November 17, 2021 Board of Education Special Meeting

001um that's fine okay so we're gonna have to give her a microphone congratulations thank you that's true special did we have your last very ceremony uh yes it is all right so thank you so much for having me in 2017. it was great to go out with you thank you so much um so next we are going to do the election of officers and for this portion of the meeting i will be turning over [Music] do you have your microphone on on your laptop nope okay is that that okay thank you um thank you we will be electing officers in accordance with policy 9121 which states the board of education shall collect from its members at the organizational meeting the chairperson a vice chairperson and the secretary the election of officers shall be in writing

002and the vote of each member shall be made available for public inspection within 48 hours the floor is now open for nominations for chair are there any nominations uh christina yes thank you ms harsh um i'd like to nominate kathleen stowe her chair as we know kathleen is starting her second term on the board and she would bring significant experience to the role she has served as vice chair for the past two years while also serving on the policy governance and budget committees and she's chaired both of those committees at various times in addition she's been the board of liaison to parks and recreation and is to the new energy management commission on that and she also led the board in the superintendent superintendent search when we hired dr jones for detailed knowledge of how

003the board operates particularly our policies and our budget would make her an effective chair from day one and as a bonus her three children are all currently at all school levels in our schools which gives her some real-time boots on [Music] are there any other nominations mr kelly i'd like to nominate myself i have not prepared a speech but i'm really nice that is true okay are there any other nominations for chair okay hearing none on closing nominations um sorry i'm closing the nomination for chair members please record your votes on your board of debt to violent cash and pass them back to me thank you it's just much okay kathleen still votes for kathleen so aaron kowalski votes for kathleen still laura costen votes for kathleen stell christina downey votes for kathleen staff kelly

004votes for jailhouse cody kittle votes for joe kell michael joseph or casey anthony mike votes for joe kelly karen hirsch votes for kathleen stell so kathleen so five joe belly three do you have any chair congratulations [Applause] to try to follow the same script that we did for the next two positions um we'll be electing officers in accordance with policy 911 [Music] collaborative and challenging uh efforts to running a very focused and dedicated board to the 8400 students that we serve are there any other how many questions are questions [Music] process [Music] michael joseph hunty anthony goes for kevin movie votes for karen [Music] christina downey those are karen bossy those are kind of bossy and jim kelly is thank you very much [Music] so the floor is now open for the nomination for secretary

005well this morning yes thank you mister i'd like to nominate karen hirsch to serve as secretary anyone who knows karen appreciates her diligence in taking notes researching matters and following up she's done an excellent job for the board in the past two years and i believe we should have to continue to do so thank you are there any other nominations for secretary [Music] her foreign nothing still roasted on her karen falsely votes for karen [Music] congratulations karen okay thanks guys now let's get down to business so that let's go straight we're gonna move to our public hearing and you can see here first from our ghs student government tommy and hobby right good evening dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees my name is hobby sarah and i'm senior class president in grand

006chelsea homecoming week just came to a thunderous conclusion literally as it started directly raining during saturday's football on monday students were all reminded of one of the few bright sides of virtual learning doing class in our pajamas students rolled out of bed and came to class this time in person in their bathrobes pajama pants and slippers then on tuesday we hosted decades today where outfits ranged from hippies to the six of the 60s to old school rappers of the 2000s tuesday night the gym was packed for our dog baltimore teams brought uniforms coaches and suits and intensity from our key match-up of the night saw administrators get defeated by a team of students on western wednesday students trained in their dodgeballs for cowboy hats and boots to school then on senior dress-up day thursday there

007was an incredible range of costumes but most notably an unprecedented rate of participation finally ghs showed off a red white bride on friday night over 500 students showed off their best semi-formal looks on the dance floor the homecoming dance had a great turnout especially amongst underclassmen and it's a great opportunity for students to engage with their peers outside of the classroom unfortunately there was no pep rally due to weather concerns on friday but regardless the week was a smashing success in my four years at ghs this homecoming week saw the most participation enthusiasm yet i'm hopeful that our new school spirit and sense of community will continue to grow and student government is eager to continue to plan events to facilitate this i also want to give a thank you to ms karen foster our

008director of student activities for her integral role in planning these events right now the class of 22 is hosting a fundraiser at chipotle in riverside for those of you who are listening from home please consider indulging into guacamole and supporting our class using the code he x6ybf or showing our flyer in the restaurant the event ends at eight so get those orders in another fundraising news the junior class is currently hosting an emma's gourmet popcorn fundraiser the sophomore class is going to host a bake sale soon and the freshman class is hosting a fundraiser on december 23 at chicken joe's i'd like to thank you all for your time tonight and i will now pass the microphone to our student body president family good evening board members dr jones and members of the community my

009name is paulie walton and i'm the ghs student i'd like to thank you all for being here tonight and consistently listening to our concerns and working towards effective solutions as hobby mentioned homecoming week was a great success and seeing teachers and students alike passionately shouting school spirit was truly refreshing as a senior homecoming gives me hope that the culture of dhs is back on the rise with the many positive takeaways from october there are also addition also many additional opportunities to enhance the experience of students at greater high school as many of you know traffic this year has been worse than ever and it is almost impossible to enter or leave ghs without spending at least half an hour turning on hillside this obstacle often leads to buses and kids being late to school in

010the world which takes away time for teachers to teach i think we all can agree that this has been a long-standing issue in the community and i hope we can facilitate an open conversation about how to effectively fix it beyond the increased traffic students have turned their attention to our upcoming midterm exams in paper students and faculty have been having discussions on what midterms will look like by returning to a full in-person voting industry the student government representatives shared recommendations with ghs administrators requesting that teachers provide a review packet in every class that lists and gives examples of possible concepts and questions that could appear on their chest additionally we are hopeful that there will be a cut off for new course content to be introduced in each class giving students enough time to submit

011final assignments to prepare for the exam i'm grateful that our ghs administrators and teachers continue to solicit feedback listen to our ideas and support the emotional and social well-being of the student body and finally includes in consultation with administrators and faculty advisors student government is planning to draft additional policy as to how social media can be safely used by club and senior organizations the use of social media between clubs student government and students is imperative to keeping a connected and engaged community for instance the cardinal crazy states of their approach frequently post information about sporting events and themes of the student section with all which often yields great turnouts in students supporting their peers on the bridge we are aware however that certain trends on tick tocks have led to challenges at the high school

012there are both benefits and drawbacks to social media and looking forward we plan to create a common sense policy that gives students the liberty to safely connect with their peers of school death while outlining consequences for inappropriately taking advantage of this privilege thank you as always for providing hobby and i the opportunity to speak that board of education i look forward to seeing you all in a moment thank you thank you so much i couldn't agree more of the traffic situation so i'm so happy it bothers you guys just as much as it does um next we have gea bill thank you good evening i'd like to uh welcome our new board members mrs crosslin and um congratulations to ms stowe as our chair ms crossley as our vp and as hirsch as our secretary

013i'm here to talk about some systemic problems um that we need to work on and continue to work on now we have the opportunity to fix special education and our systemic failures we've failed to meet the full needs of our students in addition we have failed to support the staff and faculty who work with these students we must continue to address the failure to maintain our and expand our facilities so that all students have access to playgrounds and safe buildings flooding buildings collapsing ceilings and non-compliant buildings should not be how we describe our schools here in greenwich we must provide a workplace that an educational space that is free from harassment and intimidation for our students and our members these are some things that i hope we can work together on i congratulate the new

014board members and the current board members i look forward to working with you all next week is thanksgiving i want to thank the board for all the hours that they put in as volunteers thank our parents and our pta for supporting our community our students um for always being there and trying to do their best and i ask everyone to take a moment and think of something to be thankful for and pass it on thank you all thank you so much well um pta council is mainly done okay can you hear me yeah you can um yes okay i don't i i'm not getting acknowledgement but i'll carry on i'm mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the family and the families of their members with thanksgiving around the corner

015i'd like to start by saying thank you to the new board of ed all of our district educators administrators and other staff and all of my colleagues at ptac i'll start with a follow-up from the october meeting topics of achievement and enrollment regarding achievement there are ongoing concerns about overall achievement even without the impact of covet we applaud the the planned efforts to improve achievement but we need to consider significant changes not just tweaking for example sba math results drop each year from third to fourth to fifth to usually six grades before bottoming out the district needs to understand why and to address the issues with the changes in standardized testing and the new implementation of the big ideas math program have tracking metrics changed and what information can be provided on an early and

016often basis to see if things are improving regarding enrollment while projections beyond five years are problematic this is not a reason to not have plans for possible future scenarios a board of ed members raise the desire raise the desirability of having action plans for multiple scenarios this type of planning should be investigated as part of the strategic plan what has ptac been up to the october board of ed meeting was a long one and as a result the district alp team didn't get to give their full presentation our p-tech alp team has organized a redo and that presentation will take place on november 23rd at 10 a.m it is open to all parents and we have planned to record it so it can be added to the ptac website we continue to build a library

017of resources both for future reference and for working parents that may not have flexibility during the school day yesterday our academic excellence team hosted a data date with science seminar with tara fogle our k-8 science coordinator that session was also recorded we're also engaging with the district to have reps on a couple more textbook reviews this year thank you for including us in those important discussions we also look forward to having ongoing representation in the sped review implementation process our team has spent countless hours advocating for us fed families and we look forward to remaining part of the process to improve programs we are also busy brainstorming with the district on how we might do a better job of recycling in schools how we might literally lighten the load of the middle school backpacks and

018how our dei committee can optimally engage to best serve our increasingly diverse student body lastly i want to address some comments that have percolated up to me some folks are saying parents voices are being silenced and they don't have access to training and they don't want to volunteer as a result from my perspective our parents have never been more engaged board of ed meetings have had record attendance and this is one reason i want to advocate for continued zoom access our school pta slates are nearly full and our ptas are hard at work doing great things ptech has mandatory training and we work collaboratively with individual ptas and the district we're here to advocate communicate and coordinate if you are community member looking to get more involved in an open collaborative way we look forward

019to having you join the conversation thank you mimi next up we have our community comments i'm looking at our list we have two people have dropped but we're about 24. um so we're close because as you know we only allow our public comment at the beginning of the meeting but then of course we'll take more public comments after we get through our business um so if anyone goes under three minutes maybe we can just get everybody in so with that um i could go through all the policies but i know everyone's gonna be civil tonight so let's just get started um first up is jackie holman is she at home is she here all right we have three minutes yeah all right so let me know when you're ready okay congratulations and welcome to the

020new board members i know i speak for many parents and i say we are looking forward to developing a productive and successful working relationship with you as you know we have a few unresolved concerns we hope you'll consider sooner rather than later first we'd like you to address the comment made by dr jones last month when she denied that masks and vaccine mandates were tied to our best free funding application you can hear for yourself in the video playback from the meeting around the 1 hour and 20 minute mark joe kelly says is any of that money tied to us having kids wear masks or vaccines superintendent jones immediately replies absolutely not however the esser application posted on the school website and submitted by dr jones says the opposite if greenwich takes the arbester free

021funding universal mass squaring and efforts to provide vaccinations to educate our staff and students are required why did dr jones lack candor about this in october she's also using the money to fund controversial social emotional learning programming to hire self-consultants and to hire staff to deliver cell content in addition to implementing wrap-around health services inside schools who will put the bill for these new positions and services when the code funding drives up is the bet aware of this in light of this information a cautious course of action would be to pull the application if we did then presumably we could unmask our children teachers and administrators who have thus far been used as pawns in order to obtain nearly 10 million dollars in funding their medical freedom should not be a bargaining chip and by

022the way under what authority is the district blocking emails from individuals to the government i tried to send an email to a board member but the account i was using had been blocked is that normal and did you know the results of the freedom of information act request revealed that dr jones had a nickname for me and that she had people spying on my whereabouts and recounting my activities to her do you know why she reported me to the police for harassment instead of investigating the complaint about my son's class i'm grateful the police recognized the complaint didn't reach anywhere near the level of harassment but it marks the second time dr jones tried to unsuccessfully use police against me i wonder if she's reported me to the fbi as a domestic terrorist too and

