Avon Board of Education Meeting - 4/18/17

001[Music] welcome to the uh april board of education meeting uh we're calling to order at a little late 702 i apologize for that uh if everybody can stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Applause] all right uh first item on the agenda is avon achievers uh mr giannini for pine grove school if you could come forward and uh mr burke is going to assist you and i understand you may have to have football gear to get past the crowd news of my avon achiever presentations has spread clearly but unfortunately i won't be doing all the talking

002this evening so sorry to let you down but actually i'm going to ask mary beth with favorite enjoyment and i'm gonna ask john ronald and tj to come up as well so for all the teachers in the room you can appreciate this we've all done our internship hours and that was that time in college when you went out to a local elementary or secondary school and you spent some time observing a master teacher and possibly getting to do a sample lesson yourself to get some feedback early on in your career and usually in that situation you have an opportunity to spend some time in the school get a little feedback and that's about where the relationship ends this year we've had a unique experience at pine grove school with some interns from ccsu and it's

003been a little bit different a little more of a two-way street than our typical internship experience where i think we've gained as much from having them here as they've gained maybe from spending some time with us so i'm actually going to have mary beth talk a little bit about it because they were part of the wellness department okay for the past two years uh pipero school has partnered with ccsu's health and physical education program we've had the opportunity to help prepare many aspiring teachers and most recently partnered with ccsu to implement aspects of what we call the past program p-a-s-s all capital letters uh ron tj and john are three very talented interns um that i've had the pleasure of working with um they've observed and are now teaching a series of three lessons in

004order to prepare them for student teaching next year they also have really bonded and connected with the pine world elementary school students these young men are so highly motivated to learn as much as they can all right and are frequently put in long hours for lesson plans um monitoring the student progress assessments we all know um they ask for feedback regularly from myself or my co-teacher and perrault or from mr g or mr rw their willingness is to take suggestions to make themselves better to modify their lessons and experiment with different strategies really demonstrates their motivation on how well they want they want to become better teachers they are very interested in the students progress and they try to make sure that the students themselves do their very best and every activity that they do

005ron tj and john have helped bring the past program p-a-s-s to pine road as well past stands for physically active school systems this program encourages schools to include multiple opportunities for physical activity throughout the school day aside from physical education in addition to this i'm sorry these interns along with 14 other ccsu students have been visiting pyro every tuesday for seven weeks where they give every school every classroom in the entire school a 10-minute brain break in addition to this on the morning of friday april 7th we had a team building exercise for grades two three and four which they also led um and then in the afternoon when we had a half day the two professors carol seattle from ccsu and another professor from scsu ran a professional development for our staff on pass

006so um in addition so on behalf of the school mr mr unity myself um in the school community um and the wellness department of course we'd like to thank the three of them for their time their effort at pine grove school and to help include more physically active minutes in our schooling they're going to make excellent teachers yeah perfect congratulations you still have a year to go too thank you thank you the next item on the agenda is a roaring book school avon achievers presented by the principal noam sturm and assisted by wendy howard i didn't realize pine grove had expanded into college very excited to be here tonight i view education as a journey schooling is a journey and it's a journey that takes a lot of time a lot of talent and a

007lot of effort naomi come on up every once in a while i come across a student like naomi davidson who is a second grader in nancy usage's class and students like naomi are the embodiment of what i think is really the hardest of those three things which is effortless because you've got to sink your teeth into your work and i have seen naomi sink her teeth into every single part of schooling from the day that i met her on the first or second day of school whether she's involved in reading or writing or she's in the gym or she's just enjoying recess she's somebody who gives it her all i think she's a true embodiment of what roaring brook and ava public schools are like so congratulations naomi you want your own on saturday and

008turn it over to mr sparks for our second avon achievers thank you mr thank you congratulations [Music] excuse me pleasure to join with noam in awarding the next avon achiever uh to samantha jubic miss d so smith will you come up and did you bring chloe [Applause] samantha was a great find for us at roaring brook school she first introduced herself to the community it had a big impact on us when she came as a substitute last year in a variety of roles this year we had a chance to hire her on full time and we were very excited that we nailed it down and got her on board because she's been an incredible educator by title she's a para educator but as any of you teachers in the audience will attest at the heart

009of every para educator is a true teacher she works with teachers she works with occupational therapists speech therapists bus drivers custodians ordinary administrators parents and most importantly she has had a huge impact on a targeted group of students and she's had a significant impact on the wider school in general samantha has come to us with energy and enthusiasm every day she brings artistic talent she brings passion and she brings hard work to her job and she has saved the life i know it of one particular youngster that we have in mind uh avon public schools opens its doors to everyone in the community come on in and we have your public education and kids come in all shapes and sizes and abilities and samantha has opened up her heart and her home and every part

010of her to make sure the learning experience for all the kids one in particular has been nothing short of spectacular so on behalf of all of the teachers and the staff and administrators and the roinbrook community we congratulate samantha cubic ms d as an avon achiever all right we've now finished with that portion of the agenda so we usually excuse people who came particularly for that so that they can leave and not feel embarrassed and not have to stay for all of our work which sometimes i'm told it's not as stimulating as what we just did [Applause] feeling all right at this point um i'm going to exercise a point of personal privilege i'd like to thank wendy howard for her years of service on the board of education those in the public don't appreciate

011how much time and effort they put in wendy has put in a lot of time and a lot of effort and she is she's resigning effective may 3 if my memory is correct and will be moving out of state and i just wanted to say thank you very much [Applause] and then at this point i would like to ask for an amendment to the agenda at the superintendent's request we have uh and on your on the next to your [Applause] place setting a list of non-renewals and reductions in force [Applause] and the proposal would be normally to put that on the consent calendar and i'm going to have a motion to add to the agenda is there a second second all right um this is rolly moves mrs blair seconds any comments no comments all

012in favor aye anyone opposed no no opposition no obs any abstentions no extensions all right next item is the minutes and in accordance with our ordinary procedure we only do subsection a which is the board of education minutes we leave the committee minutes to the committees involved themselves um i have a motion to approve [Applause] this is how it moves do i have second a second this is young seconds all right any comments hearing none all in favor any opposed no opposition any abstentions no abstentions carries unanimously all right communications from the public and i thought you all might be here for communications from the public uh let me just give you the basic ground rules on how it normally works um uh any member of the public can come up and speak um you

013have up to three minutes i always tell people if you finish faster no one has ever criticized anyone for being pithy and getting the job done quicker but you have up to three minutes normally we take 15 minutes um my guess is we're not going to be done in 15 minutes if everyone speaks so we can extend that well usually what we do is we go until we hit that period and then we move for an extension and then usually the board approves it but the board is the board and i can't tell you ahead of time what we're going to do so all right that being said um would anyone like to address the board just raise your hand and come on up don't be shy young lady in the back in the blue

014come on up and tell us your name carol schubinsky i have a 10th grader an 8th grader and a 6th grader i sent an email to houston but i don't know if you had time to forward it to everybody i'm going to try and talk fast i wanted to speak because i was very just disappointed to see that avon theater was on the cut list that was sent out last night i come to a lot of budget meetings and that's never been mentioned before at any of the meetings that i've been at it's a wonderful program it serves a lot of kids at the middle school in the high school and i think a lot of people in this room are here because of their concerns of the theater program i'd like to it was

015a little unclear whether just classes were being affected or whether the programs themselves were going to be impacted there's over 170 kids that participate in productions between thompson brook the middle school and the high school it's a great program that does a lot for kids who don't do sports and aren't involved in other things and the the teacher mrs patterson who runs it does a great job at the high school and i think that there could even be more classes offered in the middle school not everybody even gets it in the middle school because it's not uh offered in that many sections um i did a little research today in our our simsbury farmington west hartford and glastonbury all up for theater classes you know and and they also offer electives that we don't offer

016at the uh um high school like culinary arts and other consumer family science things so to get rid of another area of classes that we're not offering here i think makes our high school look worse i'm also concerned that the board's being asked to vote on reducing additional teachers at the high school without even knowing what those five teachers are you know if we can eliminate the theater department when i look at the faculty list does that mean the three art teachers are going to be gone or the business department and some of the other small departments so i'm very worried about voting for cuts before you even know what they are i was also concerned to see that a counselor was being eliminated we lost a counselor a couple of years ago and these

017counselors are overworked and not able to do all the things that they need to do so to lose another one and increase their workload i i disagree with um i do uh also i i wasn't surprised to see it but i am a big fan of the student assistance center i really think if there's a way to keep that that that's a valuable program that i know a lot of people have spoken on to you in the past i know it's a tough budget year so my suggestion which might not make me popular with us you know everybody is to look at the class sizes at the elementary level i think there's some room for some additional cuts there you know when i look at pine grove and roaring brook when they're going to have

01817 18 kids in the second grade class just as an example the pine grove enrollment for second grade is 123 with seven sections which makes 17.5 kids and the fourth grade is exactly the same numbers 123 and they only have six sections and 20 kids i don't think it's bad to have 20 to 22 kids in these sections at the elementary level my kids had even more than that they were fine and if you look at the historical numbers that avon parents are used to it's more like 20 to 22 not 17. so i think you could save a few at the high school by making cuts at the other other uh areas so thank you [Applause] and just one second mr molly should i respond to some of these items because uh there's some

019clarification points whatever all right well whatever i don't want to step on your toes yeah it's not been on my toes okay thank you um one my understa although we're certainly going to be asking the question of the superintendent but my understanding is we're not getting rid of the theater program but theater classes would be eliminated so i understand but certainly we're going to have some questions for the superintendent on that now i believe the gentleman the second row you'd raise your hand and come on up and tell us who you are do you want to take them as you go i don't know hello my name is amir johnson i'm a student here at avon high school um and anything else no that's great i've actually heard your name mentioned in a complimentary fashion

020thank you so i'm looking forward to great things from your your comments um i don't want to deter for my three minutes here um so mr chair i know you don't like long stories so i won't give my long story here but i think the first thing that i look at when you talk about budget issues is the student assistance center mainly because i use it so if i use it i can tell my experience and how i used it i spoke at the climate meet the climate meeting and many other students have spoken there some of you weren't there it's a great time um and a lot of people express that when you have these programs so that you know to keep the kids who have the 504 plans and the iep plan was

021not just for that right because when i came to the school i didn't have a 504 friend or iep i was just somebody who was looking for help and i seeked miss masculia as someone who would help me and has helped me i think that a lot of problems here that we have at the school is branding what we have our resources a lot of times students are not aware of the resource that we the resources that we have at this school and what it does is it says when i and i'm talking about um these different areas of support they go really i didn't know we had that because who's told me about these resources where has these resources been available to me so for me i like to always refer back to the

022nine that we set as an identity for here at avon high school and in the nine it talks about belonging and the definition behind that is enjoy a sense of inclusion and belonging right so when i came to the school me being in the student assistance center made me belong right so if it's not here and i'm gonna still have that sense of inclusion because i looked it up and when you say that sense of inclusion it's not saying that it's there but if i if it's i'm having a sense i'm feeling that my sense of inclusion is there at the student resource center and then another one is do good right our students are always pressured to do good right academically physically whatever and in that definition that was said it says act in

023an ethical manner and recognize the potential to affect change affect change in a positive way i think and i mean i can talk on and on about the students at the center how it tells me but i think of this deteriorate for my three minutes and another thing i want to talk about is the fear right so when i came to the school i used the theater department that was one of the classes i had i had intro theater it was a four-year course i used it and then this year i had acting techniques i know that the feet of classes will be cut so it seems to me like man all the classes that i've ever took here or ever had that sense of belonging or being taken away why i mean i don't

024know but how can we keep these resources because here at high school we're this academically achieving school and i think that in order to be academically achieving we need to have the resources to to help the students when they're struggling because we have yeah we have a whole bunch of students in ap but where are they getting help are they seeking out help from the resources that are not being branded well and i know that my three mentioned up is up and i want to say martin luther gave us a quote and it says the time is always right to do what is right thank you [Applause] quite vigorously your name is hi um my name is molly ford i'm a senior at avon high school um and i'm here to sort of talk on

025behalf of the theater classes and in particular the theater teacher miss patterson i think ms patterson is one of the most excellent teachers that i've ever had at this high school my freshman year i took intro to acting and i really made a lot of my close friends in that class and it's been a place of belonging theater especially i know that miss patterson herself has taken a lot of care to use theater as a home for kids who might not have anywhere else to go who feel they do not belong in sports or any other clubs miss patterson is a really really caring woman who really feels that it is her duty to help kids who don't really have anywhere else to go and she does that through her theater classes and even statistically

026uh 240 kids per year take the theater classes at avon middle school and 30 took um classes at avon high school this year with a projected 45 next year growth which is a 50 growth 60 students were in the fall play and 90 are in the musical between the cast and the crew so that's a very large student body and i for one can speak personally that in the theater department it would not be the same without ms patterson there to guide us she uses her strong communication skills to communicate between the school and our directors who work with us who are not part of the school who work with us and without miss patterson i would say that the theater department would probably fall apart we need someone like her to guide us and

027to really put in the work that she does i don't think anyone else would ever be able to handle that kind of work and the kind of caring and understanding that she puts into the theater community is really not matched by anyone else and without the classes too for her to meet students that she might find that neither theater department and uh students who didn't even consider theater as something that they might enjoy maybe take uh theater as even just an elective just to take find that they actually really enjoy it and find themselves a home in a community in the theater department and i think that without the tiresome that would never be possible thank you very much [Applause] uh hi my name is christian gadoy and i'm a senior here at avon high

028school and i am the assistant technical director here on the avon tech theater crew um i'm just going to kind of piggyback off of what was said before about ms patterson being an integral part of the avon theater team i strongly agree that without her this program will fall apart um not only the people who run this program are going to i assume would leave but also the students she has her acting classes which personally has brought me into the theater community i took her class sophomore year and there she um it kind of inspired me to take going on a limb and to take a theater or to become part of the theater crew for the show holes and i know that's not just my case it's many cases one student named hunter monroe

029was in my introduction to acting class and he was a actor in holes and what she had given him she gave him the opportunity to audition she inspired him she encouraged and it turns out that from one of the plays here that he was in he got a scholarship for his uh for his future acting uh schooling which i think that without her he would not have received which helped him to further explore himself and i think that it's very important that she stays here because without her the there will no longer be a theater program [Applause] next go ahead good evening my name is caroline morgan and i'm here tonight on behalf of miss jill patterson all of my life i have been in the special ed program program and i have been because

030i have an anxiety disorder and i have adhd theater has been my outlet it's been like my best meditation that i could have possibly ever have if miss patterson didn't get me into theater i don't know where i would be today you want to quit you want to cancel the theater program the the theater classes and such please don't because miss patterson she has helped me her so much it helps my adhd my anxiety because have any of you guys seen the play holes see me as x-ray in halls any of you well i was an x-ray i was x-ray in holes and it turns out that there's one day where i did not take my medication and it was the best rehearsal that i have ever had my adhd with me being on the

031adhd comes with bouncing off the walls every two seconds being on some sugar high i have 6 it was the best performances i've ever had those those three those three performances i did not take my medication because theater showed me that i can be someone else i can be her and miss patterson she she helped me see that no matter who i can be whoever i want and i don't have to care how everybody else thinks i was bullied i was a victim of bullying and she helped me see that you don't have to care about what other people think and what other people say i am this person and being a thespian has helped me in so many ways helped me grow as a student helped me be so many different things and so

032if you cut the classes you are taking you're taking an outlet away from kids like me kids like me i've never taken any of her classes but i did the theater program and that was the best thing that's changed my life changed my life completely i had so many things going on i was i was whatever and miss patterson this group that i've come like molly said i have made my best submit friends and they she helped me she said be who you are and don't be afraid to show it meaning you can be whoever you want to be you can be some person that you don't know and whatever you are here to learn to create she's helped you she's helped me create and become who i want to be i know i'm straying

033away from my script here but my three minutes are now uh according to the stopwatch but i just wanted to say that because a teacher's a teacher no matter how small all right uh i'm gonna pause for a second i we still have more people to speak uh is it agreed that the board of ed would like to do another 15 minutes do we need to make a motion well if i have the sense i'll just say absent objection will do it absolutely absolutely absolute objection we'll do it all right let's start with the young lady on the floor thank you for calling me young could you just check that microphone doesn't seem to be working all right it hit the button right in the middle is it going back right up to you right

034up to it oh yes there you go all right my name is janine violante i am the mother of a senior at avon high school who is in the theater program and very much like carolyn over here he is in the special education he is on the autism spectrum and it was jill patterson in her acting class that encouraged my son to do what he does to they accepted him for his quirks they accepted him for whatever he did and gave him the courage to go on to go try out his first audition was a disaster and miss patterson walked up to him and said she believes in him today my son is a senior at avon high planning to go to college for theater and his college essay was all about how ms patterson

035changed his life that's all i want to say you can't get rid of a program these kids sometimes don't have any other place to go they're not accepted in the sports they're not accepted in the other places they're accepted in the theater group because everybody accepts everybody no matter what they have and that's all i have to say [Applause] one on the let's do straight in the back [Music] my name is wendy haller i am a parent of an 8th grader at the middle school and a fifth grader at thompsonbrook i've also been the producer for the lat parent producer for the last four years for the middle school and thompson brook theater productions um i'm here on behalf of the 75 students that participated the first year the 60 82 that participated the second

036year this is at thompsonbrook the 65 and the 60th of two other years the middle school had 67 last year and 45 this year last year the beginning of last year there was no theater after school musical but because there was such a passion that started at thompsonbrook for the theater program the kids were so excited to get to the middle school to be able to take those electives to be able to continue with what they found to continue on a path because this is the time of discovery this is when they're figuring out what they're passionate about they tried soccer they tried baseball they tried basketball they tried art whatever this is something and i have to say um a quote from a karen who is also a teacher in this district said to

037me after her seventh grader finished a theater class my son will never get up on stage that is not who he is but he was terrified to speak in public but after taking his theater elective he is now not afraid to speak in public because he learned how to present himself from doing a theater class in front of an audience and that will last him for the rest of his life and that is something else theater brings to children to brings to our community um when we think of teaching to the whole child yes we need science we need social studies we need math but to teach to the whole child you need to teach all senses whether it's speaking acting singing writing drawing calculating and theater is part of being part of the whole

