January 19, 2023 Board of Education Business Meeting

001good evening everyone I would like to call this meeting to order first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance now Kathleen I don't know how you did this when you were chair because I'm very nervous and I don't think I can do it without any help so can I call for the Scouts BSA to come join us to help us with the pledge allegiance come on up Scouts they're going to bring the flags up to the stage then they're going to come on down and they're going to say a couple of words about the schools they attend and their name and then we're going to all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance stage then you hear me with this oh I don't have to hold it oh very good okay please introduce yourself and

002say what school you go to and how much you like that school um Christopher I go to Eastern and I like the social aspect of it nice Luigi I go to Eastern and I really like the teachers I'm Charlotte and I like the way that the teachers teach fantastic okay now we're all standing now it's time for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much everyone thank you Scouts most of us here who go to Greenwich public schools are Americans and we all we want to be proud of that and we also understand there are some people in our schools that are not and

003either aspire to or they're temporarily visiting us so let's make sure we put our best foot forward in every meeting going forward to make sure we show everyone in the Greenwich public school system that this country is the best country in the world and they should all be very we should all be very proud of it so thank you uh may I begin by making a motion to approve the consent agenda Karen do I have a second I'll second it oh good all in favor please put your hand up all opposed nobody we're good now we'll begin with honoring our various a variety of athletes uh and other Awards this evening Music Awards and our uh National Merit Scholarship program honorees we'll begin uh by having Pete Georgine Jew Mr G did I mess it

004up really bad thank you everyone messes up nobody calls him by his real name or actually does they just Mr G at all you all so come on up please your Egypt perfect good evening superintendent Jones chairperson Kelly Board of Education members and everyone in attendance today both physically and virtually thank you all for taking the time to recognize our fall athlete all-state high school student athletes the Connecticut High School School coaches association shows the following student athletes in their respective Sports students when I call your name please stand and remain standing until the whole group is recognized we ask the audience to hold Applause till the end in Cross Country Junior Kate Friedman cross country Junior Christian Christian so that was like cross country freshman Mateo chisara field hockey senior Clara miffelman golf singer

005Charles Troy golf Junior Owen Duda golf sophomore Alexander and Celine football Jake Kiernan senior or he's a singer excuse me football senior Jack Wilson football Junior Griffin galletta football junior John and Cigna and football sophomore Peter Von bulakis for swimming and Diving senior Daisy Decker Junior Annabelle guarnera Junior Sydney G and freshman Melissa Geiger folks these are your All-State representatives from Greenwich high schools give them a round of applause please oh my bad I skipped over soccer soccer senior Lucas Lucas stand up I also would like to thank you guys for recognizing that one not two but three All-State teams in the fall at Greenwich High School uh first up to speak about their team and recognize them will be Jeff Santilli who is the coach of the golf team at Greenwich High School Jeffrey

006congratulations and Jeff and I are friends for years we worked together some years ago years ago Jeff has the uh the coolest job you play golf after school no no no no no it's a mythology but please uh during your speech oh before your speech can you please make reference to your handicap what it is please and then then your speech thank you I don't know they'll give me a hard time about that one so we'll just call it about a four or so right Charles is that good enough all right well good evening and thank you for having us here tonight um I first want to start off because sometimes it goes overlooked to say thank you to my assistant coach Matt Fletcher for all he does for this program without him we cannot

007have uh the boys that we have here this evening and get to the point that we usually get to so thank you Matt he didn't want to come up here tonight but thank you I'll be quick I just wanted to go over a few things for the season obviously we had a great year and that's why we're here this evening um but to be the coach of these guys it was just such a special year it was an easy year to coach they were just a great group I honestly think we kept Rinaldi's in Villanueva in business this year with some of the food trips but we discussed at the beginning of the year what it was going to take to get to this point and to uh hold a few titles at the end

008of the year um and with that they really put the extra time in over the weekend to get to the point where um they got to and obviously all these athletes here as Michael Jordan says Champions are made when no one is watching and that's clear of what the soccer football team and the golf team um with that these three six guys joined only two other teams on record and program history that I have found going back to on when Rick osvik was a coach 1981 and 2012 to go undefeated and win both the state and FCI Championship so they joined some Elite company and very proud of them for that it was also very impressive as you see all in this room how many all uh State athletes we had and having three out

009of the six on the golf team was just what an accomplishment that was but I'd like to introduce the players this year uh starting down on the very end you think you messed up Pete's name though AJ enslin got that right for the first time all season all right stand up what do you got Jack Hopper emigram Owen Duda Dylan Harris Charles shroy and Coach Matt Fletcher again thank you for having this evening and we'll continue to make the school and Community proud thank you thank you Jeff next up is our boys soccer team coached by Kurt Putnam Kurt is a friend of mine for 20 years we've known each other for a very long time been on boards together absolutely and he taught me a lot about soccer I spent many years coaching soccer

010uh Youth Soccer both in uh travel and uh and Saturday morning soccer and I got a lot of lessons from him we worked together on a bunch of different things I served on the board and he was an advisor to the board and uh he is just a tremendous guy for him having coached at the high school with him for him to get the state championship if you guys please understood how important it is to him and I know he's so proud he's the proudest guy in the world right now so I'm so proud of him thanks Joe thank you all right so I actually had no idea I was supposed to give a speech so I'm going to actually do my best thanks for prepping me Pete it's much appreciated uh so um first

011of all I I just like Jeff uh it's really important to to acknowledge the people behind the scenes that uh make so many other things happen so to us as coaches can just basically get on with taking care of our players and trying to coach the players as best as we can for it to be as competitive as we can so really for the the parents of uh certainly the captains on the the varsity team and the booster club um you know it goes without saying you you are an integral part for us to be as successful as what we have been this year uh my assistant coach Ray Marshall who is uh up there somewhere in Costa Rica probably having a crafty one at the bar um right Ray and I have known each

012other a long time I actually coached his son who was one of my captains many many years ago and uh you know we've formed an incredible work in relationship so uh you know for both of us to be able to share the moments that we had this year it was an incredible experience with respects to the players um I'll be honest it was somewhat unexpected um we kind of labored through the FCX season a little bit um we played some great games we played some kind of okay games and we played some poor games uh we got into the the FC ACT Tournament uh which we have done since I've coached 22 straight years and high hopes of probably getting to the final but we come up against a very good Trumbull team and we

013didn't help ourselves with mistakes that we made and pretty much kind of get gift wrap them the the trip to the final with our first half display and and really it came down to well what now for the postseason and and I got the group of players together and I said well you know we're making far too many mistakes so unless we fix something with the system that we're playing and we're moving some players around uh we're not going to go very far in the tournament and when the draw came out we we looked at it and it was not going to be an easy part halfway to a final we played the previous year's state champions in the first round and beat them on penalties we played Trumbull again for the third time that

014season and beat them on penalties we went to Newington who were the ninth seed and actually was the only game we won in regulation surprise surprise um we then played Fairfield Prep who was seated higher than us in the semi-finals and beat them on penalties and then played Hall who had we had actually played in the season and gave us a really good beating and beat them on penalties so um I've kind of done something that the English national team seems to struggle with which is actually winning penalty shootouts and um you know I was on the end of my phone during the World Cup ready in case Gareth Southgate needed to call me up just in case they wanted some advice uh but I have to hand it to these players honestly the sacrifice

015that they made going into the into postseason with a system that we had very little time to to practice there's just their their sheer desire their work rate their effort it was absolutely tireless and you know I couldn't have been prouder at the end when we we even when we got into overtime and then eventually into penalties and obviously beat a very very good team um proudest moment of my coaching career without a doubt um with a group of players who did something that that no other team for 61 years has done in Greenwich which is to win a state championship so you know I'm looking forward to the boys are all coming back next year um and as Leo just said it's time to get a third star so hopefully it won't take as

016long to do it and we can try and get back and do it again next year so I want to call up um The Players well actually the players can stand up the captains Lucas uh Gordy um Jamie and Nick who's not actually here and then um Jack who unfortunately got injured during the season um but we got a nice medal for him at the end of it uh Max some ass Leon uh Charlie um mink Nick uh Nate Mika Matt Thomas Nick Andre um who else we got oh and Javier um just quickly just just quickly about Javier have you didn't play much actually of the postseason however you're talking nerves of Steel and just ice cold he came up and took a penalty and the penalty shoots out we've not actually stepping on

017the field in the entirety of that game and when I looked at him and I said you've won a penalty have you he said give me the ball coach I go up number one and that just says a lot about this squad of players that no matter how much they played they were willing to sacrifice themselves and then do the business when it needed it mostly and I just wanted to shout out to Javier fact because that was absolutely huge what you did in that final so congratulations boys in the third state championship team is the football team at readings High School coached by Anthony Morello I also had the pleasure about working a little bit with Coach Morello back when I was working at the school and there are some things that we certainly

018like to point out if you consider uh the covet season which we had to shut down uh coach Morello had a uh had actually won a state championship as the head coach fastest or the fastest of any other coach in the history of Greenwich high school so he did that in three years we'll take it if my voice goes out uh I lost it earlier in the week and I'm yet to find it uh but I'm gonna do my best to be as robotic as I can when I announce your name so it doesn't you don't get a squeak in the middle of it uh thank you for having us uh Tony Jones uh obviously Joe we go way back uh so thankful for all you guys do for us uh as a Greenwich Public

019Schools Alum I spent 13 years in Greenwich Public Schools was actually taken back when I uh walked in here today I was in here I think it was the year 2000 I saw Fiddler on the Roof uh Central Middle School was performing so I look back here and we are a long way from anatevka uh looks like New York City perhaps but um it is uh you know it's so great for me to to be able to be a part of this for these guys I know what it feels like uh to to put everything you got into a state championship and and come up short as a player I was over for as a player uh when it got to the playoffs so uh for me personally to be able to to help you

020guys achieve your goals was really uh something that I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life I'd like to congratulate the other teams and coaches that are here tonight um quick story about Coach Putnam early in the season there were we were having a lot of bus shortages uh happening all over the state and we had a freshman a freshman game uh Road game we have a big freshman team it requires two buses and only one bus showed up soccer also had an away game that day and uh the game was penciled in a little later on in the evening and Coach Platinum gave up the bus said hey coach just take take the bus and go so the freshman team was able to arrive on time and play that game and uh

021you know a big thanks to to coach for doing that but I think you know being here with all these teams and here with the town of Greenwich it just goes to show that you know all the teams working together can can do great things and it's not always the case and it wasn't the case uh when I was growing up and uh to have all of our coaches uh working in tandem for the betterment of student athletes is something that I know I'm really proud uh proud of and proud to come to work with so um you know I just wanted to point that out and thank you again for doing that next time it's going the other way you know we'll have a bus to give to your guys um and I want

022to thank Pete for organizing this I know in 2018 when when we want to say Championship we didn't get to do you know this event I think it's a really special opportunity so um as far as this season goes yeah it was it was a a really magical run you know football doesn't doesn't stop and this team the the seniors now and the Juniors they lost the game in early December of 2021 and their season started the next day they were working tirelessly January all the way through the summer with lifts four days a week running programs getting up at 6 a.m for morning workouts uh all throughout the summer and dedicating their time and their efforts towards a common goal and they were able to achieve that goal so um kudos to you guys

023every day you know that we're we're farther away I get a little more excited about today so it's something that isn't like dissipating it's it's continuing to grow so uh hopefully you guys got um you know hopefully you feel the same way and hopefully uh you've got more out of this uh program than just winning the state championship because if things didn't go our way I sure hope that uh you know you'd still remember all the life lessons and goals that you learned and the friendships and bonds that you made and those are ones that you'll carry on for a lifetime some of my closest friends now were were guys that I played with in high school so um congrats we have a lot of uh student athletes in our program approximately 190 uh through

024all four levels I'm not going to read 190 names tonight but I do want to recognize um the guys that are here and you know other contributors to our uh our state championship run so I'd like to start kind of in reverse order and uh open with our captains so if I can have number eight Matthew trimmer number nine Dominic DeLuca number 14 Jack Wilson and number 76 Jake Kiernan all stand up for me and if we can just do uh an Applause for these captains uh on their own I think that would be awesome you guys were exceptional the the in the entirety of the journey um tremendous leaders tremendous vocal leaders on and off the field and uh tremendous athletes too a lot of multi-sport players and a lot of guys are going

025to be continuing their athletic career uh at the next level so look forward to seeing how that how that pans out over the next few months and uh can't wait to watch you guys on Saturdays in the upcoming years um if you guys can stay standing I'm now going to announce the rest of the seniors oh Wyatt Abernathy and we can hold our Applause till till the end of this uh Wyatt Abernathy Peyton eslonson Ryan Bailey Sergo Boone Christian Brutus Andre Castellanos Michael sip alone Sean Cowie lay art dudushi Charlie Dixon Kane Earhart true fala Teddy Flynn Danny Fox Wyatt Gibson Carl grafasi George Hernandez Vincent and Singa Zachary Jacob Jack konigsberg Michael Mohler miles Moore Robert pastor Anthony petticano Sandra thomasino Neo vigilante Aryan wadwa James walgum Teddy Walsh senior class 2023. for our

026Juniors brand in August Kyle Allen Nick aravides David baumgarten Brandon Boone Dylan brem adorian Campbell Antonio chicarelli Chris Crooks Alex fluke Tyler Fong Griffin galletta Gavin generelli Nicholas granito Rocco Grillo Mark Holtz John and Singa Kiko Ivanov Logan joswiak Ian Kim Daniel manuli Ryan mcbriarty yes here McGee Johnny McHugh Vincent monic Brian Nova Brian Park Sebastian Parra Tommy pasamano Eric perrino ignaci piatrica Kane Rama James Rowena Jaden Scott John ciparas David Varela George Von velakis George weekster and Tommy Ibarra our junior class and sophomores looks like we have Chase inesta we have Max Merrick we have Michael D'Angelo we have Peter Von velakis what's up uh did I miss anybody that's present okay great uh lastly I'd like to thank my coaches um I'm fortunate to have uh probably one of the largest but really

027the most talented uh group of guys that I've ever had a chance to work with some I was fortunate enough to inherit and others um I was able to to meet and bring in and and uh this one was really shared by all of us and uh you know these these coaches some of them live you know up in Bethel uh up in Shelton and Derby and they commute here six days a week in the fall uh to be with these guys to make practice to drive home in rush hour it's 6 p.m 7 p.m at night day after day after day year after year after year um the commitment to them is unquestioned and I wouldn't be standing here uh without them so just want to give a thank you to all of them

028as well thanks everybody have a great night he's a question okay we have some more recognitions which if once we have the recognitions I I know we have midterms so I'd encourage the kids though the boys and girls go home and study for their midterms uh so but I'd like you to stay for the recognitions uh now we have the nafme student songwriting competition Q uh ice cream in the driveway please was it again [Music] it's Friedman come on up yeah hi I'm Barbara Friedman I've been teaching electronic music and uh composition and studio production at Greenwich High School since 2001. started by Anne maduno in 1969 ghs has the longest continually running music technology program in the United States and possibly the world today music technology classes such as the ghs program are offered

029in tens of thousands of schools all over the world along with my teaching partner Jason polis we provide musical arts Humanities and stem learning and credits to over 300 students every year making the ghs program one of the largest in the country this year almost 30 percent of the seniors in our program will go on to college to major in music composition audio engineering music production or music industry and business we hope that they and others will be joining the long list of ghs graduates who are vibrant professionals and well-known artists in the 50 billion dollar a year music and Communications industry hi there uh the ghs music department is very proud to congratulate you to Takahashi selected as the winner in the categories in the category grades 9 through 12 for the 2022 National

030Association for music education nafme student songwriters competition Utah was a sophomore and a student in ghs electronic music songwriting and recording class last year with myself and Barbara Friedman as teachers we co-teach the class when he submitted the piece to the composition to the competition Utah is also in the ghs honors chamber singers Patrick Taylor is the director and he is an exceptional ghs student academically as well Utah is a multi-instrumentalist and a vocalist he plays more instruments than I even know now uh he played and sang literally everything on the piece you just heard titled Ice Cream in the driveway that won the national competition we are so very very proud of all of Utah's accomplishments thank you Take a Bow take a bow from your crowd but by the way I just want

031to give a shout out to Utah's parents and to all the parents who are here supporting your young people because without you the parents they really wouldn't have the accomplishments that they have so thank you very much so much thank you for having me I've had my kids you know that I did yes thank you that's awesome uh now we have the n a m m Foundation 2022 best community for music education award Tony that's you right yeah Jones sorry thank you um we're here tonight we've invited Laura Newell um to join us I think we all know that we have one of the best music education programs in the country but it's wonderful when an outside organization agrees with us and I'm so glad you went right before Laura because I know Laura you

032work so hard with all of your staff and our music program is phenomenal and you can't have a great program without a great leader and I know somebody mentioned covid earlier tonight your program had so many impacts here in kova just like our athletic programs and you powered through it and you kept your music program strong without losing a beat and we were just talking I was talking to some people that are going to be in the Eastern musical before tonight and we're just we haven't missed a beat and it's it's very much because of you and also the wonderful people that you hire and that you leave so if you'd like to come forward and say a few words we'd love to have you thank you Dr Jones I'm just going to be very

033brief but I want to make sure that you understand while it's brief um when I talk about my teachers they are the best in this world they are some of the most accomplished musicians I've ever worked with I've moved around from all over the state and I have to tell you that your kids are in great hands they are compassionate with your children they focus on like honing their class their craft every single day not only do they teach music they already they also support your child socially and emotionally I see so many kids in the in the band room in the chorus rooms in the orchestra rooms just being together and building a music Community that's what our role is not only to just make them outstanding musicians but to build a community of

034music so when they go off into the world they're singing to their children they're listening to the radio they're listening to Utah's composition and I couldn't say anything more they are just amazing amazing individuals and when you see a music teacher that you've come across kids in all the years here please say thank you they put in countless hours before school after school to make sure we want our program is the best thank you hold on hold on okay now we have the National Merit Scholarship program honorees Miss iannello there you are well good evening everyone um thank you to the board of education and Dr Jones for allowing us this opportunity to honor some outstanding students this evening the National Merit Scholarship Corporation honors students every year based on their college board scores on

035the PSATs and just to give you an idea of how exceptional our students are the first group of students that I'm going to recognize tonight are commended students sorry and these students are part of only the top three or four percent nationally so that's an incredible accomplishment for them academically our National Merit semi-finalists are part of a one percent of the top in our country so we have a lot to be proud of and thankful for to all the work that you've done so the first group of students they would like to recognize tonight are commended students there are 36 of them so as I read your name I'll ask you to please remain standing I need to look this up this happens to tall people sorry um sorry so I'll ask you to stand

036up and remain standing until the end and if you could please hold your applause I will say I've been here for four months so I apologize ahead of time if I do not pronounce your name correctly so please forgive me Isabel benison Nicholas Carlson Stephanie Chang Nina Clark Douglas Dozier Madeline Duff Michelle Ferrone ccg Dylan Germaine Mateo Giuliani El control Nicholas dugliani alcantrell apologize Gaston Gomez ambika Grover Whittaker Grover Audrey Hall Avery imp Kai Jane Nathan Joy Noah Kim Adam klasharski Victoria Lou Marcus latufo Archer Manning Charles Miranda Nicole Orlowski Alexander Palmer Maxwell raid yukirasaki Alan shu Christine song Jane stephine Benjamin Sullivan and Suzuki Kevin tolepelts Alexander II and Kira young so again these students scored in the top three to four percent nationally so congratulations so the next group of students are Juniors

037this year we have 11 of these students I should I mean you heard me call quite a few names our commended students we had 36 of them and I'm just blown away by the level of achievement that our students regularly show in this school and we we have a lot to be proud of our national semi-finalists for this year for the 2023 um our first national semi-finalist is Sophie Citron yay Teresa Dobbins Alexander Akiko sorry I didn't say that right um Arjun Kishore Lauren coaster Luke mazzullo Joaquina Monday Laura nugen Emil Schoenberg Harry Waters and Brandon you congratulations you guys are all amazing appreciate it well that's great we got some smart kids that's way cool and one more thing that I'd like you students to hang around for is to hear from your student

038government so if I can have uh I believe we start with the student body vice president Mitch Goldstein Mitch you are a friend of my daughter she says you're a wonderful kid we have not had a chance to really spend time together yet but I'm looking forward to doing that going forward uh at the school how you doing that's good yeah congratulations oh thank you and I uh I like the new uh setup we have here we get to talk to everyone at the meeting uh so good morning good evening board members and meeting attendees my name is Mitch Goldson and I'm the student body vice president this year I want to start by congratulating all the students on their achievement this year it's great to see just how much high-level work is being done

