October 21, 2021 Board of Education Special Meeting - Part 2 of 2

001graduating kids to another level when they're not ready to go because at some point it's going to catch up and we have to figure out what that plan is one of the things that i think that this board needs to do with the incoming is is the fact that of your goals dr jones and there's not one of them that's set for achievement and i think we need to revisit this in the in with the incoming board to have a goal that what is the what is the achievement goal and what are we going and how are you going to attain it and i think we need to address that mr cher under the category of i wouldn't want to be a um i i i think all the questions you guys are asking and

002what the superintendent presented is good um but it's in my experience pretty typical which is we're talking about individual lower level things and the big strategic takeaways may not get the focus they need if you look at the data and there is this disclaimer of you have to be careful looking at the data as i told you in the last meeting when we did the strategic plan we talked to the state uh they were super great the statistics people up there are fantastic and they tell you where the trap doors are one of the comparison trap doors are is uh comparing a district that is all in building or schools that are all in building with those that were hybrid couple days a week right so they tell you those so comparing across districts you

003have to compare if you're going to do any comparison to districts according to them is it's got to be like for like and that's kind of obvious there are some people who are like for like for us so you can do those comparisons you shouldn't do comparisons that are not like for like here's a couple takeaways and i this is why i say i wouldn't want to because i again as dr gaton francis i sound like the 80 year old man it's one of my great disappointments leaving this board that we invested and i served with some giants laura erickson peter von braun uh leslie moriarty and even people i didn't agree with like barbara o'neill but we focused on trying to close the achievement gap we doubled the resources in these schools title 1

004schools versus the other schools per student we did all kinds of things we promised a whole bunch of things to the state i'm now looking at the conclusion of it and i hate to say it was a failure because what you take away the good news is let's just take ela there's two big takeaways that i would encourage you guys to focus on one is there are one two three four five schools were coveted learning loss compared to two years ago it's almost non-existent it's less than four percent coveted learning loss okay that's good news at glenville riverside isd cost cobb central uh central used to be a problem school it's not anymore the school we're in tom and his team have done a great job here a fantastic job on what what's gone you

005can see it right in the data so whatever these five schools did and notice four of them are elementary schools where all our kids were in and one of them was this cohorting thing we had in the middle schools so there's something to be learned there if somebody goes looks at that because the coveted learning loss there was exceptionally low um and in ela it was generally low it was you know five six percent that's good news western middle school it was 11 percent okay so something went on at western that didn't happen at hamilton avenue didn't happen at jc didn't happen at new lebanon those four schools are always in the compare set so somebody's got to go figure out what happened here's the biggest thing you guys i think gotta call it what

006it is and if i were still on the board i would be pulling the fire alarm there are three schools where half the students half the students in english are not at proficiency think about that 50 of the kids in that school okay and some of them are even lower by the way you can look it up and figure out which ones they are mathematics we got six schools that had double digit above 10 learning loss decline six schools ten percent slide more but there's one in here that's 14 15.6 percent slide something's going on now thank god mike reed's on the case that guy's a brilliant teacher and he'll i think figure it out but in mathematics and here's the biggest thing four schools at least half the students are not at persistency in

007four schools you've got schools in here two schools two-thirds of the students are not at proficiency in mathematics okay so all of this is great they're doing a great job at the high school teachers are working hard there is no doubt about it they're working hard every day doing covert learning loss all the rest of it but if the board doesn't take it upon themselves to tell the superintendent that you want focus laser focus on these schools these problems the rest of the schools are doing are going to do okay a riverside's going to do okay and north mianis is going to do okay those schools are isds doing great okay some of these other schools you guys have to get everybody focused on this because here's the shameful part i don't care about the

008buildings candidly i care about the administrators but this is what they're paid to do it's their job i am heartbroken that we have schools where two-thirds of the student are past grade to grade and they never get close to proficiency in mathematics we have a couple schools half the kids in the schools are passed from grade to grade and they don't get close to it so you got to help those kids you got to zero in on those kids i i would be pulling a fire alarm and all you got to get some hands on deck stop having board of ed meetings talking about stadiums star had board of meetings talking about math english every single meeting it should take all your time it should be the focus it should be all hands on deck

009all these teachers and administrators need the full support of the board and they need to know that that's all you're focused on uh for the success of these kids that they're working their tails off day in and day out to try to educate but there's some big findings here the rest of it is all noise the rest of it'll be fine the high school will be fine so these middle schools will be fine some of these elementary schools will be fine there's nothing more urgent and i say it this way and it's it makes me crazy we saw this in enrollment tonight i'll finish in a minute peter i finished tonight we have the lowest class sizes in a decade in decades we're spending more money than we've ever spent and we've got this nothing

010more important to focus on than that please do it for these kids who are um who are getting left behind by this okay so i'm sorry we're not having a discussion right now we're it's a board it's a board meeting thank you i'm gonna share a bit of a different perspective uh frankly if you go and thank you peter it's it's my opportunity to speak you've you've had yours now at this point i've seen data plenty of data what i what i haven't heard though and i i know i heard it from the administrators and i know i heard it when i saw it on the state website because i looked at the data too it was the spring of 20 kids were not in school there was some learning going on but not enough

011last year we were back but it was a strange year now we're really back in person and that is going to have an effect and it's going to have an effect for a while i've heard every one of the people that presented tonight talk about the fact that they're working on strategies to combat this we have the tools we have the resources we have the data we have the people with the drive we've also had turnover we've had turnover but in a good way where the right people are now on the case on the job we've had two curriculum presentations in a row where we have focused on what needs to be changed updated resources for teachers transformative learning making sure we're teaching consistently these are all things that are going to go and drive

012this it's not just about achievement gap every student needs to grow and we we've talked about growth over time and that that is the measure that we're starting to see when i got on the board we were comparing this year's fourth grade to last year's fourth grade it was useless we are in a much better place we are directionally going where we need to be going there's more work to do nobody's saying that there's not but i don't want to lose sight of the fact of the progress that we've made covet is a blip it's a bad blip for the students but with the data with the work there's an opportunity with with honestly with the funding that we've gotten an opportunity to do things that we haven't been able to do mentioned this before

013we have not added head count to our budget in years we also haven't added programming we have not added anything we've actually been taking away taking away taking away we're in a different place i think this is an inflection point i think it's an opportunity as for your comment about the stadium peter we've been getting committee updates we haven't been digging deep if you look at what the agendas have been this year we're focused on achievement that's where we've been going it's where we're spending our time tonight it's a lengthy meeting for a reason there's a lot to cover so we're going to move on now to our aop report jones and mark we'll let tony kick off okay sure and i i think they could probably present very quickly i do just want to

014say a couple of things first of all um i've had a lot of questions and i know the board did because several of you contacted me over the last week there have been a lot of questions so hopefully the app newsletter that the team put out helped answer a lot of those we've answered a lot of your questions um personally individually but i want to say our team again they're a brand new team but they fully understand how important alpha is and just advanced learning in this community and there has been absolutely no discussion that we would ever get rid of advanced placement that we would get rid of the out program and i as a matter of fact for the first time i heard uh something that might have been in the debate the

015other night where somebody said that uh stanford's getting rid of all of their advanced classes and when we're talking about enrollment i'm thinking oh my gosh we're gonna get all these kids from stanford so i reached out to the superintendent she said absolutely not um and as a matter of fact they're expanding early college they're expanding ap they're expanding ib they used to have a gifted program different than ours in fourth and fifth grade that went away back in 2005 but they're actually trying to enhance advanced programming so the only place that i'm aware of right now is new york and the way we look at it is they will probably move here um oh we did i hadn't heard that but but again we we're very committed and we know how important it is

016to this community so i just wanted to open it up with that i don't know if we want to ask them how long the presentation was or if you think you're fine just to go to questions are we ready to go yeah mark it i think sorry i'm sorry i stupidly unmuted on my computer um all right mark i think given the the hour uh if you can just highlight things that maybe were not in the report or questions you got and then we can go directly into questions from the board because i think we've we've all seen the materials and i know your team has done a lot of work on them uh and i know you have a presentation but we're really trying to get to the focus on this one sure let

017me give you an overview it'll take about three minutes and then we can go right to questions peter is that okay that'll be great right so uh i'd like to briefly describe how the management of the advanced learning program has evolved this year with the addition of three new academic content coordinators we now have an organizational structure that can more effectively and efficiently manage the day-to-day demands and long-term goals of the advanced program coupled with our essential core academic programming i'd be remiss if i didn't publicly take this occasion to recognize the enduring and steadfast commitment of miss bonnie o'regan as the advanced learning program facilitator for those who may not be aware miss o'regan has single-handedly stewarded this program for years all while living under the compulsions of a teacher contract and a nominal