038child it's that imagination you lose as you grow up but some children grow up needing that they need that part of their life where they can express themselves in giving students the possibility of doing that throughout their day with there's so much other pressure to perform in so many other academic areas that is a release for them and i hate to see that taking away especially for my two students my children who are so passionate about theater this is my son this is who he is and that's why i continue i work a full-time job i'm a you know full-time mom but i've produced i'm on my fifth show with the schools because i knew my kids were coming up to the high school and you know i can't see that taken away from them

039because now i'm gonna have to go elsewhere and i'm i don't want to have to do that we moved to avon for the schools we moved because of everything it offered to them and i'd hate for them to have to go somewhere else to get what our public schools should be offering then i went to marco before my son entered seventh grade and i said we need to bridge the gap thompsonburg has a play the high school has a play we need to bridge the gap i wrote he said no i can't do what can't do it's not really above them i wrote letters all the other parents whose students were in the play they wrote letters he bridged the gap i'm thrilled you're still going to have a musical at night but now that

040gap is going to end and it's going to stop how can we let that happen our students learn what they want to major in when they go to college in high school i mean they may not end up graduating and working on that field i was a journalism major now i teach preschool but you when you're 18 it's so hard to decide what you're going to do with the rest of your life so you have to build on your previous experiences and that comes from your high school experience so i hope and pray that you will give these students who need this outlet whether they want to be on stage whether they have to give a presentation where they need to talk to a customer as they're bringing them out at the stop and shop

041the capability to be able to present themselves and that's what i think we've hit the three-minute point i apologize [Applause] for coming out and expressing your opinions uh there are many times this room is empty and um i am thankful that you came out i do want to clarify something that i think is important we have no intent on eliminating the entire theater program this administration made a decision three years ago to expand the theater program which at that point was an after-school what i call a non-athletic co-curricular program that had stipends that paid people to run that group we're continuing with that the at that time we built in courses at the high school some of which our students and parents have already referenced simultaneous to that we established courses at the middle school

042and we used one position split between the two schools our hope was that by offering structured classes at the middle school it would create a feeder program to the high school based on the information that was provided and recommendations that i had to consider the courses are what is being eliminated because they were under subscribed they had under 10 students and some in some cases some of the sections had five or six students this is an enormous challenge we want it i want to keep everything we have a number that we have to stay within but i want you as students to know that your central administration cares very much about maintaining theater i'll go on a slight tangent for a minute because the saving grace for both of my own daughters was theater one

043was on the stage and one was the techie because they're just very different i i understand the impact the the fact of the data that was presented to me showed class sizes so small that i couldn't we couldn't no longer rationalize that in the face of the type of reduction that we're faced with so what we're simply saying is we're reverting to the previous model where hundreds of students can be involved and quite frankly i commend people who started the initiative at thompsonbrook as an after-school program which then feeds to the middle school and it will continue to feed to the high school so i hope you understand the point i'm clarifying it's just the courses that were offered didn't have and they don't have the projected enrollment to be able to run unless the

044board of education sees within it's appropriate to have courses that are that small there are other people that aren't in the room and we know we're all on this together but there are some people outside this room that would look and say my god how could you run these courses they should have 25 in them gary speaking of people outside this room i just got a text that there's many people waiting out there and out there i don't know if i don't i don't i'm just i'm offering the clarification because as i'm listening and i'm not going to defer to your chair but i just wanted to clarify that point because that may be a question in people's minds i don't know i'm sorry they knocked the wall down right it's a theater thing where

045i take it just take it down numbers that's one of the maybe that would things helped as well one way or the other you'd like to see those data points to see what actual numbers you're getting okay um let me just sort of uh thank you i appreciate the comment uh apparently we've got people outside them um i would say come sit up front um but i'm we're still going to take some more speakers so uh there was a group of young ladies all right houston is there a maximum capacity for this room there is i just don't know what it is you gotta want to play do you have all right uh leave leave you gotta leave uh room for can you ever touch me all right houston we also maybe how many people

046are here to speak in favor of the theater program okay how many here are are here to speak and forward excuse me in favor of the student assistance center all right fair number there too okay all right so as long as we leave sort of space so that people can get to the doors because if god forbid an emergency happens we have to move relatively quickly so let's try and see if we can take some people in groups um the group of young ladies down here i think you offered to volunteer to speak for your group yeah yeah yeah and there's two of us that wanted all right well let's start off with one let's go yeah all right and this time i will hit the start button i forgot last time all right your

047name is my name is aaron sutter i'm a senior here at avon high school and we're all here to speak on behalf of the volleyball team specifically the cuts to the developmental team or the freshman team as we now call it um we've i played volleyball all four years and it's really been an immense part of my high school experience it's changed my life the team has been a lifeline for me and for so many other girls who come in freshman year not wanting to play soccer not wanting to do field hockey but wanting to do something different something new something that's really fun and the team is really like a family and we have the developmental team because a lot of because the majority of girls who come to play have never played before

048because there's not many options for under the high school level to play volleyball there's not there's a program at the middle school but it's rather young and underdeveloped and there's not many other options extracurricular for girls to do so a lot of people come in with little to no skill so that's why we have the developmental team so they can really learn the basics of the sport which is a great sport but you need to learn the basics before you get thrown into a game because it is a little difficult so we're just speaking on that behalf that we think it even though it's rather small and it's kind of hard to go after all the powerful messages that were given tonight but it is really a great program and we're one of like we're

049one of the best sports in the school and we've done really well the past couple years and the program is really advancing we're going farther into states and conference tournaments every year and we think we're doing really well and if the developmental team were to be cut then it would kind of all fall through the cracks because we wouldn't have the new freshmen getting having their skills developed to move on to the next levels so we'd be underdeveloped as a team because kids who come in to play like soccer and basketball and football and field hockey and other sports like that they have experience before high school but volleyball is kind of new and special to the high school experience and that's when you first learn it so we just like to say that thank

050you okay thank you [Applause] volleyball contingency so uh contingent i apologize your name is my name is jordan blackington and i'm a junior i'm really bad at public speaking [Applause] theater you're almost every single girl here started on that developmental team so it's really hard for us to think about it without it like our program our coach the development one is absolutely amazing she's just such a wonderful person to be around and we all start there and every year when you come in there's a summer camp we do where you get to work with girls from like sixth grade until the incoming freshmen were so excited to be there and it's one of the most popular programs here like the freshman teams because we do have to make cuts even though that stinks but we

051do and i think there's only one other team that has to make cuts and girls lacrosse because that's popular too but we have to make those cuts and you get the girls who just absolutely thrive they love it the coach gets them going and they've never had a record less than 16 and four which is really impressive for a freshman team coming in and it just makes it such a stronger like i'm like finding friends these are my best friends and i made them starting on the developmental team and it's just i don't know it's like a support system like i love the freshmen who are on the developmental team this year and like i still talk to those girls they were so cute to watch us like like even like their first game it

052was pretty rough to watch but then by the last game they got it like they understood and they're definitely ready for jb but asking girls to come from eighth grade and get tossed into a jv game it's a lot because volleyball is growing it's thriving and i mean we're supposed to be we're predicted to be an extremely good team going to the tournament next year and having that support of the freshman girls like we make families like big sister little sister it's these big families we're all going to be together and it's just losing all of those girls who just like kind of make it dull the more the merrier it's just so much fun having those girls and i know they thrive my sister is going to come in and she needs that program

053so all right man in black start back there your name is uh my name is cameron um i'm a transgender freshman here at avon high school and i just like to speak on behalf of the theater courses and miss patterson um i came to avon high school's high school at in in the middle of the year um i came too late to be in any musicals in any place i wasn't really supposed to take the theater classes but the classes that i wanted to take were full so i did and um i don't have family support for being transgender so school is my only safe place and um not to trash avon or anything but like the way that it is it's not the most supportive place but my theater class was and has been

054my number one place of acceptance um every day sorry when i had to deal with sorry people um treating me badly for something that i have no control over i was able to vent about it to miss patterson into my whole class i was able to get group hugs every a day and i was able to um cry without feeling bad about it or feeling like my masculinity was being questioned um i'm in crew i'm in rowing crew i'm not able to be in any place right now and thinking about it i might not be able to my whole high school career because i am very into athletics but i am also very into theater so the classes really balance it out for me and um i just really like to say that without miss

055patterson and without my theater class i would not be succeeding and flourishing the way that i am right now in avon high school and yeah [Applause] all right uh why don't we grab the young lady all the way in the back that's that seems to be the spot where i can see someone particularly well so everybody seems to be fighting for it your name is elizabeth first of all i want to express my support for all these wonderful programs and i want to acknowledge that you're in a really difficult position i get it i'm a public school educator myself i understand how budgets work and i understand this year is probably more challenging than most um i'm a big component of the theater program and the student assistance center i sat in a couple meetings

056prior to the year about that but i'm really here to express my support for jv golf and tennis i'm going to be brief and i'm just going to say that it's really not a big line item i understand that everything counts in a budget like this but i just really question especially after the outpouring of support that those programs were shown in december why the athletic department couldn't find other places to make some small cuts rather than cutting the program wholesale similar to freshman volleyball there is a big group of kids coming up i know at least for golf who are interested in playing jv golf i understand the argument that there might be room for them on varsity my understanding is only five kids get to play in a varsity match show and that

057there really isn't room for anybody else when they're playing so i don't think that's a feasible solution i can't speak to tennis but i know for golf that isn't and i know that people have expressed this about you before but when you factor in the pay-to-play money i actually think you're saving very little i understand that pay-to-play money doesn't go to the athletics budget but it does go into the overall pot so i just really urge you to reconsider that decision [Applause] my secretary tells me that you've had your hand up for a long time come on up your friend and your name is my name is nicholas martin now first off i i understand that this is an extremely difficult decision that you have to make like no matter what happens someone's kid somewhere

058is going to be negatively impacted by a bunch of change but i just want to come here and show my support for the theater program and i can say that many of the kids here are here to support theater because of the classes and because of the teaching that miss patterson offers and the skills that one learns within miss patterson's classes are applicable in so many other fields other than acting and these skills these skills were used directly by other students to get into other highly competitive colleges and programs offered at those colleges for example we have one senior this year her name is stanley fletcher and she applied for the one of the most competitive stage management programs offered in the country at depaul university and because of the expertise and skills and experience

059she learned within the classes that mrs patterson offers she got into that program also last year we had a senior named jamie mcneil and because of the expertise and lighting and sound and the help and guidance from miss patterson he was accepted in the university of southern california and his theater experience in the classes he took and the time he spent with miss patterson played a direct role in his acceptance there as well and as stated earlier by christian de doy hunter monroe did receive that scholarship because of his involvement in theater and all of these students received all these great achievements because of the experience the expertise and the learning that is provided by ms patterson and without miss patterson it's not just the theater programs that are necessary for her but also the

060classes i can't think of another person who is more dedicated and more just experienced in theater to teach these classes that she offers so much to the table for us she is just a wonderful teacher and her skills and her classes are just so useful in so many other fields and acting like as a businessman the skill the interpersonal skills that she develops help you to make any proposals you may cover people stronger as a lawyer you can you can present your case much more persuasively as a doctor the ability you can talk to a patient and the ability that you can connect with that patient improves because the interpersonal skills that you learn and develop within the classes that mrs patterson teaches like i just think that cutting her would be a serious disservice

061to the potential for success that many students who are planning on going into many highly competitive fields off of thank you thank you thank you very much uh let's see i picked anyone in the back of this i want the young lady in the pink all the way in the back yes you're not allowed to step on anything i apologize i'm sorry i'm sure you are so sorry no no that's fine and if anyone who has spoken would like to leave i certainly encourage that so there's more air not that i want to be rude uh anyway go ahead your name is michele i have a son jack who is um in eighth grade and about to enter the high school next year and i'm just second seconding what um elizabeth said about jd golf

062um i think that it's a very small line item to stop the feeder pool for the varsity golf team i know of personally 10 to 15 incoming 8th graders that are interested in jv golf and they won't be able to play i understand that possibly the varsity golf coach would let them be on the varsity team but if they're out to matches there's no one to practice with the jv team so with 10 to 15 incoming eighth graders and the pay to play as well as some of the kids who are already on jv golf right now i really don't think that i think with the cost of that you're looking at under two thousand dollars to stop a jd program from developing golf players for varsity so i urge you to really strongly reconsider

063thank you mr [Applause] young lady down here raising your hand so vigorously i think you might dislocate your shoulder and your so i'm a freshman and i'm currently in mrs patterson's intro to theater class and i was in both the play and in the upcoming musical and i just wanted to talk about how beneficial theatre program has been for me and i also believe that cutting the classes is going to have a negative effect on the productions as a whole and just the theater program the classes provide opportunities for students during the day to ex to express themselves i have i have a lot of friends who are athletes like like pam said um athletes can take theater classes during school but um but go on to play out to do sports during the day

064i know avon is looking to create well-rounded students and i feel like eliminating the leader classes would not allow this now i know that the theater classes have a very small class size but i would urge you to look at the numbers in a different way this year we had 30 students in the making of the theater department next year we'll have 45 now that's still small compared to like the over 100 students acquire but that's a 50 increase and i think if we expand the theater programs in all throughout all the levels of avon schools we will get an increase in theater classes the program is very young as paterson has only been here for six years but if she is let go and the theater classes are ending i am certain that the

065theater program will begin to decrease in quality ms patterson has led us has led the theater program to catch up to some of the other surrounding schools because they have really good theater and i think that we're catching up and we're making progress and if ms patterson is let go that will all go to ways theater is so important to people i know um but some other students mentioned alumni who are going into the arts there are so many alumni of the theater program that are maybe are not going into the arts but are that are benefited from these theater classes did you know that um the average sats award of like theater theater students get an average 65 percent next 65 sorry 65 more points on the sat than the average student and 35

066on the left on the verbal and 35 on the math score and i think that's beneficial whether you're going into math whether you're going in here it's just helpful um and i know in mrs patterson's intro to theater class we do um assignments where we have to read we have to read a play we have to write character descriptions we have to write a summary that's improving our reading comprehension that's improving our character analysis our literary analysis and i think those are skills that will carry that we will carry with us for the rest of our life theater encourages tolerance and empathy we have students from all different walks of life from athletes to just die hard theater nerds to just everyone and it's so important that this program continues in high school thank [Applause]

067and then you see where we are the young lady in the red in the back [Music] and your name megan mayo i have a junior and i have an eighth grader um and i wanna say i probably should have taken some theater classes to help me through tonight i've got a piece of paper in front of me um but i'm here to ask you to reevaluate your decision to eliminate the sac student assist center and the tutor who provides the services to the students the student assist center like men made eloquently said is a sense of community for the school it's a place where kids can go um go their baby sporadically or go there on a regular basis and it provides that safe environment that they feel free to ask these questions and get

068the help they need i won't go into all the ways it helps because i think i've done it before and save some time here but i would like to say there is a new model coming out and it won't be revealed till may and my question to you is how can we eliminate something that you haven't even seen what's going to replace it i find it disturbing you're going to eliminate program that's working and successful that has excellent tutor who's the teacher who's helping students and working with and working with the other teachers to create a unit we've got a student support teacher a teacher and student working together as a unit and you have something successfully working but you're gonna get rid of it and replace it with something which you're gonna see next

069may in may and maybe it'll be good maybe it won't be good i think just let you know i think we're gonna be hearing tonight about the details of that but okay i'm glad to hear that um i would like to say that what i saw through the last meetings and i've been attending these meetings and looking at on the internet and minutes and things it says that students will be placed according to their needs in credit burying classes now students the center is for students to help them with the courses they're currently on not to create new ones for them to go to these courses will go on their records and get other transcripts my son who goes to sac does not need another course to take he needs help with the courses he's

070taking currently sac provides him with that individualized attention help and allows him to complete his schoolwork and also um helps him integrate study skills which he learns through sac and through missing scully into what's relevant in the work he's doing currently those that have created the model have not surveyed the avon high school staff i don't know why their input has not been taken into consideration considering they're working with the children or the learners i would like to say also the um the new model when i've come to other meetings did not know how many numbers actually were in sac i think we should get more information on um what's going on with sac before making changes to it i suggest that we table the elimination of sac and the tutor until we have some

071further and further information maybe we'll hear some more tonight before voting on it because it is a relevant part of the school and a place of community for the students thank you [Applause] to let you know how the budgeting process works is each major department and each of the schools is responsible for presenting their budget to the central administration and the budgets that are being reflected as presented by the superintendent and he can certainly jump in if he wants to uh the result of cuts proposed under the leadership team of each building and major department so just to let you know it's not being done in a vacuum because that's not the way we work all right i would i would try the the members of the board of education we still have uh a

072number of people who want to talk i assume because they seem to be sitting on their their their seats with their hands poised i've i have taken a liberty with your your 30 minutes that you gave me went a little bit over what is the preference of the board you want to listen to some more or do you think we've heard enough i prefer to listen to some more out of respect to the people in the audience i think we owe them that okay so we'll extend focus on people that have topics to discuss that we haven't different okay we can do that so why don't we we'll extend for another 15 minutes does anyone want to talk about not theater um not volleyball and not student assistant center is there anyone who's come who

073wishes to raise that all right let's start with the young lady back there and i'm afraid that i don't recall your name but i should know your name linda moses yes thank you i'm really very bad with they call it the rockefeller problem because he never remembered anyone's names either i don't know if this is actually working i can tell i wanted to just raise a small point i'm linda moses and my point is that i think it's really difficult for the public the you know people are interested and they want to speak and at this point the way things go in meetings we have the choice of either speaking before getting all the information which sometimes makes our comments seem uninformed we're speaking after the vote has happened in which case our comments are

074meaningless and so i am really thrilled to see the level of support for various programs and various um staff i i love seeing this room fall um but i really i really would like to have a process that you know that doesn't give me the choice between being uninformed or being too late and i don't know if there's any way to consider that i will put on my thinking cap and see if i can come up with something and we'll tackle it that way it may not actually work for this evening but we may come up with something thank you thank you very much and apparently everybody likes being young absolutely uh ted mathias annika's father you can guess where my sympathies live with respect to the theater but i just wanted to make a

