001all right everyone we're live okay it's uh 603 uh we have a quorum um i'd like to call uh the meeting to order it's the monthly meeting of the board of education march 15 2021 let's start with everyone joining in the pledge 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 great uh welcome everyone we have a long agenda tonight um uh maybe we can uh we can get started uh bill we have a recognition tonight before we approve the minutes do you want to start with that yes uh sure thank you tony uh recognition is to as we're so often able to do in west and thank our pto uh as
002many have heard me say and it's a phrase others use uh there's time talent and treasure and the pto brings us all three tonight we're thanking them not just for their time and talent but we're thanking them for treasure that they have generated so in this case the high school pto you have in the record before you a formal letter from laura schlossberg who's head of the pto film she's chair of the philanthropic committee for the high school pto uh and they're listing their two very significant gifts twenty five hundred dollars for the social justice advisory group and training provided by dr bishop uh there's a more detail in the public letter that you have and secondly uh five thousand seven hundred sixteen dollars for the purchase of four imac computers for the photography department
003and so this is a great example of how the pto and they're very rigorous about this and and lisa you may want to add things when i'm done but they listen to the requests of the principal they probe and all the rest and they've decided this is a very good use of of their generous dollars for critical needs at the high school so i don't know at least if you want to add anything before the formal recognition of of this generosity award elise is just coming on i didn't realize she was here yet so i know she would uh let's see if we'll surprise her here she's going to love me for this one hey lisa um i just was honoring the high school pto for the gifts that we have on the agenda tonight
004the twenty five hundred dollars for the social justice advocacy group and the fifty seven hundred dollars for the four imac computers i know if you wanted to add anything to that or not but it's great great gift and great generosity i would just echo that we are really very very excited and there is another gift that will probably be recognized at the next meeting that we will be equally as excited so i will leave you to anticipate that but our pto has been wonderful and we really appreciate all their generosity great thank you it bodes well for the district that she can be that quick on her feet when surprised well done lisa and thank you very much uh again pto for your generosity here so i think there is a motion tony yes there
005is a motion uh before we do that i want to on behalf of the board i want to thank the pto for all they do not only giving their time but financial resources as well each and every year um thank you um and with that can i have a motion move that the western board of education recognized the gifts to westin high school on behalf of the westin high school pto a second second thanks melissa uh that was taffy oh i'm sorry thank you taffy it's okay we're interchangeable um all in favor aye ruby hi taffy hi melissa hi gina hi hilary hi victor hi tony all opposed motion passes thank you again pto um let's move to the approval of minutes uh can i have a motion move that the western board of education
006approve the minutes from the february 22nd regular meeting and the march 11th special meeting can i have a second second uh any comments on the motion on the uh on the minutes okay all in favor hi taffy hi melissa hi gina hi hillary hi victor hi tony all opposed motion passes um public comment meredith do we have any public comment this evening we do not have any public comment this evening okay um student reps welcome you're on hi everyone um so today was our first day full back and personally i think it went really really well it was just so nice having everyone in the in the school in the building um i just think it was so much more lively um there have been some kids that i haven't seen since last year um
007and i find them to be like my closest school friends i got to see for the first time it was really great um and i talked to a lot of seniors and they were all saying that's just such a nice way to kind of wrap up the year and kind of end on a strong note and get to see each other um overall everyone really followed like the social distancing i felt pretty comfortable in class you know a lot of kids are double masking which kind of helps um and overall it was just really really nice student government also greeted everyone at the front of the building and had like a nice welcome back decorations as well but overall it was really great it's kind of like a thing that you have to take day
008by day kind of going with the cases and things like that but it was a really great way to start yeah just to add on to that like eva said we're so appreciative of everything that you guys have done for us in order to get back full back um and like ava said we all feel pretty comfortable yes the classes are a bit different than four kids in person like the past couple months um but it definitely was a smooth transition and this friday we're giving out goodie bags of like little candy and treats for the whole school so definitely keeping busy and planning little events for the whole school to get back into everything any uh any questions for our student reps well i could hear the excitement in your voices it it uh
009uh and it's great to hear that everyone is excited for uh to be back uh in person that's great i wanted to say one little thing if there's anything you guys can do or think creatively to do for those kids and i don't know how many there are who are still in distance learning and watching the celebration from afar i just know that it would be hugely appreciated to turn toward the camera and you know tell them you miss them or whatever it is because i think it's probably pretty hard for those guys who couldn't be there at the celebration yeah i completely agree and a lot of my teachers were super inclusive and make sure that you have the cameras like to the whole class of all time and speak directly towards them um
010and i was talking to a few kids who were vdl full-time and they were all saying they're like oh i wish i was there but you know i feel i still feel included it's nice seeing everyone back so i completely agree great thanks thanks for the update uh you can stay on or you could uh um you can i'm sure you have other things that uh probably more exciting than staying on for the rest of the meeting but you're welcome to stay on thank you all right oh why why didn't they stay on they didn't want to stay till eight o'clock at the meeting [Laughter] kidding the uh obviously they they have no idea how much fun this is [Laughter] um let's move to new business um we have a social emotional learning update uh
011by tracy edwards so tracy i don't know bill if you want to you know give an intro or uh go right into tracy's presentation yeah i'll be quick um every year we brought to the board an update on social emotional learning and in this case adding in mental health uh megan skelton who will do this with tracy edwards is here uh so the board had been inquiring about work regarding mental health so it's just the right time to bring a larger update on social emotional and mental health megan in in a phrase that matters is just a great star on all this work and so she and tracy uh will combine on this so every year you have it and drum roll here you go for this year and this this will be very very
012valuable and very very important thank you so i'm just going to share my screen and [Music] you can see that yes okay perfect um thanks bill so good evening um over the last couple of years the board of education and the broader community have been hearing updates about our work with social emotional learning and ei initiatives primarily the work with ruler at the elementary level and dbt at the middle and high school as bill just shared tonight i'm joined by megan skelton who is the social worker at westin high school and also the building principals who will be providing updates for each of their buildings to talk a little bit about ruler and dbt and also to share um some information about the extensive work our mental health professionals have been doing um during this
013very unique school year in conjunction with the students and families of weston westin i will just say at the start that our mental health staff has done an extraordinary job navigating a variety of complex panda pandemic specific challenges this year and i'm personally very appreciative of their work and i know that i speak for the whole school community when i say that so i think one of the first and most obvious things is we are in the middle of a pandemic and we are managing instruction in a variety of different schooling scenarios and so some of the common questions that we're getting are presented here what are we seeing what are we doing this year and how is it different from from other years i think this first item an individualized personalized approach is not
014unique to this year um but i think the level of work and the level of individualized support has certainly been magnified um the the size of westin and the the personal connections that exist between students and families and the staff has gone a long way in terms of providing the support and structure that our students have needed during these very complex times as you heard in the student update that was actually a perfect segue um you know our vdl students having students who are home uh receiving instruction is very different than anything we've ever seen in the past and it's requiring i would say a heightened level of collaboration with families because you know usually our students are coming to school and they spend a bulk of their waking hours with us and we're sort
015of seeing and assessing how they're doing because of our in-person interactions um and for some of our students that has not been the case this year and and there have certainly been times where families are reporting to us you know we know that the school work looks good and what you're seeing is as a district looks good but we have some concerns about what we're seeing at home and we need some support um and so that collaboration both with staff reaching out to families and also families reaching out to staff has really been critical um i think we've alluded to this in previous meetings and it probably isn't surprising we are seeing an increase in referrals that's true of both academic support needs and also social emotional concerns and needs and in addition to an
016increase in number we are also seeing um an increase in the level of need so it's both a quantitative and a qualitative increase um we're seeing more significant concerns maybe more frequently than we would in a typical school year i spoke a little bit about family support and collaboration as it pertains to our vdl students that has obviously been a factor even for our students who are attending in person you know families are navigating different stressors than they have in the past they're reaching out to us for support and we're also seeing differences in our students because of different schooling scenarios and different schedules and you know students grappling with needing to quarantine and a variety of other more pandemic specific situations the last item that i'll point out is sort of not as big
017picture as these other items but just like our teachers our mental health support staff are needing to do things differently in the past there was an emphasis on bringing students together in groups right um if you had students with common needs maybe even in some cases in different grade levels well let's bring them together and talk about it so that you know they know that they're not dealing with that situation on their own um social distancing has impacted our ability to do that in the same kind of way that we were doing that previously um so it's just been a shift it's required some creativity and problem solving on the part of our staff and and in some cases just either more individualized sessions or groups that are comprised of members who are both zooming
018in and physically in person so with that sort of look at what's different right now we'll step through each of the buildings to talk about updates as they pertain to either ruler or dbt and also anything covid specific starting with hess thank you so much um you know sometimes it's hard to think about the social emotional work that we do separately because it really is embedded in everything we do throughout the day our students are very excited to be in school and they're with um primarily one teacher for you know the majority of the day so those relationships and those conversations really are are ongoing we've continued to implement our ruler curriculum we work with the yale center for emotional intelligence and their curriculum which helps our students identify their feelings as well as emotions
019of others we are a responsive classroom school and that work really is around building class community um developing friendships within the class and a very um important part of the day is the morning meeting structure and we you know being on uh some students on zoom this year really was quite easy for the teachers to keep that practice going and to take the opportunity to make sure students felt connected had time to share something in their life or their feelings about something so that's a very embedded practice in our day that morning meeting in addition we continued all of our pbis activities which are also community builders our students um for the most part all of those actually all those activities were virtual we did a lot of videos to make sure that we were
020reaching all of our students building on those virtual activities that you see next in the slide in addition to the students of course we wanted to make sure that we were supporting our staff and we were able to access a resource from the yale center for emotional intelligence a pd an online self-paced pd opportunity called managing emotions during times of stress and uncertainty and it was a course designed specifically for educators um when yale first rolled it out it was just available to connecticut educators and since then has gone nationwide and we were very happy to be a part of that the staff who have completed all the modules have been giving me a lot of feedback they found it very helpful and it's really worked into our schedule nicely because it is self-paced in
021addition to that with the intermediate school we had a parent workshop called covet coppers it wasn't a huge turnout of parents but the ones that did attend we had a session during the day and also in the evening parents found that very helpful it's just to you know share their point of view and some stressors that they're dealing with at home with their students great great we'll transfer you oh good evening thank you um you know social emotional um wellness and safety um of our students and our staff has really been of utmost importance um for all of us um over the years but this year certainly it took on an even greater priority for the work that um we do and like laura we we really want to blend seamlessly into all we do
022throughout the day um we work with our students and our staff through a range of activities um starting with whole school assemblies for everybody going down into the classrooms with lessons that are led by teachers as well as by counselors going all the way down into individual student check-ins and student counseling for both students who are in school as well as at home we talk about social emotional learning with the staff in our faculty meetings as well as scheduled professional development workshops to really address the needs of both our students and our staff like hess we are a ruler and a responsive classroom school we began ruler i guess in 2017 and first with the staff to help really to help the students um identify their emotions and then to learn strategies to deal with
023them and that work continues um this year especially our school counselor vicky deluca has been pushing into all the classrooms with developmental guidance lessons that reinforce um the basic components of ruler the mood meter meta moment class charters to really um to continue to build up those strategies and tools um for our for our students um additionally our teachers are also trained in responsive classrooms so the teachers have morning meetings which really are designed to really set a positive tone for the day and to really um teachers can gauge their students emotions um and to help them move to a more positive area of the mood meter for the day we began uh working with our staff um on social emotional learning right at the very beginning of the school year and uh by using
024ruler and some of the dbt um tools um and we really tried to emphasize with our staff that everything that we have been working on is really reinforcing um and preparing us for this moment of this year um the theme that really has been running throughout our year is on self-care um it's um aimed at you know how do we we did a professional development workshop for our faculty in november um and how do we respond to stress and how do we tend to our own mindsets um you know our educators are not only working with our students helping them um with their stress and with this new normal that we're dealing with um but well as well as their own families so we really wanted to remind them to take care of themselves and
025to give them some strategies to help them do that um some of this work that we have done this year um was really based on mark bracken's work through yale um his health regulation during uncertain times as well as um his it's a wonderful article on toxic positivity that we brought to our staff that theme of self-care wove through our assemblies for our students you know every year we really try to bring assemblies have monthly assemblies with our students to really bring out that a whole school community this year we unfortunately with with everything happening with social distancing we couldn't quite do that as well but we were able to do a few on zoom um we start the year with pride and with the new expectations and social distancing but in recently we did
026one on self-care for the students and before we did that we actually sent a survey out to all of our students asking them what do they do when they're feeling stressed or they're feeling um unhappy or anxious and they i would say almost three quarters of our staff students responded with great suggestions about breathing and singing and thinking of happy places and a few of them said i'm always in the yellow when i'm in school so um so that was really nice so we brought that to our students at the assembly and then we also read a book um with them saying i can do hard things which talks about mindfulness gives them some activities talks about resilience um and and reinforces that we all learn differently and we handle stress differently like laura we
027didn't want to forget about our parents so we uh did those the two parent workshops um in conjunction with hurlbut and um to really help parents give them some strategies some resources on uh coping and dealing with this time as well as we also work closely with western youth services to provide families um with some resources and programs for students and families as well and i really um would be really remiss if i didn't just take a minute to say thank you to vicky deluca who's our school counselor and to adrian dunn um who both have really done amazing work this year with really um keeping social emotional learning at the forefront of all we do thanks patty we'll jump up to the middle school with dan all right um and before i jump into
028the dbt update i would say that um we still build on the foundation of ruler that students were introduced to at hurlbut and wiss it often plays a role in our advisory program and we incorporate that into the language that we use just in terms of self-regulation uh the mood meter and the meta moment so i don't want the public to think that uh the good work of ruler disappears when students get to the to the middle school we definitely build on it uh but the dbt uh skills and lessons do begin to be introduced at the middle school uh the school counseling department uh has continued to uh refine their training uh they use uh the skills uh directly when they're working with individual students and groups it's also incorporated into our eighth grade
029emotional health unit our sixth and seventh uh grade is also working in their health classes to integrate dbt language into the existing lessons and um we are looking to establish a common introductory dbt language for all of our staff to use with students so that just like ruler gave us a lexicon we're looking to do the same with dbt so the staff has been trained we're just trying to make sure that it's consistent throughout the school the monthly advisory program really has been reinvigorated uh thanks in large part to share a collabo who is our pbis coach and it's interesting because both presentations tonight will touch on our advisory program at times we use it for social emotional um topics and connections um sometimes just to help students feel less isolated um especially when we
030do the more typical fun activities um as opposed to some of the more serious lessons or or topics that we uh have in our advisory program uh one of the the real um things i'm most proud of i guess during the pandemic is the social emotional check-ins that our counselors have done with our students as you know it started with our eighth grade counselor and an outside therapist working with students in small groups in their english classes because of the positive feedback our sixth and seventh grade counselors took that concept modified it to make it their own and implemented it with their students and that was also a nice way i know in sixth grade when they did the individual check-ins uh to have those check-ins with our vdl students as well great thanks tan
031um we're lucky to have megan skelton joining us tonight she volunteered to participate in tonight's meeting even though not typically required to be here so that's much appreciated megan can you talk a little bit about the high school uh sure uh thanks for having me i think you know it's important to you know hear it from us that are you know that have been doing this work and i just have to start off by saying what a lift as a team we've done this past year and i think that's been what i'm most proud of you know even administrators that are on this call lisa who i'm just so happy he's gonna be our next superintendent doing home visits getting on the phone you know we have tracy working with individual students and families we
032have patty roscoe on the phone tutoring i mean i can't tell you the heavy lift that this has been but everybody pitching in and working together the amount of collaboration between you know the counseling department and teachers and students and families it has been tremendous and i i'm just very proud of the work that we've done and also recognize we are very much still in this and i do have concerns about you know the vdl kids in particular and you know constantly trying to gauge um how we can do and show up for them and make them feel part of this community so i think that's something that is always in on our mind of how you know we're proud of this work and how can we do better um you know i think that
033having this collaboration and having all this you know the zoom which i hope forever goes away after this but it's been really great to be able to work with families and get to know them on such an intimate level and it's been really humbling i think everyone's been able to kind of drop the titles and really work collaboratively in such authentic and productive ways um you know i've had students when i've you know have my three kids here and i have one of them literally ripping my hair out and the students like oh my gosh i feel so much better i'm not dealing with that i'm good i can talk to you later mrs skelton we laugh about it um you know just to really getting to know each other and working like i've said
034with families in a very uh collaborative and concrete way just connecting a lot and similar to what dan is saying um as far as the counselor check-ins that's also what our counseling staff has done they've spent a tremendous amount of time connecting with each family and getting to know them not just through the scheduling process but just checking in and saying you know how are you doing i noticed that you know you have this d and this is very atypical for you um you know past months you know even past year you've been an a student here you've been a b student here and we see this slipping like how can we get you engaged um and lisa came up with you know that really good plan of having that extended learning hour which also
035allowed the counseling staff to pull those students to bring them in to have more times to check in with them on an individual basis and have some targeted interventions for the kids that were really struggling that were able to come into the building so that time frame i know we've i'm sure you've talked about it a lot from an academic standpoint but from a counseling standpoint that's been a tremendous asset for us at the high school and again not just in person but virtually too having making sure that time is utilized for all students um i'm really proud of the students and the dbt skills are so necessary for anybody in life but at the high school level getting students to be able to own their education that's our goal and you know from a
036counseling perspective really getting them to own their emotions and realize that they're in charge of their bodies and they can do this they can regulate there's different choices that you can make to you know make the situation a little bit better and a little bit more bearable for you despite how trying this time has been so i'm really proud of the work we've done and i think dbt in particular now that we're in our third year and we've really focused on the individual skill work with students i have seen a tremendous shift and the ability of students to have that moment to regulate and then reflect back like i was i can't believe it like i was so we were having this big fight at home and i was able to think and validate my
037parents i was able to see where they were coming from and that's just that's what we want we don't want them to be dependent on i need to go connect to my counselor we want them to feel good about who they are own how they feel and also be able to connect and show empathy towards others and understand how they're feeling and keep those relationships strong so i have really seen um some amazing moments with the dbt in particular and i mentioned kind of going back that we're in year three so the ninth grade um obviously has it in their health classes and so does the sophomores and we are focused on and have another professional development coming up on the 22nd for all the counseling staff to re-engage with you know the dbt skills
