11-24-25 Groton Board of Education Meeting

001Good evening. This is a a meeting of the Graten Board of Education. It's a regular meeting being held on Monday, November 24th. It is being held by Zoom only. Um the first order of business is oh call to order. I think in attendance we have let me look at the list. I can never get this right with you. Sorry. Um we have we have Dr. Adrian Acriman, uh Ian Thomas, Jen Knight, Whitney, and Sean Corkran, and myself, Beg Washington. Um we also have um the assistant Amarine Mancini, the superintendent, Susan Austin, and the director of um finance, Rita Seak. All right. The first order of business is the pledge of allegiance. And um allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,

002indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh the next order. Can everybody hear me? Yes, we can hear you. >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Doing on Zoom is kind of funny if I wasn't sure. The next order is recognition and participation of visitors and delegation. Um I'd like to recognize Dean. This is the last regular board of education meeting. We will have a facilities meeting next chiego uh chair, but this is his last regular board of education meeting. Um I'm going to remember when I met Dean. I met him but met him four years ago when we were campaigning and we were up at school. I knew then just by standing there campaigning with him that he was going to be an excellent board member. I'm going to miss Dean. um he always had

003the best interest of the students and the district at heart. He was always able to um and willing to see both sides of the issue. He had no personal agenda. He just wants to do the right thing for the students. And whenever I called him up for advice, Dean was always willing to give me good advice and listen to me. for Miss Dean and all his stories that he tells and um he is a great board member. So, thank you Dean for your four years being on the board of education. I really appreciate you and I'm going to definitely miss you. >> Anyone else want to say anything? >> You're too kind, Bev. No, I mean every word I take. You have a, you know, you always see type of the story and issue and

004I really appreciate that. And you're always willing to listen and you're always open-minded. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um, and we have a plaque for you. We'll give it to you at the facilities meeting. >> Oh, a plaque. More more plaques. >> You can add it to your wall. >> Yeah. Uh the next item is comments from citizens in regard to agenda items and other subjects of concern that lie within the jurisdiction of the board of education. This is a portion of the agenda where the board welcomes comments from citizens. Each presentation should be limited to five minutes or less and citizens should if possible submit written comments. Presentation should be related to manage matters pertinent to Graten. Board members will only ask questions in order to clarify the speaker's presentation and cannot

005comment u during comments of citizen portion of the board meeting. Citizens should make their presentation. Um if you could raise your hand if there's any on the line and please state your name and address for the record. Vanessa, I see your hand up, Vanessa. >> Hi, thank you. My name is Vanessa Gantus. I sent an email to the board of ed earlier today. I'm speaking in support of establishing a backpack buddies program or similar support system for students experiencing food insecurity. Children deserve access to food without needing transportation and forms. I encourage the board of ed to show their support for the implementation of a supplemental food distribution program that includes simple direct distribution points within the Grten public schools. Whether this is a food pantry located in the front office or guidance office or

006at the security desk that students can access at dismissal. There are many strategies that could be considered to make sure our students have food to eat during the days that school is not in session and they do not have the benefit of free breakfast and lunch provided by the school nutrition program. Thank you so much for your time and attention to this need in our community that was very clearly illustrated during the SNAP delay at the beginning of the month which created quite a crisis in terms of food and support for hungry children. >> Thank you. Would anyone else like to address the board? Okay. I don't see anyone. Monica White. >> Yes. Hi, my name is Monica White and I serve as the director of family ministries at Noink Baptist Church. Um, we are

007trying to undergard this food distribution program. Um, and I would like to start by expressing gratitude to Ernie and Justine. Both of them have been incredibly receptive to partnering with us to meet the need of food supply for students at the Finch High School. Um, these weekend bags that we are sending home not only support high school students, but in many cases may also feed their younger siblings. Um, it is my understanding that there have been concerns about the QR code not being an ideal method for the students to enroll in the food distribution program. While I ex appreciate and respect these concerns, I believe that is important to recognize that going without food for an entire weekend is far from an ideal situation as well. Um, it is our goal to remove barriers, not

008create them. And we are committed to working collaboratively with food services to ensure that all students in Vic High School can access this support with dignity and ease. Um, I humbly ask for your support and partnership in this effort. Um, and I hope that together we can ensure that no student in our community faces hunger over a weekend or a long holiday. >> Thank you, Miss White, for bringing that forward. Um, next is any other comments from citizens? Okay, I don't see anyone check. Okay, I don't see any. Next is responsive comments. Any response? Susan, do you want to say anything about this? >> Well, I wrote about it in boardnotes that it was happening. It happened on Friday and um I know it's happening again this Tuesday. Um what they do is they distribute

009it at the Falcon Cafe and they're going to look into possibilities of putting it in guidance in the future. But because free and reduced lunch information is private, even the administrators don't necessarily know, but our guidance counselors are probably the best to know um to be able to help our kids. So that's what we're going to do moving forward. They're going to make an announcement and I think a parent square is going to go out like it did before. And I had shared that information because Ernie had shared it with me. So, I shared it in board notes and thank you both Vanessa and Monica for helping. >> Are they able to distribute the bags tomorrow? >> I'm sorry, Bev. >> Are they able to distribute the bags of food? >> Yes, I sent the

010board a note. That's they'll do it right the same way from Falcon Cafe. They'll let kids know um and families know. And um the just realize that um I think there are 40 or 50 bags and in our district we have 50% free and reduced lunch. So at Fitch that could be as many as 550 families. So we're asking kids who might need these provisions to come and get them right after school. >> Mana, can you have your hand up? >> Yes, Miss Bev. I was just going to let you know that we do have 40 long weekend bags prepared for distribution tomorrow. Um, we do not know that we could could possibly sustain 500 in the future, but we will are willing to give our best effort to ensure as many kids can be

011fed as possible. >> We do appreciate that and I think the more information we can get from families and possibly through guidance counselors and social workers is the way to go. And I think they're going to still work on this QR code. when they did it that only three children signed up, three families. So, we know it's more than three. >> Well, I'm very thankful. My daughter was able to make an announcement during the second period today in regards to the QR code being on the wall. Um, so, thank you guys for that support. Um, it really empowered her as a young person. Um, trying to ensure that her peers are well fed. Um, so, thank you for that opportunity and again, thank you so much for your continued support. It's important work. >> Um,

012I don't know who had to hand up first, Adrian or Ian. So, I'll go with Adrian or Ian. Go ahead, Ian. >> Uh, thank you, Bev. Um, I just want to thank everyone for coming out and speaking tonight. That program uh sounds fantastic. definitely filling a need that uh you know that is uh very apparent in our community and especially now in these times um with the challenges that we're facing on the federal level. Um so yeah, thank you all for coming out and I appreciate your comments and I appreciate the superintendent working with them to make this happen. Thank you. I can't hear you, Bev, but I'm assuming that you're uh that you called on me there. Um I just wanted to um voice my support for this program um and anything that we

013can do um to to encourage um people that can afford to donate to this um and and whatever we can do as a district to help out those those kids over the long weekends, kids and families of kids. So, I just wanted to express support and hope that we can continue supporting in the future. >> Miss White, do you want to say anything else? >> Okay. Dr. A, >> you can't hear me. >> You're on mute. >> Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Um I um I wanted to express myself as well and um thank uh everybody who's working on this and uh I am I am unable to read the board notes because I can't see anything. >> So if you would let me know how I can support this where I could send a

014check or or whatever I can do. So, if you would let me know, Susan to >> I will. I think Monica, is it the Noank Baptist Church? Which church is it that's doing this? So, we can give them a thank you, too. >> Yeah, I heard that. >> Yes, ma'am. It is No, Baptist Church. We're located in Noank Village. Um, we do not need any credit, but we do need support so that we can make sure that we can continue going forward. So, thank you so much for that. Thank you. >> We'll get the word out for sure. Thank you, >> Vanessa. You have something else to say, >> Vanessa? >> Thank you. I just wanted to um say that our focus is on sustainability. There are a few different ways that we can do

015that. One is that we can focus our efforts just on long weekends and vacation periods. Uh the other is that we have an Amazon wishlist that Monica put together and we are going to ask for community support uh in that way as well. We do have a lot of people that want to support that just haven't had the opportunity or the information yet. So, I'm hoping in the next few weeks to really build this program to a point where it is sustainable and there will be not only resources available daytoday, but a specific program to cover holidays and long weekends. >> Vanessa, if you get that information, I can actually send it out parent square and put it in my um weekly update and my board notes so that it can generate and um we

016can get more community buy in. Thank you, man. Uh Jay, >> yeah, I just want to say thanks uh to to everyone who's involved with fulfilling this important need. And um if you uh do have a fundraising effort, um if you can share that with Susan with any links where people can make um monetary donations, uh if that's the direction you choose to go, um then we can get that publicized as well. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Jen. Jen, >> thank you. Um I know that um there's a coordinated effort right now it looks like with the church and then like with Ernie, but has anyone contacted the United Way? I mean, the Gemma Moran um center is there and there are mo mobile food trucks that go out to various communities. Um

017and I believe we already have a um maybe something in the middle school, but maybe they can help with some food supplies as well. >> You're right, Jen. The middle school has had a United Way food pantry and when we asked to do it at Fitch, they didn't have the resources, but I can call them again and they actually do do the book bags um for the middle school kids. So, they have that program already at the middle school. It would be nice to have it, you know, in all of our schools. So, I guess that's another coordination thing to find out if United Way has that those resources. >> Yes, it will just help supplement what's already there. and there's a whole network, you know, that's been in place for several years, you know.

018So, >> Miss White, >> thank thank you for that feedback. Um, I do want to let you know that we have been in contact with Jim Moran a few times um and they are able to provide us with some resources as well. We have also um started a relationship with Feed America. Um, I have done backpack buddies in a previous state. Um, but Feed America, what they do is they allow us to purchase items at wholesale cost so that it becomes more affordable for us to be able to pack those backpacks. Um, so we are working on building those relationships. Um, and again, we're not trying to replace anything. We love that Jim Moran comes and distributes at the high school. We're just giving these kids another avenue to receive food. Um, and I don't

019think there's anything wrong with that. And I thank you so much for your support. >> Yeah. I don't think I I wasn't supposed to come out like that. I'm just like offering resources. So, um, for transparency, I used to sit on the board of the United Way in Hartford and, um, the backpack program was like in several of like the Hartford Publiclix school through United Way and um like the 70 plus organizations um that is supported. So um you know it's just like we might as well all work together. Um you know I'm not as familiar with like the resources that we have here down in southeastern Connecticut as much. Um but yeah, no definitely it wasn't supposed to come out as like being replaced. it was just offering um other venues of how to

020like you know get food um you know with um that organization that you had mentioned I believe they're out of Manchester I think and um like you said you have to purchase the food right whereas um you know sometimes you might be able to get food as donation too so >> oh no ma'am you did not offend me and I apologize if it came across that way. Um, thank you so much for your feedback. >> Yeah. No, thank you for what you're doing, >> Vanessa, you have >> Okay, here I am. I have one last thing to say. Sorry. Um, those programs are all amazing. And I think that the focus of of our intention here is to make this as easy for children as possible. They don't need transportation. They don't need to meet

021a truck. They don't need to figure out how they're going to get their food. Their food is just provided. I feel very strongly that children should not have to worry about where and how to feed themselves. And if we give them the autonomy to get the food for themselves, I do believe that the children who need it will do so. But it needs to be accessible. And I think having a food pantry in the guidance office, my personal opinion is that that would would be the best solution so that kids who need help can be can go in and get it when they need it because food insecurity means that some weeks they do and some weeks they don't. So handing a bag of food out every single week when sometimes they they don't need

022it that week is counterproductive. So I'm hoping that long run we can create a more fluid, versatile program that gives the children the opportunity to come when they need it. And if that's every day, that's fine. And if it's just every so often, that's okay, too. >> Thank you. And I hope everything goes well for you guys now. So thanks again for everything you're doing. make sure our students have food and our families. Next item on the agenda is student representative reports. I don't see any of the students. So >> now I think there's a powderpuff game tonight for seniors. So I think that's where a lot of them were headed. >> Okay. Then the next item is review the map plan and that to announce >> okay number in the board packet. >> I'm

023assuming that I have to share my screen. So I'm going to do that. Okay. Can everybody see the presentation? >> Yeah, I can see it. >> Excellent. All right, I'm going to get started then. Thank you. All right, so I'm excited to um share our math enhancement plan tonight. And this is something that I uh shared a draft of last or a version of this draft uh last year with the curriculum committee. I believe sometime last spring. And so there is a updated version that I'm going to be sharing with you tonight. Uh we start off every presentation as you know uh with by connecting our presentations to the strategic plan. And this and in this case um our presentation or our work with the math enhancement plan um aligns with pillar one accelerate academic

024achievement and our work uh around enhancing math instruction and uh and achievement or our performance um will hopefully yield results specifically in the academic pillar. Um, and we will look to of course increase our academic or accountability index and then also our DPI or district performance index and math. Our agenda for tonight is simple. I'm going to go over a couple of things. The first thing that I'm going to review is our um sorry, our vision. Whoops. Sorry. That's what happens when I'm trying to is is our vision uh for um vision and plan for math enhancement. Second thing I'm going to review is our resources to support enhancement in math. I'm going to finally then review uh our building thinking classrooms instruction um and that that approach and then I'll give you an opportunity

025to ask you some questions. Ask me some questions. All right. The first thing I want to talk about is our vision and our plan for enhancement in math. So when I first started working here last year, I started working with the math team, our elementary specialists and of course our teachers at the secondary level and I um specifically started with what is our vision here in Grten Public Schools for math and what is our approach to math instruction and I found out even though we had a uh district math team there wasn't like a defined vision for math and so I worked with the team to first define our vision for math and the teachers came up with this. Scratton public schools will ensure equitable equitable access to rigorous uh math instruction so that students

026will make sense of math in creative interactive and authentic ways. And then we defined our math through five specific approaches. We wanted our math approach to be aligned to standards, promote active learning, encourage real world connections, emphasize conceptual understanding, and then we thought it was also important to build K12 coherence. So keep that in mind. Keep those especially those five elements in mind as I talk a little bit about our math enhancement plan. All right. So it was really important for me last year um as I worked with the math team to think about if we're going to develop a a plan to improve math instruction and performance to think about a plan for um for doing that. And so I developed a plan along with the teachers that aligned with our um our strategic

027plan. So you'll see you might think to yourself while you're looking at this, wow, this is a lot of years, Amory. Well, it's designed specifically to align with the strategic plan in terms of being it it completed it started last year in the 2024 25 school year and it uh it ends in 2030. So you that should you know that should be familiar to to you because the strategic plan ends in 2030 as well. And you know um there are six phases of the plan and the six phases um you know kind of start off with plan and then and then this year we're in our pilot phase and then um you know it goes to monitor, refine, improve and evaluate. And the enhancement plan involves piloting new resources, training our teachers, implementing a new

028assessment, conducting math walkthroughs, uh making adjustments to our curricula, and um and it's captured again under these six headlines uh or six headings. And so you can see last year, for example, um I talked about how we created a district vision for math. We introduced uh the building thinking classrooms uh approach which I'm going to talk to you about and uh we reviewed some new materials which we're we're piloting this year and we um and we also piloted the I Ready platform. This year is where we are right now obviously in the 2526 school year and we're doing a lot of new things this year. We um we implemented officially our I Ready assessment which our teachers are given fall, winter and spring. Um, we are emphasizing problem solving and our teachers are being trained

029in that. Um, we are piloting illustrative math which I'm going to talk about extensively in the next couple of slides. Our teachers are being trained in the building thinking classrooms um, uh, approach and um, we're collecting of course uh, uh, feedback from our teachers on the uh, illustrative math resource and we're making some adjustments to our curricula and curriculum and assessments. Next year, assuming everything goes as planned, we'll be um providing implementation training to our staff on illustrative math should we choose to adopt that resource. We'll be monitoring the implementation. We'll continue with our uh with our professional development on building thinking classrooms, uh collecting feedback. The following year, that's really where we'll be in our refinement stage. We'll be uh continuing to provide support in our I Ready platform, continuing to monitor our implementation,

030but that year we'll be implementing math walkthroughs. We'll be hosting our math family nights to help our families understand this new uh uh this new resource, and then we'll be finalizing our refined math curriculum, K8. The one thing that I really want to emphasize is right now we currently do not have a resource that is in our in our math program that is extended K8. We have one resource for K through five. We have another resource through for 6 through 8. So I'm looking to build coherence in that K through 8 program and I think it's very very important. Finally, in the in the 28 29 year, we're looking to, of course, to improve what we're doing by making cross-curricular connections. Um, making instructional decisions based on the resources that we use, identifying teacher leaders