018facilitator stipend what she has been able to maintain is nothing short of remarkable thank you bonnie i am so delighted that dr marcus mr reed and mrs fogel will now work collaboratively with ms o'regan in years ahead as a team we want you to know that we embrace the challenges and opportunities that lay before us with fresh perspectives and resolve for excellence the coordinator team submitted a thorough written report to the board in advance of tonight's meeting we will highlight critical pieces from the report for board discussion and comment i'd like to take in a minute and address some of the uncertainties that are floating around in the community in 2020 21 we made some intentional and necessary decisions that impact the alp programming in order to maintain the required cohorting requirements our goal as

019we entered the 2020-21 school year was to keep our students in school with as little disruption to the learning process as possible although other programs were more significantly impacted the advanced learning program certainly took on a different look that said it became clear that there was a silver lining that was emerging from the change in programming at the elementary level and i came to the board with recommendation to increase out billeting for all schools moving in the 2021-22 school year citing the advantages of longer blocks of uninterrupted instruction that said and in full transparency the true value of these blocks has yet to be realized as we continue to work within the confinements of covid safeguards this year i'm highly confident that in 2022 23 we will be able to actualize the value in this

020new block approach we will lift social studies out of the humanities block to allow teachers to truly offer an enriching and complete literary experience our stem block will remain the same with a slight modification that science will always be a dedicated 30-minute period universally scheduled at the end of the block so that students who only qualified for reading can still be eligible for science i know this was a source of concern in the past and we're pleased to remedy it similarly at the middle school level in 2022-23 we will return to a standalone advanced science course in grades six through eight and you will hear more about improvements to this progressive pathway during the presentation and in our stem report to the board in december i want to take a moment and talk about the

021past failures in communication they're unacceptable and i assure you they will be remedied as the director of these programs it is my responsibility and i accept the fair criticisms noted this evening we need to do better and we will in closing i trust in the collaborative relationship we have with this board and the community as we optimistically look to the future where we can leave these temporary programmatic shifts in the rear view and focus on the exciting opportunities ahead we welcome your questions at this time thank you mark all right miss toe so i know we all have a lot of questions thank you mark thanks bonnie thanks to the new team um i'm just going to take i imagine i'll do different rounds so i'm going to start with one question here now um

022i've all my children have benefited from this program and i've seen how it's changed over the years and and that's and that goes to the turnover but i think the one thing is that this board and i believe prior boards has always been special when barbara o'neill was on it he's been very committed to this owl program so it was refreshing tony to hear you say that tonight and um i just want to make sure that we sort of take a step back and think about you know what's the purpose of this program for a lot of and i know someone said that earlier tonight but this was never considered a gifted program right that's one to two percent of the population this is an advanced learning program and so when you making sure that

023everyone's being served by this program is really important and one of the things that when i look at science i think you know the middle school science kind of shook us all up admittedly and when that was presented the good news is there's transparency now and that there's consistency across the middle schools because i can tell you that that night uh all the open houses were in middle school my phone was like buzzing like crazy right because i had friends from western texting me and i was hearing the same thing in the central and eastern so the good news is that they were consistent um the bad news is that people didn't like what they heard um and i i what i'm now hearing which i is that there just wasn't a different a different

024curriculum and that's unfortunate but i think you're hearing loud and clear that we'd like to see multiple levels again um in the science program but one of the other things i've been hearing in the community is have we thought about as we're taking a step back and thinking about how we deliver this particular science curriculum is there anything else we should be rethinking um and some people have talked about i think it was back at western they used to have a seminar class right um where you're still doing a leveling but you're also then going almost like the andrew vermonte program but coming down to the middle school and i've been hearing from different people in the community that that's an interesting idea and so as we rethink science and what this board wants i

025just wanted to know if maybe i don't know if bonnie can talk to that or see tracy um if they've thought about that because i think that could be an interesting idea i i don't think they're that far down the trail yet or they probably would not want to talk too much about it because we have a lot of work to do um i you know i think again this team because they've been with us for literally a matter of you know eight twelve weeks early when you think of it that way um no they didn't know until we started getting questions that everyone thought there were two different you know curriculums um so i think that was a learning you know for us when we started getting all of your questions um so i

026know there's got a lot of work and they were prepared to talk to that tonight so we might want i don't know if tara or mark want to speak to that mark you want to win yeah i think tara would like to i can speak that we are aware that the board has concerns about how we are providing for our students specifically those who show advancement at the middle school level and as a new coordinator it's a primary goal and a charge of mind moving forward i see this as a goal and what i know that i need to do is continue to collect more information about how our students are grappling with the current curriculum both those who are designated as advanced and those students who are designated as on level and i need

027to continue to survey my teachers my parents and my students to find out what we need to do to ensure that they can have an advanced experience moving forward i look forward to talking more about that in december when i've had a bit more time right now these pathway projects which were teacher created under the guidance of instructional coaches and a consultant and myself over the summer we know that these projects while they are running parallel to the curriculum they are still giving our students additional strategies at the high school level content assessment standards we don't know if we'll continue to use those projects as a piece of our curriculum in advance for next year we know that it will be a standalone course and we know that our teachers will continue to meet the

028needs of their students as best possible in december i'll talk through a few different options moving forward doctor sorry i was gonna say just if that's helpful i look forward to that the only other thing i'd say is right now i could report is that the advanced pathway for the sixth grader is simply just work for them separately alone at night which just is not not what was the goal at all doc francis so sorry but this question was sort of asked which is sort of what's the what is the purpose of alp and a discussion of that i think the first thing is that the per you know the mission of our district there's a bunch of stuff but part of it is to reach the potential of the student right so i think

029in the advanced learning program um as it stated in the policy you know these are for students who are able to perform at significantly above grade level and the purpose of the alp program as it says clearly in the policy is to serve these students through an accelerated and enriched curriculum and it defines those things so you know accelerated is moving at a faster pace to para phrase it and enrichment is allowing them to to dive deeper um and i think there's been a struggle um for middle school science with regards to that and i think as we are doing great work it sounds like in the district that looking through articulation uh through you know k through k through i think it would be really important to look at that for our science program

030um and to have that be a continuum and i think you know looking in some ways maybe at the model of our math program as an option you know we have a lot of students who can who are very science focused in the high school and there's so many wonderful opportunities there and you have some kids who have a hard time getting all of that in and so are there ways to to look at that you know so i think really looking outside the box um there are there are districts in the bronx who give kids physics in eighth grade you know do you look at bringing biology down into eighth grade if you're really looking at a k through and now we have a dedicated science time in elementary school do you really look

031at that process all the way through but in any case i think it's quite clear unless the board at some point changes this the alp program is meant to be for above grade level students and it's meant to be an accelerated and enriched program and i think we need to do that unless the board decides otherwise and so i really encourage that to happen come back later for other stuff thank you ms kwalski sure so um i just wanted to make sure i understood we all recognize that there isn't an accelerated program for science in middle school but did i just hear that that was going to change next year meaning calendar year or academic year yeah you wouldn't change a master schedule in the middle of a school year and when this really came

032in initially you know it was last year and it's four coveted it has to do with cohorting so starting out this year we still have um not only our students in elementary but our sixth graders who are also don't have an opportunity to be vaccinated we started out in covet again so what they're talking about is next school year so by next school year so the 2022-2023 school year will have an an actual advanced science class and offerings for our middle school students we had advanced science uh class pre-covered but it actually the the content was the same as the on grade level which i think is where there was some misunderstanding from some of the board members that thought it was actually different and we're hoping to actually progress that from where we were

033pre-covered and actually have a better enhancement and i think just to build on what gay tom said i know i had shared this with her when i was a middle school principal are and i had advanced science and we put it in and like our eighth graders did intro to chemistry and a semester of intro to physics but you also had to parallel that with being in algebra one because if you weren't in at least algebra one you didn't have the skill set really for a lot of the chemistry but it was a truly advanced pathway so we're going to explore all of those different options because now i think we know that's what the board has wanted and we're hearing now that's what you want um as all of us being new and don't

034have the background we have it now okay and then i had just some questions just for clarification purpose was with respect to uh elementary um school alp is it the case that if you test in for science um but not for math you will still do science and not i'm sorry if you test in for math but not english you can still do the math versus the english meaning you don't have if you test in for one you're in for one if you test them for both you're in for both but you're not if you test in for one you're not in for both how is that working i think you're talking about what we did for covid that was last year where they were and so i think that's what you're saying going next

035year we're hoping that we're not in the same situation we're in we're better this year than we were last year last year it was two large superblocks and they were in for everything and that was to keep the classroom sizes smaller have less mixing of students um across the different cohorts this year if they are you're either in the stem block or the humanities block and that's what mark was referencing before is if you're in the the humanities block where you're english you can't just qualify for science but next year they're fixing that in the in their schedules can you say that again please yeah you lost me on that last part i'm sorry yeah we actually talked about this i think at the last sport last time we talked about curriculum if they're in

