001right upon this meaning of the Board of Education to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay I get a motion so moved thank you and that's Miss Downey do I have a second yes Miss costen all in favor of the consent agenda that passes seven zero okay we are going straight into the public hearing I assume you're all here for the Strategic plan as Michael Joseph talked about so um so I don't know where Karen is but we have a lot of people so I want to get started so let's start with our ghs student government yay and this is their inaugural meeting I've had the
002pleasure of meeting them um at XCOM at Greenwich high school but here they are welcome guys good evening chair Stowe Dr Jones a member of the board my name is Mitch Goldstein and I am the student body vice president I truly can express how grateful I am to be speaking tonight almost a month ago the elected officers of student government met at Greninja High to discuss our goals for the year one idea that seems to be brought up repeatedly was the need for an increase in school spirit at Greenwich High School with masks cohorts and Plexiglas dividers the past three years have not been the best for students so this year we've been very busy trying to make our school feel less like a sterile learning environment and more like a warm community firstly two
003weeks ago the office of student activities hosted a freshman social all freshmen were invited to attend the social where they could play carnival games hang out with friends and get to know each other then this past Saturday we started off homecoming week with our homecoming dance once again our Student Center was used to provide students with the opportunity to dance and have fun following the dance we kicked off our homecoming Spirit Week With USA day on Monday and Country versus Country Club day on Tuesday which was surprisingly popular on Wednesday we had senior dress-up day which is always a favorite of the senior class today was pajama day and as we speak the senior class is sponsoring a dodgeball tournament down the road at ghs finally as we head into the homecoming football game we
004will have Cardinal apparel day and a pep rally in the carnival Stadium during school to conclude our homecoming week our varsity football team will play Southington this Saturday in our Stadium this year I'm thrilled to say that we've noticed more kids participating in homecoming events than in years prior and we are excited to see how this increased sense of school community and unity continues to grow throughout the year on the note of school Community this year each class is planning to host at least two events in order to foster a more Unified School environment currently the senior class is planning a movie night and while the specifics are still being worked out we want students to be able to bring blankets and shares and watch a movie on the field with their friends the other
005classes events are still in the works and I will have more information on their events next month to conclude I want to talk about my personal goals as student body vice president for the year to do that I thought I would be best to start from the beginning of the year a few weeks ago when I walked into the school I was thrilled that almost all the negative reminders of the pandemic have been removed well I was happy about this I knew that in my position I had been given the responsibility to make sure the current ghs environment feels more similar to the one that existed prior to the pandemic so this year I hope to make the ghs community a more spirited inviting one and I'm thrilled to have given this opportunity and over
006the coming year I'm eager to work with the Board of Education ghs faculty and the student body to make our school a more vibrant place on behalf of my peers I want to thank the board for the opportunity to speak tonight and now it is my honor to pass the mic over to our student body president Isabella good evening chairman Stowe I'm a little short one second good evening chairman Stowe Dr Jones and members of the board and meeting attendees a lot of us today my name is Isabella Giga and I am proud to announce that I will be serving Greenwich high school as this year's student body president Mitch and I are so grateful to be speaking for all of you today as the spokespeople of our beloved Greenwich high school as we continue
007to move away from the dreaded covid dare I say the name I am finally relieved that we are approaching a sense of normalcy in this coming year Mitch and I will work alongside XCOM to unite our student Community after two years of Google meets one-way corridors plastic dividers and Mass initiatives fostering school spirit through Student Activities will be critical in supporting our school norms and traditions that we hold so dear this year is set the goal of this year is to set new presidents for future classes this is the year we establish Greenwich high school as the Beating Heart of our community this is the year we dreamed of prior to covid and this is the year for Everlasting change similar to last year Student Government will utilize classroom reps from each advisor base in
008a fresher fashion and we will launch a new system called subcommittees dependent on issue-based conflicts we see within the school and they will be related to areas such as Food Services school spirit Communications and flex time given this new system I am optimistic that student Representatives will be able to dive into Community issues and events and participate in more school policy making issues and truly have their voices heard this will promote targeted change within our school and widen our scope for change sorry didn't commit subcommittees will allow students to participate in what they believe needs to be addressed and provide the opportunity to make a real impact within our educational environments in collaboration with students Mitch and I will continue to work to administer any to with the administration to address any student concerns and
009set forth leadership that listens to their constituents beyond that I aim to continue initiatives from my previous years such as fundraising reimagining the Student Center midterm final policies and enhancing Food Services with the supportive staff with our supportive staff advisor Mr silkman back there the support from our administration of course and the wonderful wonderful Board of Education I am optimistic for the future we have in store I am so excited for the year to come and Beyond ecstatic to see what the future brings thank you so much and look forward to speaking with you every month at the Board of Education meeting thank you thank you both and welcome again it's great having you okay next up we will hear from Gea will it's okay I got this i got this all right well good
010evening board members our Greenwich parent Community students GA members and everyone watching online my name is Lillian Perrone proud president of our over nine oh thank you um over 900 Gea members I first like to thank my negotiations team for many hours of hard work that they put forth in the negotiation process Robin Chino Chuck Costello Chrissy distel Leanne Hinkle Kevin kroyce Melissa Marquette Michelle giulanda Rosa Brian Wallach and David Ong and Juan rcea unicever rep I would also like to thank our Board of Ed negotiations chair Joe Kelly Kathleen Stowe Christina Downey Dr Jones Dr bud I believe we negotiated a fair contract for both sides I want to say thank you for your hard work um I anticipate that the board will vote tonight to move the process forward as well as the
011RTM and bet since we were all in the same room and all sat at the same negotiations table to reach this Fair contract thank you all um for participating in this process I like to address a few items that are on the agenda tonight uh two of them uh School climate survey and GPS strategic School plan and update first of all I noticed um our parents had over 75 percent of positive responses in all four areas including homeschool connection and a strategic metric welcoming partners and Children's Learning adequate opportunities for me to express my concerns and opinions how confident are your ability to support your child's learning homeschool connections composite next students feel they are valued members of the school Community 58 percent staff and learning environment 54 now hold on to that that thought
012in those numbers I want to move into this strategic plan that was from the survey so on a strategic plan the mission of Greenwich public schools to educate all students the highest level academic achievement to enable them to reach and expand their potential to prepare them for productive responsible ethical creative and compassionate members of society I want to focus on goal four increase family and Community the engagement um on four I see that from 2022 to 2007 we start with the annual parent conferences and we end up with two Pre-K for the high school my question is this I'm not arguing the powerful effect of Community connections with our parents but from reading the statistics and the data that was in that chart where parent satisfaction is close over 75 percent almost 80 percent while
013our students and staff are 58 and 54 respectively instead of adding two conferences K-12 with parents which will add more to the teacher's play and workload shouldn't we be focusing on the low student and staff results as our top priority goal seven increase positive working environment so uh cabinet members and GPS Administration team recognizes that a robust and supportive School climate and culture are essential to the success of our students and schools gdps leaders prioritize the empowerment and professional growth of all employees totally agree with that strategy five how will GPS accomplish this goal increase administrator and coordinator support around teacher academic freedom and resource vetting talk a little bit about the vetting rubric which is a draft and process GE knows that this is new District initiative and we are still learning about it
014as it is in draft stages we know this because we met with Dr Jones and the cabinet members this week to discuss its implementation the district has said there is a first draft an involving document Gea has requested that going forward we must have a seat at the table and allow teacher feedback to be part of the process that will be we will be in the trenches actually using the rubric bottom line our teachers are outstanding professionals highly qualified individuals with multiple degrees a majority have years of experience there are Educators who have always put their students first and they make students well-being their top priority our teachers want to give a wide range of District approved resources and curriculum they want to know that everything they put in front of the students is vetted
015and trusted resource academic freedom is not teaching whatever you want it is highly qualified professionals using their expertise to make decisions about which trusted approved resources and lessons work best for the students in their class our gesh staff are specialists in their area of expertise not generalists Gea looks forward to learning more about the vetting committee and their timeline and Effectiveness as well as ensuring teachers are receiving adequate time in their planning period to incorporate these new steps in closing I have no idea what will be coming out in in the comments tonight but I do want to say on behalf of Gea we've been through we everybody in the community teachers administrators we've been through this together we've stuck together things weren't perfect but we worked it out we were in school and we
016have a steady administrative team and we would like to continue working with our administrative team we've built and collaborated a strong relationship with Dr Jones we've hired some new exciting principals the teachers love their principles well most of them foreign and it's important for us to have collaboration and work together on this because we are here this is about our students and what's best for them and they need us we need to catch up on what they're missing and they're learning we need to help them with Stress and Anxiety and we need to put them first and do what is best for them thank you to the board thank you Dr Jones and thank you to everyone thanks will um up snacks PTA Council good evening Dr Jones chair Stowe Board of Education members I'm
017Francis winobe mom of three GPS kids and the 2022-2023 president of PTA Council Greenwich it's an umbrella organization representing the 15 Greenwich public school ptas and their families I'm honored to speak tonight and remind everyone to please join their school PTA or in my case three ptas entering tonight's Board of Education meeting p-tech takes note of the rallies being held outside as a non-partisan non-political non-profit organization p-tac's mission is to coordinate communicate and Advocate across the district for our students with our teachers administrators and parents Greenwich public schools are for decades and continuing to this day high performing High achieving highly ranked and highly respected relative to other school districts in the nation in Connecticut and in nearby New York communities these high standards and achievements are the result of the talent skills and professionalism
018of all the dedicated educational Professionals in the Greenwich public schools in Partnership we thank honor and support our GPS team who do the hard work every day especially as we turn the corner beyond the pandemic turning to tonight's Hot Topics PTA would like PTAC would like the Board of Education and School administration to a continue to make up the pandemic loss and ensure our students continue to achieve and Advance academically we're looking forward to hearing tonight's strategic Plan update B continue to work with Greenwich public Greenwich Police Chief heavy who's here tonight to ensure our students Safety and Security and find a solution to have on-site presence all day every day C keep focus on ensuring our kids get bust to and from school and sports safely and on time and yes I'm one of
019those families on the tardy part of town that's bus 25 and all drivers please remember to stop at least 10 feet away from a school bus and do not proceed until the bus has retracted the stop arm and deactivated the red flashing lights for our kids do not pass school buses and D keep up the increased family communication from The District in each school with some parents never having seen the inside of a school building or meeting their teacher in person The increased communication via phone emails more and even video message is so important to build back our school community we believe these Basics school buses safety security Scholastic achievement along with capital projects and the Strategic plan are what the Boe should continue to laser focus on without distraction and as importantly with the
020new school year upon us we welcome new beginnings new friendships new connections and new ideas Bienvenidos Bienvenu welcome to the 100 plus new GPS teachers welcome to the new ghs student body presidents falche to the new 9th graders Ben vinda to the new sixth graders ahla Masala to the new kindergarteners benvenuta to the new preschoolers you got this let's have a great year of learning in closing please join our October 7th PTAC Public Presentation with doctors boy to support National bullying awareness month and the October 25th Mark bracket presentation with our p-tech Di AI which are p-tech di committee will also mention and for those celebrating Shana toga thank you Francis okay we will now start our public comment um as a reminder everyone gets three minutes we would like to hear from the entire
021list in the first hour if that's possible so we'll say the name the next person so they can sort of be on deck keep it moving we'd also appreciate everyone respecting the time Karen will give you a minute warning moving from speaker to speaker without delay and we'd appreciate of course everyone being respectful as we um as we are to you so um with that let's get started um Dana Franks followed by Anna kostovic foreign several things have recently come to light that are very concerning for me as a parent I have three boys under the age of eight and I would like to be home right now reading them all bedtime stories but my concern with what is happening in our school district has brought me here tonight instead I would like to start
022by expressing my sincere gratitude to our North Street School teachers and leaderships who have been nothing but wonderful to my children last year my oldest son got sick at school and his teacher rubbed his back while he threw up at recess she treated him with love and compassion and I couldn't have asked for a more caring person to spend the days teaching my son she helped him with his reading comprehension and encouraged him to ask important questions about what he read the last thing I want to do is take away from the amazing GPS teachers who truly do the job they were hired to do care for our children and nurture their growing brains I have nothing but respect and love for the teachers who have remained focused and professional during these difficult times where
023the country is divided on nearly every possible topic with that said we are all well aware of the viral video of the Costco assistant principle admitting to hiring teachers with his own political bias this video is unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg parents have been speaking up for the last two years about inappropriate content in the classrooms and instead of taking those concerns seriously and considering ways to stop it these parents were gaslit and dismissed again and again chairwoman Stowe last week you were quoted in the Greenwich times saying the Board of Education operates in a bipartisan Manner and our focus and responsibility is the education of our students we do not get involved in any political group pushing an agenda I guess it's election season end quote please understand parents want a bipartisan
024education you are saying the Boe operates in a bipartisan manner but there is now clear evidence that some teachers have been pushing political agendas in their classroom without consequence you guess it's election season I promise you after November these concerns will not go away we now have the results of the Freedom of Information Act requests and we have seen the politically charged material that has been taught for the last few years we are simply asking for controversial political topics to be left out of the classroom many topics do Merit discussion in older grades but they must be approached in a balanced manner with open discussion and debate without anyone fearing to express their point of view none of us want to micromanage our children's teachers I have always put my full trust into our teachers
02530 seconds I want to continue to do that we want our kids to be kids this is not an extremist concept I sincerely hope that these issues can be addressed quickly and with full transparency to restore the trust in the Boe operations please don't just say the right thing do the right thing thank you thank you very much Anna kosovic followed by Joseph Solari sorry we'd like to keep on moving so everyone get going so please hold your applause if possible go ahead Anna Then followed by Joseph Solari good evening my name is Anna kostovic and I'm a parent to three children in our Greenwich Public Schools I also grew up here and attended Greenwich K-12 public and private schools I find myself over the past few years doing what my parents never felt the
026need to have to do and that is to attend and listen to every single Board of Ed meeting and it's sad that I say this because I'm doing it as a concerned parent Dr Jones we have been told by you time and time again that parents have full transparency in any form of indoctrination has no place at GPS yet what came out of the Costco assistant principles mouth showed Prejudice discrimination and political and religious bias it's shocking and intolerable this high-ranking educator said that he can't get past the parents because we the parents shape our kids his solution trying to mitigate the influence we have on our own children these are the people that are putting Progressive ideology before education and the love of our youth these Early Educational years are a highly impressionable point
027in our kids lives and I believe that most teachers devote their time and work tirelessly to teach our kids to be free thinkers and we are grateful to every single one of them we love our schools we love our teachers I've been blessed to have some of the most compassionate and caring teachers Challenge and support my kids in Old Greenwich School unfortunately Mr Boland isn't the only educator in our school system that is creating a disservice to our kids there are more of them and we want them out of our schools the Board of Ed should instruct School administrators to remove any instructional material that has not been reviewed and approved by majority vote by the Boe a staggering statistic more than 50 percent of Connecticut school children are not at grade level expectations in
028English and math our kids are our future and we are neglecting to teach them we need to go back to basics and get rid of wasting time on politics sexually explicit material gender and race I don't care what are teachers ideologies and political beliefs are as long as they're teaching them Reading Writing and arithmetic our pup our public education system is being hijacked all across the country but we the parents are here to stop this madness we will not stay silent until we are assured that we can entrust you to make sure that our children are free to develop their own moral compasses thank you thank you very much Joseph Solari followed by Jackie Homan can we keep it moving Joseph are you here are you online oh okay Joseph Solari followed by Jackie Homan
