001i'd like to call the thursday august 26th wilton board of education regular meeting to order all our members are present has everyone had a chance to review the agenda and is there a motion to approve the agenda thank you glenn a second second thank you laura all in favor comments from the public um i do not see anyone physically here lucille did we receive any public comments by email no we did not all right thank you consent agenda uh is there a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved thanks mandy thanks glenn all in favor all right board chairs report i want to keep this brief because again we have a long agenda but i want to congratulate dr smith and his whole staff on just a wonderful energetic appropriate normal happy convocation yesterday
002it was my honor and privilege to be able to address the group for a couple of minutes and i thought it important that the public hear a little bit about what i said so these are truncated remarks but i think um we all feel this way i said wilton students and families are excited to start school for a good reason our faculty is one of the best faculty and staff found anywhere in the world our faculty credential credentials training and experience are unparalleled their skills professionalism and dedication are extraordinary our teachers compassion for and attention to each and every student is inspiring our teachers have proven over and over again that they can do anything whether it's last-minute schedule changes technology that decides not to work a hard-to-reach student or a global pandemic they work
003through it all because they are creative and resilient and they are part of a team they have expert colleagues and leaders ready to collaborate and partner on the host of issues that come with every school year they are even stronger together i hope they know our board supports them we hope they feel they have the resources professional development class sizes curriculum materials technology etc to create the classroom conditions they need in a board meeting this week earlier vice chairman glenn hemerly observed that teaching today is harder than ever before there is so much that teachers need to know and be able to do certainly the world keeps presenting new and unique challenges but we know our teachers will meet those challenges because in addition to their incredible talents they are courageous so we look forward
004as a board and a community to monday when our students arrive each with individual hopes and dreams for the school year we are right to entrust our kids to our faculty we know they will work their magic to make those hopes and dreams a reality so thank you dr smith for such a great convocation outside and in person um one more thing i wanted to highlight was earlier this week we had a workshop on diversity equity and inclusion we began a conversation i want to thank superintendent smith assistant superintendent chuck smith our k-8 humanities leader karen breneke middlebrook teacher and chair of the district dei committee michael gordon high school english teacher hala harani and social studies teachers molly palmer and laura fayak for their time and research and presentation concepts goals and links to
005the portrait of the graduate aspirations and subject area standards as well as examples of curriculum material and instructional strategies were presented so i encourage everyone to view the meeting the video and slide deck are on our district website follow-up includes work for the policy and t for the policy committee and the board of ed teaching and learning committee as well as parent workshops in the future and finally um as dr smith did i wanted to recognize our board member glenn hemerly vice chair he has been on our board for 10 years this is his last school opening so i just want to say thank you on behalf of all of us so thank you [Applause] superintendent great thank you just a couple of remarks um first we always like to start with celebrations uh catherine
006luxtone um our theater director sent out a note today sharing with the school community that over the summer uh the 2020 fall play all in the timing won the state halo awards adjudication for best play that's great news so that play was directed by kevin slater and then uh the sets were prepared by uh christian clanton um and the play was live streamed back and fall as a result of covid but a couple of our students uh timothy grace and sarah bennett won best dynamic duo in a play and then um best specialty ensemble in a play was taken by four of our students emily baer nala clark matthew huang and aki lasher so congratulations to all of those involved and that's a great honor that's great well deserved and as you noted uh convocation
007was yesterday and it was hot but uh celebratory triumphant i think it was the first time that our faculty has been together in person since august 2019. i want to thank um our high school teachers who uh refer to themselves as the house band uh they've been playing together for some time and they provided the musical entertainment as they always do and so um you know gave us a lot of energy and then our keynote was uh fifth grader elise panku who amazing stole the show amazing we all fell in love with her um she's amazing and uh was really i think um wonderfully inspiring to our staff she spoke about you know the teachers who really you know kind of moved her and motivated her to get engaged get involved and um you know
008become you know active around her concerned so she was really tremendous remarkable yeah so that was just a it was a great day even even despite the uh the very warm weather um jen and i were at meet the teacher together today over at middlebrook school so another wonderful ritual that feels you know pretty normal so i have two kiddos at cidermill and i was there and then at middlebrook and i think you'll hear you know when the principles present there was just great energy in the building and you know lots and lots of enthusiasm from our students their parents and certainly our teachers and then my last update this is uh much more businessy um you may recall we have been engaged in informal negotiations with both um upsu and afscme um both i
009think jen and ruth you served on the negotiations committee um we do have an update about both those negotiations so we'll schedule a meeting uh hopefully for next week or early the week after so we can provide the update and see where we are and then we'll provide an update to the full board after that so that's in process thank you great just to add to the complication is that thank you to all the struggles that set up lucille congrats thank you for all the work she did getting there it was just a fantastic day it really was it was a really really great event yeah thank you okay that moves us on to our review and discuss items the first one being an opening update so i'm not sure how this is which order
010you want to go in so i'll leave it up to you great so kind of picking up where we left off last week we provided a lot of the technical and operational details at the district level um i thought the continuation made sense to pick up with our school administrators and they can provide a brief update um about each of the buildings um so we'll start with uh dr o'donnell at the high school and we'll just kind of work our way down to um and finish off with mrs kuhn and miller jisco well thank you dr good evening everybody uh wilson high school is poised right now for an outstanding school year uh firstly we had a really really good hiring season we hired some excellent teachers and school counselors so our students will be
011in really good hands um we're really looking forward to this faculty report class 2122 and some of you will meet them tomorrow all the summer preparations are coming to fruition uh the facility is looking really really good over the last couple days and it will be safe and healthy and that's what's important and what we need as we uh go into this school year the master schedule under the leadership of brian hena and sandy lund actually was ahead of schedule this year sandy just kept saying we're in such good shape and we're ready and the schedule very good countless of uh school counselors i think will have very little to do with student schedules and a few that we have we've been attending youtube already so we want the students to start out monday just
012feeling very comfortable and i know they're so excited to see their teachers we had our wilson high school convocation yesterday and the energy with the staff and faculty is literally powerful it's a different school year you can sense that it's a different square i think the teachers feel as if some of the limitations on their uh the threat of their teaching applications is being lifted and to a person they were just so excited of course well you can't wait to see the kids on monday and i would add all of this because i'm looking forward to having all the students back we also honored our local custodial staff there because again they've been securing the health and safety of the building and we had some keto speakers another like kathy campbell rita radawala and yes