023why does dr jones tell parents she does not promote critical race theory or my son received a suggested reading list just this week containing a crt classic stamped from controversial author ibrahim x kenny is that reading this part of the approved curriculum and if so who approved the list also please consider reminding teachers that the use of unapproved content is not permitted that's not academic freedom rather it's the board's legal obligation to approve all curriculum and lastly please do not allow dr jones to throw a few rogue teachers under the bus when it is her responsibility to ensure she implements only the curriculum curriculum approved by you the board of education our teachers should never bear the blame for the failings of their higher-ups yet they are consistently blamed when problems arise rather than administrators

024taking responsibility for allowing these things to happen in the first place thank you [Applause] i'm sure you read the policies [Music] okay all right so thank you guys for all the speakers hoping we can start off on a better note from that um 93 24 and 93 25 please try to be civil and please try not to call people specifically um but thank you anyway moving forward we're going i believe carl your son jackie you said was not going to speak this evening so we're moving on to hannah aboard hello can you hear me hopefully i'm being heard good evening board of education members dr jones members of cabinet gps administrators teachers parents and members of the community my name is ana laborday and i'm here to give thanks as vp of curriculum for ptac

025i oversee the academic excellence alp and digital learning committees as you can imagine there has been a lot of work in those committees this year already and i want to take a moment to express appreciation for both the gps administrators and the parent volunteers who have been dedicated to the goals of creating greater transparency and communication around the gps curriculum as well as promoting excellence and consistency i want to thank mark d'amico tara fogle bj marcus mike reed bonnie o'regan and mike ting for taking the time to meet with our committees and work towards our mutual goals back in the spring mark d'amico reached out to the academic excellence team and said hey let's meet over the summer i have a brand new team and i want to talk about all the work we want

026to do over the next year and he wasn't kidding ever since we met in july we've been working hand in hand sharing questions and concerns gathering and giving feedback and providing support as the team implements new tools and avenues for communication such as the website updates newsletters and presentations i am incredibly thankful that i have gotten to work with this great group of people both administrators and parents and i feel privileged to be able to support the amazing work that they are all doing the implementation update on big ideas is a wonderful example of the great work that's happening and i want to congratulate mike reed for all of his hard work taking off my pta hat i want to say a few words as a parent of three students in greenwich public schools two

027at the international school at dundee and one an eighth grader at eastern middle school this is my ninth year as an isd parent and i feel privileged to have had all three of my kids attend isd i want to say thank you to terry ricky for her two decades of leadership in which she has created what is an absolute gem in gps i want to say thank you for every teacher whose classroom my children have had the privilege of sitting in at isd from the homeroom to the art room to the music room to the gym to the media center to the resource room i want to say thank you to all isd teachers for their perseverance perseverance and grit navigating the past two difficult years thank you for keeping my kids smiling and learning

028for getting to know who they are as a person and as a learner and knowing how to challenge and inspire them i also want to say thank you to the teachers and staff at eastern middle school though this is confusing this has been a confusing and difficult time the teachers at ems have been inspiring and challenging their students while also listening and caring thank you and from the mouth of my eighth grader a very special shout out to mrs fergus for being especially awesome today and finally thank you to the returning and the new members of the board of education for your dedication to education and greenwich and thank you dr jones for all that you do good night thank you very much next up is danielle iso that you're online i do not see

029mr izzo online okay well we can always come back later all right next up is david ohana he is online mr alfano you may begin my name is david alfano i've been a resident of greenwich for over 50 years and a business owner in town for the past 27 years as a tax payer and a parent i have a financial vested interest in our schools the school system and the well-being of the students in town i want to thank the board of education for the opportunity to speak tonight congratulate the new members it's my understanding that any policies and procedures as far as masking our students and the promoting of the vaccine pop-up clinics on school grounds have been approved by this board my request is that the board discusses and votes to remove the

030mask mandate for all and the vaccine mandates for all employees and soon-to-be mandates for students pop-up vaccine clinics do not belong on school grounds this makes the school liable should there be a vaccine injury a data breach of sensitive medical records or the inevitable claim of a violation under ferpa these policies may have made sense to you before but should not any longer continuing on this path is a mistake and will cross the town of greenwich monetarily and possibly its bond rating more importantly maybe a life what i what i am unsure of is can a grieving parent sue the board members in civil court instead of mandates offered choice let the parents decide for their own children when it comes to masking and let the educators decide if they want to get the vaccine

031when the board gives employees and parents choice the board is no longer responsible for any ill effects of the masks or the highly ineffective vaccines not my words but the cdc director dr rochelle walensky the drug companies as well as the governor who mandated this cannot be held liable the governor left it up to the school districts and the board voted to implement these policies this is wolf blitzer and dr rochelle malinsky but what about all the fully vaccinated people who get the breakthrough infection can they pass it on could they pass it on to their children could they pass the virus on to older people especially more vulnerable people with the underlying health conditions um our vaccines are working exceptionally well they continue to work well for delta with the largest recently i learned

032that 17 educators were fully vaccinated contracted coven those are breakthrough cases that means those who are fully vaccinated can still contract covid and they can still die from covet you just heard this from the cdc director this matters because we are currently forcing our unvaccinated educators to take 30 seconds whether they have symptoms or not testing for an illness that they have no symptoms for makes no sense to me this feels like discrimination all the board members should understand that the decisions you have made are going to make have consequences do the right thing vote on this tonight vote for choice those that vote to continue these policies will not just be exposing the talented potential liability but endangering our children and wonderful personnel thank you for your time very quick uh address the board

033we've just come through an election where the four winners place to work together and the decade long dysfunctionality in the boe please don't disappoint the community unfortunately we've seen a politicalized board presided over the curating system we ask you that you work with the first selectmen and the bt to present the workable school plan with clear priorities and if cms is really enough to collapse and make that a priority the bet is promised to work with the boe and invest in our school system please hold it for that please use the energy which has been used and directed to useless personal tax and fix our schools our own riverside elementary has declined in rankings over the past few years from six in the state to 35th since my sons have graduated while this is happening

034the boe seems more focused on personal recriminations than attacks the community needs a better school system with elected officials from community first and personal ideology lost i beg you to deliver my sons will be out of the system before anything you do will impact my family but our love for granted is such that we walk in with five percent um and i would just comment and i would ask you to ignore the radical minority which shows up every meeting nothing they said is actually grounded in law and as government agencies you're not liable for anything related [Applause] online so i had a speech prepared but i was asked to read something anonymously from a gps teacher did you know did you know there's a divide among students that are being vaccinated those who are not

035students announce their status at school causing conflict among peers friends are being lost families make decisions for their own reasons and social emotional learning teaches us to respect these choices yet there is no sel for the divide that has been created over the vaccination in our schools there's no reason no one should think less of another because of their vaccination status teachers are expected to teach tolerance for diversity equity and inclusion where is the sel on medical choice and freedom in several emails to staff tony jones stated may 7th 2021 as required by law it is a privacy matter and there is no obligation to tell a parent that the teacher or staff member is vaccinated and in that same vein we are not allowed to ask students who is and who is not vaccinated

036may 12 as we've shared before the vaccine is an optional private decision for individuals and families and as required by law it is a privacy matter and there is no obligation to share as well as no right to ask if a student or staff member is vaccinated may 14 obtaining the vaccine is a private family decision yet privacy is not being followed by gps staff and students did you know that there are unvaccinated teachers eating lunch in their cars or alone in their classrooms instead of in our faculty room socializing and collaborating with colleagues for fear of discrimination yet 20 plus students are eating unmasked in classroom-sized makeshift cafeterias throughout the district did you know that gps parents are being discriminated against they are not able to volunteer in our schools join school functions or

037chaperone field trips unless vaccinated a negative cova test result has not been given as an option for volunteering did you know that there are teachers going to administrators requesting that not to work with unvaccinated colleagues did you know this is discrimination did you know there are teachers both vaccinated and unvaccinated paying out of pocket for cova testing did you know that every day there are vaccinated teachers testing positive for covid the vaccinated are testing positive and the unvaccinated are testing negative did you know that there are teachers who do not want to get the ethylene oxide lace slab for copper testing and are driving three hours plus each week to get a saliva test teachers are getting sick after repeated nasal swabs including headaches bloody noses and sinus issues 30 seconds did you know that

038teachers are being kicked out of classes because their negative test results have not come in on time something that is out of the teacher's control in addition when the sakura teachers are losing pay because of test mandate when they are not sick administration isn't scrambling to fuzz substitute teachers to cover classes did you know this impacts students learning our cons our contract states a need for good faith yet teachers who have been getting weekly testing for seven weeks are not being trusted in the medical facilities do not follow through with their testing turnaround times once again did you know that we do not have time private free saliva testing for staff in the bridge if you have more comments on facebook even though this has been requested since august all right next up is i

039should have said stephanie kelly was listed to speak but she [Music] i as well had a separate speech tonight but um a teacher had approached me from greenwich uh high school and asked that i'd read this tonight which was definitely more important good evening thank you good evening over 20 years ago i student taught at greenwich high school and was was hired by gps the following year my experience of greenwich public schools is that it's an exceptional school system i have taught exclusively at greenwich high school and have envisioned retiring from this district one day with fond memories of my love of teaching my students and the many colleagues who have become friends unfortunately those dreams have recently been taken away from me and have been replaced with frustrations over coded testing fears over potential

040law job loss and heartbreaking discrimination among colleagues due to the vaccine mandate colleagues that i've been friends with all of these years have stated they do not want to work closely with me because i am unvaccinated i have also been told that the unvaccinated have contributed to the increase in covid cases not only is this scientifically incorrect it is discriminatory by the way i tested positive for covid last year and i have the antibodies you are segregating the vaccinated from the unvaccinated this is outright unjust it is causing the unhealthy and unhealthy and hostile work environment having to physically and publicly hand in my test results every monday makes me feel like an outcast according to dr jones in several emails to parents and staff this should not this should be a private matter how

041could this possibly be considered private everyone knows who is being tested because the district has not fought for our privacy we cannot just email our negative results because that would be way too easy or is it because fringes on the infringes on being illegal and a violation of our medical privacy moving on to the testing sites which are supposed to be free and accessible there are no spit tests in greenwich so you expect unvaccinated teachers to test weekly without having a location nearby i travel hours on my own time to test for a mandate when i am not sick i have wasted hours running to testing sites on your suggested list to find that they are shut down with no warning just so you know these are the studies that closed over the weekend if

042results are not on time due to unforeseen error but by friday no one can be reached to comply with the mandate on time please please take this into consideration so why am i angry and upset i'm recently told to leave my job without pay because i did not have my test results on monday due to no fault of my own the testing site misspelled my name and sent the results to someone else my students learned learning was disrupted and placed on hold because i did not have a piece of paper in my hand what a disgrace thank you very much [Applause] let's go up next is before i speak to the fact that taxpayers want the advanced learning program reinstated immediately curriculum to stay with the board of education and um want the new boe

043to terminate the adoption of the generic connecticut association of boards of education policies and return to the carefully crafted local boe policies specific to greenwich's high standard for equality education i first would like to thank the talented team of women who inspired and supported me throughout my campaign and the inspirational people i met campaigning in our communities for the past month and a half it was an amazing i'd also like to thank my voters who believed in me it was an amazing journey with great conversation remarkably almost everyone i spoke with did not want to reimagine or transform greenwich public schools instead the community wants to raise the bar of excellence back to transform greenwich public schools back to the high greenwich high standards over state standards and go back to quality academics parents want

