Avon Board Of Education Meeting - 04/26/22

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call to order the monthly meeting of the avon board of education at 7 pm on august 26th i will start with a roll call to introduce the audience to those of us that are on stage tonight i think it worked for us well when we were doing these purely through zoom and i think it's always good for us to be able to introduce them or further away for you to be able to read our name placards so i will start with myself i am deborah shoot and i am the chair jay spivak vice chair president thanks deb thank you jeff fleischman our secretary president thank you jackie blaise not able to join us this evening laura young present thank you deb thank you lynn katz present

002thank you thank you sage singh present thanks deb thank you lisa seminara present thank you and our newest member liz summerhorn present thank you thank you and welcome to join us this evening i will move on to our administrators dr carnimolar superintendent president thank you um our assistant superintendent dr nessler roussack is unable to attend this evening mr medic director of human resources president thank you thank you ms russo our business manager president thank you and ms moy the executive assistant to the superintendent and board clerk is in front of us helping to operate the screens thank you shirley all right i would ask if you would join me by standing for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it

003stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone i'd like to begin each meeting by reading the mission statement to remind us all while we're here to do this work together our mission is to inspire each student a joy and passion for learning and a commitment to excellence personal integrity and social responsibility that always is the perfect segue into our recognition piece i'd like to call forward mr gnomester and ms susan horvath from roaring brook school tonight as well when we record it for nutmeg no judgment a little bit right is it working out there yes thank you perfect all right great thank you devon thank you to everybody it's always such a privilege and an honor to be able to talk about what the awesome things are that

004are going on in our school and it's really an even better opportunity to be able to do so in person tonight and as susan and i were really thinking about the spring rbs avon achievers it was that word opportunity that came to mind and opportunities in schools mean a lot of different things like sometimes they mean just your traditional teaching and learning kids didn't know how to do something and now they know how to do it they didn't have a piece of information now they do but what's really exciting is that these two young gentlemen here that we're going to honor today took advantage of an opportunity that really extended their learning because i always think that one of the best kinds of ways that we become better learners is by being curious about our

005world by being creative in our thinking and taking something that matters to us and attaching it to something even greater than just that initial interest so we're super excited to welcome up these two young gentlemen from rvs and ms horvath is going to explain the details about this to kind of split the difference on the mic height here so thank you great introduction and thank you for that because we are so excited to honor two fourth grade roaring brook students david papa and mohan arvind and these two students are members of our student council and that in and of itself is a fantastic accomplishment but we are so thrilled that they have the drive and the initiative to have the desire and want to teach roaring brook students and the community more about endangered animals

006and so these two came up with a plan and devised a fundraiser that roaring brook students participated in and that fundraiser they sold many panda keychains they were adorable and it was very popular and they were able to raise nearly 600 to raise awareness about endangered animals just on their own and that was really exciting for us to be able to see that and to be able to witness that and experience that and david and mohan in addition with that 600 that was donated to the world wildlife fund they were able to adopt air quotes endangered animals that roaring brook kind of took on so they went and selected the animals they came and did announcements with us enlisted other students help in terms of making those announcements so students and staff were aware and

007we could not be more proud of their student-centered leadership so congratulations david and congratulations mohan [Applause] [Music] before the gentleman step away i want to congratulate you on the hard work that you did this is very impressive i was curious when i saw your names what grade you're in to hear you're in fourth grade and you're already addressing these global issues in our little community makes a huge difference you really did make an impact so we're incredibly proud of mohan and david for their efforts so congratulations gentlemen another round of applause [Applause] thank you very much this is the part of our meeting as well where we certainly want to allow anyone who came here this evening for that purpose to celebrate mohan and david that you can certainly step out and no one will

008judge you we understand it's a school night and you might need to to do other routines this evening so no no problem with that our next piece is approval of board minutes do i have a motion to approve the board of education regular monthly meeting minutes of march 15th so moved thank you lynn do i have a second oh second thank you jay all in favor aye aye aye any opposed or abstentions okay so lisa is abstaining and liz were you did you vote with us or mistake okay so two abstentions because neither of these ladies were with us last month so that makes sense so you have that right shirley okay thank you very much all right our next piece of the board agenda is communication from the public and just as we started

009doing in our zoo meetings i will read first kind of the guidelines of how this works this is the section of our meeting where avon residents have the floor to share their thoughts and our concerns with the board it is not an opportunity for conversation rather it's the board's chance to listen to feedback from the community please add your name to the list i believe mr conley has been collecting those jim if you want to just raise your hand thank you and then ms moy does that work if if ms moy has the list to call okay ms moy will then call you in order you must state your name and address for the record each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak in an effort to hear as many of you as

010we can we must adhere to this time limit you can certainly state that you agree or disagree with a previous comment if you'd prefer to be brief brevity will allow more attendees to be heard after 15 minutes are up the board may choose to extend public comment or not no speaker will include charges or complaints of a personal nature against any individual avon board of education member or individual employee of the avon board of education whether the speaker names the individual or not ms moy will be our timekeeper this evening if you should reach two and a half minutes she'll alert you with a 30 second warning at the three minute mark you will be alerted again to signal that your time is up we welcome your engagement and participation ms moy who is your

011first speaker the first speaker is kim stevenson hi good evening kim stevenson from 70 harris road here in avon i'm jointly reading a letter with annie simpson from france for equity in avon schools dear aps teachers staff and leadership this letter comes to you from friends for equity in avon schools our members and supporters the past two years have been difficult for teachers school staff and leadership due to the pandemic and vitriol directed at educators that we've seen locally and nationally we sincerely thank you for the incredible job everyone at aps has done to support our students and address these challenges with professionalism resilience and grace as parents and community members we have witnessed a growing wave of dangerous rhetoric sweep our country this organized agenda is aimed at censoring history curricula and banning literature

012music and art the common thread in these efforts is a bold and ugly push to silence marginalized voices and narratives and to discourage the discussion of diversity equity and inclusion sadly this disturbing movement has come to avon this is alarming for many reasons for teachers the threat of parents trolling for crt red flags creates low morale and may cause teachers to refrain from covering content and classroom discussions that encourage critical thinking thereby the quality of our children's education and personal growth this also creates a less attractive district when it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers that bring different perspectives and provide needed role models for all of our students as parents and community members we want to make it unequivocally clear that we support and encourage the aps community to age appropriately do the following

013support qualified and experienced teachers in being allowed to do their jobs without doubting or questioning their professionalism or work ensure targeted books remain in the school libraries and curricula to protect and support intellectual freedom and not to succumb to censorship attempts teach complete us and world history civil rights genocide and black and latino studies encourage teachers to lead thoughtful socratic discussions of controversial and sensitive topics including the ones above without fear of questioning or retribution ensure accessibility of diverse representation and narratives in literature art and music and train our teachers to appropriately have and teach the hard conversations and he's gonna good evening my name is annie simpson at 15 oldwood road why is this so important our community continues to become more diverse as of 2020 percent of avon's population is is people of

014color with even higher and growing percentage of people of bypass students in the school system especially in the lower grades similar to state and national trends the avon community will continue to diversify we know from numerous disciplines that all children benefit from diverse learning environments where different races cultures income levels abilities and talents come together diverse classrooms encourage critical thinking problem solving and creativity learning in integrated settings can enhance students leadership skills meaningful relationships between individuals with different racial or ethnic backgrounds impacts how people treat racial and ethnic groups diverse classrooms prepare students to succeed in a global economy we encourage aps teachers staff and leadership to continue building an education system and community that appropriately serves every student as you prepare our children for the local and global challenges they will eventually face in

015a rapidly evolving and night diversifying world we especially let me repeat that we especially thank and support aps teachers for the invaluable work you all do since we've submitted this letter we have gotten 88 signatories including seven members of our friends for equity steering committee and 81 community members thank you miss moyer next the next one to speak is jamie palhemus hi jamie paulhemis 38 daventry hill road in avon i'm also a founding member of the friends for equity in avon schools group our team recently held a community roundtable event earlier this month on april 3rd can you hear me well okay on april 3rd to share with the wider community what we've been up to hear from other community members and avon about what the perceived strengths and areas of opportunity opportunity are with

016regards to equity within avon public schools to help our help shape our priorities goals and work plan we had around 30 community members at this event weighing in many of whom are aps parents it was a meaningful and thoughtful conversation and a group walked away with a better understanding of what is important to other parents and kids of varied ages races and backgrounds in avon public schools we will be utilizing much of this feedback to inform and guide our ongoing work and thought it would be helpful to share some of the main takeaways with you all in consideration for your ongoing work as well parents have noticed some positive changes in initiatives in the schools such as the bridges reading program pilot there is a desire to see this program expanded they have noticed more

017of an effort to create or to celebrate heritage months with bulletin boards and emphasize representation we would like to see this more consistent and systemized pine grove one school one book book choice this year was a great one a better offering of books that addressed diversity and inclusion at a recent scholastic book fair was noted administrative support of student-led groups such as avon voices for equity at the high school and the socratic seminars approach used in english social studies and other classes starting in the middle school and into high school this should continue and to be supported and expanded as an approach to learning these initiatives and all of the ways that you have made gains in terms of thoughtfulness and around diversity equity and inclusion have been and will be life-changing for many students

018thank you for making that happen and supporting the initiatives brought forth to you some of the gaps and weaknesses discussed include a critical need for diverse teachers in every school and at every level of leadership the makeup of staff and leadership should reflect the growing diversity in our schools and community a need for teachers who understand the issues and leadership that supports them a need for a system to report address and track instances of bias and inequities the perception is that issues and complaints related to dei are not taken seriously i'm sorry ms paul hemis will have to stop you there okay is that two and a half that's three seconds okay i'm gonna wrap it up okay um open choice regarding the open choice program how do we ensure avon students from hartford and

