001All right, Mark, I'm going to start our meeting. >> All right. Thank you. >> Good evening, everyone. >> Thank you for your patience, but we are getting ready to start our six o'clock meeting. >> Awesome. So, today is the November 14th. All right. Um it is my honor to start the committee of the whole for the Garten board of education. Today is November 14th and at six o'clock. Um and the first thing that I will need is the approval of the minutes from last uh committee of the whole. >> I'll move. >> So I have a I have um motion. Can I have a second on that please? I've got William for the second. Is there any discussion on the minutes? All right. Hearing none. All those in favor of approving of the minutes of
002October 11th, 2022, please say I. >> Oppose. Abstain. And that motion has carried. Um before we go into and first of all, it is really nice to see all the principles. I just really appreciate you guys taking your time out of your really busy lives and coming forward. I really um as as speaking from the board, we've been waiting for this for a couple of years and so it's really nice to um to see everyone's faces and I just really appreciate that. Um but before we start on your presentation um I have I am going to request um if we can move number um number six which is the enrollment so that Tom you can kind of um help us through um the review of the action plans and then go right into enrollment and
003then you don't have to wait through. >> Thanks. >> Every once in a while we'll do something kind. Um, but I just need to make sure that all those in favor of just just moving up one agenda item. Do I have full approval? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. I have to get like I have to get like a certain remember I it's all that Robert's rules that finally has sunk in. All right. So, we are going to move on. So, um Susan, I'm >> orient >> if you could orient us that would be fab. Well, um as you know, um we do have data this year and um I have shared with the board of education already the bird's eye view from a district perspective without having it broken out into the details school
004by school. Um the secondary principles came in and shared their data and their action plans just this last month. And now it's the turn for elementary principles. And when I reviewed it, I know um that Tom and Phil were working closely with the elementary principles. I have to say that I was really impressed with your thoughtfulness and looking at the data. You have to look at the shape of the data as well. There were some real aha moments for me seeing that knowing that we've been through two full years, three full years really, 27 months they say of COVID. There was the before CO they call BC and the after COVID that they're calling AC. And I'm wondering when that actually will start transpiring because I still feel that we have the remnants of this,
005you know, massive pandemic in all kinds of ways. Um, you know, academically and socially, emotionally, and this team of rockstar administrators have really led the buildings through this whole thing and um have gotten their medical degrees on the side, I think, when it comes to contact tracing. But um I I think one of the best ways that we can run this performance is to let us go through school by school so you can see the full picture and then we'll stop to ask questions and then after that question and answer and discussion we'll go into your enrollment if that makes sense. >> Does that make sense to everybody? So, if you have questions along the way, please just jot them down so that you can save them to ask specific questions should you have them.
006All right. >> All right. So, I just want to orient everybody. Um, the slides are all the same for all five of our schools. I just want to make sure everybody kind of understands the setup. So, a reminder here, we are talking about performance index, right? So, this is not a percentage of students that are at above grade level. This is not a percentage at all. That's an index right >> and the target as always is 75 which are that is the target that um CSTE state of education through the ESSA plan is set to reach by the end of the 2029 2030 school year. So that is a target that we aim to meet on every metric. Um we have this is just a one-year comparison. So this is just looking at last school
007year. This is not looking historical. We did that intentionally because Mystic and Bames really haven't been along around long enough to do kind of historical comparisons. We want to think about this data as a new baseline for everybody going forward. Um we have three different bars for each subset. So you'll see the first group is ESPback ELA. So we're comparing the school to the Grten overall average to the connect state of Connecticut overall performance index average. We do the same thing for the math for NSPback and then the same exercise for NSback or for NGSS, sorry. Um, we do this for three groups of students. We do this for all students combined. We do this for our not high need students and for our high need students. A reminder that our high need students are
008those students who have IEPs um are e receiving ELLL services currently or receive free and reduced lunch. So those are the subset groups that go into the high needs. Those are the three different categories that the state grades us on with our state report card, which we should have sometime before the new year. >> I found it interesting that we have high needs and non- high needs and then all together. >> So that's a different way of looking at it. We haven't really looked at data that way yet. So it's kind of interesting, but the golden rod is going to be each school and then the red for Falcons is just Grten and the blue for Connecticut um is there. I did also just want to make note of two things on the slides for
009Mystic River and for Fames River. There are two bars that appear to be missing for NGSS. That is intentional. Uh they're missing because the cohort size was too small to disclose publicly. Um a reminder here with both of those buildings, there is not a large percentage of students who are not high needs. A very large number of those students are high needs. So it's a very small court to begin with. Also, we are only counting students who were with us on October one. Talk about our enrollment later on and stayed with us and tested at that same school. Those are the only students who are counted within these count. A very small number of students who tested on the NGSS. So, they were purposely not disclosed for privacy reasons. Just wanted to make sure we
010understood it was a message. >> Um, do you want me to run through your three slides or do you want to just introduce yourself? >> Okay. So the first one we have here, so again this is the group all students for Katherine Kassi and again a reminder the yellow is the school, the red is Grten's overall average and then the blue is the state of Connecticut average. You can see um overall here in all three groups for all students, Kathern Kaski's outperformed both the Grten average and the state of Connecticut average. But tell your story a little bit because Chris, your your school has really done some amazing things that when you first became a magnet school, you had a lot of neighbor neighboring students and then you started getting more from around the town.
011And >> well, we opened as a magnet school, but we accepted very few magnet students because Graten had closed an additional elementary school. So, we sort of opened overcrowded. Um we changed our magnet theme to attract more students and there was a redistricting in Grten so we had space for um our magnet students so they came in. We were identified by the state as a school due um in need as a because of the performance gap of our Hispanic students at one time. Dr. Mitchell was our educational consultant from the state of Connecticut um to help us close that achievement gap. Um and so over time we've just built up our magnet and the work that we do in the school to improve our students achievement and help close those gaps. >> So I was
012really pleased to see the shape of the data too. >> Me too. Next. Uh, so here we're looking at the high need students. So again, this is just Katherine Kaskki from last school year, the high need students. Um, you see a little variability. Um, but in both SVAC ELA and ESPback math, Cathy outperformed the district in the state average. And for NGSS, capital just below the rotten average or above the state average. And for the not high needs population, um, Katherine Konowski consistently outperformed both Rotten and the state. >> And you would kind of expect that the not high needs group would probably do the very best. And, you know, compared to all three, all the students and then the high needs. >> Absolutely. And and it's important to remember too that in the not
013high needs group, you're taking out all students who have IEPs, right? So all all students who have IEPs are taken out of this group. the premises always. >> Well, it's my turn. >> Um, so in addition to looking at that data, our school data team also um analyzes the ESPback data and um our district data in a more indepth level. Um we look at students in each achievement level. We break it down and look at achievement of our students um by gender, by ethnicity, um high needs and non- high needs. We also look at the growth of our students in each of those subcategories. Um looking at how many students met their growth targets, what percentage of the growth targets they're achieving. Um so there's a lot of data analysis that goes in. We also
014in each area look at the claims um which are the specific areas under English language arts, science or math and the targets. Um and we analyze each section to see if there's an area that stands out as an area of low performance or an area of high performance. um so that we can make sure that we're not we're not missing any of our instruction when we're when we're teaching. For example, if we're looking at the NGSS, we want to compare our performance in the life science, earth science, um physical science, and in the practices to see are we doing a great job teaching life science and earth science, but we're falling down in physical science. Um, we want to look at all of those things so that we're sure that we're providing our students with
015the best education possible. Um, in analyzing it this year, the good news was that um, there were no areas that stood out as weak areas. Our performance was very consistent across the board. Our students performance in all areas of science were were equal. um there was nothing that stood out as um an area of weakness or something we needed to shore up. And that was the same thing in our math and our language arts. What we did find in analyzing our data is that our lowest performing students and our highest performing students because we do have two years of data to compare um were making the greatest growth but our students are in the middle. were making less growth >> than our low performance and our high performance students. And so that became that was
016our focus in looking at our data um and became a real focus for our action plan because we feel we've done a great job meeting the needs of our students who need additional support. Um, we're making sure that we're providing the enrichment that our high-erforming students need, but our students in the middle, we're getting a little lost. And it's not that they didn't make nice growth, but their growth isn't the same as the growth in our other areas. So, this is our action plan for this year. Um, we are we do have intentional use of the interim assessments in grades three to five. We're using them both, and you'll see this for all of the schools, as both teaching tools and assessments for data review, so that we're working with our students on how to
017tackle the test um and how to analyze questions, as teaching tools, but we're also using them as assessments for data review so that we can see how our students are doing in each of those areas. Um, probably the biggest change that we made was a restructuring of our SRBI schedules for this year. We do have a lot more students who need interventions coming out of the pandemic. Um, and so we revised our SRBI schedule so that we're providing um two SRBI blocks a day. one specifically targeted at English language arts and one specifically targeted at um and that way all of our students who need to receive tier 2 and tier three interventions can um with only one SRBI block if a student needed both math intervention and reading intervention they had to split that
018time and they couldn't get a full tier three intervention as needed. Um and we felt it was really important that they have that full tier three if they needed it. Um we've also started um we're working on progress monitoring of all of our students. We've always progress monitored our um low performing students, set individual goals and monitored to make sure that they're making growth. Um, and we've always set additional targets for our high-erforming students, but we're making sure now that all of our students have individual goals and that we're regularly progress monitoring to make sure all students are making growth. Um, our school focus is accountable talk in all content areas. Um, and accountable talk is making sure it's talk that moves the learning forward. And that accountability is accountability to your community, accountability to
019accurate information. Um, and I wanted to say one more thing and I can't remember it, but it's that idea that, you know, students learn how to be good active listeners. They can rephrase, they can paraphrase, they can add on so that the conversations that they're having in class are moving the thinking forward and making it deeper. And in doing that, that helps also help students improve their written responses um because they learn how to think more deeply and how to take those conversations. Um, and the intent is to make sure that we're always building on each other's knowledge and we're supporting each other in developing our knowledge. >> So, that's our school goal. Um, we're also really taking a look at our intentional and flexible grouping. And the intent of that is really looking at
020those middle kids and making sure that our groupings are not always based um on their reading level or math level, but they're also based on skill needs, interests, partnerships, collaboration. so that the all students are having that opportunity to move forward. And finally, in our science, um we are doing schoolwide use of science notebooks. Um and we're really going to work on developing the science notebook to make sure that um we're increasing our use of models, which is part of the NGSS. um that helps develop students understanding of the concepts um that they're learning to increase their vocabulary development um and to improve their written responses. >> That's our action. >> That's you talking about. >> Well, sounds like a good idea. Okay. So, uh, for Charles Vardm, uh, the exact same setup. Uh, so
