October 6, 2022 Board of Education Retreat

001foreign please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance [Applause] exactly thank you so much um I wanted to there's one two three four five of us here for my accounting right yes um we have Laura costume online and Michael Joseph will be joining shortly unfortunately Miss Kowalski can't make it tonight so um but we moved us up early so because we have a real robust agenda and some some things that we have to do a lot of deep diving on so I will get right to it so with that um the curriculum plan review cycle Dr caravillo and Mr jamico we listened to this video this was the shorter one the 34 Minute one I warned you I was less enthused about I have to be honest okay so do you have anything you want to

002say or we're just diving in the high school team is online and Laura I'm just going to keep looking up at you when you have a question I have to hold it down nope okay anyone Joe go Joe well I'll start because I have the most remedial of questions so I'm basically I've been listening or we have been listening for some time now to the public making comments about curriculum about items that are approved that are unapproved things that might be uh in it some things that might not be in it so basically I want to kind of bring it down to the most rudimentary levels now when people say curriculum is not approved do we have a history of every approved curriculum and every Board of Education that might have approved that curriculum were

003basically say there's some way of doing push-ups in gym and that was approved 25 years ago and that has not changed do we have a board of ed meeting that says that the curriculum for push-ups was approved in 1964 at this meeting the such things exist I wasn't alive in 1964 so I can't tell you exactly what happened in 1964. but what I what you're referring to are standards and the standards are set down from the state that's what's approved by the Board of Education that we're going to adopt the state and National standards in a particular content area then it's up to the local School Board to be advised by the deputy superintendent this is superintendent curriculum the curriculum coordinators on how we're going to actually take those standards and make them meaningful in

004terms of learning outcomes and developing learning plans so curriculum is a very broad um it's a it's a philosophical term people throw around curriculum all the time and and I've often heard people say well the board should approve all curricular materials well let's talk about what that would mean so curricular materials could mean every single teacher's daily lesson plans now we have over 900 teachers and they write lesson plans every single day I don't think it's within the purview of the board or I don't think it I don't think the board even wants to engage in having to work 24 7 to look at every single teacher's daily lesson plans and say yes these are board approved so the board approves on a higher level like on a 10 000 foot view you look at

005the standards identified either at the state or national level we look at the Frameworks to which we are supposed to teach those standards and then our job is to fill in the learning outcomes based on developmentally appropriate lesson plans and provide teachers with the curricular resources to get to the standards is that helpful in a way a little for me a little too much education ease if you know what I mean sort of kind of bring it down to a level where basically Maybe locked out but like I remember I remember back uh not too long ago we had that black and Latino studies as a curriculum item which we had to approve and uh that was kind of specific we went over the what was involved there and it sort of covered a lot

006of stuff of course not the daily uh plans the the the plans teachers had to put for oh I do uh uh I had to work on but it was basically just in general what was uh I I think back to uh I believe there was some time ago didn't we approve a yoga curriculum was that something we talked about as a new course or is that that's different that was a new course can you explain how the new course and US approving a new course versus US approving a curriculum item would be how that would be different just sort of but let me let me say this again this is because I I listen to our community when they when they ask questions and unfortunately the way we're structured here what we can't answer

007them we're here to listen to what they say and I feel that our our community is not really being answered these questions that they're asking about unapproved curriculum how curriculum differs so if we could just spend a little time just explaining the basics on that that would help me because I'm kind of getting hang of it a little bit with everybody here the three years I spend here but uh but it helps me to explain to maybe the community with more confidence when they ask these sort of questions so what would be the difference in those two curriculum standards framework materials so when I went home have you started that Maverick technical um what would be the best type of ethereal that we could use to implement and then I thought about it we thought

008that that particular test was curious oh okay sorry that the particular text that we chose really helped us to implement our math curriculum so in a way it's a little tricky because the curriculum and the materials happen to be very similar we use the materials to implement the curriculum so then when I think about programs or materials we have many things that are cross-curricular like social emotional learning and that's a big part of what our vision of The Graduate is and that we want to make sure that all those components are given to kids and we have to have those all the time across all content areas and across you know recess in every place else so therefore then we have programs to help us Implement that to make sure that we are meeting the

009needs of all our diverse Learners so that's more of a program or materials to have all those cross-cutting things that we want to make sure that we're giving students the opportunity to have and to graduate with the vision of The Graduate capacities accomplished so that's about the simplest way I can explain the difference between what you approve as the Board of Education the curriculum the Frameworks and the scope and sequence and then how do we Implement things that are cross-curricular like SEL so like second step uh ruler would be programs to make sure that we're helping students with their social emotional learning because there's not a curriculum for that there are things that we know are important let me address that's a good example the ruler example because I did hear that uh uh that

010that the personal people get up there and they talk about this ruler program now uh a daddy bragging moment uh my daughter happens to be a a uh at NYU as a uh a pre-med and The Psychology major and she was with the team and she would work as a research assistant up at Yale when they were developing ruler so I've certainly had some experience or when it was mentioned I knew nothing about it we were talking about it at the dinner table one day and she said well I know everything about that I was involved in the design of that remember Christy right sure yeah so yep so I quickly learned what it was because I didn't know what it was and it and she made it kind of simple and we offered the

011opportunity to some folks who had asked about it to maybe talk to her about it but she made it really easy for me to understand that it's trying to create emotions into a language that could be Universal and discussed amongst people where those emotions could be described in many different ways and to have a universal language so you can communicate that's the way she I I'm not really good at things like this but maybe she didn't explain it to me correctly but I kind of think it did yes that is correct so now when when the the citizens that the our constituents ask about why that was not approved can we walk me through how that falls under something that we were that we did approve and how that's under that umbrella and and how

012we could explain to uh our constituents about why it was why our policy covered that by approving uh what we approved and how that derived into uh into that specific thing they're talking about I think if you look at the vision of The Graduate and the capacities that's what you approved we have to have a way to make sure that students are exposed to those capacities which include the things that we teach the universal language that we hope comes across with second step and with ruler so that's really where you approve them so it doesn't make it really connected so I don't know maybe we should try to figure out because I think these people who speak at our meetings deserve answers even if they're maybe not on Target on on some of their questions

013maybe they are but I every person who speaks in any of our meetings I stop what I'm doing put down what I'm doing and I look at them and I listen to exactly what they have to say they only have an hour it doesn't take a lot of time and a lot of those a lot of attention to really focus on that and a lot of those people they deserve these answers so we might want to think about as time goes on maybe somehow helping them connect how that falls under certain categories uh that and going back to making sure we have the approvals at the highest level as you described connected to what courses or whatever else they're just saying we haven't approved because I would like to make sure that everything certainly that

014gets taught in the schools is approved so I'm not saying this is something we have to do right away but this is something maybe we if it doesn't exist and it might already but if it doesn't exist well I'd certainly like that to have that looked into because I think it's crucially important for us to have tremendous amount of transparency in everything we do there can't be too much transparency so I know it's hard to create the transparency that's necessary sometimes but you know what hard is something we just have to go at hard and go we teach our kids to work hard so we have to work hard to do the same same sort of thing I keep hearing these same things like social emotional learning and I remember Michael wasn't it you that

015mentioned it pre uh election to the Board of Education that things like that need better explanation by by the by the Educators by the Board of Education by us so basically I think well maybe it falls on us maybe I don't know how it falls on because we're just trying to figure out how I'm trying to figure out the best way to address these things we have to explain how that makes sense rather than people looking at it and seeing as something they're confused about last time we discussed the curricular uh plan um Improvement plan and management plan I think was last September the 20th um we had a deep discussion about this as well because I'm gonna use us as an example and you use the term Board of Education there's two boards of

016Education they're the elected members of the Board of Education and then there are the administrative members of the board of education but the term board of education is a broad term that sort of encompasses all of us and it is consistently used for one when it is meant for the other and vice versa the term curriculum is is similar in that and I think uh Mr Jimmy go ahead and a really good explanation for that last September and I'm not going to try to make you think back to that but um you know because the term no no but the term but it's true I've spent a lot of time trying to explain this to individuals as well is that right so the overarching curriculum are the specific needs and the standards that each course

017and student that the students need to reach in that course and master by the end of that year in order to move forward right so if it's uh ABC's and one two threes you have to do additional first grade math Edition and simple addition simple subtract subtraction so that's the the overarching curriculum and then below that you have curriculum mapping which is not our responsibility that's those who study uh to become Educators and how they take those standards and put that into terms where how do you get from point A at the start of the year to point B at the end of the year so these students can know that one plus one is two and two minus one is one and then further from there there is are the lesson plans so you

018take the curriculum mapping where students need to be at a certain point to be able to move forward and then there are those lesson plans right so that's what our teachers are doing on a daily basis to ensure that those students are learning what they need to learn on that day to be able to make it to the next point to move forward and that is where the data that you know not just it's the textbooks are overarching but there are other materials that come into the daily lesson plan there are assessments that come in and as part of the curriculum mapping and the daily assessment plan and um there are also the other the points where we are learning our students needs along the way and our teachers have to adjust those daily lessons

019daily lesson plans uh because you know student number one um got it on the first go student number two is struggling a little bit needs to have a little bit more reinforcement in that lesson and then student number three I didn't get it at all and so the teacher then has to look at student one two and three and figure out how to deliver that lesson so that they're all getting what they need and so that's that is not a point where we are at and so I don't know if I did I don't know if I did it justice okay I agree 100 and so if I can take any credit for teaching that to you I will but but this is this is years of sitting beside you at meetings uh but another

020way to look at it and again I don't mean to over uh simplify curriculum because it's incredibly complex but you can look at it in two ways the what and the how so what do we have to teach that's the standards the expectations set forth at the State national level but then well how are we going to teach those sometimes people jump to the conclusion that it's always through a textbook and it's not always the case that it's through a textbook there's multiple ways of ascertaining knowledge through units of study um again it's the how that becomes the art of instruction and that's where teachers really are required to put the effort into and that's not the level of the board of education but it's okay to ask us about the how I think it's

021important that we can explain the how because the how has to correlate to our results and if we can't make the correlation between the What the how and the achievement well then systematically there's something that's broken well thanks man I only have a little bit more to touch on I really I'm really interested to hear every everyone's explanations great and it's actually it is helping me out that was very helpful but I guess some of the things that are the things that I try to answer with stuff that's kind of spreading and it can like in a in a misinformation of people talking about stuff out there and saying this exists but they they don't know where to ask the question so they come to a board of ed meeting and say hey we want

022to know the answer to this and we just sit there like say a word I mean we hear words like or CRT and woke and things like that are being mentioned are in our curriculum now the curriculum is approved by us at a high level you all just described to me at a very high level and how would like a thing sneak in because I keep hearing people saying like things like words like I had just mentioned are kind of sneaking in to what how does that get managed that it doesn't sneak in to our to our big broad umbrella approval at the curriculum level and then we get down to the multiple levels you so eloquently described to me uh and informatively thank you how would it sneak in or how would defense the

023defense mechanism set up where it can't or it won't just so I can explain to these people that are spreading some stories around to each other that things like this might or might not exist how help me explain to them how we're well is policing that the right word or how we're managing that or how we're controlling such things I mean I think I think oversight I think oversight's a good word but you did say you were going to start off with the easy questions tonight Joe and I don't know if that's necessarily the easiest I would encourage all parents to go to our website um I've been in this position for three years and we've said what we're going to be extremely transparent about what we're teaching our children and we've created public facing

024documents so that parents can delve deeper into what we teach you're giving an example of people making the correlation between CRT and second steps program so I'm going to go right to that so if you go to our website the scope and sequence for our K5 program is there for all parents to review and now we have you know the six eight program scope and sequence uh posted as well I challenge you to find within the scope and sequence where you draw a direct correlation or even an indirect correlation between the lessons provided in the second steps program and what people refer to as CRT I don't think you'll find it I can't say it any clearer than that no I believe it has been no accusations I'm just trying to help answer questions that

025that are asked of me and I see in public public comment now there are uh uh diversity equity and inclusion the words themselves make so much sense don't they you know and people are saying that no well I guess the the I think the debate at time is his equality and Equity I think some people are arguing that one but uh but you know it's it's it's it's things like that that I I just I think we have to just make ourselves as clear as you just are how to explain that how to discuss that how to draw people in and how to maybe make it easier for us to connect the dots in that category and say and help these people and a lot of them are truly honestly nervous and scared and it's

026a sincere feeling and they're concerned about it and I would like to help alleviate that stress and and work with them on that so that's it okay I'm done thank you no I'm just going to add it's there's the board member and then I'm lucky enough to of course be a parent at every level um and I I saw Ralph there for a second the only open house I've had so far is the high school and I could tell you as a parent I walked away knowing exactly everything my child was being taught in those eight blocks and I am not capable of learning uh calculus at this point and um but I now know every unit I know every chemistry unit I know everything us history I know everything about the English and computer

027science I mean we I went through everything and they had handouts on the exact every unit how they were preparing in the case of the AP classes the sequence of preparing for that um I was floored by the information that was provided to me as a parent on exactly what they'd be learning this year and I was looking for an opportunity to get that in I didn't see it as an anywhere on the agenda but you just provided me that so thank you so much yes all right I was going to say another piece of it is when you're asking how we police the materials that's the exact what we're looking at right now this document is exactly how we're doing that and it's something that had been asked for for quite some time to

028ensure that in from you know the students across the district were learning things in a similar fashion yes and as a horizontal and vertical like alignment so that when they move from first grade to second grade those students all know the same thing no matter what elementary school they're going to and then when they move from their Elementary Schools they're all joining you know not all joining together but cohorts are joining together in middle schools and they walk in with the same knowledge and when they leave those middle schools to go to our high school they have the same core base of knowledge and that is exactly what this document is supposed to provide um additionally they did the work or the curriculum institute and committee did the work to put together the vetting rubric

029which we were introduced to a few weeks ago I know one of my and I'm just going to say thank you in advance because I sent my questions to you guys late and I got a huge document we all got about five with some of those answers and the first question I asked was about uh vetting uh materials that are outside of textbooks because there are materials that are used in classrooms that are not just textbooks um and I'm happy to reactance to ask the questions so that it can be shared here but I think that exactly what you're asking about is something that parents have been asking for here for so long it's why at these meetings I consistently say how grateful and appreciative I am for the work that's being done they're providing

030support for our teachers with lesson plans so that they're consistent they're providing support to teachers so they don't have to hunt down uh extra materials to to deliver a lesson and they're being vetted they are giving support to our Educators who our Educators can walk into those classrooms and do what they know to do best deliver the material in the way that they feel is appropriate to their students to help those students achieve and grow which we'll be talking about later I guess in the achievement report and so I don't have a degree uh I'm not a teacher I don't have a degree in that I'm not an administrator I don't have a degree in that but I believe in the people that are sitting in this room because I've I've seen the work that

031they've done through my children as of you and so I think that for the first time we've had seeing this management plan seeing all of the materials and the Scopes and sequences for K-8 up on the website being able to see all that material in schoology for the high schoolers and seeing what those courses the overview for those courses are has provided a level transparency we've never had here before and so to me I I think we've made incredibly great strides and so when parents come and they're frustrated I I do understand I understand it's a long frustration and I'm always happy to help and sit down and ask answer questions also from a parent perspective and so I appreciate you bringing this up because I think it highlights the incredible amount of work that's

032been done in the past few years in this District to bring forward which is why we're now number three I know you want to get to number one but we're getting there we're getting there yeah Michael Joseph um yeah I I don't disagree with anything I think uh as a board um let's be mindful of our role right the um and I do think I hear what you're saying Mark tonight and I don't don't disagree I do think though um we have to consider what you know our role is when it comes to the approval of curriculum um particularly when we're looking at uh policy um the our policy um very much speaks to textbooks um that's a very Antiquated definition of policy of curriculum we all know that so I don't think it is

033um um about I think it makes a lot of sense uh for the policy committee because this is a continuing conversation for the policy committee to go back and look and see you know what is all rolled because the uh transparency is is a hundred percent of the way to go here and and what the solution is we have transparency at K-8 we're getting there at high school um I'm at the kindergarten level and I can see from my son I know very much exactly what he's going to learn all year in kindergarten as a board member if I'm trying to figure out the high school curriculum I can't find it anywhere the um it's very difficult for me um if I wasn't you know I didn't go to open and you know the you

034know back to school night um because I'm not a parent so I think that's and we know that that's where uh you know we know of the course of the Year we're working on getting more of that transparency at the high school level on the um out there very clearly in one click we talked about that last Retreat um at the um online and I think that's going to help but I do think that the you know over the last 20 years the definition of curriculum has changed such that Boards of the programming just textbooks probably isn't adequate anymore and I think that's where a lot of this fuzziness comes in so I do think it makes sense as uh for the positive committee to reconsider this I'm not sure given our I'd have to

035go back and look given our current policies if it's that cut and dry that the board approves that the board approves textbooks doesn't approve programs I'm not sure that it's quite that cut and dry and I think that's something we need to we need to consider and that's where we're hearing a lot of this um concern in the community or rile up the um which I think we need to acknowledge well there is a policy 6140 B which goes Way Beyond the textbooks right but that wasn't that wasn't the explanation we heard uh earlier the um the explanation tonight was we approved textbooks so what I said was that it was it can be a little sticky a little iffy because when we first had the textbook committee for our to choose a new math

036text we didn't know that we were going to choose a text that was perfectly aligned to our math curriculum to what the standards were to what the Frameworks were and to what the student outcomes were so we didn't know that it would be the way to deliver the curriculum that was a surprise so that's why sometimes it's a little iffy it's not just the textbook that it just happened that it worked out that way and that's what made me starting to think about well how do we explain curriculum Frameworks having materials to be able to implement those Frameworks and how do we assess and what do we do so it's not I wish it was cut and dry but it's a process that we go through so I'm sorry if you if I was not

037clear with that I just want to say from a positive comment because Karen Kowalski is not here tonight but she emailed me this morning and one of the things we're trying to do um because the team has done such a great job getting there is a ton of information out there so last year like for our SEL second step we pushed that out once it was all on the website but some people might have missed it you know we're in the middle of covid we're going back over so you'll notice every Friday I'm including curriculum and when we're at the board meeting I take copious notes I listen to the complaints and if there's something that we can do better and I've heard that SEL peace is something that people just weren't understanding and so

038we pushed it out again last week Karen said she had heard some really great feedback because people just didn't know it was there we also updated the six eight in the same spot and we'll push that out again tomorrow as well so I we are listening and trying to be responsive I think a lot of people are just so busy they either like this meeting probably I don't know I can't see the numbers but generally when we talk curriculum hardly anybody dials in um or or they leave when we start talking about curriculum so it's trying to get the information out yeah yeah um what's up 20 people well that and which is great but but we're continuing to push that information out from the high school I was also going to say you make

039a good point though and this is something we've talked about with reports and over something I spoke about even before I was on the board and countless presentations I stood on the other side of the thing talking to the board we use so many terms here that are edgespeak we use so many things and little isms SEL Dei yada yada yada that we understand and so to a larger community they may miss they they may interpret that to mean something slightly different because it is from their Viewpoint and their perspective but until you sit down with somebody and say well what's your understanding of this versus my understanding of this you realize you're maybe on different pages and finding that uh point in between where the what we're actually doing and so I I wanted

040to point that out because something we've talked about also for a long time here um and I know that sometimes we forget that but um everybody else has a question but I was going to go to one question because I thought it also went to what sorry Cody did have on I wanted to weigh in on this but um Joe just to your initial premise I think it might be a little bit backwards to say parents are telling us there's an issue administrators tell us why there's not an issue I think part of what we should be doing is looking and saying it's probably not the case the parents are making things up like that when we hear there's an issue there probably is an issue at least on an isolated basis it doesn't mean

041it's systematic and the question should be not tell me how I can tell them their eyes are lying to them but what can we do to continue to eliminate the cracks or the issues where they emerge even if they're not systematic um I think to that point there's and this is a broader discussion and something that would relate to policy committee but I think about transparency which is I think we can do more on but also the concept of red lines you know where do we what what kind of guard rails can we put around so parents know that hey there's certain things that are not allowed or not tolerated um like everyone is concerned about the like you said the woke things over politicizing things I um uh we know that that happens in