019their families are more included and better supported in avon in our schools and community and a need for an effective and comprehensive equity audit in order to solve and address the problems we need the right data to identify specific issues and a point was made several times during the discussion at our event that this work truly benefits everyone it helps all students develop the ability to view and understand complex problems and events so they are provided so our students are prepared to thrive in the diverse world that they will one day lead thank you thank you miss paulinus i would ask the audience not to clap or cheer for any comments in particular who is next next is catherine lewis okay dr lewis thank you so um i'm glad to address you because i'm going

020to be talking about a questionnaire that i think perhaps came from your group the equity group but i'm not sure it came from them and i was disturbed by this questionnaire that my student was given in his health class i'm a physician who's been nih-funded so i'm particularly focused on questionnaires my mother was a victim of hitler in world war ii i want to clarify that she wasn't victimized because of who she was she was victimized because of where she was and she died from her injuries and i'm particularly focused on informed consent i think you should always seek informed consent before you give a questionnaire and informed consent needs to be voluntary informed and competent and my son certainly didn't give informed consent when he was given this questionnaire the questionnaire disturbed me it

021had questions about pronouns and it encouraged secrecy from parents it particularly encouraged the school system to keep secret pronouns pronoun choice from parents i knew immediately that the health teacher would never give out such a questionnaire because he's competent and excellent with what he does and i knew that wisconsin was engaged in aggressive litigation concerning such an incompetent questionnaire as are many districts i knew ivan high school would never give out such a ridiculous questionnaire because we're competent so i immediately emailed the superintendent seeking who in the health sent out such an incompetent questionnaire and certainly it wasn't a teacher it was i believe perhaps your group or maybe not your group it was a group of students and so i'm concerned about what's going on in the school system about this issue and i

022want to make sure we're not subjecting our students to stuff like this i'm concerned about the right to privacy for our students connecticut has a great history with right to privacy griswold v connecticut gave women the right to contraception roe v wade we're all familiar with that gives women choice for abortion and this is the right to privacy constitutional and bill of rights our students have the right to privacy too it gives them so so i'm really fired up about this our students have the right to privacy it gives them the right to study and learn i'm concerned that our our people are being asked repetitively about their pronouns it's been asked and answered people don't need to be badgered about this i stood before you last june talking about the right to privacy one

023of my my boy one of my boys friends had been harassed by the lgbt kids about his pronouns to the point that he was very very upset we're coming into june i would encourage people to not do this anymore in your school okay if you have the right to privacy please stop harassing children about this issue thank you okay thank you please don't cheer for any particular comments ms moy do we have another speaker yes the next one is megan gaynard okay can i just ask is that time when you do that the first time it's two and a half because i i okay thank you um megan gainyard 16 brownstone drive i'm here tonight to also talk about equity and social emotional learning and i also want to let you know that i already

024had a wonderful conversation with jody krazanski head of curriculum and i'm happy to work with any and everyone who would like to work with me any facts that i state here tonight are from the science of reading what i should have learned in college and i want to talk to you about the science of reading reading is not natural no one is born to read not being read to not having a print rich environment will help them for struggling readers the wait and see model does not work by the end of first grade students who are behind in reading don't tend to cannot catch up even with intervention number two everyone learns to read in the same way phonic skills and age-appropriate language comprehension number three there is a known pathway in the brain for

025reading speech sounds to print and meaning of words we can strengthen or reroute instruction with good instruction in language number four our instruction should be deliberate and it should be the right kind of instruction we will hit everyone including those who are language impaired and dyslexics there is probably about two percent of the population that really can't learn to read not 50 percent like our numbers show number five all students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction to form reading pathways and number six prevention and you might be interested in this is easier and cheaper than intervention and the right instruction will change the course of a person's life according to the department of justice two-thirds of third graders not reading proficiently will end up incarcerated or on public assistance for their lives sixteen percent don't

026graduate or if they do they can't read current research being conducted nationwide is determining the number of prisoners with dyslexia or other reading issues the fact that avon has not started our equity and sel work by closely examining our reading curriculum more closely is alarming to me is the board aware that some of our tier two intervention is taught by a tutor and not by a teacher interventionist the fact that esser funds and equity in sel money would not be directed here is alarming at the last board meeting on a slideshow presented on equity and sel it said that avon intends to address barriers to learning and teaching to re-engage students who have become disengaged they would not be disengaged if they knew how to read and felt they had a future i am asking

027for funds set aside for equity sel and esser to be reallocated to arcade through two especially reading instruction intervention decodable books interventionist curriculum recognized to be aligned with soar and you might want to take a look at some of the reading league tools to assess our current curriculum and what we're planning on using can i finish this last sentence one more sentence thank you because reading is real equity and when people know how to read they have opportunities available to them and they don't need to be put we don't want to put a band-aid on the real pro on the problems we want to fix them and give people what dr dyslexia dude said hope thank you thank you we've reached our 15 minutes ms moy do we still have people on the list we

028have six more people i will ask the board if they're comfortable with extending public comment so moved okay do i have a second oh second okay so if we have six more that's potentially 18 more minutes are we comfortable with that okay so all in favor all right all right our next speaker please next speaker is greg wolfe sorry it's all people problems here we go okay so greg wolf five king richards court um i've often found as a as a teacher and a writer that hot button issues can best be addressed through allegory so if you'll indulge me for a second so imagine you're throwing a dinner party and you have all your friends over and the dinner party's going great great food great conversation and one of the people decides to let everybody

029else know that they've joined a new religion and they say i've never felt better about myself in my life it's a fantastic religion i love it everybody of course says well that's fantastic i'm so happy for you you're glowing great okay so it keeps going a little way but then the person says no no i think all of you should also join this religion well of course you know you're going to say well actually i'm i'm jewish but thank you very much but when if that person ends up pushing again no you really should join this i really don't want to no if you don't join this you're not a good person well of course you're going to push back against that you're going to say i am a good person and then you got

030a fight going now you're throwing the dinner party so what do you do you're the host so you have two choices one you can come down on one side or the other and risk alienating that other guest or guests or two you can say this is not the appropriate venue for this conversation and pass the butter and the school is that dinner party okay you've got people believing different things and that's fine and that's fantastic but if it's a political matter if it's something and political being half the people believe one thing half the people believe the other if you are to choose if the school is actually to say yes we're coming down on this side then you are alienating half the people that send their kids to that school when you could very

031easily just say this is not an appropriate subject for school during school hours and we're talking about anything political having to do with like if you're showing something on the television that's fine show something to counter balance it if you're going to teach something teach the counter to that as well that's what school does it educates it does not indoctrinate we're supposed to be teaching the kids how to think not what to think and so to let them talk about it and discuss even if it's not the politically correct way of handling something that is something that school is supposed to do and if it's not then that topic should not be something that's discussed at school so basically that's my point that school is for education not for all of these extra things being

032thrown in here causing fight and strife and in the community quite frankly you know i as much as i love you guys i would not be here tonight if there was not these issues i'm tired of the fighting i'm sure you guys are tired of the fighting even i'm sure you know the other groups are tired of the fighting so basically keep it out of the school that's all i'm saying thank you again we'll just try to keep it so we're on time here thank you mr wolf ms moy are next next one is john lumani okay thank you good evening hello my name is actually lee john lumani i am going to be labeled a racist and homophobe for these comments but here i go uh i was born in yugoslavia my ethnicity is

033albanian i am a muslim american my family and friends died in ethnic cleansing throughout wars in yugoslavia in the 1990s i came to the united states as one years old i grew up in bridgeport along many minority children some of my best friends in the world are black and latino i currently work in the hair industry an industry that is dominated by gay people and i have over 50 people that i'm really good friends with that are in the industry um i have clients who are gay i have many married gay couples that come to me and i tell them about what my children are learning about today i have three children in the schools i have a second grade daughter at pine grove i have a fifth grade son at thompsonbrook and i have

034a sophomore at the high school and i cannot believe that dr seuss has been thrown out of the libraries and it's been replaced with books like genderqueer a genderqueer is a book that is prominently displayed in the avon school library and it teaches boys how to have oral sex with other boys i don't know who's responsible for having that book in the library but that book is straight up pornography and whoever is responsible for that shame on you seriously okay next next one is carrie firestone okay miss firestone hi carrie firestone 36 cambridge crossing um and i'm actually here to talk about um something in light of a number of incidents that have come to our attention in recent months compounding incidents before that but it's a general statement i've written out recent national campaigns

035aimed at fomenting anti-lgbtq hate have been wait sorry have found like-minded allies in avon these individuals have made a hobby of targeting and vilifying our lgbtq kids most egregiously hyper-focusing on trans kids and their families the small but vocal contingent of adults is transmitting messages to their their children who then spread ugly vitriol online and in all our avon schools sorry this is emotional for me our lgbtq kids must walk bravely through their day knowing there are people in their community who want to silence them demean them deem them mentally ill or somehow sinful who wants the essence of what makes them who they are to simply not exist they must bear this burden while bearing the many other burdens assigned to our children how difficult and exhausting must that be our lgbtq parents must

036sit bravely at home worrying about all the things we worry about as parents trying to safely usher our children into adulthood yet these parents must also worry that their children will hear words they can never unhear see glances they can never unsee they know the statistics they know the consequences of a concerted effort to shove their children into the margins that this makes their children more vulnerable to depression and suicide and victims of violence now they must endure deeply painful comments and accusations from their own neighbors our l our lgbtq students deserve to be seen heard and celebrated exactly as they are they deserve to see themselves on the pages of books because when we don't see ourselves on the pages of books it's easy to wonder do i even matter they deserve privacy to

037make medical decisions and decisions about how they want the world to address them without fear of the basis among us inserting none of your business opinions and i just like to if parents and and children in the in the room who may be in the lgbtq community i just want you to know we see you we hear you we value you we embrace you we recognize the gifts you bring to our community we recognize that you like all of us want to be safe to belong to be free to find meaning and joy in your life and we are here by your side and we will protect you with our words and our actions thank you miss firestone ms moy next song we have is megan belleville i'd also like to ask if they have