029good evening Board of Education you know what you're supposed to do tonight which is do the right thing I'm seeding my time and this Kimberly fiorello um thank you very much thank you Joe I'm state representative Kimberly fiorello thank you for your time um when I came to the United States I was in the ESL in a public school system I love the public school system I'm a product of that and um but the public school system I went to was focused on core knowledge thank you is it okay um I serve on the education committee up in Hartford and what I want folks to know is that there is a trend that is going away from recognizing parental rights and it's coming up from Hartford there were bills in education committee as well as
030in the insurance committee that allows outside adults to bypass the role and the importance of notifying parents this you are the body that is closest to the parents here I urge you to listen to the needs of these parents because they're there is a great desire for these folks to have to be heard the things that came out of that video that were most disturbing is that the assistant principal mentioned that the agenda is subtle that they serve the child not the parents and for him to suggest that for him to admit that actually his ability to get his agenda through is harder because the parents are on to him the refusal of Hartford to take on a parental rights bill which I proposed is indicative of how important your role is as the Board
031of Ed to protect the rights of these parents the school serves the parents it is in the Civil Society it is the role of the parents we must see the parents as a primary decision makers for our children and I I thank you for your time thank you thanks very much uh next up Jackie Homan followed by Peter share good evening Board of Education members and Dr Jones as you know I've been coming to these meetings for the last year and a half asking you to stop using profanity lace sexually explicit and divisive racial content inside our schools I've asked you to stop teaching unapproved and therefore illegal curriculum I've asked you to be honest about the white fragility training that you conducted with administrators I've been gaslighted and mocked by liberal parents the local
032press and even the previous chairman of this board for making these allegations but after 10 months of waiting I've backed up my allegations with the results of a number of Freedom of Information Act requests I found emails that show how you sidestep the required Board of Education approval process to add the controversial ruler program I learned about how you accepted gifts you accepted gifts from radical third-party organizations that are attempting to undermine the morality of our children now we have this video from Project Veritas that seems to corroborate the things that I've been saying and more potentially revealing systemic discrimination in the hiring practices even though some have chosen to attack the messenger and the editing of the video the assistant principal still made all of these allegations in his own words and like it
033or not project Veritas hasn't lost any court cases over editing frankly I don't understand how you could let it get this bad I don't understand how you can be in violation of so many of your own policies and procedures and not be doing anything visibly to rectify the situation I don't understand how we have so many scandals in this district and we still have the same leadership in place if this was Corporate America the leadership would be held accountable especially since this culture appears to be pervasive and driven from the top down sadly our schools have become way too politicized we've allowed ideology to replace fact in certain classes we've allowed emotions to replace academics in our schools parents are here tonight because we love our teachers and we want to support our schools we
034want to see a focus on excellent academics we want politics free schools we want a high quality education for our children not an indoctrination I hope you take action tonight you need to put the superintendent and the deputy superintendent on leave while you conduct and 30 seconds independent district-wide investigation of all of the allegations you need to immediately stop using all the unapproved curriculum and you need to start following your own policies and procedures and if you aren't courageous enough to take these steps yourselves then perhaps you should consider resigning from the board so that others can step up and do the hard work for you thank you very much next up Peter share followed by Cara Philbin Peter is he here or is he online Peter's here online uh he can he's ready to
035talk is Peter online yeah can you hear me yep go ahead Peter okay uh good evening Board of Ed members um I know you're sitting tonight in a difficult meeting I know that many of you may have uh personal or political animosities against me so therefore you may not be listening to what I'm saying but I hope that tonight you'll set those aside and maybe consider or take in what I'm about to tell you when I joined the board in 2009 I realized that I had inherited a legacy of many people who had come before me who had built the amazing school system that Greenwich Public Schools is has been and is today uh you have a responsibility the same as I did at that time to be Trustees of this Legacy the school system
036is in a state of Crisis not because of the revelations of Mr Bolin and his hiring practices although incredibly troubling as they are and I'm certain you will conduct a complete investigation of his specific acts and I understand and I'm probably pretty certain by now you've received advice from Council that you need to properly handle yourselves in a way there so that his rights are protected as an employee but also the rights of the board are protected I want to talk to you though more about the issue that is much more troubling if you listen carefully to what Mr Bolin says and he explains why he was doing what he was doing that is far and away an existential threat to our school system he made clear that his purpose was and the purpose of
037hiring teachers in this way would be that so they could subtly send messages of a political nature to cultivate students to have a particular political point of view when they leave the Greenwich school system that's an incredibly uh troubling uh development unfortunately you as board members have had indicators even when I was on the board that this was happening I can think about the teaching of unapproved curriculum particularly the white privilege checklist at Western Middle School you were also aware of it with the miseducation of the American boy being taught at Greenwich high school and there are many others as 40 seconds we knew this was happening you must protect the school system and you must separate yourself from the employees and you must conduct a comprehensive investigation so that the system can be brought
038back into pop balance and compliance with your existing policies I hope you will take this advice on board thank you very much Peter uh Cara Philbin followed by Gail lauritzen hi I'm speaking as a parent for the per first for the past year and a half I've been trying to warn people and it took a PV video to prove it true the GPS leadership District Gea Boe PTAC the Greenwich Alliance and League of Women Voters are all working together engaging in discriminatory practices politicizing our schools over sexualizing our children and embedding transformative SEL the new SEL into our core academics you are pushing all of this but you are not helping instead you are harming our children and families I know because at Western in an attempt to teach Suicide Prevention instead they taught kids
039to go into their parents medicine cabinet and take too many pills and how to find the veins in your wrists in their wrists these programs thought to be helping children have morphed into misguided twisted versions of their original Self it's not a surprise that suicide rates are up for 18 and under given what kids are learning in these misguided programs when parents email the school to have the SEL curriculum sent home the principal replies with legalese that parents can't receive Second Step proprietary materials to be utilized with students this curriculum does not go home but is handed out and collected I gave a Boe speech if you can't or won't send Learning Materials home don't teach it shame on the Boe for not doing their job to review and approve curriculum and if Administration respected
040families and kids you wouldn't sign a contract preventing curriculum from being sent home our families and children deserve better our students are underperforming despite being the top funded District in Connecticut because a poor District Boe and town leadership in a broken system soon our Boe will be rubber stamping cave State policies my advice to parents for your older kids start a countdown you're almost out for your younger kids don't stick around for the sports and AP classes your child's health and well-being are more important choose an education for your child that inspires of Love of learning out School homeschooler find an independent school that partners with parents um know that most of the private and prep schools have also taken the contain to covetesser funding and are pushing transformative SEL and divisive Dei over teaching
041personal agency Kimberly fiorello who spoke a year ago at a Boe meeting encouraging parents to be vigilant 30 seconds and works tirelessly to educate our community hosted Ian Rowe an immigrant Fair advisor and Harvard MBA who believes children should be empowered to develop agency agency is the force of one's Free Will Guided by moral discernment according to Roe developing agency is the alternative to the debilitating blame the system and blame the victim narratives it transcends our political difference and beckons all who dare to Envision lives Unshackled by present realities time thank you cara uh Gail lordson followed by Amy moose good evening when you do surveys is that oh okay when you do surveys collecting families personal data to determine the climate in the public schools do you ask how they feel about teachers who
042are hand-picked adherents to the blind group think make no mistake the climate within the walls of our schools is a direct reflection of the climate out in the community our community is aware of the comments Mr Boland made freely to an undercover journalist he does not represent and has damaged our town at a minimum a public vote should be taken to make his leave unpaid effective immediately Mr Boland brought to light a practice of indoctrination that fundamentally does not belong in schools and which is not surprising to many who have remarked On It In This Very Room for the past two years board members it is time to open your ears ignoring your constituents has resulted in town-wide embarrassment I dare say this is not Who We Are board members you may be tempted to
043believe it's enough to release a statement that discrimination and political indoctrination are not our policy we've reached a point where we need assurances we need to see that enforceable action is taken to require our teachers to teach fundamentals they are not paid to fill our children's heads with personal ideology and in and the content of our school's curriculum must be carefully scrutinized all controversial racist sexualized and frivolous content must be replaced with academics with nearly 60 percent of our students performing below grade level the status quo is unacceptable this is a wake-up call to parents who think Dr Jones is doing a good job in some ways she is but in light of record poor student performance and a nationwide administrative embarrassment How can any thinking person just accept all is okay our job is
044not to protect Dr Jones to ensure she does things she says she's doing she must be held accountable for her actions multiple instances of Rogue infractions in the last 18 months are not acceptable 37 of those infractions is evidence enough that all is not okay we cannot accept words alone only a truly independent unbiased uncompromised investigation will be acceptable finally I want to acknowledge the many excellent teachers in this District who do wonderful things for our children on a daily basis their efforts are made more difficult by certain disgraceful people among us parents please remember to give those teachers a lot of love daily thank you very much next up Amy Bruce Paula by Alyssa Vanos hello Dr Jones excuse me I'm Board of Ed members we are Alyssa Vanos and Emmy moose co-chairs of
045the PTAC diversity equity and inclusion committee we were initially introduced last year as a special committee but were voted in later this year later in the year as a standing committee we are excited to work with you all all of the PTAC the PTA committees the first select men's diversity committee Jomo the YWCA and other Greenwich Community organizations our mission has not changed our we are committed to fostering an overall sense of belonging within the GPS Community by intentionally building relationships and inviting diverse perspectives the Dei committee will partner with local ptas to create programs initiatives and events that allow for Meaningful conversations and lead to clear actions for creating truly include a truly inclusive environment the Dei committee will collaborate with GPS ptas to find the most effective ways to partner with all families
046to help every student reach their full potential this month we launched launched the PTAC Dei website the Greenwich culture Collective where we will offer content that celebrates our Multicultural Community we've shared content with the schools for Hispanic Heritage Month with options for activities and events to participate in and age-appropriate book selection selections that have been co-curated with the parrot Library going forward we will look we will update book collections that are relevant to the Heritage months and in hopes that all of our parents teachers and students can learn more about each other and be more aware of how our commonalities and differences unite us and finally we will add we will add any events in and around Fairfield County that might bring more of us together in celebration and understanding of different cultures this information
047will be shared through each of the local PTA School newsletters over the first three months of this school year our Focus will be on ensuring we have reps at every school partnering with p-tax curriculum enrichment committee to work toward more diverse curriculum-based opportunities working with all Dei reps to add content to morning announcements and collaborating with local organizations in Greenwich around diversity initiatives with all for all GPS students we will keep you all updated about other initiatives and longer term goals at each meeting although we are very optimistic about the steady impact we can have through our school reps greater impact to our curriculum and school communities can truly only happen with collaboration from the Board of Education and administration we appreciate the pushing ahead with new and diverse experiences in our current climate can
048be challenging but for the long-term benefit of our children to become adults in a multicultural world we implore a more active approach from the be Boe and administration as we stated at previous Boe meetings we were very excited that GPS have been chosen to receive a gift from common circles show a foundation for dimensions and testimony a million dollar artificial intelligence installation that was well aligned with our curriculum on the Holocaust and genocide ultimately the barriers that common circles encountered in Greenwich resulted in the organization choosing to partner solely with a White Plains School District instead who widely embraced this opportunity across learning disciplines as seen recently there are a multitude of areas for GPS in the town of Greenwich to focus diversity equity and inclusion efforts we are excited to hear how the New
049state-manded Black and Latino studies class is doing at ghs we are thrilled that Connecticut continues to be a leader in diversifying its education by becoming the first state to pass a state-funded mandate to teach Asian American and Pacific Islander history in public schools at all levels this requirement is part of a bill Governor Lamont signed into law in May after it passed near unanimously in the Senate and with overwhelming bipartisan support in the house as the I we were we have been they signed up separately please continue requirement will take effect in 2025 we are eager to hear how GPS is going to move ahead in its development we continue to encourage diverse and transparent hiring practices in order to increase representation across all Races religions cultures gender and sexual orientation sure to advance educational
050equity and consistency across GPS we encourage the district to strengthen assured experiences in all schools we can further combat socioeconomic based disparity in our children's education by formulating strategies to incorporate more curriculum enrichment across the board regardless of individual School PTA budgets we incur continue to encourage the Board of Education to increase accessibility to your meetings these meetings are important and affect all families with and without hearing sight and language needs the ability to provide in-person resources would be so beneficial of note we will highlight for those of you who don't know that recorded Boe meetings are placed on YouTube with the option of assessing accessing a multitude of languages thank you for the opportunity to speak we encourage you all to attend Mark brackett's presentation on ruler and the importance of emotional intelligence on
051Tuesday October 5th we hope we hope you all explore and celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month for those of you celebrating Rosh Hashanah next week we wish you all a sweet and happy New Year as a parent I would like to use the rest of my time to say that we support our 30 seconds superintendent and the administration and that we hope that everybody in this room will use the same respect we have used to listen to you speak that you have have poorly done listening to us thank you thanks very much next up Janet McMahon followed by Jamie Waters good evening my name is Janet McMahon and I'm speak tonight as a pair of two children in Greenwich Public Schools I'm very pleased to hear the positive results of the school climate survey hearing that almost
05260 percent of students in grades 3 through 12 feel that school is interesting useful and important up from 55 last year is commendable similarly 84 percent of parents felt they were welcomed Partners in their child's learning and 79 percent of parents felt there were adequate opportunities to express concerns and opinions about important issues impacting their child these are incredible metrics that the GPS Administration and staff should be proud of and the GPS Community should be celebrating instead there was an ugly partisan rally outside attended by a vocal few who continued to terrorize our teachers politicize our schools polarize parents and derail our school board meetings during the past eight years my kids have been in Greenwich Public School System we've been happy with the academic rigor of the curriculum taught by scores of wonderful teachers
053I consider myself an active participant in my children's education and never once have I suspected or experienced any indoctrination By Any teacher or administrator neither have I encountered anything remotely close to CRT or any of the political propaganda that these same protesters allege at every single board meeting excuse me it should surprise no one but the vast majority of this vocal group does not even have kids in the GPS and or have any kids at all indeed of the 67 Republicans who signed this letter calling to cancel Dr Jones and Dr carabillo less than a quarter actually have children in our schools that said GPS administrators and Educators we see you and we appreciate you while Mr bolin's comments were reprehensible and inappropriate we know that he is an outlier we know that the vast
054majority of you are selfless so excuse me our selfless empathetic Souls who sometimes put our own children before yourselves and your own families we know how thankless your job is most days your lesson plans are scrutinized every book you assign every email you send is over analyzed it sucks the joy out of teaching and maybe even your spirit sometimes I know it's difficult but hang in there keep teaching and continue to inspire guide and motivate our children Dr Jones and Dr carabillo the overwhelming majority of Greenwich Public School parents stands with you I speak for many when I say that you are doing an excellent job and have weathered so many crises with courage Grace and wisdom it's a shame that not even two years ago those angry few who praised you for allowing our
055children to return to school in person when most country schools around the country were still in lockdown do not listen to the noise continue to do the good work you've been doing and if you ever doubt yourself just look at this 30 seconds School climate survey some of us remember what it was like years ago when we had a revolving door of superintendents thank you for bringing back stability and continuity to the GPS leadership we need you and we're much better off with you thank you thank you very much next up James Waters followed by Lorelei o'hagen I'm going to ask that everyone please stays quiet during speeches that's we do that as a board and we expect the same um level of decorum and this otherwise we will have to ask you to go
