001all right everyone we're live great uh we have a quorum um i'd like to uh call this board meeting to order it's 603 we have um this is our monthly board meeting of the board of education um let's start with 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 thank you we don't have a a long agenda this evening but i'm sure we're gonna be at this for a while anyway um let's uh to prove the minutes uh can we have a motion one of the board members hold on i think we're having a technical issue hang on one second okay hold on yeah we have uh three separate sets
002of minutes to approve this evening okay everybody you should be able to unmute yourselves now there we go okay uh okay first order of business we're going to approve the minutes we have three separate sets of minutes to approve uh can i have a motion sure move that the western board of education approved the minutes from the august 12 2020 special meeting the december 21st 2020 regular meeting and the january 7th 2021 budget presentation meeting for fiscal year 22. can i have a second second uh thanks victor uh any discussion comments or edits to the minutes no no all in favor hi ruby hi victor taffy um seems like uh there are people who can't get off of mute uh dan okay hang on just raise your hands all opposed okay motion passes unanimously um
003june do we have public comment yes okay how many do we have done we have one okay um there's a three minute limit to public comment so um but go ahead okay i'm great jean of six winthrop hill um one year ago boe chairman pascoe concluded his board's 21 2021 budget work with a solemn warning to senior administrators and his boe colleagues that in the absence of structural change to both budget process and district operations boe risked repeating the missed opportunity and exasperation that defined the last budget cycle while the implementation of digital learning can certainly be considered a significant accomplishment the westin boe has yet to produce even a single anticipated structural improvement including multi-year budget projection modeling measurable quantified goal setting accountable budget assumptions bottoms up zero based budgeting strategic administrative service and
004cost sharing instead of working on strategic improvements the boe is devoted to scarce budget workshop time again this cycle to such essential analysis as modeling clay buildup in the art room sink drain we would not have believed it possible but the boe budget work not only did not advance this past year it appears to be risking regression in the interim freedom of information records indicate that some of the largest annual service contracts such as cleaning janitorial and out-of-district transportation may not have been objectively scored per district sourcing guidelines prior to contract award as a result the boe cannot reliably assure taxpayers of and the board of finance that most cost-effective contracts are in place freedom of information records also revealed that options for district health insurance another major driver of admiral cost increase have yet
005to be fully researched and vetted for most cost-effective alternative despite that necessary administrative groundwork has already been completed freedom of information records also reveal that current enrollment which is officially projected to drop dozens to hundreds of students more in the coming years is already less than peak aggregate enrollment in any combination of the three of the four district school facilities as a result the boe chairman's frequent claims that closing the excess school would require a minimum of three to five years of confounding or our confounding when westport indefinitely closed coleytown middle school in less than a week despite the significance of these freedoms of information revelations the boe and superintendent have failed to produce some of the most critical records against long pending requests now as old as 15 months colbit related considerations notwithstanding while
006the boe and central maine office remain hopelessly lost in the line item minutia again this year time has run out for every western student the best service students the boe must immediately refocus their budget work on the strategic cost and educational opportunities which they have aspired to including health insurance service contracts and sharing opportunities and facility consolidation among others thank you that was the only comment put forth all right thank you and uh we we always thank the public for their comments suggestions um we listened to every one of them including uh uh emails that we received from the public thank you um are our student reps on this evening [Music] i don't see them on tony i think that's an oversight on my part oh okay i uh i i i think i did
007not send them the uh the email invitation i'll double check the calendar right now okay um that's fine you know if they're not on we'll we'll have them you know they're they'll be back uh next month um they can always um send an update email to the board a short one if they feel that there's things that um the board should be updated on as well if she reaches them if she reaches them tonight can they join us while we're in session or no sure we can make a motion to uh include them in uh in another part of the agenda um it's not it's not critical at that you know i know i don't want to put them on the spot for them i just contacted one of the presidents and um let me
008ask she said yeah they were not invited just a minute i'll say okay i looked at the invitation they are on the invitation but uh i guess they don't have an updated uh reminder that's fine i mean it's always great to hear from them if they're not here this month though i'm sure um we'll hear from them next month um okay um let's move to new business uh bill uh schooling scenarios uh sure i'm gonna start in a little bit but then do a handoff quickly to uh ken and dan and lisa for sure i think kim koos may be on the on the call here patty's here um i was unable to be at the task force meeting today i apologize for that uh but i think ken and and others stepped in very
009well but let me give a framework here and then in terms of any of the recent discussions that happened this afternoon the task force that can be brought forward but but here's the framework on december 22nd sent out to the entire community the intended plan for our schooling scenarios and at this point despite the increases uh in the infection rates with covet 19 uh as with most districts around us we're holding to that plant and we can get you'll get some updates uh from the principals here as to how it's been going uh with the return uh but as of uh this past uh thursday uh we in addition to elc um kindergartners had the option to come in fully um and uh we now are also looking as well as our high needs special
010ed students on this thursday the 21st uh we'll make the decision on uh whether or not our first graders have the option to come back in fully at this point uh laura and came in for me that they are ready to do that uh and uh what we're looking at in the next day or two is just any last look at any within district spread the metrics around us in the state and in this county remain high uh we had a number of uh more we had some 39 students gone quarantined today based on one or two uh cases of exposure up at the middle school in high school so these these are real issues for us but as most districts are doing they're trying to get more in person uh and then if there
