001um checklist oh good evening we are now in session the time is 7 30 on monday november 22nd 20 20 20 21 i would like to convene the watertown board of education regular meetings before we move on to the pledge of allegiance is there a motion to add an agenda item b so moved second second motion carries um also can we have a motion to move item l first round the pump is public participation to item i do have a motion motion passes i'm now going to turn it over to i'm sorry first we'd like to um have a moment of silence in honor of mr george palumbo who passed away just the other day george was a um a big member of our of our sports community um i'm going to turn it over
002now to miss krista palumba i'm going to read his obituary from the paper and then say a little something george palumba beloved husband father grandfather and coach mr george palumba aged 78 passed away after brief illness on thursday november 18 2021 at waterbury hospital he was the husband of mona palumba born on january 24 1943 george was the son of the late rocco and jane palumba he was a proud u.s marine and he worked in the construction industry for more than 30 years a lifelong resident of oakville george will best be remembered as a coach and mentor to several generations of young people throughout oakville and watertown area for many teams including watertown high school freshman football junior varsity softball freshman boys and girls basketball swift junior high school boys basketball and boys baseball pop
003warner football water oak little league sandy koufax baseball and babe ruth baseball he was the president and co-founder of gross softball the coach of the u18 travel softball rapids team and watertown recreation boys travel basketball and coordinator for the boys and girls basketball teams he received many awards and recognitions throughout his coaching career including a public service award for the connecticut secretary of state the gold ring circles of sports the gold ring waterbury sportsman club and was inducted into the watertown high school gridiron hall of fame in addition to mona he's his devoted wife of 55 years george is survived by his daughters georgie and palumba dana lynch and kimberly leo all of oakville three grandchildren jessica palumbo of watertown daniel colangelo of oakville and joseph leclerc of oakville and his two great grandchildren elena
004cruz and gimani gonzalez of watertown he also leaves his cousin steve hovick of watertown will be considered a brother several nieces and nephews and his beloved companion his dog reggie george was pre-deceased by his son brian palumba and his brothers john palumba and robert palumbo um i am one of many many people in this town who was lucky enough to be coached by george and if you ask any of us one word to describe george as a coach the first word that will come to everyone's mind would be tough but in such a good way we mean tough i coached pop warner for many years and as a coach you never know if the players like you you're really not there to be liked you're there to teach them new skills you're there to teach
005them how to be a good team player hopefully build on their self-esteem self-confidence and at the end of my first season of coaching one of my players came up to me and she said coach krista do you know why you're my favorite coach i was honestly taken aback i'm like no why am i your favorite coach and she said you're tough but you're fair and you bring out the best in us and that is all george palumba i was a great coach for bob warner because of george palumba and his legacy lives on and all of us players and those of us who've gone on to coach he was a great man thank you hey i ask that we all rise as mr mikowski leads us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to
006the 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 [Music] here thank you moving on to item e board members should have received the minutes from the board from the regular um regular meeting on november 8th 2021 in your packets on friday is there a motion to approve the minutes of the regular board of education meeting from november 8 2021 yes madam chair i recommend that the board of ed approve the minutes from the regular board meeting dated november 8th thank you miss husking is there a second a second thank you extensions opposed all in favor on to the next item tonight we recognize dr janet carlotto principal of watertown high school for receiving the first year high
007school principal award from the connecticut association of schools an official presentation of her plaque was presented to her on november 2nd 2021 at a ceremony at watertown high school the first year high school principal award recognizes a first year high school principal who has had a positive impact on their school or school district you got it so um i would like to call dr parlato up to the ds in just a moment but um thank you miss renaldi for that introduction for dr parlato you are correct on november 2nd mr bill silva from cas connecticut association of schools came to our school district to present a wonderful award to dr carlotto and i believe he's also a good friend so that was nice to uh have somebody you know do that for you um so
008congratulations to you on behalf of all of us here in the district i'll be it a couple of years later uh better late than never congratulations [Applause] we gotta grab and we're just going to take a picture with dr carlotto and christopher oh i'm sorry thank you congratulations hey thank you and good evening madam chair at john trumbull primary school with the help of the most amazing pto we celebrated our staff with we need some more teachers like you staff enjoyed s'mores and some time together before school started teachers were busy with parent conferences and families were able to hear about the progress their child or children are making having parents in the building again has proven to be just amazing we were extremely proud to join watertown social services to help families this holiday
009season we set up our giving tree with over 80 tags and most are gone already because parents want to help as well and took tags off during conferences at judson on tuesday november 16th our third grade teachers were able to meet with polk's grade 3 teachers for training on our crec science units not only did they enjoy learning more about our science curriculum the conversation between johnson judson and polk's teachers were insightful and helpful to ensure district coherence on wednesday november 17th fire marshal kim calabrese came to speak with the students to get the students excited for the fire prevention poster contest we are excited to see the creativity of our students while learning about fire safety on friday november 19th our tech team met for the very first time we learned how to set