042the schools uh and so you should you can argue about what degree but what are we what can we do as a board to put policies in place to make sure that there's accountability to prevent that even again it's not necessarily saying it's fully systematic but I think that's something we have we can't just say well you know there's a bunch of complicated educational terms and they don't understand the layers and how curriculum works I think we have to take it seriously and think about um a systematic way we can address that I just there's a few comments that were made that I found a little bit troubling I guess the oversight of how versus what and maybe it's semantic I think just the fact that we have uh there's a large emphasis in our

043existing policies on voting on specific materials if they're primary materials there's kind of I guess a loophole or for supplemental and reference materials which gives teachers probably wiggle room to sneak things into the classroom that maybe parents aren't a fan of but there's a I think there's a fair amount of emphasis for the board to evaluate the how and not just the what um and I think that's a responsibility that I'd imagine taxpayers voters whatever want us to have I think and the reason it's important for us to have that is when you operate in a system where I'm actually a big fan of the idea of saying hey Bottoms Up give more power and um control to the people in the field but that only works in a system where you have a high

044degree of accountability and by the nature of teachers unions that doesn't exist um and so we have to have guard rails and some kind of you know uh top level system to um prevent people from you know taking their autonomy the wrong way because we don't have a way to you can't say everybody do what you want and we'll just keep the good the good ones um and so I uh um I think it's an important I I personally think that that's a role that we should embrace and we should probably from a policy standpoint be looking at supplemental and uh reference material and working with you guys on this I don't think it's necessarily a fair question for you to say hey tell you know defend yourself effectively and it's not necessarily I don't

045think it's the administrators I think a lot of it has to do with the fact striking that balance between autonomy of teachers but recognizing that some teachers are going to do things that they're not supposed to I know like when I toured the school was last year this is a common thing that would come up with principles of you know they have to slap hands sometimes and say hey don't do that um but I think it all goes back to the parents and what they're looking for and um and for this is something that we need to bring back to the policy committee I don't want to spend much more time on this because I know it's not the core Focus but everybody else is weighing in so I wanted to uh give my two

046cents yeah I hey it's a retreat so that's why you know and we now we're just starting our normal time so it's okay it's okay um so with that um it was a good discussion um but yes do you have anything related to the questions in front of us okay I was gonna ask one simple one sorry and truly simple can you just give me high level what's the big change in the writing lesson plans for six through eight foreign so as the curriculum management plan outlines we're staying the course in Middle School uh last year the focus was on six eight reading lessons and social studies lessons this year we're turning our Focus to writing instruction so at the end of this year we'll have accomplished reading writing and social studies so we're in

047our full first year implementation just so everybody's clear on reading and social studies garnering frequent feedback from teachers teachers are getting on-site visits from our curriculum writers they have Avenues to provide feedback we'll make refinements during the next summer curriculum institute in those two content areas we're just embarking on our uh work with regards to Middle School writing now Kim can speak to where we are in terms of bringing our committees together so do you have a microphone over there yeah so that's Mark as Mark said we're currently the writing process is started the first deliverable from our curriculum writers for the first couple of units in each grade level are coming tomorrow so we have a writing focus group of sixth through eighth grade teachers so there should be one teacher from each School

048in each grade level that will do a deep dive of the materials will give feedback to the curriculum writers in a 30-day cycle they'll also come in person to meet with the curriculum writers to give feedback in person and then all of the other teachers will have access to the materials as well and have an opportunity to give feedback um and then we will um as you know have a curriculum advisory committee where we will have um different six or eight teachers we'll have some representatives from Alp from special education from our El Department from the board from PTAC and as another opportunity to review curricular materials and to give feedback in that group so that's what we've got going on with writing thus far and I just want to remind everyone that we went

049through an evolution last year when we rebranded curriculum advisory committee and the sole purpose of rebranding was to create a higher level of transparency and involvement so we did that for the Big Ideas Math implementation we did that for six eight reading and social studies and we'll continue down that path for writing as well knit it for ninth grade as well ninth and 10th grade math and there will be two other sessions throughout the year too so after each set of deliverables we'll do the same process and minutes from those meetings are posted to the web excellent oh sorry yes Miss Downey I just want to talk about the process a little bit more just because this is a great chart but just kind of talk through um the step like review for Renewal obviously

050the selection creation is a little more understandable and the implementation to refine it but let's talk about the review for Renewal because we have some courses that we're doing that with if you could just kind of talk about that process a little bit I think it would be helpful for everyone sure why don't we put it in in perspective so Tara do you want to talk a little bit about what review and renewal looks like in science yep okay uh so when we review for Renewal that means we're ending five years in the Shaded color of green into blue so we we've had this curriculum we know we need to evaluate it it's been in process for a while and we just like to make sure that we're staying current within curriculum models so we're

051going to evaluate how it's doing that's the blue and then we review for Renewal that means we've officially moved it into red on our list that means it's a focus area a priority Target and it's what we're going to focus on that year in classrooms that means that we're looking at the materials as they are being used in that classroom we are vetting some other possible materials to use instead we're bringing together those curriculum advisory committees and then we're moving towards yellow of formal selection or creating our own materials in-house but I'm just I'm obviously not an educator there's the difference between the evaluation and the review like you kind of right it's it's it's going through the C sequence over and over again you know how are you move I mean and about from

052an evaluation period to a review for Renewal like what what's the hinge what what happens differently yeah and those blue boxes were really focused on student scores we're focused on how that's being implemented in the classroom and how our students are performing that's where we're evaluating what's going on that's where we're measuring feedback from teachers saying okay you've been doing this if you were going to change it what would you change how are your students performing what do your parents say and then as we move into the red that's when it's action mode that's when we're pulling together committees and we're ready to move on to the hard work of the selection or creation so just to be sure so the the red the that review for Renewal means you're taking all the data right

053because it's data driven from what you have and then saying okay these are the parts of it that we need to improve whether it's gaps in learning on a particular strand of something or you know taking too long to learn something that's what that process is so that you have a focus before you go into so you know what you're getting the selection and creation of new correct like what kind of what what do we want to make better or what do we want to keep that's exactly correct so you'll notice on the K8 boxes at the front are big areas for review right now are going to be in K5 reading which I'm sure Kim will have a chance to talk to at some point this evening okay let me ask you about that

054just um APS how much I mean we don't have I mean you know I thought that was really dictated by the College Board I'm not sure how much Liberty we have to really kind of we put it into our cycle um but don't they mandate a lot of what goes into the classroom the AP has a syllabus that has to be followed teachers have an opportunity to personalize it to the kids that are in front of them but there is a outcomes that they expect they give them a variety of materials so they'll come out let's say with a new textbook that is very different from the 2010 textbook that they've been using let's I'm just going to use this as an example calculus B AP Calculus B so they've come out with a new

055textbook which is more aligned to what's happening today in the mathematical world and in the um in the world of work and research and things like that so that's how they'll do and manage the AP courses we'll still bring them to you and we'll still bring the updates if there are updates and any new materials that we need to adopt foreign so I wonder if this is a uh this is a draft um or just the first time that might be something to think about because I don't know reading that yeah the I'm a live as a Layman or even anyone the uh what the difference is between one and four just looking at the names the um like we're talking about student if number four talks about student um outcomes um was more about

056that would be something about what's that the phases yeah the uh but any event um like the question I had well I had two the I'm going back to the writing uh which makes sense and I was a little confused the um so the writing just social studies or is it social studies in ela what what's because I thought it was Ela but then you mentioned social studies so so last year was reading specific and social studies specific this year we're going after we're going we're focusing on the writing curriculum correct we're attempting to do interdisciplinary work where it's appropriate okay and so then no pressure um so I'm wondering so what I was actually wondering the um the real thought the um because I think this is great the um you know oftentimes what

057are the questions accidents certainly mine I don't I try not to accentuate the negative than they shouldn't because this is this is a terrific plan and really really isn't I really like this the way this is laid out the um and of course the video was it was a great community resource now that we have reorganized right the um and we have um our different curriculum Specialists I'm I I'm wondering um if keeping to The Five-Year cycle is is always necessary they um in particular sorry Karen they um thinking about science they um if that does that do are we sure that that needs to wait um until 24 25 the um for that looking at the science performance scores which are up from last year but still below continuing targets you know is there

058a way now in Oregon and now that we're reorganized that there are some aspects of this that can happen simultaneously because we have more people driving the ship in different departments so I know I know Tara's dying to jump in and answer this question but I just I just want to take pause and remind everybody when we make everything a priority then nothing is a priority and we want to be very thoughtful of how much we put on teachers plates at one time um and we're going to talk a little bit about that when we phase out of the middle school work and start talking about the elementary work and What needs to come but also the I think it's important to look at our curriculum management plan as something that's pretty fluid and we

059need to be responsive to several things one state mandates uh like for example the read the right act we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight I think um student outcomes if if we're not seeing the results that we thought we would see and I'll use big ideas for for an example although we are seeing the results we thought we would see with big ideas and in a few years I think we're going to be incredibly pleased with having adopted that program um we wouldn't wait five years to make a change um within a curricular area so all though it may not be up for five years for intensive review every year when the when the state results come back we're looking at direct correlations between the assessment results and the curriculum that

060we're putting in front of students to make sure that it's responsive to their needs so with that Tara would you like to go into a little bit about science said a little bit because he knows I get to I get excited and talk too much the other important part to talk about here is that our curriculum management plan priority targets are very closely related to funding so I think Kathleen you had asked before or um Ms Danny you had asked about when we have something as read as marked for Renewal that means we're ready to program big buckets of funding into the following school year as you know we're going to be setting our budgets within between August and October for the subsequent school year so when we Mark something for review we do have

061to look at big buckets of money traveling between all of our program-based budgets for those priority targets you can imagine that science is a heavy heavy spending area given the Hands-On materials are required we have some supplemental funding to handle that in the interim and just because it's not a priority Target in a specific year does not mean I'm not working hard to ensure that the curriculum is being implemented with Fidelity that we're helping teachers and we do have plans to increase scores moving forward word science is in a wonderful position because we have these national standards adopted by the state that are not changing and that we have in place with foundational lessons that are being taught right now and we're confident in our curriculum so I can say having been in all the

062K5 classrooms that we're okay in science right now and teachers are going to love the breathing room two years of math to really make it work two years of reading and then I'm going to do two years of science so we we like how that feels for a teacher and we are prioritizing social and emotional um social and emotional experience for our staff as well and this is really a nod to that while maintaining student scores and their experience in science Miss Hirsch well I feel like some of the questions I had have sort of been answered so I was I mean I'll jump back to one of them after this but um just before we lose focus I was actually going to discuss one of the we looked at the high school I was

063looking at the high school um curricular renewal plan I know you know we've gone into depth in a lot of regards to the elementary and middle school but high school as Michael Joseph pointed out is it's a different beast and that's also because if you ever looked at our course catalog it's like a it's like a college course catalog which is why it's impossible to sort of get the same kind of gist as you would with the elementary and middle school because they're they're all on different paths at that point I'm sure you know that is but that's for the listening public but my question for you guys when it came to the high school is um sorry I had it written down is um well I have two actually one is when we were

064talking about math since we are Big Ideas I'm really pleased to see that we've seen Improvement in the year that we've used it to sort of help narrow that achievement Gap and bring back some of the coveted slides so that's good I'm looking forward to seeing more data going forward um but are we taking a look at any higher level math courses um as possible new courses because we have a huge well not huge but we definitely have a cohort of students that started a few years ago in the middle school I see Mr Healy nodding and Kathleen should be nodding um who are starting to take much higher level and more advanced math courses and so by the time they get to their junior year they've already done BC Cal and then where do

065they go and so so so for juniors and seniors who are that two three levels advance have we started to look at any of those because I'm sure that means it's going to be a textbook review and all sorts of other fun stuff Andrew is online so I think he can answer that question there he is thank you so much Andrew I know that you have done a lot of work on this and that you have been looking at those Advanced courses that we need to start to think about for our students moving forward yes thank you Ann uh Miss Hirsch that's a wonderful question and we're very excited by the advancement of the middle school students and the opportunity that that provides not only our students but our teachers and our wonderful high school

066as well and so uh we we are very fortunate to already have a number of courses that the kids can take namely Advanced calculus not too many schools around us have such a robust Advanced calculus program as we do we typically I think this year have about 28 or 29 students that are sitting in advanced calculus this year and many of our other students will go on to take EP courses in in both statistics and computer science and as you probably saw from the report our computer science scores are amazing and you know our enrollments never been higher so we're very excited about that but certainly um given what you just shared in the data that we're looking at we are in the process of putting together a new new course I'd mention it to

067the board around this time last year um we're in the early stages of putting together a linear algebra course which tends to be the next level of math that most of our students would take at University or college and we have some teachers that are excited about offering that for to our students so I just actually had a meeting with Dana and Ralph today to start that conversation and our next step is to to bring some of those ideas to our faculty committee the LPC group and then ultimately the board in the early winter or early I'm sorry late winter early spring so it's definitely something on our minds and we're excited by it and you know I hope to have something to you guys uh very soon that's awesome um the more we can

068give to our students who are reaching beyond the limits of what we have currently offered is amazing and so on another note for our high school I had a quick question because I also noticed I'm sorry to do this to you guys but um I in the curricular plan I didn't notice we have a large section of Visual Arts um and Technical courses and I didn't see any of the technology courses video production broadcast journalism any of our family and consumer science courses listed anywhere in the review cycle so I don't know if they I'm wondering when those might get reviewed some of these courses are things that are you know for you know a lot of these two we talk all the time about our students who don't always excel in math and and

069English and some of them are more technical some of the more you know focused on all of these other areas and so I was wondering when we might be digging into well I can tell you that the family and consumer Sciences um teachers did work on updating their curriculum this past summer and they now have a new team so that's the work that they did this summer and they have um they've done a good job with that I know for um what does Mr Mayo do he has the he does broadcasting video production and video production so he's working on that as well and those are areas that we are still looking at and how can we put them into our cycle so we are looking at that because we really haven't had those updated

070in quite a while so they need to be updated thank you so I'm sure I'll I'm sure we'll see another line next year and which means you're going to have to either make smaller print uh or get your magnet find much bigger paper um and then I was just going to jump quickly back because I think it's important for when we were talking about the curriculum plan and I'd asked a quick question you know most people probably didn't see the you guys did such incredible work getting answers to the questions I sent but um we had a new vetting rubric and I just was sort of trying to I had asked where that and I think this sort of goes back to some of the earlier questions is where that uh the vetting of supplementary

071limit supplementary materials lands in the curriculum cycle um and I had asked you know any new supplementary materials I assume were embedded as they come in um but how do we review the older ones that are part of our curriculum that may not address the needs anymore um so you're talking about items that were already in our classrooms outside of textbooks right so we're talking the vetting you know rubric is there for things that are needed you know when new documents and materials and things come when you talk about history you talk about ancient history things there don't necessarily change but recent history does and so I'm just going to use that as an example because that's you know you know students read the newspaper daily for some of the courses I know we have

072a teacher here who had them reading and deciphering stuff from you know newspapers and materials on The Daily and I mean it was amazing for them to do that the students had to self-selected those materials of course that's not did not come from our schools but I know when we're talking about current events sometimes we need to vet materials to share with those students yeah it really comes down to we have a vetting rubric so that everybody understands really what is the context in which you're reviewing so and it kind of even comes back to school law and looking at you know if you're going to look at the material you have to make sure it's developmentally appropriate that it meets the standards you shouldn't just be bringing random things in just because you like

073it and the vetting rubric is very simplistic in that way and so if a teacher has a question and I know we've had some where um this year where they could probably give you an example if they get to one section and they're just not quite sure then they go to the next level so that they're reaching out to the supervisor and they work through that process and that's what it's for and so far I mean it seems to be working really well and I think as much as anything it's helping people hit pause and just think more about the supplementary material if it is something new and does it really does it meet the standard of what they should be doing in the classroom [Music] and I guess the last question I have on

074that one I asked already as well if our teachers have given any feedback on the vetting rubric how they feel it supports their needs because I assume that you know there may be some feedback that might uh you know we always want to bring our teachers into the conversation because they're the ones that are taking this and running with it on a daily so I just want to make sure we're including them if there's any updates that are needed there you know I think part of being a great educator is you're always wanting to take feedback and you continue to grow and get better that's why the curriculum management plan in front of you has you know grown over the last couple of years um and I think that when we meet with DEA they

075gave us some good feedback actually at our last meeting and probably one example was there's a section on the rubric where it talks about point of view and it shouldn't just be one point of view so we got into a conversation we could probably write that section of the rubric a little bit better because we do want our students to be able to look at different points of view so we're taking feedback we'll continue to work on it all year long there are some teachers that probably don't like it at all there's some that really like it because they feel like it's a comfort to have it um but we're going to take feedback and continue to tweak all year I see Chuck not in his head with Gea and I know there's an old

076saying that you know you can't make everybody happy all the time so if everybody's slightly a little bit unhappy then you've done it right interesting that's interesting I like that slightly slightly happy slightly heavy just a little bit and to think that to think that why aren't you liking Communications wasn't that your job by the end of the meeting I will have the exact quote for you I was paraphrasing but my point is is you can't make everybody happy all of the time what makes one person uncomfortable is something somebody else is clamoring to learn about and so you know you have to kind of find a happy medium is that better happy medium I don't know if there's more questions but I was just going to say since I am sadly the oldest person

077on the board no wait sorry longest tenure on the board certainly not the oldest okay um I think hopefully only Cody is under me um but um this was like nothing I've ever seen when we started this process I remember sitting in this room and I don't know there was this whole I don't even know what it was that was put in front of us when I first joined the board but let me just tell you you walked away and there was only confusion and it was a random point in time that connected to nothing and so you just sort of said okay um but this is you're providing like a holistic overview and a plan and it's kind of how a private organization runs and so I really appreciate this thank you very much

078else on this topic okay I I'm hoping that everyone's going to be able to chance to speak here tonight but I suspect when we go to achievement data that's what they're here for so um so let's go to the achievement data report of course so we keep this moving yeah this was 34 minutes to actually watched the video when he did it I was yesterday yeah [Applause] and I know and I know where he messed up and he didn't catch it so I had to catch it for you that's multiple yes so we aim to please we hope you enjoy the video if you have questions the entire team and they came up there is there ready to go okay um do you want me to go first everyone someone else okay um I have

079to go to mass so the there was a trend right that it seems that unfortunately our achievement goes down as the grades go up and and the primary answer that's going to be provided was that the math rigor increases and therefore for some reason we're not our children aren't meeting it at the same percentage expectation but my question is language arts also gets more difficult right so is there something wrong with us or is there something wrong with the comps out there or is there something wrong with how the state is measuring the rigor because that was just there weren't any comps for that whereas there were comps I noticed for um for special needs that were comps for high needs students but for the overall metric versus the state there was not so I'm

080trying to understand if what's happening so um glad to kick things off here for the achievement report um I think in order to keep it as simple as possible in the spirit of how Mr Kelly kicked off this whole meeting um if you if you start back in in elementary school in kindergarten and first grade kids learn Concepts in second grade they apply those Concepts so that makes sense to everybody right so in third grade they learn new Concepts and then in fourth and fifth grade they apply those Concepts right so there's still new things being learned every year but certain grades are heavier so K one and three are heavy in new conceptual learning two four and five are heavy in application of skills that you learned in previous years once you get to

081Middle School it becomes new Concepts continuously year after year after year so I guess the most simple way to say it is um the conceptual learning is intensified once you get to the middle school level so that could be one way to think about why do we see this sort of like General downward trend from third grade standardized scores to eighth grade standardized scores so um that's sort of the most simple way to talk about it we can talk about what we're doing to address it if that's what you'd like to do next or if you have a follow-up question I'd be happy to answer no I think that's uh I do want to hear what we're doing next but then it also does go to the state should figure that out right and therefore