036uh if they're on the english for alp on that side of reading and literacy then uh you can't just jump across and do science right now because it's tied into the math and every teacher doesn't teach the math and the science at exactly the same time they have a block of time so one teacher may say i'm going to do science for 60 minutes today and do math for 30. and another teacher may say i'm going to do my math for 60 minutes next year they're going to put that tighter on the schedule across the district so everybody has a well-defined science so that students can be in the literacy side and also take science or the math side and also take science so they're fixing that on the schedule but sorry to interrupt here

037remember everyone's been grandfathered right now so it's irrelevant for this year understood i just want to make sure we're going back to that yes yes we are ms hirsch so i know i sent in a bunch of questions and some of you some of which were addressed in the you know presentation and some i'll just wait for follow-up on later but um i know it's been said by before but our advanced learning program's uh exceptional and of great benefit to students in school one of the main topics of discussion we've had here over the years is what is the purpose of alp and it is something we need to discuss as a board gate on red part policy which is what i was going to do but it's been on our list of policies that

038need to be updated which is why i think the board needs to have that as a discussion because alps not just about a curriculum that's being delivered it's also about how it's being delivered to our students there's an educational philosophy for advanced programs uh regards to the level of inquiry rigor and speed and based both on the need and how it's being taught so um i do think it's something we as a board should be discussing um and i i know i'd asked about looking into uh student data and a long-term review for students who are placed in alp in elementary versus those who've joined in middle and how they compare to their peers who are not and they advance to courses in the lower grades but are all taking ap and honors at the

039high school we just had an in-depth discussion on ap so i know that uh it is covering a lot of our students and i know you guys said that you were looking into that data and hopefully we'll see some more of that uh later this year but i just wanted to get some clarity on how the changes made to the educational block schedule at the elementary school the new 90-minute blocks may have affected some of the alp learning curriculum and how they benefit or support the educational needs and outcomes for the students who are in the program [Music] you know they could be a very positive or you know or impact the curriculum in different ways so i was just wondering how that might have impacted the curriculum mark do you want to speak to

040that yeah i'll i'll speak to that and i want to go back to before covin you know it was it was commonplace that there wasn't enough time to teach literacy appropriately with the 60-minute block and the extension to a 90-minute block certainly affords us the opportunity to integrate reading and writing obviously having social studies in the block currently provides a wrinkle it was a covet influence change we're looking forward to it being a temporary change and lifting it could we lift it in the second marking period we could but i need to explain what would be the ramifications of that which is by by lifting the social studies out of that block and having principles identify an individual time for social studies in the general ed setting we would be impacting when we are providing

041intervention services and we talked a lot about that just a few moments ago how critical those intervention services are especially now that we have full-time math interventionists in every building and we have our literacy support that would impact their ability to service those students um so i i i'd be remiss to re to revisiting it at any point prior to next school year so what i will say is this is a challenging year for our advanced learning teachers uh mr regan can certainly speak to uh how she anticipated that and what professional learning she did plan and provide to her staff prior to the start of the school year but again i think it's really important just to stress the fact that these were temporary changes due to covet these are not ideal situations and

042we're looking forward to moving past them bonnie did you want to speak a little bit about the professional learning and teacher readiness going into this year yes on at the end of august we were able to meet with each of the teachers about the curriculum changes that we made which included all of the supports that they needed in order to meet the wide range of students that they have within their classrooms in language arts and in math and dr marcus and mr reed can also talk more specifically about those also because they worked very closely with me on those documents you want us to go further you want to take another and have us taken well i was just asking how those block changes i know we've said for years that you know teachers i've

043always said they don't have enough time especially when the students were in ela and they'd be in out for reading and then go back to their classroom for writing i know it's probably a great benefit for students to be able to stay with their same teachers to be able to work on reading and writing as they go hand in hand so i was just wondering how these two stem these two different blocks if it's changed what curriculum is being delivered and how it's being delivered i know we have a student uh cohort now it's been grandfathered i'd love to see data on how that change and the longer blocks have sort of affected the students in the program honestly it could be an incredibly positive response i just don't know i know you don't have

044enough time necessarily to have seen how that had the data but i just didn't know if it had changed the curriculum that's being delivered because that's what we're hearing from parents yeah i think the the burn rate on that date is a little bit too short right now to jump to any conclusions but karen it's a it's a great question to ask and we're happy to circle back on that okay that data i know is too soon to hear but i just asked with the change in the block schedule what changes have been made and how is it affected to the effect of the curriculum that's being delivered in those programs i i can go further into detail but we've heard from parents that there's concern that some of the longer term things that that

045students have had learned in pa in the past in those classes they won't have time for because the blocks have been merged i know that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing i'm just asking what changes have occurred because of the change in the block bonnie do you want to talk about teaching within the block i think the what i've been hearing is more about the language arts and the changes within the language arts because what we did was we did a full integration between the reading and the writing and that there is a rumor out there that we're no longer doing shakespeare it's just been moved to the students are still able to interact with with shakespearean language and the culture it's just been moved to a different portion of the of the year

046um dr marcus did you want to talk more talk a little bit about that also and about the word study and how the word study has evolved across the entire school system absolutely thank you bonnie um so as bonnie rightly pointed out shakespeare is still happening i know there's a rumor about that just in a different unit also um all fourth and fifth graders across the entire district are partaking in our word study program i know that there's questions about the word master word masters program that is a voluntary program that students across the entire district can still partake in um but all of that word study that really enriching rigorous curriculum is in the word study program and not word masters work masters is open to all students across the district with multiple levels

047of entry let's have mike and tara talk a little bit about that stem block yep so i can speak to the math portion of this um structurally not much has changed we are still um in third grade we're doing a year and a half of curriculum in fourth grade we're doing a year and a half of curriculum and with our new program and their compact pathways we're actually doing a year and a half of curriculum in our fifth grade alp so in the past we only taught sixth grade curriculum which then left those kids with a a little bit of a gap going into pre-algebra now our kids that are in fifth grade math uh we'll be taking our six a course or six advanced course which is half of seventh grade as well as

048sixth grade and that tracks them um very nicely into pre-algebra six without any gaps whatsoever so with our new program there's no real structural changes and then within the the block of time the 90 minutes there's no real changes to the math delivery the single change to the science delivery is that it is happening on a daily basis right now within science so we are dedicating 30 minutes a day to science and obviously our alp learners are learning at a more accelerated pace so they do have time for those extension activities that are embedded into the science curriculum at the three through five level with that being said we are also providing professional learning for our help stem teachers regarding tuva data literacy labs because we want to look more at those power standards in

049the science and engineering practices around data and helping to support our teachers to support students of science within the alps stem block thank you tara thank you mike thank you for addressing that i have to tell you that that sounds like in some regards at least in the math side and everything that it's a positive change uh that there was always that issue at the fifth grade only getting the one year and then going off to math and middle school and having to figure out how to learn that half a year so thank you um and i know you've already addressed math and the science at middle school science excuse me middle school science so uh i will turn this over to somebody else and come back with another miss danny i just want to

050go back to the grandfathering and just in terms of stresses it might be putting on the system now i just want to be clear this year the students who tested in for this year were not doing the grandfathering system like if student tested into language arts this year as a new student let's say a new third grader they are not automatically placed in math as well like they were last year correct you're correct okay so we're talking about a smaller number as we go through each year i just want to make sure i think i heard it a little bit there they were giving the teachers the tools um to deal with these um wider range of abilities but also are we finding that the size of the groups is manageable um because i've heard

051a little bit about that you know in some schools the alp cohorts are actually because of this grand right you know you have larger groups of students um and whether the teachers um it's working for both the teachers and for the students do we have any kind of feedback on that i don't know from mark or dr jones yeah just even when i go back to the first year that i was here i was shocked in the budget that regardless of whether your your building has 200 students or it had 450 you had 1.7 out period and now every once in a while they would add a little bit at riverside usually is where it would be so your numbers are always different sizes and it's you know it is a classroom so it just

052depends on in that building if there are fewer students that are eligible that teacher could have fewer students in the room um if they have 20 they have 20. it because the app classroom just like a gen ed classroom would run because it's a content area um so it's always been like that i will say one of the things in kovid that you probably remember from sr2 funding was we bumped up all the app teachers to at least a 2.0 and bonnie i might ask on riverside are they still 2.0 are they slightly higher they're 2.0 because their class sizes with any individual class meet the class size guidelines all right mr share dr marcus can i go back to something you said i just needed a clarification um you talked about word study and

053then you talked about word masters uh can you just clarify for the alp i had thought they weren't doing word vocabulary building let me just use regular terminology building a vocabulary uh in the alp room itself i thought that was all done in the general classroom is that that is correct all the word study program is happening in their homeroom classes okay and is do i know you're new here i one of my kids was a now one wasn't i don't remember how it used to be done i'm trying to understand it first my first question is that a change yes okay so your plan is to go back or keep doing it the way you're doing it now currently we're going to keep it the way that we're doing it right now with the