010up the computer and projector in the gymnasium for our assemblies the students and staff members were able to get all of our technology set up for our recycling assemblies congratulations to grace young tyler bretton jack keane elijah mott ellis simmons liam kale rocco sedano and nuri mimeti for being chosen by their teachers to participate thank you to mrs washburn ms iqbal mr terozzi mr esposito mrs o'toole and mrs rinaldi for being part of this team and also on friday friday november 19th the recycling club held assemblies for all students grades three through five they presented and provided facts about recycling such as the importance of recycling and what items are recyclable we also were able to provide all classroom teachers with their recycling bins recycling is up and running at judson thank you to anna
011romano emma kuzia sophia and tanucci and megan simmonson or maggie simmonson for all their hard work thank you to mr gino fayelo for his support and follow through with this endeavor the third grade teachers at polk recently participated in the training with the crec staff developers developers about their new science units along with their judson counterparts teachers had a chance to unpack a science unit make meaning of the standards and expectations and deepen their deepen their understanding of the experiments and assessment techniques we look forward to having fourth and fifth grade teachers participate in this training in december last week fire marshal kim calabrese came to pope to meet with the students and discuss fire safety students reviewed basic fire safety rules such as stop drop and roll and having a meeting place with their
012family should they need to evacuate their home in addition the fire marshal discussed the importance of fire prevention and how it's everyone's job every day all fourth and fifth grade students are invited to participate in the statewide fire prevention poster contest and congratulations to fourth grader emma howell who won a free fresh christmas christmas tree with her art submission to the ct christmas tree growers association contest the swift unified sports team recently traveled to watertown high school to work on a unified sports inclusion project with the unified team from whs that they began planning for virtually last spring following this planning session the two teams engaged in a kickball game in the whs gym at the end of the day it was a successful day all around and they are planning to meet up again
013soon members of our unified team also participated in a virtual youth leadership summit with a number of schools across the state including our unified friends at whs the students attending this event participated in our fall unified sports soccer season or were selective members of the various swift fall sports teams the group heard two dynamic speakers david flood as the keynote speaker and eric jackson as the facilitator who shared an exciting and motivating message our team also worked with mr jackson last spring in planning our inclusion project this week our 7th graders are creating virtual museums around the theme of the titanic the students are researching various topics associated with the titanic and then creating their own museum rooms our library media specialist first teaches the strategies for researching accurate information and our language arts teachers
014then focuses the students on the skill of summarizing information how to cite resources is an integral part of the project as is to as is how to effectively use the internet as a research tool the topic is of great interests and the students are very engaged in the project and in particular in their own museum display all of the work all of the work and the work product are complete completed online excuse me the watertown high school faculty appreciated the families who came in for this this falls parent teacher conferences teachers look forward to sharing information about students progress and growth in each subject so far this year we held an evening open house for 8th grade students and their families last week families listened to an overview of information about the high school's offerings
015and then participated in tours of the building led by our knowledgeable student volunteers the principal's advisory panel met last week with over 50 members providing their input about how many aspects of life about many aspects of life in our whs community the students also learned about the 21 powerful practices for deeper learning which is a major part of our teachers professional learning this year the high school administration is making an active effort to involve students in professional learning this year so that they understand the teaching practices that they are experiencing in their classes congratulations to the watertown boys soccer team for reaching the state tournament semi-finals last week going that far in the state tournament is a notable accomplishment and speaks to the team's hard work and skill dr parlotto mr hogriff and mrs cody
016are participating in the what school could be virtual academy led by the university of kentucky school of education the purpose of the academy is to help create plans for a deeper learning in schools including increasing student choices of learning topics and more engaging ways for students to learn course material watertown high school is holding a food drive to benefit the watertown food pantry through tuesday of this week and the winning home room receives a breakfast of donuts and mr coogler's homemade cinnamon rolls the watertown high school fall play is clue and finally a reminder that dinner will be served at body manor also known as the watertown high school auditorium on next thursday friday and saturday night december 2nd through 4th at 7 pm sharp and for those of you that may be afraid of
017the dark there is a lunch and matinee showing at 2pm on the 4th tickets to your show will be purchased for 10 dollars for adults and 7 for students here at the high school during student lunches at the town hall or at the door of the show of your choice remember you must be there to get a clue and figure out who done it thank you very much some lessons thank you good evening everyone um so a busy week uh we today actually just had our strategic planning meeting at three o'clock and we reviewed gear assessments that were um actually done a couple of years ago and headed up by ms cody our assistant principal at watertown high school um and we took a look at our existing 2022 district improvement plan or also known
018as a strategic plan to ultimately debrief as it will be coming to an end come 2022 to also take a look and see uh what we're going to move into the next steps for january where we will have another committee meeting and also open up the invitation to some other faculty and administrative members we also have a big shout out coming up to actually two cabinet members to miss uh faculty or director of operations as you know there's been a personnel shortage around our state and substitutes being one of them and in the last couple of weeks i believe that ms beckett has been able to onboard up to over 20 i think 20 substitutes from neighboring towns so that has been an absolute feat and we're excited to have them in and to help