039both in the classrooms and on the fields at ghs this week students are completing their midterm exams and as we look into the second semester the office of student activities and a few student clubs are hosting a Super Bowl food drive leading up to the Super Bowl all students have been asked to bring in cans of soup which will then be donated to neighbor neighbor on the note of food the diversity and Food Services subcommittee have planned a chef's table event with the executive chef Nico to celebrate the Chinese New Year later this month uh students will be able to get food that connects to the Chinese New Year this is the first event in a series of events that aims spring a more diverse food options to Greenwich high school and with this Edition

040the student government aims to provide a more diverse and representative menu earlier this month the student government sent out a survey during an advice race to try to determine the most pressing issues at ghs we were thrilled to receive over 1200 responses the most common concern was related to midterm waiting which has been addressed thanks to Mr mayo and the administrative team at ghs the next priority was student-centered trash followed by proper utilization of flex time and finally GPA waiting and college preparation going forward the student government will continue to work with Administration and with students to address these issues I would also like to thank I would also like to address the new courses that are being introduced tonight I want to say that ghs students support the addition of the guitar 2 class

041and especially the addition of an honors linear algebra class to ghs more high-level classes will allow students to expand their knowledge in a larger variety of academic areas on behalf of the student body I want to thank you all for your time and I look forward to continuing to work with the board as we begin the year I now pass the microphone over to student body president Isabella geiga okay Isabella you stood out a lot when we knew you in middle school and your personality is overwhelming and great so please welcome everyone I know this is probably the first time for a lot of you so I'm Isabella gega your student body president at Greenwich High School good evening chairman Kelly Dr Jones members of the board and meeting attendees Happy New Year I want

042to start off by congratulating Mr Kelly on his newly elected position as chair and to miss Stowe we want to thank you for your leadership on the board and your support of the students we are so excited to work with the both of you and the rest of the board for the rest of 2023. as XCOM and student government Representatives head into 2023 we have been reflecting on the past year and set goals for the second semester each class at ghs aims to host one class specific event and our subcommittees will Foster a collaborative environment to brainstorm ideas to continue improving our school we hope to see a large turnout at student events and are optimistic for this next half of the school year Beyond this Greenwich high school students are currently deep into the

043midterm process although this is time of stress teachers have been accommodated students needs and we are incredibly appreciative administrators have been highly receptive to student feedback implementing mandatory review packets a review packet a review day prior to exams and a choice between five percent and 10 waiting for midterms for full year courses during these times of stress though we as students turn to miss Foster our director of Student Activities to put a smile on everyone's face as she coordinates a semester two spirit week kickoff starting February 6th filled with fun events exciting dress-up themes and entertaining activities during lunch we are excited for the end of midterms and a fresh start of semester two I am hopeful for the future to the come for the future to come and I look forward to speaking with

044you all once again next one thank you bro okay next up well I'm sorry I'm going to release the students to go home and study for their midterms because that's the uh priority Lil I know you love an audience but we're gonna have to break up this audience a little bit because it is midterm season well while everybody's heading out I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that tonight we honored students who were in The disciplines of Athletics academics and the Arts which is pretty impressive I just have to say so congratulations to all of our uh our students awesome thank you everyone for coming foreign thank you and now introducing Lil Peron come on upload whoa where's my sunglasses yeah wait the music right Mark and I could have danced them again this is

045my speech that's all right well good evening everyone I'm Lillian Perrone the proud president of the Greenwich Education Association um first of all I love this setup I can look at the people and nothing personal not at you guys and Joe you're right with an Arm's Reach of me um you just felt the energy as I was standing back there uh watching all the awards it's really a blessing and just so exciting um just to have the acknowledgment of so many students and and uh coaches and and staff and and teachers and uh just the gratefulness of thanking and have the opportunities um to share their their wins you know it's so exciting standing on the field and hearing a national anthem I've been there at the college level and it's really exciting uh for

046the coaches and players here today um and thank you to uh Laura who also praised the teachers not only students and administration but our teachers do work hard so many so many teachers are out there there during covid there for the students um they all work hard um thank you to my friend Pete Giorgio who's here he's doing a great job great guy and to my PE and health staff that's also here um Kathy and Chris and uh all the other Administration that I see hi Daisy um see there um uh so thank you all um it's great that we have a commonality we that we can celebrate success within this great District so thank you to our parents too um now to the not more exciting stuff but you know all right so um

047uh thank you uh Mark oh there you go right there thank you Mark and the coordinators um for the stem presentation I thought was quite interesting um uh K8 K8 stem Report with the data points um some things that I'm interested in uh hoping to learn from future presentations and conversations I'm looking at the K-8 math SBA Mastery grades 38 student achievement trends for years 2019 through 22. uh very interested in hearing the story behind the numbers sometimes you can't just look at numbers you have to look at there's always a hidden story behind some of the data um one thing I thought was very interesting uh especially grades three and four because when I look at the gray highlighted area which is 2019 pre-covered results which might be a benchmark and two indicator of

048where students are then you compare it to 2021 um covet scores um you see the data representing um learning loss and as I go to my state meetings uh it's all districts are experiencing uh this learning loss and you know we're having discussions on uh sharing strategies and ideas like how do we in different you know curricular areas how just are they handling this what's more interesting though is that in the third year uh Trend uh in 2002 a couple grades grades three surpassed the pre-covered year scores and got to uh the 75 Target not only got to the Target but the 78 went up to 78 and while grade four also improved Target goals also in 2022 of 75 percent now if this is if this is for third grade the what I don't

049know is is it a cohort Trend or are those third graders that was they were first graders and second graders and now the third graders and that's the score when they were third grader so I'm interested um on uh hearing hearing that I also observed the same data treads for the ngss science achievement trends for eighth grade um and I know that you probably as a district take a deep dive into what and how was done in these two grade levels with the cohort studies Trend and share their Knowledge and Skills and incorporate the best practices so that across all grade levels and all schools um we can incorporate the same strategy and best practices to hopefully achieve that for all our students here um and Greenwich um one thing I like to also talk

050about um is the initiative of the State Board of Education newly initiated CT saids program uh talking at the state level again um it was a program that probably had a lot of Kinks that really needed to be worked out before it was introduced to um the school system and the state probably and they know that you know we've already talked to them at the at the state level the the you know KDs CA president um a lot of glitches um and and again straight through Connecticut not just the Greenwich problem that's hitting every school the same things on tweaking um it's very frustrating for every school system it's very frustrating for the teachers with programs that put you in a place many time with glitches you have to report and wait for the fixes

051it is getting better um but sometimes we have to think about the positive I try and tell teachers think about the positive things that when sometimes you have to put the work in to front load it and that when all is said and done we're suffering now throughout the state and throughout the district we'll all have common language common things and in the end it'll it'll be better um so you have to keep your eyes on the price sometimes when you're you're stumbling um one thing I asked uh the the board to consider and our cabinet um is there's still lots of work to be done teachers need time our special education and PPS staff have been working very hard and long hours we need to be cognizant especially with new initiatives we need to

052be thoughtful and Pace them and provide support um provide training support uh and the common theme for teachers throughout the district um that I'm hearing is that they they need more time um need more collaboration time and in the end I think we'll reap the rewards of that collaboration so to and that I look forward to collaborating with a GPS cabinet and how we can provide teachers with more time and collaborative opportunities Happy New Year thank you lil and let's hear from pizza now it's Francis Wu nobe is she oh there you are fantastic you made it that's wonderful myself and Francis have had some nice conversations over the last couple of weeks right good evening I'm Francis Fu nobe mom of three GPS kids and the 2022-2023 president of the Greenwich parent-teacher advisory Council

053I'll start tonight's remarks channeling my mom with a traditional Japanese New Year's greeting okay which means Happy New Year sincere thanks for all your care and consideration last year looking forward to your continued support in 2023 wishing all of you good health and happiness PTAC is a non-partisan non-political organization made up of a governing board of directors presidents of all 15 school ptas and 17 Powerhouse advisory committees covering academics buildings curriculum enrichment and more if you're ready to be more engaged in your in our schools please join your school PTA today and nominating for the 2023-2024 p-tax Slate is also now open turning to Hot Topics and tonight's consent agenda PTAC highlights these ABCs for the Board of Education consideration a for academics p-tech is extremely interested in tonight's report out in discussion regarding K-12

054stem in science PTAC is pleased to see strong District results against the ngss standards keep it up and congratulations to our regenerine Scholars and newest Middle School innovators but in math our math scores need work just to hit the state of Connecticut's 78 goal and we have to get to 70 before we can set our sites on the board of education's 80th percentile math Mastery goal there's work to do we parents teachers and the community want to see results that reflect math confidence math literacy and math joy we want to see our students see that math is magical magnificent and mandatory we all know the Working World demands strong math skills whether you become an astronaut a banker Chef dancer or zookeeper we see the disparity between our schools so how do we lift all

055district schools to the Target we look to the district and the Board of Education to identify clear actionable steps we can all take to work towards hitting these important targets B is for budgets p-tech looks forward to Tuesday's bet budget committee meeting to approve the boe's operating Capital budgets parent teacher student and administrator input went into these plans to ensure academics stay strong our buildings stand up and our school district supports all our student needs C is for Community p-tech appreciates the vocal bipartisan partnership for the Western Middle School Fields the continued support for Central Middle School and Old Greenwich school p-tech was very pleased to welcome new Boe chair Joe Kelly to our January 2023 PTAC monthly meeting Joe welcomed our input and encouraged all to come together for our students on February 3rd

056at 11 A.M p-tech welcomes the Greenwich United Way to share their efforts towards adolescent mental health please visit the Greenwich PTAC website for Zoom details and prior recordings to end where we started I wish all those celebrating New Lunar New Year on Sunday channeling my dad this time Xin and Kuala happy year of the rabbit we look forward to working together in 2023 and to all our Greenwich high school students honored tonight well done and best wishes for your midterms and thank you as always to our Greenwich Public School teachers foreign Jackie are you here or online hi there hi there hi Jackie good evening Board of Education members and Dr Jones I took an opportunity to review the Greenwich together survey that you plan on administering to children in grades 7 through 12 and

057the survey says it's about positive things that you might have in yourself your family and your friends as well as about substance abuse and other risky behaviors the questions start off innocent at first but then students are asked intrusive questions about parents attitudes and behaviors around drugs and alcohol for instance they're asked if they've ever tried a long list of substances like ecstasy crack PCP heroin fentanyl younger students who took this survey last year particularly the 12 and 13 year olds indicated that the survey is actually what introduced them to many of these drugs in the first place it's what inspired them to learn more about these substances since it seems like from the survey that everyone was doing it so presumably this is the opposite of what the survey's intentions are some of the

058questions on the survey feel suggestive like how easy or hard would it be for you to get these substances if you wanted them students are told the survey is anonymous but anything online is it ever really anonymous and who else gets access to the data once the survey is completed is this data sold to any third parties and speaking of selling data to third parties I would like to reiterate my concern about Yale social emotional program social emotional learning program ruler since I see that the art bester 3 budget is on the agenda tonight too this program teaches children to use a mood meter to track their emotions how is that data used and what third parties have access to that data well students with undesirable moods be referred to the guidance counselor or sent

059for a mental health diagnosis and how does this intense focus on moods and emotions instead of academics help with learning loss of course the social emotional learning curriculum was never approved by you with the Board of Education as required by State education law yet that fact doesn't seem to be slowing down or stopping the implementation of this controversial curriculum that is rooted in New Age occult spirituality whatever happened to the separation of church and state and we seem to be learning more and more every day about how social emotional learning is being used as a trojan horse to deliver critical race Theory and gender ideology lessons to children and as a matter of fact that was the exact subject of the latest project Veritas investigation that just broke this week which 30 seconds reminds me

060can you pretty please give the community an update on the five different investigations into the former Costco assistant principle it's been a very long time and also can you please give parents an update on the status of some of the controversial books that have been brought to your attention thank you so much for addressing these issues and it's good to see everyone for the new year thank you why thank you Jackie Katie you 'll see if we go back to her okay that'd be great Phil browse come on up Phil foreign local in town um thank you all for allowing me to speak at your meeting I have an idea that I'd like to share with you all we all have seen or heard of the drug fentanyl it's on the news every day well

061as you know it's sadly taking our families and friends lives in all towns Across America here in Connecticut we have three drug related deaths every day the Greenwich Department police department just arrested two people with two kilos of fentanyl enough to kill one million people two kilos quite a bit from 2012 to 2021 the increase in deaths from fentanyl is 327 that's in Connecticut that's a staggering stat we must do something to stop this our families deserve a way to fight back in Narcan kits are one way that is directly able to save a life when it's immediately needed sorry 75 of those deaths occurred within our homes sixty percent of the deaths were from fentanyl this is local stuff this is not somewhere else in the middle of the country we must do something

062to help we can no longer in my opinion just talk about it we must take action to help those in need this isn't just our kids it's our fathers our mothers and family friends we must do something what I'm hoping we can do is open up a discussion on how to impair Empower our Greenwich families to fight this horrible invasion of Fentanyl I can name three friends sons that have passed away from this drug in town and that is way too many and those are the only ones that I know about there are many more I'm sure unfortunately what I'm proposing for us to consider is the thought of placing an our account kit in every medicine cabinet in our town for every high school student in our town this is possible with your help

063and ideas on how to do this the town of Greenwich is receiving 24 000 a year to combat drugs from Johnson and Johnson's settlement let us use some of these funds to purchase these kits and distribute them to our families in town many of us have college-age students that have returned home and they run the risk too of using fentanyl not forgetting to mention the parents as they also want to be here 30 seconds nobody can see fentanyl as it's hidden can only be detected by fentanyl strips that are also available but until we make these strips available we all need some way of helping the souls that have been given a drug they may not have intended to use what I Envision as an Arcane kit and every medicine cabinet and every High School

064family's medicine cabinet did I say that twice available under the moment's notice should they arise for someone in your family time it takes only micrograms of this highly toxic drug to kill sadly our families are still taking these drugs that are fake and made with fentanyl marijuana has also been the other drug that has been infected or infused with this drug sadly our kids use this too and it's too late after the fact Narcan saves lives let's try to have one kid per family in the medicine cabinet and give these families a chance to save a life thank you thank you Phil that should start hopefully started discussions controversial but we certainly want to start a discussion with that so thank you Julie deschamp there's truly all right good evening I'm Julie deschamp the chair

065of waste free Greenwich and I've been working with Angie heart of Phyllis and the PTAC Green Schools committee on the waste zero waste schools program for the district after years of advocating for a waste reduction in our schools we now have a strong program in place and the procedure to bolster it by updating regulation 3513.1r which spells out the rationale for the program materials to be diverted and roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in particular we're grateful to chair Joe Kelly for his staunch advocacy and his time and advice to navigate us through the process and vice chair Christina Downey for her instruction and guidance and thanks to Cody Kittle for our Lively discussion and his encouragement superintendent Jones we are deeply appreciative of your thoughtful review of the regulation and the amendments to make the

066program more effective and sustainable in the future we would like to recognize Blaise Leviton for his responsibility responsiveness and excellent advice as well as Dan Watson Mark Bria and Dan and Dave nannarello for their support we are indebted to the building principals custodians lunch monitors teachers and volunteers who have helped along the way this is certainly a team effort we have now rolled out the cafeteria waste program at four schools New Lebanon all Greenwich Central Middle School and ISD and will shortly launch at Eastern Middle and Parkway the program has cut recycling contamination significantly and achieved a 41 to 49 percent diversion of waste through educational training and new sorting stations I'm thrilled to report that just this week we introduced the food scrap recycling pilot at New Lebanon students now separate all food scraps

067in a designated bin and Food Services also contributes food scraps from the kitchen this organic material is transported by a hauler at no cost to the district to a licensed facility to be processed into compost each day an average of 35 pounds of food waste is diverted from the cafeteria waste stream by segregating food scraps the overall diversion rate has jumped from 42 percent to 76 percent by weight now an average 67 pounds daily or perspective twelve thousand 30 seconds pounds annually of cafeteria waste are no longer burned as trash across to this town but are instead converted to compost recycled into new products or diverted to drains to water treatment plants today we had a spirited discussion about littering waste disposal and science of composting and one third grader concluded the process is gross

068but it's good for the plants the Organics pilot and waste Reduction Program promised benefits to our budget public health and the environment and teaches our children the value of environmental stewardship and civic responsibility thank you for your support and we look forward to working together thank you thank you Julie I'll follow through with that uh Julie's work is all volunteer with her crew with her group and she's gone and put a tremendous amount of work in and at no cost for Greenwich Public Schools Katie you are you there miss you you should be able to speak well return to Katie hello hello there's Katie I I'm sorry I didn't see the the screen pop up I apologize I'm sorry about that can you hear me now we can hear you now and go ahead super

069thank you so much and my apologies again um good evening I will be brief uh really just wanted to uh State you know it's it's been just a really good night for my family and I I really wanted to start with a message of thanks to the many teachers who we feel stand beside our son and who stood behind our son tonight in support to help him achieve this honor tonight and looking forward I really just wanted to express my excitement about the proposal tonight to add linear algebra as a course option at the high school as well as the AP pre-calculus class I am truly excited and heartened by this decision to offer these advanced level courses to a growing number of students who will seek to take these in a few years when

070they are at ghs I applaud the math department for seeing the importance of having direct discourse among like-minded peers this is something that my son truly enjoyed in classes such as Miss francella's Advanced Calculus class and something that he really missed in independent study just a couple of really quick thoughts currently the MIT freeware linear algebra course is typically completed in six months and I believe that this is something that is also common in some colleges so I would be curious to know what the length of the class would be and also since this is likely going to be a class for seniors how might this affect the AP Statistics enrollment is it in is it possible to consider allowing students to possibly even take this course during the summer to allow the opportunity for

071students to take linear algebra in their senior year that's all I had to say and thank you very much again good night thank you uh and next is Christine rebstock Christine are you online hi good evening can you hear me I can hear you go ahead thank you okay I'm Christine repstock I'm a transsexual woman I'm speaking out against social emotional learning which introduces gender ideology especially with the elementary and middle school kids as this leads down a slippery slope these kids will be it will think that being trans is cool or fad it's not gender dysphoria is very real and it's very tough to live with I'm one of the 40 of trans people that attempted suicide and in our state because a state statute 19a-14c that allows mental health professionals to treat minor

072age kids without parental knowledge or consent we've seen kids such little girls could go to a school teacher or official and say I'm really a boy inside me and we're seeing these kids be put on puberty blockers hormone replacement therapy and have been given life-altering surgeries this is wrong this is child abuse I've been on hormone replacement therapy for three years and faced a cancer scare if this could happen to me this could happen to one of our one of our kids this has to stop I'm not an anti-lgbtq kid I want to help them and this starts from the home with their families doctors and therapists it involves no medical transition it we could teach anyone we don't need curriculum to teach kids that everyone's different let's be kind and respectful for everybody thank

073you for letting me speak have a good evening thank you Christine Kathleen Steiner um hello Chris Hernandez and I um we're happy to be here thank you Dr Jones and thank you the board we're here from the ghs health and safety education department physical education department as health and PE teachers and we're here to defend and support our Aquatics and water safety program that was recently removed from our our curriculum according to the National Safe Kids campaign in the national Safety Council approximately 830 children drowned in the U.S annually and in diverse communities minorities are three times more likely to drown than their non-minority peers we often take for granted that everyone knows how to swim and survive in the water however this is a false notion the reality is not everyone has the resources

074to learn whether that be Financial time or ability as a Shoreline Community we have a responsibility to teach all of our students the basics of swimming how to be safe in and around the water and what to do in case of a water emergency Greenwich High School's Aquatic and water safety program has been praised by The Zac foundation and the drowning prevention foundation and has been a fundamental PE course in our ninth grade curriculum for the past 45 plus years statistics have shown that increasing children's access to swimming lessons teaching water safety in schools and providing parents with tools to talk with their children about how to be safe in and around the water can have a huge impact on reducing drowning rates our Aquatics and water safety course closes the achievement Gap because it

075provides basic swimming and life-saving water skills to all of our students regardless of academic ability whether we are at a pool party at Todd's Point on our sailboat motorboat or jet skis having the Knowledge and Skills to swim and survive in the water allows us to have fun with our family and friends but also could be life-saving unlike other subjects the PE and health and safety education department sees all students in grades 9 through 12 each year Greenwich high school has always been a Trailblazer in the state of Connecticut instead of doing away with this vital course we urge you to instead to look to personalize the experience for our students let's continue to set high standards and raise the bar thank you so very much thank you Catherine I'm late to that discussion but

076I've had gotten a couple of calls about it so uh uh there will be some further discussions about that amongst us at least I will have discussions about it uh next is the superintendent's report Dr Jones thank you um it just didn't seem like it was on just a couple of items tonight um I think first of all I want to acknowledge I think most of you saw in the paper Angie bramonte who was uh now named to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and I think we'll see him again at the end of the year to thank him in person uh when we see all of these wonderful research projects that the students do and most of us can't understand what they're talking about because it's at such a high level so congratulations

