001I hereby call this meeting to order now the first step we take here is the pledgeable allegiance I studied all week I forgot how it goes is anyone here from the Hamilton Avenue student council who could help me with the Pledge of Allegiance please can you come up here I tried to study it all week but I need a little help what I think Kathleen I don't know how you remember that shot when you had to do it please stand I pledge allegiance which is safe one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right that was awesome you guys were tossed my stuff good job that's it all right now are we ready for a little music I think we are fantastic [Music] that's your phone's ready [Music] thank you here we
002go forward foreign shut your balls ready thank you everybody thank you so for Mr Kelly for giving us this opportunity uh we are so incredibly proud at Hamilton Avenue School of Diane Fox the principal I'm so happy to be meeting this fantastic school thank you to Mrs legrandy who is our student council um advisor and to our student council students for leading Us in the pledge and to our Suzuki students get to Dr Danny happy and to Mrs wolf this is Lisa Wolf who lead our students we are incredibly proud We are so strong on Hamilton Avenue school and I'm so happy to be part of the district and part of the school thanks for the opportunity moments like that and make all the work we put in certainly worth it okay it's always smoke
003sounds great uh if you could stick around if you have to go that's cool but if you could stick around we've got a few awards for some of the students and we have our we're bringing up to the student government uh smart so we'll begin just stay around for the up to that part that'll be way cool if you got to go that's cool too uh so let's go with the uh uh next is the recognition of the All-State musicians so we need Mr Taylor and Ms Newell let's speak good evening before I introduce this year's Allstate musicians seeing as this is my last opportunity to stand before the board part of my retirement in June I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the impact that the board has had on me my
004colleagues our students and this community among the many things I was about teaching in Greenwich is working in one of the finest spaces for music teaching and learning to be found anywhere in our state the Performing Arts Center the rehearsal Halls the technology lab and recording studio as well as various practice rooms and support spaces of course serve our talented young people every day and will for generations to come but they also stand as a symbol of The Proud tradition of Arts education in Greenwich that extends back to the middle of the last century in the formative stages of the building project I often employed a sort of rallying cry when speaking to various Town bodies when I ask if not here then where when referring to proposed new facilities that would justify our motto
005to set the standard of Excellence in public education happily you your predecessors on this board my colleagues and our administrators developed and promoted a shared Vision that continues today of striving to create and maintain the finest music education program to be found at any American High School and so for all that you have done to Forever change the lives of children by giving them access to a rich and rigorous Arts curriculum I salute you and I thank you and now it is my pleasure to introduce you to introduce to you for recognition the finest Young Musicians to be found in our department this year more than one thousand vocalists and instrumentalists from every public and private high school in Connecticut audition each year for four All-State performing ensembles and of course Jazz Ensemble and Orchestra
006this is a two-stage process with a first round of auditions in November and a second round in February the students honored here this evening have spent many years working hard to become fine musicians and although it is primarily their own passion and dedication that has led them to this impressive achievement their efforts have been well supported by their parents and families by our exceptionally strong K-12 music faculty by our school administrations and as I've said by our Board of Education all of which place a high priority on the Arts I'm pleased to present the 30 outstanding musicians who were selected to represent Greenwich High School in this year's All-State Music Festival which took place in Hartford at the end of March as I call your name please come to the front to be congratulated by
007the superintendent and board chair and remain here until everyone has been called up please hold your applause until I have called everyone up thank you we had four members of the All-State band this year [Music] plays the flute and I believe she's online and there will be a bunch of people watching from home but there are some here tonight Ethan Plummer he's a tenor saxophonist and you're here tonight Canon Stern plays oboe and Harrison wolf is a tuba player we had 23 members of the All-State Chorus this year and many of whom are here tonight in alphabetical order they are Gregory bound yeah Ethan Cooper Anna Dobbins and about edgels Michelle Ferrone Eve Paseo Beatrice Healy Maya YouTube Andy Kaplan new book Cindy Lee Julia McRae Christopher messes Joe nagai Sebastian Ojeda Luke outside Madeline
008Phillips Alexander Robles Delilah Ruiz yellow ribs Utah Takahashi and Jacobs Winston yeah three more students as part of all state we had a member of the Jazz Ensemble uh Iris Iraqi is a trumpet player and she made the Jazz Band this year I don't think she's here tonight but we can salute her nonetheless and in the orchestra we had Luka dogov of the oldest and Benny gruenbaum at cellist board time thanks everybody well that was cool um now going to the sports world with Peter gerju uh our athletic director who's gonna talk about the winter sports All-State athletes he's going to introduce them did you bring the fencers today we were going to have a fencing exhibition on the stage but they were busy good evening uh superintendent Jones sir person Kelly Board of Education
009members and everyone in attendance both here and at home I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to recognize our winter season All State High School student athletes the Connecticut High School Connecticut High School School coaches association chose the following student athletes in their respective Sports students when they call your name please stand and remain standing uh I asked the audience to hold the Applause until after everyone is recognized in cheer we have Claire um sorry Claire kilicon uh for sure also at Grace trigger Lauren civitella Lauren also was all academic in Sierra Rollins for diving we have Jaden satire in Whitaker Grover for fencing we have Aaron Bailey who also won the state championship this year in women's saber the big accomplishment uh we also have in fencing massimotozi Tim Valentin in
010track we have Caleb you know Cameron Williams has made that plan jean-luca Bianchi Harrison Goldberg and Julia Gustafson and Caitlyn Faye in skiing we have Tommy yabara in swimming we have Aiden bukharia come on Felix flagstad iowani malakalisi Keegan Clark Liam Flaherty and Noah Barrett some of the ones that were in the attendance are also tri-sport athletes so they're still competing right now in the spring Sports can we get a run of Applause for our All-State team thank you very much looking good guys congratulations thank you at this point I can introduce someone who I feel does not need any introduction in the community of Greenwich this person has made a positive impact on students for over 50 years have gone through the Greenwich Public School Systems at the high school as well as the
011swimmers he's coached and influenced he is here today to recognize the members of this year's fciac CAC and open Double L state champions the Greenwich High School boys swimming and Diving team coach sterilo chairman Kelly members of the board it's my pleasure to introduce the terrific young men of the 2023 ghs boys swimming and Diving team who made our Championship run through counties State levels and stayed open possible first up Noah Barrett come on up a personal softball is wearing the freestyle Echo leg of both the gold medal medley and 200 freestyle relays but we've been playing multiple roles in the 2024 team next senior Captain Evan Belmont fire and Sprint freestyle fire and the gold medal All-American medley relay and a member of the double La qualifying 200 free relay off to Monmouth University
012to swim next year Junior Gregory bound who rebounded from about with mono to become a surprise contributor to double L's with his butterfly performance senior Captain Aiden bucaria All-American breaststroker and I am her West Oak on the All-American medley relay and anchor of the All-America 400 freestyle relay MVP of the state double O meet he'll be swimming at Boston College next year Colin bukaria one of the few freshmen in the state to go all the way to the state open multi-talented his event was the individual medley Zachary chalnick a senior backstroker who experienced his first stayed open this year and will be off to the University of Arizona in the fall Hall we're like Flagstaff Jr and Captain elect one of the top two distance swimmers in the state who also came through with an
013outstanding Sprint performance in the 400 freestyle relay making a win by a mere 12th hundredths of a second possible Mitchell Goldstein a senior Captain middle distance and distance freestyle who made his Mark at the states this year in the 200 free off to Cornell this fall Whitaker Grover senior diver who is not only a four-time county Champion but also a four-time All-American diver and academic All-State athlete Whittaker will be diving at Yale senior Alexander kilco whose State events with the 200 and 500 freestyle this year one of the teams FCX student athletes of the year who will be attending a Georgia Tech this fall senior Charlie gosinski a water polo player who made his Mark at the State open in both the 50 and 100 freestyle will be playing water polo at Santa Clara Andrew
014Lowe a junior whose Sprint speed had him experience his first aid Championship mate this year in the 100 freestyle senior you want a megalike lib say a water polo convert and a first year competitive swimmer whose crazy speed shocked his more experienced teammates eventually earning a spot on our gold medal 200 free relay win McCarthy an up-and-coming freshman backstroker who surged from the JV Squad to become a Double L finalist in the hundred backstroke Luke mendelsohn a softball whose dramatic Improvement brought him from unknown into the top four double L's of both the individual medley and hundred breaststroke Jaden satyr a flashy senior diver who was a Double L All-State performer and who is now a three-year All-American Jack Smith a freshman distant swimmer whose State event was the 500 freestyle Jacob Winston a junior
015diver who has steadily improved up the ranks during his three years to earn All-America credentials in his State open performance this year Haddon wood a determined sophomore butterfly who made his first state open appearance this year and finally Alex you a senior who in the final weeks of his senior season converted from butterfly to distance freestyle to become a surprise State double all finalists also on FCX all academic competitor this year uh Let Me In by just thanking our wonderful diving coach Kevin Thompson an assistant swim coaches Joan Lynch and James O'Malley who held the program together while I battled covet for two weeks during the heart of the season this is our state champion swim team wow awesome did you hear some of those schools that were announced by the way wow great job
016boy Terry can really get you into Great Schools can he he is good okay now we're going to recognize our state champion chess team Mr Ramirez uh please come up here we were meant to have one of the board members fancy stuff we're not having it by the way but one of our board members fancies themselves quite a chess player Cody Kittle and uh he couldn't make it tonight he was going to take on our uh our high school Champion I think he didn't come because he didn't want to lose to our high school Champion I think that was the case so good evening thank you to the broader bed for inviting us tonight my name is Adrian Ramirez and I'm the advisor to the ghs chess club and chess team since the club's founding
017in November 2020 as a vital point of connection during the pandemic the club has gone over to 200 members today in March the team captured the state championship led by International Master Max Liu and team members Isaac de Cruz Carl Omen Victoria Liu and Elias Orman oh sorry following this five members traveled to Washington DC to compete at the National High School Championship where notable results included a fourth place finish by Max Lou in the overall Championship section and an overall strong showing from the team it truly has been an incredible time for the ghs chess program and we're very proud of what these students have achieved I would like to introduce Max Lou to give some brief comments thank you Mr Ramirez I'll be brief but just to continue a bit where he left
018off I'd like to highlight the club's new volunteer program at New Lebanon school and starting next week at Hamilton Avenue School where we offer chess enrichment using sets we brought back from the national championships to donate to the programs in these uh programs we teach the kids to think critically and consider consequences before acting which helps enhance the development of their social and relationship building skills however more importantly we enjoy sharing our love for chess with others finally we would like to extend an invitation to the Greenwich Community including all teachers and faculty as well as high school and interested middle school students as we look to host our second annual ghs Chess Championship and we hope that this event will serve as a bridge between the high school middle schools and the community at
019large after we are done with this we will also give each of the Boe members and Dr Jones chess board so they can hopefully practice at home thank you again for the support we received from Karen fostering Student Activities Mrs Laura Jean Waters and this ghs media center team and once again to the board of education for the gracious invitation for us to share with you today thank you as I call your name please come to the front to be congratulated by the superintendent in board chair and remain here until everyone has been called up right Max Lou Victoria Lou Isaac Isaac the Cruz Elias aurel and Coral woman thank you we hope to see you there thank you very much thank you okay now another highlight that we're looking forward to tonight is the
020distinguished teachers awards Laura can you say a few words considering you represent that committee I would love to uh I would like to say that it was my privilege to serve on this committee its purpose is to honor the Educators who truly give of themselves each day for the betterment of our students and our school Community as a whole it was a pleasure to read about their commitment to their craft and the joy they have for seeing their students grow and thrive and with that I want to turn the microphone over to our distinguished teacher chair Stacy Loveless thank you Laura and thank you to all the committee members that were part of this most familiar fulfilling committee work I have to say good evening I'm Stacy Loveless and I am the chair of the
021distinguished teacher Awards committee this year this is our 38th year of celebrating exceptional teaching in Greenwich selection of the six distinguished teachers is carried out by our 20-member committee actually it was 19 because one had a baby um which includes representatives from the Board of Education PTA Council Greenwich Education Association Greenwich organization of school administrators and members of the community including representatives from the Kiwanis and other community organizations parents and many previously named distinguished teachers of Greenwich it is my honor to present to you six individuals who are passionate about the work they do and who strive to inspire our students to become lifelong Learners problem solvers and innovators when I call your name if you guys would all come up and I don't know that you're sitting in an arranged in alphabetically so you
022might as well all come back up but it is my pleasure to announce the distinguished teachers for 2023 please stand yes Aaron John New Lebanon School first grade that's Far lapari Western Middle School English social studies and Tech Aaron lafaro Central Middle School music Joan O'Day Greenwich High School social worker Carol pugliano Martin New Lebanon School Alp language arts um and Maria Woodward Central Middle School mathematics these six are 2023 distinguished teachers display an extraordinary commitment to elevating their students schools and the entire District the measures each one takes remarkably exceeds expectations on behalf of the distinguished teachers award committee I congratulate all of you you are most deserving of this award the entire GPS Community is welcome to celebrate our amazing teachers at the distinguished teachers award ceremony here on Thursday May 4th at
0234 30. please join us you guys are awesome I don't want Mitch to get upset again uh if I skip over him so uh this time we're going to have the student government please come up Mitch Goldstein the student body vice president will begin last meeting I skipped over him and he stood up and good evening board members and meeting attendees my name is Mitch School CN and I am the sin body vice president I want to start by congratulating all the students on their recent achievements from music to chess to swimming and Diving it's amazing to see just how much high level work is being done at ghs I'd like to start by taking some time to update you on the exciting events and initiatives happening at ghs I'm thrilled to announce that the
024environmental action committee has been working tirelessly to promote environmental awareness and sustainability among the student body the committee has been holding daily activities in the student center to make announcements and making announcements every morning to increase excitement for the annual live like Luke Beach cleanup taking place at Todd's Point this Saturday next I'd like to mention that tomorrow is safe driving day at Greenwich High School students and staff members have been working with the Greenwich gems to create a day focused on the importance of safe driving I know that students are excited for the many events that are planned for tomorrow in addition to safe driving day students are also getting excited about the junior prom that is coming up on April 29th our students are eagerly anticipating this event and have been busy preparing
025for it from prom posing to one another to finalizing their prom outfits our juniors are looking forward to a night of fun and celebration with their classmates on a more academic note our senior class is also preparing for the next phase of their academic Journey as they prepare to end their High School careers they are getting ready to begin their senior internships and projects we are proud of our seniors for their hard work and dedication and we know that they will continue to make positive contributions to this to society in their chosen fields lastly I'd like to talk a little bit about the food services department at ghs we recently sent out a survey to collect student input on a multitude of topics firstly we have noticed that students are now spending less time waiting