056thank you go ahead James followed by Lorelei o'hagen excuse me excuse me if you cannot be respectful please leave okay excuse me I I will I will there are police here I will ask you to leave if you continue and they will escort you out so I'm going to ask we've kept it together please be respectful all right I think you can go James please go followed by Lorelei ohagan thank you good evening Madam chair Dr Jones members of the Board of Ed I'm James Waters North Miami's parent and an Eastern parent now member of the RTM and a member of the Old Greenwich School building committee tonight I speak for myself with inputs from constituents across town you face big decisions this year and we thank you for your service these have been Rocky
057times and we're all thankful for our great teachers administrators and your steady leadership as I've gathered input parents repeatedly mentioned four topics they are addressing learning loss making progress on critical School capital projects enhanced school security and completing the investigation and taking action on the hidden camera video coveted learning losses affecting schools Across the Nation including Greenwich I'm pleased Greenwich is doing far better than most but we must continue to do more we shouldn't be content with recovery we want our students to accelerate on the progress we've made on academic excellence and helping our kids become great citizens we'll only get there with steady leadership a surprising number of residents are engaged on school infrastructure people are tired of crumbling schools the rebuilding of central is a top priority and I encourage you to carefully
058consider the important need to renovate ogs and JC make long overdue Ada improvements and complete Cardinal field Phase 2 the ghs track the Western fields and cellular service at ghs please work with the bet in advance of approving the FY 24 capital budget request let's learn from the path from the past and work to create a path I'd like to see us avoid controversy through constructive and early dialogue with a potential Capital request of 130 million dollars there will be trade-offs we'll only get there with steady leadership third thank you for taking action on school security in recent weeks I was proud to support you in the RTM where all but six members voted yes I hope you'll complete the conversation on campus monitors and get those in place parents were happy for approval of
059police patrols and security Hardware but don't want safety monitors kicked down the road we'll only get there with steady leadership finally please complete a thorough investigation into the hidden camera video and take action I don't think anyone here supports indoctrination of our kids or hiring discrimination with a number of ongoing investigations your provision of due process transport parent reporting of the findings and appropriate action are critical to putting this disgusting event behind us I thank Dr Jones for taking on yet another difficult but important and want to convey my trust in this board's judgment which have been reasonably earned over the last few years please don't let politics sway your judgment and creep further into and around our schools it's hurting everyone including our teachers and kids let's just do the right thing well everyone
060wants their agenda first at the expense of others please stay focused and keep moving forward doing the opposite hurts our schools our kids and our town we are only going to get there with steady leadership thank you very much Lola o'hagen followed by Amanda Dombrowski is Lorelei here is she online nice thank you I don't see her online do you Lorelei ohagan you don't see her here okay no that's okay we will skip her um Amanda Dombrowski followed by David Lancaster so you see either online sorry Amanda Dombrowski um I'm looking um I don't how about um David Lancaster thank you that's is that David yeah okay if we see the other two pop up we can come back but thank you go ahead David yep thank you very much thank you very much um
061my name is Dave Lancaster I'm a member of the RTM but tonight I'm speaking solely as a private citizen I have lived in Greenwich all my life and attended Greenwich schools Greenwich schools have always enjoyed an excellent reputation unfortunately this is rapidly changing a growing number of parents are getting wise to unauthorized curricula agenda-based content and the lack of transparency and gaslighting from school leadership combine this with dropping academic scores the highest cost per student in the state and parents are increasingly unhappy the project Veritas video validated what many parents in this town have been saying about indoctrination in our schools with an added revelation of bigotry and its hiring processes not only is discrimination in hiring a crime but guess what add this to more bad press about investigations and lawsuits and Greenwich residents
062are embarrassed and fed up with the school what their schools are being portrayed in the news it's time for the be to deal with the situation by doing the following number one enforce existing town and state laws regarding hiring number two approve all curriculum as required by your own be policy number three develop a culture of transparency great schools have nothing to hide or expunge all expunge all agendas from the schools no matter how clever or their subtlety is and their camouflage including scl five get back to basics of Reading Writing and arithmetic so our children can get the academic education they deserve this is not a Democrat nor a republican issue the demand for accountability is growing and is coming from an increasingly broader range of political viewpoints a poll this month in the
063New York Times from Siena College revealed that 70 percent of its respondents opposed the inclusion of agendas in Illinois elementary education and a solid majority oppose it in middle school and it was equally divided among parties these issues are not going to disappear by labeling people who speak out against us as Fringe or by hiding the truth and hoping the problems will go away true academic learning is almost entirely a result of great teachers which we have of all ages and backgrounds and a substantive curriculum devoid of all agendas I know politicians especially some in my own party like to avoid these cultural issues and stick to economics but if these cultural issues are not addressed now they will only get 30 seconds to the point where repairing Town school and Boe reputation reputations may
064not be possible and the economic life of its citizens will be negatively impacted this is the time for real leadership and courage do what's right for both Greenwich students in the town fix this mess finally or step aside and let someone else do it thank you thank you very much next up Katie you followed by Kathleen Brady Katie you and then Kathleen Brady Gareth Katie yep there you are okay and then Kathleen Brady foreign just a little bit of a heads up it's sometimes hard to hear in the back when the names are being read so I'm sorry for being late I actually didn't hear that okay good evening members of the board Dr Jones and others tonight I would like to address the consideration of security monitors at the elementary and middle school level
065while I'm frankly glad to see the passage of funding to address security at our schools I am concerned about the two companies that are currently under consideration as security monitors in our schools I would like to draw attention to the fact that at least one of the security companies only requires that security monitors have the equivalent of a GED in order to be a security monitor as a long-standing parent in this District I recall when there were questions about adding sros at the high school while I generally have found them to be a positive addition to the overall security at the high school I feel that it is a mistake to not consider the significant differences between high school students and elementary and middle school kids I'm sure that any teacher here today will tell
066you that elementary school kids can be impulsive sometimes a bit overactive overactive and boisterous teachers at elementary schools understand that in many ways this is their first time learning about important behaviors norms and protocols and I'm sure that Middle School teachers will add to that the natural changes that occur with middle school kids behaviorally hormonally I'll leave it at that add to the fact that our teachers have received training to understand the needs of all students including those with IEPs and behavior plans and as Educators they are coming from a place of wanting to educate and engage with their kids should we assume that this will be exactly the same starting point for monitors and can we assume that this will be the case if there isn't adequate training and a baseline educational level in
067summary I would like there to be consideration of this while I understand The Importance of Being fiscally prudent I think it is just as important that our district partners with the company that understands and is familiar working with a wide range of kids I hate to mention this but as we've seen with our recent issues occurring with our new cost savings with the bus Partners sometimes you get what you pay for thank you for your time thank you very much next up Kathleen Brady followed by George chiropa members of the board and Dr Jones my name is Kathy Brady I'm here today as a GPS parent to thank the board and Dr Jones for the dedication and commitment the first time I met Dr Jones was early Entertainer when she came to the first church
068in Old Greenwich to listen and address parent concerns regarding special education the meeting went on for hours as various parents talk of their concerns while everyone was seated Dr Jones stood for the duration in heels and a suit I might add taking notes and listening to all I don't recall any other administrator reaching out to the community in this manner I tell the story because I believe that this is a small example of the work that Dr Jones has done to understand and serve the school district and most importantly the children what I have seen is a superintendent who operates with Integrity race and a can-do attitude she has been the superintendent for three years during which she has successfully navigated a pandemic opening the schools and providing badly needed in-person education I don't think
069I need to remind people that other districts adjacent to ours were not successful in this endeavor she runs the school district with 15 schools 8 600 students and thousands thousands of employees prior to her arrival we had over 13 superintendents in over 20 years each time progress was made a superintendent would leave and we would start again needless to say the constant turnover was not productive to long-term planning and she has been a strong and stabilizing Force the current investigation regarding the Cos Cob vice principal is obviously necessary and important and we used to say it was shocking I want to thank the board for their service and asked the board members to let the investigation play out have all the answers get all the facts don't shoot first and ask questions later now is
070the time to show support for the whole of the student body for Dr Jones and Dr Cabella as well to operate in the best interest of all not just the noisiest thank you thanks very much next up George chalupa followed by Cara Mendelssohn is George here I don't see him online no is that you George no no you're just a kid trying to leave okay um so I see Cara Mendelson online so let's go to let's call her up then sorry and then nerlin Pearson after that Miss Mendelson you uh can unmute and speak please good evening Board of Education my name is Karen mendelsohn and I have four kids in Greenwich Public Schools two are going to try one at Eastern and one at North Miami my husband and I also grew up in
071Greenwich and attended public schools here I am a PTA president and I'm speaking tonight as an individual I am here to express my total gratitude for our schools and the work their teachers administrators and coaches do every day it's impressive my kids are learning amazing things in a supportive and challenging environment they love going to school that's all I can ask for thank you to Tony for your leadership thank you to our administrators and thank you to our teachers thank you Cara next up nerlin Pearson followed by Jennifer koutai is nurlin here or is she online let me look one second um I thought I thought I saw her here but no Merlin Pearson no okay then going next Jennifer koutai followed by Jill Overlander raise your hand if you're online I'm looking for a
072shoe or Jennifer could die hi I'm here go ahead Jennifer um sorry I was on mute um my name is Jennifer koutai and I'm one of the parents who has spent the last five years speaking at Board of Education meetings on the subject of special education as a result of my outspokenness my children were retaliated against and there were many false statements made about myself my husband and my children I am also one of the parents who signed a 10-4b complaint I spoke at almost every bet meeting and I was one of many who lobbied hard for an outside independent evaluation on the practices of special education across Greenwich Public Schools and we were successful in our quest for both an outside audit independent and more importantly for systemic change but the one constant was
073that we stayed at the table with Dr Jones we may have been on opposite sides but like any good negotiation you must be at the table with leadership to effectuate change I'm here tonight to say that if you judge simply by our actions and the progress we have made in special education in this district and look at the Rogue Personnel who are no longer here you will see that being at the table with Dr Jones is Paramount to positive change parents who are here tonight speaking out against Dr Jones ask yourselves if you have ever considered sitting down privately at the table with our superintendent of schools if you haven't I would suggest that you reconsider your position and yes I'm a republican too thank you very much next up Jill Oberlander followed by Carl
074Higby I think Jill is online hi can you hear me okay yes go ahead Madam chair Dr Jones and members of the board my name is Jill Oberlander and I'm here to ask you to stay focused on the health and safety of Greenwich students and to reject the ill-founded request to place the superintendent and Deputy superintendent on leave first I want to thank all of you and most particularly the teachers staff and administrators including Dr Jones and Dr carabio for your efforts and dedication over the past two years to keep Greenwich schools open for in-person learning these are most challenging times in the work of school staff is saving lives as we now know from data in addition to our own experiences and observations as parents pandemic school closures and distance learning erased several years
075of learning the isolation resulting from stay-at-home orders and social distancing delayed critical emotional development for many children these factors exacerbated the already recognized teenage Mental Health crisis CDC studies conclude the teen emergency room visits for self-harm and eating disorders increased since before the pandemic these data points should concern all of us schools are the front line defense for children's mental health CDC Studies have found that being connected at school defined as the sense of being cared for supported and belonging and an important effect on Teen Mental Health recent data indicates that youth with connections to teachers and peers were less likely to report feelings of sadness hopelessness and thoughts of suicide the youth surveyed the CDC found that a majority did not feel connected at school gbs's strategic plan materials on tonight's agenda highlights the
076need to increase the percentage of students who report feeling school connectedness and its own data suggests that 20-22 percentages are below Target I'm a parent and a support giving parents a voice in their child's educational experience through Local School Board elections and respectful advocacy on school decisions it is critical that we as a community counter personal attacks on teachers and administrators in the name of Parental decision making these attacks undermine efforts to create a positive environment for student learning and emotional health with potentially disastrous results to our children who need support finally I want to State clearly State my support for a welcoming seconds unlawful discrimination and hiring cannot be tolerated I thank you for investigating hiring practice and providing necessary training similarly the politicization of education and mean-spirited singling out of vulnerable students due
077to their gender identity or selection of reading material is inconsistent with inclusivity I know you are very thoughtful about these issues and realize the importance your response will have to the health and safety of students time thank you very much next up Carl Higby followed by Dan Quigley all right so here we are again um I never got that survey by the way I certainly wouldn't give you any Straight A's on that one but I'd like to point out that the vocal few because we outnumbered the people who were I don't know what they were for or we can't tell what they were for but we outnumbered You by a factor of five okay so I'd also like to commend Tony Jones that you have messed up so royally that you have deemed the town
078necessary to send a dozen cop cars and 20 cops to a board of ed meeting great job okay I'd like to remind everybody here that she makes the same salary in total comp as the President of the United States four hundred thousand dollars okay look everybody here loves teachers on both sides of this argument the problem is not with the teachers for me I've written four books most people didn't know I could read but every single one of those books every single one of them attributes some lesson in my life to a teacher in the Greenwich public school system because they were awesome the administration is not now we talk about all these things that were against what we're against is approach you know the problem is is there is no or there's no top
079cover of this and every time it is it's oh it's a it's a it's a mishap it's an oversight because this is what we stand for here we're not some Fringe group we're not domestic terrorists we're parents I have two soon to be three kids in this public school system we want appropriate education Reading Writing arithmetic teach my kid how to put a astronaut on the moon maybe even teach them how to do laundry we used to do that we don't do that anymore teachers we want them free from discrimination if you're discriminated against as a teacher it is not a safe environment for you how can our kids have a safe environment if that's not the case we have the highest paid teachers in in the state we should expect the highest test results
080in the state I think that's fair what are we against we're against things like you know content that our kids are being taught that is so bad that when we print out the content on signs you don't allow us to bring it into this Auditorium am I crazy we don't want open discrimination against religious groups in there like this guy you had from Costco who somehow got a shout out as a great administrator before that all right we don't want our second graders shown erections in schools I mean that should have been a no-brainer but you know a teacher tried to erase mothers and fathers they would oh it's important grown-ups say are you kidding me this is such garbage I I'm so fed up with this stuff and the fact that we have to
081come here and be all pissed off with signs and 100 seconds sure um you know like we just don't want the over sectionalization of our children we're against critical race Theory we're against all this other stuff teach my kids reading writing and arithmetic you got to get rid of these turds because they're not helping the solution again everybody here supports our teachers on both sides we don't support the administration you no longer get the benefit of the doubt you now have to prove to us that you're doing right by our kids thank you next up Dan Quigley followed by Our Last speaker Erin Chang I think Dan is online thank you can you hear me Dan yeah can you hear me go ahead please get started great um thank you chairwoman Stowe Board of Ed
082members Dr Jones people in the audience uh not often I get the honor of following Carl Higby up but uh tonight I got to do that so that's great um I just wanted to say words of support for the Board of Ed members you guys have an extremely difficult task you do not get paid for what you do you put in countless hours into the well-being health and safety and good education of our children and for it you get a lot of flack and not many many thank yous and much appreciated so first off I want to thank you for your work you do for Dr Jones um Dr Jones and I have had disagreements in the past on on issues but I have always said that of all the things a superintendent could have