054word study being uh implemented in the homeroom classes and what are you going to do next year as of right now is that the same question is that the same answer for next year yes it is okay what i what program is actually being used in elementary what is the standard program that is being used for building vocabulary what is it called what is it called in our grades four and five it's called word study it's called word study we must use a standardized material for that correct uh yes it is it's uh by sadlier it's by who sadler sadlinger sadlear uh this was a program that was implemented uh by my predecessor sadler you just said right right is that something i i did not attend the correct because of business meeting i couldn't

055attend the curriculum committee ela meeting the other day i only attended the social studies one in the afternoon um did you go over this in that meeting and is your intent to continue to use that or are you going to wind up bringing to the board a recommendation to change it to something else well the curriculum advisory committees were only uh dealt with the middle school curriculum and not our elementary program got it got it uh so that really wasn't um it's not a topic right okay okay and so sad sadler can can you just shoot me a note with what the name of that is and and then the reference to the actual program we're using sure and then is that that is cons is expected to be consistent across all uh elementary schools

056correct that's the expectation that's been communicated to [Music] uh principals uh yes it is there is a dedicated time throughout uh elementary school uh fourth and fifth grade classrooms that attack and what kind of materials do kids have well never mind severally keep going this is about alp never mind all right um just uh i want to make sure with dr marcus i have this right i think one of the reasons why the word study was moved into the uh into the classroom for everybody is it also enables the alps students to do writing in the alp classroom which was missing for years and years and years so it's rectified a a broken problem and i've done some school visits actually i've visited all the schools since the beginning of the school year and i've

057actually seen the word study being used in the fourth grade classroom so it is being used across the district which is actually really nice to see and as a father of two former alp students i hated word masters and one of the reasons i hated it and disliked it and i think we could probably do a heck of a lot better is we weren't really teaching kids how to study and so now every student who's doing word study should be learning how to study which is a really good thing for our elementary kids because they will need that skill when they get to our middle schools and we were missing that dr francis did you have something um so i wanted to look at some of the numbers in terms of enrollment for the middle

058school and there were two things that jumped out at me with that one is historically we've known this and it was a problem since the creation of the advanced sixth grade science but then if you look at the number of students in the middle school classes it is typically two to three times the number of students that you see in math or english and that really stands out as a significant difference and the other thing that i had not realized and i don't know if this is new or old is in terms of english i was surprised to see that there are two sections for each middle school with regards to that so generally speaking as was stated earlier this is considered an advanced learning program historically i had heard you know when in some

059of the the literature looking at that or if you if you heard from joyce von tasselbaska it was often in that 10 to 15 percent range is kind of the number that was looked at and somewhere in this report it talks about that 10 number um so i think that we're we're looking at sort of two extremes here that don't really match that one is the science being way over and then if you look at for example i pulled up the enrollment at riverside um and if you i think there's you know 800 or some students there and if you looked at 10 that would be 80 students so i'm not quite sure why we have those two different ideas in terms of how to uh a lot students to those those classes but i

060think that's something that needs to be addressed and one more not quite related thing but just we did have um initially maybe in the second year because there had been a delay in implementing advanced science for sixth grade um initially because they did want to create a curriculum what had been done which i don't think the board was thrilled with was they basically gave them the on level curriculum but they had created additional project based or other types things to do but even with that given probably the expansion of the the students in there and maybe the criteria that was used there was talk at that time that teachers were having trouble because the level of reading that was required for some of these projects was well above the ability of some of the students

061there and that they were really struggling and that in response to that those things were changed to essentially lower the level to allow students to have better ability to grasp that but i think it's really important to understand that historically reading ability had been a big part of evaluating how you know students being able to uh really fully appreciate the advanced learning science and so i think as you're looking at criteria and you're looking at the curriculum to really take that into account in terms of evaluating that um and i think to bring us back to that more typical fifteen percent and i think one of the other things that was changed around the same time was the creation of the ninth grade advanced sci uh english um and again sort of as a weird

062uh contrast that has very strict entrance criteria so i think we really don't have a reasonable consistency across our our different advanced courses and while things are divided up in weird ways uh in terms of how advanced classes are sort of supervised administered and and taken care of we're talking about the same kids and i think it would be appropriate to have a bit more consistency in terms of how those programs are implemented all right misto that's a very good point on 113 a gaetan um just real fast the placement process for middle school math i did not see that in here has that changed i know it used to be based purely on a star score i know we're not doing that anymore we have the z-score system but i didn't see what we

063were using at all do you know now the z-score uh bonnie had shared the other day i guess that's what we've always used you just haven't seen it written like this but um bonnie if you would answer that right here for how they're qualifying the z score or the middle school math middle school math sorry i confuse it here middle school math oh middle school math is still under development mr reed is working with his team and myself on what that placement protocol is going to be because we won't be doing the star of course this year and so bonnie i can speak a little bit more to it um yeah so um bonnie was in another program meeting this past wednesday but what i was doing was meeting with our sixth grade teachers um

064and we focused on what are the um skills that students need to be successful in six six advanced and pre-algebra six and then as well as the learning characteristics that we also want to see those students exhibiting so what we're trying to do is as much as possible use the resources that we're already naturally having the kids use in fifth grade whether that be alp or the regular ed classroom to identify which placement they should go into and then we're taking a look specifically at certain things like uh operations with fractions and decimals and things like that to sort of differentiate who would be going in to six advanced and uh pre-algebra six so um we don't have it completely fleshed out yet i have sort of a a rough idea of how we're going

065to do it but what we're trying to do is avoid high-stakes testing that um you know it's one snapshot on one day um we're trying to look more comprehensively and make it more of a conversation with all stakeholders um inclusive of the teacher the parent and uh and the student um in the placement for next year so working through that right now and that will become part of our process of our transition meetings when we meet with our fifth to sixth grade um you know counterparts um which is a natural process that we already have in place so um i would say under construction but uh we're on the right track mike perhaps we could bring that to the board when you give the update on big ideas in november yeah that'd be great all

066right anything else yes so uh mr reed you just touched on or you made a point that's going to bring me to my next point which is that you know we don't want to look at ad more higher stakes testing and we need to look at students multiple different data points when we're putting them in i know the report shared some information about 2e student enrollment and out i know we briefly all discussed this the other day but i think that this is an area where we're still mis we may still be missing students as not all students that are twice exceptional have ieps or 504s or even diagnosis in elementary or middle school years i know both of my students were in advanced programs and would not land in the numbers you see in

067this report because the school did not have a 504 ip for them um so i'm wondering you know and this is not a question you may be able to necessarily ask and answer tonight but um i know that with you know we're now we're not just looking at scores we're looking at more of a fuller picture of our students and i'm sort of hoping that we're going to find a way to sort of make sure that we are not missing other 2e students those students on the cusp that may not be able to show proficiency when taking a test because they have uh you know auditory or visually you know visual you know issues or whatever it might be so i'm hoping that you guys are thinking about ways that we can make sure that

068we're not overlooking students with learning differences who may also benefit highly from advanced programming at the elementary level we're looking at our ap scores tonight and we can see how incredible our students are doing once they get to the high school but we don't want to miss them when they're early on so is that something you guys are going to be uh considering going forward absolutely karen actually i am working with stacy on that um the special ed coordinator on the two e components met with her again just today about um tui students and how we can get more students into our advanced classes thank you i look forward to hearing more information about that at some point uh later this year maybe but um i appreciate that you guys are taking the time to

069look at that dr francis i'm sorry one more thing um my understanding was with big ideas there was a capability to allow students to move more at a mastery-based or a self-paced level in terms of math is that correct yes that is so two things with that i would say one is obviously that should support all of our students including our advanced learners because we do have kids who end up in that linear algebra and in high school and and those are kids who probably can be moving at a faster pace even than alp in elementary school the second is that it seems to me that you know the good digital tools which i understand big ideas is supposed to be one of those should be keeping data for these students individually in terms of

070what they have mastered so i keep sort of suggesting keep i mean this has been years now but that you know our our mastery-based tools digital tools should really allow us to get a very good picture of what a student has mastered and i think that should take a huge bonus out of a high stakes test but but also not be something that's completely subjective i mean you can have objective data on what a student has mastered and is ready to do in middle school based on what they have done with their big ideas work in fifth grade so i i find it a little surprising that there's sort of this sense of needing to go either with subjective information or to go with you know only this high-stakes test it seems to me that

071we have an obvious answer in terms of being able to use data to make these decisions without basing it all on one single test yeah so i'm sorry if i was unclear before we're trying to not have one single um stakes test that that's the whole purpose of our process um what i will say is um with our transition for our teachers into the new program it has a very robust digital component but what we've heard loud and clear from the community is is wanting to return to more of a paper and pencil so we're really focusing on that to start the year um and and just getting teachers used to the format getting teachers used to to the program and then you know as we get more experienced with it feel more comfortable with

