BOE 12-21-2020 Monthly Meeting

001okay everyone we're live great all right we're all live we have a quorum uh i'd like to call the board of education meeting to order um let's start with the pledge of allegiance pleasure allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you before we start we have kind of two uh housekeeping items uh one is that we need to add a session um to scholar to talk about school scenarios and public health update um we want to add that to uh right after 7d can i have a motion someone gina you're good at this move that the western board of education amend the agenda to add the item for school scenarios and

002covet update after item 70. uh second second all in favor hi taffy hi ruby i'm melissa hi gina hi victor hi hi tony uh all opposed motion passes uh the second thing that we need to do is um uh item 8g um the teacher residency program i'd like to amend that uh item to do to have a discussion and possible vote on the teacher residency program um you can have a motion to amend that agenda item donate do you mean the alternative pathways oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry alternative pathways yes thank you um what's the agenda item uh it's eight f i'm sorry alternative pathways and we're amending to uh have basically modifying the agenda item to include a discussion and possible vote right move that the western board of education amend posted

003agenda item 8f to be discussion and possible vote on alternative pathways program for western high school have a second second okay all in favor hi taffy i'm ruby i'm melissa hi james hi victor hi victor hi tony all opposed okay motion passes we have a motion to approve the minutes move that the western board of education approved the minutes from the november 16 regular meeting and the december 9th special meeting second second uh any discussion comments edits no okay all in favor hi taffy [Music] hi ruby hi melissa hi gina hi victor hi hillary hi tony all opposed okay motion passes um public comment um is june on yes i'm here do you have any public comment this evening um no there's no public comment this evening okay um okay um student reps you're on

004best part of the meeting hi everyone um i hope you guys are all safe and healthy i know ava was going to start off by just talking about that we've changed a recent hi everyone um so recently um we switched to online for the next week um and we've kind of been online for a week now um and i think a lot of students are super eager to uh go back but overall i think that it was the right decision um i know a lot of students including myself were probably gonna end up going online anyways um the week before break and the week after just first like safety precautions um if anybody's seeing a small like member groups of their family um so there would be a lot more students online anyways than there

005would be in the classrooms um so i think that it definitely was the best choice um but besides for that um the new schedule that we have been experiencing for about the past month um i know a lot of students are really really enjoying it um it's really fluid i haven't heard i think natalie and i we haven't really heard many complaints a lot of people are very happy with how it's going um there's definitely a larger sense of routine uh than when before when you would have half the day go home and then have half your classes online but now you kind of just have a more uh fluid sense of how the week goes not like that but the teachers are putting in so much effort to make sure that the kids online

006are feeling included and things like that so there's not much of a break between the online students and the in person which is really great um besides for that um student government is planning a spirit kind of like a spirit week type of thing um when we come back kind of to get the whole student population involved and motivated again and kind of excited about school so last during november we held some online events um to kind of mimic a spirit week and a ton of students actually ended up participating and it went really well so we're gonna kind of do that again to bring some normalcy back into our routines um the seniors are starting to kind of think about prom and graduation which again has to be super fluid depending on the state

007of coven things like that but that's really exciting as well um and then we also just wanted to say thank you to the pto uh for the senior gifts we are so happy with those it's a small gesture but at the same time right now is kind of the peak of the college process and things like that so i know everyone's really happy just to receive something and natalie uh just going off of what ava said we really appreciate the senior gift we all just got in our mailboxes especially right before break when it's the last three days it's definitely a bit of a struggle to like maintain focus and everything but that was a really nice surprise um like ava said the new schedule that we've just been experiencing since i think last monday

008um and through this these three days until the 7th in january we all really like um and even though we're online student government has still been able to participate and put on a lot of activities like ava said we had a trivia night online we had an among us night i don't know if any of your kids play among us but it was a big hit and we had a ton of participants which was really good um and with that we also did a lot of community service we had the freshmen participating with an animal shelter and they raised a lot of goods like blankets and food that they ended up not being able to drop off because they couldn't get back into the school but they're going to do that when we return in

009january um we did a student government wide person-to-person community service initiative in norwalk with mrs garone who used to be one of the librarians at the high school and we did a coat drive and a lot of kids from student government went to that as well and we recently just made a video that our checklist tech liaison eli brennan is working on right now and we're sending it out tomorrow just to really unify the school and just catch everyone up and wish everyone a safe and happy holidays so yeah i think that's everything that we have in terms of updates so we hope that you all have a really safe and happy winter break and we can't wait to get to the next boardhead meeting um questions from the board members no i think this

010is uh thank you thanks for the update and uh hope that you have a wonderful holiday as well and uh looking forward to uh further updates in in january thank you thank you so much for having us um so uh let's move to new business um we have uh three new course proposals ken um do you want to go through them yes good evening everyone and i'll give a brief overview broadly of the the three courses and i'll do so within the context of the fact that we've fully vetted these course proposals at a curriculum committee meeting the recent december curriculum committee meeting and so these are three courses we're very excited to bring forward for board approval this evening to be included in the upcoming uh high school program of studies to be ready

011for course registration for the 20 21 22 school year so we have you know broadly three courses here two of which move forward are equity work in the district and as you all know we've uh we've done significant amount of work in terms of the curriculum k-12 to bolster our equity curriculum in terms of incorporating whether it's texts or units that really represent broad perspectives and at the high school level uh the first course is in social studies and this is our uh american tapestry course multiculturalism in the united states and you know when we when we went through this course we looked at it from the perspective of the fact that well you know in the state of connecticut schools are going to be required to offer a one-year course very very narrowly uh

012focused and so we've done we've done our research and we have felt that while we will still need to offer a course uh in the in the um two years from now this course we wanted to get into our program of studies earlier rather than later it's a semester course and we feel that you know in terms of looking at the identity of various various groups it's going to be a very interesting course nick torres has taken the lead on putting it together under with lisa's support and you can see in the uh in the coursework that it uh it gets into african-american uh in black identity it gets into um latino studies uh it gets into asian-american studies um native americans as well and also looks at gender and lbgtq identity as well so

013it's it's a it's a very comprehensive course but also pulls the content back to current issues which is something that we felt that the the state course was lacking so this is for next next year a semester course the second course is called voices from the edge this was led by christine cincada working with the english department to create an elective opportunity for students that will look at a variety of perspectives putting students in the shoes of different groups and perspectives and that voices from the edge course kind of builds on what we've been doing k-8 in looking at a lot of the offerings you know that we have within the curriculum so in terms of the literature you can you can see that in the course proposal what we have planned there and then

014the third course is really it's a restructuring the art course that is in the visual arts department uh 3d art and design we're calling it it's basically weaving together our crafts advance crafts our cement or ceramics and sculpture courses which were low enrollment courses and we think by bringing the content of those courses into one course that we're going to be able to increase uh the enrollment and sustain that course so that's that's a restructuring more than anything else the content is very similar to what we've offered previously uh with in in total with these courses we really are looking at no additional fte it's a shifting of uh of staffing you know where students uh decide to sign up and enroll we may not you know run other elective courses but that's how we

015always do things usually based on interests will be the courses we run and don't run um and i know um you know lisa and her team are here while lisa and i think i saw meredith starzik are both here if you have questions get into more detail into these courses or or how they're going to be shared with students as opportunities we can certainly answer any questions you have but like i said we spend a good deal of time in curriculum uh talking about these any questions um i think this is uh fabulous i'm so excited about it so much that i actually sent the link over to wes and and was like look at what they're doing they're actually doing something ahead of the connecticut schedule i mean i know connecticut's the first state

016to require um a a studies like this but the fact that you guys are doing it a year before the act 1912 is awesome um so kudos for being proactive to do something asap especially you know we always talk about in westin of us living in this bubble but you guys have been able to react to um just going what's going on on a global level and even though we're in our bubble to to make an impact here so lisa please thank nicholas and christine for just being so incredibly proactive immediately my question though is um i know that you said that you would based on enrollment you might have to flux classes to see what what the interests are what is your minimum number of students needed to run a class lisa do you

017want to speak to that or sure excuse me between 15 and 20 is the ideal number if it's less than 15 you know we have to we have to think about it what often happens with elective courses and meredith could probably comment this you know if you offer an elective one semester in one one period slot and you get 25 to 30 students that are interested by the time the schedule shakes out it could bring down the number to 20 for example now if the course is extremely popular and we do see this as a feeder to ap human geography which has become extremely popular um it could end up being two sections which then again gives us more flexibility in the place where it is in the schedule and how many kids we can

018um offer it to okay and have we ever done something i'm just thinking hypothetically let's just say we have low enrollment have we ever done something where this is maybe an online class only for children for those 10 to 12 kids who are really interested in this class but then maybe want to take it off hours um what we would have to do with that is it gets a little bit tricky ruby because you also have to consider um you know a one section of the courses a 0.1 fte and so you also have to work um i guess i would say in constraints with the union the teachers union on that now that being said i i do believe that there are some creative ways to um to work with that we were toying

019with the idea this spring of finding some way to pilot something along these lines um just to see what the interest is and to spark spark interest we have independent study routes we have different things like that so um we're pretty committed to uh to this curriculum and what we want to offer and um based on the feedback that that we've already gotten anecdotally i would say from um the social justice advocacy group there it's very positive so i'm confident that in some way shape or form we will have this any other questions or comments um we'll do three separate motions uh for the three course proposals um can i have a motion for uh american tapestry move go ahead sorry move that the western board of education approve the new course proposal for american

020tapestry have a second second all in favor hi gina hi ruby hi melissa hi victor hi tony all opposed okay motion passes kind of the second voices from the edge move that western board of education approved the course proposal for voices from the edge second second second thanks gina all in favor aye ruby hi gina i'm melissa upstairs hi victor hi hi tony all opposed okay motion passes and 3d art and design a move that the western board of education approved the new course proposal for 3d art and design [Music] all in favor i mean sorry second second thanks gina all in favor hi ruby hi gina hi taffy hi melissa hi hilary hi victor hi tony all opposed okay motion passes um next agenda item phil we're getting to you uh before 10 p.m

021this time um i was a little bit surprised to see that um i was this early in the agenda i was kind of scrambling because as you guys know this is um in the middle of budget season the good news for this report is that we really do not have any significant um any significant changes month over month to report report so for the period end in november we currently have an expanded a projected spent through year end of 54 million 141 183 roughly an available balance of twenty thousand two fifty 259 um as you know as we mentioned in um infincom our main focus for the past couple of months has been really on just reopening and all the costs and all the all the related offsets for those unanticipated expenditure so this is

022a good pause next month um we have a lot of other things that we will definitely talk about and include into the to the budget any questions on the general update okay there's one item um budget transfers to to be approved 148 000 302 and this is pretty much to true up um those object codes that um were not budgeted for um because of unsettled contract at um at the end of the budget cycle um we have um so listed on the sheet are all the various object codes hey phil just for the purpose of the public i just want to like beef that explanation up a little bit with these are increases to the non-union employees um the union settlements and we do budget a bucketed amount to cover those items and this is

023just allocating those amounts out to the appropriate lines this is not an additional charge i just want to be very clear about that for the public that is correct do you want me to just finish everything before you guys vote or yeah why don't you go through the internal services fund sure so we continue to trend favorable for the internal services fund um for the year today and in november we have an approximate claims of 140 000 so based on the theoretical average we're turning about 6.5 below the theoretical so which is about 25 000 or so which would put us in a good place in terms of the internal services fund you guys will recall that the budgeted amount for dental claims is approximately three hundred and ninety seven thousand ninety seven thousand dollars

024which will give us an approximate which will give us approximately 760 000 available in the fun at year end so phil have people started going back to the dentist it doesn't really appear that way i think um year over year month of a month we're we're we're definitely below where things have been for the past couple of years really yes people are going just not to the extent which is good and bad i don't know not taking care of their teeth yeah but we do have claims for example in um in october our claims were was approximately thirty thousand dollars it kind of done shifted a little bit in november probably because of other thanksgiving break to twenty four thousand dollars so we'll see how things continue to trend um for the remainder of the

025year so people definitely are going um but there may be some elective procedures if you can't have any for a dental that people are not taking advantage of at this time and that in a nutshell is a financial update for november okay um can i if there's can i have a motion move that the western board of education approved the fifth fiscal year 2021 financial update and budget line item transfers as presented by mr cross have a second second connection thanks melissa all in favor hi taffy hi ruby hi gina i'm melissa hi victor hillary hi hilary tony all opposed okay motion passes now tony just tony just briefly hey june just for housekeeping i want to let you know i did amend that motion just tweaked it and added in the transfers item from

