001all right good evening ooh that's loud um welcome to the september 13th board of education meeting it is 602 and i'm officially calling the meeting to order before we begin we have an item to be added to the consent agenda so i am making a motion to add item d overnight field trip request bhs upbeat for october 16th to 17th 2021 camp woodstock to be added to the consent agenda do i have a second also all those in favor i opposed all right six zero um and then the other thing since we have students here this evening i in families i would like to move the audience of citizens above the committee report so we'll have student presentations then audience of citizen so that way if while any of the wonderful families here this evening
002would like to stay or address the board they don't have to sit through all of the committee reports and then they can go home or families can go home after student presentations we don't need a motion for that so i am really excited to have some of our griswold students here this evening last tuesday i did not have school so i spent my day checking out griswolds and mcgee seeing all the positive wonderful things that are happening in our schools seeing our students and just seeing you know how great school is going i was really going to see all the positives and just watching you know the teachers work their magic and in this fifth grade class i was so impressed and i'm so excited that they are here this evening so we are going
003to turn this over to miss boday and she is going to walk us through math number talk oh i'm sorry we got to call the meeting to order with the pledge of allegiance i'm so sorry i was just so excited that we have our students here this evening so let's stand up and do our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you now we'll turn it over to our fifth graders guys all right good evening everybody members of the board of education superintendent benigni thank you for this opportunity to showcase some of the wonderful things happening at griswold school i'm going to say very little
004and pass it off to ms beaudet who's going to talk to you about number talks hi everybody we are so excited to be here and share number talks with you um i am very blessed this year to have an amazing class with all these volunteers that we're so excited to come and share so i will turn it over to them hi everyone thank you for coming we are so excited to share how we do number talks in fifth grade a number talk is one of the warm-up routines we do before starting math number talks are mental math exercises that start with an easy problem and get slowly harder we learn how to think quickly and flexibly number talks allow us to share different strategies actively listen and to support peers and to take risks in
005a safe environment an important part of number talks is to explore incorrect answers but don't worry we love making mistakes because that's why we because that's when we learn the most during number talks we use hand signals to communicate with each other if we have an answer we put our thumbs up close to our chest so others don't feel rushed we add more fingers if we have more strategies if we agree with someone as if we agree what someone has said we use a hand signal we invite the board members to try out a number talk with us let's get started okay so this is our first problem six times forty so thumbs up if you have an answer and a strategy jake what have you got anybody agree with that answer yeah anybody else
006a different answer a different strategy paul um three times which equals 120 yep and if you add 120 twice that equals 240. yep so you did three groups of 40 two times okay anybody else different strategy sure um nice all right so the second one now that we know 6 times 40 is 240 let's think about 10 times 40. thumbs up when you have an answer or a strategy julie do you want to share sure okay so if we do 10 times 4 we know that equals 40. and then we have the extra zero because it was a four not a 40 and then it's 400. yep awesome i see some people agreeing with you amelia what have you got so um i okay so you got 400 for this one awesome so you know
007the us algorithm that's really impressive any other strategies yeah cara um does anybody know what it's called when we sort of add that extra zero on at the end paul um i don't know what it's called oh what does it mean and then you make it into four and then um yeah so you said it was ten times right every time we put a zero on the end it's getting ten times bigger yeah all right here's the next one the two answers we already got now it's 16 times 40. thumbs up when you haven't answered would you like to share sorry i don't know your name tim would you like to share with that any other strategies um amelia so um times i'd be curious to see if that always works with any number combination
008you agreed yeah all right let's go to the last one so 16 times 39 so if i had showed that first it would be really hard to multiply right but now that we did all these steps you might be able to get it really quick so thumbs up when you know kara yeah so for this one i kinda did something that i learned in fourth grade well i know that ten times three is thirty top on the zero that would be three hundred and then ten times four and then times ten times nine that would be ninety and then six times three which is got a lot of friends agreeing with you 624 okay did anybody use 16 times 40 to get 16 times 39 emilia what'd you do okay yeah okay um we were
009talking about i think it was jackson in our class that came up with this since 39 is one away from 40 and it's groups of we know we would take away a whole group of 16 and not just one right yeah okay so that's how we do number talks it starts with an easy problem it gets a little more difficult so they're able to do difficult problems as mental math thank you [Applause] thank you guys so much for sharing that with us and having us participate because i will say when i was in your class last tuesday i so bad wanted to participate and jump in and agree and disagree and go up and share my thoughts so that was awesome and what i also love is that with these math problems there's so many
010ways to get to one answer and then we're able to share them and agree and disagree and help one another out and i really saw that highlighted in your class so there's like collaboration teamwork and you're all learning from one another so thank you so much so i'm going to turn it over to the board members if you guys want to add anything ask them anything i just want to say nice job i applaud you it's a lot different from when i went to school and i'm glad everybody's learning well and congratulations on this project i for one was so excited to see this on the agenda that we had students presentations finally again this was always absolutely hands down my favorite part of all of our board of ed meetings when we could go
011to the schools or we could have the students present you know art or math or something they're doing and i applaud you for getting up in front of everyone and doing this it's not easy and thank you so much for sharing this it was awesome i have one more comment when i walked up there i asked you are we all part of the same team and you all kind of nodded and i really appreciate how much you do work as a team so you get to listen to each other's differences in the thoughts that you have learn something new from a friend and maybe teach a friend in the process that's really cool so great work one other thing it was the 16 by 40 math was kind of interesting i'm thinking about it now