031to model our instructional approaches, and then continuing our math walkthroughs. and then the last year evaluating that 29 2030 year as we're getting ready to develop our new strategic plan establishing model classrooms ensuring ongoing PD making instructional adjustments and then evaluating the overall effectiveness of this math enhancement plan as we get ready to build our new strategic plan. Now I want to talk a little bit more about the resources that we've identified to uh support our math enhancement plan. The first one is called I Ready. And some people have probably have heard me talking about I Ready. And I like to say that I Ready is two instructional tools in one. The first part of the tool is it's it's a diagnostic assessment. Before this, we really didn't have a diagnostic assessment we were using

032in math. This assessment allows us to uh determine where students are three times a year in math. The students are assessed uh fall, winter, and spring. It allows us to identify what students can do in terms of their grade level expectations for math. And this has been proven to be a valid and reliable predictor of smarter balance performance. as I've talked to other um districts that are using the uh I Ready Diagnostic Assessment. It's also a personalized instructional tool, meaning that once it determines where students are in uh in terms of the standards, where they are of the standards, it provides teachers with specific lessons that and tools that they can use to help students improve their performance. You can see here this is a um kind of like a a screenshot of once teachers

033log into the platform. It provides them with um you know where to go to help teachers like a teacher toolbox to access specific instructional materials as well as specific reports that they can access to help students get to that next level of learning. The second resource that I want to kind of go over is this illustrative math. This is a resource that we are piloting. Um, and I want to talk a little bit more about that. It's very important to to let you know again we are piloting this resource. Now the illustrative math resource is what we call a problembased student centered resource and it's different from a traditional math. It's it's different different from the traditional kind of math lesson that you know maybe we encountered well at least I encountered as a young

034math student in which I was in a class the teacher kind of talked and I listened and I was expected to kind of absorb that information. Um illustrative math is you know really promotes active learning. Um oftentimes again you know ma well I'm going to kind of skip that and go to the next slide. So in illustrative math um you know students um are expected to be really um play an active role not only individually but in groups to see what they um understand and can figure out on their own and the teacher is really the facilitator of the learning and it's kind of like represented represented here in this um in this diagram or this depiction where the teacher is kind of helping the students are working together or sometimes indiv individually and the

035teacher is helping the students to kind of synthesize they're learning but they're always active in the learning process. Um the IM program is built around three elements. Uh the first one is the invitation to the math invitation to the mathematics lesson. The second one is the deep study of the concepts and the procedures and the third one is the application of the learning. This structure allows all learners to see to be successful and actively engaged in the learning process. And every unit lesson and activity ends with a strong synthesis of the strategies and the applications that students have experienced during that lesson. One of the things I really like, I'm sorry. One of the things I really like about illustrative math um and I have used this in my previous district is that it provides

036um lessons that really embedded in those lessons are access for English learners. And we know here in Grten, we do have a number of English learners and it also provides teachers with suggestions for um uh for students that are that are accelerated learners as well. Um you see also that there are access for students with disabilities too. So um if you have students that um are really high achievers, it provides suggestions for teachers that okay, here's some extension activities for those students that are really excelling. But for those students that need supports like those students that with disabilities or students that are English learners, it provides suggestions for students uh for those teachers in terms of how to modify the lesson as well. Okay. In this case, um I think it's really important to note

037that um the illustrative math is was created by um William McCllum. He was um one of the co-creators I guess or the designers of the common core which which lets us know that of course this curriculum is aligned. One of the reasons why again one of the kind of things that reinforces this to us is something called ed reports. Ed Reports is an independent review system or a platform that reviews um programs that are put out like curriculum programs or resources that are put out. And I this is my go-to anytime I'm looking at a resource. If it does not get the three gateway meets expectations, meets expectations and meets expectations, I don't even consider it. So this is the latest review. You'll see here the report was released in July of 2025. This is

038the newest edition of Illustrative Math. It's called Illustrative Math 360 and it met expectations in all three areas by Ed Reports. I mentioned earlier that uh if we were to select illustrative math, this would allow us to build important coherence. Now, illustrative math actually extends all the way through from K all the way through grade 11. At this point, um, we haven't started to look at this for the high school level. We've only started looking K8, but this will allow us to build cohesion, um, in terms of the students learning specific concepts and skills from grades K all the way through eight. And it's really important because this will allow us to guarantee that um, our students are coming in um, with certain concepts and skills. And on the right hand side, I know this

039looks like a crazy diagram, but this is called their um like their cohesion maps um or what they call their dependency charts, but it allows us to kind of see the progression of learning from one unit to the next and then from one grade level to the next. when we were looking at the the math specialist and I were looking this summer at what units we were going to pilot. This is how we selected the units um and how we determined what units um we're going we were going to select. So what does a illustrative math unit kind of look like in action? If you engage me for a little a minute or so, I'd like to show you. Hopefully this will play. I'm sorry. Just a point of privilege here, I guess. Are we

040not getting volume or any audio? I'm not getting audio. >> I can't hear it either. >> I can't either, Ian. Yeah. >> Yeah. I don't think anyone can. Amry, is there >> Can you Can you hear Amry? They can't We can't hear the volume. >> We have no audio. >> Can we start it from the beginning? >> Ary, >> so you guys can't hear that? >> No. >> Yeah, we have no audio. Huh. I wonder why you can't hear it. >> In my has always been sort of a weird um interface if you're sharing this direct YouTube video. >> Oh to >> is there a better way to do it? >> Uh I don't know is the short answer but I've come I've run into this roadblock before in other meetings other places. >> Okay.

041So maybe we will skip the video. Unfortunately, that's it's unfortunately that's too it's powerful. But if we >> are not able to if you're not able to hear it, then um probably it's best for me not to share it. >> I'll test it out when I when I can on um our agenda to see if you can on it and see if it'll work, >> right? Maybe in minutes we could put a link to it and maybe post it somewhere on the website or something like that. >> Okay. Um, let me go back to the presentation. Stop sharing though. Okay, hold on one second. There we go. Okay. Can you see the presentation again? We do not see anything currently. >> Okay. >> I can't. >> Thank you. All right. I got to Okay. Thanks.

042Go back here. >> All said I can see it, Admirie. >> Oh, thank you so much. Okay. Okay. So, unfortunately, you weren't able to see that video. Um but I will make sure that well you have access to the presentation so um at any point you can you know at your leisure take a look at that. Let me talk to you a little bit about what a typical lesson structure looks like for a le for illustrative math. So there's an invitation to the learning which I had mentioned just before that makes students uh makes clear to the students what their learning goal is for the day. Then there's a warm-up which kind of launches the lesson or focuses the uh on number sense and fluency. There are instructional activities usually one to three depending upon

043the lesson. Uh which allows them to experience you know uh new context, introduces new concepts and language um or a new representation. Um it formalizes the definition of a new of a term or helps the students work toward mastery of a new concept or procedure. There's a le lesson synthesis which guides students through um their big picture understanding through large group discussion, a response or a prompt or adding on to a new concept map. Um help students makes connections to what they already know or situates their new understanding. Um and then a cool down task and basically what those are is like almost like what they call exit tickets. um helps the students helps the teacher check for understanding and um determines if students understand understood the lesson and informs instruction for the next day.

044And from what I understand from our teachers, they really love the cool down tasks. So, um you're probably wondering like how are we collecting feedback? Um I'm plann to collect feedback from our teachers. I mean, not only informally, I've been talking to teachers quite a bit since we've started the pilot, but recently I put out a um a survey. Obviously, that's the easiest way for me to collect feedback from a large group of teachers. So, um our teachers have started the pilot. We at the elementary level, they just finished their first term um or trimester and at the um at the secondary level that obviously they finished their first quarter. So, I thought it would be a good time just to get the first kind of dipstick um on the uh by sending out a

045survey. I also surveyed our building leaders in terms of principles, assistant principles, and our curriculum leaders. And so three different surveys I I put out and um I collected information and uh I want to share some of it with you. I plan to do a second survey at the end or at the midyear point. So this is just initial feedback at this point that I wanted to share with you. There were 20 questions on each survey um including multiple choice that included multiple choice and open-ended questions and um some of the questions asked them to compare to their current resource that they're using. It asks about conceptual understanding, rigor and alignment to standards. Um engagement of the students and the quality of the assessments that illustrative math has. And then finally the quality of the

046teacher materials. So when I created this um this uh these Google slides, it was uh several days ago, but I had 29 responses in total from K5 teachers, 10 to uh responses in total from our math teachers. I believe that was all of them. and 10 uh responses from our building and curriculum leaders. And so uh the first responses that I want to go over from you, again, these are just initial responses. Are some of our multiple choice questions? Um again, this is just a sample because there were a number of multiple choice questions. The first one was, are the lessons uh well aligned to the common core? 90% of our K5 teachers said yes. uh 40% of our K uh 68 teachers said yes and our 100% of our building leaders said yes are

047the teachers actively engaged again you can see here the the the responses uh do students demonstrate a deeper deeper conceptual understanding again the responses and then would you recommend the district adopt the IM resource for next year you can see the responses here are some of our open-ended responses again this is just a sample of that I pulled um what aspect ects of the illustrative math curriculum design have been most effective in supporting student learning. I pulled a K5 response. IM has been out an outstanding vehicle for uh for instruction. It definitely challenges our students mathematical thinking and reasoning reasoning. Personally, I think the program is really going to help our students to better prepare for smarter balance. That's just one response. Um, next question was, "Have your students res how how have your students

048responded to to the illustrative math approach in terms of engagement, discussion, persistence, and confidence? And how does their response compared to the approach the district has used pre previously?" Um, the response from our middle school, one of our middle school teachers is, "I think they're taking to it well enough. However, I also account the way I assembled it to present it to them plays a large part in it." And I think that was a very fair and transparent response. um because certainly our teachers uh and their lesson planning makes a difference. And then finally, what are the most significant strengths of the illustrative math resource? This is from one of our leaders. The uh the increase in rigor and expectations. Um as a as an example, standards that were previously introduced at the end of

049grade 1 have previously been introduced and students are able to access and develop understandings. This has been very eye openening for our teachers and is leading to higher expectations for students. Cool downs at the end of most lessons forces teachers to have real-time understanding where students are. Checkpoints at the end of the unit assessments along with the rubrics are helping teachers to better understand the standards being taught. Um the next thing I want to do is talk about the building thinking classrooms approach or what we like to refer to as the BTC approach. So building thinking classrooms is an approach that um was developed by a researcher named Peter Lillianthal and it's based on 15 years of research. I have a video here. Obviously I can't show it to you because you don't have the

050audio capacity but this is the import build emphasizes the importance on doing the math over being told what to do. Again that's that student centered approach. Um and it uses 14 instructional practices that promote student thinking, collabor collaboration and perseverance including the following. And this is just some of the things that on this in terms of the instructional practices, the types of tasks that students do, where, when, and uh and how tasks are given, how groups are formed, where students work, how to address student questions, and uh how to use formative assessment. And this is a lot of training that we've been doing with our middle and high school teachers. Although our elementary school teachers are also starting to dabble in this approach and it's very aligned to our to the illustrative math resource that

051our teachers are piloting right now. And so that's why we felt like it was good to kind of um start to incorporate this approach with the work that we're doing. And so this is our last slide and uh I I think I've kind of whipped through this presentation, but um I'm going to give you plenty of time to uh ask questions, but overall, you know, in summary, we've been as a part of this enhancement plan, I've been taking like a threepronged approach um to our improving our math instruction and uh overall student performance. And it involves uh defining a new vision and approach to math instruction. Um identifying uh and like updating our curriculum and identifying new resources for teachers and providing support to our staff through professional development whether those be district and school

052sessions providing them with um coaching or modeling in our classrooms. So, um that said, um I will be happy to take any questions um that you have at this time. Okay, Jen, >> I think Anthony had a hand at first. >> I think this is the first hand I saw. So, >> yeah. Yeah, I know. >> She's probably trying to unmute. Who's who's on first? >> Andrea, >> you are Dr. Akaran. >> Okay. Um I I would really like to see this and uh I mean the um the two videos and I know that we could ask this in other ways, but I'd like to see it as a uh maybe if we could put it on an agenda at a at a CO because I'd like to hear if there are any questions or

053discussion. I'd like to hear that. and not just listen to it on my own. >> Sure. >> Thank you. >> I think Dean was before me. Beverly, I didn't want to jump in the >> Oh, I'm not sure about that. Go ahead, Jen. >> Oh, okay. Um, so Emory, um, thank you for looking into this. sometimes, you know, um if you keep doing the same thing expecting different results, well, you know, the rest. Um so, thank you for um looking into like how we can approach math in a different way. Um my question is um um if we move forward or um in the implementation process or selecting the students are you going to be targeting the students who are below the meeting the standards the students meeting the standards or the students who um

054are already at standards. So just trying to understand like um how you're going to select um for um for the pilot programs. >> So we are piloting right now um one to two units in each school for every student. >> Oh okay. So it's not like a limited scope like maybe like 25 to 50 kids and then you're just going to follow them >> throughout your No. So, um, thank you for asking that and I'm sorry that I didn't clarify that illustrative of math is a comprehensive resource that you would use. Um, it's like almost it's a curriculum resource. And so, um, what we did this summer was we identified, um, a very, we identified specific units like say for grade three or grade four, we said, okay, we really like this fraction resource better

055than or this fraction unit better than what we're doing. Um and so we're said we said okay in grade four we are going to use their unit on fractions in um for that grade level and um and and teach that particular unit um this year and see how um see how that goes. in grade five maybe they picked out a unit on uh you know I can't think of one off the top of my head but you know so they've identified each of the teacher each of the um each of the grade levels identified one to two units um in the in the resource that they said for this year we are selecting these particular units of study and that instead of um teaching our existing unit we are teaching the illustrative math unit. >>

056Perfect. Thank you. Uh thank you Beverly. Hey Marie I have a I have a two questions and then a suggestion. >> Uh one question is I know that with I Ready the um one of the individualized pieces that is provided as far as reporting for math is quantiles uh as an individual measure. Is that something that the the math team is utilizing and in individualized instruction? >> Yeah, I will tell you that um our teachers are still, you know, obviously this is a new resource for us and our teachers are still learning. There's so much with Illustrative Math. Um the all of the different reports. We actually have a training coming up. Um because one of the things that pieces of feedback that our teachers have kind of given me is that we need to

057learn more about illustrative math. They kind of had an initial they had a training last year when they were piloting and then they had a training in the beginning of the year this year and they kind of said came to me and said we need more training on illustrative math. We feel like there um Illustrative math is such a wealth of resources um that we need we could learn more so much more in terms of how to help our kids. So, we have an additional training coming up and um I I think that's something again that you know they can much learn much more about all the various reports and things. Sean, >> thank you. Uh if it's if it's anything relating to quantiles, let me know. That's what I do for a living. >>

058Yeah, sure. uh as well as with imaginary learning they are going to be launching a or Illustrated math is going to be launching a benchmark assessment in 26 and 27. Is that a new benchmark assessment? Is that something you guys are having conversations with them about? >> Yeah. So I have a conversation coming up with them. They have not talked to me about it yet, but we have a meeting coming up and I would love to hear more about they have not talked to me about it, but I'd love to hear more about that. >> Okay, perfect. And then the last piece uh for the videos from from YouTube, there is a way your technology team at the district could probably do this for you is embedding those videos directly into the PowerPoint. Then the

059um even from YouTube then it will play directly. >> Okay, I'll talk to Clint about that. Thanks for the tip. >> No problem. >> Uh yes, thank you. Um, I probably mentioned this before. I I'm pretty sure that as a as a school child, I'm a product of the panic following the launch of Sputnik when the US was trying to figure out how to uh uh get out from what they thought was being behind the Soviets. Uh, I don't really know what came before me. I know I remember my math instruction. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on sets at the beginning of the year every year. I don't know what that was pertinent to. Uh but in any event, um I know that math scores not just nationally but internationally uh in

060many countries are seen there's been a huge falling off after co there is a a rush to uh to do something about that uh to both revive uh what's seen as stagnant scoring from postcoid also from before co. So, um I I la almost any effort to to see what we can do to improve uh math instruction and math learning, not just the instruction. Um the I think the I could be wrong but the building thinking classrooms the BTC uh program that that Peter uh Lilyad Doll uh has has come up with um that's probably part of the larger uh you know minimally guided instruction philosophy. This is has been applied to other areas as well. You in other words let's move away from the traditional teacher stands in front of the room and tells

061the kids what they need to know. Um, but I the little part of me is always thinking sometimes do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? And um, all programs have their fans and their detractors. And BTC has its share uh, of detractors as well. People who've argued that his research is flawed or has flaws in it. people who have been more moderate and said that BTC works but maybe doesn't work as well for providing foundation. So what you might wind up with or what the experience has been in other districts has been that uh BTC works best with students who already have some uh math fluency. But for those students who suffer from uh I'll just put it in a nutshell, socioeconomic disadvantages, um the foundations seem to be better provided by the