077uh to Mr bramonte and I also want to just point out and they did mention it in the paper that we also now have this program in eighth grade again leading the country in science research and I think you heard tonight we're leading the country in lots of areas we have a lot to be proud and and celebrate I also want to just congratulate Riverside their musical Pippin and you know when you look at what we do and I know we recognized our musicians tonight but our our elementary Productions look like middle school and even some high schools across the country and by the time you get to high school they just look professional so congratulations to all of our musicians Eastern will have their Musical coming up I know the board has a new

078document that we're trying to share all those dates but be sure that you let us know if you're going to attend because they will sell out with all their tickets the the all the seats will be gone um Battle of the books for elementary this is something that they do every single year it's a big competition and this will be one of our first big events where we're able to use actually the Greenwich New Auditorium Greenwich Library so excited about that midterms I think you know again I think I'm hearing great things students were very much appreciative of the administration and the adjustment that they made and some of them reached out just to say thank you and then a big reminder um first of all that the budget hearing is next Tuesday night I've

079had a lot of PTA you know reach out trying to understand what which date is what happens and Tuesday evening at six o'clock the first selectman will present the town budget operating in capital and then the Board of Ed we will be presenting the operating and the capital and then it's the actual public hearing and so we are also we'll have some documents tomorrow in our Friday note that will help parents know how they can either send comments in writing to the bet or how they can make live comments we also were asked by our PTA to be sure and give them information on Central for instance because there's been a lot of just confusion and so I know the board today saw a copy of a q a and thanks to Laura costan for

080getting that started and um so we've got a q a and there's also a one-page fact sheet that I think is going to be really helpful for the community as a whole and last but not least just thank you to everybody that showed up for the Western Middle School Soul remediation public hearing last week we packed the house and online and as one of The Regulators was leaving he made the comment that he'd you know been doing this work for about a decade just around 10 or so years and that just on this one project he had more Community comments and participation than he had in the previous 10 years on all of his projects so we should be very proud of that as well thank you great thank you any questions Laura could I

081come back to the aquatics now or should we do that later we could talk about that now if you like so just a question um I have two high schoolers that have dreaded the aquatics class because it is the most awkward time to be in a swimsuit with your peers um so I just wondered if we ever considered a test out option so that there would be a way for kids who needed the aquatics program to have it and that kids who didn't need that kind of instruction could use that instructional time to take a different class and not one that they didn't really need to take and I think that that's some conversation that we've had we can certainly continue it we are not eliminating the aquatics Force so I want to make sure

082that you know that I did email the board I think a week or two ago about this it's still available but it's a choice for students and families and I will be very honest I really think ninth grade's too late to be introducing students to swimming and there's a program that the YMCA actually runs and it's aimed at second grade and that's where I really think for an assured experience working with the Y we need to start when they're younger now I will tell you I had a PE teacher somebody that knows the program said that they believe the number is probably about 90 percent of our kids come in already knowing how to swim so it's really that 10 that we really want to Target and encourage families and students to take the aquatics

083course but I'm also hoping we'll continue in the high school to expand our offerings I mean we I would love to see us doing water aerobics I'd love to see us having last swimming for students who really want to develop Lifetime Fitness I think there's so many opportunities and I will say I think there's a lot of support for the approach that we're taking we are in a time where when you talk about how young people feel about their bodies there are young people who are very uncomfortable in that class and I had somebody asked me well couldn't you offer it by gender in 2023 no we really could not without being in an office of civil rights situation and so that's just we don't do that anymore and there are several court cases even

084when you look at mathematics and gender so those have been settled and we know that as far as testing out I will tell you I had a great conversation with a group of parents they were actually the Eastern parents who were at a PTA meeting and they were asking about that I would support that if we wanted to test out it's not easy to implement but you know in the month of June taking busload of students over letting them swim across the pool I would be happy to do that that's not where we are right now that's not the recommendation but certainly if we wanted to go in that direction that's something we could do but my goal is really to offer swimming earlier in their life so that we know our youngest students are

085really know how to swim Kathleen yeah I was going to say that I agree with you Laura I just I think it's very important that you noted that it's it's still available but it's not mandatory and and I um wholeheartedly support it not being mandatory because I do think it was I'm it wasn't a good use of my child's time either um and however the testing out option is important I know that I had to do that at Notre Dame in order to graduate Notre Dame you you have to prove you can swim and so um and I believe Cornell has the same program yes so um you know I think it's an interesting option to to take it that way thank you Karen well on the same topic I I would say I also

086fully support making it optional this is something even before covet I had been asking uh for it's not a state requirement just happens to be we happen to have a pool um but I also understand that uh you know the need for life safety courses is exceptionally important especially in this day and age um I do love the option I suggested years ago about test you know testing out um and offering other options life safety courses for our students um and I just wanted to see you know when this decision was made like I said I don't know um if there was a discussion at the high school or with any of the you know Educators as to what other options we might be able to offer just uh for students and some of the

087more unique and creative uh types of PE courses because I'd love to be able to have that discussion going forward um you know as you saw a lot of athletes were here tonight uh being honored but not every student's an act you know and an athlete and it's a nice opportunity to to offer some new types of courses for them if they're gonna not have that as a credit option I have a close and trusted friend Steve Lapham who was one of the original designers of this program I understand and he contacted me the other day uh he was kind enough to share a story now he said it's not a swimming class it's not a class only to teach people how to swim it's a class that teaches people uh or kids in a

088Coastal Community how to react to dangerous situations uh it it's he had said that well if somebody falls in the water from a dock or on the beach and and how do you approach that if we do a lot of boating in our community how do you address somebody falling overboard how do you approach that he said the course I've never taken the course but he says the course addresses all these things he he tells of uh a couple years ago some students ex-students have had come back to him one specific and uh and said uh uh coach Lapham or Steve or whatever they call them that's at that stage he said our boat one time on the Long Island side we're way far away from sure we anchored and we decided to go swimming

089and the uh the boat lost the anchor and the boat drifted away and they couldn't catch up to the boat because the current was too strong he was with the student the Greenwich student who had gone through this course was with uh two other kids two other people well they were adults at that point uh and the two others started to panic and the student or former student had expressed to uh uh to Steve Lapham uh that it was because of the training he received in his course that he was able to calm the two other kids down and hours later they were rescued and he thanked Steve for uh for teaching him those skills in that course so I think we have to hear from the people who teach that course these the teachers

090who have been involved in this the ones who have seen the generations of kids go through and uh and come back and maybe share some of the stories so at least let's bring the discussion to those who will have the boots on the ground for us on this so we could have that a thorough discussion if we decide to go with some of the recommendations that the board members uh make well let's make sure we have the the complete discussion before we do that Cody to offer um any uh or do we require people to take a class for driving before they graduate no safety driving class do we have a do we require them to learn the Heimlich maneuver before they graduate but no they do take it in middle and high school it's

091in a class and they get tested on it yeah yeah okay uh fine um I guess the point I was gonna get at is you're always you could mandate any sort of safety class for something and if thousands and thousands of people go through the school presumably at some point it will benefit someone uh driving is much more dangerous than swimming for teenagers at least in terms of fatalities um if the principle is we're going to require classes that could potentially Save a Life over decades then we have better places to look but if that isn't the principle which I don't think it should be it seems silly to require something that I remember when I was at the high school and actually I was very lucky I only heard when people complain about it

092because I went there in 10th grade um the idea of forcing people on the swim team to take a swimming class seems insane to me uh so I think if we want to go the route of you know proactively coming up with classes to prevent any harm from ever happening we can look at other classes uh but otherwise I think we should proceed with the way you guys set it up Laura I just would wonder if there was also a CPR or um you know is there a CPR component in a water safety class the new products we're delivering babies you never know if you're going to be somewhere and someone goes into labor good point well you don't offer we don't offer a gems course right we do okay as a requirement well I

093say we can conclude the aquatics discussion saying for the discussion is necessary so let's continue to talk about it thank you uh any mother any more questions Karen you have a question over the aquatics or are you ready to move on to another question for the superintendent's report I'm I'm ready to move to something else but I do have a question but not on the clock look we're done with Aquatics okay your turn go ahead um my question relates to the the change in the waiting with respect to the midterms uh I just want to understand a little bit more about the process and the thought process that's gone through with that it's been historically obviously we made a policy change during covid to take care of a certain grading during that time period That's

094that policy is now expired but I'd like to understand the thinking and the logic that goes behind the the changing of the waiting My overall concern is the the excuse this excuse me the suggestion was the kids were stressed out there was we were dealing with high flu rates and other illnesses and sicknesses I feel like there's we're always going to be combating something and My worry is that we're getting away from the rigors of what we're putting on and how we are making sure that our children are understanding and being proficient in the material that we're teaching them and I'd like to understand if this is going to be a change going forward or if we're ever going to go back to the standard that we previously had and if we're not going back

095to the standard why not and how does that make sense with the rigors of the academics that we are striving for within Greenwich Public Schools so a couple a couple of pieces with that I think first of all what we're seeing in absence rates is not typical we are still not where we were pre-coded we when when people are out and they're positive with covet or the flu right now and RSV they're missing a week of school so you can have a student who's out for a week um and then they get back to school they're there for a week and then their teachers out for a week we are having very high absenteeism and so I do think we're still in a unique spot I think going forward what I would be asking at

096the principal the assistant principal and their team is to do a really good review and we talked about this I really want to understand better how are the colleges adjusting coming out of covet just because we've always done something in a particular way does it necessarily mean it's the way we need to stay but we really don't know what they're doing at the Collegiate level and I I think we need to do our homework between now and next year so that we do make really a good informed decision and start looking at the colleges just so so that we understand how they are actually approaching their midterms and finals and they may have all be they may all be reverting back but are they doing more project oriented work you know what does it look

097like in 2023 compared to what it used to look like and I think we we really need to do some homework no that would be my suggestion because my my overarching concern is that we're doing our students a disservice in the fact that we're not adequately preparing them for the next academic phase in their life because the way at least when I was at college and the way I understood it until maybe recently and I would appreciate the homework on this is is a lot more is weighted on the one two tests you know the midterm and the final and I think that that becomes a very harsh reality and particularly for the transition going from being a senior in high school to a freshman in college that's a big jump for kids right you're

098you're moving away from home for the first time you're on your own you're making choices they're trying to figure out how how to live life and get to class on time and it is a hard adjustment and so when you're talking about not only is it that hard of an adjustment but there's so much weighted on their academic performance on two tests again the education on that topic will help us they're they're going to be under a whole new stress that we haven't prepared them yet for at the high school level where they're still at home they still their parents to lean on to help them get them through the process so I just want to make sure that we're providing our students with an understanding and putting them in the best position to move

099forward in their academic Adventures uh and that's why I think we should look really closely at this policy change on the waiting to make sure we're actually not doing them a disservice and maybe it's not moving it down to five maybe there's a happy medium someplace else or a different way to structure it but I do want us to give some critical thought into whether or not we're doing the right thing now for but for them in the future yeah yeah sorry I actually I am I know that I was lucky enough to be at the student government at the time and this was something that the students did advocate for um this year because I think they liked the change last year but I hear you Karen I think it's a good analysis we

100have seen so many changes over the past few years I remember serving on the policy committee during the height of coven and coming up with I think a really good plan at that time when things were particularly stressful thankfully things have improved I think last year was definitely the right call on this as well as this year um and just to be clear I especially thought it was and I know that you guys advocated for this um it's the better of right so it might be five percent it might be ten percent and I think that's that's a that's a nice trigger because for some you know maybe it raises that quarter gray or sorry the overall transcript grade for others they prove themselves really well during those four quarters and for whatever reason they

101had a bad day um and so that gets weird at five percent and everything else goes up according um there is some Merit to that and I think that that is an interesting thing but we should continue to analyze it okay moving on uh Dr Jones I had called you either yesterday a day before and said I'm going to ask for some updates on some things and uh I like to deal in good news but some of these are not good news questions but I think I do believe in transparency and and really find that very important and rather have facts that people can talk about rather than stuff than the speculation so if you can uh give me an update on the Jeremy Bolin investigation I know that we're restricted on what we can

102and cannot say based on the number of Investigations that are going on I know you contacted our attorney and made sure what you said is what you can say and I don't want anything more than what you're allowed to say so please yeah and I'll and I'll just reiterate and I know the board knows this but the community may not anytime we have any sort of personnel issue where we're dealing with a teacher um you always have to go into it thinking it could rise to the level of a termination hearing and this board must be neutral going into that hearing which means that we can't when you have an active investigation you can't go out and say exactly what's happening so just for the community but right now we still have uh we have

103the Attorney General's investigation which is ongoing ask for more documents even as yesterday we've sent them thousands thousands of pages uh chros and the same um they are still in an active investigation thousands of documents uh the town of Greenwich is just starting literally this week so um that will be some sort of data pool we're not sure uh really that's not clear yet and then we also have the Connecticut State Department of Education um so right now until all four of those conclude we don't don't know what they're going to find and will all four of those actually agree with one another so until that is completed that's about as much as we can say so on that on that topic as far as and you explained this to me it made a lot

104of sense uh there are legal Minds that are evaluating our options and without those evaluations they're deciding uh if we speed or hurry to a conclusion or to an action it could be financially detrimental to our district or to our town so there's people or groups of people or professionals that are evaluating how we should proceed is that correct that is correct okay thank you any other questions Michael so does that is to clarify does that mean are we doing our own HR investigation or are we waiting on those other four we concluded ours and that has been shared with the other agencies Karen in I don't know if we've had a past circumstance in which we've engaged in our own HR investigation and drawn conclusions and then had subsequent or in parallel independent investigations

105from government agencies is it in the past have we waited for all of those agencies to conclude prior to in taking that into account based upon your own HR investigation in all honesty I've never seen this before um where you have all this level all of these agencies that are investigating something like this so I think it's new for all of us um but anytime you go to a termination hearing number one they're very lengthy uh they're very time consuming for all of you and they are very very expensive you need Attorneys at the table you need hearing officers so investing a half a million dollars to go to a termination hearing to then have because you don't know what the results are going to be three or four organizations come back and say your

106initial investigation was not correct and then you're in a whole nother legal issue so it's it's Consulting with attorneys to make sure that what we're doing we're trying to protect the interests of the district and make sure that investigations are very thorough so but this is a very unusual situation it seems very confusing I have one final question on this of course others might have more uh do we feel we're adequately advised with Town Council and uh do you feel comfortable uh being privy to the details more so than we're able to be preview to those details that we are okay or or adequately represented uh or uh if you think we're not or if there's any question let us know if we should consider going out and getting further advice from somebody so we

107do that in coordination with the town and we have outside Council working on this thank you next uh I'm sorry if I I said this name incorrectly uh Nicholas uh scur canis uh can you please update uh what you're able or can say or no because this is not our investigation this is an outside uh they've got arrested by uh by an outside entity so uh so can you update us on that for the sake of transparency so the first action um was through Homeland Security and from a district standpoint when you have any sort of federal agency and sometimes even a local police department if it's not Greenwich Police we don't know either so we find out about these things pretty much at the same time the community does when it's an agency like

108Homeland Security they go through they do their investigation until the investigative report comes out you don't really know uh what's happening and they also do not um and we're not they didn't share either with the Greenwich Police Department they had no idea that this you know arrest was going to be made um so again it's just like kind of pretty much what I just said we have to work with our local Council who generally we're also working with outside Counsel on the advice of our local Council and to make sure that we take the right steps at the right time thank you sorry to ask these negative questions but I think transparency is quite important another one is the uh proactive steps that we've taken towards addressing some uh some inappropriate library books that we

109had uh Dr Jones I'm very I'm very happy with the actions you've taken uh to uh allocate some of our resources to looking through our our extensive book collections and uh and identify which ones uh are inappropriate for certain age children and which ones are not uh could you explain the or at least talk a little about how you've addressed that and how you've taken this Challenge on and and some of the successes you've achieved so far I think the board is aware we've had you know a couple of books that have been brought to our attention that may be at the wrong age level just not age appropriate for whatever Library they're sitting in this is not we're not talking about curriculum materials we'll talk about what's in the library um so we started

110back in October just doing kind of a proactive review um in in the end we reviewed 14 different books and it is our media uh learning facilitator you know they get paid a stipend to be a leader in that media Department who did that first review uh looked at those books looked at um the ratings from a reputable you know writing um are the books actually age appropriate for Middle School sixth seventh and eighth graders and then made comments about uh yes the book is appropriate by the rating agency um and what are some comments what are some themes within the book and then made a recommendation to either keep it on the Shelf in middle school because yes it was appropriate age a developmental age or no it probably needs to be sent to

111the high school and so after that it came to me I looked at all 14 of those and then I did another review independent from that because I wanted to go look at a different rating system and I even go out to like Amazon and look at how they've rated books because they're a little bit more liberal so you're getting different points of view on Amazon and did a rating there and after I did that I was in agreement with most of the yes or no except for three books where the rating systems weren't green uh you know one would have it uh starting like only for high school like 15 and over another rating system might have said it was okay for 13 or 14 year olds but we're this is a middle school

112so it's going to be the library it needs to be appropriate for sixth seventh and eighth so at that point we were down to three books we needed another review and so our wonderful coordinators curriculum coordinators got together and they decided he would be the first three people to actually read the book they divided up read the book then we came back together and then they gave their recommendation and ultimately they agreed after all three of those reviews with our learning facilitator in the end out of 14 books we ended up sending I want to say six I think to the high school out of those six only one of those books was at all three middle schools the rest were just sitting on a shelf either at one school or it was a digital

113copy at one school but it really is about age-appropriateness making sure we have books where they belong for the developmental age of the students thank you at one more uh comment on that one that'll open up to others who might have to ask the question I think it's safe to say that in your term as the superintendent none of those books that have been identified uh and none of you found so far have been brought in by people working for you it's past books it's the books that have been uh abroad in years ago for whatever reason is that accurate to be honest with you so many the way that books are ordered you're talking about media Specialists media assistants I wouldn't want to answer that like I have no idea who bought the book

114that's fair okay anybody else Aaron so there was a very graphic book and I think I sent a picture of it to some of my colleagues um and I don't even remember the title but I could quickly find out what is the status of that book I could describe what the picture was okay well I could and in fact it's in one of our libraries that all of our students are list watching or I can check out so the question is where is the status of that book so when it gets to looking at what's age appropriate um you can't just look at one picture from a book and say that it's not appropriate you have to look at the book in its totality and our media Specialists do a great job when we question

115a book I've had the high school actually media Specialists have read one or two books because I'm like somebody sent this about this book can you tell me is it okay they've gone home I actually read the book over the weekend and in its totality it was okay to have on the library shelf you have to realize that just the health curriculum alone and what our students tackle in high school they do learn about sex and there are going to be library books that may have some pictures in them and it is actually the the life that they're living and learning about and if it's in the context of age appropriate narrative then it's okay okay the book you're referencing we haven't finished so I don't know all I have is a picture and I've

116got to get the book so that we can read the actual text Karen I'm sorry we finished sorry Karen um I'm assuming that we're talking about the same book as I people had reached out to me as well I've done a bit of my own research I know it's an award-winning book and this is issues and questions have been brought up about this book all over the country for many many years not not even just recently and um you know it most people haven't pulled it off the shelf it's oftentimes labeled with a label that says 18 and up and if they someone who's under the age of 18 wants to take that book out they need to have parental permission is that something we would possibly consider if if uh after your review you

117found that to be an issue um I haven't read the whole book as of yet I'm waiting to get a copy so I can do my overview but it was um interesting having read a little bit about it currently the book at least the one that was that I'm reviewing that was sent to me from more than one of you um is not an 18 and over it's actually it's the age rating is for high school so it's really about reading the content making sure what's in it is appropriate from the from the high school developmental age but the various ratings are all matching for high school so and again I'm not a big fan of banning books but I also understand that they're we have students that come in you know the young age

118of you know what maybe 14 at high school then you have students for 18 19 graduating high school it's a vast difference in those ages so if we're teaching you know there's some discussion and health classes what what grades do those start so I mean that's we don't have to answer that now but that's a question to ask um in that regard because if there's a vast difference in we were just talking about the swimming class uh students coming in at 14 body types um and puberty and all sorts of other things at that age so it's a some now that we need to get into that kind of conversation now but good point my goal so just to be clear I'm sorry something clear to folks watching at home they um I believe we're

119talking about fun home um a family tragic comic they um that was the one we got email so just because um I'm not interested in talk I hear you talking about one book the um many many a board of education has gone down the rabbit hole of spending hours debating book and a book in a book I don't know if that's the most productive use of our time they um I do think moving forward at a time after this evening it probably does both of us to consider um the purchasing process that we're using in the rating system we're using for for books moving forward because um and also how we're getting books um in general they um we know that um this is a national issue we could Google any you can very easily

