February 20, 2025 Board of Education Business Meeting

001okay so I lied before instead of at 7:03 I'm calling the meeting to order at 7:04 so can we all stand and say the Pledge fantastic uh so next up is the consent agenda um can I get a motion to accept the consent agenda anyone okay well Laura you wrote the minute so you you can't I said so oh I can't no okay Kathleen okay uh all in favor okay Wendy since you're online I can't and I can't see you are you voting yes or no on the consent agenda Wendy sorry I I was having trouble with my iPad um I'm I'm abstaining not muted I'm abstaining I can't hear you can you thumbs up for guest thumbs down for no thumbs to the middle for no you don't get the consent agenda okay well

002it passes six to one okay next up after the consent agenda is our public hearing do we have our fantastic High School uh speakers here come on down I see one are you representing perfect good evening members of the board Dr Jones and esteemed community members as always it's great to be here um to share the strides that we're making as a student government to Foster more a more connected and vibrant School Community First I wanted to give you guys some updates on our Student Government subcommittees the environment and Student Center committee led by Ben varges is researching the possibility of replacing the plastic utensils in the Cardinal Cafe with compostable and environmentally friendly ones this initiative aligns with the school's broader efforts to promote sustainability meanwhile the Food Services committee chaired by Mark zatki

003has been working to introduce healthier and more diverse menu options um future editions may include Z Bars to the vending machines and they are also considering offering offering coffee flavored milk alongside chocolate milk in the cafeteria there's even a possibility of adding hot chocolate to the breakfast menu additionally to improve efficiency in the cafe they're exploring the use of stanions to help organize lines the committee will also be sending out a feedback form next Wednesday during advisor base to receive students inputs on our dining options the school spirit front Amy Wilders is leading efforts to encourage students to work Green in the celebration of St Patrick's Day um these initiatives led by dedicated student leaders reflect a collective effort to enhance a school environment in meaningful Ways last but not least Mahir and I express

004our full support of the superintendent proposed 2025 to 2026 budget we reaffirm we re reaffirm the board's commitment to increasing our school budget and providing the best learning experience possible for our students thank you for your dedicated support and we're excited to share our updates at the next meeting thank you Rocky and when we hear gets here we'll let him come on up uh but next uh up are our GAA comments I don't see Lil here Lil are you online yes I am all right take all right here we go hi good evening chair her superintendent Dr Jones Board of Ed members willan Peron president of the grage education ass Association um had lots of time I lost power for a couple days here so I had nothing to do so I read through um

005board docs and 56 pages of the uh public Consulting Group to keep myself busy um quite a lot to digest there one statement in the very beginning of the report caught my eye and I hope it's just a typo um statement uh November 24th pcng visited 13 schools and a variety of programming and GPS over two days including Windrose alternative Community connections and prek overall 80 classrooms were visited during these visits classrooms were observed for 15 30 minutes depending on the subject area classrooms were randomly selected representing schools and grades the intent was to get a crosssection um I hope it's a typo because I can't even do that in two days it it took me a week 80 classrooms that's 15 minutes low ballet be conservative 80 classrooms 15 minutes each is 1,200 minutes

006divided by 60 Minutes to give you an give you 20 hours two schools seven hours a school day it's so that would 10 hours each day that doesn't even include driving time to each of the schools so I I'd like to know if that's a typo if not there's no way that that that's accurate information um also it states in 2024 um um the report serves as both a reflection on strides made since 2020 21 audit and honest appraisal of the ongoing work required to achieve GPS vision for special educations yes I I agree we have make great strides um and improvements and and and I'm thankful for that but we still have lots more work to do and I do have some concerns some of the um Topics in there um just to be

007brief for everyone um PD staff view these sessions as insufficient describing them as one andone initiatives they lack followup and ongoing approach um specialized evaluation teams addition staff highlighted challenges in executing co- teing models effectively with some staff expressing concerns they need uh still insufficient planning time and then um an accomplishment of reduction and out placements from 42 to 32 my concern as always as this is a budget year um and I do approve of the superintendent's budget um but I still think it's not enough to run the district the way it should be all these things that we're asked to improve from this report cost money it costs money to pay for training Li I think we lost you technical difficulties on your end oh when did you leave me hello I can hear

008you yeah issue is um there's they can't hear you in the room but they're working on correcting it so we should ask her to yeah can you hear me now can you hear me Yeah Wendy I can hear you thank you I can hear you now we can hear you everybody oh you can hear me now Karen can you hear me is L Lil's back R R liil I can hear you I don't know if they can hear me or you Li this is Mike can you hear me Karen Karen yeah everybody everybody online and the public can hear each other you it's something on your end you can't hear us yeah or you can just go on with your meeting we do oh I'm back okay sorry for the technical difficulties on our end

009okay my back you're back all right better than ever all right so here's the test ready Karen what was the last thing that you heard can you hear me Wendy we can hear you too now okay thank you um I heard you say that it's a budget year and it's not enough to run the district the way it should be that's like from the beginning that was the last that was the last thing we heard you say okay all right so I'll take take uh yeah did I did you did I tell you about the uh 80 classroom visit yes okay okay so it's a budget year so um we're concerned that um you know uh and the other other uh things that I mentioned the PD um that was asked um establishing of special

010evaluations teams of speech and language pathologist and more planning time and more planning time all those things cost money um my my concern is paying Consultants specialized staff and if if we're being asked by the BET to find Cuts we can't make Cuts we we there's not enough money even to to to do this so um I'm like pleading with the with the town you must get tired of hearing me saying the same things um also um Mr mckany mccy Anthony you're going to do a first read tonight on the policy 4121 about requirements for substitutes which GPS had a raise which um they had to because we weren't even paying them the state minimum requirement um we're not getting Pais because we're not competitive enough and we're losing them to other districts um my

011teachers are getting tired and stressed out and uh they're covering for classes they're covering for Paras they're going in and helping as much as we can um I know it's hard in other districts but we have to figure it out other districts are figuring out we need our town our bet our parents to keep supporting our public schools and to fund the budget at its Max thank you thank you L uh I see I see me here has showed up so do you want to come up and and speak while he's walking up believe congratulations are in order sorry that's okay it's very snowy and it's hard to get here from Glenville in the snow I did the same thing and guess what it's going to be just as snowy when you go to Villanova

012next year yeah hopefully a little less thank you all right can I start hello chair H Dr Jones and members of the board I hope everyone had a great break my name is miir and I'm the student body vice president at Grinch high school and I'm excited to be back here to speak at the board recently in student government we discussed new fundraiser opportunities hoping to build off older and successful ones the freshman and sophomore classes are brainstorming ways to bring their peers together through dodgeball tournaments for the ninth graders and a class Jeopardy game for the 10th graders after successfully fundraising at the past few hockey games the junior class are planning ahead for their Pi Day fundraiser on March 14th last year this fundraiser saw many staff members including our own school resource

013officer Wallace and Mr Silman get pied by students in the student center during lunch as for the seniors we're hosting our annual Crispy Cream fundraiser next Thursday uh on the 27th right after school hoping to do this successfully for one last time to cap off our senior year over this past month we also successfully completed a cookie decorating event for Valentine's Day which featured freshly baked cookies from Rocky and I as you know one of the most important goals for my this year is school spirit and one way we can maximize It Is by attending many sports games postseason is coming up for many groups to cheer on and that's what makes our school great that we have so many teams to cheer for and show out in big numbers finally I wanted to speak

014about the Greenwich School school's budget we recently learned that students would lose valuable staff and course offerings if the budget is not fully funded so many things are made possible through the resources available to ghs and our other schools including smaller class sizes more diverse courses and more engaging activities as well as Better Learning facilities our Student Government fully supports the board of education's budget for the next school year thank you for letting me speak and I can't wait to get back to you guys next month just make sure you get home safely s uh next up is PTA council is John here or John online John is online John I think you're online yep can you hear me hello Wendy can you hear me yes I can hear you apparently we have the same

015problem can every time we lose you I just turn you up on my uh laptop so we can hear you maybe I should just dial in maybe that would be easier Karen can you hear me now yes we can hear you okay uh chair hirsh uh Boe members superintendent Dr Jones everyone at CMS and online thank you for this opportunity to speak I was looking forward to this iners experience but a couple of sick kids at home altered my plans I'm John fiser the grenwich PTA council president parent of two of the 8,513 great kids in the Greenwich Public Schools the PTA Council in case anyone doesn't know is the umbrella organization made up by and for the 15 independent ptas in town we have just under 4,000 PTA families in Greenwich who together spend

016more than a quarter one and a qu million dollar annually and put in hundreds and hundreds of volunteer hours to enhance the learning experience for every student and to support our teachers we as we are about to head into the final stretch in the budget Marathon uh we appreciate all the effort and time put in by the superintendent and her team by chair hir and the Boe members uh and everyone who's been involved for the benefit of everyone listening The Next Step in the budget process are on Tuesday March 4th the BET budget committee will hold their decision day meeting and then on Wednesday March 26th the full bet will hold a public hearing on the school's budgets starting at 7 p.m. at Central Middle School plenty of opportunity for people to speak up that

017meeting is specifically to give everyone an opportunity to speak out to the bet about the school's bu budgets Pac urges everyone to attend and if you feel comfortable to speak at the BET public hearing for the but school's budget that's March 26 be there turning to the agenda the PCG special education review report confirms that GPS has made excuse me significant progress and Improvement in virtually all areas identified in the initial assessment that's good we commend the district and we recognize the hard and thoughtful work of Dr Jones Dr helan thaler the school administrators and the teachers but there's still work to be done and I'm going to Echo some of what Lil Peron said there's work to be done in Staffing in program consistency in inclusion behavior and Communications and while this report assigns

018a consistent rating to the transparent Staffing allocation model we need to emphasize what is consistently reported on the ground and some of what Lil said there's ongoing Staffing shortages particularly around par professionals and teachers who are struggling with increasingly demanding Cas loads these challenges aren't new and they aren't minor the they impact all students every day addressing Staffing concerns and staff development must remain a priority it is a budget priority but it also goes beyond the budget numbers it profoundly impacts whether students receive the support they need we also must work hard to ensure we continue to encourage the grenwich public schools high academic expectations for all Learners from IEP goal setting to academic achievement in the classroom next up on the agenda we look forward to hearing the prek presentation prek education in addition

019to being mandated for many of our kids is a great investment with social academic and life skills benefits for every kid who's able to access it we hope to see the prek program continue to expand so that more kids and families can access it we note the action item on the Riverside feasibility study and we again urge the Boe to ensure that this continues to move forward expeditiously we also note the action item on the proposal for the new ghs modern band music course the idea for this course is like an overnight sensation like a good Garage Band it seems to have come together spontaneously with Innovation and with little or no money required we applaud Mr police and the backing band of music teachers and finally we note the action item on tuition and

020fees there were comments by bet members in the BET budget committee meeting just before the winter break that District fees should be increasing in line with taxes that seems like an easy expectation to meet or exceed with that I thank you all for your public service and for this time to speak thank you John uh next up we are moving to community comments turn it over to our secretary Miss cson so we only had one speaker signed up uh hadrien nobe I don't see him in the audience so if he's online then uh yes I'm online Can Can Am I audible yes we hear you and I'll start the CL you have three minutes all right thank you uh hi my name is hadrien no and I'm a student I'm a junior at ghs I'm

021here one last time to talk about Flex time and why I think that it or at least something like it is still kind of important for the ghs school Community uh at the last board meeting a lot of seemingly lovely numbers about the elimination of flex time got shown and I agree based on these numbers alone taking Flex time away from students seems a great benefit what's harder to quantify however especially with the stats provided in that report is what ghs has lost during the transition well it may be true that this year there are 66 more clubs than last year it's also true that the barrier to entry to any of one of these clubs has been raised significantly no longer can a student drop uh drop by one day and try out a

022hobby try to see if they like something I personally have seen a lot of clubs while they may continue to be a statistic on the school roster struggle to maintain members and struggle to maintain advisers that's not even to mention the subtle but equally important uh effective decoupling Club schedules from the school block schedule rather than eight distinct blocks of time uh that students were able to defend how they so chose rather than eight times that students are able to explore different Hobbies explore different things in a time when students should be exploring uh students are basically unable to attend more than two clubs without being in two or three places at once and even that's challenging if those clubs happen to be on the same day of the only three days that clubs are

023able to run the only three days that the late bus runs not every Club is a demanding commitment and not every Club should be ghs should be making it a goal to be a space where students are able to have fun and to relax in a lower stress environment and right now that's simply not the case that's what Flex time was and right now that's what DS lack uh when I was in elementary school I had recess when I was in Middle School I had luns but at THS there are a lot of kids at ghs and there's simply not a time when all of the students are able to know that everybody will be free everybody will be able to uh talk to them or have a teacher who can give them extra help

024or uh any of that things 30 minutes of the school day whether it be in the middle of the day or at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day seems a fair cost for a better and more vibrant School Community uh as I was mentioning academically Flex time was really useful especially for students with other commitments outside of school if a student if the only option is for a student to stay after school to make up a test or something like that that's difficult for a lot of people and G just really shouldn't be putting needless difficulty upon students removing time removing time where students are able to have basically time for themselves is a bad idea if ghs wants to be a Vibrant Community it wants to be a

025place where students can interact and work academically in the past difficulties with flex time were associated with students not using the time wisely but if you put if the if the flex time was placed in the middle of a day or something like that I think that it would be an excellent solution and kind of help every student at ghs and I urge the board to consider taking this track thank you thank you right on time perfect thank you so much Adrian um next up is the superintendent's report thank you I just have a couple of items tonight um first of all I want to um just mention that on March 6 we are hosting a community forum and the Forum is uh titled combating anti-Semitism through education and that Forum will start at 6:30

026it will be at havy and this was a request um from some members of PTA to really have an opportunity to share all the work that we've done uh with our curriculum over the last really 12 to 18 months um so we're looking forward to that and you'll see information in tomorrow's newsletter about that also next week our Rising 9th through 12th graders will be enrolling and getting ready for next year we have automated that process this year for the first time so really excited about that um and we encourage all of our parents to join in with their students and really look at how the online um enrollment uh Port portfolio actually works and then I also just want to mention that next week um on Wednesday is the evening for our Rising n9th

027graders and they will be touring the high school at 5:30 and then there will be the information in the pack Center at 6:30 so that's a really important night for our Rising freshmen but lots going on uh lots of excitement and success so that's all I have tonight thank you thank you Dr Jones um now we're up to committee reports anybody have a committee report that they'd like to start with Miss C I would just like to encourage anybody who has a special educator that they um find goes above and beyond to please uh nominate them for a distinguished teacher award um you have until March 6th I believe uh to submit a packet with your nominations uh so and uh as far as um CMS uh I'm the board liaison to the CMS building