021the yellow is the school, the red is the Graten overall average, and the blue is Graten or Connecticut overall average. Sorry. This is just looking at 2122. And the first group is for all students. So, you can see consistently Charles Aarna was above uh, we both gotten and connect the average for all three test scale students. And that holds true for high need students as well. So they were consistently above what the grat Connecticut average for all of their high need students. And lastly, uh they only got beat out just in ESPback math by the state overall average for their not high need students, but overall consistently outperforming overall interest. >> All right. So our action plan, some of this stuff, I'm going to try not to say some of the same things that Chris
022did, but some of it would be the same. Um, we use this as one data point of course along with many other things that we use and pretty much all the schools I'm sure the same with that. Um, we're doing a better job of using those interim assessment blocks when they first rolled out. Um, I don't necessarily know that any school was really very good with it um to start, but we're we're being very intentional about doing that now. Focused ones in test settings. Um, I did a fifth grade one a couple of weeks ago. Um, and math and arrange the desk just like ESPback. Um, the test setting. We had the building quiet. All of that stuff was a test setting. Um, and I didn't even need to grab the report because next time
023I went to meet with the fifth grade teachers, they already got in there and looked at um, where where the kids fell in that because they wanted to see those scores right away. So, the fact that it's more consistent and I think we're all doing it and, you know, data teams are looking at it, the district is looking at it. Um, it it holds weight a little bit better. Um and we will go through um individually in practice um just like Chris said test questions and format and style and how to take the test and how to manipulate highlight slide things over back and forth all of that stuff. I'll jump to the last bullet which is science. Um that is also the same thing. Um we're going to um we just there's a science
024curriculum overhaul which has been very good. Benm Moon has done that and people have been very pleased with that so far. But we're exploring um taking the ESPback interrum which is NGSS is only given in fifth grade um that one test but taking those interrums and moving them back to fourth grade and to third grade and starting to practice with them so that they see what that test looks like. Um I don't know if you've ever taken a look at that test but the first time we pulled that up it was wild. Like there is so much reading, so much vocabulary >> and you have to manipulate stuff on the screen. So even if just the younger kids, even if the teacher just puts it up and they talk about manipulating something, they can at
025least see it and go through it. So getting that back into the other grades. >> I didn't mean to cut you off, but if the board remembers when Ben Moon was here, he did share those questions with us. And I remember all of our brains hurt, you know, just looking at those questions. >> Yeah, they're tough, but you know, the content may be a little too much for say a third grade class, but manipulating things and having the discussion and the exposure for it. So th all of those interrums and focusing on that and looking at that information as we go through um is what we're focusing on. And similar to what Chris said, although a little bit different um we heard through our our staff survey that we needed to overhaul um our student
026intervention process. Um so that's one of the reasons this is a big piece of that that first our child study team um or student intervention team whatever you want to call it is aligned um to CT sets the special ed because that new program um that they're using is requiring much more detailed um and upto-date small group work um that's recorded um constantly. So they tried to match, they spent a lot of time matching uh what we're looking for in the intervention process so that if it does move to that next level of special education, they've already got that material appropriately documented. So we spent a lot of time doing that. Um we're spending a bunch of time on win, which is what we call what I need. It's the SRBI process. Um RTI, all
027of those things are they're all the same. um and what I need and making sure that just like Chris said, we're trying to intentionally um have groups put together where there are some interests in groups with kids and matching kids up, making sure that the most needy come out to small group and we've been doing a lot of pushing as well with those teachers. So, there's a lot of work going on in that. Um within the classroom, we have a small group focus. Um the workshop model divides it up, but we're really pushing uh the fact that we get kids into small groups. they learned well from each other. Um, and it's that same thing. Match them up academically, match them up socially, match them up um, with interest needs and things like that so
028that they they're getting something out of it. I've been in several rooms where I walked in the room for something and sat with a group that I knew she had changed and she flat out said she changed it and I left. And at the end of the day, she came in, she goes, "That didn't work. We're changing that group again." So, they're paying attention to how the grouping is. Um, like Chris said, progress monitoring, we've always been pretty good with that, but we're now um digging a little bit deeper with it um and making sure we're very accurate with that. And like I said when I started, we're using multiple sources of data. Like this test, you know, these results came from last year. So these kids, some of them aren't even in our school
029anymore. We transitioned a ridiculous amount of kids at our school. So um it's just one data point for some of them. And we get some new students that don't even have this data point. Like they don't have it. They don't come with it. we don't get records for whatever reason. Um, and the last piece is a little something different, learning walks. Um, it's very much like if you're familiar with Val and Teachers College and taking teachers around our school leadership team, which is both admin and staff, it's a small group of people. Um, we're going to look at learning walks and if we can get back to four building subs, which we're short couple right now, and provide that coverage, we can start going around. We're going to start with something that's less intense than
030maybe small groups or the SRBI process just to get the format down. But it's very valuable when teachers can see other teachers doing the same thing and take ideas from them. Um, if you think of that, I'm in my classroom and I taught math, but I never saw the other math teacher teaching math because he always had kids at the same time I did. So, um, to see their peers and do that. So, that's one of the next steps that we're doing. We've discussed it. We haven't started that yet. It's we've got paperwork laid out and it's one of those things that it's on our list, but that's what we're looking to do. So, it's a few things that we've got like every other school. I'm sure there's quite a bit more added to that,
031but that's a start. >> All right. So, now we're looking at Mystic River. Um I will remind you, you know, this does break into three subgroups, but at the same time, um the demographic makeups of these buildings is very different. that helps explain, you know, that last slide where we just didn't really have enough students to fit into that not high need cohort. Um, so just a reminder of that overall, um, for the all students, uh, in ELA in MDSS, Mr. Gington very close to the graten and the state average would fell just below it. Um, for high need students, um, Mr. River overall beat the state averages or tied the state averages but came just below the Rotten average. And for not high needs, Mystic River outperformed uh both Grten and the state of
032Connecticut for their performance at ELA and math. And again for NVSS, we didn't have a large enough population of students who have disclosed their performance public. Um, so our plan at Mystic River, we um I just want to say I'm super our staff is super excited to have this gorgeous, beautiful building. Um, in addition to that, just having such a large number of students. We're at like 525 right now. Um, one of the things we're so proud of with our kiddos is how they've dealt. So, we've got kids from across uh the entire town, city kids, we have kids in the middle of the town, we have kids over on the opposite side. It's just truly amazing to see how they've gelled and we haven't had a whole lot of, you know, issues with interpersonal
033relationships and things like that. And we house the ABA program in our building, too. And those kids just are so accepted by everybody in the building. So, it really it's it's something to be proud of, and we're certainly proud of our kiddos at our school. Um, going back to obviously what my two colleagues before me had said, we we we take all of the information that we've got particularly to our ESPback assessments and we have a school-based data team as well. Um, and we we met uh prior to the school year starting, we met at the beginning of the school year and it was um it was a team effort in terms of where we're going from here. So, you know, I think as was indicated, this is our second full year uh as a
034brand new school. So, last year was really what I consider to be my true u data point, you know, my my baseline data, if you will. Um, so one of the things that we we knew right away just based on our high level of students that are that are high needs is we spent a lot of time looking at our SRBI in particular to our tier one and tier three interventions that we'll be providing those students in both ELA and math. Um, so what we've done is we've created a very tight week cycle for math and science. Um it involves um pushing for student supports by our um ELA and math specialists in the morning uh as students are um you know in math and in in the math and ELA box and then it
035is a pull out model for the afternoon during our SRB block for those kids that are really to the needs. um our classroom teachers are grouping um students together based on those target areas and areas of focus. Um this is the opportunity for us to look for for us to really look at those kids that are on the cusp. But for also we we do have a population of students that need to be enriched as well. >> So it it's really a close look at the groupings of students that target those needs, not just all of our students that are in need of a you know pretty what I consider severe intervention. Um progress monitoring is something that we do um weekly. Our ELA uh specialists meet with grade level teams and we take a
036look at the data in front of us. Um we meet as a uh building uh data team twice a month and we review math and ELA data in terms of how it's working in the process. Um we started this uh SRBI block last year and one of the things that we were really proud of when we looked at building level assessments BAS in particular. We were we were um super excited to see the growth that kids made in the year. So throughout the year they came in many of our students came in very low um but as they left us they were in a much better place. Many of them were making years growth in reading. So that was that was for us was a huge success. And we spent time um like I said
037at the beginning of the school year really working on our SRBI block and and our model of intervention and we made some changes to include a eightweek cycle so that we could really closely look at data. At the end of that eightweek cycle we really take a look at the kids that are still in severe need and we make plans for them. Um Steph mentioned our SRBI process. We call it our child study team and we really closely take a look at students that might possibly need something else if it's a referral to special ed or something like that. Um we are planning a very deliberate focus on our IABS our intro assessments this year. um specifically with math and ELA. Um our our teachers are very um excited about the process in terms of
038how we're um utilizing that data within our data teams to take a look at same thing where those areas of focus need to be where kids are struggling, where kids are doing really well and how we can meet those needs within our instructional blocks. Um our science, I have to be honest, was where we all felt we needed to really think about that. as Tom had just displayed our our scores. You know, it was just our last year's grade five kiddos that took that assessment. Um we had a very small population of students that weren't highle need students. Um but with all of that said, we really need to look at our science instruction in general. So, we spent a lot of time talking about the use of our science notebooks. I know Chris had
039mentioned that. Um with particular emphasis on the experimentation process. A lot of those questions revolve around students looking at an experiment, interpreting information, talking about it, and trying to glean information to answer questions. Um, we thought it was a really great idea to focus on how they're resp they're responding in writing uh in our science notebooks, building vocabulary as well, um, and taking a look at how they work through science experiments. Um we too uh looked at pushing back those science uh interrums to grade four and three. I think I I feel like it's not just us uh given an opportunity to wait to grade five to utilize them. Grade four teachers need to see what it is that grade what what is expected of grade five students when they take this assessment. >> And
040the fifth grade test is a combination of things they've learned in third, fourth, and fifth. So it really does make sense. we can break apart these, you know, small focus unit tests that the state provides so that it covers the material they're doing in third and then in fourth and then in fifth. So, it does make sense. >> And one of the things that our teachers were talking about, it's really important for a third and fourth grade teacher to see what is the expectation inclination. So, it's not just that they're being tested on something that they've already learned, >> but how are they being asked to interpret it to respond to it? um you know to look at some kind of a data like if it's an experiment that's put out for students and they