019us kind of with our shortage here in addition our curriculum committee we were to have an in-person meeting today but because we're in teacher conferences we will be sending out a video this week just before the thanksgiving break for the next step so that we don't lose any momentum and that curriculum committee will continue to kind of do independent work from now until our next meeting in january as well so that's exciting and just a couple of plugs early dismissal this wednesday as we're moving into thanksgiving break and of course on thanksgiving day we have turkey bowl kick off at torrington high school for 10 15 so we hope to see you there and this friday we have our tree lighting parade here in town starts at four o'clock and i believe uh santa claus
020is part of that parade so hopefully our families will come on out um i'm definitely bringing my little guys up so it'll be fun to see everybody there and if i don't get to see all of you before thanksgiving i hope everyone has a very very wonderful break with their friends and family thank you anybody have any questions through the chair thank you dr villanueva as you look at the future of our district improvement plan have you found anything or looked at what's been achieved through the existing plan uh and identified anything that has worked and you want to expand on anything that isn't working and it's either you know okay let's let's go back to the drawing board or whatever absolutely so exactly what you're talking about it was a small group today um
021but it was an opportunity for us to do exactly that to look at kind of the larger topics that we can carry over and i have to say that we we found many topics that we can continue to carry over and continue the good work with little adjustments here and there now that you know it's a little different now but with that being said i think also what came about today is that we will have an opportunity to get stakeholder feedback in many different ways so even if you can't make an in-person meeting we'll have some kind of data collection tools that'll go out whether it's a survey or whether it's a video we can push out so that we can get voices from all stakeholders as we move into the next process so i
022am looking forward to january because that will be the official kickoff for kind of our new strategic plan but again today was also about honoring the good work of all the past people who are part of this to actually have this beautiful strategic plan that we have in place at the moment great thank you anyone else okay okay now we're gonna move on to item i our first round of public participation is there anybody from the public who wishes to participate this evening please come up to the podium state your name and address genesis alfonzo lovely drive i reached out to dr v about the parent curriculum committee and i haven't gotten any more info about how to get on or um who's on it i'd like to know who's on it so [Music] anyone
023else from the audience who would like to speak tonight state good evening my name is rich eveletta i live at 87 concord drive watertown i originally lived in oakville that's the center of the universe people we can't hear you up there a little low so if you could talk a little louder and help us i'd like to start out that i wrote this article and i wanted to put it in our local paper but unfortunately they did not put it in for some reason so i'm going to read it to you okay watertown voters it's time to lace up the gloves and get ready for a battle you trust the opposition at the polls scattering democrats and independents like farm turkey crops a week before thanksgiving it's time to gather up the feathers and show
024the beleaguered lefties that the answer were the answer lies one of the biggest issues to hit this town of many years was the outsider of the watertown india it not only was the indian issue it completely divided this town and that was caused by the past administration so the sneaky close meetings the electronic trickery the bragger who lives elsewhere who got issues rolling with soliciting petitions school administrators fought hard to shadow their involvement and the name changed and rammed him home a week before the new school board election the name the warriors was evaluated by the group of confused students and received hardy blue blues when at watertown events the most embarrassing thing and i am a former athlete and a member for president of the waterworld circle of sports there's nothing more humiliating than
025to stand out there representing your town and listening to booze because you're no longer out of watertown indians it became crystal clear that watertown voters show that 3-1 trousing at the polls that the indian return is a champion and the warrior is headed for the same scrap heap where the democrats and independents have landed the voters must serve a suggestion should be made to the new school new school board meeting monday at the watertown high school it should be suggested that a do-over it is warranted let the voters have a legitimate say and see where the chips fall i'll get back to these things later other issues voters want and no part of critical race theory all caucasians are labeled white supremacists walk theories where white supremacists are there ideas are strongly promoted and cancer
026culture where american history is rewritten and a swishy obnoxious lefty slam voters you have spoken if the school administration won't adhere to your wishes it's time to join their former superstar superintendent rydell harrison in different occupations the battle has been won and it's time to enjoy the spoils they work for us we are not beholding to them let's get started first of all i like and and that was was supposed to be in our town times but as i said freedom of speech is limited first i'd like to also indicate that we use the term mascot we haven't there is no mascot in watertown a mascot is two things a mascot is a person in a suit or an animal we have we don't have either the newspapers need to get that straight they indicate
027that the mascot this and the mascot we don't have a mascot we have a symbol we have a name we have an indian and an indian to me is is something that stood for a unifying force to serve for strength they stood for care courage pride and respect that's what the indian it represents and that's what our mascot that's what our symbol is i entered watertown high school and played sports and became an indian i didn't question it it didn't make a make me feel inferior it was a high school name and that's what we went by 50 years have gone past since i played sports for watertown but one thing still remains i will always be a watertown indian then out of nowhere wokeness appeared came to town and started changing everything in this