083done the last two years in any town in America getting our kids back to school as quickly and effectively and efficiently as she did is something that will be forever indebted to her for I have a third grader he has done really well at Julian Curtis and we applaud your efforts in getting our kids back to school during an unprecedented pandemic as for the latest issue with the video and the recording of Mr Boland there's not one person I've met Republican Democrat liberal conservative who applauds what he said nobody does it's across political boundaries it was repugnant it was not something that our school system stands for it was not something that is indicative of how our administrators should behave and my anticipation is once an investigation is done this will be discovered to be
084not an endemic situation but something that is particularly related to one person I do not believe that his words are representative of the administrators teachers and superintendent or assistant superintendent at all and I think the means by which that information was procured has to be factored into the discussion I believe there should be an investigation there will be an investigation and upon that full investigation being completed there is no reason to consider punishing anyone until an investigation is done education has been politicized throughout our country this is a national movement this is not a local movement this has been called for over a year ago to get this done if you want to change and take your country back you go through your school boards so this is something we have to get used to
085in our society but I just want to reiterate Dr Jones I think you've done a good job continue doing it continue pushing forward Board of Ed members do what you were elected to do get our kids educated well keep them safe and keep them in good hands Godspeed thank you next up Aaron Chang is Erin here oh sorry Mr Higgins back online she okay we just skipped her while we're waiting for Aaron put Lorelei on and then Aaron will be our last speaker from the list great thanks for giving me an opportunity hi everyone I'm Lorelei o'hagen and thank you to the Board of Ed and everyone is in the room I had a feel-good story that I wanted to share at the end I'm a parent of a kindergartner and I just wanted to
086make it very you know bring the story to everyone that's in the room after all of the efforts that have gone on from parents involved in the special ed community and teachers and everyone who was involved in really hearing the issues that people were having with a special ed program over time and really demanding change I am now the beneficiary at Costco School of the first co-teaching model for kindergartner and I just wanted to express my gratitude for everyone in the community really understanding that we have so far to go in terms of really understanding and delivering the special ed services that we really deserve and there are a lot of steps that we need to take but right now I have a kindergartner who has ADHD because my older son has ADHD as well
087and he is really doing well in this class it's going to be such an amazing opportunity for us to understand how can we deliver the kind of services that we want filtering and screening for things like dyslexia which my older son has who's in fourth grade and we're going to really be able to catch some of these things and address them early on I am so thrilled to be in this program it's a pilot and I wanted to thank everybody in this room and give everybody a pat on the back for really saying what can we do how can we take evidence-based solutions from other places who's doing it really well and how can we Implement that and put that into our program so I am so pleased I'm saying thank you for that I
088also did just want to mention briefly in terms of the Discrimination discussions that are going on I wanted us to be taking a look at some of the issues that we have discrimination is real and it's an issue that we are facing and I would like to say let's take an opportunity to learn from this moment and say we actually have a discrimination problem in our community in fact there was a board of ed discussion some of you who are in this room right now who were not wanting to vote on Title IX and that was an issue of discrimination against trans people so I want us to be able to say yes discrimination is a problem and we need to do a better job about it right the other issue is that we have
08988 schools that are not ADA Compliant that's an issue of discrimination we also have segregated schools that don't meet the standards 30 seconds of our community for diversity we also don't have an Administration and a teaching staff overall that reflect the diversity of our community so we do have work to do so let's not be distracted by this one issue of these very loud squeaky voices complaining about sort of a made-up problem time and let's actually do very much please don't be disrespectful thank you Karen is taking the clock Karen can handle the time thank you very much the last speaker is Erin Chang is Erin Chang here okay well then that concludes our public comment we um just no that's an hour as well everyone if you sign up so now we um I
090just want to let you know we are going to only ask for a motion in a moment to go into executive session I don't know how long that'll be it's about Safety and Security we're meeting with the chief of police it's obviously very important you're welcome to stay you're welcome to go home and tune back in when we start uh when we come back we'll be addressing uh committee reports which includes the superintendent's report I suspect during that time we will talk about things like start of school buses and the investigation um but I did want to let you know that we now have I need a motion to go into executive session so move can I have a second Karen all right awesome show of hands to go on Executive session that passes eight
091zero thank you I'm not on okay here we are thank you we are back um we had our next stop we had an action item on Safety and Security but there was no action at this time so we will move on to our monthly reports um we're still it's still it's an ongoing discussion and there's no yeah well we're gonna have we have to limit what we say at this time so so um we are yeah yeah so absolutely we went to an executive session with the chief of police and the conversations are ongoing and we hope to have something or bring back very quickly and we'll take action on as a board then um but not this evening thank you um so with that we're going to go into monthly reports um Dr Jones
092thank you um first of all starting the year I just I can't express how great it feels to be out in the schools and see such a high level of energy and just the the great work that's going on um just as a reminder one of the fun things that we're rolling out this year is foundations um for third grade and that's just been great to see because those third graders had foundations in kindergarten first second and when I was out of one of the buildings the principal was saying it's the teacher's learning curve because it's their first time but the children are able to really help them just with the whole process because this is their fourth year um we also have our new uh sixth seventh and eighth grade ELA and social studies
093curriculum and I was um out in actually Central this morning and that's also great to see um rolling out and we'll continue of course to have lots of collaboration with teachers um on that I would say the two challenges there are two that right now I think are front and center in our mind I'm going to talk about Transportation first we do have um a brand new company this year last year was the end of our contract we had to go back out to bid when we went out to bid we ended up selecting this company they worked through the summer had the routes scheduled had the right amount of drivers during the summer we didn't find out until right when school was literally starting um there they were apparently bought and sold by another
094bus company so they have experienced some challenges where drivers are jumping from one company to the other there's such a driver shortage in Connecticut so that definitely has impacted them there are other issues as well we meet on it every single day and Dr carabillo was in a call again or in the meeting again today basically with their CEO um what I can say is you know of course we're apologetic you can only apologize so many times for buses not picking students up so we fully understand why parents are upset about that we've got it isolated down now to pretty much a few buses it's mainly at the high school we're working on an alternate solution and we're doing that by also working on the flexibilities of the contract and performance aspect of the contract
095with our town legal and how we can utilize perhaps other resources to make sure that not only can we run our school buses but also things like Athletics we're currently using a different provider for athletics but again um it's definitely been a challenge so I I will say that about Transportation but we're almost there we have a few we have another solution that we're putting in place right now which we hope is going to help um the last item would be with cos Cobb and I said this in the note that um I sent to Costco families letting them know um that we were putting in basically um an acting a position for their assistant principal because the parents had really asked about that um that's Karen viddy and in that same notification I let
096them know that we are currently going through the internal investigation and we also have been notified by the Attorney General by their office and that they are starting an inquiry as well as the town is also narrowing down I believe they're finalists for who they want um to do a town investigation but um I I'm not going to be able to give answers quickly um whenever you are in an investigation such as this the legal precedence has to has to take place um and there are people do have due process rights and it can take weeks and sometimes months so that's what we've shared with the Costco Community um on the internal it is Dr Bud who manages that we don't actually have any participation in that the HR department is is managing that aspect
097um I'd like to add to that just because I haven't I was lucky enough to join something called the Special Operations committee yesterday which was something that Fred Camillo and Ben branyan have started it's actually pretty interesting it's a public meeting although it was really just us um but um from there we and they actually brought together like Dan Oz's mayor myself Alexis bulgaris and um Margarita Albin from pnz anyway in that Fred did provided me an update um and that is that they're very close and then Barbara shell and Virgo also is the town attorney provided me the same that um the town is very close to hiring an independent investigator they of course themselves have to use outside counsel so they are doing that it is a costly process so they are figuring
098that out right now and um I think they're hopeful to announce that in the next couple of days um and like I said they are um I think they're figuring out the scope and all that but they are expecting to announce in the next couple of days and then of course we'll cooperate with them and their efforts quite like we're doing the attorney general and the Connecticut State Department of Education um but that is kind of where that stands and hopefully we'll hear there too hey whoa did they there we go um did um the first election they talk a little about the scope of the investigation and what what what they would be looking at the um he did not show that with me now I imagine we'll learn that after they have picked
099their outside counsel just I was just wondering that the um what about as far as what the the state investigations have David and Tony have they been in contact with us we and that is the Attorney General's office they reached out um just basically to open the inquiry had an in-person meeting several hours long um we are expecting that they will issue a subpoena could be any time to tell us exactly which documents they want us to preserve and provide to them Yes actually sticking on that same subject I also think the Department of Education had announced something as well is that being pers have they been in contact and what's the status of that yeah I'm not familiar with that Jonathan Dr Bud could be but I'm not aware of anything right now we
100just have uh his internal investigation we have the Attorney General investigation and then the town of Greenwich who's trying to hire the independent investigator and what is Dr Bud's investigation covering yeah I'm not at Liberty to talk about the investigation right now all I could say is that he is investigating and um he's coming to it from a human resources aspect from the employee standpoint um so he's he's literally in the middle of that right now so if I can just switch to a different topic you had mentioned that the um Ela the new Ela curriculum for sixth seventh and eighth grade it was rolling out and I was curious as to how we're defining curriculum because my understanding is that curriculum needs to come to the board for approval um pursuant to policy 61-61
101I believe and the question is that didn't come to the board so the question is what is the curriculum that's being rolled out because the board hadn't approved it yeah it's and that's my fault it's not really curriculum or curriculum are the standards they're actually called lesson plans and I was looking at actually the history today and it's how you take those standards and making sure that all of the teachers have resources materials available to them that are issued by the district not where they're just looking at the standards and they have to go out and find their own materials but it's it's basically a lesson plan concept which I know the curriculum team talked about um last year and it went through the curriculum committee as well Miss Downey okay we want to start
102moving tell me when committee reports I'm ready oh do you have another question well I had a question on another topic um and I know we're going to be getting it up for Dr Jones I know we're going to be getting an update uh on Western's fields and Central Middle School but I'm hoping that you might be able to give us a little bit of an update of what's going on at the high school with their fields because we've lost a lot of parking spots we have a lot of very frustrated and upset individuals over that and it they keeping seems to be encroaching further and further and they look like they're not as far ahead as I had thought we would be at this point so I was wondering if you had an update
103um they are actually right on schedule um and I know it's hard it's been really hard for Greenwich high school because I believe at the PTA meeting we said it was about 100 spots um that they've lost right now that will once they're able to move that all off site and get the fields rebuilt um you know they they will move those vehicles and they'll get that space back but it it could be the spring before we see that um but that's better than going another entire summer and having to close everything down on the campus again so they're working as quickly as they can it's a huge project at the high school and just so we're clear um we're gonna you think we're gonna be done and have that field those fields back at
104least in service by next year at least I know we got these fields back partially in the middle of the spring season last year but yeah just was wondering yes we should have them back next year for sure and might I make an additional request that uh or note that we might need to add some signage at the Cardinal Stadium um the signs that said no dogs on campus et cetera seem to not be there and uh I watched numerous dogs using our Fields as a laboratory uh the other day not on the fields but you know back behind I don't know okay so thank you okay committee reports go ahead Miss Downey I'm just reporting on the ghs entryway which um we the committee has met we've gone back to the architect he's given
105us um a fee structure to move forward with revised plans and at this point we are going to get a presentation the first week of October with a couple of possible renderings drawings and Joe I know you like a rendering maybe you'll want to come um for some suggested alternatives to the project to keep it within the budget from a design basis and then the committee will make a decision and we'll see what needs it'll obviously will have to come back to us because we have design approval Joe I briefly uh spoke of a virtual net metering so I wanted to prepare everybody for uh we're going to start getting closer to that what it is is uh we're partnering up or considering partnering up with a a Solar Development Company where they're going to
106take it's a government subsidized project uh that we're entitled to some subsidies the subsidies are directed to this company that will be building a solar array a solar system uh somewhere Upstate Connecticut they have some deals with some farmlands they're working with what we have to be prepared to do the legal side is looking at this right now but we have to be prepared to do is make a 20-year commitment to eversource uh what we'll be doing is right now we get all our electricity from eversource if we make this 20-year commitment with no Financial commitment to the Solar Development company we will be reimbursed up to 20 to 25 percent of our annual electricity costs for the next 20 years those numbers are quite big uh and uh where Abby's looking at the uh
107the documentation now we've had several meetings with the uh uh the Solar Development Company it's a real project we had met with some uh some uh uh state official state government officials to verify that it is a a very legitimate opportunity for us to uh offset our our Footprints our our consumption of electricity by that same amount uh created by a renewable source so it's a kind of a cool project it also saves us up to 20 to 25 percent so the only commitment we have is we have to be prepared to uh uh to make a 20-year commitment to eversource so I have to do a little research on that that's the only commitment we have to that uh also a second project is which we talked briefly about before is the uh the
108broadcast room and the stadium the extra uh Press Box uh Sean Mayo Ralph's son is uh uh running uh that project for us he's uh looking at the equipment uh Jamie Andrea uh and the family are are donating getting some a pretty good sum of money for him to to have this equipment for a classroom a broadcast classroom at the stadium so uh they're narrowing down the list of things they want we have to discuss the donation uh we uh hopefully we can put it on the Gen the agenda we'll talk about it later because Sean would like to talk about it briefly and Jamie also in honor of her uh our her husband uh who passed so uh so that's uh that's what I got thanks Laura while I'm looking at you you want
109to do Central Middle School sure uh so I can tell you that um we put out um request for proposals for an owner's rep and for an architect we got eight proposals back which were opened today um they'll will there will be interviews um for the committee to participate in on uh October 4th on October 29th we anticipate opening the bids that we um were hopefully going to get back from The Architects there was a very robust response to our RFP and we had I I want to say over 20 people do a walk through here um a week or so ago uh our building committee media meeting on 9 27 will be an executive session um we'll be um you know discussing scoring and our scoring individually of the of the individual responses for
110an owner's rep so that's where we are and hopefully we'll just keep moving ahead at a Full Speed Ahead for us I guess yeah Karen um I had a question about one of the Committees that had spoken um the Deni committee how did that come about and who's on it and what is their role it's a p-tac committee it's a p-tech it has nothing to do with us it's the p-tech some PTA Council their committee okay so they it has nothing to do with the Board of Ed zero okay go ahead I was going to give an update on ciac and uh while I was unable to attend their first meeting of the year Michael Joseph did so at least one of us was it was able to be there um they basically just sort
111of went over things that were happening for the year um as well as um revising some of their bylaws for a few things um but they wanted to ensure that we all were aware that they're looking for people who are interested in becoming members they are very open transparent information is certainly out there they uh have space for three parents two Educators and one related service provider some of those would be voting members and some would be alternates but they really wanted to ensure that um parents and other members of our educational Community here uh that wanted to be involved know that they are open and looking and all of their meetings are um you know open for attendance even if you are not you know a you know a voting member or an alternate
112um they also voted in new two new working committees um they do not have names for them but they are looking into behavior management strategies um and they can looking into the consistency of services and Service delivery and case management across schools uh for consistency and um they are sort of looking also to figure out the best ways that they can help to support the mental health of all of our students overall um as there is definitely a need an increased need this year and they are more than aware of that um but uh their next meeting will be in November they are going to have some uh parent uh forums and other things I know Dr Stacy will be sharing some of those uh with us uh once you gives her update as well