038written anybody who's spoken if they have written statements to maybe pass them to jim connolly who then pass it to me so that they can be included with your minutes right thank you meegan thank you good evening my name is megan belvel 64 daventry hill road i am speaking for myself and a large number of avon parents who are concerned about the political agenda that has infiltrated avon's schools this agenda is creating an uncomfortable learning environment for a significant significant number of our students this agenda is eroding the traditional role and rights of parents by promoting and encouraging lifestyle choices and beliefs which are antithetical to our own we believe that the promotion of politics medical and lifestyle choices have no place in our schools here are some examples of concerning political practices and events

039that i found when i started to pay closer attention to what is happening in our schools cnn is shown in avon middle and elementary school classrooms we do not believe that this news channel with an obvious left-leaning political message is appropriate for school why aren't fox news or prager university videos used in our school instead or even better how about we remove all tv news from the classroom at freshman orientation this year all students were given name tags which asked for the students names and their pronouns our family does not feel the need to use pronouns when we identify ourselves and we do not want this lifestyle choice forced upon our children in school this causes those who choose not to use pronouns to feel uncomfortable bullied and alienated if a child wants to use

040pronouns under their name they may freely do so but do not require the rest of the student population to do this are you familiar with the gender unicorn well you should be because teachers were taught about it this year during a professional development day it is a cartoon used to teach elementary school children that they they can identify as male female or other genders and that they can be sexually or emotionally attracted to male female or other genders i have copies here in case anyone is interested in taking a look at this next a survey created by the student for equity club was recently disseminated to all students by the high school principal without parental notification or consent while the survey was optional the students were asked about personal information and the questions were framed

041in ways which pushed a political agenda we do not consent to our children being data mined for their personal information and being exposed to questions which attempt to influence their lifestyle choices there are currently fact posters on the walls throughout the avon high school about the transgender lifestyle which are clearly intending to influence students while the school why is the school promoting only one lifestyle choice and not others what kind of precedent is the school setting here can conservative groups now put posters up throughout the school promoting their lifestyle choices how about we stop all attempts to influence our children into a certain lifestyle i hope the board of ed will look more closely at these issues and will remove politics from our schools i encourage all parents to look at every homework assignment and

042to start playing paying attention to what our kids are exposed to during the school day thank you please the next one is evas josta okay thank you hi my name is evis joshta 183 haines road um thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my opinion about the avon public school system today i moved to avon four and a half years ago from east hartford i have visited avon once prior to moving to this town and immediately knew that this is the town i want to raise my kids in this because i thought my kids will get here the best education they can get prior to talking about some of my concerns today i want to speak a little bit about my family background my husband and i were born in albania a communist

043country until 1991 and when i say communist it was completely communist isolated and no mean of free speech religion sexuality or anything else that we as a society strive for um you probably are going to ask yourself how i connect the story with the topics discussed in today's meeting well unfortunately i'm seeing some patterns that for god's sakes are not comparable uh comparable to what we have experienced but i'm seeing some nuances in the sense of freedom of speech if i'm afraid to speak out my opinion this is where where it becomes really concerning for me i am used to being careful about what i'm saying because i've learned the hard way but do i really want this about my children do i want them to be afraid to say who they are and what

044they want do i want them to be afraid for standing for their own opinion by all means i respect all cultures races religions genders and sexualities but please do so with mine as well respect my culture my traditions and my values this entails that i would like to be able to teach my kids my family traditions and values i hear us always talking about being inclusive equitable and diverse that's great but i believe while we're trying to be inclusive for some people we're being exclusive for some others at the same time i didn't choose my race and i didn't choose my religion or did i choose my country of inheritance but one thing that i chose is to move to this country because of freedom and this is freedom of speech please let my child

045be a child and teach them age-appropriate things they will grow up fast enough to learn everything else that the scary world has to offer please don't take the right away from me to teach my kids about sexuality and everything that comes with it i have kept my kids for nine months and i've worked so hard from the day i gave birth to them to give them the best that i considered to be the best for them don't take that away from me sexual contents comparable to that of genderqueer books should not exist in our school's libraries and gender unicorn should not be taught to any great how about we talk about reading writing science addition subtraction multiplication geography can i finish my sentence is it just one more yes okay stop the nonsense of involving

046the kids too early to some things that even i at the age of 36 have a hard time understanding thank you all right thank you and again i'll just ask that we please refrain from clapping ms moy is it one more name on the list we have one more on this list and a few more signed up after this list was submitted so maybe for the second half of communication let me ask the board would you like to hold off the we'll have the one that was already included but the other two now or would you prefer to do it the second public comment you're good with jay is comfortable with now okay jeff is comfortable now okay then we'll stop at after three and then if there's more by the time we get to

047the second public comment is that does that make sense all right so our next one i believe there are three more on the second correct so it'd be a total of four oh three in addition to the one okay everybody's comfortable with that correct yes okay thank you uh the next one is george from bronson road i couldn't read the last name okay thank you very much we have chloe enough okay ms knopf hello my name is uh chloe noff i live at oak ridge drive i am a graduate of the avon public school system and i just wanted to say a couple things from my experience and i was actually raised when when diversity and inclusion efforts were ramping up during the early 2000s and i can say from experience that the the lessons

048that truly enriched me were ones that focused on diversity of opinion and diversity of personhood and perspective rather than any superficial characteristic of anybody's any of what makes up a person like like race or gender or sexuality all of those things are completely private and peripheral and just to to emphasize and to focus on that so much for children teaches it teaches them that it's more important and and weighted in their lives than it should be and that's that's what i wanted to say on that and um i also wanted to to thank um the people from albania for sharing their stories because i and and i want i think that it bears repeating that it people have come to the us like to seek to seek freedom of speech and opportunity and we're we're

049not learning from what's happening in other places where it's taken away and i think we need to listen and we need to see similarities and parallels of what's happening here and the way that and the way and the way that some kind of ideologically ideological purity is eclipsing any kind of free speech i think we need to focus on that and i think that we need to understand the ways in which that free speech is being is being taken away and corrupted and i just wanted to say that as someone who is relatively young and did grow up in the ivan public school system i know it and i know it's unorthodox for some like a person like me and like a person as young as me to have this opinion it's i just think

050that that's extremely important and um thank you for your time thank you miss knop okay next one is lee knuff okay ms knapp hello under the current circumstances more than talk is needed and even school board meetings is not an opportunity for back and forth discussion full transparency is needed that's a most beautiful and cleansing concept that is often overlooked true transparency is kind of a tonic it can just spell distrust confusion frustration for everyone and it's the starting point to understanding how to actually solve problems distrust confusion and frustration will persist and will continue to erode our community if transparency doesn't take a lead role or is skirted these are some matters which demand full transparency which parents and the public require to be fully informed and which is their right here in avon

051and in america the existence of crt so sel or whichever of the various carefully worded names are used continues to be denied or choked or cloaked by many but we know it takes place and is only growing certainly takes place in connecticut and it's here in avon for authentic transparency it would be useful for parents to have full access to grant funding pursuits and decision making such as going back three years all grant proposals federal state local responded to funded and in what amounts the reporting required and the written reports specifying activities and how all funds were specifically spent plus the process by which the grant funding prospects are decided upon including what opportunities there were at the outset for parents and public to be heard regarding whether or not they want programs and the

052goals of such grants to be undertaken by the schools not just pursued to obtain money when the purpose and goals of such grants are not necessarily what's best for and could even be harmful to our young people all just mentioned also applies to searches and hirings of outside consultants and new faculty and detailed curricula not just vaguely worded outlines are necessary to see and for example s-e-l-c-r-t to see how that's taught as a standalone as well as being woven into some or essentially all academic subjects in addition there's this so-called there's so-called wellness that was introduced decades ago into the u.s public schools and it's become a burgeoning and misplaced industry in the schools such that now the schools in my view are proxy for the mental health profession but without mental health professionals in

053charge and can current students whose parents do not acquiesce to wellness sel integration into the school day opt out of willingness and sel and if so could okay can i take somebody's time who didn't finish thank you that's not the way we normally operate so that we can have another person give their perspective as well well i thought we were at the end of the list i think we have one more okay all right thank you miss knopf next last one we have haley guerrera okay thank you miss guerrero hello uh haley guerrera 106 fox den road and thank you for extending the comment portion um i want to state my support for our educators rights to stand up to hate and engage the facts so that our schools stay safe for every single student

054avon public schools must provide a thorough accurate fact-based education and teach students to respect the equal value of every person it takes more than words to enact a systemic change so i'm also here to tell you about a potential community solution i'm supporting local grassroots organization friends for equity in avon schools by helping organize avon's first community dialogues event called avon aspires set to take place in october this is an interactive facilitated series of conversations that opens lines of communication to achieve mutual understanding between all different perspectives of people in avon and address these issues together i encourage school and town leaders students parents and all community members to keep this event on their radar and plan to participate it is one way that we can make a lasting change for the next generation of

055students and our students today so thank you for all you do and thanks for your time and attention thank you miss guerrero and surely that's everyone correct thank you everyone for participating i assure you that we will make sure that someone gets back to you about your comments and concerns or questions so we appreciate your feedback okay next would be under items of information and proposals our student representative report we don't have sawyer with us this evening but charlotte our junior rep is here to give us an update hi everyone my name is charlotte perry and i'm just going to give a report from each of the k through 12 schools so starting with ahs a lot of students are really excited for falcon day which is a day where students get to participate in

056like specialized groups kind of like a day for like joining other clubs and in addition we also are starting ticket sales for our spring musical called sister act and it premieres on april 29th today was actually denim day where students wore denim to show their support for sexual assault awareness and that was hosted by the circles club this thursday juniors are taking the ngss which is a science test that i know that's also taken by 8th graders and the junior and seniors are very excited to announce that 375 prom tickets were sold this week which is very very impressive considering that in the past years we've had very low attendance next is avon middle school the two robotics teams have advanced the world championships in texas this may which is very excited exciting and they