028town stood for it our police force judging everybody by their skin critical theory and i'll get to that next next time you guys have a meeting history truth the ancient myth from way far back in 2019 people used to think there were facts that we could uh all agree on but no longer and what is woke woke to me is the good guys one who has spoken up to uh gospel one who has woken up to plight of the oppression and done something about her by posting virtual signs on instagram and that's what got this board in trouble instagram and zoom just just to go back onto on some of these remarks we could we took a survey last year the board took a survey last year and sent it out to the students and
029the parents in watertown high school and it was about the indian i don't have to true statistics but overwhelmingly the vote was to keep the indian what happened it didn't suit the people that were in power at the time they had to get it right so we had to keep on asking our kids and our students and our parents what what uh what we could go for the new name the new name vote students upset that the indian wasn't even a choice they didn't have a choice they had to choose the next best thing and dr v your letter in the town times last week this isn't ours this is watertown we don't play we don't this isn't a fairy tale we are very serious about our indians we uh and i want to say
030when i say the students we give them the right to vote and whatever i'm going to give you a little story i worked when i was in going to college i worked in a little machine shop san diego's owned it i worked with this guy named tom lambert tom and i became friends and uh he went on to join the board of education i went on to be the president of watertown uh water oak circle of sports well i used to call tom occasionally and tell them i didn't appreciate pay to play they don't like it but we would banter back and forth and and whatever tom called me one time once i got out of the blue and he said to me richie i want your opinion on uh our new football field and
031uh just became turf and he said i i'm thinking about we're thinking about putting uh an indian or the w out there what do you think and to me i didn't care i said to him at the time i said tommy i'm just happy we got turf you know what i mean so but i realized what he said it's not the students it's not the watertown high school it is our community we are the watertown indians dr v you went to a party yesterday with the gridiron club if you didn't realize it then that we are a community and we are committed to the indian you know we're off base girl uh when we did these surveys and whatever the board of education never asked the paw talk indians and i avoided invited a couple
032of them here but i told them they'll come at 6 30 i didn't know we started at seven but they they haven't shown we never asked them what they thought what they felt about it but they came to our meeting and i'm sorry our public participation is only i can't hear you our public participation is only three minutes i did let it go over but if you like okay if you wouldn't mind just wrapping it up i don't thank you is there anybody else from the public would wish to speak tonight just state your name and address please my name is robert palmer i've been in watertown since 1944 one year after i was born in waterbury i have been a player a coach a sports writer an official for 70 something years involving the
033indian the indian has never made one insulting effort on the part of anybody in this town as a sports person everybody in town if you ask them the vote would be about ten to one in favor of the indian i know i've been asking them this business about the state going to hold back money and everything i find that out to be not true it's not going to be money money held out there are indians in the southern part of the state that are going to suit a state if they attempt to hold back the money this indian bologna everything that they come up with in town here is an insult the board of education the last board of education was insulting embarrassing they screwed up everything they touched including the budget and everything like
034that the worst thing they screwed up is the indian the watertown indian belongs here if you people don't want to look it over if it's going to take legal action to get something done about it it's got to come back nobody wants the warriors i was at the football game a week ago they announced the watertown warriors and everybody in the crowd booed nobody wants the warriors and no kid 13 years old has the right to name the new mascot for watertown high when the old mascot has been around for 75 years people worship the mascot they never had a problem with it and all these new characters that blow into town and don't know anything about the sports history and the other history in this town should take a good look at what they're
035doing the indians should come back and one way or the other if it's going to be legal or whatever it's going to be a good look should be taken at the way the indian was kicked out by clandestine activities at the last board secret meetings and this and that the other thing and meetings behind the back that's all nonsense let the people in watertown decide who they want as their mascot they don't want the warriors they want the indians and you people should go about the point of making sure that the indians that can at least get another shot to get a legal attempt at being saved or voted out not a high school election where the kids are told you can't dare vote for the indian and you can't certain kids weren't allowed to
036vote the high school principal who just won an award maybe deserves an award for handling of the indian case and the other stuff she deserves an insult but let's think about what's going on here let's think of what the people want and what the elected electorate wanted in the last election and let's make sure that the right thing gets done thank you mr palmer anybody else from the audience to speak tonight anyone else please state your name and address hi joseph romano 190 french street watertown connecticut first of all the board that is here volunteering and even the passports i know the money is not very good that you get paid and donating your time and i have all due respect for every board in this town i was on park and rec for 11
037years and it's trying sometimes sometimes you put your family behind to come to these meetings the decision made in this town to get rid of the indian everyone knows that it was very unpopular even the people that voted to get rid of the indian understood it was an unpopular vote i don't dislike anyone for making that decision that was their choice but this is our choice that decision has made our town stronger i don't care about political parties it has i vote for the people i love this town our indian is our heritage it's our pride i've gone through the school systems and was a proud indian now my grandchildren are here my daughter is on three sports with the booster clubs we have put our time and effort into giving scholarships to athletes no