075quick plug for jd tennis there are a lot of us in the community who are very focused on giving opportunities to uh tennis players as well so for all the reasons that we're laid out with respect to jv golf i hope you'll consider uh jv tennis and tandem with jd golf thank you thank you mr mcconnell next question someone have anything that's not covered all right go ahead your closest your name yes dad i'm ben berman i'm a senior at avonlea pleasure to meet you ben all right i think we need to talk about how this isn't a permanent solution we can keep cutting things and next year we're going to come here and avoid reading and this does the exact same thing about well our salary and veterans costs are going up we're not

076getting more money from the state we've got to cut more stuff and then we stay next year next year next year and this isn't the solution we need we need to try something else i think we need to try to increase revenues and there are a lot of ways you can do this you can increase parking fees you could ask for core transitions to fundraising more it's just the approach we're taking now is not sustainable and i really think we need to create mr chairman of ben i will personally be your campaign manager if you decide you want to run for governor okay just so everyone knows and it probably means that i'll never have higher political aspirations as i think everyone recognizes the educational funding system in connecticut needs substantial work if not major

077revision um and that's something that's beyond the scope of what we can actually do all right people who want to talk about sort of a new topic henry all right young lady there i'm sort of mine but [Music] your name is my name is melissa otis but my daughter is jordan blackington and she was up here talking about volleyball um and i'm not going to just speak about volleyball because in general with you know whether it's theater volleyball golf tennis we're really talking about something that is very important to kids and as i said to my daughter when we look at colleges if you're going to be happy there you're going to do well so what what's happening right now is you're hearing from a lot of kids who are really unhappy about what's going

078on and and by all means i know that sports aren't necessarily high on everyone's list but my question is well one i don't understand where that six thousand dollars comes for volleyball because we're not saving on a bus they all take the same bus we are losing two thousand dollars for pay to play we have one coach and a referee the custodians can't leave early because they're going to be there for the rest of their teams so i'm not really seeing where that line item is coming into play and how we're actually saving that much but that said obviously it does have outcome of the cost as is everything else and the question is have we looked at fundraising because there are other schools around connecticut that do that i just gave fifty dollars to

079my nephew for his baseball team they have raised almost fifteen thousand dollars from the kids on the baseball team they have a fundraising site and they send out just like anything else and no do i think this is a great solution because i do agree these aren't frills that we're cutting so you know we're at a point now where we're cutting things that mean something to kids so frills are one thing you know when you look in your house you go god my bills are going up what should i cut you look at cutting out the frills we've already done that so what's left and again what does happen next year what do the kids lose next year so yeah and 100 agree with him that yeah we need to find other solutions for things

080and not just cuts and where does money come from so i get that most likely you know what the sports aren't going to get the attention i'm not going to even think they're all going to say oh yeah you know what let's put the sports back in because all the kids showed up you know this whole group here these girls they get together year round they absolutely love they go out to breakfast together that's how close they are and what you may not understand the volleyball program is they have 11 seniors this year their coach is going to have to actually start cutting girls that have been a part of this program who actually deserve to be there and put in the effort they go and they play club volleyball they do all that stuff

081and i'm sure there are other kids in their sports doing the same thing the younger kids we have parents have already signed up for camps for their kids for freshman year so they're paid out 400 or more so attend camp because their kids really want to come and play volleyball and now they're thinking oh my god i just wasted that money because all these kids aren't going to get to play anymore because he has limited spots and he's going to have to cut girls in order to actually maintain his program because there's no room for them right now and they do have a solid group of girls so i guess my question is what do we need to do to take a look at these other fundraising opportunities that other schools are doing because we're

082not the only town that has problems we are one of the towns that other towns look at and say how do you guys have so many problems given the wealth in your town which is sad well thank you [Applause] everybody wants to get rid of the guy from goshen my name's henry moore you can't tell from my uniform but i'm a manager of specialty transportation this town falls under my purview recently we suffered a real tragic loss of a school bus driver you're all familiar with the incident about a month ago and i came here to commend your staff in particular superintendent malla for his quick reaction and his assistance uh it was invaluable i mean i thought i was prepared for everything and anything that my job could throw at me i deal with

083complaints and criticism as you do all the time and uh and i go where things are broken and they're not running on time and i fix those things but uh this was overwhelming uh he showed up with his team donna miles tiffany todd i can't remember the other social service worker but uh they just didn't comfort the the troops and uh when they left they didn't know that the driver had actually perished in the crash so i wasn't sure how the buses were going to roll we were doing all kinds of things to get spares up here anyhow i won't go through all those details but to say that i overlooked a lot of the comfort and counseling and just things that superintendent mala just offered and was generous and compassionate so i thought you

084all should know that all right i seem to have a habit of picking the people in the back to make them walk up and your name is my name is hannah davies i'm a senior at avon high school and um i came here with the theater people to talk about theater but i'm not going to because i think you've heard enough um but from what i was hearing it seems like a lot of the issues people have with having these programs cut is losing the support that freshmen and other incoming students get when they come here which can be kind of hard to find if you're like a little freshman and so i think rather than cutting it rather than cutting all of these programs it might be easier to reinterpret them and maybe approach

085them in a different manner like i know that a lot of theater kids and other students are just in that thing like are struggling with public speaking skills so it might be easier to bring up a public speaking class or something like that which you could employ miss paterson with and help with the student assistance um i don't know much about them in all honesty there's a lack of advertisement with that as well which i think if you bring more of that and it will allow more students to come to and just overall like i'm not on the board of education obviously and i don't know much about how to run a high school but i think maybe instead of just erasing all these programs from the school it might be better to bring them

086like into something more similar and just still allow all these different like moving parts to go on that are helping kids across the school to succeed and just do well thank you i appreciate [Applause] it opportunity of lateral thought all right who else one hand over here yes you green shirt and your name is i'm laurie valencia sleep my daughter's going to be a freshman next year you already know how i feel about the sac program so i'm not going to talk about that um there are questions that still have to be answered as it relates to that the model that's being proposed and anyway i just wanted to point out the district server was down this past weekend and we all know that most families in the community were away for the spring recess

087and the information about the positions being cut was provided to the community just over 24 hours ago the community needs more time to process this information and then provide input i employ the members of the board to exercise good conscience and good judgment and avoid voting on the budget as as it is proposed tonight and allow the community more time to process and then provide input thank you okay thank you just a little more time can we do one more person young man over here you can talk about theater i will i will be happy to say that still in order because you're number 23 and i think we're just about at the end um so i'm jacob picard and i take the intro to theater class um before i came to avon high school

088i didn't know how people would accept me as a student or um as a community or a community member of the lgbtq plus community um and getting to meet miss patterson and take her class and be able to talk with her she's helped me this year and with like anything that you need to talk to ms patterson about she'll always be there for you so if you cut the theater classes then you're not only cutting the theater classes and the kids who want to take theater because they can't take it after school you're cutting a friend to many students because ms patterson is not only a teacher she's a friend to many of us and she's always willing to help okay [Applause] we'll take one more or number 24. young lady in the front all

089right i won't bother but um well just as long as you speak up i'm sorry what's your name um i think the the big elephant in the room your name first please felice wilson thank you um the big elephant in the room is not only the cuts but how to generate the revenue and of course the big revenue generator is the tax side of it and bringing up and i don't know what the tax proposal is because it wasn't released with the cuts i i i don't know i haven't seen it maybe i'm just totally unaware of it too because i could be i i've been a bit out of the loop and i apologize but um i know you have a tough decision to make and i would just encourage you to just not

090be afraid considering what is being handed down to us from the state we are we want to keep our taxes low however if we're going to keep our state taxes low the money's got to come from somewhere to support our children locally and if it's not going to come from the state we can't gut what's going to happen to the kids um we have money in our town a lot of parents take private tutors they pay for extracurricular activities for their kids to go to sports and do a lot of activities that most poor impoverished towns that parents can't afford to put food on the table and we're afraid to raise our taxes to provide programming in the school for our children i find that sad and on top of that you know i'm definitely

091not a democrat i am a republican and i'm a compassionate republican and when it's time to take care of our children we need to take care of our children that's it that gives me the opportunity to place a plug for may 1st 7 pm there is an avon town budget town meeting talking about the budget so uh if you have an interest i would suggest that you show up for that second budget is that all right yeah houston yes i'm sorry chairman may i just speak for one moment i want to make sure that the audience is clear with the backdrop that this budget had to be built upon i agree that revenue is the problem we have a revenue problem in our state we as a board of education i am the agent of

092the board of education we can't generate revenue and keep that the revenue goes all to the town we are simply the biggest department in town while i know at least since i've been here and i've been in two other districts the conversation always seems to be about two separate budget the town budget and the board of education budget i want to dispel that there's only one budget it's the aggregate budget when you put the two of them together and that may sound like a very simple point but there still may be some people who don't understand that so any revenue that comes in goes directly to the entire town and then the town has other boards that determine how that revenue can or will be used this particular budget didn't it didn't give me any

093great pleasure to try to put this one together and i know i know you know that the tricky part is what i don't think people are aware of is that we were i was provided a directive that we must comply with the 2.5 soft cap legislation if you go google that and i believe if many of you get my communications i actually put that in there that's why we had to reduce to the level we did to conform with that legislation and i was brought to my attention today and i'm going to publicly apologize i put that the law became effective october 1st 2017 we didn't get there yet i meant 16. that law is still in place and that was put in in a very subtle way that's called an implementer bill that had

094no public discussion at our state capitol it just gets cast upon a community so we are we me particularly i receive a directive you will not go over the 2.5 soft cap legislation let me just do a little quick math to maintain the current staffing that we had or have this year moving forward and it goes to ben's point i needed 3.3 percent new money but i was told you can't exceed 2.5 so i already started in a negative position that's why this is so difficult to do and we're trying desperately to maintain over the past five years i can point to things like we've added 23 courses in the programming studies here at the high school i'm sitting on the verge of having to recommend eliminating those we're the ones who put them in

095because we knew that the programming studies had to expand to be competitive we're in a we're in a horrific financial situation yes the community when when you look at all indicated all indicators has the ability to pay that's the key terminology not everyone shares that and says let's spend it on education unfortunately that's the way it is and and if you look statistically across the state some 72 percent um average residents in a community do not have children accessing public schools no matter what community you go to so i'm not i'm not throwing the crying towel up we're working diligently to preserve as many things as we can in the in the face of directives and declining revenues that we're going to really have to be creative in the next few years in this state

096and i know you know many of you that follow the state news you know exactly what i'm talking about i could just add a few more things there are some things some things that are unusual for boards of education and i harp on it and younger people won't care as much but the older people will go oh my god um if we blow through our budget the board of education of every community has personal liability to make that up so if we spend a million dollars more than we have then we we look around the table and say how much you're ponying up i'm a little short this month can you help more um so one of our our firm guidelines to the superintendent is we try to make sure that we don't blow through

097our budget um well it's not an option because people then won't serve on the board of education for a million dollars right there's i mean what i can say is i appreciate having the room filled i think one of our last speakers said that unfortunately we're having the conversations and we're all on the same team and i don't know what the solution is long term because i can't forecast what our state will do but we won't have a state budget come july 1st there's no way so my hope is that when the state budget is finalized my prediction will be october that were not hit with mid stream reductions that's nearly impossible when you run a school district i call it a train when the train leaves the station it's very hard to stop that

098what do you do you look at a group of parents and i'm just going to pick a hypothetical grade so don't quote me on the grade it's hypothetical what do you do you look at the parents of all second graders in both schools and say oh we have to do a midstream cut so we have to take a teacher away at second grade it's impossible you can't do that and the fixed costs that we manage are gigantic compared to the actual amount of money we do have control over i like the idea of fundraising there's some legal issues with i can't promote fundraising directly nor can the board but there are groups that can but if we do something outside if we have our private donation will it go there it could do that you

099you could direct that and the board could accept that the board actually gives me the authority to accept donations i want to leave you with one other point and it's included in that the presentation if you picked up one of the little pieces or it was in the communication that i released a budget is an estimate of the revenues and expenditures and to make my point and for any fiscal year to make my point i really don't know what's going to happen by august enrollments may shift to a certain point that we might be able to drop a section now all of a sudden i pick up a certain dollar amount that could be used for other things it's because it's always moving every single day and at least every single week our budget flexes

100it moves because something else happened something came in cheaper something came in more expensive but we have to cover our contractual obligations so i you know i can i can only commend all of you for coming out to share your concerns um and and being actively involved you know we hope that we find a resolution to a very difficult issue you know i'm always faced with okay if this doesn't go and here's the total dollar amount the board's going to look at me and say okay superintendent where is it going to come from what there's not many places to go so yes ma'am quick question your 2.5 soft cap could increase if your special ed costs increase um we've already done that this special that is excluded from 2.5 uh a cap also excluded is

101um debt service also excluded in our arbitrated labor awards there are some other things excluded for it so in fact if you were to take the total amount that we increased in our budget um is higher than a 2.5 but on the allowable items it's in fact 2.5 percent the problem is when the governor came back after we had approved our budget which is why we're having the second meeting he chopped out roughly 739 thousand dollars then and what revenue we expected to get that we're not going to get there are roughly 40 towns and we're one of them we're getting dramatically less now we're expecting that we will dodge the bullet of taking one third of the teacher pensions if we don't you know we're we're in serious trouble because that's not part of

102our budget and that was the reason we've always paid our teachers well because you know we don't pay the administrator so well we pay the teachers well because we think that's where the rubber meets the road so um i will may i just respond to one other thing and i'm sorry i can't remember who said it it was a question about why i didn't release the uh i'll say the tax information once that is set and that's been said i am prohibited by state law to have any conversation about that the law goes as far as saying that i as the superintendent of a school district and my colleagues across the state do the same thing we cannot even send a reminder of the date of the referendum so that's why i can't speak about

103any of that uh and quite frankly we don't set the tax rate and i know you do all that but i can't i me i am specifically prohibited by law that went into effect three years ago but and the budget increased like you're like whatever the percentage is that you're at anyway but like i said i was yeah it's it it's just that i can't no i i understand it but the referendum is may 10th so everybody should remember to go vote on may 10 and i didn't say that i know i did i don't know at this point i think we're done with the public comment i apologize for those who have come out and expected to speak and i can tell you that my email provider tells me i only can send out

104250 email messages a day i blew through that and i started using alternative email servers so there have been a lot of emails back and forth and thank you all very much and so at this point if anyone would like to stay that's fine but if anyone wants to leave i would suggest if you could make a little aisle for them so that they could leave without falling over that would be most appreciative thank you for coming and do thank you for coming [Music] i think all right thank you very much and um information and proposals uh mr wild miss run road do you have anything that you would like to tell us [Music] [Applause] let's pull it closer heather yeah you have to pull a little the microphone a little closer because you don't

105yet have the projecting votes but you'll get there so the juniors took the sct on april 5th and the sophomores took the cap test on the same day the teacher conferences at the high school are this thursday and friday and week half days days and the musical is premiering on april 28th and 29th on at 7 30 and there's a matinee on the 30th all right and then obviously school vacation was this past week during quarter three at the high school i believe this week um also the mike casey trio featuring the ahs jazz band will be performing on may 5th from 7 to 8 pm in the auditorium here ap exams begin on may 1st and registration is tomorrow and also various scholarship publications were accepted a few days this week and i'll also

106just add with the guidance counselor cut you did cut you did not replace mrs lieberford a few years ago and there are students who have now gone through four guns their fourth guidance counselor after various ones leaving and swollen coming back and forth and you're not really adequately supporting students with four different guidance counselors in three years and as someone who went to guidance more than i probably should have this year there's definitely hard to get an appointment sometimes and then really i mean if you're talking about something that affects every single student in the building cutting a guidance counselor well because either those kids have to go somewhere so personally it's only i completely agree um they're overworked as it is and i think that getting rid of another one and adding even more

107to that workload will make them probably not so good at for the rest of the students that they have um i also think that i should say something about the theater thing um not only because my mother would be disappointed if i didn't because my brother was mentioned by a couple of people as getting a scholarship and he's now going to uconn he's in an exclusive acting program because of what mrs madison has done for him here and he didn't know what he wanted to do when he got to college and he you know when he got to the point deciding where to go and he wasn't very academically inclined and he didn't really like anything and once he got into his classes he found something that he really loved and wanted to build for

108and now i it's nice for me to know that he is doing something that he loves and he knows that he loves it because he's not here thank you uh this is michelle you're up next thank you so um something far less stimulating financial report not much to report for the month of march the most exciting adjustment to your financial report was the increase of 365 000 to the final year-end forecast that is due um to the final supplemental appropriation coming before you and the first one still pending at the the town level but that 365 000 is more or less the result of the open choice tuition program uh revenue that we received this year hitting that four percent mark as says tomorrow um other than that i'm hoping to be compiling the list

109of year-end encumbrances for your consideration and um we should have that to you next month as on schedule excellent uh i just might as a technical matter might suggest that it's really hard to read against the slate gray the uh the print so uh a different color on on the highlighting might be helpful for people that are impaired as i am but thank you so um high school capstone project okay this is the last year of our human rights course and senior mastery project so in place of the scenery senior mastery project next year we will be implementing a capstone project as i have shared with you at previous meetings this year we've been developing the capstone the bulk of this work has been done by our department coordinators with input and assistance from staff

110and students so tonight we have two of our department coordinators here i'd like to introduce jenna ellsworth our english language arts department coordinator and betsy sanborn our social studies coordinator and they're going to provide us an overview of the capstone and kind of how we got from where we were to where we're going hi thank you for having us um we both have one-year-olds so if we fall asleep during this because this is normally our bedtime um so we're excited to be here to present something that actually um the coordinators have been eating breathing sleeping over the last few months um and um we've done some focus groups with uh students um and it's one of the first time we've really gotten students involved in the development of something big like this and we're seeing