011is uh exposure you quarantine students but we're all watching district of district were watching for internal within district spread because we want to again have as much in person as possible we've had a lot of conversations with staff leadership wta leadership they've been very clear with us about the concerns and nervousness of staff of being in school given the increases in covert 19 and now we also have the new strain coming into connecticut that we are having to track as well what we're looking at very closely and carefully is what is happening within our schools uh we see that schools are still healthy safe places to be that the work to keep the mitigating factors has been very very strong in western so we're encouraged to gradually bring back that option for families to be
012in person so again right now i would say that's quite likely on the 21st we will decide i will decide that the first graders will have that option to come back in we then will shift to thinking about for that early february date whether the second through fifth graders would also have that option to come in fully second to fifth grade we'll be talking a fair amount about this but we will be in a tighter social distance situation we'll be in rooms that are are more uh more full if you will this will track though where most districts around us are that have had students come back final comment on all this before i talk about vaccinations is some might scratch their heads as to with the rates where they are how can you do
013this when in september october november it might have been very different and i think we all should know we all should know we're learning day by day how to work with live with and manage covert 19 and so that's why here we are on this date in january with a more in-person approach with the infection rates where they are relative to where we would have been go all the way back to last march one or two cases led us to the governor to shut down all the schooling we've learned a lot more uh about about this situation and and i want to assure everyone both particularly the board and anyone through the tapes or whatever listening that health and safety remains our first priority and that's what we're going to work towards balancing that with
014the need for more in person let me just do a bit on vaccinations um i've been sharing out with the staff where we are in vaccinations we should all be enthused and multiple vaccines are going to be available it is moving slowly in connecticut we've had to over the weekend i had to forward on a note from the state to all staff to say that you need to wait for your vaccination even though you are registered to get a vaccination you need to wait per the state right now saying when over is first in line while we're in this phase called 1b in 1d age over 75 first they then are going to talk about anyone 65 and over then essential workers which will include teachers and educators there's some estimate now this could be
015four or five months away before educators are able to get get scheduled for a vaccine uh and again the medical reasons for this should be cleared everybody uh that the incident rate uh the tragic incident rate for people over 75 that infection leading to a tragic outcome is far greater and that is why the state has prioritized that order final on the vaccination basic math um as of this week 44 000 doses of the vaccine coming to connecticut each week within the 1b group they're over a million people 44 000 per week coming in doses relative to over 1 million people including educators including all over 75 who need to be vaccinated so we're optimistic we're positive we're hopeful we all should be that way in western and beyond but we also have to be
016realists as to how soon the vaccine will be a factor for us in our in our schooling scenarios let me stop um i hope that overview on a couple key pieces was helpful i then really would turn it to ken the principals uh to talk about how things are going and if you will springboard out of this afternoon's meeting in terms of any key things to bring here to the full board and then we'll open up for questions of course thanks bill good evening everyone and i just wanted to briefly before a little louder ken we can't hear you you can't hear me okay can you hear me now just a little louder if you can okay uh so good evening everyone i wanted to just briefly i feel like i'm yelling here now but
017anyway um uh so we had our task force meeting uh today and uh we had you know pretty good pretty good attendance from the group uh representatives from uh you know all different stakeholders and we did run through the plan for k-5 which uh patty uh will be able to update you on as well as we talked about where we are currently in grades six to twelve and what um we would be looking at uh going forward at the secondary level so uh we you know we really should probably just kind of center our comments around that but i think tracy edwards is obviously also here uh and can give some uh special education update because as you know at the k5 level we've had students with with special needs are able to come into
018the building and recently we have increased from pre-k uh to including our kindergarten students to a full-time status so uh we do understand from laura that that's going well with kindergarten students that um that bodes well for us bringing on uh first grade as planned on the 25th with a decision to be made in the next couple of days but that but that's the plan and uh patty can give us a fuller update with regards to uh to that so patty do you want to just uh talk about the k5 and how we're on target for for that at this point um sure i can speak a little bit about hurlbut i mean laura isn't not here this evening but um i know that she's kindergarten is going really well she said and they're really
019uh looking forward to bringing in the first grade uh and being able to um you know really being able to socially distance and uh work with our the first graders because it's a smaller class sizes and the classrooms are a little bit bigger um as we move toward you know moving to the second and the fifth grade um one of the things that we we're both um having to work through is really making sure that we're really vigilant about the socially distancing as much as we possibly can um particularly when it comes to times when students have their masks off so lunch times and um and mask breaks and and even moving around around the school and just making sure that they keep the students are staying apart um i know uh she has about
020i guess 60 something students right now who are bdl i have close to about 120 students who are bdl students so about almost 25 of my student body is distance learners currently a lot of them have a lot of the parents who have reached out have mentioned that they will be staying on that through the end of february um just to be safe so that will reduce a little bit of our class sizes which you know should help um it's just like um the cafeteria is probably the the biggest concern and trying to make sure that we really can make sure that we keep kids safe and that they have room to move around and to eat um one of the things that laura had been doing which she no longer can do is really
021um before she was in the cafeteria um as well as the gyms to feed the students but now with the weather really need to have the gyms back for the kids um to be able to participate and to get some exercise so she'll be working on making it work in this in the classrooms as well as their cafeterias and i will be doing the same in um our building as well um uh exciting that we have new students who are enrolling both at our school and in laura school i had six new students enroll since the start uh so he came back in january and i have two more coming in and another week and i think she does too as well so um we still it's uh definitely fluid our enrollment so we're growing