012as to why did i go that route i work in i.t with computers and our number of basis is usually a thousand twenty four instead of a thousand and we distill that number all the way down it goes down to 512 256 128 64 32 16 8421 so those numbers have been in my life for decades now that i've been an i.t professional and it's one of those things that you look back and say i probably could have learned that in third fourth and fifth grade and started to do that putting it together so you will use math when you're adults believe it or not steve or lindsay do you want to add anything yeah i would just like to say it was it was great to see so many different methods and ways that
013uh each of you came up with the correct answers and that's important because you have to you know be able to accomplish a task to you in in a way that makes sense and so i applaud you for that and i liked how you supported each other as well with with helping each other and each person had a different uh approach to how they would come up with the answer and all that really matters in the end is you establish repeatability uh which you demonstrated you did and you got the correct answer so kudos to you great job i think you guys should come to the high school and teach us how to do some calculus number talks i think that would really help us out thank you well thank you so much for coming
014out i know it you have to be really brave to get up here and stand up here but it is live stream so you can send it to your grandparents and aunts and uncles it's on the bhs tv youtube page i know you're all youtube famous but i also want to thank um you miss boday for pulling this all together and getting all your students out and thank you to the parents for taking time out of your busy monday to come on out because again this is the best part of our board meetings and we really want to focus on the kids so thank you [Applause] so thank you so the next part of our meeting is audience of citizens if the parents would like to leave you can if you would like to save
015for this part by all means um it's totally up to you but is there i think i only saw one person sign up if you want to speak you can go ahead and go on up to the microphone just make sure you state your name and your address and we have two minutes per person do we have the timer do you want me to use my timer okay cool hello everybody i'm jesse i'm from 72 worthington point and uh here in berlin i just wanted to say when i start off thank you for the open houses they were really good my wife and i enjoyed mcgee and willard we really had a chance to reintroduce ourselves to the teachers so it was a good job uh but the reason i'm speaking is because last time
016i was here for the meeting for the um subcommittee and there's a few things that were said and that was um that our education system is diverse which i don't necessarily agree with and our numbers for our town don't represent as well we are a diverse group of learners as we just witnessed today and hearing all those individual voices and how they learn really helped everybody grasp math so that's why when i hear things like that it kind of makes me question on where we're getting our information and how we present it so that we're aware of what we're dealing with um here in berlin we're like more than 90 percent white which leaves 10 percent for any other way to identify so we need to work to make sure that we're hearing those other
017voices out there thank you and so i don't know and i remember you were speaking about your friend he said he got upset when he heard the word equal or equality and equity yeah and that's to me it's it shows that we need to have that more information because again the children was a perfect display of what equity is they each got to approach the problem in their way and explain it in their and how they view their ideas it was the same problem but they all addressed it differently and then one more thing i'd like to bring out is that if we overlook the voices of the marginalized we're gonna miss a lot right now everything's heavy with what's going on in afghanistan and we forget that we have a population of islam here
018so time's up thank you is there anyone else that would like to address the board just as you come up just take your name and address rachel rochette 61 ellsworth boulevard and i hadn't been planning on speaking but the gentleman that just spoke um led me to want to say something about diversity within our town our students and more importantly our staff and our teachers are phenomenal and they support our children 100 but i would encourage the board and the hiring departments when you are going out and recruiting that you are recruiting in areas with diversity it would be so impactful for our children to be taught by people who aren't the same as them and my children went through berlin school system and never had a non-white teacher until high school and maybe one
019so i think it's important when you're looking at hiring that you consider diversity as well thank you thank you is there anyone else that would like to address the board this evening all right so thank you everyone and we will move on to committee reports do you have a report for us school just started obviously and many of our clubs are back up and running so upbeat and interact are the two most popular ones that we know and they have many volunteer opportunities compared to last year where there wasn't a lot of in-person activity all of our fall sports are also off to a smooth start the soccer teams are playing right now and they just had their first games last week same as girl girls volleyball last week was their first game and cross
020country and football many of you were there i saw you at their first game we had a great showing of our red sea back with some school spirit and boys golf was moved to the fall sports season and they had their first meet last week also the berlin fair a much awaited day in berlin is back which is this coming friday so everyone will have the day off and get to enjoy the fair for the incoming freshmen we had a orientation so all the students were able to come in and meet some upperclassmen volunteers ask questions and take a tour of the school with their schedules and we also held a welcome night where they get to walk through an activities fair and the principals and administrators got to speak and then finally sam and
021i just wanted to mention that there seems to be just an overall positive vibe throughout the school and everyone's really excited to be back and especially the seniors if we have to wear masks to be together we're going to do that just so that we can have some of our normal traditions great thank you so much lindsay and congratulations to berlin high football team for their victory on friday night and i saw some of the game and i know the marching band also sounded phenomenal and cheerleaders were out there and you know we're moving to a place where we can have it was the first football game in almost two years right here yeah okay because last year there was seven on seven right right right but it really yeah so but it's um all