044strong foundations in reading writing grammar history math and science not social responsibility lenses perspectives and biases parents want a reduction in screen time less reliance on online resources and a re-priority prioritization of live teacher instruction over non-academic academic programs and technology the community has spoken and the priority for the new boe is restored greenwich's historical excellence and academics by immediately bringing back local decision-making instead of following the new generic cave policies leading the bob back to proper governance and holding the superintendent accountable for prioritized quality academics safe infrastructure and partnering with parents and hosting town halls and q and a forums preventing personal opinions from being taught in the classroom is fact and require the classroom to be free of judgment for students to share their individual ideas and all contacts on contacts with impact

045on rates without impact on grades putting parents in charge of deciding whether to opt into k through 12 social emotional learning how surveys panorama surveys content that features politics sex identity or violent topics and other controversial programming reinstating a valid measurement not razz kids is as is used now to identify struggling readers to identify early intervention needs ensure intervention students are learning multiple goals not one every six to eight weeks and using foundations k through three to close the achievement gap all evaluations for special ed do a deep dive in the area of struggle to properly identify students and interventions and services do not occur during core academics as in that stands now curriculum changes to our existing programs like our advanced learning program or new pilot programs are occurring without community or boe knowledge

046review input or approval in fact there is a time failure here she's coming down good evening i'm colleen alfano i'm a 30-year resident and teacher and counselor in greenwich i come to you tonight to ask to beg for your help in getting an easily accessible weekly covet saliva test for employees many of the almost 200 employees who are required to test weekly do not want to use the invasive nasal swab which is sterilized with ethylene oxide and luna carcinogen that causes allergic reactions in those bleeds and headaches when used weekly week after week these folks are testing weekly in good faith which actually makes them less barista than the vaccinated these are caring hard-working people who are complying with the covenant mandates while trying to be true to themselves why should they be discriminated against

047spitting in a vial and getting the results is reliable quick and easy but currently the most accessible saliva test for greenwich employees is in meredith it takes over three hours round trip on the merrick parkway in evening rush hour traffic three hours winter is coming that kind of drive is fatiguing and dangerous is that what you want for your teachers paraprofessionals administrative assistants custodians administrators and bus drivers week after week with no one in sight in mamaroneck any teacher or student can pick up the saliva test on a wednesday bring it back on thursday and get the results on friday in ellington connecticut they've arranged for an urgent care facility that comes to the schools and collects saliva samples weekly stanford is working in conjunction with yale diagnostics and stanford pathology to provide weekly saliva

048tests for their police and firefighters at their stations what is the problem why can't this happen in greenwich we have been researching and asking for help with this issue since august and nothing has happened when teachers have to focus their time and attention on having basic needs met or avoiding a negative experience it is impossible to fully concentrate on the lessons their students and their jobs please help us get back to the business of teaching by making the saliva test easily accessible for greenwich employees it's simple on november 2nd we spent valuable hours in professional learning groups getting trained in universal design settings and discussing how we can make our lessons easily accessible to everyone intentionally and by design there are three main udl concepts here that are highly relevant that i hope that you

049will consider teachers were told to one optimize individual choice and autonomy two personalize and contextualize lessons and three minimize threats and distractions please can we practice what we preach please if you're interested in learning more please email concerns.com thank you good evening my name is kathleen weinstein and i have been a connecticut public educator for 30 years after the october 21st board of education meeting i attended i wrote a letter to the editors of the greenwich time the sentinel and the greenwich free press i left that meeting feeling defeated and worried however the response to my letter was enlightening i am no longer sad there were other letters that weekend responding to my own and you know what i was set straight my hypothesis was inaccurate as was stated my hypothesis was that the public

050regard for teachers in education had changed for the worse i was worried but i was wrong what i found out was that this false rhetoric and surface behavior is not the norm in our community i heard from a myriad of parents colleagues friends and neighbors who wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiments and outright falsehoods you've heard here time and time again so i've decided to be a role model for both my own kids and perhaps your kids my students when something is not right stand up be brave and to quote rgb speak your mind even if your voice shakes they should know that they need to stand up but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it you don't get your way with public bullying name calling lying and yelling you persuade

051people by creating sound arguments based in fact i'm not representing anyone tonight i'm here as one teacher and a parent in the greenwich public schools and i want you the board to know that there are many voices in support of you and your policies as well as your teaching and administrative staff i implore you to look past the circus here beyond the noise and continue to make sound educational decisions based in fact with goodwill and decorum follow your hearts your minds your experience and rely on the educational experience of many to guide you resist the urge to let the abhorrent behavior of some color your decisions for all from my perspective i think we're all advocating for the same thing a clear and transparent curriculum some want it so that they can control the conversations

052that happen in classrooms others like me wanted to protect ourselves from the surface i want my colleagues and parents and even my students to know that if you feel strongly you should speak up too even if your voice shakes you don't have to be big or loud or aggressive you just have to be confident and like every teacher will tell you do your homework get your facts in order and speak from your heart then you'll be heard about the noise thank you for your time hello can you hear me okay this is francis lunobe today speaking of the mom of north street and central middle school kids it's pandemic year three and while life is feeling a little more normal we're still in it aren't we in times of stress what skills do we as

053adults and moreover our students use a report released this week by the a.c.t and the american school counselors association shared that counselors selected three skills one demonstrating effective coping skills when faced with a problem two exhibiting self-discipline and self-control and three applying self-motivation and self-direction to learning as among both the top five most critical skills to learn and the most difficult for kids to learn i see lawn signs and hear demands for academics curriculum and transparency as a kid who is pushed to perform and a mom of high performers i understand this focus and attention that said i say that the skills that will be needed for life will be the curiosity the tenacity the resilience the perfect to persevere through the learning of sight words math facts grammar rules and close reading our beloved

054teachers share and model a love of learning and the power of perseverance for this gift and ability to teach i say thank you just this week i prayed to jesus buddha yahweh a higher power as my little had back to back math worksheet meltdowns in the end was it mommy or her sibling rooted her on and got her back on track or was it her fourth grade teacher brand new to north street school who i asked for help who got my little to math confidence and a girl who had a big smile not tears today as she said mommy i got an 88 on my math test each and every day our gps teachers are building our future leaders for you i say stay focused on your unique gifts your joy and purpose in edutopia

055this week there was an article on why teachers stay because you are our sunshine we love you stay strong and thank you for teaching academics and curriculum with transparent love affection curiosity and resilience thank you sorry thank you francis um up next is janet mcmahon looks like she's online [Music] hi can you hear me good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is janet mcmahon and i speak tonight as a parent of two greenwich public school children next week is thanksgiving and in the spirit of thanksgiving i would like to offer some words of appreciation gratitude and thanks thank you to all of the gps teachers administrators and staff and especially dr jones who have worked so tirelessly under extraordinary circumstances for almost two years to keep our doors open for in-person

056schooling we must not take for granted that our district is but one of a very small handful of schools in the state and region that remained open continuously since september 2020 for almost 14 months dr jones and her team have kept our children safe and healthy through science-based coveted mitigation strategies and protocols we must also not take for granted that schools are still closing today so thank you all for erring on the side of caution so that we may continue to receive the privilege of in-person learning as we methodically transition toward pre-pandemic times thank you for coordinating efforts with the connecticut department of public health to bring free and convenient walk-in vaccination clinics into our community thank you for recognizing this public health crisis and granting our residents access to vaccinations after being shut out

057of a number of vaccine appointments last week i took my nine-year-old to the extremely efficiently run walk-in clinic at hamilton avenue school on sunday thanks to this clinic she was one of hundreds of very happy and relieved 5 to 11 year olds who received her very first dose of the pfizer vaccine thank you for providing this valuable and important service to greenwich thank you for supporting diversity equity and inclusion as well as social emotional learning in the classroom these concepts have been gruesomely politicized at board of education meetings lately but what does it actually look like well it looks like north street schools celebrating native american heritage month by hosting an assembly with the thunderbird american indian dancers who share their beautiful traditional music and dance it looks like anxious central middle schoolers practicing mindful

058mondays during advisor base our children are finally being taught to prioritize their mental health through yoga deep breathing and other relaxation techniques finally thank you to all of the members of the board of education as elected officials and public servants we've placed our faith and our votes in you please continue to keep the best interests of our children in mind as you make policy budgetary and curriculum decisions please continue to advocate for the most vulnerable in our district english language learners free and reduced lunch recipients and special needs children with disabilities both seen and unseen the gps community appreciates you and thanks to you for your unwavering dedication happy thanksgiving thank you good evening especially enjoy the cat calls in the back it's great good evening dr jones members of the board of education and

059fellow residents my name is james waters and i'm excited to work with you as a member of the rtm district 12. tonight i'd like to offer my congratulations to our newly elected members the four of you kathleen still laura costin michael joseph mercanti anthony and cody kittle you guys were the pro school people's choice to help lead our schools for the next four years it was a great outcome for our town even if still some some still don't understand that it's over you were chosen because of the unique perspectives and expertise you bring to this board and our town's desire to move forward to solve the challenges facing our schools and our schools certainly face challenges i think we're all aware of five big ones warning signs about academic performance in the wake of covet

06019 crumbling and outdated school buildings after decades of neglect getting our special education programs back on track managing learning methods materials and objectives in an increasingly digital connected and transparent world and five managing enrollment trends while it seems like we still need the same number of classrooms and teachers and have schools that must be rebuilt despite our nation's leading success in keeping our schools open since last september these challenges are going to require consistent diligent attention for several years we won't be able to address them if this board takes its eye off the ball or is riddled with partisanship fortunately the path forward on each of these items is now more clear than ever five years ago none of us had a clue what 2021 would look like or exactly how much work our school

061buildings needed five years ago we had a revolving door of superintendents driven away at least in part by certain former members of this board now you're in a much better place you have new blood volumes of data and plans and strong new leaders in place to leverage this board has work to do but if you pledge to work collaboratively and in good faith and bring your ideas to the table i'm convinced you can debate them solve challenges and find the grand bargains you'll need to that end please encourage the public to bring their ideas to the table to help you debate these ideas but please avoid wasting even a second 30 seconds on the small minority trying to distract you with personal gripes conspiracy theories dark rabbit holes to nowhere and fake science focus on

062the vast majority of residents who elected you are comfortably going about their lives tonight because they trust that you will do what they elected to do do whatever you must to get started on critical renovations of old greenwich jc and central and demonstrate that you can work across party lines to get a strategic plan in place to drive excellence thank you [Music] i'm not seeing her online hello everyone and thank you for being here tonight i'd like to start by mentioning some laws and mandates that our country once observed in 1769 i'm sorry in 1769 a law stated that the legal existence of a woman was suspended upon marriage the fugitive slave act of 1850 legalized the capturing and returning of runaway slaves to their bondage the jim crow laws of the 1860s segregated black

063people from certain public areas the smith act of 1940 the alien registration act public law 503 japanese internment weak leaders all followed these laws since trusting the science is all the rage in 2021 i'll mention the eugenics sterilization mandate of the early parts of the last century i'll also remind you all when it comes to trusting the science that lobotomies were still legal little more than 50 years ago it's time we all start viewing mandates with a discerning and more educated eye a more logical mind and a much much more brave heart and spirit the laws i mentioned changed because brave people refused to follow them and removed leaders that did i request that our logical moral and ethical obligation to our children come far before the state where our children deserve to be prioritized

064recently i spoke with many teachers in our greenwich public schools teachers working in terror teachers being mistreated marginalized threatened and dehumanized i was a teacher for 15 years this is shocking to me i spoke with one teacher that called me crying from her closet in her classroom whose idea was it to force teachers that do not want to be vaccinated to drive three hours each weekend to a specific testing site i'd like testing labs set up in greenwich so that these teachers will no longer be inconvenienced for their medical choices to spend three hours of their precious weekends driving to get tested whose idea was it to force teachers to walk their test results down to the school nurse on monday mornings to purposely expose the identities of those who are not vaccinated this senseless

065and abusive rule defies medical privacy and is purposely encouraging judgment discord bullying and conflict and conflict among staff members it is it makes no sense at all it's cruel i ask that teachers be allowed to email their results in privacy to the nurse perfectly healthy teachers have been interrupted during in the middle of their lessons and have been escorted out of 30 seconds of school property over testing submission errors in front of their students this is humiliating this is madness i i have more to say but i'll make i'll sum it up quickly if you are a teacher please reach out this is not normal treatment on the back of my i have an email on the back on my back right now please email it um it is the concerned teachers of greenwich protonmail.com

