to the client right so i can tell you that me personally as

124a parent i got involved in the math instruction over the pandemic with my kids right i personally got involved the first time ever right now if you tell me this summer oh uh there's some work that can be done if it's just a blanket topic i'm not going to be very likely to do anything about it but if i know it's module a b c in certain areas as a parent i probably would take the time to sit down and tailor you know some instructional time you know with my children knowing that it's very targeted so what you're saying melissa i don't know if that's what you you were leaning towards but if we have tableau and we have that information and i know it's probably not easy and it's a lot of work to

125to get out you know this information per student because it's going to be customized that could potentially be very useful yeah i think it's work up front that won't will be less needed later i think so too taffy the more that people can accomplish prior to you know the first or second week of school for those families that want to um i think would be helpful thank you i think this is a really thoughtful discussion around you know thinking about next year and just um you know i'll draw the principles in you know after i just you know respond briefly if they want to say anything um you know i think this this process has really started uh in march with the uh the parent conferences you know where where is your child and what

126is the focus is math a real critical focus you know we want all kids to be reading uh as much as possible over the summer but then you know i hear i hear a real call here to try to really tailor things for students and one of those things that we will be sending home at the end of the year are the um the map results the map reports which will share where where a student is at a moment in time we've done that in the in the past um we haven't this year but the the end of the year map report will be will be helpful but nothing nothing replaces you know where you know a teacher you know has observed a student and and where would be most helpful for them to focus

127uh we do know from grade to grade what the skills are that um you know are going to be coming up that could be previewed or things that need to be reinforced whether it's third to fourth grade with with fractions which they're introduced to uh you know carol and the other cells putting together those things on the website are going to be you know repositories for that uh for those resources but i think we can go back we could talk a little bit more about these thoughts to tailor things but last point melissa that i'll make and then if others want to join in from the principles one of things you were referring to for next year was cluster grouping of students so not creating homogeneous groups of students still having a heterogeneous classroom but

128sometimes narrowing the range and the amount of differentiation between groups within a particular class and that's that's that's a strategy that you know we've discussed debated talked about um within the makeup and i know that principles especially k5 level do a lot of discussion about how are we going to create the makeup of a particular class no that's something that lauren patty wants to speak to at all so i mean we work for many months over creating classrooms um that like lots of you know we want to we want to have a nice blend of learning styles of boys and girls um abilities because i think it's really rich for kids to have those interactions and to have those discussions where the small groups come into play really will be those intervention groups that's when

129we need so that goes into our scheduling in a way so that we're making sure that when we have x amount of classes all together having math so that if you need to pull one from this classroom two from this one you know like another another child from that room then you can put those into a small intervention group and that's where i see that kind of clustering not really tracking within the entire classroom that makes sense i have a few more questions sorry um so can one question is i want to make sure i understand with this testing that like with the map it's individualized so it's not like our scores go down so another school's scores go up is that true of all this testing so this uh the map assessment is a

130national uh assessment and you know those percentages those five bands are where you know student falls you know nationally unlike the smarter balanced assessments we do not have uh let's say local dur comparisons uh as as we're able to get by by navigating the website but uh i mean that information kind of tells us where where is a student trending in relation to other western students but also in relation to you know national uh norm of what we're seeing i'm just trying to figure out like if if we move down and somebody else moves up like what did they do right that we didn't do you say somebody else you mean another another district yeah well you know i i think what we're seeing is the trend that nationally in reading and math that there

131there are the average map score for reading the average map score for math is is lower math has been probably about 10 percent lower across the country when they've done the the um the analysis map has so it's not that it's not that us in comparison to another district it's that overall uh we are seeing these trends nationally dan i don't know if you want to add yeah i'll hop in so the way like map nwea works is there are thousands of districts across the country that use nwea so we don't have access to anyone else's data for map nwea outside of what we have but what we do see and the data that we use is we are then put in a group so we have national norms and averages and so when we

132look at like the percentile ratings for the for all of the nwea that's looking at the national 50th percentile or whatever the percentile is so we don't see individual district results so there's no from at least from that perspective there's no people shifting up or down it's just how are we doing comparing to the rest of the nation when it comes to smarter balance uh that's when you you may see because we do have access to overall data for other districts as that's publicly available but we don't we won't have access to individualized data obviously to other districts but the state does put out for that for smarter balance overall information and school data for every district in connecticut i have more questions if no one else does go ahead hillary um so instructional minutes

133i don't know like when i go online and i look up what the you know state of connecticut minutes are um i don't know how that breaks out for you know math lunch library like i don't know how that how that breaks out have you thought about like taking minutes from one thing and moving it you know to for example math given the circumstances and maybe offering like an after school club for you know that particular you know whatever you're taking it from or something like that so the the uh guidelines from the state are that obviously 180 school days in 900 hours in total of instruction that is um exclusive of lunch and recess and so forth passing time uh in how those minutes are are allocated uh we we do report those and

134you know we have those discussions on how do you split the pie up so to speak for our comprehensive curriculum and we have had an hour for reading and writing in an hour for for math generally uh slightly lower at kindergarten due to developmental level and attention spans um we um you know we have vigorous debates about that and and obviously things like can we have more instructional time for world language well we would love that but then it's going to come from someplace else uh you know equally important so we have to make you know we have to make judgments value judgments but if there's an area like this year where we were concerned about the performance such as literacy find making sure we have time for that we did make adjustments so like

135in this year there was less time for science the goal as you heard i think when we met last week was to get back to the allocation of minutes that we typically have starting starting next year so the typical allocation of minutes restoring fully those those courses and subjects i have a couple other questions then um so we didn't talk about how about the use of technology and how we can since we've all you know become so adept at it and i would think parents are going to look at us and say how can you consider you know how can we use technology to help us not just from like a data analysis perspective but how what can they do are there like you know are there specific things that parents can do um that

136um that we're not considering um are there things in the classroom that can maybe customize it am i missing something like that i can i can jump in uh we've obviously learned an incredible amount of of of information about technology how it works in the classroom what works what doesn't i will say that we are in the process of putting together um summer links for families uh for all subject matters that we will be releasing at the end of the year to help with families and resources online resources for families in terms of what's working in the classroom in terms of with technology staff are going to be having all the technology we provided with them this year you know the the document cameras um all that stuff and we're also going to be giving

137them new staff laptops we saw that that was a big detriment so i think what the the situation we got in is that people who were hesitant to learn technology we were all it was all kind of forced upon all of us and so there's a lot more conversation happening in the classroom level in the grade level in the school level the district level with this is what's working let's continue using this so that's absolutely a conversation we're having you know technology professional development is always a hot topic in every single building they want more pd on this software or on this hardware or hardware that may not have necessarily been getting a lot of use now they want to start using it more because they see the value in it so now that goes