022right any other committee reports have any committees met since the last meeting okay so correct report uh we meet thursday for the first time so i don't have anything until then and correspondence to the board yes i have one corresponding support to members of board of education thank you for the engraved pen holder commemorating 25 years of service in berlin this serves as a reminder of how proud i am of the work for the district your thoughtfulness and generosity are much appreciated that's megan's royce all right moving on to the consent agenda do we have a motion for consideration i'll move to approve the consent agenda as presented so we have a second motion by tim second by mark any discussion around the consent agenda all those in favor i opposed right the vote is
0236-0 moving on to new business i'm going to turn this over to mr cogno to provide a report good evening folks um since we just met you know about well i guess about three weeks ago um i thought what i would do is rather than just rattle off you know the same projects and tell you that they've moved a little bit in three weeks they they all have but i thought i'd give you some goals and objectives and some other things coming up not only for the business office facilities but also the budget um so a few notes so bear with me please on august 23rd i reviewed most of the currently planned ongoing projects sponsored by the board of ed the list was lengthy the dollar volumes are considerable we're doing many of these
024projects in concert with the tom facilities department as well as independent architects and engineers and contractors uh just this week we actually uh just today very frankly we just contracted for uh the design for two of our projects one at griswold and one at hubbard so we're trying to move things together in a process given that we are working in the education business and in the public sector we we have some built-in schedule and budget constraints the efficient period for any fiscal year for construction is the summer we all know that basically two months of partially unoccupied space annually that's all we get to really do relatively sizable projects therefore it's imperative that we investigate and plan our projects big and small very well i've had the opportunity to be directly involved with planning and
025funding government projects for more than 25 years the one fact that constantly comes to the forefront and proves to be the most important is that good planning investigation and cost estimating all grouped together as in the field of what they call pre-construction activities are ultimately the necessary components for success risking through conception design and funding is a sure way to ruin a project excuse me that was rushing rushing through conception designing and funding is a sure way to ruin a project and embarrass its supporters one of our constant goals in the business office is to use this information to our advantage and to focus on planning and strategic scheduling the procurement process and some of the things we're taking up tonight at the border taking up tonight has been refined further regulated in recent years
026in the public sector the standards for approval continued to rise along with the cost therefore our focus must be on efficiency and cost-benefit analysis as well as short long-term maintenance for this budget season which starts in a month or so for fy 2023 our planning for the town's capital plan project starts now you i know you all understand the capital plan is the place that we get our large projects funded through through the town as we did in last year's uh two percent account the town manager has requested the board submissions by october 15th therefore representatives of the business office will be touring each facility with the principal the head custodian and the town facility department within the next few weeks to develop and redevelop our priority list for upcoming projects the key objective is
027to be realistic in our requests given anticipated budget constraints but not to lose sight of the fact that our job is to preserve and maintain our schools in a manner to serve our students doing things the right way and investing in the right infrastructure will save us money in the long run berlin's public schools are not going out of business and the demands from parents and students for continuing updating facilities technology and courses of study will grow the efforts are important gratifying and actually the most fun part of the job the superintendent has naturally directed us all to be aggressive in our review on our investigation and to recommend the package worthy of all consideration and be beneficial for our student population we hope to be reporting back to the board shortly with our requests
028and the level of success we've had in procuring support and funding for the following year thank you questions anyone have any questions for mr hug now on his report all right thank you so much thanks for your very well prepared report so now we're going to move into summer program updates and we're going to be covering special education general education summer curriculum work update and the central connecticut transition academy so i'm going to first turn it over to linda holy and to start out with special education good evening um first i want to start off by thanking michelle and cindy and then joanne and sue they're they're the ones that really put this program together um so that the kids could have a successful esy program so summers the summer school program for students with
029special education is called esy or extended school year services not every student who it participates in special ed through an iep receive special education services this is really made as a recommendation per child based on the needs i know you've heard this in the past our summer school program has kind of stayed consistent through the years so we run two summer school programs we have a five-week program for our students at our blast program so we have students in preschool elementary and mcgee so they meet monday through friday for five weeks for four hours per day and then we have our four week program that meets tuesdays wednesdays thursdays for three hours a day we had a total we had 132 students actually participate in our summer school program this year we also had third
030an additional 39 students who were recommended but the families chose not to have their children participate in the program one unique program that we were able to offer this year as well it wasn't part of esy but the department of education gave every district in the state a special education stipend to be used with students that missed out on experiences due to the pandemic so we really looked at our students that are in our blast programs that typically throughout the school year would have an opportunity to go into the community whether that be field trips two years ago we were able to get some of the students into the y pool for that experience so we put a proposal together to allow our students to participate in a camp funded through the ymca so we
