May 19, 2022 Board of Education Special Meeting - Part 1

001so okay yo my colleagues you know when it is the bummer to get out check check mike check mike can you hear me at home mike i can hear you loud and clear can you hear me hello check check 96 ish um all my buddies loved it and i remember things were starting to get good and they had to miss the prom national thing and um and um check check oh that i really appreciate everyone me i don't know is [Music] okay now okay what's going on what's going on i [Music] good evening let's call this meeting of the special meeting of the board of education to order can we please ride surprise for the pledge of allegiance thank you so much good evening as you can see we have seven board members unfortunately karen

002hirsch cannot make it this evening but we are all here live the seven of us um we do not have a consent agenda it looks like we are going straight into our public hearing so with that can i have the ghs student government reps come on down good evening chair stowe dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees last friday was the final day for seniors before leaving for their internships and projects and it was definitely a memorable one as everyone walked into school that morning they saw sticky notes covering the band room windows wallpaper across the glass corridor and toilet paper draped over the trees in the front courtyard it was definitely the most excited i've ever seen ghs students on their way to their first block classes it also was a sentimental

003day so i would just like to say that ghs was an amazing place to attend high school i will be forever grateful for the truly awe-inspiring life-changing teachers that i had during my four years ghs has some amazing people and i just want to give them all a huge thank you for their often unappreciated but nevertheless monumental impact also on that day the student center was closed due to an outbreak of a few miscellaneous water balloons although we didn't spend our final hours in our beautiful one acre student hub i have since reflected on what it is and more importantly what it can be our student center can take on many shapes it's a cafeteria for students who to eat their pancakes before their first block class it's a study hall where students can prepare

004for their tests during their open the block prior it's a hangout space for students to socialize with their peers it's the center for ghs special events from bouncy castles during lunch to academic exhibitions after school the student center is truly an exceptional place but it can be better much better when i was a rising freshman eager to enter the halls of greenwich high school my older sister told me about the social structure of the student center where i could sit and where i couldn't there were four sections one for each grade but it was more divided than just that certain areas were designated for certain friend groups often along socioeconomic lines the exciting one acre space of activity no longer seemed that big but we can change this seclusion and disintegration through investing in our

005student center with sr3 funds the student center can become an inclusive and equitable equitable space for each and every one of our nearly 3 000 ghs students introverted quiet students can find solace and more private carols and new friends can be made in more collaborative spaces greenwich high school is an incredibly diverse school but for too long students have remained in the same circles and not expanded their networks with the reimagined student center students can finally break down barriers and enter a more inclusive school community which is only possible if the board invests sr3 funds into our ghs student center in the spirit of building a more diversified community i also want to offer my reflections on homeroom at ghs this state requirement has not yet lived up to its mission homeroom is meant to

006be a community where students can connect outside of the traditional classroom environment but in reality most homerooms are not very engaging and many students feel their time could often be better spent elsewhere for those who even attend our homeroom program needs a serious overhaul where students can participate in community building activities and are given the liberty to form organic connections with their peers i support the administration's establishment of a homeroom committee next year that will play on the homeroom agendas once with student input to ensure that both the necessary information is disseminated while also fostering community as always thank you for this opportunity and for your time here tonight i look forward to speaking with you on a month's time when kwame and i introduce and pass the torch along to next year's student government

007leaders thank you so much good evening chair stow dr dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees it is with a bittersweetheart that i give tonight's remarks these are my last remarks as the outgoing student body president of greenwich high school i would just like to take the time tonight to thank everyone who made this amazing year possible from the board dr jones ms stowe mr bernstein and from our school mr silkman mr mayo miss tulada mrs foster and so many more who believed in student government to bring change and advocate for our community looking back on our year we started with mask strict covert regulation and those awful plexiglas dividers if i were to go back in time and tell myself that we would end the school year with mega tables in the

008student center a reopened cardinal cafe and the last day for seniors consisting of a water balloon fight and a tailgate my past self would tell me i'm full of it nonetheless we stand here today having accomplished all of these feats and more for the betterment of the ghs culture and community and it was all thanks to your ongoing support and feedback this monday the dhs student government hosted its first ever moderated student body presidential debate in advance of our student government elections on may 26th the three candidates all had the courage to put themselves out in front of the entire school and communicate their vision for a ghs led by their advocacy here they demonstrated their leadership abilities shared their ideas and connected with peers throughout our community the candidates were professional honest and school

009appropriate throughout the virtual debate personally this debate was extremely uplifting as it showed me that my class is leaving a ghs that is better than we found it no matter who who ends up becoming student body president and vice president i'm confident that they will diligently advocate for their peers lead initiatives that are relevant and gain support from our town for priorities such as improving and reimagining a student center that is the heart and soul of our ghs school community the student center is the biggest room in the high school get is has seemingly changed the lease i believe that innovation for the betterment of our school community is imperative we have seen this with the pack with the bleachers covered mitigation and now it is time to see it with renovations in the student

010center last year i was on a committee with numerous faculty and students who all agreed that the student center needed to be reimagined from signage to interior design to technological advancement there is immense support for a redesigned central hub for our school community i employ the board to use esser funds to improve our student center thank you as always for your time tonight can't wait to see you all next one it has been a true pleasure to have the two of you come speak to us at every meeting and i'm sorry it's coming to an end but you've always been so thoughtful kind great feedback and just you're right we've come very far so thank you so much both for coming always with that we go to lil is she here yes no gea do

011you want to put her first you it didn't can get warmed up yet i'll have to warm it up up here all right good evening dr jones board of education community members and all the gps staff and students and to my gea members in reviewing the presentation documents on the esser funding i noticed the transitioning of four specific phases survival facilities thrive and transformation transformation 20 percent of learning loss focus on learning acceleration academic renewal and student enrichment i like to focus on that word transformation i like to speak in support of our student center at ghs a place where 2 800 students and 290 staff members can have a facility reimagined a place of social gathering accelerated learning and for nourishment not only for the physical well-being but for our social and mental well-being

012a student union and i specifically use that word union where we can improve our school culture and create an environment of inclusion and not isolation a place flooded with academic and technical and friendly resources to support student learning a paid staff to support students well after the school day and a union of access to not only inside but open air spaces priorities to reflect reflect to collective call to action and to think boldly and i'm asking everyone to think boldly and what we can create and reimagine in this community in this town not only for the student center to spark innovation information including regarding implementation of initiative initiatives and resources but let's not stop here as they say up at the big house and i mean ghs that big house let's not stop here let

013go big or go home let's go big let's not stop just with the student center i hope to have the western fields open as quickly as we can for central to be built swiftly to have the best athletic facilities that we can to attract and retain the best teachers in connecticut one of the lines of in the statement on the slides on transformation section says to improve the student well-being and staff now i can see line items lots of line line items of all the things that we have done to improve the facilities to keep things safe to help accelerate learning to recoup it i'm not sure what we've done for my teachers and their well-being i talk with teachers seven in the morning till ten o'clock at night and i'm not so sure i

014can list a few things but my email president at greenwich association education association dot org can you email me and i want my email to be popping or it's not gonna pop at all but i have trouble keeping up with what's the well-being our teachers we have a thousand teachers on ct reaps right now for jobs a thousand teachers there is a teacher shortage how do we keep our best teachers here how do we attract them we need to do a better job at that and i'm here to work i work well with the board of ed i work well with dr jones but i'm telling you right now what our teachers went through i i hear it everywhere i go from bet members the speeches we have the best staff we have this we

015have that but can anyone tell me what we've done for our well-being thank you lil uh next up is the p-tech president and i see that she's online what name should i be looking for michael says p-tech president can you pull her out there you go all right go ahead mimi thank you good evening thank you good evening dr jones chairstow and other members of the board of education i'm mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of aldo members going through the agenda items for today it looks like it's going to be a long night we look forward to the further update on the western field situation our students there haven't had full access to the the school fields for six years and we all want to move

016forward we also look forward to the central middle school update we were very happy to see the call for public input on central in the district notes last friday distributed by dr jones if you have thoughts to share now is the time educational specifications are given to the building committees to help them understand the spaces which need to get built the importance of sustainable features auditoriums can you hear me okay no can you restart actually you just came on oh wow okay you can hear me now but it was really amazing what you said i can't hear you okay i'll start over good evening dr jones chair stowe and other members of the board of ed i'm mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all their oh

017um does it say wait do you want me to wait kathleen yes please wait right yes wait i'll wait for you sorry just text her yeah test go ahead and maybe start can you hear me yeah can you hear me now kathleen hmm stop again i'm gonna should i try to start again can you hear me uh hey liam hey you wanna talk to my phone should i do that huh oh uh can you hear me now kathleen maybe this is mike i think that they're having some issues on their end i can hear you perfectly it's just a matter of them working it out on their end so just like okay i can hold tight but another option amii mouth is there and persians she can read my comments probably you let me know

018all right i will i'm texting with them on site now okay i can erin can you hear me i can hear you fine test test test i hear you yeah i'm waiting for them to hear me oh sorry test one two three test one two three testing one two three test one two three do you want me to do it here test one two three test one two three can i be heard in the building testing one two three tommy can you hear me okay i do have to say this is really cool how the community is coming together in here on this one good evening dr jones chairstow and other members of the board of education i am mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all

019of their members going through the agenda items for tonight it looks like a long night we look forward to further update on the western field situation our western students haven't had full access to their fields for six years and we all want to move forward we also look forward to the central middle school update we are very happy to see the call for public input on central in the district district notes last friday distributed by dr jones if you have thoughts to share now is the time that's in capital letters the educational specifications are given to the building committee to help them understand the spaces need to be built the importance of sustainable features auditorium size gym size and more we also look forward to tonight's special ed advisory council update on our side within

020ptac we have voted in a new slate for next year and are gearing up for end-of-year celebrations and training for next year's members we're also beginning to think about our advocacy goals for next year and how we can pass the baton within ptac and continue to move the needle in improving our kids educational experience as a reminder our main roles are centralizing centralized around coordinating pta efforts and programs advocating with the unified voice facility facilitating communications and interfacing with organizations such as the school system administration and town authorities we're grateful that we have been involved in the numerous textbook reviews and other committees this year and hope that we were able to add a valuable voice to those conversations we welcome the opportunity to be part of these and other conversations within the district and

021we will continue to work hard to provide valuable and representative input on behalf of the parent community in terms of thinking about next year's advocacy goals there are a few things we've been discussing stay tuned as we look to close out this year and start next year on the right foot first we would like to better understand the protocols around school security and the district response and communication plans when there is a security event there still appears to be a lack of consistency in the communication to various students and parents second we want to explore device usage in the classroom and hopefully have a bit more consistency on the approach philosophy within the middle schools as there is growing concern about online task of time-off task which may be exacerbated by personal device usage third

022we want to move forward to move toward two parent teacher conferences per year for k-5 students fourth we want to continue to move toward a zero waste policy and ensure recycling at all schools not just in the classrooms but importantly in all the cafeterias as well fifth we are discussing how we can make our k5 lunchrooms more inclusive for students with allergies and exploring how other district employees other districts employ various means to ensure no child eats alone and last we would like to clarify and perhaps simplify some of the processes that students our schools struggle with in the way of paperwork think outside vendors insurance field trips for instance we can coordinate with the district to provide recorded training on forms in the beginning of the school year before i close i want to

023draw your attention to written comments sent to the board of ed by our north street pta presidents in opposition of an ice rink on north street fields they learned about this possibility only in uranus time today in this the speaker deadline thank you for your time and consideration and sorry about me not being here or there or wherever thank you so test test test test can you hear me we do have 23 speakers um and i think we would really like to get that test test test test can you hear me you can't hear me so you can hear me that's great oh we're good all right wonderful just in time so we're going to try to make sure we get everyone in especially because the 23rd speaker is a student and we don't want

024to make him have to wait until um after we're done with our meeting so with that if you could try to speak as quickly as i do we could get this done within an hour um so uh karen you're on the clock three minutes we'll try to save people with the person on deck benjamin marcus you were up first thank you very much sorry i already messed up with jennifer benzovango on deck good evening superintendent jones board president stowe esteemed board members colleagues parents and students my name is dr benjamin marcus and i'm the interim coordinator of english language arts and social studies k-8 i'm here tonight to discuss how the esser funds have provided teachers additional resources to support foundations our well-regarded and successful reading program in grades k-2 these funds enabled the district

