BOE Meeting (5/1/2025)

001lots of proud parents out there. So just proud board members, proud everywhere. So just really fantastic. And Jory, you know what you have coming your way? And has everybody had a chance to look at um Oh, so then regular meeting now reconvening at 7:10. Has everybody had a chance to look at the agenda? Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Heather, thank you. Is there a second? Thank you, Pam. All in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. Um, comments from the public. The board has set aside time at the beginning and end of regular meetings for public comments for members of the public to share their views on matters involving the Willland Public Schools. And to help inform the board's decisions on such matters. Two minutes will be allotted to each speaker and a maximum

002of 15 minutes to any one subject. For the record, please also give your name and address. The board considers the views of its citizens in its deliberations and welcomes and appreciates public comment. The board listens to public comment thoughtfully and with interest. The board, however, generally does not respond to public comment during board meetings by offering commentary or answering questions. The board also invites commentators and the public to contact the board or the superintendent directly with any specific questions or comments. the board through the chair and the superintendent may respond to questions and comments offered during public comment or share directly and in responding may also direct members of the public to the appropriate staff member for a response. Are there any comments from the public? I am Peggy Ner as you know I am

003the WA president and I have a comment. I'm going to read this if you don't mind. I'm sorry. I usually just fly off the cuff. I can't do that. Um so the Wilton Board of Education proposed policy 4118.5 last week. I think it's up for review tonight. Um this policy uh which relates employee use of district computer systems and electronic communications is extreme and invasive and not passed is a violation of the Wilton public school teachers and staff's fourth amendment constitutional rights to privacy as guaranteed to us through the due process clause of the 14th amendment and based uh and based on case law throughout our country cannot be considered as anything other than an infringement on the public schools. employee civil rights. The Supreme Court holdings on the topic as well as the district

004uh court rulings show that this policy is unconstitutional. In 1985, the Supreme Court in Okconor versus Ortega held that in termination of the fourth amendment right uh has occurred. Courts should evaluate two things. one uh whether the employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their area in the area being searched and two whether the search was reasonable under the circumstances. It also stated that the operational realities of a particular work place must be taken into account when determining whether an employee has an reasonable expectation of privacy. In our case at Wil Public Schools, uh we are the employees are contractually guaranteed a 30 minute lunch. um which um I'm sorry I lost my place. Um and this policy passing this policy would imply that staff were unable to use their personal devices even during

005that 30 minute lunch. Um in Okconor the Supreme Court concluded that the public employer intrusion on the constit on the constitutionally protected privacy interests of government employees for non-investigatory workrelated purposes as well as for investigations of workrelated misconduct should be judged on a standard of reasonleness under the circumstances. the reasonable reasonleness sorry standard requires that the search be reasonable at the inception and in the scope of the intrusion. This policy in and of itself shows that it does not follow the courtmandated framework. It states that the system administrator and other managing uh the computer systems may access electronic devices um accessing the computer systems at any time for any reason and for no reason. The language of this policy directly contradicts reasonableness standards laid out by the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, I

006have um several other court Supreme Court uh cases that I will not bore you with, but they involve cell phone use. say involve um employees using employee employee given employees using employer given devices and also the um the amount uh that cell phones a personal cell phones of information is on those cell phones it they there's a ton of information so I'm going to skip that and go to the end and you're welcome um by passing this policy the district would be attempting to set president that for no reason at all. The district can access the most intimate details of their employees lives, including but not limited to their photographs, their private communications with their friends and family, all personal, electronic mail communications, which may include details of their physical and mental health, and all

007documents stored on personal devices. This policy cannot be passed. It directly violates the fourth and 14th amendment rights. Um, I have this information came from a legal note prepared for the National School Board Association by the Council of School Attorneys regarding the fourth and 14th amendment. Um, implications on policies exactly like this one. I have copies if you would like to read them. Thank you for listening to me. I leave these copies here just in case you want to peruse them. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Um, consent agenda. Um, tonight's consent agenda can um includes personnel changes. Has everyone had a chance to review the consent agenda? Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion. Thank you, Pat. Is there a second? Thank you, Nicola. All in favor? I motion

008carries unanimously. Um under reports and recognition, um I would just um the cider mill jazz band, which we've already been um privileged to hear tonight. So again, just extend our appreciation and thank you for um coming out tonight. Um under um the board's chair report, I just have um one kind of reminder and plea to the town. Tuesday is our annual town meeting. Um, off the cuff, I took my kids to Washington DC for spring break and um, we are privileged in Connecticut to have a system of self-government and town government that really hearkens back to the founding of our country and is really democracy and action. And on Tuesday night, our town will come together and um hear from the board of education and the board of selectmen and um set a budget and

009and a tax rate um for our town that we then vote on. And it's just a privilege to be able to um participate this in this and I look forward to seeing as many folks available and able in our town to come out to the meeting. Um after the meeting there is voting and then adored voting continues on Saturday morning. Saturday all day at the Cloon Center. Excellent. Um so continuing just with the theme of the night here on the arts. Um I'd like you to turn your attention to the screen. Uh earlier today Tammy Thornton shared with us the winners from the 2025 H Billboard recycling contest. And um as per usual u Wilton is very well represented. So it's a two and a half minute video. Lucil, do you want to run it

010for people? [Music] Wow, thank you. [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] Great. So, there were 14 towns that participate in that contest. I think Tammy said Wilton had 176 entries and um there were nine regional winners. So, great job. Good job. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. All right, that's school climate update. Ken, thank you. Thank you for having me here, who is um in our grant funded position in the interventionist at the elementary school and she's going to be presenting um tonight. So, let me see if I can make this work. It's only there we go. Okay. So, um you'll probably remember this wheel when I come and present. Wellness is at the center of um all that we do when we talk about climate and these are the different dimensions that contribute to

011wellness and we're collecting data um on the different dimensions which were there's a lot of data to report tonight lots to celebrate and areas um of continued growth but as I was kind of preparing tonight and um thinking about um the presentation and the data that we had I just want to take a minute because I you know we've been working at this for I think about um eight years now since I've in the position and um the work that goes into being able to um look at the data, have data to measure social emotional um and wellness. It's it's challenging um to uh have the right measures in place to kind of quantify the work that we're doing. and just thinking about um the systems in place and the work that has gone into

012really being able to put this presentation together. I just wanted to take a minute to then highlight um from the teachers that at the elementary level continually assess students seal skills and then implement targeted interventions. Our students self-report on screeners and school climate surveys and then our counselors and mental health staff review the data, progress monitor and implement targeted interventions. uh gaining the support of families um and collaborating throughout that work um and recognizing our administrators, school counselors, mental health staff who review and intervene on all of our gaggle uh reports and reported discipline. And then the teachers are uh continually asked to focus on building relationships with students and serving as trusted adults. They are the front lines that identify our kids that need higher levels of support and oftentime um identify kids who

013are needing crisis intervention. And then again, our school counselors and mental health staff who tirelessly in their efforts intervene on crisis intervention. They assess, they refer, they follow up with families, um they collaborate and establish relationships in really trying times. And while they're doing all this, I'm on them to collect data so we can monitor what we're doing and um put better um or more robust programs in place. So, I just wanted to begin by just thanking um all of our um all of my colleagues and Maria who's who's doing this work and that um allows us to kind of take a look at kind of where we are tonight. So, thank you. Um all right, so we're going to start out tonight looking at um school climate and relationships and engagement because we just

014completed our school climate survey. Um we're in the very early stages of looking at that data and reviewing the data. um in the building teams. So, I'm going to give a very brief overview and I'll be coming back next year to present a deeper dive in that and what the action plans will be looking at the different schools. Okay. So where we are in the school improvement process is we completed our school climate surveys um I would say January and February are we um survey students, staff and families and now we're looking at um the data and how we can update our climate plans um and implement interventions. So, here are some highlights on um a very high level overview of the data and it's pretty exciting here minus the um high school. We'll talk

015a little bit about what we're seeing there, but these are the areas um where we had the greatest change over time and we've been using Panorama now since the pandemic back in 2020. So, we have some longitudinal comparison data. Anything that is 3 percentage points or more is considered statistically significant on the samples that we had. So this is pretty exciting. When we look at school climate, we had an 8 point increase, eight percentage points um from our families and staff. Um school climate for the high school, you see that negative 12 and that is all about our cell phone policy that they're upset. And uh you know, we're going to talk more more about that. Um when we look at the family survey around uh school fit uh that uh went up 10 percentage

016points. Our staff leadership really excited to see the emotion regulation because we've had a big focus um since the pandemic on that area in particular and we've had a statistically significant increase at all three schools and I think that really is reflective of the the um comprehensive DBT work that we're doing. student engagement is up and then sense of belonging um at the high school and the middle school and again that continues to be an area of focus. So this is the greatest change. So again just a high level um overview. So lots to celebrate there. Um then I wanted to just the code of conduct was work that we did um at the end of last year of really trying to um align how we're responding to discipline across the district and in the

017buildings and creating um a document that could be student and parent facing to be more transparent uh about how we respond to behavior because oftentimes in situations we can never talk about discipline with families and that becomes a real sticking point um because families want to know, you know, what we're doing to intervene and we can't really talk about it. But what we can do now with our code of conduct is is say here is the continuum and how we respond to different behaviors. And so that just some data um to to um connect to the work that we've done um around the code of conduct. So um the when we report data through Panorama, it's percent favorable. And um so you see uh in my school there are clear rules for hurting others. So