028committee and if you haven't driven by to see all the work going on uh please do so when it's light out so you can see all the progress just to clarify I know you said if you have a special educator we're talking about all Educators who might be who are fantastic and special that you'd like to nominate not one who simp works in the special education field no a special I just wanted to make sure yes an outstanding educator thank youas instructional coach um any any educator in our schools does anybody else have a uh committee report no no committees one all right Wendy you're after Kathleen okay go ahead just real fast um grenage Alliance next Friday is the trivia night fantastic well I every year we talk about doing a team we should

029really discuss it okay Wendy uh I just wanted to give a a quick update on the JC building committee and uh we did go out to bid um in the fall and we received three bids and we ultimately awarded the bid to Tomlinson Holly Patterson thp as a general contractor for the project and they began preliminary site uh site work over Christmas break and they just completed some initial remediation and work for the elevator over the February break uh and the majority if not all of the work will be completed during the upcoming summer summer break um and now our our committee is turning its focus to phase three which is going to focus on the cafeteria and we've begun our preliminary schematic design and narrowed the current Focus to modernizing the current cafeteria um

030where we're going to be utilizing currently unused space and modernizing the function of the kitchen and service area and also we're able to design an ADA Compliant and highly functional cafeteria serving Uh current and expected enrollment without an expansion at this time uh our goal is to have our budget and plan solidified so that we can complete construction documentation and time to go out to bid in August awarding the bid for phase three and the fall of 2025 so that we can aim to complete phase three during the summer of 20126 and we also plan to out to to lay out a preliminary design concept of an expansion which might be needed in the future uh as was outlined in the original Ed specs if enroll enr if enrollment t uh Trends change or if

031redistricting or preschool plans require more space at JC in the future um and so um so the preliminary plan will include room for both more cafeteria space as well as potential for more classroom space if there becomes a need in the future so that's my update thank you Wendy um I was say I uh my me we met with uh emac this week um so that was a very interesting meeting and we went over um quite a bunch of different details in regards to uh areas of the Town including um discussions on Central Middle School New Lebanon um and um Hamilton Avenue so um it was uh very educational and I look forward to hearing more from uh that committee as we move forward in our different projects and I would also like to note

032I have to change the record uh when Miss vizo Walsh was having um we were having sound problems earlier uh when we were discussing the consent agenda she did not vote no she abstained from the vote so I need to adjust uh the minutes for that as well going forward so with no other committee reports or updates we can turn this over to discussion items and the PCG special education review and Dr Miller would invite you to come forward um and if you want to introduce Jennifer number two since she is new to us and we'll let you do that but before you start I do just want to say while Li's uh online and watching they absolutely did what they said they were going to do and did those visits I did their schedule

033um because they didn't know the district and it was a very tight schedule um going across the district and really looking at proximity of buildings so that we had very little travel time in between so I thank them for the work that they did and it is amazing how many classrooms that you got into so thank you and to note it wasn't just one individual doing all of those visits so I think that that's another uh key key thing to note excellent I think we have a PowerPoint that hopefully should be coming up uh as well great thank you members of the board Dr Jones and the grenwich community thank you for having us here on a very snowy night for grenet um we're happy to be here to provide the summary of our findings

034uh from the last uh report um and the progress made by The District in the last few years I'm Dr Jennifer Miller I work for public Consulting Group and have been the consistent face since 2020 um in studying the district providing feedback to you meeting many of you on little tiny virtual screens over the past couple years um and I want to do some introductions we can can move on to some of the next slides um around the team and our agenda for tonight um we'll introduce ourselves um and then provide a overview of the approach that we took for this updated review uh provide a high level summary of the findings and then the conclusion and recommendations you have a summary of you have the actual report um that's been made public uh we're

035going to touch on very high level um findings tonight um but really the details provided in that report next slide as I mentioned I've been the consistent face throughout this project um but I am joined by my um other colleague the other Jennifer Dr Jennifer barabo um who provide fresh eyes and a fresh perspective um and is also a Connecticut resident so uh it's close to home for her and um can really see this work and the the work of the district through a local lens uh we're also joined by Mina cow who has been our support um on the project management and data collection side um not with us tonight but certainly was a key part of the way that we operated this project and I was going to invite board members just in

036case you want to see the presentation behind me to you can sit in front seats just I'm a visual learner so for me I would move so if if you need the time go go right ahead to move um so just to recap we started this work in the 2020 2021 school year um as we all remember what a challenging time we were in um during that time frame so we did classroom visits but we did them virtually um so it's a very different perspective now and I think we were able to add a lot more color and and um Insight particularly to see the growth over the past couple years um we provided 28 recommendations it was a lot was a lot to manage um and as I've gone through this process of the

037writing of this report it was um such a reflection on the things that we studied and what a different time and place Greenwich was in um when we started that work um we stayed on through the next year to help guide the development of the action plan um we LED some training around Universal Design for Learning um and then we did a similar um report to the one that you have um in front of you that started to assess the progress made just after one year um so that was really The Benchmark um and then this year when we came back we were looking at implementation from not just that first year but to years two and three um so when you see in the report it was important for us to show um the

038real progress where things started um and where things are on the variety of recommendations in terms of our overview um this should look familiar I talked about this um in the fall as to what our objectives were with this work um number one was to evaluate the implementation of the recommendations that um to in order to do that we wanted to we plan to interview key stakeholders review documentation and observe practices in classrooms to verify the status of the recommendation implementation um we did all those things and I'll talk about that a little bit more um the second piece was to measure progress and outcomes so really to collect the data that showed and verified not just what people were telling us but we could see it in writing we could see the trainings we

039could see the documented progress on each of the initiatives um and also identify remaining gaps and challenges this work is never done this work is always in progress um new students come new things happen um new initiatives are underway um and so our goal here was to really show that progress of what happened from 2020 to now um and provide some guidance around how to move forward from here um even if a recommendation was rated as consistent and at the top level um you'll see in the definition of it we highlight that this is a continuous Improvement cycle it will always be something to keep revisiting and assessing if that progress is still at the same spot year after year um and then finally our goal was not to provide 28 new recommendations but to

040help refine further where we see progress still could be made and um areas that maybe have emerged that need additional um either study or reflection um for for the district moving forward in terms of our methodology uh we launched the project in the fall um I presented to you virtually on what we were planning to do uh we finalized all of our focus group and interview um processes uh we we put together um along with Dr Jones help the classroom visit schedule um and in that phase two in the fall we did um a number of virtual focus groups and interviews really with a cross range of folks um in the district um teachers administrators central office staff um we did visit 80 classrooms um that really was something that we did I had my

041sneakers on we both did those couple days um and we collected documents and data to assess um as I said not just what people were telling us but to triangulate what we were hearing with what we were seeing on paper um and then we spent the last month or two um analyzing writing reflecting um and and refining that draft so that we would have the final report for you and present to you this evening in more depth um on the next slide is um the quantitative side so uh we review 75 plus documents um and and elements of data um quite the number when you think about um the progress and all the artifacts that a district could produce in a four to five year time period uh we had 15 sessions with approximately 135

042attendees I will say some of those are folks who were in two groups depending on their role so these were um unique participants um unique participant number would be slightly less we wanted to count the fact that we had that many people in focus groups um talking to specific topics um and then it the classroom visits um as I said we did um each go to a between six and seven schools in a two-day time period um and in some cases we spend a lot more time in one class in other cases we were observing a a teacher working with one student one-on-one so it would have been a little bit less time um but we really did Our intention was to see as many classes and as many modes of instruction um in the

043course of the day as we could so I'm going to turn this over to Dr barabo who's going to take us through the summary of findings and I'll come back up for um the last part of it I'm a little bit shorter than Dr Miller so I'm going to adjust the mic here um but good evening everyone I'm going to take us through the summary of findings for this report and what I want to highlight here and what most of you have probably already seen was from our first report which was largely um looking at the special education Effectiveness domains and so what you'll see here is that we've developed this framework um it's a research-based framework to help districts really assess and improve special education programming and it really is intended to enhance outcomes

044for all students um it does Support Compliance but it also drives Student Success Through integrated multi-disciplinary strategies that are highlighted in these six domains um that you see here and so what you'll see is that for this report as well when I walk through the summary of finding they're aligned to these domains again which is how the recommendations were set up in the report for this part here as Dr Miller mentioned um we did this for the status findings that were done a few years ago and so what you see here are implementation levels and so we have a range starting at beginning which would be number one the yellow circle all the way up to fully implemented number five I think it's important to know that we assessed um the the progress of grenwich

045through this um and implementing those recommendations from that first report um I want to highlight here as well that when we said consistent I know Dr Miller mentioned this um we're highlighting the fact that it is a continuous Improvement cycle and what we we highlight in the beginning of the report is that what we see in this work is that there's been a lot of technical elements that have been accomplished and where we're pushing the district now is to move into some of those adaptive components so when you hear us talk about professional development and some focus group feedback about a one and done it's not that professional development hasn't been uh Rich right with a lot of opportunities for staff but really how are we taking it now to the next level and so

046I'll talk a little bit about that when we go through the ratings for each of the the findings that we had here in the summary the other element here that I want to highlight before we dive into these summary of findings is the context um as Dr M already talked about a little bit but just where we notice that GPS has made significant progress in implementing each of these recommendations from the audit when we looked at the Baseline state of special education at the time of the original review um there was challenges with relationships between parents and the school they were strained there was a lack of trust students were often caught in intervention Cycles so it was always challenging um when you look at that first report to really understand when a student was

047being referred for an evaluation or how they were moving fluidly through those intervention Cycles specialized programs did not exist at the time and the district really did lack systems such as those needed to transparently monitor out of District placement settings and allocated staff in a manner that was consistent with student need so there was some real um systems work that needed to happen and and you'll see as we go through the summary of findings that we believe from what we've review that those systems have been put in place and so we want to note that these Improvement efforts have been marked by transparency with stakeholders so there's been stakeholder involvement throughout this process there's been a focus on capacity building so again really thinking about how do we look at this for the long term

048and then an unwavering commitment from staff so we want to highlight that everybody has been a part of this work and everybody has been helping in helping us get to this point of thinking about the findings of where you currently are for this first piece here you'll see the domain of learning environment and specialized services and in the original report this was the the area that we had the most recommendations there were 13 um and so this table here shows that summary of progress from that domain about learning environment and specialized Services uh you'll see in the following slides that we're going to highlight some key milestones in this area and how we came to the ratings for progress as you can see here GPS has made progress in almost all areas from our status

049findings in 21 to 22 and several areas have moved into consistent While others are still partially implemented but have seen some progress however again I want to highlight that when the initial report came out almost all of these areas were in the beginning phase as you can see here from the yellow circles and so this does highlight that concerted effort that we've been talking about that the leadership team is made in developing stronger practices within the learning environment and specialized Services domain and so the first one that we want to highlight here is a key Milestone is that GPS has successfully implemented a consistent framework for mtss and they've worked with aligning those practices across schools and grade levels so throughout our focus groups we heard many stakeholders describing this new process and new system

050as beneficial for moving stud students more fluidly through intervention cycles that there's been greater collaboration among teams with this new um mtss system in place and that there's been more access to supportive tools such as the district's mtss manual and an intervention flowchart to help teams really think about when to move students through the intervention tiers the second milestone here is around udl um and really looking at how the inclusion specialist has played a key role in supporting Pine teams which we noted are now at every Elementary School um through professional development while also providing those resources and strategies to help all schools really access the district um effectively and integrate all these udl strategies into the classroom so the inclusion specialist has been supporting districtwide um and those udl strategies are really starting to

051be seen in the classrooms we noticed this when we were onsite as well there were Model classrooms that we went into um that had some excellent excellent um examples of what udl would look like in practice um we highlighted that in the report as well and just thinking about where the district is currently and where they can continue to move forward and and having this be a more consistent practice across all classrooms the next Milestone was around timelines and so we want to highlight here a big milestone was that GPS achieved its goal of completing 98% of initial referrals within the 45-day timeline by this school year this was a significant increase from its Baseline of 71% in 2122 so again a big accomplishment there for the district in addition to that they've also established

052a specialized evaluation team with expertise in supporting bilingual students um as well as achiev the state targets for addressing disproportionality so the the risk ratio is reduced the state's threshold is 3 .0 um when we were here originally and the original report highlighted the fact that the district was over that threshold for identifying Hispanic or Latino students with intellectual disabilities um the state has now officially taken the district out of that U disproportionality mon monitoring um and they've achieved that goal of reducing that under that 3.0 threshold the next Milestone is around co- teing um and noting here that progress has been made with the co- teing model and investments in professional development have really helped teachers to build collaborative struct structures to support co- teing now we say that knowing that this is still

053a process that's being fine-tuned um we know the district is still working on logistical and structural challenges with this model and it's mostly at the secondary level where we're seeing some of these challenges come to play um when scaling this model it's it's been particularly challenging at the secondary level but the district has created support tools to help um this is co-planning templates that we looked at co- teaching models that are tailored to content areas and a collaborative teaching rubric to support staff and so while there are some there is some work to still be done there there have been some pretty um comprehensive tools we would say that are helping teams to really think about their co- teing practices the next Milestone is around the academic Labs that we looked at and so observations

054during our school visits showed great improvements in the academic lab compared to what we saw in the 20 uh 21 evaluation students were actively engaged when we were on site and they were working on their IEP goals Within These academic Labs we also want to highlight that the smarts curriculum was introduced um which is a comprehensive research based curriculum that helps students with executive functioning and so this has been a key area in helping really bring together that academic lab to be a useful time for students to really learn and work on their IEP goals we also want to highlight that the unique learner program um was implemented during this time and so the district has successfully launched this program which provides specialized instruction to students in a more self-contained setting and allows more students

055to remain in District to receive specialized programming while we know in the report that there are some opportunities to continue to enhance that programming we already know that the district is working on some of these things and so when we look at some of the instructional practices there um the district is working closely with at Specialists with AAC Specialists to really support that program and enhancing it a little bit more the second area here is or the third area rather is the advanced placement and honors classes and so while our data analysis shows the overall percentage of students with disabilities in APS and honor courses has has decreased this past year to 34% it was previously 41% um we note that over half of the students that are enrolled in AP or honors courses 54%