138into you know how do we replace that in a timely fashion so there's been a lot of these conversations i love these conversations it's great to have the teachers reaching out to us about this so i think you know we've kind of hit a pivotal moment with education and technology this year and we want to capitalize on that moving forward so that's absolutely a hot topic for not only us for every district in the united states how do we capitalize on this yeah i have two more questions um they're quick after and before school tutoring can we use esther grant for this after before school tutoring um i would think so so so phil um do you want to advise on this and i mean if we can use it for summer academy we could

139use it for before and after i would imagine i think it'll come down to the um union instructional minutes time yeah i think also not to just jump in but i also think that um as i'm the one that's going to have to write that part of the report this summer it's a bit premature um you know perhaps the answer is yes but that doesn't mean we're going to do it yet we really have to look very carefully at our resources and the data before we we craft the complete plan of how best to um spend those funds wisely so i don't want it when did when do they need to be spent by lisa phil can you help us with this the the plan that has to go uh forward um as dr mccarthy

140said at the beginning is uh at the end of the summer of how we are going to you know get approved and just end the fun so i guess what i'm saying is whether it's yes or no we first have to see if that would be an appropriate intervention and we're we're not there yet i don't know with doing before and after school tutoring as opposed to something else phil i don't know if you have anything that you can add regarding that yeah sure so i as we talk about the various how we can use the money on the arp as her funds um to deal with the various concerns that we have as a primary relates to learning laws we have to remember that whatever plan that we have right it's really it's a

141multi-year plan so as bill mentioned previously that our we have one a second round of funding which is our our which is sr2 and that's primary related to summer transitioning into fy 22. the arp esser is more of a long-term plan right that that grant itself is a is a two to three year grant so it's not it has to be expanded so our initial plan our initial plan is that phase one if you think think about them in phases phase one will be will be s for two with phase two being using funding from s from our esser to to deal with the second year of our overall plan sunshine is two years so we have until 20 i want to say 20 24 to spend this money 23 or 24 to spend the

142money that's great hillary do you have one more question i'm good actually thanks i just i had one more thing i wanted to say just in listening to some of hillary's questions and some of the conversations we've we've had about this and you know having a few days now to kind of absorb all of all this data and taking advantage of the opportunity we have with the esser funds to really you know make meaningful um improvements i would just say that i have serious concerns starting the year off the same as previous years i just that's going to sufficiently address uh what we're seeing on these slides and i would hope that we can all you know put our heads together as we develop these goals for the ssr funds over the summer you know

143to develop plans that really get to all students and not just those that are you know falling behind some type of you know metric that we've set right some some random number because i think all students have um suffered the negative consequences of this capacity so it it needs to be a comprehensive approach that's not just um not just intervention i when i every time i hear that word i just want to make sure it's i think that's important very very very very important but i think even the top achievers are are not where they would be but for covid and we want to get them to where they need to be as well you know i think you're absolutely right and i think what i heard in the curriculum meeting which which was really

144critical was that we aren't just experiencing this here in weston it is happening all across the country as a result of this pandemic and there may be other reasons um at different schools we know we know and it was just so enlightening to hear the sills discuss how not being able to be in person with a young child to work on math is critical like it's just critical and that when we all come back into school in september there is going to be a period where everybody has to be brought up to speed not just with um you know their math skills but just being together in the room i mean they are now but there's going to be more of that orientation and and and real adjustment to um you know to being back

145full time so i think i think i i have a funny feeling i mean i don't have a funny feeling i'm confident that the sills and the staff and the and the principals um are not planning on sort of landing landing running melissa and those who need intervention will get it but rather that everyone is going to have to take a few steps back and some big breaths and some and some and and some realignment and please jump in if i've got that wrong but that is what i heard i think it's also important to remember that you know we started this journey in march of 2020 and it's been a roller coaster until now that is months and months of this so um the journey back so to speak is also going to take

146months and months but we do need to have a plan and we do need to be um you know very careful in how we um allocate our resources um and it's going to take time but as taffy so eloquently said the big thing is is having everyone back i mean when i saw those seniors at the prom all of them together it has been so long since i have seen that and you know that kind of thing to bring the entire classes back to spend time like that um it i think everyone just has to um be patient and um work together to be able to move what we need to with these students forward but it's going to take time yeah i think it will and i do and and i do want to

147reiterate that staff did an extraordinary job doing the very most that they could over the over these 16 months um or 14 months and that you know learning math and the abstract for a child is is next to impossible and and yet they managed to bring them as far as they could under those circumstances and um i just uh i really invite you to go back and listen to that meeting if you haven't especially the public who are listening agreed okay um well i think we've discussed this thoroughly and of course these will all be you know part of the esser arp application that we make so we'll be working through these goals all summer long okay let's move on to the next agenda item unless anybody has anything pressing okay now this is just

148a discussion and vote on proposed 2021 2022 board of education meeting dates okay i think we can dispense with this one pretty quickly yeah we put an easy one in here for you to feel feel a win much needed thank you um has everyone had an opportunity to look at them is there yeah we as i mentioned in the chair meeting earlier melissa uh and with tony alves and ruby uh we tried to avoid the problem of putting a board meeting right after a vacation so hopefully someone also double checked it for that but otherwise these are what we would recommend for the coming year okay um they look good to me the can i have a motion the only thing that's in the attached is whether it is um in person or zoom um

149the attached says in person seven o'clock i thought we were gonna do six o'clock meetings where do you see that ruby the if you click on the meeting schedule so i am we can certainly have a board discussion about this i am 100 on board trying it in person my only um call out is we've had the discussion about technology and um especially around microphones and the public being able to hear us um and you know it did not pass in budget to update any of the equipment so i just want to make sure that these you know these meetings we've had a lot of public engagement over this past year and i think one of the things that's helped is that they're able to hear us and understand us and um you know watch

150what's going on so i am 100 on board if we want to put it in there to start off i would like to change the time back to six o'clock i think that's been that benefits everybody but um i don't know i'll leave it to you to discuss ruby i was actually gonna say that i think you need to consider going back to seven o'clock because with more people starting to commute back into new york city a six o'clock start um is very challenging for our working families um it this year it's been fine because so many of our families you know have been working from home um but once we hit a critical mass of our families commuting um a six o'clock start really kind of disenfranchises anybody who's traveling to and from new

