001I don't know good evening I'm calling this Newington Board of Education meeting to order the time now is seven o'clock P.M it is Wednesday March 29th 2023. would you please rise as you are able for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which its fans one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay if the clerk would please call our role here Danielle Toronto here Dr Bruce Fletcher here Wagner here Richard levarrier Richard levarrier Amy perrotti Sam Sharma here Anastasia yeah here I have everyone here except Mr leveria and Miss perrotti okay thank you very much the next thing we'll do we'll move on to agenda Item B which is our presentation of awards and proclamations
002and tonight we have an everyday hero award and this award is going to be presented to Sylvia Ribeiro the World Language teacher at Newington High School Matt's here okay come on up and hurt foreign recognition of your positive impact on students and staff and for going above and beyond and working Equity into everything you do and for connecting with the students of different cultures it is my pleasure to present you this award anything just thank you thank you a language teacher yeah loss for words yes if I could read the actual uh Narrative of what oh yeah said about her and her nominator is Ashley klopper who is also a teacher at Newington High School in our science department she is she's right over come on up Ashley um so I have the privilege of
003co-advising NHS student council with Sylvia and I am so amazed at how she works Equity into everything she does not only does she advise stuco but she also has started a French Club and a Portuguese club at school at the request of students who felt underrepresented she works to get to know students of different cultures in her classroom and has built a classroom community that moves outside of her classroom walls she encourages her colleagues to learn about their students and their cultures and she encourages students to be themselves it might seem small but when you hear students speak of Mr Barrio they light up and always say they feel like they can truly be themselves and are accepted in her classroom so that is the full I'm going to do that all right I'm going
004to open it up now for any board comments if we want to just go around the table okay set um I just want to say as I hear that and um I think it's wonderful that you were nominated but what strikes me the most she took it down was the part about how students feel they can be themselves in your classroom and so as a parent and a board member and a taxpayer that is the number one thing right we want to teach our craft but what we teach is we teach our children right that you don't teach French you don't teach Spanish you teach children so um that is a huge a testament to who you are and why you probably got this award so thank you but we're also teaching teaching we're having
005students be welcome still welcome in our class and I think that's the number one thing you know creating connections and um that's what we do we don't know we do it we just push so naturally that you know that's why I was because like we all do and I see it every day when he's in high school in other schools all right how are you just want to Echo this and I think what's great is when we have the nominator here um with it because it just shows the the true camaraderie that we see amongst our staff and we want to make sure that we're still cultivating that um and as a former stuco student and stuco president uh literally I think my mom was just like so annoyed with me every time I was
006like Mom stuko is life it's live um but because of our advisors uh really being able to have um really supportive staff I know makes a huge difference it made a huge difference for me and I know those students that come we have our student council Representatives at our board table and it's just wonderful they are always beaming and they're always great Representatives so thank you for cultivating their talent and for being a great teacher not only in student council so I know that's not your even your day job too so doing all the advising the outside extracurriculars is really great to hear that we're doing the above and beyond on the everyday so truly an everyday hero thank you um I think um Danielle said what actually stood out to me so I'm glad
007that we're on the same page there and it's a good thing you went first there um but the other thing that stood out to me was just the fact that students who felt underrepresented could come to you and that you stepped up and did something for them and I think that that speaks so highly of not only yourself but you know kind of like what you said just earlier just all the teachers in that building just doing whatever they can for for every student um to feel like they are represented and that the staff in this district and you know people at this table are here for them to be themselves and to be represented so I think the work that you do makes you an everyday hero and I think everything that you do
008above and beyond just kind of puts that stamp on it and makes it official so thank you so much um um just ditto to everything because everyone said it so eloquently but I did want to just note one thing that I loved is that students came to you they thought underrepresented and they wanted um clubs or activities or things to be formed and and you to advise them and I think that's really powerful that students knew this is a teacher we can go to and she'll take action and she will make it happen and I know that it's not always outside of the teaching hours to give your time but it seems like from um from what was said about you it is um it is truly your passion and giving that time is something
009that you love and enjoy uh as many hours as it is it's just truly an act of love so thank you for all you do you are um you make Newington proud so thank you thank you Anastasia how are you um yes I just have to Echo what everyone else said um thank you for you know everything you do and you know going above and beyond to help students clearly it shows um based on you know your recommendation and just all the positive things I've heard also from other students um just to read the line that it says it might be it might seem small but when you hear students speak of Miss Roberto they light up and just to know that you have that positive impact in their life and especially with all the
010stressful times and different things that go on and you can be that light like during their day I think that's amazing so thank you very much for all you're doing NPS is very happy to have you thank you all right uh Sam Sharma hey I'm just gonna Echo what everyone else said so thank you for going above and beyond and you know what you've done is really inspiring so thank you again okay and I don't know if you noticed the note Richard leveria was online okay you know all right very good all right so now we're going to be moving on to uh agenda item C this is public participation on any matter related to board responsibilities we do limit civil participation to three minutes and it is our policy not to respond to public
011comments after they are made and we will go back and we'll get answers to people if they have questions at an appropriate time so if you want to participate and you are online just raise your hand in the Google meet if you are here in person we welcome you to come to the end of the table and state your name and the street that you live on and then we will give you your three minutes because he's under the table yeah I've never done this before it'll turn green I just want to start in some really really nice segue that you guys were talking about you know inclusion and participation and wonderful teachers except that I'm having a different experience in John Wallace um I had emailed the board with uh concern about pretty strong
012anti-centering excuse me you need to state your name in your eyes oh Josh I'm so sorry Sean is born and I live in 204 Beacon Street um my son goes to John Wallace um thank you Dr brummett's familiar with me her and I have met several times um in the beginning of the Sierra had addressed numerous times both the school and Dr brummett on the anti-semitic incidents that my son has been encountering I had made a few suggestions on how to fix the issue many lessons Holocaust remembrance mention anything to which United the head and everybody agreed with me but nothing has been done we're currently in March I started this journey actually at the end of last year when I had suggested to Mr Diaz that something should be done um to mention since
013my son is a minority in school considered there's not many Jewish kids I'm personally am um an immigrant I'm of uh I was born a Soviet Union was raised in Israel so this I feel very passionate about it we're raised in a multicultural multilingual house and nothing has been getting done what has been done is just promises to me that things are happening nothing happens when things do happen somehow they're being investigated and we come back to the same thing of what is being done Mr Dr brummett told me that there's going to be many lessons I'm still to see any of those mini lessons even on Holocaust Remembrance Day this year I specifically asked maybe we should mention this to the student body just to know what anti-Semitism is kids don't know hate is
014not inherent hate is hot and if these kids are are not taught as a student body they don't know so now we have a bunch of eighth graders who are going into high school still uninformed on what it means to be anti-semitic um it's making my son uncomfortable it's making me uncomfortable there's been empty promises Non-Stop and I am here just to ask for help and to let me know please what is being done I'm seeing nothing and we just had a recent incident somebody has even went as far as to draw swastika to give my son a piece of paper with swastika on it my sons have been talked about as features how effed up excuse my franchise nose looks to say the least and again nothing is being done I would like to
015know how we're going to address it what is happening because I'm just about my wood scent at this point because I know for a fact if this was something different had to do with race or gender this would have been addressed very early and quickly like I said we're at the end of the year and I don't know if you want to sweep this under the rug and hope I go away but I'm not going away this is here and it's here to stay so here I am asking the question all right well thank you very much for coming and asking a question and we will confer and we will get you a response very soon I certainly hope so okay thank you very much is there anyone else from the public that wishes to
016come and speak [Music] so like three minutes I got a lot written down so uh Marconi 204 Beacon Street uh where to start here um you know I I Echo the settlements um I was not raised in the Jewish household uh so I don't know what I know what anti-Semitism is but I've never experienced it um I could tell you in the mornings when you see a child crying because he doesn't want to go to school because something's going to be said something needs to be done so I hope that you guys take that matter seriously uh we did meet a couple times uh with the superintendent uh we did bring this up and so far we've seen absolutely nothing done we were hoping that being addressed uh we spoke about advisory councils was brought
017up and this was over a month ago so you know um not going off the sheets you guys can only give me three minutes I apologize uh basically the the only thing that came from it was an option of the books for the children to read uh in the beginning of the year basically our whole our whole thing started at the dinner table when a 13 year old came home asking what's a hussy a a crack tits flapping around and a Milano baby after a few days of questions on this certain book that he was reading in the school uh we asked Mr Diaz if we could meet with him Mr did Miss Wheeling we're at the meeting Mr Diaz was kind enough to let us know don't worry uh our child would read books
018from straight white men next year okay uh I don't know why he brought up race but as a gentleman I bit my tongue after a few more conversations regarding the certain book that they were reading in school uh you know teenage pregnancy drug use underage drinking Mr D has let us know again don't worry next year he'll read books by straight white men who inform Mr Diaz that the book that we were discussing uh the book in question was actually a memoir written by a straight white man uh and after that he directed us to Dr brummett uh and this is actually our meeting with the superintendent very cordial she agreed that 13 years 13 years old was too young for this book that they were reading class at that meeting we also brought up
019some of the anti-semitic comments that have been made and asked if she could have it addressed in school we even discussed uh how she could we even discussed how it would be perfect timing seeing that the whole Kanye West tweet which I know everybody knows about and the Kyrie Irving tweet we're still fresh and everybody's mind I still be addressed not to worry about it we also mentioned how children were um I'll skip that part uh basically the only thing that came from that uh when we wanted to discuss the book was a book uh of of things for the children to read uh basically nothing happened on the anti-semitic uh and the rhetoric increased um so we requested the other meeting last month um basically I already covered that part but you know nothing
020is being done about any of this anti-Semitism that's going on in the school uh you know happens once okay happens twice I mean we're up to four or five times now uh so I would just like someone on the board to take this seriously take a look into it and hold people accountable and that's all right thank you very much for participating anyone else from the public all right I don't see anyone else there are no hands raised online I'm now moving us on to um agenda item D which is our consent agenda and you should have received a packet with all of the minutes related to these 10 different meetings so we have a slew of them here so what I would be willing to do is entertain a motion if there are no
021questions or changes that need to be made I'll entertain a motion for all 10 of them to be approved do you want to make the emotion oh my God it doesn't okay not sure why but it does all right I will read it then move to approve the consent agenda as a presented any discussion simply all those in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed say nay and unopposed okay so um the consent agenda has been moved forward now we're going to move to agenda item e superintendents of schools report the equity update on Elizabeth Greene School Dr brummett going to ask Mr Marciano to come to the podium or to the end of the table and I will project your slides for you fantastic and all you have to do is tell me
022when to advance excellent all right let me get I could see them all right so just good evening everyone uh my name is Jim Marciano principal of Elizabeth green this is my ninth year um uh working at uh working at Elizabeth green and being a part of this fine community and I just I wouldn't be remiss not to start by just saying how appreciative I am one to be employed by Newington Public Schools but two to be a part of the community at Elizabeth green the staff the students and the families have been outstanding uh the entire time I've been there and I I just I am so proud to be the leader of that school and the the people that work in that school and the families that attend that school are just amazing
023amazing individuals and uh really create a really good school environment for our students and our community so I'm going to talk a little bit today about a small slice of our Equity work uh we're focused really on inclusive practices at Elizabeth green um and so this work got started with us in terms of thinking a lot about how do we best serve our students with disabilities and we have lots of questions there um that we were you know batting around and thinking about and it's not important for me to read them it's more to think about how do we best serve our students with disabilities uh in the classroom in the most efficient way with the most qualified staff and and so those were some questions that were coming up um and we have been