031had let me see we had 19 students who participated in that program and we had 15 paraprofessionals that helped assist them so they could have this typical camp experience that they wouldn't be able to do without that adult support they went to camp for two weeks after esy was out and they were able to stay until three o'clock in the afternoon they just had a blast so that's our esy program i don't know if anyone has any questions for us i don't have any questions do you guys have any questions sounds like it went really well though thank you for your report right dr mcgark general education good evening so i would say in contrast to the esy program there was a lot of new different programming that happened this year for summer programs as
032linda did i'd like to thank laurie larry gerbin and carl watson for their organization and coordination of the summer academy program and tyler boyle the fine arts co-coordinator and ross hanson who's the department supervisor in math for helping us to expand our programming based on our needs assessment and the grant funding eligibility criteria we used esser funds to support some of the summer learning programs that were designed to target kids who we identified as a need of additional support or we are also allowed to spend summer pro summer funding to expand arts access for students so we had three primary areas that we worked on one was focused on students in the early elementary grades entering grades one two and three teachers identified 90 students that they thought would benefit from that program and we
033ended up having approximately 75 students participate the program consisted of classes that met monday to thursday for 3.5 hours a day from 8 30 to noon and the students got support and literacy in mathematics and also had an opportunity to participate in a creative movement artsy kind of other slot of time excuse me in addition to that through coordination with the ymca we were able to offer a camp program as an add-on to the summer academy program and that meant for those families they were allowed they were able to have their students in the summer program from 8 30 in the morning through the end of the the day at four o'clock and also to come on fridays to be able to participate in that through this program we also provided additional support for our
034english learner students in the past our english learners had gotten tutoring with an adult meeting at the library and we use this the as our funding to provide the opportunity for them to participate in the summer academy and stay for summer camp if they wanted to do that so that provided a total of up to five weeks of programming for those students we ran two different programs at the middle school in high school to support mathematics excuse me for the high school students entering as freshmen 8th grade teachers identified students that they recommended participation in the program and we had conducted this face-to-face at the high school so the eighth graders coming out of mcgee came to the high school for the programming they were able to tour the building meet some of the high
035school teachers and have a chance to orient themselves just a little bit to high school life in addition to getting math support at the middle school we ran it a little bit differently and we provided virtual support for students needing math help needing help with their summer math packets and help with things like khan academy that families wanted additional support with so that really covers what we did academically we also expanded our music offerings so um one of the things that we did was to subsidize students participating in the beginning band program and that meant for this year we had the biggest beginning band program in a number of years we had 69 students participate which is just a great number to have and in addition we began a completely new summer program in um
036music that tyler boyle and chris riley fascina put together they were very anxious to get the kids back singing after a year where masks and social distancing made that difficult and they ran a summer program that incorporated singing rhythm activities and ukulele instruction so we have brand new ukuleles at the elementary schools and the students were able to benefit from that that's it that's my update so much you know dr mcgark i appreciate you reporting out and explaining all that because i know in our ethno committee through like the may june july months i believe that's really where we were talking about it you know the money came through american recovery act and it was really i think it was for four different areas and one was learning recovery one was enrichment and the other
037two were with all the grants there was a mandatory use of a portion of the funds it was different each grant but it had to be used for learning recovery or learning loss um and i can give you specifics after about what each one was but in those discussions about the grant we looked at prioritizing where the need was and what if it was to fill the gap of the learning as well as the socialization and so the summer program that we put together did both extending the learning portion but then extending it to camp in the afternoon for the social portion as well as the informal learning so well thank you it just it sounds like such a great report it sounds like the students really had a wonderful opportunities it was great being
038on the planning end and now hearing you know about the opportunities that they had and you know trying to provide as many opportunities for our students as possible especially after the past year and a half anyone on the board like to comment or have any questions for dr mcgark it's great to see the use of the esser funds and those other grant monies going in such a diverse way it's you know it's a creative look at things as we talked about for the past six months or eight months about these programs it's more than just okay let's do enrichment to teach the kids more that they lost we're we're doing it in different ways which you know i've long been an advocate of beyond just the classroom stuff right the stuff outside the music and
039singing that's fantastic so thank you and thank you to all the faculty who put this together and made this happen because it was throughout everyone's summer so that was great thank you now would you like to talk about this summer curriculum work so for our summer curriculum work just explain the process a little bit for people that are new to the board and growing in their understanding of this we have a process every year where we send out a [Music] google form for summer curriculum work proposals um to all of our staff members pre-k to 12. this year we received 56 proposals across elementary middle high school special services and our k-12 departments which include art music and pe those proposals are reviewed by department supervisors by principals when appropriate and by the curriculum supervisors