066the parents of grunge are behind you thank you and we're here for you please reach out hi can you hear me good evening i am speaking to address the issue of safety from intimidation and harassment for our teachers and our students last month over 200 teachers attended the board meeting either in person or virtually to ask for your help we asked for you to address the harassment intimidation and verbal attacks on your teachers by selecting loud voices in the community during the last board meeting a community member equated your staff to nazis calling us brown shirts yet despite a few uncomfortable looks from the board no one stopped or called out this hateful and disturbing reference as a jewish woman i cannot sit by while historical facts in history are twisted to promote personal gain

067while a person dishonors my heritage my ancestors and countless family members of the six million jews who were victims of genocide by equating jews being marched into gas chambers to students being asked to wear masks on governor's mandates due to public safety i sat in that meeting as another speaker yelled towards teachers in the audience then passed around personal information and still the board took no action to stop the intimidation and hateful speech the board of ed and the administration knew of the polarizing viewpoints within the community leading up to election day and yet did nothing in advance to prepare our schools to ensure safety for our staff members who were completing professional learning poll workers left the polling areas and walked and walked around the buildings where staff were attending meetings teachers cars were

068damaged by non-faculty drivers but the biggest concern was a lack of police presence at riverside staff members were heckled and verbally accosted as they tried to enter the building to complete their professional learning ahead of this day a quarter of your teaching staff came out to ask for your help in ensuring their safety and still you have done nothing this past friday a parent used their children to help them pass out flyers to elementary school students at riverside students who are between the ages of four to ten that stated that schools are conducting medical procedures quote not only targeting teachers now but students this is crossing a line students are being targeted and their safety should be the main concern of this board how far will you let this continue before you begin to take

069action your teachers are on overdrive trying to implement new curriculum fill in learning gaps left from the pandemic and to care for the mental and physical well-being of all of our students we ask for you to ensure that we can do our jobs without fear of attack slander intimidation and harassment former chairperson bernstein opened up each public comment session with a reminder for speakers to be respectful and model the types of norms we expect our children to follow but i now ask you what are you modeling for our students when you sit for months and you allow your staff members and now your students to be intimidated and intact and continue to stay silent your silence and inaction models to our children your students and the community that when someone is being attacked it's okay

070to do nothing to say nothing um [Applause] hi sorry about that my name is jill ernst and i am the julian curtis pta co-president i have three daughters in the third grade who came in through the magnet program and another daughter to enter kindergarten at jc next september to state that i have an invested interest in julian curtis is an understatement i will be spending a total of 10 years as part of this community in addition to being a mom and pta president i am also a marketing exec executive who has worked in the k-12 educational publishing space for over 20 years i pride myself with understanding how school districts function throughout the country what i was not prepared for when moving to and enrolling my children in a school district which obviously invests in

071their curriculum and teachers but is extremely short-sighted in terms of their school's infrastructure our jc community was blindsided last year when we what we thought was a no-brainer renovation plan was attacked politically we were told we had a wish list of grandiose ideas for a school with declining enrollment but what is unrealistic about expecting my children to attend a school that does not resemble the one i attended over 35 years ago every bit of space in jc is utilized my children are in classrooms with 21 classmates the lunch in the gym because their cafeteria cannot accommodate all the kids while maintaining social distancing our school is not ada compliant it is lacking security and does not have the advantages of some of the other other elementary schools in the district with science labs preschools again

072are not a nice to have real estate development and central awareness is on the rise and attracting young families these families expect to have a centrally located public pre-k program that their children can attend and transition to for elementary for their elementary years we cannot delay the jc renovation project any longer all our schools in need should feel confident that they are in line to get the money for renovations our children deserve thank you for your time thank you very much [Applause] is jess and right yes hi can you hear me yes we can thank you good evening members of the board and superintendent jones my name is jess enright polish and along with lisa small we are the co-chairs of pta council's academic excellence committee our committee's goals are to advocate for excellence in

073the gps curriculum and to facilitate communication between the district schools teachers and parents in our roles as ae co-chairs the past few months have been very busy with many issues pertaining to curriculum in the district we've had numerous meetings and an increased level of communication with mark d'amico and our wonderful new curriculum coordinators tara fogle mike reed and benjamin marcus we are participating as parent representatives in multiple curriculum advisory committees specifically the middle school ela and social studies committees as well as the ghs math textbook advisory committee as we are not just a pa a parent association but rather a pta a parent teacher association we have also met with the new gea president lillian perrone as we did last year with carol sutton we have also met with our ae committee which is comprised

074of parent representatives from all 15 schools our mandate from them continues to be clear parents want consistency transparency and excellence which brings us to tonight tonight we speak in support of our gps teachers because there is no academic excellence without excellent teachers over the past two years our teachers were asked to perform the brave and herculean task of teaching our children during a global pandemic in an instant they needed to change the way they teach and adjust to a new ever-changing covet environment this was not easy for our teachers professionally emotionally or physically and yet they adapted and responded because they are dedicated professionals over the last several months some teachers have felt increasingly underappreciated and demoralized these teachers feel threatened in terms of instructional choices and teaching styles they are not experiencing as much

075joy as they had in years past they do not feel respected while some of these feelings may be due to the larger landscape in america our ae committee is nonetheless concerned about our own teachers in our own town specifically we are concerned with our district's need to retain and attract excellent teachers we want greenwich public school teachers to feel valued appreciated and trusted we want our teachers to receive the public and professional respect they deserve we look forward to our continued conversations with the gps administration with gea and with our parent representatives and p-tech in closing we want to say loud and clear thank you to our 900 teachers in our district we are grateful for you we value you and we appreciate everything you do for our children each and every day thank you

076next up kathleen you hello can you hear me okay uh good evening and a very warm welcome to our new board of ed members also many thanks to our returning board of ed members for their continued uh service i'd like to start by saying tonight that i'm speaking not in my official p-tech capacity but as an individual parent of three students in anticipation of the big ideas math presentation that is on the agenda this evening i would like to briefly draw attention to middle school pathway number three which seems to describe an option for students to move to algebra two i wanted to take a moment to commend mr d'amico and mr reed for including that option and for recognizing the needs of our most accelerated learners a number that continues to grow each year

077currently many of these students use johns hopkins program as a form of acceleration beyond their grade both within elementary and middle schools while it is wonderful that our district seeks to meet the needs of these gifted learners through this program the johns hopkins program has a number of flaws and parents in the past have expressed frustration with the disconnected nature of the program and the lack of live direct instruction with that in mind i would ask that discussion and consideration be given tonight regarding offering a formalized gps teacher taught curriculum for algebra 2 honors in middle school additionally i would ask that consideration be given to students currently in elementary school using the john hopkins program to instead participate in district gps classes possibly in a virtual capacity fluidity amongst grades based on ability should

078also be considered as much as possible if our past history of remote learning has taught us anything it is that students benefit from having a live teacher beyond this i would also suggest as another big idea the collaboration of the different disciplines to offer stem-based and applied mathematics classes at the middle school level such as seminar statistics and computer science many thanks in advance for your time and consideration thank you next up is noelle moore hello can you hear me hello my name is noelle moore i've lived in greenwich for 10 years and have three sons in the greenwich public schools a sixth grader at eastern and two fourth graders at isd i want to start by thanking dr jones and all the teachers administrators and support staff in our school my family appreciates all

079that you do and we know that at times it can be a thankless job during the start of the pandemic remote school was not easy but thanks to the hard work of dr jones and the boe my kids were back in school full time starting in the fall of 2020. my nephews in oregon were remote through this past april of 2021 so i know that things could have been much worse over the past year i've seen signs pop up around greenwich saying things like unmask our kids or medical procedures don't belong in schools i want you to know that based on the parents i've talked to these opinions are in the minority i have two requests one's for is for dr jones and the boe and one for my fellow parents in greenwich residents for

080dr jones and the boe please keep following the science many years ago i was a biology major in college and one thing that has stuck with me is how scientific discovery works scientists make hypotheses and then conduct experiments to test them based on the results of these experiments they modify their hypotheses run more experiments and ask other scientists to try to replicate to see if they achieve the same results when coveted hit we didn't know much about how it spread or how to treat it but 22 months later thanks to the work of scientists we know a lot more we know that masks work and that vaccines save lives my second request is for all of my fellow residents of greenwich i ask you to follow the golden rule let's think about what's best for

081our community not just what we want i personally don't like wearing a mask when i'm out and about but i care about others wearing a mask is more about protecting others than protecting myself and that is something i am happy to do but i want to get to a point where we don't want need to wear masks each other safe and in order to do that we need to get to herd immunity and that is going to require vaccinations everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated should get vaccinated so that those who are unable to get vaccinated can feel safe my children are all under 12 and until two weeks ago we were not able to get them vaccinated like all kids they are not fans of shots but i was so proud of them

082that they didn't argue at all when we took them to get vaccinated in a little over a week they'll get their second vaccination and they should be fully protected by winter break although we didn't take advantage of one of the vaccination clinics at the greenwich schools i applaud the greenwich school district and making vaccines available in schools i would encourage expanding the hours to during school so that students could get vaccinated by bringing in a signed permission slip and i truly hope that by next year the kovadexin joins the list of other vaccinations that are required in order to attend school in connecticut again i want to thank you for all that you do keep up the good work thank you up next is keith steinberg this will be the last one when we'll hit

083the hour mark for three minutes of course you're welcome to stay afterwards if you're on this list how are you tonight my name is keith steinberg and this is our second year at north mianis we have found the administration teachers and support staff to be extremely responsive and they've exceeded all of our expectations my wife and i are pleased with our son's progress both academically and socially the services he receives have drastically improved his ability and desire to communicate with others this is why we are concerned that the cova vaccine will be mandated and we will have to pull him out of school i'm not willing to put my child's long-term health at risk for him to attend school even if it is a great school when he had coven last year we thought it

084was a cold and tested him just to be safe we never imagined that his runny nose and sore throat could be due to a deadly disease that was discussed nonstop in the media he was sick for a day not a single person caught it from him at home or in his class the vaccine may be safe for some children but it may not be safe for others there has been no long-term testing done on children children are not dying from this disease or even getting seriously ill and they are not spreading it although it is understood that the childhood vaccine schedule was mandated at a state level east each district can decide how lenient to be with exemptions we ask you not to force a permanent medical procedure on the children with the consequence of

085refusal being denied educational services we all have to deal with the mandates and we discuss the science if cogan is such a threat to our lives then the million recent southern border crossers would be required to show their vaccine status but they are not nurses are being fired for refusing this vaccine this board cannot cosign and enforce a medical procedure as public policy on people and then banish the people for having different different medical opinions this is the subjugation of society every healthy child should be granted an exemption if their parents choose so just as the residents of greenwich are coming to the board of education to plead for health and safety of our children we expect you to represent our interests to the state of connecticut and make sure this experimental vaccine is not

086mandated the country is divided our town is divided but we all want what we think is best for our children please make decisions that will bring us together instead of pulling us apart by that i mean taking away our individual right of choice to pursue life liberty in the pursuit of happiness god bless the children god bless all of you god bless the troops god bless greenwich and god bless america thank you for having me [Music] dr jones thank you very much i'm going to keep it short tonight because i know it's already 8 30. just a couple of reminders and we did present the budget so encourage the board of ed to please get your questions uh if you could send those to me as quickly as you can so we can start getting

087answers to those um our next meeting on december 2nd is a budget meeting where we will discuss the budget for 22-23 also i want to say congratulations to all of our dhs students that were inducted into the honors society um it was such a delight to be at that event it was the first large scale event that we have participated in since covet started and it was just a great feeling to have the entire pack center packed actually um and our cardinal ribbon cutting i know that mr kelly will probably mention that as well but what a wonderful day and that was even with the thunderstorm and all we knew we actually got out of the stands really quickly so um but it was a great great day and then last but not least just