024on a journey to to try and answer those questions as part of the work that we've been doing next slide so back I I want to say around 2017 we uh were fortunate enough to attend a training I was a Stetson training uh that um our special education leadership had put on on various members of different schools had participated in it and they talked a lot about inclusive schools how to best manage your staff um you know how do you do the what's the best instruction uh within the classroom environment um to support uh the the acceleration needed for our students with disabilities and then collaborative teaching um so that was a training that occurred in 2017 obviously I think 2017 don't quote me on the the exact day but it was around there uh
025and six years later uh we are in a position now where we've been able to manage some of those things and I'll kind of go through the history of where we were at and how that how that came out so next slide so we had this idea uh when we first started you know we had um when we were in 2000 117 I'll say around there we had two two case managers with case loads of 20 plus students most with academic obviously academic and behavioral needs a lot of our paraprofessionals were pushing into classrooms supporting in classrooms and providing most of the in-class academic and behavioral support to our identified students and our case managers would go from grade to grade class to class to provide specialized instruction in in deficit areas based on their
026IEP goals and objectives and at that time we only had a school psychologist providing all of this social emotional learning and behavioral support um so it when we had that for that initial training it sounded great but we didn't really have a structure for for managing that um next slide so and think about this concept or this idea of of creating a co-teaching environment where where two or more Educators right now it's two Educators uh a classroom teacher and a case manager working co-planning co-instructing and coinc co-assessing together uh within uh within a classroom um with a diverse group of students right uh finding a way to do that with with the the system we had and and a way to manage it um was it wasn't possible uh so some things have changed occurred
027over time uh both with uh board support and and you know uh some staffing changes happened um and some inquiry uh from some of my staff wanting to make a difference so next slide so um so a couple of things occurred we added a case manager which allowed our case uh our case loads to go down by five uh by five which made it more manageable we have a social worker who also can help out with the SEL um and behavioral uh components we we've also brought on a bcba that's shared between two of our schools and we also have a staff member um and our registered Behavior technician within our score um we transitioned from having our case managers providing all of the uh all of the um specialized instruction to including our interventionists
028in this our interventions take a big load of of the students and support them provide the instruction in reading and or math um uh we had to create a very intensive schedule and I'll show you a little bit of what that looks like in order for this model to work because I have multiple teachers working I have two teachers working in two grades and they have to align uh with the times that they're they're working and then our intervention team we have created an intervention team that really monitors the performance of our students as a whole um you know anyone that's at risk or at risk or some risk we're taking a close look at and seeing if we're providing the appropriate services to those students um and then as a big factor and a
029big part of our work specifically this year and part of last year has been really raising our increasing our cultural awareness uh cultural uh responsive pedagogy understanding uh as a driver of this work because that is a a main factor in in our success next slide please so so so the journey began um uh two years ago uh one of my fourth grade teachers um made a request she had attended some training she'd been finishing up a degree that she was getting and she said you know I'm she was really interested in the the special education aspect and and and helping regular Ed teachers become uh more informed about um uh uh uh the the inner workings of an IEP and and those things and she she took it upon herself and she had brought
030up this idea of co-teaching with me um and that was really the seed that started it and she had asked to attend some training um and and I had knew in the back of my head when we'd done this work previously um that we had some connections out of uh at Circ um the special education Resource Center uh we we made some connections with uh with one of uh with our coach her name's Michelle LeBron Griffin and and um so I had reached out to uh miss scolioso our our special education director and kind of at can we make this work um and and she did um and so we started uh two years ago um uh the trainer from Cirque uh Miss uh Miss LeBron Griffin came in provided some summer professional learning uh
031got us started on what co-teaching is and how it could be implemented in the classroom um and then from there we've been doing monthly on-site coaching so she'll come in uh she'll do an observation she'll provide feedback in terms of how it's going um and teachers can ask questions and navigate any intricacies of what they're they're coming across um um a big part of this is scheduling and like I said I'm going to show you a little bit of that how do I make time for them to co-plan um those were questions I had to answer as part of this um and then this year we were able to expand so that same process repeated it again now we have we have two code talk for co-taught classrooms one in grade one one in grade
032two one in grade three and one in grade four um and so we have a lot of moving Parts going and then a lot of our Focus this year has really been on again building the tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy so all of those pieces together help support the growth of our students uh next slide so just a little bit about the co-teaching approaches uh I think essentially uh our goal with this is to provide opportunities for our our teachers to break up our students in different ways um it's it's much easier and and um much more engaging for the students that work in smaller groups uh so a lot of the time our teachers are engaged in something called parallel teaching where um our co-teachers are working in opposite ends of the room but
033doing a very similar lesson maybe in different ways with different supports um and each of those approaches has a purpose and use uh within the kotok classroom um and and it really is driven by the student needs so that in order for them to implement these they have to they're co-planning they're thinking about well what's going to be the best way for all of our students to be successful um and the impact on students we'll talk about in a few minutes um next next slide please so what we had to do to get there this is just a snapshot of the of the um the 40 or so students or I think it was uh closer to 50. um of identifying all of the services the students need and then how much time throughout the
034day based on their IEPs it was quite a comprehensive process that we went through um and tried to identify who's who's best suited for the kotar classrooms um and you can see there's you know different levels of um of how we were kind of labeling that but it was an intensive process every member of our uh uh the members of our case management team um our school psychologists our social worker and our speech and language path all kind of contributed their their parts to this uh which allowed us to to formulate the groupings of of the students next slide next was developing a building schedule that supported it which was is always an interesting and and fun Endeavor um but you can see the most important thing that I needed to do was make sure
035that there was no overlap between the instructional blocks for reading and math um and and because those are the two subject areas that we have the co-taught classroom um or the co-taught experience going on um and then also provide opportunities for extension we have a half hour block where we provide that um that specialized instruction so that was quite interesting so you can see here here's the example of how it looks in in actual action these are the two case managers and then the classrooms that they are working in at any given time throughout the day their day is quite busy they do get a lot of steps in from one class to the next um uh just the way the building is structured but it is a masterpiece um I will take credit for
036it if I could a little bit anything to put together to get all of these classrooms working together or to Blake uh to to make it in such a way where there's a little bit of time in between each class um um so that the case manager doesn't have to run from one to the next although she literally does um next slide so um I I'll tell you we I wanted to give you some data because I'm a data guy I like to to share some of it and and one of the things that I look for as an indicator of success is the general number of students in each of these classes moving from the at-risk some risk range to the not at risk range anymore um and this is data that was collected
037over the the fall in the winter this year and you could see larger numbers of of uh greater number um smaller how am I going to say this um you can see larger number increases in our uh no that's not there is uh less students at risk and at some risk in grades one and two and and um there are some anomalies in grades three and four that I I I have some ideas for what's feeding that um but I don't think we've been doing it long enough and have everything in place where we're seeing the long-term effects at this point but that's just some elements but there are some other things that I want to show you if you can click the next slide because this is the most compelling thing for me now
038if you look at um this is uh one of our classrooms in September she had uh 13 of her 17 students at risk right um that's 76 of her class in March now she's moved about 60 of them to some risk and it's it's quite a progression for that level of of of um for that level of need um and that's unique to this particular classroom um which I I'm that's a profoundly beautiful chart in my eyes because of the growth that they're manifesting right that you're seeing in that um and then the the the um the graphic on the other side uh shows um how our students in in fourth grade are doing in relation to the IAB which is one of our standardized assessments that we've been administering as kind of a um
039a summative to uh units that they've been learning uh this is an Ela unit in non-fiction that was just recently administered and you can see the um out of this uh seven students with disabilities that have been tested in that in that class five of them are at or near standard um and that's that's a that's that's again a pretty good growth because our goal is to make sure our students with disabilities are meeting this the grade level standards um you know in the in the same way shape and form that our our students without disabilities are thank you um next slide this is how it looks in math uh we see a greater increase of a greater decrease of the number of at-risk students in this particular subject area this is on math computation
040um again our goal is uh to move that number obviously to zero percent across all grades so that's the path we're on next slide so some of the teacher commentary I did sit down with them and just want to kind of share some of the things that they they had noted as things that they find beneficial from this this work um and there's been some great stories about how students feel about themselves uh in the way they interact in the classroom because it's no longer just a special education student and a case manager working together those those opportunities to be in groups with their their grade level peers is is maximized uh in many many different ways um and so that's that's a huge one that gets brought out and then the collaboration between the
041general ed teacher and the special education teacher the benefits of all of that both in strategy practice understanding of of this of the student um and and how they're able to service the students is is been a a great um uh a point of uh continued um blanket on the word I wanted to use for that but a point of continued celebration uh in regard to how the teachers feel about it recently uh next slide Maureen recently we had um the Connecticut's advancing inclusive principal leadership team uh come members of the state department along with Dr bruman and some other central office administrators came uh this was the director I believe um Dr Carol Quirk and her feedback to us in terms of the practices that were at egreen she this team had visited both
042our school in Reynolds for some of these practices in relation to inclusive cultures and practices we uh Mr Smith and I have been both asked to present at uh um at a national comp a conference in Maryland as a result of the work that we've done especially around the scheduling um so next slide so again uh this is kind of the general benefits and impact of the co-teaching model uh what you see here um you know in terms of students without with IEPs without IEPs and so on and so forth I did Cover a lot of that I think through the the conversation so I'm not going to go into much detail here with with what those benefits are I think you kind of see that in in the teacher commentary and and um and
043some of the things that I shared with you and then so I had that one of the things I always try to ask the staff is you know what are the things that are holding us back what are some of the things that we really need to be thinking about moving forward um uh and these are the things that they had come up with and then just making sure there's a broader understanding uh than working with Michelle LeBron Griffin on on one applying these approaches more unilaterally with some of our other staff because we have international interventions that push into um into our classrooms and and and informing them about what co-teaching is how it how it works and what our goals are with it uh is some of the things that uh um our
044co-teachers feel is important um they indicate given that the challenges of writing uh they think uh more support in that area would be beneficial um and then looking at student placements obviously we don't want a class where 17 students or 76 percent of the students are at risk so we have to really look at that more carefully um I thought we did a good job with that um in terms of of breaking down all of our students with disabilities but layering in some of the other students we had we there was definitely an abundance of more than we had anticipated um and then the continued learning and application of our culturally responsive pedagogies of critical importance and that's it any questions comments thoughts go ahead Mr what's that a comment thank thank you for everything
045yes you know Italy and you probably want to be home um so I do appreciate it and I love the the co-teaching model um that you're talking about because magic wand would be great if every code teaching model could look like that um so my question it's more of a statement and I and it's not really directed to you but probably more towards like a general thing so I think this is the third or fourth presentation we've had which they're all wonderful and I'm very happy to see the progress in Newington but one of the things that keeps sticking out to me is we keep talking about cultural awareness and culturally responsive pedagogy super but then I hear from the public that and this was my concern when um Ruth Chaffee presented last year right