026what was listed in cabe so please just make sure to pick up the appropriate motion language okay i will thank you um we added the new agenda item now didn't we like after eight day right yes tony okay so school scenarios and covet updates all right um bill why don't i hand it over to you talk about school scenarios and public health updates uh-oh all right i'm fine just hit the wrong button um i'm going to be joined in this by several people first i'll hit the public health and medical guidance um and then i'm gonna ask sort of tracy and and phil to join me with a little uh framing on that because they've also been part of the conversations that are critical understanding that uh then um i'm gonna give you a little

027perspective on where our area districts are currently as it relates to just before the break then i'll give you my sense of where they're likely to be in january this is based uh the first part is based on a document the superintendent's circulate it's a private document but but it's very clear and specific so i can share it the next thing is where they're likely to be in january it's still getting figured out but it'll be a verbal update not necessarily district by district but give you a pretty keen sense what their districts are thinking about and then i'll give you the headlines on a set of recommendations for how we would like to come back to school in january and if the screen share works at that point i'll just give you the headlines

028on the screen share and then on that be very much turning to laura patty tracy in particular to fill out the color on that because the adjustments we're thinking about very much are at that early elementary and the special ed level our middle school in high school we're seeing uh pretty much as has been uh so dan and lisa dan dokalissa may want to join in but i think the energy is going to be substantially with our younger students and our special needs students so uh let me sort of go into this from a public health medical standpoint i've been sending to the board every week and i do send that out to the task force as well as to all of the staff uh the covid19 spread data that we get from the csde

029and dph so all of you uh should know that we're up north of 61 in terms of the major indicator lead indicator that's used that's the number of cases per one hundred thousand uh about five weeks ago we were in the 30s so we've more than doubled the level uh the hopeful news is while it's still increasing uh it's a slower rate of increase it went from about 58 last week to 61. again that's a 14 day average so there's a lag in that data the positivity rate though is up close to 10 percent and this is fairfield county data westin itself is still in the red zone which is north of 25 but hanging in around the 30 range and the positivity rate is in about the five or six range so still levels

030of great concern we're statistically advised not to compare that fairfield county number to the western number nor to compare the western number to the new canaan or darian number but it is important we look at our own community number week to week to week and based on what we're going to recommend in a few minutes you'll see that we're really trying to do what we can we're statistically advised not to compare that fairfield county number to the western number nor to compare the western number to the can you hear me i'm hearing myself again number but it's important we look at our own keynote was it memorable that was sort of surreal uh mr devito is that memorex or me i don't know what that was well given what's going on in the world with

031our uh i don't know you're always a little nervous as to what's going on here so uh dan are we still alive though just want to make sure we are we are still alive okay all right i thought that was the hook was that the hook all right so uh what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna mute everybody else or if everyone can just double check if everyone can mute themselves that would be great just i think it may have been a feedback issue so can you hear me thumbs up yeah so right where i was was saying even as the pandemic continues to kick up speed and steam we also have to watch what's happening in the uk right now with a new variant what it may mean because as we've learned this is

032not just a domestic issue it's a truly global issue but having said all that we're going to in a few minutes recommend efforts to get as many students in a safe way back in school in person because we are listening equally important is listening is as educators we want the in person uh and we're balancing a lot here so i'll get to that in a second in terms of the remote mode that we went into on the 14th every district right now around us is in remote within two or three days of us going into remote on the 14th nearly everybody else went there uh and so and i think it was for the reasons you heard from our our student government leaders they put it very very well uh no none of us necessarily

033wanted to go into remote but it was clear that already nearly most of our families had opted into them remote as as the students said they themselves may have gone there anyway uh be it through vdl or other approaches so it just made sense for us to as of the 14th go in and have at least eight days of consistency it was my sense that within a couple days other districts would also be there i couldn't say that i couldn't announce that but i kind of had a sense of what was going to happen so the leadership team give them credit i'll take the blame give them credit i'll take the blame but the move was clear that get in now for eight days to give ourselves some teaching and learning consistency some predictability uh

034as we headed into the winter break uh yes part of it is the great fear of being quarantined and what that would mean for important family gatherings and event as lean as those are supposed to be in making that decision we were most concerned about our special ed students and our younger learners uh mark that in terms of what i'm going to come back to in a few minutes in terms of what it looks like for january in terms of the return of schools the way districts around it's gonna return is there's a theme emerging is as difficult as the pandemic is many districts around us are hoping by mid-january and it's mid-january not right away but mid-january shift back out of remote remember now all on remote right now shift back out of remote

035into at least for the younger learners and their special needs high needs special needs some amount of in person now for instance who kane had just announced that they're staying in remote until the 11th of january as of the 11th they will bring back in k-8 hybrid but they're going to keep their heists bring back k8 full or what they call all-in they're going to keep the high school hybrid we have found across the fall that three districts really four have been most consistent about some amount of all-in it's been greenwich darien new canaan and ridgefield as necessary you know ken can speak to sort of how it's worked out for richfield other districts has been some in some hybrid all of us facing this issue of having to shift into temporary remote due to

036quarantine issues and staffing all the rest but shorthand right now what's important is in early january most will still be in remote but beginning as much as they can for their younger learners finding ways to get those students back in person and that's in the midst of most of them seeing the same very conservative views right now from the medical and health advisors because of the nature of the pandemic the pace at which it's been picking up and and and spreading and we just have to monitor that so what are we going to do when it comes to january we're going to announce this tomorrow new cane and other districts announced today i'm going to try and do a screen share right now see if you can see it can you see this document here

037says tentative timeline two pager so tentative timeline and i have to review with families and note going out tomorrow the january 4th through 6th those are remote for schools there was uh patty picked up from a few parents that when they heard the seventh they thought the seventh was when we were back but no we're in on the fourth fifth and sixth via remote as of the seventh and excuse some of the layout issues here hurlbud will have and the details are gonna file from laura and tracy the dlc would be all in as of the seventh kindergarten would be all in as of the seventh first through second grade would be a hybrid full day as would be the west rest of the district west middle school and high school would be hybrid full

038day coming down into january january 19th or 25th uh to be determined we would have hurl but first grade all-in and then the rest of the district staying hybrid full day if you're concerned about western students relative to students in area districts if we can pull this off relative the medical issues that public health issues and all the rest will be right in keeping with nearly every district around us uh and especially those i mentioned that have been most active of trying to have students in i've put a placeholder here now for february 8th that's two weeks after be at the 25th that there we would do what we could we'd be looking at very carefully can we get hurlbut second grade in all in and can we get wiss all in uh across that

039in that time frame um criteria this is such a moving target they're not specifics here but we'd be looking at first i'm over here now if you can see what i'm highlighting we'd be looking at covid 19 regional spread that's that fairfield county coven 19 weston that's the town of weston spread the within district spread number three that's very very important uh and could be you know what's most important to how we proceed public health and medical guidance gets all folded within those first three but that's not just what mark cooper and laura marks are telling us but a range of experts and then this is qualitative but it's his fifth one the quality of teaching and learning in all land versus hybrid full day we are getting good feedback through a survey that our

040vdo parents have done as to the quality what's happening in the hybrid and remote mode and we want to balance that against what we're learning is to be all in because we want all in but everyone should know that all in within this pandemic is not the same as all in pre-pandemic or when we get posted pandemic um but this here is is the rough timeline i'll take this screen down now because i'd like laura patty and tracy to put some meat on the bones of this talk a bit about why some of these dates matter and and all the rest so i'll put that back up when we need to and obviously you'll get posted to share with the board and it's the basis of what's going to go out to families uh tomorrow

041so i don't know laura trey lord tracy you want to start yeah i could um thank you bill i can add a little bit to that bill gave a a really great framework for what we're looking at um of course we all want our students back in as much as possible um we will be as bill said bringing the elc back all in which is the model they have been in all year because of the class sizes and the elc we've been able to have them all in in person throughout we are prioritizing getting our kindergartners back first you know as bill said of course we all want everyone back in and we want to do it safely given the current numbers with covid it is concerning there's a lot of speculation and concern over

042what january might look like in terms of covid numbers post-holiday surge in addition to the surge we saw after thanksgiving so um but that being said we do want to prioritize our kindergartners our youngest learners and have them in all in on the seventh um following that um and of course depending on what the numbers look like in january which none of us know um right now how much more spread there will be um we would like to look at bringing in the first grade and then as bill said uh the other elementary grades um one of the considerations that we've been um using throughout the recent months has been the density question in the building um you know one of the recommendations has been to uh reduce density in the building than not just

043the number of people in any given room in any given building and that really is where the balancing act has to happen um you know every sector of of the community right now everywhere is looking at um reduced capacity in businesses restaurants um places where people gather so we need to do the same in the schools and consider the density within the building and the number of people that are interacting with each other you know we've been very pleased with the mitigating strategies we've had since the beginning of the year we think we've been very successful with them and i think the uh the lack of outbreaks in the school is really a testament to that that we have had good mitigating strategies and as we're looking to bring kindergarten back in and possibly other

044grades that is something that we will continue to um keep at the top of our our minds and part of the planning process so i'm going to let tracy speak if she has anything to add we will be bringing back all of our special education students as well on the seventh with elc in kindergarten yeah so i think a majority of the updates have been shared at this point our goal from a special education standpoint essentially district-wide is to return to the format of instruction that we were providing prior to the shift to remote and that specifically includes and i'm giving a preview to some other grade levels but our special education students k5 having the option to attend in person every day it's voluntary largely because of confidentiality reasons we also will be looking

045to have our high needs students in each of the four buildings back full day every day and then the middle school and high school will continue with their schedule we do have some students that we have individualized plans for and those would continue as well so it's really a shift to exactly what we were doing prior to the shift to full remote from a special education standpoint and i i guess i can just follow along though it's pretty much along the same lines so on january 7th we'll return a full day hybrid um our students are doing really well though on their remote as i keep peeking into all the different classrooms but i know that they're all anxious to get back to school as well as we are anxious to have them back in

046school as well we really want our students back in the building um as much as we possibly can but we really are very conscious about the the amount of students and that social distancing and our classrooms just really don't allow for um that six feet apart the other areas that we really are concerned about is when they're not wearing their masks such as when they're having mass breaks or lunch or snack and it's more difficult now in the winter because they can't be going outside they can't be um taking frequent recess breaks or sitting out in the grass or using the courtyard so that's um something we'll be looking into um just as we uh try to figure out how we can get them all back in in safely and give them that space that

047that they need the only other piece i wanted to add well of course while we're looking at all these different schooling scenarios is that we are constantly um watching evaluating and um evolving our our programs um while we certainly want students in person when possible um some students have chosen to be distance learning and probably will be for the entire year and we are constantly evaluating all of our programs and ensuring high quality teaching and learning throughout this pandemic whether students are in person or online we monitor student growth we monitor student progress and i am very pleased to to report that we have seen um we have seen tremendous growth with our students they're learning they're socializing they're interacting online with their with their peers and for you know in particular we wanted to

048keep a close eye on our students who are who are vdl and who are not in person at all it's a very different experience and they're doing very well very well and as patti said we're in classrooms we're either dropping in on the zooms or visiting in classrooms when we're in person and we're seeing a lot of excited students um even our kindergartners on zoom they really do amaze me you know they they certainly are are tiring out by the end of the day but their level of interaction and their level of stamina and work is really um it's wonderful to see laura that the the survey that was done on voluntary distance learning is something that we should probably come back and share with the entire board and the community because i think there's

049some interesting good data that's come back from the parent survey there you know what tony's referring to um and we as you know we have a task force on the task force are two parents whose family their children are vdl volunteer distance learning they had done a survey of a very of all the volunteer disability parents about 50 response rates so a very good response rate and they're currently writing up that and it most likely if it doesn't go out in the next day or two before the break it'll go out right after the break and what's important is a broad response to that survey shows a lot of affirmation for what is going on through uh for those families that are fully remote what is going on the quality of of the experience educationally

050and academically with some good critique of things that could get better but it is a very strong set of findings and these parents have led the process of sorting that out and we want to get that out i want to add a i purposely left off the pivotal issue for us in determining how much all in we have and i want to wait on that until uh dan and lisa if you want to add in this at this point but i think the energy of this discussion as in most districts right now is substantially with our younger learners and our special ed students i don't know dan and lisa if you want to add anything right now no i think at this point bill as you indicated um we're going to stay with the hybrid