151york city yeah i mean it kind of goes both ways though right because you know 10 30 at night disenfranchises everyone getting up early to go back into new york city um somebody including the including the board members who can who are bleary-eyed by the end of our meetings yeah i mean i don't yeah i mean with what we've gone through tonight we would be at 9 22. look at how much agenda we have still to get through no i mean i i get it i just oh i know i mean it's a valid point about going late isn't great but at six o'clock start for somebody coming home from it's impossible i mean going late is not optimal but it's possible a six o'clock start for our commuting you know residents is really almost

152impossible and i realize that that's i mean a challenge for our staff who have to stay for meetings is what i'm sorry but i just feel like it's the impossible versus not great but still possible can we take a poll of the community on that one can we do just a quick survey i don't see why not or if people want to write us let us know what you think about it um i don't i mean my personal opinion is earlier is better for everyone the people that need to attend the meeting certainly and i think with technology now you can you can listen in remotely if you're you know traveling on a train or doing something like that if it's important um i certainly don't want to disenfranchise anyone i just don't know that

153that hour difference is going to make that much of a difference i mean somebody coming back from new york city isn't going to necessarily be to westin middle school public library by seven o'clock um but they might be on a train by seven o'clock and to your point of using technology to be able to listen they may be on a train by seven o'clock yeah and maybe by six o'clock too i mean i don't know um i'm sorry melissa you finished no no i i'm i don't know i want to do what's right by the by the people of weston um and i just think that i don't my personal opinion is staying up late is is too hard um for us and for anybody that wants to listen critically to the important things that

154come towards the second half of the meeting and i also think decision making i mean we're you know at night to make thoughtful decisions for this district i just don't think it's productive for the board or for um administration especially principles that have been yeah six o'clock in the morning yeah i absolutely agree with you and i think that i can remember in our in-person meetings taking really important votes that always happened at the end of the meeting at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in some cases where we just wanted it to go away i mean we voted carefully but it was so late so i think that for the principals who have to be up at early the next morning etc i think we should at least try it at six o'clock and see

155how it goes anybody that comes in person i mean i had babysitters for so many years coming to these meetings and they were high school kids and i had to leave by 10 because they needed to go good home and stuff so i mean anybody that comes to our meeting with small kids i think would would need to uh need to have the meeting concluded at a reasonable hour uh i don't know all right well let's um what do you guys think victor how are you feeling about it on the time i've been different i think uh i mean we can agree on the dates and i think i think to ruby's point on the um on the format i just i think uh i've experienced both formats of technology and i i i for

156people that miss it it's better to see it on youtube and actually understand what we're saying so um i i i'm advocating for i mean maybe we have one or two in the middle school library but i i like this format better dude i'm sorry i had to take my dog to bed did i miss it because when you have it at the middle school library what are you doing about the public are they invited because we still have the same issue you guys probably talked about it when i when i went upstairs but you know nobody's gonna be able to hear us whereas now they can hear us so did we switch it or not well i i'd suggest the following um in an attempt to give you a little easy win here i

157would suggest you set the dates and there's still guidance coming from the state on the nature of public meetings and all if everything goes away and we're anticipating you would have the flexibility to be in person and be back to the old days with people in the room but other boards are going through what you are to say even with that are we more efficient and effective in some form of remote so if you least set the date tonight you're going to get a little more guidance from the state over the next several weeks and then you can work with uh lisa on is it best to do a zoom or not because the other part not here is i do recall that you had said keep the committee meetings in zoom um or a

158light platform and make the board meetings potentially in person so you could vote on the dates um you might commit to the time as well if you're up to that and then say you're going to be reviewing the nature of whether these meetings are in person or zoom i think that's a reasonable plan it seems like the consensus is more towards six o'clock than seven o'clock um and then let's let's see i mean if anyone's listening and feels strongly please write us a letter or an email and let us know your thoughts and if we are told that the public prefers seven we'll move it back to seven the the recommended motion only has the word dates in there it doesn't say the time or um you know in what mode so we could read

159the recommended motion as is it just specifies dates that's fine and then we'll just change the underlying document to six o'clock can we do that yeah and you can modify the motion you can modify the motion of the um or just handle it the way you're saying i mean the key thing is the dates you're getting those sets so you can plan around those and but if you're set on the time you don't want to do that go ahead too you can put that right in so you can modify the motion all right let's make a let's make a motion um as written with the an addition of the six o'clock start who's up for that challenge move that the western board of education approve the board meeting dates for 20 22 with an edit

160to be attached for meetings to start at 6 pm can i have a second second second all in favor aye hi taffy hillary hi victor all right melissa all opposed i'm staining it doesn't impact me okay i didn't i didn't want to speak too quickly gina all right uh the motion passes all right so that was our our quick one now we're on to the financial update uh phil where's everyone doing great how are you i'm well thanks so that's going to give them a quick update maybe not as quick for um period ending april um just as in previous years we have had the gift of time and with the gift of time it has allowed us to have a better picture as to how the year was progressing where we anticipate that we'll

161end the year as of the period ended april 30th we do implant or do anticipate that we'll end the year with a surplus of 135 thirty 436 dollars a few things that we have done um for so far um we have adjusted a bunch of several purchase orders that we've had so we've spent some time we've reviewed purchase orders and made necessary adjustments in addition to that um we have also done a few adjustment or some some plans of what we consider to be investments um that we can put in place for fy22 and disappointed as well this surplus will allow us to take advantage or to go ahead with our plan with the plan mitigating strategies that we have for fy22 just some quick highlights in terms of what what investments we we hope

162to to to implement um with with surplus that that is reflected in um in the current plan as you guys know we recently at the last minute we did discuss the new europe um the tied into this budget or into this projection is payment for europe the new run of europe of approximately 130 000 um we also are hoping um or that we did discuss infincom to to do certain critical investment what we consider to be critical investment um a part of the overall learning loss and our well the mitigating plan to address learning laws for all of our students is a plan to purchase books for math and focus um so we did discuss in the budget for grade seven um i forgot the grades but we have expanded this a little bit further

163to include as low as grade one um it's a critical critical plan um for for textbooks of approximately sixty thousand dollars um you guys will will recall that in in and for the past two years that i've been here there there have been several requests for music instruments because of budgetary recon uh constraints we have not been able or we pretty much not approve um those plan or those requested purchases for um instruments tied into this into this projection is purchasing of equip instruments for approximately thirty three thousand dollars also tied into this projection is an improvement to the three the training athletic training room at the high school approximately twenty one thousand dollars and also an investment in purchasing equipment additional equipment for our grounds and facility for approximately four to five thousand so

164overall in terms of critical of what we consider to be critical um investment we're looking at one hundred thousand dollars so as i again just we've had some ups and downs in terms of how the numbers flow we are fairly confident that to the remain of the year that we we will meet the projection but of course we always want to caution that there are several items or several things that may come up um with technically roughly four to five are a month left in school um so just want to be cautious about that so that in a nutshell is a is a quick overview of where we are right now not quite sure if there's any questions okay just a quick update on the internal services fund we continue to see favorable claims experience