082shouldn't they be sort of rescaling or is there something wrong with us or should you know should we be I mean I know so yes how do we address it because I want to meet their standards but is there something inherently flawed about it versus like the language arts standards yeah so I wouldn't speak to whether it's inherently flawed at the state level but what I would say is what we're doing right so um just a little uh trip down memory lane which which I shared last year you know for the better part of a decade we were kind of all over the place it was the Wild West depending on the school grade level you were in you you got standards that the teachers were adhering to but they taught them in different ways

083so the Big Ideas helps us with that uniformity so that's year one right we implement this new new program and uh everybody across the district is aligned vertically and horizontally um to use Mrs Hirsch's analogy before um once we're aligned now we're in year two so the focus this year is how do we get the discrete data that we need that tie right to skills so that we can support classrooms small groups individuals so as we had spoken earlier in the year about IXL we're leveraging a tool that we already had uh to get more actionable data so that we can support the needs essentially of individuals um what did we have in the past we had SBA data which is by Target a b c d e f g and it's many standards in

084that Target so it's kind of difficult to like sort of flesh out exactly what a particular school or grade level needed through the SBA data we just see overall Benchmark then we have link it which gives us a little bit more discrete data so we can see the actual standards we can see the question types so that gives us you know by standard what the kids need to work on and it does break it down into skills and so we started to use Link it that way but IXL gives us the skills even more discreetly so for example in third grade standard 3082 might have 15 discrete skills that students need to be able to match um your one implementation your two gather data that is actionable that is real time that we can use

085you know get the date of the night before use it the next day and then next year it's okay now that we have this data down and we understand what's coming in what our Trends are how do we look at our instructional model to be a little bit different um you know in elementary school we have the same kids all day as teachers and um you know there's flexibility to have you know like small grouping based on the hour block of time and so we have the station model that we use where kids rotate around um in middle school there are time constraints we have 42 minute blocks of time it's um difficult um to transition from the traditional whole school um lesson delivery to you know having three distinct groups because that would be

08614 minute groups I mean by the time you transition through them you would have lost a lot of time so we have to figure out how we can use this data that we get from IXL to be more just discrete with our small group instruction at Middle School level and you know it's uh try to be cognizant to the uh to Tara's Point earlier on the social emotional health of teachers because um you know you throw a new program then you throw some new data mechanisms and so we get used to these types of things and then year three we start to look at the instructional model and say how could we approach this maybe a little bit differently because if we keep doing the same thing getting the same results we all know the

087you know the sort of punch line to that thank you thank you so much sorry to throw you the tough question at the beginning but I know if anyone could handle it I want another one yeah go ahead Michael I hear you the um so I'm looking at page four right which is the overall page with the um with the math SBA results right on chart four here they um and to uh Kathleen's Point um obviously in Middle School the if you're looking at pre-covered numbers and post-covered numbers you're seeing uh you're seeing a large gap I mean in seventh grade it's ten points right our students last year scored 10 points below what they were before our seventh graders did uh pre-pre-pandemic um I look at that from a from a macro level just

088looking at that and I say well that's an example of of learning loss the um I don't know if that's the case so the question is um are we seeing that in things like IXL where were we seeing standards in fourth fifth sixth grade that students haven't Mastered on showing up in middle school is that the kind of thing that that we're seeing it talking about as far as where um the need for small group instruction and these kind of tailored tasks is the IXL analysis that what it's showing thank you for teeing this up for me um so um IXL when when it pinpoints where the student is it gives you a a score so a 560 would be a fifth grade level 60 Through The Years IXL is our math program that we

089use basically for you know Drilling and Skills Practice um but we're leveraging an aspect of it that's a has a diagnostic feature so we can figure out where a student's floor or ceiling is so it allows us both downside and upside um sort of uh viewability um so so anyway um uh 560 would be a fifth grade sixty percent of the way through the year so hypothetically speaking you could have a student that um in seventh grade that got a 560. so that would tell us they're achieving right now at a fifth grade sixty percent of the way through the year and it would give us the skills plan that's specific to that kid what they need can we identify Trends from that yes there's actually a button in the program that says what are

090the trouble spots you click it and then it gives it to you across the grade level I have the district view where I could see it across the entire District now um is it giving us anything super new that we don't already know not really um you know it always falls back to the same old things which is why we need that uniformity the vocabulary uniformity the instructional technique uniformity um so um yes we are able to identify Trends across buildings across classrooms across the district and then we figure out okay is this a specific skill or a specific standard that we might need to beef up a little bit in our professional development and then we'll work towards what would be the best way to teach fraction equivalence or you know what would be

091you know a better way to teach kids the standard algorithm for division um so it gives us a lot of information I would say we're in our sort of soft restaurant opening of it um so we're trying to still figure out exactly all the functionality and we have some cool professional development coming up on on Election Day and we're going to dive a little bit more discreetly into the data and see what kind of Trends and things we can find um in um you know in our classrooms and across the district Austin I'm sorry thank you so um can you hear me all right so I just want to say you know looking at the SBA scores um there is a jarring disparity between some schools like new Leb and ham Ave and schools like

092Riverside it's it's you just can't ignore it and I I really want to know um if we're doing something that is not working for these students you know what what is it that is not um that is not helping them the same way um you know there's got to be um there's got to be some way to address it and I just I don't know where the trouble spots are so I guess that's you know what I need to find out and then the other issue is you know yes rigor does um increase as the grade levels progress but for those students that are maybe struggling in Middle School to then have to swim in such a big sea at the high school and and you know it seems like it's sort of an uphill

093climb too late if there is um an issue with um keeping them at grade level keeping them achieving where they were so I I just sort of wanna understand how we catch how we catch them you know before they falter in the late in the later grades so it's sort of a very different two-part question one you know how are we um going to fix what is not currently maybe working um at new Levin Hamas and you know again as they progress all children through the grades not just on one side of town there is such a a drop off in um in achievement before high school I just want to be sure we're catching um students who hit a trouble spot and I I mean I have two high school kids and and the

094rigor certainly intensifies um as the grades progress and and they soon learn after kindergarten and after first and second grade school is is more serious business it's not just where you go to socialize so you know um I just wanted to ask the question okay so we'll start with Elementary uh and we all know that we've operationalized into our budget math interventionists at the elementary level um to use um there's two schools that you referenced specifically um they both have two math interventionists um now um before they either had one or maybe not even a full 1.0 um and part of that may have been paid out of their own budget um so now they have to so response to intervention um which basically what that means to the layperson is getting kids the help

095that they need when they're struggling is happening earlier um um one big shift we made this year was We implemented a kindergarten screener for every single student that walks into the Greenwich Public Schools our math intervention has screened them to see what requisite skills they're bringing to the table so right off the bat we're getting um sort of um a bird's eye view in each building of what the kids are bringing so we're identifying what's happening and then from there we start to tailor our tier one instructions which means the classroom instruction um to support the needs of that particular class so um I guess it starts with having the right people and the right and the right um supports um in the building so um you know our work's not done done there I

096will Champion for more intervention even up I'm looking at Mr Healy right now even up to the Middle School level we need we need another one at Central um and um you know I will you know do my best to show you know how we're performing and how we could use people differently Lee to support you know our math achievement um you know what I would say structurally at the middle school um is um if you sort of compare to the high school when kids get into high school um at the ninth grade level they have many different ranges of sort of on slash around grade level like four or five different courses they could take there's an algebra class algebra geometry class all sort of combined we don't have that leveling um or that

097ability to be more discreet with where kids are at the middle school level so there could be a need at some point to discuss which involves money and Staffing how do we create levels where we can get kids the support that they need when it's not just a pull-out Intervention which we don't really have a ton of those mechanisms at the middle school level at Western we have the Staffing to do it um at Eastern we don't really have the Staffing at all to do it and at Central we have one person that can support that um but um you know that's I guess how I would answer that question um and and I think it's important to be proactive in our support of this and not reactive um you know based on the scores

098I think you know if we can get ahead of the of things we could be we could see gains in achievement this is following up to that I mean kind of educationally what's the time frame right like we implemented Big Ideas in year one since we're on the math topic and we're talking about what we've seen for the test scores and we've had the covet issues kind of what's the time frame you would use to say the program is working and that we're going to close this Gap and we've it put all these tools in place because I gotta say I was going to have the same question as Laura about we clearly have some schools that are more challenged so what can we do and maybe that's a budget question Dr Jones when we're

099doing our operating budget about what we need to deploy in the schools that need more help so if you could just talk to the time frame like so I'm just going to grab that one real quick we used to have a wonderful gentleman that worked in the Greenwich public schools named John Curtin and he would always say three years makes a trend so we really need to hold on to and stay steadfast I have the utmost confidence that our curriculum advisory committee selected the right instructional tools I just kind of was like when do we evaluate it was kind of the question okay then I'll stop no no three so three years so basically at the end of next year you could really look at the data better I I think you want to follow

100the cohort data that's incredibly important we can start to evaluate the successfulness of our program after three years but I wouldn't after three years say that if the if the data isn't suggesting incredible gains that we would depart from Big Ideas but we would certainly reassess and evaluate where there could be potential vulnerabilities that we didn't expect Joe it's in the same line of questioning you're seeing a three-year we should see progress in three years on this but you made a reference to more is better kind of like if we have more help more Personnel more people more teachers to teach the kids more there's sort of a money versus need want versus need so I mean these things have to be addressed I'm glad you pointed out the fact that we're looking at a

101three-year process to see this improve so we have to put some some hard evaluations on these things if we're going to equate success we're going to somehow have to attach money to the success to some degree because it's going to cost us more money to have more of that success so we have to make sure it's a tight tight evaluation so to build on your point what I would say to that if I could um Karen's heard me make these analogies when I was the principal at Glenville school um I love woodworking I'm going to print this Carpenter and there's this wonderful image that shows for those who don't know what it is a carriage bolt with a slotted top so it's a flathead embedded in a piece of wood and someone trying to take

102it out with a wrench and it says effort with the wrong tool will equal no success I'm confident we have the right tool and I'm confident that the 900 plus teachers we have are giving their maximum amount of effort but you do have to ask do we have enough teachers making that that that concerted effort that will influence a successful outcome I don't know you can re-evaluate Staffing every single year um but I'm confident in the tools that we have sorry Karen and then Cody well I guess it's sort of on the same line and that you know I as Laura Christina were asking because when I was looking I was you know in addition to our Title One schools which I know we've we do put a lot in there um and you know

103I'm also seeing the COS Cobbs numbers have have changed slightly drastically which I had you know in it in a different way which I know I had asked about and I think the question there is we're also looking and then I looked forward to the middle schools and there's a large disparity in our scores and growth model a growth at the middle school between three different middle schools and the question then becomes is since we are talking and budget is coming um today won't be operational but that's coming soon is you know do we have the right supports in place if we don't have the right supports what are the supports that we need to add in to ensure that every single one of our students meets their growth Target right because it's every student

104has their own it's not about getting a five on an AP for every student every student has their own path to go and we have to get that student to their point so I know this is sort of a question for everybody it may not be answered tonight it may be something we think when we come down to operational budget but that's the question we want to ask Joe's always talks about being number one we've made it to number three that's great I know he wants still he wants to push forward so the question is is how do we take these results because we have to look at the disaggregated data I can't even speak this evening and sort of see because every school has different challenges different needs but we still have to look

105to see what we need to put in place at every single one of these schools and so it may not be an answer for tonight because there are 15 schools uh you know and um but I think that that's the bigger question we sort of have to look at is that we we know that we had the coveted slide that's a whole separate piece and we've been looking to try to reduce our achievement gap for a long time that's a national problem that we won't solve here today or in the next 20 years necessarily but I'd love to that would be great but if we move it closer it's better so is there something that you guys have started to think about and discuss that you feel we're missing is the right support to put

106in place to make sure that all of our students that we're moving them all in the right direction and and our Educators because they need to be able to have the support as well because without them you know they're just buildings with children in them so I think I'll simply answer it this way there's the traditional there's the known ways that we've intervened to try to close the achievement Gap to show improvements to be responsive to all of our learning communities and in some cases we've been slightly successful or somewhat successful have we sustained success not in all schools if you want to see lasting change then we have to as a group think about some drastic changes so right now we live inside this box but change occurs outside the box so I'm going

107to float something out there that I just want you to consider we've never discussed having year-round schooling in some of our schools we might want to start exploring different Avenues and approaches to how we give access to schooling year round for some of our more fragile learning communities you might want to extend the school day explore different magnet themes like a six to six again these are all things that um you know can work in the right conditions with the right support but they're not things that in Greenwich we've talked about in the past so these are radical shifts in thinking does it require money 100 percent does it require buy-in 100 um you can't always make sweeping changes just by changing a program sometimes you have to make systematic changes philosophical changes to the

108way we approach our work so I'm asking you to think very differently about when we talk about how do we address these problems let's not rehash some of the things we've tried in the past that haven't been shown to to show sustainable um Improvement in those schools year in and year out wow I was just gonna say that is so not where I thought you were going to go with that but I do remember superintendent I might not have thought I was going there I remember I do remember your discussion on the lower elementary school and the middle Elementary School dividing those up between that was a discussion we had a decade ago I feel like but so I should not be surprised but thank you you've given us leaves me a lot to think

109that Cody um I think what you just said is really great and uh going towards the systematic changes and I think everyone should speak up about stuff the one I would want to add to your list of innovation Innovative things we should consider is introducing a charter school in the district which is a conversation we can have another time um I was just going to make a comment about this um I find it very difficult to really get a sense of what's actually happening in the schools based on the um the the information in here and I'll use an example of there's a lot of discussion around the lower performing schools and higher performing schools and oh what are we going to do about ham average Julian Curtis or um uh but I think it's

110important to note that the information in here doesn't actually tell us if those schools are underperforming as institutions because we don't know what the Baseline is with those kids being in a uh in a generic school or not in a school um what I'm saying is that you have the school as an institution and then you have the demographics of the school or other factors that are kind of beyond our control and both of those have an impact on uh scores like if you had a school where no one spoke English you would expect the English Sports to be a lot lower so it wouldn't tell you much about the quality of the school of the English scores or lower or just to point out an obvious one and so one one point about that

111is I don't think we should overlook the schools that have high scores in terms of potentially like we just don't know or at least I don't from looking at this where the Improvement is actually needed most from an Institutional standpoint we know that there's more room for the scores to go up at certain schools but it also could be the case that those schools are actually serving their students better than some of the schools that have higher scores and we sort of saw a weird covet gave us a weird way to test this because we were able to see what the declines were when the kids were out of school and I don't have those numbers in front of me incorrect me if I'm wrong but I think some of the schools that have some

112of the lower scores here had the biggest is this right had the biggest drop off in in scores when they were out of school and some of the other ones like I don't want to Hazard okay we should double check that but it's interesting because the broader point I wanted to make here is just I think we have a data and benchmarking issue in that unless you have some control or something to compare it to you really don't you can't get as good of a read I would like I'd be remiss to say oh hammav is not as good of a school as uh Riverside because the students who have been there for five years aren't hitting their Benchmark because there's a lot of other factors um and so I think we really need to

113think about ways that we can either if it's picking you know other schools with at least somewhat similar demographics that we can get data on and track and compare but there's got to be something to give us a sense of um comparison to really get insights from this I I like flipping through the deck and the the presentation you guys did um but I I just I don't really have I don't know what conclusions necessarily lead a draw from a lot of this uh and I think we can do better and in terms of um coming up with creative ways to evaluate you know how we're doing so you mentioned the five-year data and that really is new for us and we're doing exactly I think what you're what you're asking about is really digging

114in and considering that maybe a building has a different demographic and they made great work maybe going on in that building and I would reference you to page 27 because when we pulled all this data we really want to eliminate excuses um for in migration out migration a really high population of students who are learning to speak English of course they're not going to perform as well but if you look at new lab on this on this page at 72 for ELA something is going right in that building for ELA and we want to get in and really figure out what that team is doing because if they can keep their kids and they have them in their school they're making progress and huge progress so we're doing a lot of that and we literally

115with the state now are drilling down to individual students and so we'll we'll work hard at trying to bring better information to the board how we can do that for you but all that work is definitely taking place and I think when Mark referenced like uh year-round school we're having all those kind of conversations what are some things that we could do that are really different that might actually emulate like what we're seeing at new lab on the five year for ELA across all of our schools and I agree with you actually I like the five-year thing is interesting because you're kind of saying you're you're um what would be really cool is if you compare cohorts of kids that are five years versus say two years you should see a difference if we're like

116coming up with the right controls one thing I was gonna throw out there is um and maybe at some point because this is some of this would be kind of interesting fun statistical stuff to do which is not necessarily in the job descriptions I imagine most the folks in this room um uh nothing they're not capable of doing it just it's a lot uh is is to look into hiring a consultant of some sort that could come in and do like a very deep dive analysis because we probably have troves of data and I you know I'm not a fan of spending money but on um uh uh yeah I wasn't I I was a math major so uh but um I think there's something that's something we should consider because it I feel like

117if it's one of those things where if you pick the right control variable you can actually glean a lot of insight and and something like the this what you just pointed out Tony with the new lab success like those are those are the things that we want to find and also you want to educate the community about because you have a self-reinforcing cycle where people say oh well this school is not good because the scores are low or whatever so I'm not going to send my kids there it's actually like a great school but you just don't know because you don't know what the control is I was just going to say so when we get these scores we look at them in overall and every school gets an individual school report from the state

118and then they compare it and they can go in and they and I want to I use the word manipulate it comes out like they're changing things there's not but they can manipulate the data by looking at these two students by grade by need by whether they're students with 504s and IEPs if their students said English is not their first language they can go in and take look a look at different cohorts throughout this they look at these scores in so many different ways and I know just from being a parent at the PTA uh almost every time I've you know every every year the principal would come out um one of them sitting here and they go through that data Report with the parents and discuss the different ways to look at the information

119and to talk about the needs of that particular school so I assume and it was one of the questions I asked that you guys are doing that in comparison to seeing so you may you don't want to sit down I just because I know that was one of the things you're interested in I know I am too and seeing what needs there are at different schools based on different pieces so it's just a point if you haven't if you don't have a student in the school and you haven't been at a PTA meeting per se you may not have been aware yet because we just yeah but that should make it to this report I shouldn't have to go out and Hunt that down yeah no I'm just saying that there's you know so we're

120going to talk a little bit about that when we talk about and I think it's labeled as site Improvement plans there really are School Improvement plans and we'll talk about the through line that that leads right up through our strategic plan for the district Miss costan so just a question because at some point along the line our summer school or however we brand it now um our extended school year model changed it used to be that um children who struggled or their teachers felt they would benefit from additional instruction were offered placement in our in our extended school year and currently it's really um for children who have a special education need and um I just want to know I look I know it takes money to stack those kinds of programs so I'm I'm

121just wondering you know when did they change why did it change can we change it back because I know that you know not every family can afford a tutor and a lot of tutors are completely fully booked across all grade levels you know if you call the ones on the Greenwich Public School list so you know I just I think you know Mark D'Amico brought up a really um a really important point but we should be offering extended school year to all children who [Music] um have an educational need and who would benefit from the added instruction and you know I I just think that it is a really important um tool in our toolbox and I and I don't know that we're using it and particularly during covid you know the the extended school

122year hours were I mean it I got to Glenville and then like I could I had time to go to stop and shop for you know a hot minute before I had to go back and pick up my child so I you know the time spent there um was certainly you know curtailed during the pandemic so I just I I really think um we should start looking at that as an option because not only is there a summer slide but there there are some kids who who need to be caught on that slide that may not have a diagnosable need um as far as an IEP but may really benefit from the extra instruction so our summer school program targets those students who are performing at the lowest level those are the students that we

123invite to our summer school program which was from 9 to 11 or 11 30 this year the tutoring was for those students that the parents wanted the students to come in just to have that reading instruction to improve their reading then there's the esy program which is for students who have been identified as needing to stay in school for an extended school year that's determined at their IEP at their PPT meetings and then is included in their IEPs they are not required to come but many parents do send their children so we changed it so that we could meet the needs of the students and actually it was Dr Jones's idea to do the tutoring and it was extremely popular that parents were able to have their children tutored it was a three to one