026inlines and more time eating thanks to more stations opening up in the cafeteria secondly we received many responses to our new sandwich of the day program which will allow students to design and name a pre-made sandwich that will be sold in the cafeteria for one day finally after our turn from the break after we've since the return of from the break one of the sandwich stations has been replaced by a salad station which has been received extremely well by the students on behalf of the student body I want to thank you all for time and I look forward to working with you guys over the last two months of the school year I guess right at the next meeting it'll be me and someone else Isabella gega our student body president don't leave until Isabella
027finishes then you could all leave oh they're leaving um I'd like to start off to express my pride for Greenwich and Greenwich high school and thank you to all the teachers I know we just went through distinguished teachers but I am just I I get warm inside because I recognize some of those teachers and it's just it's so nice to see how they're recognized and to go through the entire GPS all 12 years and Beyond in preschool it's just it's very exciting so good good evening chairman Kelly Dr Jones members of the board and meeting attendees I'm Isabella Giga student body president at Greenwich High School following a restful April break ghs is preparing for a smooth transition past the finish line which includes our beloved AP exams as we approach this time we are
028grateful that both administrators and teachers will be accommodating to our every needs this includes transitioning into review sections and supplying review materials that were well that were very well received during midterms furthermore concerning that many students take more than one AP exam we hope for flexibility during the first two weeks of May mainly to establish a manageable workload and flexibility to make up any missed assignments finally we know students will take advantage of the school psychologists and social workers to successfully navigate this stressful time and we are grateful that the school school provides Tech needs to handle the load administrators did a fantastic job during midterm week and we hope similar support is implemented throughout AP exams as per usual our class officers are searching for ways to ignite their grade through fun activities as
029a result our senior class have been working tirelessly to host diverting senior events as our time together comes to an end as we prepare for the dreaded yet precious day of May 12th we are optimistic for the upcoming unofficial Senior Skip Day which might or might not be tomorrow our seniors through Institute tradition in which begins next week in senior prom which is June 3rd as always we have graduation to commend Murray at our time together but as Mitch and I leave our Legacy we hope that our incoming class officers and student government leaders will continue forth with the progress that has been made the new student government election season has begun the election application was due this past Tuesday prospective candidates attended a mandatory meeting Wednesday to review campaign rules and deadlines to radiate
030to reiterate from last month we have decided to continue our newly organized committee structure but are actively searching for ways to improve the efficiency and Effectiveness in addition to elected positions this spring students would be able to apply for class reps in the fall we hope that these leaders commit themselves to soon government for the betterment of our school environment and take advantages of the opportunities that these positions bring finally congratulations to the students recognized for their commitment to the community Greenwich schools announced the 2023 Community Service Awards and we are Beyond proud of their efforts to improve our community and Greenwich as a whole as always thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight and I look forward to meeting with you in a month's time excellent thank you is great um
031oh you heard that sorry uh anyone who hung around to listen to the students and see the awards uh uh you can go home and take care of your kids sorry Lil I'm cutting everybody loose before you come next is our uh uh Gea president Lil Peron please come on up and say a few words sorry Aaron good evening my name is Lillian Perrone president of the Greenwich Education Association uh like to uh a lot of outstanding and exciting evening my friend Daisy so glad to see Hamilton Ave and Suzuki students my boy Pete an athletic program Patrick Taylor and the music program uh um Andrew Ramirez and the chess uh state champions and Terry Lowe uh Terry I have to share a funny quick story you are a legend all over the state because
032I was having cement done for my pool and I was supposed to be picking out a color and when the person knew I was from Greenwich all he wanted to talk about do you know Terry Lowe I coach swimming at pomperan do you know Tyrion sorry so you are a legend my friend um and to our all our distinguished teachers we know that all our teachers are distinguished but these are the the creme de La Creme that rose up to the top uh for this uh ceremony that's going to come up in May um so I have some important information I'd like to share with all of you here and at home while my ga members are aware of my activities through my VP of communication and my board of directors on my monthly meeting
033I don't think that the maybe the the parents and the Greenwich Community know some of the things uh that I do so I like to take a quick stroll into my world tonight so um people may think that the union is uh uh on opposite sides of administration and the board far from it a lot of things I do is in collaboration at the state level to make things better for all teachers and for this Greenwich community um starting with my first day of my presidency I worked hard to build a strong collaborative relationship with our Board of Education I've worked hard and very closely with Dr Jones through covid and when she was also the HR Director any any crisis or problems that arose we worked it out together we may not have agreed
034on some things but we always tried to do what is best for our students our staff and Greenwich as a whole my executive board also works with Community communicating with Dr Jones cabinet in the same manner this past year I've been very active lobbying up at the state capitol sharing in the trenches experiences and stories and answering the legislators questions over these past three months talking with Connecticut lawmakers on the landmark legislation House Bill 6884 and that concerning the recruitment retention enhancement of teachers uh teaching profession there's lots of things packed into this bill but some of the thing positive things impacting teachers coveted pension credits Statewide minimum teacher Sally funded by the state to help districts teacher tax credit and TPA for ineffective assessments of student teachers and performance and the teacher's Bill of
035Rights this bill passed March 24th is now moving to the Appropriations Committee so I testified how the cdc's the Connecticut State Department of Ed had failed us and all the districts in the state of Connecticut they pushed out a program with known flaws glitches and added hours of extra work especially for our special education staff I attended a workshop last month with many other Fairfield County Teachers we spoke with the maker of the program we shared our stories of all the glitches and I have a whole three-page list of more stuff to stand up to the Connecticut State Department of Ed and now they're doing the same thing with the right to read Act um I also testified the legislative body uh thanking them I'm also on cea Executive Board and uh I'm up lobbying
036with them so uh I thanked the legislative body because what we were asking for is an Advisory board for the State Department of Ed because the people up there making decisions may not have been in the trenches for a long period of time so that has passed and I thank them we now have five uh 10 teachers total five that are the state um uh teacher of the year and five will be appointed teachers um this is the help them uh to help in their in the trenches to guide them in the decision-making process so these things don't happen uh to our town and to our teachers I went uh the other day and talked to my mark D'Amico and Kim Palladino we were concerned about the right to read act and what was going
037on this and we don't know whether the waiver gets approved so there's a lot of things going on um they were we were concerned about a full plate of new learning for our Pre-K and we reviewed a lot a lot of training days for June and in August and understand why um that the the direction that the town is going on the reading program they have to do it because the state is so bogged down they can't even get through all the um waivers so I like to thank Mark and Kim for taking the time and sharing all that with us and to close up my friend Joe chairman Kelly I'm a little concerned on some Budget on your budget proposals uh uh three and four fiscal oversight providing school budget that supports quality education
038programs and facilities and providing a school budget that supports quality education programs now I've never done this but I feel I must I'm calling out the BET and the finance budget committee I sat in a meeting with them I do not know who these people are I don't know well I know their names because obviously I was there um I don't know their political affiliation but what I heard and what I witnessed was deplorable their deal with numbers our children our schools it's our gift they're our future and all decisions should be based on honesty and numeric numbers not subjectivities I sat there and they knew who I was and most of the members were very polite and nice but these three individuals really need to be off that committee it was based on subjectivity
039they made Rude statements if it hurts Dr Jones then I'm voting for it let's get our own teacher and stick it to the stick it to the get her own lawyer and stick it to the teachers I could go on and on with things that I don't want to say more but I I'm going to call them out and and if anyone else in this town I'm asking the parents that is deplorable it's duplicit in nature we don't tolerate it in our schools we we are honest and they need those three individuals need to be off of that committee thank you and I hope the parents call Board of Ed I'm sorry not Board of Ed Town Hall um it's you that's not how you run a town we make budgets and every I'm not
040feeling the love they cut they cut they cut and maybe there's too much subjectivity okay now we go PTAC Francis Uno Bay hello Francis how are you tonight thank you hello this is Francis unobe mom of three GPS kids and 2022 2023 president of the Greenwich parent teacher advisory Council this week kicks off National volunteer appreciation week and with that I want to honor and recognize the Board of Education volunteers sitting on my right and on my left please enjoy a sweet treat homemade and presented not homemade by me presented by Kristen Harlock Robin letter and leader and Catherine mccursie also thank you to the town of Greenwich volunteer serving the BT the RTM the building committees and most importantly the hundreds of PTA parent volunteers sharing their time talents and treasures with our 15
041Greenwich Public Schools thank thank you all for what you do every day utility turning to Hot Topics in tonight's consent agenda I share five thoughts number one we appreciate Safety First and look forward to an explanation of Monday's bus situation kids standing on Tree Corners parents scrambling and scratching their heads at the cryptic early morning email we look forward to hearing more about that number two p-tech promised to stand with our Greenwich Public School families and advocate for full funding for our school buildings we sincerely appreciate the many families who spoke and the countless hours invested by this board of education GPS Administration and the building committees to determine the shape size and scope of the proposed structures p-tech will speak with the RTM education committee on May 1st and to the full RTM on
042May 8th as the town finalizes the 2023-2024 budget our students need more than piecemeal Band-Aids that make a bad situation worse with regards to the Central Middle School specifically p-tech is very concerned that reopening the Ed specks to nickel and dime the auditorium that we are literally using right now the cafeteria music rooms will cause the town to miss the June 30th 2023 state of Connecticut Grant deadline and in pick impact the plan June 2024th groundbreaking we are here tonight at CMS a school that was found to be unsafe the entire community of the town of Greenwich needs to get this building rebuilt speedily in a way that meets or exceeds educational and Community needs ASAP the final costs based on facts and professional expertise rather than political whim will be the best and the
043right investment for the town and for our families number three p-tech is interested to learn more about the K-8 parent-teacher conference included on the proposed 2023-2024 school calendar how exactly will Middle School conferences work and what will those conferences cover for elementary or middle school the peak meetings should be a substantive two-way information exchange between parents and teachers including academic developmental social emotional growth insights and not simply a recitation of the grades or testing data that parents can otherwise get on Aspen and Link it and please be sure to allow for early morning or evening slots for those parents who cannot manage school day meetings number four PTAC appreciates the innovative ideas brought forward to support Pre-K Ela and racial imbalance we sincerely appreciate the professional expertise thought leadership and due diligence brought to bear
044please keep up the good thinking and also create accessible materials and forums for parents stay tuned for further thoughts about the six to six idea from our p-tech Dei chairs five p-tech is interested in the school donations being reviewed today we appreciate the community investing in our schools and have received positive feedback from our schools regarding these donations so spit specifically the Hamilton Avenue PTA is in favor of using the Hamilton Avenue school property Field Court and parking facilities for the Saint Rock Church's annual feast in August the festival is an annual highlight for the local community the saint Rocks Church has been a good neighbor and a strong supporter of the ham have PTA in closing May 9th is the annual PTA Council Greenwich membership meeting where we vote in the 2023-2024 Slate if
045you or someone you know is a PTA volunteer who wants to make district-wide impact please contact p-tech VP nominating to learn more and most importantly congratulations and thank you to our distinguished teachers honor tonight thank you very much thank you Francis okay it's uh Community comment time uh the first four if you could line up over there Jackie Homan Rachel covin uh Amy Youth and Claire kilgawan please come up and make your comments those who are called please just wait over there so we can move through this quickly hey Jackie let's clean in this direction yeah it's a little bit different yeah good evening Board of Education members and Dr Jones and welcome back from spring break I'm here tonight because I'm hoping you could address parents concerns and questions over some of the books
046that have been found in the high school library I was frankly surprised not to receive any response to the email I sent you about the book about choke especially since I included a screenshot of a page in the book describing an explicit rape fantasy a page I think most reasonable people would agree is too explicit to be read in a public meeting like this let alone to be found in a public high school library here are some of the questions that parents are asking how did that book end up in the library in the first place that was over 20 years ago what was the process that was utilized when it comes to selecting library books and who makes the final decision on which books end up on the shelves I know previously you've mentioned
047that you've assembled a book committee but parents are wondering if you could be more transparent about that process for instance can you tell us how often the committee meets what books have been reviewed and how long the process takes on average to review a book what books are on the review list and how do parents add a book to the list and we'll completed evaluations be available so parents can understand the rationale for your decisions and most importantly how can concerned parents get more involved the other issue I wanted to talk about tonight is the High School Sociology class and they just had an assignment this week that included watching a video from Vox which is a very left-leaning website and this is according to the media bias chart that Greenwich schools uses to rate
048political bias and accuracy of websites so they're calling this a left-leaning website the video is entitled is meritocracy and myth and ultimately reached the conclusion that yes in fact meritocracy is a myth and then implied that this was due to systemic racism even though ironically the videographer herself clearly benefited from meritocracy I'm curious if students were provided with any alternative viewpoints from right-leaning websites on the topic of systemic racism especially since a left-leaning website with obvious political bias was chosen for this assignment or was this the only perspective that was provided and the reason that I ask this is because it gets to the heart of the issue of subtle indoctrination of students into a liberal mindset and the Sociology class in particular seems to provide a rather unbalanced view of the world espousing Progressive
049values at the expense of conservative values parents obviously expect Educators to provide balanced views in the classroom especially on politically charged topics like systemic racism and would appreciate hearing how you plan to mitigate the political bias that's already been introduced into this class thank you uh Rachel no Rachel is she online she's online Joe I just allowed her to speak she should be able to speak now oh hi there thank you so much for allowing me to speak I'm actually on my way back into Central Middle School I represent the neighbors who live up on the hill behind Central Middle School um and I just want to say that we're very much in support of building a new Central Middle School as a lifelong resident here in Greenwich this school definitely needs an upgrade but