072it and start to add more of the digital components we'll be able to track longitudinally from year to year um so right now it'll continue to be a conversation um with the teachers as they track the data they normally have over the years um but we do have that component to track that um but you know there's so many different parts moving parts with this new system that um we're trying to keep it simple for the teachers so that they can just get used to the delivery of the content and then um we'll start to build out um you know that acceleration and tracking of data as we move forward year to year all right thank you we are now at the 11 30 hour i'm not seeing any other hands so we are going

073to move on thank you all very much i'm sure there's going to be a lot more discussion around aop for years to come all right next up is our tech program executive summary so mr ting you're going to do this in an executive fashion very short right because we know you're doing great work uh oh did we lose mike okay hi sorry i was already yes i will do that can you guys hear me yes we can hear you okay great i will try and do this very quickly so good evening everyone i'm michael ting and my role in the school district is to help our staff and students with all things technology now before i begin i'd like to thank the board and the superintendent for the opportunity to speak tonight i understand and

074acknowledge that we are here primarily to discuss education and that time is a limited resource and also the late hour so i will try to be brief and just hit the highlights from the technology executive summary report so let's get started our school our school district is a large environment how large we have 17 locations that consists of 16 schools and the central office we have over 3 000 computers we have over 600 smart boards over 1100 wireless access points and each day there's over 10 000 devices connected to wi-fi simultaneously now with all this technology there must be proper support and maintenance to make sure that everything keeps running smoothly last year we received almost 16 000 documented support tickets at the help desk this is an uptick in the number of tickets we

075have received on average over the past several years now that being said we cannot consider the last school year to be an average year and we'll continue tracking this statistic and its trend for the future over the past several years we have seen the support satisfaction rating rise and plateau in the mid 90 range i'm happy to see that with the increase in the number of support tickets last year our satisfaction rating has remained high this slide shows the top five categories of technical support by number of tickets the top three remain the same as the year before with chromebook support computer desktop support and ipad support taking the top spots that being said last year we saw an increase in tickets for aspen and student email which very likely can be attributed to the

076support of remote learning we had some significant accomplishments last year with the complete overhaul of the district's telephone systems cyber security improvements the high availability of the computer network the support of remote learning and the implementation of a brand new help desk so here i have some screen grabs from the new help desk system as you can see this is something us in it can really nerd out over i did want to take a second and give a shout out here to rich pucci our i.t staff member at costco who has been the most valuable player in terms of i.t support since the rollout of the new system several months ago great job mr pucci finally finally and this brings us to the end of the presentation um i'd like to mention some of the

077it projects that we're working on this year so for this school year we're looking to make improvements in the resilience of our computer network by installing backup internet connections at several key locations we're looking to improve the quality of the cellular service inside greenwich high school we will continue with our cyber security improvements and we would like to begin the relocation of the main district server room which is located at hamer from the basement of the building to a better spot on the ground floor now why are we relocating the server room well because it's in a location where there is too much risk of failure from environmental hazards there are pressurized water lines steam lines and various other plumbing lines running through the room right on top of the racks that contain all of

078our server and network equipment furthermore the location of the server room is in the basement directly underneath the men's room that's on the ground floor so i've got four photos here of this server room as it currently stands now here's a shot of the ceiling directly above one of our server racks those large pipes lead to the toilet of the men's room above here's a shot of a pressurized copper line in what i think is a waistline above our servorex here's a picture of multiple pressurized copper lines running right next to another rack full of server equipment and finally here's a picture of an exposed steam line in the corner of the server room yes that label does say it was last rebuilt 21 years ago so as you can see we need to do

079something about this situation and we'll hopefully begin the work this year these photos can be considered the before photos and i'm looking forward to sharing the after pictures when we're finished with the project now before i end my presentation i'd like to recognize acknowledge and praise a member of the i.t department this is because i'm the only one who gets to speak at these meetings but i'm not the only one that's doing the work my team is exceptional and believe me i know how fortunate i am to have such a great team tonight i'd like to single out one team member so that everyone knows how awesome he is we have a 30 plus year employee named tony tripode who has dedicated most of his adult life to the support of our school district tony

080is an absolute rock star and even after 30 years he's still the first person to get into his truck and head out to a school when something goes wrong he is one of the if not the biggest factor in the reliability exceptional uptime and availability of the computer network i can't give tony enough praise for the work that he's done and the work he continues to do day in and day out so that the staff and students here at greenwich public schools are able to do their work without interruption thank you tony you are amazing and we're lucky to have you on the team mike thank you very much and thank you for uh calling tony out so i got to know him a bit when we were designing new lab and getting the school

081open and he was amazing just very very helpful and uh knowledgeable and got us where we needed to be a couple of things one you're missing something big from your presentation you guys rolled out laptops brand new chromebooks to all of the middle schoolers and high schoolers this year uh and that was a uh was a huge deal some of the learnings uh that you brought to us last year about the uh the chromebooks just not being up to what we needed them to be especially for remote learning um you also mentioned the high school you were talking about cell service in the high school self-service around the high school and on the grounds is uh lacking to be nice about it uh with the new stadium there will be power out there that might

082be used for cell service and or improved wi-fi access so uh you know stick that on your to-do list um and some and then i think dr jones is telling me it's something you're looking to do next year which is awesome so thank you uh for everything you and your team are doing to keep this up and running technology is just one piece of of how we are working today and making our students ready for the world outside so the work you guys are doing is amazingly valued thank you thank you any other discussion on the item and thank you mike you're you're free to uh i don't know sleep maybe all right our next item is the policy governance committee uh update with new policies this would be a first read so miss downey

083yes thank you mr bernstein so um in the process of doing the policy crosswalk and reviewing policies there is a we've been reviewing the lists of cabe rec required and recommended policies um and in that process we realized we had some required policies that were not in place so the policy governance committee has been looking at various ones this is not an exhaustive list by any stretch but this is a process i think as we were retiring procedures which we need to continue to do as well we're also providing new policies for the board to review and ultimately approve as the hour is late i believe everyone has the ability to read these or has read them again this is a first read for us if anybody has any particular questions we can discuss them

084tonight um but they ultimately will obviously not be voted on until at least the next board meeting um and depending on because we have new board members if worse comes to worse we can always defer a vote but um at the next board meeting if people are not prepared but i would like them to be so so we can at least move the process along and have a first read this evening all right miss kowalski yeah i just i just actually christina i shared that concern in the sense that we have we'll have three new board members on first and they will not have had an opportunity to ask questions beforehand and these policies i understand the difference between required versus recommended i mean these these policies are they're hefty there's a lot going on

085in them and i think that that merits the opportunity for our three new board members to be able to have an opportunity an adequate amount of time to dive in and ask questions um particularly along the lines of um yeah i've got questions concerning whether or not the board is making a change with respect to the you know food services right where if we're opting in and how what the implication is because we haven't always done that in the past so i just i think that the the best way to do it is to defer it given also the hour tonight but an opportunity for our three new board members that will be coming on a full and fair opportunity to ask questions and move forward i think what i would suggest is that in

086an ideal world if we i'm not saying we have to have a discussion tonight i would like to keep them on for a first read but not and then we can decide when we're going to vote on them um just because then the existing board members will maybe have an opportunity to ask questions via email or have a dialogue if there's specific language questions i'm happy to have an offline discussion i know you also three of us have already had discussions about them so right realize that you know um i'm happy to have discussion or meeting to talk about them with you and we can do that separately not at a board meeting and then we our new board members can read them um i know at least some of the candidates were here this

087evening so they're available for their review even if it's not commentary but i would just like to keep the potential and maybe we vote on one or two of them um because we have additional ones that we've been working at that we're also going to be presenting um so there's a queue of constantly i believe it's like a never-ending um i also will point out um it's helpful for the administration because um there's regulations attached to a couple of them some of which are required by state statute that we have to approve the regulations um and it might be as simple as we approve the regulations at the next meeting um if depending you know there's a there's a variety of ways we can address it but i would like to kind of keep them

088in the queue moving along would be my preference i think dr francis had a question i was just going to make two quick comments one is um you know i know it's sort of in the regulation but it looks like some of it's also in the policy itself but in both the discrimination and the suicide prevention it talks about contact person i would really suggest that you know we have something where it's an actual person and a contact i think we have that in some of our um some of our stuff that's for uh special ed um i think it would be really nice to have it here as well because it's like you've got pages and pages of forms to fill out but if someone really has a question or someone they need to

089contact i think that name should be included and the other one i think as you're mentioning both in the food and the nutrition one i just was questioning whether we actually follow all of those particular things and i don't remember all of it but i know at some point dr jones has participated in the discussions and and they've gone by their food service chair yeah mr i mean i understand there's a lot but you know sometimes our kids get a lot of homework and some nights you don't so um i think that we have to keep moving forward i know when you guys came on the board or maybe it was when i when i came on the board i had a vote on policies right away frankly if you're coming on the board you