056of them are in more than one honors course which is a positive and so what we see there is that of students with disabilities that are enrolling in those courses they're taking more than one which highlights that students are are enjoying these courses that are stepping up to the plate to really take some more rigorous course work and so we want to highlight that while the number has decreased it is a positive trend to see that students are en ring in more than one AP or honors class um and we also want to highlight that it's been a focus it's going continue to be a focus um of having students with disabilities enroll in in higher level or more rigorous courses by limiting the enrollment in less demanded courses so something like practical biology um

057is a course that will be either removed um we've been told or um limited the amount of students that will enroll in that so that students are encouraged to take more challenging courses and then lastly twice exceptional um the district has created a comp comprehensive toe handbook that outlines the identification processes strategies and tools for supporting two e-learners and a rollout plan has been put in place for training and professional development around this Transportation was another area um where the district introduced a new Transportation request form and we noted this in the previous status findings as well but this is something that we still rated as as fully implemented because this form is being used with clear step-by-step instructions for staff and this form is part of a centralized submission process and so when we

058did our focus groups for this round as well we it was well received by school Personnel um who believe it's allowed for a much more effective and efficient system in managing Transportation requests for assistive technology in AAC um the district currently employs a part-time assisted technology specialist and a contracted AAC Specialists who have both supported with recommending tools strategies and conducting professional development for staff and this has also been a major benefit to the unique learner program as I mentioned mentioned in the previous slide um while on site we wanted to note that we also saw a wide range of at supports for students and this included High mid and low Tech options so we saw smartboards iPads we saw snap and read co-writer pencil grips slant boards um from the previous review the original

059review this was an area of of opportunity for the district and so we wanted to highlight that even our on-site observations substantiated what we saw here um with the support of of assist of technology specialist and AC specialist and seeing these tools being used in the classroom and then we also had added District placements and so we wanted to highlight here that the district has successfully reduced the number of added District placements from 42 um to 32 students as of this school year and it's allowed for significant cost savings and so when we looked at the budget around this almost $800,000 was brought back into the district which can then strengthen the continue of services and supports offered within the district by reducing those numbers the next domain I will walk us through is around

060leadership and so the first uh Milestone here that we want to highlight is around inclusive practices and so again going back to thinking about how the district has embedded udl and inclusive practices as part of a larger vision for all schools this was through hiring an inclusion specialist to really Advance these efforts districtwide and many staff have felt this addition has been extremely helpful to them in supporting their work there are some parts of the Continuum that need further refining um we heard a lot about the wellness program at the high school and feeling that just a greater understanding of the best ways to support students across the Continuum would be helpful so that they can make sure students are receiving the appropriate supports um this was expressed not only by staff but by parents

061and focus groups as well the second milestone here is around organizational structure um and roles and responsibilities so while we did not see any changes that need to be made to the current organizational structure and feel the changes that have been made are appropriate one area that we did want um to highlight here was the clarity of the role of case managers in the district and so there's currently a lack of a consistent understanding and the responsibilities of this role which has led to some confusions of expectations for staff and so that was still an area that we we feel the district should look a little more closely at the next domain is high expectations and so the two Milestones here that we wanted to highlight were the commitment to rigor and inclusive practices and

062so again our classroom observations revealed evidence of grade level and age appropriate instruction occurring students were engaged in learning and we saw evidence of rigor in many of the classrooms that we visited we know here uh when we looked at this closely and looked at all the data that the district continues to make this a focus through professional learning opportunities and a toolkit of strategies for specially designed instruction this is coming in response to some staff that have requested more PD and training on how to make sure students with disabilities are receiving their individualized supports within a general education setting and this is specifically for students that may not be in a co- teing classroom model staff also felt that in addition to this that that having some type of walkthrough tool and additional coaching

063could help them to understand areas in which they could improve their practice when you think about rigor and standards aligned instruction for students with disabilities the next domain area is around human capital and here we want to highlight the PD plan that was put in place um our review of documents shows that there has been a developed PD plan for addressing the diverse needs of general and special education staff this includes training on inclusive Services IEP development assessments and evaluations social emotional learning specialized instruction assist of Technology udl DBT for mental health and Orton Gillingham for literacy and so we want to note that there's been training for co- teing and IEP goal writing in addition to this that aligns with grade level standards for staff and implementation support for Pine teams that also have

064a strong focus on udl and so while we highlight that there has been a robust PD plan that's been put in place we do again want to bring back that that conversation we were having around moving it into that more adaptive piece and so staff have received training but what they're saying is they feel we want more coaching or additional ways to really Implement these practices as one PD session did not always relate to a shift in their practice and so again we we see that as a positive that the PD's been delivered but then really thinking about how do we take it to the next level and make sure that we're actually seeing it implemented in practice across classrooms for systems and structures um we want to highlight the staff model and we want

065to we want to emphasize that the district has rolled out a new and more transparent Staffing model that uses a weighted case load approach which accounts for both direct and indirect service hours as well as time for evaluations and PPT meetings um this has really helped staff with with allocations of Staffing and thinking about how to more closely align with student needs staff and focus groups reported a very positive perception with this new approach and building leadership have been trained on how this model Works to better support the needs in their building when they're considering their Staffing allocations and student needs and the policy and procedure manual um came up in our first report and we want to highlight here that the district's policy and procedure manual for special education is now publicly posted on

066the district's website and is updated regularly with the last update to this manual being in August of 2024 the last part I will walk you through here of is of our Milestone areas um are around the family and Community engagement areas of the domain and so we want to highlight the parent friendly resources that the district has developed and uploaded so that they're accessible to families this includes guides for understanding IEPs and 504 plans which again can all be accessed on the district's website now the ESS site has been set up to be a resource Hub um so that families can really go there and look for information about special education processes this site is also regularly reviewed and updated so it's not something that's put up once um and then left alone it's it's

067been being used as a tool that families can really access and get information that they need in real time we also want to highlight the newsletter um this was in place and it's continued to be a part of the the communication to families um and it it provides staff and families with a a way to really look at instructional practices going on in buildings tips for supporting students at home upcoming trainings for families and any departmental news um the newsletter is called together we can and it's really helped in our mind when we looked at this newsletter over the last several that have been posted um to help create greater communication and Community for families and so you could see that there are um fun nights for families there were ways for families to access

068different trainings through this and so we really felt it was a way to bring Community together where that originally wasn't here when we were um when our first original report and then lastly around collaboration um we want to highlight how much the ESS department has worked to develop more collaborative Partnerships with both cak and Pac to gather parent feedback and ideas for workshops for families um we heard this in focus groups as well with parents having appreciated these changes and I'm also asking for continued communication on events particularly ones that can be provided by external experts and any fees that parents would need to pay to attend these types of trainings uh when we talk to families about the trainings that they've attended while parents we will note still feel there are areas where the

069district can improve they did Express through our focus groups um immense gratitude for the leadership's commitment to change and engaging with them as meaningful Partners in this process and so again while we know that this is always going to be an area all of these elements of the domain of continuous Improvement we do want to highlight everything the district has done to really achieve these Milestones um it's a lot to celebrate it doesn't mean that the work is done but it does mean that there has been a lot of progress that's been made since that 2020 report I'm going to turn it back over to Dr Miller doesn't matter at the end of the action planning that we conducted um in partnership with the district in the 2122 school year we created six indicators um

070that have been publicly updated and considered as measures of success when we think about how far this plan has come in the past couple years we picked six elements um because we wanted to develop a a rubric and an understanding and benchmarks um and goals around areas that were either going to contribute to showing progress across multi recommendations or that we felt if we could move the needle in one of these key areas it would really be demonstrating overall progress for the district um so these included the state performance plan indicators um Dr Barbo talked a bit about that and I will a little more as well um students with IEP is demonstrating growth towards standards in ela and math um initial referrals U being completed within that 45 day timeline um increasing the Continuum

071of program options for students with disabil ilities within the district um increasing access around advanced placement or honors courses for uh or you know for student disabilities or identified as twice exceptional um and then also increasing parent um communication and the effectiveness of it I'm going to walk you through in the next couple slides the progress around these six indicators um and our rating around whether or not they were met and um what that looks like for Success so for the first one um this is the area around disproportionality so indicators 9 and 10 are um indicators that are measured not just at the state level in Connecticut but are measured Nationwide the these are the same indicators in every state in every laa um as to um focusing on special education and ensuring that

072students appropriately are placed and identified um in special education so um as Dr barau mentioned um when we first did this report there was an area that GPS was found to be disproportionate that was um sorry two areas around disproportionality for indicator 10 Hispanic students found eligible under the disability classification of intellectual disability um that was an area that was identified by the state at the conclusion of our report so they found similar data to what we did um and the district has worked very hard to make to um sh up those identification practices and the timelines and ensure appropriate identification was occurring um through the evaluation process um so as of this September the district was not been found disproportionate as a rating by the state in any of of the components of indicator

0739 or 10 um so the indicator is met for Success measure number one for number two um I'll wait one second till it clicks over there we go I know there's a lot of text on here so want to make sure we are um are visually displaying it as well so St the indicator number two was for students with IEPs will demonstrate growth towards standards on English language arts and Mathematics um this is certainly just one indicator of progress and the way that we look at academic success for students one data point um but I will note that the the district has partially met this indicator um certainly in grades 11 um or in grade 11 between Ela and math you will see in ela the um scores went down slightly um but in math

074they incre inreased so um these numbers align with I know data that you have looked at as a board um in the past couple months um so certainly a good indication of some progress that is occurring and being um Illustrated through these achievement data for indicator number three um we spoke to this a bit already but 71% of meetings met um the 45-day timeline or evaluation timeline from referral to eligibility an IEP implementation um that was a number um that was established in that uh in the report in that 21 2021 year report um the target was 100% that really is the standard that is a compliance indicator that's set by the state um that is expectation is 100% there was significant progress to move from 71% to 97.8% required significant structural changes training clarification

075documentation for staff um to know how to move the needle on that one so while the indicator was not met technically uh we do want to highlight what progress was made and this is a very tough indicator for every District to meet there always going to be some circumstances where that 100% is very difficult to achieve so um this is a great measure of the progress made so far for indicator four um as a as a reminder there were um specialized programs were not um in existence in GPS um so the fact that um this initial goal was to develop and offer that Continuum of programming um really was the first step um to determine which program should be created for which uh student profile and how would that occur how would training occur how

076would the classroom be set up um so the measure of that was if we set up programs within the district we can reduce the number of students who are going out of District to perhaps something they could find closer to home um so the indicator here is demonstrating that there was a reduction in the number of students in out of District placements which to us is a measure of the fact that families are understanding um the offerings within the district and there's a commitment to being able to consider placements and to be within the district and to be um growing specialized programs within the district so in our in our assessment the indicator was met for number four for number five um This was um also touched on earlier when we talked about the summary

077of findings um an indicator around um increasing the access of students with disabilities participating in advanced placement and honors courses was selected uh because first of all we could measure it and second of all it really was an indicator of how students could be um accessing rigorous coursework in a new way um or at greater um with greater access so the target was 50% by this September um as we mentioned earlier um the the district did not meet that um I we do know now that there are very um specific plans in place in order to change that number I think this um from what we understand this data and this reflection was a a really helpful understanding um when you look at this calculation what and and kind of going deeper as to what

078was preventing students from being able to enroll in honors or advanced placement courses if they had an IP um and so while this indicator was not met I think it um it was a reminder of how important it is to reflect on these data on a regular basis and to continue to understand what could be done to move the needle for indicator number six um this was focused on parent satisfaction um the target was 80% of students with dis parents of students disabilities would report effective communication on a satisfaction survey um the district has um moved to looking more broadly at all parents and the the um the entire parent survey the district-wise parent survey that's now done on a regular basis um that that was showing 89% of parent satisfaction so um even if

079you would extract students with disabilities and their parents responding um it's happening at a high rate and a much higher rate of satisfaction than had been before so for for our conclusion and for our recommendations um Family families and staff have noted progress this was certainly a very key piece of the focus groups and of the the staff that we talked with there is notable progress there is a feeling of progress um and that there is a stronger foundation on which to now spring board to the next level of what special education can look like in the district um considering the starting point that was really remarkable the strides that were made in that short time frame especially given the structural changes that had to happen across the board in so many areas um there

080are still inconsistencies in program quality across schools um delivery of of what that looks like um communication with families can be uneven um and so our recommendation is really to consider a more um cohesive and integrated approach into how that's assessed on a regular basis and how communication can continue to be um demonstrated for families in a way that that is um clicking or or clear for them um and while the district successfully laid a groundwork for improvement uh we really do as I said believe that you're well poised for the next level of what that looks like of improvement of continuing down this path um and really starting to synthesize um what those important recommendations are in this next phase um and still maintain the progress that's been made to date um so it's

081about sustaining progress um but it's also more important about embedding these changes on a regular basis um into the culture and so that BEC second nature um as to how you operate as a district U specific to special education so for our recommendations um we did align them back to the domains as well um there like I said aren't as many um but we do want to highlight um conducting a deeper analysis of the wellness center and Windrose School uh we were hearing various elements of confusion um around some of these programs um about how they're best designed to serve students with disabilities um and so that's one area that we would recommend going deeper into um continuing to refine and to review and refine the unique learner program it's still very new um and

082so um that any kind of new introduction of a program takes some time and reflection to ensure that those growing pains are alleviated and there's um program quality and impact is assessed um we would also recommend continuing to build that strong Foundation of inclusive practices and you'll see a variety of ways that we recommend doing that um expanding the pine framework um across all levels to support broader access to inclusive Education Services and to udl um we have really heard quite a bit about the impact of that framework um and the support of that um of pine to be able to do that and so um really focusing in on something that works well and has showed progress um is important for the last few domains um we focused on I'll wait till we get

083there there we go um family and Community engagement human capital and Leadership family and Community engagement um as we've said there's been such significant progress in this area and yet the work is never completely done there are always new families coming in new teams that need to um build Partnerships help parents understand what special education is and what service are provided um and then conducting a parent survey really around um the the progress their proog understanding of the progress made on the action plan um just to continue to get feedback on a regular basis um defining clear roles for case managers as we mentioned in the human Capital Area continuing to elevate um professional development there are always new teachers coming in always new staff or that want to learn new about new areas so

084this is not just about that initial professional development but really taking it to the next level around integrated practices and supporting in in the classroom um and then finally leadership um developing a synthesized and streamlined action plan so many of the components of the original action plan um either have been completed or are um underway enough that it we would recommend taking a step back rep prioritizing providing a new cohesive Next Level action plan that really will um as I mentioned continue the progress but take the district to the next level um around implementing these recommendations so with that I know we shared a lot of information with you and we appreciate your attention tonight um we're open to answering any questions about our process or findings or recommendations from here um I'm going to