050we are concerned by the manner for which it's happening in the process um for what I understand the renderings that have been passed around have it such that the school is going to be placed right up on the hill that impacts the most Neighbors in the neighborhood and none of us had been notified about what was going on none of us had been allowed to have any input in the designs again we support a new Central Middle School but we're concerned about a number of issues one being the fact that there's going to be Rock blasting that the fact that trees are going to be taken down there um if anyone's walked the woods there it's an area where there's a ton of Wildlife and there's a lot of concern about what's going to happen
051to that area and we are concerned about the process for which this has happened no one has notified us and also quite frankly the lack of transparency with regards to the budget we've been told that this school is going to be larger and larger and we are just concerned uh the impact that it's going to have on the neighborhood again we are instructing a Central Middle School we just asked for everyone to slow down take a minute to consider Community input and taxpayers and let's all come together to build a school that's great for the community thank you very much thank you thank you Amy hello my name is Ami Muth one of the PTAC Dei co-chairs and I'm speaking on behalf of my co-chair Alyssa Vanoss and our ptag di Community Committee we would
052first like to start off by reminding everyone that this is a big month for celebrating diversity April is diversity month National Arab American History Month World autism day as well as the celebration of world religions Ramadan Passover and Easter at the end of the month is the Gathering of the nation's Powwow and more than 500 native tribes meet and celebrate various traditions and cultures we also encourage you to Mark June 4th from one to three in your calendars for the Greenwich Pride Celebration at Town Hall it will be a great event we are so happy to see racial imbalance on tonight's agenda with some potential options limiting the long-term racial imbalance and impending imbalance in our Public Schools especially with the increasing imbalance in New Lebanon we understand that addressing this problem is a very
053difficult task especially if redistricting or altering attendance zones is off the table and look forward to hearing more Innovative and Creative Solutions such as the ones being presented tonight we strongly believe that teaching our students in a diverse educational environment better prepares them for a multicultural work environment improves confidence promotes empathy and reduces prejudice decreases bullying and improving mental health improves student achievement and fosters creativity the racial imbalance data presented in the past has included more detailed information including how many students are currently utilizing magnet programs it would be helpful to see similar data on the racial and socioeconomic makeup of students receiving special education services gen Ed and the Out programs this would be helpful in considering whether Western will continue to stay more balanced given that it is not admitting magnet students this
054year when we tried to find how other towns addressed this problem there weren't any easy answers or strategies but it seemed more successful outcomes came when the towns who actively engage their entire parent Community as well as obtaining outside consultant to help guide the process there are multiple questions in our committee as to whether the 66 Model would be for the entire District or just as a magnet idea for one school to address the racial imbalance in either scenario if GPS were to pile a six and six year-round model what would that calendar year look like and how would a GPS address the needs a non-traditional calendar would require would we provide programming during the longer vacation periods that is Affordable for our families who may be more limited by the ability to take time
055off or to finance appropriate Child Care 30 seconds um while the community seems to prefer neighborhood schools a more robust magnet program may also be beneficial including a STEM Magnet or something equally appealing to attract families to their neighborhoods we encourage the board to find ways to engage the entire Community not just the loudest and most involved but especially those that are under underrepresented underrepresented and unheard further we wonder how much GPS can realistically do on its own to shift the racial imbalance in our schools this four-time report we need greater Town support okay Claire and next it would be uh Michael lalken Marcia Lawrence and Richard Davis is on Deck good evening my name is Claire kilgallon I just want to start out there's a lot of recognition tonight but I want to recognize
056you I want to recognize all the work that you do um I I only know a small sliver attending these meetings I appreciate it being on the building committee and I just want to say thank you um since I'm up here on a different topic I will speak about Central Middle School building committee I am on it I want to let the community know that we have published our quarterly progress report to the RTM which is available as is all public information at the project website Greenwich schools.org cmsbc that's right we have a vanity URL um a second Community forum is slated for May dates to be published in the media I know that this a building process is not typical doesn't happen very often in town for schools so people um you know it's
057not natural to understand what the progression is I just want to hearing the other speaker say that this is a start of a public process there is so much process hearings forums you name it for you to be heard I don't want anybody to think they are not being heard it is not the case we are just the starting I just want to raise a concern regarding Central several people reached out to me today with regard to an email sent around by a republican bet member in which it was offered that cmsb demolished this building prior to the rebuild it went on to suggest that CMS students could be housed at Julian Curtis in the interim well JC students would be spread out to other schools throughout the district this kind of costly scheme does
058not pass the straight face test financially or educationally but are being suggested as viable Solutions GPS parents and our community as a whole should be made aware of them now and rebuke them to be clear this kind of thinking is antithetical to the best interests of our students in our community as a whole shifting to Western Fields I want to speak to the hundreds of families in the Western and Byram community and throughout town that support the boards approved thank you and state deep and EPA approved plan that took years to get to this point I know you will be submitting a second application for the project and know that we look forward to and will be there to show our support in planning and zoning um and thank you to all the teachers I
059just have to give the shout out to the west side and I want to thank all the teachers for all they do I want to thank everybody in this community including the bus drivers including the teachers and staff we all do work together you help our kids everybody in this room helps our kids volunteers we're volunteers staff drivers everybody so we're all here for our kids thank you have a good night Michael Elkin you know hi um my name is Michael lolkin uh and I had some prepared remarks but I'm going to address this to Claire uh I went to a building subcommittee design subcommittee meeting yesterday and I was the first thing we were told is that this is not a public hearing it's a median you won't get to speak we are direct
060neighbors to the school nobody told us they were going to place the new school essentially in our backyard now everybody says not in my backyard except it is in our backyard so uh I don't get it I'm actually hurt I love Greenwich it's a great Community the past I lived in Westchester um I never voted against a school budget I think that children school children are Paramount they're the future and there should be a new school building so and I'm not concerned about financial concerns especially I don't believe in overbuilding uh putting a building that is overbuilt in a community where it's it's not needed if you think about it Central Middle School is what 50 years old and now it's totally obsolete falling down why build a bigger building than you need maybe build
061the building where you can expand it in the direction where the existing school is what's being limited here is the imagination of the people who are building it I don't know if it's the Architects I don't know if it's that they're getting direction from the building design committee I don't know what it is but people are not being consulted people's concerns are not being addressed I sent the email to the committee and I got back something that said um thank you female go to our website information the notice for yesterday's subcommittee meeting was placed on the calendar on the 18th it said that the meeting was going to be held on the 17th and the meeting was actually the 19th so so much for public engagement um it doesn't exist they when they give you
062and also Claritin and mention that yesterday the design subcommittee approved citing the building on the North and it would be essentially a three-story building maybe technically but they don't think so it'll be a two and a half story building but it's in reality a three-story building to any common eye you have the first level yeah and then you have two more levels one two three even I can add that up three so I don't get it there's no engagement there's no opportunity 30 seconds the presentations the reports are just that a presentation not an engagement so if the process is terrible um the building where it is will take down trees the graphics of the buildings that you'll see on the website are really false it shows beautiful beautiful trees and yet eight months of
063the year those trees don't exist plus when you build it into that Hill you'll be taking down many of those trees it's literally in people's backyards time okay thank you for listening Marcia Lawrence online now Richard Davis is Marsha online foreign thank you chairman aboard board members like Union colleagues and the members the parents thank you my name is Richard Davis I'm the president of the transport Workers Union Local 100 is comprised of more than 42 hard-working men and women in transportation and tourism Industries we operate and maintain the bus and subway system in New York City we operate and maintain School Bus operations in New York and Connecticut and we also run a big bus double deck of Tours and across the country our members include bus drivers monitors and mechanics employed in first
064student transportation company as you know first student has the contract to provide bus service for your District for your children in your District Nadia my court has been a school bus driver for Greenwich for 23 years she's loved by the children the parents and she's very professional during her 23 years in a job Nadia has not had a single accident but earlier this month without warning Nadia had our job taken away Deputy superintendent Elizabeth Ann carbillo told a First Student in a letter that she followed Nadia's bus one afternoon last month she alleged Nadia's bus crossed the airline multiple times so just like that carry a video certified decertified Nadia that means she can no longer drive a bus in your District the bottom line is Nadia had a job takeaway based on one alleged
065observation no prior warning no ability to defend ourselves no hearing no due process nothing Nadia was treated like a second-class citizen and that is completely unacceptable to us this treatment shows a lack of respect not just for Nadia but our fellow co-workers and fellow bus drivers that too is unacceptable I want to point out that Nadia's boss had a camera that shows the road through the rare emergency exit and window but a district did not even bother to watch a video before taking this Draconian action I also want to be clear our problem is not with first student 30 seconds our problem is with the District administration and the district refused even though first student we say they would retrain audio our contract allows an arbitration process and that's what we're asking for to pick
066an arbitrator present evidence give testimony and let the arbitrator make a fair unbinding decision that's what we propose and we will even pay for the arbitrator so just to make it clear we want dispute the fact that the hip attendant has the right to be certified bus driver but that doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it fair okay that's what I make that point does it make it right or fear thank you thank you thank you next is uh Julie foreigners perennials sorry Julie I think I got it better the last time sorry good evening chairman Kelly superintendent Jones members of the cabinet in the Boe my name is Julie fariniars and I am the executive director of the Greenwich Alliance For Education the alliance is the only non-profit in Greenwich 100 focused
067on our public school students teachers families and alumni this is a great night I just knew it when I dropped off the distinguished teacher nomination packet that Gaspar lapari would be announced tonight as one of this year's honorees in our role as the r d arm for the Greenwich Public Schools we often meet exceptional Educators who are inspired to bring a new idea or concept to their classrooms and schools by writing a reaching out Grant guest bar brought virtual reality and augmented reality to Western Middle School in over three years and over the three years and with Grant funds of a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars he has taught students in special education science social studies and more to explore the universe with this technology and software for the second year Gaspar will be hosting
068a VR stem steam camp at Eastern Middle School and you can sign up for that on our website another distinguished teacher Carol pugliana Martin is an alliance reaching out Grant recipient Carol and her Grant brought a full theater program to New Lebanon school every student at new lab goes to a live theater performance and participates in various theater opportunities brought into the school she has built a truly outstanding program that can that creates camaraderie amongst the staff and pride and confidence in the students parents are beaming when watching their children perform congratulations Carol and Gaspar and to all of this year's distinguished teachers tonight I am announcing the party on June 10th I know I will be seeing all of you at Arch Street to celebrate 10 years of college dreams we are hosting a
069community-wide party fundraiser because the alliance and the Greenwich public schools in our combined supportive Avid will soon have 10 years of avid graduates 2013-2023 and the huge efforts of our Educators and the Avid students alumni and alumni deserve to be recognized Kovac Brothers Band composed of three Greenwich Public School teachers 40 seconds and there will be food trucks of fun and Casual night for all tickets will be on sale next week and event sponsors are welcome right now Sunday is Hope day and I will be at Arch Street with many Community Partners for the first annual event the alliance is pleased to have provided the funding for the students to take part in the yellow tulip project workshops students who participated in this program were taught public speaking skills to be able to share their
070personal mental Wellness stories to larger audiences come to Hope day to listen to student stories stories and to enjoy the many activities of the day thank you for the opportunity to speak Emily elizera sorry if I didn't pronounce that correctly next Nadia Miss Court will be up next good evening members of the board member Antonis my name is Emily elizer I am Nadia's daughter and I'm here to speak on my mother's behalf Nadia is a very working hard woman she is a provider and a support not only for her household for myself and my family and for all of her loved ones I Aspire One I aspire to be half as hardworking as my mother has been she has been a diligent and diligent bus driver for the past 23 years for this District alone
071my mother not too long ago just shared with me that she would like to that she has been so blessed to be working in this district and being a bus driver for so long that she would like to retire as a bus driver because of all of her hard work that she has put in for the past 23 years and shortly not too long ago early this month that was stripped away from her um we feel as though this decision was not a fair decision it was an unjust decision and we are here to ask the board to reconsider and to give a proper due process for my mother and for all bus drivers because she is it is not just her but is all the bus drivers together that service this district and so
072we are here tonight to ask for this reconsideration thank you Nadia my court okay all right uh Gus my grubby chairman Kelly board members ladies and gentlemen my name is Gus magrabi I am the chairman of the school bus para Transit division I represent about three thousand more than three thousand uh drivers monitors and mechanics in Westchester and queens Brooklyn and Greenwich and tonight I'm here to talk to you about my friend my fellow driver Nadia my court um Nadia should be actually recognized today 20 years with no accidents no incidents she should be recognized for the safety she had but unfortunately she was disqualified and on a decision of on of one person when I was called to come and see what happened with Nadia I came to the company to First Student I
073looked at the video and I couldn't see anything that she did wrong she did pass over the WR line we all do this as bus drivers if there's no incoming traffic we tend to go to the middle of the lane to avoid anything any hazards on the right she didn't do anything wrong I saw the video I went to the district I met the transportation director I asked him if he saw the video he said no I said did anybody in the district see the video he said no one person in the district says that she cannot drive and that's it everybody took her word that's disgraceful that's shameful to pay somebody after after 20 years of safe driving taking care of your children driving them back and forth and you just in one second
074because of the arrogance of one person you go and tell them you're done it's not acceptable we won't accept it the drivers won't accept it another thing we have a grievance process she could have been disciplined by the company if she did anything wrong all they had to do pick up the phone listen I saw her driving dangerously unsafe they would call her in look at the video call the union we go through a process and you wouldn't believe how many times we wouldn't fight for unsafe drivers unfortunately I was told by the transportation director let her go to another District if she is dangerous why would I send it to another District children are important so all I'm saying is this is unfair this process does not exist anywhere in this country people have
075a right to face their accusers they have a right to defend themselves and this is not happening over here this shouldn't be given to anybody too much power to give to anyone thank you very much thank you and uh last speakers Mike Pacino hello Mike okay my name is Mike moccino I am a former state representative former p-type or former PTA president former you know everything um thank you guys so much for everything you do uh right now you guys are in a real quandary with a lot of the things that are going on uh with all of the schools the facilities everything that we have in front of us today and with this unfortunate situation however one of the major things that you need to focus on right now is the Western Middle School