062more old-fashioned uh instruction followed by practice. In other words, get the basics down before we move into breaking the kids out into groups, student centered learning, and all of that. Um, and there's also the critique that, and I'll let you address these when I'm done, the critique that um, the approach provides um, um, or creates a lot of activity. So, it's great for um, for creating the engagement, but the ultimate question is, do the students actually learn anything? And like with everything else, I guess we'll know uh once the thing is implemented uh whether it works or not. The again the people who have been at least moderate critics have said they like BTC but not when it's applied as the 100% method. Um they see it they like it as more as an adjunct

063to other other methods. So that would be that would be my concern. And I guess I don't want to generate another cadri of of students or cohort of students that um we've for lack of a better term experimented on uh as we've done in other areas and found out oops that person doesn't work. Either our scores are stagnant uh or they've or we've even fallen behind and well we'll start over again with another uh program when this one doesn't work. Um, so I'll let you uh I'll let you address that. Are you aware of any criticisms? What's your what's your uh answer to that one? Oh, and one more thing before I forget because it's a later note. Um I note that the responses uh where the devil isn't in the and the initial feedback

064uh the K through five classroom teachers were obviously more enthusiastic or provided more positive answers than the 6 to8 math teachers. Mhm. >> So, uh, students actively engaged K through five said 62% but the 6 to8 actual math teachers 30%. Uh, deep demonstrated deeper conceptual understanding. Uh, K through five classroom teachers 62% but the 6 to8 math teachers say 30%. That's quite a differential. And when you finally get to the do you recommend the 6 to8 math teachers are uh, you know, meds and meds uh, on the thing. So, um, all right. Now, I'll let you go. >> Well, first thing I'd like to say is, um, I'm really going to miss your, uh, you being on the board and, uh, all of your, uh, great questions. So, uh, thank you for that. And um

065then I'd like to say that I love the reference that you make to Sputnik because um I'm a child of the 80s and um I uh very specifically remember when the uh Nation at Risk came out um and uh I think I was a product of that time period and all of my instruction was in response to that report. So uh you know while we uh are products of a different time our education was uh impacted by uh something really significant that happened. Um I I think you know what you've just asked me a lot of questions but I think the most important thing for me to address is the fact that you know there is no magic bullet in education and so while um I like the building thinking classrooms uh approach because it

066is problem based and student centered and it aligns with some of the work that we're doing here um in in illustrative math in terms of the pilot um I do not believe that um building thinking classrooms is something that you can do every day. It It's not in fact it's something that you know when we talk to teachers um we have said to them specifically don't do this every day. It it I I don't believe that is something that um because uh even a student- centered classroom you you can't do that every day. There are times that you are going to pro provide direct instruction to students. It's just a fact. you have to um you're going to get up and you're going to need to um whether it be lecture or give notes or

067whatever you want, however you want to call it these days, you know, I guess lecture is a is a dirty word. So now we say provide direct instruction. There's going to be days that you're going to have to do different things. So not every day is going to be um group work or small group discussion or or you know some kind of gamify. Um, and so this this also applies to building thinking classrooms. Um, and so as great as we think this is, every um every day is going to be a little bit of a mix of different things. And um, and maybe you're doing building thinking classrooms every third or fourth day. Um, but it's certainly not an everyday thing. at least in in my you know I've I've now read I'm I think

068everyone knows I have a background as an English uh English teacher and uh also a certif social studies certification and I've read now um two different books on building thinking classrooms and my interpretation of this is this is it now Peter may may disagree but uh Mr. Lillian Dr. Williamthol, but um this is not something that I would approach in terms of doing every day in my classroom. So I I hope that answers your question. Now in terms of I'd like to transition and talk about the middle school teachers response because you know it's um I I obviously noticed that and I wanted to be really transparent in putting this information out um as I share the responses of the surveys to you. This is something that obviously the K5 teachers are really favorable to

069the to the resource so far in the pilot and our building leaders um K12 uh or at least K8 have been really responsive or positive in their responses and our 68 teachers as you said are kind of messimists you know um uh I think that there's a couple of reasons for that and I'm I'm working with uh Peter to find out a little bit more and also our uh math curriculum chair uh Caitlyn Crowley, but um as I've talked to Caitlyn a little bit, I had a phone conversation with her today, just said, "Hey, can you talk to me a little bit more about this?" She said, "You know, most of our professional development so far this year and last year has been around the building thinking classrooms and we have not devoted as much

070time to the illustrative math. Um not only in terms of the professional development because we haven't, you know, truth be told, we uh have it's it's a pilot. So, we haven't provided the teachers with professional development around this resource and we haven't given them a lot of time to adjust their curriculum because we don't know if we're adopting it yet. If we go forward with adoption, we're going to provide them with time. We're going to provide them with professional development and I think that will make them feel a little bit more at ease. right now, the way that Caitlyn has described it to me, they feel like um there's been a lot of I don't want to say pressure, but they they are you they've adopted I Ready, which is a new resource. They're piloting

071illustrative math and more than the elementary level has not done uh much with building thinking classrooms, but the middle and high school has. And so they've um plus in addition to that they're preparing for their uh reacredititation in um in the IB the middle years program. So they've had a lot of different things that they're balancing and they feel like right now um the illustrative math is it's a lot. And so that I think is kind of reflective of of the feedback. So we're going to give them a little bit more time and maybe a little bit more support. and um they are they're actually going to get some time um after school to work on um preparing for the next unit and I'm going to hope that um once they do they will be

072a little bit more favorable when that second survey comes back. We'll see. >> Thank you. And uh I know I threw a bunch of questions in a series at you, but I judged you capable of actually um handling it. >> Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Uh thank you. Um I I appreciate the presentation. Um and some of my concerns uh definitely fall in in line with uh what Dean was talking about. Um you know, but uh just one one thing. Are is there is this attached to an action item uh that's happening later in the agenda? because I was just looking. Are we voting on something tonight? >> No, no, just information. It's a presentation. >> Okay. Um I thought at one point in the last year or so that we decided that we

073weren't going to do that at regular meetings that we're going to have committee. >> Can we address that issue later? Do you have a question for Ann Marie? You could call me up and we could talk about it. >> Okay. Because I mean I appreciate the information. question. I guess my what it comes down to is um you know my comment is is and I'm glad Dr. Mancini also alluded to this is that there is no one way um to teach anything um especially when it comes to math. There's multiple points of entry and you know in my experience I've used uh very modern materials at times. I've used materials that I was familiar with and and used to in my growing up or or uh I've used materials that were you know maybe from

074from Dean's era. Um so >> the before time >> but whatever hits whatever gets traction you know we talk about student centered um education you know I think teachers need to have some flexibility you know as much flexibility as possible when it comes to trying to to find the material that really tracks with whatever students they have. Um, so I'll just say that and and I'm all in favor of of um you know widening the ramp and lessening the incline by whatever means necessary. Um I guess a technical question is this uh with I Ready and and and um this sort of illustrative math uh approach is there an opportunity to capture data coming out of that as far as like micro progressions if if we could call it something like that where you know

075we're trying to get a better sense of of student progression. And one of the things we talked about was having teachers come back to us and tell us how they think they could demonstrate student progression in a way that you know maybe is not being captured by the standardized tests. Is that a possibility? >> Yeah. So um I Ready there's a you know a lot of data that comes out of the I Ready assessment and then uh each of the illustrative math units. So there's uh formative assessments in each each of the illustrative math units as well as like a unit based assessment >> and that could be anonymized in a way that could uh you know be shared as as as showing progress but not identifying not not violating any sense of privacy >>

076probably it might be a little bit hard with the unit based assessments in terms of you know reporting out each unit by school by grade level but the I Ready uh assess investments, you know, the given three times a year would be easier for sure. >> Understood. Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate all your work on this. And I I also just want to second Andrea's suggestion that this um would have been well served in a cow meeting where we could have done a deep deep dive on on this alone or this amongst another couple subjects in a exploratory fashion. >> Yeah. Um, let me correct that before uh before we go on. And that is that that my suggestion was not that we do it at a my suggestion was that we add the

077videos to the agenda so that we could so that we could um look at it together. And um I I uh but that's not why my hand was up. At any rate, what I wanted to to um thank an Marie about was your common sense approach to this and when you said to the teachers or whoever said to the teachers, don't do this every day because one of the things that we must not lose sight of is learning styles and I'm an abstract sequential learner. Please set me down and give me a lecture. I want to hear about it. I want to hear about the experts take on whatever it is that we're doing. I also realize that at times the lesson itself will determine how um the learning what learning style is appealed to.

078Um you can't learn to throw a pot by listening to to somebody talk about it. So, but I wanted to to say that that I appreciate this uh common sense approach that and and to remind everyone not to forsake the idea of individual learning styles. >> I couldn't agree more. >> Mike, >> thanks and thank you for the presentation of the thoughtful look at this. I just wondered could you comment specifically on so in our strate strategic plan there's that um you know the main performance in uh indicators and one of them of course is bringing up our our math scores by by quite a bit over five years is there um like a a real well I I guess I'll ask you is this likely to achieve that alone or or is there something

079else uh we also need to do like a burst of funding hiring or things like that. >> Well, you know, I think that um one of the things I want to say, Mike, is that, you know, there's probably a lot of things, right? There's not one thing that is going to happen. It's not just purchasing one resource um but or purchasing in this case, you know, we already made a purchase of of I Ready um at the end of last year and we so we started implementing these these assessments and the um the personalized learning tool. But it's a lot of different things and I I that's what I'm hoping that is kind of coming through in the presentation. It's we're using the I Ready diagnostic and that's helping our teachers be informed of where

080our students exactly are and so that they can monitor the process uh I mean their progress and then it's using the personalized learning tools so that um the teachers are accessing those um different like those different lessons and um you know the the kids are practicing on the um using the like the online platform and then it's um monitoring the progress you know making sure the kids are getting on and doing their minutes every every year and it's I mean every day and then um it's not just about the minutes it's that they're mastering those standards that they hadn't mastered and so it's you know checking those things and then it's um you know making sure that we have like when we when we talk about building coherence it's that we have the same program

081K through eight and so that all of our teachers know that um you know from K to one what specific um you know those are guaranteed lessons or skills that they're building from year to year. So it's not just K to one, it's one to two. And then as they make that transition from elementary school to middle school, our teachers at the middle school level kind of know what's being built upon um from one grade level to the or like not even just grade level from that elementary program to the middle school program right now because we have all of these different resources when their kids come to and this is I'm not a criticism of um our our um any particular level. It's just that right now because we have so many different resources

082that we're using when our kids come to our middle school um our teachers have no idea like they know generally what our kids have um learned because they know about the standards but they don't know how it was taught because they don't they don't have access to those resources um and they don't know what progression they were taught it um in which they were taught because again they don't have access to those resources. So it's making sure that there's a coherence from one grade level to the next. Um so so there's a lot of different things that I think that I'm kind of looking to build here um as a part of this enhancement program um or this enhancement plan. Um and then monitoring it being in the classrooms right now we're doing we've implemented

083these literacy walkthroughs that I'm so I think Susan kind of can um can reinforce this. We are so pleased with what we're seeing and uh the way that all of our principles have kind of invested um in uh as we are going in the the classrooms and looking at the way that we're implementing the witten wisdom program and our science of reading and how we are learning um from one another by just kind of visiting the classrooms and how it's particular strategy is being implemented by one teacher and then going into the same classroom or the next classroom in the same building in that same grade level and how we can learn about, you know, how the next teacher does it. Um, it's just, uh, would be so powerful when we apply that to math.

084So, um, I really think that, you know, this plan is going to make a difference. The other thing I wanted to say is, um, oh, I just lost the thought, but it will come back to me. Um, oh, I do know what I wanted to say. Um, we had some teachers who have used this uh program in other districts either when they were student teaching or maybe because they're new, relatively new to our district. And so when they heard last year we were going to pilot a unit in illustrative math, they decided, well, we're going to cheat a little bit. And so they started to pilot, they maybe piloted a couple of lessons last year or maybe a unit. And those teachers were at two buildings, um, Thames River and, um, CK. And I don't

085know if any of you recognize, but those two buildings were our two buildings that were recognized as schools of distinction for math. And, um, I think that's really worth noting. So, if that gives you any kind of um, I guess a preview or maybe answers your question, Mike, I think to me that was really promising. >> Thanks. And that is a really helpful answer and and great insight and and like when budget season comes, I'm hoping we can push through my myself, I'm hoping we push uh through more coordinator positions like we had in the past. Thanks, >> Adrian. >> Yeah. Um I I just a lot of my questions actually have already been asked, so I'm just going to um I'll ask a little bit more. Dean Dean touched on this, but other district

086use of the program. Um, do we know any success stories where this has been used um with improved results from other districts that we can kind of, you know, lean on what others have learned? >> Yeah. Um, well, are you talking about the I Ready or are you talking about um illustrative math? Which one are you talking about specifically? >> Oh, illustrative math. >> Yeah. Well, I can tell you in my previous district um they used illustrative math. It was not something that um uh so it was relatively um I would say we adopted in around that time period. Um and I will tell you that um post pandemic we were recognized by the state now again we are alliance district but post pandemic we are recognized by the state department of ed specifically for

087having zero learning loss in mathematics. In fact, I think they actually improved um in math uh had zero learning loss in ELA and had a showed a minor improvement in mathematics. Um and that was kind of unheard of um immediately following the pandemic. Um and but I can um there are a lot of districts that are using illustrative math. This is one of the state model programs. >> All right. >> Yeah, that that's great to hear and I appreciate that. Um, I mean it I and I also appreciate the long-term look that you're doing into this and the long-term plan so that we really know kind of benchmarks on where we're going and how things are going and then we can obviously make changes to that as time goes on as as we learn as

088a district. So, I appreciate that very comprehensive plan that you put together on this. >> Thank you. >> Um, and um also the the support for training that you were talking about in the elementary school. I think training especially with a you know a new system almost of of teaching math um I think the training is going to be key um and whatever we can do to support that um the now I see there's multiple um publishers of this it looks like Imagine Learning Kendall Hunt and McGraill in >> there are six actually there are only six approved vendors of illustrative math we looked at um or before I even brought it as a pilot, I looked at three. One I immediately I um disqualified and I think it was because it was only online.

089Um and the Kendall Hunt and Illustrative and Imagine Learning I brought in for uh principles and curriculum leaders to review last year. >> All right. Yeah, that that's I was wondering which way we're going. And so is it illustrative math that we're going to be piloting? Yes, that's currently where Oh, you mean in terms of Imagine Learning? >> Yeah, I'm sorry. Imagine Learning. >> Yeah. Um All right. And then the other thing I I went to Curate, which is, you know, Massachusetts did this thing that's similar to Edsite, but they just did it in the state. Um and that's curate. And they um and I didn't read the whole study, but it just says um the one place, and this is the 2021 version of it, that it didn't get top marks, but still did

090really well. um was in accessibility for students. Um so I'd be curious to know what that was about and you know if there's anything you know if we agree with that or not. Um >> yeah so I didn't I haven't seen that. Um you know I certainly rely on ed reports especially the 2020 the most updated version because these these um companies are constantly updating the versions. Um so we would be purchasing the most updated version. Um, but I can certainly ask about the 2021 version. You know, they're going to say to me that's that's outdated and uh we're not even using that version anymore. But I I can ask about it. >> Yeah. I mean, it's just um you know that it's just a data point. Um and then in and then the sixth

091rate it gets it gets you know top score right across. Um but I'm also you know interested on how this kind of rolls out over the next few years. um and to see um obviously we want to get um more middle school buy in. You know that >> for sure >> we need to give the teachers something that they feel that they can be successful with. >> Absolutely. You know um I think the most important thing is you know when you're rolling out a a curriculum program resource if the teachers don't buy in you know you got a problem. And so that it's it's um I need to get in front of the I've certainly have spent a lot of my time um with the elementary folks. I have not spent a lot of time

092with the middle school folks because I I've been relying on our our chair to do that. I need to um get more time where facetime with our middle school folks and hear more about their concerns and hopefully um I can start to address them. >> All right. Yeah. All right. I mean that that sounds great. But again, I want to say I I know we've talked about this in curriculum already, so we've um we've done some review of this already as a as a committee, but um but I do appreciate all the work and I I look forward to increased math scores and and and uh children that are better at math in general. >> Me too. Me too. So important. >> Uh Amory, I just want to say thank you for such a thorough

093presentation and thank you. I think your explanations and answers to our questions were well done. Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Any other questions? Thank you so said, thank you for all your hard work and all our questions and like I'm looking forward to seeing all this um you know test scores and you know how this plays out in the near future. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. And I uh just want to say thank you to all the teachers who have been doing they're really doing the hard work here. Um our teachers and our curriculum leaders. And so I want to um just give them a shout out because they have been working really hard with this and I appreciate them so much. >> You do too. You didn't say