085open this up to questions in a moment but I did just want to say that I really wanted to thank you um and the team Jan Jennifer and the non- Jennifers um as well as our special education staff Dr hen thaler Dr um Jones and so forth you know I've been working with you guys since since day one on this and it's um really impressive you know and I commend you and your staff for achieving so much in such a short window of time obviously change takes time especially when it's not just in practice but when also when it's a mindset so I'm really glad glad to see how many of the positives that your report had to share um and I'm sure a lot of the questions here are on the the areas of

086that we still need to have some movement and growth in um I know I personally have a few questions but um I'm going to open it up to others first um does anybody have any specific questions I'd like to ask m c so um I know you conducted site visits and you mentioned communic Community connections as one of the places you visited but there's no information on what you ascertained when you visited and it's an area that um like the wellness center and Windrose you've mentioned um a deeper analysis but you omitted Community connections from your recommendations is there a reason why you ommitted it um it's because we know there have been changes um with additional staff and a new model there that's still very new um so we did not think it warranted

087another deeper dive into that um it certainly near to continue to focus on um but we didn't feel that it would really rise to the level of a a new um deeper recommendation why would that be um because I believe that the the changes are being made there's more staff there are it's a completely different model than it was um and I think it needs some time in order to really assess um our DU significant more changes have to be made to it you think more changes need to be made no I said to assess if more changes need to be made um and then one other question um did you um do any parent feedback interviews in your visits um we had focus groups we had parent focus groups and were you happy to

088hear any specific highlights could you share with us um so when we look at the data we look at the full picture um and so um when I think about individual groups and individual um feedback around certain around key areas I think as a whole um yes overall parents are feeling like there's momentum that there is more progress being made I think we heard the same thing with staff as well there is a definite um noticeable shift in the way that special education perceived and the supports that are provided look different um there still are areas for improvement which is why we have those additional recommendations um families at times still do have questions still do feel like communication is not enough still do um Express concerns about what services look like for their child

089um I think as a whole though globally it was a markedly different um tone and a very different um orientation that the parents we talked to many of whom were the same I should say from a few years ago um was a definite shift in um the way that that's um special ucation being viewed just one other thing um you know a lot of special education families I don't know whether they're being asked are the after school if you're looking at the whole child and their experience in GPS whether they're satis side with um the offerings for their kids after school it's a huge thing for kids to have you know after school activities and whether students who have needs are able to really participate in Access um those kinds of very important activities so

090if there is going to be um a deeper analysis of how um you know how programming accessed for those individuals I think it would be really great to have sort of a review of our after school activities whether they're really inclusive for all children and you know I know that you're saying you think the program at Community connections needs to stabilize a little bit but same with our unique learner program so I do think that it would if we're going to continue with PCG I think it would warrant really all of our programs um um not just um K K12 it has to really Encompass all of our programming thanks Laura do you guys have any other questions M bead um thank you so much for the work that you've done on this report I

091just have a two questions particularly as it relates to to our bilingual families um can you tell me what your approach was in working particularly with the focus groups aside from documents um that could be translated into Spanish or other languages um and will a copy of this report be available um for our bilingual families as well um so as I recall um and we can go back to our notes to verify I don't believe we had any family any bilingual families this time that were requesting support or requesting interpreters for that those sessions um we did the first time around so I I don't believe we did this time um in terms of the report and documents um we provide the report to the district and um it's up up to the district to

092determine how that's if it's translated and what languag is how that will happen so we obviously advocate for it to happen um we think it's an important way to provide access um and information to families um but that's something that will be the district's decision so Dr Jones I guess I'll defer to you on that process um well again I wanted to thank you and I have a whole bunch of questions but um I was just going to start with two that I thought were kind of open and overall you you talked about two new two new programs um that you thought were commendable one was Pine and the other was uh smarts curriculum um neither of which I've actually heard anything about so I was you know pleased to to see that we are

093introducing new things that you're finding to be uh helpful and supportive for our students but I was just wondering if you could give me a little more you know information about both Pine and about smartt um as I said it's the first time I'm really hearing about these and um I'd really like to know a little bit more about that and then after that I was just wondering um between you Dr hen s here also asking where those different well Pine I knows Elementary smart I wasn't sure which grades it was being offered to and where just when the when the program was introduced to staff and students just out of curiosity sure Pine is um the um the program for inclusion neurodiversity education it's our partnership with NYU this is our third year in

094working with NYU um and implement lenting this across our 11 elementary schools um we've been utilizing it um for training for Paris and other staff we have access to um NYU staff for office hours as well as there's a platform of resources that's available to all staff um so we each school has its own individual plan of how they're utilizing the resources um with their staff within their schools smart the smarts program is an executive functioning program that we piloted uh two years ago um in the academic lab in the high school and we got really good feedback and then this year we were given um a grant from the state that to be specifically used with high school age students so we purchased it for all of the uh special education teachers at the

095high school level as well as Community connections so that they would have access to that they um lessons that they can use with students in supporting executive functioning executive functioning is probably one of the things that I such a such a key thing to help success for for all students honestly um and I know that's something that uh there's a lot of programs that we do at the middle school through um you know some of the other programs we do I'd love to see that a connection between that because if we can help students at the middle school level uh with some of that examp executive functioning and cross things by the time they get to high school it'll be a lot easier for them to navigate through the much more rigorous uh programs you

096know possibly AP and more honors classes um and I that's another question I had I know that prior to our implementation you uh some of the the changes you guys had uh recommended more students um uh with learning uh needs were accessing our honors and AP courses than we're seeing now even though they're taking more courses and to me it's as long as I mean I I just wanted to find out you know you were talking about having that the options introduced and given to students um more so you know honors and AP courses move at a much different rate they're not for every student I don't necessarily believe the goal should be to have more students in those courses I think the goal should be to have students accessing the courses that are the

097right courses for them so that they can feel success but as long as they realize that there's access being given to them and that they have the opportunities to be in those rigorous courses and if they're finding struggle to to drop down so you know I don't know what you found in regards to speaking to parents or students in in the regards that were they being given access to them and just finding that they wanted to stay on level this might actually be a good Dr Jones question thank you give me the easy ones um this is actually something that we've been really working on at the high school and those of you that have high schoolers know that um even with the automated enrollment we've changed kind of how students will be able to

098select their class and really have a stronger voice and what they want to enroll in previously in the high school we not only had prerequisites but our high school had a lot of uh performance requirements so if you wanted to take an honors class even if you were in the right sequence and for instance you didn't have at least a B+ you might have had a b or a B minus you were really not allowed to take that class now granted we had an override process which could be a struggle and some students are you know nervous to go through that process we have parents um that don't know how to navigate you know the process so what we've done this year they still have a perform a performance requirement but it's at a SE

099and so when the parents see the classes that are available the parents and the students will be able to decide what's best for them and previously we didn't do that the only reason they went ahead and put a c after we talked about it a lot this year this has been a big discussion um was okay if a student made a d it doesn't mean they still couldn't take an honors the next year maybe they were out sick for three weeks there may be good reasons but we would want to make sure they had a good discussion with the counselor and that we're giving them the adult support at the high school so it is a big change for us and this will be the first year where they'll actually have much more Choice than

100they've ever had before that's that's great I like I said I I like to see are students being placed where they can succeed um instead of struggle so that's why I was asking that particular question so I mean as long as they're aware that they have the opportunities and access and if it's you know right sized for them so to speak um I had a couple of other questions but anybody else no just me okay um I'll jump into some um Dr uh marcant Anthony is unable to be here with us tonight but I know he's sent a few questions I'm not going to read all of them but um one of the things you touched on that he and I actually both had some questions on um or common planning time so you know

101you would said that the teachers are still saying that they don't feel that they have enough planning time and I'm not sure how that's something that you know we might be able to address um his question was about ensuring that they have that common planning time that's definitely something that we're aware of and that we're working on um as we refine code teaching um I know that I want to give credit to all three of our middle schools in the administration in trying to look at how through the schedule they can align that um you know there's team time and you know there there's different times that people are meeting and so they're trying to figure out how to work that into the time um that's that's set in the schedule um does it need

102to be a different time so it is a work in progress but it is something that we're very aware of and that um is being worked on thank you um he wrote also The Document Speaks very thoughtfully about the progress and challenges of implementing udl Concepts across the district and classrooms as well as the continuing need to develop rigorous and targeted IEP goals um he was wondering what is the role for specialized instruction and where was this evidenced what gaps did you see that surfaced I can I can take on some of this yeah um so udl as a framework and we always try to stress this is is not just a special education initiative it's really a general education framework that that reduces the barriers right to to the classroom into standards aligned instruction

103um evidence as far as what we saw in IEP goals we didn't look at IEPs so it's hard to really say when we saw in classrooms what we saw is evidence of an IEP goal related to specialized instruction um they're really kind of two separate things in our minds when we look at this but what we would say is that when it came to specially designed instruction that was an area that teachers were requesting some more um support in and so when you were looking at those general education classrooms teachers were saying I want to make sure that we're providing those individualized supports or specially designed instruction to students to the best of our ability um and so we did see some evidence of that in our on-site visits where where students were receiving accomodations

104or modifications as needed but in other cases it wasn't as easy to tell um and so that was one of the areas that we were saying around consistency is really making sure one at the core right where your high quality instruction is that the udl framework is woven into that but at the same time not losing sight of specialized instruction and what that means for students with IEPs and how you then find that balance between an IEP goal bringing that in right to the general education classroom and accommodations and modifications as well based on an individual students IEP can I just add yeah I just want to add to to that I think one of the the shifts as we've talked about our our philosophy and and inclusion of students is that we're doing more

105pushin service so pull out Services if I'm the single special ed teacher with my small group I think our teachers are are masterful and they know what specially designed instruction is in that setting it's the shift into the classroom of what does that look like when I'm trying to provide that while the teacher is providing the instruction and how my role in that and so we've been working with that so that is a challenge but that's that's new and it's growing and so as we move in that at um that's something that we've been working on but that's where I can definitely see and you know hear from our staff and we're providing trying to provide that support and how to how to do that um so it's a shift in it's a a shift

106in how we're providing Services over the last couple years I'll let you jump in then I have a yeah this is just the follow up specifically to that um I'm just wondering how much pushing into the classroom is constrained by the physical limitations of our some of our classrooms you know because we have such different buildings and I know some of them were really designed for co- teing model and stuff you know and then we have other classrooms so is you know is that part of the issue or do you does that interfere with it at all like if you have a very small classroom for example or I don't know that anybody has brought up the size of the classroom as a as a barrier um I do know that we have some um

107odd-shaped classrooms in some of our buildings um that we're utilizing um I think it's a a more to do with a change in role um and our special educators are very highly trained individuals and it's how to move into being that that special education teacher when there's another teacher in there and they are not pars and our pars are wonderful lovely people so this isn't anything about that but as our special ed teachers are trying to fill their role they don't they're like we're we're not a parah we're a teacher and yes and so it's how do you do that specially designed instruction and how is that different than when a pair of pushes in and so that's where that struggle is and I guess I'll just end on this one other particularly um the

108thing that concerned me and I know you mentioned before was you know staff was talking when when our staff says that they they have found a lot of um helpfulness and and and you know support in in having some of the training and professional development and the other pieces the lack of consistency is still a big concern for them and they talked about the need for more targeted and collaborative training um that and and when we were looking back at some of the the goals in the IEP under IEP that so I'm a little concerned that you know without staff having targeted training and professional development to help support the creation of a strong IEP um you know it concerns me that how do we then expect the students to meet those and exceed the

109goals that are in their IEPs um you know St if staff still needs more targeted training um and I think one of the so that leads to the question also that uh Dr mcant Anthony had which was you know um sorry he was like he wish the recommendations on page six spoke more specifically about special education instruction and he was hoping to see what you um as our Consultants um might see as still being necessary to move the needle on student achievement and you know for me it's also about meeting those you know providing our teachers what they need to help our students meet the goals and exceed those in their IEPs as well I'm just going to jump in with a technical piece on that first is that to remember that when this started

110from now we switched IEP systems we're still I and you know I I hate to say it's like CT saids made me do it but there are definitely some technical things and so as we look at some of the struggle some of it has to be done with the system and even just as recently as January 1st of this year there's a new technical element of aligning the standard and the goal so there is so the state still hasn't gotten their their act together they rolled it out I know ahead of having it all actually done properly so I I I think our our staff write really good goals and they're they're on the right track but every time we get on the right track there's then a shift and then we're relearning so um

111so yes do we have work to do yes but I also want to appreciate the technical aspect and commend our staff for the great goals and the great IEPs they do write in like the difficult situation we're in well then maybe we can add a little Aster in the report because there was no mention really of the the difficulties with this I figured the state had finally got it done you know you know properly but you know so I do I'm interested to hear what recommendations you guys have for you know looking at you know improving and achieving moving the needle for student achievement for students here I mean I can I can take a that's a big question because there's so many pieces right that impact that in my mind when we when we

112start just with mtss alone right so when you look at your Core Curriculum that's your your number one piece we always say you know special education is only as good as general education um and so that's that's a big piece of this in my mind you know in looking at past reports and and reflecting on all of the data that we collected um it brings me right back to to what I was saying earlier about that technical piece versus the Adaptive piece and I feel like you could put every system in place but if the culture and the mindset hasn't shifted yet or is still in progress you're going to have barriers or bumps in that road right and so in my mind I feel like that is the next shift right it's really embracing

113what does inclusion mean what does co- teing really look like in a classroom and how do we bring that together as a general education teacher and a special education teacher um I don't know that it's necessarily about buying a curriculum right I I think we get so caught up in is this the right curriculum where it really is are we delivering instruction in the way that we need to for students at their individual level at their individual need um and so I feel like when we look at this the district is poised right for that next level in my mind to shift that mindset of saying okay we have the technical pieces down we have the systems in place now we need to move to the next adaptive piece of this and really shift how

114we approach students with disabilities how we think about them in our classrooms how we work together as teams um and really think about how these are all of our students and I think then you will start to see some of those shifts I think in some of the achievement and practices that are happening for my lens um I don't know if you have anything else to add but that's that's kind of where it's a big question um there's never an easy answer to that but but that's where my mind goes when I reflect on everything that we've looked at um so far within the district well I you know I I know you guys have been with us for a long time this evening we have another bunch of stuff on our agenda to get