025to purchase geodes the only set of decodable and readable texts that is a companion to the foundation's reading program in some geos is a resource that supports the foundation program's curriculum in increasing fluency and to coding for students and has proven to be highly successful as you may recall foundations incorporates the science of reading research in a carefully designed program for all k2 students it provides a multi-sensory structured systematic cumulative and explicit program with a documented research base skills overlapping are not taught in isolation foundations differentiates instruction while actively engaging students in their learning so that all students learn to read and spell geodes however is rooted in the belief that children are capable of reading to learn while learning to read geode is a new collection of accessible knowledge building books for emerging and

026developing readers each book enables students to apply to coding skills that they are learning in foundations while learning about important ideas in science history and the arts geodes aligns with both the scope and sequence of foundations now some are probably asking what does this term readable mean geodes are readable text because with specific decoding strategies coupled with explicit instruction in vocabulary and content knowledge they are wonderfully accessible to students with emerging reading skills the books provide provide an authentic reading experience that builds content knowledge about science history and the arts while fostering intellectual curiosity each text is at least eighty percent decodable at a designated point in the foundation scope and sequence this means that a minimum of eighty percent of the words contain phonetic elements and trick words that have been explicitly taught up

027to that specific foundations unit it is recommended that each book be read by the foundation student after they have completed that unit teachers and principals throughout the district are reporting great success with geodes as a companion to foundations in the classroom later in this public comment actually next you will hear from proud principal jennifer bensavango of old granite school about the building and student successes with geodes thank you thank you so much you were fast all right next up jennifer events mango followed by michael reed good evening dr jones chairwoman stowe members of the board and members of the community my name is jen benzvango and i'm the proud principal greenwich school thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i would be remiss if i didn't begin with a heartfelt thank you for your

028support in acquiring the funding for our architectural design funds we look forward to establishing a building committee and beginning the much needed design and renovation to our beautiful school i am not here to talk about flooding i am here to talk this evening and share my appreciation also for the current funding of the math interventionists social workers at the elementary school and the supplemental program geodes for our k2 teachers throughout the 2021 school year my brilliant literacy specialist sandy zagrella my equally brilliant ap caitlin bertram and i celebrated the results we saw from the full implementation of fundations despite the covet impact and we were eager to find decodable texts to complement the decoding and encoding instructions addressing the other components of a rich literacy program of which text comprehension is vital we found geodes

029to be the bridge we were longing for and we were thrilled to hear that it would soon be purchased for all schools connecticut has some of the nation's best literacy researchers if you follow the work of margie gillis at literacy howe or the team with yale university's haskins lab you'll see a model literacy curriculum begins with oral language at the core surrounded by equal development of phonemic awareness phonics spelling language syntax vocabulary and morphology and text comprehension with written expression the geodes program has provided my teachers with engaging decodable text and high interest mentor text using words and language rules parallel to what is taught in the classroom during word study one of my second grade teachers remarked we're enjoying the books and the engagement is certainly great and some of our early more so

030than some of the early readers we used to use the students love the connection to the work they're doing in foundations and are excited to see the transfer into books they're able to read independently in observing the instruction of one of my first grade teachers you can see the direct connection between foundations geode small group reading and ultimately the impact in their writing geodes has been the missing link necessary for a comprehensive literacy program in k2 the investment in this approach has increased in literacy skills throughout our school as a former language arts teacher and true bibliophile i find the greatest joy in seeing an increase of engaging books in the hands of our children our students love seeing them and their excitement in learning everything from poison dart frogs to cranberry crops and paraolympics

031while seeing the connection to double vowel syllables is magical thank you for the investment in our youngest learners and i brought an example with me because i had a kiddo talk today about the bonus letters of l f s and z those are the letters that you have that you have to double the end of after a short vowel so here's the book that he was reading and it's the work of leo leone and you'll see throughout it he has the words in here hiss huff fuss and that followed exactly with the rule that he was working on in language arts and it meant the world to him that he was able to explain that to me this morning and his mom so thank you thank you so much next up michael reed good evening

032chairman stowe dr jones members of the board of education cabinet members and guests i'm mike reid the math coordinator k3a for the grants public schools and i'm very thankful for this opportunity to share the positive impact of our elementary math intervention program over the last two years i have worked in the greenwich public schools for almost two decades and in my various roles i've often thought about how lucky we are to have our outstanding reading specialists they support every school and the work they do literally changes lives being a math guy though i would ask myself how great would it be if we had math specialists in every school a few elementary schools have had math interventions over the years but they were funded through school specific budget lines my dream was to see this

033limited math support expand to all elementary schools that dream finally became a reality last year when we incorporated five new math interventionists into the staffing model fast forward to this year through temporary federal funding we have increased our math interventionist by an additional five teachers we now have at least a 1.0 math interventionist in each school a reminder as a result of the pandemic we can fund these roles now but we must find a way to operationalize them into our budget on a yearly basis here are some of the impacts of these important roles on our district this year the full teacher in each building allows us to serve all grades inclusive of k to two last year we were primarily focused on grades three to five due to lack of staffing this year we're

034able to support our students in need of more urgent or tier three intervention last year due to staffing and building logistics we were only able to provide partial tier three interventions this year interventionists are able to collaborate with administrators and general education teachers more frequently this constant communication leads to more building awareness of what is needed to support our most vulnerable math students this year in class or tier one instruction support has increased dramatically from six percent last year to 46 percent this year we have many students that have not risen to the level of a pulled out intervention but still require additional support with the increased intervention staffing we can push into classrooms with more regularity and as a result students are receiving remediation before needing to be pulled out a wise person once

035said and that wise person is my grandfather an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure lastly teachers are now recommending students for screening with more regularity this has led to earlier identification for math intervention as well as promoting a more reflective community striving to implement universally designed practices in the general education classroom thank you again for making early math intervention a priority we are feeling the daily positive effects and as an employee former student lifelong resident and father of children in the greenwich public schools i hope to see us secure and build out our math intervention program in the years to come thank you thank you so much all right next up here is by adrian novak good evening chair still dr jones members of the board cabinet members and guests my name

036is jill flood and i'm the principal of north street school for the last nine years thank you for this opportunity to share my perspective on the significant positive impact of the math interventionists and social workers i'm speaking on behalf of north street but i know this impact has also been felt at all 11 elementary schools at north street a historically high achieving school we have had over 60 students serviced directly by our math interventionists this year that means these students were not on target at the start of the school year to meet the end of year benchmarks based on the data collected supporting these students and providing interventions within the homeroom math class had always been the responsibility of the classroom teacher many years ago the district realized that this was a monumental task when

037it came to teaching reading and each of the elementary schools was provided a literacy specialist finally after years of this imbalance between math and literacy we now have the manpower in the form of our math interventionists to provide the students with the level of support they deserve already the data from our winter benchmarks shows a tremendous amount of growth from the fall through explicit targeted instruction in a multi-sensory approach many students have met their benchmarks and been exited from interventions through screenings and data review the interventionists have also identified additional students with potential math difficulties and provided them with explicit systematic interventions as well this early intervention provides the students direct targeted additional instruction in a smaller group setting with a narrow focus this has helped the students get back on track rather than needing

038to be evaluated for possible special education services when these students are in the general education classroom that they are now better able to keep up with the math instruction and be successful likewise our social worker has been instrumental in helping our students who are dealing with stress and feelings of anxiousness or worry these students come to school seeking an adult to speak with who will listen and provide them with calming strategies stress relief and positive affirmation our social worker also serves as a wonderful support to many of our families who are also dealing with a variety of challenges she is truly helping create relationships and encouraging our parents to be our partners our new social worker not only provides support to these individual students and families she has also been a huge help to our

039entire school community as a member of our safe school climate committee she is available to help in times of crisis as well as planning for proactive change this year she started our north street school ambassadors program this is a way for our older students to channel all of their energy and enthusiasm into a wonderful leadership opportunity those ambassadors take pride in their jobs and act as role models while providing additional safety positivity and support to our entire school community it is a truly wonderful addition to our school we hope you will continue to support these vitally important positions in our elementary school budgets moving forward thank you and have a great evening uh next up adrian nobey followed by jackie holman and i see both of them online adrian you should be able to speak

040uh hello all of you um i'm hadrian nove and i'm an 8th grader at tms uh thanks for the opportunity to speak virtually since i'm homesick right now so for my cms 8th grade capstone research project which is a project where we look into some of the problems in our community that we can help solve i've researched remedying one of the pretty long-standing issues that i along with many other students have experienced at our school which is our lunch periods so i'm sharing my research and recommendations so i can inform the ed specs because with the new school being designed we have an opportunity to fix this problem so the cdc healthy schools program recommends students get at least 20 minutes to eat our lunch to avoid the health problems that come with fast eating

041and give us time to socialize and this doesn't really seem like a lofty goal but uh cms doesn't often reach this bar so a big factor of this issue is our lunch lines while we have a 20-minute lunch period if we allow for a 10-minute recess we don't actually get to spend all that time eating students who buy lunch often have 10 plus minute weights in their lunch lines which cuts their time to sit and need in half and at presents the lunch line has one exit per lunchroom we have two lunchrooms and one entrance if we want to buy snacks we go to the rightmost line for both food and snacks which is packed with kids clamoring for a place in the line and if we don't the left line is pretty empty it's

042mostly the snacks that hold up the line so to fix this i recommend separating the snack and lunch lines in the new schools so that students can get their food quickly and leave while also letting them get snacks when they want to when we construct the new school it's essential to make sure that the lunch line has multiple exits and entrances perhaps even two completely separate serving lines to fix this from also a few other things to consider for one the placement of the bathrooms cms bathrooms are quite far from the lunchroom and the auditorium you're all in uh which cuts into meal time and discourages students from using the bathroom which is horrible uh exits to recess uh water fountains and hand washing stations should all be closed to the bathroom to the lunchrooms

043uh for example the water bottle refill is currently a hallway away from the hallway away from the lunchroom which is not great uh in order to maximize our meal time in recess so to conclude if we want students like me to be able to stay focused in school and have a healthy and positive school environment we need to look at all the time sinks we have in the lunch line and in the lunchroom and get rid of them uh thank you for hearing my suggestions to build a better cms special thanks to my teachers who helped me out uh mr christ and mr norris oliva thank you so much from the students next up is jackie holman online followed by gene schmidt good evening board of education members and dr jones as you know i've

044been concerned about the usage of arp sr-3 funding on transformative social emotional learning or cell so i took the time to learn everything i could about transformative cell including its commitment to equity and i'm really shocked that you would ever consider launching such a controversial program in greenwich let alone that the superintendent has allegedly started implementing yale's ruler program at eastern without board approval ruler is based on the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning or castle's transformative cell framework it focuses on a concept called intersectionality that's a term coined by kimberly crenshaw who is the architect of critical race theory intersectionality describes the overlapping discrimination due to the interconnectedness of race class sex gender disability religion and so on it's a core concept a core component of crt according to crenshaw crt first requires

045one to use an equity lens to uncover racism and hidden biases which are assumed to be systemic then intersectionality aims to generate coalitions between different groups with the intent of resisting and changing the status quo that's the social justice element of crt when you go back to castle's approach to center equity it sounds just like crt it talks about identity which specifically draws on the concept of intersectionality it talks about agency which describes one's capacity to make change and then curiosity is about animating this self and social analysis and then taking action in the name of equity equity is another loaded term which suggests treating people unequally to obtain allegedly fair results in fact the state board of education says its core responsibility for educators is to do everything possible to ensure equity not equality

046specifically it says that educators need to be self-reflective so they're not blind to things like implicit bias and white privilege that's probably why a white privilege unit has been taught in the high school sociology class since 2014 it also says that schools need to promote culturally responsive programs except the research used to define culturally responsive cites the work of critical race theorists including ibram x kendi and kimberly crenshaw so culturally responsive education is a euphemism for crt just like transformative cell is my question to you tonight is did you realize that these programs have shifted over the last three years to add crt and since superintendent jones has promised that she doesn't teach crt how will you rectify this with the unapproved ruler program what about the second step cell program isn't second step the

047program that you're currently using and it also relies on castle's definition and offers crt lessons are those being employed in the district too i think parents deserve an answer to these questions we've been waiting for a long time thank you for addressing this issue [Applause] gene schmidt followed by stephanie jean's online go ahead gene you can unmute yourself i'm there sorry good evening chairman stowe dr jones members of the board cabinet members in the gps community my name is gene schmidt and i've been the principal at koskop school for the last nine years i'm here to speak about our math interventionists and our social workers first of all the benefits of our math interventionists they target student instruction for students that are performing below grade level to bring them up to grade level standards they