057are asking for donations through paypal to support their team and send them to nationals in addition the student council spelling butter braid is selling frozen pastries dough until may 2nd and the fame friends of avon music education is looking for ams parent volunteers who have a student involved in music or theater they're planning a coffee house event where students get to perform and all the proceeds will go to the world central kitchen next is tbs they have a production of seussical junior which has sold out already for the first three shows uh there there's been four orchestra students who have rehearsed and performed at the hartford uh convention center in addition they're also participating in the battle of the books for the march of dimes and have raised two thousand and six hundred dollars and

058they are also having a yearbook cover contest for all the students where they can vote on which one they would like to see represented um second to last is rowing brick school they have plans to start course registration for 2022 to 2023 school year in early may they celebrated earth day with inviting parents and students to have a story walk on the rbs trails after school on friday and they also had their first in-person kindergarten parent night since 2019. lastly is pine grove nursery school where they are celebrating pine grove's birthday which is may 2nd and they're inviting friends our family of the students to come and celebrate and they're selling tickets this week they're also having or they already had the booster thon fun run which raised over 40 thousand dollars and they're going

059to use this new money for playground equipment field trips author visits and any other needs they also celebrated fitness day with exercise for all the students and they're also looking for parent volunteers for installing a mural that has been delayed due to covid and that is all the k-12 schools that is fantastic charlotte that's a lot of research that you've done for us with all of your own school work to do as well but it's it's amazing to hear what is going on in the buildings and it's just fun to to hear it from a student as well so thank you for doing the research on that we have lots of arts things going on it is exciting to be back in person for the kindergarten parent night so thank you for sharing all those

060components we appreciate it next is our financial report with ms russo good evening the month of march was a relatively quiet month for uh financials we have some budget transfers later on the agenda to clean up the variances in both the certified and non-certified lines we've talked about the last few months that we had due to some some leaves for some employees as well as our contracts that were put in place with some of our unions that repair educators nutrition services this current year we also have some variances our teachers substitute instruction lines as we employ some long-term substitutes to fill those vacancies due to the leaves so budget transfer 202078 included in the packet under consent agenda cleared those salary line items in other expenses we've continued to see rising energy costs as we

061have our own homes oil electricity natural gas continues to rise we've been leveraging some savings and other line items to offset those rising costs and budget transfer 202079 is clearing those variances and hoping getting us through the rest of the winter we do have a new um we have a collaboration with the town that we do every year to lock in energy costs and that contract starts march first we're hoping that we'll stabilize some electricity supplier costs as well as we were happy at the um that the board of ed the last meeting and then the town council move forward with the enter of the solar panels so next year at this time hopefully we'll have some additional energy offsets at the high school in roaringbrook our contracted services supply and equipment lines some of

062the schools ask for some small transfers between their equipment and supply lanes to offset some needed repairs of different equipment school equipment such as microscopes and scales of the schools the budget transfers 20 to 202 to 64 through 75 as well as a larger global transfer of 2022079 clear those variances in special education we continue to have an unencumbered balance in our special education tuition line that'll be used to move forward our escrow payments for next year so that at minimum that balance and maybe a little bit more as we finish up our iep and pbt meetings for the rest of the year in those settlements we currently have six students in that escrow account we have some variances in transportation as well as our liability to transport our students to anna grace magnet school

063as they moved to their permanent home outside of the town left us some savings in that private school line item we use that to offset some increased costs we have for our late bus thankfully our students are attending a lot of after-school activities as you see here with the musical and and sports so we've had a lot more use of that late bus our general ed unencumbered balance for the end of the month at uh ending march 31st 2022 was a little over 3.3 million or 5.33 compared to last year at this time of 5.5 million or 9.07 the main variation there is you the way we treat our medical insurance this year with our collaborative with the town and we've paid that upfront to them so that's the main differential between that four percent

064difference you see thank you susan any questions from board members no all right thank you so much that one shooter is really appreciated we appreciate you walking us through that next is our committee and liaison reports a first is curriculum and professional practices normally jackie would give an update but dr carmel agreed to do that on her behalf tonight just quickly we have a rescheduled meeting may 10th in place of may 3rd it was going to be correct all right thank you finance jay so as always susan russo did a great job explaining everything we discussed at the meeting um as you mentioned the transfers that were discussed are going to be part of our consent calendar tonight and also on the consent calendar we have the donations so i'd like to thank those in

065the community for all their donations very nice the support we receive there and also within our agenda tonight we have the audit report which is going to be discussed later our next meeting is monday may 16th at 6 p.m and that's different than what's been scheduled because of a conflict so it's monday may 16th at 6 00 pm excellent thank you it was may 10th so now it's may 16th perfect negotiations um we do not have an update for that at this time next would be policy um laura so we discussed several policies that are last meeting two of which have been brought up on tonight's agenda for the full board to take a look at as a first read one of them is the green cleaning program policy the other is the exemption from

066instruction policy and the student health services policy will be continued at a policy level at our subcommittee for further discussion and we will be talking about these on our new business excellent thank you laura thank you then our liaison report for the board representative to correct dr carmola did you have anything okay thank you very much next would be the board chair update i had a couple of things that i just wanted to mention to board members may 2nd is our annual town budget meeting it will be held here in the auditorium with the town council on the board of finance it begins at 7 00 pm so i just remind everybody it's good for all of us to be there if we can be in order to show support again it's the last opportunity

067for the town to truly see the budget presented prior to the referendum the second one is a reminder to board members mrs tubberty has given us a deadline of friday april 29th in order to give her your regalia sizes and which university you attended so that for graduation we are dressed appropriately so i'd remind you if you have not done that yet try to do it by tomorrow so she's not having to hunt any of us down that's one of the best parts of being a board member is to participate in that so i encourage everyone to come if they're able to it is definitely worth all that hard work to see um the kids celebrate their accomplishments so that's important so remember to get back to miss tuberty does everybody have that email if

068you don't you can email me and i'm certainly happy to forward that again and now i will send it to dr carmola thank you for our hiring report mr medic good evening thank you as you can see from the hiring report we have received a significant number of resignations from members of our non-certified staff we have begun to fill many of those vacancies in addition we do have some retirements i would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge miss lane who is one of our fabulous school nurses here at avon high school who'll be departing us after many many years of service to the district in addition miss tino perla and miss riley will be retiring from both in grade two at roaring brook school and we thank them for their many dedicated years of

069service and though i know the two of them won't you know i could see them kind of getting lower in their seats right now i do want to recognize dr eileen o'neill mr mike rankowitz our student family sports specialist and high school principal who have also announced their retirements this year and as a colleague to them we appreciate all their time effort and professionalism with us over the past few years we have begun to hire for the upcoming school year we have all of our positions posted and our staff is working to find the next wave of avon high school staff for the completion of this year as well as next year thank you mr medic on our enrollment report as you can see we are status quo at this time from the previous report

070however i wanted to update you on the number of current process kindergarten registrations we're at 94 which i think we have more in the pipeline even as we speak those are completed registrations and i i would say that is eat a little more than what we might typically typically see in other years at this time but it's hard to say because sometimes it just may be that people are registering earlier than usual on our strategic plan i just want i'll just say a couple of things because we have folks from the high school here with us tonight under new business to talk about a large portion of what has been our strategic plan over the past few years which is our portrait of the graduate work that we have done through community input k and

071k to 12 faculty and staff and administrator input so i won't take up time discussing that twice i'll let the folks we ask to come to do it do it for you on the other hand just a couple of things to point out that i think might be helpful one our strategic plan is continually updated that we've put online you know that we have had to put up and take down a number of things over the past six months as we've transitioned to the new website we also transitioned uh just within the last few days to a newer version of our curriculum platform our eduplanet which is where when you click now when you click online in the past if you looked at our curriculum we were loading those up from having to download them

072from eduplanet we now have a system that syncs the two together and so you'll see it's easier to find the written curricula that's online we have as you know been working to either write if it didn't exist or rewrite and review curriculum from the years past the majority have been written since 2014 so we are nearly finished uh with reviewing again the core curriculum in math for example and in science at our next curriculum professional practices midi committee i expect you'll see those brought from the because we'll have a meeting in between from the curriculum and professional development committee here in the district that will refer some of those newer curricula to you and books that are related excuse me to them so one thing i think bears mentioning based on some of the conversations

073i've had over the past week or so and at least some of the comments here tonight though might not speak directly to some there's a framework for a student what we in district call student wellness that has been posted by the state of connecticut and it was put out in 2021 i believe it's a result of some number of years of work at the state department though none of us here were involved in that so i can't speak directly to it to be clear our curriculum is online for wellness from grades k through 12. all units are there our curriculum is not the framework that that is posted online from the connecticut state department that many people have called me and asked me about with some concerns about the developmental appropriateness of some of what's

074in the connecticut state framework i will say again just briefly i want to take too much time on it i've talked to a number of people and i'm happy to talk to anyone else that would like to about it um but the portions of that uh curriculum that i've heard some concerns about the developmental appropriateness of are not in our curriculum at those grade levels or at all so to be clear the state develops frameworks school districts develop curriculum those are utilized as guideposts for things that we have to follow based on the law and an example of a law that dictates some of our curriculum particularly to wellness is a law that was passed many years ago that states that all public schools must engage students in instruction related to the hiv virus and

075which is done in later years obviously not in younger grades but that is something if you look at the framework and in our curriculum you will see similarities because the law requires that so i just wanted to point that out because i know it's been an issue that has been raised a number excuse me a number of times over the past week or so spent quite a bit of time explaining the difference between the state frameworks and ours we are again not required to adopt them we utilize them as guides for what we do need to do and any other questions about the curriculum glad to hear someone reached out and spoke with jody take those comments into consideration i think that person is gone right now but like to follow up with jody on