041have to interpret some kind of lab or something like that. Those those kids that are in grade three and four, they need to be able to start to start that process in their head. Those teachers really need to see how it is that they're being tested. So that is something that we're actually doing this year. We did not do that last year. Um, but I think it's also for us it's a really a hyperfocus on how we're utilizing those IABS in grade five to really determine focus topics um to be able to say where are students still struggling with with that information. Susan had just mentioned that it really relies on what's being taught in the younger grades. Um really a focus on implementation of our prep units that were revamped last summer. um our
042teachers are very excited about that and I think it's important for us to make sure that um you know those are being done with with fidelity um and lastly an increase and emphasis on our number strings for math with fluency and accuracy. So that's part of our math workshop as well. There's a lot of different words and terminology. I think sometimes a picture's worth a million words. And to be able to um show you what one of these IABs looks like or to show you what a number string looks like would give you a real good indication or even um if we could videotape a classroom where it's happening, you know, so you could see a snippet of the depth of knowledge that kids bring to problem solving or to experimentation or to analyzing characters
043traits over time, you know, and what was the author's purpose, you know, so it's really pretty sophisticated, I would say, in reading, writing, math, and science in the elementary grades. So, >> clarification for the benefit of people who may be listening on television or news broadcast, if we're going to use an acronym stands for Um, so we are on to Northeast Academy. Uh, again, same exact format. We're starting with all students. So, we're looking at the Smarter Balance ELA, Smarter Balance Math, and the Next Generation Science Standards. So, across the board, Northeast Academy outperformed Graten, and the Connecticut averages for all students. And uh, the same exact trend for high needs. Not Academy ELA, math, and NGSS. And for the do I need to do this again with uh every single category northeast category academy
044outperforms both and >> all right so I'll do my best to explain as many of these acronyms as as I can because I know in our world we know these like the back of our hands and we use them interchangeably. So we um we are very happy and proud of our data as a staff. One of the first things that I showed our building when we came back to school at the end of at the end of August was our cohort data and our cohort data meaning how our kids are growing from one year to the next. When we looked at grades three, four, and five, all testing grades from last year to two years ago, despite all the challenges challenges that we faced over the last, what do you say 27 months or so,
045all of our testing grades showed growth from the year 2021 to the year 2022. So, we were really happy about that as a staff. It's not just about the work that happens in third, fourth, and fifth grade, but it's also about the work that happens in the primary grades as well. Um, so when we talk about IABS, those are interim assessment blocks. Those are the practice tests. I think as Seth was saying earlier, um, the the bar graphs that you're seeing, that was a snapshot in time of how kids performed last May, and now we're looking at how kids are doing with interim assessments, essentially practice tests now. So, we really will pull those apart. The system itself is really user friendly. It allows you to to do an item analysis to take a look
046at and this is really um an efficient part of the program to look at the five best and worst questions and you see a lot of similarities. You know, Phil was at data team meetings last year where we looked at questions between fourth and fifth grade and despite the the different passages and the different content per se, what the kids were struggling with was very consistent from one grade to the next. That's very eye openening for teachers to see and to hear from their colleagues down the hall. So, you know, we do these amongst our our whole school data team, but this also happens in uh in team data team meetings as well. Um, you've heard a couple of these uh these these bullet points already. We are putting a lot of work this year
047into matching test claims to standards and the units of instruction. And really, you're looking at the sub the subp parts of the test. Um, in the reading world, you're looking at how the kids are doing with listening versus reading versus writing and trying to really get a sense of where the data may be breaking down so that you can have a plan of attack there. Um, the state has testing blueprints which really outline uh clusters of questions essentially you know what how many questions there will be for this claim and for that claim and matching those together really brings the test life to your eyes. we've been able to um return to co-eing reading in grades one through five at our school and and just to give you a sense of what that looks like
048for 45 minutes to an hour every day in grades one through five there's either a reading specialist or a special education teacher that's present in the room for that entire block of time and it's really the power of numbers. you have two trained staff able to work with 20 to 24 kids as opposed to one person and 24 kids. When you're trying to confer with kids and meet with kids during the workshop model, run a small group guided reading perhaps. Um you're really able to get a lot more done um with two trained staff in the room. So that really is wonderful. We'd love to be able to do that in in math, but the staffing is is not necessarily the same there. And then just one more thing on the IABS, we've already started
049to do this. Um we have our math specialists already pushing in during tier one math. Tier one meaning the daily math lesson that students receive um to start to fill in those gaps on those practice test data sets that we already have. Um you know, we saw a pattern last year with with a number of our kids really struggling on the math test itself. We had 20% of last year's third grade. So, this year's current fourth grade was level one in math last year, 13 kids. And we really want to make sure that we are we are getting into our third grade classrooms right away to work on the things that we know that count. Um, a huge point of consistency we've heard across the table is SRBI, scientifically researchbased interventions. This was a major
050overhaul that we had started last year in our building um in terms of not just progress monitoring but really looking at individual students and making uh decisions based upon their progress or lack thereof. Last year we had our our whole team of reading specialists and math tutors sharing that lift which I think all of us can agree has been very heavy. Um, this year, certainly in the reading world, we've been able to to shift that lift over to our full-time tutors so that our reading specialists, going back to that bullet up top, can support and lift tier one instruction during the day. Um, in terms of instruction and planning, our district math specialists did a wonderful, amazing job at the end of last year really overhauling our math pacing guides, and we are really sticking
051to those this year. It is a it is a it is a point of discussion. Every time I get together with our teams, we're doing math check-ins to make sure that we're on pace and that we're balancing both of our programs and that we're sharing that information with our math specialists to support teams as needed. Um you've heard this as well, intentional incorporation of not just terminology but question types. I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago up in Hartford and um one of the groups was talking about the power of brief writes and really giving students um intentional planned opportunities to respond to what they're reading via writing. And that is something that we need to give kids ample opportunities to do and not just assume that they know how to do
052that. That really has to be purposeful. And then I just wanted to echo something that Seth said. We do plan on bringing back learning walks this year as well. Putting together a team of teachers and going into each other's rooms um non-evaluatory and just having some open discussions about what does you know good math instruction look like or how is my partner teacher down the hallway doing this and maybe I could take that to my classroom as well. So we're excited to bring that back. We had done a little bit of that precoid and and that had uh stopped pretty quickly but we're we're excited to bring that back. Thank you. Ah, that's better. All right. Thank you. >> So, last but certainly not least, or maybe we're saving the best for last, however you
053want to look at it. Uh, we have B River. Um, so again, I would point out that the demographics of our buildings are very different. So, again, once we get to that third slide of NGSS, we will be missing a bar. uh we just didn't have a lot of students who were at Fames River for the entire year who were considered not high needs to be in that testing group for MGSS. Just putting that out there again. Um for all of our students though, you'll see that Fames River consistently outperform both um the GRE and Connecticut average for both ELA math and NGSS. That trend continued for the highnee students as well. We always like to see this especially that our high need students are you know outperforming the district average and then the state
054average. Absolutely. >> And for our not high students again this is a very small cohort overall even in ELA and in math. Um but we see them outperforming both the graten and the average in ELA and math. And again too small of a cohort for us to disclose uh for NPSS. >> All right. We were just excited to have data to start the year similar to Steve obviously as our benchmark year to serve as main as a whole. So something not shown in that data that was that actually never happened to me before as a principal gotten I had seven students score perfect scores on the SPAC. Yeah, it was pretty incredible. Some in third, fourth and then fifth grade perfect scores. So really just proud moments. Not shocking because the students were really high
055normal year but to get a perfect score I mean that was pretty incredible. So, just wanted to, you know, give that a shout. All right, so let's start. Um, lot of things clearly. So, our IABS, um, and Ryan do a fantastic job doing all those. Um, we're doing those in math, ELA, and science, and we have brought them down to three to four as well for science. Um, one thing we actually started to do also is do what's called focused IES. So um we will give the IEs but then in some grade levels and depending on which um concept we're working on we might do what's called a focused IE. So you might have an IE about fraction but a focused IE is um could be on like comparing fractions. So it depends on the
056grade level and what they want to pull in and really assess further for students. So it's just more of a focus. Um so our planning instruction so basically we also have an SRBI but we call it win similar to staff what I need block um where pulling out our tier 2 tier three students but we also have our specialists our tutors interventionist going in during workshop similar to all the other schools I adjusted the schedule slightly so that the um small group times when they're going in so this way they're able to kind of flood more classrooms and be able to hit those small groups. and um hone in. So if the teacher is pulling a small group, the specialist or tutor interventionist obviously is pulling a small group as well. Um and during that
057time for wind block time though, going back to that, we're able to give some extra overflow because Chris was saying how some students may need math and reading. So we're able to kind of have an overflow block when we can depending on the grade level. And um during those overflowful blocks, we're providing book clubs for students who may need extra support with literacy at their reading level. So they may be working on a targeted skill during the scheduled wind block, but during an overflow, we'll say, "Oh, let's pull in and do what we call book clubs." Uh we can also do enrichment during our win time. Um our math specialist has been taking our fourth and fifth graders on specific days of the week and doing some PS, which we just call the prom of
058the week. So she'll set them up with um sort of an enrichment math problem and then they work on it throughout the week and then they come back and they talk about what they found in that problem and how they solved it. Um actually this year too we started um using our Americanore representatives um for enrichment for a very small group of fourth and fifth graders to um tie in some science enrichment for them. Uh they want to study environmental change and the impact it has on us. And then we also have overflow block for Dreambox because some students really do need some extra support in sort of sustaining a dream box or really understanding that math program and talking them through problems. So it's just a little deeper dive from Dreambox with a separate
059group that they pull out for >> and that's what we use for math. >> Yes. >> Mathematics. >> Um modeling. Okay. So obviously modeling and teaching and Ryan literally just said it. Brief rights. So brief rights have been on the ESPback. Uh but they made a comeback really strong last year. Um and some of our high kids were even kind of thrown with it because they really hadn't had that little explicit teaching in it. Um so when we went to go review it, when we went and looked at our aspect scores at the beginning of the year through our school data team, our instructional data team, there was a total common thread of 3, four, and five, all having just a struggle with that brief rate part. And there is a rubric that ESPback gives
060to you of how they're scoring it, but there's no real examples. So, we're hoping um and we did set that as a school improvement um goal this year to give at least three um of the brief rights for ESPback and the interrum assessment blocks to see how they do with it after teaching um explicitly of how to do it and then building the anchor set for that so that they then have a model. They'll use kidr their own authentic kid writing as well. And what a brief write is is kind of complicates. Students have to kind of finish an elaborate um paragraph or they might have to write an introduction for a paragraph. Sometimes it really depends upon the topic for a student, you know, if they can really hone in and elaborate on one.