120Google any number of these uh political groups around the country that have compiled these lists of books and are actively encouraging local communities to say go hey go find out if you have this book in your library and raise a plus with your board of ed it doesn't make any it makes sense for us to try to pre-proactive and some of that they uh particularly if there were books that could be concerning they um I'll leave it to um of my understanding about this particular book is we're doing review Let's find let's continue the review they um but I do think as far as the process goes I think that's something that is a board we we should consider moving forward thank you Karen yeah I agree I know uh Tony you and I have

121had some exchanges on the process by which books are selected and how uh they end up in in the libraries and I think it would be a great benefit to the community to understand that process in Greater detail as to foreign what is the selection process what how are they deciding what come you know how do they end up on the shelves but because I think parents want to know that and want to know how that that whether the money is going for and what books their kids have access to and so that they can also help have conversations with their kids about what books are what they view is appropriate because parents have a say and parents should have a say about the types of books that they have access to and when they

122don't know what books they have access to that creates a harder problem for a conversation at home in order to articulate what is appropriate and what is not in that one's household thank you I think Cody wanted to jump in if uh he was gleaming as if he had something very exciting to say well no at first I was just I liked um Karen's uh lineup I'm not in favor of banning books but but I actually I'm sympathetic to that because I think this was I was interested to say this might be uh a moment or at some point we should consider um the idea of laying out some parameters that can be useful for the book buyers whoever it's not going to make sense for us to micromanage individual book choices but in particular

123for this one it you know like just to throw out something for us to consider is a book that has lots of pictures that are sexually graphic like maybe if books write about stuff but it's fine or they can use their discretion but we put a you know I I think we have the ability to say hey we're we're not going to have in our libraries um things with uh pictures that are like extremely graphic because everyone who saw that thoughts the same thing I don't think anyone thought oh well if I have the context around what was in the paragraphs that would make it better um so I think that's something we should consider because it might be pretty easy and honestly I don't think it will have any academic impact most of the

124books and libraries things are symbol and they're kind of in the books you choose to have in the library like the books you choose to have in your house you're kind of a representation of values if you know and like hey here's who here's who we are um and so uh that might be an easy way for us to systematically just say look um we're not into the book Banning business but uh if you want to get books with pornographic image content buy them yourself you know there's a lot on the internet well I was going to just say the same like our kids have access now to so to so much more so than we did but at the same time if we're talking about and again this this goes back to it's not

125about books it's about the discussion discussion of the process and the policy what what works well for one person who's reading a book what they find interesting is not going to necessarily be the person next to you is going to find a book interesting on that same topic and so to have the discussion and the process of I I can understand that piece of the discussion but when you sit there and have a discussion on it we have books that cover a wide range of of things that are part of curriculum we talk about this all the time not everything makes somebody comfortable when they're reading it but when they go to the you know for curriculum but when you're going to the library you have the choice uh and what student a versus student

126B or C is looking at when they go to the library and the things that they're interested in reading about uh varies so vastly so which is why I'm like I think it's exceptionally important that we or don't base it on what one Community or another Community or another type of student a student or interests are when we're looking at books I I think it's exceptionally important this book is slightly different in in other ways um so I that's why I had reached out and asked but that's just yeah Michael you could wrap us up oh good um I think if we've accomplished anything we've probably raised the sale of this book six thousand percent of town this evening is by always manageable um so I'd actually like to propose a a a a motion

127to amend the agenda um if I could we have a number of community volunteers here from the Old Greenwich building committee and as you see we have a very lengthy discussion the item list of discussion items so I I would like to propose amending the agent make a motion to move item a um up to next on the agenda item number forward the the item a under action items up to uh before the discussion items for the good of our community volunteers who have been waiting patiently I would second that and and I think we do we need discussion or can I call the question uh can I have we have a motion I've seconded it you know yeah I told it just to chime in when she wants to talk so I don't know

128if she's yeah I just my only concern I guess the question is is this really the time we're still in the middle of the monthly reports I'm not sure it's the time to make this motion I think I'm not I just I'm not sure I don't know if anyone else has a thought on where it falls in like Robert Christina we're going to put it after the report so we'll still have our reports then we're going to move it to just after the reports so that's satisfactory then uh uh we'll call about no but I'm saying I'm not sure it's the appropriate time to be making the motion procedurally I'm just I you know I don't have it my Robert's Rules handy with me but because we're reordering our agenda now which is fine yeah

129I'm not necessarily opposed to it I'm just no no she's just saying do it when we're done with reports we're all going to agree to it we should finish the reports before we start changing right you withdraw emotion and we'll do that at the end of 5B make the same motions thank you and since we're not thank you Christina for pointing that out and we'll now go to and actually we'll go to Christina uh for a community approach reports she's going to talk about the Greenwich High School vestibule and I love saying that recipe because in real life I've never said that word before until this project vestibule thank you vestibule entryway tomato tomato um I just I'm happy to report that the RTM overwhelmingly granted the 500 000 interim request for the entryway project

130um so the next step is the building committee is working on finalizing the plans to go to the state and the construction drawings it will come back to us one more time for a final approval to authorize the going out to bid in the construction drawings which will hopefully be in February and keep the project on track to commence right after school gets out in June and that is it thank you Christine to remember to use sunscreen when you're out in the sun tomorrow anyone else for a committee report Karen um I was just going to report that um ciac met last week and we know very lovely meeting and they were discussing a lot of interesting different topics um Michael Joseph and I have reached out to the heads at seaac to to arrange

131some brown bag meetings with them uh prior to our next um uh presentation on the update on our action items on the um on the audit right at The Retreat yeah so um hopefully we'll be speaking with them soon and we'll have some additional updates um I know that they're looking to add some more parent um education and speaking um sessions one was uh in the end of January they're looking to set something up with about a mental health Workshop in the spring they've spoken about a couple of other different speakers uh and looking into somebody for also next fall once we have more information on that we will um share that with you I know that uh I think the end of January Workshop I think I could be wrong is January 24th at

1327 pm is that correct hi how okay well I had I have a date here so I'll come back to you on what that was I thought that's what it was anyway so that's uh that's our update thank you anybody else Laura we're going to update you in our update sure you don't have to update the Grange line update yep okay and Kathleen thanks just real fast um proud to be announced the Greenwich Alliance and um Julie provided me some quick updates which is 80 000 in scholarships was just awarded to 37 Avid college students which brings the distribution for this year up to 155. um reaching out Grant applications now available on the alliance website and due Friday March 24th the alliance is looking for proposals for programs that expand opportunities for underserved students

133as well as Inspire educators um GPS honors band Festival will be held on Wednesday February 8th at 7 pm at the pack and last but not least one of my personal favorites so I'm so excited to be announcing it is the trivia challenge um one year one of my board colleagues and I went and you guys remember this gay time I celebrated because we won just saying and with a few other people I have to admit who might have carried us but um still the that trivia challenge is Friday March 3rd will be held virtually and allows teams to include friends and family for all over the country so mark that date maybe we get a little bit of a team together okay thank you Kathleen I'm finding more and more about that Alliance I

134didn't know much about them and they're a great organizations so thank you for being so uh involved with that anybody else with a committee update I have a couple I'll be quick virtual net metering we went out with an RFP we had successful replies uh we are now in the process of evaluating uh and uh that's a very good thing we've talked about that before uh and uh it's a good thing and Blaze says that we'll be getting results uh very very soon uh next one JC building committee we've met a number of times we're putting together an RFP for an architect that's going to phase the improvements on JC we're going to have an elevator uh security entryway a whole bunch of cool stuff that we're going to be upgrading our building on at

135JC uh anybody else with a report okay Michael did you want to make some sort of motion I would I would if um I would like to move that item a under action item be moved to next on the agenda I will second that and also call the question uh all in favor of moving that would leave the two-thirds vote please put your hand up that looks like that passes unanimously you don't want to vote for that okay passes okay very good so we'll do that so why don't we then uh that would be then now so Mr chairman they um I would like to introduce uh the chairman of the Old Greenwich building committee James Waters and it is my great pleasure to be the Board of Ed liaison through this exceptionally hard-working um

136group that's been meeting multiple times a week for months now and they're very excited to bring with you the to bring to the board tonight the suggestion of the architect to hired to keep moving this project forward the bike is yours thank you don't break it I'll try not to thank you I appreciate it all right thanks Mr chairman um good evening members of the Board of Education Dr Jones um I'm James Waters and I'm humble to serve as the chairman of the Old Greenwich School building committee the Old Greenwich School building committee is excited to join you tonight to recommend silver Petrocelli and Associates as our architect as you know our committee's been hard at work since September since October and I hope you've all had a chance to read our first quarterly report

137distributed last Friday in the past 14 weeks we've met 18 times and have made significant progress in making the Old Greenwich School renovation project actionable we owe tremendous thanks to our Stellar team of volunteers who've committed themselves to making this happen many of them are sitting here if you guys raise your hands please thank you yeah our committee I'd like to also thank GPS's purchasing department for swiftly adjudicating our questions and guiding us through the RFP process it's pretty it's pretty uh detailed there are tremendous asset to the town and we certainly appreciate all their hard work we'd also like to thank the town legal department and town clerk's office for helping us stay on track and buy the book finally I'd like to personally thank Stephen welko Tony Turner Leslie Moriarty and Mike Mason

138like sitting back there um and many others for their thoughtful input and guidance this has been a true team effort and we feel lucky to have so many great public servants dedicated to the OJs project in our town so this board approved the Ed specs for Old Greenwich School in October 2021 as a reminder key items to address in the upcoming renovation Edition include bringing the school into compliance with the 1990 Ada act including the installation of an elevator creating a single secure entryway for visitor management managing storm water to prevent further flooding and raw sewage seeping into classrooms adding a building-wide sprinkler system to adhere to the current fire code addressing health issues with the building-wide HVAC system ensuring new classrooms account for a strong sustained enrollment at ogs and 21st Century Learning environment

139the ogs building committees rolled up its sleeves to understand the Ed specs and then draft solicit analyze proposals from Architects and owners reps we've interviewed candidates compared costs and had begun the process of interfacing with key stakeholders and members of the community just this afternoon we were proud to give a tour to the first selectman so he could see the need for advancing the project we'll be prepared to speak to the board of estimate and Taxation about the ogs renovation during their upcoming FY 2023-2024 budget deliberations our bet representative Stephen selps who's over there has been keeping the bet a prize of our progress as we go about hiring our professional team to include an architect owners rep and other Consultants at the Forefront is staying on time and on budget we're confident that we're

140in a position to move forward on this project in the coming fiscal year if funds are included in the budget as this board has recommended we know that this board budgeted 24.5 million dollars for the ogs renovation in addition to the one million dollars approved by the BET last year in the coming months we'll be taking a deep dive to refine the estimate Insurance consistent with the scope of the project and current construction costs taking into account inflation and the supply chain issues so after lengthy and thoughtful deliberation the ogs building committee unanimously on 8-0 vote uh voted to recommend silver Petrocelli and Associates as our Architects we felt their experience with the town strong team familiar familiarity with projects like ours an integrated approach to solving challenges made them a great fit to lead

141our project so with that I'll turn it over to David Stein from SP a who will walk us through an introduction to what SP a will bring to the table to get this done thank you I think there's a presentation and no perfect how does that have the magic so uh good evening everybody my name is David Stein I'm principal with silver petrocity Associates my partner Amanda Cleveland is here also to speak on behalf of the project but let me first begin to um to to thank the committee and also obviously the Board of Ed were familiar it's nice to have the opportunity to be here live I didn't know I've spoken to you in the past where I've been up on the screen being a part of your meeting so it's actually nice to

142be here and see everybody face to face um I want to just start out in giving everyone an introduction of our team and sort of our approach to to this project so we are a uh an integrated practice um our our firm is in its 32nd year of service and it's really built around the principles of good sensible Design Within the educational community that is our core that's really our core guidance is to sort of work within the communities that we live in communities where we work in um and this project really aligns with what we like what we like to do which is bringing Architects engineers and interior designers all in one uniform group we're unique in that way of just 50 individuals that um that are sort of focused in in that a

143lot of our peers are just bring in consultants and we do have Consultants that we will talk about I guess actually on the next slide is a good good place to go to um to that so what you see there on on sort of the face page of the group that we have purposely assembled for this project is everyone sort of above that red line is part of the silver Petrocelli team we have two offices one in Camden one in New London a majority of the group will be working out of Hampden but in you know in the virtual world we um you know work is done work is done all over um but we bring in the Consultants that really are important to the challenges of this project such as Langan engineering and these

144are also similar team members that are working on the ghs project that Miss Downey just referenced that we were also on and in the process of sort of finishing up those revised designs um so just having that continuity a team player I think is important um to understanding the challenges of this project along with um understanding the goals of the budgets that are set forth so we have Langan engineering they have an office in uh New Haven they have an office in in White Plains Michael Horton Associates structural engineer key part of this overall project is sort of evaluate that original building and how we're going to be able to Institute mechanical electrical and plumbing systems in it they were also on the high school project rounding out that we have an I.T consultant with

145D'Agostino and consultants and also pmnc and I'll talk a bit about them they are third party cost estimators out of Boston and they are going to be a key part to doing that sort of independent check of our budget as we continue to go along and move through this project so if we do need to Pivot in a direction we could do it at the right time and obviously those are things that unfortunately caught up on the Greenwich high school projects and we plan to be back on track with with that one next slide please so as part of our experience majority of our work is actually in the renovation of of existing schools and uh the does the list of dozen projects here two of them are actually projects that we work with Dr

146Jones when when she was in when she was in Fairfield that actually the Mill Hill project that we recently completed if you could see some of those just scale of those projects they are equal and just those order of magnitude um but also just equal in terms of the complexity of projects that will be constructed while the students are in school that is a really complex way of what goes first designing a building based on its construction or designing a building that obviously is for its students so having that broad experience in renovation projects we are going to focus obviously on the educational goal but understanding how can we sync with sequence the work and we're going to be partnering with the owner's rep that will be brought on shortly in a construction manager they'll

147be brought on shortly and with that teamwork we will find the right design to work with the phasing of this project uh next slide please so with that as we begin to craft a project we are mindful of the process and the process begins with the educational spec that's really sort of our guiding or north star on a project we have reviewed the educational spec that was approved and we will as we get further along we may make suggestions on making slight edits to that in the intent to maximize your reimbursement from the state of Connecticut so there are different strategies just in terms of the way that's crafted the way that it's worded to make sure that it's broad enough to capture everything that you want but it's not finite enough that may limit

148your reimbursement so just as you saw those 12 projects on the previous slide those all were state reimbursed projects with various reimbursement rates from each of those communities and with that our charge as your architect of record is also the help navigate and maximize the best of our ability the reimbursement of the project we looked at sort of four goals that we interpreted as part of the project the educational adequacy of the project and that really is looking at a 21st century forward learning environment it's a bit of a challenge to adapt in a building that was built in this error but I think we have some solutions and Amanda will talk briefly about ways that we think we can um we We Can Make spaces a bit more flexible as opposed to being fixed

149items security and none of these are in any particular order of importance they're just the ways that I've sort of just crafted them here in the presentation but security obviously is a key piece on our mind in the world that we live in and we want to we want to design strategies that are not only physical but also passive solutions that can work well as we adapt into your building accessibility barrier-free Universal Design these are solutions that we are mandated by the nine by the actually we're now in the 2010 Ada code which came up in 1990 but we need to come up with solutions that are not obvious to be in just accessible they need to be Universal they need to be part for everybody to use and not a specific item that says

150this is the accessible entryway it should be for for every entryway health and safety it's a broad statement but in the world that we live in today obviously air quality ventilation daylight are all critical pieces to create in a healthy environment for the students and your Educators that is going to be a challenge to fit those mechanical systems and those modern systems into the buildings that you have but those 12 projects that you saw before equally had those same challenges and most of 169 towns in Connecticut are all dealing with that same approach of renovating projects and with that I'm going to turn it over to Amanda and then come back with a few more slides thanks perfect thank you so again my name is Amanda Cleveland I'm principal of the Interiors department at Silver

151Petrocelli um as James had mentioned part of my job is talking to all of the key stakeholders on the project so that ranges from the students who use the space the Educators who teach in it the paraprofessionals that come in the PTO the Board of Ed the parents you name it Whoever has any involvement in these classrooms I want to know your opinion as you can imagine a student using classroom has a very different experience than the teachers who's giving it and that's why I like to hear all the different aspects of how those classrooms are used I like to know how they work well and more importantly I like to know how they don't work because what our job is to take that aspect that we've been given and actually challenge you because it's

152a year old and things have changed in a year we've seen that we've had to adapt classrooms for covet everything was get them in get them tight we're trying to get as many people in there as possible and now what we're seeing is space them out give them room how can we teach remotely as as well as teach in person so these are all the different aspects that I'm going to help guide through the process so that we make sure as we go through and we do that design that we're giving you the optimized space that we've looked at every angle every cabinet that goes in is designed for what needs to be stored there every piece of technology that's being used is the most up-to-date and user-friendly but it's also about blending in all

153of your specialty so making sure special education stem and steam programs you name it has all been thought out and I like to say that I create this geeky little spreadsheet that only I really enjoy but what that is is it's that road map that David talks about that truly then ends with not only picking the appropriate finishes because we're talking about allergens and green and off-gassing but sustainability all the way down to I will be there unpacking the boxes of the furniture as it's coming into the building making sure that everything goes into place so the more information and the more people that can get involved in this process really makes my job a lot easier so I'm going to pass it back to Dave thank you um just wanted to show you a

154case study when when we first um were interested in this project and and did the walk through um and learned more about some of the the water course issues and the drainage issues around the property we we immediately went to a project that we just finished in the north west part of the state in Winstead uh it was Barry Hinsdale school we just completed it you saw probably saw it on its list about a 18 million dollar project um that that school actually had a water course that was running under it if you could believe it someone thought it was a great idea to run one time to build a water course there it also had uh accessibility issues in the entry was was sort of done to script and we knew we needed to

155sort of solve two problems with one solution what this is really illustrating is what we did is we reworked the entryway and we also rerouted the water course so by engineering and Creative Design can we solve two solutions in one and that is kind of the approach that we bring along through all of these renovation projects because with budgets even at 24.5 million dollars we are still challenged to make that all work so if we can do the two for one solution we will look at that and this was one case study we presented to to the building committee because we just draw a direct parallel with that next slide please we talk about sustainability and renovation is probably the best way to um to practice sustainability the majority of this building is going to

156stay the way that it was originally built okay these are not being demolished and going into dumpsters there's a lot of value in that and that's why we like to practice that new buildings are wonderful and they have their purpose but the renovation of an of an existing building um is sustainable just in its own merits a high performance building is what we're going to be obligated to provide the state state statute requires that a building of this order of magnitude we are going to need to meet the U.S Green Building council's lead silver equivalent certification which is the Connecticut high performance building we're going to do that through a variety of solutions that we can fit within the building that is there but we're also going to challenge ourselves and challenge the budget to

157see if there are certain Alternatives that we can lean forward obviously aligning with your plan of conservation and development and find the right solution that could fit within that building some of the tools that we use to make sure that works as you can see just this graphic at the bottom right of the the screen is all of this work is captured in a three-dimensional model we actually take your two-dimensional drawings and we um we build a building three-dimensionally on the computer that allows us to determine conflict resolution and then whether or not beams are going to intersect with new piping and so forth so we're going to try to proof that out before we get out to construction When contractors then already have Solutions in hand so this is going to be a key

158part actually this is where the majority of the money of the budget is going to go unfortunately our Engineers in-house their best work is never seen but it's the most important piece of really the project is that health and safety component of it and we're going to work hard to make sure we find the solutions that have a long payback um for for the investment that you're going to be putting into it and lastly if you could go to the next slide please I want to talk about um schedule so um with that schedule drives budget budget drives schedule for that so our team along with the owners representative in the construction manager equally are going to sort of pull at each other to keep ourselves on time on time and on budget what is

159crafted here we have reviewed the building committee's goal of moving the design through starting in February and really continuing through September to get those initial Concepts developed presented vetted challenged and so forth once the construction manager is on board they're also going to be doing the same they're going to be reviewing the projects of our drawing they're going to be making suggestions on material supply chain issues these are different challenges than we've ever dealt with in the past and that really guides the the process that we go along with it the pre-construction phase is just that it's looking at items that we could get onboarded before we really start construction and then it's moving through your approval process in terms of the bet the back to the board of ed in terms of formal approvals