094it, but thank you for saying that because I know the board does appreciate the teachers and all their hard work that they do. Okay. Next on the agenda is um we're going to hold off on the special ed report and we're going to take care of that in December. So next is the director of finance report. Hopefully I can you hear me? >> Yes, I can. >> Okay. I'm hoping I can share my screen as well as Amarie did. It's been a while. I'm not sure what's going on. Sean, did you have another question? I see your hand up. No, I just haven't lowered it yet. I will lower it now. >> Okay, no problem. >> Caitlyn, did you receive from Joyce the um attachments? This was attachment number three. >> Yes, I can. >>

095Yeah, because I'm having problems sharing. >> It's number three, you said? >> Yes. Can you see that? >> Can you make it a little larger? >> Yep. >> I'm going to close my notebook so I can hopefully follow along with you guys. So, um yeah, this is the um general fund as of November 19th. And I just would like to point out some um changes and um areas of um that I've been looking into. As far as the salaries go, um unfortunately, we still have not been able to encumber the hourly salaries. were um me and my staff are are looking into einance and how it works and not wanting to use purchase orders or or anything like that. So, um we're still trying to get those encumbered. Um can you scroll down? I wish

096I had access to um as far as the benefits line, which is the 200 lines. I wanted to note that accounts 203 and 228 have been utilized to track life insurance and fringe benefits. Um, formerly it was everything was grouped in 2011 group insurance and um I'd like to split them out so that we can go into budget season knowing um exactly what um makes up those numbers if that makes sense. Uh those are the two things and under the 500s I wanted to note that 555 was created to track expenditures of copies previously charged to repairs of equipment. Um we do show a deficit in that line that I I believe I'm proposing transfers for. Does anybody have any questions? Of course the detail is um the next few pages. Uh and I know

097um someone asked for a report from e finance. This particular report is 383 pages long. So what I attached with this report is an it's a five-page report by function so that you can see that the expenditures and the available balance are the same. So that's um the report that follows this uh report by object. >> Are you talking about attachment number four? >> Yeah. Well, keep going. I thought >> that's the transfers. >> No, I think this is all one attachment. >> Okay. >> This is attachment three. So, >> okay. Number three. >> Four pages of detail, but that report, the PDF of this object report is 383 pages. So, I >> I think that's why they didn't in the past attach it. So I prefer to attach the one by function which um

098gives you the expenditure totals and the available balance totals that match. Does anybody have any questions? So the Excel spreadsheet has the nice neat lines and it's going by object code but the other one is right from einance I understand. And there aren't the lines and it's done by functions instead. But the bottom line is the numbers add up to mean the same thing when we cross. >> Yeah. I just wanted to show that we are getting the numbers from e finance >> and that they they are um accurate. >> Yeah. >> Anything on on tax number three? Okay. You want to do attachment number four reader? >> So attachment number four I believe is the budget transfers between functions and you you've also um talked about making sure that our function codes are correct.

099For instance, you might want to talk about the 1700 versus the 20. >> Yeah. In the in the first budget transfer um that was approved on October 27th um I had moved I had created function 2399 um because function 1700 for the state anything that begins with a one anything in the 1000 series needs to be instruction. So, um the function for districtwide admin expenses such as, you know, insurance, legal legal fees, um there's a lot of workers comp, etc. needs to be in the 2300. So, that's why you see 2399 as a new function. So the the areas in blue means that the board has already approved those budget transfer. So what I'm bringing to the board tonight is starts on page three and it's not highlighted those budget transfers. Um the first one

100is for facilities. In the past, um, budget transfers weren't necessarily done for, um, things that are in the same function, like say we would run a report on facilities 2510 and as long as they're staying within budget, um, they may not do transfers right away, but I'd like to get ahead of the game and make sure that all the transfers are made, especially before we go into the budget season, um, so that we can budget appropriately. So you'll see a budget transfer here for facilities um to true up the negative balances and that is all the way page four is is um is that same transfer and yes and that transfer totals 440,229. On page five, there's another facilities um transfer that totals 137619. Um the other two are are a little bit smaller, but

101it's um if you have any questions, it's really um transferring funds to the areas of need. I see some questions. >> Question. >> Uh yes. Um thank you. Actually, I have a lot of questions. Um, I just wonder um because this is um a new process if if maybe this is something that we could um put into the finance agenda before it comes to this meeting. Um there are a lot of of transfers here and it would be virtually impossible to really line everything up. But in general, you know, I'm looking at at some of these major uh items, Rita, um such as um pupil transportation. Um you know, if we're looking at um the printout from einance. >> Yes. Um, so we're seeing that that account is currently um has an available balance of

102-235,000. Um, so uh is that one of the transfers that you're attempting to to balance with the operation and maintenance fuel oil >> transfer? that that transfer has not been um developed yet. If if I have notes, I agree with you. I the last transfers went to the facilities finance and facilities um meeting prior to the board of ed. So I do agree with you in that sense. Unfortunately, when we have cancellations or you know these transfers have to be made so we can pay bills. But I I totally agree with you. The transportation um negative available balance. I'm still looking into that. So I haven't written up that transfer yet. But the this transfer in front of you is just the ones that are not highlighted because the other ones have been approved. And

103it's mainly focusing on um operations and maintenance um uh supplies. There's some little ones in there, but it's it's mainly their supply lines. And I want to bring up the fact that the supply object codes, you guys call them account codes, they're really granular. Like what I'm what I mean by that is you have maintenance supplies for plumbing, maintenance supplies for electrical, maintenance supplies for heating. I mean, to me, maintenance and custodial supplies should be one line. because it's going to we're going to be having thousands and upon thousands of transfers if it's that granular if that makes sense. >> Right. >> Yeah, I'm starting to get that idea. Um and of course I realize so so currently the available balance of -235,000 is based on incumbrances which may or may not be completely accurate.

104I realize it's that's not really an emergency, so to speak. We still have >> Right. Right. >> Yeah. We still have uh 5.8 uh million dollars uh encumbered. So, um it I realize there's a lot involved because all these numbers are all based on purchase orders, >> right? And >> correct. It's based on our projection which we're relooking at just to make sure that that 200,000 negative is accurate by the days and the extra runs. Transportation is pretty involved and complicated. >> Right. Right. So it doesn't necessarily set off alarms. Um but um the other thing um in general that that I was curious about so um function 1119. And I know I'm bouncing a little bit. Um uh but this is considered unclassified. Um and we're already projecting uh 91,000. It would just be

105for me I would like to see a little more narrative with regard to um what's in you know that function um just to get a better idea. Um, and I don't know what your level of confidence is in that uh line. >> Well, I'm thinking the 1119 is probably salaries and it could be substitutes at this point. I'm not 100% sure, but um I believe it's not non salaries because I would be focusing on doing a budget transfer. With salaries, I typically don't do transfers every month. I do I look at them every three to four months. Sometimes I do a transfer in January and then I true up the salaries in May because there's so many lines um to to do a transfer. So I do think that the 1119 but I can look

106into that for you and have more notes in the future. And given the the large number of of transfers, while it's not on the order of of the total amount that we had uh last month, and I'm sorry that I missed that meeting, but um by the same token, there just as you mentioned, they're just a large number of um of transfers and it's not always clear where we're taking from and why we're um transferring to I if it would be possible I know there are only enough just so many hours in the day but to get a little more uh narrative about what's causing this issue um you know just just to throw out one more example um there was a line where we were transferring um we had a negative number for account

107uh the fuel And then on the next page, we had a positive. And I'm just kind of curious how that all nets out and why, you know, what's driving those those transfers. >> Yeah, I understand. It's all new and it's it's hard to give a lot of detail on this page. So, I could >> Yeah. >> And so, yeah, >> at this point, I mean, we we trust that you know exactly what's what you're doing here. you're seeing the actual um expenses uh roll in. It's just a little bit difficult um as a board member to be asked to vote on something like this um and really not um know exactly what's driving um all of these true-ups so to speak especially just you know a few months into uh the year. Um, so but

108I I realize it's a work in progress. >> Yeah, I I think maybe I shouldn't have done as many in one. This is all facilities and like I said 650, 653, 654, all those accounts are granular in my opinion and should be cons concise as far as like consolidated into just operation and maintenance supplies. Those are all supply lines. And that's why we have all these little negatives going on because you don't know how much you're going to spend on electrical supplies, heating supplies, HVAC supplies every year. It's very hard to budget that granular. And I would like to go into this budget season budgeting, >> you know, into a bigger category if that makes sense. >> Yes. Yeah. I think that >> that would that would be a lot. You and I discussed >>

109I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Function 2510, account 633, operation and maintenance fuel oil on page three of the transfers uh spreadsheet. And and I'm sorry again to to be bouncing, but so we've got a a a a trueup transfer 175,682 um for function 2510 633. Um yep, there you are. That's page three. It's probably hard to see on the screen. >> Um however, on page five, >> we have a negative true up to that same function in account. >> So I'm just trying to wrap my head around what's going on there. So maybe if I add the department level because that's what's going on there is that there's the there's the function, there's the account, and then there's the department. >> So it could be the high school or the middle school. Are they all

110they're all separate accounts? >> Yep. >> So I think it would probably help you if I added the location. I always felt that the board of ed should approve if we're moving among um if we're taking wages for example. >> Yeah. >> If you're asking us to to reduce a wage account and pay for a supply account like the year that we had the um the flood at Mystic River and the repair and maintenance account went haywire. Um there were that went deeply into the negative. And so if we had to take that from um salaries or if we had to take it from supplies, then I think the board would have to approve that. Ironically, even though that went negative for many, many months, we got most of it back in insurance the next

111year. So, if we'd made all those transfers, then a couple months later, we would have had to reverse all those transfers back out to all the accounts they came out of because the insurance paid for it. And I just see this as becoming so difficult that we already spend the better part of three months on the budget. >> And now when we go back and review all of this, um, I I think it's just going to become exponentially more difficult to understand. But anyway, that's me and I've taken up enough oxygen. Actually, I think you brought up a good point. That transfer for 440,000 is all in function 2510. I thought I hit another function that so that's why I added it, but I don't think it should be on for approval because it's not

112hitting another function. The next transfer is hitting another function. So, that's my my error. I if it's within functions, it doesn't have to come to the board for approval. Right. That's what I'm saying. If if all of a sudden you said, "You know what? We're going to reduce a wage account to pay for >> repair and maintenance," I can see the board having to approve that. But these others um uh you know, I I really don't think that that we need to, but that's just me. So, all right. Thank you so much, >> you have your hand up. Thank you, J. >> Yes. Thank you. Um yeah, I just wanted to commend you, Rita, on on this report. Um I agree. I think that that uh adding the department level could help with the uh

113detail. I I can appreciate what Jay was saying. um to a certain extent um but uh you know even though it's not required I like knowing this level of of adjustments that are happening and if we add department level detail to that then we can get better sense because as you said moving into the budget season it gives us the the the tools we need um to set better parameters um and maybe that would minimize adjustments in the future um like this and uh >> but I do I just wanted to to thank you for the efforts you put forth on this. I see the description level added um and uh yeah this this I think we're moving along on a on a on a good track here. >> I know it's a lot. I

114do want to say that the first year is going to be tough because we are trying to just later it'll be minimized. You know what I mean? >> Understood. Exactly. And that's what I'm saying is I think what we have here is a transitional year where it's like you're coming online and you're kind of you're bringing your level of rigor to this to this process and uh I think it's moving in a direction that that at least you know is is um addressing a lot of the concerns I've had in the past and um and as we develop this report adding like you know that like you said the department level detail um and maybe as Jay noted like maybe a little bit of narrative to explain what it was that prompted the move. Um

115>> yeah, >> but uh but yeah, this is great. And and personally, I anticipate that these sorts of trueups would over time decrease in mass, you know, because we would get more more targeted, more articulated with our with our budgeting process with having a better understanding of where the needs really occur and where they unfurl uh any given year. That is my goal. >> Appreciate your efforts, Rita. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um yeah, I I I I'll have to echo that. I appreciate all of um the rigor that's going into this, Rita. Um but I I do have um and this is uh I I I I feel silly having to ask this. So um but when we have um a function adjustment so if we were to go to just like the top line

116of page 7 um it's function 1107 um you know account 612 technology ed we're pulling 58,000 out of that account where is it going to? So, it's going to legal, which is right below 50,000 is going to legal. When it's a negative, it's coming out of the account. When it's a positive, it's going in. So, um that technology software, I did put a little description that it was grant funded. Um at the end of last year we were um trying to minimize the carryover for title one to the allowed 15% and so we prepaid some of the um instructional software at the end of last year. So once I found out that and I know we needed money in legal um that's where I transferred most of those funds to. Do you see what I'm

117saying? The positive it's going into legal. going into high school completion because they needed funds there and so on. >> All right. So, are we and that was my next question is are we expecting um so legal I believe was something like 70,000 was what we had budgeted for legal. Are we adjusting that up 50,000? >> Yes. Because we're we were already um spending more than we more than we thought by by this year because we had negotiations, you know. So they the legal expenses um need to be increased. >> All right. All right. Um and I guess one other thing, how are we going to capture um where like we're using some grant funding um as kind of a temporary um backing to to funding, but we need to make sure that we capture

118that when we go into budget next year. H how are you keeping track of that so we know that? All right. Well, we only budgeted 50,000 for this category because we had another 50,000 in grant funding, but now that we don't have that, we know we need a h 100,000 next year. Are am I asking that clearly enough? >> Yeah, that so um that was budgeted in the um teaching and learning budget and I um anticipate it to be um in that budget for FY27 because we only paid prepaid for one year. So it should be in that budget again. >> All right. So I guess that makes sense. You are kind of tracking that type of thing. >> Have something unusual happening that may seem like we spent less money than we actually did.

119>> Um we're going to we're going to we're not going to forget about that basically, >> right? We still have to account for all the software we needed. >> Yeah. Great. >> And then I guess um if we go to page six um third line up from the bottom. I know I'd sent an email on this um but um it's that's function 1107 account 612 technology ed computer software. There's a credit or um out of that account of 26,680. Um what where is that? Are we cutting? >> That's the same case. It's the same account, same case as far as what we just talked about in on page seven. >> It's also a grant. Some of that correct is grant funded money. >> Correct. Sorry that I didn't include that in the description. And maybe

120in the future I can have a narrative under each budget transfer just like a one sentence or one line item >> in between each budget in between each budget transfer to kind of give you guys some some more detail. >> Yeah. And and just transfers between functions, right? And I kind of agree um with what Jay was saying like you know as far as it'd be great if we didn't have to approve all these all these transfers seem like they're h happening um inside function codes that are that are small and maybe not. You know that's just a department moving money around as they as they as they see fit or need to. Um but yeah, >> us hopefully voting on a a block of things that are that are moving kind of the larger

121funds around um you know between different function codes. So but um but I do appreciate all this and and thank you for all the work that you've been doing. >> I do want to say there are other transfers that are between functions that are small that are not on here. You know, the schools do transfers um that are small that are between their functions. Yeah. Is there a is there a minimum? I think there was a minimum. I don't remember that um that policy, but there's a minimum on that, right? Like minimum that would have to come to the board. >> Um I'm not sure. I when I read it, I didn't see that there was a minimum. >> All right. Well, we >> check that. >> I checked that. I what I read was

122if it goes between functions, I bring it to the board. The one the facility is 440,000. I I think that's all between 2510, but I think because it was so big and because I'm collapsing um accounts, I I feel like it it was a good idea for you guys to see it. >> I think the collapsing of accounts and getting the right numbers is what in what you're doing, Rita, is going to make the most sense. So any other question for Rita? Thank you. And um as we go along, I know this will get easier and better. So thank you. >> You're welcome. >> You want to go over text five? Attachment five is the um MDG report. >> Yeah, you can put it on the screen. I I looked it over today. I'm trying

123to um spend a little bit more time in the next month or so on um just understanding how we budget the the um group insurance that is self-funded. But um I did look at this and if you have questions it's it's card I'm not sure if I can answer but I will try. It's basically just our activity for September and because I didn't receive October's yet. >> And I don't believe the board is September. >> Did you say that? I'm sorry. >> I don't believe you've seen September yet. We're still doing pretty well. Actuals are less than budgeted. >> Well, this is more information than I ever seen before. So, thank you. >> Yeah, I think what I do want to share um when I get a chance is the actual plan. You know, how

124the plan's doing. This is just a year um glance at what's going on with claims, but I do like to keep an eye on the fund and how it's um whether or not we're staying, you know, within the fund, if that makes sense. >> Jay has a question. Jay, you have a question? >> Uh yes. First of all, um I think this is the first time that we've seen >> all of that entire plan with the town. Um, so that that's interesting to see how we're tracking um against the town since we're both out of the same um account. But um my question, I don't really know if this is best directed to Rita or if this would really have to go to um uh Lori, but um a lot of large corporations in the

125area are in uh open enrollment right now. Um when do you when does the district do open enrollment? >> That is May. So that typically is in May because our renewal is July. So typically we we do the open enrollment for the um for all of the staff in May. we send out emails and and they can, you know, choose a new plan or or drop. The January open enrollment is for u Medicare um eligible staff who are retired. So, we are doing a little bit with the new rates um on that plan if that makes sense. Yeah, I was wondering um because it handicaps us to not get our rates um until after we already have a um proposed budget and then all of a sudden, >> you know, that gets dumped on us.