076field remediation uh I am telling you as a former state representative who was serving on the children's committee when I first went up to Hartford that there is nothing absolutely nothing wrong with turf fields we actually need to have more turf fields I am not advocating that every field in town of Greenwich get turfed I am advocating that Western Middle School get turfed kids need to be able to be out there performing practicing and playing their individual sports and the only way that they can do that in the Northeast to be competitive is if they have turf at their access accessibility because we have a lot of bad weather um we dropped the ball I will tell you this with the Greenwich varsity baseball field we should have turfed that these poor kids don't have
077the opportunity to get out there and play as much as everyone else one of the biggest things that we need to do and remember in all of this and I'm trying to go as quickly as I can to get everything in is that you need to make sure that the community is represented when you're making these decisions the Byram Community the West End Community is in 110 percent support of putting in AstroTurf putting in the turf fields we're also in huge support of lighting it up making sure that these kids have all of the things that they need to increase their um salubility when they get into colleges so that they can be better off as their athletic programs we also have disservice that western side of the Town by not having those fields available
078to them we've finally gotten the state of Connecticut to come forward with a wonderful plan that will open these fields up for all of these kids in order for them to get out there and practice and enjoy physical activity it's the duty of you to not be short-sighted right now and understand that this is a moment in time where we have an opportunity to create a state-of-the-art sports complex 30 seconds for the town of Greenwich I serve on Parks and Recreation and we're also short with our field inventories this will raise the field inventory I implore you to allow someone from the community to be associated with this with this program so that we can make certain that everything is done properly we don't or we're not short-sighted we're not just worried about the funding
079we want to make sure that this is the best possible um out end of the day discussion and and end of the day product that we possibly can give to the town of Greenwich I'm the first time we have this opportunity don't waste it thank you thank you Mike talking about we love Carl puliano and Aaron John all right and Mike talking about grass on 420 thank you uh Tony the uh Dr Jones the superintendents report thank you I'm going to be rather brief since it's already 8 30 tonight um and I we celebrated so much about what's happening in the schools so I think we have a really good picture of what's what's happened over the last few months I do want to just mention uh one of the requests from PTA our PTAC
080was to do a safety and security update just in general you know when we get threats when when do we go into lockdown things of that nature and there's quite a lengthy document that will go out tomorrow to the community um so I just encourage people to if you need to read it over a couple of a couple of readings because it is quite long but there's a lot of information our high school ghs students also did an interview with Chief Evie which is very informative so um that will be coming out tomorrow earlier this week we did get our special education interim and our have a Meyer flood which was fantastic so thank you to bet and RTM for approving those that's going to help us a lot as we work for our financial
081um you know preparing for the end of the year and then and last but not least I'll just mention there's only 40 days of school left and when we were talking about that today I thought oh my goodness only 40 days it's going quick so again lots of great work going on and I think you're going to enjoy some of these agenda items tonight that are so informative and reflective of the great work that is happening now in our schools thank you thank you Michael hi hi Tony we we just heard uh everybody left but I don't believe just heard a number of comments from the the driver's Union I guess could you mind uh updating the public about you know kind of what happened this week and um just just a sense of where
082where where where that situation is if I think we need to clarify on on the state on what happened or the narrative here generally we don't respond when we have comments from the public like this it's not an agenda item tonight what I will say is that we followed the contract that we have with first student it's not our Union and it's not our employee um and I we don't ever take situations like this lightly and I do just want to make sure because I know sometimes there are misunderstandings my understanding to date but again it's not our employee is that the employee is was offered actually still to drive for the company that you know if she's planning on retirement that this was not impacting that but that would need to come from first
083student um not from us but this is a normal process that we do go through um you know and and unfortunately uh it is challenging but if somebody is is noted as driving unsafe this is a situation sometimes that we we take any more questions okay let's move on to the reports of officers committees and Liaisons anybody have anything to say Christina do you want to go over have a Meijer why I guess it's a very brief um that the committee has been meeting and has in the process of hiring an engineer to do an evaluation of the current state of the building so um that process is there is someone who's on retainer to the town who's going to undertake that and then report back to the committee I think that's sufficient don't you
084think Joe absolutely thank you very much anybody else Laura so I would like to give a report on the CMS building committee uh our chair appointed uh Ed Speck working group has met twice we will be meeting again tomorrow morning to work to reconcile our space adjustments as a result of the building committees recommendations and the verified program from The Architects once our working group is able to give direction on those Ed specs and and some reconciliation to the Board of Education the board will hopefully have a special meeting and will be able to move quickly and vote on any proposed changes with those adjustments sorted the bill building committee will be able to get a conceptual design estimate in a few weeks that we can hopefully present to the BET thank you and we're
085going to go back to Central Middle School in a little bit we just want to go over everyone's uh liaison committees anybody else anything to update us on I'll oh they are Michael um so the Strategic plan committee did not meet but uh we did have a few meetings um in regards to our proposal to host a uh research at the research Ed conference um last uh next year uh board members remember that we talked I talked um last meeting in the meeting before about the possibility to hold um really an International Conference here in Greenwich and bringing um speakers from across the across the across the across the world really something from Europe and uh and across the United States here published authors to show to to speak and talk about how research means
086practice um last uh two weeks ago uh Dr Jones uh Dr carabillo and Mr Amico and I met with um the um some of the leaders of research Ed so they they're directly from them not just being a research that is a non-profit organization they um they don't make any money off of this their their job is to spread the word their mission is to spread the spread research right and spread the mission of research we I further then had a conversation with the chair of research Ed from Scotland last week they are very excited about it the um the next step is hope to bring to the board an actual proposal that hopefully might be able to discuss and vote upon at our next meeting targeting the the possible Target date would be for
087this conference to be a one-day conference on Saturday would be May the 4th which is Star Wars day it's not going so that might conflict of some otherwise it would be May the 4th of 2024 so that would be an agenda item for for next month thank you Christina a question for Mike um just in terms of this conference I know you and I had a conversation about it how would it get paid for all the elements of it I know we talked about a little bit but that was a while ago so if we're gonna be talking about a vote on that I think that would be helpful information obviously absolutely all of that would go into uh the information we bring to the board next month the um it's self-funded the album registration
088fees obviously we're not going to put any money from the School District budget into into research it's not how it would go but Dr Jones can talk a little bit about that too because I know we we put in an alliance Grant excellent anymore if not I have one or a couple uh JC uh the elevator we've uh isolated or we we're making final decisions on where we're going to put the elevator uh in JC we're having the architect drop how it's going to be put in and uh we're moving forward with uh with the building committee uh with JC we're also looking at the security entrance uh where an ADA accessible entrance in the front we have some nice designs that the architect is going over it's really cool uh waterfall project they're continuing
089to meet we understand they want to delay that a little bit because it could be some work done in front of the school uh so we're uh we're just looking at designs and and just talking about it and the final I was hoping to have a final report on the stadium uh we haven't had a report in the stadium for a while we are one thing away from being absolutely finished with the stadium where we get a certificate of occupancy we have seventy thousand dollars worth of trees we have to plant we don't have seventy thousand dollars for trees so the only thing stopping us from getting a certificate of occupancy the final one for the stadium is seventy thousand dollars worth of trees we've got to figure out either way to find the trees
090where to find a seventy thousand dollars why that's a very good question because the tree Warden who derives his power from both the state and local uh he's decided that we uh uh in the plan and the initial plan he wanted certain trees put in certain places and uh uh it came down to the end where uh we uh looking for the money for the trees and we're trying to figure out where that would come from and uh we will find out eventually how and when and once the tree Warden is the last person to sign off on our certificate of occupancy then we then have a CFO yes Christina in order to get the money for the trees I know we had requested in our budget um and the BET didn't put it in
091but maybe at some point we should be considering an interim then if we really want to get a CFO for the stadium which would seem like The Prudent inappropriate thing to do I'm just throwing it out as a not an imminent but a food for thought because if we need the trees we need the trees great minds think alike and fool seldom differ so uh uh definitely I I agree with you so Michael old Old Greenwich building committee uh two men two two sentence report the uh the Mi uh application went through was Board of selectman last week and now that's at pnz um and we are in the final stages of hiring a construction manager which should be finalized tomorrow thank you is that it for our committees Liaisons and uh uh good okay
092now it's time for discussion items we're gonna go right back to CMS so uh Laura can I pass my uh magical chair Powers over to you to run this discussion I would be most pleased thank you uh any questions for me since I just gave my report yes Miss Kowalski so we had a few speakers and I know we've received a few emails regarding public comment and people's availab access to information I think it would be helpful to um give a better understanding of the narrative regarding um public access to comment as well as information if you could shed some more information on that I think that would be helpful to setting the record straight so typically building committee meetings are not public hearings it's for us to conduct our business our design review committee
093meetings similarly similarly our way for us to conduct our business we've hosted a community Forum here on the project and during the Ed spec process we held sessions for the community to give us feedback on what they hoped to see in a new building say that again I believe that was nine sessions [Laughter] we we had a lot of um we had a lot of opportunity for feedback we appreciate feedback um we do have a school to build we are placing it on the field for multiple reasons um all safety related we have to be cognizant of ways to take cars off the road for our student safety and the safety of the community our parent and Bus Loop site plan while not final um was created with that in mind specifically citing on the
094field was also a way for us to improve sight lines for safety post Sandy Hook so those were the considerations for placing the building where it is I also believe that the Ed Speck that was approved on August 11th of 2022 also specified that the building would be built on the field behind the current building is that correct in our facility master plan which the site plan you know was just I think a suggestion it too had the new Central Middle School building on the field and that was developed Circa 2017-2018. the other question that I'd ask some clarification on is in regards to this um suggestion that we're building a three-story building and can you give some greater greater clarity as to the number of stories in which this building may be I myself
095have been very direct with the architect that I thought a two-story building would be very I'm sorry a three-story building would be very problematic um we don't want to be bad neighbors I think a two-story building in a residential Zone as far um is a far easier sell um we're hoping that now that we've given the architect that feedback that they will take it to heart we've said it in our interview that we believe a three-story building would be sub-optimal and um the building that was presented when we asked is that a three-story building they said it's a three-story building but it may be a two and a half story but anyway so um we're in the design process right now um we voted in the design Review Committee to limit the height of the
096building to one that would not require the building committee to get a special variance for the hype so we're trying to limit the height of the building and doesn't the plans once the architect has submitted the plans need to come back to the board for approval we do our board must approve the design yes Miss Hirsch so along the same vein I know that we've had this in the past with other building committees and other buildings um you know the Architects will come to you guys with presentations of some some ideas of what the building could look like uh and oftentimes those are just something that the Architects have imagined not something we've actually asked for or the building committees have asked for um so I don't know if you want to kind of clarify
097that that you know what may have been presented is not from what you're saying what we what has been asked for they're just uh Pie in the Sky designs that are shared and that's where we narrow down so is that correct the design process is a process um we have not settled on an aesthetic a design a height uh you know we're trying to limit the height of the building um considering that this is a residential Zone um and so we don't have a final design this is one of the ideas presented by the architect I think they have heard our feedback loud and clear on the building rendering that they presented thank you because I know when we first discussed Ed specs we all had said we did not want a three-story facility here
098correct so thank you for clarifying yes Mr mercantian a doctor doctor um so that we know there's a there's a lot of uh different conversations and discussion around the community and there are different numbers bandied about around capacity enrollment size and building too big and things like that and one of the things that we did since our last meetings you know was we uh put together um a PowerPoint that's in the board packet board documents tonight to try to clarify some of the board's decision the um I don't think it's appropriate we don't have to talk through at length at the PowerPoint but with your permission the um I do think it would be appropriate to spend uh three to four minutes just going going over some of the big things because I think that
099Clarity would be helpful would you like to geek out about the two team model for a little bit I really would okay is it is it possible uh for Michael to put it up on on the screen yeah I mean I suppose Anything is Possible what's up just give me one minute to call it up there we go I knew it was I knew it was it was up there somewhere while he's doing that Mike can I just jump in for a question can I ask a question yes please uh prior to uh passing over the temporary chair Powers too when I was chair I put together a uh subcommittee to have discussions on possibly altering the Edge specs based on new information we received how is that going so uh we have met twice
100I think in my report I said uh we're going to meet again uh tomorrow morning uh we've worked late into the night the last two nights um and uh I can see my colleagues looking quite tired so uh we continue to work through adjustments on spaces and hope to have a um email to you chair Kelly uh after our our meeting tomorrow thank you it'll probably come up again in the agenda planning oh sorry sorry but the wrong direction um because I was that was going to be my fault was something next steps right kind of how do you envision the process moving along I know we're going to talk about Michael's PowerPoint does it I I guess not though maybe not in this level of dude so no no just kind of your general
101game plan because I know we want to keep the project on track we've we want to allow the architect and the building committee to continue doing their work so what would be your suggest I will go to Mike's PowerPoint but what would be your suggestions so my suggestion with um approval from our chair uh would be to hold a special meeting ideally on Monday anybody available um but again with his approval if he's a minimal and then um we would be able to hopefully theoretically after a weekend of reviewing our changes be able to present those to the board on Monday get a vote and then send them to the building committee so that they can continue their work and give direction to the architect on the size of the building oh I was gonna