111a lot of excitement about it so we'll start you off with just a brief overview two of the highlights here is one that the project is really all about student choice so the current smp senior mastery project was tied to the human rights course the capstone is not tied to a course not tied to any specific discipline and students are really as you can see here encouraged to follow a personal passion or intellectual uh curiosity that they will sort of be married to throughout their process um the second part um that we're highlighting here with the overview is that this is a an opportunity for students to demonstrate um the interdisciplinary skills that they've obtained throughout their high school experience which is really what we defined as the capstone and just to emphasize i mean

112the first few words here personal passion and intellectual curiosity we really wanted to honor the variety of students we have in this building and to be able to have them demonstrate a mastery in in very different ways kind of whatever works for them or whatever might encourage them to maybe even pursue something that's off the path of our traditional curriculum so when we started this process as the department coordinators um we really um spent a lot of time trying to decide really what was our vision for this project and after long discussions which were really rather enlightening since they were cross-disciplinary we really came to these key points as the sort of criteria that defined um or really came out of our vision for the capstone so some of it we already emphasized this idea

113of student choice the core of the project is this um the third one here the inquiry focus so really holding the high standard of this is not just a reflection of an experience or um a creation of something without a sort of inquiry uh focus or research question to be addressed problem to be solved so we're doing a lot of like i said cross-disciplinary conversations about what inquiry really looks like in all the disciplines so that way we can support the different project paths that students will take on um and so just very quickly the process that we went through um it's been it seems like a couple years but it's actually if they were gonna do it in one period um we started with sort of this philosophy and vision um you know in

114some ways we have something in place with the snp that we wanted to kind of maintain the best parts of that in terms of you know the the rigor and some of the expectations we have but then broaden it a little bit to capture that inquiry basis that um betsy mentioned and um and also to honor you know again the spectrum of students we have in this building um so we we came up with sort of like philosophical and visionary statements i guess and then we have to get down to you know educators can spend a lot of time in that in that area and so we we did end up getting into the framework getting into some definitions so that we had something to work with so the first few steps was really administration

115both building and district wide and department coordinators but the steps three and four were really the most enlightening and um really exciting because that's where we started bringing students in and so we had department meetings where we presented to all of our departments and got feedback from from teachers um but the student focus groups which we held with 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade separately were the ones where where students really gave us um very good criticism and feedback but also um showed a lot of excitement in terms of the ability to broaden out the topics that they could choose from what it is right now which is more course centered and being able to maybe take some risks in their living people asked about why involved the 12th grade because they've already

116done this snp they're not going to be doing this capstone but it was um it was really beneficial to have their feedback to compare their their having gone through the smp process and um some of them got so involved that her their requests are going to be helping us present this to the junior class when we do so um as a means to sort of answer questions about what they really got out of smp and and just the excitement that they have for the upcoming um seniors for next year um as to sort of the opening of the choice and just the the final step in this process was doing some of the more nitty gritty you know rubric creation and that sort of thing which um i think the students really know what they

117were in for um river creation can be an arduous task and so um yeah some of them wanted to pull their hair up by the end of the day but they they stuck with it and um so we extended we sort of had a committee of um groups working on either rubric a handbook or this whole like proposal process and having a group of teachers collaborating together was it was pretty meaningful and the students who were selected both for the focus groups and then with the work in the creating of the rubric and some other tasks we had that day were sort of hand-picked to represent a range of student abilities and academic levels um so so we'll just take you through the like the basics of what this will look like and highlighting maybe

118some of the changes for those of you who've had students go through the s p um you're probably pretty well aware of what that entailed there are some similarities but um the differences are being pretty going to be pretty obvious um so we are actually starting this process this year and uh there will be students who can make a proposal to do to for a project um starting as early as june if they want to present in october um there was a lot of appeal to that for many of our current juniors those who feel maybe a little pressured by having a really ap heavy course load and or college um and all the admission process all of that they um they've felt very excited about struggling early rather than starting it in september their

119senior year so that was that's a major change that um that students are very excited about yeah the opportunity to start over this summer was sort of a big appeal to a lot of especially the seniors who didn't have that option with the smp um i i had the senior focus group and you know they were saying things like i did nothing this summer before my senior year and i could have been working on this project so um that and were also thinking or envisioning that many kids will tie an internship to their capstone um so if they're doing a summer internship they can also um have the opportunity to sort of use that as a use of research and one thing that's been brought up by both um students and faculty is that that

120with the possibility of being kind of limitless in terms of what students do they could potentially use their um capstone as something that they put on our their college resume um we we anticipate that some of the things that we see could be um things we haven't even imagined so so it's pretty exciting in that respect but also knowing that they can they can kind of use it as a as a bragging point later on so as part of the proposal students will select a teacher mentor much like they do with the smp but because this is really open to student choice we're going to really encourage that they select a mentor that has some sort of background knowledge or interest in what it is that they're um researching so that they can really be

121of assistance so um with that we also sort of encourage the option to find a secondary expert and do well outside of the school that everyone will be required to have a teacher mentor but there will be some of those cases where maybe an outside expert might be of assistance as well so after their their proposal is accepted and they move forward you know with with um you know their process the biggest part is really research this is a research intensive um project but we are really mindful of research looking different for different projects so of course there's traditional academic research which um as an english teacher is never going to throw away but i think that we also need to be mindful of the fact that that research can be an interview with an

122expert it could be experienced more data collected through an internship so we're thinking of looking at creatively in terms of ways students can acquire research and in regards to the structure for the research this was another big sort of point of discussion where some people felt like we really shouldn't require too much structure as we currently have the snp updates that um really are sort of set um we're we're looking more for differentiation depending on the type of research the project and just the overall vision for the project and the and whatever the mentor and the student sort of decide is best for that particular student because many of our students can do very well independently and but some do need more structure and so i think it's important to be kind of cognizant of

123that and know that you know we can offer structure as needed i think the other major difference um from smp is number three up here that there's going to be three scheduled presentation dates throughout the year there will be a fourth date that we have at the end of the year um as a sort of fail-safe date that we're not going to allow students to necessarily sign up for but the idea of having different presentation dates again that kind of go with the project it allows for students to work at the pace that's appropriate for them as well as what's appropriate for their so when they present this is really their showcase of mastery and students will present to a grading panel a grading panel that will consist of teachers who will collaborate on the

124actual results for that presentation another major difference from snp is we're looking to make this um more authentic in that students will seek out an expert and i do my air quotes with the word expert because that was another sort of point of concern is where are we going to find these people but the idea is if you're presenting something on technology you would not invite myself because i have a circa 2001 uh cell phone um so the idea is we do want knowledgeable people in the audience to be able to ask probing questions so that students really can demonstrate their mastery and yeah i think that that and that's the one that um you know keeping it authentic and also maybe a little more interactive so that it's not necessarily me standing up and

125doing a book report it's me giving a presentation um not necessarily just my parents to my parents but also to people who can engage in the whatever the course is whatever the discipline is in a very real way [Applause] um so another point of discussion was how this was going to go about being graded because there's such differentia or the potential for such differentiation in the type of research as well as the final products the the idea of pass fail became sort of what we thought was more appropriate for this project this project is really all about students demonstrating mastery so they're either doing that um and and we have we will have rubrics um that are sort of in you know being finalized at this point um and um the other idea behind the

126past fail um was that um well this actually coming from a student one of the focus groups that it might allow students to take bigger risks you know knowing that um you know if they meet the standard that it passes and they're not necessarily tying into the sources we think it's a good way to have kids students get very specific directed feedback on um on standards where they still need to to show improvement but also if i could just add on to that piece because we had a lot of discussion around that if the student goes through the whole process and the product doesn't come out quite right at the end that's fine because they have their reflection piece and what they would do differently so it's not based on the perfect product at the

127end either it's much more based on the process of getting to that end product and really the learning yeah and um and one of the biggest things for for the primary stakeholders here the students and of course the staff will be mentoring is how we're going to provide ongoing support because this is is a bit of a shift in terms of what's what we currently have and um we are presenting this to the junior class um april 24th however i'm pretty sure based on listening to my classes that already know at least some of it um because of the juniors who were and other students who are involved in um the process so they've heard i'm not sure if they've heard the totally accurate version or if it's something on the telephone but um so

128we will be having a junior class meeting and um we plan to have office hours for the capstone coordinators norris truly and also a committee who will be responsible for sort of overseeing this looking at proposals giving support to students and mentors as needed we we do anticipate there will be you know questions and errors for students and support so we wanted to make sure that we had some open um time for them and questions also from the faculty so we ran a pd on april 7th um where we broke up into different groups and looked at the rubric and talked about this idea of inquiry and what it looks like across the disciplines um as well as what this sort of mentor mentee relationship will look like and the types of sort of contracts

129they can create for this project and we found that there were some areas that people felt pretty confident about but then some areas in particular the what is inquiry where we really need to sort of come to more common ground in regards to what that really looks like um specifically if a student comes to a mentor and says something like i want to start a business what's the inquiry focus right so just you know figuring out ways to actually help um mentors guide their students to to connecting this to an appropriate inquiry-based focus um and a lot of this because this isn't um this isn't tied to a course we are going to be offering a lot of things online as well um and so we are building a interface that will allow students to

130and mentors to access um relevant information and be able to submit things electronically so that we all the the google drive is sort of like the lifeblood right now in the school but um it is it's something that we're going to be using to make sure that that communication is out there and that students are having everything housed in sort of a logical way and we'll also plan on doing pd in august before we even grade any of these to make sure that everybody's grading similarly that there's calibration um and we don't have outliers that people are at consensus in terms of what is meeting standard and what's not and that will sort of act as a follow-up to our what is inquiry workshop in regards to grade and grading and i meant to say

131this when we were on that slide um there the numerous presentation dates so one of the things that's nice about the way we have this structured is if a student does decide um to present in october and they don't meet standard um they will just present you know okay an upcoming date so there are multiple times and that might actually be an additional motivation to sort of go earlier on we are really pushing for mentors to make sure that students are prepared to present that it's not like i'm just going to jump into this present and just hope that i meet standard not have to worry about it again we really want them to demonstrate mastery so there is actually a presentation readiness form that mentors will fill out but like i said if for

132some reason students don't meet standard they'll get specific feedback as to what their project was missing and you know without any penalty just uh present at the at the next uh presentation and then the last couple of slides there just included some specific names of contributors so um as jenna said when we started this it was department coordinators um and and administration and then we got some um different faculty from various disciplines involved as well as some specific students up there who really kind of sought through this process as well all right well thank you very much do members of the board have questions mr speedback first i just want to thank you both for the presentation and all the contributors for putting and i know a lot of time and effort into designing this

133but i just want to make sure i know the junior class you said i think is april 24th we'll be aware of what's happening but if this presentation or something else can be put online so other students or others in the community will understand what this entails going forward the parent just to address that too because we're yeah it's a shift for parents too and so uh we plan on i'm certainly sending some communications home and also having um the events of the climate but doing like a q a for parents to come in and sort of walk through for anybody who has questions because i think that's important to your students mr shue as a parent not having gone through this yet i'm just curious what it actually looks like so when a student

134comes in to present are they at a podium and then there's a panel of judges and there's an audience like what i don't even understand how to conceptualize it we've talked about some different options for um or organizational structures for presentations and it's still something that the committee will finalize um one of the things we were talking about as coordinators when we were designing this is having sort of like topic pro presentations be sort of grouped together and they'll be in a lot of time i think we spent something like 15 minutes with the expectation which is actually um a little bit lower than the current smp um so one the idea is they could sort of share this expert that i think a lot of people are having anxiety about going and seeking out

135um but two it will sort of be a proper time management um and they can share the grading panel so it would be um to answer your question you know three teachers grading in a classroom an expert of some sort that the student invited um their mentee um parents and any other you know we're encouraging underclassmen to to really get to as many presentations as they can because um they're doing this um and um well just to add to that actually two of the presentation days we hope to do on half days one will be the psdt day one will be the snt day and in the afternoon have the seniors present so that then we do have freshman and sophomore junior in the building who would then be required to go so that they

136are really aware of what this looks like from a very young age and it's not just you know some kids go and some don't um which i think will be really helpful down the road you know getting people used to what the expectation is and i also just to choose a little more on your question i think it could look very different depending on what the project is if i built something i probably wouldn't if i built an engine i probably wouldn't haul it up to a classroom it would probably be something outside or something that's accessible to the building if i um if i wrote a symphony i'd probably do it in the auditorium so it will be it's not a one-size-fits-all presentation some might look like this you know it might and you

137know in fact my parents are in the audience they're they're residents and i told them i was present my students are like oh my god which other parents um [Music] we are reluctant to say it's got to be a stand and deliver some will i think some students will be very comfortable doing that and just like some students will tend to go towards a traditional thesis paper um because that's what they're what's comfortable and what's normal um but i again that it could look different for different kids and by what point in the year are you done with the smp so their last final date like was their release so they're not waiting till june like what is your thought process for when you space it out so the last scheduled presentation date i think

138we have in april first week of april april um and then we do have like i said a sort of may date that we're not really telling kids about um and we anticipate that the students who start in june you know if if they they kind of go with their plan and get everything accomplished they intend to they'll be done in october right and so that is and some kids might not even start the process till september and so those kids will probably go till you know january or april depending on how the process goes well thank you honestly i had questions and you answered them with each slide so i was like okay i'm good thank you very much further questions this is a rolly so i just want to say thank you because

139i have i really think what you did was took some of the best of the s p and yet didn't keep some of what wasn't which i think for a student going through this project it sounds phenomenal i won't be a lecturer at it'll be a student really growing and diving deep into something which to me is a wonderful thing i also want to give credit because you've gone ahead of the timing of a mandate you've gone above and beyond and i think this is phenomenal for avon and you guys really deserve a lot of credit for doing this hard work and i'm glad that the students were able to contribute so thank you thank you [Applause] i wonder you say that when you're presenting that you are going to have a panel of judges

140that are going to be more educated on your topic so that they can ask you more in-depth things to assess how much you know about it i wonder if the students are responsible for creating that or if your advisor is or something like that well we anticipate that we know that that's a source of concern so we anticipate that we will have through you know various means whether it's the old spark program whether it's the internship program whether it's people we just know in town or can reach out to that we as the captain in the captain committee can provide you know a list of names if you're interested in you know something with animals maybe you know that sort of thing so you're not expected to make cold calls um it will be you

141know we will have support in terms of finance and i want to clarify it's not a it's not a panel of judges so you have a grading panel which will consist of teachers just like your current smp presentations are um so maybe two or three teachers um and then one sort of expert at least one sort of what we're calling this expert audience member um so it's not like you're going to have to seek out five people right it's just one whereas the rest of the people will be teachers and an expert might be a teacher there are there are a lot of teachers and we're putting out a sort of spreadsheet you're going to get to know a little bit more about your teacher's interests and areas of expertise because we're putting out a

142spreadsheet to sort of make that available um one for mentoring purposes but another [Music] and are done in october then do you get credit or have credit during the summer does that just transfer or do you have a study home from then on but it's not a class i am a director of account so the credit the idea is the credit that wouldn't be awarded the completion of your defense so once you go through your final presentation and you get the passing mark and your background i would just like to publicly thank um jenna and betsy and their colleagues for all of their work because as they said in the beginning they truly have been living and breathing and giving it their all so again i thank you both and please extend my thanks to

143your colleagues all right it has been suggested that the board might want to take a five minute break is that the board's pleasure maybe not okay all right next item on the agenda is the consent calendar i understand we want to pull the book on page 57 which is the god of small things anything else we already did that yeah i make a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended all right can i have a second well a second all right mrs real moved mr burke seconds all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions very unanimously all right next item on the agenda is the bullying prevention second read the item is anticipated to remain on the agenda due to outstanding questions unless you want to formally commit it down and restart the reading

144process which i assume we didn't want to do okay all right hearing no comment we're all set the next item is basis for grading second read report from the high school leadership uh i think mr arpin is doing it or is mr muller ah all right come on forward gentlemen sit down with the microphone [Applause] i did good evening um this has been an interesting experience looking back at some of the history of the school helped me get to know a little bit better my brief time here uh so we've been looking into some questions regarding uh some changes that were made in the gpa assignments at uh at the high school and we're having a little technical difficulties all right it was queued up but there's something just a second this is something we

145haven't seen yet i think we got it okay so uh there was a new policy that was put into effect uh under the previous administration uh that begins with a class of 2019 of the current 10th graders uh this was partly a reaction to concerns uh within the ask report regarding uh increasing levels of rigor so there was two things that were done there was the removal of the academic levels there was collapsing of that uh and and um changing the gpa uh at that level at the at the college prep level to uh reflect uh that mix of the two levels uh there were some waiting inequities that were addressed and uh of course as you know uh the weighting of of course reflects the rigor of the the particular course so for example

146ap courses certainly uh are have a higher weighting than college prep courses and like that so um okay so in terms of college admissions i'm going to ask mr ellinger to kind of talk to this a little bit this is his thing right so from a college admission standpoint the gpa is just one factor of the review process when students apply out the most important thing is in the review of the the transcript itself does the student show growth are they challenging themselves to the best of their ability and then colleges will also consider how many challenging courses they're taking ap honors versus how many we offer here as a school so while gpa has an impact they are also looking at the rigor and when it comes to gpa i'll mention a little bit

147later on uh some so excited in fact some feedback that i received from some colleges some do end up re-weighting their gpa so even though we present a weighted gpa here many will either take it as it is or reweight it uh as a sample it took the top six uh in terms of enrollment uh public and private uh i don't know if they got cut off on the slide but uh tufts and bu also should be present um so the top six public and private uh in terms of matriculation over the past few years for us um so the university for example they just take our gpa as it is weighted uh from avon but they also are expecting rigorous course coursework as is typically the case for most other institutions uh uri again

148will take the weighted gpa university of maryland recalculates so you can see their scale is a little bit different than the scale that we have here at the high school same thing with northeastern they have their own separate system toughs will look at the gpa as it's presented again examining the rigor of coursework completed as well as bu they look at gpa on a school-by-school basis um for kind of an approximately overall a minus average but again rigor being of utmost importance and this information excuse me but uh that you didn't see on that slide i gave you a narrative page in your packet so that that basically is summarized here as well page 119 next slide yes um so right now the quality points as i mentioned before reflect the rigor of the courses