126Um, and I thought to myself, wow, it's it's too bad that like so many of the other uh private uh companies in the area that are doing their open enrollment in October, November, they obviously know their rates now. Um, and um because that I think that's always been a pain point for us is that we're going in um with our best guess on that insurance line. Um, but that explains it if you if you're doing it. So, so there's no way that we can go to uh October open enrollment and get these things nailed down quicker to to better align with our budget process. Huh. >> Well, it's funny that you asked that because I did reach out to MDG today to see um what they're projecting. When I was in Windham, we would get

127some preliminary numbers early January and um that's what we would use for our budget. Having open enrollment October, November, you're still not catching a whole six months of possible increase, right? Because it's going to it's going to be January to December, right? It's not going to be by fiscal year. So, I but I did reach out to them and um we'll see what they say, but having Yeah, having a budget book having the superintendent's budget book due by the the mid January, January 12th, I think it is. Um most board of eds do not have their rates by then. >> All right. And uh again, I I want to echo um uh thank you for all your your work on this and um we'll we'll get our heads around it. Thank you. >> Thanks, >>

128No, thank you. Actually, Jay kind of stole my question there. >> Um so, I'll just echo that. I appreciate the efforts and I do like seeing the town and the and the and the district um in comparative levels and I look forward to hearing more comprehensive uh descriptions of how we're budgeting long term moving forward. And I would be very curious to hear if of any ways that you you think we could try to get ahead of the curve and and you know remove that anomaly from our budgeting system as far as like us having to do the best guess approach. Um thank you. >> D has a question for you. >> Okay. >> Yeah. U thank you Rita. I know I am outgoing, but um I've been a treasure myself. Um and uh sometimes

129it's been a peaceful existence and sometimes not so peaceful in existence. Um it's hard to convey u details in a in a in an understandable picture. U we're all adults. We're all fairly well educated and still there's a lot of communication that's necessary and the picture does not always get transmitted. I think it's the nature of the beast and not the people who are involved in it. And um you've got your hands full, but I think you knew that. I have confidence that you'll uh you'll um I was going to use the example of the Gordian knot. People remember the Gordian knot was a famous knot in Gordium in Asia Minor that couldn't be untied. Well, Alexander the Great came along when he was moving east and he said, "I'll untie." It took a sword,

130just cut right through it. Um, so, um, I'm not saying that that our budget is as bad as the Gordian knot, but it may seem so to a lot of people. Whether you untie it craftily or just take a sword and slice through it, um, I'm I'm confident you'll uh you'll lead us through to the uh the uh sunlit uplands, as Churchill once referred to them. Thank you again. >> I will do my best. >> Okay. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your evening. >> Have a great night. Thank you, Rita. >> You as well. The next item on the agenda is the direct buildings and grounds. Is Sam online? I don't see him. No, Sam is on vacation, but I did talk to um his um admin assistant and one of the big

131um accomplishments was that we got everything out of Pleasant Valley. So there were some um additional um robotics had some additional um I guess materials that were just for storage bins and they were able to store those over at Wells Road and um everything else has come over to Fitch and um I think there were some last water bottles that were being taken and you know distributed. So, my understanding was everything was cleared out of there, so it's good to go. Um, so we're >> Did we get the container? >> Was Sam able to get the container? >> Yes. I don't know that it's been parked yet. Um, I'll have to find out about that. But he did put in the purchase order, >> but >> and those kind of things or >> he put

132in purchase order, but >> has it arrived that pitch or did >> I don't think it's arrived yet. >> Okay. >> There's another one that did arrive, but this one we're still waiting for. I will double check though tomorrow. >> Okay. Any questions about P uh facilities? Uh, moving on. The next item on the agenda is community report. First one is policy. >> I had a question before you moved over. >> Okay. See you. >> So, my understanding is that the um robotics um moved and Sam's team moved. Um, but I think that the district still has stuff at Pleasant Valley. So, I don't Susan if you can follow up with um Sam's delegate because um that also needs to get removed non-rootics related equipment that belongs to the district. So yeah, if you could

133just let us know where that stands because I think we were supposed to get everything out um by um tomorrow, I believe. I will check with his admin assistant and I'll check with his um with Tom who is in charge of maintenance. Thank you. >> All right. You're welcome. Next is committee reports policy. Ian. >> Uh yes. Uh thank you. Um so policy met on November 20th. We discussed um pretty much all the policies that you see in the action items um queued up for tonight. And um no major changes. uh just kind of reviewed them uh just verified some of the changes that were discussed on ones that are in the second read um got in there. And then we also talked about future um referrals and um one of the things we're going

134to be doing is looking at the operational review and um comparing that with the work that we've done over the past year, year and a half and uh just kind of squaring up um a comparison between what's been recommended in the operational review versus what we've already done versus what we still uh may yet need to do. Um so that'll be sort of the guiding document for our agenda or our policy committee agendas moving forward. I'll save most of the comments as far as um the actual policies that we're voting on uh until we get to the motions. >> Okay. >> Curriculum. >> Uh yeah. So, uh, curriculum met on, um, November 3rd. Um, we have remote meetings now, so we met remotely. Um, we reviewed a few different things. Uh, the first thing was

135world language offerings. Um, we reviewed, uh, what we're offering the district, um, to the students and when. So, um, we didn't really get into elementary school, but we talked about middle school a little bit and, um, and high school and how, um, the classes aligned to, um, what the, you know, from the study that was or the, um, the, um, what was it? Um, I'm trying to think of what uh, what we did. We had a questionnaire that we sent out to parents and students a few years ago. Sorry, I was losing the word there. Um but uh but uh we just wanted to see how we aligned to that. And um I think the big takeaway was something that we knew from that from that um survey was that um you know lots of

136students wanted ASL um that aren't able to get it. I think one of the things is we don't offer ASL in uh the middle school. Um so I guess I'll I'll I'll leave it at that and we can watch the meeting minutes if you want to know more about that. Um the other thing we spent a little bit of time talking about um is we took a deep dive into the um to the AP and IB results um and class sizes to some extent um but the results on the testing over the last three years. So um this is hopefully we'll make um when the high school comes and presents to the full board um you know we kind of had the deep dive into some of those numbers in the in the curriculum. So

137hopefully we can watch those ahead of that meeting. It'll make it go a little bit smoother. Um but uh the big takeaway from that was our ECE results um and the amount of college credit compared to the other um to the other classes. Those ECE classes really do give our students a leg up. Um I think it's something like 95% of the kids that took ECE ECE classes um you know would leave the district with uh with credits that they can use towards college. And the numbers for um IB and AP are were you know quite a bit lower but those EC numbers were um surprisingly high. Um so I think that's it for curriculum. We have another meeting next week. >> All right. Thank you Dean. Uh facilities and finance. >> Yes. Uh we

138met on November 5th. Uh we discussed uh a lot of what Rita discussed. Now um at this meeting we talked about um the the operational review just as a preliminary matter. Uh the operational review of priorities uh the top 10 if you will. Uh we went over the budget calendar uh not in great detail but we were presented with the uh proposed budget uh calendar as the date stood at the end of uh October. Um a lot of discussion about the unpaid meal debt. Um this would be folks that have not signed up as free and reduced. Um and we're running a tab. It's a little alarming. So far, as of as of November 1st, uh the district is owed about $24,000. So, there was some discussion about what we could do to to get

139it um without necessarily sending people uh you know, sending uh sending folks over to people's homes and banging on their doors. Um there was also we also reviewed um Let's see what did we else did we do? Yes, operations review. Got that uh solar panels, the solar panel uh project uh that was proposed or at Fitch High School or at least applying to see if we could get into that. Uh there was a brief update on the um Charles Barnum roof. Uh that seems to be a perennial uh favorite. Uh there was an update on the robotics team move at the time and also questions regarding the um uh various maintenance matters and uh also there was a brief review about or some some discussion about theou um which we'll be discussing in the future

140uh at this body theou regarding the use of Mary Morrison's uh field the back field um the the meadow or whatever people want to refer to it as. I've called it the field in theou. So that's it. Our next meeting is so people are aware I know there's a cancellation of the December 2nd meeting. It is being moved to the first if anybody wants to play along. All right. Thank you. Next, um we met with um before the Louisiana committee with the GA and and feel free to jump in people that were there talked about special ed, the case loads on the number of hours special ed support a week. Um they said the teachers need more training on the new special ed state laws. We talked about the data dashboard and um we talked

141about that the data dashboard to celebrate all growth show highlights of the district use for good not to take info out of context and um you talked about you could probably but the only apple to apple type of test are the standard standardized test um in terms of a class size um The teachers thought the composition of the class is as important as well as the class size. And of course, the class size is in the teacher's contract. We also talked about the number of courses at the high school. Um they thought there's too many courses at the high school. We should narrow it down a little bit. And we talked about maintenance issues with which go to facilities on Monday. and just would also like to have some input on grants that are going

142to impact them. And I mean Jay and Andrea and they can jump in if I left anything out. >> No. Okay. >> Next is athletic fields. >> Uh yes. Uh so athletic fields met on November 20th as well. I was not able to attend but I did review the recording. Um and basically it was just a a a debrief of um the election, the referendum that was voted and some discussion of of moving forward into the future as far as like the future referendums, ways they could improve their communication to the public um and ways they could uh work continue to um maintain um collaborative approach with public works. Uh, I guess um the director of public works, Greg Hanover, is scheduled to retire at the end of December. So, they're anticipating some, you know,

143a period of transition there as a uh develop relationships and and and a cooperative uh uh dynamic with a with a new director coming in, whoever that may be. Um, and the December meeting for athletic fields was uh preemptively canled because it falls within the uh holiday season. >> Thank you. Um, next is Lauren. L met on um November 13th and we had legislative updates from paid executive director and general counsel she McCarthy. Uh we approved some grants. We accepted the air quality reports and we got a report from Dr. Linda Dossi. Uh she learned that teaching and learning and she gave us a presentation on design project products for solution and that is it for learn. Next on our agenda is the consent calendar. Have a motion to accept the consent calendar. So move

144I have a motion. Okay, do I have a second? >> I'll second that Sean. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. any calendar. The only thing I thought was missing was the uh the meeting on November 10th. We have it for the special meeting, the two special they don't have minutes for the regular meeting. And I'd like to thank Matthew Schuman for donating $50 to the Gen Public School mentor program. Thank you, Matthew. I know that program is near and dear to your heart. Any other comments or questions consent agenda? Okay. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say I. >> I. >> Raise your hand. I >> Okay. Any oppose? Okay, that passes n. Okay, the next item on the agenda, we have discussion possible action regarding approve policy P5113 attendance at the

145second reading. Um, can I have a motion? So moved. >> Who's that? >> John. >> I have a second. >> Second. >> Andrea. Okay. All right. Um, Emily, do you want to explain his policy? I know you worked hard on it. >> I did. I don't want to take all the credit. Uh, as I uh have explained before, I assembled a team this summer of administrators to look at revising our policy and our regulations as well as our tiered interventions. We looked at uh the CAB model policy as well as policies from across the state uh to look at this policy. When we brought it forward for first read, um I know that there were some uh we wanted to clean up the uh the policy that the draft Dr. Acriman put her uh very

146ample skills to work, cleaned it up for us. I feel like it's in great shape right now. Uh we wanted this policy to not only reflect the state uh current state uh regulations or you know the some of the statutes uh in terms of the uh updates that were made in terms of mental health days uh military students. But um we wanted it also to our our former policy which had last been updated in 2018 um kind of read like a regulation and we wanted to be it to be more like um reflective of a of a policy. Again we did update our regulations. We also updated our tiered interventions. We did we have worked very hard on this policy um as well as our whole attendance uh initiative this year. And I'm excited to

147say that as a result of that um and I know it's very early on but as 45 days in we have seen already a significant reduction in chronic absenteeism. Fingers crossed the uh remaining threequarters of the year we will continue to see that uh reduction and we will see some improved results because we know when students are in school they are more likely to learn. Any this policy? Okay. All those in favor of approving policy P5113 say I >> I'm sorry I had a little interruption there, but yes, I I didn't have anything to further comment. Um >> Okay, >> I'm in the middle of voting. I'm sorry. >> I said I'm in favor. I >> Okay. I oppos. >> Yeah. >> I Okay. Anybody opposed? >> Okay, that passes. Thank you very much. Next

148commission and possible action regarding approval of policy P 6131 um.32 4118.53 generative artificial intelligence at the second meeting 10. I have a motion um um to approve policy and I have a second ring policy P6131.3273 >> second Thomas Okay, discussion. Who wants to discuss the policy? Susan, Ian, >> I'll I'll I'll jump in and just uh say that this is um Clint and his people uh took what our notes on the last discussion and basically consolidated the policy part to the policy uh the P document and then uh created the RS the regulation um in accordance with what uh had been shifted towards um regulation. Uh so a lot of the more granular stuff and and the language that had to do with constructing the committee um we basically kind of split it um split

149the baby so to speak uh by saying that you know the board requests the superintendent or designate to establish a committee in the policy side and then on the regulation side it says the superintendent uh will let's see yeah there it is um will establish a district AI advisory committee and the committee would be specifically focused on managing the AI policy ongoing and as was noted in discussions in the previous uh board meetings and also in the committee meetings uh we all anticipate um that this is going to be a frequent revisiting um maybe even annually where we update the AI policy based on current assessments of what's going on. Thank you. >> No, thank you. >> Yeah, thanks. Um, my question is I this I don't recall clearly. Was this one of these occasions

150when we last had this in front of us? Was this one of those occasions where there was so many questions about it that it was actually withdrawn as a first reading and it would come back to us as a if you will a second first reading. So I guess is this properly a second reading or is this a new first reading? Maybe it's a difference without a or distinction without a difference. I don't know. Um to my understanding >> it was my understanding that uh it it had been pushed back to the policy committee so it would be like a second time first read as unique a situation as that may be. However, I got an email from some staff saying that they believe that it was uh that this would count as a second

151read. So I think it it it could be a distinction without a difference as you noted Dean. Um, and I I would defer to to the to the chair and and the board as far as like, you know, maybe it would take a suspension of the rules just to be safe if we wanted to pass it tonight as a second read to be sure that we dot all eyes and cross all tees. Um, but to whatever end, it's it's it's of value. Uh, I think we're in a good space with this document as it stands. I'm okay with if people want to give it notes and send it back to committee as a as a proper second read, but I do know that Clint and the IT team are eager to have something in place

152that they can use guideline to start instituting um what needs to be done as far as uh how AI is managed within the within the district. >> Yeah. I I mean I want to be practical about it too. I mean if it's a practical matter people are more or less fine with this and with the representation that we'll be back at it a number of times more more you know higher than average with a with the usual policy then um yeah I don't want to you know choose form over function um >> in the agenda it does state that it is um a second reading Joyce is usually pretty astute Joyce and Joan on that. But >> well, that's that's because the last time that was up, it was written in as a first reading,

153but as I said, my memory is that uh and I could be wrong that this was one of those where it was withdrawn. So, we didn't actually have a technical first reading. Now, again, this that may not qualify. In other words, the the withdrawal of of a quote first reading is still a first reading. You know, it may be a massive edit or a massive request or a massive rebellion, if you will, against the first reading, but no matter what happened, it counts as a first reading whether we like it or not because it's already come up once. >> Got it. >> Yeah. Okay, I'm going to go to Mike. Does he have his hands up? >> Yes. Uh, thank you. Actually, when this AI policy came up, I was thinking like others that my

154goodness, we're going to be revisiting this every year at least. Uh, but I think this policy along with the regulations, the the demarcation was very effective that while the the polic will change very quickly, the policy seems like it could last a little bit. Um so I think um the most important thing is that um as the um GI committee meets that it it reports out regularly uh to the board and if there were major regulation changes. Um and and and Dean, thank you for bringing up the um that that process. Um I I would suggest if there is any real question on that that um we we could certainly this doesn't seem like we need this in um right away. Uh so if there's any uh question that people are uneasy about, it seems

155like we could definitely approve a first reading tonight and just have it come back through the next time. I I'm fine, I guess, either way, unless it's setting some kind of precedent that we could do a first and second reading um in one meeting, which uh and use that as general practice, which I would not be uncomfortable with. Thanks. >> Great. Thank you, Mike. Um, >> um, yeah. So, um, I still I we had talked about this a couple of months ago. Um but in um the last paragraph on the first page, the the section that's readed out um or that's lined through with red, the board of education suggests that the committee be compromised of administrators, teaching staff, parents, and board members who will seek guidance from the district as necessary. Um I still