013our student government officer so they were really really just so important as they express their appreciation for what the teachers and the staff did last year and of course what they will do this year and uh you know we've been in touch with a lot of the students it's a beautiful thing to see a lot of students already developing many freshmen coming through and doing tours excited to know where their lockers will be and located in their classrooms and uh we're taking the opportunity to talk to them make them feel you know really just completely comfortable and finally before i turn it over to brian we had our instructional leadership institute earlier in the week where we focused on just some really important things that are going to ensure this school year first of all
014building strong connections with students using common informative assessments and uh four minute assessments to ensure that we're getting to know what the students trends are and their skill sets so we can feed to them uh providing appropriate scaffolding so that all of our students are working for a level playing field that are all in a position to excel and also that we're designing you know certainly rigorous instructional tasks that accessible to all of our students and that will you know really just celebrate their learning and uh have them have an outstanding experience so we're really in good shape right now brian is going to talk about the crew and uh we're looking for aggression and student orientation tomorrow so i'll turn it over to our great associate principal brandon thank you very much dr o'donnell
015and uh thank you to the wilson board of education for the invitation to join the meeting tonight my quick comment here um we have had over the past couple of weeks to echo dr o'donnell's comments the link crew team in getting ready and i think that that was when we really started feeling excitement build because the kids were in the in the hallways they were in the classrooms they were getting the training under our advisors jim zemo and scott kathy weiss deb moreno mike walsh everybody's set ready to go the kid's been excited uh the link crew uh leader student leaders have been excited and now that excitement has spread so we're ready to roll with that we have our freshman student orientation and our freshman parent orientation tomorrow too and uh everything is going
016to be uh starting in the morning and everybody will have a chance to hear from different types of voices from administration from teachers from students and very uniquely and wonderfully from other parents so we're excited about that and ready for that tomorrow uh just to echo dr o'donnell's comments you could feel the excitement of with everybody coming back this week all sat uh with everything getting put into classrooms and moved around and finishing come just getting put on so definitely on monday there's a great deal of anticipation for monday and uh speaking of that and kind of tying it all together our our link crew has some wonderful activities planned so that we have not only our introduction to classes and teachers next week but we also have some advisories where we'll be focusing on
017some sel activities menu of choices for everybody to use so that we can tailor things appropriately for the kids who are in front of us and yeah just echo the excitement all around so thank you great questions for bob thank you very much it sounds wonderful i think that means it's my turn so uh good evening everyone tori higgins i'm happy to share a little bit about what's done and as parents kevin smith said earlier we did a hard walk through today and uh dr smith was one of the many parents that were filling our buildings with love and excitement for the for the brand new school year and we're certainly very excited to welcome our students back on monday as dr o'donnell said the energy is palpable in the building today is there's nothing
018like getting the students back in the building to just raise that level of excitement and fun i i do think i remember the students for not a lot of wonderful positive energy today and that's a nice reminder of my wife and it was pretty easy for kids today this week we were blessed to be able to have full staff and faculty meetings in person and one of the things that i shared with the staff was i was quoting our us department secretary um dr cardona when he said in a webinar i attended this summer he talked about the the mass side warrior reading that is empowered the children and the question that they would how they would greet each other is they would say and how are the children and the traditional response is the
019children are well and that was the tale of which we started our meetings this year and really just making sure that we remind each other to take a photo it's not a big jump just to go from the mascot warrior to the wilson warrior or feed it back down back a bit but having an opportunity to have this staff in person the instructional food meeting in person just started to give our building a sense of moral and [Music] healthy um safe gatherings and we are ready and we're ready in a large part since he's on the call i want to give a shout out to mr figueroa and his team for making sure that the building is ready there's an awful lot of work that happens over the summer and jose and his crew have
020done a fantastic job and making sure that they'll work will be ready so okay thank you um i'm really proud of the the middleburg staff they just had incredible focus and attention on the social and emotional well-being of our students that's through the focus of a lot of our conversations this past week uh attention and focus to making sure and celebration of the accomplished accomplishments of our students the last room is hard it's hard for the students it's hard for the adults and we recognize that our staff works very hard to not only recognize that but also provide avenues to support the students to help them be successful and be able to say as the warriors would say and the children are well they do that always and they were really focused on that this
021past week we also had the opportunity to welcome a few new staff members as dr o'donnell mentioned at the high school we have a few new faces and it new faces new places at middlebrook as well and it was fun to get to know some of those folks we actually have uh more formal orientations happening for them tomorrow so we'll get to do it a little backwards instead of having that happen monday we're doing that tomorrow so be interesting to have maybe more direct questions that they have of how the week wins and so um again we're happy we're excited can't wait to have the children with us on monday and now i get to hand it over to my friend and colleague dr falcone to give you the cider mail update yeah george hold
022on we do i think we might have a few questions for you sure i just we've had some questions about lunch and what lunch is going to look like are the kids if they're in the building going to have assigned seats sorry about that i forgot there might be questions i thought i got away with no questions [Laughter] [Music] no such luck sorry all right so so our plan is to have lunch outside whenever possible that was one of our silver linings from last year and so the plan is to eat outside whenever weather permits whether it be temperature or moisture and then for the the days when we can't do that and we must be inside roughly about two-thirds of the kids will be able to be in the cafeteria and then the overflow
023will be in one of the gymnasiums so while they won't have assigned seats they're going to have seats that are enough space in between them certainly a minimum of three feet between them okay so the question also was if they are inside for multiple days in a row will they be able to sit someplace else each day someplace different each day at lunch or at lunch so if you if you've ever come to middlebrook with any kind of regularity at lunch they don't switch their seats they find their little corner and their table and that's pretty much the table list yeah all year so they know they're welcome to change seats sometimes we get a little changes uh depending upon the sports season that's happening but the kids are welcome to change their seats they're
024able to change their seats uh there'll be regular cleaning between each lunch period let alone each day in the cafeteria gymnasium area so that's not a problem and i just you know this was all included in my last friday letter too so hopefully that's not brand new information for our parents okay thank you welcome anything else for joy great dr falcone good evening all right good evening hi everybody um so i'm sure i'm gonna try not to repeat a lot of things but um i just uh we had meet the teacher today and it was just so exciting to be back and to have the kids coming in and the teachers were all in and school looks like school which is just fantastic i can't say enough about how excited all of our staff are