088um we are back to doing a lot of our shared experiences and some of our enrichment uh thanks to our pta for really helping support a lot of that and our kids are really having some wonderful experiences if you're not on twitter it is fun just to actually see um all of the hands-on activities that our students are engaged in now which is so different than what we looked like just a year ago so i'll leave it at that thank you yes all right miss calls me um sure uh dr hills i had a follow-up question from some of the comments that were made today specifically regarding teachers and getting covet tests i this is another meeting in which we're hearing it we're also getting email correspondence about it and i'm wondering what the feasibility

089is to give access to teachers that do test readily access and readily access to this spit test it seems that other places are doing i don't know if we've looked into it what is the cost component can we cover the cost component is there no cost component uh how can we make this a little bit easier i i am concerned about winter travel in this three hour thing that they're talking about that doesn't seem like the best use of anybody's time yeah and i will say i know we talked about this a couple meetings ago and it really hasn't changed um the connecticut department of health has state testing sites they determine where they are and they determine what type of testing is available right now the only that's the only one i know of

090that staff have shared is and i think meriden um and i know see little nodding her head she knows we we have called around uh all the suggested sites that might be able to do this fit test or saliva test and have not been able to come to fruition and part of that is the connective department health also has a certain standard of testing so if you think about it like a slider test that you can go buy cvs a home test kit you can't use those so even the type of testing we did last spring when we did the full testing those don't count either it has to be a lab science based test and we have not been able to find a vendor that would actually come here and into greenwich and offer

091that but i mean we have been working on it as recently again this week as this week um if we could offer it and somebody would come here and we could do it we absolutely would but we just haven't been able to make it happen and it's not from lack of effort i might mind that too much time it's supposed to be but and we also reached out and i know gea has to our state representatives you know trying to see if we can get some help at the state level um to get the connecticut department of health to set up additional but we have not had any eleven or has are represented should i finish doctor any other questions okay um oh sorry just passed in all the way down there i don't have

092a microphone yeah does it have to be a state testing site or can it not be at a hospital that might have this kind of science so the sites that they have set up have no cost to them it's all being you know funded through the clinic at department of health um we have reached out just seeing if we can get a site to set up um teachers would have to submit their health insurance um which we've been told would be like literally a hundred to two hundred dollars per test um the pool testing that they do is significantly less but again those don't count and i might just add when you compare us to like say a fire department or new york new york and connecticut have different you know standards for what they

093do allow or don't allow same way with the fire department if they want to offer testing or required testing because they want to they can use any kind they want which is where we were last year we offered it people that wanted to just stay participated as they didn't but now we're under the actual mandate [Music] i mean i'm just adding on and i just say i know i had spoken with mister as well who said that the state represents also trying to push for this as well but um if we're able to open the free vaccine clinics at the schools um through you know hospitals and whatever i would hope that they would also want to be able to provide us with spit testing sites um for providing them an opportunity to to use

094our facilities otherwise i don't know what we would need to do for that but it would seem like a fair quick brokerage people yeah i mean i think certainly the state is using i think griffin health or griffith and health which is a hospital and um they are the ones that are doing their free clinics around the state that they they would not make a commitment to be here every week even for vaccine you know they're they they have they travel around the state and go to different school sites and set up for those school sites i think it could be helpful and which a lot most school districts are doing like we are thank you all right next up reports of committees and liaisons [Music] anyone a brief note dtac met uh this week

095and um went over some of the plans uh going forward and um hopefully people will start seeing some some nice letters from us in their mailboxes soon uh asking for support for dtac so more information is coming soon what else okay if we talk about policy later thank you i forgot also ciac met this week and they went over the special education um plans action plans um and actually had quite a good discussion with dr heidenthaler who also held a town hall to go over questions from parents and the other community members um i knew they'll be meeting again to get some further details with their committees and and beyond but um i don't know if that meeting was reported but the town hall by dr stacy hagenthaler was recorded um so parents that want

096to see what questions might have been asked and answered you can find that on our website great all right see nothing else let's move to discussion items and the first thing i see is big ideas implementation update dr jones should i just turn this over to sergey nico mr reed good evening chairwoman stowe members of the board superintendent jones a rollout of the big ideas math program k-8 is well underway i'm pleased to welcome mr mike reed to share with you all that we have accomplished thus far and what is yet to come mr reed take it away good evening everybody um my name is mike reed i'm the program coordinator for k-8 mathematics thank you to the board dr jones and mr d'amico for entrusting me with the oversight of our k-8 mathematics program

097i look forward to discussing past current and future implementation of the big ideas math program with you this evening next slide please so i thought it'd be nice if we started off with some of our students engaged in the program these are some pictures from around the district of our teachers and our students engaged in the big ideas resource you know we're in full force at this point and getting more comfortable with each passing day next slide so why big ideas math first we need to understand the greenwich public schools mathematics curriculum is aligned with the connecticut course standards and is committed to providing all students with a high quality comprehensive and challenging program the program provides consistent opportunities for students to develop the knowledge skills and capacities necessary to be college and career ready

098i'm very excited to present our implementation progress tonight before we get started with what the district has been working on i think it's important for everyone to understand why the greenwich public schools have decided on the big ideas math program big idea's math is written by renowned authors dr ron larson and dr lori boswell it offers a seamless seamless math pedagogy from kindergarten through algebra ii together ron and laurie provide a consistent voice that encourages students to make connections through cohesive progressions and clear instruction since 1992 ron and laurie have authored over 50 mathematics programs doctors larson and boswell use the latest educational research along with the body of knowledge collected from expert mathematics instructors to develop the big ideas math program by implementing the work of renowned researchers from across the world big ideas

099math offers at least a full year's growth within a full year's learning while also encouraging a growth mindset in students and teachers students take their learning from surface level to deep level then transfer that learning by modeling real life situations the pedagogical approach used in this program follows the best practices outlined in the most prominent and widely accepted educational research including but not limited to visible learning for mathematics universal design for learning and rigorous pbl by design the two words i really want everybody to walk away from this presentation with are coherence and rigor and this will start to address some of mrs duff's questions earlier and then i'll try to get more specific with about those later on in the presentation big ideas is coherent because it is designed by a single authorship team

100that has intentional progression of content within each grade and between grade levels our students will build new understanding on foundations from prior grades and connect concepts throughout each course it is also a rigorous program because it provides a balance of three important building blocks conceptual understanding better known as discovering why procedural fluency also known as learning how and application knowing better known as when to apply encouraging mathematical mindsets is woven into every lesson one of the primary goals of the program is to develop proficiency in the mathematical practices more simply known as becoming a mathematical thinker students learn to ask why and to reason and communicate with others as they learn next slide please many of the things we do as educators have a positive effect on student learning but which ones have the greatest

101impact this program purposely purposefully integrates five key strategies proven to have some of the highest impact on student achievement regardless of content teacher clarity before starting a new topic we make sure the learning targets are clear as students explore and learn they continue to connect their experiences back to the success criteria so they know where they are in their learning feedback teachers will actively listen as they probe for student understanding being mindful of the feedback that they provide when students provide teachers with feedback they are able to see where students are in their learning and make instructional decisions for where to go next classroom discussion students are encouraged to talk together not like in the old days when we were in school this solidifies understanding while honing their ability to reason and construct arguments students

102benefit from hearing the reasoning of classmates and hearing peers critique their own reasoning direct instruction following exploration and discovery with explicit instruction to build procedural skill and fluency is essential to accelerated growth teachers have access to clear examples that have been carefully designed to ensure their students meet the success criteria of each lesson and finally space practice some people know this as spiral review is an effective practice that does not just focus on a single topic of new learning students must revisit concepts over time so deeper learning occurs big ideas cohesively offers multiple opportunities for students to build their conceptual understanding by intentionally revisiting and applying concepts throughout subsequent lessons and chapters review and refresh exercises in every lesson also provide continual practice on the major topics so one of the main things to address

103mrs duff's question earlier is are our sort of steady sort of drop in scoring these practices as you can see have a very high effect size so they are um well-known meta-analyses that have been done over many years and by implementing this program which is aligned and with these practices embedded we should be seeing more than a year's growth during a school year next slide please so i've analyzed the results of our most recent sba data and identified three areas of focus in each grade level the sba breaks the data down into targets which may have multiple standards within each target if you use grade three as an example your target b consists of two separate standards apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide and understand division as an unknown factor problem

104whereas target j is solve real world and mathematical problems involving perimeters of polygons i have highlighted our most high leverage targets which fall in the categories of number and quantity in algebra and functions big ideas breaks these domains down into the specific standards and then learning targets in the teacher resources embedded in these documents are not only the chapters uh uh but also the exact lessons where these are all where all these targets are addressed space practice in each lesson provides students with opportunities to practice and revisit the major targets in each grade level next slide please similarly in grades 6 through 8 you can see the highlighted high leverage targets the same road map and space practice is incorporated in our middle school level courses over time as our students progress through the program

105they will benefit from the vertical uniformity in both visual layout but more importantly conceptual progression so in essence this is a fresh start for us we have a resource that's fully aligned to the common core standards with it with a road map that is so granular for teachers that the clarity is crystal clear also one of the comments that mrs duff brought up earlier was our assessment metrics previously we had usually around six unit assessments throughout the year now we have upwards of 12 and in some cases 15 so we're assessing in a summative fashion more frequently so we're going to have our hands on the pulse um you know basically twice as much as we used to which is which is wonderful and most importantly it's the teacher clarity everybody knows exactly what they're

106doing they know where to find the resources and um and if they can't they know to call me because most of them have my cell phone number slide please so big ideas has laid out their cohesive progressions through the grades in all domains with the titles of number and quantity algebra and functions and geometry measurement data and probability this is an example of number and quantity progressions embedded in this progression are five domains and how they align throughout the program if you focus on the middle row you can see number and operations base 10 in grades k through 5 naturally progresses into um the number system in grades six through eight this chart is accessible to every teacher k through eight and not only lays out the standards but it also guides the teachers to

107the corresponding chapter by grade level this allows teachers to pinpoint resources to enrich and remediate their students next slide please so to date the gps teachers have had six opportunities to receive support directly from big ideas consultants may 2021 june 2021 two opportunities in august 2021 uh october 2021 and just recently on election day coming recently from the classroom i am acutely aware of the importance of collecting teacher feedback and insight to design professional development opportunities following the august 30th training a survey was sent out to gather information on what supports the teachers were looking for during the november second professional development we had 131 responses which i was thrilled about and after analyzing the responses there were clear commonalities across the district most teachers wanted more support with lesson management differentiation and logistics that

108said we designed sessions to support teachers in these areas simultaneously our math interventionists and select teachers in each building along with myself attended a train the trainer session the purpose of this session was to extend further into implementation covering topics such as differentiation assessment technology or instructional practices supporting effective implementation of big ideas learning programs these building instructional leaders will provide in-building supports to increase teacher understanding comfort and calculated risk-taking within the program these lead teachers will support their colleagues in the implementation of big ideas learning programs with fidelity this comprehensive training will provide opportunities to empower and build sustainable success from within our school district next slide please so moving forward gps teachers will have two additional opportunities this school year to receive support with the implementation of big ideas january 14th and march

10925th as stated in the previous slide we will continue to gather feedback from our teachers to support their growth within the program for the 21-22 school year while big ideas does offer some boxed opportunities for professional development as illustrated we will make sure to tailor the upcoming professional development to ensure the content is relevant and useful in the 20 to 23 school year we will continue to design professional development from the classroom up and i can't give enough of a shout out to the big ideas people that support us they are responsive and they are adaptable and they rise to every challenge that that we throw their way so i'm looking forward to a wonderful relationship moving forward so what's next in order to know where we're going we have to know where we've been