038and particularly how to do it in that one-on-one setting to the small group setting so we've been working through it and we're going to have another session with that the other really great work that's been going on which i'm i'm hoping and i'm sure has been highlighted in previous board meetings is the social justice professional development in collaboration with the um students on that task force to really address school climate and for us to have and engage in these conversations together and to work through and problem solve on how we can become you know more inclusive and i think it's been some really great work i think it's difficult work in a lot of ways because we're changing culture but i've seen um again just that the concept of team coming in very strong i
039think everyone is really enjoying uh having these conversations and working together not just from the top down but we're working with students which i love i think that's the most valuable thing at the high schools including the students and the work because this is um this is about them and nothing more to make it relevant to have them be the voice and the charge behind it so there's been it's definitely been a heavy lift we're not out of this i can't stress that enough this dbt session for parents that we're planning it's going to be in april i don't know that we have the date yet we've gone back and forth a couple of times but a big portion of that is going to be skill based training for parents because again we're not we're
040not through and adolescence is adolescence it can get very murky so how can you through the lens of dbt really work through those tough moments engage have that great relationship back and forth and the dialogue that they're learning using the same language how do we validate each other's emotions and work through this um it was so great this morning and i echo with the you know what the kids were saying as i jumped on with the excitement i felt it it was just like the campus was vibrating it was so nice to see um traffic was definitely more busy today but it was great to see all these bodies the music was playing it was just so nice to just see their faces or half their faces um but i'm excited i think this is
041the first step in a in a positive direction and i do remain vigilant and all of us do as a counseling staff on engagement with vdo building community how do we keep going with this work and how do we keep out reaching for the the students that are really struggling because there are students that are really struggling in ways that they never have before especially from an academic standpoint um it's very difficult to remain engaged on zoom and we've noted that you know some students this has been great for them they have had very high um grades they're they're managing well but for some the it's just been really difficult really challenging for them to find ways of engaging and owning their education and feeling like their value you know valued in their work and
042not just a computer screen so that remains a challenge it remains on the forefront of our discussions our professional development and i think we are doing a really good job and i'm really proud of the counseling staff i'm really proud of all the staff at the high school like i've said in central office everybody is really working hard on this there is no division everybody um we're all on the same page to just keep building that engagement and to be there for our students and i'm most proud of the students they're so resilient like they have done such an exceptional job in such a crazy time i i don't know how that would have gone for me in high school and i'm just really proud of the work that they've done and the parents really
043jumping in there um through some very difficult moments so i'm very proud to report you know what we've done and acknowledge that there's always a lot more work to do again did you want to talk about this um communication protocol yes you could put that up i think that's also good to know how do we get in touch with people that was kind of what we dealt with in the beginning of the pandemic and i think everybody experienced this panic and lisa's had this on the main page for a while now and most schools i think have that but you know who do i call and this is really hard to see for me i realize i need glasses now after the pandemic but um it does break it down and it gets very concrete
044you know who do i call for the lunch service now like is there lunch you know all these different questions it has on there for the high school level and i think that's important and it gives you kind of the ranking order like who do i start with what if i don't get an answer or if that person you know doesn't quite understand i can go to this person so i think that's really important to to know especially in times where you know emotions can be high you're not thinking clearly there's this communication protocol on our webpage what i think is great but you know the counseling staff are always available it's always a good place to start is with your school counselor if you're worried about a social emotional concern um in the classroom
045we always encourage them to go to the teacher first they know best you know whether the student's vdl or in person the teacher really does know best in those circumstances and then you know moving up the chain so i think that's helpful to know and part of the q a that we're going to do with the parent session is also having some high school staff members and some middle middle school staff members in particular as far as mental health and resources to be on that um for a q a after so if there's particular questions that arise which i'm hoping there will be um where we can discuss you know what we do with a situation at the high school or explain our roles a little bit better we're we're going to have a variety
046of staff joining but one that i think is going to be really great to have is our bcba who um looks at things from a behavioral standpoint a structural standpoint you know for some students that might have school avoidance coming back you know we are are we at our year anniversary i think we might be um it's going to be hard to get some of these students back in the building so what can you do as a parent from a structure perspective what can you do from a social emotional standpoint you know what are your supports at the school level and you know the language to use validating where what a student is feeling and that use of and knowing that they can do better and that they can get through this so i think
047that's going to be a really good talk i'm looking forward to that and i'm appreciative of the time tonight great thanks megan i don't know if there are questions but certainly we can take those at this point yeah is there uh questions from the board i have two questions i'm not sure if i missed it i'm sorry if i did but in terms of embedding into the curriculum so i heard ninth and tenth grade health but i didn't hear any other year's health and i didn't hear any art is that going on and i just didn't hear it yeah hillary it is happening at the at the middle school it's already been embedded in the mental health unit in eighth grade in their health class and they're looking to uh move it into sixth and
048seventh grade as well in terms of you i'm sure you're asking specifically about the dbt uh yeah i was asking i mean really about you know i guess you would call it general self-regulation i would think would be part of yeah and then some of that then also is it's done throughout the guidance lessons as well as our advisory program and the um same at the high school so we'll have seminars for juniors or for seniors only and that's where they're getting that work not just through the health curriculum in ninth and tenth grade but we echo that work especially when it comes to post high school planning um that's a natural segue to really get students to expand on that work and also the families you know what about like at the younger grades
049do you do anything in the art curriculum in terms of like teaching them to express themselves through art or anything so it hurt um i can answer both of those questions we have uh health curriculum as well starting in kindergarten and there are units on feelings and emotions um in art we do work with color wheel and what colors um are associated with certain feelings so those uh conversations happen across the content areas okay and the same for uh at whis also we have health and they just katie does some great art projects with our students okay thank you and then uh my only other question was community service is that part of i mean when i'm reading about this online it seems like that's always uh you know a big topic with regard to
050to all of this is that um something that we could embed into our curriculum in any way so i could start at hurl but we do have quite a few community service projects a lot of those are are really on hold right now because typically we try to go out into the community to bring those experiences to life for the students um we do have something we're working on for our one school one book program that will be in april that will be for the wider community and a little bit of community service piece the other piece i wanted to mention that's probably also true for west and probably beyond is a lot of work that we do around emotions and feelings and interactions between people happens through our literature as well read alouds the
051reading curriculum writing about it so it really does cut across the day and at the primary level and also a list because they're with one teacher for most of the day it's very natural for the teacher to make those connections across the content areas now we traditionally have done a lot of community service uh over the throughout the year but with covet it's been a little more difficult um with you know food drives and and coin collections and all sorts of things um we're hoping to do a big one um next month uh but yeah it's been really hard this year to do that but i i really believe in community service and trade yeah the same with the middle school it normally resides with the student government association they spearhead a lot of our
052community service but as the other principles have said it's just this is not a typical year so we're not doing the same uh outreach and drives and visits that we would normally do i have a question taffy um you know in bringing the kids through all this dbt and and emotional literacy work with mark brackett and you've learned all of this done your own professional development around all of it i'm sure that one of the benefits is that you can apply it to yourselves as needed and for yourselves as needed but i guess on a more serious note what has the staff needed or done as far as emotional support after a year of being front line workers if anything you know dan let me quickly start taffy it's a great question i it'd be
053interesting i mean megan always brings the truth so let me kind of see where we get on this one i just put her on the spot but i i this is so baked into who we are as professionals in weston and i think the advantage of our scale is that all of us um even if we're isolated from the buildings at some extent this year i mean i've been less visible in the buildings i've let people know that but i'm i'm still very present i know what's going on i listen i hear and and we are very concerned about each other and then that carries all the way through the organization so all the meetings with the principals i'm asking them about staff all the meetings with my direct reports i'm asking them about their
054staff and that cascades all the way through and back up and also this town has been incredibly generous with us as a district to allow us to have health and mental health professionals focused on the students yes first but they also have a keen ear and they pay attention so taffy it's a great question i urge the board to keep asking it but i think it's so baked into the culture here and yeah we have our bad days and we don't get along and we get upset and we get frustrated i'll end on one thing the dbt training that we can be doing this and get better is so baked into who we are now uh that we're just paying attention so i don't know i i really appreciate that i really appreciate that bill
055and um i guess the reason i raise it is not to be provocative but rather to say that anxiety and stress over the last year has been insidious right it's cumulative and um and we know that we know that because we've seen it in our own children um and we've seen it on the news every night with health care workers on the front lines who just are going to need a whole lot of therapy when this year is over because they've watched a lot of tough stuff you guys have had both sides of the argument from parents who feel really strongly and might get angry about wanting their kids to be back in school you've had parents who are really frustrated really angry about horrified that their kids are being invited back into school you
056know all of that and your own fear for your own health i get it and i just want to make sure that there is something in place for you all to um you know address it and to not and and that not be glossed over and i think as a board we i just wanted to raise it i will say i i think um just from a school perspective i know that in my building our administrators and they it's not just during cobit they do a really nice job of outreaching and you know bringing treats and i know those have come from the pto as well all those little things make such a difference when you just oh hi like i can open up my door for a treat i'm just not locked in my
057room doing zoom um all those little things really do go a long way and those notes from parents that we have gotten just far outweigh any of the negativity that we receive so i know that just being on the receiving end of a few of those that just put such a kick in your step when you when you get that positive from an administrator or from a parent or even you know from the board knowing the good work that you guys are doing um i know for a fact that they have been open to a lot of conversations i know i have cried probably three times to an administrator in this past year over concern of whatever sort whether it be how are we doing this how am i doing this as a mom and
058i think we've all just really shown tremendous teamwork and vulnerability with each other um not to say that all those things you said are not true because they are and it is also nice that we have the uh employee assistance program i don't know how much you guys know about that but for employees that are struggling and going through hardships prior to covid that we've had this but it's a resource that you can get counseling and access support also legal advice there's a lot of different components to it and i know that i've helped a couple of staff members this year get connected to it and they've started some therapy which has been really great and it's part of the benefits of working for the western public schools so i think that's a really nice
059piece and i think the more we can highlight it there is a little bit of like oh gosh are people going to know about this if i access the support um but we were able to work through that great thank you so much um i have a question uh gina go ahead yeah um megan you would that's kind of like a perfect lead into what i was going to say you know we've been talking about this as it relates to our curriculum what have we learned from this year that will benefit us going forward i mean a silver lining maybe one of the challenges of this year is mental health becoming you know such a recognized thing that people need that support and um maybe a greater openness to talking about you know taking care
060of your mental health just like you would any other part of your body so how do we capitalize on maybe a greater acceptance of acknowledging the anxiety of acknowledging you know that mental health is a part of who we are and we need to embrace it and and nurture it how do we capitalize on that and carry that aspect of this forward yeah that's a great question i think just having these conversations is the start and and knowing that you know from the top down it's supported and that you know i love taffy that you asked that question and i know that just hearing that question coming from a board member means everything to the staff you know knowing that people you know in your position care and are thinking about us um that just
061means the world but i think the more we can have these active conversations and have these check-ins the more authentic and the more ingrained it becomes in the culture um and i think weston has done a really nice job with us i can say at least for the 11 years i've been here i've seen a tremendous shift and for administration in particular to be able to be comfortable with those conversations i think that's been really really critical and really nice and that's where i've seen a lot of growth so having the training for everyone in it not just being like the mental health staff you know oh you guys do that training you know it's really having it more inclusive for everybody to have these skills i think is critical well i have a question
062but first i want to thank you for a wonderful presentation describing how we're meeting our social emotional learning issues in in in all of the schools but my question is more about how you're setting up for next year what is the work that you do to gather the data to determine what you're going to prioritize next year based on what you're seeing is that something that starts now goes into the summer um how do you gather that data now to basically see what issues are popping up and potentially how to create the right curriculum around it to try to meet whatever issues we're seeing as a result of the pandemic i don't know this question's for everyone for tracy um but just just how are we setting up for next year yeah i think that's
063a a great question we have a lot of information about our students as as everyone has said tonight i think we have a more in-depth knowledge of our students and their family structures and their academic profiles than we have in other years um and one of the things that i think is very high on our priority list and i think megan spoke about this earlier is we have some students who have done really well in a virtual format and we have students who have done really well in a modified schedule and those are students who are going to be very much on our radar as we make the transition back to a more typical school year so we have students who struggled this year with an alternate schedule that i think we're anticipating are going
064to be more successful when we return to quote-unquote normal whatever that looks like moving forward but we have a fairly significant number of students who i think have responded to the flexibility and the decrease in in-school time demand like we have students who typically are at school at you know seven o'clock and then they're going straight to athletics and then they're going straight home and then they're doing homework um and they're up late at night versus now they have an extended learning hour to get some work done we need to keep a close eye on those students and how they're making shifts to a more traditional school model i also think the other piece to this is we've gotten really creative right so we've figured out ways to capitalize on technology um and i i
065want us to continue to use that to our advantage next year we might have students who are unable to come to school for maybe a medical reason and how powerful will it be for those students to be able to connect in the ways that they've been able to connect this year versus you know three years ago if you weren't able to be in school for some reason well you sort of weren't able to be in school and we tried to provide you with some tutoring support with an adult but you didn't have social opportunities i think now we're thinking much more outside of the box how how can we engage students um in a variety of different modalities if we have a student who's really anxious about being in a group might there be sort
066of an intermediate step that includes some technology um so i think we're we're cautious about the students who are going to be experiencing a big shift but we also have a lot more tools in our tool belt about how to better support students of all ages who are grappling with mental health challenges and academic challenges thank you yes um first of all thanks for the presentation i think it was a terrific 360 touching on parents students everything yeah i i really i really commend you guys for all that my question goes to uh you know the elements of technology that are going to continue to be leveraged and it's a little bit tactical and privately i've brought this up with dan and lisa but you know the use of canvas and some scheduling things um
067seem to have the unintended consequences um at least i've experienced it personally i try to keep routines you know i think we're routine is a big thing in trying to keep consistency and emotional health and sometimes these uh these tools end up having deadlines friday friday midnight and saturday at midnight i just anything you guys can do to um address it i don't know if that's something that just i personally have experience but i bring it up in case any other families have no it's you're right victor and it's very frustrating because when we went to see if we could correct it and override it um the company said that that was the default so it's kind of a back and forth of how you um try to get the word out that no we
068don't want you up until midnight turning this in um because we know they're teenagers and many of them that's exactly what they'll do so um so we own that and we we have to figure out a way to to uh do that better whether it's every teacher has to go in and set the um specific due date to avoid that i know that i'm not sure how google does it um or her classroom but i know with canvas it's um it's it's been a real challenge as the default and then people are thinking that their kids have to stay up and get these things done at that time your child is if your child is a procrastinator or perfectionist or worse both uh it becomes it becomes a problem um so it's something that we
069do have to get a better handle on and get the word out i appreciate it i have a question first of all um tracy and megan thank you so much for this presentation again just to echo what tony says it could not have come at a better time um i have a couple of questions my first uh question i want to go back to the middle school for a second and i want to focus there um you know we have been reading in not only social media but just in news nationally i sent you guys the the news segment about the cabral family out of virginia where some students do not make the radar some students there isn't a glaring sign whether it be attendance whether it be grades whether it be attitude for them
070to flash up on on the radar yet they're struggling um so what one-on-one proactive measures and and not uh just speaking to a class on a whole but what one-on-one proactive measures are we taking just to touch base with every single student i know you touched on a little bit about eighth grade um but when i inquired from knowing that this was going to be on the agenda tonight and just speaking to a family with a seventh grader you know his grade had a class discussion about it but no one teacher has ever reached out to him personally so i'm just using that one family an example but just you get my question what proactive measures are we taking just to touch base with every single student thanks ruby this really gives me an opportunity
071to um really highlight some of the features that are key to the middle school uh one of those is the advisory program that i referenced and you'll hear again in our next presentation there we try to break down the school even smaller we've already taken the school and broken it down into teams now it's broken down with an advisor advisor teacher with about 12 to 15 students and they meet twice a month to talk about a variety of different topics sometimes they're social emotional sometimes it's topics that are timely sometimes it's just to get connected and play games and have fun um one key feature of the middle school though and the teaming model is that once a week uh the team of teachers those core academic teachers that share students they get together and
072have what we call a hands up meeting and they go over the roster of their kids and they talk about every single child and what they're noticing in class uh and it could be attendance it could be academic it could be behavioral um the other thing is i think what what andy ogden our sixth grade counselor did her social emotional check-ins were actually individual like three-minute conversations with each of her students either in person or via zoom so there are a variety of things those are just the top three things i think that come to mind and then of course we obviously encourage all of our students to try to get involved in clubs the biggest impact we've seen though with with the pandemic and we're noticing it now maybe it's just more sharply in
073focus because we're preparing for the all back in or it's because uh it's just the as i think it was um i'm not sure who said it now maybe it was taffy the the the cumulative effect of the pandemic but we have been reaching out and and doing home visits and phone calls and trying you know to help those students who really are struggling in ways that we've not seen before in terms of school avoidance at very early ages so there's a lot of interventions the whole spectrum yeah yeah no in the sixth grade sounds like a really good idea the three-minute check-in because again it could be signs that no one is seeing but yet it's there and under the surface so along the same lines of thought i want to switch uh gears
074to the lower schools particularly hurlbutt um laura laura the ruler method has been implemented for a while now what what other strategies in in hurlbut have you implemented this year specific to covid to help with the social and emotional so most of what we what we have done has really been classroom based because of the age of the students you know the direct work with the teacher to the students we got a lot of feedback on the integration of vdl students and in-person learners and i think we've made great strides in doing that and helping those students really feel part of the classroom community you know just last week when we had that great weather um we had some teachers that you know sat outside the classroom doors to be outside and they brought the
075kids in on zoom you know with all this portable technology now we have the ability to take them with us anywhere we go so that was just one you know and i'm and i'm bringing this up only because i'm and i'm just thinking about the wonderful successes that they've had at the upper schools with dbt is there any um aspects of that program that we could bring down to the lower schools so it's it's more of it's just more of push for you know versus versus pull um i don't know if if we've looked into that megan if you want to speak to that i was kind of alluding to this before that's a good question ruby i think the more we can ingrain this throughout the entire school community and parent community the better