025to be back and back into a building that looks like school once again so i would be remiss to not thank my staff last year what they had done was just unbelievable they were teaching kids you know remotely and on-site every day as elementary teachers they were preparing for you know five plus content areas fully in schoology um you know teaching insider email they had to they were doing both so just so thankful for the efforts and you know we were reflecting in the beginning of this year and just so proud and happy for even how our kids did last year you know for all um for all things being said everybody made it through last year with flying colors and we're we're really proud proud of that um i want to thank lake jory
026did our custodians and all of our faculty for helping to get this building ready it's quite a feat especially when we had to reset up and empty um you know the storage containers and everything so i just want to thank our custodians and i'll go through and just quickly update some of the covet updates that we have but again they were all shared um in multiple emails home as well but we have um hopefully we'll have a lot more students taking the bus with masks on in assigned seats that's going to be huge contact tracing really does depend hopefully we're not going to deal with that but it does depend on um assigned seats and so that that'll be a huge thing but we're really hoping that kids um go back to taking the bus
027so that um dismissal and drop-off can run a little more uh smoothly in business as usual um as i said the classroom environments look very typical we'll obviously have masks they'll be social distancing but we're happy to say that they'll be sharing materials we have lockers again lunchtime we will be using the science lab and they still are in desks just to provide that social distancing while masks are off um like middle brook we're going to try to optimize outside time to eat lunch sometimes it gets hard depending on um the age of the students because there's no way to really put your lunch so we kind of work that out and sometimes they do eat outside sometimes they don't but they have an assigned area um in the cafeteria for um when they are
028eating inside um i'm trying to think what else a washing hand that's going to be another big really big mitigation strategy kind of moving in and out of classrooms or any transitions before and after lunch that way that really allows us to more safely share different manipulatives materials and what have you and again we're asking families to support us when bringing any kind of food in for snack that there's just no sharing of food continued going into the school year i'm happy to the other thing is we're we're really excited to be able to have visitors again we've really missed that last year and so being masked and having volunteers are also welcomed back going through the background checks and everything but we are very excited to be able to have families and visitors back
029in our building i think that's it unless anybody has questions no thank you thank you okay all right i think i'm last last but hopefully not least this time usually i go first with all the littles so um i think like jory said the littles are are well they are well as are the are the very grown-up people um in addition so we also had meet the teacher today and it was great to welcome preschool and kindergarten some of those kiddos for the very first time into our school but another added attraction today was our first graders who you know many of them came to school last year but their parents didn't get to come in so it was great to see the first graders walking their parents around and kind of showing them around
030the school because the parents had never been in and they the parents were like this is a beautiful school i can't believe it and we all were reminded that um like jen said the parents weren't you know weren't allowed to come into school last year so we had an amazing meet the teacher again the kids are excited the teachers are excited the parents it's the most wonderful time of the year for them because you know next monday their children are are so we're we're super happy about that um over the last few days we also did a lot of professional development with the staff i want to thank my leadership team because they walked the entire certified staff through a little walk down memory lane called life before covid where we revisited a lot of
031our initiatives and then i introduced the um accelerated learning framework which you'll hear about a lot this year and we kind of connected what we were doing before we left in a march of 2020 to this acceleration framework so it was a great way to just get the year started so that was very exciting i also want to thank the custodians rudy angel is truly an angel and you know he moved things that he cleaned things his crew worked really hard this summer especially given the fact that we hosted esy and and several different summer camps so um he did an incredible job and was always just kathy what are we doing today tell me something great that's what he loves to say every day so so we love him i also have to give
032a shout out to our secretaries who worked this summer so tess majeski patti teranova and heather maloney we had a brand new enrollment um process this year through powerschool and they did an amazing job certain times i would walk out into the office and test would be looking at people's driver's license and so we talked about it looked like she was working for the dmv but she that all three of them did an amazing job and the the kids are all ready to come in and last but not least i just want to give a shout out to our newbies we hired a lot of new paras a new cafeteria aid and we hired eight new teachers so they are bringing some amazing energy to our school like jen said a lot of things you
033know are getting a little bit more back to normal we will have a little bit different of a plan for lunch for our kiddos so we're going to rotate kids through the cafeteria so we can keep them distance and when it's not their turn to be in the cafeteria they'll eat in their classrooms like they did last year and we'll make sure we get them you know three feet apart or we will use uh some seas guards for that um a lot of information went out to the parents a welcome back letter and faq kevin's went out we have a what's the scoop at miller driscoll so hopefully people feel very informed and again after some um great presentations that meet the teacher i hope everyone feels ready because i know we are ready for
034monday and we could not be more excited so um i have a question and it's probably to everyone are you hearing any parents express concerns or anxieties about any of our health and safety measures i haven't heard concerns about the health and safety measures i know there were some questions about masks today um but that's that was it okay i do believe we have a few families in town that just with our young age group because they're not able to be vaccinated yet there's still a little bit of fear and concern out there but i don't think there's it's it's a huge for my understanding at this time okay all right thank you i will also say for us because having the littles and again them not being vaccinated you know we're we're holding off
035and doing some zoom mystery readers and birthday readers and things like that at first as opposed to having a lot of volunteers and parents in the classroom right away it's good we want to see how everyone settles in so that's a little bit different than what dr falcone is doing okay thank you yeah if i could i just want to add that yesterday the convocation i spoke to a number of teachers and they are thrilled to be back in a regular classroom with their touches in their classrooms i it was amazing to talk to them and how happy they are they were able to get back without a ton of plexi able to put their touches up and and it's their classroom again which it wasn't last year at all and they're thrilled they really
036are the ones i spoke to yesterday were just excited about it great great andrea how about an update from special services okay well first and foremost let me tell you that i'd like to thank all of the building administrative teams who worked very hard in hiring this hiring season we have a number of new student services staff across the district and where we were unable to find staff who've met the standards that we're looking for while we refuse to settle we have found some long-term subs to fill those positions while we continue the search for the highest quality staff that we can obtain so um i thank them for their diligence they worked untold hours particularly at cider mill uh and middlebrook and the high school um the number of hours that people worked um