115to and so um you know I I wanted to thank you and I would love to have a you know deeper dive maybe because I don't want to go through all of these technical questions here but um just as an aside in discussion the conduction of a deeper analysis of the wellness center and Windrose I really would and I know you said it's too early to add Community connections because they're making some changes I would like to add Community connections to that still um even if it is just to understand some of the changes that you've already seen taking place and where you expect those to go because our oldest Learners um they have the shortest window of time at that at that stage right and so when we're looking at things like our younger

116students we have time but our oldest students especially at Community connections truly need that support and every day that goes by that we're missing opportunities there for some reason or another th those are missed opportunities that they may not get back so I really would love to have a a little bit just to see what you know not tonight obviously but what you saw there and some of the changes that you you know saw what what we can do to help support our oldest Learners as well as our youngest just so uh Dr Miller is not going oh my goodness what are you asking us to do um we would have to work on some sort of contract extension which is fine um if we want to continue our work with PCG because they they

117have fulfilled by doing what they're doing tonight what we actually contracted for so I just don't want to set unrealistic expectations because it does involve budget um and but certainly we welcome their input and we would welcome um us extending their work with us because it's really helpful for us to have independent feedback that's a discussion we can have on another night but even if it's just some of the notes that you guys had seen already not a deeper dive at the moment but anyway I just wanted to thank you guys for the time and effort um and working with all of our staff and being so respectful of all of our stakeholders in this process and just you know appreciate all the time you've spent with us over the years thank you uh Dr

118hen thaler I don't think you're supposed to go anywhere aren't you doing prek come on up we're going to talk about our young we just talked about our oldest briefly but now we're going to talk about our youngest and Dr J is gonna come up come on down with me and we do have do I have to push the button Anthony okay and we do have a PowerPoint again so you can either stay where you are and we have about 20 slides tonight and this really really is when we when we say preschool It's About Preschool space and this was an outgrowth of a request from the Board of Ed from our last meeting as we were discussing the edpe for Riverside um and also just a few reminders about historical growth so just as

119a reminder this is language straight from the Connecticut State Department of Education um and this is just a reminder that early childhood special education as defined by federal law under idea is required for three four and 5-year-old children with disabilities who require special education so this is very very different than what you find just out in a community pre where parents just want to send their children to pre this is required again for children who require services that are three four and five years old this is um why we're grappling with some of the challenges if you go back to 2013 and you look at how our growth has been in prek we have more than tripled in our students who are being found eligible Again by federal law which means that we need more

120classes we need more classroom space um the far right where you see the 149 is where we anticipate will be at the very end of the year as a reminder prek um we are enrolling all year long as children Turn 3 years old if they've been found eligible they start when they're three and we will still find children eligible between now and June so one of the questions that I get is why do we use a ratio of typically typical developing peers and children with special needs and it's really when you look at that top heading it's about least restrictive environment and when you look at the federal language what we're really talking about here is that our children who are in prek should be in a classroom with also children with typic who are

121typically um developing peers and what you're looking at right now is some of the federal language um go ahead and go to the next slide Mike so what's in bold on that second um bullet the department states that regular class includes a preschool setting with typically developing peers so I've been asked the question since I've been here just recently actually why can't we just have a prek only for children who have special needs uh we would not be following the law so our classes must be balanced and that's why we use the ratio so this is what we look like in our preschool um we have 15 students who are in a classroom and the goal is to have nine peers and six children with special needs and that is the ratio that we use

122in grenage and I just I'm going to break this down simply because for some people This Is A New Concept so if you just look at it where if we just said we had five classrooms if we went back to 2018 2019 our ratio only had four children with special needs in a classroom so those five classrooms could hold 20 children with special needs plus your peers by changing the ratio to six children what we were able to do if you still had five classrooms and you could fit six in each one of those you now with the same amount of classrooms can service 30 children with special needs and that is one reason that we changed the ratio was to run more efficiently and also to be able to slow the growth a little

123bit so that we could manage and not run out of space and this is what we've looked like uh going back to 201819 and I picked 201819 because a bet member had asked me about a prek question that they wanted to know what we look like in 201819 so if you go back to 201819 you'll see we already had 14 classrooms and that year we had added three just to get through June so when I actually started in July we had 14 classrooms 14 teachers contracted ready to go in 2019 2020 and as part of our budget discussion that year we changed the ratio going into 2020 2021 and you'll see we actually went down a classroom and went to 13 and we didn't hit 14 again until the end of 22 um and then

124at 2223 um we started with 14 and then we went to 15 later that year so we were able to manage four years of grow growth without adding a preschool classroom by adjusting our ratio we are now when you look at 2024 2025 at 177 classrooms we were only budgeted this year for 16.5 that means we were supposed to start with 16 and in February add classroom 17 but we had too many children who qualified this year and we started with 17 so I do want to note if I have prek teachers watching we are running above that ratio this year and there are a couple reasons for that um right now we have the nine peers but we're running seven to eight children with special needs and part of that is we are space

125challenged in the middle of the year uh the building where we were going to plan to add a pre looks like now it's going back to four sections some of our buildings have um a lot of a lot of kindergarten enrollment next year so those rooms that we were going to use we can no longer use um and so we are having to kind of hold on and we also want to overhire where at the end of the year when all these children who are four and turning five go to kindergarten now we've got an additional teacher um but space right now became the real challenge in February so what are some of the prease space challenge considerations it really is where do we have Elementary classrooms available for prek um looking at safety particularly

126fire code considerations and the child development in general so this is the utilization chart of all of our elementary schools um which we presented actually at the BET meeting just over a week ago uh right before the break and what you'll see is it's pretty well all yellow and green because we we are utilizing our buildings at a very very high percentage we would love to see more buildings or a few buildings at least at 85% which means you have room to grow we really don't have that and I want to say thank you to Ben Branan who actually worked on this this year uh which was wonderful this is about the third year we've had this chart but if we go to the next slide he added a new component which I thought was

127fantastic and it's really showing where are some of those specialty rooms and how they're being utilized for things like Alp and special ed and foreign language um and every building is a little bit different according to the space that they have so when we look at our space challenges from a safety consideration not just that we don't have empty rooms all over the district but prek must be located on the bottom floor for easy vacating in case of an emergency and let's just talk very briefly about why um it goes back to 1958 and there was a very tragic fire at Our Lady of Angel school in Chicago the building was a 1910 era building like many buildings that we have they have a lot of wood inside um and when that building caught on

128fire there were things that didn't happen for instance the fire alarm alarm could be heard on the first floor the second floor didn't go off the fire alarm did not actually ring at the fire station um they had fire doors that were propped open and from this tragic fire they lost 92 children that were all on the second floor and three adults and that is really why we have the the National Fire Protection Association model code almost every state follows this um and again this building also is not sprinkled um but it did impact and has impacted all of the fire drills that we do everything that we follow in the schools is an outgrowth of this 1958 um tragic fire so what does that mean for pre it means that younger children must be

129uh on or closer to the ground floor and that is to make evacuation easier and classrooms for preschool kindergarten and first grade must be located on the level of exit discharge which means they must be able um to get out of the building on ground level and classrooms for second grade can be located no more than one floor above but this is about pre that's why when we say it's hard to find a room is often because pre first grade or kindergarten they all need to be on the lower floor so we have to be pretty particular about what rooms we use it's also a reason why you can't take a building like Julian Curtis and just say let's make it a preschool half of the building the second floor couldn't be used so when

130we look at where we do have single egress around the the district just to put it in perspective which means almost every classroom could be utilized New Lebanon was built um really well with a two-level egress so the top floor where the main office is can vacate right to the parking lot on the lower level they can vacate right out to the actual Park so even though it's a multifloor building it still has egress straight outside on both levels glenvil can get out on one level Parkway is one level and North Street is one level the other seven elementary schools are limited in the lower floor uh classrooms for pre use um because they are multi-story in Greenwich so let's look at where our current prek locations are they are located predominantly on the west

131and the central portions of the district so this is just a map where you can see on the west side we have eight preschool classrooms in the center the central we have seven and on the east side of Greenwich we have two classrooms and the number of classrooms at each school is up there on the right hand side one of the reasons that we were recommending Riverside is again if you look at that east side if you have a child who qualifies for special education um in preschool and you're at ISD you're at North mananas Riverside OG you don't have the flexibility you're going to have to go to the central or to the West in order to get a prek uh unless you happen to have a seat at Old grenwich where there are

132two classrooms on the east side so when we look at the future and again uh it's just what are different op you know operations for the future expansion that we would have for preschool um and when we talk about the Riverside Ed speec adds to prek U we could go with that option when we look at Julian Curtis we already have an approved edpc right now that adds two classrooms uh for preschool the board voted on that Ed speec and then the project was not fully funded it was pecem uh at the end of the year with an elevator the entrance but if you look at the edpc uh it does have two pre- classrooms already approved and the board reaffirmed that following August that in fact that Ed speec is the Ed speec they

133believe was right for the district uh we could get to a point where we are renting space just like we do for Windrose um we could change class size and go up slightly we don't recommend that 15 little bitty kiddos is a lot um we could change the ratio again um the minimum that we can go by what the state expects would be 5050 so if you had 16 students you could have eight and eight but that's kind of like saying instead of having 24 or you know 26 fifth graders we're going to go up to 30 or 32 I mean these are these are young children so going to a 50-50 ratio is absolutely not ideal and we're asking our teachers to do a tremendous amount um we could displace programs to capture space

134which means uh you know you're moving an art teacher out of the room to go to Art on the cart there are always things like that that you can do but again it impacts the quality of instruction um and then some have recommended that we go to An Early Childhood Center that would mean building an entire entirely new Early Childhood building um and I will just point out that um Wendy had set some great questions and there's a Q&A in your packet and you know one of the things is we were pulling um how pre Works around this area is most places that have built An Early Childhood Center what you'll see is they still have classes out in the schools because they outgrow them and Norwalk just opened their Early Childhood Center in 2016

135and they're dismantling it next year and going back out to the buildings and part of the reason for that is it's very expensive to have an entire Early Childhood Center um you still need basically a principal they usually call them a director of Early Childhood you need the office staff because you have to have an entrance you need all the things you would need for an elementary school and when you think we have 17 classrooms we have more classrooms of pre than what we even have like at a Parkway or a JC um for children so I will leave it there and it's um I'm happy to answer questions but again I think Wendy did send some great questions that give you a little bit of numbers and that is in your packet tonight as

136well thank you I'll give you well a moment um for everybody come back and sit down but uh I'm open to questions Cody could um and I apologize if some of these ear in Wendy's questions because I haven't seen those um could you go through just the the origin or what we think the origin is of the rapid increase uh of the number of special ed um students interested in the mechanics of it is it have they changed what counts as qualifying or have we changed the mechanism of identifying who qualifies for it um uh or is it something else there are just more students who are qualifying for special education services even if you look at Birth to three their numbers have gone up so um we get our preschool students from two different

137two different ways one is a referral who have been getting birth to three Services the other are referrals for students who are already in prek the number of students coming up from birth to three has significantly increased um and what we're seeing is we're actually seeing a lot of students with with more significant needs than what they have historically as well so it's just the number of students um with needs um has grown and they haven't change the criteria of what qualifies no it's kind of of just a curious phenomena that like that uh the population of grenwich hasn't changed very much that we have such a like I don't know is it something in the water like what what is it's not just Greenwich it's it's everywhere and just as Dr Jones was saying

138most of the school districts that had prek centers at one point in time have outgrown them so for example like Norwalk I happened to be there when we built the center um they have outgrown and they're doing halfday programs for some of those rooms so that they have AM and PM and they they can't sustain they've outgrown Fairfield has outgrown their Center as well um so it's not just a Greenwich thing this is definitely Fairfield County and really we're seeing it on a state and National level as well how does the birth to three program identify candidates so birth to three has um different uh different criteria than we do um it it is designed as a uh early intervention to um to be able to support students with even even the um more minor

139needs um to say and then what happens is when they become two years three months um we're notified of them and we start the evaluation process and so they then um by the age of 3 have to go through an evaluation in which we then assess them using the criteria that idea has set out for preschool elementary middle and high school so it becomes that criteria so not every student in birth to three qualifies for um preschool special education services but a fair amount do and how do people find is it always do parents contact birth to three or is it a is there an outbound component is there like an awareness component of yeah birth to three there's definitely um an um an Outreach component um hospitals doctors there's a lot of referral processes

140through that and then when a student is in birth to three they're entered into the system so that we're we're aware of who they are so we know um months like six to nine months in advance who's coming up through the birth to three system um so it's run um it's run Statewide so they they keep that but there's a lot of Outreach because the idea is to have early intervention their services are usually provided through centers or people going into the homes it's a very different model but the idea is to provide that Services as early as possible so that students don't need that support once they um come into school and for some students it it it's it's very positive I just have two other ones uh do we track um what is

141the falloff rate or I don't know what how to label it but of you know what percentage of students who are classified as special ed in prek are still classif classified that way you know year one year two year three out is there a drop off in that I would say the majority continue the qualification um we might have a few in early Elementary School um preschool goes so even identifying at three they go through the same threeyear cycle of re-evaluation so they're first re-evaluation is usually kindergarten or first grade we have a few that do come off but the majority do require Services past that and it's something that we track um we don't track it per se but it's data we could definitely pull because we would be able to to look back

142to um initial um initial qualification to find out what age um we have that documentation is not something we we pull we can definitely do that if if you'd like yeah I'd be curious about at all and then my last one was I noticed that there's none at Parkway is that been on the like on the list of potential actions to take is that something to consider is there space there so we did have actually prek at Parkway um going back I think it the first year we moved it out was probably 2020 or 2021 um and part of the reason was you were putting three-year-olds and if you think about what you saw in the east side of town you you have a three-year-old on a bus going all the way to Parkway and

143we were literally transp sporting children CU we like for 45 minute bus rides and longer if you're having a bad bus day and it was just too far for young children to be on the bus and that's why we actually relocated and built the program a little stronger at North North stet okay does anybody else have specific questions no I do Wendy Wendy has a question um I I was just wondering how many children are just related services in prek um we have a handful I want to say six or seven I might be off by one or two um so we we do provide speech services as a standalone service for um preschool students who do qualify for that okay so so they are not those children are not the ones that are in

144the preschool program they're not off it's just a related service right correct okay yes um and then I have another question how do you determine who gets which program right we have a two-hour program a five hour program and a six and a half hour program so how do you determine who fits into which program do parents get to pick so so there should only be there's two times there's um the the extended day that's the the extra hour is at ham AV in new Leb and those are for students within that magnet school so um our preschool Lottery actually identifies there's three three different without having the piece of paper three different three different tiers so we have like the magnet school we have Community classes and then we have like the general um