038matter what our name is and again it's not a mascot it's our heritage the indian was our heritage we're going to continue putting our money where our heart is we're going to give to the students we're going to give to scholar athletes that's not going to stop but what is going to stop is a rash decision to dispel what was our heritage do you know there are people that laugh at us they call us those old farts that just won't let it go well there's more than us all farts that won't let it go there's a lot of young people that are learning the heritage that are learning the love for the indian i've got to become friends with tom sawyer a native american indian and he's educated me on a few things and he
039supported me in supporting our ideas but he also told us what we should and should not do i respect everyone's opinion but let's do it right and let's make a decision but don't make a rash decision we are not the warriors thank you anybody else from the audience wish to speak anyone from the virtual audience wish to speak you could just unmute yourself please and state your name and address hillian just unmute yourself please and state your name and address kathy you're still muted how about we'll come back to kathy erica would you like to unmute yourself and state your name and address kathy if you could try just one more time to unmute your microphone mr turner is there um oh if you open the queue mr turner if you the white box on
040the bottom see all up there it says all me all muted if you undo that okay um no okay um so we're gonna have to come back maybe we could just try um miss lynn if you're still there if you could try to unmute one more time your microphone there is a presentation audio button at the top screen in blue is there a way to turn that off perhaps just to try you know if you go to the top middle screen mr turner yep and swivel over the blue presenting presentation audio up top mr turner at the top middle of the screen there's a blue check mark there you are okay let's see if that works that's jeff can you try the host controls she says kathy would you like to try again on muting
041and stating your name and address there you go yeah kathy hillian 245 jordantown road um yeah i don't really know why people are even revisiting this match up thing um it was voted on it was spent months talking about it there was a whole committee put together to do research to get information from lawyers from the state from everybody and it is what it is it's the right decision it was decision made by a slew of individuals that were on a committee including some of the current board members i'm sure some of this being brought up is because of new board members that have their own um agenda on this situation um and they've brought their pals along for the ride but um it's just not appropriate i mean what you know we have people
042up there saying they're not going to give money but guess what the state's not going to give us money states don't pay funding away there was a bill passed uh or a bill that was um that was presented in january for the whole state to take away all mascots everywhere that have anything to do with native americans that's gonna end up passing and then there's not gonna be a choice so we're gonna waste our time sitting here talking about it instead of just letting it go and um what for you to maybe bring it back and then what waste your time again because the state's just gonna mix it and we're also gonna lose funding in the meantime from the tribes that are refusing to give funding to people that have that so if we
043want to continue to take away from our students go ahead but this just seems ridiculous that we're sitting here talking about that when we should be talking about our kids education and focusing on on that right now and focusing on getting the funds that we need because our town itself cuts our budget enough we don't need the state and and other people that are giving us funding cutting their funding as well thank you anybody else from the virtual audience like to speak tonight please unmute yourself and state your name and address my name is erica wozniak 354 oak drive watertown so as i asked last week about the vaccine clinics i was told they would not be held during school hours now i see on two separate occasions there will be vaccine clinics held during
044school hours this is not being transparent and i also did some research yale epidemiology professor dr harvey rich says he would pull a healthy child out of public school homes will be before he gave them this vaccine rich is one of the most academically cited american epidemiologists alive today now i was told last time there would be no vaccine clinics during school hours and now me and other concerned parents are concerned about this happening yes there was a half a day but a half a day goes to one o'clock and the clinic started at 12 so i feel this is not being transparent thank you for your time and i support the watertown indians as met as well as many others do thank you thank you anybody else from the virtual audience that would like
045to speak tonight seeing none we'll move on to our presentation this evening mr nick caruso senior staff associate at cave we'll present and discuss the essentials of the school board governance welcome thank you [Music] so i got a very lengthy email earlier last month with a whole bunch of things that we had to cover tonight and then found out that i had about 45 minutes max so i've been working all day on modifying and adjusting my presentation i'm not sure i'm even going to recognize it at this point and pure jet poor jeff i mean at 3 30 i emailed him i think the fourth version said this is definitely the last one and then refused to make more changes so it's it's going to be what it is but um i'm going to do
046my best in 45 minutes to cover what i would typically take two to three hours to do so i'm going to talk fast and do the best i can so just a very brief background i was first a member of the bloomfield board of education in 1983 served for 10 years and then in 1993 was asked to come to cave and start working with boards of education so this is my 29th year of doing that so and a lot of what i work with boards or things that i talk about when i work with boards i've learned over the last 29 years that i've learned a lot from all of you it's a it's a work in progress um what hasn't changed are the challenges in fact they're probably greater than they've ever been and