165for the front and we did discuss and find come if we have seen any any uptick in uh claims experience i think overall what we're seeing the the the claims experience continued to be fairly level we had a quick uh that's a slight bump up um in one week for claims experience um but other than that it has settled so we're pretty much in line with what the the trailing claims experience have been for for the year to date as it stands right now we do anticipate if all the projections hold that we will end the year with an additional forty six thousand dollars in the internal services fund which will bring the overall balance to just over eight hundred thousand dollars assuming that all things um hold the where they are currently any questions

166on internal services line okay um so that is the financial update for the period it ended april 30th 2021. great thank you phil does anybody have any questions about that no um do we have a motion for any of the financial reports move that the western board of education approved the 10th financial report as presented by mr cross okay can i have a second [Music] any comments all in favor attack hi gina hi ruby hi hi victor okay i'm melissa so uh the motion passes okay thank you all right i'm still here for a few more oh you have more i was just about to commend you on how short a presentation that was well you know we we do a lot of the heavy lifting um at the community level okay well thank you

167phil um so does that mean we're moving on to policies now yes okay that's my yes that's my area bear with me while i open my notebook um okay i see we have opened the uh soliciting prices in the school lunch so those are the first reads correct okay the first one we're going to be talking about is um [Music] three three two three um and now this was just a school on school lunch uh pricing and quotes this this um the updates to this policy was strictly an update from our attorneys at shipment and goodwin um there's just been some recent changes phil phil has also reviewed this thank you phil um we wanted to make sure that the um it was a very thick regulation and we wanted to make sure that the

168compliance wasn't too onerous and then all of our practices aligned with um with the changes to the regulations and that there wasn't anything from s or that kind of complicated matter so i had asked at the last policy beaten meeting that phil reviewed it um i haven't heard back so i don't want to put you on the spot phil but if if you did have the opportunity to review it and um and that's fine then i think that would be helpful for everyone to know we're talking about specifically three three two three three three two three yes right so that one really is more tied into just overall um so a few a few years ago the federal government made a few changes and one of their requests was that each board has on their

169policy um just a statement that's saying that there that the board will comply with the relevant regulation um pretty much in the code and this is just to for us to be in compliance with that and this this specifically addressed the use of all federal funds um to make purchases um so this is pretty much what what this update was all about okay all right um we did discuss this at the policy meeting it was just that it was so lengthy with the federal um implications that i just wanted to make sure that we were yeah i mean it's in in terms of what i think it when when when you're tying in that this the federal guideline and tie that into our overall purchasing policy we're sort of kind of in line with it

170because of a lot of what we have so it kind of mirrors um the overall federal policy so just in short um i did i i couldn't read an entire thing this was pretty lengthy as you mentioned nobody you're in compliance with um with those policies okay that that's what we assumed to be the case but i'm grateful for that confirmation uh so that is the extent of the changes to 3323 also on the school lunch topic is now this was just a change if you'll look at this um [Music] regarding uh first of all that that the school cafeteria workers are no longer they're not our employees so we had to make some language changes to reflect that also we made a language change to reflect the title change um to director of uh

171finance and operations which is phil's um proper title and uh we did look at this um policy just with respect to the fact that we were making some sustainability policies this year it's been a goal of the policy committee in the district so that's why we were looking at this just to make sure that there wasn't anything that was outdated in this policy and there wasn't um so phil also over you know took a look at this policy as well so that's those are the two school lunch policies i'm happy to answer any questions if anybody has any regarding them but no okay um then that those are just first reads so we don't have any um motions associated with it and according to this i don't see anything that's up for second read so

172we'll move on from policy to um a discussion and vote on the 2021-2022 out of district tuition rates is that also phil or is that yes it is i'm sorry um so out of district tuition rate um so quick update on this one so uh last year we did uh at the income and i think at the board level we did agree that going forward that the overall rate of increase will be pegged pretty much to our budget increase um we've pretty much established a baseline for per people expenditures and that was established prior so going forward will just increase this by um the percentage increase of our budget so for fy22 the percentage increase is 1.68 and all the various rates are listed on the document that you guys have shouldn't um there be

173emotion no gina okay last year we made the motion that we were going to peg the increases to the to the budget increase we admit we did that motion last year so the only reason you would need to vote this year is if you were doing something other than that hmm okay well i don't want the lack of emotion to preclude us from any comments if anybody has any concerns or questions um and i should just say just because there's no motion listed if in this discussion the board wants to do something different do it i mean you don't you have the authority to change it it's an agenda item so just because there's no motion listed if you do want to change something you have that ability duly noted does anybody um have any

174comments regarding the out of district tuition rates or any questions okay well that document is attached here and it's part of the public record if anybody wants to review it at home uh we'll move on to a discussion and vote on the 20 keep saying vote but there's no vote here either um discussion on the 2021 and 2022 pre-k tuition rates which is also attached um correct um we are recommended this year that the pre-k tuition also be packed to um the budget increase last year we did a pretty um robust review of neighboring districts and private um private centers in terms of what the pre-k rate has been um so we agreed at f income uh the committee grade f income for this year that we will also increase the pre-k tuition by the

1751.68 um we also discussed that this rate the percentage increase going forward the pre-k tuition similar to the non-resident tuition will also be increased by this percentage um the budget butcher increase year-over-year going forward with a periodic review um just to ensure that we continue to be in line with other districts and other facilities as well so we do need a motion on this one this was we had not established that protocol for the pre-k that we had in place for the regular tuition so we do need if you want to peg it yeah i'm thinking now is the time to peg it also wouldn't that make sense yeah before we do that though phil i know that what we had discussed in fincom was uh two years ago we had kind of a big

176adjustment to how we were our pre-k program was being uh positioned versus other neighboring um uh pre-k programs um and and the only thing that i i think you were gonna do is is for this year with the subsequent uh increases are we still in line with fairfield county i think you were going to reach out to three preschools specifically yeah we we did reach out to to private to private uh preschools and and it's a little bit difficult to do a comparison with those facilities um because a lot of them they're really full-time or full-day full-day programs but in terms of the rate where we continue to be in in in the same position as to where we were um a year or two ago um in neighboring district i did reach out to

177our immediate neighbor in westport and their increases also will be tied to whatever the budget increase will be um so again so this is why one of the one of the things that i that i that we decided to do after the meeting was um in addition to the percentage increase i think on on every two years or so we'll just do this comparison to see where we are and make those adjustments as needed perfect great gina do you remember how the motion was for last year for i don't remember it but i can try to craft one go for it it'll be your swan song gina move uh hang on a second let me get back to my other screen um move that the western board of education set the 2021 2022 pre-k tuition