022and which means that class sizes are getting bigger so most i would say at least half of my fourth and fifth grades have 23 now in every classroom which means you have more desks and so we're just going to be vigilant about making sure that we keep as far apart as we possibly can for our students i think uh any other questions or oops yeah why don't we um can you hear me now yeah why don't we have um you know dan and lisa give their updates as well and then go to five um i'll go for the middle school and it was a pleasure to join the task force uh i haven't been a regular member uh but definitely participated today and as i listened um by the time i spoke many of the
023concerns from the middle school had already been mentioned uh cheryl zulkowski our nursing supervisor talked a lot about at the secondary level we have our students moving from classroom to classroom so it's a concern what we have in place right now we know is working we know that our mitigating strategies especially the social distancing of at least six feet in the classrooms where the desks are separated um our mask wearing the mask breaks the hand washing the sanitizers the wipes all of that is working to prevent us from having in-school spread we would love to be able to get back to normal and have everybody in school um and lisa and i talked with the task force about you know setting out a timeline for a plan what that could look like but i think
024the reality is and we have to face it is that um as middle schools around us are bringing back all of their students they are not maintaining six feet of distance um and the question is are we as a district willing to give up that key mitigating strategy we know also by reviewing our test results and those who were able to attend the curriculum committee the last curriculum committee meeting of the board we know our students are growing we know that they're learning they aren't growing as fast as we would like them to and we did see when we looked at our first trimester grades that we do have students who are struggling with distance learning middle school students in particular um often struggle with the executive functioning skills time timelines time organization turning turning
025in assignments and we are looking carefully at all that information and putting supports in place so that these students get the the support they need to succeed but by and large our students are doing well um what our current schedule is giving us is consistency predictability and that's what both students and the faculty i think need to thrive so i think um you know if we're going to go to a different scenario um we really need to think long and hard about that uh so that the scenario that we put in place would take us through the end of the year uh it's a challenge to to change from one alt one alteration of the schedule to another um which does cause a problem with bringing everybody back in the challenge is how do we
026handle lunch at the middle school we only have a few areas that we can use they're currently being used with individual desks with significant spacing to allow students to take off their masks and eat we probably would have to look at our schedule and maybe lengthen the lunch periods uh so that we could flip so half could have recess while half eight i do know that that's what some of the other districts are are doing so um again i'm happy to to answer questions but i think um the the concerns the anxiety that the staff members have when they look at social media and they see the postings about travel and social gatherings it makes everybody nervous uh are we as a community doing everything we can uh to keep each other safe um that
027um just along with um you know the the rise as dr mccursey said the the rate going up the new variant of a high uh much more contagious or more easily spread uh form of the virus it does have everybody nervous and i i just i have to recognize that and note the impact that that would have as we look down the line to see when we can come back the vaccine can't get here soon enough and with that i'll either take questions or turn it over to lisa lisa do you want to sure complete the update and then we go sure i'm sorry lisa there was one thing i did want to say and that was that our current factor we are seeing 27 of our students on remote learning right now and that's
028been going up but it is very fluid and i get probably three to six emails a day about people going and coming back and forth so that's part of this too thank you dan um i will speak on to the high school and i am pleased to announce if you don't see their eager faces natalie and eva are now joining us online and i would encourage them to also share any perspectives they have on this the high school currently has 33 percent of the students out on um vdl that is the highest we had 33 when we were looking at about seven eight percent um in the fall so there is quite a high number um the majority of the students that are currently out are juniors and seniors 42 percent of the senior classes
029is out now this week um it will be interesting to see because our winter sports season started today and as you know you must be in school to participate in the sport so um we will be doing a new tally um on friday to see where that falls um so the semester point is always a key point at our high school to get student feedback and to see basically how we are doing um as far as on our academic progress this year because it has been so different on the administration actually sent out this week um a couple of brief very brief questions to teachers to respond to specifically in the order of the schedule as well as how they see the academic um progress the instruction and the pacing of the instruction going um
030you know at this point in the year um so we're in the process of gathering that information but i shared with the task force that um already 50 teachers have applause have responded saying overall in the schedule that they feel much more comfortable than they did in september it was a scale of one to five mostly everybody put four and five comfortable or very comfortable with using zoom with implementing um instructional strategies that require them to um teach students remotely and also in person so that that really speaks to the professional development and the way that we've been able to have those the wednesdays and our curricular partner time to develop the skills um then i specifically asked them to respond to courses because i know that there are um have been concerns that parents
031have voice that said that are saying you know the kids are losing instructional time how can we be sure that they are getting what they're getting um and um i'm pleased to report that again we asked specifically about um the content and specifically about the skills if they were concerned about the content and um we're in the process of gathering um as i said data from every course and right now though it indicates that um students are performing well the content has been adjusted that um that uh skills are right on track um we've also gotten some interesting feedback on things like i know people worry about what about the content in an ap course and our physics teacher shared with us um in the comment section of our questionnaire that um college board just
032eliminated three units um in ap physics specifically for the reason that remember these are national assessments and that they are very aware that across the board across the country that perhaps not all of the content um will be covered so that gives them some breathing room but but what we see right now is is that there is no grave concern that because we are in this current hybrid model um you know six classes daily dropped two which was a change from the beginning of the year that um that students are are progressing well now that doesn't mean that every student is we continuously look at um you know grades the counselors are looking at grades looking at who is going to our extended learning hour because every day the teachers complete a form that says