113so that's it from ziac Cody I have my Greenwich a lot Greenwich Alliance board update uh three updates they awarded seventy five thousand dollars in scholarships to um Avid graduates in college that brings total scholarship Awards to 734 000 update number two the VR AR steam camp at Western taught by uh because Gaspar thank you Lipari was a huge success this Camp built upon the equipment and software investment made by the alliance which was a hundred fifteen thousand dollars and expanded the reach to students outside of Western and then third reaching out Grand spending for 22.23 was significant over the summer and it included equipment purchases for Costco and Western sensory rooms the ham Ave Outdoor Classroom Old Greenwich School way in the Old Greenwich School wave broadcast station right um also Barbara O'Neill who
114just sent me an email I was reminded of the fact that she's on the Old Greenwich building committee and she would like the public to know that we need one more person that has construction experience so if any of the people listing online would like to apply for that job that would be fantastic and you do that through the selectman's office and construction means not constructing with Legos correct you can do whatever you'd like just checking who is the board representative on the Old Greenwich building committee not chosen yet we had to do that I have to do that and JC yeah so but the the um building committee reps the select the one that the selectman chose right um for OG and JC were approved on um Monday night at the RTM meeting so
115with that why don't we start our meeting we are now going to our first discussion item summer school executive summary which I know we all listen to the video so Dr carabello do you want to come up here and we can shoot some questions at you thank you yes questions no hands Karen um on I don't know what page it's on uh but it talks about math achievement for GPS versus Julian Curtis it talks about a 22 growth rate versus a 45 growth rate how are you measuring the the growth rates between those two different situations and I assume you mean the Julian Curtis summer school program that's run exclusively through there versus all of Greenwich Public Schools that's run separately that's correct so what we have found is that and we found this last
116year as well those students that went to their own school with their own teachers perf and and attended at least 80 percent of the time did much better had much better performance than those students that went to the GPS summer school because they did not have their own teacher so what we found is that if we could have the luxury of doing uh summer school at each School with their own teachers then I think we could really make some positive differences but we can't require the teachers to teach in their own school with their own kids in the summertime but that's something that maybe we can keep increasing every year yeah but my point goes what are you looking at to measure the growth like where are you what what tools are you using that
117distinguishes between the growth of the kids that went to summer school versus and I assume it's just the kids that went to summer school as opposed to a broader Community yeah it's just the kids in summer school Michael Reed gave us some assessments to use from Big Ideas and that's what we used as a pre-test in a post-test and you're testing them at the beginning of when they enter summer school versus when they exit summer school correct Miss Downey thanks yeah thanks Sam oh hi um so to to two points the one about Julian Curtis so are you already in the planning for next summer in terms of thinking about how you went like what's the timeline and the process for planning for next year because if you found that this model was so successful
118um are you already kind of trying to put see what Wheels we put in motion is it too soon or what should we be anticipating on that and follow-up question which is unrelated so it's really a little too soon we usually start in January we have to find out what buildings are available first and that has a big impact on how many students we can have where we can have it and then we would have to ask which administrators would be willing to be their site supervisor and which teachers would be willing to work in their own schools with their own children so it's a little early yet but we have been thinking about that and if we could do it it would be great but you know we have a lot of construction and
119repairs in our buildings during the summer but was our capacity Higher by doing it this way having kind of the campus and then the Julian Carter special did we increase our capacity or what or did we just have a smaller capacity somewhere smaller capacity we had fewer students this year we had fewer students okay and then just about the tutoring which is a question which you said was very well received if we if done early how did we do that on a cost base did we charge for it how did we we do not charge for any esy students or any students that we invite to attend summer school because they are our lowest performing students okay the only ones who um are charged are are students who take accelerated student classes for secondary students
120so for example we would have invited a student to come and he or she say you know what I don't really want to come but I'll do the tutoring correct as kind of a lesser option in terms of time commitment yes someone that was going on and that was a fabulous idea from Dr Jones yes so we're going to doubt great so can we expand capacity for that next summer I mean again it depends on the space and it depends on how many literacy Specialists that we can have because that was our Focus this year for our primary grades because it looked like I mean particularly in K and one on the literacy that was massively successful which at least based on the test results thank you so yeah yeah so that was I had
121a similar question about tutoring first of all I'm thrilled that we're doing it because obviously the numbers don't lie here it was working I it wasn't clear to me um 33 is that if that was the capacity in the program or if we were limited by the capacity in the program or we limited my uh families interested in attending the families interested in coming so what was the what kind of capacity did we have this summer well we had we had it from eight o'clock until 10 o'clock and we didn't have many students coming at the 9 to 10 hour so we would change that this year next year to uh eight and nine so that I I was that makes sense because that that matches on the uh the general Summer School attendance you
122know you see tennis number 65 75 and clearly students are who are in the summer school more were more successful they've made me wonder what we're doing or if we need to do more or how we can think differently about communicating the importance of summer school and the importance of attendance and all these things and we we do really stress that we need to have our students there every day but sometimes children don't they want to just go play and sometimes parents just want their children to have a different experience during the summer we do have many parents that do have their children go to camps because it's very important especially with covid they want their children to be able to play to socialize again so it's really parental choice we can't force them to
123come but we highly encourage them to participate of course I I guess I just wonder if there's more maybe there isn't but if there's more we can do as far as sharing this data when we're having those personal conversations with families it's a good idea we will keep that in our our thoughts for January yeah so anyway I had sent a whole bunch of questions so I'm just going to add it and it is yes you did sorry um in advance well that's what we're supposed to do absolutely and I appreciated it yeah so I know that you know I had asked how many you know what our students were offered the tutoring option I know you had said uh it was offered for grades K4 that was invited it was offered to all of
124the students all of the students that were invited but uh 33 ended up attending and um much like Michael Joseph here I was going to say the same thing I know we're adding um another parent teacher conference and I think maybe that would be a nice opportunity for students who are lagging a little bit behind uh to have an opportunity to to talk about this option as you said there are a lot of students who parents who don't want their students in school all day every day all through the summer they want to be able to have the opportunity to do other things but this tutoring option may not have been as well known and could be in a really wonderful option and I think one-on-one uh attention sometimes really is it will help in
125other things but for a strategic plan which we'll be talking about later making that connection with a student a parent an adult in a building um you know and connecting with families as well so um it's a great idea thank you I was just going to make that suggestion and the other question I had was I know we talked about GC and the home school being important I know I'd asked you since it was so successful in seeing growth in those students that were able to attend their home school if we had considered it at least for some of the other schools that are lagging a little bit behind in their achievement data and scores which I get we'll be talking about in another week or two um or some of our other Title One
126schools I know Western at one point had look to do it as well I think they were a home site anyway this year they did they did it for their own students last year but this year they did not have the same um the same volunteerism for teachers to do summer school from Western besides which we took the building over so they couldn't have done it anyway actually they probably could have but this it would have been very hard for the custodians with the work that was being done there as well as having the room so that they could clean yeah well again that leads us back to tutoring and hopefully students you know we can talk to them about that because maybe they would have the option so teachers who maybe would be interested
127in tutoring if they couldn't get into their own buildings could work with some of their additional students and would make some nice connections and see some more growth there thank you it's a great idea thank you yeah Karen I just have two more questions one was there similar data for seeing anything with respect to the English um growth level because there's there's literacy components and then there's a math component for summer school so was there similar data for on the literacy side so what we did is we used the early literacy star assessment for our K2 students and then we used the regular star reading assessment we did a pre and a post so did you see similar growth between JC JC had higher growth than our regular General summer school program sorry I just
128didn't understand the slide um and then the other question I had with respect to the tutoring um what was what is the ratio between tutor and student for that period of time it was a three to one any other questions on this topic okay Karen wasn't a question was no comment I know that the board for years has talked about ways to improve summer school um not having students that attend for things that they don't need to be there for and dividing things up so I just want to say just the numbers that we're seeing here and having the opportunity to have kids come in to be tutored all the different opportunities that they're being offered thank you for kind of taking that look and reimagining uh in some ways our summer school program I
129know Michael Joseph mentioned that there's maybe some other great ways to do that too and I look forward to having that discussion but I just wanted to thank you for that because we've asked for so long well it's it's a team effort so I appreciate the administration working with us very closely okay thank you Dr carabello next up 2022 climate survey Dr Jones I know Jen is here Lal but I told her she doesn't really have to walk through it but can you come down so we can answer ask questions thank you no I mean I don't need her to walk it walk me through it are you guys okay if we just go right into questions that's fine okay yeah go ahead Cody no did you like that style okay yep Michael Joseph go
130ahead I had one question about the the risk assessment at the end the um but just just a comment I know um there were some comments tonight about these uh um the success of this data and the excitement this data I I think we have to acknowledge that there's there's a lot of growth here um and there's a lot of numbers here that aren't aren't that great none of us really should be happy about numbers in the in the 50 Rage of when students are saying about um um the value of school and student belonging um obviously we're going to see the Strategic plan in the moment and that's certainly something that we're going to address but I don't think we want to give the message tonight that oh we all just have to Pat
131ourselves in the back and say great job there's a lot of it's a lot of growth here they um no one we can't be happy with that 58 of our students say um that school is interesting important and useful they um so I think I think we just have to acknowledge that um that said the um I was I was hoping you could explain the the at-risk stats of the bat because I was at the back because I wasn't I wasn't quite clear on the last page on page nine I wasn't quite clear what we were looking at um these statistics are generated from our Aspen sis which is what I I manage and they are the aggregate of specific instances that are reported by the individual schools as and you can see that there
132is a a significant um drop in this most recent year as to I think there was a sub question which was the difference between the high medium and low risk and I actually would defer to Stacy to give you more detail on that so the oh wait so sorry but actually I'm not sorry what are you talking about what what is a risk incident that's I think that's a fundamental from the very beginning it's like I'm looking at this saying well we had fewer risks number of incidents not students in Risk instance what is that so when a school has a concern about a child's mental health or safety they conduct a risk assessment that's done by one of our mental health practitioners so the social worker or the school psychologist so when they complete
133that it goes into Aspen so we're able to track by the number of incidents that have occurred and so this has been a practice for the last several years so we're able to look at not only last year's data but some historical data from the years before and we're able to see how many of those incidences have been needed and so our staff is really good about tracking that and they're able to follow up they put what the incident was which then classifies how it's how it's ranked and then what the follow-up to that is so that we can keep a record to make sure that we're following up with the student yeah go ahead Dr Jones so this was one of the questions actually that um Karen Hirsch also submitted and I think it's
134just helpful for the board to know that um if you look at regulation 5141.5 R that's the regulation that goes along with the policy of course that the the policy committee put together and you can see the forms you can see the detailed process and that was all updated I believe Stacy at the beginning of last year that was one of the first things that you probably worked on but it gives you a good idea of the the detail that the staff actually put into these risk assessments and how serious seriously they take them okay yeah I sent a whole bunch of these questions in too um and um much like Michael Joseph I was going to say you know some of these numbers were I wasn't doing a tap dance at home reading them
135I was a little disappointed um and I know that a lot of this is leading us directly into our agenda item later which is strategic plan and ways to uh ensure our students feel uh schools of value and then the sense of belonging and our teacher satisfaction rates because that is particularly concerning to me these are the individuals that are walking to the doors every day to make sure that our students are happy and feel confident and feel that they belong in their schools so I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more how we're going to bring that level up um but I think one of the things that's missing from this and I you could see from the questions that I asked from somebody who has a marketing background um is we we
136talked about how many people responded but we didn't say how many that was sent out to what percentage and pers like of students responded I knew each school will be getting individual reports I kind of look forward to seeing that but um I didn't have as much time to sort of dig into this but um the responses because we got them a little bit before but I think it's sort of important to note that Elementary School students will not respond the same way to their how they feel the importance of school is to the way high schoolers are and if we have I mean I was looking at your answers to me that only 47 of our high schoolers responded uh to some of these surveys so I think it's really important not just the
137data that we're getting back but trying to see if we can ask students maybe it's the way we're asking it I don't know but it's so important for us to really we're seeing more incidents of things we're talking about risk assessment um while that may be going down just there's more students that we may be missing we need to make sure that they feel a sense of belonging we need to find a way to to capture that information from them and make sure that they're feeling comfortable and confident I mean all the incredible work I see heads nodding back there the incredible work that's being done for our curriculum we want to make sure that our students feel the feel that too when they walk in the door that they have a teacher that they
138connect with so you know I'm not sure what sort of suggestions you have and I'm hoping we have an opportunity to ask some more questions about this um maybe you know down the line when we get a little bit more information from school to school but um I think the best question I can ask you is you know how we we had two-thirds of our staff taking this survey right that's what you you responded to me too which is which is great um I'm just trying to figure out how we get from 56 it was 56 percent uh to the Target of 80 so do they give any additional feedback on the staff satisfaction um that is something that the individual schools are going to be working at there is a drill down on each
139of these as a composite of multiple questions and so the we do have the detail on the individual questions all of that will be published tomorrow but has been available to all of the administration to really look at their not just the global District overview but specifically what's going on at the individual schools and this is part of their sip so that would be great because I just know how much is is being done to try to support them and I want to make sure that they're feeling that as well and I think once we get I guess a little bit more information we need to drill down from school to school I may have some additional questions but um and thank you for sharing the other information about the risk assessments um I think
140that that was a piece that a lot of us were probably missing the clarity on so I love that one thank you Miss Downey yeah I just I just wanted to follow up to ask if we could just get the data of the response rates the number of questionnaires is that going to come to us yeah when did that come it's in the uh in the questions that I asked Dr Jones had sent that all to you that we just we just got it we just got it in our inbox like oh okay today yeah okay I did not uh we just got it though yesterday oh okay so we worked really hard to try to get it to you I just didn't want you to think we just look at it okay and I
141think we will date this is just the first time this is like high level stuff we're going to dig into this again that's fine thank you oh it's we're gonna thank you we are tying this the retreat in October for student achievement so um but yeah sticking with that I mean I think Lil said it best right it was great to see the home school connection move 10 over the past three years but we also have to make sure that was great for parents um but the staff and the students need to feel the same growth yeah um so I think that's kind of the best way to sum it up if I could do so and are there any other questions or should we okay so thank you Jen uh going to and that
142leads us right into the next agenda topic strategic Plan update Dr mercanty Anthony so so it is um and honestly it is my um great uh pleasure to um introduce this this agenda item because we know it's been a long time coming and we've been some joke soaks about it and what I've joked about and things like that but I do think um at the board level but in reality um the draft strategic plan that's coming to the board tonight um really is um set up to continue our path towards Excellence um let me just introduce it briefly and then I want to tone it over turn it over to Dr Jones who will explain and walk through uh what you what you received here what we're looking at and as far as the the
143goals here and and the plan for it they um so what we're when we talk about the Strategic plan I think it's very important for us at the board and for the community to understand what it is and what it's not so 12 13 years ago there was a very large community conversation um that the board a previous board engaged in around the vision of The Graduate and what 21st century skills graduates of the system should should have it's a very thoughtful document the Strategic plan ever since then and this next five-year version of the Strategic plan really what it seeks to do is help support the more fully realized that vision of The Graduate for students that is the purpose of the Strategic plan the Strategic plan focuses on the core work of the