061So it's kind of teaching that skill. The next one, um use of equity lens for classroom visits. So they're talking about learning walks. We had the privilege of having um Dr. Cherry Son Cherry Paul come to fame first and we did um classroom visits using what she developed for us through the equity lens and um we've really latched on to that. It's broken into engagement relationship and physical environment. So when we went to the different classes we each sort sort of had that lens. So I might have been looking for physical environment and um another person looking for engagement of students in that relationship. And what it really boiled down to was sort of best practices. So, we've been using that as um even if you're picking one from each of those categories, whether it's
062hearing like more student voices or the arrangement, right, of how you do Chris was saying sometimes you do arrangement based on um behaviors, right, in a classroom or maybe we should do it on abilities. So, really looking at it differently or having it in different groups depending on your day and what the lessons flowing through. So, we're kind of streaming that through our different um areas of curriculum. You said two pen. So, two pen kind of goes with um Did you move it up? number strings. You did. You kept it there. So, two pen and number strings. So, number strings, similar to what Steve is doing, we're really focusing on accuracy and fluency to then hopefully apply it to problems. Number strings are a way a teacher will start a lesson with a string of
063different um equations that kind of go build upon each other. And it's really cute. Since September, I've been in rooms and students, you know, will be able to guess that next um equation, the number string, and teachers are like, "Oh, you know me so well." you know, as far as because they do predict what'll come next based upon the one and then they use the number equation prior to then solve the next number in the string. Um, and then the two pound assessment is a nice assessment um that will sort of test a student on um their fluency uh and accuracy of um depending upon what skill they're working upon. And it's called two pen because they literally will do one um you know using one color for a set period of time and then
064they change the color after a certain set period of time to see and then you can go back and see the structures and patterns of how a student um answered those questions and then research magnet theme topics to um site evidence. So something with this is we're using um so you're going into a text and then writing about it. what um Martin actually just was saying as far as having students then go back and cite the evidence from a text in their writing is always a um a task but to use our magnet theme so they might instead research a marine animal um to kind of tie it in is really nice for science science notebooks. So that is something all the other schools are doing as well whether it's kindergarten labeling or you know
065fifth grader labeling and sorting or um sorry not sorting but labeling writing about their findings. I was in a science lesson the other day where they were talking about chemical and physical changes. And so they were doing all of it, illustrating, labeling, and writing about their bindings. Um, and then teaching uh crosscurriculum. So we are doing that where we're developing lessons. So we're taking our pacing guides and looking at it and seeing how we could infuse the magnet theme. So if they're writing, say about an argument, they might talk about environmental changes and connecting nest lessons. So, similar to really tying it into the flash curricular part, they're going to use nest lessons. After those, they're going to use those for a springboard to other lessons. So, an example the other day was um if
066fourth grade is learning about weather and nest, they may then tie it into social studies, talking about the different regions and the weather in those different regions. >> And Nest stands for >> New England science and sailing. We have >> that's part of our partner, >> correct? Yep. >> I think I hit them all. pulled off. >> Um, do you have the flexibility to go to toggle between the PowerPoint so I can see people because that would be >> Have you have you found that my new word for the week is toggle? >> Toggle. Go between toggle. So >> really nobody's >> right. Um, but so this is the So people have questions. >> All right, I'll start off >> please. >> So, um, I think everybody's doing a fantastic job. I like their plans
067and everything like that, but really what I want to know is better data like high needs. You could obviously tell some of these grade schools have marketkedly higher numbers of high need students. What is that number? What is that percentage? And the three criteria, break that down. There's three criteria to be high needs. So is there a difference between those that are getting in the high needs criteria for what's free lunch, right? Is one of So what do those students look like for each each school? >> I want to know like all the principles have done a phenomenal job with the presentations. So I'm very comfortable with that. I want to know that you have the resources. I mean, looking at at at at Mystics River School, you can tell that your high needs numbers
068must be very high because your scores your all student scores are closer to the high need scores than to the not high need school. So, what are your resources? You know, are they, you know, based on those high needs students? you know that that would make me feel comfortable knowing that you know we have a standard process for you know teacher high need student ratio and and other resources that you need you know um that's my biggest concern with all with all of this is you know how are we addressing the high need students what does that data look like and um what are the resources and is it specific for each you know high needs population. >> It's hard to look at it because we only have the we just have that. And so,
069um, I understand why we did that because of historically like you and you would be stuck because you wouldn't have that. And also our populations look different because we've opened up the two, >> right? And if you look at their two scores too, they're they're very different as well, >> right? the high needs population for mystic is is there a difference with those three you know criteria to be high need compared to her school and is that the area that there's an opportunity you know is recognizing of the high needs populations at each individual school which one needs more resources of those three. So we really carefully monitor with staffing the number of cases and the hours to the number of special educators. So we we do that really few times a year. We're constantly
070monitoring to make sure we're we have those resources. Those two schools are the largest and they have the most significant programs. The ABA program at um Mystic River and the Academy program and Jaime's school. That's why this board did it did them such a great favor by getting an additional um assistant principal and in each school they have an assistant principal that really understands special education. So in addition to you know having a principal and an assistant principal but even with the numbers I think you have an extra math specialist and um and then the interventionists like the special educators we look at case load and number of students um so they have had some of those resources but we constantly will look at that because your point is well taken William that you have
071to look at you know the dynamics of the schools when we closed for and opened the two. Um we did balance our schools better. So in other words, we we do have a closer balance and actually um Mystic River and um Things River are nearly 5050 free and reduced lunch and um you know to people who can pay for it. Northeast is a little different. you know, they don't have the same percentage of kids who would um get free and reduced lunch. So, those we do disagregate that quite a bit just to make sure that we've covered our basis for the supports they need. >> I will say I'm sure in the future last year we did do a more in-depth kind of enrollment presentation that was much longer the main presentation of the night
072we did go into kind of all of those breakdowns per school. So, I'm sure >> that will be coming. >> Yeah. This is more of just a general view on our total numbers tonight, but we did do that last year and I'm not sure we'll do that again. >> Can I just add too, we we have looked closely in our school at our EL students, our students that are English language learners. Um, we I >> Mystic River has signed number of of those students out of the elementary school. So, we've been working with central office and having a conversation about how we better meet those student uh their needs as well. Um, we do have several tutors that are in the building that service children throughout the day. Um, and we do share a teacher
073through with with other buildings as well that are specific to English language learners. Um, but that is something that has come up on our radar for sure because those students are all taking this test as well. >> That's right. And we actually did provide on Tuesday a specialized program for regular classroom teachers to get a depth of knowledge on strategies that work for EL students. So we had a professor from Southern Connecticut State University spend a whole day with the teachers. So um yeah, and that reached a small population just because of how we had our PD laid out. But it's our intention to really take a closer look at that. the the one thing that always works for us is when you talk to teachers and they say, "Oh my god, that was worth
074our time." So our our teachers from Mystic that went to that workshop, they couldn't say enough about it. So I feel like that is an important team >> and that's actually going to continue. >> We need to be able to get everybody, you know, cycled through it. >> Thank you, >> Matthew. >> Yeah. Um, thank you each and every one of you. It's a great presentation. Very helpful. I'm a a bit confused which is not anything new at Google. Um I understand that the index is a requirement at SEV. We need to honor it. You need to report it. But where I remain I mentioned this at the last group in the high school and middle school was here. I I looked at the F and Bush scores as they came in and as I
075understood them reserving the right to be wrong. We still have a large cohort of kids who are not at grade level in a number of subjects almost from elementary all through high school. And I understand we had a chat with the assistant superintendent that there there are some kids whether it's cognitive or social or physical or emotional needs for whom growth is the appropriate way to measure their progress. But I don't think they represent good speculating because we don't really know. we haven't broken out this number of those who are not at grade level as to what percentage are people for whom growth is the proper model and what percentage are people whom we just need to give him a little more push to get them over the top. So, I'm I'm hoping we can
076and and we also said that I I pushed on last time with love uh to try to give a a sense of when we get to the 75, not yet. When we get to the 75, what will that do in terms of grade level? And I understood Tom said, please correct me if I'm wrong, that' be about 70%. >> Which means 30% are non grade level. So there's no criticism intended whatsoever. We're never going to be perfect, but how do we pursue perfection? Uh can we get more figures that on on all of these indexes that give us some approximation of what this means in terms of grading? Because of course, a kid will improve in growth over the course of a year. But if there's still 20% kids who are otherwise capable graduating without
077being at grade level, I imagine it's a concern that we all share. Can we can we generate some figures that will help elucidate this process? I think it it dubtales with what William said. >> Yeah, I I think what you're asking is is there a way to Well, I guess I guess I look at it two ways. Are you asking to use the same metric but present it in a way that might give you a frame of reference so you can understand what that might mean in terms of where students falling within grade level expectations? So what does a 65 performance index equal for example or you asking us to find a different metric? >> I guess my question is what's our baseline metric? Because sometimes we talk about growth and sometimes we talk about
078brain level and there's a kind of amorphous at least in this poor brain there's some kind of amorphous flow that I really can't get my hands on. I don't know enough to tell you what you should be doing. Yeah. >> I think that I'm foolish to try. >> I think for this year I I think it was important for us to find a metric that we could use universally for all buildings. I think going forward where now we have this baseline data, there's the opportunity next year to look at growth because we would have that ability to track growth for all of our buildings. So I think it's it's very possible next year that growth is the better metric to use as a group as we come and do this. That just wasn't possible for
079all of our buildings. I will say you know the one limitation with growth that I see for grten specifically which is different difficult is just the transiency of our population. Right? We talked a lot about this last year. I forget what the number we had. We had something, you know, we had something like 10 or 15% of our students come in and we had the almost the exact same number. >> 350 351, >> right? So we had 350 students go out and 351 come back in last year. None of those >> during the year. >> Yes. During each year and that's typical. So none of those students would be able to be included if we are doing a growth presentation. So I think it is difficult from that standpoint for Grten specifically and that would
080also negatively impact someone you know like Seth in this presentation where he has a large amount of turnover at his building. So his cohort would be extremely small. So I think it's valuable to look at that data but when we're trying to do something where we have to be consistent for all five buildings this is kind of the best metric we have understanding fully it has limitations to be able to interpret that data. I think the this metric is very useful on a student by student basis. Chris said it very, you know, well before. I'm sorry I'm gonna put you on the spot because I can't think of how you articulated it, but she was talking about how the performance index is useful at the student level. Do you mind trying to think of how
081you said that earlier? >> So, sorry, but the way you said it, I was like, oh, I've never said it that well. So the performance index gives you a much more specific indicator of where a student is um along the spectrum of say a third grade student or a fourth grade student on the aspect. If I can say that a student is exceeding um or they're meeting the expectation um that they're oh what's >> I want to say that they're you know near >> the expectation or below. Um but that's a whole range of students. When I say that you're performing at, you know, that you met the expectation on the ESPback, there's a whole range of students, Samria. There are students who came in just one point over >> and there are students who
082are just one point away from moving up. >> Yeah. >> So, the index gives you a more specific number as to where that student is. So if you're looking at an individual performance index on a student, I can watch from year to year and actually better see the growth of that student because they might be at level this year and they might be at level next year, but they could be at level barely this year and at level way up at the top almost to exceeding. and and I can't >> a more difficult test which has different range >> if I'm just looking at who's at grade level or who's exceeding. So the index narrows it down to it gives you a much more specific look within that range. So the school performance index is
083just an average of all of those individual index indices, right? Um but as you see that school performance index rising because it would be based um on the students who are with you October 1st every year you can see growth within the school. So, and if you're perform So, the other piece of that that I think I was saying is, you know, people get really confused about that number 75. Why is it 75 and not 90 or 100? And it's because 75 is that on grade level. that 92 or 100 index are those students who are performing way at the top of exceeding because it's a up to a 110 scale for the index and we can't expect every student to be above and beyond exceeding that 75 is expecting that on the average our
084students are meeting grade level expectations. There might be a few below, there might be some above, but that 75 is really what you're looking for for that middle ongrade level expectations. Does that help? >> Actually, that has helped >> quite a bit. And maybe maybe it's the seventh millionth time with a different voice. Um, but Chris, nice job. I I actually now feel like I own that. I'm still having a hard time and I I I'll drop it after this because I may be the only one. >> This is my nerdy area. >> When when we when we look when I looked at the FMPs as I understood them and I may be mistaken, okay, we still have I don't know how we establish what's a grade level. That's okay. and but we have something