149uh what we found out and peter will speak to this in a second is that our point differential here at avon high school is really more significant than a lot of other districts in our uh district reference group uh our waiting makes it difficult for students to achieve a higher overall gpa if they take more college prep courses than honors or ap so it's it's uh it does reflect truly the rate of the courses if you want to speak to that a little bit yeah i believe there's also a little excel spreadsheet in your pack as well and in preparation for tonight i looked at every single uh school in our serge amd uh and you can see that we have in fact the highest starting point with the new system for the gpa with

150an af cp level being 4.33 typically you'll see an a starts at a 4.0 with our three levels there are certain schools like glastonbury um westin where they have two groupings so it's the cp and hunters and ap get grouped together so they're awarded the same weight you'll notice in in trumbull they even have a smaller increment of increase where honors gets a point zero five and a point zero seven there are some schools that do numerical weighting uh numerical presentation there are some schools that don't present a way to gpa at all um so this is just serving as a reference point and kind of how we fall amongst the other schools so when this uh was this change was proposed the result was that in the ap and the honors classes there is

151no change in gpa except in the minus levels of each grade the equality point was decreased by .01 so in other words an a minus was under the old system of 4.34 under the new system it is a 4.33 so virtually no change um the college prep was increased a third of a point so uh and a plus under the old was 4.33 now it's 4.67 that may or may not be a true reflection of of the difference in rigor okay um so uh so as i said what we found out is that there were some changes made uh nothing that there are no students now that are applying to college for example that are affected by the new system since they're only sophomores they won't be applying to colleges for a little while yet

152so they're still uh getting to that point um so at this point um i'm gonna say that that this has been learning experience for me just you know getting as i said to know a little bit more about the school and about its its uh uh of workings and peter has uh has been very helpful he's very knowledgeable about this but i think we've all you know kind of gotten some some uh clear pictures what we'd like to do then is to say that we really we're not at a point where we need to make a change that we perhaps would like to look at regarding to the original uh of system that is in effect through the class of 2018. so and may i just interject i i appreciate the work that the high

153school has put into this i agree and support the recommendation as art just presented for a number of reasons i went back and looked at the voluminous amount of information the last time that this gpa matter was researched and i can tell you there were four binders this big and i saw the extensive research that went behind um not went behind but was used to make an informed decision i'm not being critical of anybody or any process but i think something of this magnitude requires the same type of examination and i'm left with a number of questions about you know it clearly the intent was to help students and does this new system actually help students i will quickly say that um i can i support it and i continue to support the collapse of

154the level we need to continue to provide the supports for students to be successful so that cp level is a very important level for many of our students because we have a percentage that are not going to be enrolled in [Music] honors or ap because we service all students but with that said i would ask the board to ask me to convene a group to actually research all the systems and come back to you i'll keep you updated we can put it as a standing update on where we are but i think this warrants far more research and review of information so we make sure we make the best decision you can see that peter i appreciate your you know canvassing all of our competitors let's put it that way many of whom i might

155say that we outrank i'll just quickly say that and there's no magic formula just like there's no perfect schedule if there were or if we created it that is a true revenue source i could tell you for sure but i do support you know taking a step back it's not harming students um the previous system and i don't believe that the you know the revised system was put in place to hurt students i just have way too many questions to be able to sit here comfortably and say you know i recommend where we are i just don't all right uh mr shoot you've got some questions um so just so i understand gary are you saying you're supporting staying with what no actually going i'm sorry i cut you off i'm proposing going back to

156what was always known and it worked and i just i i have what's going to sound like an unrelated question but i think some of you know some of the concerns that are expressed with me here are the the names of the schools the college and universities our students get into i'm not sure that's an outgrowth of our gpa system i'm not convinced of that i'm convinced that we have to market our students differently we have to be proactive and make contact and establish relationships with colleges or universities that we do not have relationships with and say look at how good our school is and look at how our students perform and i think that will address some of that concern it has nothing to do with gpa because as peter you articulated many of

157them and are you did too many of them recalculate they accept it the way it is they have their own set of criteria i just have a you know a concern that it's not a concern it's an interest in approaching colleges or universities proactively instead of just using i guess using the same pool that we know our students will be successful at let me just make sure i understand this because i'm in fact actually confused and i almost never admit that if i hear correctly the high school administration is saying uh the current grading system should remain in place which i mean the current grading system is modified the current one is that correct what we're looking at is looking at the at the program that is in place for the students up to the

158class of 2018. all right the old system if you will say in the old one all right so get rid of this all right so if i may speak so that we can visualize this for me because that's the way i kind of need to operate if we look at page 113 what you would be doing would be removing first of all it wouldn't be ending with class up so you'd strike that and then you would delete the academic because we no longer have that level so that paragraph would disappear from then you'd go to page 114 and you would delete the column of academic correct then you would go to page 115 and the policy would end at class the definition going through class rank correct and the rest of it would be gone

15916 and 117 somehow we need to put in the legal references that are appropriate but that those would be the changes that the policy subcommittee had been right and then asking about it and then i'm also asking you to direct me uh to review this and report back to you um happy okay so now i understand because my understanding was entirely to the conflict so it's very all right i have a question yes so what's the timing of this how does the timing of this effect why do we have to make a decision tonight like what's what's the timing that will affect the the students if they're at the you know well it will not affect uh current students that are under the older the newer students they're just they don't have enough time in

160yet so their gpas will be changed to reflect what the one grid will be and uh go from there yeah the only impact moving forward the current sophomore and freshman class who are not involved in the post-secondary funding so i guess my question is if you have so many questions about it why are we voting on it tonight if we have time why couldn't we say questions jackie are about the future they're not about the past it's about the fact that beginning the next with class of 2019 what's going to start showing will be calculated differently and what we said the past few meetings was we didn't under we didn't have enough information for why we changed we changed many other things of this policy to be responsive they were explained well for the collapse

161of the levels was the most significant and adding in credit for all electives was the other significant we weren't we have never been clear on the gpa change and that is what we're all agreeing on now we don't have enough data so therefore to do the beginning with class of 2019 would not be appropriate but at any point in time after this committee does their work it could come back in or come back in with some reformatted version depending upon what the results of the committee are it would have to and any work of the group that we're going to put together will have to take into account how it's phased in you can't just do it all at one time so what you're saying is correct we probably come in with a phased-in plan

162if we determine that it needs to change so you might still determine that it should continue as it should be right and i and and as i'm sitting here i have no preconceived notion of where that will go there's so much information but it's not linked together many people have looked at this but it's not it hasn't been articulated clearly as one one package i don't know how else to describe it and our job now for your direction is that we go do that well this is young so i'm also on the policy committee and i've heard um there's been a lot of discussion about this for a number of months your presentation is terrific this is the kind of information that we're looking for when we want to try and consider and weigh all

163the factors that go into the policies that support the students and the administrators and the teachers and everybody who try their very best every day i would be willing to support a change in the policy in order to encourage more students to take higher level more challenging courses and i think that was one of the things that was intended originally when this collapse of levels and all of this was originally put together i'm under the impression that we are about to start a two-year follow-up process of kneeask um and i would assume that there would be quite a bit of looking at trends and what's going on in general with everything including this so as part of that could the new building administration that that comes in take a policy change that we might make

164today under advisement and and look at it and see if it's working you know if we change this policy to reflect the discussions that have taken place over the last few months can we see if it works if more kids will actually be encouraged to take higher level and more challenging courses i would be in favor of supporting this right man just follow up with mrs young because i think there's two i appreciate your comments that there are two other factors um that greatly impact students um seeking a higher level coursework that's a teacher and their counselor to encourage them to stretch and support them and i'm not saying they don't do this i'm just saying that's those are two significant things that when student when teachers their students go to teachers for recommendations for

165the next course maybe we should appropriately push our students instead of you know perhaps saying okay this is the easiest way i'm not suggesting that that's happening but there are two other critical factors and i know i mean i know the counselors talk about this all the time yeah and i do know that we were throwing around the idea as coordinators of having moving forward some form of like a last day of the semester kind of be focused on those conversations in the classroom and just didn't get traction this year i know there were more conversations uh that were happening um but i do know that moving forward we are trying to get those conversations to happen more readily and thoughtfully one of the questions that it's not a question is a comment um i

166am concerned that between the ladders it's not an equal distance so it's a discontinuity surface so there's a big drop when you go from [Applause] you know a college prep to honors and i'm just letting you know that it bothers me so uh mr wyatt graduating in um school that's a good question because i'm asking because kind of what i was thinking about as i know in studentsbury they have a motivation for every student to take an ap level course before they graduate with the idea that every student has a college level experience and they have 72 percent of kids taking the ap course i can guarantee you we're not anywhere near that and i know earlier in the year i made a recommendation to everybody than last year but to have ece be at

167the same level as ap again without incentivizing so this is a little bit unrelated from gpa but i do think it's very important to have teachers and counselors talking to and it's been discussed before and it's not incentivized i really and i personally believe students and we're also offering more aps students really should be pushed to be taking advantage of them and so my thought is do you think that the gpa waiting really would make a difference in incentivizing students or it really does come down to it's the counselors in the teaching discussions well i would hate for anybody to be incentivized by a number you know i want them to be able to on their own pursue passions and subjects that are of interest uh if you're doing it for that reason alone you're

168doing it for the wrong reasons um but i do know that we have just shifted to include the ece coursework into that ap waiting and i know that we're expanding that ecu waiting and i do know that the ap participation may not be comparable to some other schools but you have to keep in mind we're also 500 students less so our offerings aren't quite as robust as those other schools um and i know that we're also trying to look at other ways of getting those pre-college experiences in there through partnerships through tungsten community colleges and getting teachers articulated through that program as well so we are looking at expanding those pre-college opportunities and i think that's the goal as we move forward is to have every student and i was involved in the previous district

169as well which is one that i'm working to make a goal here is to have every student whether it's you know that internship or work pre-work experience or a pre-college experience so that it's relevant towards their future plans i'm sorry we very much appreciate your efforts peter and those that are working with you the other thing is we have added more ap courses those that tend to have higher enrollments in other places they're the more popular ones and again the articulated agreements are some of the greatest things you could ever have as a public high school because your high school student is going to a community college for free getting college credit that can be transferred and high school credit at the same time and that early college experience so it's a win-win all the

170way around and the uconn program i agree with you does need more promotion in avon because that is a great program it's one of the oldest early college experiences program in the country and for two hundred dollars you can get a transfer through the university of connecticut and we are expanding those offerings do you have any thoughts on how how that could be promoted more i hate to put you on that too uh wait do you have any you know things that come up i think parental and you know information night on these pre-college experiences that we offer i think probably the best starting place because you're the loudest voice uh in terms of support of your students so i think that would be a good place to start myself we might want to be

171invited so that we can express our support strongly but also maybe information on the website and the front of the program of studies along with virtual high school which is another way to get kids to have ap courses and things that they're very interested in and we're all have that encouraged when kids ask about it or encourage it and ask about it in the program of studies uh this year i believe we added in in my previous district we had a chart of kind of an easy quick reference chart of the ap offerings and ece offerings so i made sure that we included that this year and there so it is hopefully kind of in the front of the book and that's in the back the vhs is nestled in the back yeah one of

172our best kept secrets and it's really really annoying we won't sure i feel like a lot of my comments are already said especially you know laura and gary and to conor's point um i have tried to look at some of the data of other schools in their ap enrollment versus ours and ours looks as a percentage lower especially in the core classes as gary expressed so i look at and i'm going to take this from our capstone presentation because there are so many contributors across our school that participated in one of the things they said was raise expectations for all students with all capitalized and i feel like we need to do that by having more students participate in ap classes in the ece i mean we have our staff and teachers trained taking their

173time to be able to teach those and i don't feel like we have communicated as well to the students to them put them in a position you know maybe they're not all able to take every ap or ece but i think each student has some special strength where they will be able to take at least one while they're in high school and i don't feel like that's happened so i also would like to see the data of where we stand today and you know a year from now and how we've taken an effort to increase those percentages can i just say one more in some of some of our neighboring districts i have looked at some of these some of these numbers and some of our neighboring districts they'll offer either the cp or the

174ap level of certain horses so that's why you will see a higher participation rate and enrollment rate so i mean that might be something that we may want to consider possibly looking at and then they do they they also have the requirement that if you take the ap course you take the exam or ap weight is linked to completion of the exam okay all right we have a motion connor has it one more thing sure not about the gpa but it's a policy um comment um teachers on the at the ap level have these i have i understand have the decision of what grade you need whether or not you took the exam as a senior um whether or not you take the final it's very some is a little inconsistent on whether or not

175you have an 85 or personally it would be really nice if it was just either like a some student teachers it'll be a 90 if you don't take the ap exam it'll be an 85 if you do and then you don't have to do the final at the end of the year be really nice if that was a policy so it's completely we're going to vote now but we are also possibly going to vote again when he makes the presentation right if he's if he offers up a change once the research is done yes we would be voting again correct is there any chance that we should just wait until vote after we hear that if it's not a timely thing or is is this timely and we need it today uh actually i'm not

176sure that that was entirely entered into my suggestion mrs zeroly answered i'm not sure the administration said that but parliamentary wise the way you test that is you make a motion to table i just want to make sure i have this scenario correct so that i'm understanding what my understanding is that they will come back after a period of time i'm not sure it was a year or six months i have to assemble with committee i have to say this is how it's going and this is what we think and this is more research that we've done i gotten it wrong mr milo no i mean no the group will come back with a finished product from start to finish with all the research done and all the comparisons and all the questions that people

177have been asking that have been answered now in isolation that's why it's it's stratified for me so i don't know how long that's going to take okay so that's that's important for me to know i feel like we are probably more time sensitive than i felt like before i heard that like a year from now would be too long um so i i'm happy to support whatever the administration is supporting but i do want to give a shout out to the cp kids you know we were on the um i mean i could try saying this we were on this committee that worked for six months to make sure that there was equity in the levels so it's a real loss i think for those kids who are working to their capacity and i know

178it's exciting to be an awesome ap kid and an awesome you're just awesome all these great things and you're achieving things and we really want to have student achievement and we want to be challenging our kids but there are some kids who are challenged and doing amazing things at the cp level so when we do this i agree with that we are saying your cp is less worth than the honors and i think that's a really serious statement that everybody around this table is about to make and i look forward to your presentation with that in mind because i think we are talking about children here who they all achieve at different levels you know i i personally am really um offended by the great chasing and i think our community and our you know

179we have to kind of get a hold of ourselves at some point and start celebrating kids who you know if you can get a 4.33 as a cp kid and you know maybe you should have been challenged more but how exciting how exciting is that that that child is able to achieve to that level and maybe maybe academic types would say then he should have been challenged more but maybe a parent would say we are celebrating this win in my household so i just i just want to say that before we vote that i will i will support the administration tonight but i look forward to having that that piece really seriously considered because it's a huge loss for everybody who's not i feel compelled to respond because i feel the same way you do

180we have to make sure that the system that we have in place is equitable for all students and now you're at the risk of you all throwing things at me my ideal world isn't even in play in public education and i'll just offer some rhetorical questions who said that you have to have an a b or c type grading schedule the world works on the competency based system who said that an a equals whatever numeric uh number you put next to it who made that up it's kind of like the same reason we have 180 school days and we have a summer off because it's based on an agrarian society it's time to do things different in our contemporary public high schools and i agree with you every student should have the opportunity to be

181to demonstrate their success in the manner in which it manifests and it's not all about you know getting the fours or fives on an a but taking this vote tonight we are saying you are you are only half the person that the honors a is i mean you are 0.66 you know we are actually making that statement that's what we're doing and i'm i'm happy to support it as long as we really have a lens you know like of the juniors this year when we take this vote this will affect their grades you know my child's included so is that no no that doesn't affect you so this sophomores will be nine and ten right nine and ten and we're going to move expeditiously we're not you know this is a big issue but it

182has to be done methodically well all right i previously made the comment which sort of ties in with your comment is that i don't like the fact it's a discontinuity surface but that's a fancy way for saying sometimes it's the 0.3 jump between ladders and sometimes it's a 0.6 do i have a motion i make a motion to modify the policy as prepared by kathy where it ends on page 115 so we're deleting the beginning with the class of 2019 exception all right we have a second i second all right mr rome moves mrs howard ii any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions carries unanimously thank you gentlemen thank you thank you all right new business and i'll try and move things along a little bit faster and i apologize for

183not being expeditious uh from the consent agenda the book the god of small things which is 87 um because we normally put it under first new business after it's [Applause] briefly is they're going to look at that and come back with a further discussion all right so that's in effect uh being tabled because the proposal is to take no action all right got it item a supplemental appropriation is that mr mala or mrs michael i see you're both looking at each other going we'll flip the coin it's like the super bowl thanks so i think i quickly addressed this in the financial report this is the second official request for the amount of funds that are coming in or have come in at this point um shoring up that open choice program tuition um i'm

184just asking that the board uh reviewed this and approved today at this point did they hear craigslist second submission second okay so this is the 207 000 on page 126. so the first one is still pending okay [Applause] all right can i have a motion to approve the supplemental appropriation oh gosh all right there's only one person says to my right i heard mrs arroyo i was second all right mr feedback second all in favor any opposed any extensions carries unanimously all right uh we've got several items of first read mrs zaroley would you like to talk about them we're there let's see were there any questions i haven't received any questions on these these are looking at uh we start at the very beginning it's a very nice place to start and we keep

185going so some of these are mostly avonizing a couple times when it says oh i know on 1100 page 131 we didn't like citizen we don't want to be challenging citizenship so we changed to person but for the most part there were not significant changes that we were making in the community relations portion that we started to review but i'm happy to entertain any questions any edits well you you can always send them to us and nothing exciting there nothing slipping by is exciting okay hearing no discussion we go to sort of chairs ruminations question that i would like to sort of try before the board uh is what should be covered in our reflection session other than evaluating the board and theory is scheduled for tomorrow night one of the questions i would also