145uh the the the the general just lottery so we look at siblings especially at ham the new Leb so all that is kind of configured into um into which program they go to and then when a student qu for as the general lottery and then for uh our special education students we always look at homeschool first if we have a school and then we look at closest to um because as Dr Jones was saying we don't want our our our smallest children you know think about threeyear olds you know on buses for a long period of time and it's not a direct route in that I'm not going from my house to the school I'm going from my house to pick up somebody else to pick up another student to pick up another student and

146that is really challenging for our students so we always try to look at where the closest school to the houses okay um okay I think you know I I just want to say we might want to consider like a hub model like we do for our our middle schools um rather than building an ele a prek in in all of our elementary schools uh as neighborhood preas um I think it might make more sense maybe if we revisit our old Gren School Ed specs we can add a couple of classrooms there and that can be our Eastern preschool and then I have my GC building committee that I'm on we're about to go into phase three with a renovation but maybe we could expand and add preschool there I just um and I don't know

147wherever you would want to put it for um in the western end of town but we might we might want to consider some consolidation into a few different areas because I think it's going to be more expensive G getting more speech therapists and OTS and pts at each of these neighborhood schools for prek I just don't think it's very cost effective I'd be interested to see what other schools in the state are doing neighborhood preschools I I'm sorry I our our I wouldn't call our preschools neighborhood preschools um right now the preschools are are chosen uh or the schools are chosen because of space um so you know every time we we look at a a school the the reason that it it's been selected as um as the location is because they happen to

148have um a space available meeting the guidelines as Dr Jones set out um and the the struggle is that um it's also because these are special education students we have to we we have to have a place for them so it it could be that there are are some years where we have a lot from one area and other years it's a different and I can give an example of next year we have a large cohort going up to uh New Lebanon this year there was a large cohort that went to um Hamilton a last year it was Glennville so every year there there seems to be a cohort but it's never it's never like a stable number um and so that's why we try to look at where the home school or the closest

149to is because it is somewhat of a moving Target okay um it just seems like we're trending in in the way of neighborhood preschools because we we we have six out of 11 elementary schools so but um okay thanks so much for Stacy and um Dr H and and Dr Jones for your presentation I was hoping to take a peek at it before the meeting tonight but I I'm I was did I miss it I didn't see it on I didn't see it added to the agenda so that's that's because I kept getting questions I was working on the slides trying to make sure I addressed the questions that that you had oh thank you so much um just well I have a question and a comment um you know in reference to what Cody

150was asking and and I know we talk about this all the time and this is not just a grenwich issue this is is not just a Connecticut issue it's a national issue where there are more and more students being recognized with uh or identified with special needs and you know learning differences and it's happening younger um and actually older students are are also being more identified as they move forward in school but this is a national a national Trend so it's not just happening here um and I I did want to ask based on what um Wendy had just asked um because I know when we were presenting some of this discussion with the BET and there were questions about a a centralized preschool um you know we'd have to hire an entirely new staff

151from principal and assistant principal nursing all the specials Etc um if we tried to do something like that but um even when we add a preschool classroom per se at a school um and as an aside Wendy the special the um Ed specs that we have for Julian Curtis I think it is phase three already have two preschool classrooms already approved for there um if I'm you know our Ed specs were proved that way and so I'm sorry I just meant we could add on to we could we're about to to go through our new Ed specs but right now we decided not sorry I'm sorry you could finish keep going yeah yeah well we we can certainly talk about that but um so my question then is is because I think it's important that

152we have an understanding when we add a preschool classroom to an elementary school we other than hiring the classroom preschool teacher and parah that maybe you know or other aids for those particular classrooms and students of needs we're not adding any otpt or other like language staff are we specifically yes we are so that becomes part of the the budget so um one of the things in the budget for this year is that we have looked at an increase in the contract with constellation for otpt some of that not all of it but some of it is for preschool so when we have preschoolers who need that the OTS and PTs are going in there so as that's a contract Service it looks a little different but for speech and language we also we we

153add that into the budget so we have added um speech and language over the last couple of years so when it's one class we can kind of absorb it when we know that another class we add a 0 five to that school so for example JC has 1.5 slps um cost cob has 1.5 slps but you're building it to the budget my point is is it's based on the number of students so if it's at if you add a preschool class at Old Greenwich versus adding it at North Street those students still have the same needs so yes it's not that you're not adding staff specifically because it's at one Elementary School that didn't have it beforehand right and a lot of those staff go from building to building during the day correct correct okay

154that's what I was just trying to understand we're not not hiring them specifically because it's in one building versus another correct it's based on the students needs wherever they may be yes okay that's where I was sorry that I didn't ask it properly um and I think the other thing that's really important um today uh I was on a call with uh bunch of other board ofed chairs from around the state uh call with cab um and we were also talking about the governor's proposal for an endowment for Universal prek and how it is coming uh uh coming probably quicker than we expect um quicker than some of these buildings that we're we're looking to add preschool classes to and if that's the case then we are looking at the possibility of truly not having

155space for some of these students we also know you know so I I think that that's that's something that we need to have a an additional discussion on I don't think it's happening necessarily this year um but I do know it's coming um it's something we've been talking about in the state for a very long time um and as we all know prek is one of the biggest ways we can address um achievement gap for our youngest students as they move forward um and it's just a it's not just for students with disabilities um it's just accelerating getting more re resources for all of our students you know it's it's exceptionally important so um I do appreciate the presentation tonight I think it was very helpful I think [Music] um the number of students that

156we have is tremendous and I think the other thing that would be interesting and it is something we talk about is the number of students who are uh traditional students we have weight lists every single year um and so when we have the opportunity to add more preschool we also end up having students who are paying which will be talking about later actually tuition um so it is it's not just that we're adding students who aren't you know who are who are covering for everything that we're also adding students who um are paying tuition which helps support some of those additions of of you know Staffing Etc so we can talk about that when we get to tuition and rates but does anybody else have any questions Wendy anymore no I'm I'm good thank you

157okay thank you so much okay on to our next topic um as Dr mccan Anthony is not here to address uh the first read of our policy 93 excuse me policy 4121 going to hand it over to another member of our policy governance committee Ms koven would you like to introduce it thank you yes um we were looking at The Substitute Teacher policy um 4121 and um the really the main change that we're looking to make here is it did have a 40-day Max imum um for long-term leave of absence for substit teachers and we wanted to change that to 60 days because that aligns um more appropriately with what's actually happening in the schools so that that's really um the change that we're seeing here and we can talk about it further um if

158Dr Jones or Miss H would like to weigh in but the change is really going from 40 to 60 days yeah makes sense it's just that there's a clerical error in it so yeah sorry I noticed that yes so we we need to make that change um yes in the third paragraph from the bottom it should it says 40 right it's written out 40 and then it's 60 and friends should be 60 for both thank you y makes sense yeah so just I know you noted noted this already but yes obviously there's a there's a there but um this was our policy to begin with the biggest change we made was simply revising it from 40 to 60 days um to comply with the change in the State uh regulations um that was basically majority

159of change um as this is our current policy yep that's really it so I guess we'll just do the second rate and at our next meeting okay on to our next discussion topic um monthly financial report and then following that budget transfers the uh financial report relatively straightforward just one note would make is last month we mentioned we may have to do an inter appropriation for Food Service uh we crunch the numbers and right now we think we're going to be uh just just okay so unless anything changes uh we think we're okay on on the launch program but uh nothing else really to point out happy to answer any questions you have do anybody have questions anyone nope buer ber no okay then we can move on to our next uh next topic the

160budget transfers are pretty boring budget transfers so uh pretty straightforward uh really a small values but happy to answer any questions you may have questions ber berer no one okay awesome thanks Ben um now we get to move on to the fun topics of our action items and our first is the Riverside School feasibility um I will Sophie since you're on the feasibility committee did you want to make the motion or I happy to to put on the table yeah I'm happy to make the motion I'd like to make the motion to approve the Riverside School um Ed specs as presented I'm happy to Second those uh now we can open for discussion anyone do you like to introduce it sure um so I had the pleasure of serving on the feasibility committee and um

161it was a very thorough um process and we got an tremendous amount of feedback from the community uh we had many community members show up at our meeting to discuss it the last time that we met and then in addition anyone who had uh the pleasure of going to the budget meeting uh there were again uh a very strong showing from Riverside School there was some incredibly compelling testimony and I'll just um really speak to two of the people who spoke um we were so lucky as to have a student come and talk about his you very unfortunate experience last year of having a broken leg and having to move the classroom downstairs um and know he was very eloquent and then um another parent was there to talk about their child and the struggles

162that their child has um just not having the accommodations that are required for her um so I think that this is a project that is overdue and um and I think that the process was very thorough and I'm happy to talk about it but I'm fully in support of it and I feel like the community is in support of it and I was very pleased that the first slman um was enthusiastic about it when he spoke about it the budget presentation as well okay does anybody have questions I mean I this is our second read so yeah know I just didn't know if there were any additional questions I mean I I'm happy to because I know part of the presentation we had tonight on preschool um was spawned from our first discussion of the

163Riverside uh School ad specs I know it was a discussion that we had uh when we were meeting with the BET um and I I know it wasn't something that was necessarily discussed with the community in advance because you know we're talking about parents that are already in the school and may not need um preschool but I I I thought the presentation we just had was very compelling um and the discussion as to why we need more preschool space at least on the Eastern end of town I want to make sure that you know we're being Equitable um for parents on on all ends of town who have students with needs and and attending preschool we don't want kids on the buses for 45 minutes especially when they're two or three um or I should

164say three or four I should say but um I I don't know so that that I don't know if anybody has a a question or comment um in discussion with that I just know if Dr Jones has said we already had an addition every year we usually get an addition of one class in the middle of the year we have one we don't even have a place to put it right now um I know we' approved two preschool classes for Julian Curtis um but that was moved I think to what I think it was phase three um so that's not happening for quite some time either um I know we we'd added I think two to the plans for old OG correct or no there's two there already right there's two there already so we're

165not adding anything new at OG so you know we have OG next and and they're not getting extra preschool space either so I I just even if it's to me I think it's like swing space Riverside to me is one of our tightest schools and you know that's why we're expanding the you know the cafeteria um they grow at an infinite rate typically I I haven't looked back at at the data right now but I don't know what did the feasibility committee when you guys met and had the discussion was it a deep discussion at all or I think that the pre the prek consideration of something really more at a board level and at a district level so I will say that the parents are not especially concerned about prek at Riverside um so

166if that was something that we felt like we wouldn't be able to do for some reason I don't think you know the community is is going to be distraught over that um how ever uh I agree with what you were saying that I I do think you know the governor is talking about Universal prek so that may be a mandate that we have to address sometime um and you know I always like the S the saying a if you fail to plan you plan to fail right so sometimes it's good if we see something coming to actually proactively do something about it um and sort of more concretely that Dr Jones has pointed out that our prek population continues to grow and we're actually short of classroom right now so you know to me it

167seems practical to include two prek classrooms um but it I don't think the Riverside Community is necessarily so concerned about it so much as I think this is a town issue um and as a board I definitely think we should talk about it because I don't know what the other Solutions are and and we've already talked about this a bit tonight but you know building a standalone Center that seems like an extremely expensive option I have no idea where it would be placed um I also just frankly don't you know the transportation issue is what always gets me whenever we're talking anything about moving kids around granite and you know anyone who drives on the Post Road knows you can drive from Riverside to the high school and it can take 15 minutes and it

168can take an hour so like the idea of moving three and four-year-olds around is not appealing to me um but I'm I'm happy to have the conversation and um and I yeah I welcome it m St yeah I'm sort of torn here because a part of me says you're right the writing on the walls that it seems that um prek is going to become um more and more um a thing in our state and perhaps our country it seems to be going that way now frankly it's been in New York for a while so um I suspect it's going to be moving here at the same time we have a little bit more of a private school prechool population and we do do a lot of cross training to be fair um between our private

169school um preschools and our public as they transition into public schools so I do think grenage is a little is a bit more unique in that sense so I I kind of see both sides of this I guess let me just be clear um a part of me thinks that it's hard to retroactively build preschool classrooms and that's the part that's a little tough given the first floor issue um but at the same time I don't want to be shortsighted because I think the Riverside Community really deserves this building and let's just be frank I think that we are more likely going to have support from our financial Co colleagues um if we're a little bit more thoughtful about perhaps not including those um classrooms so I'm torn I'd like to see our board be

170um together on this and so I guess I'd like to just hear from some of my colleagues I'll start with Cody and then I'll go to Laura um I uh admittedly don't feel like I know enough yet on the uh prek um special ed uh I guess the analysis so what what you were presenting Tony but those is super helpful presentation my hunch is that uh is in line with some of the um uh some of what Kathleen just expressed which is that the it the project seems great outside of the prek expansion which I'm not sold on um and what I just want to work out is it my intuitive feeling is that there's a uh a better way to do it especially um given that the kind of opportunity cost of that space

171in the building um like there is an opportunity cost of it uh so I you know where just to answer your question my head would be uh against it um without taking the prek space out and then I'd like to feel like there's a better solution on the prek side but my hesitation is because I don't quite have it yet although I think um my hunch is that there's one there which I know is probably an thing to hear Tony but uh you're like I just told you what it is but um uh so yeah that's where I'm at Miss C having had two kids go through the GPS preschool system um I feel like I have a very good handle on our methodology um so if you haven't had that experience it may not

172be as clear to you but you should make a joke that I was most more recently in the pre you could go right back um so um so I will say um I will say um I do see a need and I do want to say you know I I don't think there were any preschool families on the feasibility committee because you know you've got current families who have kids in the school who really just want a school with like you know fire safety um and sprinkler and you know an adequately sized building so I don't know that that was a representative sample of families who would benefit from it um but I I see a clear need I mean I think Old Greenwich PR is already full I think yeah so um I just

173I see a need I I don't think that we should be shortsighted about that need Dr Jones has already told they need they need one now um and you know to be frank um the number of children diagnosed with autism Nationwide is astounding it just grows every year so I don't think that we're um the trend is is not that there's going to be a decline in need so I think we should move forward with the best building that meets the needs of the community and meets the needs of the students and the Dom Minimus if we're talking about a $40 million project how much can two classrooms cost at most 300,000 if that that may even be high so when you're already building a building I think you need to you know stop counting