178rate at an increase of 1.68 percent further move that pre-k tuition rate in subsequent years will increase in direct proportion to the budget increase second ruby any comment all in favor hi taffy hi gina hi ruby hi victor hi melissa all opposed okay the motion passes um thank you gina let's move on to discussion and vote i think we're going to be in the same category here again uh discussion and vote on the 2021 2022 utility and facilities rental rates yeah this one is another fairly straightforward one um the district's policy is that um rental rates um is is pretty much increased by whatever at the budget adder and based on our assumption the cpi but the cpi assumption for our budget um the cpi assumption that we have for fiscal year 22 um is

1791.666 1.6 and that rate and that was established back in august of um 2020. so the rates reflected here um are based on the cpi in short okay and that's going to change every year then so um we don't if we don't vote on this it just is approved yeah okay i i just have a question on it just so i fully understand it does this like cover our costs can you just give me a little bit are they where you came up with it well no it it does not cover our racos and there's um there are separate groups with within the overall um scope of things so to speak um so we have group one where there's no fees so for all the groups within town for example parks and recs and the

180like they do not pay a fee um i think that's correct group one is community rates and then we have a private rates so again it doesn't cover the cost no but it covers it it will at least cover the cost for custodians if we have custodians who who will need to work um for a particular event and where it's being charged we do build that um that entity or that that community that entity to cover the cost of the cursed custodians everything else in terms of overall light and stuff like that it's a proportional cost okay may i just ask why when um i'm looking at this schedule that we do not have the availability to rent out any of our athletic facilities external athletic facilities we will we will allow groups to use

181our internal facilities but we have n a for the external facilities just with so many youth sports programs in the area it seems like we're missing an opportunity um to provide a service and to generate some revenue i mean i one of the reasons as i look on the on on the turf um one of the reasons to cut that i can think of really just because of the overall cost really to um of of the cost of the install and to maintain the overall turf facility now again this is something that we could look into um just as even just to offset just the the upkeep of of the turf fields and the cost for that wouldn't will of course be nowhere as low as the cost that we have just for rental oh

182no i would view it as we would be charging a fair market rate it's just there's such a demand for those types of facilities i mean obviously you'd give priority to western youth organizations but you know if a club lacrosse team wanted to rent a turf field at you know 7am on a sunday morning nobody in weston's using it absolutely and i think that's a good point gina we'll i'll have a discussion with um with mark berkowitz and maybe we'll just follow up at both facilities and fincom that sounds reasonable just be mindful i think sometimes our athletes do go and use the fields to practice and things you know without having signed up so you just want to make sure that's one of the most beautiful things about our campus is that you know

183the kids are always running to and from the fields and they have easy access so i just wouldn't want them to feel like they can't use their own field so mark would certainly know more about that than i would okay so we don't need to vote on that so we'll just move on um i feel like we kind of went over the arp esser process and grant um bill earlier so if there's anything you want to add here that i think yeah i think we were quite thorough hopefully if just any questions on the timeline actually while we've been sitting here tonight we received from the state that they will send out the assurances that have to be signed that's solely to be signed by the superintendent it's quite straightforward and that begins the process

184but if there are any questions about the timeline ask that now but i think we explained it pretty clearly earlier no and these documents are attached which are very helpful for anybody in the public who really wants to understand the funding that we're receiving and the requirements associated with it anything else anything from any other board members okay let's move on to the schooling scenarios update lisa i think that's coming from you you're muted lisa [Music] sorry as it's getting later on um um what i would say for the schooling scenarios update is um as part of the whole esser is working on what is um school going to look like in the fall and we have talked about it as a leadership team and the principals k5 612 are now working on coming up

185with some um parameters that draft up a plan that they will be sharing with dr mccarcy and me um regarding that so i guess i would say stay tuned um we're really opting on the premise that we value in-person learning and there are still some things that we have to get answered for example um a snow day situation that the state hasn't ruled on yet that you know if we could count uh snow days and have remote learning certainly would help our calendar um but but we are very cognizant of the fact that um you know our big uh challenge is if a student does have to be quarantined moving forward and especially our our youngest students who as of now are not eligible to get a vaccine how will we be able to continue

186providing services to those quarantined students that are perfectly healthy and are at home because of quality restrictions but as we all see there are a lot of different things that are still fluid everything from the mask wearing to what that will look like in september but we are persevering through it and trying to kind of you know come up with a plan that will ensure that frankly our students won't learn any won't lose any um or learning time and that will keep moving us forward and i should add that as part of that tracy edwards and her team is also instrumental in ensuring that students that have particular services how would they be met in the best way possible some more to follow we kind of gave our um principles group a deadline of friday

187the high school of course immediately said to me today could we have until monday can you give us a couple more days um so you know i said friday hoping that that we would have um you know something um a draft early next week because we do know that people are um you know anxious as to what it'll look like and we certainly don't want to contribute to stress okay sounds reasonable does anybody um have any questions regarding the schooling scenarios update comments okay now we're going to move on to agenda item 10 which is the discussion and vote on salary and contract terms for 20 21 20 22 unaffiliated central office administrators this is um these are this is this time of year we do the contract um term renewals uh every year so

188this is pretty standard uh practice we're doing it in may instead of june just to take advantage of still having jen ryan on staff to assist us with this process so let's go ahead bill are you gonna lead us here so you have before you um the recommended contracts and salary increase for each of the noted positions uh assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction i'll just you have separate motions for each then you have director of finance and operations um then you have the director of public personnel services and director of digital learning and technology and then the director of facilities uh all within the motion is the specific length of contract as well as the base salary and the increase uh represented which is uh 2.25 percent and that is is every year been

189in recent time pegged to what the western uh administrative association increases i should know in the public record the these contracts are all now two-year two-year contracts and that's an across-the-board adjustment that's not specific to any one of these individuals but that it's a board recommendation to make it across the board to your adjustment again i want to repeat that that is has nothing to do with anything other than restructuring the term of contracts for all of the top leadership team so that's the overview i recommend then you go item by item to read the motion in vote okay let's start uh with letter a can i have a motion move that the western board of education one approve the contract term of dr kenneth crawl the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for a

190new period of two years july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2023 2 established base salary of 218 269.95 representing a 2.25 increase to dr cross current base salary and three authorize the chairperson to negotiate and execute a revised contract with the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction incorporating these changes can i have a second any comment all in favor bye hillary hi gina hi ruby hi victor i'm always happy i'm melissa all opposed okay uh motion passes uh let's move on to letter b can i have a motion for that as well move that the western board of education one approved the contract term of mr phil cross the director of finance and operations for a new period of two years july 1 2021 through june 30 2023 to establish base salary of 182 331.31