033the number of kids that they worked with that last hour of school and who specifically the students are so then we can go in and track if a student um is on our watch list for example um who is the student accessing and if a teacher needs to work directly and reach out to that student then that is is happening or if we see in a particular class for example that we need to push in more whether it be in the writing center or the math lab we have been trying to do that um under the direction of um christine cincotta and janine lusso and i think that that has been um really going very well so um i'm pleased with what i'm hearing about the you know with the academics the pacing and the
034comfortability of the staff and the students that doesn't mean that we don't continually look at ways to improve right now approximately 200 students every day access the extended learning hour which is 25 of the school and those are unique students um which is powerful data i would love third quarter as we progress um to get that number up higher than 25 it would be great to see that number at 40 percent so come on and if anybody is uh watching that has a high schooler tell them to log on every teacher is available that last hour um so we are monitoring things there are concerns though about as dan said um maintaining you know keeping the consistency going keeping us moving in a positive direction um we will definitely if we bring everyone in have
035to go under the six feet and i think that that's a decision that that people have to make but i i talk to my colleagues in the other schools they are the desks are less than six feet apart in the schools that they're bringing everyone back in and in one of our neighboring districts that um begins with a w they still are not there with bringing everyone in um at the high school level they are monitoring it so we will be uh getting out of communication um so parents understand that again because i know there's a lot of somewhat anxious um parents about will they be prepared um for next year but um we think that they will be prepared for next year um ava and natalie i don't know if you have anything to
036say we also plan to take the pulse of the students um later this week i'm meeting with the student government officers because they were instrumental in moving to this new schedule and they need to have a voice in um what's going on i feel very strongly about that ava natalie would you like to add anything yeah why don't we do this what ava natalie thank you for joining us now sorry for the screw up and the schedule i think that um yes i you know definitely your input but why don't you just uh you know do whatever you were playing in addition to um uh to your input on the schooling scenario um whatever update you were planning to give why don't you do that as well okay all right perfect thank you so much
037for having us natalie do you want to kind of go over the update on everything yeah sure i can start off so basically once we got back from break we so actually before break there were a lot of plans like that last three days of school like before break started to do a bunch of like individual grade zoom events which were very which people were very excited for um and then we had to kind of cancel them because people were either traveling or they were out so then it was a lot of communication that just wasn't there so we decided to move everything to the week we got back so last week or the week before and the seniors had a gingerbread house competition which we usually do in the cafeteria but with covet obviously
038we had to move that to zoom and we had a good number of participants and people had some interesting gingerbread houses but they had fun um and then the sophomores currently are still doing the book reading initiative and they're also starting a super bowl drive which is canned goods during the super bowl um and the freshmen finish their animal um animal what's it called um pause drive yes the paws the paws drive um and knox who's the leader of their of the freshman group um has been catching us up that they're planning events that are going to be going on each week because their grade has really been liking that and participating i know they just had a baking event on zoom which is kind of a cool idea get a lot of participants that
039way um and the juniors are currently working on a drive-in movie um which i think is a good idea maybe a little cold but it would be in the cars and i'm not sure if we can do that right now but we were talking about moving that to the spring um that's pretty much the catch up with student government stuff and i know ava's going to go in depth with this more but just my opinion um miss black shared with me just like what she said the 33 um on vdl and that that number's rising i know that i'm a part of that 33 and today i actually came back to school because winter sports started um so that's definitely something that will get kids back in school i know for me coming back from
040winter break i did not feel comfortable going to school just because like mr doak said i think that the social media and everything i know teachers see it but us kids see it obviously because all of our friends are on social media um and just knowing that kids traveled people saw families from out of state um even though some may have quarantined some may not have i just didn't feel safe going back to school just at the risk of having to quarantine which is not fun um since i've already had to do it this year um so i decided to take the two weeks and then go back today and if winter sports weren't happening today i would not still would not have come back to school this week because i don't think there's any
041rush and i think with the full back schedule like i said i don't think there's any rush to move forward um in terms of going full back because i know on a student level kids are really comfortable with how everything's been going and like miss wollack said keeping consistency is really important especially with kids who have been struggling a lot with this whole school schedule and everything just keeping that consistency is really important and i know for me the schedule is really nice having the drop two a day and as my teachers have said at the beginning of class they like the schedule also um but i guess getting everyone back would be really fun but i don't think there's a rush to do anything yeah um i am like the biggest advocate for being
042in person just because personally i i like being in person i learn better but right now i think if we watch the news the numbers are so high and coming from a student who does like being in person it's it's just a little bit concerning and a little bit scary and it's spreading so quickly i feel that we should come up with a very solid plan that makes all students families and faculty feel comfortable without jumping into it too quickly um i also feel that right now um a lot of students as natalie said are very comfortable with how things are going and winter sports are just starting and for a lot of um student athletes especially the seniors were are just so happy to be able to play their sport and i think that
043keeping the schedule how it is can help keep those seasons on track instead of having more kids quarantine and things like that um also we see the vaccine roll out which is taking a little bit longer than expected um but there's new plans and things like that so maybe wait until some of the teachers are vaccinated and things like that before we start um sending students back in person fully um i feel i want i would love to have a few weeks of high school that are semi normal full back before i'm on to college um but i also want to put my my own health and my peers health first um this is not a normal year and i know as much as badly as i want to say let's just go for it