048provide high quality intervention that matches the students needs and use their learning rate and level of performance to make important educational decisions to guide instruction they provide increased time narrowed focus and reduced group size instruction and the intervention based on individual needs screens they screen students to just identify those at risk for potential mathematical difficulties and provide those interventions they provide explicit systematic instruction and targeted interventions present math learning is a multi-sensory approach in order to reach all of the learners at costco our interventions have provided professional development for teachers to analyze data from lincoln and classroom assessments so the students can receive targeted in-class instruction they have identified areas that the students could grow and provided strategies to help support these students our interventions have also analyzed grade level data to create targeted morning

049groups we targeted second and third grade for our first cycle they identified skills that needed to be taught based on the baseline data and then they created frameworks of lessons for each of our grades the data showed tremendous growth for these students that attended these groups we repeated this process for the spring this time we've added fourth grade to the groupings we are also grateful for our part-time school social workers but we hope that the board will consider making them full time in the future for many reasons our social workers provide support to school psychologists to help manage caseloads and provide much needed mental health support to all of our students including meeting individually and with groups of students for support for example students that are experiencing divorce in their family meeting with students in

050lunch bunches to encourage connections support with regulations transitions social skills peer relationships anxiety and to provide support for new students they provide support for general education with truancy anxiety social skills relationships etc and they're available to respond to crisises that arise in the building which sometimes our school psychologists are not available for they help manage crisis intervention with dcf211 and they act as our liaison with gcf they provide family outreach which is critical in these times with covet being able to work with families to provide support and how to manage behaviors connecting them to resources family dynamics peer relationships having another mental health provider allows for collaboration with our psychologists our students thank you for your time [Music] is it okay we're going to combine our comments i think that's fine we can share good

051evening chairman stowe board of ed members and superintendent dr jones i'm steph cowie and layla horn and i are the co-chairs of the greenwich high school pta we're speaking in support of the sr-3 funding for the transition the greenwich high school student center it is interesting that almost a year ago we were doing this very same thing our ghs community today is as strong as it was in june of 2021. laila and i serve on the reimagined student center committee composed of students parents and faculty the student center which is one acre in size indoors and is a hub of the school has not changed since the since the school was built in 1970s it works if you're looking to have a retro 70s party but to support the student and faculty of today it

052falls a few decades short this will be a welcome facelift these ideas will address the need to modernize the space to include technology friendly support such as digital screens charging stations and outlets additionally create new comfortable furniture seating spaces and all types this was something that the students were asking for this is what we believe the culture of ghs will be even better by striving to be a more desirable and functional space for students of all backgrounds and backgrounds and social and emotional needs the pandemic has shown us my my thing keeps jumping but the pandemic has shown us so many things but most of all it is shown as flexibility we need to reimagine our educational spaces this is a project that will impact all students in the district eventually one time or another

053this will be a place where students will take pride who may grow in with this space in ways not even thought of um spta presidents our goal is for our students to find comfort in this one acre of space and maximize their potential in doing so we need to create a more welcoming inclusive and higher functioning space one size does not fit all anymore for this generation of high school students we need to add academic and technical friendly resources support support student learning we have been one i'm sorry we have been and will continue to be an enthusiastic and supportive voice as well as a partner in this process for this transformation we hope that you will move forward with the ssr three allocation for the ghs student center and thank you so much for

054your 60 seconds thank you thank you both for combining your time appreciate it thanks for all of you for jhs um next up sarah philbin followed by adele carroll she's last june 9th at the arp sr-3 town hall the superintendent explained that proposed social emotional learning spending was for roller training which will be embedded into the curriculum into the academics the community was told that community feedback would continue until the application was submitted in august june 23rd mark breckett board of directors of castle began to train eastern middle school teachers in ruler training without a board of education vote or community input september eastern middle school began to pilot roller training again without a board of education vote or community input to date there has been no oversight of the approximately 6 million already spent

055recently the boe town attorney schulenberger gave an official opinion that the oversight of the funds first to the bet and then to the rtn is in legal order shortly after the superintendent used tax dollars to secure a different but incomplete opinion from outside counsel the opinion was incomplete as it did not look into the specifics of our town the town rtm voted to maintain bet rtm oversight the next morning the superintendent requested full appropriation of the remaining 9.5 million from the bet this began the town oversight process in an rtm meeting i asked to see the budget line specifically for ruler training i was told by the chair this information was in the boe detailed monthly budget i have reviewed all of the budget materials and have yet to find ruler training i have reviewed

056all the budget materials provided to the b rtm e m public and have not found any budget item for ruler training what is ruler training roller training is a seven step action plan over two years to change the mission of the greenwich public schools and embed transformative social emotional learning into our core academics what is the concern federal esser funding required the boe to introduce the curriculum of transformational social promotional learning cell assessed with a castle scoring however the boe did not vote on this so district must be implementing again without community input this is an excerpt of information gathered and provided by a nurse practitioner in critical care who has a doctorate in education and lives in connecticut use of transformational cells sets up a social credit system of our children and will mandate

057social work or mental health services for low scores whether parents want this or not sexual education outside of health and wellness and behavioral modification techniques do not belong in our schools this is required in esther funding enlisted in cell transformational curriculum sexual education related to transsexualism and gender studies is inappropriate to teach in younger grades and does not belong in public education with public tax planner dollars use of transformational sales curriculum it's a quiet way of introducing critical race theories adele carroll followed by megan galette good evening my name is adele carroll i'm here tonight to ask some questions and talk about the central middle school educational plan i have two children one in koskov elementary and the other at central first i want to thank dr jones and tom healey for responding so quickly

058to my emails and answering my questions almost immediately i still have more but i'll put together a list so we can communicate more efficiently i recognize and appreciate the first steps taken which was soliciting feedback from staff and now parents transparency during this process is very important it became even more important as i started reading through the plan i learned that this is not a mere replacement of a school building it is also a redesign of our children's education and curriculum on page two the section called rationale for the project made sense to me it talks about the age of the structure equipment safety concerns and classroom sizes nowhere in that rationale section does it mention changes to the curriculum when i got to page three the section called long range educational plan i learned

059that there are more changes proposed than just a new building mixed in with bullet points describing a new roof plumbing and heating is mentioned of new curriculum i'd like to learn more about the proposed curriculum changes i'll admit my head was spinning trying to google all these different acronyms such as c3 framework mtss ngss srbi and i'm sure i missed others page 29 was most revealing i i do understand that this is a draft so i'm not trying to call anyone out for clerical errors but i have some concerns in school suspension classroom is not an academic class and should not be listed under that section same with srbi math and ell which are special support programs the spreadsheet seems to be misleading and needs work in reviewing the new proposal i asked for the

060current state classroom numbers so i could do a proper comparison based on the information i received it appears the plan will be to increase the number of special ed support programs from 4 to 19. are we predicting further failure for our children and why are we aren't we trying to correct this in middle school why are we trying to practice in middle school earlier intervention at the elementary school level seems to make more sense the trend over the last several years have been to coddle kids parents are not innocent in this in many ways they have tied the school system's disciplinary arm behind its back covid and all that went along with it on the school level has only added to the overall weakened mental state of our children turning half of central middle school

061into what amounts to be a mental health facility is doing a severe disservice to our children's future it creates an alternate universe which is far from life take our children out of that bubble appreciate your time get them back to them [Music] feel free to email it thank you so much all right next up megan goletta followed by francis novak [Applause] good evening after hearing from an overwhelming number of parents and town residents while campaigning and through my continued involvement in the community i need to convey to the board that the citizens of this town do not support what's occurring in our schools parents are bonding together and their awareness is only growing parents and taxpayers are expressing their anger and dismay over being denied a say in their children's education promoting sexualized politicized dark

062dumbed down curricula and gender education is irresponsible this is not what most educated rational adults want in academia i remain committed to the many parents grandparents students teachers town employees and taxpayers to voice their concerns about improving transparency and curricula and getting back to fundamentals including the fundamental right of parents to speak against the garbage that is being passed off as curriculum i will also continue to defend the teachers who are caught in a bind the swift changes in curriculum to forced vaccinations many faculty and staff are parents and they share the same concerns there are several recent questions that have come to my attention that parents would like answers to one why are we taking extra funding with one of the largest school budgets in the country it is not needed and it comes

063with strings attached i said this back from two years ago why is tony jones not providing full transparency over the allocation of roughly 14 million dollars this is being viewed by many as a slush fund central middle school new building proposal can you define what a de-escalation room attached to a self-containment room is that sounds horrifying number four why is why as part of the cms building proposal are we including integrate equity social emotional learning and mastery across all curricular areas in the planned document five enter the elected members of the boe why did it take the rtm to get involved to ensure that they will now be oversight over the essers slush fund where is the transparency of the 14 million spend the stated goals and the metrics that will be used to determine

064if the spend met the objectives lastly why are we seeking feedback about the improvements to the ghs student center what without having a budget allocation for the project the objectives for the use of the space and the long-term plan i could go on and on about the long list of concerns from parents including the plan to address learning loss during private disruption lack of transparency regarding ruler training frustration over the boe from citizens who voted them in for not ensuring transparency and accountability finally we asked the board to hold our superintendent accountable and to provide answers to these questions on behalf of the citizens that voted for you and for the taxpayers and parents in this community if our schools continue to fail greenwich as we know it fails too thank you hello this is

065francis winobe mom of three gps students i thank you for keeping the hybrid format i'm home with a sick kid and am delighted to still be able to honor asian american pacific islander heritage month military appreciation month and mental health awareness month thank you for all you do in our community tonight in support of my son who spoke tonight and all our current and future cms students i'll share a book by my son's second favorite picture book author kristen duson please enjoy selections from if i built a school jack on the playground said to ms jane this school's okay but it's pitifully plain the builder who built this i think should be banned it's nothing at all like the school i have planned right off the lobby to get to your class i'd set up

066a system of tubes made of glass you'd hop in a pod press the number then zoom and under 10 seconds you're right at your room all of the classrooms are built onto towers that sprout from the schoolyard like color flowers and like giant petals that welcome the day the roofs open up in a similar way panels fold back and they let in the sun which frankly makes being there that much more fun it's off to the gym and this place is so cool around it please note my perimeter pool the pool's a deep oval that everyone likes you race underwater on submarine bikes up there is my trampoline basketball court it's partly a bounce house and partly a sport there's also a rock wall and here's something new i've added some skydiving wind tunnels too

067it's now time for recess let's head out the door my playground is awesome so much to explore fly on the zipline way up in the sky or slide down the twisty slide three stories high and after that if you're hot and you're beat then you can go tubing now that would be sweet my school will amaze you my school will astound by far the most fabulous school to be found perfectly planned and impeccably clean on a scale one to ten it's more like 15 and learning is fun in a place that's fun too if i built a school that's just what i do thank you gps dan watson and all the teachers staff and administration that make schools so fun every day let me end with a quote that i heard on a state of

068teaching webinar earlier today we are here tonight for their future not our past thank you thank you very much is she online i don't see her here no one's getting up isabella's here she is oh i'm sorry there she is sorry thank you mr man you're welcome she was here [Music] yeah you guys see isabelle she was here oh i'm sorry so this should be addressed in the cms specs the sound system yes oh that's so interesting okay good evening board i'd like to thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight um i'm gonna start off by saying i have two younger sisters eight years old and eleven zero eleven years old one in second grade and one in fifth grade going into middle school central to be specific and as you know central's been

069having a little bit of a dilemma but right now i'm not worried for central i'm more worried about my school greenwich high school so my name is isabella gaga i'm a junior at greenwich high school and today i'm speaking on behalf of my school asking for continued support and funding the renovation for this this the student center when i first stepped through ghs doors three years ago i couldn't help but be in all the student center but our one acre of space which allows us to develop as students members of society and human beings is in desperate need of improvements the current student center serves as the beating heart of our institution but investment in this space with sr-3 funds would support and reinforce our district's commitment to providing a safer and equitable education for

070all our students this renovation would allow greenwich high school to be a place of flexibility meeting the dynamic needs of the students as students who deserve the best resources to grow as individuals in social and emotional capacities by supporting this funding you also support the improvement of school culture support inclusivity re-establish behavioral norms and balance the dynamicism of current organized chaos you support my future my sister's future and generations to come we need this trust me we really do i do want to thank the board today and i appreciate everything the board has done for me especially within my 11 years at greenwich public schools but today i won't beg i will politely ask for you all to reconsider the allocation of these funds to fuel the future of our school this is for your