124ratio and it was quite successful next year will change the hours for that but we do focus on those lowest performing students five weeks is not a very long time but you know the extended school year meaning year-round school is something that we have talked about for about a year now that um we really want to see if we can put something into place and not next year but perhaps the following year I was thinking about this earlier as people were talking about Staffing and money and it's not always about Staffing and money it's about doing the right thing and when I first came one of the things that I noticed very quickly in summer school we weren't making any we didn't have great gains in summer school we still had slide coming back and

125we were spending it would probably be close to a million dollars more than we spent last summer and so we've worked really hard trying to get the right programming to the right students and some of our parents didn't want to send kids all day long in the summer they wanted their children to be children and you know we could offer you know PE and music and all those things but a lot of what they were doing during the day wasn't actually focused on the literacy and the numeracy aspect so we've made quite a few adjustments and we'd feel like we're getting better results and we're doing at a much more cost effective way which that has helped us fund things like you know whether that's math interventionists or reading interventionists because as you know we

126don't get to come out and just ask for a lot of extra money so we have to get I was just in this conversation today um because we noticed one thing for like esy running a tutoring model which was very very popular parents actually liked waiting on their children to finish tutoring which means they weren't on a bus so we didn't really expect the bus transportation savings but it's there so Dr hollygen taller and I were discussing today about well that's great because she needs more money as ARP goes away on her curriculum and continual training for the action plan so we are really looking very careful at those areas like summer school and esy Michael Joseph cool the um so I'm here I'm hearing a couple of different Trends here the um over the

127course of the conversation I think the first one is as we know we're consultants for this consultant um confirming the brutal facts right and I think we're all finding that um um there was concerns here justifiable concerns in some of the achievement data it sounds like the concerns are in two two large buckets one is looking at certain grade levels the uh pre-covered postcode looking at the same grade levels and looking at and seeing the um the the difference there um there's a slide on there's a bullet on page 42 which I must I'm assuming is a typo because it says that um on page 42 it says that the scores are back at pre-covered levels at elementary and we've just spent 45 minutes saying that's not the case no it says math and reading

128and in the middle school it's Middle School reading they're not there either um there's still the gap um but in any event so that's that's one um second um um I think the other big area of concern which is the perennial concern here in Greenwich is the East West achievement Gap um and we can say that's a factor of socioeconomics but then if you look at this other breakdown we see that it's not quite socio-economic and it's not quite useless no we've got um because I think the five-year analysis students have been here for five years now is actually disposes that there were schools that you know that are doing on the Eastern side of town that are doing very well and there are other schools like cos Cobb that um are very concerning when

129you look at the their their scores it's only if it's Costco only has a 15 free and reduced lunch population so that's um that's a that's a real concern and I know we have new leadership there um all that said I think there's three trends that the other that were in the conversations that as a board we need to be talking about right and we've been talking about we need to where can we go from here it sounds like one of the real issues we have is a tier two problem we know that we have curriculum um that's ongoing and that's going well and that's tier one that's Universal right the tier two what are we doing for specific students and we talked a lot about that the um and Mike talked about that was

130the use in it's particularly for math in IXL and identifying specific needs and we talk about math intervention interventionists and we talk about small group instruction and things like that they um it concerns me the that um the conversation is about how can we do more to it now is how can we do more tutoring where might we need more math interventionists um where might we need some other time times in the day when we had that conversation last spring when we're looking at how to spend the art money and we chose not to do that instead we went forward with the high school um a student center they um and I said at the time which was when we come in October I hope we're not going to say that we need more money

131for tutoring and interventions and things like that so that ship has sailed um but we have to then the our money is spent the um but moving forward they um we really need to think about this whole idea of tier two because if we need math intervention is we need to talk about it if there was not enough time in the day for tutoring to Mark's redesign comment um I think that that I think we need to see a program about how we can do that after school and before school and things like that I work in a system where kids are in school till 5 30 every day um 11 and a half months a year the um and they need every moment of that they um I don't think we should be afraid

132of that the but I think it does mean that we have to consider our priorities and we can't do everything and some of these things are more important this is our fundamental you said a lot of things in there so I'm just going to um and New York is a very different funding model New York City especially so we could get all that money that New York does that'd be great but we got a lot of our money right right not to the same yeah New York City certainly got a lot more Michael Joseph I followed that as well um so the I was going to actually do you have more or because I was going to turn to something else um language arts um since we spent a lot of time on math and

133I don't want to give any and then I want to go to science and then and then of course the high school because that seems like that's the right order okay so language arts um do you want to talk about that because I actually feel like his interpretation was kind of different than mine so I'm going to hands it over on um what your view is I guess of the score is on the SBI language arts well Kim go ahead okay so um as the the slide that you can see where we're talking about um near our historic levels we have you can see that after our 2020 year where we didn't take the espa for covid um we have trends that are trending upwards which is great um and in two of our Co

134and two of our grade levels in third grade and fourth grade we're back um at where we were at our our highest high on this graph before covet um so it's nice to kind of see those Trends trending upwards um hopefully we will continue to do that as per our new um reading units that we have um in six through eight and you know as we'll as we'll talk about reading at the um and our curriculum management plan we hope to continue that Trend up thank you no I would simply say going back to our curriculum management plan uh we recognized last year when we started our unofficial audit of our elementary Reading curriculum that there were deficiencies there and vulnerabilities and so I think partially what you're seeing is a stagnation in performance due

135to the fact that there's key areas that we're not teaching to and so I'm incredibly uh thrilled to be turning our attention to the elementary English language arts curriculum review cycle this this year and then I'd like to point out that on page 24 it seems that language arts kind of has an opposite trend of math in the sense that as as they stay with us longer the numbers are actually going up so that's an interesting Trend as well um okay people had more questions on oh did you no classes came back on no um okay go ahead and just so kind of where do we feel you know this is back to you know what do we think we can do like even if we're happy with them what are we doing to make

136them even better like I know we've got math interventionists for the math what are we doing in reading and language arts you know what are the tools we're looking at what are some ideas um for helping progress things along and and should we be thinking about maybe adding to the mix so let's start with what we have in place this is our fourth year of rolling out foundations this is the first year in third grade but this is the fourth year our kindergarten teachers are teaching the program we systematically rolled out first in kindergarten then in first then in second in this past year in third grade it's an incredibly core um component of early literacy we have companion to that we're training our teachers in geodes which are decodable techs that align nicely with

137the scope and sequence of Foundations in fourth grade and fifth grade last year we onboarded vocabulary workshop uh we were supposed to onboard grammar Workshop in fourth and fifth grade this year but I put a halt on that when we started to hear about possible mandates coming from the state certainly didn't want to spend a whole heck of a lot of money on a resource that we might not be able to use uh um and I think that's a larger conversation uh to provide the board with an update on where we currently stand with the state mandate so fundations is something that we're incredibly proud of um we absolutely need to continue to use fundations in our primary grades we're seeing positive results that will transfer into espa Data as the students cycle into the

138testing years where our vulnerability is I've said this before I'll say it again and again I knew this last year and we indicated in the curriculum management plan it's our units of study the vulnerabilities in the units to study in 60 seconds or less are in that they take into they take for granted the amount of background information our students come to school with and the amount of vocabulary they may have been Rich vocabulary they may have been exposed to and that leads to Trends and deficiencies very early on and very hard to track and catch up with yeah actually I'm gonna have Kim GUI a very specific example of that so um when we have kids that don't come we have a vast array of kids in Greenwich we have kids that have vast

139experiences are exposed to oral language go on trips go to the museum with their families speak multiple languages in their homes um and then we have other students that that don't necessarily have that that level of experience they've never been to a zoo they've never been to the movie theaters they've never been bowling we were just having a conversation the other day of a great lesson that he walked in on um in an ell classroom where the ell teacher was in second grade was explaining to a group of students what bowling was this is a bowling pin this is a bowling alley and so those kind of things that we take for granted when we are instructing students um in in the area of literacy really plays a big part when you're trying to read

140a book about or an assessment book about the zoo and the children have never been to a zoo before they don't know what a giraffe is they don't know what an elephant is they don't know what a polar bear is it's really hard to help continue that kind of instruction when they are lacking experiences they're lacking vocabulary so one of the biggest things that we see is that that's a huge discrepancy at a young age and that correlates to early literacy knowledge base and you need that knowledge base to understand and to access our our lessons so our units of study don't explicitly build background knowledge and that is one of the vulnerabilities that Marcus talking about and the units assume and Kim you can talk a little bit more about this and you could

141talk better about it than I can about the assumption that grammar is embedded within the units and quite frankly it's it's just not there and we need to be we need to teach our children explicit grammar skills and that's one of the vulnerabilities in our current units as well yeah I think the philosophy of of the units that were when we talked about the science of reading last time and how we know that explicit instruction is very important for students um in all areas but some of our students come with a lot of World Language and they have the grammatical and the syntactical just in everyday language and they don't need as much explicit instruction as some as another student might and those students are able to in spite of access that um but our

142units right now do not explicitly teach vocabulary they do not explicitly teach grammar or syntax or any of those important elements um they're weaved into discovering them through more reading um and for some kids that come with those background knowledge and and come with that it it's more natural other students need more explicit instruction in that area I was on a call the other day with 20 assists and superintendents of curriculum from across the state I'm not going to name which districts but they were all high performing districts and it seems very uh common to have the following recipe and literacy instruction they have foundations they have hegarty and they have units of study and they all agree that the units of study have those vulnerabilities the difference is in the higher performing districts as

143Kim is alluding to kids are coming to school with a higher fund of knowledge of background knowledge and experiential knowledge that they can immediately make up for those vulnerabilities and they don't necessarily need the explicit teaching in we can't afford that you know when we talk about and you have the slides in front of you are a high needs population we have to be very strategic in how we're approaching our instructional methodologies to meet those needs so when you have one of those just the tools what are the tools you need to address those I guess that's the question for us so on the curriculum management plan that's our that's our analysis and evaluation period this year is to come together as a curriculum advisory committee look at programmatic shifts that we would recommend to

144the board the wrinkle is this so there's been an update um there's been a great deal of pushback from all of the districts in the state of Connecticut on the right to read act and this notion that we have to choose one of the programs that the state has mandated um superintendents have come out saying they're not going to do it their District's not going to do it um groups of superintendental areas and Dr Jones can talk more about this than I can um but there's a there is a great deal of dissatisfaction in the state telling us what they think is best for our learners the state released a list on Thursday evening and already the state is making changes Dr Jones did you want to just talk about some of the changes the

145state has already relented yeah really within 24 hours they're already sitting down at the table with the cave and caps because pretty much the entire state was like this is not going to work um if you look at a district like us the message that was kind of coming forward by the programs that they picked like we'd be tossing foundations out going and investing another million dollars to roll out curriculum when replacing things that we don't feel like we need to replace um and so there were only 12 districts in the state of Connecticut that were using one of those programs was it 12 or 15. 12 out of 122. so so they've really pretty much said now they're going to come back they're going to allow waivers we'll probably have a lot of paperwork

146to do because it was uh legislated so they'll work on the legislature and to get you know to see if they can make some changes there but in the meantime we'll have to put in waivers and did just do a lot of paperwork can I just add while I have the mic if you don't mind too I really want to also emphasize I we're a pre-k through 12 plus school district and one of the issues that I think we've really it's been an oversight for us for a long time is really an emphasis to give Preschool teachers the resources that they need and so we sat down at the beginning of this year started talking a lot about preschool and Kim I know you could probably speak to that the other thing I'll just mention

147is 12 plus or 18 to 22. we've never really had resources and materials for that program they go out in the community they do a lot of job ready and do fantastic um but they should be having that training and the curriculum component in when they're in our building which is the mill Bank building that little tiny house that sits in front of JC and we've really never invested in that program and so they're doing some phenomenal work there this year and trying to really make sure I'm all the way through the pre-k through 12 plus we're very focused I don't know if you want to mention some of the stuff you're looking at with Pre-K absolutely and I'm sorry care is not here because um Cara and Tony and Stacy and all of us

148we had a conversation at the beginning of the year when when we talked about this opportunity to really have Pre-K build up and help support we have robust preschool classes that people value in our community and there's a wait list and they can't wait to get in one of the things that we noticed was we don't have any systematic curriculum and one of the easy lifts that we we thought of right away was that we have we've done this rollout for K through three in foundations but they have a Pre-K component so Tony was Dr Jones was so um you know accepting and excited about that Prospect and I think that's that's in the works correct yeah so we'll have a nice through line um that'll give a nice fun foundation for fundations in kindergarten

149so the kids that are with us that will be exciting and and Cara and I will work together today at this year too um kind of talk about literacy from pre-k up so Miss Carson gets the trophy Miss costume sorry to keep asking questions from afar um one of since we brought up preschool um I think one of the problems that we see at some of our Title One schools is there is no Universal Pre-K um across the board for Title One students and what becomes an access to pre-k Gap then later becomes an achievement Gap because they don't have that early Foundation at school and and all of a sudden you know they show up in a Kindergarten class where other kids are writing their names and have that um that experience in an

150academic setting which they've never encountered before and I I know it's not free um but I I think it's something that we should really be thinking hard about if we're going to address um the achievement Gap early because access to pre-k and that that Early Learning Foundation is really critical I'm sorry oh actually I know that's something this board has talked about year in and year out and I've eaten well before I was even on the board I remember the state was at some point going to mandate uh Pre-K uh and then it sort of frittered away I don't know whatever happened to it but it it didn't it didn't come into play but I completely agree with you Ms constant um and one of the points I was actually going to ask about because

151I didn't see it on the curriculum management plan was preschool and I hadn't thought about it much until I got a phone call from someone who's looking to move into the district who is asking me very specific questions about preschool on the preschool curriculum and you know if they were moving their student here and I had to say I can tell you about our preschool program but I can't speak to the preschool curriculum because I don't I never had a child in the preschool program and to be fair I hadn't seen a curriculum and so I it got me thinking when I was looking at this uh it was a question I was going to ask if that was something that we were going to be looking at as well at some point just because

152you know where we are we we've added a preschool there's more need than ever and you know that that program is growing rapidly [Music] Dr Jones reminds me often that she was a kindergarten teacher and she sees everything through the lens of a kindergarten teacher um so I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about how how important we feel it is to to make it a more standardized approach to our preschool learning plan because I will tell you as a principal of for 15 years it always amazed me when we had kindergarten orientation and the little guys came in and we did informal screenings on them the vast disparity in what they knew and it was very dependent on the location um and that puts kindergarten teachers in a difficult position

153on the first day of school and you then throw in the age discrepancy uh in Connecticut which can be four and a half all the way to six and so right from right from the start you're putting us in in a very precarious situation and asking us to close gaps that have emerged before we even had had an opportunity to teach them I'm just to that kind of following up on that I know we were talking about with the math interventionists screening all of our kindergartners do we do the same thing with our literacy Specialists or we don't have enough staff for that you know it just would seem like a good idea so we have a couple on kind of piggybacking on on their great idea we have three schools this year that kind

154of tried something a little bit different and they took some phonemic awareness um tasks out of hegarty letters and sounds um and some really pre-reading skills that we would expect them to come in to kindergarten knowing again to kind of get a an idea of where they're at so we have three schools that did that this year the data is just coming in I'm excited to kind of work with those principles to kind of see what they found if they found it valuable we do have a universal screener that is just a unit we have star that that will assess risk but the exciting thing that I'm looking forward to is um another thing from the state that came is that is that star as we talked about at the Last Retreat um is no

155longer approved so we have an opportunity to pick a real a universal screener to Mike's Point that will let us really dig deep into discrete skills and when I look at the options here there are some options that I think once we get a committee together to look at and look through will really allow us to pinpoint areas that will do a nice through line into intervention and we can catch that early and get us into some tier one intervention with our classroom teachers so they know they can use the data to inform their small group or their whole instruction depending and then our our literacy specialist can also use that data to to pick an intervention that will match the student right now our literacy Specialists are are amazing and they're doing um we

156we use um we use the core as a as a universal kind of screen when a kid comes to us there's different components of phonics phonemic awareness comprehension vocabulary there's all different subtests that we can kind of dig in pick a targeted goal based on you know what they need and then provide intervention um with um you know evidence-based materials I also think we can do a little bit a better job with our Outreach to our existing uh preschool partners and letting them know what our expectations are obviously they all have different philosophical approaches to preschool and I respect them all but I think if they knew kind of what we think on a fundamental level we'd like to see our youngest Learners coming equipped with it would certainly um be advantageous for us well

157I was going to take the delete from preschool All the Way Forward um with a with a tiny little stop in between I know uh Ms Regan and I have had this discussion many a time too is the testing that we give our students I mean and you brought up something which just jogged my thoughts which is we give these students standardized tests it happens in SATs it happens in our sbas and you have a student who's never had an experience or asked a question that they then have to interpret with the basis of having no basis of knowledge right if students asked you go to the bowling alley with your friends and you only have enough money for two pairs of shoes in one alley with six pins and the kids don't know what

158that means then they're already behind and trying to answer that question so have we ever had the opportunity to see what you know to look into that to see if you know we've talked about giving students tests in their native language especially at younger ages or other questions in the past but have we ever looked into seeing what questions are being asked to so that these students we know that they're they have the core knowledge to answer the question they may know the information but they may not be able to uh you know understand the question based on what's you know what is being asked of them so so I think Jeffrey has been been waiting patiently to jump in here and and and it kind of connects what you were talking about earlier Joe

159with diversity Equity inclusion being culturally responsive having a culturally responsive curriculum so Jeffrey I'll let you yes um so our ESL teachers and and that is what Kim and I were talking about that is a large portion of what they do in pre-reading and looking at academic vocabulary and giving students the access to things that they may not have experienced or are just not culturally um it are not cultural experiences that they have had so that is a big portion of what happens in an ell classroom um is pre-reading and exposing students and teaching students so when they see those questions or they read that book they have that experience but I think that's something universally that programs are looking at is this question something that is accessible to all students because if you look

160at something even like the SAT students take that around the world so when they look at those questions is it something that a student in Spain or France would be able to access and are they able to show what they know or are they being asked a cultural question with a side of academics you said it so much better [Laughter] um I I was just going to jump forward because we were talking about the supports of the younger ages and so I wanted to talk a little bit about something with the supports for the older uh grades and I know in the presentation I had asked this before you said you were going to look into it you noted that the 9th and 10th graders are going to be taking the PSAT shortly it's also

161offered to 11th graders but I don't it's not required for the 11th graders to take the PSAT um and you said the teachers were going to be looking through the results from the 9th and 10th grade to see what supports they might uh need to be able to put into place to get them where they need to be and you were talking about before and after school help and something called The s.a.t Academy which I have to say is I love the idea people say things are test optional when they're going off to college but they're not so much they're moving backwards but um It's a Wonderful support for students but I'm wondering why that sat Academy is not necessarily being offered to 11th graders and if that president if those benchmarked Benchmark tests in

162language arts that were given to the 9th and 10th graders where they also given to the 11th graders as well because that's a grade that's sort of Fallen a little bit through the cracks and you know everything's being put in place before and after them and they're they're at the Crux right now so I just want to want to make sure that we're you know so I'm not sure if Miss Barry is on tonight I sent that question to her to see if she could clarify it for us I know that for the 9th and 10th graders what they do then you may take over Miss Barry thank you so much yes I'm here yes um good evening the 9th and 10th graders do take a benchmark um that is from released sections of previous

163PSATs then teachers look we run those through teachers look at the results and then they discuss their students and plcs and follow-up and plcs that's even before the whole ninth grade takes the practice PSAT and then the 10th grade takes a so we have those results also in Lincoln from the full ninth grade full 10th grade so by the time the kids are in 11th grade they have in Link at 9th and 10th grade scores we have the previous benchmarks and teachers continue to practice using you know sat um prefixes and their questions and align type of questions and the SAT Academy is is also is for 11th graders and we offer after school s.a.t um workshops as well that's through the continuing ed so there are opportunities in 11th grade as well that's really