174pennies and build the building the community needs I I think it's you know there is absolutely no reason financially to not when you're building a building do not add um a classroom that can't possibly cost that much just to jump on that I was going to say as a parent coming from Glenville when Glenville was being rebuilt and the discussions then that took place which were you'll never reach X number of SE sections in your school historically you've never hit that number you're never going to hit that number guess what we hit that number within a year of reopening the new school and we were having to scramble for space and reorganize things to that to make them into classrooms and you know much like Laura I was going to say that's why I said

175even if they're not you know assigned as prek even if it's just additional swing space we know we've had classrooms um in in our schools that flooded or had to close for a certain period of time or weigh like we don't have spaces to move children to when we need them um we have a school that we know is historically the one that grows uh at a rate which is Riverside I know you know again the cost of building those two classrooms doesn't mean we're automatically going to fill them with students and and you know desks and things like that I just think it's the opportunity cost to do it when a building is being put together and the walls are open and you can build it then as opposed to trying to like hack

176through a wall to add something on it's much less expensive to do it in advance coming from a family of you know Engineers I you know I just that's my thought and I know we've we've discussed it at infin item but you know I'd love to know I mean it's it's like you know Laura said at that point it's not a significant additional cost um we went we went through this with CMS the classroom I mean we we looked at every possible way to save money and you know when you're building a building an additional classroom is a couple hundred thousand there's just no other there's no other way to quantify how minute in a $40 million project it is it just doesn't make any sense but I do also recognize Kathleen's comments on working

177with you know with the you know Financial you know situation in town so miss bad um I'd have to say that I do agree with Miss HS and and Miss C um on a couple of different points we we do you know to kind of echo what's been said we do have the opportunity to be proactive and forward thinking on Space here there is a need um there from what I've seen there is a clear established need um I'm not sure what more we can provide on that front to justify having more prek classrooms I think there's been extensive work done on that and this is a need and the trend that's that's happening um particularly as it relates to our special education students um and I think at this point these are the recommendations

178that have been made through very thorough and um exhaustive work um and I'm looking forward to supporting the specification uh Miss Visa Walsh I just wanted to say that I am in full support and I'm excited about this project but without the pre and um Dr mik girl Dr merant um who isn't here tonight he also shares my view um and just to couple of comments that I have from other people that I heard from tonight um weren't weren't there two PTA chairs representing all parents on this committee and none of them mentioned the preschool and the and and how much they wanted it um and it's not just 300,000 Miss Coston it's two and a half million for the prek Edition and it's another 200,000 for the preschool playground um and and and I

179I do I I know that they are adding that you are adding two more classrooms at JC but I was saying with our expansion we could add two more classrooms if if need be there and that's more centrally located for everybody what pricing was included for the prek on the Riverside edps I think it's another two and a half million that's what I that's what I thought I saw budget for the CL are you talking about for the two classrooms yeah playround yeah that is a that's a very nice playground I'm gonna go look I'm not saying it's not two and a half I just didn't yes two and a half plus contingency yeah I don't I I mean I have I don't have my budget book in front of me right now but that

180number sticks out in my head it wouldn't be in the budget book it' be in the uh in theed book The Ed specs which is in another binder um anyway okay that that's all I have to say no but let's find the numbers because that's I'm looking through it now sorry as we all now scroll through the 80 pages of uh yeah I know Mr Bron are you able to find that number scr he's scrolling too but on real paper I think it's around where the space is and the handout on space I mean I I see costs on page 77 of playgrounds and Equipment but I assume it's also you know there's playground equipment for grades two through five included in there at the very end of the edpc it has that document with

181the cost the conceptual estimates un unfortunately as I look at it it's based on the trades so page one is all trades and it is based on square footage I had a super quick uh Email exchange with the architect you know if looking at that addition on the south that's the mass of the of the 2 prek I think it's like 2700 and ch change square feet it's not as simple as just reducing the square footage from the con the conceptual estimate they have to rerun it all there uh Wendy is correct there's the the playground number is on the is the very last P almost third to the last page in the conceptual estimate that's when you look at site development uh there is a $200,000 for uh playground equipment grades two through five

182I've yet to find the pr one page 77 had the playground but that's why I said it has grades two through five if if it's if it's an interest we can try to see how long it takes to have this up this updated to REM remove prek but the architect did say just simply can't take the square footage and and remove it because it's all based on the the trades uh throughout the whole building the other systems and things I just remember having discussion on Central Middle School right because it's cost of of a lot of other stuff y so I can either confirm or deny the number of of the two million okay thank you if I might add because you mentioned Central when you're this early in the process for a construction project

183that's why you often hear about price per square foot and so if you just take that 600 number you're looking at about $800,000 per classroom give or take and it just depends on what they calculate in but we don't actually have a design I mean you could slightly change the square footage there are you know different approaches they could have but you're still looking at a price per square foot is how they're going to back into it basically but we can try to get a better number this was a cost estimator so that was the whole idea on this project is there a way that maybe we could approve this in like two parts like do I make a a motion Sans prek but then with an additional well I think Ben was saying and

184I mean I'm sure you know anything is possible but Mr Bron was just saying that in order to to do the approve the Ed specs without the prek classrooms it's not just removing the prek classrooms he said they'd have to revise other portions of it am I am I correct you were saying I mean it's because it's obviously other things like you know HVAC and and other you envelope I I just see on page 20 the two core you know spaces for prek updating the Ed specs themselves is relatively straightforward if you were to remove the pre it's just going through the exercise of the 20 this 24-page document on the uh conceptual estimate and that's where it depends on the square footage you know they have a price of concrete how much is a

185concrete for that particular piece they have the reinforcement they go through all of the different trades that's what just makes it not as simple as just pull out the 2700 Square F feet so it's the architect it can be done we just they just I would prefer to have the professional was one reason we picked them we had we wanted the conceptual estimate sopie um you know I think the question that that we're kind of presented with as a board is if we're looking at this and saying do we want to have prek and Riverside or not based on the cost it's not just the cost of the prek in Riverside School it's then the cost of what is the alternative and I'm you know we could go down a real rabbit hole on this

186but I'll just like present a couple hypotheticals one would be okay what does it cost alternatively to build two more pre at JC in addition to the two pre that were already included in the edpc is it going to be more cost effective to have four pre at JC is it even POS possible is there even space there and then if you're busing kids from Riverside and old grwi to Julian Curtis you know do we look at what is the cost per year do we look at what's the cost over 10 years or 20 years I mean so I don't know how indepth of an analysis we all want to do and that's partly question for you Cody because you were raising it you know it's like how how are we looking at this if

187it's if it's really a purely a Cost question and we're just saying that feels like a lot of money it's like well that feels like a lot of money compared to what exactly you know and what are these alternative solutions that we are considering we have no price tag attached to any of the alternative Solutions so it's I just find that a little tricky oh Cody unless you want to respond first yeah I just I um I think that's totally right you definitely want to consider against the alternative costs I the cost to me is part of it but it's also the question of whether it's the right place to be adding capacity which I'm not uh convinced of and I think it's partially reflected in the you know parental feedback I mean like in

188my short experience here feel like anytime we consider spending money on anything an army of people show up and send us emails saying please spend money on this please spend money on this and this one doesn't feel that way and maybe they'll all be at the next meeting um but uh uh so that it's it's potentially cost but also just is that is it the optimal place um to do it and I asked uh Tony for some data on the distribution of the students in the program and I was interested in going through that but um yeah Jen then Laura I'd just like to know maybe Dr Jones and then Wendy sorry address it um how are those children in the district then if we don't have the space for them we don't have a

189place for them how what what are their options they can go to a one of the private preschools correct no it's not in a sense that so many of the depends on the preschool um so many of them don't even have certified staff so Community preschools generally have people that have an early childhood certificate but they are not certified with the state of Connecticut so we can't we can't actually use a lot of those programs to service children in the way that we would so there's no option for those families in town that would receive level of services that we could provide at the the public school the GPS preschool if their demand is there or maybe I should ask it another way what's an alternative for a family I would say that has potentially

190a um a a special education preschooler if not with our with our preschool options if obviously viously none available for spacing and other we are required by federal law um to to provide it I mean that's the basic at a basic level so what happens is what you're seeing right now this school year we have more children qualifying we were not able to put that classroom where we thought we were going to be able to in February so now the class is growing larger than we would like it to be we've gone above our six peers we have seven and eight and we'll definitely be at I would say in all 17 classrooms more than likely by the end of the year um which is more than what we would want the next kind of

191worst case scenario is you're moving somebody out of a classroom uh where there is a restroom in order on the lower level in order to make space and that has to be a program where maybe we have a special education room and we have to move somebody out where now they're in a room with another special ed teacher because you're overcrowded and just you know to give an example um I been looking at our you know prek-k enrollment for next year and when I think about just the size of um like Riverside on the list it doesn't mean they will all come but right now we have 106 children on the list that's four or five sections Glenville was was supposed to already be in the 80s but they have 96 children on their list

192at Glenville so I mean we just we have a large wave of kiddos coming through and what they call covid babies when the birth rate went back up um they're just starting and they will be in the elementaries for several years you know once they start with this they you know matriculate through so we do have to serve them by federal law so we just have to figure it out so I'm just G to jump in so my point is is we we have to we we also can't grow these class like prek classrooms to significant sizes or you know I mean once you start to really play with the ratio of students you're really impacting the achievement of the students you know with needs um in accessing their you know goals right okay well

193Laura and then Wendy I would just like to say to Cody some of us went to the budget presentation where dozens and dozens of Riverside parents came out to demand that we approve the Ed specs as they were presented yeah but I was specifically rur referring to advocating for the prek which I think Sophie's comments just reflected what I was saying but they all said please please approve them as presented with the prek I'll uh make a comment related to the budget I've noticed many people come here and say I would like to advocate for the superintendent's budget and I've never interpreted that to mean that they agree with every single line item and are well informed about it Wendy um I I don't remember who brought it up but somebody did say Parkway um

194we don't have anybody there currently right for prek so we have classrooms there why don't we just put children there well I know Dr Jones can probably address it but a lot of it was in regards to having the students on transp you know the buses and the transportation to get back there some of the youngest of our students like you know three-year-olds are buses for up to 45 minutes to get there and it just was not um the best practice for the youngest students to be on the buses that long it's not best practice for any student to be on the bus that long but you know is that oh yeah so Dr Jones is shaking her head um Sophie um okay so I have a suggestion so that we can um move forward

195on the action item my suggestion is I think this conversation about PR is a very complicated one and we have a lot of information that we should probably gather um to think about what what does this mean for our district I think there's stuff happening at the state level that's really important that we also need to understand more um the transportation issues in terms of how do you safely and appropriately transport three-year-olds and also what is it cost to do so um so my suggestion is that we would take the prek classrooms out of the Ed specs for Riverside School and otherwise approve the Ed specs as presented and that we have a longer and more robust conversation about what are we doing as a district with prek because what we're talking about is you

196know yes the two classrooms certainly would help and in many ways I would like to vote in favor for of them but I'm also trying to be practical here and I you know there seems to be Universal support for this project otherwise and certainly the community is very eager to have it move forward and I but I hope that we can then have a very robust conversation about what are we doing with pre and how are we going to handle I agree the numbers continue to go up I don't see any reason why they would start to go down and we should talk about all the options and look at what is best practice um and look at the 20-year cost of busing kids and all of that because I would like to see all

197that information as well I was going to point out that this is the discussion that we're having on prek is not just about the Ed specs it's a much deeper and more Phil philosophical discussion on prek Cody pointed it out right like is this the appropriate place to have those classrooms and those students you know and so I think the other point of it is is once we approve these Ed specs without you know with or without prek those are the Ed specs and I think if we want to remove prek uh Ben was saying that they can't just REM we can't just remove the prek there's we'd have to go through right so we'd have to get another document from them if we want to approve it without prek is that correct well I

198think you can approve the concept without PRK I don't think we need a sorry I just I don't know if I could keep doing this K had one thing I I think what Sophie said is spoton and I think that if after we do the analysis for whatever reason it says no the most cost effective or the most practical or whatever term you want to use is that it's going to be at Riverside then fine it's not like Riverside's being built tomorrow I suspect we can then go and add it back but I think it's prudent for us to now make this decision to approve these Ed specs Sans prek and uh move it forward to the finance board no absolutely you do not need costs for the Ed specs the Ed specs are are

199going to we like to have the cost as help so frame the the conversation but you don't need that it help going forward we'll update the bet so they we know what the the project cost is that's what I was trying to get is if we could approve it if we because you were saying you can't just remove the prek space to do it so that's what so you're saying we can approve it without that and then we'll just get updated yes you appr the aspects as edited and then we'll work with the architect to update the estimates um well the motion on the table is to present you know prove them as presented so uh it sounds like somebody may have a I'd like to make a motion to amend that we approve the

200EDP as presented except remove the two prek classrooms this is for the Riverside School is there a second I'm happy to second that okay so we have a second um we've obviously don't need to put it on the table to discuss because we've been discussing it so um I will uh say oh wait all in favor of the [Music] amended no yes are you in favor of it as amended without with the removal of pre uh reluctantly I I will also support it because you know I don't want to cut off our nose despite our face um so that passes uh with a 72 nil um and I know Dr McAn had also wanted to support that so if he was here it would be unanimous um so thank you so I guess we'll just

201ask for the revised version of Ed specs without the prek um thank you guys uh next up tuition in fees come on back now you skipped the music course oh I'm sorry music course first I guess I did have that written down incorrectly my bad oh um so I will put that oh I see why I was taking notes in the wrong spot so I'll just make the motion to approve the honors modern band course for inclusion in the ghs course of study guide as presented is there a second so so be raised her hand first so uh does anybody have questions or comments otherwise we can go to a vote okay so all in favor of adding the course Wendy are I don't see you Wendy yes yes yes okay yes okay so that's

202a 70 awesome fantastic thank you guys for all your hard work I'm sure this is going to provide some fantastic uh you know more art at the high school musically so I guess now we are on to so you know uh to tuition and fees so the item before you is uh an annual exercise the board does the the change in front of you is just a change in methodology uh with that page two of the the document fir we tried to align the current model with the proposed model and I just want to point out that represents a two-year leg when uh last year the the Year we're stting in fiscal year 25 has the tuition that was approved was 26812 which is based on fiscal year 23 um I didn't nobody's made a

203motion so I wanted to make a motion so we can actually have the discussion um so I will just make the motion to approve the 2025 2026 tuition rates as presented is there a second Laura okay now it's on the table continue sorry no no worry no worries so the methodology we're proposing is I think we'll true up the tuition uh to more the best data we have the state releases their net current expenditures per pupil or the nce in January 25 so the timing is perfect for a February vote uh that 25 is based off the fiscal year 24 uh information that we uh the board and the town presents or actually uploads to the state and which is then audited so you have that fiscal year 24 number is 27,600 and if this