110this past summer we had a rather large committee of teachers coaches consultants and administrators creating and designing support documents to help the teachers transition to big ideas next summer we will shift from a creation phase to a refinement phase we will take teacher feedback and refine our delivery pacing and supports where necessary our guiding principles will always be coherence and rigor with students at the center next slide please the following slides will illustrate the three typical pathways a student may follow when they get to middle school it is important to note that with big ideas math come new compacted pathways which almost completely eliminate missed content which we had in the past this is a typical in this slide on grade level pathway if you focus on the left side of the graphic this would

111be a natural three year progression there are opportunities for students to accelerate over the summer as illustrated by the jump to the middle and right columns throughout the year we will collect information inclusive of formative and summative assessments daily assignments link it data work habits etc to help form a picture of each student we will not only use any uh we will not use any singular assessment to determine placement in march we will begin the process of meeting with building administrators and teachers to determine appropriate placement of each student parents will be notified of the district's proposed placement and have the opportunity to appeal final decisions for placement will be made prior to april break during may and june we will continue to gather information on students and adjust placements as necessary next slide please

112this slide shows a single grade level jump our students entering 6a or 6 advanced no longer miss any content big ideas has created advanced pathways to cover three years of content in a two-year span which would put our students on track to complete algebra by the end of grade 8. this advanced pathway has eliminated a long-standing concern of students skipping grade 6 content completely if you focus on the left side of the graphic this would be a single jump three-year progression there are also opportunities to accelerate over the summer as illustrated by the jump to the middle and the right columns and next slide please our third pathway is for students that start off with a double jump in grade six our grade five alps students will naturally and those are our math out students

113will naturally feed into this pathway with no skipping of content as stated earlier we will use multiple classroom measures of both ability and work habits to determine if a general education student will make a single or double jump we will engage in the typical building advisory committee transition procedure so that all stakeholders students parents teachers and administrators have a voice in each student's middle school math placement it is important to note that middle school administrators monitor placement in all courses very closely and will adjust students as necessary once they matriculate to middle school next slide please so what are people saying around the district here are some examples of what's being said at various levels around the district overall the implementation of big ideas math has been positive in general as i visit the k-8

114buildings i encounter teachers that are grateful to finally have a program with all the resources they need that said change can be hard and overwhelming we will continue to listen to teachers administrators and parents to ensure they feel supported robin sharma a canadian author sums it up pretty nicely change is hard at first it's messy in the middle and it's gorgeous at the end i look forward to our bright math future in the greenwich public schools next slide please so i figured we'd bookend this presentation with uh some more students at work in the classroom um you could see here various grade levels inclusive of middle school and um you know everybody's all the way in getting their hands dirty and it's really really exciting next slide please so that concludes the presentation and i

115welcome any questions at this time [Music] um i know we had a speaker uh asked the same question earlier but um i didn't hear when you were talking about the students at the middle school level uh double jump we've not had the opportunity to offer algebra 2 to them before and i know when we had done the big ideas math book review that was a but it was a very exciting thing to hear that they would be they would be able to offer algebra 2 as part of this program this is something that we're going to be looking to possibly bring into our schools um as a class at the middle school because i know there are a lot of students uh in addition to one student whose parents sitting next to me um who

116have students that are hitting algebra 2 in middle school and they really are very difficult it's very difficult to teach them um when they're not being offered algebra 2 classes at the middle school yeah so that's a a great question slash comment and we are trending um towards having more and more students um entering algebra 2 prior to high school this year we have a handful next year we're already predicting that we'll have um you know maybe twice as many and we have many different options currently we've been using cty as one of our vehicles our small handful of students are actually working with a greenwich high school teacher mr skurkanich currently that worked out well this year for us but we'll be taking a look at what our options are and what impacts those

117have to our budget and how to operationalize that moving forward um but um you know i think we all share a common goal we would love to have our kids um with our teachers and um you know have live instruction so um you know we're going to take in all the information look at the enrollment and you know luckily i have some really wonderful people to work with to help me figure that out and and uh we'll make sure we we give them the supports that they need but um it's definitely trending that way that we have more students in algebra two prior to the end of eighth grade well i'd love to hear a little bit more about that at some later meeting um and i just wanted to confirm i know that you

118guys had um you know professional development uh to teach uh ka teachers how to use big ideas math and and more um was that mandatory at the very start and the two that are upcoming um you know is it just sort of opt-in for the teachers that uh want a little bit more training so great question so uh at the end of last school year in may we had optional and then in june we had a mandatory training and then in august we had an optional training and then our august 30th training was mandatory our november 2nd training was mandatory uh january will be mandatory and march will be mandatory thank you and this is a great update glad to see it's uh it's being received well within the district thanks mr so previously for

119better or worse um at least in our experience it was the spring star assessment that would determine a child's placement in middle school um which was i'm talking about a fifth grade assessment um what are our assessment tools now i i know you said the classroom feature and some of you know i wondered if there was a concrete assessment that we're giving across the board yeah so what we're trying to do is we're trying to uh move away from a high-stakes singular test that determines whether a student gets into a program and so we want to look at the whole body of evidence so in in you know in that vein we're going to be looking at their summative assessments by chapter we're going to be looking at their most recent linked data which would

120be their form b which happens in january we'll look at their formative assessments that the teachers give in the classroom which could be classwork could be exit tickets things of that nature we're going to look at their work habits and we're going to really triangulate um you know being the son of a land surveyor i know that one point is never a good reference and two is pretty good but you'd rather have three four or five um and so we're moving towards um uh an approach that is not weighted in one singular assessment but rather um you know sort of equally weighted across the student's entire body of work thank you [Music] um thanks for the presentation appreciated there was a number of things i really appreciated i love that you put pictures of kids

121in there that show what math actually looked like as a classroom the one that you talked about um the learning science behind the program and i love that you stressed the coherence of the program um that was helpful um what a couple things that i'm wondering about because we know from the achievement um presentation last month we know there were undoubtedly a number of learning guests they um how how is the math instruction how is that there's probably some gaps between where students are and where this program is so how are we addressing that kind of um those kind of needs that get students back on track so to reinforce um exactly what i said earlier the program is perfectly aligned to the common core state standards so we know exactly where these standards and

122skills and topics fall in each grade level in each chapter in each section so we've identified where those are by chapter and we know exactly um you know uh you know where the students will be learning them not necessarily when because every class sort of adjusts to their own their own their own clientele and moves at the pace that's appropriate for them but um we know exactly where these skills are found and so we're able to either slow down or speed up depending on whatever the skills are so i showed you the high leverage skills in this presentation the three or four most important ones for each grade level but i have many more and i know exactly where we find them in the big ideas math program so um in those areas in those

123spots we will slow down and take a little bit more time to secure that knowledge but also if you think vertically as well as students from year to year progress through the program they become more comfortable the teachers become more clear and so that space review becomes more and more important to address those priority standards and that space review is focused on those priority standards which tend to be areas where we we have some weaknesses so um the program itself is naturally aligned but we've also identified exactly where it happens and so we can slow down and and refine our practice in those areas perhaps you might want to add on uh and talk a little bit about the added value of our math interventionists at the elementary level now yes so we are very

124very lucky we were able to double our math interventionist program from um five to ten and then we have a one title one math intervention so we have eleven total and um that means we have a 1.0 billet in each building which allows us to do two things it allows us to see more kids that need intervention or remediation but it also provides us the time to support tier one instruction so our math interventionists are able to get into the classrooms and support those teachers with with their instruction for their entire class so um i'm really excited about you know building this program out i'm very hopeful we're able to operationalize these five extra inter interventionists into our budget moving forward um because we need these resources they were sorely missed for many years and

125i can already see the fruits of our labor and just the smiles on kids faces and and um you know we um we we have a lot of support this year um so we're very lucky where where math is concerned that makes more sense i'm glad you you mentioned the intervention spacing [Music] um this one other question you mentioned the opportunity for preview clarified so like that you had on the slide the uh i think the one workshop was create classrooms to concentrate on learning needs by an opportunity or is that is that one of the mandated i'm sorry you're a little bit muffled so i couldn't catch that whole that whole question if you would just if you could repeat it yeah yeah so so i was trying to figure out so you mentioned

126the opportunity you mentioned what opportunities were for you on this slide about future training i just wanted to clarify if um like for example the first one is creating math classrooms that concentrate on learner needs by differentiating the instruction is that one of the ones that you mentioned or is for everybody or is that is that an opportunity that teachers can select from right so on the august 30th training um we we provided everybody with sort of the updates to the new platform um and um you know sort of a general but deeper overview from what they had gotten the previous year then what we did was we collected feedback from the teachers we found exactly what their highest priorities were we tailored the um november 2nd pd to what they were asking for in

127a couple of weeks i'll send out another form and i'll say what would you like to see next then i'll go back to my big ideas consultants and we'll build that out and we'll we'll figure out where you know people would go quite possibly give them the option so if we had um two to four consultants with two to four options they could pick and choose which things they wanted to go to um and and to support their needs so we have a lot of options on the table it will depend on the feedback i get i'm hoping for another 131 responses um but um you know we're gonna be bubbling things grassroots from the ground up and um and you know when i say opportunities i mean opportunities to engage in meaningful work where

128they have a chance to actually dive deep and then plan with their colleagues if i could just add on to that i think one of the things that we're also trying to be very considerate of is the teachers that we haven't hired yet so we are archiving all of our professional learning opportunities in mathematics so we're recording all of these sessions so that any teacher teachers that we currently have and our future teachers that we will on board have the opportunity to go through these trainings anyway uh i'm new so can you send me after the meeting just whatever the academic research is around this on what you know i assume there's been controlled studies of this program and what uh impacts expected to have on test scores or whatever other measurements have been about

129uh you know whatever whatever we expect i i think what i heard you say i'm sorry for some reason that side of the room is muffled um i think what you wanted to to see was the research of the program and the successes it's had in other areas yeah yeah you wouldn't mind just sending that yep absolutely no problem do we establish how we're going to measure how successful we are at implementing this and what uh what we expect to get out of it in a quantitative fashion i think one thing i noticed in presentations is all like qualitative commentary there's nothing really that you know allows the board number to say oh okay i i see how we're going to be tracking our successes so i'm sorry i think what you said was how

130are we measuring it from a quantitative perspective yes right so what we would do historically is we'd look back at our data and we would see what the trend was what the areas were where we had so successes or weaknesses and then obviously we had that little blip in the radar where we didn't have any asses assessment and then we have our sba scores from last year so we we typically focus on our sba scores um three through eight um to to give us our quantitative measures for how successful the program is um we also use linkit um which would be in-house and that is uh second through eighth um so we would use that to sort of assess the progress as we're going um so i guess to sum that up our summative measure

131would be our sba scores and do you know how long it will take for the benefits of the program to roll through you know i think it really is determined by the comfort level of the teachers one of the main reasons why we chose this program is it's very scripted um and there are insights at every level and how to help all types of learners from our ell learners to our students that have struggles and as the teachers become more comfortable that's when we're going to see the greatest amount of success and as they collaborate one of john hattie's visible learning data pieces is collective teacher efficacy and that's how they understand what they're doing um and how they work together towards a great a common good and that has the greatest effect size of

132anything so this resource provides that uniformity so that we can all be speaking the same language so with that same language comes the teacher clarity with the teacher clarity comes the collective teacher efficacy and with that the data is just there that the students should improve but as far as a timeline is concerned you know i i haven't really put a hard time on that but i would say within you know two years we should be seeing some very positive trends um that's my hope but i'm also always a glass half full kind of a guy okay thank you no problem just one quick question mike uh going to the c2i program um and i guess we probably use it sporadically at what point do we say you know when you have six children in

133a grade is it is that the point at which you say okay now it's more effective or efficient through the teacher i'm not sure how much the license is that how we're making that decision i'm sorry again i'm not i'm not sure if it's the sound on my end um if you could repeat that there we go can you hear me now i can okay basically i was just trying to understand as more and more children seem to be triple jumping but there is there are times when we use cty right to bridge for for select students but is there um i guess a breaking point at which we sort of say 62 why licenses now it makes sense for us to have an additional teacher actually teaching the class do we is that how