164good to know and hopefully maybe maybe that's something we can also share out with the high school parents because I know it used to be there used to be an SAT course offered uh like over the summer that I didn't see in this year's summer school program um but you know I students are definitely moving back towards taking a lot of these standardized tests for college entrance and since one of our strategic goals is you know 100 graduation rate we also want to make sure that they're graduating and that they have The Next Step whether it's school or something else and that's a good way for those who want to continue their education to to take that step and we like in a benchmark we last year's ninth graders pre and post really showed some

165nice growth and Aggregate and we're hoping that that will result in higher scores as they move along we'll see them again in this year 10th grade as we track that progress but um you know covid we had some dip post covet and it's it's in endurance and we're trying to build that back up in a number of ways and if you look at one of the slides the where they struggled was um in sort of the evidence-based stuff recognizing powerful evidence and that's what we're trying to Target and hit this year foreign like I said I talk about a specific grade because during covid you know the high school was their hybrid and they didn't they had a whole year and a half or Plus without midterms and finals and so some of these students

166are coming in at the later grades in high school having to take their a midterm or a final for the first time and that can really positively or negatively impact uh their GPA overall and and they have very little time in the later grades to to make that that up so that's why I I focus on that area so okay um I want to jump for the high school but real fast do you want to make like a two seconds on a GSS because it's hard not to skip I mean it's a real robust um we are doing well in ngss I think you can see from the scores that we're feeling confident about the growth we continue to make we attribute that to our digital Partners into the and Explore Learning their tests like

167simulation software that we have um implemented for the last three to five years depending on the program and we like our results there the only note I would make about the very minor regression in our 11th grade data is that that cohort of 11th graders is the same cohort that you'll see in eighth grade in the 2019 data so what you're actually seeing is a 12 point jump from the last time they were tested in eighth grade and if we remember that 11th grade cohort they their three years of high school have been under some sort of coveted limitation which you can imagine affects the science classroom quite a bit when it comes to Hands-On material based lab activities that is a very good point now I'm very happy I asked you still very impressive

168okay go ahead so on science the um because I know our our magnet school there is is our science Elementary Magnet School or stem magazines obviously underperforming the uh um um on page 32 the um the Gap significant so um um I'm I'm assuming this has been the topic of a lot of conversations it's full steam ahead so to speak and and it's I feel that from Mark you mentioned it earlier but um it is full steam ahead and it is Hands-On it is co-planning with those teachers and saying what's happening in our classrooms what are we able to implement with Fidelity in the curriculum as written and where are we having content gaps in our teachers understanding or instructional gaps and how the units foundational units are to be implemented similar to as Kim

169kind of just explained students with differing background experiences tend to perform poorly on our Science assessment the Science assessment uses what's referred to as novel phenomena to assess content and skill so we have no idea what's going to be tested on this assessment at any time they can take assessment strands from K through five in four different disciplines of Science and we never know what that's going to be so what we do is we give broad understandings of all the content necessary in our K-5 foundational lessons and we drill down to the skills the skills in that test are often about decoding and reading comprehension of data so that's what we have our our partners in digital platforms to work with and I have work to do at our Title One schools I know that

170we're ready for it and we're attacking on a day-to-day basis thank you all right I'm going to move to the high school that's okay with everyone so um I don't know I was going to jump into AP scores yeah okay fine um I mean first of all I'll just take a step back it's amazing that the number of tests that we're given the number of children that are taking AP exams and the success I was trying to see if there was a correlation of any sort between the increase in certain subject areas and the scores in it not really it sort of depends on the subject area even more or less um but of course what jumps out is has why is social studies just generally there's just more tests right so because I I

171thought Lucy is on board too she can answer those questions so yes how about it is she there out there she is mute good evening yeah that's in social studies we have um many AP courses offered hence why we have so many students taking AP tests in that area AP Psychology also happens to be a very popular course um where we have close to 300 students taking that course um which also leads to a very high number of AP test takers okay I didn't realize that thank you yes does anyone have specific questions on AP [Music] it's not a specific question observation I was really impressed that you know that last year's results we had a lot of higher averages I think that's you know the volume of test is great but what the how

172the kids are doing on the test is you know arguably more important and I know like it's definitely content you know it doesn't look like it but it if you look at the other chart there was a link in there about what the averages were um in 21 verses 22 and I know the tests have been a little in 20 they were a little weird so it's it's a weird year but I think there were a lot of a lot of classes had really impressive increases in what the average score was so kudos to to the high school yeah I mean just if you look at calculus a b and Calculus BC the number of children taking that and the average score is incredible and then um the computer science too to come back like

173it has in 2022 is just I Now understand why we're offering a class now beyond computer science safety I mean you know a lot of people are talking about math and technology and right here look at English literature which is one of the harder classes um AP classes which went up almost a full point from 3.45 to 4.37 so that's a big you know there's 125 kids 124 kids taking it back into account that we start later than the aps are based on like Southern school schedule so we already are at a deficit in time going in because our schools start later and then this year in particular we lost about you know what is it five to ten days of instruction so I was the question I was gonna say I mean there's certain

174things like that teachers will talk about this constantly that they can't get through all the material they try their best but it's even harder with things like you know United States you know history and government because that is it's linear you can't really jump over days and so we had so many snow days that was the only question I was going to point out is or ask is you know at some point how we figure out how to support those students because every single day that we have is a snow day it impacts those particular courses so much more not so much more but the impacts them in a different way because they're tested in a much earlier date they're tested in early May uh and then you know then we have no more way

175to build in there yeah I noticed that one of the um at the open house I learned just how quickly they were moving through the material and um and one of the the math teacher actually made the comment that our I guess the way our schedule is set up that she only has as if how many minutes 50 helps a block 50 254. and and that you know other school system sheets are getting like a full-on over an hour in math and how she's trying to move through a BC calculus course at that speed um but then look I mean the results are pretty good so I'm just I'm very impressed and um but I feel like we need to ask Laura normal question um no no you can't get away without so I mean

176it's harder for you because you don't have the same numbers of students taking a test but what what are you like most proud of here there's I mean those Art and Design class seems pretty interesting I think what I'm most proud of is in on the art side is that we offer an option for students who aren't really into the Hands-On art and we offer that our history so even though they're a small amount of kids even just I went into class last week all of a sudden there's a bunch of kids who are taking our history and that was one of our newer courses and it doesn't appeal to the typical Studio student who submits portfolio and along those lines so I think what I'm most proud of is that we have such a

177nice diverse offering that like if you're not the traditional like even instrumentalist you can take the music theory and the composition part so the fact that we appeal to different types of students and we do see you know students taking advantage of that I'm that's what I'm really most proud of and then I notice that French had an uptick right in terms of I think I heard it on the video in terms of people taking the AP is that right I think it was French okay um as somebody new to the district one of the things I'm so impressed with is the scores overall on the APS and when I look at the amount of students that we have taking them that's something that I'm really excited about for the future to have more of

178our students taking AP exams because they are doing so well and I think that speaks volumes to the teaching that's going on at the high school and starting when our first program all the way up and just to reiterate like that the number of kids taking it it really is amazing college prep because you know there are many students who say you know their time at Greenwich high school was harder than their freshman year of college you know so because of all these AP classes so I I think we are preparing our students who are highly motivated Cody's more recently out of high school maybe he can speak to that a little bit I will I'll give the plug for babies I graduated college in three years because of all the AP credits but I

179will say I had Mr Epstein for AP US History and he viewed anything lower than a four as an abject failure and measured against that and so I looking at our scores we have a lot of room to uh improve although some of them are quite impressive but I was going to say one of the things we do focus on so much are our AP the number of students and the scores from the aps but there are a lot of courses that don't have an AP component we have a lot of honors programs and a lot of honors courses that are they get the same credit for a lot of students opt to take honors over an AP if it's offered for multiple reasons they may not be ready and I know I had asked

180if we could sort of at some point going down the road and future start to look at some of those honors courses as well when we're looking at our you know not just APS obviously it's you know easier to look at but there's a huge component of our students they're taking these very high level honors courses and uh other honors options that that we're not really seeing here and reflected here and they're just as important as the aps because some of the students just you know they can't do the aps for multiple different reasons so I just I wanted to point that out so I because I think it's a it's an important designation to have we've already started on Gathering that data for you I was going to say I was going to say

181something similar you should always be concerned when you you're thinking like me um but um um because I'm wondering about the metrics um if there are other metrics in regard to the AP if we're keeping we're counting the right ways this is fleshing out as much as we should so I'm curious for example um the numbers the raw numbers are great it'd be interesting to see what percent and track over time what percentage of our students are graduating with ap credit the um how that number changes um and how many AP credits different students graduate like how many students are believing with four how many like how many tests they've passed right you've said you know yes they graduate that's that would be good data I think that might be yeah as far as that

182these numbers are great but I don't know if they tell the whole story much like tracking the honors um yes they do it's very expensive the tests are very expensive Yeah well yeah they're like 90 a test no we do for students with needs but overall we couldn't afford to spend to pay for everything over 100 bucks each yeah exactly um since we're moving on but I don't want to move on without knowing why what Mr Healy has to share with me and what Bonnie has to share with me can can I offer that Mr Healy would be able to provide wonderful context to our school Improvement plan conversation that's coming up okay so you're the only one I haven't really heard from so on this panel she's saving up for the October 20th meeting

183where we're all gonna just let her do the whole thing well but it's funny I mean Alp leads to a lot of this AP I would hope and we've always asked for that so I would say not just out I would say going back to our curriculum management plan for us to get these types of scores it has to start in kindergarten in pre-k and what we do to for the achievement for all of our students from a very young age all the way through we need to be celebrating that with our kindergarten teachers these AP scores are not possible without that strong Foundation we build in the elementary school and making sure that we are pushing those kids as far as we can that's a very good way to end okay so yes thank

184you um so can we go to the school sorry oh no is that still we did that at the last meeting okay so let's go to the update on school and prevent plans sorry yep go ahead yeah go ahead Cody just one thing that just done on me is a potential way to evaluate um what the opportunity is is we do everything on an aggregate basis with schools I would be very curious to see how the test scores break down it could be anonymized but by teacher especially when they're in elementary schools and you have different um teachers per grade because it's kind of gives you a controlled variable just you have random classes assigned with different teachers and what you could extract from that is where kind of the ceiling is right if you

185have it could be the case that it's all pretty close but I'd imagine that there's some classes maybe where you have out performance and that could be a very good guidance on what is achievable and you know where how much of a spread there is between where we're at and where we could go just as in this improving the quality of data so we can actually discern things from it idea foreign and I just wanted to just add an extra thank you because I this is one of the the best conversations I feel like we've had here in a long time and talking about a lot of these things and to see all the discussions that we've had over the past few years come together to this type of data Retreat that we're talking about

186here and achievement and curriculum and coming up with school Improvement plans because that's always my favorite topic um I'm just I'm just overwhelmed and I just wanted to say thank you to to all of you to to our members who've been here for a long time and our newest um I'm just very excited for the future it's a good transition school oh the high school no one forget the high school and the high school oh yes no absolutely um okay so School Improvement plans who is this so first order businesses we need to stop calling it site Improvement plans because School Improvement plans um think of a school Improvement plan and you have the template in front of you that we ask all of our building administrators to fill out think of them as the

187tributaries that lead to the larger river which is our strategic plan so flowery tonight I just want to make sure I keep Joe's interests um every every school and I think let's start with um when you'll be able to see these so on October 17 on October 17th they're due uh the high school plan is due to Dr carabello the elementary and middle school plans are due to me most of them are already finished with their plans but that date also coincides with when the building administrator's goals are due why is that it's because there should be a direct through line between the teacher goals that are set the building administrator's goals in the school Improvement plan goals and they all lead into our strategic plan so I think this is a wonderful opportunity for

188uh Mr Healy to have a little microphone time and talk a little bit about how he approaches the process at Central Middle School if he wouldn't mind what if I would um so I was not aware that this was going to be happening this evening but I'm ready to fire away because this is actually one of the things that I enjoy doing in my job um so um as as Mr D'Amico said um you know each year we go through the process of developing our school Improvement plans at the at the school level um and while each of us has our own plan it's a very collaborative process so it starts it does start from the top so even all the discussions recently around this District strategic plan that's been coming through that the team

189has done such a great job putting together we've had lots of conversations about that document the goals on that document over the years and then really drilling down into what that means for each individual School using the same data points and the same targets and then the similar strategies so um I've had many meetings with many of the folks at that table already and will continue to all the way up until the the 17th as well as with Mr D'Amico and then my colleagues um Mr Weinstein and Mr Goldstein at the other middle schools because we do actually work very closely in in terms of aligning our strategic Improvement plans or School Improvement plans so in essence what you what you really see in in that through line Mark is talking about is when we

190look at what the district priorities are and the district goals are so for example what are we looking at in that that recent document for for this coming year um we then dive in with the help of Miss Lyle back there to get our data sets in front of us um and develop our school-based goals align to those areas so when we're looking oftentimes traditionally at our SBA especially six to eight all three grades where the kids are taking the SBA SBA uh reading SBA math ngss for eighth grade those are our core target areas now we're really looking at uh even that extra wonderful data set of growth targets and also the growth targets for both our high need students and our non-high need students and how are we doing with those so we

191at the school level tackle those um conversations and discussions and then try to set our appropriate targets aggressively stretching right we got the message on the stretch goals and we're really focusing on those two right so the idea of following in line with those conversations to make sure our goals are stretch goals then from that once we're looking at our school-based goals we're having our individual conferences with every teacher to set their individual goals in their area now obviously our language arts and Math teachers and science teachers it's much more straightforward but because those students are taking the SBA in those content areas it becomes a little bit more nuanced when you're talking about social studies when you're talking about World Language but all of those areas obviously have standards have assessments that we use

192so the model themselves are the same so then we sit down and we we have those goals that teachers are studying with the kids that are in front of them that year and based on where we are right now we're not only using the data for where we got uh in terms of their performance from last year on SBA or any of the benchmark assessments that we took but we also have already taken the fall benchmarks in reading and math already so we have that data and then we also have a um a fair amount of in classroom data sets whether we're looking at Big Ideas tests and quizzes for example in math we have many data points we can do and then we sit down for those meetings and then we look at a

193fairly consistent structure across the teachers and across the content areas for the format and what's been wonderful even with this team is you know they're still fairly new I look at them it's fairly new but um they've jumped right in and rolled up their sleeves so what's been wonderful is the building principals have had a chance to meet with the the uh coordinator team and really provide some of those templates and their expertise in the content area and with the assessments and say what are reasonable targets and what are we looking at so then those goals happen for the teachers on their level and you see that direct link from the district strategic plan down to our school-based Improvement plan to the individual teacher goals and then what we're really also working to align are

194the strategies that we are using to meet those goals what we have decided we believe with our pedagogical knowledge this is what's going to get us there and so we really work to look at the strategies that have been implemented so simply speaking again when you're looking at Big Ideas or you're looking at the ELA reading or the social studies implementing those lessons is supposed to result in in what we're looking for in terms of student gains and so we're making sure that those are relevant in our plans which also include professional learning right how our teachers are spending their time outside of classroom improving their practice and building their capacity and then what's going on exactly in the classroom so then when we go through and walk through whether it's a group with the

195coordinators who come to the buildings or we do it in our own building base we're actually seeing these plans in action we are taking in that information and giving feedback to the teachers on their progress toward their goals periodically and then of course we have the mid-year check-in to see where they are with their goals and then obviously the end of year reflection so it really is a very clean line from what the expectation is at the district level down to what we're doing at the schools down to every individual teacher just something that I would add from the elementary perspective is the 11 Elementary principles have come together worked with the coordinators of Miss Lau to unpack the data at the elementary level as well and one of the messages that we wanted to

196make sure our teachers heard loudly and clearly was we aren't coming off our big Ideas implementation initiative historically speaking in Greenwich we would shift initiatives after one year of implementation and we would never give teachers really an opportunity to master from to a level of breadth and depth that we feel is appropriate for them to utilize new tools and resources so we're signifying we're signaling we're staying the course for our second year because we know that next year we have to move on to reading so you'll see a through line by and large in our elementary school Improvement plans that we're staying the course our academic focus is on mathematics making sure that the teachers feel quite comfortable and confident in delivering the Big Ideas platform at a level that we feel is commensurate with

197um with the training that we've provided thus far huh yes sir just as I know sip plans I was on that fun committee too um so this is just something for us to discuss for gender planning we haven't had [Music] um uh an update on you know the Sip goals I know in the past we usually get the Sip each School sip plan and then get an update at some point during the school year I think the last time we got that I had asked Tony I think it's 2019. I'd reached out and so I was like that's the last time I remember seeing the Sip goals and the update where schools were towards that for obvious reasons so um if we're going to be getting those in the traditional October time frame the the

198plans um I was going to say just for agenda planning down the future and to give a thought is to what timing might be good for us to get an update as to where people are or if we want to just tie that into you know as a strategic Plan update on goals but it's just a discussion for a later point because I should say most people sitting here haven't had the opportunity to have a sip update yeah I think it's there should probably be a a further discussion on how how you would like us to report out district-wide the overall success of our individual School Improvement plans but I just want to remind everyone that they will be posted once they're approved so by the end of October we'll probably set like a November

1991st Target date and all principals will signaling their weekly message to parents that the school Improvement plan has been posted but every Elementary principle has a responsibility to bring in their parent body and walk them school walk them through the results of last year's School Improvement plan and how it leads into this year's School Improvement and they are all posted on every single school's main page if anybody has interest in going back and looking through because I have read all of them have you Jeff um okay I think that's that's great yep Michael Jackson so let me just say because I heard a number of things there that I think are worth highlighting um because I think they're all terrific uh run one based on you know it's it's grounding all of this in real

200data and just in the performance of students achievement in real time will spend not only the data we just look through but the benchmarks from only you know this this fall um it sounds like where it is a laser-like focus here on instruction really um and very much um we're talking about a level of organizational coherence that um I think is um is new to us in certain ways the um that's really really terrific because I'm weird the um I've gone back and read many zip plans over the years they um and many of them seem like they were written in past years not this year the um many seem like they've been written in a vacuum and what you're describing here is a process it's not that's very much tied to um both down

201to the teacher level and up all the way to the Strategic plan and goals not only this year but out towards the future and also very much tied to other aspects the curriculum work the teacher evaluation works that Ann talked about last time all different aspects of um of the organization and I think that kind of coherence um is something we've been clearly been inspiring to for a while and it's and it's a good point to highlight that but also creates a level of interdependency for building administrators to learn from each other so for example we talked earlier about the success at New Lebanon School the administration from New Lebanon school has the opportunity when coming together with the rest of the administrative team to talk about the strategies that they employed that led to

202those successes other administrators learn from their colleagues when you have those opportunities for those conversations anything else no okay then I think we got to tackle capital thank you very much thank you I think um everyone can go home right thank you thank you thank you so much congratulations any essential questions [Music] the people who are born yeah good how are you good to see you yeah I know I know it is we're working on it we're working [Music] well you saw the one that we had for the 20th we're bringing one of those for everyone to work on I was going to say Dr Jones has a uniform um I was gonna say yeah Tony hasn't eat uniforms [Music] no hot mic moments okay so we're moving to capital budget planning um and for

203the whatever five people that are listening or whoever I don't know I'm just joking um the your package just to be clear this town this is again earlier been historically right meeting the town revised Town process which again was apparently a decade old process but okay we're becoming familiar with it um and so it is a little fast and therefore we're only going to be having public comment on it when we meet and vote on this plan so I'm going to maybe if you could put in your Friday note um to please encourage parents to maybe look at this document and then provide their thoughts because um we'll certainly take a lot of public comment if they come on the 20th but um yeah but emails and everything right yeah I just I want to