044i i don't feel like it's the best time i think it's a fantastic time to evaluate the situation go over everyone's views on things talk to the students but i think right now how things are is great and then maybe take a better look at it in like march and spring thank you who won the gingerbread contest we were waiting for the results it's on instagram i haven't been able to post it we don't know i'm not sure if there was a decided winner ava i know you were there i couldn't make it did you guys decide my gingerbread i'm not a very artistic person mine was not good also i was i was waiting for the results but some people had like really really fantastic gingerbread houses so i think it might have been
045vanessa or ava asher but certainly not me i would encourage you to check it out on instagram and also check out that we had 400 baby trout born this week thank you pto for our trout program just getting a shout out to them uh thank you natalie never thanks for jumping on so quickly and giving us a really good update um and your views on on the schooling scenarios you can stay on and you can sign off if you have other things to do as well but i the board really appreciates you jumping on um and giving the update um are there other questions from uh board members i got a question for dan and lisa so do you have a plan or you just kind of like gonna see how things go i don't
046feel like i gotta here's our plan going forward i gotta things are working well right now we talk we froze for a bit you want to go lisa all i would say is is that we have other ideas and scenarios but i i think it's premature to go down that road and getting a lot of people to weigh in on certain things when we don't have the necessary i would say health metrics in place um every week i i talked to the jurgey principals about different things that their that they are doing in their schools and immediately following that meeting i talked with our building administrative team to say you know how would this look here you know it's it's very different based on the building the size of the school the amount of mixed
047grade level classes and all of that so at this point i i don't want people yes it's a wait and see but at the same time behind the scenes we are thinking of a lot of different things um you know i just listening to the kids saying i wish we could have a few weeks of normal high school that would be my greatest wish for the fourth quarter um that being said um we have to to see how we can mitigate the risks and um uh you know and and figure out some of those those things while there are ideas nothing is written um clear cut in stone because one thing we see is it's kind of a fluid situation you know um lisa and dad one you know we spoke about this at the
048workshop which is you know um the fact that we're staying with the same uh scenario in the uppers we spoke about you know we've been you know the schooling scenarios for the lower schools we've been speaking about them at length right that's been the line share about discussion really haven't spent time talking about the upper schools we went into one mode and we're sticking with it and i think that um it's i think it's going to be critical to understand the criteria that you're evaluating whether to stay here or to move and to make sure that we have specific touch points let's say you know you know we're reviewing it every couple of weeks we're trying to you know we're we're you know we have very objective criteria which we're going to basically look if
049we're if we feel like we're delivering the curriculum um you know successfully you know we really don't see a reason to move to a different scenario or not i think that what everyone is looking for and i think it goes to hillary's question is you know the plan doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to move from this you know mode to a new mode which involves maybe more in-person time but the plan is to look at what objective criteria to determine how we're going to go from this step to the next step right and i think that that's really the conversation we should be having every step of the way to say you know are we still fine in this mode or should we be looking to you know more in-person time what's the criteria
050in which we're looking at to evaluate whether we're going to actually move to a different schooling scenario right maybe tony i think and we can talk more lisa dan and charles can talk more through this conversation i mean they've had criteria i mean fundamentally it's a set of educational criteria right how do we maximize educationally what we're doing and the lower school conversations have been for those younger learners more in person may be the educational difference maybe whereas at six through twelve a lot of thinking a lot of look a lot added a lot of discussions with faculty you've heard lisa say a lot of discussions with students as to what's that educational difference that's really where to focus it and i know lisa's doing that dan's doing that so i think a takeaway is
051how do we make that that much more overt for the rest of the community because here's a compliment for weston consistency here may be the best thing if educationally you know those criteria and it it's never going to be a narrow number i think the board knows that but at least educationally saying we feel pretty good about where we are that then that consistency helps with an eye for when you may do more coming in i mean just today um if you're so his point if you're educationally strong then the health and safety is a different issue today 35 more students one in a quarantine we have only six positives in the district but just because of a couple suddenly 35 are out in quarantine and if we're full in that number would be 70
05280 and that gets that continuity and consistency issue um and so there's a lot of art here some science but that's i think that's so i think we can be more explicit about those educational criteria but it's it's understanding what becomes at risk for that continuity and learning for those older students who may be doing on average and more way beyond average doing pretty well in the current scenario and there was one thing i mentioned at the task force that i failed to mention tonight and that is getting those new chromebooks at the middle school just before the holidays was a game changer in terms of the stability the continuity the consistency of at least the platform that our students and teachers are using for education so thank you dan devito once again any other
053uh questions or comments from the other board members yep um i want to do a bit of a sound check does uh is everyone hearing me clearly because uh my screen seems to be freezing up every once in a while okay thanks um doesn't seem to be uh questions from the other board members okay we'll go to the next item on the agenda is uh an update on the superintendent search process uh so a couple of things short update uh dr harrardy has uh embarked on on on the search uh the search is now has been public for two weeks uh we have a number of applicants uh i think that um dr rorty uh thinks that by the first week in february when the application process closing will probably have around 20 applicants if