134we make that decision or how do we figure this out so i believe what you're asking is do we start to change structurally how we're how we're managing the students um and how we're instructing them you know obviously i would i would be trying to troubleshoot that with with mark and dr jones but you are right eventually it comes to a point where you have to start thinking a little bit differently um i don't know that we're there yet um but we're always going to look to innovate we're always going to research and see what other districts are doing that are having great success and you know i i would i would not like to say yeah we would add more teachers because that means money but um um you know we will always put

135all options on the table and and present it to you all to make a decision and um you know um in my mind every option is an option um but for right now we would stay status quo with our logistics get everybody comfortable with the program most importantly the students and then um when we start to see maybe a plateau that's when we try to think a little bit differently to supercharge things thank you you're welcome so i had um just a quick question regarding the professional development just to clarify the professional development that's being provided is that provided by big ideas people that have come in and they're providing that development or redoing it internally through the expertise of the likes of you and mark have gone gathered over the course of this um

136this rollout it's mostly our big ideas consultants from outside um but we are building internal capacities so you know we're trying to um you know instead of having somebody fish for us all the time we're going to try to learn how to fish for ourselves so the idea with that train the trainers was to have at least four people for power users so to speak in every building that could be go to's for teacher to again ensure that clarity ensure that comfort and then you know be a conduit um not only to administrators but back to me i meet with my interventionists and my middle school math teachers monthly more formally and then obviously in frequent very frequently informally um and so um it's a combination of both but right now we're leaning heavily on

137the big ideas math consultants to provide that training okay so that questions but in one point which is uh one i i talked to a number of teachers in the elementary schools and they really are loving this program and they also love the response time that they're getting when they do have questions that must go to these power trainers that you're talking about i think that that's a great idea to have that uh resource directly within the schools but then it goes because we're using big ideas consultants to help continuous on the training i was just curious from a budgetary perspective and we probably talked about this from the original rollout but do we have how is it built into our budget dr jones is probably a question for you but how is it built

138into our budget when we have additional training in january and march and is that already slated for do we need to take conservation karen's like probably she's shaking her hands so she's not necessarily i'm sorry i don't i was gonna say i mean mike and uh mr demigod would probably be best to answer this but it was part of the program [Music] that the pd was included yes so the pd everything for this year was included um so all the trainings for this year then after this year moving forward um we would we would have to fund that ourselves depending on what we would be looking for okay and i guess if it's anticipated we would try to figure out a way to build that in 20 you've given some some thoughts that yes they

139do have a curricular budget so that they have professional development funds um to you know plan for the year thank you anything else all right thank you very much mr reed you're welcome have a nice night thanks so much take care moving on next discussion item the racial balance report dr caravillo all right good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones new board members returning board members colleagues and the greenwich community tonight i will share an overview of the racial balance report the connecticut state board of education with regulations section 10-226-e-1 requires that each board of education submit information on the racial composition of each school by grade the racial composition of the teachers and the number of students who are eligible to receive free or reduced lunches we have been cited as a district that has

140a racial imbalance the good news is that greenwich continues to become increasingly diverse with more students identifying as hispanic or two or more races all students when they register in our schools identify themselves in the following categories that are required by the state asian black caucasian hispanic native american pacific islander and two or more races in the past 10 years there has been an increase in diversity in our district from 29.5 to 39.6 hispanics appear to be the greatest increase of students for 18.1 to 22.6 the racial balance is calculated as the variance between the minority enrollment of a specific school and the district minority enrollment average the threshold for racial imbalance is plus or minus 25 from the district average for each school's makeup for example k-5 schools are only compared to k-pop schools

141two of our schools hamilton avenue and new lebanon school have made great progress since last our last report in but they continue to be cited as racially imbalanced the state requires districts to present a plan to demonstrate how they're addressing that imbalance then they require updates on that progress our update will be next december next month december we have five schools that are impending racial imbalance which is plus or minus 15 from the district percentage those schools are julian curtis isd parkway old greenwich and north street school western middle school has made great progress and is at plus 13 and is now below the impending threshold of racial imbalance the chart on page two in your report demonstrates the racial balance status of all schools and the greenwich public schools collective average western middle school

142has a total of 41 students who attend by choice and by choice we mean magnet students tuition students or out of attendance exceptions seven percent or 254 elementary students attend magnet schools isd has the largest number of magnet students julian curtis has 29 of its students as magnet students hamilton avenue has 12 percent of their students as magnet students and 13 of the students at new lebanon are magnet students so to summarize greenwich continues to become increasingly diverse hamilton avenue and new lebanon have narrowed their racial imbalance but will continue to be cited as racially imbalanced western middle school is plus 13 and is now below the threshold of impending racial imbalance 89 of our elementary school students attend their resident school 254 elementary students attend our four elementary magnet schools of isd hamilton avenue

143new lebanon and julian curtis any questions um i think i actually sent this in thank you for for the update um and while i know that the report certainly was required at state and just wanted to i'm unclear as to how we're going to plan to use the data in this report specifically um as it was listed in the goal of closing the achievement gap um it didn't really have any suggested actions towards uh doing so noted so i'm just wondering um if we'll be getting more information on that or how we'll be able to use this data to support to support the students are you talking specifically about achievement gap or specifically about racial imbalance uh well i was going to say specifically about the achievement gap that was what it was listed as

144on our agenda so i'm just wondering if it was listed that's the goal i'm wondering how you might be utilizing this data and what your close said that you would get we didn't address it in the uh racial imbalance report but we can get that information too that would be great thank you i have a question for the other uh so i know there's a lot a lot of history here and it's um and it's important history and i know the magnet program you know 10 years ago i know the community went through a very good conversation about this so i want to make sure um we understand i think it's important to know that right to talk about how the um the magnet programs are affecting i think it's a different question whether or

145not the magnet programs are um you know itself good for students so that's that's a separate question but as far as how it's affecting this number or the race that's [Music] and so at the same time the um diversity uh so the gap has decreased there's no lebanon what's the actual number for the effectiveness of the magnet program and shrinking the gap are we able to take away the uh because i'm looking at this it's almost like the diversity of the district of the wall isn't like that so can we be able to tease out in any more specific way how effective the actual magnet programs are in addressing the racial balance i know that uh in 2019 when we looked at the report we looked at all of the achievement of the magnet schools

146but i think which had an impact on uh the schools that uh were developed because of the racial imbalance with the exception of isd but i believe that um we really can't do that right now because of the of covid the past year and a half but that's something that we can look into so i'd be happy to look into that for you i would argue that's a that's a really important thing for us to be mindful of considering the 10-year history here of a program i was just curious of the more tenured board members and we obviously have all public commentary how often does it come up parents coming and saying that they're worried about their children's schools racial and balance yeah in all honesty um really never um and i say that because

147you know there's we have community neighborhood schools in elementary and they love their community schools um and i think the three districts that grapple with this in the state of connecticut would all stay the same so maybe i'll make an obvious point then is that it's probably good to separate things that parents in the community care about from things that bureaucrats and hartford purport to care about maybe that can guide some of that we prioritize our time and focus um and and just to kind of add to that you know we do have certain groups with john furrier and we are back in hartford which we have to go and meet with them but it really really there isn't an outcome necessarily today and especially since we had um some we had more of a

148reimbursement for instance before magnetic school in lebanon um than you would normally see on a school construction project and that largely in part to this um what we're trying to solve for so um but it is about being respectful and um kathleen and karen have to go to that too um since they're newly elected we'll talk about that tomorrow sorry i want to read and i just wanted to confirm when you talk about school choice as an element um choice i just want to be sure i understand the definition correctly it includes our magnet students and our tuition students and any kind of the superintendent exemptions is that accurate yes that is um and then one other like kind of a new shy point on the chart on page two we talk about the grade

149level district average from what i can tell it seems like our pre-k's count in that average not just k through 12. is that correct uh the pre-school is in that average because we have to compare the schools that have preschools so the preschool schools the pre-k five schools are compared together and then you have your k-5 schools that are compared together and you're six eight and we don't have greenwich high school because it's one high school okay i just want some fire thank you you're welcome i just have one question and maybe it's just the math that's throwing me western middle school seems to be uh really the maybe it's not the only school but within the right range and the feed in schools to western middle school if i'm not mistaken or a new

150lab hamilton avenue i think part of parkway uh i'm not aware of any other so where is that so i guess the influx of parkway and glenville are helping shape out the um our percentage there with western middle school that's how that's working out we were actually in a discussion um i believe where we were looking at the total number of students yes our tuition students that are my students that and and they have they're about 41. and they're coming from across the town to actually attend this magnet school and um you know if you go back to that um 2019 kind of data you know they were performing equally as central and eastern and because they are now an avid magnet and there are parents that have a real interest in that and feel

151like the students need it and it's a great school so i think that 41 does make a difference well i think that sends a good message to what gordon's doing over there kids are going there so kudos to him okay seeing nothing further move on to our next discussion item um oh one of my favorite things the board of education meeting calendar i'm trying to see it after jones so this calendar really modeled similar to what um we have this year you know we made some adjustments where um if you go back a couple of years we've had a lot more meetings so you can always consider adding more um but we also look if you look at the notes in the comments at the top all the things that have to be considered you

152know dates when you can't meet um one one thing i would say on here that we do need to when we look at location and an adjustment when you look at the meeting dates is that we used to always go to a different location two in actual schools is to visit the school so the board will have to decide if we're going to always um we're now going forward which i hope we will offer people at home to be able to watch virtually and also live our engagement is just quadrupled so if we're going to do that it would be our recommendation that we stay here at central because if then we can still allow engagement if every month we're moving to all of our different schools it's too difficult we don't have the equipment

153at all of our schools in order to be able to do that um it adds a complexity so it just means the location would always be central and virtual versus traveling but again if we travel we can't do the virtual you can still live stream it let me say that you can't have participation that's the part that gets so difficult so staff would have to be here if they're presenting which it's been wonderful also for our staff who commute um hours and hours at night you know they've been able to be virtual and be home it's wonderful um for parents that are giving their public comment that have little ones at home that would never come to our meetings now they're able to do that um so that's a consideration for the board [Music] i

154don't think we need to make that decision tonight right it's just something like food for i agree 100 but um keeping our meetings available and zoom i think we've had universal requests for that from the community to their ability to listen and participate um my one thought i'm going to be the but i think um i think i'm taking a lesson from last month's meeting i think in october in particular i think i would add a second meeting especially when we're talking about we always have our achievement data and our enrollment data and those are two very needy topics and frankly putting those at a retreat or where we can really just dig up dig our rollers up and dig into them um and also you know on a timely basis without you know reports

155and public comment where we can really just get into the work i think it would be much more productive for us as a board um my colleagues may agree or disagree but um just i would urge you to add that one i can't ask for a lot more but i think that one will be worthwhile along with christina i was going to say the same for the one to possibly look to add another retreat in the spring and march uh for a follow-up um you know to be able to give us a kind of a deeper dive oftentimes a lot of the board would like to deeper dive into a lot of the different academics the programming that we have especially with all the new uh changes to curriculum that that we're going to be

156seeing coming forward um i think that would be really beneficial to the biggest time to really have that deep dive um as i know these meetings tend to go really late um having a retreat i i looked at march 30th because there's a good five plus weeks between meetings um in the spring and um i would say making sure that we can continue offering uh virtual options for people because it's definitely something that the community has asked for but i would say as a member who has had the opportunity to go to a lot of the different schools over the years there really is something special to be able to walk into all the different schools and see the different community um each school brings to the table um hearing from each individual principal of

157the school seeing some of the children perform and really seeing our buildings in action i think one of the most important things that we've had that we've missed is being able to go into this building to really be able to see what's happening in those schools not just the work that's up on the wall but looking at the infrastructure of the building um from sitting in those auditoriums and having the opportunity to visit each one so i'd love to be able to see if there's a way to find a way to be able to continue to visit those schools and support each one of our uh you know eleven elementary within the middles and end our high school as well thank you yeah i was gonna ask that i i so maybe there's a way