018the feedback there is uh very high um in terms of favorable. And then at your child's school, how well does the overall approach to discipline work? You'll see 86% responded either extremely well, quite well, or somewhat well. And that was an increase of five points. And then another area that we continue to focus on um in the district is our connectedness relationship score. And this question we ask continually of our students. Is there at least one adult in the building that you feel connected to? You see a nice growth um at Cider Mill uh Wilton High School. Although it had a decrease that's not statistically significant and at Milbrook that's something we'll pay attention to. I mean we want to get at the 80% so we're close but a little dip there. So we'll take

019a look um and uh that will probably be part of a action plan moving forward but still they're you know in a good place. So I wanted to present some of the climate highlights and now we're going to talk a little bit. It's been a while since I've given an update on our mental health response data. And again there's um things here to celebrate and things to pay attention to. So you'll see from this slide, this is we've been collecting data since uh 2021 and uh this is the total number of interventions per year, a four-year comparison uh up until April 28th. So there's been a significant decrease at the high school. Um however, you'll see um a significant increase when we look at our elementary um schools and we're going to um look at

020that a little more closely, talk about what's happening. So here are the types of interventions when looking at the high school. So you'll see again a huge drop in students uh presenting with suicidal ideiation um in terms of students attempting not any information that that we have been aware of in two years and then um things are pretty stable. Um you'll see other this other incidents here we we got better at coding our data so um we won't have those categories anymore. Um so this is what it's looking like uh in terms of our data for the high school. when we look at preK8 um yeah so I I we it when you look at it at first glance it's certainly concerning I want to just make some notes here so the threat and harm

021to others now one reason why this is um higher is we did significant training at the elementary level on how to use how to respond to threatening behavior using a comprehensive evidence-based approach so we are using that and looking at it through a different lens and tracking it. So, it's going to be elevated because of that. The other piece um is that of the 20, five students contributed to 11 of those incidents. So, we have some repeat uh situations. So, that begs the question of really looking at do we have a cohort of students that maybe needs a different tier three intervention and that's something that we need to kind of look at um at Cider Mill and how we maybe approach that a little differently. I will say that kids are using threatening language

022more than we've seen and at the elementary level. Um, and I, you know, we can make um connections to social media and having cell phones at a young age and the video games and just parents that I've talked to, you know, elementary age kids watching Stranger Things and shows that are developmentally probably way too much for that age. And so we're seeing some of it in the language. Um and then to talk about the suicidal ideiation. Um again in that 12 at Cider Mill only uh I believe two of those um actually needed a mobile crisis type of intervention. Um so sometimes again that's language that kids are using yet we still need to do a full assessment. Now at the middle school of those nine eight of those needed mobile crisis intervention. So, um

023the situations at the middle school are are certainly um concerning and I think needing more intervention um with those cases. But to speak to the elementary level, um that speaks to you know my work with the mental health team and the counselors and the teachers. Um we are um in the process and right now we actually have uh kind of integrated items into the lessons that the counselor are providing tier one um about language and communication. They have a lesson label communication. So, we're just making sure that it's integrated with the idea of, you know, what you say matters, words matter, how you say it matters to make sure, you know, uh, students are understanding the impact of what they're saying and what it could how it could affect them or others and responses to

024what they're saying. So, again, having this data to look at through a lens, you know, we can think about, do we need to think tier one in a different way? And again, when we think about the large population of 800 students or 900 students, this is a small cohort. However, um the work that needs to go in to do these assessments and support these students is something is that's significant and we want to pay attention and we want to move that. Can I just a quick sure question about that? Yeah. I'm just wondering has there been any work to look at are kids seeing the adult response and understanding that why the adults are being triggered in such a way over their language? Like are they do are they understanding like the meaning and the

025intent or is it just kind of they're looking to shock or say something provocative and know that those are provocative words or language and the adult reaction is kind of they're not understanding the connection to it. I'm just cur I'm just I mean oftentimes it's a regulation piece. they're not able to regulate and they're angry and they're acting out for some kids and sometimes it could be part of a disability and sometimes not um or an impulsivity piece. So, it's something it it's really dependent on on the child and then what are they watching in terms of violent shows or different things like that and then playing out that, right? And so, um, you know, being able to kind of look at that on a case by case in all that we do, there's always

026an education piece and helping the kid understand the impact. Yeah. And just the just the threatening language piece just has me like sometimes kids say something knowing that they're going to get a certain response out of it. Yeah. But the response that they're really getting is way beyond because as adults that type of threat or that type those type of language has different meaning, right? And that's definitely why we're integrating that into like the tier one overall for all the students to understand. Words matter and it has a greater impact than maybe what you what you perceive or what they are perceiving. So here's just you know another way of we were tracking downward nicely. You'll see the uptick um this year and again it's because of those some of those incidents happening in the

027lower grades. And then this is interesting since um we've been tracking the in fourth grade this cohort here up the top they have had the highest number of incidents right in our seventh grade this year. So looking at in eighth grade you know what kind of supports and we're going to keep a close eye on those uh students next year. So and then here are the mobile crisis referrals that I was referring to before. If you look at the high school um two of the referrals I I believe it was um eight in total. two uh were ended up in mobile crisis referrals. Four students had to be assessed at the emergency room. So although our numbers are down at the high school, the um situations that come up are are pretty intense and trying

028to get those kids into the right level of care is um important. And then you'll see, you know, at the middle school, this is the seventh grade cohort where we've had some kids that are really struggling. And then um just showing this is interesting right again this um kind of connects to the violence when we look at our GIGO filtering software from last year you know the top um issue was harassment uh and this year it's around um violence and threatening behavior right so it's the connection to kind of um what we're seeing around that threatening behavior and then the red is just to explain um so the Um we filter uh anything in Google that students are doing their email um their uh Google Drive uh Docs etc. And we've added web filtering this

029year. So anything they're searching on the web when they're on the Google Drive um gets filtered. So things will come in as a possible student situation which is in red. Those are PSS's. we get immediately notified by text and email and we have to intervene on those right away because typically there's um an emergency situation there with the way that that's coming in. Um the questionable content those can be um oftentimes they may be related to an assignment um or something that is um less emergent but still we need to you know confirm that and follow up those uh those cases as well. Was that across the district or was that across the district? Yeah. And this is broken down by builders. So you see what high school wins the prize on um and we

030would expect more violations to be at the high school. What is new this year is as you see and this has been since um since January um of these incidents at Cider Mill. That's not typical. Um so again something that we're looking at. I think the admin team are meeting to kind of look at that data. um and see what what's been going on the last couple of months of why we're getting um those violations. And then the speakup is our anonymous tip line. So we've had four reports this year. One ended up um being a a PSS, a potential student situation, the other three questionable contact. So um students can report fully anonymous or it can be connected to their their drive. Um, we encourage kids to tell a trusted adult. That's always the

031best way to report. But if um, this is like a backup option should they not uh, feel comfortable doing that. And then here's our discipline data as aligning the code of conduct and um, aligning that with how we code data in Power School. We now can kind of track our discipline data over time. What's interesting here and important to note, um the discipline at the high school is down significantly this year. Uh we had a total of 17 uh acts of verified bullying last year and we're at four now. And you know, we really attribute that to not having cell phones in school. That that has had um a big uh a big impact on that. Um and then on this uh chart here is just this isn't necessarily um ai this isn't necessarily progression

032here but of those incidents um that you saw on the um the page before. This is how we may respond to those or we did respond to those and it it um it could be a variety of these in and out of school suspension detention depending on um at the high school kids can have an alternate discipline by having multiple uh counseling sessions with the outreach counselor or they need with their counselor for restorative session along with um in school suspension. So, uh just this is the response to um those and then how are we responding to the trends we're seeing. So, some of the things um something that's new this year to um enhance communication with the police department and this came as a recommendation from our um mental health task force advisory. There's

033a program called handle with care and basically if the police go out to a home after school hours and there is a child in the home that may be traumatized by something that went on or impacted uh the SRO's let me know that um handle that student with care the next day. we don't necessarily have to know any information other than handle with care and then we share that information with any adults that interact with that child so they know um that the child may need some additional support and we may need to monitor um what they might need throughout the day. So that's been super helpful in just wrapping around um support for students and enhancing communication. And then um we make referrals to the urgent crisis center at Wilmore, which is an alternative

034to the emergency room and has really positive feedback um of families that have used that service um uh instead of um the emergency room, which isn't the best place for mental health crisis. We continue to offer parent education programs, our cell phone free initiative, which you'll hear more um about in terms of how that's going and then uh continue our screening for early intervention, our DBT programs and threat assessment training that now all of our mental health staff and admin be trained in. Now, what's in progress and excited to talk about our town partnership um we were able to um access the opioid funds to fund what is called cartwheel. It is a mental health online um resource wraparound program that schools are using. It's based in Massachusetts. Uh but we will have 25 spots

035next year where we kids needing like immediate um counseling and support, we can refer them into this program. So um for our middle school students, they can have counseling um virtual. And then for our younger students, they give support to the families as well as the student and it's uh it uses their insurance. So, no out-of- pocket cost and immediate uh referrals. So, as we look at our data at um Cider Mill and Middlebrook, we'll focus those spots for um those students that um because what we find often there's an acute crisis and now getting them into treatment in a timely manner um is not helpful when they have to wait and then we're trying to provide services in school. So, um we're excited that we'll be able to pilot that next year. And then