037with interviews and demo lessons and reference checking i really can't say enough about the care with which the leadership teams that all the buildings take and sharon d'angelo and melissa barrett in searching out the right candidates for those positions so i thank you all on behalf of the kids um after a resounding success in our esy program which went off beautifully due to the work of again sharon and melissa and bernadette hess we had hundreds of kids come through our esy and get back into a rhythm of learning over the summer this year we also are welcoming more than 30 new students and families to the wilton public schools pre-k all the way through grade 12. and so teams of staff have been working hard in evaluating evaluating students getting to know those students and
038their families welcoming them to the community and making sure that they all have ieps that can be implemented on day one so we have teams that have been working very very hard over the summer to make sure that those students and their families are welcomed into the community with open arms and their students will be cared for from day one and their needs will be met along the way so i want to thank all of those teams for doing that as a result we have had some additional staffing that we've needed to bring on board to meet the needs of some of those students so you'll my report puts out the fte that we've added across the district where needed and we are ready to go we're working with the accelerated framework as well so
039you'll hear us talk a lot about scaffolding to grade level content for students as we move forward and you'll hear more and more about that as the days progress and we are working hard to close the achievement gap to engage our students and make sure that they are safe and well and moving forward across the district from pre-k to age 22. i'm happy to report that our community steps program will actually get back into the community that will be back out and about in the community this year and where we can't be more excited about that the kids are excited we have our kids going back to normal community college our kids going back to their job sites um both outside and inside if you remember last year we could only do outside work um
040and that was only through kind of the end of november but so we'll be back out in the community so look for us everywhere we go genesis is up and running we had a very successful program through the month of july we have we graduated four students who went on to four-year universities we have 15 students beginning the school year with us and i have seven students who are currently considering enrollment as you know we take rolling enrollment at genesis so kids start throughout the year um we have a number of students from other districts who are inquiring and considering placing their students at genesis for the 21-22 school year so we're working with those districts as we speak to make decisions about that um and you know we're excited about a year we're excited
041to get back into it the teams are ready to roll the teachers are excited they're ready to see their kids and work directly with their kids from day one so i couldn't be more excited and again i continue to be extraordinarily proud of the student services department and the work they've done throughout this pandemic and i have great faith that we'll be able to um bring kids along and and finish the unfinished learning that needs to take place i'll take any questions you might have andrea it's mandy i just had a quick question of the 30 students are these new to wilton students or are these new to special ed students that some of them might have already been in wilton schools no these are new to wilton students and families we also have students
042who have been in the wilton schools who are newly identified but these are these are students and families who've moved into wilton and will be joining us pre-k all the way up got it how does that compare with last year perhaps or the year before the past few years we've had higher numbers of students moving in but that's really due to what's happened throughout covid with the number of housing sales as as you see the real estate market has been booming for the past two years this is this is an extraordinary number of new students with disabilities for this year many of them might have been here last year and didn't join us because of covid yet they were still working remotely or doing other things homeschooling so they're all joining us now the there
043was uh an attempt by a new private school for special ed students to take over the abc house and evidently that fell through what do you know about that school or that system and would it have been a value to us if they did or i i just i don't know what their purpose was yeah um i know i know some about the school um you know it would have provided a service to perhaps um students or families who didn't feel that the that their current programs were working right perhaps like any other private school um for students with disabilities i can't say uh i don't know enough about what was what the draw would have been what type of students they served what level of training or background or curriculum so i really can't
044to the school itself yeah okay okay andre the students that are considering genesis from other districts how does that work well it can work in two ways one it can be a parent placement like like other parents who might join us from other districts and seek enrollment or in some cases where you might have a student with a disability the school district may be seeking support and make a placement through the ppt process and the school district would pay tuition and transportation um for the student to come so it could happen through two avenues uh and we have both parents seeking enrollment and school districts seeking enrollment and they would pay tuition and they would pay we follow our non-resident admissions policy okay thank you andrea are you at the point of being able to
045admit out of district students for any reason for either reason or are you there yet uh we're yeah we're deep in conversations on both accounts with students who may be very well suited to the program and we have space in the program right now um we you know we like to make sure we have enough space for our wilton kids first yeah okay thank you yeah the other side of the conversation is we're finalizing what we think the per pupil would be for that program yeah yeah yeah good okay great good luck this year yeah thank you a lot to think about anything else for andre our last update on that agenda item is mr mcdougall and uh just a brief update on fall athletics please absolutely thank you for inviting me um we have
046as of right now 536 student athletes registered for fall sports and our 10 fall sports this season we added boys golf to the fall they will no longer be doing spring golf they're going to be playing in the fall now just the boys the girls will still play in the spring i do have an update on our covent protocols based off of the ciac sports medicine committee and the connecticut dph for indoor sports such as volleyball cheerleading when they're practicing inside and swimming when they're not in the pool they must wear masks inside and and practice their social distancing while they're on the bench um all the outdoor sports do not have to wear masks while they're playing thank goodness um and uh you know but when they are inside when they're using the indoor
047facilities they will have to still wear their masks so um then the question comes up what if um somebody does come down with covid um so if a student athlete or coach or staff staff member for that matter um does it is in close contact with someone who uh has coveted and they are fully vaccinated vaccinated and they are asymptomatic they will not have to quarantine they will have to wear a mask um they'll have to wear a mask for um well until they get back or until they get tested they can get tested between days three and five if the test come back comes back and they're negative they do not have to wear their mask anymore and they can go back to uh practice as normal so chris just started here so the
048um the mask requirement if there's an exposure that's for outdoors since they're all required for masks indoors anyway indoors you always have to wear a mask no matter what yes yes for those that are unvaccinated and and also asymptomatic um they will have to uh and they're in close quarantine um they will have to uh quarantine and uh for at least 10 days um and get they can get a test after day seven between day seven and day ten um and if that comes back negative then they'll be able to go back after seven to ten days if they get the test if they do not get the test they have to wait the full two weeks whether they're vaccinated or unvaccinated students or staff who are exposed to cover 19 and have symptoms they