160and on to the RTM for final funding and so forth so we'll be there to help Shepherd that project along and provide that technical support and speak on behalf of the design in the merits of the project and then once we go into bidding in Awards and construction our team we do have dedicated construction administrator we also have a licensed building official we'll be on board to help manage the project make sure that the contractors and their team is building the project in accordance with the mission um and at the end of the day certify that this project meets and exceeds the expectations that were set forth as as we start off today so with that again thank you for try trusting us with this with this important project we are excited to get started

161and we know it's a long journey but we'll be there one step at a time so thank you happy to stay well thank you let's please stay we're going to follow through with some questions does anybody have a question well I guess I'll start off nobody else has one uh well obviously I have a comment I have a comment go right ahead okay um I just want to say you know I wasn't aware that silver petrochelli had been selected by Old Greenwich up until you guys just announced it so it's not like I just want to be clear this process was very independent on behalf of the Old Greenwich building committee uh that being said they've been a pleasure to deal with for the high school entryway they've been responsive they've been thoughtful um they've

162been open to our suggestions crazy and not crazy um and David and his team have really just been a pleasure to work with and we look forward to working with them and completing the vestibule um and um happy to say we've been very happy customers um thus far with them so I just wanted to give that plug and it really did not know until tonight that they had been selected so thank you thank you um the only I guess the question the one question I have is uh uh what did you think about the uh we voted we looked at the feasibility studies some opportunities to uh sketch out what our thoughts might be during the feasibility process do you have any comments about your observations of our feasibility we did and you know we

163we didn't want to be too presumptuous but we're Architects and we we brought our own thoughts at least initial thoughts more just to sort of demonstrate to the building committee how we think than anything and you know we were doing that in a vacuum so we didn't have the opportunity of of learning more about the project and meeting the individuals um that we'll be working with but yeah we did look at that we we came up with some solutions that we thought we could possibly reduce some of the square footage if we just looked at sort of rearranging the corridors um circulation is a big part of the school circulation is basically the hallways those are just square footage that gets you from point A to point B and if we could do that in

164a shorter shorter manner we could save costs because building buildings is just cost per square foot so we we looked at a solution that we thought could possibly do that we also looked at sort of a two two to one scenario that we similar to what we showed you on the Mary Hinsdale project in which we are con one of the contemplate can we move the original entryway back to that front entryway resolve the Ada issue by creating a upgrade scenario but under that can we also now put storm Drainage Systems in that so that still needs a proof of concept to see whether we can make that work and we do want to explore that um but again we we start a project like this with an open mind we will challenge that other

165solution but understand that there's other ones that are there and work towards that it's really a one step at a time process but yes we did look at that we saw the merits that were there and I think we could keep a lot of that we would like to look at some other Alternatives that we think may be able to help save cost and we're going to need to do that across the board because prices just aren't going down so we're going to have to do whatever we can to to get in that right direction so that it's good that we've given you a bit of a nudge in a direction that we certainly are we're okay with that we voted way back when uh and I guess there's the uh we it's luckily we

166have two advocates for you guys obviously our liaison board liaison Michael who is The Advocate what a surprise we have Christina as well so that's a that's a plus minuses are this is the first we're seeing of any information so I'm not sure that our our members are are able to uh gather enough to make a decision so I'm going to leave that to them if they uh obviously will call the vote at one point but I'm going to leave the floor open to anybody else who might want to gather more information to see if they're I think get enough tonight to make that vote Aaron well I was going to Second what Joe said I mean I've seen I've seen the work and the presentations you guys have done here with other other projects

167but this is the first time we've seen this so I knew I had asked earlier if we were going to have an opportunity to see any of the information but I want to make sure that this is being posted because it's not up on the website um I don't have any questions simply because I was watching I I haven't had a chance to really make it through but I know I had spoken to members of the building committee uh without knowing who they selected um and it heard that I believe it was it a unanimous decision yes uh by the building committee and that uh they all had very positive things to say uh without sharing information with me as to who is to who had been selected but I did reach out to other

168members to ask so I thought I at least share that anybody else Karen and now we've got changed just a little bit sorry all right um so first of all I'm really pleasantly surprised to hear the words coming out of your mouth about working within the budget and coming up with Solutions because I think to be honest it's really important we're on the verge of you know with Old Greenwich and then we have CMS as well uh which is in an enormous burden on our Capital uh here in town and it is nice finally to hear someone say we're going to work with you to try to keep this as close to budget as possible we're coming up with Solutions we have new ideas and ways in which that we can perhaps shrink the square

169footage that doesn't impact the educational opportunities which we're provided this is all music to our ears and I'd also like this or at least to mine and I'd also like to comment that uh you the track record that you have given with the high school entryway and the fact that we as a board came back and said the expense of this was going to be something of an additional two and a half million dollars and we said yeah we're not doing that and you came back with an alternative that works provides the solution that we're looking for at just a little bit more of a cost but certainly not the full weight of what was originally being presented to us is also you know gives us I think and gives me the Comfort to say

170we're looking for a partnership and I think that's what a lot of projects often miss at times is that partnership it's we're not you know we're not an endless bank that's just rolling out the dough uh we're just not and I am grateful to hear the words of we're working with you and the budget and trying to stick to it because we haven't heard that in a while and I and that gives me a lot of confidence in the project so I appreciate that I was on the feasibility study for the old Granite school we worked really hard to try to push that down and getting the right number for that school in what needed to happen uh it's a great school it's in a great Community it has a lot of unique characteristics that

171I want to keep and and basically accentuate and rather than get rid of because that school has a lot of history particularly attic if you've been up there I'm kind of worried if there's bodies um anyway but I do appreciate that and I thought the presentation was great thank you Kathleen real fast just to wrap this up um building committee conducted due diligence references All That Jazz great great question anybody else well one big thing that's helping me decide on this was Barbara O'Neill you've convinced her to support this project so all these smokes and and Joe if I have to make a comment of course um I think you know I think as if the building committee has done their due diligence while I think none of us love that we just didn't get

172any documents in advance in the presentation now um it is the role of the building committee to do the due diligence and make the decision and the fact that they were unanimous and they're making a recommendation in addition to the fact that I think we have familiarity with silver patricelli um I'm good with voting in favor tonight I see no need for to further delay the project so that's my point of view others can disagree thank you and Michael I guess maybe you can conclude and then they can think about it so so so yes so based on I I appreciate all the comments and I think a lot of the comments um that uh um fellow board members have mentioned are why uh we some all of us on the building committee felt so

173strongly about Sylvan petratelli they know Greenwich um they're thinking creatively um they have an in-house team and they they very much um very much impressed all of us um and their references all checked out and I'm sorry Christina you weren't uh we you we we kept you in the dark we were we were advised to keep everyone in the dark but I assure you that uh the chairman Waters had many conversations with chairman Walco um about about no no I like that though because then it shows that it was an independent decision so it's good that we were kept in the dark um so I'd like to make a motion um to um I'd like to make a motion to accept Sylvan Petrocelli of the architect of the Old Greenwich project I'm happy sorry so

174we have a motion Second To None over there hello hello at the Kids Table over there okay all in favor please raise your hand hi that is unanimous congratulations thank you thank you okay moving on let's go to the Central Middle School update Dr Jones I think we've really talked about this just a reminder we have a question and answer document the board has that will go out tomorrow I think it'll be very very helpful for the larger Community we also have a brand new fact sheet that the board got today that will go out tomorrow as well and we do have a third document we're working on um more specifically it's a little bit more detail even for the bet so I'll just leave it at that but it will once it goes out

175it will be online be on the project page be available to everybody who wants to learn about the project anyone on Central Middle School that's a negative let's move on uh Western Middle School uh please again on this one I think I've already addressed it uh in my superintendent's comments so uh we don't need to belabor it anymore we could move on to the next item if you're happy so I understand Parks and Rec as Brent has already assigned the fields for for uh fall so we could be ready that that soon is that correct just kidding okay moving on uh now we have new courses uh ghs to be approved for the cosg first read that carabello I don't need the podium thank you so much I just have Jason polis and he's here

176tonight to present the guitar too uh new course which is very exciting and then after Jason we will have Andrew Byrne present the linear algebra course thank you my name is Jason polis I teach at ghs thank you all for your time tonight as I present a an exciting potential new course offering at ghs at ghs we currently have we currently offer a one semester three block beginning guitar course after having taught a ghs for five years it's clear to me that our guitar program is growing and there's a need to offer a second level of Qatar this new class called guitar 2 will serve students at ghs in a number of ways in the past few years we have increased our class offerings of beginning guitar from three times per year to five times

177per year due to demand many students and parents are now asking if there is a way for students to continue their study of Qatar as guitar classes are three block classes they complement the heavier six block offerings of orchestra band and choir meeting uh and choir meeting the needs of a segment of our population that love music but sometimes can't commit to a performance Ensemble like band choir or orchestra or simply don't have the room in their schedules for a six block music class another need that this class addresses is that we often have guitarists enter ghs that already have substantial guitar experience and there currently is no class that meets their needs for pursuing guitar past a basic level I have taught the beginning guitar course for several years now based on my observations

178most students who have taken guitar one would be interested in taking guitar too much of my teaching role at ghs involves teaching electronic music classes this expanded guitar curriculum will help to feed skilled guitars into our electronic music program and Jazz ensembles we have two Jazz ensembles we have enhanced our electronic music curriculum in the past few years to include learning guitar piano bass and drums in our songwriting and recording classes students now play in Rock Band type ensembles as part of their assured experience students who have taken guitar one and two will not only be a major boost to the electronic music program but we'll have we'll now have a way to collaborate and play in small ensembles with other students using their guitars and their guitar skills in addition after taking guitar to

179ghs will have many guitars that will be capable of joining one of our two Jazz ensembles lastly expanding our offerings and especially three block offerings in music will allow us to engage musically with a more diverse population of the school and as a result will strengthen the connection of the music department and the entire School that's it okay questions Karen so is are we intending to offer this for the for the next year yeah for the 2023-2024 right yep okay that's the plan and how many students do we think are interested in this program uh it's it's hard to say I've taken in informal polls in the class and have the students give me um sort of like exit exit polls and stuff as they finish the class and um uh I'm I think there

180could be as many as as 40 students that want to take it next year and so we're planning on offering it first and second semester and then based on enrollment figuring out if we're going to have it both semesters action and how will this impact or can it be used for any portion of their graduation requirements that's a great question I can't answer it it's uh it's complicated I know they need Fine Arts it can it can serve in a few different uh ways okay it's a fine art credit but it's more than that as well and so I can get back to you on exactly all the possible ways that it can help them but part of the part of what's great about offering something like this is that it can help to fill

181fulfill needs for the kids in a music area where they may not they may not be in band or require something like that and it's a way for them to get involved in music we have a few other classes that are three block classes uh intro to music theory and then uh electronic uh intro electron music but that's basically it for music so this wouldn't this would help we got them all for expanding our music program I mean under um Miss Newell and what she's done with it and building it up and I think it's only shown that the we have an amazing and a talented group of children sorry students that are looking for ways in which they can span expand on their music credentials and I think if there's a need for this

182class and particularly with the number of students there's no reason we shouldn't be offering it and I think we should just make sure that we can find ways in which that it could you know go toward their graduation requirements I know that there's a lot of rigors there and I wouldn't want these particular students because they want to take this these classes because this is what interests them in any way hurts their ability or jams up their schedules with so that they can get the right credits to to graduate yeah I have a question oh go ahead Karen no please no girls first no yes your question's probably a lot better than mine I I don't know if my question's any better but I was going to say I I love the idea of this

183I think it's an incredible opportunity to offer you know more Arts programs as Karen was saying um and so if there's I had two questions you know if there's an interesting guitar too do you think this might have any opportunities to lead to other upper level technique courses um either in you know guitar in my mind I dream like you know this is so I teach electronic music and in there we have a new initiative as the last couple years where we have the kids playing in bands it's really incredible so part in addition to songwriting they're learning how to play together and they learn bass drums and keyboard and um but anyways they get to I can imagine that these these two once they finish guitar two number they can go into the songwriting

184and that will give them a place to further develop because they will be playing in ensembles and for a school to have kind of a school a rock thing it's pretty it's pretty rare it's really cool to see these kids and my favorite part about this whole boosting up the guitar program at ghs and and the electronic and music program in terms of getting kids to really play as a group there um we're attracting a whole population from the school that wouldn't isn't always you know they're not always your band kids they're not your Orchestra kids necessarily and they just they they're starting to really come out of the woodwork and they love the collaborative nature of getting to play rock music and and write music together you know well I'm glad my I thought

185process was so transparent that you went right to school of rock but so my other question is I know you mentioned that um there was going to be no cost for educators and that you were going to be creating you know there was a discussion at um uh looking at a method book so I just wanted to he was wondering if you or other educators are going to be creating the method book for the course or are we going to look for um any just materials additional materials or have access to some online resources so I've created a book The guitar one course and I can share that with you guys and then I've created this I I will be creating the second as well so I've been teaching guitar for a few decades so

186I'm looking forward to you know uh designing that and I can share that with you guys and basically I wrote wrote a book for the first course and there's also YouTube practice videos so if a kid even ever misses a class they literally have a whole video of me just playing the stuff with them and they can they can you know so that would be the idea for the second level too well now that I know there's YouTube videos I can oh I'd be very happy to teach myself to play guitar I definitely would need an educator to help me that but thank you for answering my questions now level ones that's in there that's in there right where are we level two give me some sort of uh oh that's a good question well

187um they're gonna you know they move on to Green Day and they learn they learn Led Zeppelin and um you know they oh they were they'll end up doing some funk stuff James Brown they'll do some uh to get in there's a little bit of jazz too so well uh honestly guitar one it's amazing what they end up walking away with and if we can have guitar too I think the kids will be just delighted that they get I think they were honestly shocked that we could play really play at the end of the first semester thank you that's a great answer thank you very much any more questions thank you very much for that sure appreciate it no problem uh so we have K8 stem report oh okay on his linear algebra where's that

188okay honestly algebra this is part of the course of study guide same same section well same thing okay sorry about that that's okay Mr Kelly good evening uh chairman Kelly um Board of Education Dr Jones thank you for the opportunity to speak with you here today about our proposed course honors linear algebra as you've heard me uh through the last couple of years we're really excited by the work that's happening at our elementary and middle schools as far as math and math advancement and we're seeing more and more students who are uh running through our program at a very quick Pace it's a really good problem to have um so I'm excited to bring forth forward to you today uh honors linear algebra which is really kind of the the next step in a child's

189mathematics progression it really is the foundation for all stem Fields as you can see in The Proposal here tonight the applications of linear algebra are varied in many everything from economics to Neuroscience to uh theories of Relativity so we think this will be a wonderful opportunity to encourage our students to continue to grow and we're really excited to to be able to bring this forward to you tonight thank you any questions oh we've got lots of questions well I may have a question but I just wanted to start by saying a huge thank you I mean for many many many things but in for this in particular because this is something that I know that parents have been asking for the board has been asking for for so long that we have so many students

190at the earlier levels now doing triple jumps that they're running out of math courses so I am just thrilled that you brought this forward but I'll let Kathleen ask her questions because I know she has a student that might be been you know might be in that course if we ever approve it go ahead Kathleen yeah which is um so you would think I'd be all four but I'm going to ask some questions about um you know because it's a limited group of children right let's let's sort of reset everyone just so people understand I mean my high school's topped out of BC calculus we're talking about the fact that we are children can take Advanced calculus here already um so in order for you to be on track for this course you'd have to

191be a sophomore taking BC calculus um I am lucky enough to be in that you know I do have a child in that but that means that I mean I think he has there are six kids perhaps um throughout his class doing that is that right that is correct yeah we uh currently have um seven students who are juniors in our Advanced Calculus class um so we would definitely need to recruit a few more students to be able to run the course but to have it on the books and really have it as an opportunity or understood pathway I think would be um really helpful to a lot of our community that have inquired about that over the years yeah and so I do appreciate that what I guess I need to understand because we

192always have to look at things is if we kind of run a course right if it's appropriate it's I appreciate that it costs money we talk about the books but I mean obviously we also have to find a teacher a teacher which it's already challenging to find teachers to teach Advanced calculus right it's these are hard classes to teach um but the independent study does seem to be working well for some right I want to understand that a little bit because I know that that's it's MIT right it's it's free right well yeah yes 100 we you know we will continue to offer those independent study Pathways um you know not everyone is interested in linear algebra just in our our research I think the vast majority of students who are on this pathway will

193take linear algebra and that's why we chose to go in this direction as opposed to other directions but you know until it makes really fiscal sense for for Grant High School and and certainly the board um you know we would work very closely with Dr Jones and and Mr Mayo Ms Delotta to ensure that you know it makes a lot of sense to have a full-class dedicated versus taking a look at uh the independent pathway independent study pathway so you bring up excellent points but we're not I I there's certainly no plans to just run it with two or three kids um and the independent study pathway has been working well for us but I think it will be important as we see more and more students come through that we have it on the

194books that we get teachers trained and get it get ourselves ready for when that big influx will come because it is coming yeah I was wondering where starting to matriculate more and more children into this path I mean it's incredible I actually wanted to say is do we have any comps are there other high schools that are doing this I mean I feel like wow already yeah so I did a survey throughout Fairfield County there isn't another school that has it on the books many of the schools will do an independent study that like we've done a broader search you know there's some schools in the city like Bronx school science and um Stuyvesant that do have it on the books um so just to kind of put that in perspective in some schools like

195the Massachusetts math academy Math and Science Academy also has an underbook so they're few and far between but I I love the idea of us getting ahead of it and actually having it there as a as a known pathway for for our students and for our families yeah that's I mean that's incredible the fact that we're even can contemplate this is impressive but um so thank you but I I know I realize it requires a lot of diligence and and thought Mike yeah I um I mean I'm I'm not I'm not unsupportive I'm supportive of the thing but I do want to caution us because this is not a no-brainer in much of the country there's a if you look like you and you read there's a lot of debate going on in other parts

196of the country that we shouldn't be doing this kind of math acceleration there's no question that you know I'm not triple jumps and things like that we should you know are not are not healthy for kids social emotional quality um you certainly cannot point to uh what What's they um well I'm not I'm not saying I'm not arguing I'm not arguing either way I'm just saying it is a very rich debate if you look and see particularly out in California which has its own problems but there are a lot of there's a lot of State policy right now to push back on this so on Mustangs suggesting we do this but I am suggesting that part of the reason for that is the significant social emotional pressure the uh um you know we talk about

197we point to you you raised Stuyvesant and Frank science neither one of these are synonymous with um student mental health they um you know they both those schools have significant crises um in the pressures and stretches so I just want to caution us that as we continue to consider these kind of advanced enrichment options for students uh just because it's available for students doesn't mean that um it's healthy um when as soon as we create these paths that means we're creating pressure for students to take them um we know the competition is real um and is that race to at some point we we all we do have to consider that race to these kind of super Advanced sophomore College before you graduate high school is is necessarily worth it um um so I'm not

198saying we're voting no but I think we need to be mindful of all aspects of this debate I'm just going to go to Cody real quick because as a math genius I was curious I do love linear algebra that was my favorite uh no I'm serious I was hoping to say that I was in math major I know you're a year of it I love it it's I was actually curious about something else why is calculus a requirement to take the class because I I looked at the list of stuff and you can do linear algebra with no calculus knowledge and it's actually what I was thinking about is it's such a and this was eye-opening for me when I took it is it's a really different form of math that if you don't like

199calculus like which I'm sure there are some mathematically inclined students who don't love calc that could take it as an alternative and it kind of opens up the world of math I was curious why it would be uh restricted to only calculus students it's a really good question and one that I I didn't settle on or our team didn't settle on lightly Cody um as far as the uh reason at the end of the day I think in our work in canvassing colleges and specifically engineering schools one of the things that we hear regularly is the importance of having that ad calc or multivariable calculus before you go into uh some of the high level physics and engineering classes so we didn't want to send the wrong message there partially the second thing is that

200we our Advanced calculus classes do enjoy some pretty good enrollment and uh you know we want to be able to sustain that over time and so at least initially the way our team was thinking about it and it may evolve over time is that we really want to try to Target those students who have gotten through ad calc and had that experience and and really are committed to to going to the mat exploring math at that level moving forward so it wasn't done in isolation like I said we looked at a lot of what the colleges are reporting back to us as far as um what they're looking for um and you know I think because it is new and we're kind of embarking on this um with very few models we decided to go

201in that that direction but we would certainly be open to other suggestions moving forward just uh one thing I would maybe consider um and I'm reflecting on my own experience I did AP Stat as an elective when I was doing BC calc at the high school with Mr Speaker um and uh yeah yeah two years ago uh when I was a senior um and uh we maybe consider making it um an option for people to do as an elective so they haven't if you haven't completed calculus but you're enrolled in it because then it would solve the issue Kathleen was talking about of being only available like being only available for sophomores who are taking calculus it would then give you presumably another year or two of students available and oh it's a great point