036we're also looking at bridge program with coastal counseling which is a agency in Westport. And so they offer a program where they'll come within the district. So students that are either transitioning into um hospital setting or out of the hospital setting that need um more intensive support before they kind of step down back to a normal day. Um this would be a wraparound program for them, you know, within our own um within Wilton borders. And then expanding our everyday speech curriculum. um which Maria's going to talk about that and then we're exploring um some other wraparound services for high need students and then C bits and bounceback which are evidence-based trauma group programs um that that's something we're exploring that might um help some of our younger kids that are struggling. All right. So, the

037proactive measures um really looking at kind of our overall LCDL curriculum and universal screening. And I'm going to introduce um who's going to talk about uh the social skills um uh social emotional skills and her position and what she's doing at the elementary. If you'll remember, we were awarded the mental health specialist grant. Just we're in year two now. um we have to absorb next year a small portion of funding for that grant and then in the following year um the fall and so I thought it would be a really good time for Maria to kind of talk about um how she's supporting teachers um at the lower levels and some of the work that she's doing. Thank you. Y um so to kind of echo Kim's statement in the beginning, you know, the teachers

038and the staff have been great. you know, they are the front front lines, like Kim said, um, doing a lot of this work and it's been great to be able to collaborate with them. You know, they're always willing and accepting and wanting, you know, help if needed, um, and doing a lot of a lot of great work. So, here I have um just a little screenshot of two different the scope and sequences. The one on the left there um a little upper is going to be uh Miller Driscolls and then the lower right is Cider Mill. So that's their scope and sequence for their social emotional learning. Um that's on um a larger spreadsheet which has you know all the months of the school year. Of course uh you can see that Miller Driscoll has

039it broken out week by week because they are following the everyday speech curriculum which provides um 40 weeks 40 weeks worth of lessons for them. Um Cider Mill has it more u per month they're providing those two lessons. Um here you don't see the specific lessons because that's on a different uh worksheet within that workbook for them. But I wanted to show everyone here how we're also connecting the counseling lessons and um for Cider Mill the connection of that fifth special that health and wellness uh where those DBT lessons are being given. So, we're really trying to be thematic and purposeful with how we're integrating these lessons. Um, and also uh having that cohesion between both uh Miller Driscoll and Cider Mill and even up at Middlebrook. I know we were talking about kind of

040theming the whole district. Um, you know, so this is a little bit more about everyday speech. um they have tier one uh that the teachers are utilizing and then there's a tier two and three that the mental health staff, the counselors and the psychologists um can utilize. I I have used the program before I came to Wilton. Um I truly enjoy it. Um as a social worker, it was super helpful. Um and I think it's great for the teachers to have something that I say is like a point andoot camera. The lessons are all there. They have nice videos. They have reflection questions, they have group discussion questions. So, um it's really easy to integrate it for the the classroom teacher um into the the work they're they're doing. Uh and it's nice as well

041that tier 2 and three also are working off the same platform. So then the teachers can be aware of what they're working on uh within, you know, the counseling office and bring it back to the classroom. So they have the same access to the the the programs and they can even click the same video and review it as a whole class. if they want to or just pull a piece of it and you know um talk about a certain question to to guide some discussion. So this uh data is from everyday speech um when we had met with everyday speech they had pulled this for us in the past 180 days how much uh it is being utilized and those are the five castle competencies. Um, so you'll notice that the bottom two, relationship skills

042and responsive decision-m aren't utilized that much, but that's because they're not within that curriculum just yet. That's not where they're at. Um, the teachers aren't in that section just yet. They're working towards it. So, it makes sense that self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, those are the units that have been utilized so far. Um, but of course, you know, teachers are open to utilize whatever they feel is the need and they want to um address within their classroom. and they say, "Hey, you know, there there's some peer issues." Yeah, of course. Jump ahead and do, you know, lesson 40. That's fine. Um, you know, they're able to do that and have that autonomy to address the needs within their classroom. So, this is just a little screenshot so everyone here can understand what it looks like for

043a teacher on their end. This is first grade. They have it, you know, for the other grades of as well, of course. But you'll see there where it says unit one self-awareness and then, you know, each unit is labeled one of the different castle competencies. Um on the right hand side you see where it says open unit. If you were to click that in the actual program then you would have all your lessons right within there and each le lesson you know would say the power of yet or growth mindset and you click that and it's a nice lesson plan for the teacher. Um as well as then it will say student le and gives you the videos and the questions. Uh or sometimes it's like a game or activity that you can do and

044like a craft um depending on the grade level. So again, this is I just want to show you guys how um the ease of access really I think makes it, you know, um so in regards to assessing the social emotional learning that's occurring in um the classroom, we utilize the DESA. Um it is a state approved um strength-based assessment. Uh so we have good participation in this uh because it is a pass of consent. Passive consent. Thank you, Kim. So, parents can opt their uh children out of um this assessment. Um so, you see there to total students assessed was 743. This is looking at uh Miller Driscoll these two charts. So, we do it pre the premid and post. Um so, we're coming up on the post now uh this time frame. So you

045can see from the pre to mid at Miller Driscoll uh you'll notice the need is dropping from that 4% need for instruction um and then 3% for the midyear. You notice the 70% for the pre which is the uh typical range. That blue means typical and then you're 63% uh for mid which it's like oh no that dropped. However, if you look at the green you see the growth where you see 26% for the mid that's the strength and now you're in 34. So, we've had some nice gains. So, really, if you're looking combined the typical and the strengths, you've made some gains. Um, there in the in that green section for sure. This is looking at just one specific cohort. Um, our current second graders. Up top is their predesa scores. And then on

046the bottom there is their post-ESEA scores. Um, so overall, you can see that green, that strength increasing over the course of the years. We don't have that post yet for this year, but projections can show that ideally that will continue to increase um from year to year. Uh now you have the 2034 cohort and 2033. So those are our third graders on the left and our fourth graders on the right. I just have their post scores there um just to make it easier viewing wise. But again that green that strength is um increasing uh for for both cohorts. Okay. Um best is our universal screener and another screener that we use. It's different than the DSA. Uh this is an a screener for atrisisk behavior. You'll see up there internalizing externalizing school and adaptive skills.

047Um because this is a different more of an atrisisk screener. we need act active consent for this and so you'll see the participation rates are not as high as the DESA due to that. However, we did have a a big push um to try to get more information out to families and share this at back to school night. So, we did get a higher participation rate than we have in the past at Middle Cider Mill almost 50% and we're still low at the high school. So, um, something for us to continue to work on and think about. But of the students that did participate, um, 89% end up in the typical range, we have six in the elevated and, um, about 3% in the extremely elevated. So, small number of kids in the elevated and

048extremely elevated. And then, do you want to talk a little bit about um, how we um, uh, intervention? Yeah. Intervention for um, those kids. Yeah. So the best screener helps inform um how we create our intervention groups and the students that we um know the counselors then pull in for those tier two and tier three interventions. Um and we have different um groups for for them and we can also have them rerate for the best screener at the end to see the assessment and see the growth um within those skill ranges. Um also this talks more about kind of going back to the tier one and seeing is there something that we should be putting in place tier one overall. um for these students just to help address the the the needs globally um at

049the school level. And then for students at the middle school level, they there's executive functioning groups, there's a DBT um tier 2 uh group or a class at tier three depending on, you know, what the need is of the student. So trying to catch these students earlier on to skill them up so we don't have as many crisis interventions is the goal um with this screener. And then we also screen um so the best was in grades three, six, eight and nine. Um we are using the suicide uh SOS screener in grade 10. Again you'll see over um the three years. Um so the first two years we did the entire 10th grade class um in PE and health at one time. We're breaking it out in fall and spring and just doing it in

050health this year. it's a little more manageable, but you'll see the trends, you know, are um are trending downward just like our emergency interventions um which is a good thing. We're also piloting this. We piloted this in grade seven for half of the grade um this year and we'll be going to full implementation next year. So, at each grade, there'll be some type of um screening that happens. Again, we need um uh for this screener, parents can opt um their students out because it's part of the curriculum. So, they get a lesson in the classroom and then they take a screening and then just Tanya wasn't able to be here um tonight, but just to talk a little bit about what we're doing um or what happened this year uh at the middle school is

051um there's grade level SEAL uh team meetings. And so the focus was on executive function groups for tier 2 and then uh DBT groups um tier 2 as well in grade six and seven that were implemented. And then you can see um some of the different focuses in grades six, seven and eight. So really looking at the needs of that grade and then um in terms of what they might need wise and being responsive um kind of to what the teachers are seeing. We are looking at I'm just gonna go okay piece of lights got um a little mixed up but next steps here are um uh continue to focus on charters. They did grade level charters this year rather than the kids going in different classrooms and having different charters. They did grade level.