102say I know I know it's a long PowerPoint and then Mike spent a lot of time Dr mccanty Anthony spent a lot of time on it so I I would love to give it it's due um so I know if you want to if you're available if you're able to just do a quick and then if we're if we have a uh so I don't want to have a meeting on Monday then if you want to let the man go I don't think we need the whole background we gotta we're gonna I mean this is the the executive summary the uh but I hear you thank you thank you they um the purpose here was twofold the one was was to from a board perspective from the for the board to um all of us
103to to explain our position here as far as what we see and what we envision as the most important aspects of um of Central Middle School and clarify that for the community since there's so much debate and discussion about that um and then the second the second aspect of this this PowerPoint is really to help set this parameters in the guide for just that that subcommittee work that we're going to be talking about at the special meaning um really such that we have the priorities clear when we're looking at revising The Edge specs so the the next slide here which is something we will not go into detail lays out some of the history of the project back from the facilities master plan through the Ed specs originally being derived voted on in August um
104and then the architectural dispute that we spent a lot of time discussing last month um the next slide shows a comparison of kind of of what the different plans um where the different plans are so on the left hand side obviously you see the current Central Middle School the building we're currently in that was 110 000 square feet 31 class from six science labs this is obviously available on board docs and as public for for all to see the Ed specs as approved uh the Ed specs as approved last August by the board increased to 115 30 classroom six science labs and the full Auditorium the decisions that we're currently looking at stem largely from the revisions that the Central Middle School building committee made last month they are recommending changes to the unit specs
105uh increasing to 125 000 square feet 30 classroom six science labs um effectively having the uh and effectively halfing the size of this space at the auditorium um much has the discussion around the aspects if we can go to the next Point next slide here is around capacity and you see this again the 660 student number has been discussed at length across town so we thought our working group we thought it would make sense to take a couple minutes to Define what we mean by capacity um so in simplest terms because middle school capacity is different than an elementary school capacity and it's important for all of us in the community to realize that in simplest terms if this was an elementary school it's a very simple calculation now there are other complicated calculations and
106if you look at square footage and things like that in facilities master plan but for all purposes you know you take the number of classrooms you times that by the number of students and you get a capacity in an elementary school classroom that would make a lot of sense um it doesn't as you see on the next slide make make make that sense in the Middle School in the middle school because middle schools are not programmed by individual classrooms but are programmed by teams they uh that is a range that number is a range and it could be up to 660 students they uh but but often less likes and there are some parameters on that which we talk about um and try to explain on the next few slides so the most important aspect
107of the edge spec uh from my opinion and the reason why we have to be so careful about the Ed specs is The Preserve preservation of the team model um what is a team so the teams obviously the team in a middle school um everyone on a sixth grade um has the same team that has the same if if you're a teacher excuse me if you're a student in sixth grade you're a student of the cohort of up to 110 students and you all share the same Stu these same teachers such that the math teacher the ELA teachers most language arts social studies and science also are the same similar Cadre of students that's extraordinarily important in middle school which for reasons uh spelled out in detail on the next slide um what uh everybody
108who has taught or everybody who has if we can go to the next slide real quick the um every for anyone who has taught or certainly anyone who has raised in middle school or knows Middle School is very complicated age range and shrinking the school down shrinking down the the number of adults and making those those relationships meaningful between who the student works with is incredibly important that's why we have a t model it is why in the middle of the last century as a country we moved away from Junior highs and moved to Middle Schools middle schools are just that the difference between a junior high and middle school is very much is very much in the team model Michael I don't know if you can go to the next slide um there there
109we go thank you the middle schools are very much synonymous with uh Team structures and you'll see their links to a lot of the research in the summary of research of the Middle School movement in the 20th century that brought the team to that before that a junior high was just that it was a junior version of the high school and we realized a long time ago that moving students treating a seventh grader like an 11th grader where they go all around the building from class to class class doesn't work very well that's why we try to shrink it down um much more recently the middle level Education Association for middle level education released a summary now in its fifth edition saying teaming is the heart of a middle school philosophy the um even as
110the earliest latest 2018 Hanover research commissioned a report for Connecticut saying that teaming is of champion is the most efficient way to organize middle education um it's the gold standard for middle schools it's why it's so important the Ed specks building a building a new Central Middle School that can't support the team model would be as effective as building an 80-yard football field it is simply not worth it they um and that's why the team model is is so important um however yes and that means and that means looking and that means considering the space is a different way in different ways um so how is a team model and this is a complicated slide that people can study at their Leisure but you see here this is kind of how Middle School is a
111simple way of how a middle school is programmed um so period one you see the different classes in our model remember there were two English language art classes so the Shaded version is the Shaded version of that is where the kids are and the white square is empty that's important for reasons that we'll talk about at our special meetings why we might be able to shrink the square footage a little bit because that not every classroom is used every period in the team model the um um there are five classrooms used at any one time give or take now there are some others because classes print out in this tracking and things like that but in general there is uh there are some there are some there's a little bit of space but basically in
112order to have a team you need those classrooms uh one team of 100 which could could fit under our contractual uh limits up to 110 students um that on the next slide gives a sense of what capacity means so at that 660 uh number uh mythical enrollment number of someday sometime in the future um um this the we could fit 110 students per team they um that's a class of size of 22. they um you need those many classrooms on the team in order to physical classrooms um to have a 22 class size now there's been a lot of caulking Community about the client enrollment the state number projected number in the next eight years is 511. that would be a class size on a team of 17. they um at one point in the
113future there's a projection that was going as low as 450 students at Central Middle School that would mean class sizes under the two team per grade model which is what we have of 15 per student of 15. obviously it doesn't work out that way it is going to be uneven numbers and things like that um obviously 15 is small so that says well can we have efficiencies here or can we shrink that can we go to one team or something like that the answer is no we can't and this is the problem that we Face here with designing Central Middle School you see that on the next slide because if we go to a one team model the numbers simply get too big the um if you only have one team on sixth grade one
114team on seventh grade and one team on eighth grade um I obviously had 660 you're looking at classes of 44. but at uh 450 students that load number we're still looking at a class size of 30. which obviously is untenable um it's not acceptable to the community it's too large for class size guidelines and it's outside of teacher contractual limits um why talk about all this because I think it's important for us to realize what we when we talk about the range here the um building a school around teams and you'll see that on the next slide building the Middle School uh building the middle school around teams uh mandates a certain number of classes um the um it is essential for high performing Middle School um however the new the um that's that's the
115number one thing if you look at all the research there was no one out there who will argue that you can have a middle school without team this is not worth it um but number two here they um the new CMS the other conclusion here is we have to have a two-team structure the um if unless you're going to 330 students in the middle school with no projection is that we need to have two teams and that requires a certain number of classrooms probably at least 28. um but we're going to talk about that on Monday um the um and then the third conclusion here the two team per grade structure requires building enough classrooms for a range of students up to 660. the bottom line which is the final the final Point here on
116the next slide thank you so on the next slide suspension oh one more there we go thank you so the bottom line the uh the team model is extraordinarily efficient from an educational perspective it is inefficient on a square footage basis that's the trade-off that we as aboard how are are are believing in that we believe strongly that that trade-off is worth it we're going to need more classrooms to make the team model work and that might require some infinitiative inefficiencies and our job the job of the working group and the job that we're going to be talking about at the special meeting is where we might be able to find other places in the building outside of classrooms to maintain the team model but find other efficiencies to control the ultimate square footage of
117the building and make it make it make it cost effective thank you any other questions and I should note this this was vetted by I did make all this up with Dr Jones principal Healey and many several members aboard because Christina all gave comments on this this was this is not just a mercanti Anthony production thank you yes Karen and I was just going to say thank you this is why you're such a great educator no no it's true thank you for you know for your great presentation Ms Downey look at the first names um so back to next steps if um I guess the question is if we if we are gonna have a meeting next week I don't know if this goes back into Joe's gavel or I guess when we do agenda
118planning um we would have to if we were doing a meeting we really have to think about it tonight we can't like kind of wait and do emails just because of the notice requirements just food for thought is it back to me now please take it away thank you uh we have some great progress on Western Middle School we can briefly Dr Jones go over what we've accomplished the good news uh we were at planning and zoning this week and AECOM and Langan are moving you know full steam ahead probably what you heard in the public comment tonight is did come out of planning and zoning and that's where they were asking a lot of questions about Turf versus grass and natural grass but again that plan has been vetted with deep and EPA the
119board has voted on it it does have a Turf cap um and so I mean that's what we're moving forward with the what we've planned to do there so um we're excited where we are and uh and they've been very very responsive at the state in working with AECOM and Lincoln great any questions Western we're cooking with gasoline on Western go ahead when do we expect to get the final yay from the state so that we can break some ground well I mean we soon have to ask for interim funding but the way it well my understanding and the way that it works we really have that to be where we are now it's not like there's like a magic form they just sign they know exactly where we are in the process they were
120here for our public hearing you know it's all of those steps they know we're at planning and zoning right now um they did because they're still working uh with the team they actually came back and in a couple of areas we didn't have to go as deep and so they were resubmitting some of those plans and updating them over the last few weeks but and they hope to have uh the the questions to the answers for Planning and Zoning very quickly and I think there is a pre-meeting that will be happening just within the next like next week thank you anybody else great and our board colleagues I'm going to try to move along quickly because we have a lot on our agenda so please yell at me if I move too fast uh my
121friend Mark D'Amico come up please well it's good to talk about the uh K-5 Ela and reading waiver good evening chairman Kelly members of the board Dr Jones all those listening in and here in person my name is Mark D'Amico I'm the director of curriculum and Leadership for kindergarten through eighth grade with me tonight is our Kaela coordinator Kimberly Palladino who will give to you for the very first time her lead presentation on three important items in the world of English language arts first we'll talk about our adoption of a new Universal screener we'll give you an update on our state waiver that's been submitted and then we're going to take you through our path forward for early literacy instruction I know there have been some board members that have submitted some questions we did
122provide you with some detailed written responses but we very much look forward to a rigorous and thorough conversation on this topic at any time we can begin so you ready for questions now absolutely okay who's got a question Laura come on could you explain for some of the uh members and parents who may not be aware what is a geode I'm glad you asked it's really a fun and exciting new thing that we have in our classrooms and every time I get to see them in action I get really excited so geodes are our set of decodable texts that are in our K2 classrooms a decodable text is we call an accountable text it's a text that matches the phonics scope and sequence that the kids are learning in the classrooms so we adopted geodes
123in 2021 kind of got a little bit interrupted with covid but now they're in all of our classrooms we also have the black and white copies that are so every kid has them and can take them home but basically the students are learning for example in first grade maybe they're learning about consonant Blends which are two letters that make two sounds so b-l-s-r-s-l-t-r that kind of a thing and then the book that they're reading has those patterns in it so they're practicing in Connected text the other cool thing about geodes is it is a knowledge building portion where they have curated Tech sets about four texts for each set so in that first grade example we're talking about consonant Blends they have four books about creature features about animals and how they protect themselves so
124there's four different books so constantly they're building knowledge about the same topic they're having recurring vocabulary that keep coming up and they're practicing their fluency throughout it all so they're really exciting the books themselves are really the kids love them the teachers are like they just want to like touch them they're very nice quality books and the kids are very engaged in them Mike thank you z um I I really did appreciate the the presentation and the thoughtfulness and thanks for the questions today you know that obviously this is an incredibly important uh topic the um I would argue it's one of the most important curriculum decisions we we have um could you would you mind walking us through because um we heard from the um the the Gea presidents tonight we heard some comments
125about um the right to leave lack and things like that some concerns there um I guess I would I guess could you walk us through um some of the decisions that you made and submitted in the waiver and the some of the some of the things like geodes that that decided to put in and why why apply for the waiver instead of um like I said some of the state approved curriculum choices sure so I think it's important to kind of give context um uh in 2021 they passed the right to read act which is what was Lil was referencing earlier um after that legislation passed a kind of acted curated a set of events that came into play one was creating a reading Leadership Council under the guise of a director and with with
126the director and also the the council they were charged with looking at and reviewing up to five reading programs that would be presented to districts and districts would have to choose from one of those five at least five programs to be implemented the idea was that they wanted districts to have robust and rigorous curriculums that talked about the five pillars of reading which you saw all over that presentation so the state is looking for curriculums that have robust instruction and phonemic awareness phonics vocabulary fluency and comprehension and part of that process when the when the we finally got the list in October this past October there was also a waiver option that became available for districts that felt like the curriculum they currently have in place met the state requirements of having those five pillars
127of reading in a scientifically researched based and evidence-based programs so when we started reviewing our own curriculum we realized very quickly that we have really good strong robust components for each of those five pillars there were some areas in need of refinement which were some of the additions that you saw for the upcoming school year on the presentation But ultimately we chose the waiver because we believe in what we've been doing our teachers have invested their time and energy into what we've been doing and to to throw all that out to pick a box curriculum that would mean that we'd have to realign everything we probably couldn't use foundations anymore which we've just spent four years in rolling out our teachers are finding huge success with it our kids are decoding you've never seen before
128and to kind of take geodes out that we've been implementing for two years um it didn't make sense so once we started putting those together and putting in little refinements that you saw in the presentation it made more sense and I think um you know I know Dr Jones and and Mr D'Amico have been talking to administrators around the state and um sorry we're still not that we're we're definitely not the only ones that have done this so I'll let them speak a little bit more to that but um yeah there's also some back-end concerns on the programs that were recommended by the state and certainly Dr Jones can talk about her conversations within the superintendent's Cadre um across the state and I can talk uh a little bit about what the assistant superintendents um