049will have to uh they'll have to quarantine for 10 days if they obviously are showing symptoms okay so it's a little better than last year a lot better i would say for those especially for those people that are vaccinated what about the football schedule this year it's not good it's a tough schedule the tough schedule but the fca as a whole it's a tough lead so we will uh we will see what we can do we had a good scrimmage yesterday um coach saw some positive things and we'll uh we'll see how we go but uh for the rest of the sports they're out there right now because we uh slid practices back a little bit because of the uh the heat today um we'll probably have to do the same thing tomorrow get them
050uh so they're practicing in cooler temperatures good move yeah thanks chris thank you questions for chris great no i think that's great that there are so many um signing up registering and it feels very normal so congrats exactly thank you thank you um all right so next on our agenda is a facilities update and um i think that's jose it is yeah well all right okay good evening everyone thank you for having me custodial staff the head custodians for all their hard work that they've done they've been working very very hard to get our facilities ready so i just want to acknowledge them we too our department has been tasked with uh hiring um i don't know if you all are aware that marc esposito our hvac technician will be retiring at the end of
051this year those are big shoes to fill i want to thank maria erica and tracy for helping us uh you know search out and try to find candidates that are going to try to fill those shoes but he's a great guy he will be missed but we have him for one more year so that's gonna be a tough tough loss for our department um i tell you it was very nice today to go around the facilities and actually see our buildings being occupied it was so nice seeing the students with their parents the teachers um it just you know reminded us how school was supposed to be last year was very very difficult for our department roaming down the hallways not seeing anyone it was just very very challenging so it was nice to see
052the students smiling with their parents and also the staff they were very very appreciative so that was very nice this year we did um we did some upgrades to the facilities i'll start off at miller driscoll again rudy is phenomenal he does a great job at uh miller driscoll um he has a great administration there um it was just general upkeep um you know painting there was a couple speaker replacements that were done down in the preschool area that was needed we had uh taking care of that but and some landscaping in the front of the building so the the building's fairly new but uh you know they're doing a great job over there you know maintaining it at cider mill there was where was the bulk of our work that was done this summer
053there's a repair to the canopy in the front entrance um it's still um being worked on but there was quite a bit that was done it was painted the columns were painted the upper membrane membrane of the roofing was done um they're still waiting for some part uh pieces to come in due to the uh you know this delta variants kind of delayed everything so we're waiting to to get all the uh the remaining components to to button that up there's also the roof on the upper part of the llc the library there's some repair work that was being done there the same thing the the roofers are are working on it um they should have that button up probably by the end of uh september we also had a paint crew come in and
054and paint the corridors the cork boards um in the uh corridors which uh you know kind of sprucing up the place um it was really really nice to kind of take the pictures and look at it from you know the corridors down seeing the nice tile that were installed the wax it just makes the place look really real really nice and bright we also replaced some speakers on the exterior of the building we actually replaced them all so it's better coverage when we're making announcements and also for any lockdowns you know we're able to hear it throughout the uh the complex um we installed seven additional speakers in the building um we had issues where if students or staff were in the restrooms and there was announcements being made you were not able to hear
055so lewis our electrician did a really really good job of taking care of that and installing those uh speakers so um i want to give him acknowledge him for all his hard work and what a great addition it is to have him a part of our team at middlebrook we did some uh restroom renovation over in the um outside the auditorium the the restrooms there we replaced all the fixtures we purchased new uh partitions um which is well well needed i mean that place was uh it was original from i believe in this 1965. um the classroom 149 and 150 we went in and replaced the vct tile that were in there it was there was areas where the tiles were buckling up and we needed to address it because it was a safety concern
056we did some work on the climbing wall we had it inspected the inspection came back fine uh we also did some uh staining on the climbing wall so it's uh ready for use from our students i know they're excited to kind of get out there and and take advantage of the climbing wall ice stem we went in and did some work in ice then which is we removed some of the emergency shutoffs so that when the students are in there if they're not you know if they're horsing around they won't turn off the power to the whole uh classroom there we're also in the process of uh installing a door just to kind of you know keep the kids in that space we're waiting to get approval from the building inspector as soon as we
057get that we should have that button up hopefully by this weekend we're going to pull the permits tomorrow at the high school there's the elevator the freight elevator which is original from 1971 is being um remodeled um it's it's not going to be ready for the start of school and we're looking at the end of september we ran into some issues with the uh shaft in the pit there's a water that's uh coming into the elevator pit but we've hired a company to come out and and take care of that issue so they're still working on it there was quite a bit of painting done over at the high school matt and his guys have done an amazing job you know getting that building ready um we also uh purchased a sound board for the
058clune auditorium um again we're waiting for it to be delivered everything's delayed because of this uh this covet and the delta variant so as soon as that comes in we'll uh train uh christian and his staff to to kind of how to use the sound board but um our main focus this year was too kind of focus our attention on the outside of the facilities we've noticed that there was a lot of overgrown trees um and the guys have done an amazing job in the last week or so really addressing that um they uh the germa uh cesar patino um rodney they that's our landscaping crew they've gone to pretty much all the schools and you know sprucing it up when i left today they were over at cider mill cutting back some of the
059trees i'm gonna try to work with the town and see if they could come out and and take care of some of the heavily grown area by the back of cider mill going down to uh school road uh the hill there catalpa so um but yeah that's pretty much it um you know we're ready we have all our hand sanitizers dispensers uh the custodians have gone through and you know replaced the batteries they're making sure that they're in every classroom um we're providing wipes for k through five because i think that's the bigger need for the the wipes where the students especially at miller driscoll having lunch in the classrooms and that's cider mill as well we've worked with the dr smith truck and kelly on coming up with a a protocol for pe i
060think it's going to be uh successful you know we're going to be able to clean the equipment at the end of the uh today the custodians will be responsible for doing that we just don't feel comfortable having students with spray bottles and horsing around we don't want no one to get hurt so we'll take care of that um and we're looking forward to this upcoming summer to try to you know do some more work at middlebrook and get it where it needs to be so um that's pretty much it any questions um just one question dr smith already reassured us last week but do you feel confident that our hvac systems are going to be able to work with the added load and the hot weather and also the desire for more fresh air yes