052It was much more comprehensive and I think the kids were able to um kind of um acquire kind of the skills around that more quickly. we continue the monthly SEAL team meetings. Um there was a creation of a um a student advisory council and I'm going to talk a little bit about that more in a minute. Um they really um kind of tried to be systemic about um morning announcements and connecting that to themes that were happening monthly to kind of again have a more comprehensive approach. Um, so students were kind of getting the same message over time and then they'll be working again this summer to even refine that more and um, align the lessons uh, more targeted um, probably um, particular assured experiences that kids will get in six and eight. How do

053I go backwards? So just to kind of end um, the looking at safety, belonging and welcoming environment. We spent some time so this is some information about the climate and culture student advisory at the middle school. Um again they focused on um they the kids really helped uh with the grade level charters. Um they did a PSA around the school climate to engage the kids in participation and then participated in project belonging and I'm going to talk a little bit about that. This is um we engaged with teachers college um Columbia University faculty and staff uh with a project um called belonging. It's a student-driven program aimed at developing resilient and connected communities. And so the kids part kids were nominated. We have a group at the middle school and a group at the high

054school of about 30 kids um in each building. They went through five hours of training and um the training really um kind of built a common language through key concepts around hugging, peer rejection, what belonging means and educational displacement. Then they learn techniques to foster belonging within their classroom and community and then shared experiences and and strategies um to build a collaborative environment. they get $1,000 to create a budget and implement a project within their school community. So, um we just finished the training and both schools, it's funny, their projects are kind of similar. So, Middle Brook's proposal is called the Tree of Belonging and um it's going to be this type of structure where when the kids come in, they create a leaf and kind of tie that to how they belong at Middbrook.

055Teachers will be involved in it as well. and then there'll be some way they take that with them when they leave. Um, and then at the high school, their proposal is called All Hands In. It's going to be some type of mural where um there'll be an activity and advisory to kind of launch it with some type of celebration and the kids will leave their handrint with a word connected to belonging. still in the um the development stage, but um as kind of a visual symbol. And then part of the training really talked about sharing your story. And so they want to include a segment in the morning warrior where we're getting kids to volunteer to do a piece where they can share kind of their story um and you can learn something about students

056that you wouldn't ne necessarily know by just um sitting with them in a classroom. And so that's really how um kids can kind of get to know each other better. So again, they um they'll build the budget, they have the money to create the project. There's a um schools around the area uh that are involved. They're going to be sharing um their proposals and hearing what other schools are doing. So uh we're in the early stages of it, but the kids that are involved are are pretty excited about it. So, um, and then the last thing I don't have a slide for this, but we're excited about is, um, we're, uh, with collaborating with, um, Bill and the LLC to do a summer Wilton reads around digital citizenship. That's, uh, picking books that are developmentally

057age appropriate. um across the buildings at the high school we'll be doing accountable and um hoping that will be uh we're still ironing things out with English but um maybe a required read for 9th and tth graders and we have confirmed the author to come visit in November to do school assemblies as well as a community um so we're really excited about um that work which is in the works and that's our update any questions we're opening up to questions I just want to say that I'm thrilled about the Wilton Reed summer program and um I've read council actually um and I think it's powerful teaching tool and um that then the author has agreed to come that's a powerful teaching tool and the author herself is a powerful example of you know how you

058can move communities and be involved in in communities through journalism. So I think even tying that in with a larger vision of the learner um just in both ways I think that's really um a tremendous opportunity um for our kids and um I hope you know I don't know what the thought is in terms of ninth and tenth but there may there's a possibility I think that some of her message would be even accessible to middlebrook age students in maybe more of a dialogue kind of format. that as versus the the reading material. But I um the in terms of the themes and how you how you become accountable for your behavior. I we haven't landed on a book yet for the middle school. A little tricky there. Um yes, common sense media um doesn't

059recommend. I think it's no I don't think that the the book itself is the right format but the theme the idea of it the idea of it I think is certainly something that would be um powerful in that in that school um as well so it's not everybody will be it will be required reading will still work but everybody will do some type of activity in English um so to to excerpts from it or English and advisory again we're working out the details but it's it's exciting it's even just community building when you have a whole community working on a same book, a same project, the same theme that um is woven into, you know, every kid connecting to each other about one about one particular thing. I think also lends itself. Um I does

060anybody have any um questions for Kim or great teams of people across across the buildings doing I had a just a couple questions. Sure. Um from some of the data we saw earlier in the presentation. Do we have any initial hypotheses as to the spike at Cider Miller? Well, I think again I think we're looking at it through um a threat assessment lens and we're we're um you know we're coding it differently which so that in one sense but I do meaning so when you say you're coding it differently meaning that we weren't maybe that maybe the increase is not as drastic as we think because yeah and I do it's not just it's not just Wilton when we had our task force meeting in fact Silver Hill Hospital is working right now to create

061a program for elementary age because schools across the area across the country. We're seeing this dysregulation in our younger learners. Um and um you know, we can make speculations of why that is, you know, but I don't think there's, you know, definitive, but I would suspect it has to do with um what they're doing and what they're seeing gaming and online and um kind of how early they're getting access to smartphones and what they're doing online. some of the language has been normalized or the behavior has been normalized and we know that there's a social there's a deficit in terms of skill building and coping skills. So the regulation pieces um you know not being able to control themselves and we're seeing more outwardly aggressive and are we able to validate those hypotheses by just

062talking to the students and trying to understand what led to the event or what are the other tools at your disposal to figure that out? Yeah, I mean I think there's a again a because we have some kids that are repeating this even with interventions in place. It's like we need to be supporting these kids in a different way. Um so thinking about a small that small cohort of students that are really struggling of like how do we support them um in a different way and uh like a genesis some kind of place where they can go and be safe they can be in I I think creating um more support within the mainstream for them. Yeah. And having a place to skill up. Yeah. When they're um and some of it is some of

063it is helping the teachers with skills within the classroom. We talked about like emotions belong in the classroom and can we when you pull the kid out and teach them when they're regulated that's not going to help them learn how to manage right when in the moment. So how can we work with um supporting in the classroom in the moment um and supporting our teachers with some of those skills in the classroom as well. And the transference piece is that big piece like how do you transfer skill the skill attribution in a controlled environment to when all of a sudden you're not in a controlled right a controlled environment and I think that's you know the bigger so they may need daily skills right and so that's what you know not necessarily an alternative environment

064but daily skills so they can you know acquire those more quickly and I think I just wonder because the the environment that our kids are now living in and growing up in in terms of technology and you know outside influences and resources that's not changing you know to some extent. So it's like are the tools and methods that we have are they keeping pace with this like kind of new real the new reality like are the are our the skills that we're teaching our kids and or the way they're we're delivering that skill to them sufficient given this the change in environment that we've seen over the last you know 8 10 years. Um, I mean that's a larger Yeah. larger question, but um, you know, I just Well, the fact that our younger kids

065are are struggling, that's a that's really scary that our younger kids are really having a heart now showing signs of behaviors that normally you would see in a middle or or a high school. That's very concerning because if we don't sort of tackle that now at that age that's it's not going to get any better. It's just going to get worse. Is there a parent piece that's being addressed? because as a young age, parents surely have a big role to play. And what I think that's we had two years ago, we had the cell phone um program and we had one at um Cider Mill specifically, Jen, you know, to try to partner with parents to help. And this was the teachers sharing about what they're seeing in the classroom. The parents that were there

066were shocked and I think it really made people rethink things. The problem is we didn't have enough there was a very small number of people there. So, it's how do we get the message out? How do we how do we get the message out for parents to hear? So, we'll be doing more of that. Do something that's not just in person, but you're making videos that people can watch at their leisure that's getting this message out because actually we embedded um some of the information um at back to school night. We got good feedback on that. So, I think trying to give the message when we have captive audience. Yeah. Yeah. the youth council tracks like they have a lot of recorded programs and people tend to um not find time to watch them. I

067mean, I have a bunch of things to watch in my own inbox and so it's hard it's hard with the demands I think to um make the time to kind of I think another piece of that is um you know the the roll out of everyday speech into that third grade for cider mill and integrate you know uh they have the morning meeting but then integrating a piece of that emotional regulation um you know for that that grade level will be helpful at cider mill and I think to speak to your point before about the data and you're saying, well, why are they kind of saying these things? I I think um Kim's other data about showing how many referrals are actually going to like a mobile crisis referral from those larger numbers, right? It

068was small. Um so it it could be more just around like I said the education and those communication lessons about how what you're saying even in DBT those lessons in that um health and wellness special about you know what you say has a true impact and isn't just that they are understanding that um and helping the education piece and also maybe for parents too right and saying let's talk about this a little more at your dinner table and why it's important and how you're relaying these messages uh overall as a family. So that that actually was you brought up how everyday speech is going into third grade. So that was my question. Is it is it a K5 curriculum? Is it like a It's K12 actually new new at the high school. Um but we're

069right now we're rolling going slowly. Okay. just you know going slowly and collecting data just because in terms of just you know we're seeing it younger and like the vertical the vertical integration between the schools like same language same understanding same modules really help with like routines and then if you're in the routine of that then I feel like the kids you get greater impact and then the tier 2 piece so because some some of the work is siloed right and so that the mental health staff can be collaborating with the teacher and Maria you didn't really talk, but Maria does a lot of that um kind of crossover to kind of make sure that the skills the teacher has what she needs to because that's where kids are going to acquire it more quickly

070is when we're all working towards the same goal. Yeah. Kim, one of the other things you you shared, I think on that same slide was the dramatic increase at the high school and you you attributed it to the potentially to the to the cell phone policy. Oh, the the school climate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are we How can we substantiate that? Um, well, it's a good question. It is a good question and Bob and probably going to talk a little when you look at the free response data from the kids, they're angry about the fact that we took the cell phones away. So, you know, so we have to talk about okay, you know, what do we yet when you look at the discipline data, it's way down. So, it's working and they're so something