186raise well two questions one is the the the hearing that i have that actually affects me the most is that board members are saying it's not as much fun as it used to be and i i need to fix that i have no freaking idea how to fix that but i need to fix that um the reflection session is scheduled for tomorrow night if my memory is correct um in light of the fact uh mrs howard has uh resigned effective in the future and we're going to have a shall we say a new player um a new member have we identified who the new player is i i don't know who it is um so the the question is going to be um should we postpone the reflection session because every time you add a

187new person to the mix i mean it may sound odd but it actually does change the dynamics uh even a single person changes the dynamics so i want to have a sense of feel for to see whether or not anyone else was worried about um it's not being as much fun as it used to be uh and whether or not we should wait for our new member to join us i would like to i would like to not meet tomorrow i'd like to wait i i can see there's some advantage to that and i just i just didn't want to make this decision in vacuum because i agree my argument would be there so we are inundated with meetings where i feel personally like we're meeting a lot i understand and and that's one of

188the things that that i can also see us doing at the reflection session is maybe saying is there a way we can cut down a little bit on the meetings because originally when i started this it was a three-hour meeting a month and now we spend a lot more time in unions i mean what if what if this new member really has a strong drive to paint everything purple polka dotted and that's you know why don't we wait for the reflection session to have their input and they can share what their goals and and hopes and dreams are because otherwise isn't the possibility that we would have to have another one when they come on board distinct possibility we might have to have another one i would agree to hold off until we have the

189new member and one of the topics i'd like us to discuss is our common goals as a board of nine what is our vision together that we would like to accomplish for our students that's that's a good idea and let's put down [Applause] sort of a running list and fewer meetings i'm not advocating for fewer meetings i'm just saying if we can avoid having another four-hour reflection session the next week maybe we should but i understand and i i'm a big fan of if we can cover the same amount of work with fewer meetings i'm sort of in favor of that okay anything else this is the role so if if i hear three of you have said you want to postpone i need to at least discuss a couple things so let me know

190go ahead and we're postponing well no i raise them raise them now uh because i was intended to get the the feel of the group and it wasn't intended to be a real live vote but tell me what you think that was the rumination always i'll honor the vote we have several issues at hand that need to be discussed and agreed upon because i'm not a miracle worker and minutes don't just magically happen and they need to happen within a certain time frame and a request was made outside of that outside of my understanding and knowledge to have board briefs and board briefs we need to at least understand what they're supposed to look like they've looked differently in the past i'd like to have some kind of agreement by the board that's always nice

191when we can agree um and the board briefs can't come before the minutes i am emphatic on that because the minutes must be done in a timely manner they were not done in a timely manner until we had nicole further so there needs to be consensus around the board briefs what they look like that's a discussion a chatting discussion um would you like to have that discussion because i did have that item on on the thing is rumination yeah at this time i'm going to call your attention to the 10 o'clock rule yeah we have a 10 o'clock policy absolutely correct and we have a lot of ground to cover after that and so and we still haven't covered some things so i don't think it's appropriate for me to want to put you know

192deal with board brief now but it's it's out there the other thing is we have a problem with some folks following the rules and we need to address that so we need to address our code of ethics and our policies and we can't have spokespeople besides you unless you delegate can't do it uh i and i stand admonished and that was my fault for the last time so yes but you're right okay so let's move off of ruminations because i think we ruminated enough so are we postponing the representation i would say the the consensus was the postpone and i wasn't going to put you through a formal ass through a formal vote and if someone feels strongly the other way now would be a time to speak up okay superintendent's update uh i'll just

193move fairly quickly here the enrollment report is what it is you can see we're virtually identical as last month the department and monthly summaries have been included i know you appreciate those i've extended that appreciation to all of our building leaders um the the third item i'm a little puzzled because i didn't put it on so i was it was okay let me know what am i supposed to do here well uh i assume you'll tell us that uh you've you've completed a first round of interviews there are people i'm coming back i'm on the third item i know that's the high school principles that's the fourth it's did i count them all just nobody oh well it just says district leadership team board 17 18 goals and priorities oh i don't assume well that's

194what's on mine yeah oh all right yeah you're right i actually did put that down because it was from last month district leadership team board of education and superintendent i'm assuming that's we're going to discuss that when we're all together uh similar to what mrs said we're all going to right yes the short answers are all going to agree on that certainly i expect you to have a leadership position in terms of helping to formulate that because that's part of the evaluation process that we all agreed to that we're going to be evaluated you're going to be evaluated how we work together is going to be evaluated and we're going to actually have some goals next year and then we will evaluate each of us on how we did vis-a-vis our goals got it and

195in theory that's supposed to be done in like june so i figured i'd start the conversation now because if we didn't start the conversation now i forget i i understand and i think you were technically out of the office when i modified the agenda i was the last item whatever number you have is the high school principal search i'm referring to the blank insert pages in the packet so i don't have a number we have four candidates moving forward into the second round the second round happens next week i'm thinking tuesday wednesday tuesday wednesday committee's working very well they're inundated with full womanist responses to writing samples so we'll keep you posted from there and my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong that the candidates look pretty good yeah yeah i won't i mean

196i'll defer to some others who are on the committee but don't need a precise readout candidate a is strong at this point but we have to wait and see how they perform over the next few stages so thank you i i have nothing else to report and in terms of what's left in the process to be done i do a second interview i probably should be using the mic after the second round at the start of the second round we give the nine writing prompts which they've addressed they go through a series of questions that'll be a 90-minute period because the questions require more in-depth or response from that point there's no minimum or no maximum to go forward the third stage is the reverse site visit they come here and we assemble groups of

197people for them to meet and this is the period in time that we tell the committee envision them in the scene is this the person and the people we assemble our parents faculty and staff in this case students and our student representatives on the interview panel are actually organizing that now and other administrators have lengthy sessions with each of the candidates there that are advanced to the third round i don't know how many that will be until we conclude on wednesday evening and then um there certainly can't be more than four probably less well that was profound it would be at most four [Applause] all right thank you assistant superintendent okay i'll be i'll be brief as the capstone was kind of a bigger piece of mind this evening earlier um all of our state

198assessments uh went very smoothly earlier this month thanks to the work and attention to detail by jodi kurzansky and our assistant principals who do the bulk of the work on administering those assessments tomorrow we'll be administering cat makeups for about 15 students and on april 25th we have our connecticut s.a.t school day assessment we have about 20 students that need to make up that assessment and we have two students left to make up the cmt so we're in very good shape right now and then on page 189 is a listing of the building-based professional development activities that took place on april 7th for your reference and that concludes my report excellent thank you and uh meerman you're up next since we're going to break 10 o'clock i assume no one has a problem with breaking

19910 o'clock at this point all right hearing no objection because i suspect one of your items may take longer than the rest yeah i can talk fast but um i'll actually go slightly out of order because i'm suspecting one of the items will have questions as well and i'll put that one last just to cover the first two items more quickly we did have our first meeting on with a group of collective professionals inclusive of general ed and special education pupil services and we met with a team from circ that are trained in really helping us look at accessible education materials universal design for learning and we really began just really our philosophical understandings about what does accessibility actually mean what does it look like in our classrooms what do we envision it being we'll

200have another session and that session will get more practical we'll actually begin to look at some tools that actually promote some accessibility and then we'll have a third session in may to continue the conversation into a strategic plan which hopefully we'll be able to present to you as how we're going to really enhance ultimately what we're already doing is to embrace that accessibility for all students the other is just a really informational plug for septa they have a meeting this thursday at the avon public library from 7 to 8 30 the topic of conversation is transitions and they have actually selected some volunteer staff who will come and talk about what it means to transition from school to school and it would be a good opportunity for parents to come and have q a around

201what it is that they're concerned about i think they are looking for a head count so um if you can reach to septa if you're interested in attending how do they do that um it could be any of the separate board members sophia lamp um stephanie lane but you also can contact barbarone directly and dark can get the information to them as well get an email about it there has been emails circulating correct so the last item i'm going to update you on the work that we've been doing collectively donna and i and jody we would have been working with three teams i'm going to refer to them as content experts because they were hand selected for their expertise in three major areas one was reading writing we did work on those together because they

202do go hand in hand the second was for mathematics and the third was for executive functioning those are the three major component areas that we look at for student supports it's certainly not some in total of all student supports that we need to offer but there are three of the major areas that we do need to think about supporting these three groups met for a period of two full days to really go through what we currently have in place and then envision what we would love to have in place uh barring any resource restrictions so we took resource restrictions off the table because we wanted them to dream the dream right what it should look like for all students and i have to tell you it was some of the most powerful conversations i think

203have had to date in this district the amazing conceptualization of the skills that they're thinking about the teaching methodologies that we thought about the different ways that we can provide supports and services to all students and that being really the operative word all and what we have come up with now is a as a matrix that kind of represents that dream out of that we then prioritize our major things that we want to see in place for next fall our dream the dream is probably going to take a good three years in my opinion to really fully realize but there are things that we can do immediately in the fall and the major themes just to kind of isolate what they are for you tonight we're really looking at putting co-teaching in across major core

204subject areas so that we have two some classrooms with two teachers in them the most popular model for co-teaching is a special education teacher and and general education teacher so for example um there might be a couple of math classes where we would have a special education teacher in that classroom this is a model that you we already currently practice through all our other schools all the way up through middle school so it's a very common practice already in place it had been a practice here at the high school we just need to reinstitute it so we'll need to look at that piece the other is to really talk about some how we're going to expand our resource supports and to provide two levels one is sort of a drop in for any student so

205that they are continuing to get that support that they depend on to help them get through maybe a particular assignment or a particular research project the other is to look at more strategic placement of students that really need much more intensified supports these are students that would have selected goals that we need to work on the goals in our vision is that they would come from the students they're working with the students to set their own goals to say okay what is it that we need to learn how is it that we can improve what we need to improve and for some students it might be mathematical concepts for other students it might be improving my writing skills it could vary from kid to cat the other is a practice we already have in place

206and just really beefing up is called check in check out it's a system by which students are attached to a single adult it is a highly successful system it's used across the nation it has a lot of positive research behind it um it probably stands to reason it makes good sense because it does relationships make a big difference we want to expand that because we do have that practice in place and we just need to make it more effective and more in terms of reaching broader audience of students the most intensive supports that we talked about is really setting up some individual courses because for some students we really have to think about one of our largest themes of conversation was the distinction between just helping me get through this assignment versus i'm missing some

207skills that's preventing me from doing this assignment there's a big difference in those two supports we are trying to set up a system for both supports are available because for some kids i've got the skills i just need to help get the push through this assignment but for many students it's a repetitive issue it's not an issue of just this assignment and so for those students we really need to look at what are the missing skills and that's where those three executive functioning mathematics when reading and writing really become important executive functionings i'll just discuss briefly as it's all those things that we use as adults to organize prioritize systemize time management those types of things for many of our students that actually that part of the brain doesn't develop until you're about 25. so

208just a natural development is a struggle for many kids for some kids we really need to do some explicit instruction on how to manage those things some very specific study skills from very specific mnemonics for example on how you might memorize something or how you might go about a task we're looking at putting in a study skills instruction course a critical reading course which we already actually have but expanding it as structured literacy instruction foundations of composition and a mathematical concept course so really looking at those threads and those themes around numeracy understandings that sometimes get missed or kids really do need a little more time really developing these are skills specifically designs courses specifically designed to teach those skills that are missing therefore these will be courses with credit and they'll be curriculum and

209these are courses that will be made available for any student who may be missing skills some students that may be part of their iep or their 504 plan for other students it's just part of an intervention that we're trying to support them with so that they can strengthen those areas that they have gaps in so it's really trying to provide that comprehensive play across all these areas so that we're supporting a full continuum of needs right everything from just help me get through this assignment too i really am struggling with reading skills still and i need some reading instruction okay let me just make sure i understand well i gotta go here so you're gonna have a drop-in center for people who need assistance on an as-needed basis how's that gonna work yes so we

210are working out the details of the structural pieces but there's a couple of things we have been talking about first of all we still haven't played the um english language arts asset resource center so that is still going to be operationalized as it currently is as a drop in and we have the math lab which will also the other thing we talked about is helping to increase office hours for teachers and the use of structured study halls where there's an actual study hall alignment between maybe i need just a little extra help in math and it happens to be study hall of duty by a math teacher so that there's a better more strategic system of aligning those students to times where they can get help okay for other questions um so you said there

211is going to be a study skills class and it is going to be credited so my understanding when we spoke last time here was that the the study skills where do the kids with the ieps go where did they get where do they receive their special education without it turning up on their transcript right excellent question so one of the first things um and you bring up a really good point which does need to clarify first of all how we currently label our classes study skills that's not what this model is so unfortunately the name is the same but the concept is very different currently study skills classes really are our supports for students with ieps this is different if i have an iep for the area of reading and i need more reading instruction

212i would actually probably be in the reading class not necessarily the study skills class the study skills class are for students that really need much more instruction around executive functioning some of their students will be students with ieps but not all there are clearly a number of students that are supported currently through our student assistance team our sat team that really what they need are some instructions on how do i study for a task how do i more effectively take notes how do i organize a research project those types of themes would be in the study skills class that's currently it's much more of a mishmash and it might be more independent supports this is actually a curriculum course my concern with that honestly would be the same because then you're taking a child who

213has an iep who needs to receive those who's kind of prescribed right to have those supports right and they're going to have to have study skills on their transcript where not necessarily i just want to clearly tell me how that like if johnny needs to have study skills how does he johnny has an iep right how does he what happens to him sure so first of all we would first look at what his needs are we start there all right so if the needs happen to be the needs that are met through that class then yes they may have that class and it is a it is a course that's actually on that national registry there are plenty of high schools that offer that as a generic course for anyone and we would be opening

214it up to more than just kids with ieps it wouldn't be a class exclusively for students with ieps but for many of our students with ieps it's really not study skills per se it could be reading it could be math it could be writing so they may be in these other courses and those may be appearing on transcript the other caveat i want to explain is that what is decided by a ppt can override so ppq can make the decision that a student is in one of these classes but they've decided for many other reasons that it's not going to be appearing in the transcript therefore it's not going to be accredited class ppt still has the authority to make such decisions for an individual student case by case so a ppt you could say

215johnny really needs to take this whatever the reading classes you're going to call right what are you calling it we don't have official titles okay so reading support 101 yeah um and if his family can sit down at the ppt and say he needs to receive his special education in this prescribed way right this is not to be put on his transcript and he's not going to get credit for it right so each family when they decide their their child's schedule through ppt will be notified and it will be a family decision if they're going to accept credit and put it on the transcript yes to me in my head it's a common conversation at every ppt right the other piece jackie too as kim spoke you know it's kind of the drop in so

216that's kind of the first level then in the second level it's students that need a little more than the drop in you have to tell them to go because they're not dropping in that needs some support so those could be any student but those are students too that will have specific goals that are monitored in growth but aren't receiving credit so you know it might be a goal and study skills of management and getting work done so it will be an assigned block of time with no credit but then if we have students as kim was saying that don't just need kind of a little bit of assistance and help getting it done but really the development of the skills in order to do it that would move up to that third level which would

217uh be a course with credit so for iep kids so what would the name of that course be it would just um again we haven't gotten down okay reading 101 but just say you know drop in okay if the student needs to be assigned based on you know a decision of a ppt or a student assistance team we'll just say it's executive functioning 101 they're assigned for a block of time in their schedule to get those supports but it is not credit bearing but then if a student specifically needs the course and the skills and it's a course then they move to that next level so it's really three levels of support it's tiered up the other conversation we had as we were developing the structure was the fact that 90 minute blocks are very

218long for kind of this remediation especially if you have a 90-minute block of math remediation after your 90-minute math class so we're developing skinny blocks within the bigger blocks so that the students are having 45 minutes of intervention and we're also setting those blocks across the days like the a and b days so students can get the 45 minutes every day as opposed to 90 minutes every other day so we're looking at structuring the supports in that way also thank you let me just make sure i understand in terms of the drop-in suppose i'm taping taking ap physics and i really don't understand the how a gas chromatograph really works and i'm just having trouble can i drop in even though in theory i'm taking an advanced class or is it restricted so they couldn't

219do that well i i love that you picked that example you said i'm gonna i'm gonna back into that answer by first talking about the ultimate vision and then the reality of what we might be able to implement next fall because i want to be clear about that the ultimate vision is yes you would be able to drop into your teacher probably in that particular case there would be an opportunity for you to connect um for example we i mean this is how vision works but i think we thought about imagine um and some high schools have done this taking that section of the library and recreating it so it has all the textbooks and it has some computer resources in it and it's staffed with a duty teacher who goes in there and just

220is available for a drop in conversation that's the vision that's like a an idea on a practical level for what we can implement for next year we're going to stay with the current structures of the english resource center and the math lab and then what we're going to do is try to enhance the use of office hours with teachers and the use of looking at assigning study halls in a little more compatible way so that we have kids aligned with teachers in their study halls who could then they just lean over and ask a question to those are the the more pragmatic ways we can kind of implement and get closer to that vision okay further questions let's see mrs schue do you anticipate at all a drop in taking part in the drop-in aspect

221because they have to find where the teacher is and how to get there and they might talk themselves out of seeking that support without having a physical space to go to well first of all we wouldn't it wouldn't be a guessing game it would be clearly advertised and so because we're building on supports that already exist i'm i'm not anticipating that it's really one support area that we're modifying differently and i don't think the numbers are as large i don't know the exact numbers but they're not as large as people i think imagine it's it's not most kids the drop-in part is really with their own teacher you know there's a couple of kids who do rely on that extra support so i think we just need to make sure that we're meeting kids where

222they're at and what they need and kind of being pragmatic about how that can play out and it wouldn't be left just as a mystery it would be very clearly communicated is there i i think what you're proposing sounds great and i appreciate your honesty and that you think it'll take probably about three years to really have it where you want it to be is there any harm in having a hybrid of this and keeping the sac location until we've really mastered this because when you have students like amir coming forward and sharing that that was a belonging and an inclusiveness space for him that speaks to me and so i wonder if we are doing harm by not honoring that need and i'm gonna i'm gonna give you a more complicated answer than probably