061i'm 100 confident we had a commissioning agent come out again this year and um you know the report should be uh available within the next couple days mark has worked closely with them we basically ran our systems last year at the full capacity and everything held up there were some areas where the equipment was you know kind of older but we repaired those exhaust fans that needed to re-repair again you know mark has done a phenomenal job he is on top of it and he does a lot of preventative maintenance so i'm confident that we'll be able to uh you know that our equipment is working at its at its peak okay all right i just um want to keep highlighting that because that's a major mitigation strategy so as long as all systems are
062go that's great thank you jose just kudos to you and all of your staff the custodians of each of the buildings they've just done a phenomenal it's amazing how much work it's done over the summer and uh we're very very fortunate to have jose and each of the building main custodians of each of the buildings rudy is a prince he's just the greatest they all are so thank you so much for all the hard work you guys do thank you awesome i would definitely let them know thank you thank you thank you for that jose thank you okay um all right hiring update that's right maria's up okay wonderful hey good evening hello thank you for allowing me to uh present two weeks in a row i have just a few slides to share with
063you this evening it's probably we who should be thanking you i'm happy to be here as long as you'll have me okay um so i i'm so pleased to present this update in an unprecedented year of hiring and i want to start just by saying that um the slides that i share with you this evening are updated from the slides that i shared with lucille to share with you earlier this week because we continue to hire so our numbers are changing daily and um that's good news because we want to fill all of these positions for for the start of the school year and certainly for the first few weeks of the school year so um i'm going to start with an overview of our certified staff we had 47 positions to fill this year
064and typically just to give you a sense we have about half that in a school year we have 38 of those filled and we're very excited about the staff that we've hired i'll talk about those in just a few minutes but um we have 38 of the 47 positions filled and you can see there on the slide what remains the bulk of the remaining open positions are our interventionist positions that we posted later in the summer because those are new positions they're temporary positions for the school year for the for the acceleration of learning that we have planned for the year and so you know we're certainly focusing on those positions we're not surprised that they're not filled we expected to be working on those into the first weeks of school we have a pe
065position at wilton high school that we just hired a long term sub for so while that's open we do have it filled essentially for the beginning of the year for coverage and then we have a culinary arts position uh that the team has been working on and we have some very good prospects there so we're excited about that for non-certified staff we have 15 positions to fill 13 of them have been filled and you can see there we have one miller driscoll and one cider male paraprofessional to fill and then finally for our long-term substitutes which we have annually um you know we have people who may be out on medical leave or other short-term leads or or longer leaves of a few months uh so it's not unusual to have those kinds of positions
066open we have all eight of our openings for this year filled so we're very excited about that in looking at our certified staff uh you know it's not easy to be hired here and i'm sure brian keating one of our most recent hires would attest to that the 38 staff members that we've hired in the certified ranks are from a pool of more than 600 applicants it's the top six percent of the applicant pool we have a very rigorous process it takes a lot to get hired in the wilton public schools we're proud of that it's a three-part interview process and that's you know you get to the interview after you complete the application which in and of itself um is is quite daunting for some you know sometimes we get feedback from applicants that
067they're thinking of applying but um you know the the application is lengthy and it's it's lengthy for a reason you know we really want to find out a lot about our applicants through that process we you know engage them in a number of different questions about their philosophy and background and approach to teaching and we also want to get a sense of their ability to communicate you know in writing so after screening all of the candidates that come through the application process we invite a select few in for for interviews they participate in the initial committee interview and then from there those candidates uh that are very successful are welcomed back for a demonstration lesson and then finally the finalist is welcomed back for each position for the central office interview so what that means
068is the 38 filled positions represent about 115 interviews just for those applicants and that's something to celebrate but it's also something to acknowledge when thinking about the incredible amount of time and effort that our administrative staff put into the interview process because our administrators not only participated in those 100 about 114 interviews they participated in far more because of all of the applicants that they brought in uh that perhaps didn't advance to the demonstration lesson or didn't advance to the central office interview and you know the 38 filled positions also again represent about three times that in the number of reference checks that our administrators conducted so i just want to take this opportunity to congratulate and acknowledge our administrative teams at each of the schools for the incredible amount of time effort and care
069that they put into selecting the best of the best to continue to make our school district better and most importantly just to provide the very best care and instruction for our kids so thank you administrators yes thank you and now to celebrate some of the members of the fall class of 2021 you know they're it's always so inspirational to sit in those central office interviews and learn more about our candidates because they have they come from such different backgrounds uh many of them are career changers some of them are brand new teachers all of them have a passion for teaching and a commitment to doing the very best that they can for our students and this is you know i could go on and on about the backgrounds of our candidates um of our our
070new teachers i should say but i'll just give you a sample here uh we have in the in the fall class of 2021 the rhode island foreign language teacher of the year and when i say thee i mean v1 in the state the rhode island foreign language teacher of the year that's pretty amazing that's a teacher that's joining us at the high school this year we have an elementary teacher of the year for her elementary school in brookfield connecticut we have a professor an adjunct professor at fairfield university who teaches a methods of world language instruction and now she's coming to teach our students in world language at cider mill and we have a teacher who was recognized by the national association for music education he was a featured teacher for his guitar instruction at
071the high school level so um you know again that's just a sample we we have such diverse backgrounds we've you know one of our math teachers coming on board has a law degree and a certificate in taxation and you know we hired a person who has been a professional farmer at one point in her life and you know you just think about the rich experiences that people are bringing to the classroom the life experiences uh and it's really exciting and we're very much looking forward to welcoming our new teachers formally tomorrow at new teacher induction we we typically have this be our kickoff event for the start of the week uh back to school for our teachers but the weather this past weekend had had other plans for us and we decided to just err
072on the safe side and host the event tomorrow so we're looking forward to that so i'm happy to take any questions i have yeah maria throughout the summer i read frequently about the difficulty the districts were having finding teacher hiring teachers uh obviously driven by covet and evidently a bunch of other reasons we seem to have been uh quite successful at it what do you attribute the 600 applicants i mean well you know i think our our reputation you know is is well known you know and we hear this often by candidates that come in and interview for us and you know they just talk about how they've aspired to work in a district like wilton um you know whether they're brand new teachers or whether they're accomplished teachers in other districts you know people