071is happening. Yeah, for sure. It is. And I think over it's hard. I mean, I get it there. I would if I was a junior senior, it's hard. I've had it my whole life and what are you doing? But I think over time and as more schools move in this direction and kids I think we're hearing from some I'm sorry that way so long. You know as much as they don't like it I think when you talk to kids oneonone about it there is a ease like there's a relief and so I was I was referring to the decrease in bullying cases. Oh I'm sorry. It wasn't the am I happy about it? I'm not surprised. It was there was a big decrease in bullying which you said you thought was attributable over the cell

072phone policy. I was curious what gives you the confidence that that is the case that we got some slides about that. Can I just ask it one more question about data collection? Do you do you know if all the talk about wait until 8 for cell phones? Is it having any effect? Are there less kids turning up at cider with cell phones these days? you don't allow them that I I can't monitor what they're doing. Parents are talking about it. I can tell you I have conversations with parents that are wanting to wait until late and giving them reasons why and telling them some of the things that you know you're you may be leading into. Um but we've had is it is it safe to say we've had less we've had some text things

073like that in the past? We've had less of that this year. chats and things like that that that have gone bad very quickly which it will at the elementary developmentally they're just not I mean you think about threatening some of the words that they may be saying in school they're going to say them on text and then of that right and so um uh we were responding to a number of those things in the past that's down so maybe are the most challeng There's always something. Yes, always work to do. There's always the rug. you got to try to stay ahead of I think we can really see the movement over time about like where we were where we've come how um I think it's great that we're combining come with like tier one and

074tier two together like in the classroom because you're right behavior does live does belong in the classroom and um I think that that's a a fundamental um part I think of even making a community of kids that are forgiving of each other because they're they're all surrounded by it and supporting it living it. So, um I want to thank you. I'm excited to see the middle Brooklyn and high school projects when they come together. And um always my one question always is, you know, is there something that we can be doing as a board to better support? I don't know especially needs to be full talk. Okay. Yeah, we definitely want to keep hers. We'll be looking to the budget next year. Thank you. It's a lot of information. Thank you. Thank you. special guest.

075A couple more chairs. Thanks for coming out on a Thursday night, guys. Right from practice, right from work. Yeah, I wanted to come right. [Music] Welcome. Thanks for having us. Well, yeah, thanks for having us. It's good to see everybody and I know you're very interested in our cell phone free school initiative. I say um everybody is, including neighboring districts. So, we're excited to share with you tonight. Um I'm honored to introduce Dr. Amy Korn, who's been instrumental in the implementation of this plan. Amy has been a rock star and done such great work. And then we have Grace, Liam, and Zach. and I'll let them introduce themselves. They are juniors, so they have a vested interest in what we're doing and they're knowledgeable and they're going to kind of tell it like it is.

076They they'll attest to the fact that I said just speak objectively and speak your truth, right? They're not chosen for any particular purpose and uh they did participate in the visits with uh Weston and Darian and Westport. They did very well. Um we didn't know what they were going to say then. We don't know what they're going to say now, but they're going to be honest with you, right? So, introduce yourselves, Grace. Thanks for coming right from tennis. Um, I'm Grace Johnson. I'm a junior. Um, I don't know what else to say. I'm happy to be here and share my thoughts about the cell phone free initiative. Yeah, I'm I'm Lim Joy. I'm also a junior. Um, and yeah, thanks for having us and, you know, letting us kind of speak how we deal the

077whole policy. I'm Zach Manino. I'm also a junior. Um, and yeah, I mean, I think I've been decently involved and I know so as Grace, um, because we're both on the executive board at the school. Um, and we've worked with Dr. O'Donnell and Dr. Cororin a little bit about implementing this policy and I think it's been great to be a part of that and it's as all three of us said, we're happy to be here. So, we're glad to have them. So, we have a brief presentation for you and then we'll uh turn it over to the students, let you hear from them a little bit. Uh for starters, thank you for supporting our proposal. You'll think back to the fall where you had to approve this and approve the policy. Um it is not

078always easy. You make difficult decisions, but at that time we told you, please trust the educators. You remember that and you did so. And uh we're going to have some very positive things to report about the four different goals. I will fully acknowledge that if you give the students the opportunity to share anonymously their views about taking their cell phones away on a on a survey, we're going to get those type of results, you know, but you're going to hear in a minute here we're in year one and I think we made some good progress and there's good indicators thereof. So, um I want to commend all of our students. You know, we said right away that has to be built on trust. Try to be open-minded. Give this a chance. Um, I think the

079students were were almost overwhelmed at first when they thought we're going to lose our devices and you heard the term the ban and we said we're not really banning them. It'll be a restriction. You know, you're going to get them before and after school. Um, and really they've stepped up for the most part. There are still some students to be fully transparent who don't like this at all. And I think the students who've processed through this and experienced the transition, many of them would say, you know what, we're starting to see some of the benefits. I think you might hear that from some of the students here as well. So, a good collaborative effort. And then again, we're in year one. So, you may recall that Dr. Smith outlined four clear goal areas. What we

080want to do tonight is we want to show you those goals. You have the hard copies with you. And then we're going to provide some direct evidence of kind of how we're moving the needle. Um, for Patrick's question on bull one, you'll see some direct responses from our highly qualified mental health professionals. So, Dr. K has the next slide. Um so first of all you may recall that we decided initially to delay the start um largely based on feedback and just wanting to hear from more people. We kind of backpedalled and did um some visits with different people. We visited with our students in our flex program. We had some um parent talks, parent coffees where we heard from the parents and then we also took a lot of feedback from the students and waited

081till after homecoming because we didn't want especially our seniors to feel that they had lost that opportunity for their last homecoming. Um and most recently today, as a matter of fact, our seniors had asked if they could use their phones to take pictures because it was their college sweatshirt t-shirt day. Um so we did allow the seniors to do that. So, we have continued to kind of work with them through those opportunities to find appropriate times. Um, I would say we had, as Bob just shared, um, Westport came first to kind of look at our cell phone free schools. We hosted pretty large contingent from there. I don't They did bring two of their student leaders from their school newspaper. um they were absolutely blown away when they went to our cafeteria to see students

082actually interacting in the cafeteria. I think the quote and I may not have this 100% correct um was they had not been in an environment that large where nobody had a cell phone in probably since CO had happened and they were just absolutely blown away and couldn't wrap their heads around it. students or adults, they said largely. Um, and then we hosted a visit with Weston and Darianne as well, and we invited our students here to join us for that. And like Bob said, we had no idea what they were going to say, if it was going to be good, bad, ugly, who knew. Um, and they, I think, to the person walked out of here and were like, I h we have to do this. We need to make this happen in our schools.

083There was one student I recall vividly that came in I forget if she I think she was from Weston and she was like no way no how is this happening in my school. I'm here because I want to fight it. By the end of the day she was smiling. She was talking to these guys and she was like I think we can do this. I'm going to I want to try it. Um, so it they've seen the transformation and these are, you know, our educator colleagues from nearby districts that now actually want to give this a try. So I think that speaks to a lot of the success, too. Um, when we at the outset spoke to a lot of other schools, which we've circled around to some of the high schools that have tried

084this, they really said you have to give it a few years. um our seniors obviously this was a big push for them in their final year. The Torington who's had this for quite a while now said really wait till your freshman or seniors to really kind of evaluate and see how successful it's going to be because you'll see as time goes on kids will just think this is part of what we do here. Um and then this kind of gets to your question from earlier Patrick um about the infractions. We've had 237 infractions, which I thought seemed high up until we spoke to Torington and the other school, which were probably triple, if not quadruple what we had. We were actually getting very nervous post February break about where we were with infractions. And I

085felt much better after that phone call. Um and it's really leading to us having to make two to three phone calls a day to parents because our first infraction we do call um every single parent that they have the phone and they've been caught somewhere in the building with it out so they can have it in their bag as long as it's not seen. Um and by bag I mean their backpack. Um so we do call the parent for every single student um when they're caught the first time. So, it's really not raised that infraction number that much. I would go back to kind of the bullying question you had earlier and I would tell you last year we had a binder full of bullying cases for just one year. We don't even have a

086quarter of one filled for this year. That's how significant the impact is. And as one of the APs, I work on those cases very heavily. I can tell you probably 90 to 95% of them involve some type of cell phone violation or did in the past and we're not seeing that right now. How does that 237 breakdown across the four different grades? Is it skew heavily towards the older grades? Um I No, we looked at that a while ago. Um the sophomores were slightly higher, but they're a bigger class. They're also 40 bigger. Um so when you take that into consideration that this them and the seniors were pretty close in the number. Um the sophomores is defin or the freshman excuse me definitely the least. That makes sense. Yeah. We started in November as

087you recall. So we wanted to break it down on the average per day. Um I looked at it again today. I mean there were some days early on where there were five or six or seven and um now it can spike a little bit but um you know we're trying to do things to address it and we'll talk a little bit about that too. Um so Dr. Smith I think I think thoughtfully outlined four goals for what we are all working on together and this is the first one which you can see was to improve mental health. So this talks about self cell phones contribution to anxiety stress and mental health challenges. Um, and then what the impact of a cell phone free high school can be there in terms of alleviating some of those

088issues. And I'm going to show you four direct quotes from our mental health professionals taken this week. You know, we asked them, we showed them this. We said, "How is this working?" And so these are from our highly trained school psychologists, our school social workers, and actually our flex teacher. And you can see here, um, I actually spoke with them this week and and gathered these quotes. Um, decreased anxiety, fewer distractions, fewer peer conflicts. The amount of time students would come to not just mental health professionals, but administrators and say, "Look at this. This is what this person posted about me or for me. I need your help. It's all around the school." And so that is decreasing. um the social issues and the peer conflicts. This is really compelling. I like the second part