129were concerned with early on which was that we we requested from the state uh many of the assistant superintendents data that supported those programs and could show us the evidence that it would improve our student outcomes more so than our current programs that evidence wasn't provided to us in fact the five programs that were originally listed uh were in very few us Connecticut school districts which was another concern for us um an initial review of the programs what we found were several several of the programs were very similar in nature and that's because of the publication companies that were supporting them and also that the approach that they were taking wasn't necessarily aligned with the mission and vision of the Greenwich Public Schools again we believe in a multi-tiered programmatic theme-based approach to early literacy
130where the five pillars of reading are clearly defined and represented but I also want to go back to what Miss Palladino said in which we want to honor the hard work and commitment of the public school teachers that have gone through years of professional development and that this town has invested a great deal of funds in in order to bring fundations into our primary classrooms and we have seen a great deal of success so when you think about the science of reading and I know that's the term that's floating out there in the community it talks about the five pillars of reading so the presentation that we created for you was to thoroughly and explicitly outline how our prescribed curriculum as it currently stands and how it will evolve as we Implement some small changes
131in the fall absolutely adhere to those five pillars and we have every bit of confidence that our waiver will be approved and we look forward to receiving that feedback from the state Dr Jones I don't know if you wanted to add anything just from the superintendent perspective on that um you know when I meet with the superintendents from Fairfield County we were all very much aligned in that you know these are some of the most Progressive school districts doing great work invested not only a ton of money but just as Marcus said the time that our teachers have put in to to utilize what we have right now we would be throwing all of that out plus it would be well over a million dollars and you actually they went and actually calculated what those
132programs would cost and it just didn't make sense and I will say um one of the questions I think Karen you asked us today um you know they thought they were going to get about 40 waivers from across the state and they ended up getting somewhere between 110 and 120 um as as people went in and started evaluating so we have many districts taking the same approach that we are Aaron well first of all I'm always skeptical of a program that comes down from the state that they're forced to use I've said it many times and um I am affirmatively against programs that are come down from the state that we have they come in little cookie cutter boxes because they don't fit our unique Dynamic here in Greenwich however one of my esteemed colleagues
133on the board who's more schooled in this than I am has we've talked a little bit about in the last week this concept of units of study and over the last 20 years or so there have been quite a few challenges to that program as and I understand that the creator of this program has now made changes in refinements and I'd like your understanding of whether or not those changes and refinements are sufficient do you think they meet our needs and do you share the concerns of my esteemed colleague that will rename nameless regarding the units of study portion of this curriculum I'm happy to talk with about that I think I think we've seen a lot in the news I think we've seen a lot in the newspapers and podcasts surrounding this I think
134the first thing that's important to note about the units of study is that it was never designed to be what the state was looking to review it was never meant to be an all-encompassing curriculum right um and that's why when you saw our slideshow um it isn't it isn't there our primary resource for phonemic awareness or for phonics or even for vocabulary it's our primary resource for comprehension it does support the other ones and the new units to your point really do take that the criticism that they've gotten in the past um the new units do have an optional phonemic awareness thing but we're going to go with a more systematic explicit part of that it does integrate font the application of the phonics within every lesson the amount of decode there's been a shift
135in um in the early grades and kn1 specifically with putting decodable text within the model text within the small group instruction and goes in their book box so kids are getting now a balanced um plethora of books they're getting some authentic text and they're getting some decodable texts in addition to the geodes that they're already using in small group daily um in addition to the knowledge I know we were talking about knowledge generation we were talking about how geodes are so great for that they've also built that within the mini lessons so there's a lot of non-fiction text being read aloud there's um there are directions and and how to curate non-fiction text sets during the nonfiction unit so that kids are building their knowledge upon that and I think the biggest criticism that we
136read about and we saw and we heard about is this idea of the three queuing system so the three queuing system for for everyone that's around today is the idea that when we're teaching our earliest readers to read like in kindergarten and in first grade when they get to a word they don't know we're supposed to provide them some strategies of how to solve that word so in the three queuing system we're using lots of different ways to get to the word so you might get to a word and you might say okay like you don't know that word okay check the picture look at the first letter what you think might go there and I think over the years of research and working with scientists and the science of reading and and knowing what
137we know about phonetic decoding um we know that that's not the best strategy it might get them reading faster in kindergarten but then it helps them to create a roadblock when they get a little bit older so what that's been completely removed from all of the units and you won't see that at all and also if you notice on this slideshow that is one of the shifts that we're making instructionally is reinforcing the concept that we're not using the three queuing system for decoding anymore it was always meant to be a strategy to understand what you're reading so when you read something and it doesn't make sense you can like check yourself and go back and reread but it kind of got a little bit confused in curricular material so that is all out and
138we're building up the resources to make that possible so we're we're adding more decodable texts into all of our K2 classrooms in addition to the GEOS to support that in addition to what's already in the units so just two follow-ups on that so one with certain changes are we comfortable that our current budget is sufficient for any of the changes that we have as opposed to a million dollars that we would need in order to fund a new program well I wanted to go back and and I wanted to answer um your question just directly about the concerns of your esteemed colleague I do not share those concerns uh we feel very confident I heard that the revised units of study um fit in our multi-layered approach to early literacy instruction uh and we are
139already in um in the planning phases of what our professional learning day will look like for teachers on June 20th to provide them not only with the materials should they choose to take them home for the summer but we are providing them with um instructional planning maps and an overview of the first unit that will certainly allow the transition to the revised units to be a much more easier process than in the past so we've we've run out I mean we've implemented a lot of new programs and one of the things that we've heard or I've heard from teachers is you know it's a lot of work to start a brand new program and so what I'm also hearing from you and I just want confirmation is that essentially this program in in its whole
140is pretty much already is implemented here except for the tweaks that we need a couple of tweaks that we need to make is that a fair statement Fair statement uh it's a similar statement that I actually made to miss perone and one of the members of her executive committee yesterday when they had an impromptu meeting with myself and Miss Palladino about the changes that were coming in the fall and look I'll be honest with you uh is it a lot for a teacher anytime we ask teachers to adopt new curriculum we have to be sensitive to the transition process and that falls on my team to make sure that the professional development is clear is consistent and that teachers have an opportunity to provide feedback so that we know what follow-up sessions need to look
141like um I feel really good about where we are and I'm going to tell you why many of the components are just refinements many of the components we've had in place the alternative was to start from ground zero and that would have been very very difficult given the limited amount of professional learning opportunities we do have with teachers before the beginning of the school year um so I think that answers your question it does it one last piece the units of study component of this was that in any of the other state those five programs the state was pushing out no then I'm good to go Madam Secretary as usual I had a ton of questions most of which I sent ahead of time and I really greatly appreciate the document that you provided with
142responses um it might be in the best interest of time if you're okay with having that posted absolutely um so I have uh so I I think two of my esteemed colleagues have already asked a bunch of the units of studies questions so I'm going to slide over to the new screener instead um before I ask that the one question I did want to ask about geodes and some of the other programs um I know we used a lot of uh edu edu speak today in this presentation and so um I know I've been asked by several parents um is there if we are going to be able to provide um a more parent-friendly version of some of these uh documents and uh some examples and demonstrations of how these are going to be used
143in the classroom um so that we can have our parents better support our students learning at home and I just want to see if you can address that quickly before I ask people's questions absolutely I've been in contact with p-tech this week and we have a tentative schedule for a a board friendly a parent friendly board presentation about just kind of the shifts and and the Five Pillars and what the state is asking about so we're currently trying to schedule that for for a May virtual meeting for that and then I think it made we talked through how it make it makes more sense to wait until the fall when these um new materials are being implemented to have an in-person parent Workshop to to see them in person and to to do some activities
144and to to really engage age with parents to see how they can support their students at home with all of the the new little exciting pieces that we have in mind so yes stay tuned parents you will see the invitation on p-tech fairly soon I think that's great I think our teachers also need to get their uh their fingers in and dirty into this program before we start to put together how the parents can help at home we want to make sure our teachers give you guys their feedback um so I wanted to slide over to deebles which is the new screening program that we're going to be moving in instead of star um uh so I I know that I'd asked if other districts were using this as a screener and that this is
145going to be uh which you addressed already so I was just wondering if you could talk about how this is uh why we picked Dibbles um and as it's replacing star if you feel it's going to be better supportive of our students and better able to catch students early with uh reading and learning differences so that we can better support them at younger grade levels to uh to better you know to better adapt and learn absolutely I am incredibly excited about our adoption of Dibbles um it is that's okay um that's why we're here to give all the information um so just a short historical of that is that we again were given a list from the state of screeners that we were allowed to choose from we this has this started back in 2014
146and that's when we adopted star they updated the list of approved screeners um this past June so we went to our due diligence we had meetings with all of the companies we got together a representative Committee of teachers and administrators to look through what we were what what our options were and by far this was the unanimous decision of the committee um I full I wholeheartedly agree it is going to give us way more information than star ever did star was primarily a screener that kind of assessed risk but didn't give teachers the actionable data to then go that step further so what Dibbles will do is it it it targets very specific um subtests within each grade that are highly predictive of either reading success or reading challenge so if we see on that
147screener very early on that they are having struggles with a certain area it not only will help the teachers group their kids it will give them activities to do with them it will provide the reading interventionists with opportunities and specific skills to work on that will help build that reading Foundation fast and early and there's not only three Benchmark Parts throughout the year that will help us to determine that on an ongoing basis but the ability to progress Monitor and see how we we start to close that Gap with intervention so it's going to be a slam dunk especially with our mtss process and how that goes into our strategic plan I think it's going to be a really good addition to our literacy program I definitely look forward to seeing the data on that
148because I know that this is a very important area for us as catching students with with learning needs and younger age especially when it comes to reading and decoding I mean personally I miss um LeapFrog uh Letter Factory don't know if anybody else used that with their kids but it was fantastic um so I you know I'm just hoping that uh we get an opportunity to see some of this in action I know it's being offered uh in English and Spanish I don't know if uh students who are primarily Spanish speakers at uh the very young grades might be given this in Spanish um so that we can actually yeah you know what that's harder for somebody who's you know Jeff Schenker and I have had some side conversations he was actually on the committee
149that chose it so we actually have a meeting set up with Dibbles to kind of explore what exactly who who would be a good person or a child to possibly use that and and in what circumstances might we use it um so absolutely that was a nice bonus that we saw with that one as well thank you and I will let the the answers at uh Mr D'Amico provided from all of you guys speak for themselves if you can post those that way you don't have to go now Chris dinner thank you um it's kind of two points um I just wanted you to talk a little bit about um did one committee make all the different decisions the waiver and the education yeah just kind of talk about who participated in terms of input
150and that was just kind of just anecdotal and then the other part was about to talk about the haggarities because you said we're using them at ham Ave already or no yes it's been in pre-k and came out if you could just talk a little bit about that and count that you know how it's gone and the decision to integrate it into everyone's okay okay so um the waiver was has been you know an administrative collaboration not only with other districts but in in our our collaborative team in looking at our curriculum as far as hegarty is concerned that was part of that waiver process like that was one of the missing pieces a quick refinement to our curriculum and that was something that you know I researched kind of brought to my literacy Specialists
151got their input as well and we've had hegarty within our Intervention Program um since maybe about December January and they've been using it in intervention and they've been sharing it and and having really nice results with that um we've also been talking to neighboring districts about who uses foundations and what they're using in nine out of ten times they're all pairing it with hegarty because it works so nicely together so hegarty is a phonemic awareness program that's designed for kids in kindergarten and first grade as you saw maybe on the slides that we're going to implement it in K2 whole class this year because it is it can be in in second grade too and we're primarily doing it in K2 this year to kind of bridge the gap for those current first graders that
152that didn't receive it and then we're getting our second our second grade teachers trained and then they'll have that as a supplemental resource resource for small group instruction in subsequent years um and so we feel firmly phonemic awareness is one of those things that is the foundational skills that if that phonics is built upon and it is a really high predictor both of kids that struggle and kids that are successful in Reading it's a really strong predictor of that so if we can Implement That explicit instruction early and build that Foundation we we're on a good start so um I'm trying to think if there was anything and then the the committee for Dibbles we had about I think six teachers and four administrators spanning L special education classroom teachers of various grades we really
153wanted to make sure that we were picking the best for for everybody and and I think their unanimous decision speaks for the one we actually chose awesome thank you is this something that we as the board have I know it's listed as a discussion item do we need to vote on it because it's not really it's program not curriculum material okay just checking thank you so much Michael that was going to be my my final question I beat you to it that's good well because uh so I guess the um um look I start talking to this point um look there's no secret I've been I've been critical of units of study um as a curriculum long before I was on the board um you know when I had op-eds in the paper in 2019
154in in 2019 and 2018. um but there I am not a literacy expert this is not my area of expertise so despite um um nods from my my colleagues on the board I respect all of your your opinions that I know you've reviewed them I know you've talked to Dr Calkins personally about about this decision the um um my my and I love the um the visual that you put together with the different pieces of the puzzle and how the different pieces of public puzzle represent the five pillars of reading and I understand I guess my only my concern here my continuing question and I do wonder if it is a board conversation something we could decide upon is um the how the units of study fits into that comprehensive comprehension piece because uh units