073just know about the programs that we have here whether it's fine and performing arts or in the poor content areas um the other thing that i want to acknowledge and i want to really want to praise this is people always comment on the very positive experience they have throughout the interview process they comment on the warmth of the staff they meet during the process the professionalism and care of the administrators who call them personally and give them updates throughout the process the feeling that they get just walking in the buildings and i don't think that can be overstated because we have candidates often and this year is no exception we have candidates who are often considering offers in different districts all at the same time and they choose wilton sometimes because of the feeling that
074they had from being in the building you know sometimes when you look at comparable positions in the area the pay may be similar some of the benefits may be similar and so then it comes down to the climate and you know where they want to be every day and so often we hear from people that that positive experience that they had through the interview process is what helps them make the decision to come here and i'm very proud of that because i i think it speaks to who we are as a district that we care about people we care about growing not only our students but also our teachers and i think it's what helps us retain staff too well i think it's great i mean to have that many applicants is just a phenomenal
075thing in this environment i think so well done the other question is the culinary you know losing heather was a major blow it was and we're very we are so sad to lose our culinary arts instructor at the middle school she was incredible inspirational um transformed that program and while we um are so sad to see her go we're also very happy that she had the opportunity to pursue something else professionally absolutely but i will say we're also very excited about some prospects that we've been um pursuing so i i hope to have a an update for you very soon on that okay good because that's such an important program at middlebrook it really is i mean the students okay well good well fingers crossed i have a question it might be a little bit
076more to kevin than to maria but the interventionist positions that we haven't been able to fill yet and their relationship to kind of getting this accelerated framework off the ground how are we close to filling those is it making changing our plans a little bit um is it making anything more difficult to implement i don't think so at this point you know we posted those positions uh later in the summer as maria said as we were finalizing our arp plan and then you know frankly as we were getting ready to reopen school you know attention was just divided in the last week or so but we also we never anticipated needing interventionists right out of the gate on day one and so i think as we will you know get school launched and then we'll
077pick up the interview process and i suspect um we'll have folks you know placed you know probably late second week school early third week of school probably early third week is more more accurate and at that point we'll be ready okay perfect i'm sure you have looked at this but it seems like interventionists there may be a pool among our yes retirees that are fairly local in fact the uh you know marina i spoke about that earlier this week and so i think we're we're already tapping him right yeah because that would be great congratulations marie i think i think yeah great done an incredible job and and congratulations to franny yesterday for introducing all of our new teachers yeah that was a nice dream that was a great yeah that was a great uh
078great way of introducing them yeah half randy donovan do it it was really remarkable yeah yeah we're so we're so happy so yep so well done yeah we'll see you tomorrow thanks and i just want to acknowledge erica cross and tracy d'angelis and the office of human resources who process everything and just make it all happen so kudos goes to them and certainly the administrators want it again thank you thank you thank you um all right well that is [Music] all wonderful news it seems like we are off to a wonderful energetic accomplished uh you know start so this is great so um and no hurricane predicted for the weekends that got we got that out of the way so opening day hopefully the weather will also cooperate um all right so without any further
079questions about any opening stuff no i think we're in a good good position good spot yeah i mean it's great it's a lot of work like twice during the summer maria and all of her staff a lot of work yep okay um student dress and grooming this is uh well kevin or policy committee you can sort of explain what happened sure i'll i'll take this on if that's okay so we looked at this policy just a week ago we listened to the conversation around the board table and so um went back and based on some of that conversation proposed one change it's the same change to both the policy and the regulation and it comes in the form of an additional sentence to the best extent possible student dress concerns will be addressed in a
080manner that does not disrupt the student's school day i think that was one of the the concerns that was echoed around the table that um you know there was some just some worry that uh kids would be taken out of class and um their day would be disrupted so i think you know reinforcing that will you know continue to rely on the judgment on our staff but to the best extent possible avoid that then we certainly will do so um so we've taken that we've also added that to the regulation as well okay that's the that's the only change i think we'll make the other changes i suppose yep and so if there are no further comments questions about it i'll just we'll plan to have this on for discuss and approve on september 19th
081perfect all right thank you for that um change and glenn picked up one wording that needed changing as well it's not substantive but it's good so we'll show that'll be there as well yeah and actually that's in the regulation not the policies okay great all right so this sounds like fun to talk about wilton public schools logo and mascot seems like there's a lot of graphic design so things we can look at there there are um i'll just briefly um as you know we started uh because we picked up this conversation back in june at one of our last meetings and one of our goals was to remove the feathers from the the lance that's in some of our particularly in our athletic imagery and so we started making those changes this summer what we
082committed to was having an official logo and so you can see you know kind of a proposed version of that on the briefing summary i provided for you as well um some additional logos that will be used at the high school and high school athletics so we were looking at those and then today very serendipitously i had a meeting with dave cody who is one of our long time parents significant volunteer here in town very involved in the athletics community dave does graphic design work and so he presented some pro bono work that he did on our logo this summer and so what you have here is some of dave's proposals and you know i'll tell you you know frankly he went up the work that we did in house so uh you know obviously
083you know for dave you know i mean the issue uh one part of the issue was just you know removing the um native american imagery um but the other goal uh is really to standardize the logo and to um put to bed all of the other you know logos whether we created them or other people created them that are uh out in the community um we're actually gonna land on a blue well we are going to land on a blind pantone color we've got right we have a wheelchair blue it's here so pantone is the universal guide for color oh i didn't know that yeah okay it defines yeah it's very specific okay right so in dave's proposed work i mean i've been here decades and it's all light blue dark blue no darien not
084this is whatever maybe but not quite this okay whatever this pantone number is that is it nothing else but all right so that's it so there are a few things uh to pay attention to um so dave the other you know he he played with our wilton w he adjusted the size this is just a sample so you can actually see it in living color here i'm gonna take a look he also uh in his rendition added some shading to give some 3d dimension to the w it looks really really sharp a little more modern and so you know my opinion that's a step beyond you know what we were thinking about and certainly better than uh you know what we were proposing in house um through some of these slides that you know he
085shared you can see some renditions he's offered uh he was you know playing with the lacrosse logo uh he was doing some work for the crew team uh as well yeah they had they have one so they do yep thanks um baseball and so i spoke to bob and chris this afternoon i had them take a look at dave's work and they too were interested in supplanting kind of what we were proposing with uh dave's work and then as part of this of course we would standardize the not only the color but the font and we would do that for both academics and athletics kevin i think this is awesome um two questions would we have a ability to like have these stickers for sale somewhere i feel like one of the reasons people create