076off and the more authentic this program is i would envision you know more parent training and more teacher training k through 12 on these skills because as a parent i know when the minute a butt comes out of my mouth versus an and i can already see my kid changing their face i'm like ah and i'm frustrated so even like these little tweaks that you can you know that you learn instantly they make such a difference so i would really like to see um you know moving forward how we can get more k12 you know even for the board like i would love to invite you guys in for a training um so you can see what it's like and you know get greened in this so i wouldn't that's our next question we're gonna
077we're gonna take you up on that i'd love that but then megan to your point though um you know you spoke about the dbt presentation for high school is this something that we can do for the parents district-wide and not just the high school yes and that's also going to be part of this parent presentation that's coming up it's not just going to be for middle and high school although obviously we're doing the middle and high school work with the students on dbt i would really encourage all parents you know in the district whether you're in the preschool all the way up through you know seniors or beyond to to tune in for that because it's going to be a good way to get oriented with the language and you know what these skills are
078used for like dbt was started really for the most serious of um psychiat psychiatric disorders and behaviors it was designed you know as an anti-suicide anti-self-harm program so which you know again that's a dicey topic but it's you know whether you're really far on that spectrum or you're just having some difficulty throughout your day it gives you those tools it's a whole spectrum so yeah i would encourage everyone as soon as we have that date it's been really difficult with the center to pin them down for a date they have obviously had a ton of requests to have these um talks they are definitely committed to it we just have to pin down the date but we're going to make sure that we advertise that really well and it's going to obviously be through zoom
079so it'll be easy for people to join and we're also asking permission if we can record it and then post on our website great yes let's just ensure that that's marketed let's ensure it's marketed district-wide for sure thank you yes good point okay thank you thanks again for a wonderful presentation and a great discussion and i'm sure there's a lot more to come and we will definitely take you up as a board on uh dvt training um sorry just one housekeeping thing bill what's the protocol of posting um uh presentations prior to the meeting only because i would have loved to reviewed this presentation prior to seeing it for the first time here uh the protocol is sometimes we walk them in such as this one and the next one other times that they are
080ahead of time there's not a protocol that it's an automatic ahead of time and that's something you look at in the future but the the staff often need the flexibility of a walk-in at that evening so i think going forward in the future you can revisit that i would just say that you definitely we need the flexibility uh we try and post ahead of time but they're gonna be times such as these two that they're they're walked in and posted at the same time this will be posted uh asap for the community now that's been presented that's the definite protocol once you have it it's posted publicly and that's very common in a lot of districts but you as a board can look at that i think going forward but it's very common that some
081things are posted at the point of the meeting some are posted ahead of time yeah let's just tony we can take it offline i just i you know for the for thoughtful dialogue and thoughtful questions you know this is our only opportunity to speak about it publicly so for the board to just be prepared with some of that it would be helpful yeah i mean to put it in context we have a wednesday deadline ahead of your monday meeting for nearly everything then there's a friday sweep at the same time there are some powerpoint presentations that often have to change right up to the minute and those then are walked in but the vast majority of what you receive would be that wednesday before the friday meeting i'm sorry the wednesday for the monday meeting
082sweep on friday and then some some things are posted the night of the meeting great um i i i turned off my video because my uh it looks like my internet connection is a bit unstable so hopefully it's better better now uh can you hear me still okay great so uh the next next item on the agenda is a diversity equity and inclusion presentation by dr craw um you know there's work going on in the district in terms of diversity equity and inclusion really involved three you know three pillars uh you know one is diversity uh in staffing um looking at our policies and the third is the curriculum component and uh dr crow and others are going to give us an update on the curricular component tonight um and how we're looking at um
083our curriculum in the context of diver diversity equity and inclusion so ken take it away thank you tony i'm just calling up the presentation now and you should see it excuse me you should see it there everybody see it yes wonderful okay so uh good evening everyone and you know that was a great presentation and also a good segue into uh diversity equity and inclusion discussion and and uh joined with me tonight are the principles because we're going to talk district and uh building levels as well as uh in the audience tonight we have a few of our sills so i'm pleased that they can join us so this really has been uh a lot of work uh this year even though it's been a pandemic year uh this has been one of our goals
084diversity equity and inclusion and we've been making progress we've been working very hard in this area and i also want to commend jen ryan our human resources manager for her work as well she's been doing a lot of work behind the scenes so um jumping right in just a quick outline of the presentation i'm going to start with those goals and desired outcomes that we've outlined uh through our goal setting process this year as a district and then get into sort of how we are tying all this together using an equity framework from the district point of view and really tying the work together at the schools and as tony said they're really uh three pillars here that uh you know we'll be touching on you could see many of the the areas relate to
085those three uh curriculum uh hr and policy so um i'll start and then i will ask my colleagues to join me and you know obviously our goal uh is to create and sustain a more inclusive school climate and all and you heard a lot about that in the previous presentation but also from a diversity equity and inclusion standpoint we don't tolerate discrimination on any basis and we certainly in terms of making this goal come to life we have some some outcomes that are high priority when we've discussed this as an administration certainly we want our curriculum to be as inclusive as possible we gave a update on our curriculum work at the october curriculum committee and pleased that we can talk more about this tonight also building the capacity of our staff through our professional
086learning experiences and that has been happening uh throughout the year we'll talk about that uh reducing racial isolation in in our district we're predominantly uh white student body and we you know have been looking at those efforts to reduce racial isolation uh increase diversity of faculty and staff and then obviously the board has taken on in the cur uh the policy committee level you know reviewing and updating policies and so that we can then also translate that to training in the workplace uh to ensure that those those policies are upheld this is the framework that i was talking about earlier uh from an equities standpoint this is from the connecticut center for school change which is an organization in connecticut that we're partnering with with this work we're very pleased to be working with carrie
087lord and patrice nelson from the connecticut center and this is their uh their framework that really resonated with us and uh you know the work really progresses and grows from an awareness level to a capacity level to then making some some transformations with respect to equity and really looking at those levels from a personal level from the individual institutional which really refers to the schools and systemic refers to the district so looking at awareness building capacity building transformational work at all three of those levels and so uh when we think about this year and all the things we've been doing in terms of uh you know getting through the pandemic here are some things that you can see uh that we've been doing and just kind of highlighting here and others will get into this
088in more detail at the awareness and capacity column you see several book studies professional development ongoing at schools and about to begin at the k5 level and at the district level i'll talk about the ongoing training our leaders are receiving to to uh to make this uh this goal reality and then you know the trans transformational level there are small examples at the classroom level we've got a you know great example of the work going on social justice group um and you know i'm going to get into some other things at the district level as we go through so when we think about professional learning it's not only the the educators in in the classroom and the schools that need uh professional learning but also our district leaders which includes the building administration central office
089our curriculum leaders and we've set aside for the past few months our curriculum council meeting which is when we typically come together for training and discussion here are some of the essential questions listed on this page how can we as leaders reduce the effects of bias particularly racial bias in a system can we recognize it how do we address it and we're doing a book study using the text unconscious bias in schools by benson and fireman and those discussions you know you think in zoom it's going to be very difficult but we've learned that we've seen from our our teachers in the in the classrooms that we can have breakout groups and discussions that are very rich and facilitated very nicely uh through the connecticut center now we've been using the connecticut center this year
090and i see us as we move along over the years to um to potentially branch out and use other uh resources for professional learning send people out for training or bring people in and build our own capacity to do the work like we did with emotional intelligence but from the capacity building we're doing as school leaders i want to take a moment just think about how we can take an existing structure how we have a curriculum renewal cycle in place already and i've talked about this a curriculum committee how we have a schedule for every subject area for renewing it and constantly building on what we put in place and how do we make it better begins with a research development stage but the change here the significant change from a systemic level is to
091apply an equity lens to these various stages so for example in the research and development stage when we're looking at what we're teaching how we're teaching and the resources that we're using apply the equity lens to see are we meeting the needs of all students are our students being represented within this curriculum uh look at the student performance data along the way how are students from various subgroups performing and those are you know we always look at that kind of student performance data but look at it through an equity lens as well and now as a board you know that we regularly bring the curriculum committee updates as we had with world language recently on what changes are we uh looking at what are things that we you know shifts we need to make you
092will have that in coming to um curriculum committee so you can ask questions push our thinking and if there's any significant or major shifts we're making you're gonna you're gonna be certainly apprised of that so that is sort of at the systemic level now as i said earlier i mentioned our student demographics and students of color with um the smallest subgroup two percent black and african american we um just we we've known this but i think in the context now of dei uh programs to reduce uh racial isolation are becoming even more critical if you look at our open choice program the administration the board uh had made a commitment a few years ago to even ramp up this program it's instead of our previous having two students each year potentially come from bridgeport to
093the westin public schools the board and administration made a commitment to bring four each year so ultimately this number you'll see continue to rise um each year and we find that the student body greatly benefits from increasing the diversity so we're continuing to support that program now when you think about our staff overall we have approximately nine percent of our staff are representative of different groups and so you know i think this this percentage even smaller than the student body so we are looking at ways that we can increase staff diversity through our hiring and recruitment processes jen ryan is doing a tremendous amount of work in this area as mentioned the first bullet the diversity recruitment partners that's a a job board service that allows us to get the word out and get postings
094out very efficiently to a larger uh group of people who might be interested we're also collaborating with our cooperative educational services our local rest and the c csde and creating our own district recruitment plan which i'll get into a little more on our next page but the the conversation we've had in the budget process exploring a teacher mentorship program we're continuing to explore mentorship programs so that potentially we could bring candidates uh here as as student teachers and then maybe potentially be becoming a part of our faculty now one of the challenges we do face is that we have a limited number of positions each year usually we're only hiring about 10 12 positions in a typical year and some subject areas you get many more applications than in others certification is also something we
095need to look at um but but even still we we do think there there are ways that we can increase um our ability to recruit uh staff and so again i mentioned job boards we're reaching out to universities and colleges and we're getting to wider audiences and i think the communications committee will be very pleased to see once it's completed and we're getting close to establishing a district page for the website that speaks directly to recruiting and retaining staff of color so that something to look for from a policy standpoint we have a policy committee of the board and as you know that group has been very active and has been going through our policies your couple in particular sex discrimination sexual harassment policies and hate-based conduct policy that has been looked at and updated
096and refined other policies that are on the docket to be reviewed are listed here as well and all this is very important uh not that you know policies necessarily will change the system but they're the basis for workplace education so uh using the policies to really educate staff to uh you know to have that lens about uh equity and inclusion uh and ensure that we're creating the best possible environment uh for our students um so uh additional strategies related to that are um you know our website social media sites ensuring that they're representative of all populations just like our curriculum that's one of our goals we want to also make any of our communications uh in the same bank and then examining job postings job descriptions we don't want anyone to be deterred by any
097of that so we right now are looking very closely at job postings we'll get to job descriptions uh you know anytime we're posting positions and so that from a district level gives you a sense of curriculum uh what we're doing at the hr level and policy now at this the school building level we'll we'll go school by school and you're going to hear some um some some of the school-based and individual kinds of things that are happening which i think are very exciting so i'll pass it on to laura now and you can just let me know when you need me to advance or i'll try to anticipate we can't hear you laura sorry thanks ken um so i'm going to start off with some of the accomplishments some of what you'll see and hear
098about really crosses buildings patty and i work very closely together to try to build a comprehensive k5 program so some of these do apply also to the intermediate school our k5 language arts cils attended a workshop around planning and leading culturally responsive read-alouds and book talks using literature is a very natural way to introduce a variety of concepts and topics to very young learners and it is often a springboard for more in-depth conversations and you'll see in here a couple of the focus areas of that workshop um again i wanted to um revisit our emotional intelligent work that we've been doing a key piece of the foundational work for an equity lens is to teach students how to recognize and understand their emotions as well as those of others when we do that we find
099that students are able to engage in more in-depth conversations with each other around conflict resolution for example um well i may be in a situation that may not necessarily you know spark a feeling in me if i can recognize that in somebody else we find that you know that really helps our students engaged in into higher level conversations our language arts work also has been around ongoing review and acquisition of additional resources for our school as well as our librarian has been looking into those it's very exciting to see now the wide range and the increase in available texts and resources that do represent a wide variety of people um anywhere from disabilities to different uh races backgrounds languages there really are so many different choices down we are always trying to make sure at
100the forefront of our minds is when we are choosing resources no matter what they are are we looking at them with an equity lens um sometimes it's just as simple as when we think about materials for the classroom you know it used to be you couldn't get crayons in a variety of colors now we you know we know we have packs for um that are different skin tones in the crayola colors now come in 24 skin tones you know there's just so many um different resources available to really make sure that we're looking widely and broadly across what we do every day certainly um i've noticed from oh sorry can you go back for a minute ken um from a lot of the work that we've done as a leadership team um you know it's
101really widened and broadened the way i look at a variety of activities and resources that we do within the school um a lot of what we do also at the early elementary level is to build communication skills so that students are able to engage in and have really rich conversations around topics that is i think you know more often as they get older can be challenging and can really um raise strong emotions so we really start at the earliest levels building those communication skills one of the uh my favorite units in kindergarten is around our opinion unit and we start at the very youngest ages to teach our students to look at the world through different lenses you know is there a problem you see in our school or our community or in the world
102and what can you do to affect change in that so really helping them at the earliest levels develop their voice and to really help them build on the belief that yes they can make a difference in the world and they can affect change even as a five-year-old okay next slide we will continue to look uh with an equity lens at our review and review the materials and the resources that we use our professional learning experiences we're looking forward to kicking off that dei work on the 22nd of this month our social studies curriculum is ken talked about the renewal process we are looking at the renewal process for social studies in 2223 so that will be an opportunity to look in that one content area which often has a lot of these rich topics it
103we are starting and continuing to review and reflect on our school practices around some of the events that we have and looking at those through different lenses and certainly through all the work we've been doing as a leadership team we do uh look through our events through different lenses and the equity lens has really been helpful for me to look at school-wide what we're doing and of course we're looking forward to the return of the k2 world language program in the next school year and pending budget approval of course next slide um i just wanted to share with you this is k5 our uh our language arts and social studies curriculum um and and just as i'm not going to go through each grade but just at a glance you can see that we have
104over the years um made sure that we are including different perspectives different um [Music] lenses through the curricular areas and it's certainly always a work in progress and we're always looking to improve and expand upon what we do okay so whoops i'll follow follow um laura so um as you notice in there you can really see the skills building and the awareness and how we look at talking to students um about multicultural and different countries in third grade working all the way up to more complex conversations in fifth grade um so like um like laura in like our social emotional work this is really important work and um we really want it to be ongoing and to be in you know embedded and not just a one-shot look at look at um how we um
105look at diversity and um and uh culturally uh aware being culturally aware um last summer um alex along with um andrea attended that virtual workshop um for by teachers college and then um led some um summer book clubs virtual book clubs um actually 46 students participated in that um and in grades three and four and five for all three grades um in each grade each grade level the books were chosen to spark conversation and dialogue about race and the experiences of black americans that are different from our own and in a grade and age-appropriate way of course throughout the year alex has worked with the teachers looking at the curriculum for ways to um make sure that it's culturally aware and responsive um so that when we're talking about diversity it shouldn't be just done
106in an isolated unit or addressed only like during our black history month or uh when we're celebrating martin luther king jr's birthday we really want to make sure that it's seamlessly um embedded and addressed in everything that we do um this year alex has been working on acquiring texts that focus um on authors of color as well as books with characters of color that are current um and also that don't always partici portray families in crisis um you know it's been a challenge of finding um age-appropriate books there seems to be more and more coming out so um alex is certainly um looking for them as as she can acquire them um so that we can have enough within our for every classroom um we we'd also don't want them to be exclusively historical fiction
107books which we have uh quite a large number of we really want them to be culturally relevant um so alex is increasing that i mean over the the um the past few years she really has been uh has made a huge effort and has acquired a good-sized collection of um books that are culturally um diverse in what we call our windows and our mirrors unit in fifth grade which is books that really represent a wide range of different cultures and races so that our students can see themselves in these books and also learn about different cultures and races so that that was um that's been ongoing work the last few years um upcoming work our next steps uh we as we mentioned uh professional learning experiences for our staff start next monday on the 22nd
108with dei work we're going to continue to acquire texts to balance the classroom libraries to make sure that the the number of texts on future authors and characters of color i'm also really looking at um the materials that we use not just books but also posters and resources um with an equity lens as well and um expanding the work in curriculum units so really looking forward to the work that we're going to be doing with the social studies renewal units starting in another year from now but also continue that work with our language arts units as well all right so um this slide really is just a representation of some of the work that we've been doing at the middle school i mentioned earlier that we have reinvigorated our advisory program much of what we
109do in the advisory is putting what we've been learning about diversity equity and inclusion into the advisory lessons and spending time having conversations with students some are much more light-hearted than others um but as you can see and this was put together again by shara kolodny there's a lot of work and i think really at the middle school is when our students develop mentally are ready to start tackling some of these topics which frankly can be challenging even for adults and uh just like we did with our emotional intelligence work when we first tackled that we spent about a year just as an adult staff getting to understand emotional intelligence and the ruler approach and then later on with dbt we've been doing the same with diversity equity and inclusion and we'll talk about that
110in the next slide but i just wanted to just show maybe a broad array of some of the lessons and the topics uh that have been out there now not every student has done all of these lessons um i would say everybody did uh the lesson on the danger of a single story um which was uh something that we did as a staff first but many of the others were a choice so teachers and students could choose from a variety of topics what they would like to do we did spend a school-wide advisory though on the westin middle school r words matter pledge that was a pledge that was developed by students four or five years ago uh i had a group of students who founded a a gay straight alliance and uh their major
111contribution for the two years that they were active was this legacy this r words matter pledge where we talk about uh the goal of making sure that our school climate at western middle school is one that's inclusive of all so go ahead um ken um i'm sorry you know i think this is when we have i thought i had a goal a slide in there i'm sorry on um on my professional development and i don't see it in there right now so let me just go talk about that it didn't get it didn't get into the final version um we've been working ken mentioned the connecticut center for school change and the middle school um has been working with the same facilitators uh that have been working with the curriculum council uh it's uh carrie