144district when we're talking about teaching and learning focusing mostly on academic achievement and the other growth of students it is not all-encompassing of all work of the board right strategic plan is not a capital document it's not about board policy and things like that it's very much focused on the teaching and learning and the work schools each school's each building's School Improvement plan will be based off the Strategic plan and that's again grounded in teaching and learning the other thing to make sure to point out here um before I turn it over in what you're looking at here are some of the goals right this is not the plan it's not the whole plant there are some strategies here and things like that but when we drafted when the when the Strategic plan committee and
145Dr Jones dental administrations we wanted to very we were very clear that what we didn't want um was this version of the Strategic plan to be a very detailed five-year we're going to do this in year two this in year three this in year four because we know things change and we know when we're talking about Improvement science and continuous Improvement we know that you can't plan that far ahead so what you see here uh which we talked about um which we've previously talked about the board to board or our six stretch goals we Define stretch goals as audacious ambitious long-term long-term girl goals that will help us more fully realize vision of The Graduate they you see tied to each of those stretch goals a metric for each year to help support us gradually
146getting there over the course of five years but the strategies how we're going to do that is intentionally fuzzy we have some broad Strokes here and strategic plan committee will continue the meet and we'll continue to meet and have conversations um at the board level in the community and PTEC and everybody else but those strategies are going to evolve over time um as we measure the metrics year by year and month by month um all that said so with that said let me turn it over to Dr Jones to to talk a little bit about what you're looking at specifically just before you start I think it's awesome what's not here and what I think also needs to be here are there are there are additional documents that are hyperlinked to these um you'll see
147where it says detailed outline and methodology I think that's also important when you're reviewing this as as members of the board as well as well as members of the community to understand because it goes into a much greater detail uh regarding the strategies and how the metrics are to be um achieved so I think if we could get those posted by tomorrow so that people could pull them up I think that'd be helpful for this unless it's already on there by hyperlink it's just not printed okay got it good I was just going to add one other thing one of the biggest things we had talked about was ensuring that our our staff had buy-in to this because if they don't have buy-in uh this wasn't going to work they did so I just wanted
148to make sure that the public was aware of that um we're not just uh demanding of things that they were involved very involved in a lot of coming up with some of these strategies and plans and I was going to say additionally one of the biggest things we had missed out on our first time was our goals to be you know time sensitive to be something that we could that were measurable and a way for us to be able to go back and sort of measure how we were doing along the course and that is really something that is built in here and you'll see as we move forward and as uh both Karen and uh Michael Joseph mentioned that I think that there's um there's an element that of flexibility here and so that's
149why things might be I think the term you used was a little fuzzy was that things do change as we move forward and we may see something that's working something that's not and we want to be able to be able to make some of those changes into strategies as we go forward to still meet those targets and metrics I don't know if that helps but that is just I know something I wanted to share that we've talked about for a long time uh in building it um Mike if you don't mind I know you we're going to bring it up for us um just so that people that are here can actually see it so first of all let me say I met with Dr McCarthy Anthony right when he took over um this committee
150and one of the things we talked about was trying to have really at the time I always put up planning on a page I think you call it something else but we both were of the the like mindset that what we were trying to avoid also is having a document that's two inches thick and that staff never really can grapple and understand because it ends up going on the Shelf after you have the first presentation and then people get so busy they can't go back to it we've had great feedback on this because we have shared it with like our Senior Team it was shared it our back to school meetings out at the buildings and it's so easy to understand I mean the work is really clear on on the goals and I think
151you'll see how they do tie back to the climate survey that evangen was just sharing and one of the reasons we put that climate survey on tonight was so you could see add the link so if we look at first of all like the one in the yellow at the top goal number one graduation rate and what you'll see is at the bottom of that graduation rate there's a link and that's what uh Karen was just referencing the detailed outline of methodology and again this is draft so we continue to work on that can you go ahead and click on that um just so people can see so everything is embedded in here where you can actually see the metric we have you know the mission Division and then below that are how we want
152to accomplish that and I will say where you see the Cardinal down on the bottom the one on the top the first one those are common across different different goals so that just helps you know that that's something that we're working on across everything and when you get over to the right go ahead and go back Mike to the main page when you look at the right on the success metrics one aspect that we've talked a lot about and some of you have different opinions I had good meeting this week um with Karen Kowalski and I met early in the morning and then I also met with Karen Hurst who's on the committee before our meeting tonight and we we've pushed this to actually be stretch goals and that's something that some of the board
153may feel like Ah that's such a lofty goal and that's going to be really difficult but we that's what we set out to do so for graduation rate you'll see that's at 99 we know that's very doable um and when we look across the state one of the reasons it is a focus it can be a number of things that can cause a metric it could be that we are not tracking our students as they move and they leave us is it a data issue is it that we've been we've had the mentality that it's okay if you just graduate in the summer so we're not intervening soon enough for you know freshmen and sophomores to have the credits they need but right now where our graduation rate is it's not it's not bad it's
154a strong graduation rate but in the state of Connecticut we're about 82nd or 85th so we know that we can actually do better in that area um the second goal is Mastery of reading and I don't think that's a surprise to anybody that reading is at the core of everything we do it's across every content area and you can see some of the things that we've been in the works over the last couple of years when we were kind of didn't have a plan we extended the old one but it didn't stop our work and I have to say from the curriculum team from all of our teachers out in the buildings they didn't look coveted we didn't hit pause and they implemented brand new programming in the middle of covid and I think that
155there I want to say that because I think we should be extremely extremely proud of our staff and our administrators when you look at the Mastery of reading again one of the things that's a little bit different about this metric is we're looking at and if you look at success metric 100 of fourth grade students who've been with GPS for five or more years are reading on grade level and that's a that is the way that the state has changed and they're actually looking at it from a five-year view as well one of the reasons we're doing five years it helps us understand if our programming is working um when we look across especially I'm going to say our elementaries it's probably easier to see some buildings have more in migration out migration some buildings
156have more El students the reality is if you came to this country and you don't speak English you're probably not going to be mastering uh the the grade level assessment in three years that's asking a lot we know that from all of the research that's out there but the other caveat to that I would say is it doesn't mean we're not watching our results every single year I mean we have to look at every single day we're looking at every student that we need to intervene on and this board's been very supportive of math interventionists and reading interventionists and helping us get to that so again you could click on those detailed outline of methodology and you would see that but I won't do we don't need to do that right now Mike um while
157you're just on this one here's my thinking I mean my concern by saying a hundred percent which it I I applaud it but I'm also are we setting ourselves up for failure if we say 100 because there are always students who are going to struggle so I I I'm just throwing it out there that I just you could put it in 99 but when you say a hundred that's like we're gonna get everyone and I am concerned that we're then saying well we didn't need it and then we're going to be explaining it as opposed to saying 99. I just I don't know if Karen Karen's not in her head yes that's why I you know I guess I think of it a little bit differently and we may not hit 100 maybe we'll be
15891 or 94. but I don't think we can go into a strategic plan thinking it's okay for any child to not be reading on grade level and I think if they're not reading on grade level I want to be able to sit in front of you and say if we have six percent what have we been doing over the you know five years of this plan every year when we report back if we're not seeing the growth so and the great thing is the state all also has the growth metric when we do the retreat you'll see that the way the state's measuring I think it's going to be very helpful for the board to understand too but I I feel like it's okay because we if you can't read everything else that's going to
159be incredibly challenging and across all content areas so that I think that's it's a lofty goal but it needs to be our goal just on that note the uh please understand to Christina that that 100 percent is in 2027 that's a future board that's going to have to explain that number so if if I could if I could interject it'd be great if we could um let Dr Jones get through everything then maybe we'll talk about it the um because not that this board has ever gone down tangents and talked about one line item for 20 minutes but maybe maybe we can maybe we can get through everything and then take questions our third goal of course is Mastery of math uh mathematics again you'll see some of those strategies that you're very aware of
160the Universal Design for Learning all that training we did last year that's really about making sure we're really Keen into what every student needs the one question I get here and initially even even from staff we had a lot of discussion is when you look at that algebra one metric the Board of Education I think predating all of you that's always been such an important goal and it didn't really show up as much as our reporting metrics the last kind of five or seven years but we've still been working on it and that's the amount of eighth graders who take algebra one in eighth grade now people have said well if it's 80 for SBA and sat is 80 why is it algebra one but the reason why Algebra 1 is set at 75 is
161that it's very if it was just set on their success in eighth grade and an eighth grade assessment that would be different this is talking about 75 five percent of our students are in algebra one in eighth grade so what that means is you would be putting if you go higher than that not every student needs to be in algebra one in eighth grade nor do they want to be and for some of those students you're setting them on a trajectory where then they're starting their freshman year with geometry they're taking algebra two they're now into pre-calc you're putting them on a calculus track and really that should be a parent decision along with the teachers and we should celebrate if we have 75 percent but for some students it's just not it's not appropriate
162and that's why it's set at 75. um the next three but you'll see Ty right back again to some of the survey information we want to continue to increase to increase family and Community engagement um to feel a stronger sense of connection and support and I have to say this is one area that I know when Jin Lau and I looked at the data we were so excited that coming out of covid like on our family engagement that it's up like 22 percent and that's after covid and I really thought for sure last year it would just fall apart because um just the mask issue alone people were so frustrated by the end of last year but we want to continue on this trajectory working with our parents and one of the things you'll also
163notice that's on here uh the number two under strategy is to increase the frequency depth of curriculum instruction and parent education-based workshops we started that over the last year or so we are trying to intensify that our parents have said they they want more assistance on how to help their children at home so we're doing lots of workshops for parents want to learn about Big Ideas well how do you find the tutor help when they're at home and you as a parent don't know how to do that math because you haven't done it in 20 years so we're really working on that and it's built into here also the increased student belonging I think all of you you know your comments talked about we want every student to feel connected with our schools and again
164we want to see that continue to grow so if you go into that outline of methodology you'll see some of the strategies that we're using that we're planning six is to increase positive working environment for teachers and staff and really to prioritize professional growth as well for all of our staff this is really important you know I guess the good news is again coming out of covid I have to say I I don't like us being at like 58 but the idea that we were there before covid and we were still there at the end of last year actually shocked me I thought it would have dropped probably 20 percent because quite frankly people were so exhausted last year after being in covid I really I really expected a drop so I think we can
165only go up by continuing to work as partners like with Gea and and being responsive to what we can do to make their jobs that much better so that's just kind of the draft again it's really planning on a page everybody can understand it and we're really doing a lot of this work right now and I'm very excited about it it's been hard not to have really kind of our metrics and our goals um because this we didn't have the focus for everybody and this ties so easily to what they're doing at the building level and in their site Improvement plan so this is our draft I'm happy we finally presented it yippee Miss Downey okay just one more follow-up um on goal four which we talk about increased family and Community engagement Community engagement
166I'm gonna like aren't we really trying to help our families I'm not really sure what the community engagement element is and if that really is a priority um I mean there's Community Information but it's really about the families so I'm just kind of throwing that out as food for thought so here's how I would see family engagement on that and and that'll that's a good question for us to talk about I think from A administrative level I think engaging the community is everything from and I think we've done a good job of it neighbor to neighbor engaging all of our we have so many Community Partners that come in and tutor children after school all of that Community Services but I think maybe that's maybe it needs to be just rephrased it just because I
167think that's a little confusing to me it seems like right I was just going to say family and Community engagement is I think also how this if I'm not incorrect is also how the state sort of terms it um and when you say community I think it's not just general Community for families when you say families that Community engagement is also the wider version of their family right there it's not you know other parts that that connect um so I think that it's it's just the term that's used I think outside not just here it's all over um and much like Christina I guess the one comment and I know you just addressed it I had asked about the math but I think it's maybe it's important when we go back in and talk about
168100 reaching that math uh reading um Mastery I'm sorry that you know here and it's we should highlight it it's all students who've been here for five years or more for fourth grade um and for eighth grade it's you know five years or more uh reading on that grade level I mean there will always be outliers we always have a student that uh as learning differences I know our special education audit uh pointed things out like that and we're working really hard there to to which we'll hear about later uh discover these issues sooner and provide support sooner um but maybe there's a way we can just add something in there just like I said to me it's I don't want to set up for failure I want to set up for success and there
169were will always be outliers and I don't want a teacher or a student to ever feel that they're the outlier because they can't get to that point um but the question I actually had also was goal number one graduation rate and I think that this may be something that isn't addressed in the added thing that maybe you can address a little bit uh you were talking about flexible scheduling at ghs I wasn't sure I mean if you could sort of address that so people understood what that is and uh you know I'll just leave it at that as my first question I mean flexible scheduling can be everything from um how are we still intervening on something like reading for a student who's ninth or tenth grade and still is struggling to read when do
170they fit that into their schedule how are we working with families for those students who really want to be more career ready and they want to be able to for instance attend Stanford and go to the technical school it's very very difficult with our current schedule so do we need to look at a school within a school in order to provide more opportunities for students and especially for some of our students who find the expense of college so challenging you know they can graduate already ready you know to earn a job and and be able to have a strong skill set to be able to go to college if that's what they choose to do or stay within that profession because that's what they love like an automotive program so I think it's really trying
171to look at making sure we're meeting the needs of every every student and working with every family I think that's great because what we talk about not every student's in academics some students are artists some are athletes some are great with their hands and and don't want to like you say go to college directly after school so I think that's a really nice way to sort of focus it um and again I know we talk about monitoring individuals social emotional academic supports and I didn't know if you meant for every single student or students again that were on the risk behavior uh scale or how we're you know I think we can talk about that in deeper depth later but how to get there because I know it's something that's truly needed which we'll I
172guess get to when we get to the next report I I think that has to be for every student it again it's just helping every student find success and when you one of the the things that's fascinating to me on the risk assessment is if you listen last year across the country I that that data surprised me when I saw it but we also added social workers in elementary did that have an impact um you know because we're trying to be very proactive pre-k through 12 plus and I think our staff are doing that so I think that really is every student but they're at different levels of need so thank you and I want to also thank my uh other committee members for you know getting this out here this year's great thank well
173see a lot of growth so I would just make a suggestion um and I'm happy to do it for everyone else I don't think I need to to bore everyone with the comments that I'd given Tony earlier this week but and maybe with Michael Joseph's and Karen if your comments are written down I'm happy to share them with the entire board so you can see what comments we had to this draft in particular but I think uh if you could if you have more in-depth comments and you want to ask questions maybe just to start circulating them amongst the group so we can start collecting them and then we can discuss them at our next committee meeting so that we can grab them because there's a lot of information here and given the the hour