051and continue to monitor and improve uh how that's going but uh it just it doesn't make sense for us at this point to look at um doing the all-in given some of the the considerations that we have with moving classes and and the number of students in the spaces i would agree yeah and in terms of what we're going to see across the region in january again i mean if you look at the the districts that have been leading the most with all in new canaan is going to return back but go hybrid with their high school greenwich is staying hybrid with their high school so at that older student level they're holding at the hybrid but trying to get that that full in here's the key issue and i've had this discussion now really

052starting this morning with the cabinet lots of discussions don't worry it just wasn't today but a real pivotal on the following that over the weekend as i'm reflecting on the friday conversation with mark cooper and laura marx at the time they were the most concerned i've heard them but also saying we you need students in school we understand that but very concerned about the uptick laura marx is a pediatrician saying she is starting to think she's seeing what's some in school spread we're seeing that in some neighboring districts uh and so that's not enough yet to stop the in person but worried mark cooper understands the drive to have in person my own sense of the other districts of what's happening there the amount of in person listening to my fellow superintendents as they think

053about january most not again all remote now and giving a bit of time before they get right back in it in january but here's the point as districts have gone into full in with the younger students that social distancing metric has shrunk we struggled to have a social distancing metric of of close to five or six feet at west it was more like two feet uh second grade it's more like two feet um and that's one of those mitigating factors we hear about and is cited for us by all the experts other districts though are saying or just they're gonna mask be comfortable with closer social distancing and take care of the other pieces so here's the question for us to be grappling with that's why there's this timeline you saw on the sheet is

054let's get the kindergartners back in our elc i left sped off because it crosses all grade levels get them back in see how we're doing consider ways to get second grade in so all of hurl butts in later in the month but really look hard at that social distancing question and what's our comfort level with having tighter quarters play that against what we're seeing with the pandemic and then think about whis for early february as we watch what's happening with the pandemic watch how we're doing at containing spread within the district as we gradually bring in more full dense spaces so that's the method here of why we would phase back in trying to get for our elementaries all in but to do that gradually as we juxtaposed to how are we doing on those

055other metrics again to repeat regional in the town of weston within our own schools and then our comfort level social distancing is we bring more and more into the buildings i that's the thoughts for tonight to get reactions from the board uh and let's let's open it up questions from comments from other the other board members just just a question um you know there's been a lot of chatter amongst other districts that they're going that they're staying remote until you get two weeks post the winter break um what were the discussions within weston about potentially extending the remote till we get beyond that two-week quarantine period post the break uh we we looked at it um it's a good question gene we definitely looked at it uh it's it's it's mixed i mean a number

056of districts i mean right now wilton's planning to come right back in in that first week uh derry uh gary ann's plan to come right back into that first week grant's plan to come right back in in that first week uh new canaan is waiting one week you may know that new canaan is one of the few districts doing fairly regular testing they're going to do voluntary testing on the 8th uh and then bring people back in on the 11th again k-8 in high school hybrid so it's i just have to in this case look at other districts our sense was comfortably staying in remote until that thursday gave us several days to judge and assess i think that is a case we we can take advantage of uh being a bit smaller district four

057buildings uh we have you know less maneuver pieces to worry about uh so that's what we thought about but principles you could add to this because we we talked a lot about it canada if you want to add to this or tracy i think the other idea behind this decision being that it gives us a chance to take a look at staffing which it was one of the big drivers for that shift to remote so it's enough time to make sure that we're positioned well to be able to move forward or potentially make some adjustments versus coming back that that first day and then i think gina to your question about the two weeks i think we're we're looking to get at least some students back into the buildings and back into an in-person routine

058as soon as possible we felt like those couple of days gave us a buffer to make sure we have a very solid plan and can do that thoughtfully and safely while not keeping us out for a more extended period of time bill can you throw up your memo one more time please thank you i and i did add in here as i left it off the social distancing metrics piece and i did under february just make it complete that middle middle school and high school would be continuing hybrid full day not here is the special ed piece as tracy referred discussed it because that would apply to multiple grades a question we have here and is this 19th for first 25th um and i think that's really the sense of as we understand what it

059means to bring back in fully you know a couple of grades you know it's that's the number of students and staff whether the turnaround time of two weeks to understand what's happening or a bit longer is is necessary that's the 19th or 25th did we did you how are the staff feeling about the staff are fully on board with this i assume uh i can speak to that uh the staff is very anxious i i think the staff as in all districts the staff is is quite anxious um sorry um i i think their preference would be to as much as possible staying hybrid uh and i know ken you want to you've been in most recent conversation with the leadership of the wta do you want to speak to that please sure so i

060i did um provide a heads up uh to the leadership of the wta today um i did not get any uh initial reactions at this point i think you know following this meeting we may get more um information reactions i know laura has a touch base [Music] in her building with a couple of staff members so she may be able to add more there laura did you want to did you want to add anything yeah i think they're understandably very nervous um i did i mean i wasn't i wasn't asking so much about how they feel now because i know how nervous they are but more about about this schedule about you know i mean we don't know what life is going to be like by february 8th or january 19th but have they seen

061this has the staff seen this no we've not run it by the staff district wide at hurlbut which is most directly affected most immediately laura's had conversations with those teachers most directly affected tracy has been an ongoing basis talking with a number of of the staff in in the special ed realm the rest of the staff have not we've we've not put this out in that regard has there been communication to teachers as far as and not just teachers but all school staff about when they'll have access to the vaccines um part of some of the updates doesn't come back to on the quarantine and the vaccines is that's a big open question right now uh we are working with the westport west and i'll do a quick update on vaccines because it relates to

062this uh let me be direct the the sense right now if if we're expecting vaccines to make a difference for us in our schooling scenarios maybe any earlier than february or even march it's it's not going to have an effect because right now while teachers are in that 1b group it's still not clear when 1b will have the vaccines available we had talked about this in the task force earlier we learned on friday that while thanks to phil and others we had gotten in all the necessary information eight ten twelve weeks ago to the westport western health district statewide uh the software was being used was not the same software that was then used to determine the allotment so it all as a friday we learned from westport western health district it had to go

063re-entered and so we've jumped in to help get that done um so another district not far from us an urban district was informed over the weekend their teachers may not get vaccines till may now we don't know if that's accurate right so we so there's a lot of information flying out there um and we are persisting through fran rabinowitz and others to make sure that educators are and and to think of students first and concentric circle out within district so that we prioritize those closest to students and move outwards from those who'd be eligible for vaccines so so it would go through the health through the through the health department not through each individual district it would go through each of the health departments in the state correct but we have to coordinate as we

064have recorded in early fall we coordinated wes it was running through the health districts we sent as all our data into health district then there was the understanding well actually you have to use a whole new software package basically so that's all i had to get and that's not their error it's not our air it's up the ladder error and so we're now fixing that but that's i mean the vaccines are out there but some things you're reading about or hearing about in terms of deployment issues you know we're seeing that so the vaccines will be there but it's not going to be as early as as next month uh they may be able to fast track some things but i mean we have to make this plan here assuming we were without the vaccines

065understood i just i just didn't know where we stood with like timing no yeah but it's a great question gina i had as a critical update because this is my first chance with the board in the community to give that update um and we also know that one of the vaccines at least it's a you have to you get you know two doses before you start to see an effect and even with the vaccine we still need to follow all the practices of of masking social distancing and all the rest but it would make a big difference to our staff so this is going to be unpopular but then again any way you come down on this is unpopular but ah laura i know the kids the little ones we know i'm always advocating for

066the little ones but they need to have in-person classes i know it but uh january 6 is not that far after what would be what we will assume will be a christmas surge just like the thanksgiving surge we're seeing now and i i would love your thoughts on this your honest thoughts but i and i know i can hear parents shrieking in their living rooms right now as they listen to me because and you know as we all know we're getting 100 letters a day saying how come our kids aren't in school and we're getting 100 letters a day saying how come our kids are in school uh so but so the unpopular question is how can we feel confident putting the kids back in school and more important not more importantly equally as importantly

067the teaching staff back in school so close after a christmas surge that's a great question um and i do think that speaks to why we're looking at stepping in um a grade level at a time because we don't know what that surge will look like we're already in the high risk range which you know everything i've seen all the recommendations all of the health guidance is for reduced in-person learning yeah um that being said you know elc has been in throughout that's the benefit of small class sizes um you know where social distancing is is easier to manage and it's less um people in a room um so they've been in throughout very successfully um great you know it couldn't have gone any better with elc um we do want to prioritize kindergarten you know

068for just the reasons you say they're our youngest learners they're at least independent although i have to tell you i'm very impressed with um the learning that has the teaching and learning that has been happening um throughout i mean they really are engaged they're um i mean just being on a kindergarten zoom is an experience to behold i mean it's just there's so much joy and energy and excitement about the learning and and they are learning and they're reading and they're um they're doing their math and they're holding up their you know their assignments to their teachers so they can see so it you know unless they're flipping their hearts honestly it is great and the teachers have been you know wonderful and really have um we've learned so much since the beginning of the

069year when i think back to march i mean we have just evolved into such a different educational program right now um and which is exciting to be a part of but to go back to your question i do think that's why it's important to step in the grades and not to just hope for the best and go all back in and hope we don't have you know people getting sick and a massive outbreak i think you know we need to be thoughtful about bringing kindergarten in um you know and i'm looking at what else we can do in the building to um help with those mitigating strategies and then by um a little bit later in january i think we'll have a better sense of that and uh yeah i think i think that's right

070and and because you have so few students by stepping in that way you can maintain the safety the distance you need i think it's really important to say right here at this meeting and every day between now and when they're back in school that this could be reversed at any time and that families ought to prepare themselves for that so that it's not a big exhale hooray the kids are back in school you know it really has to be said meant often and that this could be changed at any time depending on on how things go so you know taffy i think that i think that's right i think what one thing that is important is that we have kind of a nominal plan right that says okay there is a plan to start getting

071kids back into school full time um i i think that just saying wait and see is probably not enough i think if we have you know i think that we need to have a plan where everyone is the expectation is that we're stepping through this and we are seeing movement we're seeing movement every couple of weeks every month but we can step back at any time if things get worse um and so you know i think everyone would love to see us move faster i think that well not everyone i get i guess they're you know i you're right we do get we do get emails on both sides of this of this issue right but i think having a nominal plan is fine i also think that what's happening in other districts is when

072you really look at it is that they're by making a decision around putting getting all kids back right they're really not making a public health decision what they're saying is that if you don't like it you have the voluntary distance learning option right but what they're not considering is the staff right what they are saying is you know with from the students perspective we're going all in and if if you're uncomfortable with that as a parent you have the option of doing voluntary distance learning and and for some reason it's it's we're really not privy to what's happening at the staff level by them making that decision right and and and that's really where that's kind of the missing the missing piece here right i think the other piece i think the other piece is

073that that and i've received emails to this effect that people um don't have the option to be in person they're not choosing to go vdl they have to go vdl because of the health vulnerabilities of their families or what have you they have to they don't have the choice to go back in person they have to go bdl so that vdl needs to be top-notch and just as equitable and high quality as anything else so so and then if if they do go vdl of course the staff as you rightly point out tony the staff doesn't have that option to have their kids video because they need to be in the classroom right um so this is what i'm saying is that i i you know everyone would like to see a step to plan

074to getting the younger learners back into school and i think that i you know we all want to see as you know we all that tendency for us is to probably say let's try to be aggressive in kind of getting our kids the younger learners back into school right so the you know the the issue at hand is going to be and i think whatever decision is made there's going to be a huge amount of criticism around that because i think that students the parents of younger learners for the most part would like their kids to be in more than than less right yeah um and you know my view on this is that whatever it is we need a nominal plan with some some nominal dates so that everyone has an expectation of where

075we're going right and we talked about this obviously on the task force committee um so the administration kind of understood my position and and the questions and the train of thought which was really around hurl but and and understanding if it was if if hurl but and i and i went back into uh previous emails um to try and put together my own snapshot of of hurl but from from when the year began and while we've had um students and teachers in quarantine um in hurl but i could only find one case of a confirmed covet case maybe maybe i missed an email laura but we and unfortunately the dashboard isn't historical it's just a moment of time but it is the one school that has had uh the lowest um uh case rate um

076and so and so i i i'm still questioning um if if the first graders can maintain that level of social distancing i know second grade was an issue but if kindergarten and first grade can still maintain that level of social distancing why is there the two-week lag between those two grades and i i i'm still not understanding bill what is the metric that you're then going to present for first grade to say okay we are safe now first grade can go back to school full-time well again like in with every superintendent in the country if there's no specific number it's a mixture of looking at sets of information i'm just going to give it to you straight uh it's saying along that chart it's saying where are we regionally even if it's up ticking still