112lord and patrice nelson and they have completed four sessions we have one final session scheduled for this year um and we have guiding guiding questions that lead us into a variety of areas uh that's what i alluded to the work that we've been doing as adults around um you know what is our racialized identity what um what is prioritized what um what groups do we belong to um and what if any benefits do those groups give us we talk we talked about what is meant um by by white privilege that was a very you know challenging conversation many people come to it from many different perspectives but even though these sessions were held via zoom the breakout sessions as ken mentioned really allowed us to get into some in-depth conversations and really work on growing
113and then we took some of our unconscious biases looking at looking at those and how does it play out in a school and what can we do to disrupt the unconscious bias and institutional racism so that's what we've been working on and we're continuing to work on it at the middle school and i think this can if i'm not if i'm correct is where christine and nick take over yeah sure i'll go first um so what's up on the screen right now is a shared goal from the ela and social studies department because nick and i work so closely together our teachers work so closely together we thought it was only natural since we have a similar goal in the district to have a similar goal at the school um so you can see it
114right up on screen that we were really focusing on the materials themselves that the students are experiencing in our classes um and it's all through the lens of always building the skills that you know those critical reading critical thinking communication skills that we're always building in the classroom but just a real focus on the content that they're they're using there so the big uh goal for ela was just making sure that everything's done at scale right that's the most important thing is that all of our students are having these common experiences from year to year not just to make sure for consistency but just so the teachers know what's already been done what to expect and where to go from there um and it will then uh help us with the transition to high school
115because we know exactly where to pick up from that point um before i talk about the books nick do you want to talk about your social studies uh goals since it's on the screen sure um so going along with what christine just uh shared with you our goal was to try to expand the use of multicultural primary sources and um try to make more connections between uh you know a lot of the salient social and political issues that are going on right now and the content uh to give students a forum in which to engage uh on a critical level and also to create a safe space that students would be able to engage in some of these you know challenging topics uh you know again through content and then also um through uh you
116know conversations about the uh the contemporary world that they're living in right now so um yeah i'll talk i'll talk more about that in a little bit um christine sure so uh these are just some of the units that we're teaching in each of our grade levels some of them have been existing units but we're looking at them through a different lens um or encouraging our students to talk about issues within the texts in different ways um and some of these are new units such as our um social issues book clubs in grade six um i think this is our second year implementing that um as is the same for uh uh land of permanent goodbyes this should be our third year we didn't it was a little challenging last year to do that one
117without the actual books in hand but um we're moving forward with that again so our goal overall just so you know kind of where this is all going is to use a training that the middle school teachers have been doing with the connecticut center for school change so they have a few of those sessions under their belt now and then to really um narrow our focus i guess i should say at the department level and we're doing this work on monday at our pd and we're trying to figure out how we can bring our adult learning our new learning into the classroom so we really want to make sure that we're creating a classroom where student voice is key and trying to figure out ways we can elevate student voice because that's the appropriate place
118for our middle schoolers to be um at this point how can they use their voice how can they listen to other voices we're always looking at things um always looking at our issues through the lens of empathy and how can we be empathetic if we're not listening um and how can we make sure our voices are strong enough so that we can use them um so we all know too that the conversations and i think i think it's important to keep saying this these conversations can be uncomfortable they're challenging they're challenging for the teachers too um they could be uncomfortable sometimes for the kids but we i think we're at a point now where we were feeling confident enough as a staff um where we are supporting each other we're building community none of this
119work will be done if we don't have our own community support within our faculty and we have that um so now we could really make sure that we're doing right across the board consistently for all of our students um and nick you can take it from there okay so uh going off of what christine said we are um at an interesting point in the dei training where um teachers are developing a lot of uh awareness and increasing their capacity and so what we're doing as well in our department in the upcoming pd is to start looking at concrete applications um and how those kinds of improvements in awareness uh can start to kind of uh spill out into the classroom environment um and so uh in terms of what we are looking at across the
120uh vertical um timeline from sixth to eighth you know eighth is really or sorry sixth is really foundational in terms of perspective taking um students are really starting to learn about the use of geographers tools uh learning about how people develop culture as a response to their environments and their needs and it's a moment where students are starting to really think objectively and in an open-minded way and critically about the development of culture um seventh is really interesting because they start kind of taking a lot of those skills um and i guess you could say perspectives that the students were starting to develop in sixth and they are starting to look at some of the more salient social economic and political issues surrounding them so for example natural resources and the un's sustainable development goals
121is a big part of the seventh grade curriculum and so they are looking at um you know conservation of natural resources in uh africa they look at imperialism in africa and the effect on the conservation of natural resources they're looking at the amazon rainforest they're looking at um at these issues through a uh historical lens but also a contemporary and human rights lens um and they're developing a human rights uh through literature unit that they're hoping to roll out with um their ela counterparts as well eighth grade is when students start to hit the u.s history which is where really a lot of the rubber meets the road for our students in terms of what they see in their environment around them and what they're seeing in content and where the connections start to become
122really uh you know prevalent so um you know students are engaging with a variety of sources on how different groups have experienced moments in american history for example westward expansion what it meant for um a variety of different groups what westward expansion meant for um you know white eastern uh people who were moving west what it meant for indigenous americans what it meant for african-americans what it meant for uh immigrants who were coming into the to the west coast um students are uh really thinking about this idea of american progress what does progress mean you know is is american progress a zero-sum game are people destined to um win only at the expense of others and so part of what again we're trying to do is um build some awareness and build some capacity in
123terms of the students ability to think critically historically but in the process they're also thinking critically about themselves um and and they can apply some of those perspectives to current events that are happening right now um you know we talked about the primary sources one of the things that 8th grade teachers have been doing a lot of recently is really working on um these uh uh narratives of formerly enslaved people so they were documented by the wpa during the 1930s and so a lot of the students are you know the students are not just learning about slavery from secondary source textbook material but they're reading the accounts of people who actually lived through it um you know they asked questions like how free were free blacks in the north in the 19th century um they're
124trying to develop nuanced responses and get a better understanding of the world in which they live because you know once they get up to high school that becomes really where a lot of the critical thinking um is is being done um so that's where that's where we are um should i just continue on with the high school at this point or um it's fine i'll take it from here thank you um can you hear me okay can you go what are you doing um yeah okay so if you look at this goal for the social studies department and there is also one in english you can find it also in our action plan which is on the front of the high school website but it's very similar to the work in the middle school and
125what they are doing is working in their curricular partners and to kind of create a vertical and horizontal timeline next slide this is a quick glance of it you can see by um themes like nationalism and then you have um perpetuation of racist institutions we have the 10th grade on the top the 11th grade at the bottom the important thing with all of these themes is is that there are assured learning tasks that go with them um that you don't see so there's a lot more background on that for the teachers to ensure a consistent approach because we have multiple teachers teaching these grade levels next slide please um here are a few examples of things that have already been embedded on particular units of study i'd like to draw attention to the modern world
126studies picture that's a zoom link we've made a great use especially on guest speakers and that was a speaker of the holocaust that mr torres was able to get for us but you can see the different themes that are going on in the different courses and how the teachers are approaching them american studies is 11th grade and then we have the world studies on the bottom next slide please our next our new course you all heard about the american tapestry multiculturalism in the united states i'm pleased to say that we have over 25 students that have currently expressed interest in taking that course so we will be able to offer one section of it and it specifically deals with the concept of identity emphasizing ethnic and racial identity in america and that um was presented
127to the curriculum um subcommittee of the board and um during the budget time next slide please this is the english language arts and one thing i want to show is dr carl can you please click on the crc score card and open it up go to page 8. it's the highlighted thing thank you if you look at this we were actually looking at it the other day and um christine cincotta has been using it a lot with her with her keep going page 8 with her department and we actually shared it with the cils and it's kind of how you do an audit on you know what currently do we have and where are we lacking keep going thank you so for example you might look at all right let's take a look right now
128at the text that we're using is there a diversity of characters what do we currently have what perhaps are we missing that we need to include can you go um scroll down a little bit more thank you and then we have the diversity of authors who are um our multiple perspectives who are the voices and this was really helpful they have been working on it for the last several years and when we shared it with our our other uh curriculum instructional leaders for example our music cell said i can do this with the type of music that we're asking the um students to perform and um the art still said yes and when we're looking at different kinds of techniques and things like that are we you know what do we have currently what do
129we need more of to express that diversity uh theme so this has really been a great help okay can you go back to the presentation thank you next slide please i think it's very powerful of what the kids are saying and you can look at this we ask them all the time for on feedback and i think the last line especially is something that i'm a senior is saying speaking directly about diversity in the curriculum diversifies our understanding of the you know i can't say of the world and makes us more complete human beings but um christina picked those topics out and um those quotes and i think it's really powerful this serves as an evidence of that they are making the connections they are getting the idea of um you know we have mirror
130texts and then we have window text and they're reading more and more um diverse authors next slide voices from the edges the new course that we have the sort of the language arts um uh you know it complements um both the american tapestry as well as facing history which is another social studies course and it talks again about the idea of mirror text that we're very excited for next slide oh okay um whs professional development um our program council all um uh looked at and read this book those are all the sills the director of uh school counseling and the administrative team and basically all the bullet points are the um kind of the uh goals for each of the four sessions we had with dr uh david nirenberg who worked on getting again the
131idea of there's a sense of urgency about this work it's very uncomfortable work and can we share our working definitions and vocabularies of key topics such as culturally responsive teaching race as a social construct etc our stills are also undergoing the work at the um you know for the connecticut uh center for school change so i think it's it's great that we are able to complement this i think that um having multiple voices as consultants in this work is also powerful so we did four sessions with dr nuremberg next slide and um these are some of the things that um we looked at color blind and color mute versus color brave what does an inclusive curriculum look like you know starting with us what what led you to the beliefs you hold with the faculty
132and we did this in small groups and we used the people that facilitated it were actually um our social justice advocacy faculty um we have a group of approximately 10 faculty that expressed an interest in this and then they serve as facilitators when we do small group discussions and we've kept the groups the same to build that kind of um learning community and also that comfortability that um you know that that people feel comfortable expressing their their thoughts and their um perspectives because it can be very uncomfortable next slide please and so these are some of the quotes that the um faculty was saying about the work and what they want to um do more of but um one of the most powerful ones was i found myself second guessing my assumptions they're thinking one
133way and then they're thinking of you know their how their thinking is changing next slide this is another book christine why don't you talk a little bit about this book what we're trying to do is encourage different adult book groups and this was one that the english department used go ahead right so much of it is really about that first bullet point about centering student voices so between reading this book and we had our own session with dr nirenberg this was our theme um that we were exploring so he gave us some actually very useful and practical ways to center student voice in the classroom um he had ideas of co-teaching reciprocal teaching um and other ideas like that that we were able to then almost immediately put into our practice so we were very
134grateful um to lisa for giving us that opportunity and we're working through this book right now this is what the high school will be doing at their professional development day on um monday is that we're focusing really on the last bullet on monday is that idea of intersectionality right nothing's in a silo no issue is on its own we're looking at so many ways um and this is something that we're trying to explore in our classes or the literature we read right it affects so many people we're crossing over in so many ways but i think the consistent theme here in the work we're doing the work we're doing in our department in the high school as a whole in the middle school everywhere it's just that whole idea of trying to build a community
135of trying to build a classroom where the students um you know we're always about relationships and we're always about a safe environment where students can take risks um but now we're just looking at it even more so through the lens of a multicultural education so uh the experiences our students are having the classroom the experiences that that we're having as a staff in our own professional learning which i am still wowed by the amount of work our teachers have done this year and then always in the back of my head it's like and don't forget we're in the middle of a pandemic while we're doing all this it's it's just astonishing to me at how how receptive everyone has been and and how reflective everyone has been and and the changes we're seeing are real
136and changes slow and we know this was going to be an issue this was something we talked about with carrying patrice on um at curriculum council but you have to keep pushing and you have to keep going um so a lot of this is just really beautiful when you can see all the different things we're doing and how it all ties in together so again grateful for everything we're able to do thank you christine um i wanted to just talk very briefly about our social justice advocacy group these are the themes um diversity equity inclusion in action and here are some very specific um kind of goals that they have about the culture and celebrating diversity and fostering inclusion where these goals came from was the applications actually of the 40 students um that applied
137to be social justice advocates um there were a lot of powerful things in their application next slide please so basically we have 40 students that are involved and um we have a group of faculty that is also working through it um and then um what the faculty did in analyzing all of quite frankly the um student voices and their applications and their interest was to come up with some student leadership structures under specific uh categories that the students will be focusing this has been messy work this year i think um we you know we haven't been able to meet a lot in in person so they've done different um zoom leadership things but it's kind of like as jana obedy says we're building the plane as we're flying it so and as christine just said
138you know it's not as quickly as we would like but also we don't um want to be on such a fast pace that we don't have a planful approach um so this group will be um doing another uh leadership leadership session or workshop that um our pto has sponsored with dr elizabeth bishop from global kids will be working with them this spring and it's really to set things up for the fall next slide and this um is the uh just a few bullets about the the faculty that works with these students and um i'm really proud of them because they we just asked who would like to be a part of it and the way it practically worked out was every department and school counselor department is represented as well so that's kind of our
139work in a nutshell any questions great presentation two like excellent presentations back to back um uh you know i i have a couple of questions maybe i can start off one is um you know uh there's a couple of mentions of i i think christine mentioned it and and um lisa mentioned it about having uncomfortable conversations and i'm wondering where you know in a developmentally appropriate way in the lower schools how are we actually start starting to have those conversations about race so that when you are in the middle school or in the high school you know that our students are able to be more comfortable having those conversations around race because um it's got to start early on i mean we as adults struggle with conversations around race and i'm just wondering how how
140how you how you try to do it in the in the early years um in a developmentally appropriate way um i could start a pearl but you know a lot of times we use literature to kick off that conversation because it kind of brings them into the world of a character and an experience that somebody's having um you know certainly you know the big times of the year around martin luther king day or black history month our teachers will start to um foster those conversations and uh i know andrea noble may want to weigh on this too she's on this meeting um she and i were just talking about this the other day and she so she really helped me articulate um children at the very young age they're very curious and they often just
141um say what they see so it really is a prime time to foster and lead those conversations um i do think next steps for us we really want to build the capacity and the awareness with our staff so that they're comfortable really getting a little more in depth into those conversations you know certainly they're already happening um you know students may say you know why do you have you know um any anything and i remember going to kindergarten classroom uh this happened last year and a student wanted to know like why do you have those blue bumps on your hands and you know they were noticing the veins in my hands and it was like oh you know as you get older and i mean they just say it um and we need as the
142adults we need to be prepared to um you know lead those conversations and ourselves to be comfortable in that you know of course i'm thinking well because i'm getting older but um you know you kind of have to be prepared in the moment to respond to those um those just very natural the natural curiosity um you know as they're start really really starting to learn to talk about and examine and critically think about the world around them and you know five and six year olds will be the first ones to say well that's not fair um and then we need to take the conversations to the next level um thank you the the the other a question is maybe more more comment but you know i think ultimately diversity and equity and inclusion if we're
143successful it's a lens by which we actually make all of our decisions right around how we teach our children how we actually hire staff how you know our policies um and we have a lot of work to to get there um and i'm just wondering i think as a board what we probably would want to see next year um and we haven't had this conversation as a board but i'd like to see more specific goals around uh progress we're making on on on all fronts um i think um we've we've sort of made a head start there's a lot of work going on in the district but um i would like to see some more specific goals come out of it to say okay on each one of these topics or pillars you know where
144do we where do we want to be next year and the year after to start putting you know shedding at least a shining you know some light at the board level on this and i i think that should be the the topic of conversation at uh an upcoming workshop that we're going to have as a board on on dei but um but i think that's that's where i would like it to go i think there's great work going on and i think that we probably have to develop some very specific goals uh that we want to achieve um not only next year but the year after to make sure that we continue shedding some light on this very important topic right yeah i think that's right tony if i can can i jump in here
145yeah sure i think that's right i think a lot of that is hard to measure um so yes we are going to absolutely you know create goals that we can measure that need to be measurable and then we have to also think about how to tell the narrative of that sphere of influence that we've created right there are ripples and we've created some real influence among children and hopefully their families which is going to be my next question um but how do we capture that you know if you know it doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily quantitative measurement um but but how do you capture it in stories um you know and those are just as powerful to demonstrate that you've achieved goals what it's you know what's the model of that so i think that
146along with those goals as tony said we'd like to see those stories come to life in some real palatable way in some real way that that indicates progress i was also going to ask um you know and one of those goals may be related to how the district you know you're not responsible for changing the world i mean you can try and boil the ocean but you're not responsible for changing the entire world just these little lives that you have under your roofs that said because weston is as it is and such a he our district is such a huge part of our town and i raised this as you remember during the curriculum meeting but we have a a an obligation in some respects to make sure that the children experience these good conversations
147when they go home to and what happens when they go home and we can ensure that they have good conversations when they go home but how do we make the connection between what happens in the district and what happens when those children go into the world and firstly what happens when they go home to their families and as we know there are some town efforts going on as well you know team weston which i think some one of you may have referred to is just this kind of community-wide effort as well to do this work i know norfolk is involved in this work any connections that we can make with those other efforts is going to be critical to to developing a whole picture of diversity equity inclusion in our community so i just wanted
148to put that out there if there's any comment on that great but i think that would be included in sort of the way we look at this work going forward next year just to include the the connecting of those dots yeah taffy that's um i'm glad you brought that up and you know i think you know lisa has sort of led the way here and already begun to um extend out to the team weston and bring in uh from a district level me and starting to have discussions with them and look at see where there may be opportunities to partner down the road i don't know if lisa you wanted to comment sure um we um actually um presented to team weston um several members because we wanted them to understand the work that we