202we and we continue to kind of try to find that balance one of the things that's happened probably since you've graduated is all the AP Computer Science classes have been added um so we have a good number of students as you've seen in previous reports who are taking both AP Computer Science principles and AP Computer Science a and so a lot of our students who are on this pathway that don't pursue a course an independent study will take advantage of AP Stat and the three two other computer science classes because that will give them college credit I think one of the criticism systems here both of adcalc and honors linear algebra as as we have them is that they don't often lead to much if any recognition when you get to that um to University

203or college level some kids will have to depend upon where they go retake these courses um so you know the the value of having the AP credit sometimes outweighs exploring the the independent study so we try to work with every individual child to be able to give them what they need in order so that they can continue to pursue their passion and pathway just to the last comment I totally missed an opportunity to make a math joke I should have said that calculus and linear algebra are totally orthogonal to each other uh someone got that so we but I would say this to my peers linear algebra is a really really amazing class so just from the content standpoint I would totally recommend this okay Christina Union member okay Cody if it makes you feel

204better I kind of groaned when you made the joke um anyway so it's just you know it's funny because like in the course of this discussion I think my concerns are kind of similar to Kathleen's in terms of you know who you'd have I like the idea but um who's qualified having staff qualified to teach it because I know there's only two teachers at the two teachers at the high school who really teach BC calc and multivariable health um and they won't be with us forever so I think that's an important element of this and then thinking about it when we're talking about um kind of what Cody was just talking about like the threshold of you know running a class with six kids I know Dr Jones looks through the budget and we've talked

205about not running other classes when we don't have enough enrollment and now we're talking about well we would roll it you know run this class so I think the enrollment issue is an important one of saying if we have fewer than x number of kids kids you know it's kind of hard to justify how to run the class so I'm going to leave that to you into Dr Jones to talk about along those lines and perhaps a way to solve that problem is to talk about that eligibility isn't limited to the kids who've completed multivariable but maybe if you have a senior who's taking multi-variable who's the math person who simultaneously wants to take linear algebra if you're that intense a math student and I had two of them grow up in my household besides

206myself no I'm just kidding um two of my children you know taking this in addition to multivariable for a kid who wants to go to engineering school could be a great Avenue and then you've increased your pool of the students who are available to take the class which then helps justifying running it um and and it just do it you know I understand your point about a not having AP credit for multi-variable or something like this for when they go to college but those AP classes don't exist right like if the classes don't exist they're not given college credit but again um in my children's experience having taken the multivariable it was massively easier when they got to college and they were taking those classes in college because it was a repeat of what they'd

207done in Greenwich high school so I think it's a huge value the multi-variable uh Calculus class and this could be too for letting out linear algebra but um I am concerned about the enrollment element because I do think if we're saying we're not running certain classes with a small number I don't think we can you know say oh well this is a special class I think we have to think about that um for the enrollment issue um so that was on that point um I also somebody mentioned earlier Dr Jones um and something about AP pre-calculus I know that's not as part of this of course a study guide and Andrew since that's math at the high school I don't know if that's a new class that we're we're already offering or because we already

208offer pre-calc it's just the AP version I don't know if you want to speak to that sure I'd be happy to um as as you may have seen in our report for the stem that's coming up shortly we learned uh last spring that the College Board has decided to offer advanced placement precalculus that came it did come as a surprise to me and my team and um when College Board released the information we took a lot of time in the spring and early part of the summer to analyze what's actually in that syllabus and um the really great news is that Greenwich High School's honors pre-calculus class as as it's been for a number of years is on par if not better than the advanced placement precalculus uh curriculum that's being put forth by college

209board so for us as a school it's a very easy transition to to add AP uh pre-calculus and it's just a minor a few minor tweaks that will need to happen and my team has been working on that really for the last six months so I think we're well positioned to make that switch um immediately not too many of our neighboring districts are in such a position because of the quality of their honors pre-calculus curriculum um so we're excited by this and and uh you know it's another opportunity to uh get students to to earn some of that AP credit there are some naysayers out there that will say that you know what college if any will will recognize an AP pre-calculus uh credit uh I I don't know which ones will or which ones

210won't right now but um nonetheless I think it's it's exciting for us uh to see that our curriculum is at at that standard if not exceeds it and that we'll have this opportunity to to at least um afford our students that opportunity to to sit for that exam if they so choose great thank you Laura didn't go I've let Laura building Karen we'll go to use that that's okay good Laura not to diverge but because I have an honors pre-calc student could he take the AP exam for it for AP pre-calc if he wanted to if that was an option 100 uh correct me if I'm wrong beside now but uh any student can sit for any AP exam our recommendation is that you sit through our class but uh but nonetheless yes uh your

211child should be well prepared if in a year from May uh they'd like to take it I think that would be that would be just fine a proud mommy moment very nice okay Karen well I was gonna say they don't offer it yet and it either way it would be too late you'd had to uh right sign up for AP testing already but that's neither here nor there right um so I actually had two questions well one one of which you sort of addressed a little bit um as to the requirement to happen to take ad calc first because I you know I had done some research also looking at what a lot of the colleges uh when they are offering the higher level courses most of them what I had looked at uh said

212that you know you can take classes in any order once you've taken like past uh you know calc 2 or past like the AP Calculus BC uh exam so the question would be also I mean again I know you don't want to take from ad calc but I know that a couple people had brought up the same thing I love the option of offering it either or if people want to do linear algebra or ad calc because I guess I think it offers a different option for math students who are interested some of them also want to take AP stats along with one of these just you know for for fun um but the other question I was going to ask you is you know from going through the Big Ideas Math textbook um you

213know I don't think they offered a higher level math uh textbooks is that correct right we don't have those for calc um not to date but my understanding is and maybe Mr Reed has a different understanding but um there's there are plans to um ex you know move up the line a little bit longer a little bit further I know Larson who's the primary author of the text has has his own um AP calc textbook for example so but that was before he joined the Big Ideas group so he may be writing one right now for all I know I remember asking when we were reviewing them for the algebra and geometry courses and they had said that they were looking to develop something further along and the only reason I was asking is because

214you know as it's mentioned we only have uh I think two teachers who teach the higher level like DC calc and linear you know ad calc um it makes it really difficult for a student who needs added support to find a tutor uh to help because they can't hire their teacher and if they can they get usually oftentimes extra support you know pre and post school but you know at night time if you're really having difficulty [Music] um re-teaching is is difficult so that's the only reason I was asking um the question is once if we approve this the question would be would we be able to possibly find I don't know if you've done any research on tax what textbooks are out there for this but if any of them might have that online

215component for reteaching in case a student it's just a question if you've if you've looked yeah no what I'd like to respond to First is I think one of the things although we have two outstanding teachers that teach BC calculus and AD calc historically we are building capacity in the department and that's something that we've taken very seriously over the last number of years is through the hiring process is to find folks that will be comfortable to follow in those wonderful footsteps if if the day is to come um and similarly we're doing that with uh computer science as you've heard me speaking in years past so that's I don't want anyone to think that there's just only two people out of our 30-something uh staff that are capable of teaching these courses that's that's

216not the case at all um as far as textbooks with a specialized course like this in in linear algebra is really really only two textbooks out there um uh one is written by uh Dr Strang here in uh through MIT I know I I had the probably the first edition 30 years ago when I took uh linear algebra but um you know as far as a course like this it's just a really specialized course and uh there aren't many textbooks companies that are out there publishing linear algebra textbooks and making money on it so uh I think our choices will be limited if we're if we are fortunate enough to have enough uh students who are actually enrolled as far as choosing which textbook we would use well it was not to say that we

217don't have a lot of incredible Educators at the school at all I just know when the higher level math courses we only have two teachers teaching them currently doesn't mean others can't so I didn't want I didn't want any teachers who are working on this for me to think that I was suggesting that I was just asking I know you know from having a student in a higher level math courses in years past that's the owner I was asking thank you Karen any more questions fantastic thank you Andrew thank you everyone okay see ya Mark I think you're up K-8 stem report hope it's not too cold for you is it not too cold good evening I'd like to welcome us all into hour four of tonight's uh board meeting and I would also like

218to bring up Mr Reed and Miss Fogle um we appreciate the fact that I believe all of you have watched our flipped video and are prepared to ask questions so uh we're ready to get into it I just want to apologize to Mr Kittle now that I know his math background this certainly is way below what would stimulate your mathematical mind but if you have any questions on the K-8 level we'll we'll take them so um happy to start with math and Mr Reed or a science with Miss Vogel let's start with Mike and by the way I've spoken to Mike about this topic he's much more in tune with this so I've asked a lot of questions of him but she answered very simply which now he's gonna owe those questions to you thank

219you Bill let me um let me on on so that everybody doesn't have to but uh let me thank you again for the presentation the um it was the the 20-minute video I think um I guess it's right now or for his 20 minute video is great that we don't have to have a 20 minute presentation but the end was at the 20-minute video is well worth um if any of the community members are still watching a well worth watching um to see um how thoughtfully um you all the team is going about I'm approaching growth in both in in stem in Ka um and um I really appreciate how the um you've broken down of the metric as far as the goals for this year um by grade level and by School uh recognizing

220that each of our schools are in a diverse place and have very unique challenges and set real metrics for each run and I think that's that's that that's really helpful um and it's well worth watching just so you can stay to the end you get rewarded by seeing all those great eighth grade Pro science projects which are which are tremendous I didn't understand the eighth grade projects let alone the high school so um so is that um and no particular order but the um like I said it'd be helpful in thinking about next steps right if you've set these metrics and things like that but it'd be helpful to think about match steps in math and science and how you're approaching supporting um our teachers in making these these both metrics the um they know

221an email we talked a little bit about I'm thinking about what those classroom observations the classroom visits look like and how you're coordinating with building administrators and I thought that might be helpful to talk about sure no problem so I believe um well thank you for having us tonight appreciate it um Tara and I are pretty much on the same page with this there might be some nuanced differences in how we observe and how we support buildings but for the most part um we have observed every middle school teacher in our content areas for at least one session I'm starting my second go-round of that which is um probably a bit of a different approach than my predecessors um having not been in the classroom all that much or seen them in the classroom for

222many years so um so that's one thing um with the elementary school we are really working with grade level teams to support them specifically with um you know their instruction how they're delivering the instruction for certain Concepts certain skills that they're teaching um maybe diving into specific cohorts of kids that are struggling um um with with Concepts um and then from there what we do is we figure out what the metrics are going to be to to to sort of evaluate is what we've decided working and if it is then we continue with it and if it isn't then we sort of um revamp and go in possibly a different direction so what I would say is boots on the ground sleeves rolled up with teachers they know we're accessible they call us when they

223need us we get in there and we help them so um you know last year was a lot of relationship building this year is is really more um you know getting getting in the trenches with them and actually observing the kids interacting with the kids um and figuring out what they need um the last thing I'd say before I'd have Tara jump in just to add whatever she would like to for science is we do this in conjunction with the building Administration so when we do do walk-throughs in elementary we tend to organize it and and schedule it with the building administrator so we can walk through and calibrate and then what we do is we provide feedback that day very direct feedback about what we saw that was going well questions we have where

224we think we should go next and we do the same thing in the middle school but in the middle school with the busy and hectic schedules we sort of just come in when we whenever we we would like and we check in in the office and if they can join us they join us on the administration and if not we just we get in there in the classrooms and again provide that direct feedback and the one thing I can say from a math perspective which has been really amazing this year is we have um now started to sort of work in partnership with our special Educators to support math growth you know for all kids really but that's been a really powerful thing so I'm really excited to continue that and um you know you

225know really the main thing for us is to understand each building's culture and how they operate and then you know sort of pair that with the vision of the administrator and then what we need them to do from a district perspective so you know I think that's the overarching sort of goal and how we approach things um for both of us but Tara if you want to add something for science I can say ditto to that but the only thing I would add is there is a tiered Approach at our Title 1 schools where we have higher needs so we are there more often we are more visible and more available for planning sessions with teachers at that schools at those schools and we're in constant communication with administrators if they have concerns so we're

226there to celebrate growth that they're having and we're there to address concerns at those schools where needs are higher do we have um um can you talk a little bit about like mid-year benchmarking that we're doing on our way towards towards these end of your goals yeah um I am going to let Mike take that one because the meteor Benchmark is just a bit cleaner at the math and he has the multiple grades worth of data to talk about yeah so I think as most of you know we're in the middle of our uh winter Benchmark assessment window now I guess we're sort of at the beginning part of it but it's a two-week window and um you know I uh become obsessed with it the second the window opens and um you know we

227we don't we haven't even assessed nearly half the kids yet but the preliminary data when we start to compare it um you know certain schools or certain groups of kids has been um very positive um the one thing I'd also like to add is um you know Lil perona brought up wondering about the cohort data and you know trying to be true to what we've been preaching for the last year about three data points three years makes a trend we didn't want to report out necessarily that cohort data because we really only have two years since covid but we do have very positive two-year cohort data so if you look at our Middle School which is really where I'm hyper focused because that's where we tend to take a bit of a dive in our

228performance um each of our middle schools is has positive cohort growth um so our current you know sixth grade cohort which means we look at the 2021 grade four scores and the 2022 grade 5 scores um you know the average across the district um is in middle school is 10 points higher than the previous year and Western Middle School is seeing the highest they had 19 points of cohort growth there and then as you get to seventh grade and then eighth grade it's um it it Dives down a little bit but it's also still positive with an average of four um so we are seeing some nice cohort Trends in the infancy of starting to track that but next year in this report we'll report out both the grade level scores and the cohort scores

229because um you know as we you know as have stated previously we want to really be you know um approach our data analysis with Fidelity and so we want three um three years of scores in order to report that out yeah well I was going to say you just addressed one of my questions because I was going to ask about uh doing looking at a you know a cohort studying a trend across but um you know because this report it took me by surprise in a couple of ways and I think the the bigger issues that we're only looking at the SBA scores that's only one data point here um and so I think that that's important for everybody to kind of focus on it's you know when we're looking at the students Mastery and

230growth in math it we look at so much more than just one data point so I'm glad to hear that you mentioned some of the other uh data points that you're looking at that shows much different growth patterns and we see seeing in this document because I have to tell you there was I was a little surprised there was such a huge disparity uh between some of the schools when looking at the elementary scores and even further when we looked at the middle schools um and that that was sort of one of the questions I was going to ask you about but you know when we're looking at the elementary schools I think you started to talk about one of the additional supports we're adding uh for schools with lagging Learners to help them meet

231some of the lofty goals that have been set um so I I think it's good that we start to talk about some of those that's aren't doing this here over here sorry [Music] um some of those supports that we're adding in so um you know are there things what we have had in Pat in the past for those supports if you're looking at just the SBA data it doesn't show that it's necessarily helped but when I guess you're talking about other data points so that was one of the things I was going to ask us if we look at the other data that we have are we seeing growth and you know what are we putting into to help with these lagging schools with lagging scores yeah so um you know one of the things

232that we started last year to implement was the bridges Intervention Program um in in all of our schools but it has had a profound effect on our our Title One schools especially um with respect to the fact that two of those schools in elementary was what we're talking about here um have two math interventionists and so um um you know when we take a look at those High needs populations we start to think about you know how can we how can we better serve them and oftentimes the most important thing is to is to keep the schema the same right and so when these kids go in and out of supports whether it be intervention or if they go in into needing special education supports um we want to keep um everything sort of uniform

233so what we started to do is is um we're going to start to bring Bridges intervention um the program in and start to work with our special Educators at those schools to help support those kids and then um you know from there hopefully build it out to the rest of the district because I see one of our largest needs is is to empower and embolden and to give our our special Educators the tools that they need to support the students um and so um I think historically in the past they have been primarily focused on on reading and and they get the training in reading and and what we need to do is give them that proper training in um in math as well so um you know we're starting to build those supports out

234but you know we're learning a lot as we go and and um you know every building has has its different needs and different grade levels as you can see in the data have different needs and um you know sometimes it can be a little bit difficult to tease out what we should do across the entire District when each um building is sort of its own little district and has its own needs so um you know really what it starts with is is clear and direct expectations and then knowing that um you know you'll be held accountable for what we expect you to do but it's done with love and support you know we're in there trying to help them the best that we can and and you know know um we use our SBA data

235we use our linked data we use our summative assessments those of you don't know what that means that's just the end of chapter test and then quite frankly we use a lot of quantitative data just observations that we see in the ways kids behave because while math seems so numbers oriented it's actually a it's a mindset more than it is anything else and so we need to you know really change the culture of math in general so that people understand it's okay to make mistakes that's where we learn um and um you know we fall down we scrape our knees and we get back up again right and so that's really what we need to need to focus in on and so we're trying to build a mindset of of celebrating um when we come

236across things that are difficult and then you know how do we work through those weeds and and you know get to where we need to go so a lot of data points but I think we focus on the SBA for these reports because that's ultimately the one thing that's exactly the same across the entire District it well I was gonna say so you bring up two points that I thought were really interesting because one is the way the words you know the SBA is worded it's it's also across the state it's not just here so I think that that's a big difference also and and how the students uh might be testing in their growth scores because you're looking at the SBA all of the other assessments that we offer the summative Assessments in the

237other you know mid-year assessments are things that we've we've had our hand in and looked at and it and addressed to so it speaks to the way our students are learning and the wording that's being you know used in our classrooms and how they're being taught so I think that that is a really interesting point to just to just you know to have out there but you also mentioned and this is interesting because it was what shocked me even more was other than the disparity the elementary was the big disparity at the middle schools right you see Eastern here and Western and Central are tied in the lower portion and that that surprised me into you know having a student at Western that the growth there is huge and they lost some during covet but

238I'm glad to hear it's coming back um and so you mentioned now I'm sorry I'm like right in this um you mentioned how all three you know in your presentation all three of the middle schools have a different tactic right the Eastern has a has an interventionist Western and in central are using uh excuse me Central has the interventionist and eastern and western are using changes in scheduling other teachers to sort of create support opportunities um if all three of them are using different strategies they understand we have different Learners two of them are lagging behind are we looking at what's working in one school but when they're doing really well or we're seeing growth to sort of bring that in and I know each school's run differently each population of each School different but

239I just we're seeing such disparity at least just looking at the SBA scores at least in this report so that's what I was just wondering yeah so you know really what drives that is is the Staffing model right and so each building has a different amount of staff and how they allocate their staff can be dependent on many variables um you know throughout each school year to school year right so um you know currently right now um at Western we have the most staff um and so they're able to design their their schedules in a very unique way where um every teacher has um an opportunity to have math and a half with their students that need that extra support and then um at Central that's our least amount of teachers and they do have

240the interventionist but it's only one person right and so um we try to figure out how to utilize him to either push into class or pull students out and then you know really how do we identify the kids that we think um really need that just little bit of TLC so that we can give them that support and then get them back into the classroom because if anything is true we know that the most important thing is that they're in the classroom with their teacher and so we value our interventionists and they're wonderful but their goal is to get them into intervention and out of intervention and so um you know I'll give Eastern as an example they were able to allocate an extra body towards math save three teachers per grade level and they

241were able to then have one of those teachers work with the skills class so that would be students that are below grade level um really the the bottom line is is um you know depending on the types of kids that come in from year to year it sort of dictates our staffing model and so um could we bring a uniformity across the board sure if we decided that as a as a you know leadership team in a district that we wanted to allocate staff in certain spots um absolutely we could but at the same time Western has a totally different identity than Eastern and then then Central and so we we do have to take into account their individuality and how we support them and what their needs are so um I guess that's a

242convoluted way to say sure we could make it uniform but I do wonder if that would be the right way to do it I wasn't suggesting that we make it uniform because I like I said each school has their own needs and and functionality I just didn't know if there were some best practices that if it's working well at one school and again it's not necessarily about how it's being who's teaching and how but it's just support you know what different ways of support and I was just curious about that but um and you did talk about multiple assessments and data points and so the quick question I had had because you were just mentioned it again is my final question uh about adding support finding out who needs support and whereas you mentioned you

243know having the opportunity to give student assessment and looking at their data points the teachers are going to be meeting to discuss formative assessment data with the student for students and discuss and create team consensus on how to support some of the students uh so you know we don't want to wait too long to discover student has issues because math as you know builds upon itself so um how often are the teachers going to be meeting and discussing strategies looking at the different um you know data points to sort of find a student that might be falling through the cracks before it's too late before they're on to multiple different you know you know lessons Beyond and they didn't learn the base lessons so they're still struggling I'm just curious yeah so um in middle