077let's say we're moving from 61 to 70. that's that first and we look at weston if weston's staying you know still up in the red zone you know up in the 30s or so but then do it goes to your exact point are we seeing spread as we gradually bring in more students and staff more density because we have had staff positives we have staff positives that result in the need to quarantine and we have student positives there was so the result is the people in the building who may then be infected and then those who get exposed because we've had and laura can speak to it um we've had whole grades go out for 14 days in her butt uh and that may have been tied to staff or student but it's looking at

078what's the degree of exposure we've had as we bring more in and is it staying kind of where we were then we say all right we can handle this and if if we're not having complete very strong opposition from our public health and medical advisors but saying all right just keep going then we would we bring bring more in and then we get that's the first grade because there we can do the social distancing there's that larger density the number in the building if we can you know by mid-january say we can bring in the first grade and we're still holding to it then we say let's now do that heavier lift on the second grade and then third through fifth where unless we're going to add staff and spread students out which is a

079significant investment uh we're going to have to be comfortable with close recorders but but but by the time we hit late january we'll have a much better handle on that do you know when we were all back in for those two to three weeks do you do you have a snapshot of what herobot looked like during those two to three weeks did we have any confirmed cases yeah we had a staff exposure during that we can go back and pull that back out if you'd like we we did have staff exposure and that was when we did up the first grade go out and some of it is exposure can we have the the soccer program issue and that affects it's it can it can come in a variety of ways we have to deal

080with that um yeah i just you know i i still i always go back to the um american academy of pediatrics just to see what updates they have put on their website and they have actually not updated from their original stance um they've actually as of 1217 they actually put out an update with regards to sports but um they have not updated their original stance that that that children need to be in school and so you know listen you know my position i i said it multiple times during the task force meeting i think that we have the vdl option we it is based on the most recent survey parents are happy with that option um and if given the opportunity we need to just capitalize on every day that we can to to get

081the students back in school and and we we know that we can safely for first grade with social distancing guidelines so i'm just questioning the two-week delay for first grade we actually don't have six feet um social distancing in first grade kindergarten is um a little easier because the rooms for the most part are larger in kindergarten um the shapes of the room the size of the room are much larger than the first grades so we do have more space one of the considerations and the um concerns about increased density is the times when the students have their masks off which is the greatest risk for transmission and those are the lunch times um snap time there's a little bit of you know more flexibility with because we can kind of work with that within

082the classroom but the lunch times are um when the students have their masks off and then you have a room for all of children who are not six feet apart that are eating with their masks off um that's challenging we're also in the winter months now we're not outside as much as we were um even just a month ago um you know we were blessed with a beautiful large campus and we were outside quite a bit mass breaks moving around pe outside um we are now in uh winter months or we're going to be indoors you know for sometimes all day um with limited um opportunities for you know masks breaks um with the whole class so that's also a consideration um the the lunchtimes i know are are usually a very big concern for

083our staff as well because that's when they feel the most exposed when they're monitoring and supervising a room full of students who have their masks off yeah i i am i hear what you're saying laura i think you know those are certainly points that we we want to consider and be thoughtful about um but i mean i have to say on this one i think i i agree with ruby um it would sure be nice to see as many of the hurl butters in as possible as soon as possible we spend so much time looking at the public health metrics and the public health standards and discussing public health and when i look at bill's chart and all the criteria we're looking on there i see public health again but i don't see social and

084emotional health and when i think about this winter that we're starting now and you know these young kids who are not having any sport activities they're not going to be playing outside in the yard as much they're not going to be interacting with their peers as much um you know i think the classroom is is such an important place for them to be so um i i do appreciate the flexibility with this plan that that everyone has put forward i've certainly been in meetings and i've seen this document evolve from from different places to where it is today and i think it's it's a it's a it's a great improvement it's also a great sign of collaboration and and thought and communication with different stakeholders so i would encourage everybody to just keep keep thinking

085about this and and and let's see where we can where we can evolve with it i also wanted to uh mention one other point too i mean and hearing bill speak about the vaccination schedules and and i think that this pandemic is looking to last a lot longer than any of us anticipated back when we were planning for the beginning of the school year and you know last year we certainly were caught off guard with a very sudden end to the school year of in-person learning in march um you know not knowing when and how this will end you know we we do have the advantage right now of of being able to plan ahead and plan for worst case scenarios and i think we should spend some time thinking about the transitional years and

086the upper schools too so we have this document that's talking about you know prioritizing the youngest learners and children with ieps and i think that definitely needs to be the priority right now but as soon as we start moving forward with those goals i think we need to start thinking about the you know the kids coming into the high school we heard last year how hard of a transition that was for those rising 8th graders those rising 5th rising rising 9th graders 8 current 8th graders rising 6th graders current 5th graders and see if we can think about creative ways to make sure that they're prepared for for a social emotional change in terms of the school and academic change um you know i just i just want to make sure that we can be

087as take advantage of the fact that we have some planning and some time to to add those individuals into our planning document well i mean principles this might be a quick good moment tracy also i mean we do worry about those transitions and i think we just have to redouble those efforts as melissa is asking but that is something you know we've been working hard on the last several years and just i mean we any quick insights to the board on that point because that goes on so we've got the approaches we've got the framework i think tracy as a newcomer is observed within special ed we can even do that better and we'll look at that for sure um but i don't think once wants to reflect on that because it's a really good

088observation by and request by melissa i can just speak too from a special education standpoint that's something that we've already started talking about at each of the levels it's been flagged as a priority for my work with the two assistant directors and i think it's going to be a longer process this year because there's been changes in schedule and routines and so it's not as as clear-cut so we are mapping out a process for each of the buildings um and we'll be working on that really beginning in january we were fortunate i'm sorry i'm sorry um i guess i would say that you know we actually were talking today our team about um it's that time eighth grade registration and uh the timeline for that and it just almost seems surreal but you know dan

089and i have been been having some conversations about how to get the best possible outcomes um from our ninth graders because it it it was um very challenging i mean they they they're sort of in the building but not really um it it's been really hard i think one of the best things that we did this year that um everyone unanimously at the school parents staff and students agree on is this extended learning hour every day and so how can we formalize something like that if it's not on a daily basis but to formalize it as part of our schedule and then to really to work and start setting the groundwork um in eighth grade so that they understand how easy it is to um to access it and that um it's you know by

090accessing it you know our very brightest students access it there's there's nothing wrong with reaching out and getting support and connecting with your teachers so i i do believe that that there are many future opportunities with what we have learned through this pandemic of how to do things better once we get back to our our new normal anything from as tony was saying that the idea of all the way that we're teaching and how much better we're getting at it to how can we get the best possible outcome for all students in our our different interventions anywhere from tier one to tier three i was just going to say that we were lucky in a way last early last spring late winter we were able to have the eighth graders go up to the high

091school before we closed in march so they had a chance to speak with the counselors to speak with students that's something we've been doing and trying to build on that transition program at the high school just depending on what the scenario is the time and trying to as you said melissa trying to make the best of the situation so we can truly prepare those students for a successful transition social emotionally and academically and then to do the same thing with the fifth graders to the sixth grade unfortunately we did not get to have that visit in person so we made videos and video tours and meet the admins and and more meetings specifically for those parents and for those students who were new to the middle school but you're right to uh to remind us

092that that time is now this is the transition planning time right now now i think melissa's comments around the fact that this is you know that's it it's something that we're you know it's it's not a decision made at one meeting right now it's it's one where there's a framework here and over the course of the next several weeks before we get to that date uh i think that um there's going to be a lot of updates further thinking between the leadership team and and and the board in terms of understanding exactly um how this is going to evolve i think that once we get to the first week in january things may look different things will look different than they are today they may be worse they may be better but one thing's for

093sure is that this conversation around um how we're going to you know how we're going to uh sequence this over the course of january or february has to continue during the month of december and you know during the holidays so that we really understand exactly what we're facing in the first week of january and how we're going to actually step through this um so you know any other comments before we move on to the next agenda item well tony not to lengthen the process but as with other districts they're all announcing what the return plan is and i need to do that tomorrow i owe that to the families to let them know at least the front end of this um what i i i mean because they you know we need to confirm that

094the seventh is this plan is because i i mean your educators at the robot level and with tracy are right where you want them they they want those students in person and we've got to begin working on that i think well you know billy isn't it my understanding that it is your decision bill and not ours i mean we're here to listen and advise but i understood that it is you know yours to decide sorry were you going to say that tony yeah that's exactly what i was going to say and i mean we actually have a direct match i just want you know sometimes let's high fit sets get up on the balcony so you all know who hyphens is but if you get up on the balcony we all agree we all agree

095in person is better and and thank you taffy for asking about the staff uh because i will say in their heart of hearts they know in person is better and but that's to say right now they're very anxious as every educator in the united states and internationally is and so they need to know that we know they're anxious and their preference may not be in person right now but every family in weston has to know that their children are going people who want to see them in person so what what we'll announce tomorrow and i'm going to confer with laura i'm going to confer with tracy because they're most pivotal at this point for those that first week is i i think we want to announce that that it's that elck and special ed and

096we'll do some thinking on that first grade uh and what that time shift is because you've all been very very clear and and we don't disagree at all it's just the issue of timing and phasing relative to that larger public health and medical environment we're in and uh we've been pretty bold here relative to whis to even have whis on this list as of early february uh so i i hope you agree we'll have an announcement out tomorrow be lean and clean at least on this front end but i think it's helpful to west because we've not done this before they say here dates we're aiming at for other adjustments but we may have to be flexible but at least give everybody something to point to and as general some of the criteria are and

097i did add to it the sel or excuse me melissa um that here are those six because way back when there were three health and safety academic growth and social emotional learning so just to say those are the ones we'll look at volunteer distance learning cross cuts everything is always there as does the special ed piece yeah and i would you know and i would before you go you go public i would have another internal discussion around first grade i think that that's that's that's another you know i guess that think about that a little bit but that you know i yeah it you know as a board we're informed by you know a number of different constituents right we hear from the teachers we hear from the leadership team we hear from the parents

098um and we you know we we you know our collective views right are informed to some extent at ten thousand feet by a number of constituents we're not in the weeds right and and so you know that's you know at the end of the day um that's how we get our uh you know we come together and that's how we we collect our views right and and so you know what i'm getting from this discussion is that if you take another look at first grade and and work on that sooner versus later that might be a good thing to do but you know again you know you're you're there every day doing what you do and you have a better view at it than we do as a board member but this is kind of

099this is our collective use of things that we're hearing right i had a question i had a comment and a question for laura um my comment is that i think everyone should be outside as much as possible i don't think anyone should be inside all day certainly not kids a hurl but um but my comment my question is these kids like this is like starting a new year for them so especially you know they're young they haven't seen their classmates all the time they haven't had to get up this early they haven't had to do so many of the things and they haven't had to follow so many protocols like they're completely out of practice so what's the plan to kind of like address all of that putting all the academics aside because you know

100i always say i think your mental health is more important than your physical health so for me this is a mental health decision it's it's mentally healthy for them to be socializing with other people but you know in the course of that like they're totally out of practice you know we find um that they do transition back in fairly quickly um i'm sorry hillary were you still speaking there's a little bit of a lag in the internet no no that was my question okay um you know after any break it's they usually um transition back fairly quickly you know after thanksgiving extended break when first grade was out um for remote learning for a period of time they come back in the mask they're right back into it i mean i don't have any concerns

101about them being out of practice with being in school and masks it's just part of their it's part of life right now um and being back in school the teachers are very skilled at easing them back into the day we spend a lot of time with discussions interactions reconnecting with peers reconnecting with teachers um and you know we're we're very much into our routines so there's a predictable schedule the teachers review that um so the students know what's coming and i think that's why we did see when we went to all remote it was a fairly smooth transition because the students had already been doing a remote day on their off hybrid day when they were learning from home it was the same schedule so uh they weren't relearning new routines i think the routines

102are important so even though they haven't been in the routines maybe for a week and a half because they're on break it's the same routine students who are coming into school will be coming in is is i'm sorry say that again they have have they all been together every day all day like the isn't all of that like yeah so the um the three weeks when we were all in earlier in the year um was was a very easy transition they were so excited to see each other um you guys know that and they build in those opportunities to acknowledge it discuss it celebrate it um while of course keeping our vdl students connected as well but it's a big part of our morning meeting discussions um tapping into that that energy and that excitement