149were doing and it was our faculty group plus christine and nick from the curricular thing and i think it was a really good um conversation and uh christine actually shared a story where something that team had done in bringing in pres a presenter for uh through the pto it kind of reflected in in a situation that she had in her classroom um where christina i don't know if you want to comment briefly on it but it was kind of one of those aha moments where the parent and the child kind of linked if you will um at the house over his perspective and christine's class was you know he didn't um he had certain strong views about a piece of literature and she after hearing the present presentation you know they had a conversation about
150it that was very powerful i think that what could really help us at the for at the school level is if um they help us with that parent piece that would be wonderful or that community piece that's right that's there that's largely falls in their camp right yeah or or even if you do like if the public library wanted to have one of these um and especially now with zoom it's a lot easier to have a book club or things like that with that would support our work because anything that they could do with the not only the parent community but the community at large to support the work would certainly then support us and it kind of fosters a more organic conversation um at home i guess i would say yeah and and just
151to follow up i know and if the public are listening you know we the board tony and i and melissa also had a meeting with team weston where we went through with a fine-tooth comb all of the things they were envisioning could be transformative in our community in our district and wanted to address melissa directly around policies that we could consider um you know modifying etc so it was a very wholesome conversation and i think those links are already being made but i think you're quite right that a lot of that thankfully can fall to team um and others in the community yeah and just to follow up a little bit on that um on taffy's point with the community you know i do think especially with respect to the curricular component and and potential
152for change or shifts that it would be really significant there to have a bit more transparency than just the um you know the curriculum committee which you know i think um does a fantastic job but not not everybody can can make that meeting or certainly you know families or community members i think often probably aren't aware of when those are so maybe we can either you know do a better job publicizing when when that's coming up for conversation or you know work through the pto or other organizations to um or have a standing standing agenda item at this meeting yeah exactly exactly something like that because i think you know these are these are big issues and they're national issues and um you know i don't think we're not going to do ourselves any favors
153if if we wait until a child brings a book home or or has a question from a class and our our parents our community members don't have the context to to talk about it or to you know express any concerns that they may have about about the curriculum i mean we we should um we should be transparent melissa i would piggyback off of that too and just say that they need the language right they need to know as far as parents and community members what to say when those questions and conversations come up and i think that's a part of what we need to make sure that we do when we're talking with our families as well as our community members gina you go you have your hand raised then i'll go after you no
154i um taffy melissa hit on a lot of the points about engaging the community and andrea about educating the community so that you know we can hopefully all evolve and learn and and become better accepting things you know i also want to touch on the aspect of we all know just in like normal day at school a child will go home and we'll like relay something to a parent and i applaud our educators for introducing these sensitive conversations in the classroom but um i'm kind of looking at our staff are you guys empowered and feel comfortable if you're getting pushback from a family member um you know or a parent who may be upset about something that's been done in class and this pairs of the education piece but you know if a child comes
155home and relays you know a version of what happened at school to the parent and the parent is incredibly upset or offended you know whatever it may be um do you guys have the support to handle those interactions i feel like i have more support more visible support i know i've always been supportive i want to make that clear um but more support across the board than ever i think because we do as a staff have a shared understanding a common language a common goal like all of this is so beautifully aligned um that if we do run into situations and inevitably it's going to happen right it is um i i feel confident enough that there's a community behind me my school community my colleagues my the administrators here um that yes i i
156and if i i just feel like i'm just kind of moved by it right because i feel like this is our strongest effort um and it's not new like right this has been going on for years but i just feel like it's so out there invisible and supported by the community and across the board right now that yes i do feel greatly supported um not and i'm not just saying that because they're all here in this meeting it's it's really my colleagues everybody around me so yes ruby yes so i want to go back to what tony was talking about earlier and just kind of um being innovative and and thinking what does year three year four year five look like and i want to tie it back to faculty there's a lot of organizations
157out there that are making a commitment that five years from now their organization will look like x or they will have x amount of females at the executive level or x amount of black executives at the executive level i think we need to push weston to do the same of what does what is what is western going to look like in five years what is our target what are our goals and what are what are the things that we're going to make happen to hit those goals and i will say it's not even just black indian and asian you know having male teachers in hurl but you know we love kevin guertin and he's holding down the fort but i would love to see more i i think little boys need those strong male role
158models in in the school system so that was my first comment so i i definitely want to look for that next year is is what is our um three to five year goal and and how are we going to get there from a faculty standpoint my second comment and and question and this question is to bill and to ken so the entire presentation i was looking for one word um hyphenated word um and that is anti-racist um and i didn't see that word until we got to the page of the whs professional development so what is it what how can we as a district or what is it going to take where we as a district commit not just reducing biases but as a district commit to being anti-racist and that's not just in policy
159but it's in conduct as well well i mean i i think ruby i i mean i appreciate the comment and it's it's spot on um i mean what what you have here and you've embraced it in your in many of these comments is there are not many districts that could have the conversation you just had there are not many districts that bring the expertise and the passion to this for you and i'm actually just drafting a note that's going to go a couple people upon this because some of us have been around this work for a long long time and and this is a rare moment that a school district 80 percent white can have this kind of conversation with depth and so i think the first answer is you got to embrace before you
160fight you got to embrace before you push away and you got to embrace so the anti-racism is there and and i think but it's fundamentally you embrace you educate you support and you work on the antis uh and i know you know and bill i think bill i think you don't look to start with the answer but you're not asking you're not asking that we start there and it has to be a piece of it so i appreciate your critique that it wasn't in there much but i would ask us to and i know you're doing this to grab hold of the affirmative here and and you can be assured because i know lisa so well this is deep in who lisa is and oh i don't yeah i don't question that at all and
161i agree with you bill just ruby i just want to say i agree that you really can't move to the fight until you uh are educated and enlightened to yourself and i think that's the been the first big phase i that's my feeling i just want to throw out the challenge though it's i i just don't want to talk the talk i want to walk the walk and i want to it whether it needs to be a those words in policy whether it needs to be on our website whether we use it at in our everyday uh uh vernacular whatever that's my push here right and it's exactly right i mean you know it's exactly right at the core of this is who we are as humans and the sense of dignity and the sense
162of support and in that is it also then confronting and not tolerating which what is what we do we do not uh tolerate or confront uh racist hate approaches so i think it's important that the policy committee has grappled with that and you saw that in the presentation there was a board know that it's to go after hate speech hate language that's modeled on another district near us uh but but it is important to go after it i i know you're doing this but if as a district from a board level from administration level not starting with the affirmative the embracing the educating uh then we we get into just the fight uh and and so i'm incredibly hopeful for this district based on what this presentation and the people behind it have shared with
163you as a board if i can add i think one of the things that we have to look at is we have really tried to embrace the work and and given people the space to kind of understand the work and i'm talking now about the faculty and um because it is it's it's it's hard work um to have these these kinds of conversations and um and kind of face face that you know the whole idea of the color brave versus the color blind but to be able to look at for example all of just um like bill was saying you know his policy but then there's also practices what do our handbook say what do what do these what do our documents say what do we say as a district that you know we are
164anti-racist you know we in writing that district goal and i should give a shout out to megan skelton who helped us craft it because i was kind of struggling at the end when we were looking at it for the high school we you know do not tolerate discrimination and we have all of these things like the title nine and all these things that are in the books but i think at times now after this first year we are reaching the point where okay this is it we you know this is what we believe in you know whatever it is these three four or five bulleted points and it sort of falls under um our norms and the behaviors that we expect and i think that that we're on the after there's all this work that
165we've been supporting all year we're ready for that next step and not to do it in a way that's confrontational like bill says but just to say it and this is our expectation and with the pd work that we've done i think we're in a really good place to to move that way yeah i i definitely feel that um probably the administration the staff is a bit uh you're you're on that journey i think as a board we have to um embark on that journey ourselves as well um and i you know i would like to push that along a lot more than we have been this year simply because of the fact that our plate has been really filled not an excuse just the fact but i think that we need to uh move
166on this as a board and embark on that journey because i i i it's it's it's that important to this district to do that tony if i could just add you know i think we just have to look at this from a growth mindset you know we think about growth mindset with students you go back to the framework that i shared of you know awareness capacity and transformation um you know that that's the journey that we're on and um we really have you know just picked up um you know where we are and now have seen some growth this year and i think your ideas of having uh you know specific goals related and you saw in the presentation there are specific outcomes that we're looking to to have but but uh you know as
167we as we use this year as a springboard um you know i think administration faculty board we've got a good starting point here any other comments or questions from the board uh hillary yes i do have a question but i do want to share this with you all which is i'm reading this book called think again and i'm working on this with myself and the book is all about how we spend you know our as we grow into adults we have these beliefs and we value keeping the belief you know over and over and year after year and that's supposed to be so highly valued and he's trying to teach us that your belief should really be more like a scientific hypothesis and you should look at it and it's irrelevant to this conversation you
168should really look at it from i want you to change my mind i want you know i i i want to have this conversation and and i i want to be wrong so it just kind of made me think of that um my question is regards to you have all these great leaders at the high school that are um really passionate these students that are really passionate is there a way to get them engaged with the students at the lower grades um you know this is what i think i think that um we're not there yet i think that um as i said this first year we're kind of getting things organized um getting like sort of sub uh groups involved and i think that that could naturally be a next step um when we're
169further along in the process you know the the the particular group that were you know has been involved inside one sort of what i would say leadership retreat we're planning on another one we want to we want to um move it along but we don't want to go too quickly um we want to make sure that we have an appropriate way to um to integrate them into something if we if we you know how how would they work and and what would their message be and all that so definitely i think in the future but but not right now um i think that being back in person yay in september is going to be so huge in so many levels to be able to do things again um face to face that it will hopefully
170kind of be a a wonderful consequence of of this work yeah i might just underscore what lisa said there i i because as you know at the adult level here in weston this is a great presentation i've expected expressed immense enthusiasm the work is hard though are all the adults in line or all the adults understanding this in our community for sure no so i think it's and i mean within the professional community so this this this i mean the training we're doing for the connecticut center for school changes is excellent it's urging us to have a growth mode as ken has said and also be impatient uh but it requires us as adults to sort of get our ei right get our dbt rights so as we get into these conversations we handle them
171correctly i've been in those difficult conversations with young people many times and if you don't set them up correctly you do more damage so i couldn't agree with you more hillary on the question because i think that role modeling this is an incredibly powerful way to bring leadership from within we have to hear the and please help those young people be ready to have those difficult conversations such that it it keeps working well and doesn't become like this i mean if this isn't the place but i can tell you my own failings at that as an educator or i went too fast to that peer-to-peer conversation across racial lines and oh my goodness you know so i it's exactly right hillary i think i just would endorse what lisa said there in the sense of
172the right build towards it but please get there you're exactly right great thank you thank you this was a great presentation and another really good discussion um so bill we have a few more agenda items for for this evening um you might uh maybe go briefly through the public health guidelines and we can move to the schooling scenarios more quickly sure yeah i'll be be efficient here what i'm feeling though is this is a meeting that you want to have this is a meeting about the real work uh we so often are talking about the schooling scenarios as we have to under cover 19 we're talking about the public health issues we have to uh i mean the extent of work done here by your team on the dei this is breathtaking the volume of
173work and the reach in the midst of still figuring out how to provide schools still feeling how to stay healthy so i will be brief um a lot went out in writing in the last several days i'd urge the board as you have and the community to focus on the full return procedures update that sent out i think it speaks for itself as a board you might have questions about some of those pieces it was in there friday it was critical we felt disrequited to get that out as we move to full return um because we now are more full return than almost just any district around us uh we've gone from people concerned that we're behind we're right there and we're ahead of some others now almost anybody so uh you know high school
174wise what lisa's accomplished uh and her team's accomplished i mean that's 100 back in five days a week almost no one around us can point to that um so we we've moved dan's big commitment as he'll talk about to be in next week so it was a critical we had in a sense health and safety guidelines out friday for people to follow and there was one stern comment in there about the hope that people will do those home health checks and stay home if you're not feeling well um vaccinations thank your team thank your team several weeks ago we had no idea that what we can now say is by april break every single staff member in this district will have the opportunity to be fully vaccinated the clinics were incredibly well run the collaboration
175with westport western health district westport staples pavilion was the exact right to ha place to have that just incredibly professional well-run clinic with everybody from the three districts contributing but again by april break when we're back every staff member will have that opportunity to be fully vaccinated there have been questions about testing will we bring surveillance testing in i shared with the board a statement on that we're looking at that closely and carefully uh the view right now is with the vaccinations um the complexity of running and testing your own testing system well the cost of that the need you've got to do it several times a week three or four times a week uh if you're going to be accurate with that that we we can hold off on that a bit now we
176are watching the very few districts around us that are doing surveillance testing so we'll keep paying attention but right now with mark cooper's advice laura mark's advice looking at what the state's advising we can hold off on that surveillance testing quarantine is a big question for us i know board members have questions about that the community has questions about that friday made the statement that based on mark cooper laura marx your nursing supervisor your nurses your administrators let's get to may one let's get to may one and see where we are if we can shorten that quarantine down several as superintendents in the region are looking at how do you shorten that that quarantine amount down but the cdc still recommends 14 our metrics have plateaued they were dropping but they were dropping but now
177they've plateaued we have variants in the region and as we now come full back in i think the sense is quarantined gives us a tool to sort of make control if we get it in the buildings and we have had situations where between the 10th day and the 14th day we've seen positives develop in our own community so that's why we would like to get to may one we'll keep reviewing it and several supers are talking about the lost school time under that tool given to us by the cdc because even at 10 days around us you're still losing a lot of school time so we are going to look at that we would just ask patients to let us get to that you know and principals can speak to that we've talked a lot
178about it um so that that's the public health update in a bit of a verbal sprint uh but it is backed up by the document you receive friday and yes because the manual sits in my writing capacity it is now fully updated i apologize to everyone that it took from october to today but it is now fully updated the big manual that's posted on the website that is fully updated so bill how quickly will you guys come out with guidance now that literally earlier this afternoon lamont changed so that like 16 and up will be eligible to start registering for vaccines in early april so we can have high schoolers who may be vaccinated um as far as are those students still going to be quarantined will those students like so yeah i mean it's
179i mean if this is an evolving situation but just like how quickly it's no we've already decided and it's in that document on friday which is and and this is we don't we we can't create this we have to follow the guidelines which is once you're through your regime of your vaccination be it a single dose or second dose once you're two weeks past that final dose and you have no symptoms of coed 19 if you're exposed you don't have to quarantine but that's at the point we'd have to say in the contact tracing have you been vaccinated can document it because it's the same with staff but that'd be the same for students as is for staff so that's another reason why we want to kind of hold where we are in quarantine until
180we get closer to that may date because the quarantine question goes goes away if you've been fully vaccinated but you need that two-week period so by late april if all our staff have availed them of that opportunity to be vaccinated for staff the quarantine issue goes away our loss of school time goes away and then it's a matter of for our students how we manage that so the simple answer is yes um bill one of one of the questions that we get as board members i've gotten um is that you know westport has a 10-day quarantine we're under the same health district um and the question is why are we 14 in westport's 10 maybe you can talk about their experience with 10 and why aren't we consistent these are questions that the community is
181asking us um well tom's a great colleague tom's greece he used to work here he knows many of you very well uh tom and i have been texting tonight on the quarantine question tom uh chose not to follow mark cooper's advice chose to go to the 10 day uh and they have but if you're an athlete in westport you go 14 days if you can't guarantee six foot social distancing you go 14 days uh so they have a so it's not a pure 10 day their loss of school time would would match ours i mean tom is looking very actively at that as there are other superintendents so the differential there between us and weston in terms of law school time which is the fundamental here is is is is almost it's very similar um
182but our strong view based on mark cooper laura marks our nursing professionals who are frontline working with this have been let's keep to the 14 let's till may stay consistent so everybody's treated the same way and we don't have various groupings it's been a challenge in other districts we have different groupings are you a 14 are you a 10 when you shift the fourth so i think right now for us keeping it consistent so you know but again we've reviewed this very very carefully administrators nurses we've all talked about this a lot and i say with all due respect i mean they made a decision to not follow what at that point mark cooper they have a different medical advisor that may be part of the equation wilton actually if you looked at the good
183morning wilton they actually came out with a 10-day quarantine and a seven-day quarantine are you familiar with that bill where yeah very much i mean all the superintendents are talking a lot about what each is doing uh the seven day you have to monitor more closely uh in terms of the amount of follow-up in terms of you know the tests and all the rest um we've looked at that we've looked at the number of other districts that are at 14 10. very few have gone to the seven most it's been most it go to set to go to 10. but the only difference is between that is that they're they're accommodating for a rapid or pcr test to get out of quarantine where their minimum is seven whereas app we don't accommodate for any testing
184it is a steadfast 14 and i think that's a harder pill to swallow whereas i i if if there were fla if there was flexibility around the 14 to accommodate for a negative pcr test i think you would have more support well but that's cdc that's the cdc and dph the cdc and dph say if you go sub 10 you have to use the pcr or the rapid and then it's up to the district to manage that so most very few wilton's one of the few districts that's gone sub 10 and they're willing to do that the test management there but you cannot test out at 14 for the cdc and dph you can't test out a 10 you can test out at seven so again we're actively looking at this we keep looking at
185it um and i'm you know we looked at it the last couple days can we go sub 14 uh and the feeling right now is what what i've shared with you um and put out and i just i i publicly i don't agree with it and here is the reason why is because we're taking such a conservative approach even to quarantining an entire bus when that child was nowhere near probably the infected child and then for a parent then to be out for 14 your child to be out for 14 days when after seven you could possibly get a test and to show that you're negative and and it's well within reason for it to be acceptable to go back into society but yet we're not even entertaining that thought so i i do not
186agree with the 14-day quarantine i i think we need to re look at it asap especially with all of our neighboring districts um doing other other things not accurate ruby they're not all it is it is accurate to what other districts are doing and i'm saying that i disagree with our policy because i think we're not even entertaining the fact of having a parent get a negative pcr test it's basically 14 or nothing and i don't think that we're being flexible enough with the parents yeah i think ruby's right and i think that um you know last we talked about it it was two-thirds of the districts have moved away from the 14 days right and we're in the minority in the one-third and i just don't think that's the place we want to be
187you know we are we want to put education first in getting these kids and we've worked so hard to get these kids in the building and then we're we're we're having these quarantine requirements that are you know on um well too conservative too conservative and i think if westport's doing it with the same health district at 10 days i i don't think there's anything that we know differently or that's unique about us or that we're smarter than them or better than them that we would be making a different policy change i i think what's what works for them works for us with the same health district that's my personal opinion like i think there's two two issues here one is 10 to 14 but the other is is is really allowing a student back after