047um it's harder sometimes to be a school board member than it was 30 years ago but um it's still a noble cause and in case any member of the audience because some people recognize the fact that you are paid very little you actually paid nothing this is an unpaid job the chair gets twice as much but it's not right so uh you know i applaud all of you for doing this um and it it's a very important process um can we get this on so i can so a little background this presentation originally started many years ago as mistakes i made as a school board member and my boss being an attorney took one look at and said you can't admit to any of these things and i had to change a lot of it
048and frankly over the years i've adjusted it as time goes on because new things come up new issues start to happen so someone who saw this presentation 20 years ago see is seeing something very different so i don't know if any of you have been on the board that long i think the first time i may have done it was in 2003 so um although it was very different then okay so i'm going to start with a simple question how many school board members does it take to screw in a light bulb serious question majority that's the second and third best answer that you could have the first the best answer is actually none it's up to the board to say let there be light the board sets vision the board sets expectations you set
049goals you have a strategic plan in the works that's going to be in in essence your vision for moving the district forward as you go along working on goals primarily also your policy manual the policy manual is how you really direct the work of the district it's a very important responsibility that the board has and you use that to say let there be light it's a superintendent's job acting as the chief executive officer of the board to decide you know and again working with staff bringing the experts in does it have to be incandescent fluorescent candlelight what's the what's the means by which we are going to make the light that the board has asked for and it's very important also to delegate that to the appropriate staff person i've seen literally seen superintendents mopping
050up floors changing ceiling panels and light bulbs but as a board it's your job to make sure your ceo has the ability to do executive things and not to tie up her time doing things that should more appropriately be done by a different person on staff and that's part of your support to the to the district is providing your superintendent the proper tools the proper support and um and frankly for all the reasons you're supporting your your mission you're supporting your your policies etc by having the right materials and support to do that but it is also part of your responsibility to evaluate the quality of lighting you should have at your board meetings presentations on student data um when you are considering a new academic pursuit in the district one of the questions i
051hope you'll start to ask is what's it going to look like if it's done well and you more than likely already are but part of what i want to hear is yes this is the new program we want to initiate this is how we're going to be implementing it here's how we're going to be assessing it to make sure we're doing it and when we plan on coming back to show you that it's working or it needs tweaking and we'll keep in touch to say when we need additional material or we have to make some changes or rarely but sometimes you know what it hasn't really worked the way we wanted to we found something better because we're never satisfied with where we hit today we're always a small thing i had to lose some
052weight so over the summer i lost 25 pounds and that i did that very quickly so i changed the goal to 30 and then it was 35 and now it's 40 because it's been working but the goal kept shifting because we i kept achieving it and realizing i could still do better and that's kind of where we need to be with school boards and school districts we're never quite happy we set a goal we want to get there but when we get there let's see if we can do even better it's hard to count i don't expect all of you to do that but um there are 2 000 i can't see too good from here but 2623 little smiley faces on this screen that represents the number of children currently in the watertown public
053schools it could be up or down a couple each day but this is your um for for last year this is what you reported to the state of connecticut in terms of the number of students i do this on purpose because this is why you're all here that's why your administration is here and your teachers those children's entire future rests on what happens in these schools because we know there's very good evidence that a child who has a strong education experience has a much greater opportunity in life this mask is going to kill me much greater opportunity in life than if they have a bad school active experience so it's within your power to do a lot to improve that and there is a lot of research that shows that school boards can have a
054profound influence on improving education you have to do the right work to do that but you have that power the other reason i like to do this is because when we're looking at student data we might get a number like 90 or succeeding or 80 percent are succeeding and sometimes that's good i mean you know what we hit 80 we hit 90 that's excellent but let's never forget that 10 percent is still 260 kids that we haven't reached and we have an obligation that society is not built like it used to be where 10 could run the factories and everybody else could get a really meaningful job experience working for less than a high school education or at least a high school education we know that doesn't happen anymore in the information age we're in
055people need to be quick on their feet you know they their statistics that show that you know 80 percent of the jobs that people will do in 10 or 20 years haven't existed yet we have to teach people to be resilient and to learn and those are skills that you have the power to do so it's important to never forget the smiley faces uh quickly one other thing especially right now this is called the eisenhower matrix and it's set up in two quadrants something's either important or it's unimportant or it's urgent or it's not urgent and the the critical thing is particularly now with covet is if if it's urgent um and it's um important of course we have to do it that just no question um and that's typically a task left to your
056superintendent the urgent stuff tends to be administrative operational the not urgent stuff is usually where we're planning that's your strategic planning that's your policy work that's the board's domain in general and so we have to when we're having our meetings are we focusing our time on the right stuff now with covet unfortunately kind of messed things up quite a bit because everything was urgent everything was immediate i mean you know every thursday the governor would have another executive order every thursday night our staff would be trying to figure out what the implications were and make sure our members all got a memo saying here's what you need to think about and then usually friday or monday they'd walk back a little bit and say well we didn't mean this because they'd get feedback and they