046we want to be culturally responsive we have to make sure that we're culturally responsive to everyone and that was my concern and one of the and you didn't do that but so like like I just want when we're doing that I want to make sure we're respecting everyone so as we move forward we want to make sure we're not just looking at one or two cultures but we're looking at all cultures because it really is important that everyone feels included so I love the progress that you're doing but just kind of keep that as like a bubble over your head miss you up hi uh I want to say thank you so much for the presentation and um I just did want to mention I got to tour E green and I got to see
047this um teaching method um first hand the co-teaching and I was extremely impressed so I want to say thank you for that and also your school was amazing um I did like you know just watching that and seeing the flow of it firsthand in person I thought was magnificent um personal experience like my son um personally has went through a similar teaching model and went from a child who was at 1.9 verbal to a child who is doing like multiplication and kindergarten so I know the code teaching model works and I know um other places are using it as well and I'm excited to see that you know you're doing this at a green and the way you did like the schedule I know it's like you know it was a lot of work so
048I do appreciate appreciate that but I do want to say like watch me firsthand going in egreen I was with Dr brummett myself and just seeing just how the flow of the school Works how the model works I just you know would say like every board members should get a chance to see that because it was a great like thing observe and yes thank you so much for like doing the research going above and beyond and doing this because I know firsthand personally with my own child it does work and like I said to go from a child who was non-verbals and I was like verbal and doing like above the grade level I think it's magnificent so I know this program works and this teaching mod works so thank you very much for all
049your hard work I know it's like countless hours but thank you Wagner foreign I love this presentation I do love the co-teaching model um I am an educator myself so I'm unable to go into the schools and visit because it's got my own little 19 loves in front of me that I need to educate um so I'm unable to visit but I do know from my own experiences that the benefit um is unbelievable and I wish as Mr Rose alluded to that we as teachers sitting here could always have that model because while you did obviously speak from the benefit to the children and the benefit to the school as a whole I think as a teacher too there's just so much power in working with another person and really being able to Target those
050skills even when teachers do small groups so let's say we have four small groups moving around it gets kind of tricky sometimes to really work with this targeted group of kiddos that need that extra really intense math intervention and you have some students kind of investigating math problems over there and some students doing math games and it's kind of like conducting an orchestra and there's a flying flu and it just gets crazy so to have that's what it feels like really teachers back me up that's what feels like okay but um when there's another person in the room that you're co-teaching with that has that skill set to hone in on these skills for these kiddos and really help them overcome any deficits or close the gaps I think the results just go above and
051beyond so thank you to all the e Green teachers who participated in this and dedicated themselves to it and put in the hard work obviously reaping the benefits and um wonderful yes um yeah I just want to Echo that as a love to talk about my alma mater um and it's always great to have you here um it's just crazy to see yeah since I'm going when Wendy was a principal there and now seeing how much growth has happened and now I have a little cousin there and I know she's benefited from that but I wanted to really emphasize too we look at things in a lot of data lenses too here and just in terms of the increase in our special ed students has been drastic particularly in the last five years so knowing
052that this opportunity Gap is getting closed is really important I think that's one of our missions on the board is to be able to look at Opportunity gaps and this is a big one uh just obviously giving that so Kudos great job um and just question regarding some of those testings like are we looking at a spring model maybe that's a Wendy question of the new question but how often are we looking to kind of assess um the students progress because I love seeing a zero percent in the winter already yes yeah so we we test them every three uh three times a year in the spring uh they'll test again in the spring to see um so yeah that's the goal um and some of them some of the assessments are administered more often
053so like the running record one I showed you is five times a year okay um especially for students at risk would love to see those spring numbers May mid-may into May anyone else he's already spoken I could just add while that's being flushed out that um I didn't mention this when I introduced Mr Marciano but this is like just a small snapshot of the equity work he does at his school I know you've done a lot of work with Hispanic culture I know there was also your school did a Chinese New Year um celebration and so I know that he's working on all aspects of equity and this was just today was a focus on how we're trying to support our special ed students and I will say he was rather modest in the feedback
054uh having been on that team and part of the debrief process they were very impressed because they were also looking at um some of our multilingual kids which wasn't their initial Focus but they were looking at it anyway and kind of and also how the culture of the school was how children were treating each other and interacting with each other and they were very impressed with the kindness and the collaboration that they saw among the children as well as the adults so I do appreciate um how you've kind of cultivated that at your school and uh obviously we always have more work to be done Anastasia did you have another question no very good well yes I did actually sorry I didn't know if you heard me go ahead um so my question maybe is
055for Dr brummett um I know that everyone you know has different work situations you know that maybe not work remote or you know whatever um is there any way that they can make some sort of like video maybe just showing that the board or just how like the model works or how this teaching method works for those who don't have the opportunity because of you know not having that remote option you know maybe they can see it just so they can get the opportunity to see what I saw and just how like how it flows and maybe how we could you know put that teaching out on all the schools is there any way they can like make a video for the board I don't know if that's allowed or just so everyone can see
056that and get that opportunity is that something that we can do Dr Brennan yeah I would have to kind of figure out how to do it with confidentiality purposes but um and it also is a model that we're running at Reynolds so let me talk to the print respective principals to see if that's something we could do while respecting and being cognizant of uh confidentiality okay perfect thank you okay well thank you so very much good morning a bit more I do have um that's it for that update but I do have a under new business okay so we're going to move on to agenda item F our new business and the first thing is going to be the report of an update on Equity survey you have a guest here I do um Craig
057were you able to update the presentation is it linked in the main frame here beautiful so I just want to introduce before we launch into the presentation that I am joined this evening by some very good collaborators and uh Partners really in our work toward determining how are we doing with our Equity work uh so I'm joined this evening by Yvonne Austin from indelible impressions as well as another colleague Armando Jimenez and they are have been integral in both the development of the survey the interpretation of the survey and what we're going to show you tonight uh was what kind of results that we gleaned from that and we'll show you at least a portion of a video that was created to um kind of give some information to the community because one thing I
058think we've learned through the efforts and I'll let Yvonne and Armando speak to it as well is you know we need more communication around these issues absolutely and perhaps some of what we heard this evening through earlier on was not enough communication about what we're actually actually doing to address some of the issues that cause angst or upset with our constituents so um put this on presents so and I will let Yvonne and Armando jump in as they see fit you just have to make sure your mic is on the green I'm sure Wendy has already tipped you off to that that trick we administered the survey in the fall and it went out we deliberated about who it should go to but ultimately it went to every staff member in the district electronically we
059also agreed that high school students who have a maturity level that they could handle the survey and respond all parents and Guardians were sent the survey through electronic means and it went out to community members though I will say that was probably our smallest response rate uh how it was done virtually all electronic we put it through to parents on parent square or Guardians and then we also put it on our website and some of our partners put it on their websites so that is really what happened and we did get a fair uh response rate of well over I think was well over 800 responses so was this the slide you wanted to speak to Yvonne or the next one um I'm fine to speak to the next one okay so our respondents range
060from this group and I want to break it down very generally about what type of feedback we received so the students were the most in my opinion some of the most powerful feedback that we got in it when we dove into it with another partner avivaz which is the yellow brick um what's their second act what's the second part of the name Yellow Brick Communications or no it's just Yellow Brick so yellow brick is an organization that worked with us to analyze our data and uh I'll let Yvonne speak to that in in her remarks but what what was found based on that analysis was that our students were 100 and it's not an exaggeration 100 in support of our Equity work in fact they want to be more involved they want their student voice
061to be heard and we're going at that through many different mechanisms and they also hope to see the community support this they do they do know that this is something that might not necessarily be 100 embraced by all stakeholders but that is something that they want uh similarly our administrators and Educators and they're kind of grouped into one bucket well also felt that they understood the importance of academic Excellence for all in other words they know that our opportunity and achievement Gap is something that needs to change and that we can be very proud of the achievement of many of our students but we have to be mindful of those students that are not doing as well they also had 99 of the statements that they made about our Equity work were positive as we
062moved along to parents and Guardians the feedback that we got is they want to be involved they're willing to prioritize the student needs but they want more transparency with our objectives and our efforts so those are things that we took to heart and and did some work on already and similarly the community members and it was a pretty small response rate but they also wanted to be involved and they were they did have probably the most concerns out of the entire uh survey responders were what is our purpose what's the reason we're doing this what's any type of agenda behind it all right now I want to ask uh Yvonne Armando to speak to this slide before we kick off the the video that we have produced so Yvonne it's all yours excellent thank you
063Dr brummett and the entire Board of Education here at Newington Public Schools for allowing us to join you this evening um I speak as the chief culture architect CEO and founder of indelible Impressions with my colleague here Armando Jimenez our goal with this project in partnering with Newington Public Schools was to gain a better understanding of not just the equity work that's ongoing but the equity work that's still needed throughout the school district and what was critical to all of us engaged in this project including ourselves at indelible Impressions our data partner Yellow Brick as well as the equity office in Dr brumma as head of Newington Public Schools was that we captured the voices of as many people in the district as possible and that's intentional we know that when we capture more voices
064we get a much clearer picture of perspectives of experiences and that's very key when you're talking about the premise of equity so as a Next Step based on what we have learned what we have gleaned and the continued steps that we anticipate taking we intend to make sure that we're communicating that we're clarifying the objectives of the work and the partnership that we have and to make sure that we're getting more feedback so as a Next Step you will definitely see subsequent surveys that'll be going out and that we're going to continue to measure sentiment in the town from all of the different uh audiences as has been outlined we're also going to be identifying and developing opportunities to listen learn lean in partner and Advocate and I think that's really important when we start
065to contemplate some of the other members that are so to speak outside of the work of knowington public schools when you start talking about the community right the support agencies business owners even like myself had I not been headed this project it would be really important to get my perspective in that as well because we all have a stake in the progress of the students in this community we all have a stake in who they become and to ensure that they are well equipped to achieve success in this new Global world and then creating strategy and action plans that really address that identified barriers and needs we're digging deep into that data to make sure that we understand what those barriers are and then breaking out into different segments and different groups uh ways to
066address that different strategies again making sure that we're contemplating the voices of all those involved and then implementing and measuring along the way so whatever comes out of the data in terms of what we learn from people through things like additional surveys focus groups and interviews we're going to put together some strategies to implement we're going to measure the success of that I think with any school district as we know there's not a tried and true strategy that works across the board because you're dealing with diverse populations as a result we're going to be measuring and saying hey is this working is this not working so well are we capturing the right voices are we actually making progress and then calibrating throughout that Armando do you have anything to share in addition um Armando Jimenez
067here it's a pleasure thank you as well I Echo everything Yvonne mentioned um our goal is to contribute and complement the work that you're doing not to contradict the conflict we are here to partner and as we come in with our expertise we are also students to learn how we can make sure that the mesh that we are creating is as strong as it's ever been for the future of the students that come to the MPS District thank you very much and I want to make sure I elaborate on the work that Armando as well as yellow brick supported us with is really diving into this data and really developing a communication strategy that's something we really I don't want to say agonized about but I think we did uh because we knew it would