155of study existed for many years they um and resisted um revision for many years despite a lot of the quote signs of reading that goes back decades um now we have a new revision that came out last year depending on the curriculum material the um the material it's either 90 98 of similar to what it was before or it's very much a recognition of um the science and about face in it and the change and if it is a big change um I guess my question is then one of process because if it is a real big a big change then um I suspect it might be some matter of uh some differences opinion on the board but it might if it is a big change I it strikes me as something that at some
156point we as a board probably have to vote on because our job is to improve the curriculum um I think this is our K if this is a big part of our arcade five curriculum particularly when it speaks to comprehension uh is it a tweak and if it's a tweak then I've got other concerns or is it a big change and if it's a big change then is it something worth the vote on and I know that gets into complications about process because at the same time we've got a waiver already approve of the state and I don't know how that deals that so I think that's something that uh probably we need it probably is a lengthier conversation than probably the Sprint because my assumption is we have to get to the waiver process
157first but at some point if it is a big curriculum change um it's our job as a board I would argue that if the public to the vote on it Madam Secretary I guess it leads me to the only other question that I had which I had asked you know I know that some uh with geodes and at least Hagerty you were mentioning um that their support and their support material and I just want to make sure that uh the materials that are included have just have been vetted by our our curriculum Council or those that are looking at the dot you know the materials that we put in front of our kids what materials are you referring to you said that there were books or readings for decoding and things like that for the
158students I just want to make sure that they align with everything that we've you know approved for for our students and that's they've been looked at that's all if they're new what they have but but I think we have to take a step back and and I think it's an important conversation with the board and the superintendent I certainly like to participate in that as well as defining primary resources for instruction versus supplementary resources and to what extent either does the board wish to be involved in those decisions or believes they need to be involved in those decisions so providing us with the guard rails my team actually would be greatly appreciative of that because we certainly uh promote a very inclusive and collaborative approach to our work very transparent we work uh extremely uh
159well with the Gea and we feel it's important that you know what decisions we're making and why um I will say we're working under an incredibly compressed timeline this year due to the uncertainties in terms of the way the information rolled out from the state I was expecting the question of what happens if our waiver isn't approved and I will tell you in in watching other uh assistant superintendents report out to their board um the answer is simply this we don't know um and that's not a good place to live uh in the middle of April knowing that we have so much to plan for um professional learning uh planning professional learning requires time it requires if you're having a specialist come in to present you have to book them well in advance um you
160know this year has been a bit of a challenge only because the state has decided to insert themselves in what's otherwise usually a local board decision um so we're navigating Waters that are are a bit untraditional uh but again I but I go back to we're happy uh to set up either curriculum advisory committees or textbook review committees if we understand uh more clearly what the board recognizes as a primary resource that that is compelling you to uh endorse or proof Karen oh Tony you want to add something here yeah I do and I think you'll see the difference between uh what Kim is presenting tonight and then with our Pre-K which is absolutely brand new and that's why it's on here for a board decision we were not a district like a lot of
161districts across the country that were aversive uh to phonics you know we're in our fourth year of Foundations which is very strong so I think that's why we're saying ours really is more of a tweak we've had the units of study we've been implementing phonics those components are there we're trying to enhance what we do but this is very much about program and materials it's about we never take like book sets for instance that would be in a classroom we we couldn't even begin I don't think to bring every single thing to the board um but again when you see when you hear pre-K in a minute that is brand new we've never had uh what what you know he is going to be presenting for us Joe um so we want the board's approval
162on that Karen maybe I can Short Short Circuit the discussion a little bit and something that we can take up in our next policy meeting that's being scheduled for next week because I think this is an ongoing discussion based upon how we view policies 6161 and 6141 because both of those policies deal with respect to design of curriculum and the approval of it and if you were to look at you know the definition here and how it says it's any textbook or learning material that will serve as the function of the textbook textbook whether it's hard copy or digital must go through the district curriculum as well as approval by the board and to me what it sounds like despite the fact we're making tweaks we are we are changing the curriculum I don't it
163depends on how you define a tweak but a tweak is a change and I think we need to understand better because it would be my opinion unless I can be swayed otherwise that it would need approval and I'm not saying you wouldn't get it but I'm just saying for process and policy purposes for which this board follows we would need to approve it well if I may well I think we have to have further discussion on us so uh we'll just uh edit now I think we have to figure out where we land and then uh so we'll move on everyone okay with that okay very good thank you thank you excellent uh preschool curriculum recommendation Dr H and Mr Baines good evening chairman Kelly Dr Jones Board of Education so following that we're actually
164talking about our Pre-K curriculum um the last time that the preschool had a curriculum started in 2016 and so starting toward the end of last year we started discussing what are some of the needs out of our preschool classes and this year we implemented fundations so we moved that into the preschool to start working on bridging between what's happening in preschool and what's happening in our our kindergarten and we also implemented it was mentioned earlier Hagerty at our ham Ave Pre-K class again trying to get all those pre-reading skills but we started talking about how do we have a more comprehensive curriculum and so starting this fall um LED first by caravatolo who is now the our former preschool coordinator but now AP at Glenville and then taken over by Joe Baines led the curriculum
165process in looking at our preschool or Pre-K curriculum so I'm going to turn that over to Joe thank you very much Dr Harlingen Tyler um I did I didn't bring chess boards for everybody but I do have some materials to pass around so I'm just gonna go ahead and put it here maybe this year oh cool so while you're looking I could I'll ask what questions can I can I answer well I have a question strangely enough uh I had been spending a little time with the United Way and I understand that uh I was intrigued I never knew up until recently what they actually do in partnership with us yes and uh uh it's incredible I didn't understand it but I mean it's very important that uh uh that well certainly having a certain
166uh course like this that when we have our preschoolers and the ones that we are teaching and giving this course to uh compared to the ones that also filter into the kindergarten from the other various schools around the community it's important to sort of reach out and create some sort of standardization so that way no kid has a deficiency when they do reach kindergarten so and they explain to me that they get out and try to do that for us when we teach our kids the ones under our charge and they get out and try to uh get the other kids and try to prep them for our kindergarten so could you uh give me I heard I I was intrigued by their perspective of it I'd love to hear yours yes well we actually
167have our uh our amazing United Way consultant here um as well and we actually met with the the uh the student Readiness committee the School Readiness committee today and we spoke to one of our head our Head Start program about how they're using the creative curriculum as well and how amazing it's been in in their program and how it's really helped teachers with their individualization of of the material and you know just really been a major benefit so having that continuity within the within the within the town is amazing definitely yeah well just one more for me that I'll hand it up to you guys is there something uh and maybe you can't give the answer now but is there something that us as board members can do to help this partnership I think I
168I think it's great and just uh just if you can let me know how we can help this in some way the partnership with the United Way yeah you know uh Dave Raven has been great with the United Way um we just recently I think it's in tonight's electronic version maybe tomorrow's paper about um the furniture donation for our Pre-K at the Julian Curtis preschool class I think just the continued support in the donations they provide us um last year was my first experience with bringing in a donation for the district and that was you know like where's this check coming from um and so you know they have just been great partners and I think you know just supporting both you know both sides as we work together and um I know even talking
169about something like this in a public forum and giving the United Way the credit that they deserve for the support that they provide us thank you Karen Madam Secretary I think I need a sash that says that okay um first of all thank you for the great presentation I actually enjoyed a lot of the videos that you had there it sort of showed it gave us a really good feeling for for you know some of the programs thank you um the question I had I think I had sent in advance I was just sort of wondering um since Joe touched upon this if any of the kindergarten teachers uh at our public schools have been involved in the committee to kind of go look through this program um one of the things we always talk
170about and how important it is is to have our curriculums aligned um to help with that transition to support students moving from pre-k into our kindergarten classrooms so I don't know if you can talk a little bit about that if we've gotten feedback from those teachers we didn't have the kindergarten teachers on the curriculum but one of the things that was very important when we when we started looking for curriculum was making sure that we could continue our alignment so continue to keep things like foundations and second step that are preparing our students for kindergarten and when we were looking at many of the curriculums some of them wouldn't co-exist but this one not only coexisted with those but also uh they had experience with other districts that have used the same program so they
171were able to you know they're gonna if they when they come and train us they're going to come and train us and also talk train us on how to coexist with foundations and second step so that was a really important uh for us to continue to be aligned in this throughout the entire process that's awesome actually so uh we'd love to have our students um be able to continue onward and be prepared as prepared as possible um and so I know the other question was is one of the biggest things we really like to do is sort of also focus on parent support um and the Pre-K area it's it's so important for our parents to to be able to know what how to help their students at home get to access to the things
172that they need um I know this program is uh offered in languages both um in English and Spanish um and so I assumed does that also does it also provide um any kind of materials for parents and parent support that our teachers have that opportunity to work with parents at home Yes actually that's one of the things we're most excited about um you know it has a robust Library can am I in the microphone okay has a robust library of um e-books for students and parents um in both English and Spanish it has an app that parents can go on and see what they're doing in class and and track progress um yeah you can send home mini lessons for you know at-home investigations um you know and all the lessons come with come with
173ideas for parent engagement throughout the lesson so we think it's so important not just to involve parents and you know maybe at the end of the school year or one night but involve them in what we're doing across the entire year um and the lessons come with ideas of how you can incorporate learning at home as well if you're studying balls maybe you know an idea could be to go home and and how many balls do you have in your house you know which ones roll easily on the floor which ones don't you know and investigate why so um yeah it's it's really exciting the parent engagement options that are that are featured um thank you I know that uh this looks interesting I can't wait to delve into some of the toys you brought
174with us yeah actually as a parent I have two little girls that are around this age and it actually one of the things that really excited me about it because I could see myself you know using it at home as well so and I yeah well no further questions I must comment that you have a really cool job so yeah kids so that's all right yeah all right thanks very much yes if you want to keep looking at him that's fine let's take them by the end of the norm yeah I think you guys are done okay Dr Jones meeting agenda thank you um just a couple of notes again taking feedback from what the board has um you know provided that you wanted to see on almost on almost every meeting you'll find throughout
175this agenda plan that uh there's something focused on curriculum so that we don't just get so hung up on all of our building committees and not be talking about instruction um so you also if you note on October 5th one thing that the board now that we have a strategic plan you wanted to be able to hear the update about the site plan that's built in so that we will all know and have those in front of the board early um I know one request that the board wanted and I had explained this in the chair and vice chair meetings it's just almost impossible to eliminate one of those meetings in September if we are going to have our new capital process because that Capital you know the board retreat is a full meeting on
176its own um one of the other things that um we have done in here is that you'll see again we're where there is a retreat that is actually focused on February 8th and that is the executive session on the special education update outplacement and settlements which we've come to get used to and I think everyone finds very helpful but then I've also listed the executive session the board seemed to want this year that we did for the first time which was the legal update on any pending litigation that the town of Greenwich attorneys would come and update us on so that's new on this agenda but again you know often these reports uh you know very much mirror the same time of the year and we kind of model because it has to do with
177either when we're getting testing results or things of that nature um so I'll take questions or if there's anything that somebody saw that you're wondering why it is the way that it is Christina thank you um so Tony just a couple of quick points um I know because this is an informational um one thing I see is you have your um your presentation of your superintendent goals on September 7th but then we don't vote till October 19th I think that's too long I think you know you kind of you know you set your goals it seems to me my colleagues May disagree that we should be voting on them sooner than that um just because you know it's a chunk you're already now six weeks into the year so that would just be a suggestion
178to maybe move them query into the September business meeting um just food for thought um then two other things that just jumped out of me do we need a westerns I know we have Western soil updates I think you have it in every month because I know we were doing that this year hopefully it'll be far you know we won't need it it'll just be kind of in superintendence report committee reports um and then my last point was I think you have the February meeting for a first read of graduation and last day of school and I think there's still a lot of opportunities for snow in February and I think we usually do that in March it's when it has generally shown up on our plan and we end up moving it but you
179know but we can now we have more flexibility uh over the last couple years since the law changed where we can go ahead and set the graduation date which you know previously do you go back to three years ago we couldn't do that um so we I'm happy to move it or leave it it doesn't really matter uh the W the Western Soul uh update when we met on our planning uh I what I heard was that we made a commitment to be sure we keep the community updated so I just left it on there and then if when it's done and where Light Speed Ahead we'll just take it off Michael yeah I guess totally I guess the one one thought with the the supernannicals and I don't know if it makes sense or
180not if the to what Christina was saying if there was I had a similar thought if there was any value in actually moving it to June um because I guess historically the superintendent goals have been in September because you wait for the test results and things like that but now that we have we have um more longer term metrics we kind of already know what some of those benchmarks are so I don't know if moving the first read in June makes sense or not I don't know then and then we come back and we vote in September I guess that's kind of when you're kind of that seems like a big lag though doesn't it like you know if we see something in in June and then we don't vote till September yeah I don't
181know yeah that's why I was trying to compress it from the six weeks yeah you're adding three months yeah I don't know I don't know the right answer but right right as I've heard of Journey I know June is often in admin World June has spent a lot of Judas spent thinking about September the um so you're already my assumption is you already have some some sense of what's going on maybe not all right God you have to answer the question before I go to the next question sorry yeah no I think it really doesn't matter to me to be honest um I think from the curriculum team standpoint we have our management plan we know what we're doing right so yeah I can do it in June it just uh it's it's really probably