071kids in our future please make the right choice thank you [Applause] good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones members of the board of education cabinet members and guests i'm kathleen ramirez the assistant principal of north miami school thank you for this opportunity to share angela and my thoughts on the significant impact of the social worker and math interventionists at north mianis while i can only speak to north myannas's experience the effect of these additional staff members has been felt in all of the elementary schools while covent has been difficult for all of us it has been particularly impactful on our students our social worker has been a vital addition to our staff to help our students who aren't necessarily mandated for counseling these students need extra support as they are experiencing new feelings of anxiety and

072stress due to covid along with other students who need help with emotional regulation processing a change at home social skills peer relationships and or coming to north miami as a new student the north miami staff has also benefited from the addition of our social worker as she has been able to push into classrooms to give teachers tips on how to better support all students in the class with emotion regulation and other behavioral issues finally our social worker has been a wonderful contact for our families regarding such issues as behaviors at home separation anxiety and connecting parents with outside resources north manassas math interventionists have provided an incredibly valuable service to our students just as our reading interventionists have done for years up until this year any student who needed math health received it from the

073classroom teacher only now with math interventionists working with classroom teachers analyzing data to pinpoint student needs and setting up small group interventions to address these needs classroom teachers have more time with other students our interventionists have been able to push into grades k and 1 classrooms to support these early learners before they are in need of intervention also since these small groups are very fluid students who have met their intervention goals are able to exit allowing space for more students to benefit from these interventions finally dr pamela cantor a renowned child psychiatrist says the driver to learning is social connection these additional adults in our building not only provide much needed social emotional and academic instruction but also gives students another opportunity at making the vital social connection needed for learning please consider continuing to

074support both the social site the social workers and math interventionists in our elementary schools thank you and have a great evening thank you very much all right followed by angie good evening i'm sally davis chair of the greenwich recycling advisory board and i'm here to advocate for the race proposal prepared by the pta council oyster greenwich and the trans sustainability committee french public schools contributes significantly to the waste stream however a large percentage of waste can be reduced recycled composted or replaced with reusables resulting in fiscal savings environmental benefits and educational opportunities students need to be educated about methods of dealing with the waste we produce how the environment is affected how important it is to protect the planet and its natural resources reducing our waste stream is absolutely essential soon our trash will no

075longer be burned at the waste to energy facility and likely will have to be sent out of state to a landfill as we all know it's the law to recycle items such as paper cans bottles and plastics one and two therefore it's necessary that appropriate recycling containers are available in cafeterias classrooms and throughout the school always twinned with trash bins in 2019 along with the pta council green schools committee we instituted a cafeteria waste reduction program at several elementary and middle schools this was most successful in reducing overall trash by an average of 55 percent the goal of this program was to decrease lunchroom waste by recycling hard plastic aluminum foil and drink containers removing liquids and at some schools composting fresh produce unfortunately due to covid this was suspended now it is strongly recommended

076that the cafeteria waste reduction program be re-implemented district-wide in the fall outdoor composting bins were provided at most schools for the collection of fruits and vegetables but the tonnage collected was limited in comparison to using a contracted organic recycler it also depended on parents teachers and students to maintain it as the union contract restricted custodians from transporting food scraps to the outdoor bins volunteers are a great resource i know i've worked for them for many years but the system has to be incorporated into the administration from the superintendent down to the lunch monitors and custodial staff i urge the board to implement a sustainable waste management program that encourages environmental stewardship civic responsibility and leadership by the greenwich public schools thank you thank you very much alexander good evening board of ed and dr jones

077my name is angie heart of phyllis and tonight i'm speaking with my ptac green schools co-chair haddon it is my hope that each of you have had the time to review the zero waste proposal in the week since our last meeting green reps from each school have sent me observations regarding the recycling status at their school the purpose of this was to have real-time data on where we stand and where we can hopefully get before the close of school this year the reps were not advocating for any changes at the moment but merely reporting what currently exists the three questions i surveyed for were one does your school have its recycling containers in the cafeteria yes or no two if your school was one of the six schools that had new sorting stations pre-pandemic are

078those sorting stations in the cafeteria now including all the components which would be the gray liquids blue recycling black trash green composting bins along with signage in both english and spanish and they're supposed to just leave me comments and then third are their recycling bins in classrooms yes no or some the results are as follows out of the 14 gps schools i had 11 report back so for the first question 6 out of 11 have proper recycling bins in the cafeteria we're happy about that however 5 out of 11 do not have recycling bins in the cafeteria at the moment for the second question which was only regarding the six schools that had those sorting stations pre-pandemic two out of the six have the full stations back out and running for two was a little

079bit unclear and another two out of the six do not have their pandemic stations back out and third regarding the recycling in the classrooms there seemed to be containers in many classrooms but this was not a strong sample size as not many classrooms were visited it was noted that offices and media centers did have paper recycling bins and we thought that was really great we asked that an effort be made to have recycling bins back in all gps cafes before the end of this school year and that the two to four sorting stations that existed pre-pandemic be put back in those respective cafeterias this is seemingly small task our goal is that the structure being placed so that next fall our volunteers can hit the ground running to educate students on recycling and proper sorting

080waste reduction is so important our zero waste proposal is not just about getting the physical structure in place although that's needed it's about teaching procedure what materials are accepted and where they go um and the whys and the need for district-wide cooperation both the bottom-up and the top-down approach thank you so much for your time thank you very much um next up um sorry was it hayden alexander followed by maria weston thank you guys so much for having me i really appreciate it dr jones my daughter goes to central and you know i appreciate it there's an old saying you know does a bear defecate in the woods the answer is yes and the fact that a non-binary student has to have their own bathroom it's crazy that we're even fighting over this but we're

081kind of having an issue with my daughter catherine because she identifies as a cat she's a trans species and nobody's willing to put a litter box in the classroom and for that she's getting a lot of disrespect the teachers are thinking that she's some kind of joke and she's having an identity crisis so dr jones i would just implore you to actually take steps to be more forward thinking because when we think about the transition movement or the transgender movement or just the transition of a child in this day and age we don't follow the same binary rules that you grew up with we need people that are less bigoted and less white supremacists and people that are open-minded because my daughter is just she's not alone in her thinking she has other classmates that

082have these same ideas but they feel too afraid to actually come out and request these things so i would like for a more inclusionary faculty to actually support my daughter because just the idea that she just wants a little litter box so she can tinkle in and she can defecate in that's not too much to ask for but once again it's a system of white supremacy in a school district that's you know very affluent people they're not able to take off their maga hats or get off their trump train that they lost and just help my daughter out now listen ever since you know my wife's boyfriend has moved in my daughter has been having a lot of issues with that with this transition and she's not really getting along with them and i'll be

083honest i'm not getting along with him that much her only fans account has gone down because now my wife is you know constantly napping with her boyfriend and it's just making her life terrible so when she goes to school all she wants to do is be able to use the litter box where she can just go number one or go number two and she doesn't have to use the non-binary she doesn't have to use the boys she doesn't have to use the girls now if you guys will not make these uh you know if you're not we'll do this for we're gonna have to get you know involved legally and to be honest i'm in debilitating debt i have a horrible gambling addiction so for me right now hiring an attorney i'm gonna have to

084get another job i'm gonna have to take a loan out from a bank and the only way to do that would be to commit some sort of fraud so you guys are literally going to make me break the law in order to support my daughter and so i just want to ask yourselves to ask yourself this are you really being inclusive thank you so much for your time next up mariah [Music] sorry sorry marlo do you see more lesson online okay we're gonna skip that and go to sam is it jack jackie making speech online go ahead you can unmute yourself sam get started hi can you hear me we can good evening board and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight hi my name is sam jaffe and i'm a sophomore at greenwich

085high school i'm here to ask for the support of the zero waste schools program proposed by waste free greenwich over the past two years here i've observed an excessive lack of efficient waste disposal i believe that covet has had a significant effect on the sustainability programs that were in place pre-pandemic such as the pilot zero waste schools program at ems it is important that we continue our efforts in waste reduction and sustainability throughout the past couple years waste has escalated internationally through containment strategies such as disposable masks the climate is still digressing rapidly and if anything problems were escalated by the pandemic it's intrinsic and it's intrinsic to continue our efforts towards a waste-free society despite pandemic restrictions and zero-waste schools program is an effective step forward there's little education in regards to what recycling

086even is in greenwich public schools nonetheless a proper recycling system in place at greenwich high school the student center is a good example of the current status of recycling wall a couple of recycling bins are scattered in the large room and are often filled with trash not recyclables the zero waste schools program would be an effective solution to this problem many of my peers don't understand the importance in recycling and composting by furthering education on the effect waste has on the environment we can garner more support for waste reduction in addition outdoor composting bins would be an easy and useful solution to the waste problem natural and low-cost ways to improve our environment are imperative to the development of waste reduction programs sustainability is one of the most important causes right now for my generation

087in order to save our world from the oncoming and current effects of climate change we need to act swiftly while both fighting for this cause at the local and national levels we can work to make effective change locally taking steps such as zero waste schools program can further the creation of a sustainable school system my generation is the future and it is necessary for us to be educated on the impacts we can have on the environment by teaching students steps they can take through simple day-to-day things such as recycling and composting we can further waste reduction in schools and teach valuable lessons on environmental protection i'd like to end with a chinese proverb that i believe aligns with my message be not afraid of growing slowly be afraid of only standing still currently we are

088standing still the zero waste schools program can leave a lasting impact on our future thank you for listening thank you so much next up kristen leminsky followed by amy moose when i was growing up i was considered a tomboy i didn't play with dolls and i didn't like wearing dresses i preferred to play with max box cars and tonka trucks i would go out into the swamp behind our backyard with my siblings and cousins and play in the mud catch frogs and build forts no one ever suggested to me that maybe my gender identity did not match my gender assigned at birth but if i was a little girl acting that way and doing those activities now even right here in greenwich there's a very good chance that a teacher or school counselor could be

089telling me this very thing and without my parents consent or knowledge and if an adult authority figure in school was saying those things to me as a child i would probably believe them i might become gender confused child because of the thoughts and adult authority figure put in my head which are then reinforced with sel and progressive gender ideology in the classroom i might even like that it makes me feel special or gets me attention based on the progressive gender propaganda surrounding me in school advertising and all forms of media when i hit puberty and hormones cause mood swings and depression it may be blamed on my gender confusion or gender dysphoria a school psychologist counselor or teacher may suggest hormone treatment and beginning to transition i might start using the boys bathroom or the

090new non-binary bathrooms that they are putting in central middle school all this could be happening without my parents consent and if i did begin this transition project process i would be setting myself up for a lifetime of anxiety and depression or even suicide because in actuality i was being psychologically manipulated into transgenderism transgender people also known as non-binary pan gender gender queer gender fluid by gender polygender and two-spirit have a lifetime suicide attempt rate of 30 to 81 percent as compared with the general population rate of one to five percent transgender people also only account for 0.5 percent of the population buried in the very high trans-suicide rate are many cases in which people have wrongfully transitioned because they were misdiagnosed and made to believe gender dysphoria was to blame for their anxiety depression feelings

091of inadequacy or acceptance instead of getting the proper counseling or treatment for what is most likely very normal teenage angst due to puberty and hormones or some other emotional or psychological issue or no issue at all this is not about acceptance it is about adult propaganda confusing children children are called children for a reason they are born an empty slate and only know what they are taught or learned through experience children do not understand nor do they need to be exposed to concepts of sex and gender identity when schools introduce these concepts to children at inappropriate ages they're greatly influencing their psychological development and teaching them to believe in progressive ideologies before they're even capable of understanding them and formulating their own opinions even the lgbtq plus community is confused on these issues as they

092have an almost never meeting list of names and flags for the 72 plus genders or no genders which overlap duplicate and even contradict each other this explains why yukon online college registration now includes these gender choices male female gender neutral transgender non-binary eight agender pan gender gender queer two-spirit third gender and other i ask again what are we doing to our children three minutes schools need to thank you so much for your time [Applause] good evening dr jones chairperson stowe and boe members i'd like to speak to school climate concerns and ruler spelled r-u-l-e-r not r-o-l-l-e-r has been mentioned in previous meetings has been an ongoing area of concern these meetings and i as well as other eastern parents have been waiting for leadership to speak to this which has not happened having read his

093most recent book and having seen him speak last night with a bunch of educators wearing roller t-shirts i wanted to dispel some of the misinformation maybe one day we will be lucky enough to have mr racket actually speak here for gps mark brackett founder and director of the yale center for emotional intelligence and a professor at the child study center at yale is the lead developer of ruler an evidence-based approach to social emotional learning that has been adopted by nearly two thousand pre-k through high school schools across the u.s and other countries this includes wilton new canaan ridgefield weston and westport ruler just stands for are recognizing emotions itself and others you understanding the cause and consequences of emotions l labeling emotions accurately e expressing emotions and are regulating emotions effectively ruler aims to infuse