076that related to the reading curriculum welcome liz because i almost forgot to say that liz and i met last week and started the process of transitioning her to the board i know liz is very excited to be here with us i don't need to speak for you liz i'm sure he'll say the same later but we had a good meeting to get acclimated and turn over all of the materials and the policies and so on and between miss shoot on the board side and me as the superintendent we will find the new board member training for liz also as the rest of you have gone through and unless i'm thinking there was something else that there is um i'll just ask i don't know if they're still out there um i know how to i

077know how to reach miss chloe knopf as a as a former student ms lee nothing's mom if you would email because i don't think the comment was finished and i don't have a way of contacting i'm saying that deb because you mentioned that i would follow someone here would follow up and that i can't do if we don't have contact information thank you all right thank you very much were there any questions okay so the next piece is our consent calendar and just as a refresher this is a grouping of items that we can block vote together however board members do have the opportunity to remove an item if they'd rather discuss it prior to voting on it i do want to take a moment to recognize the generous donations that are included in here

078as well we do appreciate the work that is done outside of the school funding in order to fully enrich the experience that we have in our buildings here do i have a motion to approve the consent calendar i'll make a motion to approve it thank you jay do i have a second i'll second them thank you sage all in favor hi hi any opposed any abstentions passes unanimously okay thank you very much now on to new business our healthy food certification this is an annual event for us and i saw mrs dreyer's with us this evening would you mind maggie just speaking to it as a refresher for new board members and for seasoned board members as to what this entails sure good evening so as massoud mentioned every year we or you as a

079board vote to certify that we will comply and follow the connecticut nutritional standards um can you can you hear me i know i'm a little short here so um and there's two parts to this vote the first part is that whether you choose to follow these nutritional standards and to to certify with the healthy food certification if you choose to do that we receive 10 federal funding of 10 cents per lunch sold the second part is an exemption and that is there's three parts to that food that is sold to students at an event outside of the school day and it cannot be sold out of a vending machine so at an event you'd be able to sell whatever you wanted to sweat a football game if the boosters have um they're selling some kind

080of snacks they do not have to follow the regulations um they're very clear with this what a event is an event is a basketball game a school play something like that it is not practice or rehearsal so um what there's the if you have it i think i believe you have it in front of you thank you just found it thank you so if you look at that there's the first part is the motion language to comply and to certify and then the second part would be i would recommend just combining the food and beverage exemption into the same boat and that's the last that's at the bottom of the second page and so i as the director of nutrition service would recommend yes but that's up to you to vote thank you maggie are

081there any questions regarding this go ahead lin just press your button i thought it was green what's why wouldn't we vote for it i mean why would anyone not vote for healthy food i don't understand why it's an issue um i think in a state like ours there really is not a reason for us not to years ago there were not the smart there weren't as many regulations where you could choose to sell things that didn't comply for financial reasons now there's connecticut nutrition standards and there's these smart snacks which so if you don't comply the smart sex or snacks are slightly less strict the regulation than connecticut's and you would have to follow those so um to follow the slightly stricter regulations and then receive the 10 cents per meal makes sense to me

082thank you thank you maggie did that help lin yeah it does okay any other questions okay so i want to make sure we do this correctly maggie there's two that we're actually reading correct so the one that's on the screen is at the bottom of page 115 for us yes [Music] so i will read this motion pursuant to connecticut general statute section 10-215-f the board of education or governing authority certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1 2022 through june 30th 2023 this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all

083times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organization and groups do i have a second thank you jeff seconds all in favor aye any objections or abstentions passes unanimously and then maggie am i correct the second one is for the beverage exemptions is that correct yes and i i would suggest the one at the bottom which combines the food and beverages together so you don't have to do separate two separate photos okay i appreciate that so starting on page 116 moving into 117 is that correct okay so again do you want me to read it or does someone else want to take a turn sure thank you thanks all right so um

084i'll make the motion that the board of education will allow the sale two students of food items that do not meet the connecticut national standards and beverages not listed in section 10-221-q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are met one the sales in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend or two the sale is at the location of the event and three the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer games school plays and interscholastic debates are events but soccer practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings are not the regular school day is the

085period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food and beverage sales all right thank you jay do i have a second i'll second thank you laura all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions passes unanimously thank you maggie we appreciate it all right everyone next new business item is policy three five two four point two green cleaning program so we did have robust conversation around both of these policies that are being presented tonight and i'm hoping dr carnamolo can give us an overview of why we have brought this up for a first read thank you so on page 119 the green cleaning program i know you've had a chance to review this

086before it came tonight since we discussed it at the policy meeting this is a change the law has changed as you know during the pandemic active pandemic not sure when we can call it endemic i hope it's now we were able to utilize different cleaning materials than we had in the past because we were told by the department of public health to utilize disinfectants and so forth to clean in the past that had not been allowed at all everything that was utilized in schools had to meet certain regulations related to green cleaning that changed during the last two years and a part of that the law now makes permanent and so if you see it at the top pursuant to subsection and list the law for you any disinfectant disinfecting cleaner sanitizer or any other

087antimicrobial product approved by federal law may be used by the board so what it is telling us is that we can continue to use utilize those when and as necessary however the remaining pieces of our policy if you notice most of this has not changed much in other words of course the goal is still to try to use green cleaning products when we can and also to notify parents students staff of what is being utilized which those sheets are posted in schools and online you'll see the notifications of time too this isn't the pesticide piece but that's a similar process when we utilize something that is different than the norm we notify individuals in the school basically the bottom line is the policy remains the same in terms of green policy green cleaning that that

088is the preferred method however we may utilize other disinfectants cleaners and sanitizers bleach is an example of that bleach was something you weren't able to use in the past in schools hand sanitizer wasn't allowed because of the uh alcohol content both of those are now allowed questions from the board dr carmel you'd like for us to take action on this this evening yes if unless there are other questions or concerns that we didn't discuss with policy or tonight because as i said the law has already changed and this is what we have been following based on what we were till very recently required to do so laura would you like to make a motion just to make clear there are no concerns or issues or changes as this has been presented tonight for a first

089read okay can i i'm sorry laura that just reminded me as i saw mr fleishman next to me yes this has come from board council this has been this this is the uh palace this is the policy that um the changes the legal changes went through board council [Music] all right so hearing none i would like to make a motion that policy 352 4.1 the green cleaning program policy will be updated revised as presented do i have a second second okay thank you lynn all in favor aye aye any opposed extensions passes unanimously all right thank you our next item of business is exemption from instruction policy 6144.1 thank you this policy was brought to um our attention as part of a list of policies that were sent out first i believe by cabe the

090board of education association and ms young as the policy chair forwarded that along to me it had already been on our list from shipment and goodwin as one to look at however there aren't major changes here it was and we can talk through what the changes are but this was something that kate both cabe and shipman advised school districts and boards of education to look at the current policies you had and ensure that you did have a an exemption from instruction policy number one we are as i mentioned earlier we are required by law to teach certain uh pieces of curriculum you see that in here with the aids instruction that i mentioned earlier however we are also required by law to allow families to opt out of instruction related to any thing that is

091required by law so dissection of animals you see aids instruction medical which we had a conversation at policy is not neces isn't truly necessary in this policy it's not in the shipment model policy to be clear but we already had it in our policy and we had a conversation and from my perspective i advised the policy committee and i think we agreed that it wasn't necessary to be taken out either because we do follow medical exemptions all the time for students and this just reiterates what we already do but you're not required to have that by law in this policy it's a practice that we have to engage in regardless and likewise if you turn the page if you could go to the next one surely for alternative assignments thank you this is clarifying both

092what we have to do legally and what the practice is related to providing alternative assignments for students who may opt out of some of the curriculum okay i'll just pause and see if you have questions and want to read things you can see and should you are there any questions from board members regarding this policy jeff jeff go for it thank you just to clarification look in what's crossed out now are students will students under this policy will be able to use the religious exemption or is this no longer it's not confused thank you so that one no you there are religious exemptions from instruction there were there still are this is i'm sorry we talked about this policy and i just neglected to mention it because i talked about the medical um board council

093recommended that we take that out because it's covered in other pieces of policy related to religion and as i explained in the policy committee meeting really there are a number of reasons that we might exempt a student for instruction of any particular item and not all of them are going to be contained here some might have to do with a family's request some might have to do with a student's personal issues you know thing exempting them from the kind of instruction for example that might trigger a mental health issue in a student but there are a number of reasons that our schools work with families and students that way so this one jeff is another example being covered under that and also in a different policy so it was recommended to remove it from this

094one because it wasn't related to the same legal parameters so i can add some follow-up sure uh looking again so we're looking at scenarios where there are exemptions and i this they accept the back that talks about alternative assignments is there any sort of guidance a for um educators in terms of what those assignments will look like and are there any safeguards to ensure students who are given an exception aren't open to ridicule or exposed private information or so forth so our instructors this this happens more often i would say in in later years for example when we're talking about the um human sexuality piece of wellness that's required to be taught under law and a family may opt out the way those pieces are taught it's not obvious to students who's not able to

095do that so that's an example of that just by the way that they teach it in class when we get into the older grades and we're typically talking more about a particular book or a particular you know portion of a unit as i said maybe someone might need an exemption either based on again not something here maybe medical maybe a student issue the way we've been able to handle it efficiently is that if you notice in our curriculum this is one of the reasons that there are alternatives there so for example when the english department is teaching english 1 formally known as english 9 there will be a number of different texts that can be utilized so students are used to seeing people utilize different texts and pieces you need to be perfectly frank i