191representing a 2.25 increase to mr cross's current base salary and three authorized the chairperson to negotiate and execute a revised contract with the director of finance and operations incorporating these changes right have a second i can't be all in favor hi ruby hi gina hi victor hi chaffey hi melissa all opposed okay motion passes letter c can i have a motion move that the western board of education one approved the contract term of miss tracy edwards the director of pupil personnel and serv her pupil personnel services for a new period of two years july 1 2021 through june 30th 2023 2. establish a base salary of 176 381.25 representing a 2.25 increase to miss edward's current base salary and 3 authorize the chairperson to negotiate and execute a revised contract with the director of pupil

192personnel services incorporating these changes can i have a second second any comment all in favor hi ruby hi taffy hi gina hi hilary doctor i'm melissa all opposed motion passes letter d can i have a motion move that the western board of education one approved the contract term of mr daniel devito the director of digital learning and technology for a new period of two years july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2023 two established base salary of 163 representing a 2.25 percent increase to mr devito's current base salary and three authorize the chairperson to negotiate and execute a revised contract with the director of digital learning and technology incorporating these changes can i have a second back end any comment all in favor aye ruby hi hillary hi victor i'm melissa all opposed motion passes let's

193tackle letter e move that the western board of education one approved the contract term of mr michael del mastro the director of facilities for a new period of two years july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2023 two established base salary of four hundred 135 fifty dollars and fifty eight cents representing a two point two five percent increase to mr del master's current base salary and three authorize the chairperson to negotiate and execute a revised contract with the director of facilities incorporating these changes can i have a second second any comment all in favor aye ruby hi taffy hillary hi victor i'm melissa all opposed uh motion passes okay that's that's the end of that agenda item now we're moving on to [Music] agenda 11 which is also salary increases pertaining to personnel um various personnel

194positions okay walk us through this one yeah ken do you want to do this one and we have that one correction right so this is the unaffiliated group of um staff members support staff and uh we have a group of them here and i think that we can uh read through the list as as one motion um and i'm happy to read through if that that's helpful would you like to um yeah it probably needs to be read into the record because it's not as part of the motion right uh we have the uh we have you know several positions here that um are part of this motion uh discussion of salary increases for uh the nursing supervisor food service director confidential administrative assistant fourth superintendent the administrative assistant for the assistant superintendent of curriculum

195and instruction the administrative assistant to the director of pps fed finance coordinator new high well human resource manager confidential finance and operations office manager payroll and benefits coordinator accounts payroll accounts receivable the student activities bookkeeper the information technology coordinator the district data coordinator the data analyst and the board certified behavioral analyst physicians now for those who are continuing in those positions uh next year some of these positions are new hires and would be um would not receive the increase if they're they're not continuing they're in other words new hires okay well let's um let's have a motion and let's make sure that the motion states that it's for people that are continuing in the position do you want to help with this do we have we have an abbreviated motion the in uh the increase

196is 225 yes yes move that the western board of education approve a general rate wage increase of 2.25 percent general rate increase for the positions listed above wage increases would only apply to employees employed prior to july 1 2021 in the current position does that work and can we read into the record that correction on the position which was the uh the district data coordinator correct yeah yeah because it's the new hire tbd is the information technology coordinator yeah you know yeah i didn't read into whether it was a new hire or not but just yeah so what well we have to clarify is in what you see there when the motion refers to it is up above it says information technology coordinator and then it says new hire tbd that new hire tbd should

197be in front of the information technology coordinator that's the new hire tbd the district data coordinator is an ongoing employee so we can make that correction just want to make sure you as a board know that that shift will occur okay all right can i have a second that can't ruby any comment all in favor hi ruby hi gina hi hilary hi taffy hi victor hi melissa all opposed okay um motion passes all right moving on ah back to policy now i see the second reads okay old business here we go these are um some policies that we discussed last last month as a first read so we can bring them we'll bring them up again now as a second read and they are attached if anybody has any questions about them uh let me

198just open my notebook [Applause] okay here we are child sexual abuse and assault policy and reporting procedures that's 5141.45 [Music] this is a title change to the policy in terms of our how we address our employee that's responsible for reviewing this uh tracy's position and tracy has reviewed this i mean there's there's nothing else substantive in here to discuss does anybody have any questions about it okay if not then i'll ask for a motion on the child sexual abuse and assault policy and reporting procedure move that the western board of education approve policy administrative regulation 5141.45 child sexual abuse and assault policy and reporting procedure a second second any comment all in favor hi taffy hi ruby hi hillary hi victor i'm melissa all opposed oh i was in favor sorry i'm sorry gina okay

199okay all opposed none uh motion passes all right next the non-discrimination policy for community personnel and students um [Music] i don't have a number attached to this but it is it is attached on cave and it is part of the record this was a change just to make sure that our policy and administrative regulations reflect the current federal guidelines regarding the protective classes of individuals also there is a state law in connecticut now that addresses ethnic traits and hairstyles so to make sure that there's no discrimination associated with any type of ethnic trait or hairstyle so we obviously want to be in compliance with our with our connecticut laws there and also there was another name and title change um in the in the regulation and policy and you know these things happen we have

200different people change positions or the title of their position changes and if the uh regulation or policy is outdated then we just update it so that's that's all that means uh does anybody have any questions or concerns about this one all right can i have a motion and i also just received the numbers off of the uh attached as well so it would read move that the western board of education approved policy administrative regulations of non-discrimination community personnel and students 18.11 and 4218.11 okay thank you can i have a second second any comments all in favor hi chef hi gina hi hillary hi victor okay i'm melissa all opposed okay motion passes uh this one the last one is the reports of suspected abuse or neglect of children or sexual assault of students by school

201employees okay so this uh also was uh reviewed by tracy which i think makes us all feel more comfortable and a title change only i believe bill my notes aren't complete on this one it's just a title change on this right yes okay terrific um can i have a motion western board of education approve policy administrative regulation 4118.25 and 5141.4 reports of suspected abuse or neglect of children or sexual assault of students by in school employees can i have a second that can't ruby and any comment all in favor aye ruby hi gina hi victor okay i'm melissa all opposed all right the motion passes we are nearing the end item number 12 b is a discussion and possible vote on modifying the 2021-2022 school calendar okay so this was um relating directly to our