086all these things is because there's really no place to go to like buy stickers or bumper stickers or anything yeah i think you know the i think the answer to your question is certainly yes and um i think you know just the conversation is how to do that is that something that you know we as a district would want to produce and sell which we could um oftentimes we you know we operate through the ptas or the pcas take the logos and as well the booster clubs it would just be nice on the website to be like do you want to purchase a sticker this is who you talk to because like i mean i've created stickers because i'm like i don't even know how to create my w does not look like this and
087it's the pantone it's not dead and my second question is a lot of times people are looking for the jpeg yes could we have that in one spot that we certainly can do that's something lucille started to work on this summer she shared you know that kind of the early version when we were um putting some of this together just in the last month or so um she developed work with greg theriot over at the high school and so we shared some standardized images but i think as we kind of move forward in this process we'll settle on some of these and then we can put them on our web page we can distribute them and then i think you know to your first question we would just have to decide you know what we
088want to produce and where we want to sell even if there's an image available that people can go and turn into stickers yeah yeah yeah yeah the pt's and the booster clubs yeah have their own yeah yeah and then i feel like for it yeah there's someone that you go to to request and you know because even i'm just thinking like well you just go to signature styles and they have yeah they have the w on things like all other places around town yeah yeah we just have to come up with an efficient system that makes sense that's great so yeah so that's that's the update and so i think you know my recommendation you know we've got a few more people to circulate this around through but i think the work that dave did
089is really high quality and well kudos congratulations and stick to your guns about the mascot notre dame is going through the same thing and they're saying we've got the leprechaun he's ours and we're not changing after it was voted the fourth worst mascot it was number four so laura and i settled this right we started researching this mascot 2018. hey it was when um so having been i can't say how many years i've lived in wilton um so i wasn't even in middle school when they changed the mascot um because it used to be an indigenous person originally and then in the 70s they decided that was wrong and then they spoke to the you know the greek warrior and i have to say somewhere peter tracy um i was the 25th graduating class and
090we had a contest to design the new logo and whoever juan got a yearbook um for you know all of 1983 that's how much the yearbook cost back then um but peter was i mean i was startled when i moved back as an adult and saw you know very familiar w is still there from back in 1983 so and then think of all the clearing going through my house found my husband's class ring the ugliest thing i've ever found but very clearly a greek warrior on the wooden high school classroom so there's no doubt that this is actually yes yeah you know i will stick to it for us and so we're going to retain the warrior absolutely that's our mascot so kevin on page like four of this it shows a picture of the
091field and it has like will we go and change the paint on the signs with the so the banners so i talked to um dave and j.r sherman about that um they you know they threw their organization wharf yeah and they are they've ordered new ones um and they'll continue on a replacement cycle to update all of the so it's not like effective immediately it's like as we update yeah i mean in fact you know just i spoke to jr um sometime this weekend he had already um you know played some orders yeah i think you remember that they had on the back of the stadium those giant w's yep so i think the new ones that are going to come in will be uh reflective of a new logo great it's great news yeah
092so we're we're making progress awesome thank you yeah thanks tim thanks to dave yeah thank you dave dave did a great job wonderful talented people okay the last reviewed discuss item is our board of education goals i got a couple of suggestions one was mentioned at our last meeting and one came in since then so it's highlighted both of those are highlighted in red and i hope i captured the thoughts perfect yeah and if not let me know send me any other suggestions if i don't get any i'll put this on next time for a uh approval all right okay so thank you thank you no thanks all of us it's well that was a lot of work and it is a very comprehensive you know objective well i have to say i kept walking
093around the house and six voices are in my head yeah i can see what when and i tried to capture it all so yeah no thanks it was kind of fun um all right there are no action items you see our business um can i ask for one more thing is a financial update can we we'll have one in september okay all right because i i like to see the federal funds and all that sort of stuff and just real quick there is a enrollment rejection attached is that different from what we saw last week has it been updated um i think this it's uh dated august 23rd so yeah so this is the same well this is different from last week then yeah we continue to update this okay this is a new one
094okay so that was as of august 23rd it's probably changed again so i can send it out each week as we you know i probably um after first day and show up i'll maybe send it out after that okay okay great and the workshop will um that's not on here the september second workshop right no it's not we got a notice about that today um yeah so i i know people have like ridiculously busy schedules so the workshop on the academic accelerated learning and some of the testing data the workshop will certainly be the workshop but it's also coming to the board table so you know if you want to call in for the workshop that's fine or if you can't attend it at all it will be discussed at the board table but for
095those that need to and want to and would like to dive in that's the workshop got it all right so it's not like it disappears it'll come to the board table but in a truncated version so if you want to sort of delve into the details and dive into stuff and understand all the technical terminology and all of that you'll get that at the workshop yeah that's the workshop so on the second right thursday second i forget the date yep thursday thank you 12 30. yeah so it's in between i gotta put that on white i'll send the invites tomorrow yeah all right yeah i want to send them before this meetings because i didn't want anybody to get confused with the panelists invite so i'll send them out tomorrow okay that's perfect all right
096and again i just want to reassure those people who are really and i know all of many of you have conflicting work schedules that the issue will come to the table but it can't be in as much depth because it would take the entire meeting okay so um what else uh hall of fame um october 7th that's a big deal hall of fame is a big deal so we will be hearing more about that yes uh comments is that a live like save the date yes yeah it's in place of our meeting but what time is that at seven o'clock it's usually we'll we'll probably schedule around six we did something instead yeah first time we ran in got it that's a great night yeah i just want to make sure i can save the
097date yeah that is a great great night yeah yeah thanks for saying it might be a bit earlier than our regular meeting okay um lucille are there any comments from the public at this point yes there are okay then my preface is always um you know please keep remarks to two minutes the board does not respond um directly there's no interaction but we obviously listen carefully and if appropriate follow up individually later comment is from jared martin we certainly appreciate all the tremendous work of our teachers and administrators i would like to thank recognize jose and the entire facility staff for all the work they've done for our schools throughout the summer as well as the constant adaptation to the ever changing changing covid protocols you all truly keep our schools running regards jared martin
098hey thank you any other comments no okay great we'll respond to that one with thank you i said thank you all right um having finished the meeting and not seeing anybody with any other issues the meeting is adjourned thank you