040who advance selected projects for approval over the course of the summer teachers completed approximately 1500 hours of summer curriculum work and i decided not to read off the list of all 56 projects for you but just to give you a sampling of some of the kinds of things teachers worked on they worked on strategies and materials to support sight word development they re did math assessments at the elementary school they worked on ruler lessons fact fluency and technology integration among other projects at the elementary level at the middle school they worked to replace human systems labs the esteem teachers worked on minecraft and aquaponics which is brand new and you'll have to get over to maggie and see the fish they worked on research and media literacy and they developed support for summer math programming
041in the high school they conducted projects such as adjusting pacing related to changes in ap courses they had some courses like french one that were running for the first time in several years and the curriculum and materials needed to be updated they revamped the geometry with statistics course to better prepare for the content standards on the sat they developed new curriculum for a spanish language and culture course and for the computer science discovery course they worked on restructuring capstone we worked on the developmental guidance curriculum related to the new school counseling framework and teachers worked on advisory programming at the high school in special services teachers worked on tech integration for learning center science courses they worked on developing social studies and science curriculum for the mickey blast program and speech and language pathologists and
042social workers work to further develop the social skills curriculum so when you look at the breadth and depth of those projects you can see that summer curriculum projects cover everything from our preschool and early childhood classes to our advanced ap classes we take a broad definition of what curriculum work means in the summer so the development of new assessments as well as investigating new curriculum and new materials is an important part of that that's it anyone have any questions well i know that the summer curriculum work happens every year and it's a necessary component to drive our school district board and i know that we talked about this at the last meeting dr mcgart but can you just speak to as a result of the social justice and equity committee just to be clear was
043any of the curriculum changed over the summer we we did make some changes um that were continuations of work that we had done previously but there was there was nothing there was no there were no new courses that came as direct result of that committee there were no new textbooks adopted there were no uh significant changes based on the result of that work right and i appreciate that i just wanted to be clear of that because i know a lot of people are listening to the meetings and there's been a lot of questions so i just don't want there to be any confusion so thank you for all the work that you do and thank you for the report i really appreciate it i know the board does and i know that the curriculum is
044a lot of work to get done and it's you know is very important that we do that so thank you right and now we will turn it back over to linder for the central connecticut transition academy you know it was about eight years ago i think eight plus years ago that i had a vision to have the transition academy move out of the high school and off site and that was made possible because of the support of the board of ed um and then while we were doing that i also wanted to look at how we can partner with another town for a couple reasons it's not just a financial reason it's also so that our students who've been together for probably since kindergarten can broaden their social circles and develop relationships with other students
045from other towns so finally we've come to the point where we're happy to announce that we are in a true partnership with cromwell public schools in berlin public schools this partnership will provide services to our students from age 18 to 22 in both communities the berlin transition academy is now called the central connecticut transition academy and we continue to run the program out of the ymca building on main street and like just i just shared with you that many of our students have been one with one another since preschool or kindergarten um so now they can really work together to foster new relationships and hopefully continue these relationships until adulthood um when we first moved to the y about six years ago we started our program with four students last year we had 10 students
046this year we have 20 students so our program continues to grow it's the goal both of berlin and cromwell to continue to grow the program by offering tuition spots to surrounding towns so that we can continue to bring different students in from different communities our open house for the families and students will be held on wednesday september 22nd at 6 30. and we always invite you to come down and see this program it's just it's a nice program to go in because the students don't have to worry about academics anymore they're just working on their life skills they're working on independent living skills they're working on employment skills on career opportunities some students are enrolled in some college classes and it's just an it's an exciting adventure now that we can merge together with cromwell
047and again thank you to the board this would never been able to happen without the continued support of the board and the superintendents thank you it's very exciting to see how much this program has grown over the past six years i've been on the board and i know that it takes a lot of work from all of you guys that you put into it so thank you does anyone else on the board have anything they would like to add ask contribute i just would like to say i think it's very exciting that you um were able to well collectively you were able to see this dream come to fruition through the efforts of many i'm sure but it does certainly provide greater opportunities for all those involved and i look forward to seeing it grow
048even more thank you anyone else all right thank you for that update okay so moving on to um we are adopting a new policy this evening and i know at the last meeting we elaborated a little bit more on it so we have a policy review and a second reading and adoption for policy 3324.1 code of conduct governing procurements under a federal award um any discussion around this yes i'll start with a motion okay i'll move that the board adopt new policy 3324.1 code of conduct governing procurements under a federal award and revised policy 3323 purchasing as presented do we have a second so motion by tim second by kerry now do we have any discussion around this new policy that we are adopting okay yep so we talked a little bit at the last
049meeting about these policies these are uh as it says a revised policy to purchasing which we already had but factors from the government have been introduced in that as well as the new policy that are there to address all of the federal grants and awards and stipends and everything else that we've been getting and all the communities around are are dealing with this so it's not anything unique to berlin but i think it is a good step forward to make sure that we are handling this appropriately and properly and in full visibility with the community and everybody else who is going to be looking at how we're spending this money so i think they're very appropriate for what we're in the middle of right now thank you tim anyone else all right all those in