156believe that that should be in this policy. I know that there's um referral to it in regulation, but the regulation we have no um control over, you know, I mean that the regulation could change the day after that we um we approve this policy. Um not that I think that that will happen. I mean the regulation does does stand for something but I believe it's important um to include that um just so that we have a little bit um a little tighter guard rails on this policy um just because it is so significant and it is affecting um like everyone in our district the students and teachers. So um I I'll listen to hear other comments on that for now. >> Thank you. Uh, Dr. A, >> that is exactly the paragraph I wanted to

157talk about. >> I I brought this up at the at the meeting and they said, "Well, it's going I didn't expect this to be a second reading." So, they the committee said, "Well, it's going to the board for a first reading anyway. Tell them then." So my my concerns are still that this does not u belong in the policy the the designation of a committee and all that sort of thing that belongs in regulations. So I'm opposed to that entire paragraph and I believe that they uh that um it has to go in regulations. It's not a policy, it's a regulation. Okay. Thank you, Dr. A. Um, Amarie, >> I just want to speak to, you know, I I want to respect the process whether it's a first read or second read, but I do

158want to speak to the um urgency around this. Um, and you know, Clint has been everyone has is really talking about the importance of this work and uh, Clint has a committee or at least has some members of the committee in terms of the educators who really want to start to get after this and certainly Clint has a has a plan for for some of the work that he wants to do. Um but um right now we're kind of held up really because we can't do anything until this policy um takes like the next step whether it be you know it's adopted moves forward whatever term we want to use for it. Um and I know that it seems to me that the board recognizes the importance of this policy. Um but uh we really

159have been um kind of put in a um we really can't move forward because of um you know it seems like the we're being held up really because of this one paragraph. And I'm not saying it's not important. Um but if we really do believe this work is important um I think we have to um come to some kind of compromise about this particular piece. So um or and and then I guess eventually too or today whether this is a first read or second read but I do want to speak to the urgency. um we do want to move forward and and start to address um the work around AI um and and we have some preliminary ideas and um certainly some people identified for the committee, but we can't get to that um if

160we're still going to get hung up on on these types of things. Thank you. >> Uh Bev, >> um I was just looking at the um minutes for the August meeting. That was the first reading. The September 22nd meeting was the second reading and that's the one that failed. So, uh, this would be a legitimate second reading. >> Thank you, Jay. >> Uh, Ian, >> uh, thank you. Yeah. So, I just wanted to say that, um, in in principle, I support what Adrian said. I think it there is a place for us to put some specificity in the policy as to what sort of committee we'd like to see that made up. Um, however, at this point, if the committee the policy committee um is going to do that, we would need a vote from

161the board directing us to put that specific language in there. um or we do the edit live tonight and vote on it as such as amended. Um my concern is that I do appreciate the fact that there there are things that got to get done there. There's the regulations have to get in place. Um and this is going to be a living document. So it could be a thing if we're not satisfied with the shape of what the committee takes in the next year or so. um you know this this could come back before the board and adjustments could be made. So I'm I'm trying to find a a decent middle way forward here. Um, so if if there are people that feel strongly about that language being in the policy side of this document,

162then I would say make the motion and uh and we'll see if there's a second and we'll have the discussion and vote whether or not we want to put that language in tonight and pass it as a second read. That would be the most efficient thing to do, I think, in order to just kind of move this along one way or the other. um or failing that we just kind of pass it as it stands now as a second read, put it in place, watch how it unfolds over the next year and if it needs to be pulled back into policy for revision um we can do that in the future. Thank you, >> hand up. >> Did you call me? >> Yeah, Beverly. Um, I'm vote I recognize the urgency of this. I'm voting

163for it no matter what. Um, and u Ian is exactly right. We can come back and look at it later. I was just uh saying what the policy committee said to me and I did what I what they told me to do and I'm voting for it. So that's that. >> All right. One else. >> Yeah. So G given that discussion um and and this just goes back to something um that I that like we just passed a cell phone policy and then some regulations had changed um shortly after that in one of the schools and I went back and read the cell phone policy um and there was really no teeth in it um and the regulations that didn't really make a lot of sense um were fine with the policy and would have

164the regulations or the policy wouldn't have done anything to to change what had what had happened. Um, and it turns out that that was a a mistake or maybe a miscommunication in the in the regulation change. But, um, but I I'm concerned about that with this policy. So, at at this point, I think I'm just going to make the motion to um to amend the policy um and specifically to add back in the language in the last paragraph of the first page um to say the board of education parenthesis board or uh suggests that the committee be compromised of administrators, teaching staff, parents, and board members that in parenthesis who will seek guidance from district council as necessary. >> Do I have a second on that amendment? >> Second, Thomas. >> I would just ask

165Adrian, do you have that typed out by chance? Would you be able to put that up in the chat so I could just pull the language over? >> Um, yeah. It's admin. It's basically the second it's uh to reinstate the second sentence in the last paragraph. >> Uh even though I'm not in favor of telling this to uh I think that this that sentence should be in regulation. The only thing that helps me out is to say suggest and that's only a suggestion. She doesn't have to do it. He or she doesn't have to do it. Uh but I'm not in favor of uh putting something I think regulations into policy vote on the amendment. We have an amendment that says the board that wants to add uh to add the board of education board

166suggests the committee comprised of administrative teach parents and board members that in parentheses do we'll seek guidance from district council as necessary. That's the amendment. I'll have a take a vote. All those in favor of the amendment. Uh I'll I'll take a roll call vote. It's easier for me. Adrien. >> Uh yes. I'm in favor. >> You got Adrian. Okay. Ian in favor. Adrian. >> Yes. I'm in favor. >> I'm sorry. Who? Oh, >> me. No, I'm not in. Me, Jen, or Jay? >> Can you all hear me? >> Well, you're muffled sometimes. >> Okay. I'm going on. >> Uh, I'm in favor. >> Okay. Yes. >> Okay. Go ahead, Jen. >> Oh, me. No, I'm not. >> Bey, I don't know if you see my hand. >> No, he's going down to >> Okay,

167vote. Go ahead. Are you okay? >> Well, I I wonder if um if Adrian could read it again. his if Adrian could read his amendment again. >> Yeah. So, I would like to make a motion to I would like to amend the motion motion to reinstate the sentence. Um, this would be from the first read. The board of education board suggests the committee be compromised of administrators, teaching staff, parents, and board members that in parenthesis will seek guidance from district council as necessary. Um my my question then is I don't know why we're um for expediency. I said I was going to vote for this, but I don't know why we just don't say an est a committee will be established or a committee will um do all those things that you said it was

168going to do. And that can go in policy. That's fine. But I I'm I'm still upset with the uh idea of of designating the or requesting the superintendent to do it. Just say that the committee is going to be >> going to do those things. >> Point of order. We are in the middle of a roll call vote. >> Ask for I got it. >> Say that again. So either >> then I'm going to vote no. No, I'm going to vote no in that case >> because I think we have enough people. >> Okay. Jay, >> no. >> Yes. >> Mike. Yes. No passing. Okay. So now let's take a vote on the main on the motion as on the policy as amended. Um I'll go down once again. This is yes or no. No

169disc. Yes. Adrian. Yes or no for the policy as amended. >> Yes. Um, Dr. A. >> No. >> Yes. Jen. >> Oh, me. Um, no. >> Night. >> Yes. >> Jay. >> Yes. >> And myself. Okay. Beth. I'm sorry. Okay. Item is new business question and possible action regarding F26 budget transfers between functions in the amount of 636, $42. And >> I'm never mind. I'll I'll deal with it later. >> Yeah. >> Be we're just having a hard time uh understanding what you're saying. Your mic is very muffled and fuzzy and >> Did we lose Beth? >> We lost Beth. Yes. What was the final vote? >> Adrian, um, do you want to step in as vice for a minute and just give us a tally of the final vote? Did you happen to catch

170it? What it was? >> No, I wasn't keeping track. I apologize. >> Adrien, if it's okay, I think Joan should note compromised as comprised. for both motions or just the one >> everywhere that everywhere that compromise might appear it should be comprised. I don't think we want a compromised committee. >> Agreed 100%. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Well said. >> Got it. >> Thank you. And if everyone could tell me how did Bev vote on each motion, the amendment and the main motion as amended because I really didn't hear it. >> I know the second one was a yes. I'm not sure on the first one. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I can't recall. >> I think she was yes on both >> because I think the first time around it was Dr. Arian, myself

171and Jay who voted against. And then the second time around it was just Dr. Acriman and myself who were against. And I think Jay >> Jen, I appreciate that. >> I think you're right. >> Yeah, I believe Bev was in favor on both times around as well. >> I think she's back on. >> Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> All right. Did Joan have a question? >> We were just trying to run the tally of the vote and she was asking if you had voted yes for both the amendment and and the amended motion. >> I voted yes for the amendment, no for the amendment and yes for the policy as amended. >> Understood. And could I just ask a tally? You you had the tally as far as I um >> seven yes,

172two nos. policy as amended seven yes and two the two nos was Dr. A and J the voting yes. >> Very well. Thank you. >> Jen, thank you. >> Anytime Joan and do you have for the amendment with vote was >> Yes, I got it. I got it. >> Okay. Any questions? Just give me a call. All right. The next item under new business is um to approve the FY26 budget transfers between functions in amount of $636,42. Do I have a motion to approve that? >> So moved. Thomas second. >> Do I have a second? >> Second, Beth. >> Okay. Thank you, Sh. All right. discussion on um Ian, can you take that down for me, please? >> Thank you. Uh is Vita still on? >> Nope. Hasn't been on for a while. >> Okay.

173Well, we heard Vita's discussion on the um transfer. Any questions? Any questions? >> No, I think we asked. >> No. Okay. All those who in favor of approving the FY26 budget transfers between functions in the amount of $636,42 say I. I. >> I. I. Opposed. Extensions. Okay. Approved. >> All right. That's approved. The next item is discussion and possible action regarding approval of policy P6141 curriculum design/development as a first reading. Um, do I have a motion to approve that policy as a first reading? >> Moved. Adrian second. >> Second. >> Okay. Dr. Mancini, do you want to walk us through this policy? >> Sure. I'm happy to do that. So, I've been working with the uh curriculum uh committee, the board's curriculum committee um to make a revision to this policy. The first revision here

174is a revision that we made simply because um the committee of the whole uh we generally do not uh vote at committee of the whole. I think this was something that was a holdover from a while ago. I think uh in may maybe previous years that was something that was done but at least since um I've become a part of Graten public schools you no longer we no longer have votes during committee of the whole. So in number three here uh we made a change that uh that when we bring curriculum forward we changed that uh that it's going to the full board instead of to the committee of the whole. And then finally in step five we've actually eliminated step five in an effort to streamline the process a little bit instead of going

175back to the curriculum uh subcommittee or the the board curriculum committee. um it would skip that that process because they um the uh when you have a a new course, it actually goes to the curriculum committee um at one point during the process. Instead, the final review would go to the full board for final approval. >> Okay, any questions? >> Do you want to add anything? Um, I just have a question for Ann Marie. >> Wait, wait one second. Ian, do you want to add anything? >> Uh, no. Actually, I was going to defer to Adrian anyway because he was, uh, this came from the curriculum committee. We made no changes in policy. Uh, curriculum went through it a few times, so I defer to him for any further. >> Okay. Okay. Go ahead, Aiden.

176>> Yeah. Ann Marie. Um so online under three presented to the full board for approval of drafting a curriculum. I I was under the impression after that meeting that it was going to be the curriculum committee um that would approve drafting the curriculum. I mean I understand the reason to have it full board. Um but I I thought it was um was the committee that we had talked about. >> Yeah. That's that's never been part of the process, Adrian. It's always been that the first two steps. Um the curriculum committee goes for review and recommendation. That's you know we didn't make any revisions there. Then it's brought to again it was always brought previously to the committee of the whole. We made the change to the full board just because again the process of voting

177um the committee of the whole there's no uh vote there. Um, and so this is the existing process with that minor change and then this the curriculum is is written and then it would go to the full board for final approval. >> All right. I mean I I don't disagree with with um with this this uh process. I I that's just different than my memory. But um but that fails me sometimes. So thank you. There's a nifty flow chart on the back. Did you have your hand up, Susan? I just said there's a a nice little flowchart on the back. >> Okay. Any other questions or comments? >> I I do. Um my hand is up. >> Go ahead, Dr. A. Um, my memory is like like um like Adrian's I I guess what I

178what I what I just wanted to clarify was that now that I'm thinking about it is that we when we when we we don't vote on it at the U curriculum committee. However, now that I think about it, we vote to send it to the board, which means that we approved it. Is that my Am I understanding that correctly, Mary and Marie? Um, Dr. Acriman, um, there is no So, again, I never made a ch I have not made any changes to that part of the process, but I appreciate you asking that question. Um, I think where the confusion is is, for example, the last time we brought a a course forward, um, uh, there I I I think I asked for approval technically and um according to the process there was no approval that's

179necessary. It's brought forward for review and recommendation and then based on that review it's then as a part of that process then brought forward to the full board. >> So that was my misunderstanding of the process. But this these first three steps actually the first four here have not been changed at all. >> Okay. So I'm just clarifying. So in my mind when we say we're going to send it to the full board >> um for a vote that means that it went through us and we're satisfied with it and we're so satisfied with it we're going to send it to the full board fully expecting that they will approve it. Yeah, I mean at that point I'm hoping that of course I've done my due well myself it says here myself or would be

180Susan in this case we've done our due diligence in making sure that you know uh we've brought forward a quality product >> to you. Now again sometimes you know things happen uh but um I'm hoping that you know when a a course is brought forward to me um you know I've done a my due diligence in making sure that it's been well prepared that there are no um that there are no holes you know you sometimes you're going to ask questions and maybe there's more exploration that needs to be done um and that will be part of the review process if we feel during that process that it's not ready to go during to the full board, then we wouldn't bring it forward to the full board. >> Review and recommendation. I think that's really

181important too, Andrea. >> When it goes to you. >> Okay. >> That's my uh that's my understanding. >> Yeah. And there was of course this year that um that I believe that we didn't move forward because uh based on the review and the recommendation process, we recommended that that we not move it forward that it it wait a year. Yeah. >> Okay. Any other discussion? >> Any question? >> Okay. See hand. So, um, go ahead. >> All right. Um, yeah, I just wanted to circle back. So I believe like this this um process is similar to like how the policy committee, you know, will pass something as a first read, but the board ultimately has the big thumbs up and or down. Um but Adrian, you were saying that you feel like there's a andrea

182too is you feel like there's something different in here or does this basically correspond to your understanding what the process should be? No. Yes. I'm I'm with I'm good with it. >> You're good with it. And Adrian, how are you with this? >> Yes. Uh um I'm good with it. It's just different than I remembered from the meeting. Um but the but what's written out here, I support. >> Okay. Very well then. >> All right. If you and and who else is on the curriculum committee? I'm sorry I'm blanking right now. >> That would be me. Mike Whitney. >> All right. >> I have my hand up, by the way. >> And he has his hand up. So, are you done Ian? I'll be calling Mike. >> Well, my my I was curious to hear

183what he was going to say anyway. So, >> okay. Are you done? >> Yeah, I'm good. >> Okay, Mike. >> Thanks. Yeah. Um, so it was presented to us and we did discuss it. Of course, that had to go to the the policy committee. One one question would be like often when we um approve policies we also see like the changes to the regulations and so in this case it'd be there is the flowchart I think that's part of the regulation but maybe the the handbook is too. Um so that's one thing. Um me personally um I' I'd like to discuss that number five point more that we're crossing out going back to the curriculum committee for review. And Emry, you mentioned that well if a new course is proposed, we have to approve it

184anyway. Uh but then when I go to that flowchart, which is on the next page, that's part of the regulation, not not um the policy. It just I don't see that in there. I don't see that step in there that uh about like when we're approving the course other than the the first time the board approved a the writing of a curriculum. >> Um so I didn't make the revision to this flowchart. I have to say I think Erica did. Um but if it is eliminated from the from five, it wouldn't be reflected on this part of the chart. But it could just be an error. I I'd have to go back and and um work with Erica on that. It should be reflected in this first part. So where where would the the course

185approval >> the course approval would go in the in the beginning in this first part of the chart when it goes forward you know with the um if you look at in the beginning steps let me see here board curriculum I don't know I can't I I really can't see that chart to be honest with you it's really hard for me to read thank Yeah, right there. What's What's highlighted >> for review and recommendation? >> See, that's what's highlighted in blue. >> Yes, thank you. But that so that look by the curriculum committee is entirely before the curriculum's written. I I really think >> that's before the that's before the curriculum is written. >> Yeah. So, so my personal view as the committee member is I'd like to to see the results of that beaten