244school that's that's pretty much a weekly occurrence when they're get together in their teams to talk about kids they have different types of meetings but I would even say it's even more on a daily basis to be honest um just tracking kids in the elementary schools we tend to I mean we'll never stop um we'll never wait to bring up a student that we think is urgently needing intervention but we tend to work in six to eight week Cycles through our mtss process so um you know um I guess you know six times a year is when we bring kids up and we talk about who's needs to come in who needs to move out who needs to be elevated to a different sort of status of support and so um so that's the current

245model that we do now but I guess I would say on a daily basis we bring kids up and we talk about them and we discuss what their needs are thank you it's good to know that our students are won't be falling through the cracks if we're looking that closely and I didn't want Tara to think I was ignoring her I just I didn't have any questions because you've gone over so much I did also wanted to say thank you because of all of the focused work that we put into our science curriculum and advanced science it looks like it's really helped a lot of our students meet Mastery sorry that you were on the hot seat tonight Mike sorry I love it Laura Laura you had a question yeah so uh you mentioned there's

246a I forget what you called it challenge or what was Bridges what is the bridges program how does it fit into the school because that's not a term I've heard before um and then I just wanted to say that one math interventionist at a middle school of hundreds of kids certainly doesn't seem like a lot I mean is there um I don't think that's for me to decide but I would always argue for as many as possible so um because I gotta wonder that there's um only so many hours in a day um so I always worry that it's not enough but could you tell me about the bridges yeah so the the bridges program is an intervention program that's research based um when we started to roll out our our math intervention they essentially

247didn't have anything to use that was different from what they were currently using so we were kind of building the plane on the Fly and then we quickly identified that we needed a more systematic approach for entering students into intervention diagnosing them figuring out exactly what the skills were that they needed and then following a sort of a logical progression and so we went out and we and we looked at you know various programs and um the bridges Intervention Program was something we had um already kind of had a relationship with because um New Lebanon and some other schools were using number Corner which is just a way for um our you know our earliest Learners to just sort of um uh start their day with numbers looking at the calendar counting by 10 hens

248things like that and so from there what we did was you know we decided that we needed to have this systematic approach and so we we brought in one kit of bridges intervention and we trialed that at New Lebanon and um and we loved it and so we decided to roll it out to all the schools to support them so that they have something that they could utilize other than augmenting the Big Ideas program which is just showing the kids the same thing but maybe in a more intensive or different way we wanted to give them something else sort of like we have our reading interventions like where a student may go into a reading intervention that might be using Norton Gillingham program or things like that so that's what I would liken it to

249but you could definitely take a look at it the math learning center is where it comes out of and I'd be happy if you email me to send you some more information about it so it's in every school every math interventionist has the kits um which are basically text resources and then the manipulative kits which um you know is the usually the best way to support students it's usually a visual concrete approach our students that are having struggles with math okay great Mark Tara Mike the question for for Tony I think and it's in regards to math interventionists because it doesn't feel like we have enough of them and the question is if I look at our Sr funding which we're going to talk about a little bit later it looks like we don't have

250payment for our interventionist in the 20 this year component or maybe I'm looking at the wrong year so right because we're approving funds for next year right for 2024. I believe that's right so in our original budget for this year we have a math interventionist one but we don't for next year are we one decreasing the math interventionist or are we assuming then or you know consuming them into our traditional operating plan it's operating and if you go back again remember you know just three years ago we didn't have math interventionists it really wasn't a focus first we had none in elementary and so when we started to put them in and and ARP Esser has been very helpful our goal was making sure we got them off of a grant and into operating so

251the some of these key positions we've worked hard in the budget process to do that and just as a reminder you know when we talk about flexibility and scheduling our middle school principals have also made some you know some challenging decisions they're looking at their buildings they're deciding what do they really need to do to help every student be successful and some of them and I'm going to use like Gordon for instance has one media specialist and those of you that have been on the board for a while know that was a big discussion um but it was very intentional in that building in that looking at the resources they had and what was the greatest need and so giving them a little bit of flexibility not just okay you just get additional staff because

252we all know with our budget processing Greenwich it it's very very challenging to have everything that we need so we start by looking at what we have right now and just because we've had it for 20 years doesn't mean it's the right position so that's where we've started so I I agree we can if you ask our staff they will tell you we would love to have more interventionists we'd love to have more special ed as teachers we would love I mean all of those positions but when we are told that we should not be increasing headcount and that's the guidelines maybe that's a different you know discussion that the board may want to have as we go into next year's budget do you want us to ask truly if I go and ask the

253principals what do they think they really need to have the very best Staffing in their building but then we'd have to be really prepared to not be able to meet guidelines from the bet I know that's a long answer but that that's the reality we're trying to look at the staff we have and use them the most effective as we can I think we should just look at it as a guideline okay Mark you wanted to yeah I just wanted to before we step away I wanted to acknowledge that you know Mike and Tara have only been on the job for 18 months so so the amount that they have accomplished in that short period of time really deserves our thanks and appreciation for all of their hard work and I also want to acknowledge

254Laura's efforts from hour one of tonight's board meeting because she does a fantastic job with our Arts and Music program as well so really proud of the team tonight so thank you for having us thank you great that's excellent thank you very much and you're up so I won't say anything about the late hour but by the time I get home it'll probably be about 1 30 and I have to be at Parkway at 8 30 in the morning it's a good thing I don't need too much sleep however yeah I know I don't want to get a speeding ticket so I hope that you all enjoyed the video from our stem at the high school so we can finish out our pre-k through 12 plus District on our stem growth and I will have

255uh both Andrew and Sean who's only been on the job for September October November December January five months he's doing a fantastic job so come on yep I guess so any questions I'm sure you could have imagined my hand was going up um so I have one for Science and one for math so you know uh I'll start with Matt since you're at the mic um I yeah I see that you know I have to tell you I apologize to our elementary and uh you know K-8 Middle School coordinators but the the growth we've seen at math in the high school obviously looking at you know again only one data one or two data points has been fantastic so thank you I know the support and the work you guys have put into it has

256been fantastic um so uh I see that you noted one of the things that you've been doing to add for support is Learning Centers for the students um who need a little extra math support or or some questions on whatever the lesson is for the day and I think that's fantastic um having taken a a small sub you know sub pole on how that how their Learning Centers are working um I've heard from actually you know a couple of students not just one that lives in my house that they're exceptionally helpful um but that we might need some more teachers available uh during those centers because oftentimes there's just one teacher and there's a lot of students that come in for help um and for you know the the poor educator who's stuck in there

257with with is one person trying to answer questions at multiple different levels of math with a lot of students in a short window of time that need that support so I was wondering if you know we're looking at ways to support our students as we go forward if we're we're looking to add uh more bolster those Learning Centers in in other ways by adding additional Math teachers um or Stu teachers who can help with higher level math courses or if there's a way that teachers can there can be a sign up so students if they know that they need help supporting a certain type of math they know which teacher or which level of math might be you know which Learning Center might be the best one for them to go to because it's such

258an incredible opportunity for our students to have that additional support I know our teachers come in at the beginning of the day offered time after the day but it's nice when students have an opportunity and open to to get Alexa support so thank you for putting that in place but I didn't know if we were going to add any support in there yeah that's a that's a great question and uh you know Arch again are absolutely amazing with uh the amount of time and how many balls they're able to kind of keep in the air at one time so for those of you that don't know uh full-time math teacher teaches five sections which is 30 blocks out of the uh 48 blocks and so uh the remainder of their time is is filled with

259their non-instructional prep period and um serving in our math learning center or our math testing center so um typically a teacher will have six to eight blocks out of the schedule where they're up in in the math learning center and it's really dictated based on their schedule when they can be up there so we're very fortunate to have at least one uh certified math teacher in our math learning center who's there for both students who are assigned there because they're getting some remediation and then others who want to just drop by and get some extra help and in addition to that we do have one constant paraprofessional uh who's in there who helps kind of manage that space and and helps us uh you know work with the kids on work completion type issues as

260you can imagine uh that being all said it would be great after listening to Mr Reed and and the KA team we do not have a math interventionist at the high school and uh you know not that it's long overdue but it certainly would be an excellent addition if if it would ever become available to the high school because I think one of the major concerns as you just articulated Miss Hirsch is that you might not be able to get necessarily the support you're hoping for because it's it's really dictated by kind of happen chance and who could be available but if we had a math interventionist or someone that was in there who let's say could teach through PC calculus per our conversation earlier uh that individual would be able to meet everyone's needs

261and I think um uh one of the things that you know I I love about Greenwich High School is that so many of our kids wherever they are are really excited to go and get that help and support and it's a tremendous resource for us to have for for Greenwich high school and and the entire community so math interventions maybe for 24 25 school year foreign well thank you I keep feeling I'm like leaning into this too much but so thank you because it really has been such an incredible opportunity for our students to get that extra support that they need um and I had a quick question on one of the changes in science which I'm sure you're expecting hi welcome we haven't met um quick question because I saw that you guys were

262making the recommendations for students to um I I'd love to hear a little bit more about the rationale and I see some more information here um behind changing the requirement for 11th graders to take an ngss aligned science class um you know I I understand that passing the ngss is one of the ways to determine competency in science for uh and required for the district graduation and performance standards so I I didn't know if that was that was a basis um and and I had already looked into the course catalog because we it's nice that everything tonight's sort of aligned in the same a couple of different things we were looking at so I had seen that you know the majority of the science classes would meet this you know that most of the 11th

263graders tend to take meet that the requirement but I was just curious what the the rationale was yeah absolutely thank you um so in your eyes packets I I kind of create a little uh handout for you to make it a little easier for the rationale um with with the data that we saw from the ngss test uh we we're seeing a pretty high achievement rate from our students already um I was more concerned about the students that weren't meeting uh Mastery and we were trying to determine how can we ensure that we're supporting those students the best and so what I try to do is dive into the data a little bit more and determine well in some of those students what was the cases that they weren't potentially were not making Mastery on

264the ngss tests and so when I dove into the data a little bit I identified 25 students that were not in that were in non-aligned ngss courses and what I found was seven of those students did not pass the ngss tests and uh which is about 20 28 of the students and um and so the the the the big Rachelle it was a very small percentage of students that were in those down the line classes and when I pulled the data for the current students that were in non-aligned ngss classes for this year it would be a fact about 30 students um and so to ensure that they're getting the same access to the content uh and to ensure that they have uh you know the they're learning the same skills uh in every single

265one of their junior classes as well as their freshmen and sophomore classes um you know that was the the major rationale behind making that change for them thank you because like I said I had I'd seen this it was in the back of the boat but I thought we would be helpful to ask the question anyway so thanks everybody else Michael yeah I just I guess I just had a question about uh process in in general the um so I know we're talking about these uh this change and we're talking about new courses um are these things in the are the new courses and years past I know we got new courses by the board and they were already in the course catalog people already talking about it and things like that did that happen

266again of course catalog out the um is that is that did that happen again this year foreign the course catalog is actually on the website the high school website however those courses are in there only if they are approved by the board if they are not approved by the board then they will not be there they'll be taken off and I guess I know we set the goals the wrong term but I know as we're talking about the high school curriculum and these courses and things about with the website and looking at putting getting more of The Curriculum maps on online as a goal of the engineer I guess how how's that going yeah yes sir uh so for the majority of our classes um I think where we have two left to do those

267are the new classes honors anatomy and physiology and honors biochem those public-facing documents still need to be posted on the website um but all the documents have been sent to our uh one of our media Specialists uh to make sure they're accessible uh for for uh all member members of the community and and Greenwich Public Schools um and so they're working on getting all those up on the website looks like we're good well one more thing of course Andrew uh the math the math documents have been up there for about two years now and they're fully complete we've uh been updating them regularly so uh they should be there for free to view thank you thanks Sean thank you Sandra thank you man all right very good thank you blaze I think you're up get

268your doze off back there excellent without offending any of my colleagues the hour is late if we could sharpen our questions a little bit and let's uh Target them a little while more precisely maybe we can cover everything that's your bedtime Ralph good evening please hello all right financial report right that's what I'm yes please Okay so monthly financial report this is basically the halfway period where December 31st this is as of December 31st 2022 um I'll just run through a couple of things and then take some questions uh really quickly um see what we're looking at under expenditures um we're about 52.1 percent through our operating budget so that sounds about right um we're pretty much right on target a couple of the areas that we're watching though you'll see if you look closely

269are our 200s those are our services um that is running a little bit high so that was something that we actually met on earlier but overall um the budget at around 52 percent which is pretty on target for this time of year Capital um you'll see I just I'll give a big shout out to Dan his team member Elisa Kimberly that you've met before on Capital we've been going through over the last few weeks line by line account by account uh cleaning up Capital looking at some old funds returning what we can and really um putting a lot of effort there uh month over month we've had some good execution over 800 000 either spent or encumbered since last month's report um that 39.7 million in open Capital includes all the funds that were appropriated

270July 1st and also 8.5 million still open for the Western Middle School soil remediation uh fast forward the other thing that I would just point out too is the school lunch program um the federal funding for Universal free free lunch ran out this was after the extension so that program is transitioning back to normal uh currently um students that are on free and reduced lunch so the reduced lunch students are not being charged that's about a 48 Cent per charge student this is kind of a hybrid model the state reimburses us for the rest of that meal so that's probably about a for a half year about a nine the ten thousand dollar charge um other good news on the school lunch fund is that the cash in lieu of Commodities clock reimbursement is likely

271expected to be significantly higher than we thought based on the high participation rate um due to the universal free lunch program so uh we had originally budgeted last year probably a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that but it looks like we'll be close to around maybe three hundred and forty thousand dollars um in in the clock program um and that basically clock is driven by participation and it's in the rear so the the federal funding ran out but there will still be significant benefits to the school lunch fund because of that Federal program driving up participation and then out of District tuition uh we're meeting regularly with Stacy's uh Team my team watching um where we're at and we made a couple of minor counting changes to move students to be properly recorded about

272four students that were in out of District out of District but really weren't out of District so I think that's just a minor accounting change to more accurately show that that program any questions on multi-financial report so Kathleen yes I just went um so so yeah so sped it looks like it's just a little bit over right versus where we've been in the past where we're like oh my god um and so which isn't actually a technical Financial term um but it sounds right yeah but I feel sometimes so but um so so you're feeling confident that we're going to be like okay for this operating budget essentially this year I think yeah Dr Jones and I met um you know I'm still digesting some of the school stuff so I sometimes have my own

273little bit of a heart attack but I think um right now we met and as of today we're we're feeling pretty good good I I'll go ahead Karen please first so I had a couple questions about just school lunch in general um one I'd asked you earlier um today regarding what it would cost and what it would do to our budget to continue to provide a universal lunch um so I'm just curious if we can just work harder on those numbers and the reason why I asked that is uh really Dr Jones's email was the impetus of that question which said suggested that there are a number of children that are either one embarrassed to go buy lunch with their card because or their parents can't put the requisite amount on it and so there

274needs to be a way where every kid feels like they can go get lunch without having a problem or being embarrassed about it so I was curious as to those numbers and what that included with respect to um breakfast as well uh and I think it's something that this board should consider and I know we're always looking at budgetary items but the fact that a child feels embarrassed about going up to buy lunch is just unacceptable so I think we need to look long and hard about how we try to fix that problem um the second question I had with regards to lunch I think goes more to maybe Dr Jones but it went up significantly I think in the past years like we all got emails well I got an email from the elementary

275school that says you should expect to pay six dollars a day for a lunch which includes lunch and and the snack and that just seemed like a lot of money for a school lunch and I don't know why that what what why we're seeing such a huge Trend and an increase in regards to school lunch prices but they I got an email that said expect to be at least on your card six dollars a day for a school lunch and I actually think that most people could provide their kids a cheaper lunch than six dollars a day so I was just curious on the pricing on that was that the lobster tails is that what it was no I'm wondering without seeing the context of the email it's kind of hard to answer but I

276don't I don't have the prices in front of you that I don't think they're that high however we do try to really warn parents that do have the capability to put money on their card because we do have the almost said consumables that's not the right word sex yes and we do have students I remember when my son was in Middle School it was our card you know went really high and it's because he was buying for all of his friends so you know it's we do warn parents that be be aware if they get um you know one of the one of the additional drinks or something of that nature this is what you would expect to see so it could have been couched in that but I don't think we're that high yet

277yeah let me send it to you because I would just be curious as to what the expected costs is because it just seemed to be a a big jump from prior years and I don't know if we're we're going you know that's attributed to building supplies and and supply chain issues which seems to be impacting everything just to surmise it's when we do the budget when we do the Food Service budget and we you know annually look at the pricing so we it we don't adjust once the board approves that pricing so it's not like if things go super high in the middle of the year we got we would bring it back to the board you would have to prove it it's four four dollars and fifteen cents is what it says on the

278website okay uh and one question I have is a it's a usual beating the dead horse with this question use it or lose it well I see we have some uh uh in fiscal year ending June of uh June 30th uh we have some unallocated uh grant money that still exists is that correct we do yeah so um expiring at the end of this fiscal year um we have on a looking at the report you saw a note there's about 1.5 million in Grants that expire this year unappropriated between all of them and unencumbered it is approximately around eight hundred thousand dollars that need to be fully executed by June 30th use it or lose it uh we set up um Administration set up a meeting with the grant managers to start coordinating uh regularly

279we did a lot of work and Stacy's over there and Ann and a lot of work doing a lot of Grant cleanup and now we're all working together to make sure that we're going to get you know every dollar spent there's a couple of programs it's small dollar amounts where it's some of the funds just may not apply to the situation where we got some federal funding but for the most part we are all on the same page and we're working really hard to to get every dollar spent but you bring up a good point it's about eight hundred thousand dollars and we have to get it spent by June 30th I have ideas on how to spend it perfect I mean for real though of course well let's speak to a blaze directly if

280you have great ideas but I'd be very important to me to make sure we uh we use it uh and make sure we act quickly thank you all good all right thank you blaze thank you and and yeah we'll follow up uh Karen I think with everybody and those are some good questions on the school lunch the universal free lunch pricing and the breakfast all right let's hit the survey Dr h this time of night I'm not going to try your name is foreign we found her good evening and congratulations on your your new role um we're here tonight to talk about the Greenwich together survey so this is a survey um that is a community survey so it's not just Greenwich public school it's all of this it's given to all students in 7th

281through 12th grade in both private and public schools and I have several members of the Greenwich together team to give you more specifics so this is my first administration of this particular survey and I wanted to make sure that we had the right people here to answer everybody's questions um the survey is given and then the results are then shared with the community so earlier this school year there were actually several newspaper articles about the survey results that are shared out with the community which drives some of the programs that um that do occur throughout the throughout the years um and with that information I am going to turn it over to them about how they determine the questions it's a group who they give it to um I know that Nina can talk about

282the security of the online survey because I know that that's a concern so hopefully we can answer everybody's questions thank you so we'll take questions sure I'm albruzovsky a program in Modesto Minister administrator for Greenwich together the local coalition I'm Karina Restrepo I'm the prevention coordinator for Grants together hi and I'm in Greek Gillespie and I'm a member of Greenwich together and have been involved with survey implementation since 2018. fantastic thank you any questions our historians yes I'm gonna I'm gonna start yes yes she does need to talk well she needs to answer questions yeah perfect you can introduce her 's too please let's start with Michael so hi the um so I guess so I I didn't know anything about um server until I saw uh sold in the packet uh this week and

283I read through and completely on my own is reading some of these questions and you know I had some some of the concerns that have gotten to you about um ideas and things like that so I guess I I guess I'm curious about the origins of the survey and who wrote the survey and is this what kind of norms this is uh you know how it's been normed and all that kind of stuff okay so I'll give you a little hits not the same survey but it's very similar and uh we were then eligible to apply for the drug free communities Grant because we were able to administer the survey and get the data for Greenwich residents or Greenwich students I should say so um and then because the grant requirements of the grant are

284that every two years we administer the same type of survey all right but so Nina if you're on and you can speak about how the survey was created and how the questions were but they come from National surveys but I'll let Nina who's our sure uh can you hear me yes great so the surveys um pull together adapted from several State and National surveys um we created a question Data Bank um some of the surveys are the search Institute profiles um of student life the national outcome measures which is from the office of National Drug control policy the youth risk behavior survey which is from administered through the Center for Disease Control on a national level and through the Connecticut Department of Public Health on a state level and then there are two surveys that

285are used in Connecticut uh youth voices count and sirach sirach is an acronym that I am just not going to be able to get right now at this hour um and so they're all questions that have been used uh for many many years over many different types of communities and very prominent in the prevention and public health field okay so it's um so it's a it's an amalgam is that is that fair to say yes yes okay and what happens the the what happens if we don't do the survey we lose our funding okay yeah so what's the funding so we get drug-free Community grant money which is federal funding it's um 625 000 over five years we're in year four of our grant right now and it's a requirement of the grant that we