054not if not more uh which is uh which is uh pretty good uh it gives it gives us a really good pool to search from um in addition dr rorty had a community forum uh last week and there's another one that's planned for the 25th um you know anyone who's listening uh who hasn't joined the community forum uh i think it's a great uh opportunity to have your voices heard in terms of uh giving dr herrarty your thoughts on what to look for in the next superintendent in addition dr rardy has had meetings with some staff leadership team he's planning on meeting with the town's diversity equity and inclusion committee uh parent leaders as well as um members of weff at the next board meeting um you'll probably compile a community uh profile uh that's
055basically a summary of everything that he's gotten from all the constituents uh from staff from parents uh from the various groups in town and come up with a composite profile that represents uh everyone's views and at that point probably within february we'll start our interview process we're also looking at adding to the superintendent search committee we have recommendations from uh the wta the administrators association recommendations from the pto um and so we'll we'll have a representative from uh the staff the administration uh parent leaders as well as the community to add to the uh the search committee before we begin the formal interview process so more to come so far so good uh next month we'll probably have dr arardi address the public meeting with the composite profile um any questions from from the board
056members tony can you just repeat how many um applicants you said are in uh right now uh 15 formerly have uh are there's 15 applications that are completed um thank you with the view that there will probably be uh 20 or more by the time we're done and what does a short list consist of is it five did you say i think the short list will be uh probably on a handful right we you know the search committee has to go through them but it's typically you know five to seven thank you okay there's no other questions or comments we can uh maybe have phil do the uh financial update is everyone good um step into the financial update as of december uh 2020. uh so for the year to date we have um actually
057spent 43 of our budget 23 million 231 660. we have encumbered 53 percent 28 million 813 um we have four percent that is still uh anticipated currently we have an inter um projected spend through year end of ninety nine point nine seven percent or fifty four minute one twenty five six twenty just going over real quick over the month to month uh changes as it relates to salaries we have a change in salaries of roughly twenty five thousand eight seventy seven and reduction there um mainly having to do uh with the leticia go and i'm sorry i deserve savings t-shirt going on fml for eighty-five thousand three forty we also needed to re to hire a sub for that um for that teacher in addition to that we had other other sub areas that we
058need immediate coverage for forty one thousand nine thirty six there's a correction there of a previous month placeholder of forty four thousand seven ten we also transferred to the coronavirus relief on grand sixty one thousand 604 and we have increased the um supplemental or additional funding for the food service salaries to the tune of thirty four thousand four twenty one professional services um is down by forty six thousand nine sixty two the main reason for this is just a change in service um we have we had budgeted for fy21 i'm assuming that our service provider i do believe this is nervous will be would have been billing us the past practice is that we would pay the bill would it and we would be reimbursed by the town for fy 21 um the town our
059novus is building the town directly for this service we will also see a further reduction in the revenue line item property services we have received a reimbursement from fema forty one thousand nine eighty five nine eighty five seventy one seventy five percent uh fema is reimbursing us for a one-time clean offer facilities that was done back in march in addition to that um this the municipal current of ours relief fund picked up the remaining 25 of that for 13 995 we've also revised the projection for the overall cleaning for the year we've reduced that estimate by 11 627 equipment equipment is up by thirty five thousand nine thirty six um in previous months i did not account for other items um that were budgeted broke but were yet to be encumbered this is just a
060chew up of um of for that revenue offsets as i mentioned um we will not be getting a reimbursement from the town because they're being billed directly um by novice in addition to that fema reimbursement is directly removed from the revenue offset and applied directly against the expense line any questions on the financials themselves hey phil if things remain as they are in terms of uh our mode of attendance or as planned right um do we anticipate um any do we anticipate any further savings you know what we call covet savings uh today over the year sure so we will start reviewing that process um beginning for the next monthly report um just that i know just at a quick glance we do anticipate there will be some savings um we i was just reviewing
061uh the fuel account and there will be there should be some savings there and there's some brought some other broad categories um that we will review and we will start reporting on those savings beginning next month any other uh any questions or comments from the other board members okay shift into the internal services fund for the year to date we have claims and claims and fees paid from the internal services fund of 165 165 this is below our current theoretical average we're currently at 41.6 um so we anticipate if this trend continues that we will have we will be above the 766 now that the budgeted seven sixty thousand um that we anticipated to to have left at the end of the school year we will continue to monitor this um a lot of this
062primarily has to do with um cloven 19. um so we'll continue to monitor this and if there's any if this trend holds um we will end the year with the surplus or with more money that we plan how much more than we planned if the trend continues roughly 30 000 or so so that would leave the balance at your end of roughly 790 000 any questions on the internal services fund okay um there's no questions that's it for that item and that item um phil maybe you can go on to the next item which is the food service financial update sure so um do we not want the motion to accept that update or do you want to wait and do the food service first you know um probably do the food service and then
063we can do the entire financial update yeah okay um so our current scenario um is not voting very well for a food service program as you can can imagine um just to give you senses to where we are at the k5 level we are serving 60 less meals than um compared to last year at the middle school 70 percent less and the current scenario at the high school we are currently in effect not serving any meals at all at the high school with this in mind we will we do anticipate having significant a significant loss for the food service program for the current year on accrual basis we do anticipate that we will have a loss this is currently current estimate as of december of 300 almost 398 thousand dollars um i didn't mention previously
064that a portion of this the salary one hundred and two thousand dollars will be covered by um by the operating operating fund um on a cash basis we started the year with cash in the bank of roughly two hundred and ten thousand dollars with the ins and out to this this account the bank account will be short by approximately one hundred and three thousand dollars um so in effect the operating account will need to write a check uh to the food service program um to cover this um the current financials as presented as of december does not include this transfer i wanted to have a discussion before with finco and also with the full board before that was placed on um on the financial so beginning next month for the next report and then january