085that's established a grade level for ELA for grade 10 what whatever the grade level is and we have so many below that number I don't know how that handshakes with what you're telling me I did understand what you say but how does it handshake and what can we learn from that handshake >> when you when well first of all think about FNP is one that's one reading assessment >> and really it's we're looking at two things we're looking at well three things. We're looking at the students ability to decode a text, >> to read it fluently, >> and to answer comprehension questions, >> but the way that that one test is administered is very different from what an ESPback reading test is is asking students to do. So they're really while they're they they're connected,
086they're all about reading, we're looking for kids to perform in two different ways. But if you look at my if I look at my F and P scores, I've got students that are below. I've got those students who are, you know, right around that grade level, and then I've got the ones that are above. It really does pretty much mesh with what my ELA scores are. Overall, we do see correlation. >> If the superintendent would allow me to invite her for a cup of tea or coffee so I can learn a little bit more. >> Oh no, >> I got room in my day. >> But Chris, thank you so much. That was really helpful. I am going to recognize Beverly. >> Thank you, Kim. And thank everyone for the presentation. I didn't see all
087of it, but I saw the end part of it. Um, my question is, um, that you're saying that most of our students are at grade level and that's where we want them to be. Did I mishare that? >> I didn't hear that. >> Well, the majority are at >> the majority of the students are gray level. Is that what I heard? >> Okay, Beverly, I'm not quite sure if I understood your question, so I apologize. I'm now didn't have a question yet, but I'm just reiterating what I what I think I heard. So, did I hear that uh most of our students we want our students to be at grade level? Did I hear that? >> Yes, that's the vote. Okay. So if we have the NYP and the IB and AP, are those programs
088at grade level or those programs exceeding grade level? >> So I would say that they set the stage for having um a a better foundation of skills. I don't know that you can equate it to a reading level or a math level. Um, but certainly there's more rigor. There's more expectation of the workload and the depth of thinking that kids will do in those courses. And our job I think in the elementary Beverly is to give them all those opportunities in the elementary level to kind of have them more ready for that more advanced thinking in middle school my in the high school. So are at grade level students, can you tell me they would be successful at the NYP and the IB and AP programs? >> Yes, we believe they will. Um the ones
089that are not quite there yet, either they're just a little off or maybe they're a whole year difference. you know, especially a child who is in special education and has an IEP, they're getting different levels of intervention. So, a a brief intervention might just be an extra reading group with a classroom teacher. Um, that would be like a tier one in the classroom. A tier two might be with a reading specialist or a math specialist. Um, and additional or a tutor, additional reading and zeroing in on what their strengths and weaknesses are. And then a tier three and special ed are more intensive. You more time of for intervention. But one of the things that is true is we don't have any of our children missing their core instruction. That is so important. It used
090to be in the good old days, kids were pushed and pulled out of all kinds of core instruction and so they didn't get what the other kids got. In this day and age, in elementary, they all get the core instruction and they get enrichment opportunities with the magnets and when they need more, we give them more instruction that's very targeted to what their needs are. So, it really is a good system. That's why I think we see the growth that we see. So, we monitor growth because we want to see every child grow, whether they're, you know, needing a lot of intervention, whether they're needing a lot of enrichment. Like Chris said, her both ends were seeming to make best growth, but then she started looking at the middle, the kids who were at grade
091level and she said design programs with her staff to say how can we help them to make significant growth. So, I love that that our teams in the schools are looking at this so so carefully and trying to understand and make sense because the closer you are to the child, as you know, those principles and those teachers, the more that they know the child and can analyze and have a handle on what Matthew is asking. So, who are these kids? What are what's happening with them? And how are we helping them to grow and to get at grade level? That was my long- winded answer. I don't know if quite if that got answered, Beverly. Um because in my in my brain, I put AP and diploma IB in a separate in a separate location
092where I saw see if you guys have taught me. Well, the IB and the MYP is a roadmap to help kids learn in a more rigorous, more inquisitive way. So, it's not a program. How am I doing? >> But my sets the stage for that. And all kids get my right. That's Yeah, I think I said that. >> That's what I said. So my only question is um how are how are our kiddos doing um and does it influence the scores in terms of coming back into classroom on a day-to-day basis coming back from the pandemic? Like what are the behaviors? what are our I I I just think that we hear on a national level about what what what's happening with our our um school kids and I'm just wondering what what our buildings
093are looking at and and such and I and part of this was for and please don't feel don't look at me so awful is that on my Facebook feed there is a principal I think he's down south and he was pretending to talk to I don't know what his name is but he's on pretty frequently and he was pretending to talked to a school board member and and talking about test scores and that's fine. He goes, "Well, you know, sir, we just got we just got back from a a pandemic." And so, what we're really going to be doing is holding our, you know, keeping our kids um loving our kids, helping our kids grow, helping our kids um uh learn because we we've just all gone through this really difficult thing. And so I
094was just as I was preparing for today's tonight's meeting, I was just wondering about what you all were seeing in terms or hearing from your teachers. >> Well, Jerry Brooks, >> thank you. Oh, but >> he's hilarious. >> He is hilar. I do recommend him. >> The guy in the car. >> Yes. Yes. So his last one was that he was taking a phone call from a school board member. >> My first response would be we added a school-based health center to Northeast this summer. We share the the behavioral health clinician with Barnum. And when I was looking at the initial the contract over the summer, it said on there 12 referrals by the end of October and I thought to myself, gosh, that just seems like a a high number in two months of
095school. And we hit it and and that was pretty quick. Um, we also share a social worker with with Seth school and the need is there. Um, you know, we have a full-time psych, but we share those other positions with two other schools, and the need is is really clear. You know, we have we have kids that have trauma both inside and outside of school, but we also have um families that are seeking the assistance for their kids that have kind of come out of the woodwork to be honest in the past year or so. So, um, just to give you a sense of how we're utilizing those people that the need is clear. >> Yeah. And once again, I'm not I'm not it's not a the reason why the test scores are because of
096this. That's not what I'm saying. But I just think that is a we can get really stuck on data. We can get really stuck on the index scores. Um, but if we're not taking a look at sort of what, you know, sometimes just to manage a classroom, um, must be really difficult. And so I just wanted to make sure that that voice got heard as well. And we also saw the need from the staff to build those skills in their in their teaching and in their instruction and their planning. Um we brought that into the middle um I'm sorry it was offered at the middle school but it was off it was offered to the entire district also last Tuesday through the the department of family services on how to how to work with children
097and families who have experienced trauma. Um, and that was something that was asked for by the staff and and luckily we were able to to get something and that's something we're going to look to continue to do. >> Awesome. >> And you also presentation was really focused on academics, but like he said, we could have done >> we could have all added components to what's going on. >> And I and I and I appreciate that, but I guess for me, I saw that in absence. And so I wanted to make sure that um that we hear you like that we that we're we're hearing that this is that we're in a difficult place. I just want to recognize Rita. >> Oh hi. Yes. Um thank you everyone. Um Susan I asked would like to know
098um we you provided us with elementary enrollment but could you also provide us with class size? >> We will be doing that. that um is quite a task but we will do that in reading ourselves for the budget. So that will be coming. >> I guess >> I just wanted to see if there was a correlation between the scores and the class sizes. Some of our schools have smaller class sizes, some of them have a little larger. I was just curious about that. And my second question is for Tom. Um Tom, how small of a group do we have for these students at Thames River and Mystic River, the not high need students that do you know that you can't even like inch out the scores for us for the science standards? >> Typically the
099cutoff is less than 20. >> So out of we have um four >> wells is only in fifth grade. So we are saying for fifth graders at both of those schools we have less 19 basically or less students who meet that criteria in the fifth grade. >> So then you're saying the m if we have four classrooms >> no there's three >> there's three. So let's say if there's 20 in each 60 students are you saying then that a lot of these students are high needs. I'm saying that roughly 40 out of those 60 are high needs >> and a high need student could be anybody with a 504 plan not basically just is that what you said >> special education free reduced lunch or receiving ELLL services currently >> or a combination >> or
100or yes you could it is an is an or statement not an and statement so any one of those things qualify you if you have the trifecta um but you just fought once at that point. Well, that's really incredible because I mean I don't see why free and reduced lunch would keep you from not, you know, let letting you know this the science standards be shown because I would think a lot of the other schools have that also. >> Well, it's it's more that the socioeconomic status of the student groups them within that category. There just weren't enough students not in that category to disclose it. Like for instance, you heard Steve talk about he does have a larger population of EL students. >> Yes. >> So that he's actually considered a bilingual school. He's
101and so is Grant Middle School. So you know and when our students come from other countries, some of them are well educated and some of them have had little ed education. Many of them come with no language at all. Some come with a little bit of language. So, we have to take them where they come and, you know, make them feel comfortable and at home and and really grow. One of the good things I have to say though, we've brought the EL data to you. Our EL data looks really pretty good. Our our teachers and EL um teachers in Paris are doing a fine job getting them in and helping them grow. But it takes a few years, as you know, to get from a level one in Lost Links to a level five where
102they're reading and they're articulate and they're writing and they can do all those things, >> right? Well, I just it is a concern of me when I look at the scores at Mystic River for the science and the math um you know for the high need students. >> Yeah, >> it it it's it is concerning um more so than I I believe all the other schools together. So whether we need more resources there um to help out but there there is about that that's a good you know you brought that up Rita and so did Matthew so I'll definitely we'll look at that >> okay >> carefully >> thank you >> if I'm not hearing any more questions um we're going to move on I once again just wanted to say thank you very much
103on the on behalf of the board the good work that you guys are doing um for our district. Um we just you guys are a class act. Thank you. >> So we are going to you guys don't have to say if you want to go. >> I know spending a charming evening with us. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Bye guys. Thank you for working so hard. >> Thank you guys. >> All right. So Tom, enrollment data. enrollment. Uh so like I had said before, this is just a really high level look at enrollment. This is not kind of breaking it down by demographics, so socioeconomic status. That is something we typically do later on in the school year kind of as a a main presentation of the list. >> Good night. Thank you. >>
104So you can see here it's broken down by school. We do have some variation um between October 1st, which is kind of our snapshot date for the state of Connecticut, from last year versus this year. We are a net plus seven overall. So we have seven more students overall this October 1st than we do last October 1st. The largest variability is at Charles Farnum where you can see we gained 20 students this year. That is not a surprise. Um it is will be seen whether or not that holds throughout the school year. So I think we had talked a little bit about this earlier. The Navy did not move families on the same timeline as they did in prior years. They held off a lot of those moves from Gren from the base, but we
105started intaking a lot of students early from the base. So therefore on October 1st, we had kind of a a lot of people in limbo. So we are starting to see some of those families be reassigned to their base around the country. At this point, I expect that some of that enrollment will balance out at Charles Sarnum. However, I will tell you Charles Barnum in general has by far the highest demand um you know for that popular for that uh for a particular school. So Charles Barnum also has a largest number of magnet students right now at other buildings. So you think Charles Barnum is 20 above where they were last year and we have a ton of students who intend who are actually going to other buildings. The Charles Barnham has a lot of
106demand for the size of the building that it >> I was just doing mental math and I could tell that we're higher we have higher enrollment this year than we had last year. >> Yeah. And sorry about doing 31 versus 2,138. >> Yeah. So we're plus seven. >> Yeah. >> Um so you know a little bit you know with within kind of normal variability you know we lose to it one building game to another but outlier really is Barnum this year. Um, it remains to be seen whether that's going to be a one-year thing or not, or whether that's just going to continue and as EB keeps hiring more workers and as our subbase expands, are we just going to have more and more young sailor families in town and we just have more and
107more demand at Charles Barnum? It seems like that is the direction that is going, >> but it's good we have introduc magnets to be able to handle that situation >> and uh, you know, that'll be important. We did have Charles Barnham had the largest demand for students interested in going to some of our magnet schools last year. Hopefully that continues. It helps us kind of balance that load between kind of the increasing demographic population in that school zone and move them to kind of other schools. Um and then for Graten Middle School, we we do have a little bit more variability here. You know, plus two at Graten Middle. We are down a little bit at Fitch High School, but I did want to point out that most of that is due to a very
108small senior class this year. So while our other grades are averaging around 275 280, our senior class is only 229 as of today. So it is a very small senior class. My expectation is when this eighth grade group comes up next year, we will get back towards that 1,50 mark roughly. So this seems to just be a slight anomaly with this small graduating class this year. Um I don't anticipate this is a a larger trend of reading. >> Yeah. Class sizes are more in the 300 range at the middle school and then they go up to the high school. So that was an anomaly for that senior class. >> And this this cohort uh that is now seniors has been small for the past four years. They this has been a small group that's just