204make sure we get a lot of a lot of feedback since there's a lot going on here so um with that can I ask Miss Downey because I didn't get to go to the budget committee with a little bit of an update happy too um so I've spoken to some of you so the budget committee met oh low two two days ago and we focused our discussion on some of the major projects kind of the big ones um including but not limited to Central Middle School the Western Middle School Fields Julian Curtis Old Greenwich um and there was a discussion of Riverside as our next building in the food chain um I'm gonna not give you the deal but basically all four of us participated plays was there Tony was there I think it was

205a really productive discussion um we get a couple different ideas on the direction we we were thinking the board would want to go given the four of us were there so some of the documents were revised from the original posting to reflect those thoughts they are not nothing is final until we vote on it on October 20th but this was kind of the mood of the room the consensus uh of the direction we suggested that Blaze and Tony kind of revised the documents so it I just just to the extent anyone says we made changes and you didn't vote on it well nothing has been voted on so just to be very clear um so I think I'm going to turn it over to blaze to give a little summary of what was changed based

206on our discussions and it's it's it's it was a very free-form discussion tonight's intended to be that way for those of you who weren't there so to just ask questions and you know nothing's etched in stone right yeah no not at all yeah I think we had a really productive budget committee meeting and we got some really good feedback from the members and went through the main uh drivers of cost we had posted that really five projects for this year's request are driving you know over 87 percent of the requests just in those five projects um and then the five-year window we really had just a handful of really significant items that were really driving most and are forcing a lot of the conversation so we tackled those head on um and what is before

207you are a few things and I'll I guess run through each of them and then we can talk about the the main ones because they're pretty significant um the first one is the thought process behind Central Middle School it's highlighted because the number wasn't changed yet but we we all know at this point that after the pandemic the number on square footage that was given was a little on the low side given changes in the market what the thought process here and I'm working with the building committee on the time frame of when these numbers will be released and if not what we can do but the Architects um were going to be required in the RFP to give their best estimate based on market conditions so each of those bids has a square foot

208price um all-inclusive except ffne hopefully and hopefully we can talk to the building committee um to see what their time frame is and we'd like to basically take those eight square foot prices and take the average from those eight architect firms that bid and I think that would give us a really solid number and then we would consolidate in the FFA which is around 5 million and we we hope to have this be to you you know in advance you know hopefully maybe next week so it's well in advance of the 20th meeting we can we can get that information out there and then that project also we know includes some field work we don't know exactly what that will look like yet no one does but we know that it's on the table so

209we had added something just so it was on the radar in 29 and we then moved it up to 27 to line up with the construction do you want to go through all of them or do you want to talk about like because Laura should fill us in on the committee that's where I was kind of going yeah so I didn't know so I was really saying wow we're talking about Central go ahead Laura um so the building committee has just also met this morning and we also met on Tuesday um so we put out an RFP we got um responses for an owner's rep some of the so we've narrowed it to three owners reps um some have provided pricing some have not but obviously these are um calculations that have not taken into

210account um the soil testing which is not or was not complete but I you know I know that the draft of the suitability the soil suitability um is hundreds of pages Dan is probably sitting at that table and can maybe summarize that best because one of the questions was well how do we know what it's going to cost if we don't know where we're going to put it the RFP respondents for the architectural firms of which there are eight I think Blaze reference the number eight but maybe not um in a way that's we got eight respondents um they sent in um their proposals uh the building committee is in the process of you know having picked those up over the last day or two um because it's a lot of materials and we have

211to read um eight pricing proposals and sort of match those up with the reality of where the building might be placed hopefully all of them include you know not just an all-in number but also some of what they are calculating Does it include site work Does it include Fields when are they when you know when my Fields be completed because you know if we're handing over a building to the students and the administration and the teachers you know we sort of want them to know when they can utilize the the campus as a whole so all of these um all of these things would it include Landscaping um tree planting fencing you know all of these things we want to be sure we're very thorough about and um we should have a better picture um

212within the time frame hopefully that will get us to the October 20th uh time frame so hopefully we'll have um a more solid idea of what the real world current date pricing might be I hope that helps yeah I think that this way too then you know no one knows what's going on with some of the market conditions but I think at least logically then we have a really defendable you know logic and number about how we got to that you know pricing per square foot it's kind of the best way to go about it I think at the moment with the limited information that we have but the process that we have to follow up um the the we gave it a thoughtful approach too when we went given what's going to kind of

213happen with Central Middle School um the committee was then uh we were looking at the rest of the pressures in The Five-Year Plan um the next major kind of topic on the 15-year plan would have been the Julius Kirk Julian Curtis renovation um this was uh I think a project of significant um you know conversation over the last few years especially through the last budget process um that has been taken into account the 15-year request that we have before you we were looking at Dr Jones um actually you know and Dan are out walking the facilities they did all the facilities last week to kind of look at conditions and everything met with the principal um and so coming up with a kind of maybe a potential hybrid approach we talked about this for a

214long time on Tuesday um where expansion renovation versus doing some targeted needed Renovations before you is a proposal that builds on the established logic that was kind of put together with the building committee for Julian Curtis leveraging the Ada improvements the elevator program couple of the two of the bathrooms um and then taking the design from the original Ed specs the thought process here 800 and 1024 instead um of design money to create an accessible front entrance this would involve the two ramps that were proposed in the original design and the front as well as expanding the step way a little bit to make room for wheelchair electrifying the doors and some other Minor Details to be linked up with the security project that's going on there and then it would also include uh 50

215000 for design when Dr Jones went to the school we had the Ed specs from some of the original information she talked to the principal there what is the number one priority the number one priority was the cafeteria clearly emphasized by the administration at the school we um were asked by the building committee to put together a comparison for example of which I'll pass around um and I of the sizing for the cafeterias compared to the other elementary schools just to kind of highlight the disparity it is a really small room basically um it's only a thousand square feet um so there's some idea to then in fiscally you're 25 uh put together a two million dollar renovation package based on the design to expand the size of the cafeteria or do something creative that

216an architect can come up with with space at the school to find a better cafeteria solution there and then in fiscal year 26 then go through after the cafeteria is done and doing around a much-needed renovation of the Millwork fixtures and equipment this way we go through the the most important needs give that school and that Community um the the most needed areas based on conversation and our own you know information that we have and still have a reasonable tolerable and logical financial model that we are proposing as a board that that was the thought process there yep uh two questions we'll go back to a CMS for a second cruise that are there there was a reference to the soil evaluations then are we there yet are we still passing on that I will

217have a report in hand Monday the uh the engineering firm who was tasked with doing this has apologized up and down they had a covet issue um still I'm still not 100 in belief of that but uh we just spoke with him we just spoke with them today and they promised that they would have us a full report on Monday okay thank you second question is uh JC related it's a conservative mind of spending money well but there's also a urgency amongst our colleagues to get things done quickly uh there are Urgent matters of ADA compliancy which we all find are we all support and all want to address it aggressively so my question Dan and you're without all the research and work done I just want your opinion because I know you know the

218uh you intimately know the building you intimately know uh the project you intimately know what we're talking about here uh entryway sort of seems like it could be the entryway we were going to put in as far as the major project or major Renovations we had talked about in the past the 29 million dollar renovation or so so I could see that one being not putting good money at bad that you might have to rip out during a major renovation so I think the entryway seems kind of cool uh but my concerns are the uh cafeteria elevator and the uh the bathrooms now if at one point it's decided say in the near future uh that a major renovation that we had talked about it's it's timely and it gets accelerated for whatever reason uh

219one of those things that we're looking to do uh would be bad money at good in other words if we're putting an elevator in uh the elevator we're putting in in a major renovation would be ripped out because of a redesign and and would be uh would be put in a different way we have a way of evaluating or understanding this this short-term solution to JC's problems which is in addressing the big scale issues we've talked about before uh is there a way of evaluating the money we're putting into this in the short term um short term Joe you know the craps you we don't know what the design is going to be the the short-term issue is the building is not ADA Compliant it needs an elevator we've looked at several different locations still

220haven't come up with an exact location uh we looked at building an elevator on the outside of the building um and we've looked at elevator within the in you know the current layout of the building which would be more costly you have more infrastructure that has to be moved around uh one of the ideas that it's still an idea is to add it in the uh in the courtyard area right now behind on one of the classrooms you know accessing it we might have to take some space out of a classroom we don't know what we're going to do yet but as far as a new design coming down the road and elevator is a feature that I think they can design around it's not like we're going to be tearing down the building um

221and it's such a large feature such an integral feature um yeah I think we can build around it bathrooms again bathrooms are they need to be upgraded now they're not fully compliant so depending on when the school is going to be rebuilt or whatever you have some time that we are in not compliance again could be united we worked around not sure the bat the uh the cafeteria uh cafeteria is a large component again depending on where we put it um it could be part of the design to be built around um the current idea is to enlarge the existing one I don't think it's a bad idea like there's no plans it's just an idea of where it goes uh but that cafeteria is so small that the amount of waves that go through

222I don't I think there's five lunch waves which is a little bit much right so um you know it's is there a definitive answer no is something going to be touched in a major renovation probably but I think if we get the right people if and when this comes along and we tell them hey we don't want you to touch this we want you to work around it they can do that so there's there's a chance a good chance of if we plan properly uh that some of the money we're putting into this thing in the short term to take care of the very very needed issues uh that if we do have a major renovation in the future if done properly we could salvage some of that uh some of that money we're putting

223into it now I believe so yes thank you foreign before we move off JC yeah I just had a quick question because I I hate to you know poke a Sleeping Bear but um uh we as a board had approved a School that was uh you know not not funded uh and here I see that we've pulled back from that but we as a board haven't discussed that and you know I just you know I'm not sure does that mean that we're we're no longer looking towards what we uh the Ed specks and things that we approved are we pulling back because it's not a discussion we've sort of had as a board well we're having it now yeah so I think at the moment I was just going to run through the changes from

224Tuesday and then we'll probably go through each one and talk about them some of them are pretty significant uh Julian Curtis is is a huge one um or do you want to just talk about it now or do you want me would you guys prefer to hear the whole story yeah let's let's finish the discussion and then uh we'll go back and and go through each one in detail uh the other major one similar to Julian Curtis um in terms of the The Five-Year model what we were talking about um at Riverside was realistic timing um as well as realistic resource allocation um the biggest one being thinking that it was essential to do uh still to ask for the hundred and fifty thousand dollars to start the study at that location to see what

225the needs are see what the infrastructure looks like um and then one one of the other things too is to look at the resources and the ability to execute over the next five years um and so the thought process here that we talked about was to adjust the scale of that potentially um to one of the things Dr Jones brought up a good point to the board that um the way some of these things get framed to the community can be challenging because you put together a feasibility study you get the whole Community involved everyone's pumped they see that this is going to be some hundred million dollar or 30 million dollar thing um and then five years later we're still kind of asking for the same funding for the same kind of project and

226everyone is in a bad place so the thought process here was maybe to set some of the numbers a little bit more realistically in the model that way when you're putting together the committee to start with that feasibility study people are starting from a framework that might set expectations for actually realistically accomplishing some of that work and the time frame that we're proposing um and then Cardinal field the last major change that we uh have here proposed before you for discussion tonight would be what are we going to do with the Cardinal field uh Stadium project phase one is wrapped up um there was one major outstanding piece from phase one that was supposed to be completed in phase two this is the planting and trees this is a directive from the tree Ward and

227that's about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars we talked about phase two of the project which was uh the small field house and a second Stadium or second set of bleachers as well as the egress to the high school the secondary egress and the bridge before you um proposal is to to close out and get that we cannot get a certificate of occupancy from the building department until the tree Warden uh signs off on the planting plan um so to do that we need to finish the planting program um and that's about 150 000 um and that and then we have the road the thought process was to keep on the radar see what things look like um push out a little bit in terms of prioritization of our own ability to execute um but

228keep some funding on there for the bridge and the egress um and I had one more thing which has come up since our meeting on Tuesday which I'd like to add um and or for ad for discussion um the ghs entryway building committee met this morning um we had a very detailed conversation with the architect um the full committee and basically just to kind of drill down to the basics you know all the a e money that was allocated to the project has been expended so now we have the 2.75 which is remaining however of the 2.75 are now new design process is eating into that money because there isn't any more money in addition to that fact any construction is going to require at least a 10 contingency Dan I don't know if 20

229is becoming with these projects but I'm just saying 10 let's just say ten percent so if you take kind of the design money and attend and a contingency the 2.75 in construction is now not 2.75 in construction it's 2.3 um I'm just this very back of the envelope um so I think there is definitely a deep concern on the committee's part that given where the bids were and if we want to have something appropriate whether it's going to be achievable with that number so a thought um I had which I hadn't discussed with committee because it's not really the committee's decision was to perhaps take that 10 percent number of the contingency and put it into next year's money because the project isn't going to start till June anyway so if we don't get the

230money till fiscal year 24. um otherwise it would be the kind of thing that I think we as a board have to make a decision if the project comes back at 2.7 but now we don't have 2.7 are we going to go in and ask for an interim but an alternative path would be to put a couple hundred thousand dollars I I just picked 10 really off the top of my head and I'm happy to discuss it but put it into our Capital request for next year now and also realizing that before the RTM votes on this budget we're going to know what the project costs so it's really kind of a placeholder pending the construction to me it seems better than going in for an interim given that we don't need the money but

231Town processes aren't always logical but I to me that seemed that it might be the prudent thing for us to do for a board I am picking a number out of thin air so happy to discuss um with anyone what everyone's appetite is for secure greater security at the high school because we did not ask for any additional funds when we did our interim already at the high school in anticipation of this project so I just wanted to alert everyone on the board that this is a possibility and just to again take the Pulse of the room that people say let's put in some number for next year then just opening that for discussion as well so those are the major projects and those really are in addition as a driver but there's really nothing

232to do with this one um it is what it is is Western Middle School uh the field remediation so those are the main drivers I mean everything else really is about 16 of the whole car I mean those are actually um of the overall cost so those were the major discussion items that's what we spent a lot of time on with the budget committee um and I think basically we just go through each one the major ones for now and then take other questions on the smaller stuff if there are ones so what point of order so what we're looking at is this the this is the proposed capital budget is that what we're saying right yeah so what you're looking at right now um and the board operates a little bit differently than the

233rest of the town because this is a very public process but that there's just versions of but this would be the fiscal year 24 15-year plan from the board that would be sent over um technically for process it gets sent over to the first selectman's office who consolidates it into one capital budget um they appropriate just to be clear only things in 24 have a project sheet and get an appropriation the rest are just for the 15-year you know Capital planning so when we vote when we vote next time I'll be voting on like are we voting on 23-24 are we voting on The 15-year plan you would be voting it on your 15-year plan that includes your Appropriations for 24. but we're not you know we're obviously not we can adjust any of this

234but this is just more for the towns planning process for that like by signaling for example the Julian Curtis and the Riverside we're signaling that we're not going to be looking for 30 million for Riverside we'll be looking for 15. which which no that makes sense the um the numbers are are completely in the out years these are all theoretical model you know just for planning purposes by voting this year on you know 30 000 for kitchen equipment in 10 years we're not saying that that's what we anticipate the nice thing about having what the way when we have the 15-year model is most of it will kind of shift and then we add in the out ear um but the good thing is for the model too is if something like Dan might open

235up a project and then find out that we've got to accelerate a project or push one out and that's all a very acceptable part of the process um this would be you know they're all informed to one another um so that would be kind of the process yeah but you're not but your real numbers for appropriation are your 24 numbers and the town did ask the board just as a reminder um instead of you know a 15-year plan but really focusing on the five-year and the guidelines were supposed to be getting um a full a five-year number for the whole town from the in in the budget guidelines for Capital rather than just the one year and I guess the challenge is going to be just from things I'm hearing is like the town's going

236to give the or the BT's going to give a five-year Capital number I think the problem we're gonna all find us on the BET in their gym is this the central number is going to throw all the math off um that's not our concern could be 25 of the things but again that's not our job that's the veg's job um so the question is how they choose to finance it is not our concern we should ask for what we believe we need and let them figure it out you know everybody has their job right it's not our job to do the financing it's our job to say this is what we think we're going to need and let them say what's going to be funded yeah and I think this way we have what we

237have put together as a team I think we'll be going into it with a you know a logical approach that that we took to doing this may not work but right no but it's certainly more reasonable and you obviously did a lot of good work of the budget committee because they they really did I mean we really had a really good conversation right yeah wonderful okay so I'm going to jump into a few things that's okay okay so straight to ADA compliance I'm skipping let's talk about let's finish on the big projects first I would say is everything yeah but yeah the biggest ones I think maybe we'll run through because there might be a lot of conversation just on um maybe not as much on Central Middle School but definitely I think on Julian

238Curtis um we should all be on the same page in Riverside um and those are the most time sensitive projects one of my thoughts would be I'm not sure why we have a two-year gap between a e and construction because we did it I thought I know we were shifting things around um but we kind of have a feasibility then a year off then a e and then two years off and the problem is going to be with the state reimbursement process that we if then it's really going to be three years I I think I would I we should consider putting the 15 for Riverside in the fiscal year 28. I started with it with the uh in the sixth year but because you were trying to hide it from the five the fifth

239but uh yeah that makes sense but I do think it's more accurate to say you know a e you're off yeah because kind of that's consistent with the way we've done our other projects just and I know I don't know if anybody else's thoughts on it yeah you want to pick I mean you want to talk do we want to talk Central middle I mean I don't have the number I think Laura proposed you know kind of where the good thought process would be we don't have the number yet but we want to have it to you um before the 20th so we can talk about it but the logic there is to take the proposals take the bids and take an average and add in the ffne that we used yeah I don't know

240and I think that's where we start and we and we do it like the budget committee talked about we got to do it the right way if we're going to do it and uh that that seems like a defendable approach to making the number real yeah because I think the budget committee felt that the 67 69 is 69. and and the problem is you know we're then creating a whole false narrative and the fact of the matter is whatever is a pro is back to the state reimbursement process the number that the RTM and the BET appropriate is the number that goes in for State reimbursement yes you're only allowed one Amendment so you want your number to be as close to realistic as possible so you don't want to be you know adding 30

241million dollars I don't think the state's going to look too kindly on us no okay I think one thing that we've had some pressure put on us about and maybe even been criticized about his priorities it's creating priorities what I think we should do as a group uh if not this form some other form of exercise but basically we list the projects which we have and respond back as a board on what priority uh we think of that project from that data we collect if for example we say Central Middle School on a scale of one to say five five being the most important we all rank Central Middle School whatever number five to one or one to five we decide to give it and then the next projects in that way then at least

242as a group we've established the priority so we at least work off of that or another way of doing it that's just a suggested way but to sit here and sort of bounce it back and forth doesn't really create a priority that we could also stick to and then Express to the town or the bet or the community but don't you think putting things in our budget for next year expresses those I mean we we certainly don't have just one priority right we can have multiple priorities yeah I was gonna say the thing that I don't love about that Joe is that then very quickly people say okay thanks I'm gonna take your number one priority and cut the rest I like the idea of this is you know 23 24th this is our priority

243right and and that's like kind of your point Christina so you know if I were looking at this and we were voting on this you know we're sort of saying Central Middle Schools are a priority and is Western and my you know Greenwich I know Greenwich one of the things though I you know we've talked about and this was kind of the original problem with the 15-year plan was we were trying to smooth it out right and um and that goes to financing frankly I mean there's lots of things that we're not going to get into long-term financing that's the BET's decision but you could smooth out Capital by bonding or various methodologies but one of the things I look at is this is a pro forma this is kind of a 41 million dollar

244number right if I take out Western and Central ironically I'm at 41 right and then that seems to be sort of the going to say if you take out of the 121 and almost 122 million dollars if you pull out Central Old Greenwich the Western fields and the ham Ave HVAC HVAC the four biggest projects it leaves us with 12.9 million for all our buildings for everything else right to Blaze's point that that's if that's 13 yeah yeah when we when we put together the capital on that spreadsheet that came with the packet the point was is that Dan um I think and Dr Jones worked together a lot to to do exactly what some of the things that we're talking about is to prioritize and a lot of the routine maintenance not to I