068be critical how how do we put this out in a way that will be received in the intent that it's meant to be so with that in mind um after much uh discussion and of course Dr Harrison was intimately involved we determined that a fireside chat video would be our best way to go uh you know spoiler alert there's no fire and uh we're basically just talking but it is our way of trying to subtly talk through some of the issues that were raised in the survey results and open up the dialogue you'll know and I think we'll show about five minutes of the video it's about 16 minutes long but at some point in the video and I think you'll see it a QR code is prompted onto the screen and that allows the
069the viewer to then you know take a picture of the QR code and then provide further feedback to us we did it strategically that way so that the viewer would start watching the video before they would provide the feedback because this is our attempt now to um address any misunderstandings that we thought came through with the survey so with Craig's assistance I'm gonna this video worked an hour ago so I have to adjust that tab so go share tab and then that's the video okay big first there you go to him hello everyone I'm Yvonne Alston I am the chief culture architect and CEO of indelible Impressions Consulting my firm collaborated with Newington Public Schools under recent Equity survey that many of you participated in it was distributed across our town and solicited feedback from
070students at the high school level parents and custodians AKA families administrators Educators and community members we are very glad to report that we had an amazing turnout of participants for that survey that was focused on Equity within the NPS Community now today I have the privilege and honor of meeting with Dr brummett superintendent of schools here for NPS and we're just going to have a brief chat excuse me about the recent survey findings and what an NPS intends to do with them so welcome Dr brummett thank you for taking the time to do this today thank you Yvonne all right well I am sure the community is eager to hear about what we learned so I'd like to get right into it but first we would like to start off and just ask you uh
071what is the current vision for Newington Public Schools well it's certainly a multi-layered vision but first and foremost we want all of our children to be highly prepared for life after graduation with a with a plan that is achievable and you know rigorous having high standards for themselves but as a subset and equally important we want to make sure that we are working toward the reduction of the opportunity gap for our students especially those who are historically marginalized or underrepresented and we intend to do that through access to our high quality curriculum that's rigorous relevant and engaging so those are really two big overarching themes for us here in Newington Public Schools fantastic so despite what some folks might hear in Social Circles or around town the true purpose of driving Equity through uh engaging
072with students in the community is really focused on the students right student supporters when within and outside of the schools is focus on their social emotional learning helping them to hurdle barriers and challenges to success and to best prepare them for our evolving Global world you would say that's correct I would and a quick story I visited a kindergarten classroom yesterday for the read Across America uh day and the book I read to the kids was all about how to identify their emotions and it was really uh important and I saw within their responses that they are learning about that emotions are okay and how to deal with them and how to make sure that they are a part of their educational day that they're okay but yet we need to know how to manage
073them sometimes so that was something that I I witnessed firsthand yesterday I also want to make sure that we look at our achievement Gap and have a purposeful and intentional effort toward reducing it we're not unique here in Newington pretty much every District in the state of Connecticut has an achievement Gap what I think makes us different is we are taking steps to reduce it by focusing on it and making sure we're meeting the needs of all of our kids fantastic and I can tell how passionate that you you are about that um and so that's great so in terms of some of uh the responses that we got back uh I want to highlight for our viewers today that when it came to participating in the survey and some of the questions around Equity
074that 100 of the student comments about it were positive uh Educators comments landed at a whopping 99 positive with parents trailing very close to that at 79 percent and members of the public came in at 75 positive in their comments around this Equity work and what uh the district is doing uh how do you feel about that well I was thrilled by the student responses but at the end of the day I was not surprised because in my conversation with students they tell me that all the time that they want our school district to be equally good for all children and they some of them acknowledge that maybe their experiences weren't always that way but they're helping us work on this so that maybe they're siblings their younger siblings will have a better experience parents
075tell me that as well and my staff but I also want to acknowledge that and I want to also say this teachers are working diligently to learn as much as they can about how to engage all of our students through culturally relevant pedagogy I'm very proud of all of our teachers and their efforts uh to date I also want to acknowledge we did have you know the chunk of folks there around 20 to 25 percent through parents or community members who were a little unclear or concerned about where we're headed and I'm hoping our discussion today may help clear up some of that fantastic and I think it will so I very much appreciate that um and you're right regarding this student uh I'd like to read one of the student comments that said I
076think open-mindedness by everyone students parents teachers and volunteers is really needed so that we can try to reduce barriers and also that if something doesn't work there should be a willingness to try again or to try something new and I think the voices of the youth came through very clear about what's needed in terms of collaboration across the spectrum of our community so that they can be successful and I really appreciated the students saying that there should be a willingness to try again and try something new and I think that these generation you know what we see here at indelible uh when we engage with students in capacities like this is that they are very much open into understanding that everything that we try to help them be successful may not land a hundred percent
077from the very beginning but it's constantly reframing and redesigning as needed to be to be successful in our efforts for their growth so I'm gonna stop it there and um just kind of expound upon that particular segment that we are currently working on getting more student voice Dr Hairston and I have done Outreach to some of our high school students and several clubs have put forth students who are very interested in being part of this work and uh that is our next step and and you know based on tonight's comments earlier I want to put out again that we have had some missteps along the way and I think it's important to be transparent an example of that is a book list that went out that wasn't as balanced in offering a variety of reading
078materials that it should have been but because we've got many processes established in the district that was dealt with we worked with the school and the grade level involved and talked through how we need to process how we cultivate book lists and you know for the parents that voiced concern there were two we reached out to them and you know dealt with that very openly and so to say that we are where we need to be with Equity is not true but we are I would say very Valiant in our attempts to move forward and I think we are starting to see the impact um what Mr Marciano shared tonight we see pockets of that throughout the district and the goal is that we're going to continue this work for several years to come but
079I think clearly this video which will go on for another 10 minutes but in the interest of time I won't show uh we'll show some of our you know constituents where we're trying to go with this so I don't know if Yvonne or Armando would like to make any closing remarks I just want to say that I appreciate the dedication to equity by this school district I appreciate the fact that this board has prioritized this as something that is important for our students and being willing to engage in conversations um you know Equity is really at its heart about providing access of opportunities for all regardless of how an individual might identify regardless of what socioeconomic status they and their families may have things like that and so I just want to say thank you
080to you all thank you to Dr brummett and the entire Newington Public School System staff that you've allowed us to partner with you to drive this very important change and we're excited about the future of this and we're dedicated to to the work thank you I'll turn it over to Dr Fletcher for any follow-up questions all right we'll go here F first oh okay I looked there first so the last board meeting I got instead every single time I was like do I not have a voice assistant um were the words from our students the words that were read by one of our students and the fact that they had the 99 percent positive rate I what was a hundred I'm sorry my apologies even better um they threw what what was just said it
081seems like they are the ones kind of like shouting out reaching out like we needed this we need to do the work we want to be a part of the work and so I for we have to give them that we have to give them that I think that student voice and everything we do um is incredibly important and Incredibly powerful and I just that's just like something I passionately believe in so I just wanted to say that um but I also want to go back and I know that we'll I'm guessing we're going to be unpacking the data that that came from these surveys more and I never want to um look at negative things but I think it is important I know it was mentioned that there were some misunderstandings by the community
082and that um like I'm just looking at like the community at the 75 which is still very good but I'm just wondering what if there's any anecdotal or um any statements kind of behind that 25 of of negative results is that the correct way to say that okay sure um so what I will say to that without having a specific numbers right in front of me what we do know based on what we received is that when we talk about some of the misunderstandings right so for example uh one example is CRT right and where people are automatically assuming that that's critical race Theory rather than culturally responsive teaching so that's one of the aspects of the misunderstanding about what's really going on and what is um being focused on within Newington Public School Systems
083you know uh part of the video that people will be able to watch once it's posted up online and they have access to the questionnaire as well is that um there are different perspectives about what Newington is doing and what Newington is not doing um and I actually did pose some of those challenging questions directly to Dr brummett in the video which you'll see and be able to further understand what some of the possibly negative sentiments are around what's going on but I can say with uh much confidence that a lot of it is around misinformation there were you know in some regards some inflammatory language that was used regarding that such as indoctrination and things like that but for the most part um it really does center around misinformation and people concerned about what
084Equity would really mean for them and I think again that's where not understanding truly what Equity is and looking at it only through the lens of race and ethnicity versus understanding the broader context of that the equity covers a myriad dimensions of diversity right and different identities and at its core it really is about making sure that every single student has access to what they need to be successful no matter how that student might identify so as an example if there are students that are part of the disability Community we want to make sure that they're getting all their needs met that's just one segment of a diverse population so if you were to take that logic and apply it more broadly you would see that that's something that every single one of us would
085want for any student and so that's something that I think we need to come around as a community is to understand for those folks that may not be clear about terminology definitions and how they're being applied could certainly impact that 25 percent and I feel fairly confident that what you would probably see is that drops down to about 10 if they fully understood the context and the meaning of what we're doing and why good go ahead I like you oh thank you I can go really quick um that asked my question but in a much better way so I'm really glad you asked that um I will ask a softball then in terms of this video I think um in response to the fact that the people that maybe aren't as invested in what happens
086in our schools from a day-to-day basis a lot of people probably didn't take the survey so I'm just wondering in terms of this video and then further either further surveys or further videos that explain because I think a lot of what you just explained there's also communicating our efforts to the public and communicating them in a way that people who aren't invested in Newington Public Schools can understand the way that you just did where it's not just about one segment it's about everybody so I'm wondering if there are ways that we can and I I don't know the answer to this we have to get this information out to the public that we do need to be invested in what happens here so I'm wondering just initially this video what is the plan to distribute
087it outside of Newington Public Schools because I know we had community members that took the survey but then next steps how do we I guess how do we follow up to get not only more people in the community to take the survey but more people to better understand what we're trying to achieve and maybe that's not a softball because it's moving a lot yeah that's my bad but go ahead please answer sure I will let you do that so she likes you okay fantastic um so to your question about uh making sure that the videos well distributed it is going to live on the equity office's landing page where the survey information did before so people will be able to watch the video to Dr brummett's earlier Point regarding the QR code what they'll be
088able to do is look at that uh hit that QR code and be able to access a questionnaire we thought it was really important for people to be able to ask questions to dig a little bit deeper in terms of something that they didn't understand or wanting to um ex you know asking for expansion on something we are limiting that to two questions per person or if possible per household but we wanted to give the option for an additional data collection based on what was delivered in the survey so everyone in the community everyone who has digital access to a computer or a smartphone or a iPad or some other tablet will be able to access that questionnaire from that we're going to digest that we're going to categorize those questions and we're going to