065we will have on an item to cover this 403 243 as of right now um if if the trend improves um we will not need to fund as much as we currently are anticipating but we just continue to to monitor that account as of january 14th we had cash in the bank of 103 403 dollars and that is the update for the food service program phil yeah yeah go um i was just gonna say i was just gonna say thanks melissa that uh we did speak to at length at this in the in the finance subcommittee meeting and and phil and the team have taken every effort to mitigate you know this again i think we should think about this as a consequence of the year that will solve itself over time right so the
066the steps that could be taken to minimize the the um the loss were taken and and and and traditionally as phil says this program builds reserves and that's why on a cash basis it won't be as bad as a hit um so i just wanted to highlight that that that we did spend quite quite a bit of time on this topic great um thanks victor i also wanted to add that i attended a legislative breakfast with virtual virtual breakfast with superintendents and board of ed members for our local region with a lot of the state congress people and this was a pretty important topic that a lot of districts were hit really negatively with and some of the legislative leaders were somewhat hopeful that there might be some um legislation to help with with these
067types of shortages so just fill you know to the extent you i'll stay in the loop on it too but you may just want to keep your ears open there any other questions or comments from the from the board can we have a motion on the financial update move that the western board of education approved the sixth financial year 2021 financial update as presented by mr cross you have a second second thank you ruby all in favor hi taffy hi ruby hi i'm melissa hi victor hi hillary hi tony all opposed uh motion passes thank you uh the next topic is uh discussion vote on the setting of the high school graduation date um we we basically have a discussion um we typically uh vote to set the high school graduation date um on april
0681st 2021 um and what we need to do is have a discussion and a vote on having the superintendent set that date by april 1st 2021. bill uh yeah it's a very straightforward uh item for you uh the item is posted now the memo that explains it all there may have been a little lag in that i apologize uh again every year the board votes now to give the superintendent the authority to do this effective april 1. the memo is a briefer version of a longer one year last year because you will recall call that last year the state gave flexibility to districts to set the date far earlier than april uh as explained in the memo as it turns out you know about half the districts took advantage of that flexibility many did not
069for the logistical reasons that are also explained in the memo that trying to hold graduation at a set date that may then be earlier than when the high school closes creates a set of problems uh certainly for those students carrying on but if that date of graduation the seniors still have not met what is now 177 day requirement they got to come back so the feeling last year quite thoroughly from lisa and matt and julie and others that we spoke with on this whole thing was an almost sense stay old-fashioned get permission to set the date effective april 1. families still have a good couple months warning uh and and we're much more likely to be picking a date that will be the date and doesn't create a set of logistical problems uh to make
070it as as exciting a graduation as possible so it's a technical procedural votes to uh so uh what we're approving is that uh we're basically going to set the graduation date on april 1st on or before right have a motion move that the western board of education approves setting the whs graduation date on april 1st 2021 have a second second all in favor hi ruby hi gina hi melissa hi victor hi hillary hi tony all opposed uh motion passes uh the next items are uh uh policy items uh bill do you want to take them um i think i may pass them right over to melissa to frame um but the unless mostly we want me to continue on the first one is a title nine but you melissa do you want to pick up
071the walking to see this yeah these are whoops okay good um sure the title nine i think was um a sexual harassment change i believe and it was just a change of language based on a change to the state regulatory scheme i believe the second policy we spent a lot of time in the policy committee working on which was the student disciplinary policy regarding transportation on the school bus we had a policy that governed behavior on the school bus and it was kind of a standalone policy and it was outdated so what we did was we took the opportunity to fold the bus policy into our regular student disciplinary policy so that all of our student discipline is now housed in one location which i think will be more efficient and easier to um to
072govern so i'm that's basically it i'm not it's not fresh in my head i don't know i think tracy may have covered the title nine am i correct tracy that was just a change in um the language related to sexual harassment in the connecticut statutes yeah we had actually just approved the title ix policy a couple of months ago in a meeting and there were some technical updates and a few places that's really just clarifying some language around reporting uh and it's very technical edits we're talking about like a couple of words on a page so okay that that's why i'm not recalling it exactly okay perfect um so though so that's we we did vet these thoroughly in the policy committee um and they're attached right here for everyone's review and they will be
073under the second reading uh next month but i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have okay well i don't think we have a motion because it's just a first reading right that's right so that's it okay thank you any questions comments let's move to uh committee reports uh committee chairs anything to report this month well i'll go for policy um you know obviously we spent a lot of time on the disciplinary policy that that i was just speaking about but um also we've we've made a lot of progress um in meeting with some of the members of the western sustainability committee here in district and we're working on creating a sustainability policy for westin that based on our initial research there don't there doesn't seem to be a lot of these types of
074policies in um in districts so we're really excited about the opportunity to kind of take the lead here and we've got some great support some great ideas so look for that in the coming months as we work through it we're drafting it from the bottom up so um it will take some time but we're excited about it well let's see if i tony may add there just because they're two parallel paths that are i think working very well here there's the policy committee working on creating a policy and as melissa said we don't have many places to go from examples of that but the building level district-wide level leadership from teachers administrators that's continuing so what they're going to actually be doing this is an update to the policy committee but you might as well