109been moving along. >> Our Khook cohort is our biggest. >> Yes. >> If they stayed with us the whole time they're closer to 400. Any questions on where we are? So that that is our October one snapshot date. That's the date for kind of all of our numbers for the state of Connecticut that we take for our students. Those are the students who when they test at the end of the year will be included in those numbers next year. >> Yes. >> William, with the the number of students that come into the school district with the military, is there any type of assessment that we do initially? Um >> they usually come with assessment that we look at from their other school >> from their other schools. Um we do sometimes give the comprehensive ESBACK
110which is um a test that um really is like having an ESPback test but it's off season so you can give it at any time. So when there's real concerns or questions, we have other assessments that we can give them to find out how they're doing. If they don't come with a portfolio rich enough for us to determine, >> and in this day and age, do we change their grade? You know, if they come in as a third grader, but we assess them their first grade level. >> I think that's something that's done with the the principal and the family. The the other thing is in Connecticut you can start school as a four-year-old that you know in kindergarten other states you have to be five. So sometimes there's differential with age just because of
111the nature of how states >> isn't there also that um compact military compact. I was just going to say so last on the on voting day last week with the PD day I met with the 612 counseling team and the representatives for the military compact and that that also does govern it um from K to 8. Basically if a student is is sent to us as a military family as a sixth grader they come to us as a sixth grader and that's where they are placed. Um the only exception to that is if they're at the high school level and they don't have the requisite amount of credits to be qualified say as a junior in Grten. They might be places as a sophomore if that's the only amount of credits that they have because
112the the credit requirements might be very different in some states versus Connecticut. I know you guys are having conversations about that tomorrow. But for example, like some town some districts and other states might only require 20 credits to graduate or require 26. So because of that scale, they're they're placed really where they come in with the amount of credits that they have. if they've taken algebra in the middle school and algebra 1 and they need algebra 2 in eighth grade. That has certainly happened, you know, over the years. And the the good thing about having that campus is that they get dropped off at the high school. There's usually a few students either in a higher level math or science and then we have someone walk them back or we get them back, bless them
113back to the middle school. Can I just follow up on to another part of the military compact is those families within 10 days of the family asking the prior district that they usually do before they leave. We have to get all the educational records from that prior district. So typically our military families are coming in and we have a complete file on that student before they're starting. So we we have really all the data well not all the data we have a lot of the data we need to be able to accurately place that student before they're ready to register for classes. >> And our schools do the same thing. So before they leave town, >> as long as they're given the information, they give them all their files. >> So is there national testing
114anymore for like third grade? >> Well, ESPback was supposed to be that the common core standards. As a military child myself, I was very excited about the Common Core standards. I thought they were good, rigorous standards. They were supposed to be national standards, as was the test. Some states decided to go with it and some states didn't. So, um, >> it depends where they come from. >> Depends. >> Yeah. >> But that's unfortunate. >> Yeah. Because >> that would have been a good thing. >> But our students Yeah. >> Yeah. >> at at a at a disadvantage possibly. >> We're lucky that some might use common metrics like a Lexile score or reading level, something like that. So, the the assessment they use might be different, but the metric that comes out of it might
115be the same. So, there's a lot of times there's good data in there for us to be able to place them. to your point to have that kind of universal screener is something we've been having kind of internal discussions with especially at the middle school level because I think there there can be such a wide range of ability level students are coming in with so no we're we're having those conversations >> I I guess this is for you Susan I'm really interested in the compact and what happens how does that um how does that set with the the comp the compact if a student comes in with only 20 credits and we require x amount of number more and what happens in terms of of the compact. >> Um so in terms of where they're
116placed at the grade level >> so we we did just have this oh what is I think she's considered the state commissioner of the compact. I think that's what her title is. Uh she was here presenting to us. >> Laura. >> Yeah. Laura. >> That's fantastic. >> Yes. Yeah. and she so she we I don't think she had ever contemplated that question either uh because it is kind of a caveat within the compact but our understanding is is because it's the high school level based on credit so if they come in thinking they're a junior but they don't actually qualify as a junior based on credits then they are considered a sophomore at that point >> and how does that square >> well I think that's within the realm of >> that's within the realm
117of what the local education position >> All right I I also know I I think she she certainly offered to come back. It was a great presentation. I think she could do a presentation for the board >> for the and the administrators >> and the administrators. I think it was a a great hour, frankly, and we I learned a lot. I thought I knew a lot about the compact, but we learned a lot in that hour, which I think that'd be great to have back. >> I'm sure I'm invited. >> Yes, definitely. Well, thank you. >> We saw that your hand was up. Did you make a decision? >> No, it was answered already. Thank you. >> Okay, great. You know, one of the things that I am wondering if we could have is um
118if if this could just be printed one more time into the board notes about having what is the enrollment the like the top enrollment of each school. So like it's good to know that we've got enrollment of 9008 but what what is our max capacity? >> Oh. Oh fire code. >> But what is the capacity of how many kids that we can that we can have? capacity building. >> That's the word. >> That's something I have to check with Santa. >> What is the building capacity? >> Well, >> students. >> Yeah, but it could also be like capacity, too. >> Well, I think there's a number of student. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah, that just would be kind of I don't know. Maybe no one else is interested. So, >> I don't think
119we're at capacity at any of our schools. >> Full capacity, but full capacity. >> Full capacity would be >> pretty close. >> Yeah. and and and if it can't be done, I just thought it would be interesting. Read us. >> I I thought it was 900 at our middle school when we the when the school was built, >> but maybe not. >> That may have been the target enrollment because I think you're supposed to with state funding hit 95% of target enrollment to be eligible, I believe. So, that may have been the target to hit 900. That would make sense. >> Okay. Because I we always thought it was a little small compared to the high school. Yeah. >> Well, they're not building them like they used to, Rita. >> The building commission wants them
120occupied 100% participation 100% of the time, and they don't give every teacher a classroom. >> I know. And the classrooms are smaller also. >> The classrooms are smaller. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, I've always thought if we had an issue, we could always move a grade up to the high school. They're right there. So if if it ever got really overcrowded, you know, that's a possibility. >> I love your can do attitude, Rita. All right, any other questions um for our enrollment data? >> If hearing none, Tom, thank you very much. And I your last day in the district is >> Friday. Friday. So, we um we wish you um a lot of luck and thank you so much for really partnering with the board and understanding all this information. Um and we wish
121you really a lot of luck. >> Thank you. >> I very much appreciate. >> All right. >> We'll miss him for sure. >> You're not gonna get rid of me so Lori come join Show this one first. Diversity. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Jen Anthony um and Reita Casey who's on have also been part of the DEI group who've helped um craft our HR diversity plan. So we've had got a whole >> collaboration. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, so >> Jen, >> are you part of this? She is here for the mentoring program. Are you Why don't you Why don't you come come join us? >> We have an open table. >> We love to share as many hats indeed. >> So I want to talk just a little bit about our our current plan in
122in our work to diversify the workforce. Um that is what is on the screen currently. Um this is our plan for the next three years. >> Phil, is there any way that you could enlarge that? >> That would be really swell of you. >> For now, >> we can move if we need to. Mhm. >> Yeah. So, um so this is our plan the next three years. I've been in the process of developing uh this plan starting um over the summer. Our last plan, our last five-year plan expired at the end of the last school year. Um so, this plan will take us forward the next three three years. we've um what we've looked at or focused on are programs that we've seen success with and then also some new initiatives which I'll I'll speak
123to a little bit but um we're going to continue our efforts around our grow our own programs both in district and out of district the program that's run through um that program for teacher and residents we're going to continue that program we've um since we've uh this is our second year participation and In two years time, we have um brought in three educators of color in two years. So, it's really having um an absolute impact on our ability to bring educators of color into the district. Um so, we're going to continue to participate in that. It's a good pipeline for us to foster those individuals while they're going through their teaching program and then bring them on to the district after they've completed their program, which has been going very successfully. Um and Reita who
124is uh I saw I think she was in the audience here on Zoom. She actually sponsored one of our placements. So um she actually um took one of the first placements at Katherine Palaski. Um worked with that teacher for an entire year. We hired the teacher this year and she is her sponsor teacher um for the year um continuing to support Cheyenne as she's on her path to teaching now. So it's a real success story. the program really is working. Um, we will continue to look at scholarships for pitch high school uh students. We started that program a couple of years ago and that's really was to encourage students to be on the pathway to teaching if they had an interest in teaching. We wanted to support them with some scholarship money. It's not a
125significant amount of money. It's really just encouraging the dialogue, encouraging down the path. And that ties into the work that we want to do around offering a teacher pathway curriculum at the high school to really expand that interest and have um have courses that will allow them to start that study much sooner instead of waiting until they get to college or in an ed preparation program. Um so so that those two will will connect very nicely to support the students at the high school. Um and then um we're looking at additional uh minority recruitment venues. We continue to network thanks to Sacramento. She's very helpful with the Martin Luther King Scholars and and making connections for us. Um so that's been very helpful that we were allowed to make connections and bring those individuals into
126the district and work with us while they're still in their um still in their education programs. Yeah. Um we're also looking at one of the new initiatives we're looking at is considering um a more robust support system for our substitute teachers. So one of the things that that I've worked on is I have put in for a grant to purchase some software that would allow us to offer professional learning communities for our substitute teachers. So much more robust. It would allow them to um do online curriculum to enhance their skills, their classroom management, their lesson planning, all of the things that uh prepare them well to be teachers. So, and it does take a little pressure off of the rest of the organization, the administrators, they're so busy, you know, we can't expect that they're
127going to be able to deliver curriculum to substitute teachers while they're trying to focus all their energy on delivering curriculum to students. So, and and based on what we all just saw and heard, it's, you know, it's a heavy lift. So, the goal with this is is twofold. It's to provide that support that the schools need to enhance those individuals and their skill sets, but then also get them better prepared so that they can move through the continue and hopefully become teachers of the future. Um, so that is we we've applied for a g a grant for the software. As I mentioned, we're waiting to hear if we're being awarded or not. But, um, if not, we'll obviously have to kind of revisit that, you know, um, professional learning community format and framework and see
128what that looks like and see how we can accomplish it. But I think that's kind of a a path to, um, like I said, pathway to teaching, but I think also to retain our substitute teachers. You know, we all know they're hard to find. So, this we're hoping will be a retention tool because not a lot of districts have what I'm talking about. So, it's kind of on the cutting edge and I think um if we can roll something like this out, I think we might even be able to attract substitutes into the district who maybe want to grow and become educators in the future. Um and then we'd like to survey those individuals to see what's important to them. You know, what why are they here? Why did they stay? And so those are
129some some of the things that we're going to focus on is growing that substitute teacher population to help the district overall and then obviously help with the need obviously of covering classrooms. That's the ultimate goal. Um but we'd like to have them uh feel more valued, retain them longer, um because I think overall that's helpful for the district. Um so those are the some of the things that we will continue to focus on. Um, we're doing a significant amount of outreach just in general with recruitment with staffing the way it is. There's a significant amount of outreach going on on a daily weekly basis. We continue to do events in the community um partner with partners in the community. One of the things that we have just um uh rolled out is we're actually trying
130for the first time some radio advertising, some actual radio spots. So, um, for November and December, we are doing some radio spots on three local radio stations to let them know that we're hiring. Um, come see us. Um, so it'll be a good test to see kind of test the waters and see what that recruitment venue brings us. Um, you know, obviously we're out in the public and we're doing all those things, but we want to take an opportunity to take advantage of maybe testing a new recruitment method to see, you know, if it reaches more and more people. Certainly we're on Facebook and we're um doing Facebook posts and and boosting those posts and we are seeing actual positive results from the Facebook recruitment. Um it seems to be going quite well. So um
131I think one of the questions you had was kind of the current state of staffing and then I'll talk a little bit about the um the demographic information. Um >> is that big enough? >> No. Yeah. I don't know which uh >> so um I think you're looking for just a general update on how the staffing's going. So we have made some progress since I think I was here last. Um we're looking for a small number of tutors still about 10. Um we're down to about 30 pair of professional positions which is down. It sounds like a lot and it is a lot. Um down significantly from where we were. Um >> and where were we before? >> We were up 42. >> Yeah. And that that was coming off of last year, which we
132were even higher. We were probably closer to 50 when we left last year. >> Okay. >> We don't have that. >> I think we have up a different slide. >> Yeah, I'm just I'm just talking in general. Yeah, I'm just general. >> I'll take it off just so we're not confused. >> Bill was a little was a little slid. >> Yeah. And um and we have a small number of kindergarten. I think we're still looking for about 10 or 11 of those. Um but overall the rest of the staffing is pretty stable. Those are the areas that we're having the most difficulty for sure. >> I I've heard um building subs have been hard to get but I think we're down to only having needing five >> five correct >> out of the whole district.