050favor i opposed 6-0 now we are moving on to item f the report on equity and social justice committee so at the last meeting i had requested that superintendent benigny look at the committee structure effectiveness positives and negatives that have come out of the meetings and determine a way to ensure transparency and report back to the board this meeting so um i'm going to turn it over to superintendent benigny and dr mcgurk to report back to the board good evening uh thank you very much for the opportunity to take a look at the committee i do appreciate the comments and i do realize that there needs to be greater clarity so i hope that tonight i'll be able to give you some of that clarity and go reviewing the structure but first i want to
051start off with that the committee has always been advisory in nature i think initially there was some confusion in whether the committee was a board of ed committee or a committee outside of the board we did seek clarity on that and it definitely is a board committee we know that moving forward and we recognize that because it is a board committee whether board members are active part in the committee or only a few board members it still falls under a board committee which means that it will follow all guidelines of open meetings agendas will be posted and meetings are open to the public just to reiterate when we first formed the committee was open to all those that were interested so anyone that wished to join the committee was able to join the committee there
052was not like they were selected from a group anyone that was interested was able to join um as it will be moving forward if meetings are hold held virtually moving forward a link to the meeting will be posted and the agenda will be posted as any board subcommittee is posted uh which is posted with the town and posted at the meeting venue and posted online um so moving forward that's what will be occurring um as far as the meeting structure and how the meetings will be run and and the ability that the meetings are viewed by the public in an open setting will definitely follow that moving forward the full committee looking at it moving forward realizing the work in a full committee of over 60 people which may grow at this point we're looking
053at we'll meet quarterly as a full committee meetings will include opportunity for new learning for an example an article a ted talk some type of discussion but i want to stop on that for a moment some of the critique of the previous committee was the consultant we were working with we are not working with that consultant moving forward and there was definitely a feeling that much of the discussion was targeted towards a certain area and that it wasn't as open as it could be or inclusive i'm here to say that we're going to ensure that everyone has a feeling of welcome to the committee and feeling it's a safe place to share regardless of where your point of view is the idea is new learning by the committee to share to the greater community if
054we can't have members of the community feeling it's a safe place i don't know how we're going to share that further with the greater community so that is definitely position that we're going to ensure it takes place moving forward on all subcommittees will report on their progress so the thought is that we have these quarterly meetings and within these meetings the subcommittees are doing work they report back to the group there's feedback in that large group setting the subcommittee's report out and there's oversight of those subcommittees by myself the assistant superintendent and the chairs we have the chairs i'm going to ask aaron to speak a moment but the chairs are listed out under each of the subcommittees and we also noted what their position is their parents administrators teachers various people that are the
055chairs at this moment doesn't mean that those won't change and there's goals for each committee and some of the work that the committee would be working towards i'm going to ask aaron to talk about each committee and then i'll come back and talk about the goals at the end thank you brian so uh this document is in your schoology folder as well as being displayed here for your review uh our expectation um in moving forward in the way that we envision uh continuing this work is to keep in place the subcommittees that we started in april of this school year those committees were just getting started they've only had a couple of meetings and their work has essentially been on hold while this issue is resolved around how the committee's moving forward we expect to
056continue to work with the subcommittees but we want to clarify to the board and to people who may have questions in the public the way in which the committees will work and how oversight will be provided to the committees the parent family community outreach committee will work in conjunction with the board of ed communications committee this is a direct suggestion that came up at one of our one of the recent board meetings about why there would be a parent outreach committee and a communications committee we think that they need to work in collaboration so that if the um outreach committee for example wants to bring in a speaker or sponsor parent form that we're doing that in the united way with the communications committee and the communications committee is lending their support behind the work
057that's being done for the curriculum and audit curriculum audit and the anti-bias anti-racist efforts with students i want to reiterate the idea that significant changes to the curriculum are reviewed by the board of education committee curriculum committee prior to implementation the border bed curriculum committee will continue to approve new courses in new textbooks as has been past practice and agendas for the board of ed curriculum committee are published and meetings are open to the public our district curriculum documents continue to be accessible to the public through a link on the district website and in addition we plan to post a report on the district website showing which curriculum documents from the previous year have been modified and that's specifically to address the concern that changes were being made without oversight or without approval for the
058professional learning committee we expect the the chairs of that committee to continue to work with their committee to identify opportunities for professional learning for our staff including our non-certified staff and to bring those proposals forward um for review and approval by the administrative council which includes the superintendent of schools uh the same sort of concept the same concept would be true for the recruitment retention of a diverse workforce this committee has a goal of increasing the diversity of certified and non-certified staff and to identify ways to proactively report support retention of staff as you heard a community member speak to tonight and again they would make proposals for any changes in our process either in advertising in our hiring process or the ways that we do we advertise for positions or try to bring people