188a negative test right uh how you know um what are the you know bill what are the negatives around around around that what are the complications around that well again that's at the seven day very few districts have gone to the seventh day you've noted that wilton has of of the group here down south of rafael county almost no one else has gone there because the only way that's where you test out uh and then it's up to the district to manage that process and again that's where most have gone to 10. the other thing going on is staying at the 10 is if that's closer to the 14 as the athletes are required just you know in westport it's not a consistent 10. you've got large number of students who are still at 14
189you have large number of students who uh so it's not a consistent 10 there and that's in in almost none of the districts i mentioned so you mentioned now it's a little data as more districts are going full in more looking their quarantine because that becomes because none of us are social distancing um and so where in the districts have said you can be ten if you have six foot amongst you but none of us have that anymore once we're all in so we we're we're looking at it very actively but i think you must feel some comfort now that dr fauci has said three feet in schools is is acceptable i mean i think that that should give people some some level of comfort on on that point so i think you know the
190point i take away from it is things are changing really quickly and you know even as gina pointed out you know the vaccination schedules here in connecticut just moved up either today or yesterday very recently um so i think you have to kind of look at the trend and where things are going yeah listen let me just say one thing this is not me alone this is all of your nurses all of your administrators all all of your public health and medical advisors saying right now give us a couple more weeks as you're going all back in and we're looking at the numbers and we're looking what the other districts are doing and if i didn't see any other districts if i saw the other districts it was a clean ten no matter what 100
191of the time 10 but that's not what's going on um you know that's not what's happening when you look at exactly because we all share very because none of us want to keep students out the bus issue any district if you're on that bus you quarantine because and none of us like that but that's just the nature of it so we are looking at it very very actively i hope you hear me say that we're constantly looking at it uh administrators here can know in the last couple days we've gone back to look at it again so we're constantly looking at how to shorten that down i guess but bill i mean colleges have been effectively using quarantine all year with obviously students being in much more close contact than even our students because they
192live in the same buildings and they were using a you know a two test you you test it on one day and then you test it again on day 10 and it was two negative tests i mean obviously we can't mandate the family's test so they take 14 days but if families are willing to provide the data i just think there's enough evidence that with multiple testings that you know there are there are other options than just a pure 14 day yeah i think the testing is i mean unless it's really a we're finding that this is a prohibited prohibitive administrative burden you'd think that testing out sounds like a reasonable approach unless there's something that i'm missing bill again i don't hear that we're not looking at this and thinking about it again the
193seven day is issue and that's why very few districts around us have taken on one surveillance testing in the public sector because you got to do it two or three times a week to have it be at all valid or reliable and there's a serious cost you what wilton's done that and that's also why they're able to go to the seven day most have not gone there because of the logistics of of managing that again i'm looking at it i've been talking to tom today about it several times we keep looking at it and i'm committed to going back to the nursing staff going back to the administrators and others and saying the board is raising major questions on this on behalf of the community this isn't the first time i've heard it tonight and
194again we're looking at it very very accurately i just want you to have the facts the facts are amongst those districts that are doing 10 many it's still 14. uh if you can't come back any and i think the reason that dr fauci has said three is because you've had major superintendents in this in the nation say you can't get all in unless you go sub six you've all been following it nationally and now with our new education secretary and the big push is all in like we said very explicitly friday to the western community we're able to go full return knowing that our social distancing is not what it's been so i think that's part of that so all for looking at it we're going to look at it uh and i i think
195you know just to be fair also you'll have a segment of the population that basically will be fine with it right so you know it's not like the the board is is speaking for everyone right uh i i but but i do think that um there is enough concern that this may be too um conservative to definitely take a serious look at it um not only 10-day but but potentially if students um if if you have the data students should be allowed to test out as well but i think this is something where um i know you're looking at it but i think you heard tonight that there is some concern that we're being just too conservative at this point by a portion of the of the community at least i have three very specific
196questions um one was around and if i missed some of them in the materials that went out i apologize to the bats um you're commenting around travel bill it says that the governor will come up with something prior to march 19th what i read was that they're just gonna the travel requirement uh was gonna be changed from from mandatory to discretionary so isn't that already known it's anticipated that he will announce that uh he hasn't i mean so what we said in the materials is at that point it's discretionary and optional um we we have been very close to whatever the state approach on travel is that's been our approach so once the governor finally and formally announces that which we've not seen that announcement yet we and that's why i put in the materials
197friday we anticipate uh so it'd be the same but it's all voluntary then but i think families have to use the same judgment as to how they travel or not but just using those as guidelines uh but that we we follow those same guidelines so there really would be no change there okay um my second question was maybe for lisa the the elh will will that continue towards the towards the end of the year um yes it will continue and uh we are currently working on when we go back full day until 2 30 we are um looking at um devising a schedule that it may not be every day victor but we want to pilot something a little bit different to see how that goes because that's been one of the big pluses that
198has come out of the um whole pandemic and we want to um incorporate it into next year's schedule so we actually just met today about coming up with a couple of options and talking to the staff about how we could keep that going when after a break we come full back but the the the target to go to 2 30 you have a target date for that already um well we i said that the week of um before break before april break let me look at the exact uh calendar i would communicate again with families um you know today went very well um obviously we're going to monitor but i was going to communicate with families the week of april 5th we're looking at the week of april 26th i don't know if it will
199be that exactly that first monday back you might need just a couple of days to um get things in order but that's when we are looking to go uh fullback okay and my last question is um directionally speaking bill what percentage of the teachers did not choose the option to to take the vaccine for the staff or we include nurses and bus drivers um well it's private medical information i think generally everyone as far as i know we didn't get a sense they didn't avail themselves of it but it's private medical information so we can't ask they're not obligated to tell us um at that quarantine moment at the point of exposure that'd be a private conversation between a nursing professional or administrator and that individual uh if they're not if they're off the quarantine
200but that's private information we have a pretty good handle though that that people really took advantage of the opportunities provided i know ken if you want to speak to that but again uh intense major work by all sorts of people to get that opportunity and while we're on that i think it's important for you as a board to know the next round of vaccinations because all of us are really in a second on the two dose and there's pretty strong evidence that that second dose you're gonna have some some impact on you so the sec the first clinic is is the eighth excuse me the first the day before good friday um and the next clinic though would be we think that following thursday uh so we may be having to think about on that
201friday how many staff have been vaccinated on that thursday and are there going to be enough out that we may need to think about a remote possibility for some amount of the district if not the full district and that's something that across the nation particularly you know districts are looking at just in the sense to get everybody vaccinated but we're looking at that closely um so why don't um we go through the schooling scenarios uh now if you know uh i guess if the you know we could start at the lower schools and go up see how everything is going so far and then i'm sure that will uh prompt some some other questions from the board yeah and i'd be excellent one thing uh because we met earlier today to you know talk about
202you know the meeting and the flow we know the questions about substitutes we know the questions about the volunteer distance learning what i would suggest is let's get through the schooling scenarios then come back to those two topics uh because we're very you know the team's very much ready to talk about vdl and very much ready to talk about substitutes but let's sort of get through the schools first yeah that's great thanks sorry so i didn't start it hurl but um you know we continue to be all in we have had some uh significant quarantines recently but you know when remote days have gone i would say very well you know we've come a long way in terms of integrating the technology with student learning the students have learned a tremendous amount this year they
203really amaze me when i pop into these zooms and i see you know how engaged and active they are in the learning it's exciting to see but we continue to be all in it's wonderful having all the students in um you know we've got good systems for arrival and dismissal we do actually also have uh more vdl students coming back in person we've seen a little increase in the number of edl families who want to return to in-person learning so i'll pass it on to patty okay we're pretty similar uh we're all in uh which is so nice um we have have been seeing though an increase in our bdl students uh returning back into school so um we're seeing more and more coming back in um we have a couple of classes out on
204quarantine but um one's coming back wednesday this wednesday one's coming back next wednesday so uh but otherwise um we're in we're managing the long lines for arrival and dismissal as as quickly as we can as best as we can but um otherwise um going well going really well all right um so we've been communicating a lot about the middle school plans just this evening we sent out um the video recording of last thursday night's presentation we had a pto presentation earlier in the day thursday and we are just in high gear right now the entire staff custodians security team leaders we're all um andre santelli with the food services we are just in full mode getting ready doing the last minute adjustments to classes and classrooms and furniture numbers but it's going very well high
205school was very excited today to see everyone um back um walking correctly in the walls the right direction senior lot almost full that was like the best walked all around the classroom kids looked great we still had um some bdl students in class um that that um it's amazing how they just get incorporated so nicely into the classroom um today's figure was we're 18 vdl but um it's going well knock on wood uh lisa um in terms of um how that breaks out between the upperclassmen and lower classmen in terms of dl yeah i have it here just a second i i i remember glancing at it the the seniors are still um the highest group it's um 15 9th grade of the ninth grade class 16 of the 10th 17 percent of the eleven
206twenty three percent of the seniors okay um so are you 141.793 are you concerned or not about 23 of the seniors not you know being vdl is that um i'm not right now i think that um you know we we shall see um you know i know some people are just coming back from traveling around and looking at colleges things like that because you have to make a decision soon so right um but i think it's it's so it's all great it was i couldn't believe when i walked into the class and saw all of these kids it's been so long um it almost i i could have almost cried i was like yay they're all here hey ken uh what was the what's the percentage uh not ken dan what's the percentage of vdl
207in the middle school just out of curiosity you're muted yeah i'm sorry i saw that um on a document today i just don't have it at my fingertips i do okay it's 23.6 um 23.6 we are i could say just anecdotally we are seeing um the migration also uh back in even from people who are coming in for the first time still uh hurl but 11 west 15 and then um high school 38. actually i have um a quick question on enrollment since we're here school's actually dropped to 19 so oh do you want to update this then you wait you send it out today yeah i sent out today oh but since you sent it out it's dropped oh okay um i have a quick uh question so net net total enrollment has only
208gone up by three percent but you've seen obviously um an entry and an exit of about 16 students and 13 students out how of of the students that that we are getting back in districts so these 16 plus students how many are new to the district and not just parents who unenrolled their children at the beginning are now re-enrolling their children you want to go by school or just uh bill do you have a sense just total i didn't ask meredith to chase that particular detail maybe just go school by school i mean the main you know we because you've got a number in but you got others going out so i i think holistically we have to have a handle on this just in terms of total district on how we're tracking um just
209because then next year's enrollment is going to be the the you know shot in the dark in terms of how many students are going to re-enter so yeah well i think the the big question here is you know with all the home sales we have or are we actually seeing it in increased right enrollment of new students right that's my point yeah yeah i mean you had five new students come in and then the question of those five you know how many of those were coming in off of homeschooling um we you know that's something we can try and look at in the you know in the next enrollment piece but you know overall enrollment moved a little bit but you know it was five in a few more out but it did go up
210slightly but basically it's fairly stable and again your projection for next year does include the calculation of about half of your homeschoolers coming back all in we what we can try and do when we see an adjustment for future enrollment reports i mean it's very few students we can try and go school by school do we have a sense is that a student coming in out of homeschooling or or brand new to the district i think generally you know i think it's a good idea to start thinking about that data i think it's helpful it's going to be helpful for planning purposes if we can see whether you know some of the you know whether these are just new students to the district it's it's been a question in certainly in my mind as to
211you know whether we're we're seeing an influx of new students given the home sales that we've seen but it's it it would be nice if we started looking at that a little bit more specifically i i know it's hard and but if if there's a way of doing that that would be that would be very helpful yeah no we we have been doing it we did it for you twice we did it for you in a big way in the fall we did it again in the budget season i mean for example because you had eight new you had a shift of eight five in three you know out or whatever it says here yeah no eight eight total five reductions we can look at the ins and outs to just let you know yeah
212that would be helpful thank you but before we before we get into specific schools ken for our conversation on thursday how did you want to weave in um the progress report into this conversation or did you want to do it after you're a mute yeah ruby let's do that well after um you know i think maybe in the i know we committees and maybe i can do it there yeah you're muted ruby oh sorry i was saying not in the committees we had talked about specifically talking about some of the interventions that do we have an agenda hold on uh i mean yeah let's uh it's not an agenda item tony we talked about it on thursday it was supposed to get at it it didn't get at it it's it's it's fruitful information for
213parents to know that testing has been underway interventions are being planned i wanted it on the record i spoke to ken about it on thursday okay so let's do the following uh i suggest we do the following let's go through let's go through this let's um right i can help you let's go through let's go let's go through this agenda and then we'll have let's let's get through voluntary distance learning then have get can give just a brief a brief update on that and then we'll move to policy stuff how's that yeah so yeah so i think from what the the team thought they've given you kind of the school by school update um i mean there are two significant topics here we know the board is concerned about which we did put on the
214agenda the bdl and the substitutes i might just let's do those two now let's do vdl now let's do the substitutes and then maybe ken could give a a quick update on on on something and then at the next meeting probably a bit more of a fulsome uh uh update yeah so on on the voluntary distance learning issue um i'll i'll be brief and then i know a couple of principles are gonna sort of bring to life where we are here we're looking for a solution um i've also talked to eight other districts today eight other districts are facing the same fundamental question and i'll read you from this quote was from several other districts there quote remote learning is not intended to be a daily choice a provision for traveling while schools in session
215or as a way to avoid quarantining for the purposes of participating in athletics another district said we're having trouble managing the ins and outs of who's in the remote program several others said the same thing most of several have put limits on when you go in how long you then have to stay in others have not but to a district they all said we're struggling with this and particularly concerned about as we go into more full in how do you manage it educationally so for the last five six eight weeks this has been a conversation here it's come up in two task forces and then last week assistant principals on behalf of teachers and others said we need to think about a different way to do this we crafted an approach it clearly may not
216be the right approach but what we're trying to do is is address here a pretty fundamental issue we want to make sure bdl continues to work really well for those families who've chosen bdl and we want to make sure that as we're all in more full classrooms teachers managing the vdl and also who's in front of them we want to make that a very strong experience and as we've been seeing and as a bunch of other districts of iran's been seeing we do have some families who are using that quick in and out as a way to deal with some approaches that really make it tough for us to be educationally strong so what was suggested last week that may just be too much but we're trying to find a solution so what we want
217to do is kind of share with you as a board a couple of the examples things we're working with to try and come up with an approach here that that works and again by sharing some of what i found out today just we're not alone in this we're none of us are trying to find out how to maximize this so i i don't know if uh a couple the principal just want to kind of help for the board bring to life what it is we're grappling with here yeah i you know before we before we do that you know the the one it's i think that the the issue around this is is and i think that this is where you're going to hear from some of the board members is that we we we've
218learned a lot in terms of how to deliver education through technology that we want to make sure we use it to our advantage as it relates not only to the staff but also to the students right um having a one month notice period um seems to have to some extent handicapped us in terms of how to actually be able to use this more effectively for our students because i think we're so concerned with the ins and outs and and there there should be i think some reasonable um solution here that basically avoids gaming of the system but also is reasonable in terms of students being able to use the technology when they are out for whatever reason and and i think we know it's a fine line but i think that we are i you
219know the belief here from the at least from the boards and i don't want to put words in everyone's mouth is that where we've strayed away from that from that balance right by using this one month right well here you go if i make because we we i received a number of emails i listened to those we pulled back the plan principles of talk today we said let's talk with the board about because we agree with you four weeks is too much four weeks is too much okay good that's the start let's revisit that but i think you know we've got to solve the problem as administrators working on behalf of teachers because teachers so we agree but it's i think if if mike kind of share a few examples for the board of what
220we're trying to grapple with uh because the sense is four weeks is too much we've listened and we're pulling that way back and and i've talked to the administrators that say we just we got to pull that way back and we got to find another approach here um but it but all of us are committed to the technology the other districts i've talked to eight of them today are saying hey bill we got the same problem we'd love to learn from what you figure out here is a way to kind of help we want to maximize the flexibility but we also we're struggling so a couple principles can have to share then let's let's talk about it because we we're not going to do four weeks it doesn't make any sense we agree with you
221okay if i could maybe start the conversa i'm sorry melissa did you want to add something no please go ahead um we did talk um about it because we have been struggling and i think that each level has its own unique struggle um with it and that's part of the challenge and and all of the principles agreed um four weeks um no but we have to try to figure out um some kind of a balance to um to support the teachers and also the students that are whether they're vdl all the time or in person all the time um i'll talk for um sort of like the high school and middle school um dan you can add because i think that that situation is very similar and then patty and um laura can add so
222for example at the levels where the kids are changing classes and so each teacher may have up to 100 students i know that our teachers um we'll just let them in because it becomes kind of a a little bit of a very difficult operational thing to be you know is this person bdl is this person not bdl they're they're ringing the bell you know you walk down the hall and you hear ding ding ding people are trying to get in um and it it was becoming kind of an untenable situation so we just sort of teachers would let them in um i don't know dan if you want to add anything that's what happened at your school correct yeah well actually i have to say um i sent out the communication asking for parent support
223because really we just need them to understand and help us manage the vdl um we've worked with parents in situations where we've we've let them go remote just for a day but it is disruptive and it's gotten to be where you know we've had kids actually try to zoom into class from the car on their way you know to a tournament or the or the um the airport for traveling we're just saying you know there should be good reasons for going vdl we don't want to encourage we've never wanted to encourage parents to send a sick child to school but at the same time if a child's sick we want the child to rest and recover um just because they can be sick and and remote in doesn't necessarily mean they should so it's really
224come into those the criteria of what's an acceptable request for vdl um we've been very flexible i don't think i've never said no to a parent i thank them for actually reaching out and communicating at least so we have the record is correct because sometimes as lisa said they just pop in but you know sometimes it's um well it's challenging for them i would say it gets it gets challenging especially at the high school level because what we have is this um kids and they'll say it they didn't want to get up get dressed and come to school and the parents don't even know that oh you know i'm kind of tired i'm just gonna i was in a class today and i said to the kid here this is what i saw i said
225could i see the rest of you please i just saw a hater waving um so it's it's um in some circumstances become very challenging at our levels because um teachers have different groups different activities all ready to go and then all of a sudden where is the person oh the person is um you know is not in person the person is going to do it this way now so what we were trying to do is figure what would be a better balance and also not to encourage um people to just stay home because you know oh mrs walk i didn't i didn't want to get dressed and come in well lisa and i think just like our we're trying we want teachers or the parents to support us we want to support the parents and
226i think it's so important the middle school level for the students to have a routine and not just to be dropping in and out we we have had students who are developing school avoidance more than ever in this context and i think it's a disservice to the students in a way to to not have at least some clear guidelines about what is vdl um and what is promoting pool avoidance that's that's frankly the most compelling point i've heard on this is that if school avoidance as you've described oh miss well like i didn't feel like getting out of bed you know if that's a chronic problem then we have bigger problems to worry about like that that is that is you know i'm i'm of two minds i'm on i'm of two oops i've got