089of quote number two right from one of our school sites. Students are spending more time in classes. They're not leaving class as much for mental health issues. That is huge. You know, we had these students spend a lot of time down in you know the flex wing or the mental health wing and that has decreased. So clearly when you see some of the data that Kim has presented that kind of fleshes that out a little bit. The third quote is from our flex teacher. She does outstanding work and Dr. Smith and I and um and Dr. Cohen visited that group. They had some concerns. Are they going to need their phones? They may rely on them more because they have more significant anxiety or mental health issues. These kids have been fine. I was in

090there again today. I go in there frequently. They have their challenges still, but they don't have the challenges resulting from having cell phones and these conflicts on Instagram, Snapchat, or whatever it was that was causing them issues. So, you can see that improvement there. And then this is a quote. I mean, if you read the fourth one, you hear about joy, playing games, socializing with each other, which we'll present another slide on that. So, we actually have more of these. These are just four of them. Um, they all were eager. I will tell you this, the mental health professionals when we were delaying the opening to get this right, they were like, when are we starting? When do we start? And what we did, it was like an ovation. So, they in our students of

091concern meetings, it is helping. and it is helping significantly but let's give us some time. Okay, goal number two, Dr. Kor. So goal number two, you might recall was all about um enhancing academic focus. Um I would share with you that within a half hour of our first day of implementation, the school building was changed. Kids when they walked out of class for breaks or walked out to go to the bathroom, they weren't right on their phones right away. um when they had breaks from class, they were actually talking about what had just happened in class. Um their learning environment, what they were learning, um they were talking to their teachers. They weren't checking in on what's going on outside. I really feel um in terms of the academics, if you think about the vision

092of a learner, it's really helped to actualize that across the different attributes and make it much more seamless in our building. So again, similarly to the last um goal, we quickly today Bob actually just today sent the teachers an email our instructional leaders and asked them for some feedback and that's what's here on this slide. Um you will see it has been transformational for teachers and that they're not feeling that they have to police this. They've probably gotten hours back of instructional time in the long term. um just not having to police this at the beginning and at the end of class. So goal three, this was to promote connection through face-to-face interaction. And I will tell you here, and I think you'll hear that from some of our students here, some of the some

093of the student naysayers on the survey. I was speaking with some of them this week in the cafeteria just trying to get a broader picture. Even the students who are still saying, you know, we might miss our phones. We think maybe we should have them during breaks. We think maybe we should have them in the cafeteria, but but we'll give them up in the classroom are saying we recognize we're interacting with each other. Look at us here in the cafeteria. I mean, these are quotes from these kids. So, um that has transformed rather than I mean students used to walk in, they were on their cell phones and in the front lobby right away they're on their cell phones. The hallways when students were on breaks or when they were sitting there, you heard me

094portray this to you when we got ready to launch. um they're sitting there in the hallways, they're on their phones. They might be talking a little bit, but they're, you know, there's not a lot of face tof face interaction. The C cafeteria has been transformed the breaks. Now, for example, yesterday I was up in the first floor taking care of some business and there was a group of boys walking around. They're on break. No cell phones talking, laughing a little too boisterously. Actually, I tell them, "Calm down. Classes are going on." But they were talking to each other. And I guarantee you, you know, a few short months ago, they would have been seeking their phones and doing something different. So, um, all of those environments have really been different. And I know this is

095a textrich quote, but we had a bunch more of these type ones about this particular goal, but I thought that this school counselor just kind of summed it up. If you read that, it just talks about how refreshing is the adults that come into the building say game changer, right? I'm telling you, the educators from Weston and from Derenne and from Westport that came to spend their times and and I love their schools. I love the principles, but there's if they came from their schools, which they did, and they saw this environment where they didn't see any cell phones. Now, you see there's infractions. We have ways of finding them, you know, the 237, but they came in and they were just they were just enamored by the possibilities. So, that is going on a

096lot. And finally, goal four and some evidence and then we're going to hear from our students, Dr. Cord. And I wanted to be crisp here. Dr. Corn. Sure. So, some of this we've already talked about um supporting positive behaviors. We really feel that it's helped to mitigate issues around cyber bullying. I mentioned earlier um how much there's been a decrease in our online behaviors that we've had to address mainly in the office. Um and then similarly some of the positive promotion that we've been able to do of good behaviors through some of our own social media channels um has been really helpful and useful and it's something we want to continue to grow. And then these again are some quotes from um some of our mental health staff in terms of how they're seeing such

097a decline in their student visitors and kind of talking about the cyber bullying, the social comparison. Um one of the things we were finding a lot um is girls in particular looking at um people online and weight issues was coming up a lot. There's a lot of um things around anorexia and behaviors that are kind of proven through social media that it's almost encouraging those things and we've seen a decline even in that if you speak to our mental health staff because they're not accessing it as frequently during the school day and comparing themselves to others. So, with that, I think we're going to turn it over to our students just to share some of their experiences and their feedback openly and honestly. We have not prepped them. Um, and we want you to hear

098from them and feel free to ask them any questions you might want to ask as well. What's What's it What's it been like from you? You you you've been here a couple years already and as I said, you have a vested interest in the future. We wanted juniors. So, um, you know, what's it been like? What's the transition been like? the the pros, the cons, and uh what are your thoughts on it? I told you it's I I said we have a very receptive kind board of education and they love hearing from students. Tell me about lunch times as well. I want to hear about that. All right. Um well, I'll start with that even. So, I want to say within the first week of implementing it, um which is in my experience where the

099most push back from students was like, um, and I'll kind of get into that later. Um, I I told this story at I think it was Westport where I was uh when the when the the school came in and came to talk to us and the administration. Um, we were sitting at lunch and it's just such a different feeling um being in the cafeteria. Um, like Mrs. K said like with the with the quote from the student like so many people, none of them on their phones, everyone's talking, having a good time and smiling. Um, and I think someone at my lunch table, we were having a weird debate about grapes and um, someone brought up the question, you know, what percent of a grape is water? And someone goes to their pocket and, you

100know, their phone's not there to look it up. Um, and people are like, "Oh, if only we had our phones." But then 20 minutes later, we were still talking about, you're still debating, you know, this kid says 60%, this kid says 40%. And it's it's it might sound like a kind of a funny example, but you know, if your phone was if that kid's phone was in his pocket, that conversation would have ended then and there. Um, and you know, no one would have been laughing, no one would smiling 20 minutes later if uh that hadn't happened. So, I think that's kind of a strange but good example of how they really um the phones, I don't think people realize they will shut down conversations. Brazil and kind of a a good time. So, initially

101I was I can remember exactly where I was when I opened up the email that said, you know, we're going to be rolling out this cell phone for school. Um I was sitting on my couch with my dog and you know I'm scrolling through the email. It's like we're um you're not going to be able to have smartwatches, AirPods or your phone. And initially like the AirPods that really um you know I was worried about that because that's how you know you sit in the library you put in earbuds to kind of just like block out everything and you just work. Um so but the school you know they listened they ended up taking that away. So that's I think that's like just the school listening to what we have to say and what's actually

102important to us and we can use in the correct um way to benefit ourselves um is really important. So thank you guys and understanding that this was such a drastic change and actually like delaying the um the implementation was really big because um you know obviously for the sophomores, juniors and seniors this is they've been in the high school before but this is like it was it's completely new but you have the freshman who have never been in a high school setting before and understanding that they have to get accustomed to high school and then high school without phones. So I think they it's the administration did a really great job um rolling everything out. Yeah, I really agree with what uh Zach and Liam have been saying. Um, one thing I noticed from even

103just like today, this was this afternoon um in my AP US history class, we went on a walk outside after our test, which was really nice. And I just said to my friend um who was walking with me, I was like, it's so crazy to think like a year ago we had our phones, like we would take our phones with us whenever we would walk outside like, and that's kind of just a random story, but it's true. Like we really used to have our phones in every aspect of the school. Like even if you weren't using it in class like I remember sometimes in some of my classes I would have it on my desk and like that's crazy to think about now. Or you know using it all the time on breaks and in

104the library and in the cafeteria and I was really resistant to the cell phone free um initiative. Like I was actually really against it at first. Um, I also remember who I was when I opened up that email sitting at my desk like like dusting off my computer at the end of the summer and I opened the email and it was very shocking. But, um, it's actually been um, like not bad and there's a lot of good that's come out of it. So, yeah, I mean there's good and bad, but mostly good I would say. Has it made you reconsider your relationship with social media or do you just do more of that? Yeah. Um, I can say one thing. It's really nice to I feel like you have a a blank slate at the

105end of the day or not the end of the day after school. Like I'll get home and I'll open I'll get out of school and open my phone and I'll have like eight minutes of screen time for the whole day at 3 p.m. And that's really refreshing cuz sometimes I would come home from school and I'd already have like an hour or two hours on my phone after just being in school all day. So it's really nice. Um, especially like being an athlete now. Um, I play tennis, so it's in season. When I get home from practice, I'll have like, you know, I've only been on my phone for like 45 minutes a day or something or especially a match. Um, I'm on my phone for like an hour, two hours max every day, which

106is really different from how much I was on my phone before. Um, so it's really nice to just have like that break and not be on your phone as much. And I think we can all agree it makes you feel good about yourself. like being on your phone a lot doesn't make you feel good about yourself. So, it's just it's kind of nice. Yeah. Um, personally, I'm not on social media a lot anyways. Um, I'm definitely on it. Like, I'll definitely, you know, send some funny videos to my friends and whatnot. Um, but I think so, one thing that's interesting to me, so I play hockey, um, and we don't have a rink here, so we have to drive to Ridgefield um, in the season. And I remember as a freshman and sophomore, I was

107sitting in the back of, you know, junior and senior's cars and we were kind of on our phones like the person driving and maybe try to make conversation every now and then because, you know, obviously they can't be scrolling on TikTok or whatever, but it it kind of fell on deaf ears and kids in the back were kind of on their phones because it carries over from school. You know, if you're accustomed to being able to, you know, check this and check that whenever you want. Um, or, you know, watch this video. you get in the car on the way to practice on the bus on the ride home, it stays with you. Um, and now I'm a junior and I'm driving kids to, you know, practice like stop at Dunk of Donuts, do whatever.