089answer them in terms of delivery of response we are strategizing on that currently as to whether or not that will be in Excel spreadsheet that might be another video we're not quite sure yet it depends on the volume we get and how much bucketing and segmenting we actually have to do in terms of communicating further with the community part of what we have been discussing and strategizing on with NPS with Dr Gerald Harrison and the team is how we engage folks and focus groups is a really great way to bring people together to hear voices and to give people the opportunity to share what they're thinking what their concerns are and how to be better educated on some of the core meanings of things and what we're actually doing right rather than things running through
090a rumor Bill and before you know it becomes you know culturally responsive teaching becomes critical race Theory and things like that so um that's going to be a really important next step for us and our intention is to Galvanize all the voices of the community in different segments and then again to make sure that we're conveying our findings openly transparently with the intention of doing our level best to commit to closing both knowledge and behavior gaps just a follow-up are you able to pull the data of where peop how people came to the survey um so the interesting thing is because of the way that the surveys are set up anonymity is really important we find it indelible impression for people to feel like they really want to give their honest opinion and feedback on
091things so there are were not any mechanisms built into the system in order to capture any personally identifiable information furthermore the distribution of that link went to various groups so as Dr brummett has mentioned it went through a portal to parents it went here there it went through uh I believe Community newsletter through the Chamber of Commerce so it's really difficult to be able to track those aspects however in the demographics in the survey and I do hope everyone took the survey um you were able to actually select how you identify so that we could categorize as much as possible based on if you were a Community member if you were a student Etc so we do have an numerical breakdown of folks who actually made those selections to see kind of where they fall
092so then for example if I said I was a business owner which I'm not in Newington yeah if I said that then we could potentially assume that maybe I got the information from the chamber but if I was one of only four people who said that then maybe we need to figure out a way with the chamber to alter the communication effort is that something that we're looking at in terms of because I just I absolutely just need to really make sure the community is invested in this effort yes and that was part of the Strategic communication that plans in the beginning is to figure out what were all the distribution channels that we could disseminate the link for the survey is part of the reason why we set up the landing page giving directives
093I believe I even did a voiceover talking to folks about the survey and why it was important to take it um but I think the next level is to just keep the conversation going in the broadest uh forums as possible and so I think socializing the information is a really big part of that so what I would encourage even the board to do is to talk about it talk about it in your workplaces if those are here in the town of Newington if you have relatives spouses Partners Etc that are members of the Newington Community continue to amplify this work because it's really important and again it always comes back to the students we want to set them up for success and this is a Surefire way to do that I mean you're just hearing
094I think tonight alone was extremely impressive to Armando and I about the equity work that's going on in other schools right this is important it's top talk and it's top of mind in our society overall so the more that we amplify this and we encourage participation I think that we'll have a chance to get even more voices and for people to really start to take this seriously and invest both time conversations and I dare even say heart as well as Minds into forwarding equity all right online Mr loverier hi thank you um I guess my question because uh like the term itself of culturally responsive teaching culturally responsible pedagogy I mean the acronym compared to the to the critical race Theory it's like literally the same letters is this like a term that's only been
095used in the past couple of years culturally responsive pedagogy uh well the culturally responsive teaching because I've like literally never heard this until the uh you know the equity versus equality uh uh you know dichotomy uh and you know in education um I mean I haven't heard these terms until after the you know the the uh critical race Theory being brought to the Forefront and I'm wondering if this is just like almost like a reactive term being used to portray Equity work in a different light or is this something is it are these terms that we've used for a long time these are research-based terms we we have several what we call cannons in the district and one of them is called culturally responsive teaching in the brain and that's a research-based book that has
096you know evidence-based uh techniques or Frameworks that you can apply that will work well for all children so that's a research-based terminology it wasn't something that we created here or that was a reaction to anything it's not we can't even take credit for it we've extrapolated it from the research so um no that the answer to your question would be no it is not some reaction or a reconfiguration of that acronym okay thanks all right Miss Weaver really quickly I was just going to add anecdotally that I I just um said that um when I was in college at the University of St Joseph one of my classes was culturally responsive teaching and that was many moons again it was a few years ago two thousand five 2005. so I don't know how you know
097I don't know where it was before that but I just remember that definitely being a teacher preparedness class that you had to take in order to become an educator thanks Beth um yeah I'll just Echo that and it's wonderful to have one of my mentors here Mondo Jimenez is awesome um we've crossed paths before so this is like full circle for me and it's great that it's on this this issue um and I think one of the things too we were talking about in the policy committee probably a couple months ago was some of the policies we're looking at and I was like this is from 2001 and it says equity in this so to say like this is a new term I think is is one of the things we were discussing of how
098we we clarify a lot of things because there are a lot of charged words I think in this space and I think one of the things we've talked about as a board even amongst each other is well what did you mean by that well wait when you're saying this what do we mean by that um so even you know those in this space I think sometimes we we try and get those Clarity on that term and I know that's part of that work is making sure it's throughout our staff and administration that we get the clarity of just within the school system not even just on the outside um so I guess my question too is in terms of the survey can community members still take the survey how are we kind of keeping progress
099and are there going to be other iterations I know you said kind of future high level strategic plans but how do we keep tracking this data how do we get more buy-in and more input and you know so we can see changes um you know when he does a lovely job giving us false winter and spring and many data points so I'm just seeing how we can get more data points to be able to like you said get that more um holistic view sure um so at this point that Richard would you mind oh thank you he closes Mike okay and create noise in the room all right go ahead I'm sorry oh no problem in terms of this this particular survey is now is now closed so it is not accessible to anyone anyone
100because we've gotten we we had it out there for quite some time in which to capture voices and so that one is done but we do have I want to say off the top of my head at least three more that we are going to be running successively but again we're going to have other data capture points right so as I mentioned individual interviews and focus groups and things like that we will be collecting data throughout and we will be reporting that data directly to superintendent bramette as well as others on the team and we will make sure that part of that is um you know transparent to to everyone so that they know how things are tracking and the progress being made and in terms of goals we really do like to use the
101data as a compass right so while we have some uh ideas and some strategies that we're thinking of and we're planning the data that we continue to acquire will continue to inform right what's needed how we calibrate how we pivot for different strategies and different tactics and may I recommend audiobooks uh for your voice it's wonderful it just like excuse me I'm like I would read your audiobook and then find me and if I may have it and Dr brummett knows this um adamel Impressions we work with our heart and Minds through intentionality so we don't just create surveys to collect data because it's great to collect data many of you know how many times do you go to a store and someone says oh can you please leave us a survey if someone really
102left a lasting or an indelible impression you would go ahead and take the time to make that survey and so the partnership that we have all around the the mesh that we that we mentioned earlier it's about making sure that people understand okay I took this survey I see things happening because many of us have experience taking surveys and things haven't changed so for us we don't just put a bunch of questions to collect data points we intentionally sit down to say hey here are some of the opportunities here are some of the strengths let's try to gather more information that's into your point uh Mike Mr Michael what you were saying about how do we strategically get that out right sometimes the conversation somebody going for a cup of coffee right or maybe saying
103hey I wasn't able to take the survey however I want to get involved right because this work is important to what we're doing and it all comes back to the students right it all comes back to what we're doing you mentioned you asked a great question Ms Danielle about or you mentioned earlier overall how are we doing keeping in mind of the communities and the groups that are identified you are all doing it here in so many ways Miss was it Miss Ribeiro the fact that she is in practice of diversity through language through through uh stucco through stuco right that right there's diversity then what we see Marciano Mr Marciano right Equity at his school right through students with disabilities that was one of the to your question uh Miss Beth where you some
104of the clarifications were some people looked at and said oh diversity well we have enough people who identify as Latin Americans or African-Americans right diversity is far beyond that and you all are touching elements right I always say there's a million pieces to a puzzle right and every puzzle has its value you are all working on your own pieces to the puzzle because it's a larger picture and little by little this puzzle is going to come together through this partnership so and I just wanted to add one thing that I think a lot of times we're trying to clarify too that we don't work from a space of scarcity but an abundance and I think that sometimes gets lost in all of this but thank you I've seen this guy I like you too [Laughter]
105much anything else no I just want obviously the hopefully the board can take away from this presentation that we are surrounding ourselves with uh extremely capable Partners who are very knowledgeable about the work we're attempting that that's that's our intention because we don't know all the risk to know and we've got a lot of good people around us that do know more than us and are sharing their expertise and the conversation will continue so thank you thank you but thank you okay we're now going to be moving on to agenda item F2 which no okay did I miss something no she's sad because she's got a graduate oh her baby is graduating so go ahead okay thank you any tissues anywhere in the room okay so we're going to have discussion and possible action on
106the establishment of a firm graduation date so Dr Berman yes uh this year the high school adopted to live in a constant conversation with uh High School leadership because last year the graduation date was Far earlier than the last day of school for students because we had a bunch of snow days this year we only had one so they now feel ready to move forward with establishing a graduation date they didn't Avail themselves so the new state law that went into effect a few years ago that they could have set this date or recommended it to the board back in September but based on last year they wanted to wait quite a bit into the school year so the recommendation is that our graduation date will be uh June 12th and I believe that would
107be the motion that is before the board this evening all right yes we're going to motion then discuss you should uh move that the Board of Education approve Monday June 12 2023 as the firm graduation date for students in grade 12 for the graduating class of 2023 at Newington High School thank you motion is made in seconded we're now open for discussion any questions or comments to be made extra box of tissues that night okay I feel bad for Beth because she sits next to me extra long sleeves to me you thought I cried last year okay all right let's call the roll Miranda yes Danielle drossman can I explain yes Dr Bruce Fletcher yes he had Wagner yes yeah yes um Sam Sharma Pam is not in the meeting yeah I believe it eight
108Jessica wheeler yes Anastasia yeah yes the motion passed unanimously seven zero great excellent thank you everybody next item on our agenda is the discussion and possible action of the boecip account projects would it be okay Dr Fletcher if we did the budget first we reordered that we absolutely can there's no motion made so we can do that thank you so we'll we're going to do item number four which is the update on the budget of 2023-24. and actually they're sort of intertwined so um however the or it wants to handle that there is a motion though relative to the uh Capital plan okay so I just wanted to keep the board abreast of where we we are and um before I go further it Miss yappa as a update to the finance committee would you
109like to provide this update or would you like me to um you can provide it it's fine all right thank you so the the finance committee met last week the this summarizes where they began and the board's aware that we landed at a 5.95 percent which is before the Town Council right now uh however we continue to look at possible savings uh while the the town continues to deliberate their budget process and through the course of numerous discussions the following uh reductions could be further made there's no need for the board to take action tonight they it would be wise to wait to see where the town lands but we have and we also want to acknowledge that we took some of the feedback that we received during the budget presentation before the town and
110did more updated estimates so with all that in mind we were able to recommend a reduction of forty one thousand dollars in diesel fuel because the price has come down substantially since we first ran the numbers and as the board knows we look at our budget process starting in January um and even before that actually we started pulling our books together in November so we looking at it with a fresh set of eyes to see if prices are coming down is smart and that is luckily what happened with diesel so that is a recommendation for a 41 000 reduction electricity has also come down by kilowatt hour and that would allow us to cut our electricity budget by a hundred and forty nine thousand dollars we looked at our other salaries line very carefully and