174of the of the day um you might want to dive into it more and and your comments might mean more to the rest of us if you wrote them down fair enough I'm good with that everyone else okay thank you very much thank you for getting this in front of us I know this is a huge undertaking and the graphics were fantastic so with that let's move to the special education update Dr h uh oh my gosh did you guys want to say something I'm sorry we've made you stay for this whole thing and then good night okay but it was nice before you go okay before you go on that did you guys did some tremendous work and I don't think it should go without being noticed or said and we really really do
175appreciate it um obviously we the three of us sat on the committee but we did not do what created this you guys all did and I think it needs to be recognized I recognize that the rest of the board and I want to make sure that everybody here and still online realizes the effort that went in to create this document because I do think it's it's excellent so thank you very much and the work behind the document that's taking place every day in our schools so you have to go home and get some sleep as a result thank you so much thanks guys okay special education update Dr h I did the recording and posted it with the board Docs I want to give everyone a test if they listen to the video okay of
176course they did okay so where might Dr H live you must live in a city did you record this at home no I actually I know why you're asking I actually recorded it in the office oh my was there a serious traffic situation and then so so in my office when you can hear the fire department um I have to say that it took me an hour to record the five and a half minutes um between the noises there there were a couple so yes I was like maybe she commutes from New York City I'm so intrigued so now you know what the noise is what it sounds like at havemeyer oh okay so that was my big question no so anyway okay go ahead I only have one question I'm by the way being
177a New Yorker I didn't even I literally tuned all of that out I like literally didn't hear a single honk behind you I live in that country so I yeah I was gonna say I just know that uh you know having visited some of the schools I know having read a lot of anecdotal uh details in a lot of articles about what's going on in the here elsewhere you know that we have a lot of and we've talked about this in a lot of an increase of students with needs many of whom aren't really don't have IEPs don't have 504s I know that we're seeing a lot more increasing needs especially from students going from elementary to Middle um you know so I just wanted to sort of ask a quick question sort of about
178Staffing just if we have enough support staff our psychologists our Paras if we have open positions and something you know I just want to make sure that we have that in place because all the work you're doing is so incredible thank you we have um for vacant positions all of our special education teacher positions have been filled we are waiting for some that we've recently hired that need to still be released from their school district but we've covered that with internally some of our substitute teachers have come back and are are filling those classes our vacancies really are with our school psychologists we have a school-based school psychologist position open an evaluation team school psychologist position that's open a part-time school psychologist open and a maternity leave as well so um it's it's a mental
179health professional and you're listening to this please take a look at what I I was talking with a school psychologist at one of the private schools today and I was like you know we have some openings are you are you interested I'm out recruiting everywhere I can um so that's where our vacancies are um we do have some para vacancies I know that HR has been working so hard to recruit as well as to process um the Paris to be able to get them into the uh to be able to get them into the schools um so every day they're filling up um so we still have some vacancies but we're getting there um so it's uh the fact that we we have filled all the special education educator roles is already a big step
180forward so that's great Michael Joseph I want to commend uh Dr H for modeling the um the spirit of lifelong learning and learning how to do the video because I know that was that was great um so I have a bunch of questions but I'm for in the interest of time I wanted to limit it to the the most important here yeah can you explain um um what it means when you when you say that the state has found this uh disproportionate sure so the state has specific guidelines in looking at different eligibilities in different categories based on ethnicity in the area of intellectual disability under the category of Hispanic the state has found that we are disproportionate we are disproportionate if we are have a risk ratio of a 3.0 or more our risk
181ratio in that area is a 4.1 4.2 um so each year we look at that data and um they look for are you declining or are you staying the same we were in somewhat of a decline within a three to four and then last last October our number popped back up to a four so the state has found that we're disappointed in that area the other area that we are disproportionate in is speech and language in the area for our Hispanic students so again the risk ratio is we are a 3.3 in that area and so that's an area that the state is monitoring our disproportionality in okay so what are our next steps there so our next steps are one of so part of the requirement for being found is proportionate is part of
182our idea Grant is a set aside to be able to address that um part of what we have done is Mr Dan Katz who happens to be here our new hire is part of his responsibility is evaluating and supervising our evaluation teams and working with our evaluation teams at the schools to look at our evaluation our identification process when we're doing our assessments to make sure that we are identifying our students in the appropriate category and that we're considering all eligibilities we're testing correctly so that's one of the corrective actions the other is that we're looking through our mtss process what are we doing in terms of intervening and so looking at working with specifically speech and language to look at our processes of identification and what we can do on the early end before
183the identification I don't want to editorialize too much but I can understand that with speech and language the um where the bilingual evaluation is always you know a challenge and key to that on ID I mean it is what it is there okay but I can say that you can it seems kind of silly the state would be um Holiness accountable for that I mean that's those are pretty hard metrics when when we get to when when we're when we're identifying students with that particular classification um okay so the only other one thing I wanted to I was hoping you could talk about because you you mentioned this in uh uh in the report the um I'm sorry we hope talking about a little bit about co-teaching um and the plan moving forward I don't
184know if we've given if we really know the next Blue expansion especially since our Pre-K numbers are up if we if we know at this point if we're if which way we're going the elements we have to go both ways like both laterally and up and you know you know what I mean go ahead it's like yes so um so that is part of the budget discussion right now so and as Dr Jones gets ready for her budget presentation those are things that we're we're considering and we're looking at is both expanding from so our first grade can move into second grade so right now we have a kindergarten and a first um so those first graders can move to Second as well as looking at our numbers and our success of our kindergarten and
185do we need to open up another kindergarten at another school to both um because of the popularity you know we have five spots at one school do we need to open that at another school to be able to have more students in there so that's part of the budget discussion um and so I ask you guys to keep that in mind as it's being presented um that that it does come with the cost of a teacher for that for both two teachers if we go both horizontal and lateral and I think we're going to have to think about some metrics to show how how the program's gaining success even though it's so small but the conversation I was so pleased in the public comment today and having that parent share experience and um that's that's
186why we all do what we do and to have that shared with um so happy Miss Downey um I was going to actually ask a question to to kind of the co-teaching and the unique learner I was going to ask you about how those were going how many students we have in those because I I did listen the video a couple days ago it might have been in there but um if you could just give us a quick overview on the co-teaching and the unique Learner in terms of children how many Etc so our kindergarten has four students our first grade I think has two could be one but I I I thought it we were at two and then are you leak our unique learner has one student in it right now but we
187have a couple other families that are looking at the program now that there's another student that's in there um to be able to see the program running okay thank you and then um just you mentioned School psychologists because kind of it was interesting um first couple days of school when we were making the rounds and it was interesting several schools commented on changing I guess we've reallocated how we um have them in the different schools if you could just kind of speak briefly to how you made those decisions I know we're short staffed but kind of assuming you have a full staff how you yeah do it the reallocation doesn't have to do with being staffed fully it has to do with creating Equity across the district and looking at the numbers of students within
188the school and looking at the workload within the schools so there has been a big disparity between certain schools and certain caseloads so you could be a school psychologist and be responsible for 55 identified students or you could have 20 identified students so the so it's a big difference and so looking at how we can create a little bit more equity and make sure that all students are getting what what they need so it's not trying to take away services from anybody really looking at the analysis of the caseloads of the workload the time and making sure that everybody can get what they can get what they need thank you that's Costa so I'm a little surprised by the very few number of students um was that did you have a Target in mind um
189for the co-teaching classroom the unique learner program did you have any targets that or expectations because I I think it's a you know looking at it as a practical matter you know families having to choose to take their child out of their neighborhood school to attend a coach taught classroom um you know in in central Greenwich I mean Costco is Purdue Central but um that sort of says to me we're missing a a broad swath of students that would benefit and obviously I know the financial constraints probably don't allow us to do that at every school um but is that seems to be a very relatively small number for the co-teaching it is supposed to be a small number so in terms of we're looking at a cap of five students so if we look
190at the kindergarten we have four of the five we also don't want to pack it so that for example we had a family who Moved In from an another District first grader and we were able to talk about do you want to go to your home school or do you want to go to the co-teaching which was actually the program that had been recommended from the previous um recently there was a another recommendation for a co-teaching so we want to make sure we have the ability to um we want to start out full so you're right but at the same time also have time have room to move a student in if we need to that the goal is to be able to offer a Continuum of options so um we want to make sure
191that um we St we have a full class but also have the ability to have students who move in um for the kindergarten it was a little bit easier because we were moving from preschool into kindergarten first grade meant for some students it was changing schools but we still as I said we there's still conversations about some students where they might move into that so we're really only looking at a Max of five students within that program so those numbers are good for our code for our unique learner um I think I had many conversations with parents who are interested but it's really hard to be the first one and so you know that that's one of those those things that since we've had one student we've had a lot of more interest in the
192program and parents are looking at it in a different light because there's something to visit now it's very it was very hard in the spring to imagine there's this class we're going to have you we're aren't able to meet the teacher you can't see the room and so we now have that and so now it's a little bit of a different conversation good to know thank you okay I don't know um I just wanted to ask a quick question because I know this is just sort of a quick overview and I'm you know I know there was a bunch of information um included in oh now my brain just went where'd it go um in our overview um you know the timeline of where things are and um where we're going to be I know
193a lot of stuff is completed in January 22 there were other things that said you know we were in process of in 21 22 and things that are coming down the pike um I just didn't know when we might see an update um just at some point during the year or earlier on that you know the the action plan um the overview I just know a couple of questions had had been asked um because there were some stuff that was still in progress and so I don't know when we might be able to just get an updated version of that where we are with some of those topics so in June um I had done a presentation to the board and with it being summer not much had changed I mean while we still were
194working on things and putting things in place there really wasn't a drastic change in where we were in the action plan from the presentation to June to to now in September so the next time I think I'm on in another six weeks ish and um so at that time we'll have moved into the school year and can give another further update yeah you're on for November 16th yeah that's what I was just double checking because I was gonna say there's some stuff in the the before that I know we've already completed or were on target to complete and I just know it hasn't been updated and I just wanted to make sure that we have that at some point so that we can change some of those yellows to Greens I'm getting there so forth
195no the amount that you've gotten done and it's such a short window of time is absolutely incredible I've heard wonderful feedback from parents and families throughout the district and we had speakers earlier tonight sort of addressing some of that I think that that that speaks so loudly uh at least to me because of the the years spent standing where you are begging for for change um for our families and now we're seeing it happen on a daily basis I think it's fantastic thank you very much Dr H okay with that I'm going to Central Middle School okay Central Middle School update Dr Jones I really don't have much to add so I won't like the labor because I think LR Coston actually talked about dig yeah talked about that they're meeting weekly I believe moving
196full steam ahead we're a cheery Bunch we meet every Tuesday at 8 A.M does Mr hilly want to say something since he's here did you need to add anything enough now perfect and I even approach I appreciate the efficiency of the comment okay with that as we've promised to then always have Western Middle School update I'm hoping for a robust update here it's tough to give a robust update right now the remedial remedial action plan is in the Deep it's in with EPA um last week they did send a letter they wanted us to notarize which means you're getting towards the end um but we're continuing to wait um for their final approval um and then the next the next step is when we will start into that public hearing piece if you remember where
197we'll have probably probably in here we'll have a the public hearing where people could come and support the project or not do we have Annie send someone that might be we were really aiming for October and they'll let um last update that's kind of where we were still sitting so I'm hopeful waiting for it next you have to wait until the deep in the EPA actually um sign off on their media action plan remember the whole rip anyone else okay same all right that's very good all right financial and Staffing report Blaze you're up everybody can you hear me you're good go ahead all right so the uh first item I have before you is the year-end report for fiscal year 22. um base a pretty straightforward for standard reporting but normally I think this
198goes before the board maybe in July but you had a pretty packed summer so this report is here before you um for review and approval uh there's there's not too much that should stand out from some of the prior reports I was looking at um summary page on the front operating was 99.7 percent fully executed for fiscal year 22. um the under I think some real strong prioritization from Dr Jones the GPS made some great execution on open Capital so that's reflected in um the capital numbers and uh the federal programs obviously had some major impacts on the school lunch program which you would see in the financials there but if any other than that if anybody has any specific questions or would like me to run through anything specific let me know yes um
199so I we got some questions um at least I did about the school lunch program and how long it'll be free for all that's until the money Runs Out is is all we know I think the last I heard in Dr Jones might have a better uh number or time frame but we're looking at planning purposes uh sometime between the end of October um or November and then um I just looked at exhibit two and I noticed um the preschool tuition goes into the town's general fund is that so for Revenue yeah but it's our school why do they get the money yeah and let me just make sure I'm looking at the same thing so in exhibit two preschool tuition 500 000. yeah we're recording the revenue but I don't think that actually goes
200into the general fund but let me double check on that for you and I'll send you an email I yeah thank you no okay all right this is now information okay so let's go on to budget transfers Blaze transfers this month are informational only um most of them are all pretty routine just internal JVS um I don't know if anyone has any specific questions about them I had a question um with respect to number two you're moving it from Administration to instruction so it that's office services to um the program is cipl which is rental maintenance and software so that's the same code this I think they're called General codes that's the same general code same uh it's the same major object code yep so those are two hundreds so because what caught my eye
201is just the difference between so that's the same is this it's just the other component with instruction it actually you know would be helpful going forward if you have the General object codes like a column for the general object codes going forward so we could just see where they what they are yeah I think that's a good idea so in this one you're going we're going and it's going from 600 to 620 and the major object codes are staying in 200s and I think we'll add those on the next report yeah that would be helpful I'd appreciate it I like that any other questions on this topic okay Blaze might always be this easy okay next we are going to rental rates and tuition and fees Sean is very mad right now exactly exactly yes
202so you don't think Sean's online watching the first one that I think we'll look at uh are the rental rates I think that was in your packet first so what I think we would be asking the board to do if it's possible is to vote on the rental rates um some background here if it's possible but otherwise we could look at doing this at the next meeting basically um because of covet I think that there was no contract I think the last time the board voted on this we had the attached approved uh rental rates from 2019 the rental rates are primarily driven by labor um so these rates are basically updated to reflect the uh cost of contract that we're at now with the new hourly rates and the teamster rate um right now
203because we're using the uh contract labor rates um we're actually running a deficit in the rentals like from outside groups because we're paying them at the current fiscal year contractual rate but the fee is from you know prior fear labor rates which is why we brought this before you now okay that's really important um I would just like to know why everybody's rate went up except for the auditorium student employees yes they say to 22. they did everybody else got a bomb I think at the moment I'm just in the in the term of my own time frame for the amount of things that I'm processing and also working on at the moment with Dr Jones in the last three weeks um something we did talk about was once we have a little more time