057were learning too that you know what this is what we meant or we've heard and we're going to modify and adjust but even to the beginning of school last year where three weeks before the school started they wanted to see three plans or two plans here's what happens if it's in school here's what happens if it's remote and here's hybrid so you're planning all this stuff you're spending all your resources and your time and you're not even sure what you're going to do that meant your superintendent had to be flexible and that meant the board's responsibility was probably a little more of supporting the superintendent rather than worrying about the vision and having the superintendent following directives from the board but rather more of you stepping back and say what do you need from us
058how can we support you through this we're never going to forget the long-term stuff but some of it has to get put on hold until we get through this even now as covid starts hopefully to start to fade into the into oblivion you now have two years worth of kids who probably are far farther behind than would like and so we have to think about getting them back up to speed as well so there's still going to be another year or two of urgency that you have to be thinking about while at the same time putting on that vision hat and trying to come up with ways of still establishing long-term goals one last thing before i get into the meat of what i want to talk about tonight this is a great quote it's
059by lafayette and it came out of a book that was written actually in 1958 i believe about school board leadership i picked it up on amazon used for three bucks a couple years ago and it's amazing how much of it still very relevant to boards today because nothing has changed it seems or not much has changed but for the audience sake and such i read i study i examine i listen i reflect and out of all this i try to form an idea into which i put as much common sense as i can when we're working with policy for example we can get very prescriptive or we can be a little more general and let our administration who have been trained who i mean i do some work with uh the uh od93 certification i
060teach some of those classes for friends of mine who are running those courses and they work really hard to get that certification so we have to be able to trust them to understand what the work is and get out of their way but we need their guidance and help as we make our policy decisions and what we need to do so i'm going to go through some ideas maybe it's like a top 10 or top 12 thing board members need to think about and particularly with new board members you know you get on the board you're ready you want to move my first board meeting i made four motions four emotions guess how many of them passed guess how many seconds i got to those motions so it took me a while to understand that
061it's a process and i may have been the smartest person on the board i still think so they they didn't obviously but i had to gain their trust to understand when i spoke maybe i kind of had an idea what i talked was talking about and i had to learn to trust them because i had to realize that i was a young impetuous young snot basically at that time and i really had a lot to learn and it didn't take that long because you get on the tail end of a lot of five six to one or five to two votes you learn pretty quickly um so it takes time it takes a year you you can study how the budget's made you can talk you can listen to the experienced folks who've been on
062the finance committee for years until you've lived through a budget it's really hard to understand exactly what it's like what it's like to deal with the community what it's like to work with each other so take your time master the art and then also try to think what motivates others what's driving someone to be very strong minded about something usually it's a value judgment we're not making decisions out of the out of nothing we have strong values and we decide on things to to satisfy those values if somebody's feeling really strongly about something it helps to try to put yourself in their shoes why do they feel that strongly about it i may still not agree but i will at least respect the person who's done it and at least it will help us work
063better together i'm going through this very quickly i'm sorry but 45 minutes is not a lot of time especially if you want to ask questions the other thing i learned is that you don't get respect automatically that takes time and i can remember one board member who she was a brand new appointed board member had just been on like one week and went to a pto meeting or uh to a staff meeting she was actually a teacher in another district and everybody knew her and somebody said you know susan it's so great to see you on the board of education it's going to be great to have an educator on the board and she goes excuse me but when i'm here in my official capacity as a member of the board of education you shall
064address me as ms jones now i heard about this because it was all over the schools the next day and half the teachers were talking about in the teachers lounges and it got back to board members that's not how you want to be thought of that's just not so it will take time but if you're doing the right work you will gain the respect of people that you want to have their respect so let's talk about a couple things that we want to stay away from and every one of these is actually very true uh some of them i look back let's put these all out and then we'll go from the bottom up do not fall asleep during public comment do not and sitting in the corner cracking jokes with each other is a
065very close second i mean folks who come to you in public comment you know there's lists of things people are afraid of and number one is usually public speaking number seven is death so they are petrified that you you know i'm up here especially now it's on camera or it's all over the world basically with with the internet i'm scared to death but i'm here because it's important to me now you don't have to change your mind you don't have to agree with someone but show them the respect they've come here to share their opinions share what they believe and listen because it might be something that you could start to to listen to so again it's it's important to recognize it may be three minutes or four and a half um but the time