223you're looking for but the reality is it's about relationships right that's really what he's talking about and he's he's right the power of that particular relationship is really important to him and i hear that loud and clear and every student needs that every student should have that right but it's not always located in one person and i think that is part of what we're trying to really help communicate and be clear about because that particular center has a has only a small population we have a much larger population of students who actually get that same need met through other individuals who are staying and still in the system so what you're talking about on a simple level is we need to find out which students are relying very heavily on that particular one and what

224are we going to do to support them through a transition that is really the takeaway for me so do you feel that you have a sense of who those students are and how you're going to help them and are you going to reach out to the families and yeah i don't personally have the data but donna and jody do they know exactly the names of the students they know who they are they know how many so we're going to be able to do that very well laura has a question oh yes sorry so thank you so much kim for presenting that information tonight i think for me and you were there at the climate meeting what we've heard overwhelmingly and consistently from i would say probably more than 25 students um give or take 20

225to 25 parents um and some staff who've said that the sense of place is very very important consistency of one space where students can come and drop in just like it sounds like not have to go all around looking for which teacher is open during that period but being able to go to that space next to the library it's not so much about the person who's the body in the chair that they're going in to see necessarily it's about having a sense of place and feeling safe and also that it's for everybody in the building every single student in that building they don't have to have an iep or a 504 or have been referred to the student assistance center team anyone can walk into that space and get help when they need it they

226don't have to have the time assigned to them they can just walk in when they feel like it and so i i have heard all of those concerns loud and clear and it just i'm concerned that we during this transition time are are not going to be addressing the needs of those students which i think it's at least 35 if i'm not mistaken 35 to 45 students who regularly utilize that space on a daily basis i can't speak directly like i said to the numbers um and we also hear loud and clear what exactly what people are saying and that goes back to really i'm going to give the same response i gave to them that sense of space exists for different kids for different places for different teachers and we i mean just to

227kind of highlight an example of kids talking even tonight about their sense of place with some programs that are also being affected we have to take account that it's really again it's going back to all the things we're going to instill at a whole school level around connection with a positive adult knowing exactly where i can go when there's there isn't i think it's kind of a misnomer to assume it's a single spot currently it is not it there there are other parents who could come in here and talk about other spaces and other teachers and other programs that are representing those same features and so i want to make sure that we understand that there's a broader audience of need that we have to kind of consider in these pieces further questions all right

228hearing none we then move to the next item number 12. that's type size it needs to be a lot smaller [Applause] what's number 12 the budget i'd have it up on the screen i do marvel at people's uh resiliency uh with given the hour i i will be brief you've you've had an opportunity to see this i feel compelled to provide some explanation behind you know putting something such as a budget implementation plan together in the time frame in which we did we had very little time to put this together because as you know we were together the wednesday before the break learning of our fate of our budget and we walked out not having to reduce any more that immediately triggered our action to work with our district administrators and such to seek out

229the very i guess what i call advisement to me that is necessary to implement this plan um then we have sort of interrupted when you see district administrators you meet the principals principals department supervisors and those that are here at this table right so it had to be finalized right in order to finalize that we had to identify i'm sorry did i no no no i i just want to make sure i just didn't know if there was a question the scope of the okay compensation was important to be stated on the record okay what we have to do is when we identified a position to reduce we first had to confirm the dollar amount associated with that position in order to do that we had to follow it follow the position organized labor contracts

230typically have a reduction in force scenario so we had to play out all those scenarios with respect to teachers not just teachers but other people's licensure and then the final person had to be identified so again it's hard to explain but we were doing that with absolutely two or three days to go then there was a break the reason that a list could not be given to you in advance is because of the commitment that we've made as a district to speak to all of our employees that would be impacted by what i was going to present to you publicly i thought we had it there was one error i take responsibility for the error a person was not notified till this morning bear in mind i was getting i was getting messages that you

231wanted the information we organized the information we sent out your chair also asked to send it out to the community which we did that was as fast as we could do it because we were notifying people that were impacted on monday and we got the information to you once i had confirmation that people had been spoken to and the one that did not happen that way was because i was just not available yesterday afternoon monday afternoon so we move this as quickly as we can bear in mind the staff for the break they already had plans to be away so all the numbers had to be confirmed so we presented we presented to you an accurate scenario to hit the number that we've been authorized at least you have to be part of going to

232referendum uh i do i do want to address what we we did receive some criticism and i just i can't gloss it over the website went down we don't host our own website hopefully you got the information that was we did contact our network manager our host service was not available until monday so it could not be repaired there were some uh statements that we did it deliberately that we would not do that it just it happened so very briefly that's the backdrop to this this is an extraordinarily difficult scenario to present to you i'm not going to be repetitive and read all these bulleted items to you i'm going to trust the fact that you read the communication we did everything possible to save as many positions as we could and i'm going to

233go right to what i have as the last slide and it's i think it's the last page in the booklet also second to the last page these are the reductions now i do want to just address some comments that came up during the public comment section i believe one one young lady referenced you know second grade seems to be low at 17 and fourth grade is higher in my i can only use my experience here the expectation that's been articulated is that we maintain class sizes under 20 it has never been stated in stone but under 20 in the primary years that's defined as k one two we have worked diligently to do that the past two years we haven't been able to do that because we got inundated by new registrants after the school

234year started this particular series of reductions if you look at the total elementary bar and it's it's grayed out it's the first one we got lucky because four people that we did not know were going to retire nor nor did they or they would have notified me by the contractual date decided to retire when that happened we chose we're not going to fill that bear in mind what results is that you save the entire salary because if you get into a reduction in force you actually have to reduce two positions to get the savings of one because we pay our unemployment directly so when somebody retired we said well we had four that we didn't anticipate that actually helped us by being able to keep people in their jobs so we've made a decision not

235to fill them and and the notes are really we we have fluctuation in enrollment a kindergarten right now and i'll show you that on on the next slide i might as well do it now this this chart reflects the reduced ftes in the elementary staff and taken into account and these are the remaining sections and those are the class sizes so i say not bad however it's just a caution i don't know what's going to happen moving forward i can tell you though i did try to go back and research our kindergarten numbers for the past five years this is the lowest number that we've seen in five years now of course that could flip i just jinxed this where it's coming off of two years that were the highest we've ever seen where i

236had to add nine positions in total over two years theater hopefully i clarified you know what what i'm going to characterize as maybe it was a misunderstanding but we we're not cutting theater we're taking the courses because of enrollment and bear in mind that i seek advisement i do not sit and make the decisions in isolation so there are times it but i will quickly say i bear responsibility for delivering this because i ultimately have to approve it to give it to you but i'm heavily dependent on what information i'm being given [Applause] it was suggested the class sizes were low some were less than six some were less than 10. um that's the story of theater but we have a strong desire to maintain the theater program as it was prior to ever offering

237the courses the music reduction is a 0.6 we had a retirement and you're going to say well how could you do that it's just how we're going to re-allocate our current music staff to cover the required periods and that comes with the assignment stage bear in mind i also have a date the contract the aaa contract says june 15 we try to go for june 1st that means that everybody will get an assignment letter in this case somebody's going to be split between schools to cover the music uh wellness is there is a change in how the model is being run at the middle school the five five positions at the high school require more significant uh a more significant review of the schedule there were some things advanced i'll just say we felt as

238it wouldn't work and that's why these are not specific uh because we're working on that right now with the high school administration to identify those as soon as we have them you're going to know those they're not art as was suggested they're not they're not in any fine arts area these are going to be in content area and i don't want to you know cause an alarm cause panic the way you achieve the savings is by you you compress different sections of the same course we have we have some sections that we can't compress don has been working diligently at looking at that and that's where we're going to pick up the equivalent it may not be five whole people it could be a half of uh but it has to be in the same

239certification area that's our chore for this week yes wendy so as far as mrs patterson goes i'm wondering if there's some way we can consolidate her classes and keep part of her half time or and if there's anything else that she's certified to teach as well she has no certification and that she would be seniority over other teachers in that same content area what i will say is can you tell but i can tell you that there's a provision in the contract uh that says you what you in order to be considered for a different certification you have to have taught using that endorsement within a five-year period of time i'm sorry i can't go further but okay okay and she has not had that i teach so okay so i won't i won't belabor

240that i mean uh again and is there some way to consolidate her classes so we're only losing half of her that's something we have to look at yeah and are the numbers that's what we're doing now bear in mind i'm dependent on what i'm given and i'm just go i just have to say it i mean when when i have two principals say you know we'll give this position i say you know i ask those questions hello i ask the questions are you sure and then i go but we will obviously we we take you know we give great consideration to the public comment we'll go back and look at options with them we don't do it in isolation yes um the numbers of students per class is that based on this year's enrollment or

241already who signed up for next year we looked at both and it's still low and we and we intentionally split the position with the middle school i think i said this when i was trying to clarify to create the feeder program for the high school courses i don't know why the enrollments haven't developed but it will certainly look at compressing it and i just i feel like after all this we might have compelled more students to want to take theater right but i think i think the general misunderstanding was that theater's gone we're not going to have any more productions but i have to keep reminding folks you're looking at the people who actually put the courses in a few years ago to strengthen that strand but the enrollments didn't develop we certainly support all

242of the you know the after school co-curricular design model that's where that's where hundreds of students are involved and we're very appreciative that thompsonbrook did it as a part of work with the parents because now they're feeding the middle school which is bigger and then the middle school will then in turn feed the high school so so is the television station involved in this too because it didn't jill patterson no she did no somebody else she didn't do that no no we i thought that was one of her talents is that she's not teaching no she well hers was more of i don't know how to describe it teaching people how to present themselves if they were going to be filmed as opposed to the actual technology our applied ed teacher is expert in using

243that equipment with our students so but there's some things we could go back and look at the non-certified um again i'm like i just don't want to read every line to you it's there um again there were some unanticipated retirements there's a but more importantly i'm going to draw your attention to the other reductions made capturing kids hearts the commitment to that program has now been minimized to only the remaining money that is left in the budget is to do the new employee orientation bear in mind we have new employees that come earlier than people who have been here they actually have a longer work year by their contract and and that's when the training would take place should you support that um the educational consultant we took days off of our obligation of that

244um jv tennis golf and volleyball again when you when you have to reduce a budget and it's a broad-based reduction you have to also be careful uh when you're sitting where we're all sitting that you don't send a message you know that one thing is more important than the other because over time that creates inequity and that's a tough that's a tough statement for me to make but you know we're cutting we have people who are losing their jobs that are you know obviously teachers there's no other place for us to go uh again uh then then we have been fortunate to have established a system where there's a dollar amount that we're able to pre-buy with and what that means is when our appropriations when july first starts and our principals go to work

245with their staff and they order the things for the next school year we look at their line items usually around the beginning of november and then we say we're going to put some money aside for you but if you need things in an emergency let us know that actually allows us to try to get ahead in the next budget and you can see that while some people may not consider 66 000 a significant amount it is in this kind of budget and then to support the new i'm going to say newly designed or soon to be implemented the implemented student support model at the high school as kim has described it in her work with donna and others i'm adding i am proposing to add a social worker to be part of that interdisciplinary team

246at the high school and as i said before the last slide is is just a snapshot of the class size uh one of the things i want to bring to your attention uh and it's probably more for the folks that are in the audience we do have class size caps the second bullet there are class size caps at different grade levels in the certified staff contract if we exceed that number then we have to do something the two things one of two that we have to agree on with the association is one we either pay uh every um we pay the teacher for every area in which he or she provides instruction and at the elementary level that would be four areas and i can't remember the dollar amount as i'm sitting here or we

247have to hire a teacher assistant to provide additional uh support to the teacher uh in cases where we've experienced this and again the past two years have been extraordinarily difficult because our enrollment actually was much higher than our projection we met with teachers and said what would you prefer we actually gave them the option and that's how we you know and obviously in most cases at least when we first offered people were picking the extra person so we sat as a team and said okay why don't we just commit to putting teaching assistance at kindergarten first second and third let's just that was not the signal that we were going to go over the cap but we saw the benefit of providing the extra assistance to service our youngest students so uh and i just

248leave this one right i'm sorry but those are gone now right oh there's two that are gone right because we can't they're not filled now so we're not we're not displacing someone so we're not again we're not bearing the unemployment attrition nutrition right and they and then they'll stay in k12 yeah so and we weren't and and the key here is that they're presently vacant so we're not going to incur any unemployment cost that's uh so i i look to you and be more than happy to try to answer questions we've we've asked we've you know answered just about every question we were given and it's really yours now i i appreciate that let me just sort of talk about the counselor for a second my understanding what content uh the counselor that you're removing

249yeah um that after the removal of the council counselor the caseload will be average of 205 right as per counselor and the state of connecticut generally speaking the case load for an average counselor is 450. right and i gave i sent you information because someone someone asked me that question from the board it came through houston i sent responses to that so you have it on your email it was the uh i think it was the last question and i gave you a chart it was actually prepared by kim and you're right this the national and state average student to teacher i'm sorry student to counselor ratio exceeds 400. the school counselor american association of school counselors uses a figure of 250 our case loads for our counselors with the reduction will be around 205.

250the reason that happens is because the director has a smaller caseload peter the fellow who was here has a smaller case so that's that's typically how it's done in every district and that's how it's been done here so we're talking uh per counselor maybe 20 students more than what they're currently serving but bear in mind our counselors also don't participate in the functions such as student assessment so they don't organize and coordinate administer sbac or cmt or even ap testing we pay we have stipends to pay people to do that so it's not an apples it's not a true comparison based on other places but it's um we've added two counselors during this administration's tenure and i outline that in the response this is extraordinary extraordinarily difficult to propose to you but this is what

251we believe to be the best possible solution to the challenge that we've been telling can you go ahead i just want when you say music is so music so children are still going to have band chorus area so there's really no cut to programming this is just a kind of a humanity a reconfiguration of something thank you for saying that because the first book is very exciting to people people will be thrilled but the first bullet here is very significant now some folks will say well gary you're you're stretching here because you know you're cutting theater the program feeder still exists we're simply because we're in a position where we were reverting to the way it was before that's all okay this issue so i would just like to maybe just brainstorm with you a

252little bit or share my perspective of how i'm feeling about things and i know this is difficult i'm so grateful i'm not you that i have to make these decisions well it's reciprocal because guess what it's we all make the decision and we're all right right but i you had to come up with these suggestions i can't even imagine that i'm i'm incredibly grateful for the social worker being brought back in so kim thank you so much for recommending that for me i appreciate academics beyond belief but honestly social emotional well-being often trumps that in my mind and to have students be good people at the end of graduating avon is more important to me and so when i hear programs that really impact students at their core at their heart where they are who

253they truly are and who they're meant to be it concerns me that i want to try to brainstorm with you and find another option when you say theaters and gone because productions will be there i was one of the first people at thomson brook that brought it to town so i'm just i want you to understand that we brought it because we were passionate about it but the things that i've seen happen with the children that are involved in the relationships i for i know gary i'm just trying to make a statement i agree um the impact that i see on students lives and how they engage with one another and make relationships they wouldn't have outside of that program when i hear students say it's not just the production it's also the class that's

254where i'm like i don't want to give up yet because i hear them and i think there's value in during their school day that's their hook right i mean we hear not everybody comes in for math not everybody comes in for science sometimes they come in for theater sometimes they come in to sing that's what gets them in this building and so to take away that hook breaks me in some level and so i just i would love to hear that you will go back and maybe look and see if we can reconfigure in some way and maybe rename a class so that public speaking skills can be incorporated just something to maintain that also for me i'm very i'm an optimistic person by nature so kim i have faith in you that we're going

255somewhere and by three years we'll be there but until we're there i worry about catching those students that are still uncertain in that sac tutor position being lost i that's my concern and so i just want to make sure we're not dropping the ball unintentionally i don't think it's on purpose i just feel like should we catch that somehow just in the interim until we get it right that's where my heart that's where my brain is when it comes to athletics i wonder is it possible and the suggestion was made and i think it makes sense to ask every team to give up a little bit so we don't have to drop these three and then the fundraising if that's an option rather than having it look like it's eliminated promoting that that's an option

256to maintain it would be helpful so parents know how to get involved or whatever but if every team when we have 20 plus teams gave up something we could save these and that sounds more ideal to me i don't know if it's just a dream but i just those are my concerns okay uh mrs rell i think you were yeah um kim just gave us a very nice presentation about all the different levels and nowhere in there did we hear anything about a social worker and i don't believe in the last couple meetings we heard anything about a social worker the first time i heard about a social worker was last night when i looked at this sheet i'm not saying that we don't need a social worker i'm just saying it's the first time

257my suggestion would be if this is over a three-year period maybe that's something we can add next year this year instead add back half the theater teacher and add back the sports which would meet a lot of needs that we heard tonight one of the i'm sorry i'm interrupting no no one of the things that we were wrestling with with theater i wish i could look at you and say i can make this enrollment work it's just not there so you would be telling us that if you want part of that position restored then it's okay for the enrollment to be wherever it's going to be there's that's the other side of it there's there's don't misinterpret what i'm saying you know just but are there enough 45 kids should be enough for half time

258as close to what a half-time teacher would have well it's right if they're all in the same two periods yes but if they're scattered over the course of the whole day you may not have and we're i don't know where the 45 came from because we haven't seen the 45 we have the registration oh okay so that okay that because that's a good question the 45 the number that we didn't again we again we have we have the number of students that have been enrolled now whether that will change because as one young person said well the courses that you know he wanted to take didn't fit so they put them in theater and that happened to work that that may happen again it just there's it's not an exact same almost sounded like jill

259patterson was a social worker i mean that's kind of what i heard tonight well because my comment was that in prior years we haven't had this discussion until after the referendum has passed and we know that we have a real final number because right now we know what the board of finance has said but if the referendum doesn't pass then all of this is again right well the issue the the issue and i i i respect what you just said i have a problem i have a statutory problem because i have to notify people by may 1st there's no variance from that okay that but i with all of you i expect that's been a problem for many years and we worked around it so i'm not sure we didn't work around it we have