227a daughter face timing me right now i'm i'm of two minds on this because i'm the one really that pushed back on this idea of a month and i still believe that it's way too long and i think we've all agreed we're not doing that um because i think it puts up walls where there's already so many walls that the kids have faced in the last year and the families have faced in the last year as far as you know a full learning experience and you guys have just done a heroic job of giving them the very best we can do under the circumstances with bdl that said um you know the kids who are in vdl who have been there for six months online because of health vulnerabilities or other reasons need to have
228a full experience of it and not a distracted experience for the teacher saying just watch this movie because i've got too many other things going on and i'm not blaming the teacher there that's a function of you know there's kids zooming in and out um kids who aren't getting out of bed you're having to do a roll call at the beginning of the class to make sure that these are the vdl kids and not the other like i get that's totally disruptive you know there will be no rich vdl experience for the actual vdl kids if you're also managing other kids that aren't supposed to be there so i i'm hearing i'm actually hearing the problem that i i wasn't quite aware of before can i just ask a question how are you currently holding
229those students accountable the ones that uh pop up on vdo that weren't supposed to what what are you doing right now well quite frankly um at our level and i and i want to give the elementary levels to speak um quite frankly the the teachers were just kind of trying to make it work and let them in and so there's no repercussions well the class is ruby the classes are so short that if they were to say okay let's see i've got these you know 18 kids that are supposed to be on vdl and then cross-checking with the ones that show up by the time that's done 10 minutes of the classes like sure so it's almost easier to let them in as far as repercussions go we've invited even before today kids to come
230in and when like dances they didn't want to come in and some of them are school avoidant for different reasons um we went to the house i think that that probably every administrator on the screen has gone out to the house and been like you know you you can't be vdl or you know you'll log in when you feel like it um and the sro has helped us and and we've gotten them to come in i mean we do you do that a few times and they'll get out of bed and come in but um what's going on at the elementary schools perhaps you can give an example of some of the challenges you have because it's different because it's a whole day that they're there the attendance right so we try to be really
231flexible too we the one thing that we've asked is that we can that we get at least 24 hours and it really is about the teachers and making sure that they have all the materials and they know who's in and who's out because so much of that is dependent on what they're teaching in school and then you know we and then they they move over if they want to they they can come back so that's really what we've been asking parents to do and they've been um they've really worked well for the most part and the same thing with us dan says you have somebody who's sick take the sick day really just take the time you can still do work if you want but don't try to zoom in and and really just take
232that time to rest because if you're not feeling well then really just um then that's what sick days are there for so um um that's what where what we've been doing and let me let me ask let me ask the sort of a question around you know the notion of like legalizing there's two and a half months left of school so what if you said anyone who wants to go on a trip can go on a trip your kids legally have to go to school so if you're going on a trip you need to tell us i mean this is a risk but i'm saying you want to go away for 10 days i need a letter tell us you're going away for 10 days it's totally fine but we need to know your kid's
233going to be in vdl for 10 days we need to know it so in other words don't hide that you're going on a trip tell us you're going on a trip and and then your kid can join for 10 days but we need to know like don't right i don't think people are hiding it quite frankly it's not hiding it it's just okay there are bizarre circumstances to be frank of when you see where they are and they're zooming in like okay if you're if you're away could you just find like a nice room where you could contact you know instead of instead of being on the chairlift yeah i think i would say most of the parents have been very yeah very helpful with us it's just um you know i think some of
234the parents were actually needing some help to try to you know they want their kids in school and now their kids have become very comfortable vdl uh and it's when they're vdl and not actually zooming and it's even a bigger problem than if they were zooming in on facebook you know i i think there's an issue i mean obviously there's probably some rules around the proper scene you know the proper setting in which to which to participate in class right um and uh but so so so what's the answer we you talked about saying you know writing in a kind of an appeal of like these are the reasons why we need your help you know and here are some specific things and could you please uh we i don't want to speak forever but
235i think we're kind of in consensus could you give us um you know a two-week commitment um of what you're doing we can change within 24 hours but could you commit for for the the you know the the ten school days because as one of my durga um principal said he goes i can't even think beyond two weeks because something else seems to happen which i think is true i think that you know families have different things going on whatever but but you know we didn't hear from laura can can we just see what her old butt challenges are sorry i don't i want to make sure i hear what's going on in her butt a little bit different um experience for our students they love being in school you know we open the doors
236in the morning they're like clamoring to get in so we don't have as many vdl students we have had parents asking you know oh we're gonna you know travel can they zoom in on the way to the airport and it's just not practical especially for our age students right um our teachers have to do a lot of planning if somebody is not physically in in person right you know they might be doing an activity with math manipulatives or you know there's a something they're cutting out and if a child doesn't have that um you know it's really upsetting to the child too but are you seeing it in hurlbut where um uh it's being abused where uh children are are coming and going as freely as like the high school we have some but not
237as much um and it certainly i think is even dropped off even more i think what at the beginning of the year when we had periods of hybrid and students were in and out every other day now that we've been you know more all in i have seen it decrease good so what we want to avoid is the you're going away well then you can't put your child in school because we're not in the business of blocking closing the door to children who want to be in school that's our that's our concern as a board i think you know i i heard my own voice saying we don't want to put up a wall you know and make it harder for the kids to be in school in person in school um so if they're
238gone for three days and they're back for the next seven and can't join the classroom it does it just feels wrong do you know what i mean because we've we've put a two-week commitment and what you're hoping i think lisa by saying let's make a 10-day commitment or 10-school day 2-week commitment is that they won't go on their trip or they won't you know well and i don't think that's gonna happen i don't think people are gonna you know i think i don't think they're gonna cancel their trip because they're of the disincentive you've created with two weeks i just i think what i would like to see is the principles but what we would do in non-coveted times if a family takes a trip the child gets the lessons works works asynchronously for those
239three days they're gone um and then they come back and they come right back to school yeah and have to catch up which is hard for the child so maybe the parent yeah no that's true i mean that's just the normal way i don't think we're trying to to punish families for traveling or disincentivize i just think it's it's the reality of education and we're trying to plan the justification for everybody so your your guidance would be a a two-week commitment but with some flexibility within that yeah i mean i would i would say that um you know it's it's kind of like also like when a kid says well i'm i don't feel well i don't want to go to school to spread anything but can i just like pop in for the day
240there's enough work posted asynchronously especially at the middle school in the high school level where they can keep working you know kind of on their own schedule or health plan how they feel that day that it's not um they won't get that behind and like dan says when when students go in the past when they would go there there's a paper they had to get a teacher to sign it and say this is the work and this is what you have to do and we were really flexible we were flexible with it but people at least had a plan and understood what was happening um and now i think it's just gotten a little bit um you know too flowing if you will i don't mind you know the the commitment and i certainly think
241a notice period is perfectly reasonable um you know i think as long as we can build in some some of the flexibility that you all are talking about you know with parents that are organized and and thoughtful about this because you know what i'd like to just point out i'm sure you know when we're all down in the weeds dealing with this you know covet and all the schooling scenarios and all the things that we're dealing with every day we kind of lose a little bit of track of you know for a lot of these kids you know they've lost their sports season you know they've lost their high school prom they've lost you know hanging out with their friends they've lost you know kindergarten class you know the excitement of your first friends you
242know those first few months you know these there's just been a lot of memorial day fair i mean there's just so many things that these these kids in this community have lost and i think parents are striving and struggling to come up with things that are special for their family or things that can bring some kind of hope and joy or maybe maybe it's the opposite maybe it's a sick relative or people that have been confined to their home for months and now they've been vaccinated you can go visit grandma and grandpa and so i just i think we should take advantage of what we've learned from the technology and you know allow in appropriate circumstances you know families to take advantage of the unique times that we're in and do what's right for themselves
243and not stand like to taffy's point not stand in the way not not be a wall to education but be a partner if if it makes sense for everybody and with notice and a reasonable commitment it's not harming and it's not an administrative burden then you know i i think that would be fine well it makes me think when dan said how we um treated vacations non-coveted it's kind of i'm thinking along those lines it's the same thing one of the things i'm conscious of is these college visits i certainly wouldn't want to penalize someone because they wanted to go somewhere to look at colleges for three or four days we allowed it in the in the best of times you know and to at least have that flexible i think we just need to
244to be a little bit better informed and and kind of put up some guidelines around it it would be helpful it would be a win-win for all of us because the reality is is that these kids now especially the older ones that are going to be getting vaccinated they got to make a decision where they're going to go to school and some of them haven't even seen any of these places so i agree so are you saying melissa and lisa and dan and everyone that if for example they wanted to take three days off and go visit colleges or if they wanted to extend spring break for example for an extra three to four days or whatever it be that maybe they would not be allowed in vdl and would just get some assignments and
245work you know to do as you would if you were missing three days or that we should also or or both and i'm not i'm not an administrator but my the point i was trying to make i think if maybe i wasn't clear was that i think in the appropriate circumstances an exception would be made if the if the policy is you know two weeks as you're proposing that in appropriate circumstances you would make exceptions to that so that you know people could vdl and remote in um as as necessary i mean i that i think that would be well i think there are circumstances where that would be again again the roll call issue is the problem but again you have a notice requirement i mean you you'd have a 24 or 48 hour
246notice requirement i think this discussion is is an area where the technology has created this issue because prior to this if a senior was going to go on college visits a senior would go on college visits and they would immerse themselves in the experience of being on that college visit and that's really what that senior should be doing is immersing themselves because they're making a very big decision now because of this zoom ability oh well you can still go to school the kids shouldn't be in school the kids should be focusing on learning you know about the community that they're looking to be a part of melissa to your point about if there's a grandparent who's now been vaccinated and the kids can go visit their grandparents that is a very special moment and before
247covet parents would not even think twice they're going to take their child to go see their grandparents that they haven't had a chance to hug in a year and they are going to be there with their grandparent and they're they're just going to do some homework in the evenings and turn it in and come i guess but what about the kids that are in bed and don't want to get dressed and come to school that's a different story taffy and that's where and i think some of this is our administrators are looking for a little guidance to help be able to decipher what's what because the kid who's hiding in their bed and not going to school is one of our students who needs the support of the appropriate staff in our building to work
248with their family to come in that's a different scenario i guess i think this thing about like if parents want to travel travel people your kids are only young once but you know what travel with them and be with them and let them enjoy the experience they can catch up on school work i i just feel like that this idea of oh my god there's a zoom class they don't have to miss school you know what parents have made these decisions for years about these experiences they want to give their children without having them go to school it's okay to miss school but i just i i i'm with you on that to a degree it's okay to miss school i mean there's an absent absenteeism problem that we have to think about but i
249agree on the sentiments what i heard at the very beginning of this discussion which i think is a logistics issue and this is how does the teacher let in students who are not signed up for vdl or not let them in right it's that whole kind of who's on who's scheduled to be here in person and who isn't and how do i manage that yeah and taffy i think i think the only practical way of managing that is put a reasonable period on this that not a month that's that's less right yeah and that will be somewhat of a disincentive hopefully for that yeah so i let me i i've heard some guidelines here from the board because the board you don't want to design this because we'd be here at one time because again
250this came out believe it or not this was seven eight weeks worth of listening and and four weeks is too much but it was a disincentive move to say that's going to take care of a lot of explaining and eight districts around is who i talked to today with very neutral questions said yeah it's a problem we don't know how to fix it let us know what you figure out and a few boards are about the grapple that's not too far from us i would suggest the following what i have clearly heard is honor flexibility honor choice take advantage of the technology um and it might be two weeks maybe it'll be a little bit less but i think let the principles with me come kind of refine this way down to something reasonable that
251honors flexibility honors choice um and in there because really what it's about it's these couple day ins and outs that are the kicker i mean that's what's really doing this that's the problem and and i think we can come up with an approach here um and if you know if just so the again board you don't want to get pulled into trying to figure this out but i'm happy to report back through the officers as to what we come up with share it around before it goes back out but but i think that's what i mean i've heard some very clear guidelines the feedback last week took it to heart and and thus having this conversation uh but i guess i don't know if the principles have hurt enough now for us to go back
252figure this out and then let the i think the officer board here see it so you feel comfortable again i don't want to create a precedent where every management moment goes to the officers i think this one's big i want you to get a chance to see it and hear about it yeah no i think that's that's fine bill i think you've heard um i think you've heard the board members i think your your approach is perfectly reasonable okay so we'll proceed that way um okay um so a couple of topics before we move to to policy items uh ken you're going to talk about substitutes uh given that we had an incident last week which resulted in uh just a shortage of substitutes so i guess the board had questions about just the whole
253substitute uh i wouldn't say policy but just how how we go uh how we go about uh just aligning our substitutes and then the second issue was uh answer to ruby's questions about uh assessments okay sure yeah perfectly reasonable question about our substitute program and as a backdrop um we've posted the program as a whole from the question and answer session with the um the budget process of how we handle addressing our needs for substitutes so with that in mind just a little history um you know last year 2019 20 we had um 53 people who were in our subpool and when it came time for this year the pandemic we just about lost completely that sub pool you know people who just were not comfortable being a part of you know the system teaching
254in the pandemic and so we really had to rebuild our sub pool this past summer and fall and uh and we did that i mean it's not it's it's not to that same level it was very difficult um we had 39 applications that we um you know worked through with people who are interested based on our advertising based on you know casting our nets uh and this is after you know having had to fill a lot of long-term subpositions leave positions as you know um when we started the year but but even out of those um you know 39 applications um you know with people who ultimately followed through um you know we ended up hiring 21 of those um of those 21 10 took another position or moved um and then you know we
255had another uh eight that didn't really respond uh once we had the application we wanted to interview followed up they just would not go further so all in all what we ended up with at this point in time is 17 daily substitutes that we have working in the district this year and i would say 11 of those are from the new pool and six are people from last year who had been with us um and working with us and i will say we were very fortunate a parent in town worked very closely with jen ryan to help us put together the pool that we actually have at the moment so you know we really appreciated that and i know jen continues to access that resource and uh continues to advertise but when we come to
256the current situation uh you know this past um well last week uh at hurlbut uh laura had um you know by that friday and made a decision that we were you know looking like we're we're able to open on monday the data we had available to us was that we had uh 19 people who are going to be out at herbert and and that's a really big number that's right on that threshold there but um you know laura was going to scramble and as we've done this year um you know we've done things like pulling you know paras uh now we have greater flexibility with with our substitutes or with paras because they don't have to have a college degree in order to use them as subs but then by sunday afternoon um laura and
257i just you know our administrators kind of look in over the weekend and look to see what their absences are jen ryan as well and uh they give me updates and by sunday afternoon that number 19 was up to 25. now 25 people uh out it was just a tip that was just the tipping point and that was just you know when we look at herbert when we look across the district come monday that number at herbert rose to 27 overnight and across the district we had another number of uh people out 26 between the other other buildings so we had you know over 50 people out and you know the ability to uh to shift and to move people around try to keep those first and second grades in on those days just became
258untenable uh even with our even with you know um you know we would certainly like our our sub pool to be to be broader than it is it's just it's one of the challenges across the state we have a very difficult time like other districts maintaining a large sub pool so that's um and i know laura sent a very detailed follow-up email which hopefully was was helpful uh too many and understanding why we made the decision uh we had um one reflection point that we had was you know at the time we made the announcement maybe saying you know more detailed explanation would be coming the following day uh that was a good um you know i think learning uh point for us and and uh but anyway i know that you wanted to get
259that information on subs and you know we respond to your questions uh that you may still have um i i have a question so knowing that our subpool was 53 substitutes last year and you said then going into this year out of the 39 applications we only hired 21 so we're already starting lower than last year and we know that we're in a pandemic year what what else did we do to get creative here to try to to increase our total on hand substitutes lisa um you know recent senior grads that that you know were still in the area that that took a sabbatical year because of the pandemic um sharing substitutes with westport or with wilton like what other creative measures did we do i would say we weren't we were we were doomed
260from the beginning ken i mean the fact that we only had 21 on staff versus last year's 53 and we're in march now like what have we done from from september to to increase our total on hand which by the way needs to continue happening tomorrow because we've got the teachers going in for a second dose and that second dose we know that there are side effects to the second dose which means or should parents expect remote days following second dose for from teachers well let me let just on that ruby we've been saying from the get-go the westport schools eastern writing and weston all agreed across superintendents so the first communication went out that on the second dose because we want to get as many done as fast as possible we may face that
261that's why it's no accident that the first second dose is on the thursday before good friday and that's and then the next group we're hoping will be as late in the week as thursday and we'll do a very specific count to know how many of our teachers will be in that on what would be the 8th of april i'm looking at my calendar and so we're going to plan ahead on that exact issue i will say i appreciate the creativity every district around us in august september knew they had a shortage of subs it's a statewide issue so i can let ken speak to that to the in other in the principles but uh it's creative for sure wilton wouldn't have had a resource westport whenever because they all had the same shortage and and
262you know a lot of districts have had to go into remote because of staffing issues and it's just anyway but i guess i'm looking for like where i i'm just not seeing the creativity bill and this is this is where i'm i i social media post like how many moms here in this town that are educated moms that are willing to help not once did i see a social media post of of us trying to get creative to recruit more substitutes i guess that's what i keep asking for is again we already started off in a bad position versus last year so all of these you know creative ideas should have been happening from day one i had a mom candidly i had a mom in our district who said she applied and never heard
263back she went through the interview process and never heard back um and and i heard from two other women that on social media once that went live so it's you know it's well i mean certainly send them send them uh you know to us and i mean we certainly that would be an exception we followed up on uh just about any person who was interested and i think one of the really creative solutions and partnerships was jen working with a parent in the community that was extremely helpful uh we broadened all of the recruitment strategies and places that we post job boards and we looked at outside agencies as a possibility as well so we explored that but i mean we frankly got to a point where we could not safely run a building even
264if you're bringing in these other substitutes you have people who may not necessarily know our system may not be able to work with six and seven year olds because it does take a you know certain uh person to work you know at herbert and work that age group developmentally so i mean we were the number was just so dramatic that we could not deal with that at this point yes we need more subs yes you know i think a good strategy is some social media and maybe maybe an outreach directly to all our families i think that's something we certainly um you know reflecting on this experience we can do and bring more uh attention to that with our community um but you know i mean there's there's a point where we just you know