094the principles of emotional intelligence into the heart of schools enhancing how students learn teachers teach families parent and leaders lead they have found that students who receive more have better academic performance positive shifts in school climate better quality relationships with peers and teachers students in schools using ruler have less bullying and aggressive behavior after one year in fact research under review shows that early adolescent students who reported significantly lower connectedness of teachers in comparison to their peers scored significantly lower on all adaptive indicators and significantly higher on maladaptive indicators in comparison to students reported high and average levels of connectiveness what does this mean essentially that adolescence mental health is at risk in the situations unfortunately because this is a pilot paid for by greenwich alliance not esther funds our students will not receive ruler

095at eastern until at least 2023 so my sixth grader will be lucky to take part by eighth grade maybe it's difficult for parents to understand why this is needed so it's easier to lie and say it's a pathway to crt i don't know maybe it would be helpful if the district shared its data on risk assessment so parents better understand where ruler is being piloted for instance how many students are reporting depression and anxiety are expressed suicidally how many students have engaged in aggressive behaviors for their peers or staff how many bullying reports have been made how many reports been made to gpd for assault yes that's right assault parents were out of concern that students aren't being taught about suicide and mental health concerns that is exactly what sem that's sel not cell that

096social emotional learning is trying to address we often hear that kids should be learning this stuff at home and i'm sure they are but it is in school that they really learn how to use it thank you very much good evening board members i'm nicholas sosa and eighth grade student at central middle school over the past three months i've been researching how we could teach financial literacy in middle schools so once i concluded my research i decided that it was time to implement it so i've come here this evening to propose a new class for all greenwich middle schools the middle school students of greenwich would greatly benefit from a financial literacy class that could be offered as a semester elective in this class students would learn the basics of the financial systems including how

097banks work the stock market budgeting and investing even things as simple what it means to have a saving and checking account i believe that this class is an essential component to a student's education that is currently missing all curriculums offered in greenwich middle schools as a student we should be learning the fundamentals of money early on to prepare us for when we become independent from our parents but even how to manage our own money from a summer job in addition we will learn the value of saving money over time and how to spend it responsibly ideally this class would be a one semester elective that students from sixth to eighth grade could take students who sign up for this elective would be top key foundational tools in understanding finance that would prepare them for the

098real world but even on a more basic level students would be better prepared for the economics and other finance classes offered at greenwich high school and beyond part of the vision of the graduate is to help students develop their individual capacities to conduct themselves in an ethical and responsible manner critically interpret evaluate and synthesize information and explore define and solve complex problems a personal finance class fits nicely into the vision of the graduate by giving students the opportunity to learn the life skills that they will use every day of their life everyone needs to know how to manage money wisely every day at the core this class addresses a practical need that is not currently addressed in our curriculum over the remainder of this year i will be putting together a course curriculum that i

099plan to share with you the board dr jones and the curriculum committee will review this implement we'll review and implement for future greenwich middle school students i appreciate your consideration and look forward to talking further with you on this very important subject and good evening an hour so thank you everyone for being so accommodating um next up we turn to our monthly reports dr jones i'm going to keep mine pretty short since it's already 8 30. um i just want to say congratulations on new lab um they had their adams family um musical which was actually funded by alliance and uh so thank you to the alliance for their continued support of all of our schools um i also want to say thank you for all of our educators who are out speaking tonight our

100principals um just on behalf to so that you can hear their voices because i think often that's something that's missing you probably hear us more at these meetings because they do run long so it's hard for them to be here but thank you to all of them um and i know i don't want to steal joe's thunder but um just about the the game with lights i won't say any more except that i do want to say thank you to everybody who has worked so hard including you joe on cardinal stadium and it's just been i think a phenomenal project and again you heard i think it mentioned tonight it's it helps change culture you know when you address the learning environment the athletic environment it makes a difference for our students so that's all

101for me tonight can i assess one question based on the p-tech um feedback north street school in the ice hockey rink can we talk just address that because it was news to everyone i think so there was a a meeting probably about a month ago um where uh from the first selectmen who organized it asked for the schools to come and have a conversation and they asked us if there were any properties in the school at all where it would even be feasible and so mr watson did go through because we felt like we needed to you know work with the town on this look at every single site that um school site and the only one that was really even remotely impossible was north street that was the end of the conversation um so

102there was a meeting of the actual ice hockey committee which is a public meeting um that's not our meeting the board isn't part of this committee to my knowledge um and so that committee has i think been tasked to try to figure out what they're going to propose and mr watson has been very very clear with the committee that should they want to utilize anything to do with the schools that have come to the board um and so he reiterated that at that meeting the other day he was invited to and um again it would be a concept and they had they would have to bring you the full information because we really don't know anything about what's being proposed but i do know you have to have um the electric you know uh quite

103quite strong electric um to run it you have to be have close to water be close to the water we don't even really know what the time frame would be um you know that this would be up is it a tent what type of structure we don't know any of that um so i do know that jill flood is sending a short note to her families i think in the morning just to make sure they all know that if anything was going to be considered it would come to board yeah that's a board decision absolutely i just want to make that clear thank you very much yes michael joseph um yeah tony we we heard a couple times tonight about uh from about sustainability about um restoring um some programs that existed before before the

104pandemic election was there anything you can add about progress projects there it really it really depends on every building they're all a little bit different um you know initially when the compost bins rolled out some buildings it works some buildings it's more challenging and there are a whole host of issues as you know our school sites are all over greenwich some had tried composting several years ago and it was attracting like foxes and rodents and things of that nature because they're close to a wooded area and they felt like it was making the playground not safe we have some buildings where it's not in our custodial contract for them to have to take stuff out it was an addition to their job so it would have to be negotiated um you know we are uh

105we are a contract state um so the buildings that when they're ready to put back their recycling it will go back in and we've got our factories all open but it is different at every building and some buildings when it gets to the multiple like the liquid station and um where it's much more complex it really depends on is there a student club that's leading it is there a teacher you know that's real passionate about it or their parent volunteers but we don't have the people just to make every building look the same and each building kind of does what they can do that's just to follow up with that mike someone from waste street greenwich i had actually been speaking with and i think they had planned to make a proposal to us this

106month but they weren't prepared in time so i believe we're going to hear something it sounded like next month on the 10th topic what about where we were the dishwashers i know we had talked about the dishwashers instead of all the styrofoam we're throwing away plastic forks and things like that so we actually i think it was last summer so we went and really looked at the high school campus just trying to see if we could put a dishwasher back in there just for high school because that would be a third of our campus one of the challenges we had and we recognized quickly is where the dishwasher was many years ago the dishwasher could kind of go in the same area but where all the trays are and things of that nature have been

107made into like an office um so we realized it was gonna be a little bit more significant um an initial assessment we think that it's not gonna cause huge water issues we were concerned about that um so from stormwater aspect as you know um and so we are we have a i think it's 35 000 in the budget uh this current year and it's actually setting in the cafeteria budget to study so that we know exactly what we would have to do is it going to be a half a million dollar project or is it going to be 100 000 we just don't know but we're going to get all those answers this current year to start with the high school what we do know is there was a push precoded for us to run

108out of the high school and try to deliver all over the district after two years of delivering lunches all over the district um we just don't believe it's sustainable for us to do that we did it with a lot of kids but dirty dishes and things of that nature would be even more complex thank you all right let's do committee reports let me start with you joe sure i've got to start with some some bad news i just heard from the uh greenwich boys rugby team that's at the national championship right now they lost in the first round [Music] hey joe i think you turned it i think you turned it to know uh [Music] try that again can you hear me now who needs a microphone okay this is a little better all right

109that's a little sad news but we're through with that now let's go into some happier news uh tony you just talked about the first night game at cardinal stadium we finally got the approval uh to uh to play a game under the lights uh it was an incredible game the boys lacrosse team played a double overtime against one of the top teams in the country darian and uh we lost by uh well he lost a double overtime unfortunately it was a very good game uh another project what we're working on that i want to mention is the waterfall project uh we finally settled or thought about a day to do the cleanup are are as we see at the top of campus we see the waterfall areas once again looking like an abandoned lot i

110don't know if the same kid eats pizza there every day or puts that well that pizza box is still there i know if you drive by you're looking at it in the weeds then you'll see a pizza box so i don't know if it's the same one every time or if it's one that gets put there uh every every day but we have to address the garbage that has built up there we have to cut the weeds down we're not going to be intrusive to the soil because we know that's a topic we have to work on very carefully we're just going to clean it up so the group is going to get together on the 4th and attempt to do a clean up on that area that's it for me thank you thank you

111okay christina this morning um two two things the budget committee met um earlier this week um obviously several of the items on our agenda but um we talked about our operating reconstruction i'll talk to you later about our operating budget for this year um closing the gap oh my goodness it's a bird it's a bird [Music] christina this is the most exciting uh [Music] okay so what do we do [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] go get him batman [Music] oh my god [Music] that's only okay so we had a budget committee maybe um we talked about the current year's budget we also talked about the bbt and the rtm voted on um what we're gonna do in the next month's budget on next year's budget um and we had a discussion um about arp so we

112i can chime in when we get if we get to those things showing i'm sure we'll present all of that in a bit and then these are the ghs building entryway building committee the path of the state does not move quickly we still do not yet have the final approval to be able to go out to bid we are hopeful that we will have that in the next week once we cannot go out until we get the state letter that says we've got to bid so we're we're hopeful that if we have it we'll go out to bid we'll give this back the end of june but it's obviously safe to say we will not be breaking ground until sometime this summer um the committee is already discussing the logistics involved in that and we'll

113report back when i have more information yes that's cool i feel like i haven't heard anything based on that um the question i have is given that the state has taken a while i mean how long do we real i mean do we really think that we can move the bidding process that quickly in order to still break ground in summary basically we had our meeting with the state and they requested some additional documents which sounded relatively easy to put together but they wanted them all submitted as a package there was something from the town sewer you know kind of miscellaneous things so the plan was those were going in this week with the hope that we'd get back the approval next week it's just they need to kind of stop the ice trustees our

114rfp is ready to go out the moment that state approval comes in so our committee made a decision about how to manage that um so the moment the state says you can go out to bed the plan is within a day or two to go out to vic it's it's been organized it is that as efficient way as we can possibly do sounds good thanks michael joseph yeah the strategic plan committee met last week um it's um there's a lot going on behind the scenes that um it sounds like i give the same report every month from that we are on the timeline and we're bringing something to the board soon and that is true and if you recall the timeline that we presented the board back in february we're hoping to have draft stretch

115goals to the board next month to talk to them remember we're going to talk about stretch goals we're talking about large three four five year goals that are ambitious and really ground the work of the district moving forward uh one of the themes of our conversation um over the conversations of the last few months or about when you heard it in the comments many of our administrators tonight is a lot of the good work that's going on in the district and how the strategic man strategic plan can align and should be aligning a lot of that work together in conjunction moving towards certain stretch goals so um on our meeting last week we looked at a draft template um and the leadership team which is being led by dr jones is taking that back someone

116else's might think oh okay the leadership team is taking that back um and working on that so we're going to meet again before the next board meeting provide comments and hopefully in the next video we'll be talking about these goals we'll head towards next year all right the bat has exited the building i was going to ask like kids are coming to this building tomorrow i'd like to know if the bat is going i got it in the cafeteria and then i got it out of the [Applause] really tackled a castle of issues tonight i'm very impressed okay with that kathleen can i do um oh yeah sorry just the greenwich alliance update i have two updates the uh the greenwich alliance board voted on their reaching out grants for the 2023 school year and

117uh approved funding of 148 000 for seven grants largest grant recipient is for science beyond the classroom which is for all greenwich public schools first and second graders a full listing of the grants will soon be available on the website and also wanted to note that the alliance says three high school senior interns two working for the avid success program and uh one helping maintain the database and writing some articles for the newsletter and what i hear is that they are terrific and hardworking so great great thank you good update okay with that let's start our meeting uh western middle school soil update and i'll be very brief tonight because we did have a long report at our last meeting and that's what's in your board packet is just a reminder of where all that

118testing has taken place um um about a week and a half ago we did get well actually last week uh we did get an update that the last round of testing we believe they're not going to ask for more which is fantastic news after all the testing that's taken place so they are preparing the actual uh remediation plan right now because you have to get to the point where things are approved before we can submit that we hope will go in uh with over the next month then it will go into the state they will review it probably for a couple of months and while they're doing that review at some point in time we'll also hold the public hearing which many of you probably remember when we were working on the high school field