096think you know i'm going to be frank in this way it is it is difficult sometimes to completely maintain that anonymity depending on the situation and i'm just thinking of a couple of you know over the years things that i've spoken with parents about but i do know that the schools and our teachers try hard to make that the case and that's the expectation of course that they will do the best they can within their means not to ensure no student single doubt correct correct thank you other questions i just have a question about the logistics of this we want to make it somewhat easy for teachers and every time they have a starting a new unit would they have to send out a form or is that something that's in the parent handbook how

097would what would the logistics look like so when we're talking about the wellness curriculum for example where some pieces are required by law but you can opt out or there are the pieces not required by law but you still as a parent may not want your child to engage in the instruction or activities related to that particular topic notifications are sent out when they are doing those units for example i think probably all of us have seen this even as students are most of us as students when we were younger there's a certain part of the wellness curriculum there's typically a grade five where you start talking about some issues like puberty with students and that is an example of when they are going to engage in that it is sent out ahead of time

098and a reminder about this policy and the form accompanies it to your point i think the rest of what you might be asking lynn is we've talked about in some of our other meetings for example we did the controversial issues policy over recently we've made a number of changes and i think we're still making changes to how that the information related to curricular units and books and resources are communicated out online for example we now have an entire list of the board approved required texts and it goes by i can't see well enough if i remember right it's grade level yes and we just put that together after some of these you know the conversations that we've been having over the last you know couple of years and trying to be um very clear about

099what is being taught so um that's one of the things that we've done all of that is now online i and i just saw the a couple of days ago i was looking for something so i know that's on our new website also that took a little bit of time to build and to work with our teachers to do but we went through that the other piece is we made some changes with how teachers would communicate out syllabi at the high school for example in the english department when they were covering potential material that might trying to think of the word as we used it because i think we we this is when we discuss the policy and i don't have that one in front of me that we discussed a number of different words

100that might fit it because for lack of a better word right now offensive is not exactly what we were saying but that might be sensitive sensitive objections yeah object that could be objectionable or sensitive to some so um that's how we have put those out in some of the courses well also as it was my understanding that these are the actual subjects under which the state says we have a mandatory obligation as a board to allow for the exemptions correct we haven't just that's correct you know set these aside just because these are actually these are a must yes but we've left the policy a little more inclusive by allowing the additional language just saying that there might be other circumstances under which yes a student might seek and that's our right that's our practice

101regardless yes correct lisa yes so i guess my question goes back to if we are allowing exemptions and we are taking liberty with this policy to go beyond what is required is everything available to the public in terms of do they have the capability of reviewing the curriculum in order to make a sound decision as to whether they want to allow their child to partake in this or not so at this point we have migrated um the majority of the curriculum to the new website as i think i mentioned under the update and i'll just circle back because it makes sense again here lisa to talk about a little bit more our curriculum warehouse where it's easier to pull out the curriculum from and be able to see the standards and the central questions and

102so forth is eduplanet and that didn't work hand in hand with our previous website so we had them loaded online and they're there they just were i think a little bit harder to read the way that it was it's going to be a lot clearer now the way that we have begun building the new piece of it so in short the answer to your question is every one of them is not online as i sit here tonight they are in the process of putting the rest from the old website up and also there are some that are pending approval like i talked about tonight that will be coming through the district committee and then through the board that will be put up one of the other changes that we made recently that we're still in

103the process of came out of a previous curriculum and professional practices uh committee meeting in which we discussed the the prior practice um that the district and the board and this is something we had never talked about in my time here that this was something that had been long-standing until we had this conversation at the meeting we did not post curricula online until they went completely through the approval process but the issue with that is that when you're writing curricula at the same time in some cases based on for example you know state requirement changing and you don't get them through the entire process if you don't put them online at all even while they're in draft form then people can review them so we are that's another piece that the teaching and learning office

104and if donna was here she would speak to it tonight also i'm probably in even more depth than i'm going to right now is working on posting the rest of those online there are some that have not been written yet that are elective courses and we talked about that in the curriculum meeting also collective courses here at the high school and that's where we rely on the syllabus from the teachers still at this point as we continue writing those and just to reiterate because i know that the board has heard this in previous meetings as we've talked about these issues there were nearly no written curricula in the district before 2014. so they before i started and since i've been here our office and the schools the faculty the department coordinators two of which are

105here with us tonight have been working on um writing all of that curricula and it has been a pretty heavy lift obviously so the focus had been on the core academic areas from k through 12 and all of those are online in addition to as i said earlier wellness our digital literacy curriculum is now online so we moved out from the core academic areas and the majority are now there and i recognize that donna isn't here this evening and she might be the better person to answer the question but do we have a time frame in which the entire curricula will be online i can answer the question too you usually try to be able to make sure i answer all the questions as you know no matter what it is so i did to

106be to be up front i i did tell um donna's office because it's it's other folks besides donna that work in it not to spend time putting um curriculum up on the old in the old fashion you know because that's just going to be double the work and take us even longer to get it into the new platform so the ones that were not on the um old site that they are now trying to program in to the new eduplanet platform they're working through that and i said don't stop doing that just to make it on the old site and for people to be able to find because to the best of my knowledge none of those as i said are the particularly controversial issues or ones like this that we might have to exempt

107students from so when i talk to donna again about this actually just yesterday and earlier today uh jodi krazanski and i were talking about the same i would say for the ones that are written we are probably two maybe two weeks out from the rest of them going up but again there are others that are still in the process of being written that are electives those are done as we cycle them through so for example we just finished almost finished i believe math and science and a complete review again from k-12 so we've also had folks writing some of the electives at the same time that we redid the core one i don't have so here's what i would rather have said to you that i don't i just didn't have access to before the

108meeting tonight with donna not being here this is the piece i don't have um because she and i spoke about it yesterday and even she would have had to dig through quite a bit of things this morning to give it to me for tonight and she wasn't here and i just didn't have time for it there's i wanted to be able to provide a list of all of the courses that are taught that there isn't a curriculum written for and i didn't have i just couldn't do that in time for tonight knowing it would be a question so we'll provide that as soon as i can get it done so through the chair tonight actually though we are discussing a specific policy pertaining to exemption from instruction there are other policies as we discussed at

109a subcommittee level that have to do with access to reviewing curriculum and educational materials as well as controversial materials and i am a little concerned that we're moving away from the policy that's before us yes you're correct there are those also sorry i just wanted to make sure i answered everybody i just want to make sure that everybody understands what we're looking at tonight has to do with the mandatory policies that we must provide an exemption for and focus on that for tonight if there are additional policies that anybody on the board would be interested in adding to our next agenda please uh let me know deb um this is a first read we're not voting on this is that correct we have the opportunity to do that like we did with the green cleaning

110is if it's following legal wording which are you suggesting that you're not prepared to do so okay well i'm i'm just a little bit uncomfortable with the wording for family life education instruction that whole section because it feels as though somehow i'd love to see some wording that connects it to specific a specific unit my concern is we all know especially in the elementary level instruction about families doesn't just happen when you're teaching that particular unit it could happen during a morning meeting when kids are discussing their own families and the diversity of their own families i would hate for teachers to feel uncomfortable because of this language that every time we're discussing anything even peripherally that they need to make sure kids have an opportunity to opt out or parents have an opportunity to

111opt out do you understand kind of where i'm going with this and just wondering if the language could somehow narrow that section to include family life education instruction as part of the this specific curriculum as written within the units rather than just in general that's not a conversation we had at the policy level then it doesn't mean that we couldn't have it it's just not a topic it wasn't raised as an issue we were talking about this being the the definition that that the law utilizes i understand what you're saying and i'm i'm i'm under i'm just worried that some people will take further than what your our intent would be that's all well i think you know again a in a night where we're having some of the comments that we are i think

112this is right a space where one might say of course we want to be transparent with the curriculum there are of course times that a student is going to ask a question in a class or a discussion is going to happen as a result of that that won't be an exact part of the curriculum and our teachers do their best to to deal with and in some cases depending on the age of the students and the questions that are asked that might be you know maybe you should go home and ask your mom dad or grandma grandpa family member um but i understand your point i'm not sure where we would land on that i think that if we want i think that if we want to have want to have a conversation about this

113we should come back to the policy committee and leave and and and bring this back there so that we're not going around about it here because then you're not on the policy committee if i remember right i hate to hold everything up but okay so it doesn't matter for my person it doesn't matter because the law is the law and if someone these are the topics in the in the curriculum that if you opt if you want to opt your child out of you have the ability to do that and we have been doing that for a long time without making a change to the policy so i i don't have from my seat to push it through without having another conversation if that's what the board would like to do laura i'll defer to

114you as the chair of policy i if this is what the superintendent is recommending that we bring it back to the policy committee we can certainly do that if other members of the policy committee are comfortable with the language we could still move it forward as well we can certainly do that and people can vote as they feel comfortable through the chair i would look for direction on it since we do not meet in may it would mean this would be delayed uh at the very earliest until june unless we had a special meeting and i am a little concerned that we would then not have this in place okay i as you're speaking or thinking about something else why don't i [Music] do some leg work between now and the next board meeting and

115bring some information back to you again about this i'll send it in advance if if you like if i i'm sure i'll get it before then um and if that way when we return at the next board meeting that makes sense we can have if this was a first read anyway yeah we can have another conversation i was just saying if we're going to have a big conversation about it taking the time to do that here tonight is is right not and i'd rather do because i'd like to be able to move forward with the rest of the new business that we have and leave this until next time that's fine that's my you know that's my recommendation all right so we will revisit this at our may meeting okay next is our audit report

116um 2021. ms russo again susan good evening um i'm happy to report that the board of ed received a clean audit uh the management letter provided by our audit firm had a couple of notes for the town on the on their side of things but the board of ed was comment free for the year and we're very proud of that we've posted on our website the entirety of the audit report if at your leisure you'd like to read it for brevity we did not include that in the packet but it is on the board of ed's website in the business department webpage so you can read that at your leisure but we're very excited and happy and hope next year will be just as good go ahead jay so i would just like to congratulate