108Um, and it's so different even in that small environment. You know, the four or five people in my car will will all be having a conversation like people get out of get out of school, check their phone, see, oh, here's my ride. All right, time to go. Um, and or like on the bus to games even. um like so so many like or so less people um are on their phones like so few kids are on their phones now um going to events or even at things like um like other sporting events like basketball games and things like that kids are interacting more outside of school and I think it um it it is because of the fact that we don't have that access to our phones during the day so we're kind of accustoing

109our brains to the like realization that hey, like I don't need to be looking at the screen all the time. I don't need to be checking this and knowing everything that's going around. Like I can just enjoy my company and enjoy the people around me. Um so I got off topic from your social media question there. Sorry. But um yeah, I think it really carries over from school to outside and that's something that wasn't I think directly said in in these goals. Um because obviously you know as the board of ed you can only really control so much about what happens outside of school but it's it's been I would say for me at least an unexpected impact. Um I was initially very worried um about you know my cell phone use being like an

110uptake in it um outside of school because you know the main goal of high school is to then prepare you for college and like the world beyond. So, you know, in college, obviously, you have access to your phones. You're paying for these classes. Like, the professors aren't going to care if you're sitting in the back of class on your phone. That's on you. So, I was really um worried how I would, you know, take that for myself. Like, oh, if I'm I don't have it in high school, but I have it then am I going to um be on it all the time. But, I think having this has kind of taught me that like I don't need it all the time. And I can really only use it for like its main purpose, which

111is to like talk to my friends or if I need to call my mom about something, I'll talk to her. But I found that I don't really need to be scrolling social media all the time, which I think has been really great. Um, do you guys have any plans next year to change the um application of the policy? Do you have any fear or mitigation strategies for that whole like um kind of uh slippery slope of the fatigue? Right. The fatigue of trying to implement a policy like this I can imagine can be a lot. Right. So um is that something you guys talk about? Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean we we want to we didn't know if we get to this yet but we'll show it to you just since you're asking the question

112and then I just want to make sure the student have a chance. They they listen. They wait they waited. so long I I didn't tell him be this late. So, we're done. You guys get to go like I told you. So, you know, Heather, we're we've had some conversations and um you know, we're always talking as an admin team. So, you know, kind of you know what comes next and these were other relevant highlights. We can kind of maybe skip over those, but you get a flavor for um for that. Um teacher time saved. I think that I think that that second quote was grace if I recall during the visit where you said it's so great to not have to worry about people filming me or taking Was that you wasn't it? I mean

113that I thought was was interesting. You like I don't want to go in the bathroom some filming me, you know. So, um the assemblies and the large meetings, you know, we had a we've had packed auditoriums that the phones you don't have to say put your phones away. I haven't seen a single phone during those. We used to have kids in the middle of rows and you're trying to get to them. So, for example, and then we will make a plea to our parents next year, Heather, for example. Not saying you, but you're asking No, you're asking the question. I love your daughter. Um, no, we we do want texting them in the middle of the night. One of the things we're going to emphasize next year in all sincerity is that, you know, when

114we when we deal with these infractions, it's often we call the parents like, listen, what time was that? And we have the exact time because we record it all on a data sheet and the parents like, you know, that was me. I was interacting about whatever a dentist appointment, whatever. And we understand families are busy, but we're going to try to encourage families to, you know, that'll be one of the points we'll make next year is really let's all try to double down and and make it work. And then couple couple things we're thinking about. You know, we want to do this really really well. I think we've had a good launch on on in year one. We're not even a year in, right? We started we started in a delay, but we want to

115try to get it better. And I think again, I think that's through building the students understanding of the potential impact and benefits of this to them in those aformentioned four goals. So, we'll try the educational piece, right, can is is just so critical here. um during our grade level assemblies next year um I think we'll take a little bit of a different approach actually I think even maybe some of these students may be willing to come in and talk to the freshman about the benefits that Zach was talking about that recently at exec board so um just sharing your wisdom be be open-minded give this a chance these are some of the benefits that we've perceived so um I think we'll take a look at the consequences you know right now there are really no

116consequences on the on the first offense except taking the phone for the day which Yeah, the need of fraction could occur at 2 o'clock and you have to wait 255. We may we're going to take a look at that. I'm not going to get more specific here, but I think that may be worth considering when 237 students have most of them, by the way, are first offenses. When we talked to those other schools, the the principal's like, well, we had a student with 14, we had students with nine, and we like Amy and I got off the phone, we're like, okay, we're not doing we want to do this well for for our students. So, a follow question, the students about that. Do you feel like there's still a decent cohort of of kids that

117are getting away with having their phones out and they're just not like and then they they do it so much and some of the staff or whatever are so fatigued from telling these kids to put their phone away that they've given up. Um I think everyone has by now their own way of handling like the cell phone. I think like cell phone free is the main thing. I really don't think people are on their phones that much. I mean there are times when during downtime like out people there are certain areas in the school where you will maybe see some phones but it's I haven't heard any teachers like in my classes have to tell a kid to put their phone away. Um since it's been implemented because like that would be that would be

118very risky. I don't think people would want to do that. They want to lose their phone. Yeah. Your phone. Um so what's your question again? No, I just I don't think typically if you if there was a a sentiment of like oh, you know, because I would say like and you would probably agree with this, 99% of your kids are like they're rule followers, right? They want they want to do well. They want to be in there. We're so fortunate to have a community that really values the education, right? So, I was just curious if if there was a kind of a a small group of kids that were basically doing what they wanted and there was no consequences. Is there much mirroring of your phone on your MacBook going on? I mean, I personally

119don't have a Mac, so I don't have that issue. But, um, I do think kids are more a lot more focused in class. Um, but to answer Mrs. P's question, I think it's gotten to the point where like it's shocking. Like, you're invisible shock when you see a phone. It's like, what are you doing? Um, and that's great. Like, at the end of the day, it's on that person. Like, they're the ones that are going to get in trouble. other than the ones that are going to have to make that call home or um have to bring the phone to the office for is it like a week on like the second third offense. Um is that one of the third offense? Yeah. Second the parent has to come in and pick it up and

120and that happens but we don't have a lot of multiple multiple offenders. Liam, keep going. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I just I think it's just gotten to the point where it's we're in such a habit of doing it and we understand that we don't really need these devices um as much as we thought we did. Um because we've never really known any better. Um our parents kind of just handed us our phones and we're like here do what you want. Be curious to follow cohort of students. I'd be curious to follow students over the summer to see like what the summer looks like for you guys. I think personally I'm probably just going to be on my phone to text my friends to go hang out. That's all I'm going to be. That's great. I

121mean, I loved Grace when you said like you feel better about yourself and I feel like like when you feel better about yourself, you do better and in everything that you're confronted with from the classroom to, you know, the the field to your interpersonal relationship. So, I just, you know, in terms of like being in a community and thinking about wellness, I just think that's That's a a tremendous, you know, that in it in and of itself just um is is really a great accomplishment I think for for all of good. You've pulled off a big you pulled off a really big thing and you were very hesitant to do it. Yeah. The competitive side of me loves that other school systems around us are now. Of course it is. Is always a leader. Absolutely.

122And we have so many things to be proud of, but I I'm this is one for me. I'm so I'm so proud of our town and everybody in this and anybody I talk to outside of this town, you know, even with young kids, when I tell them what we've done, they are delighted that there's this this effort to just get away from them and all the, you know, we all know kind of the ramifications of what it can do, the harm it can bring. And so this this is just a huge step in the right direction. Can you just tell me the consequences of what happens when a kid messes up once, glances up twice, messes up three times? Is that your question? So the first time um usually a staff member brings a phone

123to the office. Um it if one of us is not available, which is often it stays in the office till the end of the day. Um and then we make a phone call with the student to their family and explain that they have a first time cell phone violation and what happens the second time. Second time, similarly, it's usually brought down by a staff member. Um we call home and then the parent has to come pick it up. Uh which they don't like because they get very inconvenienced by that. Um, and then the third time we also call home and then we start with consequences of two to four detentions typically. And we really haven't gotten beyond that. And a parent also has to come pick it up that time. Um, but we really have

124not gone further than that. Kids don't like it. Parents don't like having to pick it up. I had a parent that actually left a phone over the break because they were so frustrated with their child for having a second violation. and they said it's going to stay in the school for April break. I love that. Okay. So, it's been successful. The parents have been so so supportive. I have to say for I'm sure they see happier kids. Yeah. Kids that are, you know, and I would anticipate just going to get happier to have their kids in the school like for you guys. a lot of some of the kids that were very adamantly against it. Is it kind of moved to a place where yeah, we're still not okay with it, but it's not such

125a big deal or, you know, is the sentiment like it's just, you know, tacit kind of whatever to it or is there still kind of, you know, that that hold? Um, I can kind of speak to this because I really was the person who was like really against it. Um, more so than most of my friends and I was trying to use my position on the exec board. I was like, "Don't worry. Like, I'll be there. I'll get it. I'll make sure it doesn't happen." We had a meeting. Um, I was obviously unsuccessful, but that's okay. Uh, we had a meeting where we talked about it at the executive board and I like had my points I was going to make. I was all prepared. Um, so I was pretty like not looking forward to

126having the cell phones. Um, not in school or in the honor pouches. Um, but now I mean you've all heard what I think it's not like I would say I've come to enjoy it. And people who like anyone who isn't happy with it has probably found their way to deal with it and have their whatever they need to have their phone like they've probably found their way to deal with it. And I don't think there's anyone who's still like protesting. Like if you are, it's kind of, you know, I don't think anyone's doing that because there's no reason to really. That's what I like. Have people seen that? Like it's not kind of it's not kind of working. It's not something we talk about anymore. Like I never talk about it with my friends anymore.