090should be doing your homework now and also i mean more maybe equally important i shouldn't say more important but the new board votes on a budget that they're not sitting in the first meeting as presented so this is just the way it goes business has to go on i think this is the first read and you can send comments to the policy committee but i think we should keep moving forward well i i guess i'll just note for agenda planning purposes it'll be listed as a second read and an action item it does not have to be actioned or the entirety it doesn't have to be action you all can take up that discussion at the november business meeting i won't be there i won't be watching um but you're free to do as you

091wish but thinking back to how this has gone it's true these things the business of the board goes on uh the candidates should be paying attention to the meetings they should be reviewing the materials they're there for them and if the board decides to not take it up at that point that's fine too but at least it will be listed there it is our practice to take the second read as an action item again we have definitely put off voting on things that have been up for second read so they can go for further uh review that's not a problem all right with that we're going to move on but anybody okay mr sheriff go ahead um christina i won't be here peter won't be here gay tom won't be here um yeah take it

092for what it's worth it kind of reflects badly on the people who are here that they had a first read at midnight with no public around nobody watching and then you want to pass 36 pages at the next meeting for your own image as a board you might want to think about that but maybe you don't care i'm moving off that i'm moving off that's just my input to you do whatever you want i won't be here and i won't be watching it either i would tell you though uh in the policies that you have there are probably some substantial um i would call mistakes things you don't know you're tying the hands of the board forever by doing a good example would be food services in your food services you're prescribing first of all

093the policy is written as exceptionally low level of detail the policies are starting to look like procedures they're not looking like policies so you guys i don't know why that's happening in that committee but you should probably be a little more careful about that like when you're prescribing at the nth degree a person and a job and who they report to that would never be in a policy in in prior that would have been at the full discretion of the superintendent so the superintendent could make a reorganization now in this case an example the superintendent ever wants to reorganize they've got to come to the board for approval because it violates the policy i would encourage you to do that the second thing that's in there is i don't know if you know this but

094in prior years when we had food services tied to federal mandates the way you've tied them we have numerous times voted not to follow those a so we could have more nutritious food for our kids that's part one and part two is staying with those federal programs would have cost us upwards of a half a million dollars for less nutritious food so you probably want to go back and take a look at when that happened the person to call by the way to tell you all about that subject is a gentleman named ben branyan he was around and what have you so you've got a couple policy areas there where you might have been taking these things from cave because how they're written but in actual case the application of them in greenwich which cave

095never worries about they're writing for i don't know meridan or willington or whatever they wind up having really bad implementation in greenwich they're great for other districts that have nothing um as you know and you may go back back and look at that because you might wind up creating a trapdoor for yourselves thank you we'll do that thank you peter okay hearing no other comments we're going to move on to the next discussion item which is budget transfer mr o'keefe good evening uh there's three uh informational budget transfers not requiring board action uh the first transfer is a thirteen thousand dollar uh transfer within the athletic accounts to cover local live expense for athletic events the second is a transfer within special ed for 18 000 482 to cover a prior year tuition payment and

096the third is a transfer of 660 000 from math to sippl to facilitate uh the purchase of ela and social studies uh instructional materials and uh recall that uh this this 660 was originally budgeted in math uh but we were able to uh pay for the textbooks utilizing uh full year 21 funds all right any questions or discussion and thank you for that last point for our friends from the bet that are watching this is the discussion that i know we had with leslie tarkington and lizzie moriarty uh just as they're prepping for their budget work um about the the pull forward of the math textbooks and how that that funding was being used this year all right uh seeing no other discussion we're going to move on then to our action items so the

097first action item is the old greenwich school education specifications uh do we have a motion to accept the uh because it's an action that we need emotion put it on the table so do we have a motion and it would be to to approve the inspects as presented karen i make the motion to approve the old greenwich ed specs as provided and set forth in your packet of materials all right is there a second for that miss downey thank you all right discussion so i don't know dr jones who's kicking this off for you i believe russ is still with us and he was going to do uh just literally a few minutes uh just as a reminder for everybody do we need that can we just call the vote i think given given the

098impact of of what this is in the the capital project i think we ought to have a brief discussion about it so mr davidson uh good evening i'm still with you it's still still thursday um i don't know can i share my screen um yes go ahead russ you can share your screen all right russ it's just saying you started screen sharing but we're actually not seeing anything yep and it stops screen sharing all right maybe you can give a quick verbal update unless we've lost your audio about now we got your back thanks okay um just this has been going on for about 15 months this is the same head spec that you saw last december it's for the reconstruction and expansion of the old greenwich basically it's a four classroom edition and the

099reason there's four classrooms is not to expand the capacity of the building it's to replace and right-size the building so one room is needed because we're going to move the main office down to the ground floor two rooms are undersized and they're not accessible and they're prone to flooding which you heard about earlier and one existing room is undersized and we need that room to cut through to make the carter to the new addition so the key categories here this is about accessibility new three-stop elevator three ramps and a lift to make all areas accessible puts the main entrance on grade and makes it accessible the gym and auditorium entrance will be accessible with a new ramp and student toilet rooms will be renovated to comply with ada on all levels it's also about security

100a new secure vestibule for visitor management at the new main entrance and a front entrance that is visible by staff and security personnel and the main office will be adjacent to the main entrance and the two activity spaces and outdoor classrooms for students will now be in a fully enclosed courtyard and we have no classrooms located immediately adjacent to the driveway which is a little bit vulnerable it also focuses on educational adequacy with the four new classrooms we talked about and we get pre-kindergarten kindergarten first grade classrooms all grouped together and all on the ground floor you also restore adequate support spaces for the speech and psychologist and you're able to expand the nurses suite it's a and the fourth category is health and safety uh we're getting the two classrooms that are below the

101floodplain they will no longer be classrooms it'll be converted to a multi-purpose space which coincidentally was its original use when it was built you're going to get completely new heating and ventilating and air conditioning systems for all areas that currently do not have them new windows new communications fire alarm and emergency lighting systems will be upgraded and replaced so i think it's a reasonable uh sort of minimum project and as was earlier mentioned it's significantly less than what was proposed in the master plan and i'll leave it i'll leave it there for questions thank you all right miss kowalski you were the member of the feasibility committee so i want to give you the first opportunity um i have to say that the committee who probably did stay awake to hear all of this did

102an excellent job we came in and looked at the things that we categorized as wants needs and must-haves and really focused on making this school fixing this school in the categories that russ identified with respect to you know health safety and putting the classrooms back in in good shape is not flooding because they do have a sewage problem that floods and it's flooded three times already this year which is just unacceptable on any level and particularly in greenwich and also addressed the ada issues which we have faced and obviously had a complaint on last year that we need to address what we have come up with here and i agree with russ is we have put together a ed spec that meets those needs and does not drive for any fancy extras and i was

103proud of the group that came up with this we worked very hard this is what their community wants i agree with it i think it's the right size and i'm really happy with how this turned out thank you i just want to say i think it's great i worry about what we're not doing right this is a scaled-down version and and the thing that worries me the most is we're not looking in the deep dark corners of the building we're not looking behind the walls and the ceilings uh basically we're not learning from what happened in north mianas and and i think that's something that the board going forward will certainly need to think about as you move this project forward in the older buildings this building was designed before 1900. uh you know i

104i just worry about the very older parts of the building where we've slapped paint on uh you know maybe put a drop ceiling in but really didn't pay attention to what was really going on this is great this absolutely needs to be done the same as julian curtis there are needs that have to happen we're talking about needs not wants um i think that's been the focus all along uh i just i really worry we don't go far enough and what we're doing if we're going to dig into the building we should be really digging into the building so i just want to clarify if i could peter that 13 million of the 24 and a half million is existing building repairs so and that that i understand but it's not in every room or

105every space so that's you could definitely spend more that that was the 38 million that was in the master plan i think it's fair to say in life you can always spend more right but it's what we're spending it on and i basically would rather spend it on making sure buildings are safe and and stand the test of time this is a building that has certainly stood the test of time but it's come to a point where we we need to make sure that it's still safe going forward mr kelly uh peter what you're bringing up now worries me i mean i'm concerned about you're saying just the fact you brought it up now if something happens and you brought it up and we didn't act on it that's going to be something that uh

106that's going to be uh worry me i i really had no problems with this going into this but just making that statement i want to hear from the architect russ can you address more in more detail uh peter's comments about that there might be some things that are not addressed that could be uh could be concerning well you know we did a careful dive as karen mentioned on the infrastructure that was identified so there are a lot of systems and a lot of case work but it's not a complete gut renovation of the whole older sections of the building i believe it's inadequate and the right scope of work and you've got a contingency built in and some cost escalation built in so um i i think it's a very reasonable um way to go

107forward at this point so in in your opinion there's really no red flags uh in this project that we should actually make note of uh because as i said we brought it up in this meeting and if something happens and we didn't do anything about it then uh then it's certainly not really responsible at our end so no i i i i don't think there are joe i think that um you know we revisit it with a mechanical engineering team uh we reviewed it in detail with dan watson who knows the building pretty well uh we added back some roof replacement work that had been earlier prioritized out so you've got more than half of this project is about fixing the existing building and then another 2.9 is renovation another million seven is fixing the