117susan russo and the entire team at the central office for the clean audit i know that's representative of the good work that you do on a daily basis so thank you for all that yes we definitely appreciate that and we enjoy that there was absolutely nothing to comment on so we appreciate that thank you susan all right um next is portrait of the graduate i know we have mr inquits along with ms lal or ms berliner are you staying at your seats do you have a microphone to yes we'll we'll set them up i just want to lead in again thank you uh both for not only all of this work that you have been uh co-facilitating at the high school for some time but for being here with us tonight and hanging in there

118and staying with us i know you have some home obligations that they may have expected you home a little bit earlier tonight i apologize but thank you again for doing this and board members i think if you have questions jacqueline and and lisa mike you would rather stop along the way or what would you rather do just because we usually try to set it up as we begin yeah we'll stop we maybe stop along the way okay because i think it'd probably be best stop at each spot and then we'll see sure thank you all right good evening i'm jacqueline lawler i'm the niask co-chair as well as the math department coordinator good evening i'm lisa berliner i am co-chairing the ask with jaclyn and am the world language coordinator tonight we're going to talk

119a little bit about the portrait of the graduate or what we sort of deem as qualities that students from avon high school should have upon graduation and how we really looked at this as a k-12 initiative so niask or the new england association of schools and colleges we our last decennial visit was actually in the fall of 2013. and we are due for our next sort of update it which is a collaborative conference which is also known as sort of like a mini visit and in this mini visit which will happen in the fall of 2023 it was supposed to be in the fall of 2021 and then it's been moved up um the chair of the nia's visit as well as a niask representative we'll look at our self-study which will need to be

120completed before then which lisa and i will facilitate and after the self-study we will come up with sort of a plan of um improvement and then our decennial visit which was supposed to be the fall of 2023 is now being pushed to the fall of 2025 so it's just like a little bit of background of what's sort of to come in terms of the ask the nias process is really seven steps um the we are kind of pre these seven steps at this moment in time but we are preparing for step one and we will go through those um those seven steps in the next two years so this next slide shows just um there's been some changes at the from niask regarding the 10-year cycle and previously it was the decennial visit would happen

121and there wasn't a whole lot of movement that the faculty would see along the way and with our new standards um it's much more of a continuous improvement process so we are at the beginning of getting ready for our self-study we were anticipating really starting that this spring but with the visit being pushed off a little bit we're still kind of at the beginning stages then we will have that collaborative conference where we will have that mini visit with whoever will be accredited or chairing the accreditation process and from there we would have a development of our growth plan which would align with the district improvement plan and we would have to implement that specifically for the neoask process it would be what we implement at the high school level we would have to write

122our summary report have the next visit and continuous to continuously improve that plan that we develop so as a faculty we started looking at the revised standards for 2020 and the the various standards have changed for the process that we will be accredited for and specifically we started as a nias committee here at the high school focusing on standard two which is where we felt like as high school faculty members we were we really were responsible for the most impact next slide please thank you um so as lisa just said we really are focusing on this student learning component because as teachers this is where we really feel the most comfortable so in order to acclimate the faculty with this nias process we decided to run two professional development days surrounding this student learning component

123and really wanted to get a sense of what we are currently doing in our current practice and how that relates to our portrait of the graduate which we will get into a little bit on the next few slides actually if you can go back one second so with this vision of the graduate and here we're calling we're calling it portrait of the graduate and avon um so those two terms are kind of used interchangeably um this really does align with what our goal is as a school so this is the component we've been looking at for the past couple of years so starting we can look at the next slide all the way back in 2018 in our minds as a high school faculty we were halfway to the next decennial visit and those timelines

124have changed which is great for us it gives us a little bit more time so we actually had a contingency of faculty members here from the high school that attended a conference run by niask to kind of start to get us thinking about what we see in the vision of the graduate and from there we also started working with jonathan costa from advance he really is an expert in the nes process and conducts not only visits here within the us but also internationally and he helped us facilitate various discussions of really thinking about the essential skills our students will need upon graduation and what life will look like for them as adults so not only cpdc participated in some of those workshops with pre-k 12 representation but as well as the members of the high

125school faculty that are on our specific nies committee and then the following school year we launched the thought exchange activity which was really a survey given out to students staff community members really anyone that's on our listserv asking them questions related to what they thought were the essential skills and attributes our graduates needed for life after their school experience um and then we also pulled various district documents like the blueprint for excellence and focused as cpdc in our nes committee of really having thoughtful discussions of those various skills and attributes we were looking for students to have when they were graduating avon high school and for each of those skills and attributes the high school staff sat down and really wrote a lot of descriptors and brainstormed what those looked like and we started to

126create various indicators of success and then we used examples from our existing curriculum and that process so after that whole process we actually had after all the data was collected from all the stakeholders we actually ended up with nine different skills and attributes which were then combined into the following so our three skills which are measurable components which we have developed rubrics to create which we'll talk about in a little bit our communication expression collaboration and critical and creative thinking and then the dispositions which are more reflective in nature our cultural competence and independent and adaptable so we had pages of lists of brainstormed ideas of those skills and attribute attributes and through our many discussions we were really able to combine a lot of those in and fall on these three skills and two

127dispositions so work got tabled a little bit during the covid process we came back last spring as a full faculty to um or excuse me as cbdc the neos committee to look at that condensed list we had a couple different work groups um from pre-k 8 and 9 12 to draft rubrics for the various indicators of intent of indicators of attainment for each skill with having indicators for beginning developing proficient in advance for those skills um and then there were also some self-reflective rubrics written for the two dispositions and again those are are reflective in nature those are not evaluative on the teacher's part so the next couple slides really just run through those indicators of each of our skills and dispositions so the first skill the communication express in expression and effective communicator demonstrates

128the ability to perform these types of indicators in the classroom and in activities and assessments labs performance tasks etc so i'll give you a second if you want to read through those and then the second one collaboration same same idea so again these are the skills which we have developed rubrics for to evaluate students on collaboration and then the third skill critical and creative thinking again a rubric was developed to evaluate students and their ability to think critically and creatively and the rubrics were developed based upon current rubrics that we have already been using at avon high school and then we took those rubrics and sort of tailored them more towards these skills and added some components as well and then rubrics were created in the other schools that sort of mirror our rubrics and

129fit the needs of the elementary school students and middle school students and then for the two dispositions we drafted definitions of what those attributes look like and again ways that students might demonstrate those particular dispositions what was nice is kind of those pre-k 12 conversations of how we really regardless of kind of the building you were in we all had similar goals in mind for students and it's not often that we really get to have those pre-k-12 conversations so culturally competent was one of those dispositions and there's a lot of different ways that we discussed how students would demonstrate that attribute and then the second one that we agreed upon um pre-k-12 if we advance the next one was independent and adaptable and it's interesting because this is definitely one that kind of pre-pandemic post-pandemic

130looked different for us and it was one i think that we all kind of felt like after the fact this was one of those dispositions that became obvious to us given what we had all experienced so just to reiterate again the two dispositions there are there are um we are not evaluating students using rubrics on the dispositions this is more of a self-reflection piece and so then um this current school year we brought portrait of the graduate work to our full faculty we did two different professional development sessions that were both half day professional development the first one in november we showed the full faculty where we were with the porch of the graduate work the various indicators we had our faculty work in their various grade level teams course teams on how their current

131practices align with the three skills um so they kind of waited which skill they felt like their clt was was kind of already addressing the most in their current curriculum and then kind of we had them rank a little bit of like number one for their particular content area to kind of where maybe which of those skills they weren't completely addressing in their curriculum because we wanted to start to take inventory of where this work was already happening in the building oh can you go back please i'm sorry and then in the march professional development we had teachers in their collaborative teams so courses that they teach that are similar really look at what they're currently doing and then we had and how that would relate to the portrait of the graduate and the rubrics

132and it was really impressive actually i was impressed personally with what came out of that conversation and just hearing about some of the really interesting um lessons that teachers are doing in their classrooms you know i'm in the math department i really know what's happening in math but it was really impressive how this is really something that we are doing already and it was it was really nice to hear that what teachers are doing in other subject areas i definitely agree that it was march was a really powerful day because i also had gone to the day thinking that um you know maybe collaboration wasn't something that as an academic teacher i was continuously working on but then as like some of our unified arts teachers were discussing components of their curriculum and some of

133the tech ed teachers were explaining some of their projects it really made me kind of sit back and think about how this work is being done across the building and we have kind of started to identify those areas where we can really start to see benchmarks of this work happening um and how we are preparing students for life beyond avon high school so our next steps in this process um the rubrics are pretty finalized we just really wanted to take them for like a test run with some of the lessons and assessments that we're currently using and see have the teachers actually run through activities and actually grade students based on these rubrics just to make sure they're um you know solidified also we're working on a graphic i know dr rusack is really working

134on that with a particular student to sort of have a visual of the portrait of the graduate we are also getting ready to roll out this the rubrics to our pre-k a faculty students and staff and align the pre-k 8 report cards to align with some of these identified skills and attributes so that's sort of what's to come and then you know at the high school level we know that we are really already working towards those skills that came out of all of our conversations as being three essential skills however kind of we now need to take a little bit of a closer look at those indicators that we identified and start to look at modifying some current lessons or assessments to really address the all of the indicators we had for each of those

135skills um and again kind of as i had said for each grade level we would like to identify some benchmark assessments so they're kind of our progress checkpoints along the way of meeting all of the skills of the portrait of the graduate so that we know that for instance by the end of ninth grade students will have completed xyz lesson assessment that would be indicators of their progress um i just want to say quickly i think one of the best pieces of this process is the unification of pre-k 12. um this is really the first time where we're looking at rubrics district-wide and really following um giving us the ability to follow students kind of throughout their avon high school career and um that's a big change from our previous yes visit in 2013. so