119we had to do that as well to give the community an opportunity to speak um if they are in favor of the project or not i'm sure we can pack the house for that one um but again um we're it's looking really good the biggest uh difference in their response was that uh they're wanting an extra layer on the top which means we're gonna have to go another four or five inches uh below the surface with whatever is going to go right underneath whatever the solution is which means it is going to probably increase costs a little bit because now you've got an additional layer but that's what they're going to require on on certain areas of the field mr kelly hey uh tony i spoke to uh senator fazio prior to this meeting we

120have spoke briefly at this topic he bet he has a meeting scheduled next week with the eep uh and uh he wants to know if there's anything that we specifically want him to go over when he meets with him do we have something we can relate to him i mean he's more than welcome to call if he wants that i can connect him you know with um with our firm that's working on it but um they really are working hard at the state level i will say um we're very pleased with where we are right now because it devolves in our court to get the remediation plan back to the state so and obviously they've been working on that so that will go in and then it's just a matter of the review before we

121can say yes you can get a shovel on the ground um they'll be reviewing our plan and whether or not they like it but they've given us so much input we know what needs to go in the plan would you like him to give you a call or should i tell him to just go on the information he has now he's more than welcome to give me a call if he wants that latest update thank you okay that's great news seems like hopefully we can see this in the next year would be a dream okay um with that let's move to our next discussion item for you our planning implementation thank you so much for putting all this detail together um 107 pages was very insightful of all the work we've done over the past

122year on this so with that dr jones thank you um of course i'm not going to go through all 106 pages that's there for you to reference but you know it's sean and i were working on this we did recognize there we have three board members that weren't here last summer um and so there was a lot of work that took place and just from the timing perspective this grant was worked on through june and july and by federal requirements we had to have this grant in by august and the intent of the arp grant funding for schools from the united states department of education was that we would be implementing in september that we were not supposed to sit on this all year long and be planning and have committees and do we had

123to get the entire plan through 2024 submitted by august so what you've got is just a basic timeline um and i've tried to put examples we've pulled the examples for you of the actual uh application that went in in august and we have that there's town hall information there's also some more online there's actually a video you can watch that walks you through it and if somebody wants more information obviously we didn't put a whole lot of emails in here but it just gave you an idea or flavor that was kind of what we've seen this week like on the high school the student center the emails we're getting we got a lot last summer on this project as they mentioned tonight so again this is a basic timeline um mr o'keefe i'm not sure

124if you are there and are able he has been home ill so do you want to just kind of quickly sean start with your powerpoint uh i will try i'm uh kind of lost my voice but they will do my best um so if you can go to page one mike on the next page so this is the uh presentation that uh we gave to the bet uh the budget committee as well as the full bet the first chart is just a history of the four grants that we've uh received the first disaster one for 758 000 which is last year was fully appropriated and spent in full year 21. the coronavirus relief fund is 1.2 million again appropriated last year by the bet and fully spent in 21. sr2 for 4.3 million uh we

125approached we appropriated and spent in floyd 21 2.7 the remainder was a subject of the meeting with the bet to fully appropriate uh and spend in full year 22 1.6 million and finally the arp for 9.6 million so we have spent and or committed uh these funds and budgeted these committees through full year 24 starting in full year 22 ending in 24. next next part next chart so this is the you can just go all the way to the bottom this is the how we spent the the sr1 is predominantly for technology for students to facilitate remote learning laptops chromebooks and a small amount of teaching supplies again fully appropriated last year and spent last year next page um so this is the coronavirus relief fund 1.2 million and you can see uh that we

126spent uh the you know most of it on facility supplies and equipment as well as teaching and learning supplies so that that took care of there's a lot of ppe in there window barrier shields that we heard students didn't like earlier teaching supplies and so on again fully appropriated last year in span last year uh sr2 the total grant as i mentioned 4.3 million uh we spent and appropriated last year 2.7 and you can see the detail on how we spent uh the uh 2.7 million in full year 21 we had certified staff for alp in the elementary schools summer evaluations for uh special ed valuations that were delayed due to covet so we got them done over the summer uh remote teachers we also had some non-certified staff for police over time for traffic

127and so on temporary custodians and also a significant amount of uh of technology that was used to facilitate remote learning laptops chromebooks and so on and also some facility supplies and as well as food service transportation in the summer of 2020. next page uh the request for the bet to appropriate which they did by the way for 1.566 million uh you can see the breakdown it's predominantly for uh staff salary and benefits uh including the five social workers that uh was mentioned uh significantly earlier today as well as the math interventionists that have been a huge success also 3.3 ftes in alp which is an additional 0.3 fte in each of the elementary schools we had 0.7 in each of the elementary schools and we we topped it off to a full 1.0 and then

128on top of that the associated benefits allocated from the town next page uh s of three so total grant is nine point six and uh and this was touched on earlier the focus of the can you go can you come back yeah the focus of the grant is transformation and at least 20 of the grant must be spent on learning loss uh transformation includes you can you can i'm not going to read them all but family community connections social emotional mental health and so on uh safe buildings inviting spaces healthy schools and so on so that's that's kind of just their next page this chart is a and there's more detail in the appendix but this uh primarily addresses how the money is being spent or you know spent in full year 22 and uh

129how it is projected to be spent and budgeted to be spending full year 23 and 24. and you can see of the total 9.6 million in the lower right-hand corner 4.6 of it is for human resources and and you can see we uh two incent uh substitutes to uh come to greenwich we we raised our rate a little bit and provided an additional incentive to not only come to greenwich but to work consistently for us and then there's the you can read down the uh the various ftes in sped english teacher speech assistive technology pe uh reading interventionist math interventionist teacher of math psychology social workers alp and then the town allocation of benefits was tacked on as well in terms of facilities and food services and teaching and learning that's in the detail in

130the appendix so we go there quickly i'm quick i'm quickly fading guys um so this is this is what's in the monthly financials package these two charts for for uh arp and you can see the top part is that same 4.6 million for human resources followed by benefits and then you can see below benefits the detail of the facilities we uh spending money for disinfectant in full year 22 a media room redesign at the high school ppe container storage for storage of furniture that we weren't using or couldn't use because of social distancing we also are doing a number of hvac projects to improve the air quality uh the student center redesign which you heard a lot about earlier for 500 community connections and uh and then the 100 000 that was used to do

131the analysis at central middle school that precipitated uh you know all the things that are now going on there and then again the food services uh meal delivery in uh in the summer of 21. next page and then here's the teaching and learning and you can see i'm not going to go through every one of them because i don't think my voice will last that long but we've provided additional descriptions off to the right so that should help uh any anyone to understand it better um i think i'll leave it there before i finally lose it thank you sean you sound um so i'm going to turn this over to christina downey's chair on the budget committee but going through this was even helpful and i had chair of the budget committee during that summer

132and as a reminder our budget committee is the only committee that actually has half the board on it and it's always been bipartisan two republicans two democrats we worked hard that summer with dr jones and the administration and then of course he went off and got all this feedback which is helpful to see from the community from the staff from the students and um then i recall that as we read in the summer we then sent this whole presentation to the board um after our sort of our july meeting um so it was good to go through this timeline but let me turn this now over to christina downey who's taken over the budget commitment and that's anyway yeah thanks uh kathleen thank you sean hope you for that um so i think what's really

133clear from i think these you know couple pages about the arp is what you can really see is that that we you know half the money is going towards teaching and learning and professional costs right um part of this there were adjustments when we had to put the town um asked the bts just to put our allocation of benefits into this portion of it that was an extra you know 400 000 for next year and 400 for the year afterwards so we have 800 000 that originally was not necessarily i don't yeah it's about you know a little bit for every year so it's 971 000 which was not originally part of this i think you know you can see from the breakdown the bold numbers i know that other people ask questions i think

134what i'm going to just ask we've talked a lot about student center like tony i don't know if you'd like to address the community connection project just so people are familiar with what that's involved sharon i know stacy's online today see if i don't oh that's right you're live today if i don't answer that just let me know and community connections is for our students who stay with us until the age of 22. and for a long time they really didn't have a home they the program would move just to where we could find space and now that we have them in the building the one thing that um again to dr hollidan taller she's really focused on that aspect of our program and they're putting in a curriculum which we really we haven't had

135in the past and part of that is also um to make sure that that the space itself um has the components for young people who need to learn to live independently as much as possible and the space right now really has had no investment um they're you know they should be able to learn to cook this is what you would normally see in some of these um spaces where they're also looking at job ready aspects they see if you if you want to speak to it you can't if you think that's enough sure yeah um so can you hear me there we go um so currently the program's at the millbank building over by julian curtis and the building is not set up for our students right now so for example there's not enough electrical

136outlets to be able to plug in some of the appliances that we normally do as dr jones mentioned for cooking we realized during covid that when students couldn't go out into the community that we didn't have alternate activities for them to do and so knowing that we have a continuum of student needs and so it's not all about work it's also developing life skills we need to expand the options that we have available to our students i think some of the people who have questions why don't we other board members post their questions disgusting not about that that's okay you're on the budget committee so i see that we have under transformation on the rfsr3 page extended school days are we extending the school day for everybody or you know what's this before so what

137you see on this page is how the money is supposed to be spent um and i'm trying to think i don't we're definitely not extending the school day for everybody um we could have had an after-school program though that is part of this somewhere but i can't even think of uh in the after school program most most of it was summer programming but this is just how you can spend the money and what the intent is uh from the united states department of education so i i guess i have a few different questions but i guess the one look at this to understand this chart because we we heard a lot about the student center tonight and we certainly got a lot of emails this week about the student center the could you talk about

138what what the the plan is and then but also i'm confused because on this chart it looks like it was um already spent so i don't understand certainly i can speak to that so this is a project where we wanted to put out actually an rfp to make sure that whoever was going to be working with the furniture design that it was a competitive process so we put out an rfp we actually had four different proposals we have narrowed down to the proposal that we believe is going to do exactly what the students have envisioned and the staff have envisioned um they had to present actually you know samples of furniture what type how do you get charging stations in a really big space it doesn't have a lot of outlets or it's not easy

139so we've gone through all of that process um however until i knew that the bet was going to make us go before the bet and i didn't want to assume on a project this large that something strange wasn't going to emerge so we are ready to go um on this once the the appropriation is there um we'll get started immediately so that money hasn't been spent yet it has not been spent just because it was such a large dollar amount we've gone through all of the process up to the point that we need the money so we can implement this for our students and then so i think it might be helpful first just to back up and i don't think kathy this might be you the um might be helpful to clarify the public

140exactly why we're having this conversation tonight we what we might be we need to vote on something soon so that's a very good point so we do need to vote on um basically the fiscal year and um i think we'll take that up after maybe next week i want to talk to you about agenda planning and then fiscal year 24 we would do when the operating budget came before us you know in a year um so but we do need to do that soon and i'd like to do it before it goes back to the rtm so i you know i'm gonna at the end as for our schedules to see if we can meet in the next week i was kind of hoping at one point to couple it with a cns ed spec

141vote but i think in our next conversation we'll find that that's probably not ready so then we don't have to vote on on fiscal year 22 that's what we're saying we don't have to but i suggest we do okay so then we do have to vote on the we will vote because the high school student center is in fiscal year 22 so that's why so we should be voting on that if we go down 22. correct the bbt suggested that we vote on 22 that they conditioned the appropriation for 23 upon a vote but that the money for 20 fiscal year 22 in fiscal year 23 has been appropriated by the bbg so with the condition on the 23 that we take a vote on it with a suggestion for 22. very technical and that

142was to vote on monday correct all right [Music] okay so all that said so that would clarify as far as what the the vote is and what not um that's good so we heard a lot tonight about um a lot of what sounds like really exciting work around what's going on with math interventionists and social workers and a lot of the real need that we know is out there from um the pandemic um if it's true that we this is something now that um which is great you know because as people know this is something that i think it's important that we as a board talk about um if we're going to move towards that uh a vote on approving these funds um i think it would be it would be more than helpful to

143get a sense of quantifiably you know what kind of progress we're making we know that we had um of some really stark challenges and some really stark data in last year's state results we also know that we're not going to get those results again until next fall which obviously is too late for for this vote so how else can we be sure that what we're doing is working i we heard tonight about lincoln data they we heard about students making benchmarks it'd be interesting to see how what kind and what kind of metrics we can have we have on students making that accelerated growth i i don't want to be a stick in the mud the um i i love this i love the idea of reviewing the the student center um i think these