075hear it is jen and i met since that last policy committee meeting with the teacher and administrative leadership they're going to call the uh the district-wide committee back together because of cove they've been a bit in hiatus but they're going to call them back together give them the good news that the board is working on developing a policy i said it's not there yet but take it as a win that the board has taken this on uh and we'll begin looking at what's a baseline establishing from their view what's a baseline for best practice where are we where aren't we on that continuum when we start from the where are we to where are we so i think as that moves along really looking a little later this school year i think we could have
076those parallel paths connected a few key points and this could be a really good moment going into certainly next year on the whole issue of sustainability new policy and a sense of uh uh if well the beginning of a benchmark of where we are and where we have to go and a nice i think blending of the board uh leadership with teacher leadership and if i may miss melissa one of the key teachers mike aiken had said uh who he's been at this i think you know i'm going with this but he gave the board a big compliment to say in his previous district he never had the opportunity to work with the board on these types of questions so i think board please take that as a compliment from one of our really you
077know newer but veteran teachers that we're very fortunate to have here melissa that's great kudos to you and your committee because i know there's a ton of passion around this within the community so the fact that you guys have taken that on that's amazing congrats it's great thank you it's a team effort any anything else from the committee training i had uh something i wanted to bring up just for the broader group but every everybody uh they probably belong to the curriculum committee but it they really wanted everybody weigh in um and the thought sort of started and elicited you know in the discussion we've been having in the you know whether or not to reinstate the k-2 language program and um i i would like to just put out there as an idea to
078everyone you know close budget this is not a budget discussion is could we somehow and i don't know how it's best structured to just take a step back and look at the language program from a to z right what are we doing early the taffy talked about the importance of early exposure what what curriculums are making its way through the longevity of the program what technology are we applying um what outside benchmarks can we use i i just i just i think it'd be a very rich discussion as and as all of you know i'm very passionate about how that you know fits into the you know global citizen aspect of our of our of our mission so um i'm happy to spend time at the curriculum subcommittee meeting even though i'm not part of
079it um for any input to the extent that it's warranted or welcomed but i i really think we need to i would really like to change the conversation about this um i don't know how to go about it but it's just a question for the yeah for everybody on this call victor thank you and i've heard from a couple of other board members the exact same sentiment that the discussion shouldn't be about whether or not we offer uh world language at various levels but how we actually deliver it across all levels and and i really appreciated your verbage on that um victor and i i absolutely think that this is not a discussion that is solely revolving around one budget line but rather a bigger discussion holistic discussion well yeah absolutely i i think that's
080where the discussion starts a curriculum it doesn't start with a budget discussion i think it ends with the discussion around how we actually fund what we believe are best practices but i think discussion has to start in curriculum and what's more and also victor i do want to encourage you to join us at the next curriculum meeting anyone can join of course we'd love to have you we'll discuss it then if you let me know when it's on the agenda that'd be that'd be great and i'll make the time for sure yep thank you so can we get that on the agenda for the next meeting that's a question i guess like if i could just add you know we certainly can add that um that we do have a renewal cycle for every curriculum
081area every five years every area is uh renewed we did have a recent renewal of the world language program which you know there are various steps to that process can you define that can you just define that ken what a renewal process actually means yeah so um it first looks at the existing program uh you know takes into account any changes in standards and things of that nature um we then respond with um you know what what information uh research you know bring to bear in terms of feedback in the system what what recommendations we have for changes that it results in professional development curriculum development depending on what those changes are going to be curriculum is you know our programs are revised rewritten and uh in some in some cases they're very minor revisions
082and in other cases you could have a major overhaul let's say like you have a whole new math program um and so each you know each renewal really depends on what the needs are and what the questions are that we're trying to to answer so i can also speak to that in terms of the cycle and you know at our next meeting and we could do some preliminary work with world language great um thanks again i just had one one one update you know we're you know we're in the midst of the budget process now um we basically had the the presentation of the budget uh on the seventh we had a four hour workshop on the on the eighth um we had a three hour workshop on the 14th um for those uh joining
083from from home we we did add a workshop on the 21st because we thought we needed it to to get our work done by the end of the month um and what we did is we added a workshop on the 21st so we will have a workshop on the 21st at 5 p.m which is posted and we will have our final workshop on the 25th um the public forum was moved from the 21st to 26th at seven um so just in case uh people aren't keeping up with their schedule we did have a few changes we added a budget workshop and we moved the public forum from the 21st uh to the 26th i also just wanted tony i'm sorry back on curriculum for a minute i just wanted to highlight that we did have
084also a very robust discussion on how we measure progress um uh on student learning it was incredibly informative and encouraging um and um i think that perhaps we and i think it was suggested can remind me um that we really take that holistic picture of how we measure student progress and make it available in a in a very deliberate offering of information to families and others who have been inquiring of late around how sat scores for example fit into a much larger pyramid of tools that we use so we had a very good discussion i encourage everyone to go back and um you know and look at those those minutes i know that meeting isn't recorded but um it really was um was a great session so i just wanted to follow up on that
085from last time great well our uh you know we have a bunch of workshops as i mentioned on the budget our next regular monthly meeting is on february 16th um is there anything else that we need to discuss bill before we adjourn i think uh it's been quite a thorough meeting and covered a lot of ground remarkably efficiently it's 7 23. and uh your super tenants report i think uh you all spoke for yourself and spoke for the district and that i think is a good report right now great uh yes i think this is probably goes on record um we've had the record for the longest board meeting i think this is probably a record for the shortest board meeting um but we got a lot done and we have a lot of meetings
086coming up over the next couple of weeks so if there's nothing else uh can i have a motion to adjourn so moved second okay great um so it's 7 21 and uh we're adjourning our monthly meeting uh thanks everyone thanks