111we looked at a history and that is something the board had asked us to do as well and we feel comfortable reducing that line by a hundred thousand dollars um our athletic department was asked to look at their salary their supply line and their redu recommending a reduction of twenty thousand we looked with our uh spoke with our professional learning supplies and this really is uh Steve's area of expertise I will say this is a painful cut but is something that we could put forward as a means to try to close this Gap and lastly uh Wendy Krauss and Kristen Freeman Dove real deep into the um curriculum line items and those were particularly brought up by the Town Council because some of those went up quite a bit this year though a lot of
112that is the function of some of the previous buy aheads um Miss cross Miss Freeman did feel comfortable recommending a sixty one thousand dollar reduction so if all these were to be eventually agreed upon by the board that would reduce uh the current budget request to 5.43 percent um so that really is my budget update uh it is pretty similar to what the finance what is very similar to what the finance committee saw last week we have we are constantly looking at the budget there are no new uh reductions that we feel comfortable recommending at this time um I I would recommend that we continue to work with the town to discuss what there are some collaborative things we can do I was notified by the acting time manager karpinski today that the mousse will
113be on the agenda for the town council meeting on Tuesday so if those two mousse are approved by the town or agreed upon then that would allow us to reduce our budget by about uh 557 thousand dollars which would further reduce this by I don't want to put you on the spot Lou but that would probably bring us below five percent if we were to cut the mou offsets so we blew up we were below five percent at that point there is still a gap to close though um there's a 1.9 million dollar reduction as recommended by the town manager so if we get if if that 500 000 500 157 000 is approved and we're down to 4.9 um we still have a gap of the 3.5 that the town manager is recommending to
1144.9 and that equates to about a 1.5 million dollars so we do have um you know a lot to still consider and again um ongoing Outreach to the town and an attempt to see if there are any other Solutions besides you know we're getting dangerously close we're already there with further Cuts going right into Staffing or services like busing or different programs that we offer would have to be reduced if if this Gap does not somehow close so that's kind of where we're at no no action just information all right any questions from anyone foreign are there any other I know we've gone over this but we are penny pinching because I think we're all in agreement I think and I mean to speak for anyone so I apologize but that we would rather cut
115a thing than a person I think we're on that sort of page and so just wondering if there's anywhere that if we had to go without um yeah it's hard it's hard to say no it is it's like it's hard to say because I don't want to cut anything right like and at the end of the day we're not really the ones necessarily cutting it so I just want to make that kind of statement um but we have to make changes before it gets to a point where uh an individual an educator is cut so I'm just thinking I'm just gonna throw things out there and I just hope that Tomatoes don't kind of get thrown my way but like um the the number of new library books this year like could that be decreased
116and I'm an avid lover of reader so I'm not I'm just trying to think creatively I'm sorry I'm just it makes me nervous because I don't want to be pegged as like I'm taking things away from the poor little children I'm not I'm a teacher like I pick up pencils off the floor and save them like I say paper clips you know but is there anywhere else is there anywhere we can get creative and we can dig further I don't know well I'm gonna ask Wendy to maybe explain what went into the cut um of 61 000 but the board Finance subcommittee did bring up the infamous Desmos so I did ask Wendy to bring that back and I don't know if you've had a chance yet Wendy to have an analysis done about how
117important that is to teachers um but we are going to look into that would you mind giving a quick update as to what went into that 61 000 cut and how you were able to come upon that um sure and it's interesting Beth that you brought up um library media books because when I saw the slide I said I made a note to Tom worrying that media should be listed in there too because we did cut the media um books significantly by more than half um so the what we did is we went through all of the programs that were responsible for and we can we actually included library media El and art because we saw some possibilities there Ela reading and math because there's some bigger ticket items social studies and science were really
118hard to cut there's not much in there aside from what's required to run the program so we the lens we used was if we cut this could could we have a replacement or something else and still run the program and that's how we came up with the number that you see there the um we have three other items that we're looking at but we're talking to the department coordinators right now I think their meeting is next week Dr brummett with um Christian Freeman um to discuss what the impact would be if we because because you the program is designed a certain way right now so if you take one thing away we have to talk to them about what does it need to be replaced with what we were cutting were things that we we
119can go without that for a year like library media books is an example of that um should we cut something like uh online program we're using or something like Desmos then we have to think about do we have a re the replacement item behind that so it won't be a complete um cut we'd have to offset it with something but it might be a reduction it might still be a saving so that's the conversation when right now so we could see some additional there but we we're not comfortable cutting it without further conversation with our department okay did you have a question sweever and then we have Anastasia online yeah no I just wanted to clarify too because I know there were like comments at I think Town Council I didn't say but that we
120cut all of these things as a board which is not true so I just want to clarify those are not actual Cuts yet those are just proposals ideas and just to clarify more it's sitting with the Town Council right now who is considering I believe they just adopted the town manager's budget last night and then that will be a public hearing on April 4th I think so currently the control of what actually is getting cut on or not cut but considered um on on our budget is with the with the Town Council and we're not actively taking action on this because we need to be able to know what the actual request is and I'm just wondering too in terms of Miss making Outback there's a mindset of thinking creatively too like how much uh
121you know interaction we have with the town as a full board on how we can you know come together with this Gap I think you did a great presentation but how do we signify I mean I think every department will say the same thing about their needs like this is needs not wants um but where does the town budget compare to to where we're at right now I just am not sure I just want to clarify like our what's their increase ask and then what's like how our comparison and in terms of um like what's getting cut compared to ours that's not a clear question but I'm trying to say we have a an ask it is getting below ask which departments are not below ask does that make sense by breakdown yeah I mean
122blue um would know I don't know if you know off top of your head Lou what the town managers proposed increase was on the towns side of things I don't have it committed to memory um I'm sorry I don't eating the Beast last night watching Dr Burnett so I didn't catch the town council meeting but I don't want to speak off the cuff you can certainly provide that to the board I don't want to misrepresent that in any way shape or form um so much I think they're at the process like the board when the board took over the superintendent's budget now there yeah I'm just wondering what the opportunity with this long-winded question is that what is our opportunity to still collaborate with the Town Council on this like in terms of not just
123us doing the creativity but on the town side as well just seeing where where there's the collaboration opportunities I can respond to that and then if any other board member I mean I have had a lot of Outreach with the mayor um and I think the mou process is step one because that is you know they need to take affirmative action on that in the coming than it is on their agenda or will be for the next Tuesday meeting from there we still have a shortfall I have offered um to meet with with her and any of her leadership teams that's willing to do so about any other ways we can provide um relief to the significant cut one of the strategies that we're working on now is as I think the board's fully aware
124I have put a hard freeze in place every penny that goes out the door has to go through my office now I always approve purchase orders this now is things that come up you know the boiler needed some part last week I had to approve that so anything that comes up that can be done without we're doing without and obviously we're repairing the boiler but um you know we're making those judgment calls someone wanted to go to a training I said no you're going to have to wait uh to next year or Beyond um so it's any purchasing right now is only Bare Essentials to get through the year and maybe we can not rely as much on the non-lapsing fund and see where that gets us to as we get closer to the end
125of the fiscal year and Lou did you want to add something to that I just went and uh looked up their budget okay yeah town government operations are four and a quarter I'm sorry uh Town operation was four and a quarter percent and uh overall The Debt Service there's a multiple categories appears like it's about five percent uh increase on The Debt Service side ours was ours was three and a half percent okay all right Anastasia thank you Dr Fletcher so I just want to clarify um so yes these are proposals that um sorry I'm losing my voice um that we thought of in the finance committee I know there were other things that we didn't put in there uh we were hoping um that we wouldn't get with the town manager proposed obviously that's
126why we worked so hard to try to come up with additional tentative you know adjustments as uh as I should say um I am going to say the finance committee and the members of it you know Danielle Sam you know Dr brummett helped Lou everyone we've tried every single thing I mean we met before we we met during the finance meeting and we went through every single tab that we can think of to try to um come up with additional cuts and I understand they haven't been accepted by the board but you know usually you don't have like a finance meeting in between that's not typical but seeing what the town manager proposed we were just trying to be proactive and maybe if you know we did have the mayor and others on the call
127um if they saw that then maybe they would take you know that into consideration um obviously I didn't watch the meeting last night so based on what you said obviously that didn't happen so I mean I'm just a little concerned as well um as where else we can save I guess we'll have to look again um I'm not really sure I I mean I know I did Danielle I don't know if anybody else can think of anything um I don't know where else we can make an adjustment um at this point so I do want to let the board know that we did work very hard that is not typical to have another meeting in between and I I couldn't come up with any additional besides this which was I think close to almost 500
128000 if I'm not adding it up correctly or a little under so we we really did work very hard to try to come up with additional adjustments thank you yeah this is about four hundred and twelve thousand or thereabouts and I would agree the team the finance subcommittee did really pour through the budget um in one of the filed recommendations was to look at the curriculum one more time um so I'll turn it back over to you all right do you have another question yeah last and I just want to clarify too like there were public comments made on Saturday morning at a town council meeting regarding the finance subcommittee and what they approved versus insinuating the whole board approved with these things and I just want to clarify that's not true there's also misinformation
129about our buy ahead program so I just want to clarify that like on the board side we don't have like this that's not where we can find money the buy ahead program isn't like an official program I know Dr brummett and clarifying emails to board members but I just want to make sure publicly people know that like these cuts are not adopted yet they are considerations and then we have like a buy ahead program but I just want to clarify that for the public too because I think others might think oh there's all that we're talking around in circles about oh let's get creative with all these Cuts that's not a place for a cut as well it's it's not a program type of thing so just can you clarify that too I just want
130to make sure that's clear sure um yeah there's not a formal buy ahead program and what we do is if there is money in the current Year's budget that we can use to offset the next year's budget thereby to reduce our ask we we've done it in the past we the board asked for an accounting of that though typically we also discuss it when we present the board the boards but the board present the budget to the board my apologies and so this year there were no Buy aheads in previous years we've provided board reports and typically they are in Supply items you can't buy had like a service but you can buy ahead some curricular items or some supplies and that's typically where we've done it sometimes technology and we provided an accounting of
131the last several years of that but this year because our budget is quite tight and we don't want to rely any more than we have to on the non-lapsing monies there was no there were no buy a heads so that I wouldn't call it a program I would call it an analysis that we try to do so that we can offset the following Year's budget but as the board has seen when folks saw these dramatic upticks this year in certain curricular lines were like whoa what happened and that caught the eye of our town uh officials as well and that is typically a direct result of buy a heads because if you buy ahead in the previous year then the next year you're asked maybe that much higher because you're more or less back-filling so
132um not a formalized program not something we're able to do every year it is a strategy to reduce these subsequent years ask but not a strategy that we can use for this coming year all right well thank you Mr leverier hey thanks um yeah I mean I think that we could make a cut to our uh maintenance uh contracted services to zero percent um I mean we have very qualified and competent um maintenance workers on our payroll and I I said this uh at last year's budget uh that you know we should be relying on our employees uh more rather than hiring out to third-party contractors um with the budget increase we received last year in that line I mean I think that a zero in that particular line item would be helpful to uh
133closing the gap thanks I understand here do you have another question I have a question for um Lou um if if that cut was made in regards to um what Mr leveria said what would that bring us at um tentatively like what what does that look like or the um yes um I don't have my book with me at the moment so I don't remember the exact I believe we covered it at the finance subcommittee it is the uh contracted Services right I'm trying to think what the magnitude of the oh you got it oh yeah very good great so you just you know say what is I believe it was uh uh calculated out at a 20 increase over the actual if I remember the final amount it was uh a million eleven thousand