260never missed notifying people prior to may 1st but did we notify them already we've never had this many we've had to right so if they're already notified well but peggy's talking about past years there's not one year that we've been in this position since i've been here of cutting teachers after may 1st yes it's been non-renewal of meth through non-renewals for the most part i mean i recall this vividly because this is one of us the superintendent's worst nightmare because when the budget cycle doesn't allow a line with the statutory language i'm put in a position where i have to act now i'm just going to draw i'm not throwing stones at west hartford but it's just the one that comes to mind most recently i refused as a profession to send out non-renewal notices

261to everyone who's not tenured i view that as irresponsible and nothing but you know throwing everything against the wall west hartford sent out 285 non-renewal letters whether they were going to non-renew them or not and i remember the days of being a new teacher and every single year i got a non-renewal letter no one spoke to me it was in my mailbox because that was the mindset and from that day forward i said that's not the way to treat professionals and that's not the way we're going to treat our staff if we're going to non-renew that we're going to have the intestinal fortitude and the courage to sit in front of them and say this is this is why this is happening here are some options that might become available that's why this is so

262sensitive with me because may 1st is a drop dead date unless the whole you know the only town that ever had a problem with this was montville and the superintendent's name was jake luz iii he threw the keys on the desk of the commissioner of education and he said i relinquish all responsibility for the montville public schools because they didn't have a budget they locked the central office doors it's the only time i've ever seen someone not adhere to the may first and we i don't want to send out all the notices it's demoralizing and that's why we i know that this is a very unique year that we're sitting here right now having to have this conversation the earlier years my first welcoming president was the million-dollar cut that ended up being 850 000

263because the health insurance changed we still met the may first deadline there too i think mrs arrowley has some questions did you finish oh good you didn't finish or you did no i'm fine okay i i thought you had i didn't mean to come here so i have a question with regards to theater in the sense that um fine arts is something that while the state has backed off moving to 25 requirements credit requirements until in the future they did establish a date i forget the exact year but it increases the fine arts which is why i thought we were moving proactively to address that um so and so that was one of my questions right it's and you're absolutely correct this is a manifestation of the number of participants that's why it was brought

264forward to me to say we can't carry it it's too low no but i guess and i know we're gonna go back and try to we're gonna go see how if things could be compressed uh well because what my point is i'm sorry i'm not being clear is that it well it's not a requirement today uh it will be a requirement that there's an increased electives and finances so we were trying to proactively get there we're going to have to get there and so i you know what i heard was compelling and i would like to see it if it could be a 0.5 and just at the high school um so that that that would be what it is one caution just so you know the 0.5 is no guarantee that you'll have the

265same person i understand i'm not talking people i know this is hard to when you get into a reduction scenario when you sit where we sit it's gonna sound the way it's gonna sound you can't you can't think of people because you have relationships all over the place you have to follow what the contracts dictate um i hear you okay and the other three of you the other thought that was presented tonight which was something i had also was and i know it's not popular but none of this is is to increase pay to participate and increase parking um so that's i i agree with deb in the sense that cut all don't cut three sports that does not appeal to me at all to uh annihilate certain sports and only certain sports the social

266worker i would i agree with what's already been stated i was stunned to see that because that's not been a discussion ever this year so i i'm not supportive adding a position when we're taking away so many and i've been a strong supporter of of keeping the the sac position again position um because i think given what we've heard is needed and it meets a need until we get these pieces in place over the three year period i would recommend not the social worker but keep the sac position let me if i might rephrase your question slightly and ask mrs miermann why do you believe a social worker is preferable and what will they be doing that is different better whatever than the current uh sac question rather than have it just rumble around in

267my head for starters a certificate certification and you know qualifications are on certified staff i think the training that goes on and the expertise that's available is something that we could benefit from the other is looking at how we're providing that multi-disciplinary support across that continuum and making sure that the relationship pieces are being managed across that piece of it so it's beyond just what currently exists in stack so would they be teaching because i mean you're we're talking about adding a lot of classes um social workers don't typically teach in the same manner as what you're asking about typically it's through either counseling there is instruction certainly that they do provide that instruction does look in different formats everything from working with a small group on an instructional piece or sometimes they're embedding their

268instruction in a moment in terms of supporting a student so in those pieces it's not the same as a classroom teacher and the only other piece that i would add is i've always been willing to stretch class sizes i i've not heard that unwritten set under 20 i believe in the contract sticking to the contract period so which means these could go higher okay further questions this is young so i would also echo what mrs rowley said in that up to the contractual obligations i would support stretching the class sizes particularly at the lower grade levels and i've expressed already my deep concern about losing the sac position and the current model that's currently in place and i would be in favor of keeping the static position [Music] over a new social worker this year

269as we transition to a new model if that's possible that position i believe is considerably less than what's currently 23 4. right if there are ways to seek cost avoidance and cost containment that would avoid using outside consultants to save a position we have seen that other districts realize savings by utilizing a professional development model that does not rely on outside consultants but rather utilizes in-house experts in their own staff and their own faculty over the last four years by my estimation we've spent approximately somewhere over four hundred thousand dollars on the capturing kids hearts professional development model including consultants fees substitute teachers travel food and lodging i do have the numbers here in front of me if somebody wants specifically to break that down in the consultant fees alone the current budget the way

270that i read it appears to show an approximate consulting fee of 101 thousand dollars if you take away the 28.5 that still leaves 72.5 on the table for consulting fees alone for capturing kids hearts i i believe this model of professional development is unsustainable and it would be my proposal to eliminate capturing kids hearts professional development district-wide i don't believe we can afford it anymore all right further confidence so i guess i would like to know what the administration thinks the number what is the budget number of remaining for cap the commitment to capturing kids hearts for for this year um i really support the social worker i feel like our district will really benefit from from a social worker would support i think we need sac as we transition i think sacked should be

271supported this year upcoming year regarding the three sports i kind of wish this was pitched to the to us and to the public is you know like crew i really like how they do a hybrid they do a hybrid uh fundraising through the boosters and then you know they they have kind of a they they do some of their own fundraising through the boosters they pay a double pay to participate fee one comes to the school district and the other goes to the parent support group i'm not sure what their but they also do other fundraising they also have other like leaf raking and all those other things so it would be really helpful to me if the students involved and the parents and the teams could kind of be working with the athletic director

272and the boosters to say uh for example i talked to a parent today who jv golf parent and said you know if we could raise the six thousand dollars for the greens fees we can be you can rely on us for that piece and then the line item that the administration would be responsible for would be the um jb coach so i guess i really just want to plug that we should be supporting that model for some of these sports that in my opinion because i i would feel terrible to lose those opportunities for kids if you want to provide an answer to mrs young the remaining balance for capturing kids hearts is 23 4. 23 400 yes for this coming year yes okay but does that include that's it takes it all out completely

273if you take 23 for yeah the whole what about the cost of the teacher days that they have to come in it's all gone if you if you take 23 four yeah on top of the 28 5 that we've already taken capturing kids hearts no longer is supported in the school district so we could use that to swap out for the sack but hasn't pine grove receives some awards for the benefits that that program is providing he i jess was going to be the person to make the announcement but pine grove has been named the national show showcase school so to say it's not working well it's an incorrect statement one out of five schools is a 20 return on an investment that's not i wouldn't say that's a stellar you know outcome one of

274our five schools that's actually using it and benefiting from it all right let me it's the hour is like one other idea have you guys revisited the other post employment benefits program and actually investing that money as opposed to just letting it sit in cash so at the end of this year i'm going to have a better analysis based on the retiree pool active retiree pool and their not just the premium costs for what they pay on a monthly basis but the actual usage because typically retirees are high users as everyone knows and because we're fully insured here we pay every claim out of pocket so interestingly enough there's never been an analysis done on the active retirees for the board of education side which is why our other post-employment benefits was so low twenty-five

275thousand dollars is it's crazy um so i'll be able to look at that at the end of this year and have a better model and so what will end up happening is the analysis that was performed on the full pool right because those retirees were included in the full pool um i'm actually going to be requesting a transfer right out of the big health insurance line into that other post-employment what's the total obligation at this point um i i don't know the total obligation because i didn't have the number ever we were just told by the um the actuary at the time that we need to be contributing a minimum of you know 100 thousand dollars a year because it hadn't been doing 25 000 but it's actually far larger than that if you look

276at the usage right but again that that cash if you will is sitting in our current employee health insurance benefit line so it there's really not going to need to be an increase or decrease it's going to be a transfer once i have the number though for you okay could be something to review houston mr chairman i'm sorry um i know i know the hours late i'd like to be able to leave here understanding what the board wants me to do going forward right because there's been a lot of oh no i understand that i was going to talk about how i he's going to arrive at that situation if you i just need to know what are we talking about i have a chance of talking oh i'm sorry sure now i'm just waiting

277um i i want to go back to something that peggy said and we've never been in this position without um really having the referendum and i know it's a unique year and first you know i applaud your efforts and presenting that's how difficult it was but you know given the information we heard tonight you know and the connection that so many students had with the theater program in the school as opposed to just after school and also learning that i think a lot in the community are trying to find other creative ways of keeping those three sports in place without maybe affecting the budget you know i i look at those two issues and you know i concerned about the five other high school positions that may be lost i know when you mention theater

278we have all the theater students but when we find out what those other five are we may have all those groups coming out supporting those programs also so like i fear english and math are gone i understand what you're saying and and i understand you need to give people notice i know in the past you know we didn't go to west hartford route and give nine renewals to everyone but we did sometimes and correct if i'm wrong we'd get did give it to some staff but then we're able to hire them back afterwards and if you need to do that and then we learn more on how we can bring some back i think that's the situation we may be faced with from what we learned tonight all right my suggestion on how to proceed

279is that i will make a motion to approve the superintendent's budget hopefully someone will second it and then someone will then come along and say i want to make a modification and then we'll test whatever modifications that want to be done one at a time so that way we'll know whether or not we're going to have any modifications or not because a lot of us have said i like this modification i like that modification we need to know if the board is in favor of it now of course you can always just say i want to table the whole thing and so if you a a motion a table does have priority and if that carries then we have to have a special meeting we'll come back do we have to do that first before

280we get into the yeah if you want to make a motion a table now would be the time to make it yes laura so in the interest of transparency since so many people did not even know that this was going to happen until you know or what was going to be on this until yesterday i would like to make a motion a table and hold a special meeting okay does that have a second second all right it's non-debatable motion all in favor of the motion to table i three all opposed just one two opposed and the rest are abstentions me and yeah and me mr burke so emotion sorry i was asleep you were asleep what's your vote go again after the motion to table yeah i got that and i got the three include

281the two three three so let's shoot yep howard now yeah i'll keep going can i motion to table two since it wasn't written down yet well no there's only one person makes the motion that you could vote in favor of it that's what i'm saying yes yes all right so that's four people voting in favor okay i'm keeping track of the emotion okay all right now keep going those opposed i'm opposed perks opposed is there anything how's the world is it most so then it carries four to three about abstentions what are the other two the other two i was saying i want to discuss it further i don't care what you're talking about there's a special emotion no no not to discuss the budget so i'm not voting to the table so okay okay

282then you are opposed to the table no he's okay and mrs rell i think you're obsessed i have to track this yep so they're two abstentions so technically speaking the motion carries which means we have to have a special meeting which then says yes go ahead i just i just want to make sure that you clarify for me what you want me to go back and look at yep this is now's the time the first to talk any of you said that you want to you want us to go re-examine theater to see if we could maintain some fte of that position that's we're going to do that what other things you want me to look at i would like to swap capturing kids hearts for a sec well okay all right that's it that's

283that that's that would be a voting i don't know okay i'm sorry i'm just trying to figure out what work i need to do for you so now i have to go look at theater to figure that out and and i'll give you what's about all of the options we come up with i'm looking for the tasks you need me to produce something this is young what time and i'm looking for clarification and maybe this is just outdated but when i had added up all these numbers having to do with professional district-wide development on this budget spreadsheet maybe it isn't capturing kids hearts maybe it's something else and i just don't know what it is you know 15 000 this is so you wanna eat my suggestion would be to speak with right heather what

284would it be would it be easier to just put in an email and say what are these sure okay and that's and that's out of the that is the only budget we produced that was in my folder yes yeah so you want all the three lines all the 330 lines you want yeah yeah second number i think well i there were some up here and some down here that were yeah i'll i'll go through it my suggestion is speak to heather we'll just give you the details she knows everything okay all right we'll get you that all right what else and what would the title nine implications be of getting rid of volleyball title ix implications okay i will review that with tim tim [Music] did you discuss everybody taking a cut from every sport

285again i'm gonna i'm going to go back now if that's something that you want us to do you know asking for them to take the cut or just making the cutter two different things uh i would certainly be speaking to the athletic director as early as tomorrow and say okay have you looked at this option and and how about laying out a fundraising option for i think it would end up making like a co-op sport kind of not not necessarily it's a hybrid fund it's a hybrid sit i really can't in the position i'm in do that i can you know assist them by providing some information and that would work i also just wanted to say you know in terms of professional development i understand the value of the professional development and you know

286gary you've done comparisons in the past to companies and how important it is but in my opinion i i think there's other resources out there where it won't cost us anything and i'm still able to mention cabe or maybe others within our district have you know uh certain specialties where they can help out because in my view the the sac or other positions where you have direct face-to-face contact with students to me are extremely valuable in a difficult time like this and whether it's you know staff teachers you know the sac position just wherever we're losing that face-to-face to me is going to hurt our students so i'd rather replace the professional development away if we could i'm adding on to that i mean maybe even if those line items aren't all capturing kids hearts

287what else are we spending professional development dollars on that we might be able to find within our own district or you know for free through crap or some other okay so i'm interpreting that is you want to make reductions to the professional development we want to understand what each of those lines are right two that's two different things you know giving we're gonna give you the detail for every line item i just want to be clear that you're saying you want me to go cut it no i let me make this clear i think what's happening is a number of board members are saying what their interest is and they're giving you sort of they would like to be able to do a chinese menu type option i can't tell you for sure all of

288these comments in fact i'll tell you not all of these comments we'll pass the full board because they're basically saying we require additional information that's fine that's wonderful they're also saying that we don't want to vote because they voted to table it so they're saying we'd like some more information so do not i would say view this as the building of a chinese menu which is probably probably somewhat weird but one from column a one from column b so someone says all right one of the issues raised suppose we leave the social worker out can we keep sex that was someone said that i can't tell you because we haven't done the voting process that that commands the majority of the board have we made your pot you're now looking at your face have we

289made your task impossibly difficult yes okay and only because while i understood what each of you said right to have me try to go create scenarios is without understanding where all of you are is virtually impossible to do i mean we've done we've been so close to this budget we've already cut this thing procedurally i will do whatever you want me to do i know i've never suggested although procedurally what we can do is test out some of these ideas and say we want to cut this we want to add this but that still requires us to vote on this and we can say it's a tentative vote come back to us and let us know whether or not it works can we do that one because that way i can tell you whether or

290not once you once you vote you give me the responsibility to implement all right so unless we say come back we'll take another and i'll use i'll use right i mean i'll use the student assistance center tutor a number of you have raised that and that's an area of interest for you is it unreasonable for me to look at you and say how many people are in favor of that because that plays into every other scenario so if people want to keep that position now i have to figure out how to fund that okay some people have advanced some ideas on how to fund that so so would it be helpful to have a sort of a straw vote really i need to have people say on the various items all right can i ask

291i understand we tabled it but if we're to go along with what we're talking about if we were to add in or suggest that we add in sac the theater and the sports that's a hundred thousand dollars if we take out the social worker and some professional development to offset that is there some consensus to that i will not ever vote to eliminate a social worker okay we're not eliminating one we're just not adding one i i'm not i'm not it's not in my life i would support that peggy yeah i would i would i would vote for that i could this year you're never going to get it back this this will be this we don't have it though wow tell me what your what your proposal is so i can get it down

292my proposal big picture and i'm not sure all the dollar amounts is if we add in add back theater the sac position and the sports round numbers is a hundred thousand dollars right to be funded with a limit not adding the social worker and some savings in professional development or other non-kid line items up to the discretion of the administration of what those non-kid line items are now is this you want him to come back with a specific proposal to that effect or you want to approve that i'm not sure that we can approve it because we've tabled it but it was like the direction but to give gary to hearing what gary's saying and us just tabling it if this is something that people would generally agree on i think it's a way to

293give him direction of what the board would generally agree on i would agree in the theater there's a distinction theater position can be whatever you can do stop it it's late um stop what chatting on the side all right it's peggy and jay sorry all right the distinction is you can vote to pick it up from the table you can actually real live and prove it that's fine if that's what you want to do those who voted in favor of the motion are the only ones who can make that motion the table right right you can also have a straw poll for this to see where the board is and then we'll have another special meeting is there a preference in the interest of transparency for the public to participate in this process i believe

294we should have a special meeting okay anyone disagreeing no but i i think a straw fall would be great i understand that's the proposal that she was all right so all those in favor of what i would call the rel proposal no it's not to eliminate a social worker maybe exactly sack some portion of theater and sports offsetting not adding a social worker and doing a reduction of professional development or other non-kid lines that's her proposal i want to understand that when the future building administrator whoever that is when they come in if at some point in the future made a recommendation and a request that they needed to have a social worker in that building to meet their current need that this could be revisited again it's they already transfer it's a normal transfer

295under uh the finance committee which gets reported up to us as every other normal transfer yes thank you the administrators made the request already not we don't have a new building administration these administrators made a request already all right so a straw poll means nothing guys it's 11 30 at night i want to have a straw poll so we have some directions just an idea all right it's an idea it's not creating emotion it's not telling what to do it's telling them to come back with a proposal would you raise your hands if you're in favor of it one two three four five six seven eight no doubt check it seven in favor seven opposed as to sorry two opposed as a straw poll all right okay okay in light of the hour um i

296would propose that we skipped the next items communications from the public discuss get past committee reports any further communications from the public because we have to go into executive sessions for one item oh my god sorry for one all right can we go to the other room so we don't have to wait okay uh hearing no objection we're moving into executive session unanimously at 11 26. [Music] you