286do the survey collect the data so that we are seeing what the risks are for youth how we're doing with trying to lower those risks and if our interventions are working and we get a pulse on the community in general and what's happening so it's just a good sort of needs assessment of where we are in the community fine um I've been long enough on this board to remember when you came the first couple times I think um and I remember sitting in a room with the head of I think running into Country Day and Sacred Heart and we went through all this and it was a really you got some really great feedback in fact I felt like run it was in a pretty good place relatively speaking if I recall um but so

287I guess my question goes back to that are all of our local private schools participating again yes excellent thank you great uh Karen I'm taking God good Lord I'm piggybacking a little on what Kathleen had asked because I too have been here long enough to have been through the the initial round of looking at this and and so forth but um so in the past all seventh graders in private schools were given to it given this but only 50 of GPS students were given this uh and it it was uh they were asked at random to take the survey um and they're with the option of an object in order to balance the number of students taking the survey between public and private yes is that still going to be the way you guys yes

288okay and then I assume since you already answered all the private schools have already looked at the survey and given the thumbs up right um and in past again uh I know you know we'd asked about cost there's no cost no okay no no well no but there was a cost to initially give a certain because we didn't have a strand correct so now that we have the grant it's covered and so this is you're we're going into year five I know this is a requirement to do it every two years um are you guys going to be looking or is there possible to utilize if we use the the data to apply for a next round of this grant yes we will be applying for years 5 through 10. okay perfect so I guess

289that's uh that's another reason to sort of look into doing it I know there's no better time for us to find ways to support the mental health and and help reduce our uses youths risky behavior and strengthen their healthy choices that then now with you know all the stuff that's going on these days so thank you you're welcome thank you a question I have uh the data that's collected uh I know I spoke to Chief Evie yes yes and uh Chief said that he uses uh uses the data certainly not to catch anybody but to represent and structure and make our service to our community our Police Department serve our community in a positive proactive way he says that data is incredibly helpful to his Department uh so that baits the question now the data

290gets distributed uh where how does it what give me a the control where it goes to who uses the data and I'll make one more uh one more reference is that I used to be a coach here in our school and uh in our high school and uh there was some data that came to us when we were looking at the code of conduct for the students we would evaluate the Charlie uh the amount of pressure we might put on a kid that might have uh whether we forgive him because the stats say that most kids do this we tell the kids that are you'll be tempted to do this because the other kids are doing this according to data that was given me from the school I didn't know where it came from so

291now that that it came and was used certainly for an helpful way in my personal experience so please give me a uh just a a direction on the data and where it goes sure so once the data is collected and it is collected anonymously I know there was a question about that but and we could talk more about that if people have questions but um it gets tabulated by Nina and then it gets presented to the community so we have a public forum that's usually recorded So that lives on the Greenwich together website so people have access to it once it's tabulated and a report is formed so we do you know a big General forum and then anybody who wants the data or presentation so we've gone to PTA meetings Ingrid and I had

292a dog and pony show and went out and anybody who would request it whether it's parent groups or agencies or the United Way wanted some information and we presented to them so it's really we you know we present the public forum but then as people request to get more information about that data we go out and do presentations on that we also do focus groups afterwards with both students and parents to find out what they thought about the results of the data because we want the students to get the results and know what those results are so thank you that was great and the uh has there been any discussion about the certainly the positive effects of the data and the use that the examples I made of coaching and gpv very useful uh but

293is there any uh discussions about the the negativity of this data getting distributed any any Skeptics that might suggest that uh uh that the data is used in a negative way which of course was outweighed by the positives right how we do it right so if you could share and I hate to bring up the negative side of things that question is asked I think it's important to speak about publicly sure um so I'll answer that but I'll also give anybody else a chance yeah but I'm sorry just to interrupt Joe I'm we emotion needed to go on the table to start the whole discussion that's right when the when the I when the item came up it we really needed to start with the motion in a second you are correct I didn't want

294it but it just kept going on I'll happily make a motion to uh to put the question as to whether we approve grunge together youth survey on the table I'll second that discussion continue please thank you thank you Christina okay so one of the things that we look at in the survey is definitely risk behavior but we're also looking at protective factors and that's um Nina mentioned the search Institute and that's one of their big uh things is about assets and what are the assets that the children have the youth have and the what are how are those protective factors helping to reduce their risky Behavior so that's what our goal always is with the survey is to look at the the two of those things against each other the risk factors and the protective

295factors and then our job is to try to beef up those protective factors and that's all of our programming for us as a coalition Greenwich together sponsored programming but also all the members of Greenwich together when they do their programming they take that data and they look at it and they say how how can we use this data then to inform our programming for both parents and students I don't know if that answered your question it does bad but there's the negativity that might have been discussed about what what add things might come of this data when outweighed by the good that comes from the data of any of the bad examples bad give me tell me explain I hope this done yeah I mean there's definitely use you know there there is um you

296know we saw on the last survey there was there is substance use there is mental health issues and and problems but I don't think that we look at it that way as a negative we look at it okay this is the what's happening in the community and how can we then as agencies and Coalition work together to solve those problems or help make a difference I don't do you have anything to yeah I just want to add to that that usually what we found in the surveys is that most students are not using substances so just to outweigh that that con that most people think that or youth usually think that all my peers are using substances you know vice versa we we found that that's not true we've worked hard to get students because

297we want them to know then not everyone is doing I think sort of what you know because we've had the privilege of sitting here tonight listening to so many discussions is that by having this quantitative data it prior to having these surveys because I've been around a while um is that it was very difficult to have um catalysts for discussion because we did not have sort of concrete data it really has opened the door to discussion and I think in one of the presentations doing a deeper dive into what's driving it so it's been a wonderful wonderful opportunity even with numbers that people you know go whoa whatever so it's been great that would I think Karen was next Mike so sorry I'll be quick um so I'm a little confused what services then do

298you provide you get all of this data and then you do your dog and pony show about it so then then what like right what do you do yeah um so we do a lot of things we sponsor speakers for both parents and students so we just had speakers in October I think it was and it was all around creating a family frame because one of the things we found in the last survey was when parents had strong boundaries and rules around use and underage drinking and those kinds of things that students drank less or used less so that was one of the things we found and then we then provided an educational event for parents to talk about well then how do you do that how do you help provide that family frame and

299provide guidance to your children and have those conversations because they're not easy conversations so we so that's one thing that we do we provide speakers for both students and parents we have a website a Greenwich together website that we have many topics on the him from vaping to underage drinking to mental health a few more and so all that information continually gets updated and then we do a lot of social media campaigns and all of that is directed back to those websites and the youth we have a youth Coalition that Karina works with very closely and there are students from all the schools including Greenwich high school and we work very closely with the Greenwich Outreach club that Kathy Steiner who was here earlier she is the facilitator for that club and they concentrate on

300mental mental health and substance use prevention and so we participate in the health fairs we buy a lot of materials prevention materials we have some here but that we give out to students and so like a highlighter with a message about no jeweling and then it has our our website address on there so um and then we give money to the police to do compliance checks so they go out into the retailers and make sure they're they kind of stage it and make sure they're not selling to underage Youth and then we also provide materials and educational materials and education and the youth are part of that to those real retailers to go out there and tell them you know this is what will happen you know the developing brain is really important please don't

301sell to underage Youth and um so we do a lot of that and um we also there are team nights that the town and the police department have tried to last summer they tried to develop to again limit the risky behavior of Youth in town and we provide money to help support those and staff to help support those nights um so what else I think I talked about everything we also provide training to Coalition members and community members so for example last spring we provided a training that was open to everyone and again was recorded and lives on our website about the new marijuana law and you know that just came into effect recently and so what damage that can do to Youth and the message it sends when it's legalized and even though it's

302not legal for anybody under the age of 21 it's still a message that gets sent out Michael I'm sorry no please oh sorry I thought you were done sorry so then my additional follow-ups are one how is this survey uh presented to students so one um do they know that they can opt out and not have to take it yes and directions right in the beginning and it says it and so when are they given this this is probably for you Tony when are students given this survey it's different at each school but most of them have Flex periods they have um basically non-instructional times that they can utilize to be able to give the survey so that's what most of them do but it looks a little bit different at each building we work

303with the principals it's 15 to 20 minutes and does it have to be in electronic form and what why can't it be in in paper form and they just fill it out with a pencil Nina I'll let her talk about that um there's really been no we haven't had any reason to be concerned about the um anonymity of the survey using the platform that we use um historically we haven't had any issues with that and it's just an easy or less you know cause more cost effective more sustainable approach using the um Survey Monkey platform I think it's also a more reliable way to collect data and it's just more uniform in terms of the conditions that the students take it under so do you I I don't recall you guys coming back here in

304this setting to present the data is so you know obviously you you go around and do things but with respect to the data that you've pulled and you're asking our permission to do it I think you would want to come back it would be more than give us a session as to absolutely what it is we did do it once I don't know if we did it after the 2021 because of maybe because of covet I don't know I haven't done it since I've been here heard it first time yeah yeah and again we'd be happy to do that I'm like an executive session I believe okay wasn't it oh yeah it's just because it was like the Sacred Heart To You probably woman was there no I remember there was a time when I

305was Sacred Heart well considering every day they were all we will be happy to come yeah sometime in the future we'll talk invite us we will come back of course and Michael uh Karen you're you're done yeah yeah cycle Gallery I'll try to be quick because I mean it sounds like you're doing great work the um an important work I mean obviously this is this is you know on the headlines every day it's super important the um I I have concerns the um I I don't know based on what you've you've given us the um I don't I don't have enough evidence to say that um um this is this is appropriate um the um is it okay to ask seven-year-olds or seventh graders not seven year olds seventh graders some of these questions about

306K2 K3 Delta 8 spice all these things probably I don't know the um I don't have that um it worry I I worry that this is not one survey that we've taken from and a trusted Source but but a combination I also worry that we're giving it in a non-instructional uh space where we're not giving guidance um about it um I I remember I mean this is this is anecdotal but I I I know many examples of of kids that have learned things in history in health class and applied them incorrectly because they learned about the multiplier effect and things like that so I worry about all these all these things the um I don't want you to lose your funding um but I can't I can't support this right now without um more evidence

307even though we've given it before without more evidence that we're not doing damage to the kids so say more about how we would be the damage I don't have evidence that we're not I I worry that these questions are not things that these ideas and questions are things that we you know particularly in seventh and eighth grade that you know I'm not naive to say kids don't know about drugs and things like that yeah but it's it's it's concerning nope noticed a word or are familiar with that they're going to then go out and do something because they were given a survey but I don't know Nina if you have anything to add to that no that's I would say the same thing yes Kathleen so Michael I understand I mean I have a seventh

308grader and I look at some of these questions um at the same time there are things that are taught in health class which are mandated by the state which are frankly uncomfortable but that's also why some of these things are being taught because there are kids you know find it and other ways that perhaps isn't as educational a setting so um I'm in support of this I was in support of it years ago and I appreciate the anonymity of it I think that's very important I wouldn't want my children to take this and to be associated with them um so um I appreciate that but I found the data to be helpful last time and the fact that the private schools are doing it as well I think it says a lot about our community

309and we should be partners with them like we always are and I think just to talk about the administration of it it's not just given to a student with no instruction they're the teacher or whoever is facilitating the survey that day gives gets very specific instructions from us and they talk to the students about it before the students take it they are told that they can opt out any time so even if their parents haven't opted them out beforehand they can go through the survey and if they're at all uncomfortable with any of the questions first of all they can skip any questions so it's not like you have to answer a question in order to go to the next question they can skip any question they want and if they at some point say

310I don't want to do this anymore then they don't do it I mean that's just it we also have have a former ghs student who was I think the student governing body right a president who's now at a university in Chicago he made a video talking to the students about how do you why this survey is so important that they can skip any question that try to be as honest as possible so they get a lot of guidance before they actually sit down to take the survey it's not done work in isolation and just hand it to them so I understand your concern I think the other question again around the concern is that we have because we've done it twice now we've been able to do some comparison and albeit kovid we don't know

311why but we've seen a decrease across the board and we will see in this survey how much the difference covet made but for example we had in 2018 I think it was like 21 percent of grade 12 students had used marijuana in the last 30 days which is you know a way to sort of measure present use in 2021 it went down to 15 percent so we're you know again covid happened but that's a six percent decrease in a very short period of time and as Alan described some of the interventions but most importantly we're able to see if there's a difference if what we're doing has any correlation to like you said because the last thing we want to do is certainly damaged but our results are showing so far that we're seeing some

312kind of decrease and again we'll see this you know this coming up shall I call the question uh well thank you very much uh your argument your your presentation was convincing uh and uh uh and a factor for me one of our greatest Town resources is our chief of police and I had extensive discussions with him about this finding out he was involved that made it easy exactly as well as Demetria Nelson who might might be still on I don't know what's this yep so but Jim heavy I've got Chief heavy I've got a personal relationship with and tremendous amount of respect and when he told me the importance of the survey uh to his Department to our town uh it made it easy for me to make a decision to support this so if

313I can uh call the question I will now take a vote all in favor please raise your hand I all against abstentions one okay thank you it passes what's our number five two five two one thank you you can't make the motion you want to make I know what you want to make that motion I'd like to make a motion to approve the revised proposal F why 2024 Food Services budget as presented we'll have a secondary second yes discussion Blaze foreign keep me going I might uh any bet members listen and they'll be happy about that okay uh Food Services budget it's uh pretty straightforward exactly what it says on the sheet um Christina's on here she pointed out uh at the last meeting that fixed charges had a typo in it had a zero

314it was correctly entered in munis but we need to correct the record um fixed charges should not be zero effects charges as the benefits that we pay for all the employees um this is a manual entry this was a typo so what's before you today is correcting the record the only change is an additional 432 thousand dollars in the fiscal year 24 budget request for the school lunch fund and that is because it was missing in the book when you voted on it as a typo so we're correcting the record luckily it was uh correctly in munis which is the actual Financial system so it hasn't messed up any of the numbers or hasn't messed up anything um in the towns contribution or model or anything so I guess I'm withdrawing my motion making a

315new motion uh to approve the uh the revised proposal FY 2024 Food Services budget as not as presented uh but an additional 432 000 uh school lunch yes I was right the first time so I have to withdraw my second motion oh good all right good so I'll go back to my first motion to approve the revised proposal FY 2020 for food budget Services as presented so we're good this presented one is the right one okay and then we have questions Karen so does this mean we're over our on our operating budget as under the gut the operating guidelines that the BET has suggested by 432 000 or whatever amount this is now this one is coming out of the school lunch fund so it's independent of the guidelines and the a fund the 2.9

316percent and actually what we're still seeing is that due to the really strong fund balance from all the federal funding there is um going to probably be no contribution the town is building in no contribution to the school lunch fund this year for the first time because there is a very healthy fund balance which we made clear at the last meeting is due to the federal funding it's not due to you know some magic that you know and David's work you know David is doing a lot of good work so if David's listening it's also David's doing a lot of good work but it's driven by the federal funding but uh no to answer your question it doesn't impact that any other questions seeing none uh let's take a vote all in favor please raise

317your hand I that's unanimous thank you I think you're still up I think I might stay up here you want me to look at the motion on the table why don't you make the motions um and to approve this is a motion to approve the revised Board of Ed our budget as presented anybody want a second that one wonderful okay questions I just wanted to ask please please confirm if you don't mind confirming that this is the same I look through the numbers it looks identical to the one that was presented to us in December yes this is the so we presented this December 1st then we presented on December 15th with the breakdown of FTE and the only change since December 15th it's not a dollar amount change but um from our discussion with

318the uh budget committee we had a good discussion so the only change is the financial reporting and Analysis specialist position is the new change and we checked with the state after the follow-up from the budget committee to make sure that that was a permissible use for accounting and we get an email back in writing that that would be a permissible use Aaron that's the 25 000. that is the in row nine it's a position the financial reporting and Analysis specialist it was previously listed as a teacher math that math teacher was absorbed into title one which is an ongoing position and it really should be in uh Title One um and so with that funding it's relatively the same salary with the budget committee we swapped out the position with the financial reporting and Analysis

319specialist and that's the Takeover um all the accounting and Grant Management for the life of the grant which is only two more years other than that Christina that's the only change um from the previous two meetings so thank you question so this is to hire this person as the just to manage this the spending of this grant the this person as we discussed is going to manage this grant uh specifically all Grant Management of it for the 9.5 million and then they're also going to do all the Grant Management for all of our grants cleanup we talked about at the budget committee um the grants we've been doing a lot of work and I'll give Kimberly a shout out who's our currently our only financial reporting and Analysis specialist um they're in rough shape and

320took a lot of accounting work and so this person would actually we would have them do all of the grant you know we have millions of dollars in annual Grant Management on top of just this grant so we would also have them do all of that too and all the state reporting so the funding for this runs out after the 2024 year so would the plan be to keep this person on and absorb them into our operating plan or is this just a two-year job to me personally I'd like to keep them on but let's see how it goes with knowing that it's a temporary funding position we're gonna really have to you can see on page one we still we reduced it we did a lot of work um in the budget to get

321down the number of positions but we still have um eight and a half positions that we're funding with the American Rescue plan so we've actually got to figure out what we're going to do with all those positions so now it's nine and a half positions no this is are you trying to raise your hand there Michael this is so yeah the uh sorry thank you sir thank you um this was uh an unpopular opinion when I raised it last year the um again just um to your point about uh the eight and a half positions that um we're going to have can have to consider and think about and hopefully uh fold into the budget and if we don't then we as a board are going to have to think carefully about the priorities here

322you can look across these 12 lines and interpret the last column as a set of priorities and you can see um I don't think you should that way or you could a Layman not not real I think things could say and you could say well um we've managed to not be able to fold in a lot of the special ed lines and social worker line were able to fold in uh things like the the Alp program and things like that the um and when we come to priorities next year if it's something that we're not able to fund everything then as a board we're going to have to have some tough conversations about which we don't want to do about considering the difference between affording accelerated programs for some or unfinished learning for others I

323don't want to do that they um but right now we're looking at still eight and a half positions that we haven't been able to fund yet in the current operating budget that speak specifically to unfinished learning which is a more important I would argue position for us but that's next year's conversation hopefully we do not have to have after you work your magic fiscal cliff we talking fiscal cliff I know yeah I think um what what we it's going to be a significant conversation because as as I think we all pointed out we're carrying the the reason we came in at 2.9 for example which we talked about at length is only really because of the federal funding um we have a number of positions on here we have sub incentive pay on here's our

324sub budget custodial overtime over 150 000 it's something we talked about at length you've got a number of curriculum mandates um that were pending on a response from the state that were lucky that we have Federal funding for that we could use for curriculum funding so you you bring up a good point and it's gonna it'll be a good conversation we'll have yeah absolutely yeah and I just want to add we will not bring you a budget that has a cliff we've planned on this over these couple of years that's why we were very strategic about the three social workers that were put in the operating so we're really watching that to make sure that we would not do that to the board and the community hey I think it's time to call the question

325uh time to take a boat all in favor please raise your hand I of the seven are all against abstentions one abstention okay very good uh now on to agenda planning thank you thank you blaze anything I got to do to get my stuff to the beginning of this agenda or or what anyone I gotta talk to you I'm just kidding I thought you were going to ask I thought you could ask for your parking to be validated okay thank you all right okay we've gotten through everything and once again I'm sorry with my inexperience of running a board of ed meeting that we went to the ungodly hour of 11 37. I do apologize to all my colleagues I will try to do better next time uh we have covered everything on the agenda

326uh we have an agenda said that before our next meeting uh and we need to add something to it oh what would you like to add Michael well that's on strategic plan is on there I don't know if it's worth us having a conversation around because um if we're going to the retreat would be the appropriate time which is February 2nd adding to the agenda the um our the the past topic of board goals and trying to take a another stab at that I don't know if that's something we want to try to talk about on February 2nd they uh um I know we tried that last summer and then CMS happens and things like that but it might be a nice agenda topic similar thought but I was like well at this point is

327it for this year or do we discuss it going forward is anyone opposed to adding board goals Joe I think we can have a discussion about it um looking at if we're adding an executive session and if we're voting on the Strategic plan it might be a long meeting as it is without getting into board goals just everyone's appetite for how long a meeting they want to have so I think we can have an offline discussion and consider whether it makes sense or not I'm not saying yo I'm not saying yes in my own personal view I think we just have to ponder it Mike don't you think that's reasonable no that's that's reasonable I am I am optimistic that the Strategic plan conversation might not be as lengthy as some of the other conversations

328we've had this evening all right so that was uh for Christina no NES so uh anyone else we're good with just leaving the agenda as it is yeah it's fine you're gonna have an executive session ahead of it right we are okay thank you okay great now uh Laura do you have a motion to make your microphone sorry a motion to adjourn I will second that motion all in favor please raise your hand aye thank you Christina uh we're done I know