136we have had some preliminary discussions of how this rollout looks to the community and especially to students who this you know most really addresses and we're looking to start with our incoming ninth graders of collecting evidence of their work towards porch of the graduate and making them aware that this is our goal for them for their graduation we felt like ninth grade was a good place to start so that by the end of senior year we would have a great sample of their work and just in time for our visit as well i think that's it oh no i think okay yeah no i think that's good oh you're welcome any questions that's a very comprehensive and i know it's an overview and we know how long you've been working on this so it is

137impressive and we certainly have that objective to send them off into the world successfully so thank you for that were there any questions from board members thank you again um in lieu of a question um i i want to just reiterate some pieces of this if you could maybe go back surely to the the collaboration piece for example um just to or either one would work or communication and expression either sorry no collaboration um when we were talking about getting everyone together pre-k to 12 um i think i've said this previously when we were working on our strategic plan or blueprint for excellence that one of our focus areas was to be able to do this as a district not just as a high school because in the end you are a graduate of avon

138public schools no matter what place you you join us in and so if we just like trying to root the continuous improvement efforts in the blueprint if we anchor further to the portrait of the graduate from pre-k to 12 then we're all on the same page about what it is that's most important that we're doing so that was intentional in how we did this process and i think it's gone very well i'm appreciative obviously um but one of the things i wanted to point out because i thought of it while you were speaking is you know we've heard comments a number of times about what social and emotional learning looks like and is there a curriculum and so forth and i wanted to point this out because i think this is one good example and

139again this isn't i don't want to go through all of the pieces of social emotional learning or growth tonight and take the time to do that in addition to this but collaboration for example is one of the standards in uh the social emotional learning standards we don't have a set curriculum in social emotional learning i think that you know over time some of the ways that we as the public as a whole um have come to understand some of those pieces differently or perhaps in in different places they're being implemented differently i can't really speak to that what i can tell you about it here and we've spoken about this before as a board and pieces of this are in our strategic plan is that we are talking about the interpersonal social skills and you

140know emotional intelligence that comes along with a continuum from pre-k to 12 being able to meet those 21st century skills of collaboration critical thinking and so forth so the state has required those attributes to be present also across the continuum and on a separate note they have required the legislature has required the state department of education to put together a standalone framework like i talked about earlier tonight for social emotional learning we here in avon talked about plotting that out over the years and made decisions that since this these pieces that would be there that would be the big picture items of social emotional learning are present throughout all of these critical skills critical thinking the cultural competence the collaboration um the communication skills that we would weave them through in our standing curriculums and

141i think you know we've talked about that as we've taken things through curriculum professional practices but i just thought this was a good spot to mention that because of the um questions or conversations about that certainly we talked more about that another time too but i think you've had good conversations from pre-k to 12 about how to ensure that we're meeting all of these 21st century knowledge and skills which is the big picture for us and our graduates all right so ms berliner and miss lawler thank you so much we really appreciate this oj you had something to say you know i just want to thank you both for leading this and i understand the extensive time you put into this and know you both the teachers and how would you care about the students

142and we talk about you know the entire student and what you've done here um having um gone through the the process before you know this is all just preparation from the ex visit so if someone could just explain to the rest of the board like you know this is all in preparation for the work you do every day but also for that visit how is that visit going to work and what does that entail so we wish we had more information about that today we were supposed to actually be in a full-day pd day pd today with knee ask but because district timelines have been pushed out because of the pandemic we're waiting to hear a little bit of the specifics of how that collaborative conference will go in the next visit um because the

143process has changed with the 2020 standards but we do know we will be conducting when we get our firm date we'll launch the self-study nias will give us an evaluation tool for all stakeholders to look at the standards and with guiding questions to help us develop our report of the self-study we'll have that mini visit with very few representatives from neoask it's not the large contingency of the previous decennial visits from there we'll write that improvement plan as a school in preparation of the decennial visit so and those decennial visitors are shorter i know that a couple of the administrators in the room have been active on some of the knee evaluations for some local schools to help us as well as what that will look like so we are in the beginning stages of

144getting ready for the process however we know we need to align to the 2020 standards so as a staff we're starting to look at where we are in alignment with those and decided that that standard two of student learning and looking at the vision of the graduate which from our previous visit of the previous from the nine that we had of the social emotion or the academic social civic expectations from before that was one of the largest recommendations from the previous visit was to readdress the expectations we align that now with the portrait of the graduate so that's where we are with our work and this right and the development of our school-wide rubric so that's where we are right now with the faculty led part of the work and i you know as dr

145carney mulla had said in 2014 the with the start of the documented curriculum we knew as a high school staff that was also a huge recommendation so we feel like we've made great progress in in working towards written documented curriculum as well so i don't know if that answers your question but it the process looks a little bit yeah the process is different than before this is the first time the high school will go through the process as it has been revised from the previous accreditation visits that for example ju would have been on and so what they're referring to and is some pieces of it still have to be given to us to be able to even share with you but in the past i have gone out on the ask visits and had

146the training i haven't had i just don't have the time really to do much of that anymore however as i said we have some other administrators who have mr medic is one who has been um through all of the newest training and has chaired these committees in several school districts at this point and spent time here going through pieces with our team to talk about the other side of the experience and helping them prepare also so i think there'll be more to come for you as a board about what that timeline looks like there'll be more to come for us as the faculty staff and administration on what it looks like anyone else all right thank you so much we appreciate it thank you all right our second communication from the public miss moy do

147we have speakers we do we have two speakers first one is aaron barthel okay thank you so much for letting me talk today my name is dr erin barthel and i live on wright drive and avon and i just want to start off by saying that i fully support what my friends for equity in avon schools said today and so fully support the lgbtq community as well i wanted to say that here in the avon community we would never say that somebody with a disability shouldn't be in our public schools that it wasn't the appropriate venue for somebody in a wheelchair one of our children in a wheelchair to be in the school that they should be kept out of schools that their medical problems have no place in our schools that we would never

148say that our student feels alienated or uncomfortable because someone in a wheelchair is in their class that our students feel like they're having to choose somebody else's lifestyle because they would have to use this the school ramp at school because somebody in their class has a wheelchair we would never say that our students feel excluded from extra services because they don't have an aid in their classroom like somebody with a wheelchair or somebody with autism has and our students would never say that they feel uncomfortable because they don't see themselves in a book with a child with a wheelchair or somebody with a seeing eye dog or other aid that they need because they haven't just they have a disability we would never say this about differently abled children sorry we would never say that

149about children that may look different because they have different physical abilities they were born this way and they have every right to be in school and to be supported in school but for some reason we use this language with discussions around lgbtq youth and teaching black history in school i'm shaking i'm sorry because i wrote this while i was sitting here so i wish i had better notes but what i heard tonight was that their students have right to privacy that it's not the appropriate venue these are all quotes from today that discussing these political points in school is alienating it should be kept out of the school it makes their children feel uncomfortable that medical things have no place in our schools and that they're having lifestyle choices pushed upon them for some reason

150we use this language with discussions around lgbtq youth in dealing with black history in school we use this language for human beings that just look differently from white cisgender heterosexual individuals and are therefore treated like they're wrong or threatening it's not okay to use this for a person's disability or for people with different religions and it's not okay to use this with people who have diverse gender identities sexualities and different races these are people people human beings children and some of them may be in their homes and i hope that someday they can look back and say that their experience at avon public schools was one they felt supported and one that they didn't feel like they were alienating other children or being or pushing their lifestyles because the teachers around them and the board

151of education around them supported them just like everyone else in the school thank you miss barthel next our last speaker is chris campbell okay mr campbell good evening um chris campbell i reside at eight heathcote i'm also with the friends of equity i wanted to say thank you to my team for what they said there's a lot of tension in the room this evening rightfully so there's many things that get said and what i try to hear from the other side is that we all want our kids to be educated wanted needed and loved right and there's there was a comment made that you know certain conversations shouldn't happen in my house my son asked me things that i have to answer my son goes to rbs my son loves school he is pre-k he's

152four and yes i'm biased but that little dude is smart he loves it he loves to read he reads so well i'm so proud of my son but he also asked me how come none of the teachers look like mommy because mommy's black so we have to have that conversation i can't just say well you know so i mean i have to give him an answer there's going to be plenty of conversations moving forward in our town that we have to have they're not easy but just because you don't share the same experience does not make it not real all of these things are real things are changing people are changing people are moving in and i plan on staying here i plan on remaining here i want my sons to flourish here i have

153one in and i have two more on the way i don't want to put my kids in a different school i want them to be at avon and i appreciate all the hard work that the board does and teachers do you y'all got a hard job we have to understand that it's not okay just to dismiss because you've never experienced it i hope that other people we we can't just sit here and scream at each other that's now conversation works so i hope that we can come to some point where we can have a conversation a real conversation and get to a point where there are certain things in there that we all have in common we all love our kids dearly so let's focus on things that we have in common because we can't

154keep screaming at each other thank you guys for everything that you do i appreciate it thank you and surely that was our final comment all right our next item on the agenda is communication from avon board of education members do we have anyone that would like to say something lisa yes i was not at the last meeting but i received a beautiful gift bag full of cards and appreciation for being a board member so i just wanted to acknowledge that and say thank you very much to all the children who wrote terrific letters to me and the teachers and of course all the appreciation we always get from the public thank you lisa that is definitely the best part for sure anybody else all right jeff no okay all right so now we are at

155the point of the meeting where i would like to make a motion to invite dr carnimola and mr medic into an executive session with us for two purposes one is to discuss have a discussion concerning attorney-client privilege related to the board of education's legal responsibilities and interplay with community groups as well as a discussion of negotiation strategies of non-union contracts it is 9 20 can i have a second please second thank you lisa all in favor aye all right so at 9 20 we will enter into executive session we thank you for joining us this evening we'll now clear the room other than the board and dr carmel and mr medic