133>> Yeah. And that each of the schools has a few three I think at the elementary and then >> three three at the uh yeah four at the larger elementary the two larger elementaryaries and then believe it's six at the middle school high school. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Um Lori, how are we in terms of our um pay for subs compared to the surrounding towns? >> I would have to check it again. Um I think we were comparable but not uh there are there are districts in the area who have advanced those wages for substitute teachers for sure. >> We advanced them last year when we did the Paris in the minimum wage. >> Right. >> I think Stonington is about $30 more a day than Graten I've heard. So it would be good to
134look at that and think about what we need to do. You know it might have something to do with our pay structure. >> Yeah. Agreed, Rita. We will need to look at that again for sure um before we um go into the budget season. Um so I appreciate you asking about that. We did get some data regarding pair professionals recently. Um learn had done a very kind of informal uh survey and you know that that data was uh certainly more more concerning than what we've seen in the past. There are several districts in the local area who have increased their wages significantly. So we have that data and we can share that with the board when we go through the budgeting >> and we do understand that several of the districts have large amount of
135RPS or even more than Grten got and so they're putting those funds in to pay for non-certified staff which will provide a nice cliff for them in two years. What do you do then thereafter if you've paid all that? >> Right. Right. Um, so we'll be going into negotiations with the Paris in the spring. So that's a conversation we will have. >> How did that happen? Because we extended. >> We did an extension. Yes. >> Yeah. >> So that might be >> I know you feel like you just finished, right? We start again. Um but so that'll be uh data that we will certainly bring to the table during the budget process and then also as we look at negotiations we'll certainly have to bring that information forward for the board to take a look
136at. Andrea has a question. >> Yeah. How do we compare in terms of those those districts that are paying higher than we are? How do we compare instead in terms of student population? Um it's it I would say it's more geographic than equal student population, but we could we can provide that data. We can certainly get student data associated with the districts. >> Norwich is one that has done that, but they're a K8 system, >> right? >> And they have some significant needs too in that area and has funds to be able to provide those big increases. >> Right. So now does Phil put up his please. Thank you Phil get ahead of himself. >> Um so uh this is some actual data that I wanted to share with the board. This is data this
137is uh what's called an EEO5 report. This is a report that we have to file with the federal government every two years which basically identifies our staffing population by ethnicity and and race. So, uh, what I want to do is just kind of share this data. Um, I went all the way back to 2016 because that was about the time we really started to do a lot of targeted work around, um, how we were going to diversify the workforce. Um, that's about where our prior five-year plan started. Um, so, uh, we went all the way back to that point. And this is kind of one of the measures that we use just to see every couple of years where are we and how have we progressed. So I'm not going to go through all the
138numbers per se on the screen because you've seen the table, but a couple things I just wanted to point out. Some of the most recent developments in the data are we have seen in 2022 um I would say the largest amount of increase in some of the populations. And in 2022 we saw an increase in the Hispanic and and Latino males. Um a sizable increase in Hispanic and Latino females. um an increase in black or AfricanAmerican male and I apologize I see the typo there. I see a typo in the in the African-American column. >> African. >> Yes. So apologize for the typo. And then um female classified as two or more races. We saw you know, you know, we saw a sizable increase there. So those are the populations that have grown within our
139workforce in the last couple of years. So that is what the data is telling us. We're making, you know, prior to that, I think we're making kind of steady small gains in these numbers. Um some of the more sizable changes appear to be from 2020 to 2022. >> Oh, is this for all employees or non-certified? Is this this entire cohort? This is this is all employees. Um it include it doesn't report a small number of kind of part-time so substitute teachers and things like that. >> All these are all FTE FTE. Yep. >> Well, they're FTE and they're non-served. >> Correct. Certified certified >> custodians. >> Yes. >> So it would be our entire workforce. >> Yeah. Other than like substitute teachers, they don't really capture, right? sizable increase with our white and male white
140male and white women as well. >> Yeah. The white female. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> So, um I know Sue had Susan had mentioned about the DEI committee and some of the work that that that committee is doing. So, um I do uh work on that committee with Jen and with Brenita. Um and we continue to look at how we are going to um continue to diversify the workforce. We collaborate as a committee. Um and then also we take a deeper dive into these numbers on an annual basis. So, we don't look at it every two years. We do have an annual uh deeper dive report that breaks this down further. And if the board wanted to see that, we can absolutely send that out with the board notes. >> I think I would love
141to see that specifically with um certified staff. What that break? >> Yeah, because it gives a nice breakdown. It breaks down the certified staff by grade level. So, elementary, middle, high school, and then breaks out the pair of professionals. So, it kind of takes this and breaks it down on an annual basis a little bit deeper. >> Administration versus teachers, too. >> Correct. Administration's working out. >> That would be great. Yeah. Thank you, Lord. >> Yeah, no problem. We'll get that over to you on my committee too, Lori. That that's the committee I'm on. >> Yes. Thank you, Andrea. Yes. Yeah. There's a there's a number of wonderful participants who have been very help. >> That's right. >> So, I just wanted to make sure that I do have to say that um I work
142at DK and we have a teacher residence who is now a full-time staff. We also have another teacher in residence who is working with one of our full-time teachers. And this year we have a lot of pair of professionals who are um non-white >> of color and who also speak different languages >> and just walking through the building this year >> must be wonderful. >> Seeing the students mirrored and the people who are working with them is really heartwarming. So your efforts are it's just nice to see and you can just see the connections between the kids >> is they feel like >> Yeah. >> You know they're they're people like them in their in the school. >> Yeah. They see their peers. Yeah. That's great. >> It's good to hear. >> Yeah. Thanks. So
143kudos to you. >> Any other questions from the board? >> Question. So for student teachers, um what's our hiring rate? Like how effective are we with retaining student teachers? You know, we were thinking growing our own. Um are we very effective at that or or are we missing out? And what are we >> We We were so effective that sometimes I think that held us back from getting a more diverse staff because when you have an intern or a student teacher, you know them, you've educated them. So when they came to the table with others, sometimes they almost had an inside track. So the reason we're doing this new program where we're bringing in people of color to do this, um, you know, internship, um, it really sets them up for success to be trained
144by our highly skilled teachers to get to know the school community. So the answer is yes and no. you know, it we do we do feel like we do a nice job supporting them and getting them into the school, but we just want to make sure that that population of interns is a diverse population as well, >> right? Which is some of the goal with the professional learning committee uh um community. We're hoping to attract more individuals into the district who have some of that diverse background because we'll have something to help, you know, develop them and bring them along. So are you able to choose like the students you know the the college students that are in education you don't have are you just assigned a student or do you get you know >>
145well one and you can choose >> a student teacher comes to learn and we don't pay for them we just teach them an internship like the one that we're talking about is someone who comes from a university who we pay a certain amount for similar to a long-term building sub. >> Yeah. Yeah. Your question though. Well, that doesn't You have it though with the teachers in residence. >> Yes, correct. But the internship >> that's that was your question. >> We don't choose them. So, we're >> and how can we change that? >> Well, here's what I would say. They the universities reach out to us with student teachers who are interested in a placement with us. I'll be honest, most of the time it's driven geographically by the student teacher. They want to have a
146placement close to where they live. So, they will tend to reach out to the districts within their community because that's where they want to work. Um, so we do have some choice. Um, but and we cast the net with the university saying, you know, bring us your individuals, bring us your student teachers. Um, and if we feel like they're not the right placement for us, we can certainly choose. Now, I'll be honest. It hasn't been enough volume for us to have to make that choice. You know, it's it get, you know, the student teaching placements are not easy to come by because there's so many districts that, you know, they're being um they're being moved around the districts based on the student the student teachers interest geographically. So our growth your own may be a
147paraprofessional who wants to go into education and we can help support and they tend to be more diverse group. >> Correct. >> Or our own students if you know they go off to school and want to be a teacher and want to come back and teach at their alma mada >> that happens too. So we can cultivate some of that with our grow the own. >> Yeah. >> And pay attention and you know say come come back and student teach here. Yeah. I know I mean it's a good question because the grow our own is really to tackle every possible avenue right so it is teachers it is Paris it is high school students who are trying to you know really speak to each population that we have access to that may have this interest
148and growth in mind it' be great to know that because you mentioned Howard and HBCU it would be great to know that they are >> you know calling to say hey we have a student that wants to you know do a student teacher. >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> You know or us reaching out to them. >> Yeah. >> To say we have you know X number this year. >> Well we had Carita Hajj traveled down to her alma Howard and she did make a couple nice connections for us and and met some people so that she can network with people who are there now. So that could happen in the future for us. >> Yeah. We just started that partnership for for the exact reason that you're describing. We actually did make a placement from there
149at the middle school. So, we actually um you know were able to make those connections and then bring someone into the organization. So, I think it's definitely going to be a good partnership going forward. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah. Meth. Do we have we tried to use our alumni association or faculty or even reach out into the community to let them know that uh we will be having openings if they know somebody who is in a teaching program somewhere to and make use of the resource that we have at them. >> Yeah. So we we do uh have very strong connections with our retired teachers in the community. Um, you know, frankly, one just came to me the other day and brought me a candidate that we ended up hiring. So, we absolutely spread
150the word, cast the net as wide as possible, um, get out in the community. And I, and I'll be honest, our retirees have been very helpful. They've referred individuals to us. Um, any leads we get, we immediately, you know, contact them and get them in. You know, if they're interested, we jump on them and get them going. Yeah. Yay. Thank you so much. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you. It's good to see you. >> Welcome. So, we have been working very very closely with Jen and with Sharon Schik and Jen and Sharon have worked together to um really reboot the mentoring program and a lot of that has been research and then some development um using some of the tools that we had used in the past but revitalizing the program. So, I'm going to
151let Jen talk a little bit. I think she has a little slideshow for us. Jen, and when did you become our um coordinator of this? >> So, um for those of you that don't know me, I'm Jen Anthony. I have been in Grten since 2000. I've been a literacy coach, prek teacher, kindergarten teacher, first grade teacher, >> math coach, >> currently the math specialist at CK, >> and I took on this additional role last month. >> So, I welcome. >> Thank you very much. She completed her 092 to be an administrator. >> Yes. >> She and Reita Casey, if she's still on, shout out. >> She's over there giving me moral support. So, I just wanted to share with you a little bit about the um presentation that I gave to the interview committee and
152then kind of give you a little bit of where we the progress that we've made so far. So, when I was thinking about the mentor program, and I feel like I've been a mentor informally for many years here in Grten, um it's just the school that I've been at for many years just lends itself to needing um adult role models and I just naturally think that that is in my wheelhouse. Um, so I started to think about how the mentor program and revitalizing the mentor program could um bridge some of the gaps that we have with our academics and also um thinking about our diversity, equity and inclusion statements. Um so people that's not um so I was really thinking a lot about the last part of the DEI vision statement ensuring that all groups
153feel valued actively engaged and empowered and what groups do we have in Grten that we could really target using the mentor program. Um so on the next slide I feel like we just talked about this at the elementary level when they were talking about the high needs versus non- high needs. Um, and that this is just the a mirror of the aspect data that they showed. Um, I didn't put any labels on it because it doesn't really matter because you can see across the board here, Graten, that we have a gap between our non- high needs and our high needs students um at all the levels. So, when you're thinking about the groups of students that are in those in that subgroup, it's our ELLL population, which we have supports for. It's our special ed
154population which we also have supports for. But there's a large group of kids who could cross over to both of those groups um but may not cross over into either one of those groups are are um students with low socio socioeconomic status. So, can we use the um role model mentor program to maybe target some of those on the cusp kind of kids who might be falling through the cracks and just be in need of some support through adults in our community. So, when I was thinking about who needs a mentor, um I kind of thought about some snippets and I've had all of these kids in my classes. Um so, on the top left you'll see there's one of those kids is Joe. He comes to school most days. He's very capable student, but