134four seventy was the request status right now and I believe the total budget for that was 836 000. um the for the contracted Services maintenance is one million one hundred and eleven thousand four hundred and thirty seven dollars ask and the appropriation right now is 836 I believe you are amazing and might need to go out more and get those numbers out of your head so you're you're right 200 250 000 somewhere in that range yeah so if we reduce that what would that bring it down to our percentage increase about three tenths of a percent if that went to zero of your budget ask so you know if we're out Five Points sorry can you explain what that actually means though right we're talking about percents and jobs and things that happen and we're
135not talking about the function of what we would be cutting so and you just also these are all specialty trades that are not on staff we have the sprinkler companies and manage the uh as far as suppression systems around all the buildings whether it's whether it's the wet system for a true Fire or the Haley Halon systems for the cafeterias that uh they have you know stove uh grease fire or whatever it is so they can address either one of those situations you have the maintenance contract for the fire alarms uh in all the buildings when you walk in they have the big fire panel that the fire marshal or the fire chief and the Gang roll in and they have to assess what that panel is telling us where the fire where's the trouble
136in the building all those have to be constantly kept update we have supplemental electrician Services because our in-house electrician is a one-man gang of basically just working off of a ladder working on small electrical projects and he is much more aligned with being the brains behind being able to identifying keep the overall systems running but he doesn't have the capacity he doesn't have the tool set he doesn't have the resources in order to switch out a Transformer or an electrical panel or go change out the lights at the light towers at the football field you know there's a number of these things we just don't have that are here other things that are in there are the plumbing services for the district if you think 5000 individuals a day going through 180 to 200 days
137of the flushes and uh spigots and everything else in the sun there's a lot of transactions that could man you know the doors that are there you know being able to uh have door service by qualified door companies the elevators and lifts that are in the buildings you know there's probably 35 to 40 of these line item details that are here for Specialties that are really beyond the skill set of our staff and if you wanted to hire somebody who was a specialist in a certain area you do not have enough work for a full-time position so if we decided okay let's hire an electrician or a plumber it'd probably be a 0.4.5 job over the course of the year and it'll be an ineffective higher because the person would be working in other you
138know lower tasks skills but you're paying for the high end of the work so we have to balance what we can get done and what we have to go out for and nothing is cheap out there right now everybody that we're hearing from is routinely plus 20 on their pricing both on the labor side and it's even worse on the materials because in trying to get the repair parts that are needed right now we have a in process repair or a rooftop system over the media center John Wallace one component of the system went bad is called a heat exchanger that one part itself is twenty thousand dollars plus the cost for the company to come in take it out put a new one back in and restore it to functional condition so Lou just
139to the short answer is that the this line item is for services that we personally can't we don't have the capacity capacity so what about the supply side I remember during the finance meeting Lou and I didn't want to interrupt you I know you're speaking for a little bit um about you saying that we want to make sure we have the five items on the Shelf not two what about the supplies now I don't have that book in front of me but like um Miss hot Wagner sorry I was gonna say this nanky um said like if it comes down to cutting uh products versus people I mean we're gonna cut products so I understand that it's hard and these are hard times for everyone but we need to figure that out because we're not
140going to cut our teachers and we're not going to cut the people that impact our children and we want to make sure that they have the resources they need especially after coming um out of a pandemic you know some of the things that we always you know fight and talk about or you know providing recovery for students who fall behind so we're going to make sure we do that so it may be a hard ask to cut some of the supplies and of course we're not going to leave kids in the dark or anything like that we never have but we have to make those tough decisions because like I said I didn't watch the meeting last night I'm just going off in regurgitated information but if we're not getting the even 5.95 or the
141tentative 5.43 any of that then we have to ensure that we still keep our staff and still help these children and cut some of those supplies let's say we don't cut um the contracted service workers well we're going to have to cut some of the supplies and we're going to have to figure out how to do that and use our creative minds to do that I know we did ask um and I know Jessica Weaver was an advocate as well um thank you and um Beth Minke about having a joint meeting with the Town Council and Board of Ed and I think with what we what was you know they said last night versus what we're asking for I am going to Advocate publicly that we have that meeting sooner um than later because I
142mean what else can we do Dr brummett was in the finance meeting with us so was the mayor there isn't anything else to tentatively caught they're just not so I mean we can keep digging and trying but I mean even to come up with almost almost let me make sure I'm clear with my words 500 000 almost tend to literally come with that I mean that's I thought that was huge because we didn't come up with that as a board before so even just re-going through over and over and I mean we just have to figure something out I mean if maintenance or whatever it's called the supply line can't buy five things on a shelf and have to buy a three gonna have to figure it out and if the town's gonna have to
143step in to help we're gonna have to figure it out we have to become creative and we're going to have to figure it out but I'm going to Advocate whether Dr Fletcher Dr brummett the mayor to come together because even with that mou we're still not getting what we need so we need to have that joint meeting thank you Okay so I just I won't speed this up here because we're going over things that we've already discussed that detail I'll give you a moment here in just a moment so we can't make Cuts tonight and we don't even know what we're going to get for a budget so at this point we're just going to have to go into a holding pattern and then once we find out what our budget is approved at then
144we're going to come back here and we'll work as a board to find the cuts okay Miss drost I'll give you one last thing on this super quick at the finance meeting we had asked for a list of what current contracted Services we use this year so that we could have that information so I know that that was not that long ago I think it was less than a week ago I know that's a big ask but a few days ago I did what's wrong with my board email definitely resend it but Lou had provided that to us right I'll have everything because Mr Brandon will say like hey I'm like I'm not on this okay we will resend that but we did there was a request and we did collect it okay so at
145this point we we do have another item that we got to discuss and vote on so I'm going to close the conversation on that at this point and I'm sure I won't say what I'm going to say okay so uh can I segue over to capitals yes let's go over to the Capitol and that this is a potential action item one that the finance subcommittee did put forth in a quick review uh we are we did a review of our capital budget before the finance subcommittee we articulated that we have are currently in the midst of spending our technology money we anticipate that that entire line item will be uh spent in full the track resurfacing is a new concern uh we thought we would try to look at repairs those are not feasible and
146Lou did get more current estimates that's about a 250 000 undertaking upwards of potentially 300 000 that's in the planning stages why is that a priority now because two of our lanes are currently unusable due to safety hazards I believe Lou referenced the HVAC system at Wallace that needed to be repaired and renovated that's been completed uh District vehicle that was completed back in the fall that's a vehicle that we used to go from school to school and the NHS north parking lot resurfacing that's been on the docker for quite some time and that's looking to be about a 240 to 280 thousand dollar uh undertaking because these items will exceed what we currently have Luke cultivated a memo that was already shared with the finance subcommittee and Lou if you wouldn't mind just doing
147a very quick overview of what this memo is about sure um within the board CIP account there is uh project allocations that are established by the town budget process each April so when the facilities committee gets together and uh then brings a proposal to the board for consideration in December their basic the board is basically voting on this is our proposed action plan for board CIP items for the next fiscal year from July through succeed in June when the all the resources come into the fund they are moved to the undesignated reserve line within the board CIP account and for this year we had a million two of resources basically who that were there our Appropriations were only a million dollars so we did not fully appropriate the money that we had available on the
148undesignated line as things have been unfolding this year there's been a big increase in Revenue receipts that we're going to have and big increase in the cost of some of the project proposals right now with the resources we have in the designated project accounts we do not have enough money to do both of these projects it could be one or the other we would not be able to do both we also have 300 I believe it's 347 000 on the undesignated line that is available for reallocation but that requires a Town Council action the last time we made a proposal this type was uh two years ago when we had to take down the chimney at Martin Kellogg because it was structurally unstable we did the same basic memo request of the Town manager Town
149Council to put it on an agenda that we'd like to have the council authorized moving three hundred thousand dollars this year off the non-designated line into the two projects accounts that I've designated here in the memo that will get us a long way toward the uh adequate level of funding to make these projects happen if there is a little bit of a shortfall we can always roll over into next year's Appropriations for the finishing touches on this if it's a little bit short I just don't know exactly the dollars here it's such a volatile market right now that I can't give you the 99 certain answer of where these are going to land but we have the resources now to allocate to the projects this way we can move ahead in good conscience and get
150them ready we can always pull back and say no we won't it's just it's too expensive we can we'll wait for something to come down in price or we've got to re-address how we're going to do this so you know we will not get ourselves in a position where the commitment the board is making uh pass this motion means it's Full Speed Ahead under any conditions there'll be brutally reviewed and determined if it's the right course of action at this point okay go ahead Mr Strauss um I know that I was at the finance committee but I processed slow sometimes so the repaving of the high school north parking lot definitely needs to be done is that something that like this is the town repave like in the town like is that price like for
151the town doing it the town will do it unless they're overloaded and then they'll sub it out to uh Telecom to do the work but we will be paying for it so either we pay the talent to do that that work or we'll be paying till or the board CIP fund will be paying it one way or another that you know the town will control the project on our behalf because they have the technical expertise to uh get everything done the way we need it okay what I'd like to do is get a motion on this then we can have our discussion on it move that the Newington Board of Education requests at the Newington Town Council authorized the transfer of three hundred thousand dollars of Financial Resources currently in the undesignated reserve line item
152within the board CIP fund and transferred the 300 000 to the following accounts blacktop slash Paving accounts 31193-88758 in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars and track slash tennis slash Basketball Services in the account 31193-88252 in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars second the motion has been made and seconded it's now open for discussion um I was going to ask the same thing as Mr Rose in regards to maybe the town um helping us out or doing that for us I know the high school track has been on there since I joined the board um as something that needed to be worked on since 2021 so it's not something that's new um this came up for discussion before we did the John Patterson parking lot and we just I think with inflation we
153ended up having to do you know Patterson looks amazing by the way but um I was just wondering if there's any way Lou that the town can help us seeing that the track has been on the list to get done for like almost two years now uh I we would have to bring that request to the next meeting and see if there is any uh resources that they'd be willing to dedicate to it uh the only real concern would be if this is become just a substitution well we certainly don't have a problem with you doing the track but something else comes out so you end up having to reorder your priorities so unless we you know I have some indications the town will expand the resources they would provide for us financially you know
154we should expect that we'll be limited by what we have access to and it's just a matter of reordering our own priorities thank you all right any other questions okay I'm going to ask the clerk the police call the roll Miranda yes Danielle drove yes yes that's 19 hot Wagner yes uh yes yes that's a poemer yes Anastasia yeah yes the motion passes unanimously eight zero all right thank you very much I'm now moving us on to our agenda item G which is public participation on any matter related to board responsibilities you can call in at 860-665-8659 or you can raise your hand here in the meeting and we will call on you we do limit civil participation to three minutes uh Miss Havens bye bye sorry for the delay Dana Havens 113 Stoddard um
155somebody keeps texting me stop it okay um if you are truly I I was listening to some of the public participation earlier um so this is in regards to that um but if you guys are truly committed to equity and diversity it means that you must respect the expression and conviction of all views the fact that a father's conservative beliefs and his son's following suit were mentioned in a writing by a principal or what I heard from a parent was written in another email who wants to um who she's concerned about controlling the flow and the timing of the cruelties and sexual actions of others and the dangers of the world to her child and um the wording that was sent to her was really quite unaccepting those are just a couple of incidents that