204is approved tonight that methodology will then just uh go forward the same same logic and we're just we've close that gap between the uh cost of Education based rather than the two-year leg um does anybody have any questions Cody can I just make a comment of course Ben I think you did a really nice job coming up with a sound methodology that makes sense here oh I'll make one other comment the um I was interested in the question of if the nce included was properly burdened by if it was missing out on any expenses and I did use chat GPT and I I to because of all the the stuff that's reported in the Conneticut whatever websites it seems that it doesn't but can you confirm that that that it doesn't actually miss out I

205know that the state it doesn't include pension costs but since those are supported by a different tax stream of revenues it seems that that's okay is there anything else that it misses not to my knowledge I like to call this the the mother of all reports the town pres provides all of the in kind in kind contributions the capital expenses we report that up report our expenses and the grants it's all the local expenses and that's the best way when you look at the it's difficult to compare board ofed budgets without looking at the State numbers because that's they do the all in but you're absolutely right it's is it's the best capture Sans the state uh retire because that is the different Revenue stream this is the local Revenue stream it best represents the

206the per pupil cost Kathleen um I agree I think it was a great analysis thank you Ben um just if you could remind me um I probably should know this by now but what who came up with the 15% and the 25% of the uh for the town employees and the GPS employees it's not a part of any Union contract right I don't believe it's part of the contract and I did try to track that down because I was curious that gets the same percentage that was here uh in play When I Was Here 14 years ago fascinating um and I think someone asked the question but do you happen to know how many people sorry are using utilizing the 15% rate and the 25% rate I was hoping no one would ask me that

207question because I did not get a chance to to pull to pull that wheny did ask that right I think that was just for preschool but I could be wrong yeah the preschool I saw but I didn't I didn't pull the uh we can pull it but it's just I did not pull it for uh tonight SW it was in our enrollment report I mean I feel like I know a lot of people so I just um it would just be interesting I mean I think it I I I think it's a great um perk that we provide our school personnel and our town personnel and I would love for it to even get a little bit more recognition I suppose and that's why I think it's important for us to analyze a little bit

208of the various percentages um yeah I'm curious about that as well and um also I just wanted to know I was I'm we're doing research on the origins of all of this um I was curious about the prek um and the town of grenage and the GPS staff um you know qualifying for the discounted prek and when sort of when did that start or is there a policy that we could look to or any just to understand it better you looking for the number or just how they qualify no I see the number but just I just didn't know sort of what the origin was of that because it to me like intuitively makes sense that the K through 12 um being able to have your kids go to school where you teach and paying

209the tuition and having it be discounted that but the pre feels like just a little bit different because obviously as we just discussed not everybody in town gets to send their kids to GPS PRK so I just kind of curious sort of how did that develop and how long like how long standing is it I don't even know how long we've had pre- case so maybe it's relatively new I think what's important there is that if it's uh town of Greenwich employees or if it's School District employees they are the last tier so even if they want to be in the lottery they do not get a place and and they start on the wait list because they're the bottom that actually draw for a spot so it's only and it tends to be like

210if we have a class where people turn it down because they went to a different pre um and we start working through the weight list and schools already started a lot of families are their children are already settled so they'll choose to not come to our prek so we only have we have very very few um well as a matter of fact we have seven yeah and that's it out of all those prek um kiddos quick one more question I'm very happy with the analysis and if it's important I'm happy to approve this tonight but I was just wondering if we wanted to have a little bit more background before approving something like this I know people are probably making their plans now but the percentages are relevant and the number of people utilizing the

211program I think are important to know we can we can get that data I would say it's it's not particularly relevant for setting setting the rates I would I would would recommend you set the rates tonight so we can inform the the BET to change their revenue assumptions uh which would be helpful during their their budget consolidation uh NE next week uh but we can certainly get you the historical run going forward I think it is important so uh we can start planning everyone can start planning what the numbers are particularly prek we've already been asked like what's the tuation for next year so it would if it's possible it be great to pass tonight yeah and I was just going to say I I really appreciate this because I was looking back through past

212historical tuition rates and discussions that we' had and I you know from back in 2023 when we started talking about tying the tuition rates this was while you were still working for the town um but you know tying them to our budget at you know uh operating budget and and per people spending and increases because we weren't moving those tuition rates up very much um and we wanted to be commenor it with the actual you know cost so I wanted to say you know much like Cody and and Kath and thank you so much for taking this deep dive and and going in here to to do that which is what we've been looking towards doing for I don't know was a year and a half at least or longer um but just making sure

213that we did a full review and an overhaul of the tuition rates and fees which uh you know is was much needed I just had I I pulled some numbers on something separate for um tuition students the high school and I think it was something like 60 or 70 total it it's not that I mean out of the total population was pretty small it it definitely is a is a small number but but it's uh and and I looked back years ago that we used to provide the numbers and then that that stop but we we can we can figure out what the number is and then just give you CR I actually have that number it's in uh the enrollment report page 11 so that little booklet we had for the BET a week

214or so ago um we have uh Elementary is 55 Middle School's 29 high schools 57 so thank you so it's in the budget book we gave to the Well Done awesome Frank that in case anybody wants to go digging for it so um so I don't know if that changes your thoughts on approving these but I do agree um with been but helpful to do this before the BET starts to go through all of their budget assumptions any other comments questions thoughts Wendy I just don't I just don't understand the rationale Behind these rates I mean how close to Market rates are these these seem very low and doesn't it it does cost money to run our programs the the number that we based it off of was a calculated number so I'll just refer

215to you to fiscal year 24 in the proposed model that 27,600 that is as close as you can get to market rate on based off of actual expenditures both on the Boe side and the town hall side including uh all of the benefits uh payroll medical and uh local pension with for the non-certified staff that's an all-in number uh so that's the best number that that and this is the most accurate number Market we just let inflated it based on an average and then the requested so that you could you could debate note three Note 4 on the escalator but 2024 is the most accurate okay thank you for explaining Cody and Wendy I think the um this is all based on the idea that we should be charging what it costs approximate our best

216estimate of what it costs to educate a student I think you bring up an interesting point that the notion of the market price can be different than than the cost uh and the market price would be more based on what the what it costs to get uh an alternative you know option that's of similar quality and that probably would be a higher number but that's I feel like it would be a more that's a discussion we could have at some point I doubt it would go anywhere of should we price differently or should we price at a premium but I think this particular exercise was just taking the existing methodology and correcting it which which is relatively non-controversial that are you talking about Market rates for private elementary middle and high school or are you

217just talking about market rate for preschool Private Preschool because if you're looking at the market rate for private private school you know we know we're basing it off of what our costs are versus private school which is also you know they include endowments and they you know there's so much that's included in their and their fees and the fees for kindergarten are different than the fees for eth grade or nth grade and and so forth if you're looking at private school that's why I was just Cur I don't I was curious to see what you were referring to I guess primarily the uh the preschool it still seems kind of low but okay I mean I I understand what Ben said um but any anybody any other questions comments okay so I mean I'd like

218to vote on this tonight if that's possible so um the Motions on the table to approve these as presented um all in favor okay that is a 70 uh thank you Wendy I saw your hand up I suppose it was for voting correct yes it was okay just checking a few okay thank you so now we are on to agenda plan um Kathleen I was wondering if we could this is just sort of a getting philosophical 10 o'clock here at night and I haven't eaten but um Tony earlier you mentioned and I think it's great the change that was made at the high school in terms of um not having to do overrides when you're recommended for a particular class and I'm only privy to it because I have students at the high school so

219I think it's something we should discuss more broadly because I'm not sure the rest of the board was aware of it um so I'd like to understand a little bit of the thinking behind that because I already had a few texts um tonight questioning the thought um but it makes me especially after this robust presentation from PCG I guess I'd love to do a deeper dive on the high school in general I think there's so many cool things happening there and you and I have talked about this a little bit right so there's there's AP classes and there are so many there are honors classes and we have different um you know how do we how do we end up there's sometimes you have onlevel classes and there's multiple options from you know I don't

220we don't call it practical anymore but right to honors to AP honors and AP are weighted the same people have been debating that for years there's and I know there's so much to what I'm bringing up but I think it would be such a fun conversation to have at a board level just our high school does awesome and um we see how well the the kids go on um and so I think there's so much to just learn and for everyone to be aware of I feel like I I know a lot of it because I'm in it but I'm not sure the whole board appreciates what's happening at the high school and I think it would just be really cool to talk about at a board level as an aside when we were at

221XCOM this this past week I know Dr Jones was unable to attend but we had a very robust discussion specifically there um in regards to the waiting of midterms and finals and one of the pieces we were specifically talking about was what you were talking about is is just is waiting the different classes we were talking about the consistency in grading across you know different teachers who are teaching the same class and the pacing and all of the other things and talking about you know it wasn't necessarily even about waiting because that may not be the thing that's really going to support changing the Stress and Anxiety for students and so we had a very robust deep discussion so I think it would be very interesting to because that's what we just started talking about

222if we're doing a look at the high school it's a good opportunity to hear about all the incredible programs and we were looking we're talk just talking about the wellness center through PCG other areas and things that we have in the high school you know and I think that talking about waiting can be part of that because again this it took us in a very different path in our the discussion XCOM I wish the students were still here to to talk about it was incredible to hear their perspective on things because you know we as adults don't always know what it is that they need and sometimes they have the best ideas um so I just I I I think it would be I think it would be fun and dive especially like doing it

223in a March meeting right we actually make it a lot of the students come out get their thoughts um I mean I know going through the college process now a lot of frankly the colleges unweight a lot of their grades right because then they sort of look at the rigor of the class and they reweight it so but why not learn from those experiences right so um I just think it'd be fun if nothing else yeah I'm not sure I I have to check with the curriculum team it sounds like a really big presentation to do good job for you um and because we already have the K12 math update you know they're working on that um and they also have that other the curriculum updates that are coming so let me see where we

224can fit it in the calendar because I want to make sure we can do a good job and really outline you know what what we're going to present to you I was also going to say I think maybe it would be helpful I know Kathleen I'm happy to sit and talk to you about what what the actual ask is because I don't like I don't think we need to go through the curriculum at the high school because you know when we we get you know we're going to be getting the course catalog and that details a lot of that information that's there like how many APS we offer how many honors classes I think Kathleen's talking about something slightly different so before we go ask when we could do do you want to I'm happy

225to put together the template for it I mean I I've already starting to think about in my head what it looks like so I could just sort of take a shot at it yeah if you send that and anybody else that has ideas but if you have a template in your head send that and then I can run that past the curriculum team I just figured be better for us to know the actual ask um before we figure out if and when um or more like when um so that would be you know welcome your thoughts yep I have two questions so I it was a request that we put the field use on here and so we do have that on next month I really don't know what that is and Mike's not here

226to actually provide Direction he's the one that was asking for it so if anybody has feedback on that it we've put it on there at the request but I don't know what what I need to have ready for you I think you can put an aster next to that if we need to add it there or if we need to move it um I'll just wait for Dr marante Anthony to chime in because it as it was his request um I I think it would be best to hear hear his what his specific ask was yep last thing um Luna did finally reify and so uh Dr bud has asked if there's any way perhaps next week that we could do a very fast like executive session here's the contract come out and vote because

227we are trying to get it you know through the whole RTM process and they don't you know during the budget they have a whole month where they won't take other items so if we could find a time we promise it won't be lengthy um to take a vote which is what we did I think on the teacher contract are you looking to try to add that for third you know I know we always have a hold on Thursday nights is that what you're looking to to do thats for the I can't speak for anybody else but Thursday is the day that I could do it but you know and if it if we're just doing we're doing executive obviously we usually prefer to do it in person but you know as this is being we're

228putting this on last minute we can be we can discuss being flexible if need be is does Thursday work for you guys Wendy thought hold on just a second let me just look yeah that the 27th yeah you know yeah obvious I and I don't think it would be long okay very quick so I don't know what what do you think would work best Dr Jones do you want to do seven seven does that work for everybody six seven seven I just I want to defer to those who are coming and and from elsewhere as what half an hour I would say is is that good seven 6 or 6:30 might be good I just know we have somebody at least one person that commutes back from the city okay so I just I'm trying

229to be respectful of end times are you in the city I thought you were up here no that's why I said I wasn't you I was think well I was thinking about Mike what yeah well I just you tell me what works I mean if you want to do 6630 want to do seven I'm I'm open that's six all right six o'clock it is does that work does that conclude our agenda plan works for me okay what Jen I just I wanted to just um go back to the prek discussion and have some not not this evening but in terms of our next meeting and any agenda planning um to you know set some parameters on our discussion for this moving forward as there the need is seems to be pretty great that we need

230so you want to bring a prek discussion back at a at another meeting yes is um just because I know we worked with the Ed specs and it and I I understand understand that there is this need for prek um the question is where we put it obviously and it's it's definitely worth talking about um but I would like to not see it kind of go on and on and and kind of have an endgame because we can always keep like talking about well what about this possibility and that possibility and and and which is great but I think at a certain point I think we really need to set parameters on it and figure figure this out and well yeah we were talking about it in a philosophical manner but I also think that

231in regards to what you're saying is what Cody was saying that he's wants to figure out like where's the right place to add capacity how do we do this you guys were looking at you know and sopie was talking about the alternative costs you know to do things elsewhere so I think we should just you're right like I think again we should figure out what our specific ask is we can put that together you guys can shoot ideas to whatever we'll put together a or we'll just do a Google doc with thoughts and that way Dr Jones can sort of have a better idea of what we're asking for before we figure out what to when to bring that back I just it it's so important and I just I know we talk not the

232board specifically but I there are a lot of conversations that take place for years and years and years and if we're in a position to really you know deep dive on it let's let's do it yeah um I'm happy to volunteer to put something together and circulate it and say like this is what I think we want to look at because I agree I don't I don't want to go down a rabbit hole I think it's kind of like okay here are three different scenarios right and then let's cost them out and figure it out and do it over 25 years and so that we have some numbers to work with they're not going to be perfect but instead of having like you said we don't want to go in circles right I was always

233saying tonight was philosophical we wanted to get to actual details data and we also have kiddos waiting to come to the program so we really need to address that I was going to say the building has already told like they didn't have bats flying here tonight but they've definitely told us the building is saying it's time to go because they just turned the lights off I I know somebody here has a has a motion they want to make [Music] Laura motion to adjourn I see Jen seconding it all right all in favor all right Wendy's hand is up so that's 70 right Wendy you're voting for that yes okay thank you and good night