245think any major detriment at the moment especially with all the grant funding that we got but was this is a small routine request a very small routine request there's only a handful and that was to help try to make Rome in the financial model for these major projects that we're signaling our priority and we did defer to your point a pretty significant amount of routine Capital well I think historically our maintenance has been around 10 11 12 million right so then that's all that fitmaster facilities plan it should have been it should have been so this is the maintenance number is very much in line um we've been underfunding that for years yeah but so so to that end to that point I think for all those reasons I think we have to acknowledge that

2462324 is not a normal year because we've got this Central Middle School gorilla uh in the budget the um and we we have that every year with some projects we know we've never had a middle school condemned no that's true but we're looking at 80 million dollars I mean it's yeah no I'm just saying everything else is stacked up because it's been pushed down the pipe but but but that still makes that still makes this a very unique budget and I think we need to it would be I think to Joe's point about priorities the I'm not I'm not I'm not suggesting we shortchange maintenance but I do think um it's appropriate that we um we look at that and we do prioritize some things I I would argue it's not the year for some

247of these small projects such as something such that that aren't maintenance necessarily such as the track such as maybe the HVAC such as fences such as playgrounds as much as I love playgrounds such as these unfortunately the um some of these tough choices like that probably made this year if we're really serious about getting you know these major projects done the um and some the 400 000 track in fact might need to wait a year they um when we're not funding an 80 million middle school and there's that a big party you know we asked for the track last year and we didn't get it I know so we're different we've already deferred it well yeah but as we but but the reality is even last time now look at this year's ask but that's

248the problem is that we have asked for a lot of these projects and so let me take two steps back and said when the master facility plan was for first put forward and most of us here weren't on the board I think only Kathleen was um they prioritized everything they went through it they said these are the things that are the most important to us which is Ada schools you know safety and I forgot what the third one was off the top of my head air quality and that is how all of these projects were prioritized we have had we've been looking at Julian Curtis Riverside and Old Greenwich for I can't tell you how long yes Central has had to jump forward in the timeline but more than half of the stuff that we're

249looking at here is stuff that's been kicked down the road the can and if we keep doing that the costs are just going to escalate I'm not saying we're kicking everything down the word I'm saying we have to acknowledge this is an extraordinarily unique budget here but I think some of the projects you're talking about I mean not that I'm gonna say they're sort of chump change like the track at the high school you don't know what I'm saying so so chain reducing those I is so de minimis it doesn't mean it's not meaningful like you know I I disagree that you know cutting all these little things really impacts our students um and our buildings and defer we've deferred a lot of Maintenance and look where we are now on Central and North me

250well this that's what some of these smaller projects are if we defer some just yeah Mr Kelly May I thank you since I've been on the board now for three years if the priority of the project was a horse race it would be in the lead we have JC in second place we have OG in third place we have Central Middle School oh no Central Middle School makes a move around the outside that moves to the first place second place goes Julie Curtis third place goes oh Greenwich oh no where's Riverside come bring it up the rear okay what's happening then if announced like the uh like a horse race in the time here we're getting criticized that I've seen us year after year where the money folks the bet people are telling us well

251you guys can't get your priorities straight we had nothing to do with North Miami schools ceiling collapsing and all of a sudden getting in front of the horse race so that was now first so then again they look at us as we're trying to advance our project saying well you guys can't get your order straight and it seems like a way that they're deferring the responsibility of pushing off the projects on us so I would suggest and if it's Central Middle School seems to be the consensus right here we make a clear statement that that is the priority for us to move forward on stuff own it don't let anything else step in the way own hit declare it and say this is the priority so nobody can then push on us the fact that

252we don't understand our own priorities that's the reason why in the ranking system might be an incorrect way of doing it but we definitely have to put our priority together and stop the criticism from the outside saying we don't know what's first yeah and then you just drop what's in Middle School in that sense is that what you're suggesting could you imagine that pardon say that so you're dropping Western Middle School field in that scenario I didn't I didn't make a priority but we have to make that priority and own those priorities yes Cody I think you would in a world where you said you have to under build Central or delay Western a year I think you would build Central correctly and delay it now you know how I feel about Western I think

253all the parents should have pitchforks and be it these uh bureaucrats house houses who are holding this up burning them down but um so I'm not saying that I think that's the right thing but I do agree with uh with Joe that um the prioritizing there's a intangible benefit To Us by um and I actually think we did that so I'm not like like I thought we had a very productive budget committee meeting where we said okay we know the central number is going up a lot so what can we do to um uh you know change the uh expected Capital needs and we did that uh but I do agree that I think it's actually helpful to just say hey this is what you know this is what matters the most and second most

254thermos because if we don't we can pretend that like it'll all get funded anyways but usually just then leaves our control and someone else will do it so I think some of what we're talking about is semantic but I think the the general um approach I was recommending makes sense and I do think we already our budget committee meeting I thought was actually a really good meeting to what great members we have on the budget committee um I think Cody I think you bring up a good point just to before we get too far down this road I think the prioritization and Theory um should be built in ideally into the capital plan and what like what we started to do with the budget committee where we were kind of doing that and and instead

255of leaving maybe numbers inaccurate or higher than you know like at 30 million versus the 15 that we went to it is a challenging exercise I've done it before for internal purposes where a lot of they're like the bet there are some members that will ask for Force ranked Capital they want you to go through each year and and go through and go one two three four five six seven eight nine ten on that Year's request and depending on how you're modeling I mean that can be challenging that might work for some departments for others if you build a relatively accurate you know a 15-year plan that you can stand behind that's your ranking that's your Force ranking I mean so you're sending the message by doing the things that we were talking about at

256the budget committee by prioritizing at the budget committee we even talked about things like Old Greenwich um to do this and we were we were doing this exercise and I think it's important for us to maybe even have that same conversation where you know are do we do you ask for both and then if we agree on asking for both in the same year um we are saying that these are priority number one they're in fiscal year 24. um I think it would be wise to try to maybe Force rank it as an exercise if you do that in you know as a board or something but that ranking should be built into the 15 to the 15-year plan because you really can't Force rank like you said one uh it's almost impossible you know

257like on a plumbing you can't really Force rank Plumbing also too you can't force rake your whole Capital because you can't force rake a toilet that's needed against uh a playground against like a building I mean those are basically the stadium is a great example of we said it's not a priority right we're like let's we don't need new visitor bleachers you know Joe said they can last for 15 years after his Sledgehammer test um and we put the road out a couple years and frankly I'd actually put it out a little further than you have it in here to be honest so I think like just in terms of prioritization I think we've done a lot I agree with Cody that you know it's not it's just I just don't think it's as easy

258as one two three four if we have too many we have 15 buildings you know so I think it's really hard you know it's like choosing your children you know different version of it but you know it's hard it's it's hard to say that you know how how are we to say Central I'm not saying we're saying it's like Central deserves it or Old Greenwich deserves it more other than we say they're both you have to remember the fact that even if we ask for some of these funds Central Middle School isn't close to getting rebuilds next year you know some of the other schools might be and you're still asking for because you have well because this is on the state the state process also which puts you know so that sounds that we're

259asking for the money but we don't even need the money for six months to a year so it's a little perverse with these figures earning interests at least but it's it's kind of you know that we're asking for it and then we know it's not going to be utilized to 12 months I just can't sit here idly by and stomach a discussion where we're talking about the needs of our Schools maintenance wise for all 15 schools have Meyer you know and whatever and saying we should cut this out and the other thing just to rebuild a school that desperately needs it these are things that we as a district know that we need to do it's not necessarily that one takes priority over another I mean yes certainly if you don't have a school facility

260to put children in it's one thing but taking away from other schools and the regular maintenance that they've been looking towards it's still school safety to have an appropriate fence you don't want a student to be out on a school playground and then find out that it's falling apart and having a student that gets hurt because we push that maintenance off I think that there's a yes it is an unusual Year yes we have Central Middle School and we've had that before we had it I mean it wasn't in middle school but New Lebanon was a pretty big deal uh for many years in the discussion over that Western has waited my daughter's going to graduate from Greenwich High School having been a Western student and having had never stepped foot on that field my

261son did the same it's I can't even begin and so these are this budget when you're looking at Capital is two separate budgets it's these big large projects and these other smaller ones and you can push them off but we know we've been underfunding regular maintenance it is safety it is it is all these other pieces that have to be put into place I mean you can't put that off just because you have to rebuild another school so if you have particular nine items you're yeah we can have a discussion about them but but and then we can vote on them and then if we whatever passes passes and then it'll go to before the BET and the RTM and they'll have those same discussions on those I think that's the way to approach it

262on the smaller yeah I think it's on the small thing I think it's worth it to talk about uh maybe the couple major ones that just because we kind of need direction if we're going to go one way or the other as a team to get that ready for you for the 20th um and then maybe we still go through kind of line by line on a number of them but just in interest of time I think it would be helpful to talk about the major ones so that our team kind of knows which way to go and the other good point is this is very different than operating because the selectman actually really works on Capital whereas the operating is kind of straight to the bet so the selectman kind of will weigh these

263things versus like Eastern Civic Center like that's the sort of decisions that aren't being made so we're also sacrificing other aspects of the town if they sort of don't look at this on a pro forma basis which I really think central is kind of a unique situation that should be considered okay yeah and I think some of the direction we've received and hopefully this kind of sticks for this for Central Middle School is that we're going to do our part to send over a number that we feel like you know reflects the best information we have In fairness to the first selectment it's not like we're you know sending over 67 million and then letting them prioritize everything knowing that it's going to be by the time you know I think we're doing the I

264think we're doing our part to do the right thing on Central Middle School and that will go a long way one last comment on that Karen I think you're writing what you're saying about making sure that maintenance is uh not put off I'm sure what we get from our uh from Dan and our maintenance that's mandatory versus maintenance that's not mandatory so of course we'll put a category that we cannot put off and and we'll put a category that could be flexible so I guess we could separate it that way to maybe but we do that every year and that's how come we're in the bind we're in because every year we're like well let's just move this one down if we do that every year we're going to cut to the Bone and then

265still have things taken back I think I think that's the problem and you're looking at things and yes Riverside renovation is in for 150 next year but we're not going to be looking to do that until further down we how long ago did we vote and approve on Old Greenwich Ed specks we haven't even brought that back to the table to talk about a building again building committee has just been formed but we haven't even gone to to bad to look at rfps and so we know even if we're asking for this it's not happening in the next year we have to be able to move forward on these projects because otherwise they'll never happen and I don't I'm not just talking about the big ones I'm talking about the I mean I have some

266questions on some of the smaller ones too and yes I'm sure there's some things here they can be adjusted or removed but overall I I this is such a paired down capital budget I don't think I've ever seen something so small and is you know Blaze pointed out was without the large projects it's all like the rest of it's 13 but it's It's 121 million dollars it's not paired down it is the largest capital budget in the history but again no no no no no ignore but here's back no no no no no no but you have to you have to again look at what there's the big projects and there's the maintenance yes the maintenance is under 13 million and that also includes a million three for disaster recovery and some other stuff so

267here's my concern Joe that about when you start talking about things that are mandatory and kind of like maybes that's just given we're just handing it to the bet on a silver platter and the RTM to say we don't really need these things that's not our job they can they can do their I think we do our due diligence to say what we vote on and what we believe and that's why we have these discussions and we go through the CIP sheets and if we and we vote the way we vote and once we vote it it goes to them and let them make decisions but if we start playing with well this is kind of optional then let's us vote on it if we don't agree on it and see where the vote shakes

268out but that's I you know that's what that's our job it's not to hand to them and say well this is our mandatories and these are our maybes that's not that's not the way but just because we're building Central doesn't mean I don't think we should do plumbing and electrical at other schools just this kind of I think so so I think so we go through them it's a straw man argument about the like manager no one everyone wants to do mandatory maintenance but I we that doesn't mean we can't say hey is is there anything in the list maybe the answer is but that's our discussion I agree no right because we don't we're not voicing that on someone else so but we have to do it tonight or on the 20th one last

269comment on that just directly addressing your comment Christina the uh and I hate to do this because in the real world I don't do this but sort of in this world of different agencies control different things uh when it comes to doing stuff that has to be done it has to be done and the stuff that doesn't have to be done and it's no longer our responsibility to do it we've passed it off to somebody else well we could say that the reason why it's not done is not because of us because of somebody else and unfortunately that's the way the Machine Works where they're gonna have to make some decisions that we leave it to them to make a decision and a mandatory thing has the same urgency as a non-mandatory thing then the

270decisions theirs and they could make the wrong one that's the worrying I have if somebody says why isn't the playground built because I believe someone brought a playground as a reference before why isn't the playground built somewhere well because we didn't get the money for it and it's no longer our responsibility we requested it it's it's uh it's not what I do in the real world but it sort of seems like this is the way it's done here so why don't we uh I think I think we're good with Central Middle School uh at the moment we'll go with that approach you're getting points for being diplomatic uh so how about uh so Julian Curtis um I think this is the one that we really want direct show and we talked about it for a

271long time at the budget committee I mean maybe some of the members want to give some thoughts on on kind of how we derived here but um the thought process here was was after um a lot of input thought Community conversation budget discussions last year um to come up to take the existing Ed specs uh prioritize those and we we basically put together the package um that's before you with a little bit of adjustments after the budget committee meeting with some input uh the thought process here as I mentioned is the 800 000 for the accessible front entrance 50 000 to start the design early to get that going then roll right into the cafeteria um there's a clear need I mean it's only a thousand square feet it's extremely small uh compared to any

272other school that was the one that the principal said was was if you're going to do anything other than Ada do this one um to your point actually what we were talking about doing um do this um and then going through and and you know old sinks that are that are decades old and and things like that that Dan has identified and Dr Jones actually gets out and walks through a lot of the buildings and mill work that needs to be upgraded um and kind of putting together a package to balance the needs of of financing and prioritization and sending a message but also still investing in the in the school and and I think all of us on the budget committee you know while we yeah I think we all feel this is an

273appropriate compromise that you know gets the building in accessibility it you know in a perfect world yes we would have done a full renovation but I think we've we've asked for this money twice I'm not sure the appetite is there for the rest of the town so let's be realistic um and do the things that need absolutely need to be done to Joe's point this doesn't foreclose us from coming back at some point down the road and as long as the money is spent wisely and Joe will be on the building committee so I'm sure it will be um I I think that was you guys can correct me I think that was kind of the mood of the room which is why we directed plays in Tony to make this revision and cut 30

274million or whatever it was off next year's number what came 20 something yeah it was next year 29 point it was 1.5 this year for the a e and 29.7 next year sorry she texts me now because I can't see her go ahead Laura hey I just you know we didn't address the science room at JC either because this project seems to be kind of chopped up now and very piecemeal then very unfortunate but in the interest of educational Equity I would like to sort of understand why there's no money for a science room when other schools have a science have science rooms and you know if if we as I mentioned are even going to think about Universal pre-K in a title one school it would make sense that we have preschool classrooms in

275that title one school so I'm just I'm a little disappointed by you know what I'm hearing and because it really does seem like um we're losing sight of a greater need and I want to just be very transparent about my feelings about that foreign I actually have a question and then a comment in regards to GCS since that's where we're at I've just much like Laura I'm very disappointed honestly um I I understand that we are struggling to move forward but one of the things we've spent so much time talking about sitting in this boardroom uh even before I was on this board is not pitting one school against another we created that 15-year Master facility plan so that schools and and those communities would have an understanding of where they fell in line when

276it came to Renovations and you know and things happening within their schools it hasn't moved forward the way we had been you know we'd promised a community that it would and you know now we're sitting here having a discussion where you're kind of pitting one school against another one school's needs and one community's needs against another and my level of disappointment at this moment is significant and I rarely get this emotional about something about it in a meeting but I sat in meetings during Ferb and watched schools being pit against school and it was not a good place to be I don't want to get there again and I feel like that's where we're heading I'm very disappointed I just have to say I do understand having to make some decisions because we need to

277get things funded and move forward but I I feel like that's where we're heading and it's it's very disappointing for me um so that being said when it comes to Julian Curtis you know again yes I agree we need Universal Pre-K with something we we have the need for uh classroom you know additional classrooms for that anyway but my bigger question is one of the things we've been talking we've been told time and time again is once you start to work on a facility for adding ADA compliance you are required to do all of it you can't do it piecemeal so is where do we put ourselves if we put in an elevator and can't get to do the renovation work to make sure every single doorway in that facility is wide enough for a

278wheelchair or every single doorknob is at the appropriate level or sink is at the appropriate level for someone with Ada needs where are we if we are not revising the the entryway to allow students to access the building to get to an elevator wherever that may be or families that are coming into that school facility do we put ourselves at risk for legal action if we're not going to be doing the whole Pro you know all of the Ada Ada improvements at once thank you yeah I'll try to answer your question I'm not quite sure where you got the language that once you start you have to finish it um we have a I want to say a systematic plan where we're going to move forward and do Ada in pieces across the district I

279think uh we had several discussions in the last couple years about the actual cost it would be to renovate every school in the district to compliancy and it's uh it's a very large number so as far as what we're doing at JC we are starting from the outside it doesn't make sense to renovate a bathroom if you can't get a person with mobility issues into the building so that's why we started from the outside uh the issue of putting the elevator that was a emphasis when we were provided the money by the town the emphasis for Ada would be for an elevator so that's where that's where we're at with that and you're probably looking at a cost for an elevator somewhere around a million dollars we got 1.1 million so the question of whether

280or not we're going to be able to do bathrooms with the allotted money you're not going to do a bathroom or multiple bathrooms for a hundred thousand dollars so it's it's a matter of financing so we can let them access the students that have needs or families that have needs to be able to access the building but God forbid they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the day so I I understand the the point we have we can't do everything all at once but to me it just if you're going to be doing some of it I mean we were this was a discussion from a long time ago maybe that's where I understood it that and I won't say the term grandfathered in but you know we weren't being once

281you start to do major renovation work on a building for things you have to bring it fully up to code that was what I had always been it had explained to us in previous meetings years upon years so I I maybe I misunderstood but you know if we're going to be doing it then we do really need to consider you're giving access to students to the building if they need it we need to make sure that they have access to facilities that you know to meet their other needs um so you know I don't see bathrooms on here it doesn't have to be every bathroom but I do think that you have to make sure that they can access different you know pieces as well during the school day we do have just as a

282point of clarity we do have uh to Dan's point the bathrooms are also built into the Ada program so there could be some balancing between being included in this project what's on our you know but what's on us is to coordinate the requests in other years for other programs with other projects so like the ADA compliance program that Dan has um and that the board has been uh you know investing in every year um does include those those strategies so that's a good point that we should revisit to ensure that we're prioritizing um why ADA compliance was so low this year like the funding wise was 249 versus over a million for years going forward and I was you know wondering because we also had to do some stuff here right with buyer escapes and

283and other things right the fire escapes aren't Ada no they're not okay so I just didn't see that located anywhere in the budget I know it's the Monday was already given to us but I didn't see it reflected here anywhere yeah because we got the funding yes but you have things here listed for prior three years I didn't see any anywhere so prior three years is what is what they require on the form is whenever you're requesting a project for that specific project you have to include the total that was budgeted for that project well that explains that part thank you and just so you know Karen in the worksheet on the CIP sheet as part of the 249 of the ADA compliance it's 204 000 for Julianne Curtis the point is going to JC

284specific as to what where that was going so that's why I was just trying to figure that out that was my next on page seven no no no it doesn't I was that was going to be my next question which was that just a comment quick one Karen I support you in your uh JC project I've been the advocate for JC for some time now uh I've tried very hard sometimes you just have to change direction if you're just not getting where you have to go and I'm I'm not sure we're there we can continue to fight a little bit more we can certainly talk about it but those kids need to be brought up in an elevator those kids need bathrooms at a compliant those kids need stuff immediately we can just keep how

285many more years are we going to get pushed off on that no I agree with you on that I I'm not necessarily saying what we're doing I agree with torn so I'm not saying I agree with moving forward in a partial way I try to make sure that the money we're investing in in a discussion with Dan just now was money that could build on some sort of the renovations that we've always talked about but I'm torn it just they need something and whatever we're doing is not working I understand the theory of not cutting off your nose despite your face right and that's where we're at in this point they need what they need but it I was talking about something that just went further than that it wasn't just JC we're sitting here