103tony do we need to put another meeting on the calendar to discuss scenarios prior to the seventh and or the the 18th well i think we should um i mean we could put a special meeting uh on the calendar very you know right towards um towards the very end of the break right you have to remember we do have you know we are uh we do have the budget presentation [Music] sort of that first week in january but the first day we're back i mean so but we can we can actually put a special meeting together at some point um why don't we do this i i think that's helpful only because you know when the last memo came out from bill in terms of going to remote one of the feedback um major feedback

104that we got was just we needed more information on how and why this decision was made and i think if we talk publicly about what are the metrics what's going on what are we looking at there's no room for miscommunication what's that monday that monday is what the fifth monday's before what's that monday's the fourth and we have right now a task force meeting sitting in there you could set some forth i'd urge you not to do something on the break i would do it i would probably if we do a special meeting i would probably do something on the fourth yeah so let let me take that away and and uh and potentially do something for the fourth that i think that's a good idea okay okay anything else okay let's move to the

105next topic um a little bit back to the future um update of the town uh facilities optimization committee thank you gail and and rick for for your patience hopefully uh this was fun for you i think it's just me at this point tony sorry oh sorry uh sorry we lost we lost rick okay um so let me give you a bit of a background first on this um so in 2017 silver petrochelli did their uh fertility study which basically had two parts they looked at the facilities conditions which which was formed the basis of our 10-year capital plan they also did a piece on what it would cost to do pro programmatic updates um as well after that we actually had a phase two study which basically we're looking at a three school campus and

106what that would involve there was different permutations on on different three school campus configurations all of them actually would involve some significant construction um i think that phase two came up with some interesting ideas um it came up with the conclusion that if we actually ended up wanting to configure the campus in a three-school configuration that it would definitely involve some um some construction um and but but i don't think that the answer was there so decision was made to actually expand this to a town-wide committee to look at not only the school campus but also look at optimization in context of town facilities as well and so there was a facilities optimization commission committee that was put together uh it included uh stakeholders from the town it from the you know the town leadership

107uh finance committee uh hillary and i are serving on there uh ken craw is on there as well um rick bertazy who who was good enough to share this um he's not with us now um but he he basically comes with a huge amount of experience uh in managing real estate i think he managed um deutsche bank's real estate portfolio in europe and recently manages uh bridgestone's real estate portfolio as well and so he comes to us with considerable experience uh gail who you know is a former select person um has been uh playing an instrumental role in leading this um this this committee she's here tonight to really uh talk about the work that the committee's done and then and and the next steps for the committee um this has been um the update

108was done at the facility at the last facilities committee meeting and so this was a good um point in the work of the committee to actually address the full board to talk about what the committee has done so far and what work we're going to do in the in the future so let me hand it over to gail thank you tony as those of you who have been involved for quite a while you know that the facilities discussion has been going on for at least 10 years or so and it not only was revolved around what to do with the schools and whether we should consolidate the campus but also what to do with the school and town employees that are housed at the annex as well as the jarvis building so given the silver

109petrochelli report given the the needs of town staff the board of selectmen wisely felt that it was important to create a committee that takes a holistic approach to the whole town so that we can implement a plan that will be relevant for at least 25 30 years at least that's what our plan is so the facilities optimization committee um has gone through um a process where we interviewed several different consultants uh to get their thoughts and feelings on what we're trying to do um those meetings were incredibly helpful they all had a chance to tour the facilities um thanks to the school's facility staff and we're at the point now where we'd like to issue a request for proposal uh so the the main questions that the committee is tasked to ask that we would

110like to answer is given the current uh enrollment trends and expectations does it make sense to look at potentially reducing the board of education's footprint and going from a four-school model to a three-school model and if we do that um what are the benefits to that versus um the you know not not having any benefits to doing so um so that's first and foremost um academically uh how that plays out is obviously our our primary concern um but we also want to know will there be any cost savings if we make this move just as important is how do we get staff to work in a location with staff members that they should work with on a regular basis so for example for the town right now we have land use in the annex they

111work very closely with employees of town hall such as the town clerk and the tax assessor we also have social services and and youth services in the annex they work very closely with senior services how can we get that to work a little bit more closer and how do we get parks and rec to interface with those groups as well on the the school side you know you have half of your staff in one building half of your staff in another building and the annex at least in in my opinion and and what most of the consultants who came through said is that it's nearing the end of its useful life it was put together as a kinderland um when my kids were in kindergarten they just turned 25 so temporary building that was supposed

112to last 10 years has lasted a little bit longer than that and i'm i'm really fearful that if we don't start making some plans we're going to be in a situation where a building is falling apart and we don't have any plans to go forward for those staff who are in it on the town side as well we have the jarvis facility which is an antique house which houses three to four employees it really is not a good use of that facility or that land location but in addition to those two main questions that we'd like to ask we really feel as a group that if we are going to take a look at the facilities the school and town facilities particularly the school facilities that we really do need to go back and take

113a look and see if we're going to make any modifications to accommodate this switch to a three-school footprint are there other renovations that should take place at the same time so for example should we should we consider other changes that might have an impact on the physical security sustainability such as the carbon footprints of the school water and waste reductions health and safety daylight enhancements mep improvements things along that nature which i know were looked at at the silver pecha chali report but we really do feel that perhaps coming in with it under a different perspective might be a good idea also are there other renovations or recommendations that we're seeing that would enhance the students 21st century learning environment and that goes hand in hand with programmatic upgrades and other changes that might be

114desired by the board of education because if we're going to start looking at making those renovations i think it would be helpful to know ahead of time what would be the board of ed's priorities and put that in the request for proposal the three things that i just added last would be considered add alternates to the initial proposal so that when it goes to the board of finance for funding the priority is really to figure out what our campus should look like and what we should do with the staffing and then in addition to that as an at alternate are what are the other changes that we should consider to uh the board of education buildings at the same time so um the committee would like to have uh specifics as to what we should

115ask these consultants to look for when we issue this rfp right now the we have reviewed it with the board of selectmen we're waiting for comments back from the town administrator and then once we get his comics facts as well as your comments back um the committee will get together and hopefully bring forth a proposal to the board of selectmen to issue this rfp right after um sometime probably the end of january so with that i will open the florida questions yeah one one thing before we ask questions is is um during this process you know the the um when we looked at optima optimizing our town facilities um i kind of looked at it in a more myopic way but after hearing some of the uh presentations from some of the consultants that um

116really answered the rfq right um i think we have an opportunity here to look at this as a more um generational type of uh of project where we can ultimately try to see if we can bring our facilities to what is you know 21st century educational standards you know i'm not sure at the end of the day whether the financial uh ability to do that you know where that is with respect to the town but i think this is an opportunity to look at things in a different way than i think we kind of started looking at this to see if there is a way in which we can actually set a path to really create a set of facilities that ultimately will really serve us for the next few decades um that's what these

117projects really are are all about they're not about you know patching things up these are more about you know optimizing but also making sure that we we actually address the facilities needs that are going to be you know that are going to be required to actually service our students for a number of years to come um and then you know that that's that's a lot you know it's going to take a lot of work i mean this is this this starts with the consultants but ultimately comes back to the board of ed which ultimately you know has the final decision here on this um but anyway just to talk about process going forward tony to build on what you said so um right now what we're looking to do is um issue this rfp hopefully

118right after the the well end of january at some point um after we get those responses it'll go to the board of finance to determine what portions of those responses to the rfp they would like to fund according to rick our chair he thinks it's going to take probably six nine months maybe even a year to take a look at all of our facilities and come back with one well-organized concise plan as to where we should go with our facilities and that will also entail a lot of meetings not only with the board of education and the board of selectmen but with the public as well we think it's important to get their input so there will be at least uh two meetings to public forums with the public so that they can weigh in

119on this um so we are not even looking you know if the board of uh finance approves all this we're not even looking to go out and bond for at least i want to say two years probably and that coincides with the timing that um the bond from the west and the high school renovations will be coming offline um so we have an opportunity to really make those adjustments to bring our buildings up from the 1960s to present at a time when i think it'll be financially palatable to the town so that's what we're trying to kind of work on this we're very cognizant of um the cost that it takes to bring our buildings up to speed we feel it's incredibly important um but we also want to look and see if perhaps if

120we reduce the footprint and take one of the school buildings offline whether we have a chance to make some savings that might help offset some of those costs can i just make a comment that may have a question in it i'm not sure um i just really appreciate gail and tony um that this work should not be done um in isolation around what matters vis-a-vis buildings but rather should be closely aligned to how we educate our children and what they need um we've talked i know victor brought up some time ago you know international baccalaureate formatting for schools um and it's something that maybe down the road we begin to think more about well that requires a certain rethinking about how our facilities are equipped for that we know and i'm speaking with my curriculum

121chair hat on we know that that having kids of different ages under one roof um rather than separated by building is really really advantageous to all of those kids old and young to be under one roof so i'm not afraid of putting younger kids in the same building as older kids because it can be incredibly beneficial i'm not talking about her but aged kids but um so so as we look ahead as we look ahead i really want to just put an exclamation point next to the idea that this really ought to be closely aligned to our academic long-term academic vision and goals for the district um and that it's not just a fiscal question thanks gail absolutely yeah um more than a question i just i just wanna i mean thank gail and rick

122i i can't think for a better group of people to be looking at this and i know it seems that this has been going on for such a long time but i think i think we're at a point where where this is being done correctly and um and and i you know i set it into rick's presentation and and i think it's important to say that that one thing is is to to when we talk about the changes we want to make um you know one word that stuck in my mind he said it's not a wish list right and and and that that talks to the point about about being fiscally responsible about this process but but yeah there's certain things that once you break ground on some sort of renovations there's things that

123that can be done rather than doing them individually so so by by looking at the campus the the town buildings the programmatic changes we want to think about the students i mean it it's it's it's a long arduous work but um i really respect what what what gail and rick are doing it's also less expensive once you have the the contractors bidding on a project if you put in all the work that you want to do on the campus rather than piecemeal it and some of the decisions that you make have an impact on what you can do later down the road so that's why you want to make sure that anything that that you think should be included is included from the get-go because other once some decisions are made down the road sometimes

124you can't always go back and and retrofit the space so we want to make sure that as we do this that we are going to bring our schools um up to where they quite frankly where i think they should be yeah another comment sorry tony one last comment i promise to be quiet um you know the other thing we need to to integrate in our thinking around this is that because our town resources are so limited the campus really is this enormous takes up an enormous amount of geography in our town um physically and and and figuratively and that as we think about the campus at large it ought to be a place where community lives as well in other words how do we integrate into our school campus places for families to be or

125or events to happen where town and school become a much closer um uh uh um you know an integrated um place to be just we're now we're getting into the weeds now but i'm just saying again at the outset of that i think taffy you have a very important point because i you know i always thought what you know if you kind of say you know weston's about education i think you know i always think about western whether you're young learner or an old learner uh or your senior citizen there's there's there's it's really about education and i think your your point you know whether it's a whether it's a a a mindset or a theme or an actual facilities configuration i think it it it is what weston seems to be all about right

126right you know and i do think that there are opportunities that that if it's determined um that it is preferable to go to a three-school campus to bring the community more into the campus in different ways by utilizing that that empty building so to speak gail i'm so glad on page three of this document that you included that if uh if we do consolidate from four facilities to three facilities that we're gonna do without significant capital investment because i think the issue that i had with the silver uh petrochelli proposal was everything had a 40 million dollar price tag to it every single option which confused me because i was like well then how are we optimizing if we're just now paying for an extra arm and a leg onto each school so thank you

127for that because that should be the tone when we go forward but my question is under the scope of services under 2a where you talk about if the answer is yes and if we are going to consolidate or close my question is how detailed do we want to have the conversation with the consultant to repurpose or how to repurpose or the cost around closing and and with those conversations are we expecting the consultant to think out of the box to have a regionalized center for something you know i know melissa and tony both had conversations with tracy's predecessor around offering some fed services bringing some spread services um in-house and regionalizing that or maybe thinking outside of the box on the other end of the spectrum going to for the gifted and talented program so

128to i guess my question is what level of detail are we asking the consultant to to to produce in terms of repurposing that fourth building um i totally agree with you ruby and a big part of what the consultant is going to have to figure out is what we do with that fourth building because there's a cost associated with the building whether there are students in it or not right and it may if if the school's not using it anymore your it may come off the the board of ed's balance sheet but it's going on to the town budget balance sheet because someone has to pay uh you know for the electricity even if it's uh you know the usage is a lot less from not having the building there you still have to make