108site and drainage problems so the new construction is the smallest uh you know 6.9 million so the bulk of this is being spent on your existing site and facilities uh that makes me feel a little more comfortable and uh you brought dan into the formula i know that dan is extra cautious on these things is he still online by chance okay just to explain your concerns a little bit joe when uh the incident happened in north miami old greenwich was one of the schools they went in and actually checked all the ceilings uh there was one small area they identified which i think that we're going to hear about at some point in the future they said it didn't need to be done immediately so that was the the good news they looked at old

109green actually looked at jc and they looked at riverside okay well karen uh uh tony and russ if you guys are telling me dan watson is saying this is okay uh i've worked with dan quite closely and i'm okay with uh with his judgment uh is that what you guys understand yeah he was part of the process he was on every meeting and we were actually in a capital planning meeting today for the budget so yes good enough for me thank you miss hersh so just to reiterate on that you did mention that there's contingency funds so should we be in the process of working on the older parts of the building and discover that there is something that was accidentally not seen and needs to be fixed we do have some kind of i

110can't even speak contingency funds built in to address that that's correct that's correct thank you all right then uh if there's no further discussion take a vote the motion on the table is to prove the old garnish education will grant school education specifications as presented all those in favor that is unanimous eight zero thank you very much the old greenwich community uh you're on your way happy birthday jen exactly well we missed it you know what though she told us her wish so we had to wait till after midnight you're not supposed to tell your wish folks all right next up is the tuition and fees this is uh i know our third read of tuition and fees uh so i'll just go ahead and make the motion to approve the fiscal year 23 tuition

111and fees is presented is there a second oh dr france a second she had her hand up she's your hand we use hands in this classroom all right uh mr o'keefe if you could just quickly walk us through the changes sure so we were asked the last time to take a look at the last chart which is the secondary summer programs um as we looked at it you know rather than uh sync up a list with uh what ann was showing in the prior meeting for courses that may or may not be offered we we figure that it's probably best to reformat it and we did that and established four levels of programs with examples of each along with the proposed rates and level one would be a college prep course with lab for example

112chemistry level two would be a full year credit fairing course level three would be a credit recovery review course improved grade or a bridge course and level four would be semester courses and uh so we've listed the uh the proposed uh prices for those courses which are up three percent year to year questions miss johnny i'm just a quick one sean on these level one level two courses i mean the hour is late and i don't have the old chart in front of me is this about what they were before because they seem like expensive classes or if that's just what it costs us to run the class i don't know i'm just kind of how is the number because they are expensive these are identical to the uh to the tuitions we were looking

113at free and we were just categorizing them differently and what we've previously charged for these classes for those crap classes correct sean for level one we're going from 975 to a thousand five level two goes from 909 to 936. three percent increase gotcha thank you any other questions or discussion ms hirsch um i know i'd sent this question in um but i hadn't gotten the answer so i wasn't sure on that same page page five under the proposed fees for the 2223 for level four classes i saw that the chart listed the class fee is forty eight dollars last year was 250. uh where was it last year was 298 so we're 250 less uh was that just a typo that was a typo and it's fixed on the chart now thank you well i

114didn't see it fixed on the document that's posted so what is the correct it's it's 307 3 increase thank you [Music] okay so keep doing that can you just make sure the version uh the updated version gets posted on board so what we're voting on that bottom line can you read the numbers across for level four level four is uh 307 uh and free and reduced 49. so 298 to 307 for the class fee for free or reduced 48 to 49. okay all right so maybe you want to make a motion to amend so that we can do that the other last question is you also remove the rates for the summer school program and the gps employment play rates are you still working on those uh those were deleted uh because the for the

115gps employees we apply a 15 which is uh discussed on the first page in that package it was also another item i think it was uh six hour elementary courses that you had asked about uh and we have not conducted those classes in several years so and suggested that we delete them okay because they were in the last report okay so uh i'd like to make a promotion the new version is updated i don't know i'm looking at the one that's posted on board docs so i don't see it now if it's been updated i guess it hasn't been uh sent to board docs it will okay so do you still like do i say okay so i'd like to make a motion to amend um level the fee for level four uh for fy2223

116that the class fee instead of 48b 307. second for that motion dr francis thank you any discussion on that all in favor of the motion to amend joe yes all right that passes 7-0 all right so the amended motion on the table uh is to accept the tuition and fees as presented with the amendment all those in favor all right that passes 7-0 thank you very much sean sorry for running you through the ringer on this but we want to make sure we get that right no that's quite all right that's quite alright uh yeah i apologize for the uh for the typos no worries all right so last up is the financial and staffing report so i'm gonna move that we accept the financial and staffing report for the period ended september 30 2021.

117is there a second dr francis is so fast with their hand tonight all right sean quick quick quick summary yeah not a lot to talk about this early in the year but uh as of september we're uh our operating uh expense is 21.5 million which is 12 and a half percent of our budget of 171.9 spending is up about 11 and driven by two things one is that supplies are up about a million dollars and it's really a phenomenon of the fact that you know it's it's a residual impact of the pre-spend activity from june of last year and and we were slow in purchases in july august september of uh of 20. so that plus we have some covert related expense that hasn't yet been charged out and uh so when you normalize for

118those things we're pretty much on track with our year to year spending rate for the plan uh capital uh continued focus on that our capital is uh 28.7 million which includes the the new addition of our full year 22 budget of 13.2 and when you look at the pre full year 22 which is really the area that we're focused on closing out uh our balance is 15.5 million dollars which compared to a year ago is down about 50 so our 15.5 is down 14 7 or about 50 so we're continuing to focus on closing out those uh older projects uh and then school lunch finally is uh really not much to talk about other than you know we did budget for a relatively normal year but as we are seeing now the you know we

119will probably uh continue to have reduced uh cash sales revenue and with offsetting increases in state reimbursements given that the free food program is continuing until june of 22. thank you are any questions or discussion sometimes i was leaving through sean i had had some questions about the staffing report did we like those adjustments because you were fixing some of the math on that like tweaking it i i did you i did send you the uh answers and there are a couple of uh areas where the formula is not correct so we've gotta fix that so i will get those two charts uh updated and we'll get those uh updated aboard ducks thank you all right miss hirsch well i don't know if christina with the question that you had asked was the same one

120that i was going to ask i was just just wondering it notes the report notes that were down six custodians and i didn't know where those vacancies were for looking to fill them i don't know the location but we are down six uh three of them have been hired uh one has a start date of october 25th the other two is awaiting clearance and uh and we're continuing to uh look to replace the other three thank you and as far as how the work is getting done um that is uh basically you know the staff's chipping in with overtime plus uh uh occasionally we have a temp that comes in to uh help get the work done thank you and this just one last comment on that is um we about a year ago we

121tried to uh restore two fte's custodial ftes um restore head count that had been reduced several years ago uh but unfortunately we were unable to get approval for those and we would still like to pursue uh hiring restoring two ftes and custodial ranks and i presume that will be part of our discussion at our budget meeting yes makes sense all right seeing no other hands the motion on the table is to accept the financial and staffing report for the period ended in september 30th as presented all those in favor 7-0 unanimous thank you mr o'keefe all right just very quickly before we get back to our community comments uh agenda planning two things i noted tonight uh looking for some further enrollment information on where the students are going although i think some of it

122is a replacement value but put that on the tvg uh and then possibly an update on achievement gap closing plan which i think uh there was some discussion about when that might be so we'll have to figure that out in our next chair meeting which will be my last year meeting how about that peter and that's uh help and the seminar and those sort of concepts coming back as well yes so aop i think was going to come back i think mr d'amico was talking about having that come back in december yeah but i think there may already be a report scheduled for december he was putting that in with so we'll have to take a look all right so now we're going to resume our um community comments ms hirsch i'm just going to

123ask we had about having a special education update because we were supposed to be seeing where those uh plans were that were from the uh audit recommendations and i don't see that on here i think that actually was we were looking at holding that for september so we've got a separate document of things that are coming up at our next year meeting and that's on there so we'll see your september no i'm sorry i'm sorry november or december so it's okay thank you but yes uh yeah next year next september because you know all right we're gonna go back to our community comments i will again remind all of our speakers about our policy get three minutes to speak we'd ask you be civil and respectful uh and all of that good stuff so i'm

124going to go back to our list if you give me one moment because i have 10 thousand paper here our next speaker is marijuana and if you're with us online if you could raise your hand hello okay we've got you go ahead please hi my name is mario mikleichek but tonight i've been asked to read a statement from a group of teachers who don't feel safe to speak here tonight this statement is a consolidation of many statements written in first person from a group of anonymous teachers you all may not know how many of us are being discriminated against and how hundreds of us in the greenwich public schools are being discriminated against i've been a teacher for almost 20 years i've been praised for my work i've never had a warning of any kind