144things are important but as a board we have to be sure that our core mission is is being attended to the uh and i think we need to look carefully at the metrics because we're only going to get these this money as you can see for another two years um so we have to be very clear as much as we can that the learning about loss is being remediated we're making accelerated growth and students on math and reading are moving back up to a grade level before we um get this to get to some other things so i am curious as far as what data we might be able to get i know we have a time crunch in things um but but i i personally um i'm uncomfortable moving forward with any vote until

145we we have some real better sense on on those metrics that make sense yeah go ahead and pastor jones so i'm going to use the math interventionist as an example um you're going to get that data it was in 2022 that money is spent we have built it into the operating budget the board's already voted on for next year so going forward it is something that's already in the budget um and when you look at any of these positions in 2022 they're all things that have already been implemented the student center is unique and i will say that is that is an area that we believe strongly i think you heard it tonight that it's going to make a difference just in the social emotional and support for our students in the high school and

146that it's enormous that's a that's a big focus for us especially in that age group um and we think that's the reason that's in here and this concept started before we even knew we were going to have arp to be able to help with it because it bubbled up from students and from the administrators and staff um so that is that's a unique one on here in comparison to the staffing but we will as we always do bring data to the board on how and we hope we're going to see great results not only in math interventionists but just with the whole roll out of the new math program we're hearing uh wonderful things and uh see mike reid still sitting there and we had a discussion just last week you know i was trying

147to find where the goal was that happened it was back and i believe we found it was 2015 uh karen hirsch finally sent the senate to me she knew where to find it about the percentage of students for instance in eighth grade algebra are we still trending in the right direction because that's been around and we are which was like we're going to have i think some really good data to share with the board i could just ask one thing i remember when um this first came and i was in the budget committee on and i kind of at the whole idea too of redoing a student center because it seems like such a large amount of money and then i listened to the students and the surveys and the experts perhaps now that i

148have a student there and then just some of the stories about how um well look i mean it's older than me so um i think that and you know i'm not as young as cody but um so i think that it's it's probably time to to change and maybe address some of and the other thing i liked about it frankly is that every student goes to the high school right and so that that feels good too that you're going to actually transform the lives for you know 2 800 students but that's just my plug for why i also like i sort of turned on that i had the sort of same reaction initially just one more plug for the student center project because i don't believe the student center currently meets the needs of all

149students and it's um really critical i think for their you know for their health and well-being to have a space that meets their needs if you've seen it it could use a lot of work joe yeah microphone they uh the to be well you know the devil's advocate here just looking at it a different way student center the would we have allocated resources to the student center if not the federal money if arp funds would we where do we think that would happen are there other priorities ahead of that this is unique funding i understand then i want people are looking at it from a different perspective so please address that i think there's a reason why it hasn't been done since the 70s truly i think um if you go back over the last

150couple of years where we tried to have even just furniture regular furniture in the budget it gets cut um because we have guidelines that we are held to and granted the guidelines the last couple of years have been a little bit higher where we're at least covering our contracted costs but this money is meant it's exactly what the us department of education meant with this funding it is not supposed to supplant things or you know just to take something off of our budget it's supposed to be trans you know transformational and i think this is a perfect project that needs that and would i be able to or like with sean might be able to build this into the budget with the current budget climate it would be incredibly incredibly difficult thank you miss downey

151yeah i just want to kind of follow up to kind of tanging to michael joseph's question i think the fact that we're putting such a huge amount of it into education educational issues now you can think about measuring it but i think i feel good about that i think also the fact that we're trying to incorporate those things as long-term budget items by you know as we have perhaps you know fewer classroom teachers we can put the math interventions into our operating budget indicates to me that these are things we feel are worthwhile and we want to be doing and help our students that we don't want to just simply do it for three years and then cut it off i think is indicative of it as a priority um for our students and if

152i could just ask that that's one of the things i know we talked about when i was in the budget committee and then you've continued is the funding class we're all very much aware of what happens when a grant goes away and so i know that sean dr jones and the committee has spent a lot of time talking about how you're going to work what works into our ongoing operating budget what was the origin of the 500 000 number i'm just thinking about like i just googled it but an acre is i think 44 000 square feet or something close to that and so it's like a little more than ten dollars a square foot renovating i don't know joe you're a builder can you do anything for ten dollars a square foot like how

153i was trying to get a context of what can actually be done with that money and how it was sized it's very much driven by actually um the design would probably be a better word of redesign through furniture and those aspects not a renovation we're gonna knock down walls that's the big difference um and from seeing the proposals um that we did receive not to exceed them out and we look at how they have planned for the space um it's i think it's going to do exactly what we needed to do but it really was trying to be thoughtful about how much can we invest from arp how much does furniture generally cost um and furniture can be expensive because this furniture has to be school grade it has to be able to last yeah

154i mean it's you know they're tough on the furniture so we feel like it's going to be able to do what we need so this is a calculation sorry calculation on cubic foot versus square foot or your cubic foot in the open space is different square foot so since you asked okay so i just i have a couple of questions so based upon the the package of materials and the timeline so from the timeline of what was submitted that the powerpoint press the it was a high-level powerpoint presentation that was distributed in i believe july that is different than what was actually submitted to the state and then it seems that what has been actually submitted to the state is and tony i think you've said this yourself the application that was submitted to the

155state is really difficult to read in fact it's somewhat incomprehensible as to what we put in here but um the issue that i was addressing is you know things keep evolving so from a matter of you know how we're spending so three when do you envision that stopping right it's a slightly it's different from the proposal in july it's different than what we've submitted to the state and the numbers have differed uh from month to month occasionally i think the biggest change was obviously the benefits piece but do you envision this plan changing anymore over the course of time if you go back to the viri when we presented and i think it went to the board july 30th last summer and you look at that you'll notice most of the items are actually almost

156identical to what they are now what you see that will change is when i look at 23 and we're going to have let's say um you know a speech teacher or that one math interventionist i really don't know is that teacher going to be 128 000 or are we going to have a 90 000 teacher so this and we've known this from day one and the state knows that we have to go in and update this periodically as we get the actual and actual expenses um and that and that will continue um all the way up into 24 and you know and the benefits did cause a big change in that um we did not we would we did not have the benefits in here so that caused shifts um for not only two but

157three so there are some shifts between just where they follow the grant and sometimes you know we could have let's say assisted technology person next year and the person is 80 000 uh that's where i have to work with dr holligen taller and she oversees ida grants she may end up putting part in an idea part on arp so yes there are going to be changes all the way up through 24. and then how does that work with state they we have to request that they open that application back up uh we have to go in make eligible edits it has to be things that they approve once we uh do that they go in and approve it again and generally you know most of this again are it's not changing the item because they

158do make sure it fits in the right bucket it's really changing the dollar amount if we have if we're updating for the actual and sub incentive for instance um i'm sure we won't have a lot left but we had some left in 7th century we might want to adjust that and move it to next year where we only have 120 000 because we have less so we would open the application but we can't open it they have to open it for us okay going to the 20 learning loss there's a lot obviously there are certain things that are obviously fall within there but from a state perspective for example in adding three and a half sped teachers and sped assistants and then also in connection with other aspects of this when we're talking about you

159know curriculum support what portions of this count to that 20 of learning loss yeah we're considered way over that and as a matter of fact i was looking there's some an actual visualization that um the connecticut finance project has where they pull straight from the grant program um and if you look at that we're sitting somewhere between it doesn't have the exact percentage but you can tell because it's broken down into the four buckets that they're holding this accountable to for arp and we're around 60 um where is this i can send the link it's a connecticut finance project and it shows our piece of this and what it looks like so for example because off the top i would say adding three and a half fed teachers is in response to our p you

160know pcg coming out and giving us our 28 recommendations of things to do which was one prior to covig but is that does the state consider that something that is attributable to learning loss because i would attribute that to dealing with our ongoing issue in revamping our special ed program as it compared to learning loss for all across the district no i mean the state looks at it because where we needed those teachers were bringing caseloads down trying to be more intensive and in having the staff or students um that's not the pcg piece as you know built into our operating budget going into next year so this is over and above to really be targeted and then i guess my overall sorry to someone else so one thing that i think would be overall

161helpful right is trying to just understand based upon the information that was obtained from the community which it was helpful to see for the first time some of that input that was received that was in this package is what was said but given the money that we've had what hasn't been put down on paper is in words right is what is the strategic plan like when you got when you envisioned this money and you put it into various buckets and you were looking at it what was your strategic plan what were your goal what is the goals that you intend to achieve with this money and how would you measure those goals and whether or not we were successful so first of all it's taking input from i think some of the most valuable input

162is the people that are out with our children and when you look at this that's what you that's what you see reflected and i think that's why you had the principles here speaking tonight about social workers math interventionists and you know what they need for their buildings i think the parent inputs supported um what's in this grant as well when you look at the some of the survey results and the numerous emails i don't even know how many we got last summer but it was a lot um also supported exactly what's in here and i think the goal is making sure that we were utilizing the money as much as we could um to support the academic excellence to be able to help coming out of cova because there were a lot of challenges and

163and we're still facing them so i think we measure the success number one by where we are today i mean compared to a lot of districts where we are right now we should be extremely proud of what we've accomplished and um i i think our results will continue to show that um so that to me is one measure okay so but what is that measure for example if we were to look at measuring loss so mike talked earlier about the fact that at the beginning of the year we had a series of schools that were well below where we needed to be on both math and reading and so my question more goes to we are putting interventionists both from a literacy and mathematics component so how are we going to measure that that money

164was well spent and that we actually got the result we were looking for and that's what i'm not understanding from you it's where it's where students start at the beginning of the year and where they end and we have multiple triangle triangulated data that we use for that and they're you know we're very focused on that so i think you know you heard some of the um administrators reference that tonight i think jill mentioned it from her building um just really looking at where her kids started how many were in intervention how many are no longer an intervention there are all types of data points that that our schools because we have wonderful staff out there that really use data so when are we going to get when are we going to get to see

165that information i generally the board sees it in the fall every call yeah michael yeah and i guess that's where this is a curious timeline because i know we generally see all the state review in the fall i think i would argue that this might be a time to um for us to reach out and see how are we gonna get sba testing back we don't have sva testing but we have all this just what dr jones said we've been doing benchmarks and growth measurements all year so we certainly have a sense and the administrators talked about tonight about tracking students and their growth over the year so there's a way for us to get a macro sense of our students making standard growth are they making accelerated growth because we only have this money

166for for a few years they um and what we don't want to be is we don't want to be in a period in two years from now where students continue on a standard growth trajectory and they're still behind the um i know we know all that the um i think from what i'm hearing and i don't mean to be critical from what i'm hearing i mean it sounds like we have a plan and i i suspected from what everybody said tonight sounds like there are many aspects of that plan that are terrific um i think we need to see we need to see evidence of how the plan is working especially if we're going to commit continued funds to that um it gives us a chance to pause and see is this working do we

167have to reallocate or move things different ways they um we heard tonight they um we did hear you know one one comment from one school say that you know we have a 0.5 social worker we need one we need a full-time one we heard another comment about expanding math interventions so i'm sure there's needs out there and i think it's it's not appropriate i know we've got time crunches and i know we've got rtm and things but our core mission of supporting kids particularly where we've got elementary schools where more you know we've got grade levels where significant numbers of students reading below grade levels and where we can see where accelerated growth is and where it is and i think that's a common cause as a board to look at i understand how quickly

168though i mean you're an educator i think about in business if i go to a plan i don't expect to see the turnaround in less than a year and we're talking nine months here right so when you invest and you put in math i mean i've seen nlp for example so i've seen it there on special education and math and reading when you do the investment we now have just you know eight months of data um you know i i mean i i i guess i'll turn it back to dr jones but i'm just thinking more philosophically you then need to see the information i know that if i take the final test in june are you timing me [Laughter] because i don't have to go onto you not a bad idea but so i

169do think that it'd be important to agree to see the data i know i feel like my kids are always taking tests so certainly um it's important to see that but i also would think kind of how the grant would work is that you know we would see the data you know next fall turns out math interventionists are working great let's work them into our operating budget turns out reading's not kids still can't read we have to come up with a different plan let's not work that into the operating budget i mean am i being foolish or is that how you look at it so just just for full clarity we already have reading interventions in the operating budget and we have for a while we just didn't have map at elementary next year we

170have built it into the operating budget i know it seems like a long time ago we discussed it way back in like december but that's already in our operating budget so you'll see you will get data in the fall we'll continue to watch that and see how our math program is doing but it sounds to me like i mean the the only thing on here you're really i think questioning would be social workers because we have we do not have those in the operating budget um as of today and i know that i've had certain board members ask me like how what do they actually do and i think you know we do need to do a good presentation of what that looks like as far as the things on the top of this chart