155he's disengaged. Um, he truly believes that the only talent he has is being a soccer player and he's a pretty good soccer player, but has never had any soccer instruction because his family is on a very limited income and they can't afford that. So, Joe needs to feel valued. He needs somebody to tell him that you could do something with soccer and maybe not. you have a lot of other things you could do besides soccer. Um, in the top right is Jorge. Um, I've definitely had Jorgees in my class. He comes to school every day. He tries really hard, but he comes to school at six o'clock in the morning because that's when his single dad drops him off because he needs to get to work. And he doesn't get picked up until 6:00 at
156night. So, by the time he gets home, his dad is really tired from working really hard to support him. Um, and in class he starts acting out and seeking adult attention. Um, or he needs a mentor to become engaged in school and to have an adult who can support him. Um, who is available for him during the day. And finally in the bottom, one of those girls is Alina. She comes to high school every day. She works hard and has good grades. When school is over, her friends participate in after school activities, but she did not. Her mom works second shift. she needs to go home. She is the caretaker of her siblings. Um once her siblings go to bed, she does her homework. Um her friends at school start talking about college. She can't
157see this in her future because she has responsibilities. Alina needs to be empowered. She needs to know that there are avenues for her to pursue what she needs to do um or what she is capable of doing and at the same time continue to support her family. So, I applied for the job and I got the job and started doing some research. Um, I hooked up with the Governor's Prevention Partnership and learned a lot about what it takes to have a quality program. Um, the mentor.org site um has a ton of information about the national mentor program and CABE also has policies and procedures that should be followed if you're going to have a quality program in your school. Um and these are the quality program standards that um are highlighted. You need to have
158a trained program coordinator. Um a mentor screening pro process with back background checks. Um need to have mentor training an initial mentor training and ongoing mentor training as those mentors stay in the process. Um we need to establish a criteria or a process to determine um the mentor mentee matches um ongoing mentor supervision and support and program evaluation. So as I'm working with Sharon Ship, we're keeping all of these um standards in mind as we get the um program back up and running. Um, so this is just a kind of a snippet of what I see as year one. Um, fall 2020 has already started. Um, Sharon and I are attending the governor's prevention partnership training. Um, we're in week four. It meets once a week for two hours. Um, I've worked with Lori and
159with Phil and with Sharon developing some policies and procedures that we need to have in place. Um before we pull in more mentors to work with our kids, we're establishing a district mentor committee which is going to be composed of a building liaison from every school, possibly more than one liaison at the middle school and teacher representation from each school so that we have um input from all um parties as we move forward. We've started the community outreach. Sharon has been um instrumental in reaching out to local businesses. She's attended the um Eastern Connecticut Chamber um education meeting last month. Um she's already been talking to um Chelsea Graten Bank who is very interested in partnering with us. Um and we are working on creating our mentor training sessions which we have to have in
160place before we can pair mentors with kids. >> We've also outreached to Um, EB and they have a mentor coordinator at EB. Liam >> Barber. >> Yes. >> And they actually have subgroups of these mentors. So they have the black Latino engineering group. Um, you know, they have women in engineering. So they have all different varieties of mentorships that can happen in our schools even with robotics team. So that's very exciting. >> This this community has plenty of people who we can tap into. So moving forward into the winter, our plans for winter are um January is n national mentor month. So we're trying to think of some recruitment events that we can um host to get more mentors involved. We're going to finalize the mentee referral process um within our committee. Um, we're going
161to finalize the mentee selection criteria and we're going to identify mentors. Um, I've been doing a lot of outreach to um, other districts who have um, successful mentorship programs and the ones that are most successful have the mentors starting at the elementary level and those mentors follow the kids to the middle school and the high school. So that relationship builds across the years. So, I would like to when we finally um get all the processes in place and we start um getting mentees, I would like to prioritize kids in grade five and grade eight so that we can pair those mentorships up before the school year ends. So then when those fifth graders go to sixth grade, they will already have that mentor going with them. And then the same thing for the eighth graders
162going into nth grade and then kind of trickle down from there so that we can start that um process of mentors moving with kids. And finally in the spring we'll have our annual program recognition event. We will continue our outreach and we will meet with the um mentor committee to evaluate and revise any of the pro uh procedures that we've been working on thus far and see if we need to make any tweaks for the following year. So what we've done so far, um, as I said, Sharon and I have attended the mentor staff training. Um, we have done a lot of work with the, um, creation of the some of the procedures. Um, we've done school-based outreach. I've reached out to, like I said, many districts who have successful programs. And I've tried to
163dig deep into the people that we still have in district who are part of the mentor program. Come to find out, we actually do have three um active mentor mentee relationships happening in the middle school that we didn't know about. So, we have those three. We have a building coordinator at the middle school um >> Marissa Gallo who has been very helpful in kind of giving me some informations of what things have happened in the past so we can kind of build upon those. Um, we're creating the mentor um committee. I'm going to send out the email this week to the building principles looking for their recommendations for their liaison and for um teacher representation. Um so we can hopefully have the first meeting I would hope like the first meet week of December so
164that we can really uh focus on the mentor um the mentor mentee match. So once we start getting some more mentors in we can start those matches as soon as we can. hopefully in January. Um I met with Rebecca Bay this morning and she is going to be phenomenal with our community outreach and public relations. She's already started working on the web the web page. So on the GPS website, we're going to have a separate mentor program website. Um >> and she's so good about getting it out on Facebook, too. >> Yep. She's gonna um network through Facebook. We're going to make a promo video um a little twominut video with hopefully some of our past mentors kind of advertising what um the benefits of being a mentor are. Um she's making flyers with little
165QR codes. So, um, we can hang up the flyers and people can just scan the QR code and that QR code will go right to, uh, like a little, not Google survey, but something similar to a goo Google survey, which would just tell the person that I'm interested in being a mentor and then I will get that information and we can start the process. Um, >> so cool. >> I've worked with Lori. We already have the um mentor application process completed. So we have our steps that we're going to follow. Should somebody want to be a mentor? Lor's um department has fixed the applet track. So we added some additional questions that we thought needed to be in there based on the governor's partnership. So that's all finished. And um since we don't have an
166initial mentor training, a current training with all the components that they suggest that we have um the mentor director from West Harford Public Schools has offered to do an online training that um Sharon and I are going to sit in on. Cool. >> And we have three mentors that have already completed a training a while ago who want to get started. So, we're all going to join in to her training so that I can see what the training looks like and create our own and then we can get those three people up and running who are waiting to be mentors. >> The other thing we've said for sustainability in the future is to have the community coordinators help be the conduit for welcoming people into the building. So, if there's any chance that they can
167be part of any of this, >> they're definitely in the roles and responsibilities. So, great. So, I basically talked about what moving into winter, we're going to finalize the referral process, planned for the recruitment in January. Um, Rebecca's working on the advertising, and the only other thing is we need to figure out um supplies because there are two schools that still have their supplies from long ago, but none of the other schools have any mentor supplies. So, my guess is that that will need to get to Susan as she puts together her budget so that we can figure out how to how to make that happen. >> We may have some resources in our enrichment section because we've had other grants to help support it. So, there might be a way to at least get
168some startups here for a few months. There may also be a way to depending upon the resources you want to check and donate some puzzles and some stuff but I can't be sure of anything. I'm sure our community would be forthcoming the important materials if they were asked. Uh Sharon told me that this would be the 25th year mentoring program >> which from a communication point of view is a wonderful hope to revivify the program timing for February or March might not be harmful of congratulations. >> Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. >> This is great. definitely needed and um >> we've been we've been waiting for you >> and they've been working they actually know each other because Jen Anthony was Sharon Shik's granddaughter's teacher in the first grade at CK first
169grade. Okay. >> So that worked out we and we didn't plan it that way but it just worked out really nicely and um >> Jen thank you. We are this has been this has been a a hot issue for all of us and so to know that we've got we've got some thinking Beverly >> I too just want to say thank you to Jen that was an excellent presentation and good luck to you. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Any other questions? >> No. I just wanted to wish you all good luck also. I'm so glad it's being revived. Thank you. >> It it just needs that extra tender loving care, >> right? >> And a little bit of a reboot and less co. >> So my my senses is that this may be
170some of our ways of addressing the difference between high needs. >> Yeah. >> Um and seeing that so >> that could be another intervention. >> Yeah. So, um, our last agenda item before the adjournment is, um, items that we want to, um, bring forward. Um, just, uh, I have a couple questions for Susan and staff. Are we going to be able to do our full, um, board meeting at the annex? We were told by the end of November. It still says central office, but I feel like in my outlook it says annex. >> Can that so I'll find out. >> So that will be information just to let people know is that we are going to be um I've lost my quorum. >> Hey guys, I've lost my quorum. >> I'm sorry. >> Well, you
171you have a quorum online. >> Well, yeah, you're right. Thank you, Rita. Um, sorry. >> That's all right. I just everyone was leaving. I'm just trying to be I'm also trying to be mindful of time. Um, so just u let people to just just to um make sure that they follow up where our regular board meeting and it might be at the annex which would be our first time since February of 2020. >> It says it on Outlook. So not that that's gospel, >> but we'll but we'll get that um done. I just I also wanted um for people to know is that we're looking at having another art show so that people can do that and so stay tuned for that for future topics. um >> see what >> and so and um I
172was one of the things that people asked me to do was to see if we could have a meeting with the fields committee and um Mark Romano has done some really great um work in getting the field committee to understand what we were looking for. next committee of the whole um we are it's going to be it is all finance and facilities and so I didn't know how the board would feel if we could have the guys zoom in and have a conversation specifically around where they're placing the Fitch um concession fieldhouse um football field bleachers in their larger study um so that we could hear them. it um it might be a little bit of a heavy lift, but maybe Susan and I can adjust the agenda if we can get them there. So,
173I just wanted to let you know that that I'm hoping that that might happen next week. Um any other future topics? I got yours from this morning. >> Um Kim, I had a question. Tomorrow, those people that are on the AGSA GA board lea and that's at 4:15. >> Yes. >> And room 11, I haven't seen an agenda, so maybe somebody could shoot off We asked for an agenda. Nobody gave us an agenda. Um the only thing I heard was um how many um long-term subs or building subs do we need? I got that answer. Five. But um I'm sure they'll come up with something. I we sent it out to Beth and to Peter. >> Um so we're just waiting to hear from them. My my my um question would be about class sizes
174to to the you know staff >> future topics. >> Anything else folks? No, >> not a future topic, but um it'd be great if we did names and introductions for any of the presenters >> that we have here because we have a lot and like I don't know any of those. >> Yep. >> Principles >> and I you know >> and William and the moment like it started to roll and you're right. >> Okay, >> that's a thank you. Thank you for bringing that to our >> presentation. Some of them were late for us getting them. Yeah, >> we'll get this envelope up on Friday. It'd be nice if we got all the presentations to make it a little more efficient. >> I uh I hear you and um I it uh it just we
175we try actually it's gotten much better. But yeah, we um >> we had to put some things in board notes that we >> the enrollment the enrollment data came in but even that was changed but no we it needs to be better and we're going to work on that. Anything else? Can um I heard Susan say we get the class sizes at budget time. Is it possible to get them now? >> Sure. Well, we don't have time, so we'll try to get them as soon as we can, but that's a work that that takes quite a bit of time. So, we will try to do as as good a job as we can. >> Okay. Just try to do what you can and maybe we can get them within the next month. >> Yeah. motion
176to adjourn. Okay, >> I have got a motion for adjournment. Have a second. William seconded. All those in favor, please say I. >> You guys, this was a really, really great meeting. Thank you for your um thoughtful questions. >> All right. Thank you. Bye. >> All in favor? All >> I'm sorry. Whoever like helped me with that. All in favor say I. Bye. >> Bye.