204with digesting the entire fee structure and looking at a review for the last time you know some of the fee rates and some of these things and what we should be doing for a couple of these at the moment though we thought it was important to just get the labor rates um that would warrant a larger discussion so this before you right now is just updating the labor rates to match the contractual increases we'd have to suspend our rules guys obviously if we want to take action on this I mean I'm happy to do well he's they're kind of asking us to yeah I think we there's a policy this is what we have to approve these rates correct right and it seems but we would just have to take a vote to move it
205from from discussion to action item that's fine and we just needed two-thirds but I have a quick can I have a quick question before we do it so please I this is thank you for informing us and I know you said we're running in a deficit um if we work to approve these uh tonight or whatever um the question is is does that retroactively affect anybody that signed a contract for upcoming rentals or you know or do we keep with whatever signed as of today if we vote this in today you're talking about so people that are planning their events next month that already have yeah I I think that would be a good question I I don't know what the historical practice has been as they were updated since they were been effective but
206uh if they have a signed contract with us for a particular rate US changing this will not proactively go back and change their contract we have a signed contract with that number and it actually has all the more reason that we should sign it vote on it tonight for future all the contracts we're going to sign in the next no that's what I was just double checking I wanted to make sure that if people have already signed it stays there but if they have it out now and it's not signed that they'll get a new contract correct if it's not signed to Blaze's point I mean we can make this a broader discussion at one point like I'd argue we should be charging more but I think at this point let's just uh get it
207right so that we're not losing money so I think we need a motion to waive the first read is what we need no it's just a motion to take it up as an action item you think so yeah because it's not a first read second read That's only policy why not okay so it's a motion to convert it I hereby move that we take this up as an action item this evening happy to second that all in favor that passes eight zero now you want to put the motion on the table motion to approve the rental fee structure as proposed by Mr Leviton okay I'm Michael Joseph all in favor that passes eight zero okay Sean really is annoyed that was super easy okay uh thank you and I do think that you brought up
208a good comment that you know a larger conversation at looking at the fees is probably warranted at this point so that's something that we can work on great okay so now tuition and fees tuition and fees um two parts here we're talking about the uh you know non-resident tuition program for GPS and town staff on schedule a um and then we're also looking at the uh kindergarten program which would be on schedule B and then um we have the proposed tuition increases I think we received a few questions about where the tuition rates kind of come from and what the logic is behind them uh this Administration you know inherited the tuition structure similar to some of the fee structures um historically we've been increasing between two and three percent you know trying to balance
209inflation um against you know wage increases and you know the burden the shop cost increased so that's kind of reflected before you but I'm happy to take questions about what's specific from anybody Miss Downey just to confirm so you're proposing a three percent increase on all these items just to be sure we understand what we're voting three three percent increase yeah so the the thought there was between the two and three percent historical without kind of changing something of that inflate with inflation what it is um the higher end three percent makes more sense also looking at the weight the contractual wage increases um and where the labor market kind of is try to balance those two besides the equation this is information only so if we want to maybe follow up with questions because
210this is for next year right for 23.24 correct please this is for 23 24. so it is important as they're building the operating budget um but I think we could take it up if we want as an action item and you know maybe the next meeting because I imagine this you'd want to go through this a little bit more in detail yes go ahead just a quick question so this is for I'm sorry for 23 24 but I see a there's only a column here for 22. the first two pages uh based on the historical format yeah our uh like information I think it's also a report so you have some context for what we're talking about and then the fee is actually starting on the third page of the packet on this topic you'll
211see a proposed tuition rate 23 24 page one yeah okay but so for example if you look at biology that was the class that you ended up not running during last summer and so my question was is that because of the cost of it or was it because you couldn't get Staffing okay any other questions on this topic hmm okay well we will obviously bring this back so we can ask some questions of blaze in the interim if there are any okay let's move to action items uh Blaze you're still up budget resolution can I get a motion to put this on the table um one second anyone have it in front of them go ahead Laura could you read it motion to put the fiscal year 23 budget resolution on the table 24. that
212it says 23 on the approve the attached fiscal year 24 budget resolution has proposed thank you I will second the title is incorrect okay please slipping through the cracks here sorry about that so yeah the resolution um this is the language that's currently taken out of the approved budget from last year um no change except for the change in red and as a reminder these are the uh these get adopted with the budget from the town which allows us to appropriate funds without having to go back through and seek RTM approval to get them assigned into an account code so things like your basic you know well this is what's really important are two pieces of resolutions it would be grant funding and having so when we get the grant funding that's labeled in the
213resolutions we can have them appropriated into the appropriate account code without having to get RTM approval on some of them and then also what what we're proposing here for athletics um basically because the revenue goes to the general fund unless we have a resolution and this is for all departments and it's particularly impactful for us at the board of ed um we have uh basically no ability to then recoup the related expenses with that so if we start charging again for athletics and the primary reason behind that is more for things like operational improvements for the experience like crowd control safety ensuring equal representation for different sides so there's a reason to implement ticketing for example there's costs associated with that you have to have you know three ticket collectors collecting tickets there's some staff
214expense there the revenue generated from those sales goes into the town general fund though without this resolution so this resolution here in red would be would be basically modeled on what we do with the rental of the facilities so it matches the expenses and it would go back to the board of Ed's operating budget instead of going to the town's general fund that that's what the resolution here is proposed to do that's the only change do you have a comment Joe do you have a comment okay after discovering we I like that right right so it's like to clarify for years um ticket Revenue collected athletic events that money has not stayed with the with the district that's correct well we did just build a really nice new ticket booth so this sounds like a
215perfect opportunity why we did it we have to to do something with the ticket booth well done Joe how did we discover this I asked where does the money go and honestly we couldn't find out we didn't know good job Jim all right thank you it was a good question keep asking questions like that Jeff all right I'd like to call the question all in favor of the motion on the table that passes eight zero thank you okay second and last action item Gea teacher contract would you like to make a motion Joe to put this on the table it's actually not listed so you could just say to approve the I would like to make a motion to approve the Gea teachers contract I'm happy to second that okay all right discussion Joe oh
216yes um there's a lot of ways to negotiate a contract I've done it professionally for 40 years a little about myself when negotiating presently I own a Commodities company and I am the global uh price Setter of a commodity uh the CME pays me a lot of money to do that and I price the forward curve based on hearing people's uh Fair valuation some people try to cheat the number to be high or some treated to be lower but I have to interpret what the fair price is so I do that and I run a business and make a whole lot of money based on that I had the wonderful opportunity uh to talk to Lil about our contract where she had a sincere honest attempt at a negotiation to settle on a price uh
217obviously there were other details in the contract which worked out which helped us we narrowed it down to one common denominator which we had to work at which ended up being the uh the gwi the raise increase across to all the teachers and the uh the contribution to the insurance what I thought during this unique time of inflationary volatility it would be impossible to settle this contract I told Lil that and in our our team negotiation the spread between the bid and the offer uh the proposal that we wanted the proposal they want you could drive a truck through it was just not there the only way we were able to get anything is because Lil's sincere honesty and her forthcoming about wanting to settle a contract at a fair valuation she would go to
218her people and she would make them come to a contract because in this time it was very important for us going forward to make sure we worked together it was very important to find a fair number not try to and also being very fiscally responsible how to defend the interests of the town in an interest rate Rising environment if the new contract is higher than the old contract which in a a when an inflationary environment it has to be it'll of course be questioned and I knew that we would be better protected if we went to arbitration when an outside entity settle a contract for us so we cannot be blamed but still Lil pushed on and she wanted to get a fair agreement on a contract I thought our number was not going to
219meet her expectations or her team's expectations but she'd look beyond that and said there are a lot of issues that we'd like to settle which would work very closely on there's a number which we can meet which we can win agreed to this number that we could actually have a giant morale boost and the teachers who have worked so hard over the last couple of years and pushed through the adversity that they did push to to understand that the board of education is supporting the teachers in this contract negotiation fully understanding that I was looking at protecting the interests of the town's funds but she also said that she felt it was really important for us to work together I truly feel it's very important for us to work together to strike this deal this
220fair deal and I might be asked by the RTM whether we got a good deal no we didn't we got a fair deal we got a deal that suited them that she fought her people to come to and I hope I can persuade my people to come because this is a fair deal and they deserve a fair deal after what they just went through Miss Downey would you like to add to that wow that's a tough act to follow Joe but it's the night is late so um I I I've said this to some of my colleagues I wanted to um give kudos to Joe for managing this process while kudos to Lil for her participation in the process I think um there was a lot of time spent in havemeyer this summer um by
221all of us but I think the conversations were productive I think we talked through a lot of the issues and and I agree with Joe I think we came out with a fair deal I think we all looked at the environment we're in in the world I think we looked at what a potential if we couldn't make a deal what an arbitration result would be and I think to me this was the right deal to come to so I I thank everyone for their efforts um in this Dr Jones and Dr Bud also everybody put a lot of time and effort into really thinking through the process and having discussions which weren't always easy one more Point thank you my partners working together on this we did spend a lot of time doing this but
222one thing that tonight there was a a couple of different opinions on a lot of different things but one thing that was Universal in the room tonight as we disagreed with many issues they spoke their opinion was that they supported 100 of the people supported our teachers they all did no matter what their opinion was about other things they support their teachers and this is not an Administration contract and that's what they were some of the people were just criticizing that some were supporting the administration this is not that contract this is a contract with the teachers and 100 of the people in this room uh to support support our teachers and I'll just add I was the third person on the committee this was my first time on the committee and I was truly
223impressed by my colleagues um Joe led us through a huge effort he included um many voices which was thoughtful and um and I will say that Dr Jones and Dr Bud also did a great job on language we focused it a lot on the numbers on the three of us but they focused a lot on the language that hopefully also um improved things for the teachers as well as for the students and the parents in the community um look I think fair is the right word it's fine in the sense that neither one of us are elated and that means we reach compromise so um with that any other comments from my colleagues Cody sure um I uh I wanted to complement my colleagues who did the negotiation I think it's a pretty impossible task
224um I was thinking about I'm gonna get the quote wrong but there's an HL making line that's like you know three foxes and a hand voting on what's for lunch and I think the way that the legal structure negotiating with public sector unions is like that so I actually am going to vote against it but not because I think that you got a bad deal you probably got the best deal that you can I philosophically don't like um uh the way this is done and even if we ended up in a worse place in arbitration I think anything that draws attention to the way the system works is you know mildly helpful uh but I could see how someone else would disagree with that I think I was just looking at this in Greenwich the
225average compensation per teacher is a hundred thirty eight thousand dollars uh the next highest in the state is New Canaan at 121 000 uh at the lowest in the state which that's probably not a great comparison is Madison Connecticut 85 000 so we're we have a very generous compensation structure that's not any of your guys fault uh there's a lot of stats on this and when I reviewed them it comes down to it's actually not the teachers Union's fault either if I were them I would play My Hand the way you know it's been dealt it's uh there's a people anyone who's still up and listening the municipal employee relations act it's a 1965 law in Connecticut is a disaster it's what creates this system it perpetuates this problem the core uh problem with Union
226contract in general is that it doesn't differentiate between um it doesn't pay teachers based on how good they are so some teachers are overpaid some teachers are underpaid uh and the difference is the quality and we don't have a system that allows us to differentiate so I wanted to just say I think you guys did a great job I think uh what a miserable way to spend a summer and I think everyone owes you guys uh for you know fighting the fight um and uh I just wanted to explain you know the philosophical underpinnings for why I will vote against it but uh give you guys the credit that's due well sure unless anyone else wants to add anything of discussion no all right so all in favor of the motion all opposed sorry that's
227fine passes five three okay thank you very much um let's go to agenda plan and I think we do need to talk about a few things here I'm going to put it out there the biggest thing I know that we need to well we need to probably add one date but most importantly we need to for the October 6th add um the capital discussion so I don't know if we want to remove anything because I think we really need to make that the focus yeah I was going to suggest just removing from October 6 or just finding another date for uh our board professional development because I think Capital takes a little bit of Precedence due to the time agreed can make a suggestion that our our professional development would be enhanced by to the
228extent every one of us attends the cape convention in November which has a variety of training opportunities and learning opportunities Cody it's not propaganda you get to choose which sessions you go to I have to be honest it was actually really cool it's very educational it's about being on a board um and pop you know there's one on policies and there's things on it's not what we'll have an offline it will say for those of us who went when we were first elected which is Karen and myself we we got a lot out of it um not you know we always need a couple of nuggets just need this you know I say it was a highly recommend it was a great experience Okay so um let's take board professional development off that we can
229vote on Cody goings in the conference um and then let's add the Strategic plan is go ahead sorry anything else I'm not the Strategic plan sorry the capital you need that's fair do you want to put on the sixth and make it more discussion or do you want to I know I think we've been on the 20th I think we really need to focus on yeah okay all right so so we're gonna move the Strategic plan to the 20th um it wasn't on there as an action item and we can provide comments per Karen's suggestion to you guys in the interim and then you could take them up at the committee correct okay so then we'll add capital and do we want to keep these three other items on the board retreat for October 6th
230I think so what is the site Improvement plans Tony these are the school Improvement plans I we could probably take it off if because capital is going to need so much but you kind of go we I mean I would say that kind of goes with our strategic plan if we're going to be voting on at the next meeting it's just at least having an update on what they are okay so we can prove that's kind of important okay no no I would leave it on the sixth because if we have to vote on anything it's just it's tied into what the Strategic plan is it's one of the what are the goals okay all right well are we and we're doing the curriculum plan review cycle also in that meeting that's happy we have
231to make Capital first so we're okay all right so and you'll hopefully have a budget committee that could provide us feedback ahead of that is that right Christina we're working on getting a date together okay and the other question is if it's going to be that I mean it's going to be a heavy date we haven't heard data like on a cheap achievement data for a couple years it's going to be in depth it's a possibility not that I necessarily want to move it any earlier but even if you bump it to 6 30 we can do pizza again um on me this time I'm okay with it earlier I'm okay we're not affecting the public in this case because it's border treatment okay with pizza is everyone I would like sushi I agree I'm
232with Laura um no soup for you is everyone good with a 6 30 start if we even did that on October 6th can we do that Mike can we just change a meeting time Mike antonacia we'll probably have to notice it as a special meaning but that's okay it would become a special meeting and that just freezes the agenda but you can absolutely make the change but it's a retreat so it's not we're not we're not regularly scheduled meetings so time or location changes trips a special meeting yeah but I mean what I mean we're not voting anything special meetings not like a major yeah yeah okay and also on November 3rd we have reference to operating and cap we're not having first read of the capital budget on November 3rd because we will have
233voted on it already well and the same with December 1st I was just about to say and and December 15th foreign and so as a result we need to put the vote of the capital budget to October 20th we have to move that correct no okay so that goes on the 20th okay I also think that we need to add a um after our discussions with the chief I think we'll probably need to have them hopefully a fast meeting um an executive session and Then followed by an action plan in the next week so that we can go back to the vet and RTM with a security plan um I know it's 11 10 but I don't need to know when the chief's going to be ready for it I mean it's kind of hard
234to plan a meeting if we don't know yeah it's probably hard to add I mean I'll I'll just send an email to you guys to see if he I thought he he probably saw around a week I think but let's figure that out and I'll send you guys an email and see how quickly we can move that okay anything else no okay I need an important motion it's costume okay a second motion to adjourn okay all in favor thank you so much thanks for sticking with us good night