186and um have our read on it before it goes and review of it before it goes to the board for approval. Um I think ultimately that would save time. I so that's the process right now as it exists and I think that's you know kind of what I presented to the curriculum committee before it even went to the policy committee but um maybe I was not clear about that. I thought I was that that's the step that we had that I'm proposing revising. you you certainly were we're were very clear about it but as a curriculum committee we are not in the um we do not get to vote on the policy before it goes to the the whole board. Um so I I had a differing opinion on that. We did discuss it but

187um I I still have that differing opinion >> and so I'm just saying it now. Um yeah and and I think uh uh part of the approach here is that we want a process that's streamlined so that reasonably um uh something get could get presented in say September or maybe October and then um have the curriculum um written over the following summer. Right. So, right now, and I I do want to emphasize this, um, and I understand why there are, you know, guidelines or guardrails in place, but right now, it is close to it's an 18-month process. So, in theory, if we have a course that a the middle school or the high school wants to propose, it basically will be 2 years before that course is put in place for um for students. And

188I I do believe that, you know, respectfully that's a problem. >> Yeah. And I guess I won't have a back and forth much, but so uh my understanding though, I think is um a lot of the curriculum often is written during the summer. Maybe I'm incorrect on that. Um >> not necessarily. >> Yeah. and but but if it's written during the summer then that course by nature wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't come come to be offered the next year. Um uh I mean where I work I am accustomed to the the two-year timeline I must say because it gets approved from one academic year and uh and then it it comes in the next. So it might be 2 years or 18 months. So that's not un unusual to me just because of the realities of when

189people have time to write things and the the layers of approval it it goes through. Um I I do know that you know we do get kind of rush um like oh this needs to be approved um and and like those kind of filter in um after October for instance right and so there there's some of that timing too but um >> you know so is is the curriculum no longer going to be written during the summer because >> no it really depends on the course. So for example we know that um Mr. Mr. Mor for example came forward with a course to us um or actually it was a revision but it was a major revision right so we we categorized it as a as a new course because it was such a major

190revision now he and one of his colleagues are writing it because we have significant time uh this winter break they're going to be writing it during the winter break um now that's you know that doesn't happen all the time but that was something that they asked because they wanted to put a course in place next year. And they believe that um as a part of our uh process, they might be able to especially if we're able to revise the process this year, they might be able to get that course, you know, written and then through our revised process um you know, and then offer that course next year. Um and that's the um I believe it's the IB personal and professional skills course. That's right. >> Yeah, that's it. >> Anything else? So, what are

191you suggesting, Mike? Well, just just for me, I'd suggest keeping in number five because that uh curriculum committee meeting, as long as it's happening during the school year when uh the teachers are present, um I don't see that as delaying the process, uh I guess at most a month, uh but it could be just a matter of weeks if it precedes the next uh BOE regular meeting. Uh and I think it could make that process go more smoothly. Um there is a issue if like basically the summer months it's hard to uh present uh new curriculum to the board or or like the finished curriculum to the board because the the people that have developed it often are are um on summer vacation. Uh so so it is a tight timeline um like getting it

192done in May or June for instance. Uh, but I just don't think adding having the curriculum committee still in at close to the finish line adds much time. >> Adrian, >> yeah. Um, let me since this is my memory, which I think is wrong, but um, how about or would it I would be curious to see what people thought about basically eliminating three. Um so present to the board curriculum subcommittee for re review recommendations and approval of drafting. Um so making two the approval to drafting. That way it only comes to the board once um at the end. The problems with that is that the board wouldn't be voting on it um at the onset of the curriculum. Um they would basically just get a shot to shoot it up or down after we've written

193the curriculum. It's not incredibly expensive to write a curriculum. Um, but it probably would be um, I guess frustrating to the staff to do it to to to, you know, reject a curriculum after it was written. Um, it would probably be upsetting to staff. So, I' I'd want to be cognitive of that possibility. Um, but that that was actually what I thought in from my memory, which, you know, this is a couple of months ago now. So, but I'd be curious to see what what others thought of that. No, I I keeping three in. I should be voting um on the approval of drafting a curriculum. Uh Amory, >> I see the dean has his hand up, but then I'll I'll let him go and then I I'd like to make a comment. >> Okay,

194Dean. >> Oh, yeah. Real quick, I was going to say an answer to Adrian. Yeah, just we don't have a policy on this or but maybe we should do like like policy um have a first and second reading or effectively have a first and second reading on curriculum. >> Well, this this policy is a first reading right here, Dean. No, what I mean what I mean is with respect with with respect to correct I mean to address Adrian's concern >> you know the if if the if the if the board has reason to want a like a first shot and last shot at a policy first and second reading >> then maybe we should have something like that for for curriculum as well some >> you actually do with three and six you are approving

195it to move forward to draft and then you're f doing a final approval. So, you really do have that twostep, >> right? Yeah, that that that's that's that there. So, I'd like be in favor of keeping three and six. >> Yeah, I'm in favor of keeping three and six. Um, Dr. Mancini. >> Yeah, I I I mean, I I certainly respect the decision of this board, but I think where I'm a little bit frustrated is um you know, several months ago, I brought this forward to the curriculum committee. they were in support. Um, and so now, um, I'm confused by the fact that, um, some of the members don't remember what we talked about. I certainly, um, did not make any changes from the time that we, um, discussed this as a committee to now.

196Um, and, um, you know, everything has been the same. Uh, so I'm kind of confused by that. Um, ultimately, I mean, I'm going to honor as the the decision that this board makes. Um, but I'm trying to I am trying to do um the best for the students and for the teachers. This is something that um was brought to me by our staff that this process needs to be revised um because it's uh held up um progress. And so um yeah, I I I think I'm you know I I'm a little bit frustrated if if I can speak honestly u in terms of you know this getting held up. Um yeah, I mean that's really all I have to say about that. All right, Dr. A and then Mike and then let's move on and

197take a vote. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, no, I I brought some history um saying that some of the board members in the past were saying um you know, why on earth am I sitting through this twice? So, and my my u question was was um simply about my own memory of this. So, I'm voting for it. So, but I I just wanted to clear that up. I said I was always voting for the last one too, but I am voting for this one. >> All right, Mike. >> Thanks. Um, I do have a good memory of the the meeting. Um, and and one part of important part is the and I'll say it again curriculum committee um could we could talk about this but we couldn't vote on it. it has to go to

198the the policy committee and so um I the by definition the curriculum committee um couldn't agree or disagree to anything really uh we could discuss points about it um and I think that number five for me is is essential and in some form um and then in terms of the timeline um the course you mentioned the um the IB personal professional skills um if that if that curriculum is developed over um you know winter break uh my I can see that timeline neatly folding in within a year. I don't however see us being able it's been brought up um that we're going to have a robotics course uh that's going to be seek approval and to be offered um the next school year 2026 2027 school year. I don't see that happening at this point.

199And that's not because of this process we're talking about. It's the timing the it's the the timing of the introduction of like the starting of the process and anything that's written over the summer. Um I I just just couldn't possibly I think u be introduced by that following school year which would be like a like a couple of weeks or a month later. >> Mike, can I just add something? Not all our courses are written. Um like our project lead the way some of our IB AP courses though and ECE those are all kind of delivered to us because they have parameters that have to be done. So even with the first robotics which is the you know the group that our robotics team is with they actually have a curriculum. So there's already developed

200curriculums that we can take a look at that don't need the process of going out to write it because it's already been written. Hey, Susan, can you do me a favor? Can you raise your hand like everybody else? I know this been tended, but I can you just raise your hand? >> I've been very quiet and I'm not feeling real good. I'm very sick, so I'm just >> I'm just asking you politely if you can raise your hand like everyone else. >> Okay, go ahead, Mike. You finished? >> Um, yeah, I'm fine. >> Okay. Um, Jen, >> um, I don't know if this is possible, um, but and I'm not part of either of the two committees, right? But, um, maybe when it's brought up for voting, and I know they can't take an official

201vote at the committee level, but on our agenda, I've seen this somewhere where it says the committee recommends in favor of voting for this or the committee recommends not in favor of voting for this because um if there's a general agreement um at the committee level um we should know what it is rather than like um a hijack's not the right word but um getting the rest um once it's presented then getting something um trying to get like all of the votes rechanged. Um so um I don't know if that's possible. It's just a thought. >> Okay. um for my um >> you know how I feel about it like every time I feel like we're going through like something like this like we listen to it then there's um you know agreements disagreements and

202then we send it back and um really it should be decided upon how that recommendation is going to go forward rather than all of us having to listen um um and get things restated. Sorry, it's more of an opinion rather than a comment to the process. >> Well, this is this is a first reading, so this is going to go back to the policy committee anyway. And as for myself, if this is what um Dr. Mancini is asking for and she thinks this is the best for the district and for the students and the staff would like to have it this way. I'm in favor of the policy >> and I agree with that. That's why I'm just saying like it's um very frustrating that as a person regardless if it's our assistant superintendent or

203the chair or whomever is bringing it forward, if you think you have your committee supporting you and then you come in here and then it gets derailed, it's not fair cuz I don't know how long they spent on on it, right? It's It's not fair to the people on the committee who put their time in and it's not fair for the rest of the board. >> All right. Thank you, Jim. Um, let's take a vote so we can move on. Um, I'll do a vote called vote and this way I'll have the vote for the numbers for sure. Um, it's going to be a yes for the policy or no. Yes to move it, yes to approve it for a first reading or no. Um, Adrian. >> Yes. >> Okay. At the A. >> Yes.

204>> Jen, >> yes. >> John, >> yes. >> Mike, >> no. >> Jay. >> Yes. I'm a yes. Ian, >> I'm just gonna abstain on this one for a minute. Yeah. >> Okay, Dean. >> Yes. >> Okay, it goes back for a second reading. All right, thank you very much. Uh, the next item on the agenda is >> Bev, sorry, just >> happened. >> Well, since it's coming back for a second read to the policy committee, is that correct? >> Mhm. because this was the first meeting. >> Yep. Understood. Uh so I just would ask anyone that has any specific edits that they'd like to have discussed to send those to me so that I can uh >> adjudicate it clearly. >> Thank you. Everybody heard Ian would like if you have any edits please

205send it back send it to him so they can discuss it at curriculum and then we won't have all this discussion when it comes back to um board as Jen has stated it should be cleaned up at in curriculum. All right the next item is um >> you mean policy. >> Excuse me. >> I think you mean policy. Yeah, policy, right? Okay. But I think the curriculum people had a say in this too because Adrian's in curriculum. He's not on policy. So, I don't know if you curriculum people had a say on this or not, but I'm moving on from here. um discussion and possible action regarding approval of policy P6146 graduation requirements. That's the first reading. That's attachment 12. Um can I get a motion for that? >> So moved. >> Is that you,

206Sean? >> Yes. >> Okay. Do I have a second? >> Second. All right. Um, Amarie, >> yeah, thanks uh, thanks again for giving me the opportunity to talk about this. Uh, I want to be very clear that, um, this was also brought forward to curriculum. Um, and it was discussed in depth. Um, then it was brought forward to policy. Um, and specifically, um, I think this was this was generated maybe from a full board meeting. um the topic or the need to look at our graduation requirements. I think that that was sometime last spring. Um and the need arose out of the fact that currently Fitch uh Fish High School has 27 credits for graduation that are required while the state department of ed requires 25. Um in doing some additional research we learned um

207that currently uh the ESSA milestone for Fitch is I believe um 80 80 or 91% um uh that's the milestone they need to hit for four-year graduation. And um the milestone that they reached was um 88.9%. So we're not meeting our targeted graduation rate. Um and we looked into that and I looked I worked with the high school team to look into that. We found that um the majority of the students that are not meeting the gradu or that are not graduating are failing classes related to world language. Now that's common for students that are students that that have special needs often struggle with world language classes. And so one of the recommendations that we are making in terms of the reduction in graduation uh requirements is um to go from 2.0 um credits in

208in world language down to 1.0 credits. And then um we also noticed that Fitch has an additional elective credit that's recommended. And so we were um we are recommending that Fitch reduce its elective credits from 4.0 to 3.0. Uh, and again, I want to make sure that I emphasize that this was brought to curriculum first, reviewed with them. We actually talked about several different options, ultimately came to those two recommendations, and then I brought it forward to policy um just actually a couple of days ago, reviewed um reviewed these recommendations, and uh now here we are. >> Okay, Mike, you have your hand up. Okay. Any questions? Ian, did you want to add anything or you or you? Nope. Any questions? I I just have one question. I don't and I don't it's on um

209page number six. Wait, let me say yeah page number six for credits >> and it says >> the document um be but go ahead and and ask me about it and I'll I'll find page number six into in the document. >> Okay. So it says equivalent to 120 total hours and the 200 minutes are crossed out, right? Mhm. >> But on the next page, um, you keep the 200 minutes in on the third paragraph down. >> That probably should be a an edit that we made. Probably just an oversight on my part. >> Okay. I just was wondering. >> Thank you for catching that. >> Okay. U Mike, do you have your hand up? >> Yes, I do. Sorry about that. Um, I was just wondering in the policy committee. So So I'm supportive of

210of reducing the the credits. The one thing um that I was wondering about is if we could speed up the the timeline and and we discussed it in curriculum committee and I won't go through that, but um it was this timeline you're getting is actually I think the uh best representation of of what the the high school team's looking for. Uh but I was wondering if that discussion was was had in policy because there's some urgency I think towards improving graduation rates. Uh but this reduction in credits really doesn't come in I think I can't remember graduating class maybe of 2029. >> So I wonder if that discussion was >> yeah we did not talk about that in Paul. Uh we did for uh briefly we talked about why it was the class of 2029

211and thanks again for bringing that up. Um the reason why we didn't um uh kind of apply this to other classes is because those classes are within their program of study. And so, um, I know one of the things that we talked about, and I can't remember if it was during curriculum or for in in another meeting, um, but this has been brought up previously is, um, there was some concern about students graduating early, um, and so, um, if we were to change, for example, with the current juniors or sophomores, um, and change like, you know, the these students have already maybe met their world language requirement or met another requirement and we were to make changes is those students may be able to to graduate early or it may impact their program of studies

212in another way. And so, um, the best thing to do usually, and again, I've seen this, um, I've certainly been part of other districts where we've made changes to graduation requirements. Um, you usually don't make those changes unless you're making them to the freshman class or usually the incoming class like eighth graders that are going to be coming into the high school. Um, just because again, the students are are into their program of studies. they've started accumulating their credits and it just it messes things up basically. >> Thank you. I just want kind of draw that out because it's, you know, it's a positive change that we're looking for. It's going to have some time to occur, but that's to avoid uh negative unintended consequences that were easily foreseeable by by you all. >> Thank

213you, Mike. Ian. >> Uh yeah, I just wanted to kind of echo what Mike was saying uh first off and and and what Ann Marie was saying. Yeah, we did discuss it briefly and and it's basically like a phased a phased out approach. Um so that everyone can follow similar track lines. Um so uh the one and one question this occurred to me and I apologize. I I kind of talked about a little bit during policy committee but I didn't really kind of land someplace with it. Um but um reducing the world language requirements. There are still some colleges that require um a certain amount of world language uh in order to to get um to not have to take classes um on a college level in world language. Like um the college I went

214to way back when was three years. If you had three years in high school, you didn't have to take any in college. Now, I know a lot of those standards have changed and a lot of it schoolbyschool basis and this may not be a thing that goes into policy, but just I wanted to kind of throw it out there for people to think about how to approach it is like how do we make sure that parents and students are fully aware that they have to do their own due diligence in regards to making sure that if they don't want to take foreign language in college, they have to verify with the colleges that they're looking to apply to or they have to kind of do some forward thinking on those requirements if they want to

215try to avoid that. So, I just want to kind of throw that out there as a nugget. Thank you. >> Marie, could it be like um is it like most colleges require three years of foreign languages? So, >> so most colleges do not require it. They recommend it. So, um just until a couple of years ago, the state department of ed didn't even require a world language as a credit. Um that was all of kind of electives. Um this year it's just in the last couple of years that um they're requiring a 1.0 credit in world language. Uh again it's highly recommended from colleges that students take world language. Uh you know but um this is not something that has been required until recently. We want students to take world language of course but I

216think that colleges do recognize that a lot of students study u struggle with world language um instruction especially those students with special needs. And I think that's why they, you know, um the state department of ed has always hesitated to require um world language instruction. >> Dean, >> yeah. Uh yeah, I was going to say that uh echoing what what Ian said or jumping off of that one. Um yeah, I don't have a problem with having a minimum um of one credit for the world language. I would like to think that students who are collegebound will do some advanced planning. It's true that some may not get to may not figure that out in Pilton maybe later, but they they have I think at that point if they don't figure out that they're going to