171like special education assisted technology you'll notice in 24 it's not there that has to be an operating budget we didn't have that position and we have to have it uh we weren't meeting the needs of children so um like at 0.1 pe that was really a coveted addition for like a small section so there really isn't much on here i'm going to say that's really debatable in the sense of the only kind of new or different um going forward is the social worker for fy23 and i and i think it would be great at the end of the year to get do a really good report about what you know what is all of the work that's taken place and uh ptas have some really good questions about that as well but it's hard to

172support students when we don't have elementary counselors we don't have social workers and we we know what we're seeing and i i know um dr mike that you're seeing it probably in new york as well right um it's it's really difficult for kids coming out of covent and we have to have support in our elementary schools so and you know we may need to refine how we use positions systemically across the district and continue to do work with that but we've needed this position before covey all right joe since we're waiting oh yeah thank you [Applause] what i'm hearing i think i'm hearing anyway and i sort of agree with it is we need a progress report before we get our report card because basically we have to make a decision and if we're going

173to be comfortable making a decision voting for the affirmative and we certainly have to have at least some data we understand and i can't get the report cards or progress report i think i'm hearing that and i certainly support that concept it's hard to do that we really need to vote like next week and we need to keep in mind the people on 22 are under contract the people in 23 are going to get their contract on june 1st and this has been a big discussion point where people don't understand the timeline and that's why it goes from the us department of education it went to the connecticut department of ed it's flows straight to the school because we have a totally different timeline than the arp money for like the municipality so it is

174it is challenging because the people that are on here have to be contracted or we lose people and and the ones that we're keeping obviously um it's june 1st is when we start handing those out i mean maybe we could have mark talk about some of the successes i mean i feel that we've heard a lot from the principals tonight about why it's working and i don't want to dismiss all that feedback especially as we i do think it's important that we and maybe i'm sorry i guess he's sick as well okay lovely all right miss costa what about our students who take the star test they take a fall in a spring and how fast i don't think my bj might be better to answer that actually what data we have right now [Music]

175we do have the data from uh fall winter and spring um but that's only on the reading side of things that are really not part of this discussion why not they haven't seen in the spring yet and that funding wasn't geared towards the literacy specialists remember towards the map introductionists [Music] i'm a little concerned that we're getting kind of sucked into a rabbit hole on data because we're really talking about the money for next year if that's what we're really talking about i think you got to really look at the breakdown look at the human resource i mean look at the numbers the human resources you know you've got certain positions you can disagree or agree with those positions but that's really what we're talking about um with the social workers being obviously a substantial

176chunk of it i don't think any of us really have it to be about social workers um we have that's about 425 000 we have almost 400 000 in our incremental aop on staff i don't think we have a huge divergence of opinion on that accompanying those is also 400 000 of benefits which go with them um so we're you know and just i'm concerned with parsing i mean i i don't disagree that we would like metrics and we want information and i think one of the reasons we added an extra board meeting in october was to have a really robust discussion about um the enrollment and the testing data because i think we felt like it got short-changed by trying to squeeze into a meeting so i think we will have an opportunity when

177we have a really full picture but i think these partial pictures of like cherry picking a little data on this test and a little on this i do i just don't think that's a productive use of board time i don't think it's productive to ask our staff to generate a bunch of reports just to make us feel a little better i think it's more important that we look at the numbers in the detailed chart and say do i have a fundamental objection with any of these particular items and if i do it's kind of in the speak now or forever holds your peace category to me um looking at the 23 numbers so that that to me is the way to do the analysis but that's one person okay yeah i think um well there's

178an interesting article in the wall street journal this week about a lot of school districts failing to spend this money at all i think because of some of the logistical challenges that um you're talking about and obviously it's unfortunate that it doesn't line up well but i think you guys have done a great job of at least getting it to work because it would be worse if you weren't spending any of it i think um if it's perhaps not feasible to have any of the data uh it's probably worth at least you know it's not debatable or whatever it's my hope is that when we do get the data even if it's not available now we'll take it very seriously if the data doesn't line up with the qualitative assessment we're hearing because it sounds

179like we're hearing across the board people saying this is having a real impact this is extremely you know [Music] important for us so i just want for memory purposes if what it takes till the fall if they're if the data doesn't support that i think we have to then say whoa uh we have a serious issue of people being able to assess things and i think that would call into to question the degree of confidence we can have in statements like that in the future hopefully it all works out really nicely i just wanted to flag that as i think a reasonable approach from a government standpoint especially if we can't do anything in advance because of these logistical hurdles that are holding up a lot of other school districts good point i have a

180separate question on something not related to the hr stuff we're done with that but still on our yes okay that's fine can someone what the school climate consultant the description says learning for staff to support students in crisis i just wasn't someone tell me a little bit more about what that is i know it's not can you show me where it is big dollars but did you find it it's in the middle on the teaching of it's on the detailed page under teaching and learning right here [Music] it's 80 000 bucks over three right years or if you want to email me yeah i want to double check i think that that is actually the high school line for professional development that they've been doing but i want to double check that before i commit

181to that cool okay seeing nothing helps we do at the end when we do gender planning we'll talk about want to bring us back forward um so with that can we move to oh actually kathleen i'm sorry guys one more question is there is there um an argument to be made that we should be taking some of the money from some of these pockets and making it available for substitute teachers i feel like that's something that i continue to hear about as an issue uh either that they're underpaid or having more um uh uh more full-time subs available it feels like that was particularly impacted by covet i don't know if it's worth considering that that's that very first line is how we're getting through it like this year with the seven centi and it's

182on the arp line for 22. i'm so sorry i completely missed that and i just remembered we talked about that in the budget meeting so yeah that was basically that no but it's a good point because subs have kind of gotten us through and santa fe has gotten us through with so many people like i mean it seems like half the people have on my rsic so i can imagine what the high school looks like so actually sorry tony i know we talked about this but the substitute pay was only modestly increased right it was like the 50 this is the 50 stipend for five days so i'm sorry my question should have been should we be doing more in that area is that sufficient so what what i want to do and you'll notice

183in 23 i just have 120 000 that we could plug in there it's not a lot um but i really want to go back and look and exactly what is our actual for the sub-incentive again that's one where i don't know how many people are going to be out over the next you know 25 days um and so we want to go in and really analyze that number when we get ready to build the operating budget i do believe it's something that going forward we are going to have to address and we need to be competitive in the market because because everyone across the country people are seeing sub shortages and i think our incentive has made an enormous difference because you're right i mean normally it's 110 a day and it's not easy work

184um you know and i think you pointed out it was less than mcdonald's for an hour was it yeah it's 15.79 yeah which you could get so with the incentive pay you know we've been able to make it where it's much more lucrative for people to kind and stuff for us and that needs to be a long-term solution to recruit and retain ourselves and mcdonald's doesn't have bags mcdonald's has chicken mcnuggets which is better than 15-17 i think we're losing it um anything else before i move to cms on this topic okay thank you very much okay so cms am i right yes ed specs dr jones and what is the if the first question is what is the difference from what we all saw last week okay so i'm going to quickly turn it

185over to our consultant so fran and roger tom healy is also elevated if you have school-based questions the copy that you had sitting out is the one you should be using not the one inside the blue packet this one was just updated this afternoon and our consultants are going to just kind of verbally let you know what changes have been made after gaining staff input which i believe mr kelly was able to listen to some of the staff input also they took all of the comments um that the board had submitted as well so um brandon roger i'll turn it over to you thank you dr jones um my name is roger lafleur and i'm here with fran di fiore hello everyone excuse me i just said hello everyone i thought i heard that um

186first off i want to thank everyone that contributed with their comments and questions sent them into tom and dr jones because they were very helpful and very insightful and it really helps when you have a large set of eyes looking over uh documents such as these because they pick up a lot of things that we sometimes just glance over and don't pick up on so it was very helpful information and fran and i spent quite a few hours processing the questions and developing responses and answers and making changes to the end specs what i can tell you at this point is uh after uh we had a discussion both with tom and dr jones uh because there was a a series of uh common requests uh and it really centered around additional space in certain

187areas and we felt more comfortable if we had to talk with the administration about how to handle that so we consulted with them and got some really important feedback and have made some of those changes so we basically what we did was we looked at some of the spaces that were questioned as to whether they were truly needed uh and we thought if they're not and we can reallocate that space to areas where people are saying they would could use additional space that was probably in the best interest of the project so what i can tell you it now is one of the big questions that came up was the computer lab and the questions that kept coming up was if we are one-to-one with computer devices with students one-to-one uh do we really need

188a dedicated computer lab and um i think it was decided that at this point with better use of that space could be made by putting it into some of the other areas that had been requested for additional space another area that was brought up and talked about was the health classroom and this room also was decided that we really didn't need a dedicated health classroom we could get by uh with that class being instructed within a regular classroom um because what happens in in the school you'll have i think there's 24 or so classrooms that are not fully occupied all the time so if you look at the school schedule some of those classrooms in fact most of those classrooms will be available at some point during the day and as a result of that

189that health class can be taught more of those rooms so it's making use of existing space and not wasting additional space it could be utilized in other areas better so those two spaces were basically eliminated and we also ended up putting more space in than the original document had so i think the overall square footage has grown up to a little over 104 000. um some of the areas that were reallocated started with the media center we heard a lot of concerns about the media center especially the reading and the stack section not being large enough and when we investigated this we found that there's an intention to have approximately 10 000 books in there so we ended up increasing the media center by about 500 square feet uh for in that particular section also

190the resource rooms uh which get a lot of use and are important uh were sized at 400 and there was a request to see if we could make those larger so we added 100 square feet to them as well um the other areas that we heard that we thought they were tight because they're existing and they're pretty much that size now where the chorus the orchestra and the band rooms so though they each got 100 square feet um the fitness room which is uh adjacent to the gym was also increased and that was increased by 400 square feet um and then the i think the uh the life skills room which is part of this special ed program that was also increased by 200 square feet i think that's a an important one because the

191life skills has a lot of appliances in there it's just going to get too crowded if they if they uh don't have that additional space um the other area that got really a a good chunk of space was the auditorium and stage because we we've heard from many many people that they really like the auditorium and the stage the way it is so we basically decided to match the existing size so we increased that significantly there were a lot of other minor changes um such as uh in fact there were some of the formatting inconsistencies which i don't know which part of that member got them but i really appreciate it because we were able to make i was able to make a lot of those ironically though as i'm looking the document over the

192one that you got tonight i still see a few more so this is a working document it's in progress and uh sooner or later we're going to get them all we hope to have the final draft in front of you in about two weeks um the other minor changes were things like uh they there was a request for the white boards to be off the um a magnetic white board so we made those changes they also asked for like higher ceilings in the gym area um because they could utilize more storage if they could go vertical um they also there was a request for soundproof booths that could they be in the classrooms the world language classroom so that the teachers can work individually with students without disrupting the rest of the class so we've

193included those so in closing i would encourage you to continue to send your comments and your observations and questions to dr jones and tom because they'll get them to us and we'll continue to work on this till we get this document uh the way everybody wants it if you have any questions now so i just wondered how big the media center is currently and whether the now increase space gives us at least you know what we have and i i have been told that we have a lot more books than ten thousand i i think i've been told or i've heard the number um is closer to 18 000 books and so i just wonder if we have enough i don't know where the other books are going have enough storage we we heard uh

194the average was they said around ten thousand so what we can do is we can double check that we'll find out if uh additional space is needed we can make we can make some changes to it thank you i have first a comment that a number of questions i have of being able to watch the central middle school teachers brainstorming concepts and ideas about what the new building should have some of our best resources are certainly the teachers right now to tell us what they need and what they want to have in the new building uh they were they were being heard is what they said to me uh they were enthusiastic and they were very excited and that's what i went there and wanted to see and i'm very happy that i saw that

195so uh thank you uh tom for uh for inviting me into uh uh to to me and talk to those uh people doing the brainstorm uh questions i have i was at a political meeting last night and i kept being asked multiple times the same question i thought it was a little strange but they some of the people wanted to know about the bathrooms if you could just explain uh the bathrooms that we're putting in and uh and what we required to put in versus what we're choosing to put in uh so if you could please just go over that to just answer the questions of those people who asked me that so that came up a lot to fran and i while we're interviewing the staff i i mean so much so that when

196the next group of people came in we would we would you know jokingly say we know about the bathrooms okay because apparently the school when it was designed was designed with insufficient uh facilities for for that in the last 20 30