125i've mentioned i've mentored new teachers i've been dedicated i've never stopped caring about my job yet now we are all being discriminated against because of a personal decision not to be vaccinated the new mandate not only discriminates against those that have chosen not to be vaccinated whether for personal religious or medical reasons but it has left us feeling threatened isolated and scared we endure constant stress lack of sleep and fear of retaliation i am not a public health threat i taught through the entire pandemic last year in person never once was i thought of as a danger i was an asset a hero someone to be applauded for doing my job now i've become someone that can't be around anyone unless i test every week i had covered a few months ago i have more

126antibodies than a vaccinated teacher yet our government and school district believe that i can pass along covid and the vaccinated teacher cannot when we know the vaccination does not stop the spread of the virus this is clear discrimination and has left us open for unfair judgment and unjust treatment from our colleagues and administration teachers eat in the faculty room and attend meetings unmasked all day long yet as an unvaccinated staff member i've been asked to remain masked at all times this has segregated me from my peers and colleagues put me in a situation to isolate myself and my classroom for lunch even though i continue to test negative and have no symptoms the second day of school this year i was told by a colleague of whom i have been friends with for almost a

127decade that she wouldn't work with me because i'm not vaccinated i felt hurt alone and isolated we live with constant stress having to get a test that is known carcinogens placed in our nasal cavity every single week i along with at least 100 other teachers go above and beyond for our job for the kids and it is shameful how we are being treated i have devoted my entire career to the greenwich public schools this uncertainty is creating overwhelming anxiety that my job health insurance for myself and my family 30 seconds are not secure we are asking for an accommodation many of us do not want to put the carcinogen lace swab into our nasal cavity every week some for personal reasons some religious and others for medical reasons several of us have even suffered from

128health issues from this procedure that is done over and over again unnecessarily there is an alternative a government approved saliva test but our voices are not allowed please help us help us like you help all discriminated teachers support us because we are teachers too who love our job care for time thank you very much all right our next speaker is lillian de souza you can raise your hand or online lillian if you unmute hello can you hear me yes we can hear you okay hi how are you uh good evening uh my name is liliani moziak and i have a daughter on first grade at north myannas first and foremost i want to express my gratitude to all teachers you all have my deepest and most sincere respect we love you and we know you

129had to sacrifice so much for the children we are living in a crisis we stand before you because we want to work collaboratively with the board i am free to be in free to act and i'm here because i want to protect freedom of choice and i want to save our children i'm here because i am concerned about my daughter and about our children first of all it's related to parent choice i want to remind you to respect the decisions and not forcing over we see how the boe are completing distorting of the education system sexual and gender education does not involve you we object the teaching of various cells critical racist theories parents should have a voice in the child's school curriculum when it comes to subjects like sex education and critical race theory

130second stop vaccine mandate we will refuse any vaccine mandate enough with the mandate we know the pandemic was created in advance why should a child be subjected to the risk of an experimental vaccine i believe injecting a covet vaccine into my body would mean that i'm perpetuating the immortal use of a fetal cell lines i believe that time and distance from an evil that originated long ago does not excuse it or making me free of responsibility for participating in it injecting products manufactured or tested using fetal cell lines into my body violates my religion beliefs third mask harms children the mask must stop we need to allow kids to build of natural immunity masks are ineffective and potentially harmful masks interfere with task performances efficiencies and cause low blood oxygen and elevate carbon dioxide level

131our children are in school for seven hours basically breeding their own exhaust four fighting for freedom we are not going to be 30 seconds we will not give up we are parents that wants the best of our children we are not going to sacrifice our children for the government we're drawing the line here the problem today is not coveted suppression is excuse it's a justification i have to say this is ridiculous this needs to stop you know god gave us the mind to determine good from evil and a will to choose between good and evil please work with us here thank you thank you very much all right the next speaker signed up is darren moziak i don't know if he's separately giving comments i don't see him online peter all right then we're going

132to move on the next speaker is julie freddie ours hello good evening hi julie we can hear you go ahead okay i was going to do a i'll quickly go through my my comments for tonight good evening everyone as you know my name is julie ferniers and i am the executive director of the greenwich alliance for education i plan on speaking monthly about education and our partnership with the greenwich schools teacher students greenwich high school avid alumni and our community tonight i would like to share that we are celebrating 15 years as the education nonprofit supporting the greenwich public schools here are a few highlights which demonstrate our significant and lasting impact on the greenwich public schools for 15 years and with 3.8 million in total funding we have supported the students family families alumni

133and the education educators of the greenwich public schools for 14 years as part of our reaching out grants we have provided 1.7 million in funding to 52 grants across all 15 buildings of the greenwich public schools and for 13 years we've promoted early childhood education resulting in over 686 thousand for our youngest learners and our families for 20 21 22 we are investing 100 over 108 000 in the following reaching out grants families as partners at hamilton avenue theater arts a new lebanon ruler an sel program at eastern middle school unbound innovations virtual reality really cool at western middle school esports at greenwich high school and education and wellness center at greenwich high school on the grand side we continue to support the developing artist grant which was started in 2016 and has reached 8

134000 middle school students and innovation and at innovation lab we're still supporting student projects now after listening tonight i am really excited to be the r d arm for the greenwich public schools and i look forward to working with the new program administrators even more after listening to try the many new ideas that they have in their new roles thanks for the opportunity to speak about the many ways we are partnering to enhance the educational experience for greenwich students and teachers see you at the turkey trot and see you next month thank you thank you julie appreciate the partnership from the alliance all right the next speaker is linda whitridge linda if you're online if you could raise your hand oh she's in person hold on thank you okay good evening or good morning uh

135members of the board and dr jones um i know it's late but i respectfully appreciate that i can have my voice heard my name is linda wittridge and i'm here today to speak for my husband and myself and my three daughters in the greenwich public school system i'm here today as a mom that wants the freedom to make choices i believe to be the best for my children we've all become obsessively caught up in a political and social divide over kova that has trickled down to our kids and if we as parents don't speak up now in the name of common sense and compassion for our kids they'll be continued to be taken advantage of to bolster whatever political scenario they happen to be living within at some point we have to be able to

136move on we have to allow our kids the freedom to live their lives and not be used as political pawns in this game any longer the risks of the virus are so low for children we shouldn't be asking more of them for the greater good that's no longer fair for me this is about choice you may be tied to the state's ruling now about masks in schools but there is so much more to it we need to work together to stop stop caring so much about optics and start caring about the kids why can't the kids play together across classes and recess in elementary schools why can't they go on field trips why are we preventing kids from playing on their sports teams in high school why aren't all students like the sixth graders allowed

137into the auditoriums with the seventh and eighth graders most importantly what's going to happen in february are you going to step up and give kids and their parents the choice to mask or not to mask next up vaccinations we all know the vaccine for our kids is and will become more of an issue as emergency authorizations are extended to be frank there are a lot of us that aren't going to want to give our young kids this vaccine at this time whether it's because of the possible side effects the lack of long-term studies or just the fact that generally kids aren't as affected by kovid and that they shouldn't be pawns any longer we don't want it we want the choice to say no and not to have our kids punished for that choice we

138see what's happening at the private schools are we going to follow suit in the public schools while lamont and you may say there won't be mandates there are other ways in which the children are being forced to pay the price and it's not right pressuring kids and families to vaccinate their little kids to be able to play sports to be able to participate in clubs to be able to travel are you going to segregate segregate kids based on their medical status are you going to shame them into following the narrative just to be able to live a normal life as a kid this is not how personal choice works and it's not fair to our kids over vaccine that we know doesn't stop transmission it doesn't work the way it was advertised by the government

139and it has thousands of people reporting adverse side effects and truly isn't necessary for kids the level of fear imposed on parents and the reduction in 30 seconds has skewed our society into accepting things that we really would never have believed just a few years ago i will not accept this i'm ready to hold this line to gain the right to choose if my children should be masked and to fight the forced vaccinations these are our kids and it is up to us to decide what is right and best for them thank you for your time thank you very much and we do appreciate the fact that you stayed all the way to the end seriously it's usually just lil and brian all right uh next up is grandfatherdad although i don't see him i

140do believe he emailed the board of his comments uh so thank you graeme for that uh next would be christopher mccormack also not seeing christopher online if you are online please raise your hand michael are you seeing him all right i'm not seeing him uh christopher mccormack not seeing you and i'm not seeing any of the last few here and the last is uh kristen niminski kristen if you're still with us raise your hand all right well that i guess is going to do it um thank you everybody for uh participating this evening for uh the length of our meeting uh dr jones please thank your staff for staying so late uh mr kelly i believe you have a motion for us you could pass it over to gayton if you'd like because considering she's

141used to doing this and it's her last time no no i'm getting to do it at the next meeting because this used to be my job all right dr francis dr francis moves to adjourn mr kelly would you like the second one i will second it all right all those in favor of adjourning we are adjourned thank you very much everybody