217go to college by their junior or senior year, they probably have other uh things that they have to wrap up uh or problems that they have to deal with other than oops, I only took one year of a world language. I know my oldest got bitten by that. He took as little as possible. I don't remember what he took. He took Spanish in high school, but apparently not enough. So, when he went to for his undergrad degree, he had to take uh one more year of Spanish and that actually made the difference because he was a freshman. made the difference between um it would have been Sumakumloud but it wound up being Magnaumloud because he figured ah it's a Spanish so he got B's >> and this is where we have to really work with

218our counselors and make sure our counselors are are educating our students and our families properly. >> Yeah. Right. All right. Anything else, Dean? >> That's enough. >> All right, Adrian. Yeah. And just on the foreign language thing um and this kind of goes in again to um you know like offering ASL to anywhere the the need or the desire for it um because some kids and and I'll say this for myself um when I went through uh foreign language in high school um have a really difficult time with it. Um their brains just aren't wired to process language and some people process it really well. Um, so I, you know, I, as far as the credits, I agree with going down, but as far as having kids successful in foreign language, I think offering things

219that they are interested in um, and that they can be successful in um, might help resolve that that desire to have enough foreign language. Um the the one other thing that I was going to say and I had kind of brought this up before um in the curriculum meeting but the um you know we're making the completion of the my personal project one credit in this um and that right now is a half a credit and it's a pass fail. Um, it's a past fail and I think it's going to stay that way. But, you know, I I had some concerns about that uh maybe not being rigorous enough since we're also dropping to 25 credits, but we're adding this um personal project. Um, I mean, I I'm I'm still supportive of this policy as

220a whole, but but I have some some reservations based on that. And then um Ann Marie maybe you can remind me but it says completion of the my personal project one credit but since that's only half a credit where does the the other half is >> the other half comes from um >> global something >> global citizenship. >> Yeah. Global citizenship. Yeah. >> That's a separate class. Why would that um not be listed out separately? >> It's not listed there. Isn't don't I have the document? >> Sorry that I don't have it out in front of me. I'm just >> I have it all outlined here and of course I don't have it in front of my face, >> but if you if you look at page five on 6146, it says, you know, >>

221hold on a second. >> Physical education, one credit. Health and safety education, one credit. >> Should be it should be right here. >> Completion of the my project, one credit. >> Yeah, global citizenship is the other five. >> Yeah, but it's not listed. It's not listed. >> Not in the >> No, because I edited my paper. >> Yeah, it says it just says one credit completion of the my personal project and and I also have um a little bit the the state requires a capstone project. So, I don't know. Yeah. Um >> do we have to call it the MYP project or can't we just call it a personal project? because I think it was also there was some discussion on whether there was a military um and Mike maybe can can um weigh in

222on this because I think this was your comment in the committee. Um so underneath this and I don't I don't know what document that you have but um I think the original memo that I created that went to the curriculum committee and then I don't know what what what translated in terms of how it moved forward to policy but if you remember the original um document that I created for curriculum it laid out under mastery experience it's point the 1.0 0 is the mastery it and then it's broken down for 0.5 for the personal project 0.5 for global citizenship and then underneath it it says students can take naval science >> one to meet this requirement and so I'll make sure um again for whatever reason I don't have the um the way it looks

223in policy but I will make sure that it it's reflected that way um in the final version. Yeah, because document that we got in a bought packet, it doesn't have that. But I saw that on another document. That's how I knew to write it in on this document because I saw it on another document. >> I will work with Erica on that. >> I just assume that she kind of took what what was written here. So, I'll make sure that that translates over accordingly. >> Anything else, Adrian? Yeah, I mean this is a first read, so we can um you know, we can we can you know, we can just take that note, I guess, and and just pick some of the stuff. Um but I again, I would I would just be interested in

224just getting rid of the MYP and calling it a personal project. So um so that there is some flexibility to to do something else. >> Well, there's flexibility for the naval science students. It's specific to my because that's the requirement. That's what students are completing. is that task. >> Yeah, right now it's a it's a credit requirement in the curriculum. Um but that but then we're talking about the whole gradu I mean we're not saying that we're requiring anything else specific like that in this I don't believe >> as far >> we can say specific >> this is only a first meet so they can figure it out send your um suggestions to Ian and they can hash it out in policy >> anyone have >> sorry to jump in there but as policy chair.

225I just want to kind of make a quick comment about that if I could. >> Well, you're policy chair, but raise your hand and be recognized. Go ahead. >> Um, appreciate that. Yeah, I apologize for jumping in. Um I just gonna say in general, yeah, and also so send those send those uh the language that you'd like to see in there and also if you want to attend the policy committee meeting, um we could take one person in at a time if you wanted to speak to the issue during the meeting. As long as we don't go over four total board of ed members in the meeting, if we only have one guest at a time, we don't break a quorum. So just want to put that out there. Thanks. >> Okay. Anything else? All

226right. All those in favor of approving policy P6146 graduation requirements as the first reading. Um Jen, Sean, Adrian, raise your hand if you're a yes. That' be good. Just raise your hand if yes. and Dr. A. >> I'm sorry. I thought I did it. >> Okay. Uh Jay, you still with us? Jay? >> Uh yes, I'm a nay on that. >> You're a nay? >> Okay. Okay. And Mike? >> Yes. >> Okay. So it passes 821 as a first reading. Next on the agenda is thank you AM appreciate all your hard work and and developing these policy you and your team that help you did it do it and um we'll see you then when it comes back for a second meeting. But thank you very much. >> Thank you Anmarie. I'm going to excuse

227myself too because I've got a I'm not feeling good at all. Okay, >> take care of yourself, Susan. >> I'll try. >> Okay. Uh, next is letters and communications and comments by board members. Um, Ian, you have your hand up. >> Um, yeah. I I just wanted to say that I I received a number of communications. um some from the Noank Baptist Church um people that we we heard from earlier tonight and also received a letter from the uh from the robotics team um which is uh greatly appreciated. glad that uh they they're settling into their new home. And um I am just also curious to know um as far as the the um the chair uh Bev, did you you were elected to city council as well in in the fall. Have you sworn

228into city council? >> I have. >> Okay. And um you're continuing on. You're going to be swearing in as as a as a chair, as a uh as a board member as well. >> Um I haven't decided. >> Anything else? >> Uh that's it for now. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Um Adrian, you have anything? >> Oh, yeah. I just wanted to um kind of reiterate the support from earlier in the meeting um that we should help um distribute feed food as as much as we can as a district um to those in need. >> Thank you. Um and that is communications. >> Did you save me? >> Yes, I did. >> Oh, okay. Um the the only thing I have is um uh something that we I have for Dean and it's something that

229we say at the academy when anybody precious is leaving and that is fair winds and a following se. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um Jan, >> um should is this the time to mention that we attended the CABE meeting? >> Oh yeah, you can. Yeah, we sure. >> So um several members attended the CABE meeting um last Friday um and I believe some attended on Saturday. So um during that meeting I sat in on three different sessions. One on diversity and communications, another on um cyber security and um the um graduation requirements and how it's um 25 credits at other school districts and how they parse it out. So um and I know like other people attended so they could share what um committees are or sessions they attended and if there's any questions or

230they want further detail I can go into um what notes I took. >> Okay. Thank you June Mike. >> Yes. Uh thank you. Uh yeah, I went to the the CAB conference on Saturday and attended uh two sessions, one on special education, one on the freedom of information act. The special education one I found uh very useful uh and it was uh some members from the state special education task force. Uh we recently have been briefed on new legislation that came out. Uh but one thing I hadn't realized what and they pointed out was the the task force came out with their report which I knew but their report had many more and different recommendations from uh what was approved by the legislature. So it's a I I think it's it's a useful read for

231us at least to see those recommendations to um kind of see some ways forward um beyond what's already been done uh from the Freedom of Information Act. enjoyed that as well. And um one point that they emphasized was just in general for towns or school systems that you know adhering to the Freedom of Information Act is part of the the job duties. It's part of uh our responsibilities by law, but it's also part of duties. So um taking a long time to respond to something um um just because you got other things to do is not is you know it has to be balanced by the fact that there is a responsibility to do so. Um and they also pointed out that as a board as as the superintendent of course is is responsible for

232compliance with uh FOI uh but so is the board and so if the board has a freedom of information request that we should at least assure ourselves that it's being looked into so that our our responsibility is met. Um and other than that is is good to have um conversations with with um people in other districts and u one of the themes that was brought up was um the possibility of some non-classroom shared services um uh among other school systems. It's an I a thought like to go forward with sometime. Thanks. >> You Mike um Dean, >> thank you. Well, I I am ending my time on the board the way I started. Uh I started fully remote in the fall of 2020. Um and I'm ending in the fall of 2025 fully remote for

233pretty much the same bug. Uh it seems um a lot of things I can say. My wife has asked me, you know, you sound like you have regrets. No, no real regrets. You got to know when to go and it's it's it's time for me to go. Um, usually I just get kicked out by the voters. Um, but this time I'm leaving on my own. So that it it feels like I'm doing myself in somehow, but this town has enough people, has enough talent, somebody else should, you know, should should serve. Um, I'll try to keep this pretty short. Um, I I' I've served under two chairs. Uh, Kim and Bev. uh both have been uh more than capable uh leaders of this of this body. They have very different styles. Um I very much

234enjoyed working with Bev uh as well as Kim. It seems like a million years ago that Kim was Kim was chair. Uh I've seen members come and go. Um I think we take for granted um we're always focusing on the problems. I think we take for granted the quality of people that we work with both on the board and also staff and um I think we need to take some time to um uh to say thanks and not just prefuncterally uh uh the way I think we often do uh but really I I do want to recognize the quality of my of my colleagues uh the way we've been able to reason and and sometimes not reason together. It's okay. We can have our differences. Um, it's been um it's been a lot of time.

235It's been a pain in the you know what. Uh, but it's also been its own weird kind of uh enjoyment. I I don't know how else to to put it. Uh, I am going to miss it. I'm probably stupid enough to involve myself uh back into the system somehow, whether it's the schools or somewhere else in town because I don't know any better, apparently. Um, yeah. So, I guess there's some sort of this some sort of sadness on my part to basically watch the ship move away without me on it. Um, but that's okay. Um, I'm I'm on firm land and uh boy, it sounded so much better in my head than the way it's coming out to be honest with you. Um, thank you. Thank you all for being u um good colleagues. I

236I'll miss you. >> Thank you, Dean. Like I said before, I'm gonna miss you, too. So, >> well, I'm not going too far. I'm still here, you know. I mean, it's a small town. So, >> and and uh we don't forget we had Jay in the middle there. So, you had three three chairs. >> Oh, that's right. Oh my god. Sorry, Jay. Sorry, Jay. >> Sean Dean, I know we've only known each other for a little while, but it's been a pleasure, my friend. My point. >> Uh I attended the K meeting on Friday. It was wonderful to see so many of you. Uh I I I attended two sessions. One was on legislative updates. Uh I'm working on uh gathering the information, putting together my notes, and we'll share that out with the group.

237Uh there's some legislation that did not pass that would have significantly affected our roles. Um but that's not to say that it won't pass for 2026. So definitely some things to keep an eye on. Uh the second session I attended was about roles and responsibilities of a board member. As a new board member, I found that to be really rewarding uh really insightful and eye opening in many ways. Um looking forward to uh serving with you all. Dean will miss you, but looking forward to serving with you all in the next term. Um I think I get everybody. Um I too attended the cave conference. The keynote speaker in the morning was Dr. Mel Pondona. He was excellent in my opinion. He talked about career pathways and school to work and preparing students for well-paying

238jobs right out of high school. He talked a lot about Graten and EB and um and what we were doing here in Grten and he was just energetic and very uplifting and he wants to his theme was making schools work for everyone because if we only focus on college as we know and that's making schools work for everyone. So that was his main message to me. Um my other workshop was communicating through crisis and um they discussed um like he said if you know a crisis coming up um you should share information beforehand so people are prepared and remember that you know what happens to usually we're not in isolation that probably happened to some other district as well and um also don't put stock in social media and board members should Never never never

239never comment um make a comment in a comment section on media. Social media is not for board members. And he also talked about like sometimes board members don't know things because of confidentiality. So you have to understand that the superintendent um she usually or he usually knows stuff and he they can't tell the board because of confidentiality. Um, and when answering questions from the press, a short written statement is good. And um, whoever responds to the press, the superintendent or the board should never say no comment. You should always have some kind of response. I attended the policy committee meeting and that was very good. Um, you know, talked about regulations. the regulations belong to the superintendent and deliberation is very good and he said we should look at each series every five to six

240years. So pick a series to review every year. So um so in policy maybe next year view review the 5,000 series and then the year after that the 6,000 series and so forth and so on. Um, I also went to um how Washington DC is going to impact school district. There's nothing new there to be honest with you. Um, and that's it. But I have to say, um, if you sign up to come to these conferences, I mean, one board member did have an excuse. She did call and say she couldn't come so we could find somebody else to go. But if you don't show up, costing the district money. So I ask please if you sign up to go to these conferences and it's we have to pay for it to let us know

241that you cannot attend so we can find somebody else to go in your place because it's just wasted money that the district is paying and the do taxpayers are paying. So I think the person knows who I'm talking to but I'm just talking in general now. Okay. >> I said yes because I thought you were talking to me about >> you called up. >> Yeah, I know. I know. That's that's why I thought you meant me, but no. No, I did. Yes. Thank you. >> Um, next is future meeting dates and calendar items for board attention. Um, I just want to add one thing that on Monday, December 1st, I'd like to have a special meeting at 5:30. I think I talked to some board members about this already. I'm having a special meeting at

2425:30 so we can go over the memorandum of agreement of understanding I should say about Mary Morrison. So um um they will be remote for the curriculum committee. They're already remote. It could be remote. The finance committee and finance and facility committee will be in person but so it would be a hybrid meeting. um 5:30 for the special meeting to talk about the memorandum for Mary Morrison and then the curriculum committee meet at 6 and finance will meet at 6 financing facilities. So you don't have to come in be remote but we need to uh get this memorandum going. Okay, Adrian. >> Yeah. Um I I So I haven't um seen anything on that um memorandum. Are we going to Is the board going to be um receive that? >> Yeah, you'll get Yeah, you're

243going to get it. >> I think Joyce will send it out. She probably didn't send it out today, but she'll send it out before on Thanksgiving so you can look it over. >> All right. So this is going to be we're going to have some deliberation on that basically in that meeting. >> Discussion. It will say discussion and possible vote. All right. But I'll text I'll email Joyce and ask her to make sure it was for you guys to look at. Okay. >> Ian. >> Uh yeah, that was pretty much my question, too. So, we'll receive a draft before the holiday so we can over the long weekend and then we'll discussion possible vote at six o'clock. You said what? 5:30 for the special >> 5:30. Yeah. 5:30. 5:30 special meeting for uh the full

244board. >> For the full board. >> Okay. And then committee meetings. >> I wouldn't have had the meeting and if if I didn't send you the information, how you going to how you going to talk about the information if you don't have it? >> Well, you know, I'm just saying it has happened in the past like other boards and other bodies where you know dropped on a chair. >> I'll make sure you get it. Don't worry. >> Thank you. >> Okay, Dean. Uh yeah. Uh if it has if the draft hasn't been touched since my last submission, then I'm happy to circulate that one. I don't want to confuse. >> That was Joyce's question. She wanted to know was there any changes? She was going to contact you to see if there any change. So

245if the draft hasn't changed, just circulated, Dean. Okay. >> Okay. >> Have to do that. I don't have to worry. So if you don't get it, contact Dean. >> All right. Um I don't work here anymore. >> And remember, board members, you have to be sworn in by um December 2nd. All the newly elected board members, you have to be sworn in by December 2nd. And that's it. Um anything else? Okay. >> Well, I'm sorry. I guess I missed I missed that memo. Um, were the new board members were not having a meeting for them to be sworn in at? >> No. You know why? Because they had to be sworn in by December 2nd. The charter says that um um the board members have to be sworn in the first Tuesday after the election.

246And the first Tuesday after the election is December 2nd. >> Yep. >> First Tuesday after the election was two weeks ago. >> The first t >> of December. in December Tuesday, December after the election. Okay, got it. >> Yeah. >> All right. Got it. >> Okay. >> We're not having a meeting that night. >> There's no meeting on the second. >> No, there's no meeting on the second. >> All right. Is that >> I think Andrea is getting sworn in tomorrow. Sean's working on it. I don't know. But Mike's probably working on it. So, they got a couple of days to go to the town hall and get sworn in. >> All right. Thank you. I'm gonna try to get there tomorrow. This is Sean. >> Okay. All right. See you there. Okay. Um, anything

247else? >> Well, >> okay. Motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. It's 9:49 and we are now adjourned. Um, everyone have a happy Thanksgiving.