202last month's board meeting when we were discussing the schooling scenarios and the possible impact of of remote learning and how that what could affect the schedule and when we looked at it we saw that the date that the children are starting school this year is a week and a half prior to labor day and the date that they're getting out is earlier in june than traditionally so i think the question was asked if it were possible to move things back or i should say i guess ahead a little bit so that um maybe there's only a week or so before labor day less time there and that the end date is more to what it has been traditionally which is more like mid-june so um ken why don't you let us know what your recommendation

203is yes so following up on last month's discussion uh we heard some interest in looking at the durg information seeing what the start dates and end dates are for the dir as well as you know is there a possibility of uh you know starting starting a little later and what we found when i found when we went to look at the dirt data that we did have the earliest start on the calendar that was approved last year um you know for uh for the 21 22 school year starting on august 26th and then ending on uh june uh ninth for the last day for students what i've uh covered is that most districts are starting the school year first day of students on august 30th their one district starting on the 31st in our durg

204and another one starting on september 1st so uh you know we we we did have the earliest start with this approved 21 22 calendar but before you um i did um put together a calendar that is a week starts a week later starts uh with a september basically just moves everything ahead a week so the start would be on september 2nd starting on a thursday with the three teacher days preceding that on the monday tuesday wednesday and then the the last day would then again push out a week with um the last day of school being for students the 16th of june which leaves you know six six days if we're talking about what we typically do for snow days that would be that would be in line um so i mean you know that

205that is you know five days later uh it puts us more in line with the rest of the dirt and based on the conversations that we had with um you know in our calendar committee meeting we did hear from the wta that you know starting with a partial week was preferable for students uh even from you know a parent parent standpoint although we do see some some districts you know several districts here that are starting on uh the monday uh first with students on on august 30th so um you know presenting that to you as as an option for for discussion and um you know obviously i think if you know if the start date was like uh er 9 on september 1st then you you'd have staff starting on a friday with their teacher

206days friday monday tuesday so you know that wednesday start did look at that uh a tuesday start you know you have staff starting on thursday friday the week before uh then they're they're uh they come back monday and then kids start on the tuesday for a four-day week that's another possibility that you could you could consider but um you know i think you're either looking at starting on potentially you know tuesday that week or thursday would be what i present to you for for discussion but this calendar here in front of you basically just pushed everything a week a week ahead and and why not monday like some districts are starting that makes the most sense to me there are some benefits to that ruby in that a full week given that the next couple

207of weeks are broken up by shortened weeks with holidays does make sense just trying to be responsive to the calendar committee i mean this has actually gone through this particular calendar to calendar committees uh last year's as well as this year um you know the group and again we heard that feedback about um you know just the stamina particularly of youngest learners and with that full week to start the year um but but you know as you pointed out there are you know there have been other districts that do that and you know it is you know when we're looking at this um you know just trying to be just be conscious of some of that that feedback and that's why you know that's why i just shared that as a concern and just as

208a concern for kids at the other end of the spectrum this change takes almost five academic days from our high school kids managing ap course loads this year college board gave some flexibility on the testing dates but typically those testing dates are the first two weeks of may and that's that um so our kids are have less instructional days compared to the vast majority of the country that starts a lot earlier and if we're cutting almost five more days and if we're reinstituting midterm exams next year that's even more instructional days lost for those upper level kids to prep for ap exams just wondering if there's a happy medium yeah no i i agree i i um and i think the unknown of whether the state will honor so you get to the 180 is

209still an unknown right and if and if they're not well then you're looking at a whole another possible week you know to account for snow days um i just go back to that monday august 30th making the most sense because if you're already starting the week the family's already here it we i think the the the the point of kind of revisit is does it make sense to does it make sense to start the thursday prior right when the weekend's coming up whereas if you're now start the family's already here their vacation's over might as well just get to it and you've got half days for the first two weeks for that kindergartner so they're only in school correct me if i'm wrong right ken they're only in school for half a day but at

210least it's a full week and then if you start august 30th your last day correct me if i'm wrong would be the 13th june 13th yeah three one two three yes your last day because you don't wanna until a until we find out what the state will allow in terms of remote learning and counting it towards 180 days and then and then the second thing is is you know camps and all of that good stuff that all starts that that third week of june so you don't want to get you don't want to bump up too close to that i even remember being in this district one year where a lot of children who were going away to camp they had to miss the last day of school because of snow days it had pushed

211the last day back so far um yeah i think that i i think that's a real valid concern i know new york has said that they're going to allow remote learning for snow days which is something that i would hope connecticut would do but i agree that it would be a little risky to count on that right now um so let me just try to consolidate opinions here does it seem and just nod your head or or you know make some kind of hand motion if this is not the case but it seems like the consensus is and looking at this derg a school year start chart that can helpfully put together for us are we in agreement that the 26th this is too early and we want to change it it's just a matter

212of are we changing it to that monday that tuesday or that thursday are we kind of at least at that point i see taffy saying yes ruby's nodding gina do you feel okay with that victor you're good hillary you're not on my screen hillary you good yeah i mean i i i would just quickly summarize that what i i totally agree with what gina said she made a very good point but sitting there listening to miss lynch talk about how it was so hard for those kids they just can't start on a monday is what i heard and you are our calendar rep yeah that was two years in a row she made a really big point of it i would say like mondays out um other than that you know i don't have a

213strong opinion personally so what was it men's second proposal tuesday how do we feel about tuesday that way you're coming back the little kids have a a an extra day so it's a shorter week and then the following week is also a shorter week because it's labor day so they've got two short weeks to kind of get themselves up and going it to gina's point it doesn't add all those extra days on it doesn't cost us extra days and as many in terms of prep um i just my only instinct is looking at this chart if we stick with august 26th we're going to be the only district in this area whose kids are going back that early and it has i mean it's been a hard year and i think you know our weather

214is the most beautiful towards the end of the summer than in the beginning and you know people probably value that time at the end more than they value it at the beginning but i don't want to speak for everybody i mean that just seems to be the consensus i'm hearing now do we want to vote on maybe the tuesday or at least why don't we make that the straw man and does anybody have any concerns about starting on that tuesday i'm hearing from hillary that the monday is challenging for the little littlest kids um or do people still feel like they want to go with the monday either way let's just try and try to reach some kind of i'm good for the tuesday i'm good for the tuesday as well good for the tuesday

215everybody's good with tuesday wow all right can you feel comfortable with that you think the committee would be comfortable with that well i think i think the partial the partial week is uh you know makes sense um even if it's just the four day um you know so i think we can yeah i mean we can adjust the calendar that way and then be more in line with the other districts so then our last day would be the 14th which is also a tuesday and it won't be if there's a snow day or two or three or four it'll it'll go longer so we've got a little bit of a cushion there and hopefully we won't we won't need it the state will allow us to use our technology and our remote learning do we