286talking about which project is more important and that we're talking about some large projects and it is it's not just JC now we're pitting you know we have OG coming behind suddenly is it OG not going to be as important you know they have classrooms that we're flooding we we approved Those ads back so long ago but now that Central's here it's so will be so costly suddenly that OG gets pushed so that's why I was saying it's not just GC and I understand that we have to we we don't have unlimited funds and we have to make decisions that are in the best interest of all of our residents as well as our students and and you know educational Community but uh just I'm just I'm at a point of of absolute I I

287I don't even have words which is for me pretty well to balance some of the uh you know because there was a lot of discussion about JC on at the at the committee meeting I mean it is a 15-year plan for for signaling to some of the things we can talk about is uh I mean we're looking all the way through in theory at least 2038 um we can still put some renovation money in farther out years um and years where we talk about smoothing out the bumps uh some of these years are significantly low um because they're so far out that it's kind of unreasonable to be really thinking about some realistic things but this is a major renovation so I think you don't have to totally take you know you know it's something

288you can talk about is is to kind of balance because you had some of these concerns the other the other day um and how can you still keep some of it on the radar so that a building committee knows that because there is a building committee already established um and and it's kind of the model that's unfortunately or fortunately already being moved forward um so you can still put some money in the out years for maybe some renovation that signals to the building committee that whatever they're designing should be something that can be leveraged in 10 to 12 years um for potentially another renovation depending on enrollment objc is 100 year anniversary events so that'd be cool there's something that that can still be talked about um to find common ground on that one so

289that we still keep it on the radar but we prioritize for the next five getting getting something done for them so that that's something that you can think about yeah I do just want to point out too that I I think walking through the building was really important just as that refresher because they do have several bathrooms in that building that were rebuilt Trish thinks around 2009 they're actually nice there's some that are super old um so there are parts of the building their terrazzo floors are still beautiful they're not like at OG where they have like the yellow caution tape where it was cracking um so they're I think we've tried to be really thoughtful about what what's in here and the secure entryway is you know is important but again that in the

290plan you can see where they had the ramps coming off the side that would get taken care of really quickly and that plus the elevator that's already been funded um I think they're they're really important projects and the cafeteria alone again it really does impact instruction and I was saying um when we have like an early release day we want kids to be able to have a hot lunch you know it just see they were asking if we were just going to stay with the sack lunches like we did during covid because they can't fit all their kids in the cafeteria and so you know it's hard for them on days like that to even get kids through hot lunch so by the cafeteria can also partnership with other pieces of the building they might

291put that cafeteria where there are an existing classrooms right now and then take the cafeteria and create wonderful small spaces by putting up walls so you know I think that's the idea of having a building committee and still listening and being responsive to what they're asking for so we're hopeful because again I mean it's this is a five-year plan and we haven't been able to move anything yet and right now we've had five years of kids moving through the building and they didn't have an elevator they didn't have any of it so we're trying to I guess bring a realistic point of views trying to help the building get something done that's the important so so that's JC I think you know we can mull over the point if we want to add any money

292in the you know in a decade um for signaling but that's something we can kind of think about as a team any other things that at the moment uh we want to talk about on JC or move to the next major one which would be Riverside um and that would be a similar uh thought process here uh still a little bit different but um it's kind of hard we have less information for Riverside than we have for Julian Curtis um so that's one of the challenges with this one um 150 000 in fiscal year 24 to get a team together to study the building look at the structure and the needs of the facility um and then uh 1.5 million as a placeholder it's kind of hard to know again because we don't know exactly

293what that 150 will look like but uh 1.5 million for a e and then 15 million um in I have it in 29 but we could look at 28 to kind of line up a little bit better to Christina's Point that's something we could talk about um to still signal to to what type of work and tolerance that we want to balance uh it's a little harder because we don't have the uh Ed specs like we did for Julian Curtis to look at and prioritize with the team um but that's the thought process there and just you know we did take it down it was it previously in for 31 million I think it was 31.65 million and I think the group that the budget committee really felt like if we're kind of going back

294to kind of more basic needs uh but but again because we don't have a feasibility study we couldn't cut it so low but to the cafeteria Point as I look at the sheet from Blaze and that Riverside has a 1700 square foot cafeteria with almost 500 kids in the building you know that that clearly is going to be an issue for them so you know um just like that those things that we just don't we haven't really looked at did we do a whole review of all the cafeterias in the district a year a couple years ago looking into the sizes in comparison to school I'm pretty sure we did I can go back and look well we have this at least in terms of this is just square is that what that comes from

295this is from that yeah okay so yeah so I know I was gonna say I knew we had more data than that at some point that was pulled out of that foreign yeah you know kind of tells the message that's all right uh so so I don't know if we have any thought I mean I know it's getting pretty late here at the curriculum to go through first before Capital but that that's kind of the thought on Riverside um uh it is what it is though just because it seems so it's too big a gap with the state reimbursement process because the state reimbursement put that would be the kind of thing that will push it out a year so I think I'd move that to the 27-28 it's a little hard to judge because

296you just picked a random number and cut it in half from what I can tell so well no no but it was just more about timeline you know we typically do a e then we take a year and then we do construction money is usually is our typical you know obviously you know things have not been done the thought there too the name of the project that's why it's highlighted was Riverside expansion renovation and that was what was kind of built into the 31.65 so here we were signaling a major renovation potentially but took out the word expansion and that's it's still yeah I mean it's still kind of pulling a number out we figured cutting it in but that was the number there is some thought behind it and and cutting the number in

297half was kind of like as good a guess as any it's not expansion renovation yeah that's what that was the thought there you know um and until we have a a more detailed study like we had for JC it's kind of hard to go through and pick those key projects okay that's Riverside uh Cardinal I think this is the other one we really need some direction on because we don't have a project sheet for this one yet um and it it does require some fiscal year 24 appropriation um we originally you know in the budget was showing the 6 million we talked about eliminating uh part of the phase two um because it's in good shape and the needs uh delaying the road to see where we're at we can talk about where that should

298be I would push it out a couple more years personally I don't I don't think it's two years away I think it's probably longer because to Joe's Point once we didn't get anything done before the state road project I don't you know the people at the high school they may argue otherwise but the same level of urgency and again back to priorities the four million dollars versus four million dollars at one of our other buildings it requires the bridge and you know as as Dan has alluded to and has already talked to DPW about it it's expensive um to do um no I'm saying push it out yes yeah no matter what though I think we do need to make the request uh for the trees uh to close out the project it looks like

299I mean that was mostly supposed to be in phase two uh Dan Dr Jones and I have been working really closely uh Joe I know you've been involved in trying to wrap up the project go through the financials uh we're in pretty good shape um it's really just the trees and the planting we needed to get the CEO um you know I am I did I did used to work at parks I'm going to talk to the tree Warden to make sure we're all on the same page um you know what we need is really what we need um so I will do that before the 20th uh on that number um I I'm I'm not going to bring Joe to the meeting uh might go to that one by myself uh but on that

300topic just one comment yes the question is to Dan uh do we in order to we've done a lot of work on the bridge on the road uh I would like to somehow if we're going to mothball the project to preserve the work we've done so far and make sure we don't have to redo that work do we have to invest anything to make sure that we preserve the point we're at right now so then in the future we don't have to go backwards to readdress anything is there any money we have to spend to do that or can we mothball it without having to readdress anything we've already done because we've done a lot of work I think we're in good shape I mean we stopped at a logical at a logical point if

301we had gone any further we would have to take out the the tennis courts and things like that so we stopped at a logical point and phase two would have picked up from there so I don't think there's anything that needs to be done um um I'll go back and look at the phase two drawings and see if there was any required trees other than what the tree Warden had requested that I think it's just the trees from phase one that we need to that we need to add good so we could pick up sometime in the future and not have wasted all the work we've done and use that as a starting point rather than having to go back right I mean we still do not have um buildable drawings for phase two we

302you know that that we would have to start at that point we have you know I think DD level drawings at best you know but that we can preserve what we've done to make sure we don't have to start from the beginning again correct just a good question about trees since we're talking about trees um as the tree Conservancy or any other outside groups offered to help with the cost of the trees just at it because I know we've talked about it a little bit with the high school of entryway landscape I was just I didn't know if anyone had been in touch with them to see if they'd donate some trees to help with the cost it's a good question I think Dan can you batter anything I have not seems like they they

303are uh hand in hand I know you love private money well I think it's their hand to hand with the tree Ward and they want us they feel we've got obligations to fulfill based off something they keep making reference to some obligations which we didn't fulfill in the past the previous Board of Education so I don't think they'll win to cooperate as much as they would if we had done the other obligations which we did not fulfill which we don't know what they were since we haven't done no no I'm saying I don't think anybody knows I think if I do talk to the to the tree ward in which I will do before the 20th um I will also ask this question though uh just having been in Parks can work with the tree

304Conservancy quite a bit we do have the property we are going to be doing the work so if we can offer to leverage something there for their own interests for in exchange for private uh funding there may be like a species uh you know if we could add in in a pawpaw Grove or something there may be some exchange that we can do there I've heard I've learned more in the last two and a half years about paw paws than you would think of they are native to Connecticut and there's a discussion for a different day but now I want to hear what it is yes um I I would ask for some guidance it doesn't have to be today but we will want guidance on on where that 4 million should sit so I

305know we're talking about we're talking about I would go out a year or two do you want to take that past the five-year Mark well I have tried that forever so I have a question for this year for not four years down the road for for this year's ask on the stadium go for it so having a been at the stadium for a night game which is pretty rare um it went late you know the lights need to get turned off at a certain point and gradually we didn't have a huge uh turnout for the uh field hockey senior night because it was torrential downpours um but it is Pitch Black in there pitch black and so I know part of it the initial discussion of phase two when we were going to do bleachers

306there was a discussion I think at some point just like some pathway lighting that's not there and there it's dangerous if they're having students we have two night games coming up I think for football right Joe yeah uh so I was going to ask if anybody has thought about which pathway so when you go back behind the second set of Bleacher you know the visitor bleachers that pathway over the little Bridge there past the baseball field because that's how the students go back to the school um and all well okay whatever it might be it might have been a bullet point to discuss for phase two but whatever it is uh having been back there you know most people parked in the general parking lot it's really dangerous especially when it's wet because there's a

307lot of gravel just saying just so you're not I'm agreeing with you I I don't know why that path wasn't included but the lighting that used to reside on the on the western side of the parking lot all the way along fields three and four that lighting was taken out as part of the uh soil abatement so that would have provided some light certainly not enough but behind you talk about the the you talk about the path that leads by the baseball field yeah so if you go back behind the visitor bleachers which is where the majority of our students will come in and out and especially after a night game because most people again Park in our main parking lot not the little side parking lot um that's how they exit the stadium uh

308a lot of people will walk back through this that and it's very dark that's a great suggestion should I work offline with Dan just have a conversation with them yeah I mean I don't know what it would cost and it you know I was like I'll go over to Costco and buy the little solar lights you just stick in the ground but I'll take you I'll work with it but I just figured you know it's not a lot of light it's not an ambient light it can be turned on but yes there may be funding already it's just a safety issue the only thing I would be worried about is I'm not sure how that area is affected by the soil remediation project I wouldn't want to put in something and have it ripped out

309but I can talk to a town about that yeah again I mean I I I'm not sure I'm sure there's other Alternatives whether it's just that they have lighting that they can put in and remove for the night games or if it's just those little you put little stakes in the ground that whatever it might be that will move control whatever it might be I just noticed having walked through that in the dark and the kids are trying to carry all of their sports equipment it was it was dangerous that's a good one yeah okay so we'll put the four million in 29 and we'll explore the lighting and I will talk to the tree Warden no promises so I'd like to set the bar pretty low and then maybe uh I think for major

310projects that might have been it except uh did we want to uh we did actually about an hour before this meeting the kitchen um I think we might actually I just I'm looking at my last little bit of hand notes we may also want to talk about the ghs kitchen project um the dishwasher I mean um we have it in for 250 000. um what line item is it or CIP sheet okay uh so 250 um the initial design estimate that um Dan just got uh literally at the end of the day today um is closer to 400 000. um so and we still need the trays and other things to implement that project that does not include the like still stainless steel trays and all that this is just the construction that has to

311happen the dishwasher itself um the work you know electric everything we need to do to put in a dishwasher for that the equipment is is yeah not that expensive uh it's really the construction work to put that room together uh and move the dishwasher room and move the facilities room um that's the most expensive piece that's driving the cost we have for this project um 250 000 in the ghs kitchen renovation and in plumbing um there is some overlap and plumbing and electrical there is a request for the high school a portion of that is for ghs and it is for this kitchen it's not in this project specifically because Dan's team has noticed that this is work that's going to have to happen anyways to the plumbing and electrical there so that but it

312would be the same overlapping work that would happen if you were going to do the dishwashing work um but no matter what they've noticed some of that plumbing really needs some work um I I don't know Dan if you want to add anything to that piece I mean I know we just got the we literally just got it for this meeting but it's just something that should get on the radar now since we only have until October 20th one of the things I'd want to I guess I mean of course for sustainability there's an argument for it um but is there a trade-off in terms of the annual cost that must be associated with disposable trades right so keep in mind that well you know the sustainability is a very different discussion than cost because

313we're going to need two people additional staff in order to make this work is this just for sustainability or is there an actual need for this this is this is really to move away from right now we have like biodegradable for the most part Trace um this moves to like a stainless steel I think it is an yeah and um so that we're washing actually the dishes um and you don't have the single use yeah you don't you're not throwing away your trays every day at the high school and we started with the high school which is one of the largest you know buildings so it would be almost a third of the district would be moving in this direction but it there's a cost to doing it and we have to have the staff

314and it will be two additional people there's no cost savings really well I mean it's it's there is but it's not going to be significantly close to just the operating expense to Dr Jones's point I mean to staff I mean the reason right now we're not washing the dishes full-time staff I mean to do that for that particular position I'm just wondering because I know the cost of purchase the trays and then to just the the cost to dispose it like there was a whole research done on the cost of purchasing and disposing trays there was a huge yeah so I just didn't know that somebody for you to hire somebody like that do they need to be a full-time position 0.7 I'm just talking about the time I'm joking all right I didn't necessarily

315have need an answer I was just curious it's I mean we just got I mean unfortunately too I mean literally at the end of the day today Dan just got the uh the numbers at that's closer to 400 000. we kind of already knew we were going to be around 300 000 we're putting together the operating budget we're still thinking about headcount but to Dr Jones's point we know there is going to be some head count impact uh whether it's two full-time people whether it's two part-time people we're still in discussion about but no matter what there's there's head count impact um it's all single-use trays right now so um I I know that the page can't have it but I would recommend putting this on a column about 10 inches to the right of

316the end of this page that's probably 20 70. yeah we got to get one of the map plotter ones that we had on the other day uh so it's a conversation I mean do we want to you know it's a really intense conversation I mean we don't have to uh I think we don't have to there are people who have already reached out to the office um asking about the status of this request that you know just to be very clear um so I think I want to call Cody I think we'll tell them to call Cody and that'll be fine uh no but I think it's just it's something that the board should talk about before the 20th I'd say I would argue that that is what there are there are lines here the

317I know it's unpopular but there are lines here like that that that don't fall in the maintenance requests that are small that I think don't can't be really can't prioritize this year given everything else I think this is one of the I'm all for sustainability this isn't the year to do it to do it I mean it's just not stop the unit renovate the stage there's nothing sustainable about wasting money right I think this is probably five or six lines that I think they could think about is could we do would there be possible to just give us like an email with a quick analysis of custom install ing costs yeah which is the cost of what we spend on the trays I think that would just be helpful to the board we will share

318that via email for conversation before and then and then that can also be posted on board docs because I know a lot of people will be interested in it so we can do that it's not a secret uh we'll we'll share it with the board in advance and it'll it will make sure that we have it on the agenda to talk about on the 20th um but we can also have another budget committee meeting before the 20th might be productive once we kind of hone through a lot of these things I know you know we just love getting together on the budget committee so yeah we had a great time I mean it was very productive you know uh operating is yeah really uh let's get through the 20 of them before we start jumping

319to the operator um can we talk about my suggestion on the high school security project not that I want to be adding things but I would like to hear people's thoughts on my idea if people prefer to just wait it out and go that was interesting hours ago what was your idea again adding 200 000. oh I said 275 I was like going on the 10 number figuring that was like a good night it's as good a number as I could come up with if if there's a general view that that's a good idea we can ask Blaze to include it I think it's thoughtful the argument that we already spent it I mean well no no no because well well we've basically spend our all right or we're saying it to now but but

320again before the budget actually gets voted on we'll know what the number is so we're basically putting this is a true placeholder because we'll know before the BET even though it's so where on this because I didn't even say it's an add-up it's an add-on yeah so we would be adding 270 at least for discussion we should have on here 275 000 as additional funds to the ghs entryway project in next year one time I'd rather ask for more and be able to well I guess I don't know I'd rather I'm supporting your say I I would rather ask for more because we know we needed to do this and be able to return if we don't use it than to start a little you know to be honest it'll just get cut before the

321budget gets voted on it wouldn't even have to be returned because we're going to vote on it it's going to go the BET doesn't vote till the end of March and if the timeline for the project stays as is that project's out to bid by then or maybe maybe not by then but it'll be out to bid but it'll be before the RTM votes in may we would be we would know with certainty so it's up to the group about the number I just made up that number so and it's preferable to an interim I think for you know based on the timing so and it's preferable a selfishly indefinite uh okay so that's all the major stuff I had um opened other questions we can also take questions via email and put together for

322mostly other stuff is some smaller dollar amounts but not less significant I think if we want to take questions via email we can also put together a q a something we could work on with the budget Committee in advance I was going to say we could do the Google Doc like we've done in the past sort of share that around um the only other thing I wanted to point out is the ghs cellular Improvement project I am all in on this having tried to reach my child today I can tell you it does not work and uh it's a rail safety issue so and Mike Mike is reaching out again he did it last year we talked earlier he is going to once again reach out to the major cell carriers and based on the

323volume we have there see if there's any assistance that can be provided in funding or equipment things like that so he's working on that now and we'll have that before the 20th if the if any of these major carriers think there's anything they can do to help us out he did reach out last year I didn't it didn't work but we'll try again so just a quick question since the next time we get this back is the only time people are going to have the opportunity we're gonna have the opportunity to hear from the public on this I know we talked about this at the very start but again I know you're going to push it out in your weekly notice but I think it's you know important for all of us to make sure

324that people are aware that the next time this comes before us we're voting on it so now is the time for our community to share their thoughts with us even ahead of uh public comment at that meeting maybe the PTA Laura you're you're the liaison to PTA Council they should be pushing this out as well don't you think I mean I think so I will make that suggestion because it is so bad and what version I think like if we're gonna send out too I think we make the change on the 4 million we move Riverside to make the change and that's the one I mean after your comments tonight is probably I wouldn't post another version until after like the budget committee maybe meets on it right we have it on the on board

325docs this is the first question Alex already the question to push out is just to comment that if nobody to tell people to give us comments yep so I would hold off on this till we meet again can I ask just one more question yeah um the roofs on um for a guy that's like is that plural um North myanus in 24 25 I know it's not just about to cycle but the next one 2.3 million I mean I have to ask the question didn't we just fix something just the ceilings we didn't get to the roof it was just the ceilings okay so that money is basically going towards the gym route which hasn't been addressed in a while and there may be some abatement issues thank you and I'm gonna make give me

326a motion all right just one I have one advertisement the strategic planning committee meets on Monday the um any comments we'll be reviewing board coming so if any board members have comments we'd appreciate on the draft and appreciate them before Monday's Columbus Day movie no offense it takes no priority of the budget committee thank you we'll talk about it yeah yeah anything else motion to adjourn thank you if I get a second okay all in favor and Miss costume yes okay 7-0 thank you so much good night