265sometimes these things happen and we had to make a decision to go remote um you know we we obviously didn't want to do that but um you know it's just the circumstance and we had to make that call and i think it was still the right call any other questions or comments for ken or bill i i i do want to talk for next year this this is some listen boards are not supposed to get involved from an operational perspective but this is this is an area where needs it it needs it's in triage right it needs it it's in it's in turn around mode and this is where i i don't feel comfortable as a board member that it's being managed and so this is an area tony where next year i'm going to
266want to know about how many applications of you know substitutes do we have on staff how many do we interviewed i don't think we should be getting involved at that level of detail boards don't but you know when again when you're just looking at the math last year we had 53 this year we had 21. i'm not seeing the creatives here on how to get unhappy we need to be fact based here you need to go then we every single district around us face this issue we looked at all the creative options statewide commissioner cardona when commissioner said let's look at those just in their senior year of college as a substitute option i can tell you that none of the districts around here in southern fairfield county everywhere from bridgeport through new canaan through
267darien through greenwich none of us adopted that because these would not they're not ready to come into the classrooms and run them in safe ways that are appropriate uh you heard ken say that very creative moves with a parent that generated about i think about 20 subs so we were very creative in reaching out there was no social media post you could have doubled that you could have tripled that with the social media that's a different issue if going forward the district wants to use social media for posting but gen and others were very creative in getting to people you have to interview them you have to review them because you need to make sure that the people in that classroom the teachers of record meet certain criterion standards for the safety and well-being of
268our students and so we were very creative on all the rest so i just would urge in the future that we can talk in general about that give you updates but i would urge the board not to get into that level of management because a lot of work was done and a lot of care went into this but i can assure you every single district around us face these issues last week new canaan had grades in remote teams in remote westport er9 their high school is out due to lack of staffing it's been going on all around us and unfortunately for us it only hit last week and let's remember laura through her great creative work had pre-k and kn in the midst of all that shortages which was great absolutely you know absolutely i
269i just think that this is an area that going forward we just need to build confidence in that it's being managed that's all i i think it yeah you know bill it it it really stemmed from two separate separate issues which highlighted the the substitute sausage shortage i think um i think the thing that probably brought it to the forefront was the fact that no one really understood exactly why we we were we went to remote and i think when people understood it then the conversation kind of went to well why do we have a a substitute shortage and i think that the board understands why but i think to ruby's point um a if we're finding that substitutes are going to be hard to find we should you know we should talk about having
270a more uh you know more kind of offensive posture and and have outreach um if we're finding that that's that's something that um is going to be a vulnerability in the future let me be clear we had outreach we reached out and and the reality is where i would you know from the broad parameters of who needs to be in your classrooms to assure that they're legally appropriate safe and secure we were very creative and and looked at that so i think no no i don't need outreach in the sense of outreach outreach because there's a specific crisis i meant if is there going to be you know do we need to have a more and believe me this is not something the board really wants to get involved in but do we need to
271have a more systematic permanent approach to for for outreach if substitutes are going to be uh an issue in the future that that's really yeah and i i would have i would add uh this would have not been clear because that was what was going on and like every district around us because you had the every district around us saw their pool go like this because people did not want to come into the schools and work so then we were all saying how do we creatively within the limits of the law how do we creatively bring that pool back up and so ken jen and others were scouring that the superintendents were all talking about it said hey how do we get that pool back up and fortunately weston we only hit that that we
272only hit that wall last week we hit that after seven eight nine months of this we hit that wall last week and and and and it was until then and that was through great creative work to avoid it up until that point and the other fact that went on here is in that group uh that you had the first vaccination group incredible excitement i'm going to get vaccinated caught up in that group that couldn't get vaccinated where a few teachers and then that affected the concern of i come in i may get exposed and i'm going to lose my opportunity for the quick vaccination it was a perfect storm so i just want you all to be clear despite all that work we hit this moment and there was all this stuff adding up and
273but the fact that and i don't want to lose sight that incredible creativity laura worked all that weekend knowing she had 19 down on friday then suddenly it's 25 26 on sunday she looks across the district we find out we're down another 25 or 26 so we can't redeploy we've been redeploying perry's and others all year long she's that at that point she goes i can at least get pre-k and k in but let's use the remote first and second because they're not in but at least they're having via remote not person but they're going to have a quality educational experience instead of someone in that room who's just tending time none of us want people in front of the students that are just tending time and laura laura made laura made the decision she
274had to make and she made a good one if you had to go remote it's it the question isn't about whether or not laura made the right decision in that moment it's about how come the how come there wasn't you know enough it's the infrastructure to support the principles it's the it's the it's the it's the support that laura needed that i'm i'm and the communication to the to the population all right um i'm not sure this is i go ahead go ahead victor oh sorry tony uh just one quick point i i think to the sentiment around this discussion i ran across a a referral for regional director for a staffing agency specifically on substitute teachers and that i passed on and there just didn't seem to be that much interest in following up
275on that so i i think there are other opportunities to do so victor we followed up on that we dug into that it was very helpful to send it along and jen and you know they looked into that some things produced for us others don't we definitely looked into it every option that comes before us we're exploring it so we did look into that yes that's not what came across in the response in the email but anyway i trust you did all right um i don't think there's a decision point that has to be made here i think i think uh some points were made that that i i don't think there's immediate follow-up on here but i i i think it's probably gonna um probably going to be other discussions around um around substitutes
276um you know as we get into next year but but i'm not sure there's there's any decisions here to be made um so ken do you want to just give a brief update on assessments sure i think in the context of the schooling scenarios and that you know we have been uh this year obviously in the pandemic parents are um you know just kind of wondering how's their child doing and you know their classroom teachers at the k5 level have this uh great opportunity this week to engage with families with our parent conferences um at the curriculum committee we gave an update that you know right now at this point in the in the school year uh you know we're starting to get a sense of um you know where we are uh we know
277there's there's there's been a lag in math progress with with some students we know that even in reading we have students through our data teams that have been identified across the district that need additional support and intervention services and at these you know upcoming conferences uh it's really important for um you know parents and teachers uh you know to be clear on you know how their you know how the child is doing and what we're doing to support that child so we do have kids who are receiving those intervention services uh we know you know where they are in terms of their reading levels in terms of fountains and pinellas we've done that assessment work and so um you know those those are really good opportunities uh for teachers and families uh to make sure
278that students continue to to grow and progress and uh just adding on to that uh the the brief gauging progress report we gave at the curriculum committee we also talked about providing supports in the summer through a summer academy we are getting some interest from teachers i do have an informational session from some of our staff that's being held on wednesday so it's looking like we're going to be able to offer some summer opportunities to help students maintain their gains and also continue to grow for those who uh you know really need that the most and you know we're going to be providing a more detailed annual instructional update and i encourage um you know families to to look at our periodic uh engaging progress updates but also that annual instructional update will give a
279sense as a district but i think parents overall really looking at where is their child and uh in these parent conferences this will be a great opportunity to see where how kids are doing um uh when they come to this ken ken quick question when when do you expect to have kind of the you know what i what i would envision is having a comprehensive view of the data at some point to assess in reality exactly where you know in aggregate you know uh you know what the impact of this year was on on progress right um and and then what are some of the corrective measures that we're going to be putting in place um in the future um when do we you know how does that you know when can we expect that
280yeah and i think it's in stages tony because the full picture won't really be here until the fall because you think about it we have upcoming spring assessments uh we have standardized testing in uh reading math science we have ap we have um uh you know going into the end of our year we will do a spring map assessment um across the district and so you're going to get at the annual instructional update a fuller picture than what we provided at a curriculum committee meeting across all of our subject areas and what those interventions are you'll get a really good sense there but then confirming and and adding to that picture will be you know over the summer and in the early fall uh as well and we'll see where kids are but i i
281should say tan at the curriculum meeting and this is to answer tony's question we have already seen um uh learning loss we've seen a difference between last year and this year and ken and and the team all acknowledged that we are seeing it and um and then we moved on to uh how to how to mitigate those losses and part of it was around the um the summer academy was probably the most substantive um uh uh option to um to offer and there was some question and i'm gonna you know just say it kids i know you're addressing it but there was some question about again how to find teachers to actually um populate and teach at that summer academy and we challenged you know the administration to really start getting creative right now about
282finding those warm bodies um to do that so that this doesn't become sort of an online you know supplementary thing in the summer that's not we don't need more online than anything so we've we've sort of pushed a little bit and i think ken and the team heard us and i think that the data we already have is really um telling and that it's probably going to tell more in may and more in the fall but we're not waiting to fall to the fall how much data do you have by the end of the school year to drive um you know the work in developing curriculum for for for next year right i mean um i guess you you will have a limited amount of data i mean it'll directionally tell you where things are
283but i'm not sure you're going to have all the data right and i think and i think we need a presentation on all of this at the next uh board meeting yeah i was so just to be clear i was so passionate to talk about it tonight two reasons one it's something that the parent the spirit of transparency it's something that the parents have been asking for since day one how are we measuring progress how are we stacking up and this is actually i would assume a lot of the data is probably happening across other districts too but the second reason i wanted to bring this up and really because i'm in the lower school school world is there so much parent support that's needed for these little ones that by highlighting the data and
284the tests that have already been administered i.e the map and the fontes and pinell it allows the parents to ask the right questions this week during conferences you know if we can get the parents involved now in helping with the reading and math we are just going to be that much further along so that was my passion around why i wanted it to be discussed tonight and and ken if so if we can actually just put the gauging progress update in cabe just so that people can reference it against um this meeting tonight that would be that would be helpful too it's it's there um oh great thank you planned it as i said early landed in the curriculum committee line is where it is but um taffy to your point yes um we've got
285some learning lags we've got some gaps we have wrapped our arms around those kids where we've seen significant gaps with intervention it's just we don't have multiple measures right now we have a few we have we have narrow measures we don't we also only are looking at reading and math with this with this current uh update we know there's obviously broader skills science writing so forth which we i i think it's worth an agenda item for the next meeting to actually go through whatever we have in some detail absolutely and then ken in curriculum we talked a little bit about the need to try to get information out to our families just because you know particularly our younger kids you know families are scrambling to sign these kids up for camp and then they've spent
286you know hundreds of dollars and then all of a sudden you know summer academy is going on and they can't get their money back like i know that it is a beast to put together but the more information our families have in a very timely manner so that they can organize themselves and you know and again to my point you know you were talking this might be a half day thing like trying to collaborate with other town agencies so we can have a full day offering that you know working families can utilize i i know you've got a big task but like we've got to let our families know um even some preliminary ideas preliminary dates like i we're really running out of time for our families to be able to plan for their summers
287and gina made a really good suggestion in the curriculum meeting like you know if parks and rec is offering an afternoon of activities can't we connect and do the morning of activities so that parents have an entire day where their kids are are engaged and you know and they can catch up as well like just partner with the town agencies to do this i think it was a great idea gina thank you i'm just worried about time i mean you know particularly working families and even you know families where there's a stay-at-home parent they want their children to have a fun summer they're trying to organize things i just you know i feel we could lose people because we're not have you connected yet with parks and rec ken where did you were you able
288to reach them not not on this issue i'm working uh we've been working with the teachers to try to get our pool squared away there but yes once i have a sense of the schedule with teachers uh then then we can coordinate with uh with the town and um you know i anticipate that this week yeah so i mean okay just so you know i mean ken has updated me on that and he's got it as a big priority i think what what he's looking at and he's talked with others is you want to make sure you've got the quality people working in the summer moments with with the students so can that be our teachers you know and and if not then how do we make that happen because again you want to have
289quality people quality educators working with students for that summer experience and so moving fast to get that quality lined up and and it's a brand new type of thing some of our teachers are saying they may not want to be in school this summer but but you know i can assure you we've heard this directly and are working on it but again it's quality you want to help students address where they are with with quality educators [Music] great thanks thanks ken um can i not move on can i ask a question sure go ahead um so one of the things that i we didn't really talk about and i think we need to is this issue what i'll call executive function study skills so when i heard that curriculum presentation it seemed like across the
290grades all of that and i'm sort of grouping it all together was an issue so is there a way i mean i know you have a sort of study skills groups at the middle school um is there a way to broaden that is there a way to you know think about adding you know some time management study skills programs into the curriculum um since you saw that as an issue you know that that executive functioning study skills that's all really important and i think at various levels we have supports to do that um i mean something we can take a look at i think we could talk more in the next update um you know i think as a group we can we can come back and and uh you know look at that more
291fully but you know i know dan has an ost program at the middle school we've got case at the high school um there are other supports um you know for for students with with uh with special needs um so so we can we could talk about that um i i don't think you're suggesting you're looking more at curriculum not necessarily in the summer though right well i'm thinking about it as like um like a study skills class or an after school or i mean there's certain you know it seemed like that was a loss across the board was was all of that was time management was planning out your your if you have a project due in a week um like that's what i heard so i'm just thinking of a way to address that
292though i don't want to ignore that thank you we'll think about that thank you that's it that's all i have okay um let's move to the uh we have two we have uh two items under policy that we need to review bill right melissa if you want to run through those sure i just see the coaching one is there a second one hold it hold on it's just the first reading on the um oh i'm sorry yes you're right the other was recognitions and celebrations discussion it wasn't under policy yeah just one yeah yeah no problem this is a very um simple policy it's attached and cave for you to look at it's a first reading so it'll be up again if anyone takes a look at it and has any questions we talked about
293it at the policy committee it's it it's just the retention and evaluation and hiring and of athletic coaches and assistant coaches and how that operates um we did send it to mark berkowitz for his his thoughts as well and he agreed with the policy ultimately at the committee level we decided to leave that ultimate authority with those decisions with the superintendent um it just seemed like it was a smoother and more clean way of handling what could be challenging decisions and wanting to have a little bit of distance from coach to assistant coach that sort of thing so i'm happy to answer any questions if you have them okay well since it's just a first read there's no motion melissa i was trying to sorry i was trying to find the paragraph um it uh
294it talks about under evaluations um it says as directed by the superintendent of schools or his his or her designee so we're just using that as like standard language to give flexibility to the district but the athletic director is still going to be reporting to the president to the high school principal because when i the first time i read it i was like wait a minute we're now making having it and i was like no and then i went back and read it i was like i just wanted to clarify that that's just our standard having flexibility language it's just flexi there's no change to the operational structure thank you sure okay um the last item on the agenda um [Music] which i've been looking forward to all evening is recognitions and discussion on celebrations
295this should be all we talk about right just wanted to at least plant the thought with the boar we may have to come back to it at the next meeting is i mean and you'll be talking about at some point tony how you meet once we're all back in how you choose to do that as a board uh we had a whole process for celebrating twice a year uh we still know that large groupings are probably not going to be allowed this school year in any way today the principles and i will begin to talk about end of year possibilities but it's just to plant with the board the thought that you know we're trying to think about how to celebrate and honor particularly our students and in the past we had moved that to
296not every meeting but to twice a year how you do that in a zoom format for large numbers is very difficult so just wanted to plant the thought don't have to resolve it here just let you know we're thinking about you might have some ideas but just how do we celebrate this year um you know all those students in the past we've celebrated for their different accomplishments and let me just be then really clear we've had a policy and a little more procedure that any student recognition that is at the regional or state level and beyond has warranted a special call out and moment at the board of ed and it and it's something that's somehow been part of their experience here uh at the at the school so as great as an individual chess
297player may be if on their own they've gone off to be a great chess player but that's not through the district that's not been recognized but if they're in any of our math competitions our athletic programs our music or theater arts and have received a recognition at the regional level or higher we that we then honor them but all that's been on hold so we're just we don't want to get to this year without finding a way to to honor them let's do it yeah i mean there's no question here either we do a little bit in the next three board meetings you know a certain amount of kids in the next three board meetings or we have a special board meeting to do it the only problem with a special board meeting to do
298it is we don't have much public joining you know what i mean um how much of the public is still on right now do you think yeah exactly i i think um yeah i you know here's probably it's probably most efficient to do a special meeting on recognitions and awards can i make a suggestion tony what if the pto helps us here organizing a special meeting because they have such a close connection with families to say what if they you know do our kind of advertising on this one you know what i mean put out that this is a special a special meeting yeah i think well i think the parents will assume i mean if it's a special meeting recognizing their child i suspect the parents will be zooming in yeah i'm talking about
299i don't know i'm just talking yeah anyway yeah but absolutely it should we definitely should advertise it that's for sure the the in-person ones you not surprisingly you tend to have the families of those students honored who would be there so you know if you had 50 honored you'd get or more if you had 10 you'd do the math so what i hear is you're saying yes we want to find a way even in a zoom format uh to be honoring those who are recognized so we i can take that back to the drawing board my next meeting with the pto presidents i can ask them if that's something they want to point you've got a communications committee meeting that's coming up this thursday uh we could add that to the agenda if that's a
300natural committee to grapple with this too because this is a great communications opportunity so we can go back and begin working on it uh meredith can begin reaching out to the principals and the other program directors for who's been getting recognitions what the numbers are so we can begin planning it sure and maybe you know since it's it's it's virtual you know maybe like the the student captains or something can submit some pictures or something that would be liven it up a little bit maybe since we're not going to be in person yeah could zoom in too a slideshow you know uh i love that we just just want to make sure we don't get too close to lisa's big end-of-year awards ceremony right um fair enough yeah we'll we'll they'll be deep in the
301coordination so don't worry yeah we started planning actually for that and figuring out how we are going to do it um so yeah we can figure it out that's a no-brainer let's do it thank you okay so i have the direction needed and we'll be coming back to you with updates and and ideas great uh anything on you uh anything in the supers report bill uh well it's really more at the end of this meeting we do want to just confirm that we we we would like to modify the april meeting date yes out of the 19th that was a frankly a mistake we let that sit there that's the monday after spring break and we never put a board meeting right after a vacation right i don't think you need to vote on this
302maybe gina since you seem to be the one who's sort of the key keeper of knowledge here i think we can just shift it it may still be a special meeting but we can still shift it to the 26th yeah posted as that that was the main part of my report because we've i knew we were going to have covered a lot of ground tonight any uh yeah it'll just by shifting the date it will become a special meeting so we will have no flexibility to adjust the agenda that night so just be uber careful with the posting yeah yeah well i'll work with meredith on that to get that fine-tuned and get it to tony one ahead of time so we get everything into what we want okay anything uh anything from the uh
303committee chairs bedtime yes covered a lot of ground tonight if anybody's interested in joining us uh fincom is uh march 26th we shifted it later in the month to give film more time for more accurate more complete information so if you want to join us march 26th great um yeah we covered a lot of ground tonight thank you everyone uh hanging in there thank you all right uh can i have a motion to adjourn so moved second thanks melissa