216all feel comfortable with this change all right let's have let's have a motion but the caveat is that the revised calendar does not reflect this so let's make sure in our motion that we state that it's uh august what is that the august 31st start then or is it correct tuesday august 31st start tuesday august 31st start okay can i have a motion move that the western board of education approve the revised 2021 2022 calendar with a start date of with a student start date of august 31st and a student end date of june 14th great can i have a second second any comment all in favor hi taffy hi ruby hi gina hi victor i'm melissa oh sorry okay i heard everybody uh all opposed all right motion passes i think that's a good

217i really feel like that's a fair compromise and a good outcome for for families in a difficult year i hope i hope everybody listening enjoys a couple extra days of summer vacation all right moving on oh just when i thought we were done with the calendar discussion and vote on this 2022-2023 western public school calendar ken before you for a second look is the 2223 calendar that also went through the committee process um you know the you know you can see that uh it's a september first start for students and you know you could have the same discussion here that we just had on that on that start date in terms of it's you know that's a thursday start um but you know i think with this you know you will get another crack at

218this i mean when we first started looking at this the you know we don't have the information around the dirt as i just shared with you from 22 22-23 we're fairly early out in the process so uh things like the start date or the placement of april vacation um you know that you might see you know you might see as those uh other calendars come out you may look at that next next spring and want to make some adjustments but for right now you know this gives you sort of a a place to start from and i don't think there was much discussion on this at the last meeting but you may have had more of a chance to you know um have questions no i think my only thought ken and help me help

219me with the timing on this is if this is when we need to approve these calendars for any reason then i think it makes sense to also move forward with this one i just think we'd have better visibility when we know what the state's going to do with the snow day situation and remote learning i think we'd make a better a better decision about a start date and end date rather than approving something now and then changing it i mean we still may want to give the kids one or two old-fashioned snow days but what if we have one of these you know five-day blizzards and we you know we we want to do remote learning and the state allows us to you know that could impact how we would finalize this so help me

220understand whether you know you think it would be wise to to do this now because it's important for some reason i'm not seeing or if maybe it makes sense to to do it in the fall when when the governor hopefully has spoken on this side you know i think those are those are fair points given that this is an unusual year and maybe a little more time would give us uh the information from you know standpoint of snow days as well as information of where maybe others in the dirt are are leaning as well because you know with the most recent change we just made to 21 22 you know once you adopt a calendar you really don't want to make you know a lot of significant changes unless there are unusual circumstances like we

221were dealing with you know this year and for next year's calendar so that that's i mean if you know lisa wants to weigh in or you know bill has a thought but i'm comfortable um you know holding off till we have more information if you are yeah i would agree let's hold off dr mccarcy yeah just don't let it get lost in the shuffle so you forget to come back to it yeah good advice and but i i think you know it's a good moment aboard your parents and all districts have had this rhythm of having the counter that year out ready now and if you're both board members and parents expert in the district i mean lisa and ken are real veterans here if you all are comfortable with in this case waiting uh

222you know that's fine i just would heard someone get on a to-do list so you're not sitting here in december going oops yeah or something like that so the other thing is a really good point so let's let's put it on our calendar for um the fall as soon as we can and let's um let's communicate this change in the schedule out to staff and families uh as soon as we can because i'm sure people are making vacation plans and child care arrangements and things of the art yeah we can what you have approved can we can blast that tomorrow if you want um and get that out i think we should include there this very thoughtful step not to yet finalize that next year calendar and just so you know there may be some

223very plan oriented people out there looking for it just so just yeah and i would just caveat it with the the snow days are still up in the air that we feel like we have some wiggle room in june with the june 14th but you know we're not clairvoyant here and we're we're trying to do something that matches what the other districts are doing around us and and lets people optimize um the summer as best we can with the limited information we have right now because i don't want to get crucified in in june if we have had a really bad winner fair enough okay that sounds good okay so let's send that communication out tomorrow um and then i think we are on to just the superintendent's report and committee reports so um dr

224mccarthy do you have anything yeah just a quick uh good news piecing and speaking of calendars uh we are going to have an end of year staff gathering and we're going to gather on the football field and i'm hoping four fingers crossed really good weather that would be friday morning june 18th after the high school graduation the day before everyone will be set up because that's the rain date for for the uh for the high school graduation uh some of these board members may remember two years ago we all that was the last time we do this we gather with not all of you could be there it's really a wonderful quick program the spirit and gina you're not the spirit is just incredible uh we've worked it all out it's going to be sunny

225and beautiful you heard it now uh 7 30 8 30 it'll be a brunch box lunch served by our incredible chef team led by andre uh and then from 8 30 to 9 30 sharp we'll be out in the football field uh honoring and celebrating uh years of service um retirees some of those we've mentioned here um and if you want rousing cheers come out and hear when the length of service is listed by each principal for those in their building it's really moving how loud people get uh as they should but then we announced the teacher of the year distinguished uh employee of the year that's not quite the name but this distinguished and then the pair of the year and and then we keep it moving it's fast it's upbeat uh but that

226would be uh you'll get a reminder but i just want to let you know that a few people here said let's do this and we'll do it outside we're allowed to and and we can be safe if it's looking like rain don't master and i will probably make our last together weather decision uh we'll do that late on the 17th uh and it's all ready to roll uh so let me just say that there i think this year and something for lisa going to next year we haven't been bringing you to the principal's report in writing and all uh we'll talk she'll talk with the principals about that for next year uh but my sense and you're all knowing the district well my sense is we're finishing strong and we are going to finish strong

227so thank you bill what day did you say that to that stuff yeah i'll get into that but thank you for clarifying uh the 18th june 18th early in the morning and staff like it early because they get in they get some breakfast they celebrate and then they get back in their buildings for closing faculty meetings and wrapping it up okay thank you uh we'll remind you and then be sure to let you know if it's going to be on zoom instead if the weather's not helpful uh that morning okay thank you for that bill that's all uh great news uh does anybody want to speak about the their committee reports i know that we have very full and engaged committee meetings that we all attend a lot of them but if anyone wants to

228add anything nope okay we've made it to the end of the protocol uh just uh fincom we'll be doing like a final review of line items for the budget and if there are any adjustments necessary um they'll need to be voted on in june all right thank you for that anyone else okay i think we made it we made it to the end of a very long agenda so thank everyone for their patience and uh commitment and thanks for bearing with me as i shared this for the first time uh appreciate it good job melissa great job thank you thank you melissa can i have a motion to adjourn [Laughter] there are three of us all right the meeting is adjourned for the rest of your night good night everybody night everybody