156I know of there's a couple more and I'm sure this there are even more parents who feel like this but just don't have the courage to speak up um I believe that what was said earlier today these two examples I gave you are proof that your MPS staff are not not only practicing inclusion and Equity when it comes to these types of beliefs it appears they're only tolerant of those who think along the same views or the views you're directing them to adopt and sadly it sees some it seems like some of the children are following suit um I think you need to revisit your mission statement and the practice surrounding these issues and truly truly uh encourage those to encourage your staff and children to be tolerant of other people's beliefs thank you anyone
157else all right seeing none uh we'll move on to agenda item H was which is further remarks by board members remind you we don't make remarks on public comments that's the first thing that I have on my list so um that we don't respond to the public but I do think that when parents come and I I still think we need to revisit that I think that they deserve kind of a Roundtable discussion not with a response because that's not our purview but just I think they deserve to know how we feel because they elected us so um I'm going to reiterate that I hope that we make sure that we include all cultures um I think it's important I've said that it's not my first time saying it um I think that our work
158with Equity is amazing in this town I've always said that but I want to make sure that we are Equitable for all and I know that that's what our vision is and that's what that um amazing woman who I don't remember her name but her first name was Yvonne said like so I just want to make sure that we're we're continuing to walk that walk um I want to also just State like closing the achievement Gap is not anything new um and I know that some people think it is it's not I mean when I much before you went to college my friend um Chef versus O'Neill had actually come into fruition while I was in teaching school and it was amazing and it was about that achievement Gap and then race to the top
159was also about that like so it's that's not a New Concept and and we have to address it and then fourth um it had been brought to my attention about adding a new policy about buy ahead and it's not a policy but I do wonder if um and I'd ask for clarification and didn't get it but um and it wasn't for me that I asked for clarification but um if we're talking about looking at a policy for Budget transfers because I think that's really what the concern is so I'm just looking for clarification on like what as a board it's not in our purview to say like don't do buy a heads but is it the question about the board budget transfers that are done with beforehand so I'm sorry that I took so long
160because I know it's late but you know I cried tonight so it's okay thank you all oh and Mr Brandy I like you too yes thank you uh just a few things I'll try to go quickly um first uh if there is uh you know certain uh non-inclusion of uh of students and bullying going on that's related to that um it has to stop and uh it's going to stop uh secondly um I want to say quickly that on multiple members of this board uh including myself and members of both parties uh have gone on the record during meetings seeking to have a joint meeting with the Town Council and the mayor herself came in and requested that meeting through the appropriate procedural channels during public participation it's time for us to do that and
161lastly um I would be remiss if um you know I didn't make a uh a comment uh regarding the school shooting that happened in Nashville I I've been perfect personally critical of the equity goals I have gone on record several times saying that I think that equality is the should be the focus and not equity but since we do have an equity goal and I'm looking through it through a lens of equity we need to make sure that um we are looking at uh looking at how we are accommodating and making sure that students with mental disabilities are receiving the help and support that they need on a daily basis and we need to make sure that we are including them into our portrait of a graduate so that they are well functioning members of
162society upon graduation thank you um yeah I apologize for my attorneys today I was at the Martin Kellogg performance of Beauty and the Beast my daughter was in the cast tonight there's three more four more shows I believe Thursday Friday and two on Saturday so if you have not seen it yet um I encourage you to do so the tickets are selling very fast might sell out um it was amazing I heard last night was amazing to you Dr permanent and and everybody um and um I also just want to put in a plug for our state reps and uh rep Curry who visited John Walls today kind of along the lines of Orchard saying you know another school shooting always comes up um security issues obviously don't want to get into details but um
163our reps and rep Curry saw uh John Wallace the wings that are in need of renovation I know that the Town Council is aware mayor Beth said last night that she would schedule a meeting um with Dr brummett and and head of security to go through the plans and what the board is asking for I know it was not on it was cut from the CIP budget but I'm hoping um that the town can find a way to work with um Dr brema her team the board to to make it work because I think it is extremely important especially this day and age to just be safe um that's all thank you Weaver I think Amy took exactly my line I think one of those things I immediately thought of the obviously the victims and
164the families but also just you go to your your place where you know that there needs to be improvements and Wallace has been a long-standing thing since I was a student I think since Beth was a student like wait that's been it's been a conversation topic for a while about about safety measure so you know I really hope that we can come to a solution this year this budget year on this um and um I think just making sure more people are aware that that is a huge priority not only on the board but hopefully we can get the town to see as well um and I just wanted to to Echo the sentence about Beauty and the Beast um we had a wonderful narrator and enchantress sitting here right now um Dr Obama I
165just really want to say it's such a great reflection of our our school system um I think we all are huge fans of the Arts here and Newington has just been a shining example of that but to have the teachers come and do a full Teacher cast um it's just such an incredible thing to watch here Middle School principal get up there and and get your old middle school math teacher to sing as guest on so um I just think one of the things that that we try and do I know there's a lot of always craziness around all of our budget things but I think it's a good time to highlight you know um these are the things that the programs are going to this is what our budget really goes to um and
166thank you to all the teachers who not only put in full days of work but then full nights of rehearsals and have incredible Talent outside of the academics so thank you for being holistic examples as well and catch them tomorrow night six o'clock mkms thank you thank you miss you up hi yes um I just want to Echo some of the things that my other board members have said um as you all know I've been an advocate um to redoing um sorry uh John Wallace and making sure it's safe and secure I know I bounced ideas off of many board members members just other people speaking with Dr brummett just how we can get that project done um I know you know we're working as hard as we can to figure out ways that we
167can at least start the process I know Lou thank you very much you did send um me an update in regards to ways that the town can possibly start the project and thank you for doing all that research and coming up with different creative ways to possibly I mean just make the school safer I I was you know so upset after you know hearing about that um shooting and it's just it's just disgusting and it's sad and you know that people lose their lives and I think that safety is a priority and I will always advocate for that I'm a mother myself you know I have family members and you all do as well and I and I will Advocate to the Town Council to everyone that will listen to me um you know on
168the top of my voice that that is something that we need to get done soon and if there's any way that the town can help us out with that or accomplish some type of strategic planning um I think John Wallace is a priority um thank you thank you just wanted to say ditto I guess really to most of what was said but I did want to mention um or kind of reflect back on Danielle's comment also our presenters this evening um that talked about the equity survey really looking at Equity being not only through the lens of race and truly um looking at all of our subgroups and making sure that everyone feels included all needs are met and that everybody is able to you know hit that Target being given what they need in
169order to succeed um and again going back to Mr verrier said I think mental health has to I know mental health of our students has taken a serious post pandemic um and I know that our schools and our our teachers are doing a lot to support and to help and to advocate for and I just think that is definitely a group of students that that need everything they can um to kind of push forward um and there was something else I was going to say oh my gosh the I was going to say that I went to the high school show I think it was two weeks ago now it was absolutely spectacular laughed so hard that I cried um your son was amazing everybody in it was just really outstanding it was also so
170cool to see and I think the same with with Martin Kellogg um shows as well it's not just the kiddos on stage right they're handing out programs they're backstage they're doing hair and makeup they're building the props it just um it highlights the school as a whole Community everyone is involved all of the teachers are on stage or they're sitting in the audience or they're helping backstage or selling tickets and all of the parents are coming out and it's just this really really beautiful community example that I think should be highlighted and celebrated I'll try to be fast but I'm a little fired up tonight um okay really quick on the budget just I have a hard time when we talk about all the creativity that we are doing at this table and virtually and
171then we don't hear creativity on the town side and then we see a projected unreserved bank account of over 13 million dollars that the town will have after all is said and done when we're needing what we need to fund a school district and I think it's very unrealistic to assume that you know Beth made the point about the library books right at some point we're going to need to fund those so even if we don't fund them now next year they're going to be in the budget so we just this town continuously just finds the biggest can that we can kick and we kick it down the road until we're at the point that we're at right now and I think at some point we have to just figure out what as a town
172we value here and it seems consistently that the school district is looked at as you go make it work you go tell so and so that we have too much staff here but on Town side we're not going to do any of that and I just think it's I think that the way the school system is treated at town government is unfair and I'm just going to say it I think the way that this budget was handed down to us from its initial release was very unfair I don't think that either Dr brummett nor Dr Fletcher have been avoiding any sort of joint meeting I think it's been out there plenty of times um I don't think there's interest on on the town side to do it so I'm just going to throw that out
173there there's money I'm not saying that I think it's a great strategy to spend your savings account but the town does it anyway and they do it to offset the mill rate I'm just saying maybe we should look at what the reality is of the school system's budget this year and next year because we're just going to have the same conversation again in a year um I just wanted to Dr Fletcher if you give me a second here um on social media we we had a parent come here a few weeks ago and coincidentally the same person was here recording uh another parent and I just want to say I don't want to minimize the parents concern I think Danielle put it very well that like we have to have these conversations and there's always
174going to be gaps I think Dr brummett mentioned too during that Equity conversation there's always going to be gaps there's always going to be room for improvement conversations that we have to have really tough ones at times um but I think exploiting a parent's complaint is a really dangerous thing to do not only just for the school system but for this town so the reason I say that is a few weeks ago we all saw the parent that was here and it was posted on social media and the parent said and I quote due to an innocuous political cartoon I posted on Facebook we had to endure a swat-like raid in our home last Thursday when SRO corvo's brother stated it was an emergency situation and I had to come outside I would not go
175outside for fear of my life now earlier a week ago just a week ago that same parent said this I have to make a correction corvo the security guard at Martin Kellogg his brother is a Newington Police Officer but was not and in parentheses as I was told by a board of education member involved in the raid in my home the only person that's not at this meeting right now is Sam Sharma I'm very confident Sam Sharma did not have this interaction so if nobody on the board of education is willing to apologize to Mr corvo the Newington Police Department well both of the Mr corvo's actually then I think that's shameful and I think the Board of Education should then just apologize on behalf of whoever doesn't have the willingness to step forward and
176say they told this parent this and in the thread it's very clear the parent says that it was just two adults talking they're allowed to talk and that the Board of Education member may have just been confused which is interesting I don't know why a board of education member would even be involved in that conversation but we talk about coincidences I think that the person that was here recording I think that it's very interesting that they recorded this initial conversation that was on social media I'm going to expect that today's um public participation will also be on social media and then that's very unfair to Mr Diaz I think it's very unfair to Mr torello who are doing everything they can in that school it doesn't minimize the parents complaint concern in any way but
177they're not going to be on social media to defend themselves Mr torello Mr Diaz the teachers in that building are not logging on to Newington strong to say here are the facts and I think whoever is out there trying to tell this person to record this stuff and post on social media under the assumption that everything is going wrong at Newington Public Schools should be ashamed of themselves thank you all right uh just two clarifying pieces uh for the record one is that late today after the um the visit by our legislators I don't know if there's any coincident there we were contacted by the time manager's office to have a meeting about John Wallace so they've requested that we just send members of our choosing who can speak to the particulars of the program
178so that is happening I believe it's going to be Tuesday after the town council meeting relative to the mayor we've had conversations I don't recall her coming here to ask for a joint meeting that part I just don't recall but I believe in our conversations if anything were to occur she it indicated it would not be like a full joint meeting because those typically don't go as well but she seemed to be open to a small group now that's where we left it I don't know whether it'll go further than that but I don't recall her requesting an added board meeting however in private conversation there there may be some potential there but I think it would be a small group versus two bodies uh getting together so I just want to clear the record
179on that thank you all right thank you motion to return oh second okay motion is made in second and all in favor say aye adjourned thank you all see you next Wednesday