158to have the principles come to us and here so we're not hearing from the public sorry for the staff but maybe those are the times and i could certainly go back and ask the principals like what what might be a good idea i know one thing that they would love um and i think you have an invitation like that came in your inbox yesterday for new lebanon and i know it's the 59 of the year but trying to get you out in the buildings for authentic activities more so than even deaths in the evening so i think we can do a better job at that um one of my previous districts also during the budget season would you listen to your board and that was a great just to go out and actually get to

159the teachers and stop by the teachers lounge and you know say hello and get the vibe of the building and um so we can look at some of those and have those discussions um the thing about the meeting in march to serve as a reminder whenever the board asks to change a little bit i'll see if i can pull the budget calendar because um it's the meetings that you end up doing all those communities and stuff like that and your nights were so cool so that's why he would ask us to pair it back so i'll try to get a copy of what it might look like but yeah i had look i looked at them at march and i didn't see anything around the time at least this year but obviously things change every

160year so but um thank you miss quality sure so um i like the idea of adding a board retreat and i guess calendaring it would be important because i'm looking at the calendar of what we have coming up in third in april and may we're talking about textbook recommendations first reads for d p and d r d i r forgive me i don't know what the aftermath stands for but k through eight it was only in first read and then um shortly thereafter i think three weeks thereafter we're voting on it i think given the curriculum changes in the textbook it'd be really helpful to have a more of a add that to a retreat or somewhere else so we can have some uh in-depth analysis and time for questions related to that that that

161you addition all right oh we're still talking anything else on this no okay all right so moving on now to the school calendar dr jones so this is the proposed calendar for 2024. again our counselors i know it seems like it's so far away but before we know it um it mirrors pretty much exactly you know what we do in french on an annual basis there's um the week of december of course we have to consider the various holidays and things that you see um in religious um days um that we honor and then we also have the week in february which is the february break and we have the week in april um as a reminder students must be in school for 180 days our teachers must have 187 and we do build in

162five snow days so when you look at where the snow day is uh we assume that we have we can have up to five and if we don't need them then you actually just get out of school earlier miss downey um just a quick question um and actually mr kittle maybe you'll actually have a kid in school by then um so the professional learning day in march do you feel like it's you know just kind of in terms of do you like front loading i'll be like balancing them out i know that's kind of you know every year the calendar is a little different um but until they were professional morning in march you feel like it's worth doing at that point in the year just mid to record you know jump through the year

163it is because you can only front frontload so much for professional development and absorb so much so having one in the spring you get that's actually great to be able to reflect on how things are going during the year all right okay as long as you come back to us as an action um so moving on to our last item for discussion policy programs committee policies first three missed yes thank you um so policy governance in the process as we've talked about uh looking at policies that we do not currently have in place or that need um one of which we didn't get to that was in the packet last month which is an action item our title ix policy for both students and for staff so what you see here are policies on for

164both um and they're both proposed we actually do have one for staff but i think um we've learned that it's probably not accurate you know adequate based on the governing law so what policy governments did is we really looked at what the options were to put in for a policy and with these policies were drafted by outs our outside counsel nothing has been changed in them after we did much discussion and deliberation and looking at some of the wording and consultation with it shipman goodwin and because it is so technical and regulated we really were very cautious about changing anything so all i said all we simply did was we had the words greenwich and we put in some contact information so what i would ask um i'm happy to take questions i'm not sure

165i can answer any of them right now but what i would ask board members to do is if they look at them and have any questions and then i can consolidate them and then provide them to shipment with them and they could then answer them for us before although in december so i would ask them to you know i think most people make you know they may be very minor questions just because unless you know you have a lot of knowledge in this area you might not want to ask about a lot of stuff so anyway um that's where we are on these policies um if anyone has any general questions everyone asked now we can talk about it miss quality i sent you my questions and i appreciate the conversation that we had earlier

166today about this and um i did have more than general questions that i would appreciate and as you talked about i think it's a great idea kind of outplan on this because there's a lot of my concerns were just on what does this exactly mean how far does it go and what are the greater implications uh because the definitions look quite broad so i i think that would be helpful yeah and there's also some very extensive regulations that accompany these which shipment government also drafted and dr jones has been working with them to make sure ours are mirrored theirs perfectly as well as providing contact information and some other details miss costa i know i have briefly spoken about this uh with some of you um just um to be very clear in our policies

167and procedures there's times when when um we may see in our in our policies and procedures the board and and um gps used interchangeably and i just want to be sure we're clear about the board and gps and where the division of those towers exists yeah well i think it's a good point something that we've always we've been talking about for years just probably and uh you know we'd rather i mean if it's good stuff we want to take predatory before but if it's better no no directing its employees and i i i know we have a lot of power but i i only know of one employee yes yes um okay uh any i'm sorry [Music] thank you thank you madam chairman yeah just quick the only one thing that i wondered about is

168the uh i will get into the legal things but both both um policies um clearly identify the deputy superintendent as before title ix coordinator the only thing i wonder you know sometimes you want to organize the um the senior leadership a little differently you know if yours goes on and things like that it could be an hr hr director you know i just don't know if you wanted to give more the positive community a little more leeway to the superintendent we put it in the policy there's always this person that's always going to be the person that we might be able to be right um so when you see the regulation um with this new policy which you probably already have all of the roles and responsibilities are different and so we actually have two

169schools that pair up together and you'll see that in the regulation where the investigator is actually coming to school and that was you know recommended by the actual attorney the title one coordinator is the title one coordinator for that school um so the roles are actually outlined without using people's names but uh who in each building the pairs up process so the title nine one coordinated district is really more if i'm somebody who wants to report something and use that email general email it goes like three of us to make sure everybody knows then we filter right back down to start back to the building model with the building so we're using our whole acquire administration and also like in the event you know the doctor john says okay it's really gonna be the superintendent

170who does it going forward we can vent them in the policy you know but um the notion is that we've been advised we have to designate someone um and there actually had not been this email address for title ix coordinator so now we've put that into place so we're kind of creating systems that'll make it more versatile nimble and useful in the long run regardless of who the personnel are very good anything else no all right so christina you asked for a comment um yeah i'm going to ask for um well this ties into what i'm going to say with the other policies okay so we go to action items um all right yeah i was gonna say the first action item has been actually removed because it didn't require approval and there's no reason

171that we don't need to do so that was taken off and now we're back to christiana yeah so um i know this is listed as an action item i don't know if i'm required to make a motion um because we have our new board members i'm going to table until our next meeting i don't know if we need to make a motion for that yeah that okay a second captain um just during the discussion so um for those of you who've read like last month we presented a number because the fact of our ongoing policies um crosswalk it was called um required you know gaps in coverage so we presented a number of policies on a mishmash of different topics which members of pgc have obviously already looked at and the other existing board members

172i've looked at too and what i'm going to ask for three brand new board members is for you to look at them um and please it's super helpful because there are a variety of them give us comments in writing just because i think that's more productive because we have already two people's comments in writing so it's always better to just have them all together um policy governance is going to be meeting on november 29th on this issue or the december board meeting so i would ask that you three provide us with the comments ideally before next say monday before the holiday and then we will be able to address it thereafter and then be hopefully in a position to vote on all of these at our december meeting i just wanted you know is there

173any more discussion on it that's why i was [Music] for the period ending october 31st has revised good evening everybody uh welcome to laura cody and mike and welcome back kathleen um so through october of 2021 our year-to-date actual expenses are currently at 40.5 million which is uh 23.6 of our full-year budget of 171.9 uh compared to the same period last year our year-to-date spending is up six and a half million or about 25 percent uh three minor things you know you got the uh not minor but budgeted contractual increases uh the year-to-year impact uh related to uh supplies so we had artificially low supply spending through october of 2020 which was a residual impact of the free spend at year end in 2020 services are down a little bit primarily due to the timing

174of invoices related to transportation and special ed tuition that should normalized over the next couple of months um but the the vast majority of the increase year to year is the fact that uh this year we have nine pay periods through october whereas last year we had only eight so that will normalize um the the actually uh the last pay period last year in october was actually posted in november so that phenomenon will offset so we'll be you know our year-to-year impact will be relatively minor at this point uh capital available balances are currently at 28.4 million uh including our current year allocation of 13.1 so for the pre 22 available balances of 15.3 that's down about 14.9 million or about from a year ago uh and of that of that uh 14.9 about two

175and a half relates to uh building projects building committee projects which are complete but not yet closed out by the state so once that happens two and a half million will uh will come out um continue to focus on the pre-22 spend you know our focus is to close them out as soon as possible on food services still early to say where we're gonna end the year but one thing we i think we know at this point is that uh our our cash sales uh will be down uh or less than budget and there'll be an offsetting increase in state reimbursements given that the free food for all students program is continuing to the end of this school year that's that's all i wanted to cover at this point is there any questions can you

176um you should show what it is the spending versus the budget the year-to-date budget because it's hard to interpret the percentage of the total year i'm sorry what was the question i couldn't hear just for reporting um can you hear what the spending is relative to the uh budgeted year-to-date expenditure as opposed to just doing a percentage of the total year you know i think you're asking uh do we have a year-to-date budget okay he's asking us we we do not we do not we do not have a year-to-date budget so in other words we don't have a budget by month split by month if that's what you're asking okay i'll maybe take that up another one another question okay all right well then the action is on the vehicle to accept the financial report

177ended up foreign all right on to agenda planning second okay so our next meeting is the budget meeting so we won't be adding anything there but on the 16th we've obviously just okay special [Music] and i think related questions so i'm wondering if it makes sense to include it in the summer second meeting which is in regards to the um the esser proposal that came out that relates to the spending on 10 million you know the 10 million dollars that were coming in i think that might make sense to add it there um since it's all in the same yeah the same germans money items i was just looking at yeah i was looking at dr jones let's talk about that um it seems like she might need another maybe another budget moving ahead of

178that um but let's figure that out okay question anything else no okay well before we can adjourn we have to go back to our public hearings for one second let's see who's up okay uh is caitlyn haynes still online she's not here right so now online mr the only person i'm seeing online still is mr cheney who was the last speaker okay so you don't see sharon i do not see her either okay so then uh to uh block cheney please uh good evening my name is bob chaney and i'm a parent of a child at the julian curtis elementary school and a child at central middle school i want to take a moment to give a huge thank you to dr jones and the entire gps administration faculty teachers etc for everything you guys

179have done to make the public schools as amazing as they are and on a personal note i just wanted to take a minute or so to thank all the teachers that have helped my two sons over the years get to where they are right now my younger son is now in fourth grade julian curtis and has had such an amazing experience at jc he's learning so much and having such a great time i of course can't name all the teachers at jc but when i give a special thank you to his current teachers ms mazzilli mr ellenger miss wilshaw for making sure my son keeps himself on track this year my other son also had such an amazing experience with all the same teachers and many others during his time at julian curtis as well

180i also can't speak about the excellency of the school without mentioning principal mcguire without her at the helm i don't think jc would be the school that it is today now my older son started his middle school journey this year as a sixth grader he is loving middle school speaking from personal experience it is not an easy feat to make the first year of middle school a great experience however my sixth grader is having a great time and also i feel learning at his level and enjoying his classes from playing soccer being in band and enjoying his studies i i couldn't ask for a better experience for him there are too many teachers to call out personally so i would just like to thank uh the entire faculty i guess and principal healy for everything

181they're doing at the school i guess i just really want the teachers to know that there are a lot of parents my wife and i included that really appreciate everything that you have done and are still doing right now for the greenwich public schools please understand that that we have your back and we will be with you to help you in any way we can in the future uh thank you and everyone have a great thanksgiving break [Applause] um so with that i'll be reaching out to all of you um over the next few days to talk about how many assignments you'd like um all right thank you so much for joining goodnight everyone and happy thanksgiving