127It doesn't come up really. Like oh remember this. I remember within like 15 minutes of the email coming out that people were already posting on social media about how to get around. I must have just blown up. Yeah. Um but now it's just like I think we've understood that this is for us and this is like being implemented for a reason. Um and how we can actually benefit from it and I think just looking on like the bright side of that is super important and um understanding that this is and but it is and has been super like beneficial for us. So how did you find that? How did you figure that out? Did you know that right away that it was for you, that it was going to benefit you? Took time. Yeah, it

128just took time. So, it just took time and sort of an experience of not having the phone. Yeah. And just like seeing that the results come like you feel more engaged in class and then the grades start to come too and you see your participation grade go up. you see um you're you're actually um taking in the material and understanding it and not just like what did I just learn and then going on your phone to try and see what you learned. Um, so I think just seeing the results, um, just feels really good and understanding that like, yeah, this is for us. And I think that's a that's a really good question. Like I really do like that question of did you see that it's for you and not something that the administrator is

129just pushing on you? I think at the beginning that was kind of the general sentiment people are you know if I'm sure some of you are parents and you you've said to your kid or anyone you've heard someone say you know oh you're always on your phone or you're addicted to your phone and the kids no I'm not like and I think that's kind of everyone's reaction when anyone kind of I don't want to say accuses but says something like that to them and that's I think was the general sentiment from the kids at the start uh or from the students at the at the start of the saying it's we don't really see a problem here. Um, and I think that one of the goals about um like it was uh I'll say like

130negative student interaction. I'll say dealing with social media. Um especially that was um kids were just like I don't really we don't really see how this is going to solve that. Like a lot of it happens outside of school. Um but now I think we students are experiencing the more positive environment. they're experiencing, like Liam said, the better grades, the better engagement in class. Um, and you know, it's kind of the I told you so moment from administration. They've been telling us this all along, you know, saying this is for you. This isn't for us. I mean, obviously, it's going to help the teachers, but it's for the students. It's for your mental health. It's for your just enjoyment of being at school. It's making it a good environment where people want to come and

131want to stay, want to learn, see their friends. Um, and it was hard to see that at first because I think people are kind of caught up in this craze of, you know, how do I get around it? Like, I need my phone. And once that kind of washes away, then I think students have really seen the benefits of it. Um, and we've realized that it is for us. And I I think Zach brought up a really important question point about the teachers. Um, how this is kind of before they were teachers, it was like up to them to use the phone caddies. Um, and that kind of takes away from their job as teachers. They're becoming, you know, they have policemen, they have to police the phones. Um, and I remember, um, vividly during

132the, um, the Weston and, uh, Darienne, um, when they came, um, Senor Hernandez, who I had last year, um, spoke about how she's just like ecstatic about this. Um, she was a really big pusher for it. And I now understand why because teachers can just be teachers and then the students can just be students and actually do their job and learn. Um, which has been great. I think also briefly I wanted to like add on you had asked like when did you realize it was good? I think the main point of that is like I think we all know teenagers like don't really like to be told like what to do and even though you hear hundred times like oh it's for your mental health for your grades for your social life like I think

133that each student just has to come to realize that for themselves and like that'll happen a different time for everybody some people it's really quick for some people it takes longer but I think like there's no specific moment it's just when you stop thinking about your phone I would say and yeah like as much as probably all want to say I told you so like I think you just have to let people like realize it for themselves and um like I don't know just yeah come to realize that for themselves like oh even though they might never admit it like maybe the phone it's not be it sounds like there's a consensus amongst a lot of you that this was a good idea and that this has been a beneficial idea for you. Yeah. Um

134there's still I want to say some stragglers of course. Um and you're always gonna have that no matter what. No matter what change you make to the This was a big change. Yeah. This is huge. Yeah. Probably the biggest thing that have or will happen in at least our four four years of high school. Um and it's very interesting I think from the perspective of a junior specifically. Um and I mean I every grade has their own thing. we've been through two years, two and a little bit of having our phones and making this change now and kind of thinking ahead it's oh what's going to happen our senior year. Um I think that was a big worry for students as well because I think the senior year is kind of this like experience that

135people want to have. You know there's the senior experience is you know coming up shortly where students get to go and do their trip and do their research and things like that. Um but uh so I think as as juniors there were a lot of stragglers in our grade and I know there we weren't listed in the two classes that had a lot of um like infractions but I think it was because we kind of made that switch pretty quick. Um and the people who at first um might have felt like grace and might have felt so against it tried to fight it. Um, and you know, for the for the first little while when I saw that email, I was like, this is going to be annoying. I wasn't like, I'm going to, you

136know, hate this and hate the school. Um, but those students, I think, like Grace said, like it it takes their own time and it takes the experience. Um, but I don't think you're never going to 100% get full support and that's for anything and that's not going to change. Yeah. I think also a point I wanted to come back to is what you had said about like the screenering. That's probably what I would say the hardest part is. I don't I don't have a MacBook so I can't, you know, text or anything and it is sometimes really hard to see. Like in one of my classes there's someone who sits right in front of me and I always see the the Instagram on their page or them texting their friends and like I try not

137to look at it but there's a part of me that I'm like like that could be me texting away, you know, going on Instagram. But it's hard. I mean it the simple solution is just close your computer. If the teacher just said like, "Oh, everyone close their computer." Then it would be gone. But I don't know what to really do about that. It's I don't know how you would really control maybe just teachers being a little bit more strict about how you used your technology. But um that's probably the hardest thing is just like seeing other kids have the availability and you not. You guys have validated one of my deep hunches. Um and it's the the way you've come home to uh appreciating the reason for the policy change more than half an hour

138now described a range of personal benefits that you've experienced and I I think my my hope you know because there's only so much you know that adults can do with the finger wagging and policy enforcement but my my hope is over time that more of your peers will come around to really truly um experience the the benefit of the change. Um for me the big big picture here is the the pernitious dependence that we all experience with with these devices. Um and you know we we obviously can do something about it and um and we're trying and so thank you for being marvelous um insightful brilliant just sharing such a wonderful thanks for not making my house you would never do [Laughter] No, thank you for joining us tonight and um for all the work

139that you do with your friends and in the school and I know on the executive committee and I know that if you guys come across any other ideas or solutions, you know who to go to, who share them with. So really appreciate it getting late. Yeah, good work. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. [Music] Okay, we have um just one, two, three, four, five policies to go through on the agenda. Their second read. Um I don't think we received any questions um about them. So we can start with um 4115.2 which is administrative regulations regarding concussion management and training um for athletic coaches. Um are there any um questions um or comments about this policy? is yes. No. Oh, sorry. I'm like, sorry, my hand on my profile is um is there a motion

140to approve um um policy 4115.2? So, thank you, Pam. Is there a second? Thank you, Lori. All in favor? I with this next one. Yeah, I want to table it. Yeah, I think let me just offer a comment. I don't have any concerns about this policy. It's a recommended policy from our um attorneys. So I have like it's pretty standard. I was surprised that we actually didn't maintain it already, but just in light of the comments we heard. I'm happy to just go back and spend some more time and better understand and you know have some more conversation. And I would echo your um thoughts as it came through the policy committee. But yes, um we'll put it aside for now. Um, policy 4120 reports on suspected abuse or neglect of adults and uh with

141an intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder. Are there any questions or comments on this policy? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve policy 4120? Thank you, Pat. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Nicola. All in favor? Motion carries unanimously. Um, policy 5131.61, chemical health policy for student athletes. There any questions or comments on this policy? Hearing none. Is there a motion to approve policy 5131.61? So move. Thank you. And second um Lori. All in favor? I I carries unanimously and Um, finally, policy 6172.6, remote learning and credit for online courses. There any questions or comments on this policy? Is there a motion to approve policy 6172.6? Motion. Thank you, Cad. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Heather. All in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. Are there any comments from the public? Um,

142just bring everyone's attention to future business. Annual town meeting is May 6 at 700 p.m. here in Ray Cloon Center. Um, then we will have a regular meeting on May 15th at 7 p.m. And then we'll have a board of education meeting on June 5th. Right now it says 7 p.m., but that'll go out for 6 pm um on the notice and we'll make a note of that as we get closer. Um meeting adjourned at 9:03. Thank you.