129sure the envelope of the building is tight otherwise you know you're destroying another building as far as repurposing it um i think that those are conversations that the facilities optimization committee started having you know the first level of conversation is well if we don't need for example pearl bud to be utilized as an elementary school does it make sense to put school or town staff into that building so that we don't have to build additions onto central office into town hall to accommodate those employees what other uses are there this is the first i'm actually hearing about potential for regionalized services i'm i'm just a little bit surprised because when i was first selectmen and i brought up that concept it was it was shot down as a hard no you know full stop we're

130not going there so if this is conversations that you guys are having um you know please let me know and we will incorporate that into discussions with i i think i would view them as more brainstorming than brainstorming yeah more brainstorming around things but rather than specific conversations but but you know certainly we have to continue doing those kinds of things yeah i just think the the the the um the how and the why we repurpose that fourth building could lead us to different decisions that we make collectively for the entire district that's all absolutely and we also have to be cognizant of you know what happens if the school population balloons again right you know when my kids first started kindergarten we had portables all over the place we want to make sure that

131whatever we do we're not getting back to that kind of situation right so so if it means for example keeping north house as it is and just shuttering it so that perhaps if you need extra classrooms you can immediately within a year go back and use them i mean that's a discussion that we have to have with the board of ed as well as the the consultants so i think that they're they're cognizant of it particularly as we're we're looking at enrollment numbers during this crazy covet time and we see an increase in people coming into our town but not necessarily those who are actually in school right now we don't necessarily know what that's going to be four or five years down the road for when we're we're planning so i think we just

132have to at this point kind of keep an open end to that but really what i think it was important for the committee to know prior to issuing this rfp is are there specific things that we should ask the consultant to study for example we can certainly put in there if um you want to uh have a discussion about utilizing extra space for regionalization or for um i know this has been discussed and and decided not to do but perhaps put a nursery school somewhere or or whatever it is um you know but also do you want to include like for example the science labs is something that i hear over and over again is a serious need in the middle school so if we are going to hire consultants and if they have to

133make some changes to accommodate moving fifth grade to the middle school should there be a a second look at perhaps retrofitting classrooms or making renovations to accommodate updated science classes i'm just putting that out there as soon as i mean it's it's for you to tell me not for me to tell you but yeah yeah you know i think in you know one of the the tasks that we took or or at least that i suggested to do originally is to not really be specific around that but wait until the consultant comes on board and kind of start and and making sure that they work with the administration and and or the and or the board to look at some of those things when they do come on board um because right now it's very

134hard to actually you know specify in in real specificity what the laundry list of programmatic you know upgrades might look like right yeah but tony you also can't ask because you know you can't get a consultant to price out things to be determined do you know what i'm saying right then you have the easier it'll be for board of finance to approve all of these adults yeah and and and i think what i'm hearing gail is you're sort of giving us permission to dream a little bit and i don't mean dream and technicolor but to absolutely olympic dream let's put it that way what's that a realistic dream right right to absolutely say we've been talking about you know offering pre-k in in grander terms for some time we've been talking about a b c

135and d so can we put those down because we know that even if we if we lay down 10 ideas that you know 10 of them might go through or maybe 20 but it's worth putting them down i think well this is supposed to go out when it's going to go out in in assuming six weeks yeah yeah yeah so so maybe we could take a closer look um perhaps through the leadership team first and then and then through the facilities committee take a closer look if there is anything we want to actually add to the rfp before it goes out i just have one this is kind of a ticky tack question but i think it's it's an important one as far as overall space usage um education continually evolves you know whether you

136have you know k to five buildings k to two buildings k to eight buildings things change um the design of buildings changed security concerns drove the way schools were built post sandy hook is the pandemic going to drive school design as far as space and classrooms space more space in cafeterias more open indoor space in northern climates my concern is we're entering in the planning phase of what is supposed to be you know the future of our buildings for the next several decades to come we're going to be on the front end of trying to address some of those questions in those designs what what sort of parameters as far as classroom spacing cafeteria spacing op indoor open space etc you know are we going to build into this great quest i think that those

137are all the things that the consultant needs to come back and tell us and that's one of the reasons why we kind of need to know the full scope before we start this because what you're saying is is incredibly important gina five years from now we won't be dealing with the coronavillas epidemic anymore god willing but what's going to come on next i mean after sandy hook we had lots of conversations about the security of buildings and how playgrounds are built and where playgrounds are built and and and other other issues which i'm certainly not going to discuss in public session but the point is that that these consultants that we're working with or at least we hope to be working with will have to have the answers to those questions like how do you

138design schools five years from now given what we're currently facing and and that's why um we want to do this once do it carefully and hire the right people so that we get all the answers so that we can we can move forward but you're right i mean look i look at things like like the size of hallways and and some of the hallways that silver petrochelli pointed out particularly in the middle school are very narrow you would never design a hallway like that i mean i'm not in the construction business but i would just assume that you wouldn't build a school with a hallway like that because you want to be able to have a certain amount of flow between people some of the consultants during the rfq process showed us things that we

139didn't even necessarily think about they had uh flexible doors doors that opened up outside you know to increase like double the size of the cafeteria space and then a big part of it and all the consultants came in when they talked to us about it were were the energy efficient upgrades that all of the buildings and you know in the school as well as town hall could use to to save money down the road as well as bring more light in which was a common theme among the participants during the rfq process so if we're going to make any of these changes and if we're going to make a wholesale change to any of our buildings i think it's wise to just try to get everything out there at once we could figure out how

140to phase it in terms of what's best for the students and phase it is what's best for town financing but i think that we have to get a whole picture and come up with some plan as to how we can implement it all going forward just taffy i'm a dreamer too good any other questions for gail all right yeah we'll we'll take that internally and we'll uh over the before it goes out we'll basically try to address that that part of the rfp okay great given all the free time we all have a moment all right guys thanks for having me thank you thanks a lot and thanks for all your work on this thanks all right where are we um alternative pathways tracy do you want to cue this up you want me to

141queue it up quickly ken who's going to cue this one up i'm i'm happy to do it okay thank you um so i know you're all familiar with ess it's a program that's been in district for the past two few years uh and the purpose of the program is to support students who have complex social emotional and behavioral needs and the overarching goal of that program was to provide the support that was needed to ensure or to provide as many opportunities as possible for students to stay within west end so that they are experiencing their education and their extracurricular opportunities within their home community and i think whenever there's a program that has what i'll call external service providers the ultimate goal as a district is to build the internal capacity of the people who

142work in the district to be able to support a program with a similar structure and that's exactly what the high school team is going to propose uh tonight a group of high school leaders uh building leaders our head of counseling meredith who's here this evening and department chairs have come together and have generated what i think is a really exciting proposal that further embeds this program uh within the fabric of weston high school and incorporates the talents of the westin high school staff in order to meet the needs of our students i think the key feature of the proposal is that we maintain the level of social emotional and behavioral support that's needed for these students and we also enhance the work that's being done with these students uh from an academic standpoint um i

143think there are a number of team members who are excited about this proposal and i think it just furthers uh the work that we're doing on behalf of our special education students and district so lisa do you want to jump in sure thank you tracy um you know as tracy said we had been looking very carefully i would say every year at the program ess and um we are now sort of at a point where we believe that we can provide a sort of in-house homegrown program that has increased flexibility and provides the level of personalization um for these students both academically and therapeutically our challenge over the last couple of years and i can let um uh meredith speak to it is is that you know they were provided with therapeutic services um within

144the school however there were some academic what i would call um pitfalls along the way um with the program uh specifically that um students to be frank weren't earning the number of credits they would need to graduate because of the way um both the program designed and um working as as we said um with consultants and not really owning the program so meredith why don't you um explain a little bit by what we mean specifically with the academic piece and how we think that we can um provide um a really robust alternative pathway for these students sure so i think when we thought about ess and the counseling services they could provide we were hoping that giving them the students a counseling the academics would approve as well and i think over the years what

145we've seen is yes they're receiving the counseling but their academics have not improved um we have students who are not achieving the credits that they need to graduate on time and still not passing the classes they need to graduate as well um that also has been a problem with the structure of ess with their structure of mandating groups and certain periods of the day for counseling has definitely unfortunately hurt some of our students in the ability to take other classes um so we have seen over the years where unfortunately some of our students are perceiving the counseling services but they're just their academics are still struggling um so we feel that the model with alternative pathways where we have um cils who are in charge of the academics or these students to be a benefit

146so they're still going to be receiving counseling services but they're also going to be receiving academics in smaller environments they're also going to be having cils who can break down the courses to the core components and to help them still achieve the academic goals that we need them to do for graduation so we're gonna be hitting both of those components at the same time and if i can add you know when we look at for example uh sort of the daily life of of some of these students um you know it's it's hard it's hard to get some of them in the building it's hard to get them to class um you know while on paper it might look like their daily attendance is really good their period attendance is not good and that's why

147that's one of the um you know um gina had talked at the um at the was the curriculum committee right when we proposed it about what are the evidence indicators that this is going to be successful one of the things that we continually analyzed um for the last several years are things like credits but also um academic growth and academic attendance so you know right now we have there are i believe it's seven students in the program um and three of them will be leaving the program so so there's four left to continue for the following year but we're also always looking to identify other students when when a student is in the program and for example we have two that don't like to come to school on a daily basis or can't arrive on

148time well in our new program we've proposed that we would have a paraprofessional dedicated to that program because what happens now quite frankly is we run around and try to find them in the hallways you know where are they we got to get them to class all of that stuff which it you know it's challenging if a family does not want to do the intake with the contracted service or be a part of the the therapeutic program then um they are not part of ess but they're still our students so we have students for example seniors two seniors that i can think of they're no longer in the program they are really um challenged academically to be able to graduate on time and we have to continually um you know help them the best we

149can uh between the the counseling staff and um the administrative staff and the teachers um but they're not part of that program anymore because the parents um and the students decided they didn't want to be in it so with this approach it really is what i would say you know weston's known for its level of personalization and by doing it in-house we can tweak so many aspects of the services that we offer these students we don't need to have a parental intake of course we want the parents to support the program but that doesn't mean we don't continue to work with our students we'll have one of our special ed um teachers that's kind of the the link the liaison to the program tracy um had a great way of describing it as a constellation

150of services everything from involving the transition coordinator to the college and career counselor to the students school counselors to the cils who can not only deliver instruction but support if on they were doing if a student was doing an online course or if a student was actually in the classroom in the regular classroom that cil can provide that support in a block um of the academics so it really is a robust um a robust approach i think that that kind of um holistically supports the students better but mainly gives them the target and and the way to graduate and not you know have be three four credits short which some of them some of them are quite frankly right now and and they won't graduate on time unless we we figure out how to better

151support them lisa how does this impact the sales daily life because of the future they already have and yeah so the sales are um you know the four core academic sales that we're looking at and that and we picked those four because that's the um quite frankly the graduation requirements they teach they have uh um it's a 0.5 teaching part of their schedule the point two is from that teaching schedule so they um and i it was um i think christine cincotta was at the um subcommittee meeting where she said it doesn't interfere with our cell duties because it's it's the part of our teaching load and when you look at the sills we we selected them actually that's the new canadian model if you will we looked at a lot of different models meredith

152talked to a lot of people and in new kingdom they also use their curricular instructional leaders it's because they are so familiar with all the courses and how to scaffold them how to compact them um some of them are certified in multiple uh areas like jamie charles and bio and gem that they're the most flexible um that will be able to do it and they're really excited about it um because we had you know we had conversations with them we wouldn't have moved forward unless we had conversations with um the the key building people that would actually have to implement you know implement the services the program lisa i know we discussed this first of all thank you for being so proactive to bring this in-house because i think you know you guys know your

153students the best in terms of what works and what doesn't and whenever you hire an outside party who doesn't know the student doesn't know the westernite way so thank you for that first of all second of all i know we talked a little bit about the metrics that we're going to use to determine the success and how we didn't um necessarily think that what with what ess did fit do you kind of envision um having an annual review that's more individualized because if there's you know less than you know if there's only five students right now you can't really average anything right because like one student can just throw everything off so is it more of a if when we you know review this program on an annual basis is it really kind of the

154movement per child that we're looking at yes okay yes most definitely we would be creating um you know meredith and and the school counseling work now in student success plans this is a very individualized you know what are the goals for this student both social emotionally and academically and how can we help that student and support that student to achieve it and what we learned is is that you have to really dig down to the very layer of you know being in class what's the work they're producing what does that look like um you know uh how um how well they are responding to their therapeutic services that that's a whole other component um the plus is also bringing it in house that were pointed out i think it was meredith pointed out is um