059in through our administrative structure and the final area the school culture and student opportunities again the proposals would be reviewed and approved by the the administrative council which includes the superintendent of schools we hope that the clarity of this proposal helps to give confidence to the board that there is sufficient oversight and that there is a plan in place to make sure that the committees stay in their intended role of being advisory and that the work that they do is supported moving forward thank you i think it's important to note in all of the subcommittees the oversight of each subcommittee and as far as when a proposal is reviewed approved by administrative council administrative council would mean you know all the administrators in the district and myself which we meet bi-weekly so if there were
060things that we were overseeing they would go through administrative council if there's a need for it to go through the board or through the subcommittees then we could definitely do so also the other portion i think it's important to note is that with the um trainings there was question of what trainings go on with the students what training is going on with the staff we have no problem posting those trainings for the public to see we can post those on the website as it was shared at the last meeting many of these trainings have been going on for years they may not have fall under the umbrella of the district equity and social justice committee but we work with the anti-defamation league for years and so on and and and some of the work that
061we did with the habits of mind would also cross reference with some of the district equity work so i think it's important to note that the work has been going on as far as the transparency i think the curriculum has been posted on the website a good portion of it meaning you may not get as far in as a teacher can get but you can see all the curriculum that curriculum has been posted i believe for over 10 years and it's accessible under rubicon atlas rubicon on the district website so some thoughts for the goals to the board and obviously these goals could change but for discussion one of them is develop a district equity statement the process to be determined by the board of education we thought that would be a good goal for
062the 21 22 school year each subcommittee would develop three to five action steps to review by the board of education in december 2021 at that meeting if that was a direction you'd like the subcommittees to go that we just described each subcommittee will prepare and present a brief report on their work and recommendations for future actions we thought that with the june meeting very being very packed already that we would wait till september and have the subcommittee's report to the board and actually do a presentation of what was accomplished in the 21 22 school year and then to begin the sched goals for the following year if needed so that was kind of our you asked for a little uh review and adjustments to the committee um those are our thoughts obviously if you'd like
063further review our recommendations were open to any comment at this point or we'd go back and make some more further for the adjustments right now i'm going to turn it over to the board members um if you guys have anything you'd like to ask or add so thank you i think that um helps to provide some clarity in terms of how you are thinking about moving forward um one question i have is are those subcommittees already populated or how will they be populated the subcommittees were populated this year and the chairs that you see were the chairs for this year moving forward we did not decide if they'll be the chairs or not the thought was we only had limited meetings last year and we haven't over the summer had any meetings since we last
064ended the school year so the thought was that if those chairs were in place that they would remain it doesn't mean that they can't change we're open to looking at that but the thought is that those committee stack committee structure would stay and if additional people joined the committee they would be added to those various subcommittees subcommittees they'd like to serve on or are they being identified by others to serve on those committees subcommittees they were they were self-selected is that how it would move forward moving forward would you let himself i mean we didn't get as far as discussion i don't think we can have you know 40 on one and only five on the other so i think there will be some interest but we may have do you have interest in the
065top three and then we look at where where it's needed also is there a date set for the first quarter really meeting yet we have not to the best of my knowledge we've not set a date yet we really wanted to get the board's approval that you that this structure works and that we've made some changes that will hopefully allow us to move forward in a positive direction well thank you for putting this together i know over the past month the both of you spent a significant amount of time really going through this and trying to you know keep intact some of the work that was already done um i will say it has been made abundantly clear that you know though we've heard from people who don't particularly support the work we've also heard
066from a significant amount of stakeholders within the community especially teachers and students who really do and i think it's very important that we you know provide this this space for this work to continue um and i know that there's a lot of people really passionate about it and it can look different in so many different ways and i think right now as a board of education um us as board members dr mcgurk and superintendent benigny as well as everyone else involved it's really finding what's right and best for our community and it's going to look different everywhere i think with social justice equity any of these topics right now in society we're facing different times that none of us have ever really gone through well i know for me in my my time alive i
067haven't and you know we can agree we can disagree but at the end of the day what are we doing for the kids and you know we need to make sure that we are providing an equitable learning environment whatever that means and i think by doing this work we're going to develop our equity statement and we can move forward so thank you for that and i have two questions um so i i know that when you were presenting you said that this was put out to everyone um in one of our conversations i learned that it actually was can you speak to um how it was put out initially because i did i didn't even know this until we spoke yeah dr mcgurk was pointing on it but i know it was posted um to
068the best of our ability to invite people but i can share with how those invitations came and how the contact went so if you want to share it sure we sent out a direct email solicitation to all members of the staff so all of our staff members were invited we also sent out a message to the community of parents through our school messenger system and we used one of the berlin board of education citizen columns to provide information about how people could join the committee and we did have people who are not parents but interested community members joined through that post so yeah i think it's important to know that it was in the citizen and that's it did reach a greater good um and then the last question i have and then i'll see