182more trying to get it um get it posted on time and to be ready just with graduation and everything else that would be happening but I'm happy I can do it either way definitely yeah I was just going to say Tony I mean June always seems to be like a race to the finish line and the summer is probably a time for you to actually sit back and be a little more strategic so I would think if I were you as a CEO I'd sort of want to take that time to take a step back and think about it over the summer but it's not my plan um on the social studies um in September I assume that that means and I think you've told us this before already so that's kind of you know
183we did math one year we did language arts another is this like this is this is due now the social studies um curriculum is what we're going to be looking at next is that that's not actually curriculum this is an ad on here and it's because we should be ready by September um Dr carabillo I don't know if you had anything to add to that but that has social studies that is on here for September 21st it's an AP classibly yes oh right you raise it okay fair enough sorry it's now coming back to me because I'm sorry Christina I'm serving on the committee for that textbook for sure so and we will have it ready for September so I think you know because it's um a half year class at an AP spring term
184class of high school if we vote on it or review it in September it'll be fine for January Karen Madam Secretary um uh I I had a similar uh concern well not concern but question about doing um superintendent goals and have been presented in September only because I know uh a we now have a strategic plan and they're going to pretty much align with that and uh you know all your a lot of your work is already planned for over the summer so I mean I'm certainly that maybe it's not a discussion for tonight but I would love to talk to you about that um the question I actually was going to bring up was um our October 15 uh October 5th board retreat um it sort of doesn't really seem like an actual Retreat
185because there's so much there I know our Retreats especially like this was developed as a deep dive on a subject or to do some sort of professional development and last year we changed this particular board retreat on that date uh to a special meeting um but yeah I know you're adding Capital planning here um and some other action items um but I it concerns me just because I know this is supposed to be a retreat in a way for us to have a lot of time to really take a deep dive into things like curriculum and data and and climate survey and our strategic plan and any adjustments we need to make especially since that'll be the first time we're really going to be able to to focus on that so um I'm not sure
186if there's a possibility we can move some of the things around there um and the only other thing is especially since later uh in our agenda tonight we'll be discussing board goals uh and one of the things we are supposed to do it is policy is to do board professional development and I do not see that located anywhere here so um I would love to take a look and some and make some suggestions when we come to our between now and when we see this again um as we may have some turnover in the board uh in November um planning something for after that not just onboarding of new members but it's a perfect opportunity to provide professional development for current members returning board members and any uh one new who will be joining us
187we can discuss topics at some other point but yeah I might just speak to it is it is a heavy Retreat agenda but I I wasn't really concerned about it in the sense that they all fit together so closely now that we have a strategic plan uh the curriculum plan review cycle it's really we're not going through big changes like we were three years ago um our achievement data report is really part of strategic plan um the climate survey is part of the metrics for the the plan so I see those all fitting together if our capital budget I think goes as well as it did this first time this year we did so much work through like the finance committee and that by the time we got to the board people knew what was
188there and also again because our projects are so planned out um you know in our 15-year plan and again Blaze has done a lot of work uh this year to even refine that so I don't see it being as big of a challenge um so that's I was okay with it because when you look they're all so busy um we've just got a lot that we want to cover and in the year okay good all right next board goals Mike I passed my Powers over to you so um before I open up so with the because related to the other item to the previous item but I wanted to talk about it so um what we have before us is uh for first read although it is certainly not the first time we've seen a
189draft uh version of the uh of board goals um we've been in process for a while now of creating a better governance uh process around supporting our own uh our own board goals um I would argue and I know um Karen Hurst sent a different opinion earlier today um that when thinking about the board goals and thinking about how it fits into the previous thing of the agenda we might want to think about and we talked about this before doing the board goals on a different Cadence than the academic year because the board goals unlike superintendent goals that are more academic focused the board goals are focused more around the work of the board um itself and the board reorganizes in November um with new members we will likely have some new members in November
190we will have elections of officers and things you know possible new chair and new committee assignments and things like that so my my argument would be that would be when we would create with those new roles and responsibilities and chairs and everything else that's when the bore gold conversation would take place for the following and the board goals would work on a calendar year I also think that would help Cadence wise if we're talking about strategic plan goals and superintendicals and things like that on an academic basis then it's a lot easier for us to then pivot I think that's part of the reason why we have such a challenge with board goals historically the it'll be a lot easier for us to Pivot to board goals mid-year um with the reorganization um so that's
191so I just wanted to put that out there before we talk about the actual document itself but go ahead Christina yeah no no I see your point Mike but I think the challenge is you know you have people turn over in whatever form in November and you're also in the middle of budget season so as a practical matter board goals don't really happen in that time frame and and that's only every other year so I I think I I see your point but I still think as a board you know we start school year we kind of have a plan for what we want to get accomplished during the school year and then ours can be kind of aligned to the superintendents which are more on a school year like the board goals and super
192goals are kind of on the same time frame I'm concerned that putting them on a different schedule creates a little bit too of a mishmash um and and again because you're only talking about a turnover issue every two years it's not like that's an annual event we have we we have um committee assignments every year but we as a pool but you're talking about the board as a whole not committees right the board as a whole right so committee assignments should really not matter for what the board as a whole wants to accomplish yeah true or false right I mean some some of the some of the mechanics may be different some of the goals are you know of the of of the board undoubtedly will work towards the committee I mean I hear you
193I think everyone's going to do the work is definitely following up on the committee but it just I hear I think part of I think part of my my concern a part of concern is we establish we work kind of established goals in September then we have elections in November and then you know and those that work all Fizzles out because we've got new people that don't have ownership of the thing right but at the same time if you have there's also some people who come onto the board who really don't have the knowledge and in the background to be able to make those evaluations all new board members and so it's better to have board have goals I think they need to get on board with I think we need to give the new
194members a chance to have ownership of the goals especially if they were voted but I'm sorry I defer I mean I'm just going to say having been on the board for a while we never tend to agree on these goals and you guys can't even agree on the timing so I'm going to suggest I'm sorry Joe but could we maybe move along on this agenda because I don't think we're going to agree on this tonight so I think we keep going on there's a lot of action items ahead are there any discussion uh comments on the on the on the draft dress itself should we just send them to you in writing wouldn't that be more efficient I'm perfectly fine with that okay then I'll take my powers back and Shout we shall move on
195thank you thank you everybody next we go to racial balance uh Dr Jones um thank you Mr Kelly um for racial balance first of all let me just clarify this is just an update it is not this is not considered our racial balance report generally that comes to you in the fall and there's a tremendous amount of data in it um this was just trying to give you an update and you'll even notice on the on the last page these are like updated information these are our district count from December so that's not our official number so we have to wait and get those from the state because they do change all the time um I also do want to note on the schools to watch I should have also on the 15 threshold listed
196uh Julian Curtis so I don't know if it fell off or what happened but uh they are sitting I think it's right around 18 um so just for those who are watching that may not understand the calculation they look at our district in our K-5 schools in two different ways one is K5 and the other is pre-k5 and you are compared with like schools so the buildings that have Pre-K are compared to other buildings have pre-k5 the K5 buildings are compared on a district level just to K5 um if we are impending that means there's a 15 difference from the district average because they take all those schools they tell us what the average is and it you can either be below the average which means you're not a very diverse school or you could
197be above that average which means that there's more diversity there above and beyond the average of the district so when you look at that our threshold for out of balance right now it is HEM Avenue Lebanon that they consider and to be out of balance but when you look on the bottom of that first page you still have buildings like North Street Old Greenwich Parkway that from the state perspective would say are not diverse enough and that's why you see the negative because they're under the average and then when you look at ISD it's impending at 15 percent um heading in the direction more like a Hamilton Avenue or New Lebanon with more diversity um then on the second page what you're seeing is an update based on what the uh what what the conversation
198has been like um when we've gone in front of the State Board of Education their subcommittee so they always talk to us about redistricting there are generally three districts that are challenged with this issue in the state of Connecticut uh it's usually West Hartford Fairfield and Greenwich and so we show up and we're named almost every year um in some districts it all depends on the capacity for instance like redistricting at Fairfield is very different than we are geographically in how their schools are where they're located what their Road Network looks like they're in the process right now I've been following their their meetings as well just to see what the state board has been commenting because we're writing similar such situations same number of schools and they are going through redistricting and Greenwich we've
199really tried to express strongly when we're at the State Board that we cannot put five-year-olds and seven-year-olds on a bus for an hour to go across town and I think Kathleen you were at the meeting where they pulled up their GPS and said oh it's only x amount of miles and it's like we will invite you to come drive that that's at school start time that's no it's not it's it's a it's a big it's a big track so it's looking at are there other things we can do and we had a good conversation with them in January and one of the things that was recommended was to look at intra District like an open choice and what that would mean is if you have a building that is under they don't have enough diversity
200in that building and let's say they have Plus Sizes uh because you had to add an extra teacher and there's only 17 in a class but it was too many you know too many students to not have that section then you would have some seats that you could offer only to those buildings that are considered over and the idea that the state is suggesting is that you're helping to balance your District but you're able to do that more in a manner that is choice so it's almost kind of like what you do with a magnet but you're only offering seats to certain schools which are not considered balanced um and so that's something we'll continue to watch through the summer I'm looking at all of our our numbers right now um Jen Lau does a
201lot of this work with me we've met over the last couple of weeks um because you have to really go in and say okay how many students would it take to shift to really be in Balance but it's it's really a greater issue than that because you're lifting that whole District average so even if you don't get it completely out of balance you're still helping a building say like ham Ave because you're raising the district balance so their percentage in comparison to the district Narrows which is what we want to have happen and when we went to the state uh at the beginning of the year or at the end of last year we were really really close but because it changes each year you just don't know but getting the whole District a little
202bit more balanced and doing it by choice is a really good conversation to have and it is a strategy that they do utilize in other districts um and you've probably heard darianne had a big conversation this year in their District about open Choice out of the district so there are districts like Fairfield that take students from Bridgeport in order to try to balance but that's outside the district this is just talking about our students and our families that live in Greenwich so it is a good solution that probably needs you know more thorough vetting but it's something I think we can definitely look at the other thing is just enhancing the magnet theme in general so this is something that we're looking at and Dr carabillo is helping with this she's done quite a bit
203of work just even looking at calendars across the country to have a year-round calendar we already run February school we run April school we already do that um so it's really looking at how could we have a more permanent kind of solution that would be a year-round option that could be really helpful for families but then also looking at that six to six would that attract some families that that's that's a huge bonus for families that work and six to six is again is another kind of a theme or approach that has been tried in Connecticut and it has worked when I was in Fairfield I had I can't remember how many students but there were there were families that would opt out of Fairfield to go to bridgeport's Six to Six because it was
204a beautiful building and they weren't having to pay before care and Aftercare and and it was a learning opportunity like what happens in that longer day was not just like you're outside playing I mean it was also instructional in nature so again it's really looking um at what we could do there and what would be the budgetary input um if we were going to do something like that we would want to add instructional days um because you also would want to be having that student achievement as a focus to help close that Gap and we've been looking and I believe it was 20. we were looking at about adding 20 days so you would have teachers that want to work longer but again we have a lot of teachers that teach February school they teach
205April school and they do summer school so I think it's a matter of getting the right people who would really buy into that and you have breaks at different times in the year which those people who have ever been on a year-round calendar has its own benefits too some people really really like it um so those are some things that we're exploring these are conversations again that came up when Joe and I were at the state and they have already let us know we will be invited again in the fall yes very fun Karen um thank you for this update um I had some similar questions to at least I know one speaker who'd address some of the questions about the enhancing the magnet theme in 6x6 um I know you guys aren't ready to
206answer those is it best for us to just send those questions over to you um so yeah I'll do that so that you have time to to do some more research thank you and karaoke did you have a question sort of comment um I understand since we have to go back in the fall with a plan as to what we're going forward I think we need to include time within our calendar that we aren't going back to regarding when we're going to see the proposed plan being able to provide comment and approve it before it it goes before it's presented to the state because if we have a plan and the state likes it but we as a board don't I think that presents a problem so the thinking there so we're when we're going
207back in the fall my understanding is we'll probably be back in front of the subcommittee again um and it really this is a concept this magnet thing we've actually talked about this probably for well over a year um but it takes time and it we couldn't do this by September of 23. we would need to plan this in the budget it would need to be part of our no no no I'm sorry I think you misunderstood I mean if we're presenting a plan of what we think we what we want to talk about to the committee if we're presenting a plan saying this is what we're proposing we will look at or do what I'm saying is I think it needs to I would like it to come to the board in advance so that
208we have an opportunity to comment on it yeah they haven't asked for that for an update um on the actual plan they've asked first to come basically with ideas again uh so in the fall let's say we were able to do you actually we actually could do the intro District in the fall depending on how enrollment Falls uh and that would be something we would want to discuss as a board before the school year started for sure and I wouldn't know that until probably halfway through the summer that's all I'm saying what I'm saying is whatever proposals or discussion items that we're presenting to the state I'm asking that they come to the before the board so that we have an opportunity to review them and give commentary on what we think about them I'll
209make sure that gets on the agenda okay everybody else good all right moving on