155you know if let's say someone had said you you you're proposing one social worker with the program the cils and the um paraprofessional what if the social worker isn't in that day and you know you look at six periods drop two of our regular schedule we have certain academic blocks we have a paraprofessional that's back there all the time but the the other really um great thing about the program is is that every student in western high school is assigned a counselor so those counselors on a day that for example if the social worker isn't here can also help sort of under the the umbrella of the services um because they will have a a relationship with the counselor currently if someone is out in the contracted services program um someone from that program comes

156in um frankly the students might not even know the person you know the person um actually the substitute showed up the other day we didn't know at the beginning of the year who are you oh i'm gonna come if someone is out ill um with that we don't have to worry about they're our own people that know our own kids and is this going to um is like the social worker is this is the lin is the reporting is it reporting up to tracy or or is this program going to be overseen by you lisa it's in tracy's budget okay but clearly um i would say that we're all involved everyone from the assistant director to tracy ultimately at the at the central august level to us meredith is the director of counseling and um

157you know it's very important that that we all um know and are involved in the program i guess and that there is oversight and there has to be um as tracy keeps telling us and we're working on a transition plan um to how to start moving in this direction um starting second semester and how that will and then my last question is um what did we do prior to having ess in place for five years how did we handle this program we um students were outplaced um and we did the very best we could meredith do you want to yeah no i mean actually if you look about five years ago we also did not have a full-time social worker at the high school we didn't have the dedicated college and career counselor at the

158high school so our services over the last five years have changed a lot as well um so i know that we were stretched as far as counseling services in the department trying to deal with some of these students who i have to say for a lot of times were school um avoidance school phobic um so we there we would have our social worker who was part-time trying new home visits um our school psychologist as well i'm trying to do some some group counseling with some of these students um but i have to say our dynamic and our whole team actually has changed over the last five years yes we should also say that you know um with our school resource officer you know he also helps us with at times home visits and you know

159before we we had this um it was kind of all hands on deck anybody that could help i mean i i remember driving out to a home to to find out what's going on with with someone else to try to get the student in school we did our tier two center for academic support and enhancement some of the students were in that with a lot of counseling support um but uh you know it was kind of um you know inventing the wheel as we're doing it no yeah and i'm i'm asking that question only because when you when you just look at the overall total it's it's you know it's an expensive program but if we were you know trying to piece it together five years ago and there was out placement and there was

160this and there was that when you kind of do a bottoms up you're probably in the same realm so that's what i was trying to get to so thank you for that yeah um while this is not a budget discussion one of the things that would be helpful uh if when the time comes is that we create a single line item for this so that we can actually track the resources that this is actually using so that you know ultimately it doesn't get diluted with everything else we're doing in this in this in this area yeah that's a good suggestion tony and ruby this was part of your first question but i just want to go back to it because i think it's important um i do think the number of students is going to

161be different as we move forward with this program because as lisa spoke to earlier in her update there's sort of an opt-out provision and there there are legal parameters within special education that parents can certainly refuse services but but that's a different process than the opt-out that exists when you have contractors from another organization in your building and so there are some students who have opted out of the current structure that i think we're very much hoping to be able to engage within an in-house structure um i think your question though about how do we measure this over time in a way that's that can be public facing is is going to be an important question because while we do drill down to the individual student a lot that's obviously not going to be an

162appropriate update for this sort of public session so i think that's that's part of the planning that still needs to happen at this point and um so hopefully that's helpful and i i should have framed this uh at the beginning when i gave a summary just so the people who are not on curriculum committee know why we're here and what we need to do tonight um we did discuss this in more detail at a curriculum committee meeting last week and so the purpose of tonight is to bring it forward to the full board of education and provide as you've already uh gotten into an opportunity to ask some follow-up questions so i just wanted you to have that context yeah no i appreciate that that's what i was getting to i think the the updates

163are going to have to be more qualitative than quantitative because it's it is going to be so individualized but you guys are the experts so then you're going to come to the table to say whether it's working or not and then tracy just for the members of the board that may not have participated in our meeting last week about this um maybe talk about the necessity to approve this program moving forward because of the transitions and the plans you'll need to put in place for individual students to really make this program beneficial for next year yes so we certainly want to answer all of the questions that you have but the sooner that we can make a decision the better um because you can imagine we do have a lot of people who are excited

164about this plan um but they're in their beginning stages of sharing some addition additional ideas about like the logistics of how this will work and what our process will be and who's going to do what um and we'd like to delve into that much more deeply especially as we move into january and then i think the bigger piece to making a decision is how do we best support the students and families as we move from one program structure to another and that's really going to need to be a multi-stage process because there's going to need to be a lot of communication um parents are going to have questions i think the sooner we can get ahead of that the more likely it is that we'll be able to help these additional families that i'm talking

165about get on board with the plan feel comfortable with the plan and know that we're poised to start you know our next school year with this fully in motion and also just for the public record um i'm going to ask the same question that i asked at our curriculum meeting just so we can have it out there as you noted in the past five years we've had ess in place and we have also added to the counseling staff at the high school in various capacities so now we added those because of needs so now we're doing away with potentially the ess program and this plan caused to hire one social worker and one para do we have the manpower still in place to be able to support the high school counseling department meredith i'm looking

166at you lisa i know it's your responsibility too counseling department with the needs of all of our students i mean you know part of the reason why we've had to expand the counseling department is the expanded services that we're offering the expanded demand for the services that are offered are the two people we're proposing hiring is that enough to maintain everything narrative i truly believe it is um you know if you think of our existing social worker and her current caseload um and i don't think anyone really realizes how many students she currently works with and i think you know we're talking about the social worker taking over this program and who's going to be the face of this program i believe that that person will be able to handle the needs of those students

167and that caseload and then with re hiring an additional social worker for our department to replace that person i think we definitely will be able to still be able to handle the needs of our students again we also have a school psychologist who is here to also help the counseling needs and again with the addition of our college and career counselor that has truly helped our department um help you know deal with the post-secondary planning so that's relieved a whole area you know where our school counselors had to focus so much more time now we have a partner in that with our college and career counselor so i truly believe that we do have a lot of people to be able and resources to still help um with the counseling and then i'm assuming this

168program will be flexible i mean ess was a tier 3 program i'm assuming this in-house program may be flexible so that depending on the number of students involved you know we may be able to assist some tier two people with a little bit more support to to help them out might be a little more flexibility to the level of service offered to each individual student yeah that's exactly something we need to outline in this transition plan that we keep uh alluding to in this discussion it's it's what's the distinction between tier two and tier three and how do we make the decision about what tier two maybe fall under the umbrella of this new program versus a tier two that might be better suited within a different different support model within the high school if

169that makes sense no it does just trying to get my head around all the parameters in the moving pieces but yeah thank you tracy i had a question about the sill time um so is there any other way to work it than to then to take still time away can you add sell time for this hillary if i could just jump in um can you hear me yep we're not um we're not looking to take away any of the sell time so the 0.5 release time for the sills for coaching will still be dedicated time and will not be infringed upon by the teaching responsibilities which point two of which include facilitating the academic component for these students so you know this will be a this will be a typical class on their teaching schedule

170and will be separate from their cell responsibilities if that makes sense so if it's 0.8 let's forget identifying it still or not but essentially it's taking 0.8 of teaching time which that correlates to four class sections eight class sections four so essentially that'll be taking four class sections that are currently available and shifting them to this program do you have that flexibility in your class schedule as you're building it that we're still going to be offered this same amount of options to the rest of the high school for classes yes what we did was we were very careful in looking at the staffing and you know we're always very con you know staffing is the key is um how can we staff the most effectively to provide the most access to courses um to not

171adversely impact the academic program and we were able to do that um successfully um to absorb that 0.8 in our proposed you know our staffing proposal for the following year um noah no course went away it was just kind of reconfiguring some numbers and things like that and you know we're very fortunate because we have writing center we have math lab we have um the case uh center for academic support and enhancement we had certain classes that are that are still collaborative but you know we look at all of this we look at the numbers and the offerings and um you know i'm i'm pleased to say that we can we can do this um and the staffing piece of it as far as the academic fte is um is is neutral it's just reallocated

172so are we oops so are we looking for a vote here any other questions or comments yeah i think that um uh you know yeah we are if we're ready to vote on this i think that um i think that we should have a vote i think the uh the budget considerations probably will be handled at budget times but i think this is a vote um correct me if i'm wrong here this is a vote to actually um replace the ess with alternative pathways right yes but i mean we can't know from the information presented at curriculum that that that switch would save the district right yeah 40 45 000 that's 4 000 something like that sure so i think if we're ready to vote i think it's probably a good thing that we get

173this done um and then the you know the budgetary impact will you know we'll have at that discussion at budget time gina albert you're up we need a motion move that the western board of education approve the new program western high school alternative pathways sorry to be word smithing do we need any language that says as a replacement for i don't think so we'll do that uh at budget time okay thank you actually we don't need that we just want to prove ess in the spring when their contracts up for renewal that's right yeah that's right i just underscore that because i think we're working hard here we we appreciate the work ess has done the last five years working hard to keep it framed that way other districts have added ess others have made

174this type of transition fairfield as recently so anything we can do to keep this is which it is we've learned from you i think ess and and we're going to build forward yep good can we have a second second all in favor hi ruby hi gina hi taffy i'm melissa hi victor great hi hillary hi tony all opposed okay motion passes i i i think this is this this is great i you know it's uh um i know we we we this is the what i don't know the third year on the board uh fourth year yeah and we've had this discussion every year uh it's nice to finally see that um we've kind of all come to a consensus decision on uh how to move forward on this it's great i think it also

175bodes very well for the district to have this kind of in-house expertise it's a point of pride and we really look forward to seeing it unfold yep great thank you thanks thanks for your hard work on this all right uh next item is uh teacher residency program bill well we've had quite a thorough meeting um there is some logic for this item following on the previous one the previous one is you all spoke to underscores the level of innovation creativity that the team that spoke to you has been exerting even in the midst of trying to just do what we do in the midst of pandemic that often has been just enough for most districts but your team here really moved with great innovation regarding the alternative pathways similarly within diversity equity inclusion as we're

176now calling this area work as as many of you have flagged many many organizations use that phrasing now we're using it uh we have a couple things to update you on one of which is the teacher residency program um i'm going to speak to that first uh and and then uh ken wants to give you some updates and we've held the principles late tonight because i think we're going to ask them to chime in a bit i apologize for having you go extra late in the night with his principles but uh certainly uh patty and laura may want us after i've talked about the teacher residency program a bit just introduce that to you as a board see what kind of questions you have uh i talked earlier today with patty and lore about this

177as well as the other principles uh they had questions for i have gotten more answers to since we chatted earlier today uh but then also when ken speaks to the work of the connecticut center for school change with the entire leadership team and including uh curriculum instructional leaders i think it's important the board get an update on that because some very exciting work on vital initiatives occurring um so in terms of the correct teacher residency program posted for you uh powerpoint i attached that because that was a recent powerpoint used with a number of districts that are have been considering the program i'm not going to walk you back through that document um i'm actually and i'll but i will come back to the letter of intent and the cover email the letter of intent

178in a second um but i did send to the board earlier today and i think it's been posted um uh let me just see if it was posted there was a two-page executive summary yes thank you ruby that went to you that i thought was particularly uh valuable for explaining the program and that was just shared today by the head of the program and uh if i'd had that before i wouldn't have buried you in the powerpoint i would have simply just sent that that short document along but you have it there it features all the key elements of this what's important in that two pager is right up top you see graphically as all of you would understand that fundamentally this program is working on what is a historic mismatch a historic failing for

179us in education in all areas which often the diversity of our students is not at all matched by the diversity of the teachers faculty staff working with those students and you see there graphically the situation connecticut and connecticut's not alone be it public schools independent schools parochial schools even higher ed that that that discrepancy is there so this program was started two years ago by crack in one part of the state to address that they've had now two cohorts they're expanding for the upcoming school year down into this region working with ces to bring forward a residency program the program is designed to address what i think you all understand to be quite a challenge for us as we try and diversify our teaching force in teaching faculties a lot of labor economists have looked

180at this for a long time but now for a variety of reasons those going in to teach individuals of color have decided not as much to do that so we have to get that pipeline flowing again and get it flowing very early so this program is designed to locate individuals who have a bachelor's but who are not currently teaching do not currently have certification and bring them into an 18-month residency program it's a statewide effort again would have a regional base uh and to have partnering districts that would have one or more residents uh who would be hired by that district but part of this regional and statewide program keep saying regional because the sense of a cohort the sense of support both locally and across the state's critical for this but but the individuals