069if the board has any other questions because i know this is one of those things that the more we think about it the more questions come up so superintendent benigni i know in our last meeting i had asked you did the curriculum change as a result of the social justice and equity committee and you said it didn't and then tonight when i asked dr mcgurk it was well kind of not really no major changes can we just clarify that because i just do not want any misconceptions right now and i just want to be clear and transparent and if there were changes what those were okay aaron i'm going to ask you to speak to it directly more to that the curriculum work is as far as textbook adoption anything of that nature no did
070staff members work in the summer on just equity and social justice as such not to my knowledge as such in isolation so to answer your question were there changes directly from the equity and social justice committee no nothing came to my knowledge unless i'm wrong nothing came from the committee to say this is what has to change in the curriculum and this change should be noted the equity and social justice committee said make this change to say that we're not always working on social skills and we're not working on kindness for others all those things that we do with habits of the mind some of the presentations that were in front of the board those those things do overlap with equity and social justice for all so to say that there may not have been
071some of that in the curriculum i don't want to say that it's not that there wasn't any of that done or people didn't work on social social skills and things of that nature that could overlap and aaron if you can be more explicit about things that may overlap i'd rather have you share that this evening um julia the reason that i hesitated a minute when you asked me was because there were no changes as i said directly from the the subcommittees that started to work this spring the committees are all advisory in nature they even if they made recommendations it still has to go through the curriculum change process the reason that i hesitated for a moment was they we have had three years of equity work happening in the district which has included having
072teachers do things like work on identity you remember a couple of years ago we had the students from willard that came with their identity maps when they were talking about you know i'm a soccer player and a violin player and i speak spanish and i um i like to travel with my family and another fam the other kids that had different identity maps and they were learning to find things that were unique about themselves and things that were in common so i hesitated because some of that work that started three years ago continues and continues to have an influence on work that we're doing in the school what i did not um mean was that there was something that anyone on the equity or social justice committee directed and said needed to meet a change
073in our curriculum because that did not happen i appreciate that no when i i remember when the students came and that was wonderful it was such a nice thing to see them do that and um yeah i just i just want to be crystal clear especially that you know this is available on youtube people can go back watch it and then the questions tend to come after the fact so i want to make sure that we are being transparent and straightforward and if there is anything we can address it now you know over a year ago the board of education had postings on the internet there were pieces in the curriculum that we're biased culturally biased and we're offensive we definitely did review the curriculum at an administrative level to make sure that those accusations
074were not in the curriculum and i can tell you as i stand here tonight those pieces that were said are not in the curriculum and we're in the curriculum when they when we were accused that they were in the curriculum they may have been in years ago but they were not in the current curriculum so i think when you're asking how change has been made that is something that we took immediately took action on and immediately looked into the curriculum to ensure that that wasn't part of our curriculum well i think it's important you brought that up and i think it's important that we go back to that because that was really a big thing that affected us as a board and the greater good of the community because whereas people are talking about us
075suddenly adding in critical race theory as a result of this committee which hasn't happened a year a year ago we were being accused that we were a racist school district and for the amount of people we heard about critical race theory it was 10 times more we were getting emails that we were racist so it is important that there are those checks and balances and that curriculum is being reviewed um and that that was a really stressful time i would say as a board member it was probably equally as stressful as this if not more so thank you thank you for bringing that up does anyone else have anything they would like to add questions i guess this isn't so much a question as um encouragement to um ensure that folks this is this creates
076a safe space for people to express diversity in opinion and share diverse perspectives because um you know i think that's where folks have uh kind of raised their voices is in feeling as though they may have been silenced or that their perspectives weren't represented in some of the work and whether or not that is factual um i feel it's important that people are invited into a space that is safe to share and exchange ideas and come to some common ground right and shared understanding so i hope that we can create pathways for different voices and ideas to be shared and um and examined within this work i said it earlier but i think that point that you bring up is that if members of the committee can't have this safe space because the whole notion
077of the committee is to move forward to the greater community of berlin so if those that people that devote their time and energy to the task can't have the safe space and to feel part of the community the community the community of practice right then how is it going to be shared beyond that so i think you bring up a very relevant point and we both recognize and i think the greater community committee recommend recognizes that that needs to be a priority um so thank you do any other board members have anything they would like to share because i think before we wrap up this meeting and move forward if there's any you know major issues that anyone has like we speak up now before we move on to our next meeting and move forward
078with this well thank you so much for putting the time and effort into this um i know it's been a lot of work going through and restructuring and coming up with everything to report back but i think the clarity will be very very helpful moving forward so thank you all right so this evening we will not be going into executive session is that correct the contract is not ready our attorneys don't have already yet okay so we have one last item on the agenda do we have a second motion by kerry second by mark all those in favor i opposed it carries 6-0 thank you