181selected and if if weston stays in this program hired by weston uh would come in as a resident for 18 months the program starts in the summer before they would come into the district their summer work uh some summer academic work more studies towards their certification they then come in in that august as a resident and it's all at the elementary level it's a k-6 certification they're working towards they would join the district in august not as a teacher of record but as a resident working with one of our mentor teacher who'd be one of our full-time teachers they would be placed substantially in one classroom but would have the flexibility based on our design to move amongst multiple classrooms they would have ongoing coursework during that school year their residency school year by the

182time they hit that following summer they would have had an intensive year of residency work with us mentoring coursework networking through ces with other residents here in area districts as well as part of a statewide effort then in that second summer they would complete what's required for their certification and other pieces and then they would be receiving a 90-day certificate at that point in the summer and then in that fall so of that second august if there's a placement available in this district and we can come to that was a question of the principles today if there's a placement available in this district they would be placed as a teacher of record in this district and would then be doing one last set of course work while teaching to round out the necessary certification to

183be fully certified k-6 within the state of connecticut so that's the 18 months if you've sort of tracked it through with a range of supports both required from within the partnering district which are clearly listed in the material i sent plus there's two pages very tight and neat listing the requirements that we would have as a district but also requirements for the residents a couple questions the principal's asked today is this obligation is it an obligation for us if we have a resident are we obligated to provide them that full-time position once they're that teacher record that is the goal but trp understands especially in a small district we may not have an opening we're not going to be required to create a line position for that individual at that point and i did do

184legwork on this today the principles asked me is that then we would hope that individual would find placement in one of the other network districts and when we had an opening would conceivably want to come back here this is a grow your own this is a help to bring people up through uh into the profession but there would be that flexibility that they could go to another ideally network district um so it we would hope we have an opening but if we don't uh that individual still would provide getting look at the launching pad if you will for from weston um if uh we did it if we didn't have an opening and at some future point wanted to create the line for the individual you could do that uh questions today about the you

185know any employee it's not regarding here we hire the best and someone right out we don't tend to hire people right out of their bachelor's level or brand new uh we would still want to hire the best but a very important point here is and this is what i talked with the director of the program today if we truly are going to grow the pipeline we often now need to think a little bit differently here in terms of how we're getting the best in and it may well be that we identify someone we hire them and we say we have 18 months to work with them and cultivate them and and help them grow to the level of what a you know a top flight district would would demand because you know that we typically

186don't hire teachers unless they've had four or five years of experience but we could very much be growing people and bringing them along um question of if someone comes in and is struggling uh relative to what's expected there would be a variety of interventions early we would be doing that uh the trp would be doing that we'd be working closely and tracking this to an individual resident so if early on even midpoint it was clear this wasn't a good match we could work to address that and help to make a change so that that would be an aspect of this program as i talked with a while ago tony pesco and melissa about this uh like a lot of districts the timing on this caught up with all of us again due to pandemic um

187and there suddenly appeared for a whole bunch of us just a few days before december 11th the need for trp to say we need you to commit at least your intentions to participate so i was given the green light by the chair to at least keep us in the process here keep us in the consideration with this program so submitted the letter of intent that you see in the record submitted it with a cover email quite intentionally listing that we would hope to stay in in this process but we have to look at the budgetary implications of it a thought depending on the board's interest here is that this could be quite natural at least one of these placements for us to turn to wef or other philanthropic sources i think you saw at least

188in the powerpoint if not in the two-pager districts are turning to title monies they're turning to philanthropic resources uh they're turning a variety of places to allow this program to continue last update which is very important in the two-pager is you see what are called the districts uh the intending districts interesting description and you can see from our area the other intending districts the interested district list which i'd seen a week ago is a bit bigger in this area there are some of our sister and brother districts that have chosen not to participate but you do see here uh right next door westport a few others that are very much intending to participate in this district this this program so my recommendation to superintendent is that we stay in this process as long as we

189can uh if the board's uh positive on this thing it's a critical part of our work on diversity equity inclusion it goes right directly into one of the biggest fundamental problems we all have which is diversifying our teaching faculty it would be a bit different would be growing our own fostering our talent and i think that's exciting and i think right now with several area districts and ces very active on this it's important for us to see how long we can stay in this this effort um and again personal pronoun because i put my name on as superintendent um i have very much structured this so we have four or five points where we can go back to trp to say we're really trying but we we can't fit this in financially uh but i've

190urged everyone to think about the program the merits of the program think about it that way and then later we'll start to figure out whether it's affordable so i don't know if that's a fair introduction or not um ken you've been a little closer to it right now jen ryan has been assigned as a point on this uh because she is actually working to up our within the hr realm or other efforts on diversity and recruitment of a diverse faculty and staff uh we can speak to that as necessary it's listed in the goals draft document actually with some specificity of documents with tony melissa now but we can speak to more questions or thoughts you have on this so i am i love this program i think it's great um i ask simply is

191and i and i love that it's a mentoring program where you know our excellent top-notch staff can work with young educators and learn and we will learn a lot from them as well i would imagine how much of the teaching time is it going to take in other words will it be again i'm asking the burden question will it be a burden on the teacher's time master teacher the master mentors time to now be also mentoring another teacher or is it like the role of a sill for example taffy that's a great question and i did i think all of us have some knowledge i i don't have the exact answer but i think some of the answer is that the mentor teacher will have a stipend and that's one of the things that we

192would set a stipend relative to the western style that makes sense um and because there's recognition that this is you have to take this seriously and that means as a mentor you got to give it time and it's not simply oh i have a student teacher in my room uh it's in a and our best teachers work really well with the student teachers because many of the people on the zoom have been student teachers to get where they got uh and we know that uh on how that works so i i think here this would be you've got to be giving it time so that's why that stipend's there the mentor teacher also will get another benefit they too are part of this network so i think uh with some of our veteran teachers this

193could be a growth opportunity yeah absolutely yeah and um i and some districts i'm not saying west in some districts that's why ain't that intentless it may be budgetary might be another if we're truly gonna solve this problem it's so graphically portrayed at the top of that two-pager we have to think differently how about we get our talent in and that grow your own ideas is so that mentoring piece is essential to this i hate that expression grow your own is that in the document i just don't think that's a that's simply yeah i don't i don't think it's i think these people that are coming to work with us are fully grown and they're going to mature as as as educators but that we have a lot to learn from them as well and

194i think we should change our lexicon on that yeah oh well soon um i too am really excited about this program i think it's totally thinking outside of the box and like taffy said i think you know i understand our methodology in terms of why we hire uh people with experience four to five years but i think there is beauty also hiring raw um just raw talent too in terms of because then i think it forces us to to do things differently or think outside of the box or look at things in another way my question is is hypothetically if a a a resident were to join our program start the 18 months we just figure out in the middle of it that it is not a right fit do we have to complete the

19518th month cycle to get a new resident or would we get one would we replace the one that's left us uh you i thought you're going one place with a question i i think the 18 month matters that evolution in time so i think we would but i very was very specific uh today with the director about if someone's not just because if someone's struggling you don't want to keep extending it right in a way to help them right something different but i think because that 18 months matters for them to get the certification that would likely mean at that point we would be without the resident um now i could follow up on that question conceivably you know there might be someone else in another cohort or someone was left out but i think

196to be clear that 18 months matters because you start in that summer with coursework and all the rest but then when you so i i think yeah basic answer is that's fair and would we would we structure the 18th month more as like a rotational program where they get exposure to different teachers are we looking at only one teacher uh or maybe one teacher for one academic year and another one or or just one teacher for the whole 18 months very creative question i think there needs to be a mentor teacher of record if you will um but i think that that we can really do really help uh here with up and coming with with we can help with the talent by helping them make more exposure you know that focus work with the

197mentor is going to matter and if we can make this work that's why at least now is the to um one one per of each of the elementary buildings um which i think would would be a help in that regard ruby i'd love to get patty and laura's take on this program because they're going to be living under their roofs so to speak i'm very excited by it i think it's a great idea i mean i i i'm always looking grow to grow um teachers you know and bring in student teachers and things but this is exciting i'm i was really interested to hear about this today so ditto yeah it's a very exciting program and um it sounds very promising so i'm sorry i lost my internet connection so i may have missed the

198end of your conversation but yeah i you know um i thought when we first heard about this you know not to get in front of the rest of the board on on this but you know i thought this really hit the heart of you know potentially what we're trying to do in terms of of increasing you know staff diversity um in a in a meaningful way i mean um and provide opportunities for um for for talent that's right out of school as well so you know it it's something that we just couldn't dismiss outright because of dollars and cents i think that's something we have to see through and find a way of of getting this funded um if we can't do it as a you know from a budgetary standpoint we should certainly try

199to do this from you know outside dollars um and uh but i think we should you know we should stay on this and figure out a way of getting this funding and getting this done it well if it's okay with you i think dan and i would love to forward this to west just to get them included on the the conversation and you know just i know that they're going to be thrilled to see this as well but anyway it couldn't hurt to just include them from the get-go thank you because actually if i made the phone to have the conversation here first and then based on that definitely talk with wes this major i think that surfaced today that's why good highlight yes yeah i you know i think was left in there sorry

200tony taffy and and i and dan had a conversation with weff around you know initiatives related to diversity equity and inclusion initiative and you know i think this fits right in so um it may i mean tony it may it we can discuss it afterwards they they are absolutely willing to support anything in this bucket but they specifically would also like um someone to work with the district at large on cultural competency as an advisor so there if there's there's enough to go around yes for both probably going to have to pick and choose but but it's certainly worth the conversation yeah any other questions comments great thank you um i think this um see nothing on old business um wait ken's going to go to the other critical work on the dei update you

201oh okay great i'll be efficient and i will um try to tie together a lot of the conversation we've we've had tonight i mean the dei work you've just heard about our uh work to to to try to bring more diversity through the trp program we've heard earlier this evening about new course proposals at the high school that enhance our curriculum so we just keep building on the work that um even before more of a spotlight was put on this this this past spring and became you know a major initiative for the district uh you know we we had given some updates on all the things that um in the english social studies department at the high school as well as at the lower schools we've been doing to try to enhance the curriculum and

202make it more inclusive i'm also excited to just uh update you that the training that you know is so essential for our staff and our leaders we're continue to build on that and last monday all of our administrators and curriculum leaders uh had the first of a series of workshops with the connecticut center for school change and we're working with uh the same two facilitators that are working with the middle school staff with dan over the course of this year we hope this is going to be a partnership that continues to grow with the connecticut center uh into next year because we realize this work with dei is really multi-year work it it has to uh you know it start start slowly and build and continue to grow over the course of the the next

203few years and so i'm glad that it's part of the district calls the school goals but our first session you know really was about our leaders learning more about this work and how we are going to lead the work going forward so the training that the administrators are going to be continuing to receive is a slightly different pathway than what's happening in dan's building what's happening in lisa's building but we do have the district leaders the 612 staff engaged in this and we are now um going to be looking at it you know in the new year where's the appropriate point and way you know to engage the lower schools and maybe there there is you know an opportunity here uh whether it's with the connecticut center or you know in discussions with patty and

204laura we'll figure out how the best entry point would be and when that would be but you know this work is really now becoming more global in the district and you know it's very exciting so you can see how it's kind of all um you know kind of coming together and starting to uh connect so you know dan i know is excited lisa's been excited with staff and we've had really good positive feedback so far um you know in terms of the trainings and dan lisa if there's anything you want to add certainly but i know we're it's getting late and we're trying to be efficient here okay i know if there are any questions thanks ken um anything for the committee chair to report okay um i'll just say it's finance like obviously budget

205season is upon us and um i encourage everyone to check our meeting calendar we have tons of meetings coming up in january both during the day and in the evening and i encourage people if they can't watch live um that meetings will be reported and they can catch up at their leisure yes so between now and the next board meeting we have a budget presentation and two workshops so um and uh it will all be uh zoomed into everyone's living rooms for them to enjoy um bill is there anything else from you no i think we've uh covered everything okay um so this is the last uh it's the last meeting of the year like i said we we we will have a uh um exact um we'll have a special meeting to discuss school

206schooling scenarios um um probably we'll try to schedule one on the monday when we get back after which we will have a budget presentation on the seventh and then two workshops before the next uh before the next board meeting anything else from any of the board members no well i want to wish everyone happy holidays and and uh hopefully everyone uh gets a good rest over the break uh and enjoys uh whatever time they have uh with their families um and uh energized for uh part two of this uh of this incredibly different school year um thanks everyone for all your hard work and and happy holidays to everyone happy holidays you have a motion to uh have a motion to return oh so moved okay second okay meeting adjourned thank you