066that they're here is important now it's also important to remind all of you that and ourselves that the way the freedom of information law works your meeting is held in public but it is not considered a public meeting in other words the folks here the folks on camera all get to observe you doing the work of the school district but it does not mean that they are automatically given permission to participate that is a privilege that you give the public and i've only known one board that i think very foolishly stopped all public comment but there were people trying to undermine the work of the board and they couldn't get anything done but it's important to have the community involvement but what it does mean is that you can have some legitimate reasonable expectations for
067one you can't say three minutes or two minutes or whatever you could say um public comment will be for the first 15 minutes of a board meeting and and that's it and then we go to the agenda because the reason you're here tonight is to complete that agenda that's the business of the board and it's your business meeting so you could add you know if there's a two-thirds vote we can extend it another 15 minutes if there's a lot of people that are here to talk about a subject maybe it makes more sense to call a special meeting later specifically to have a hearing to talk about just that item i hope i'm not making blooming noises when i hit this thing so that's an important thing to think about that public comment is a
068tool that you can use to keep in touch with people but it is just part of your process but the important part is that you don't want to keep ending meetings because you couldn't get through the agenda because you didn't have time and that's an important thing i think it's also fair i didn't hear anybody here just disrespectful tonight but i think it's fair for you to say when people address the board that you expect them to be orderly and um if they're not i think the chair can remind them of that uh you can recess a meeting and there are times when boards had to clear the room but that's people aren't trying to do that i know a couple boards where it was getting pretty vicious the checkup said but we don't want
069to stop people from talking we are open we are trying but it's hard to sit up there when you're paid as much as you do to get beat up and i understand that so we have to try to work on that so don't fall asleep in public comment and that actually happened in one of my meetings meeting under the influence please do not come to a school board meter meeting after having a few um i know one board actually they used to there was a local watering hole across the street from their board meetings and they'd all be across the street before their meeting and they'd all have one drink together those meetings went remarkably well if several of them had more than one however it got chaotic so alcohol is just one of those
070play you shouldn't drive here under the influence and you shouldn't be under the influence you have a meeting and i say that sort of tongue-in-cheek but it can be a problem it really can don't insult each other don't insult your superintendent or your staff particularly in public you know i worked in one district i was at a number of their meetings and there was one board member that always every meeting said well i don't believe anything i hear from the superintendent comma but and then to go on and say something he didn't believe the president of the teachers union was sitting next to me in this in the audience bad-mouthing the superintendent and getting a kick out of the board member insulting the superintendent i'm going to repeat myself this is your chief executive officer
071you have an allegiance to her as long as she is your ceo as much as she has an allegiance to you and it is important if you have problems share them with her talk to the chair i'm having an issue can we figure out a way of working this out i think directly is usually the best way but it's not take it to the public because you then undermine everything this board is trying to do you cannot be effective leaders if your ceo does not have credibility and frankly people are not going to recognize that it was jason who was the one person that got it and everybody else was not they're just going to remember the board did a terrible thing or the board's been misbehaving and they're not going to remember that maybe
072you were the only one that wasn't so you have to think about the the betterment of the board same with staff and sometimes it's not a direct insult sometimes it's the way you ask a question you know i can't believe you're doing this or could you please exp you know but you say in such a negative way i know superintendents who have said to their boards i can't ask my principals to come to the board meetings anymore because they they refuse and i will talk i will take the heat i will answer your questions if you have to beat up on somebody beat up on me but i'm not subjecting my staff to that what type of board are you when that happens regularly it's just not because then your community is not seeing leadership
073they're just not don't threaten each other i have seen board meetings where the police officer in the room was to protect board members from each other not from whatever so again be careful how you treat each other because you may need their vote somewhere down the line too don't swear at each other don't throw things all of these things have happened in board meetings by the way and keep your cool keep your cool i was working with a contentious board once and this was a sign on the wall we were in the library and this was a sign basically making the kids understand i'm going to respect each ot we're going to respect each other we're going to play nice in the sandbox together and i had to point to the sign with the board
074members and say you expect this of your kids how about showing some examples to be a role model we can get very frustrated i was on a very political board my and i was on the wrong end of that it was a 5-2 vote and i was one of the two and as i shared it took me two years to get one thing passed and i voted against it but it's it's important to understand those 2600 kids they don't care the parents of those 2 600 kids they don't care there's a process to get elected we all acknowledge that we all accept that but all of those hats that we wear out there probably need to come off while we're here together working together and i know sometimes that can be really difficult because the
075people that may have helped us get where we are expect things of us but your commitment is to the children your commitment you swear an oath to uphold the state the state's interest in public schools and that's your first obligation in fact that's the num basically the two things the state says are you have to provide good schools and you can definitely disagree with what good means and you have to implement the educational interests of the state you're a state agency you're elected locally but your obligation is to the commissioner of education to the state board of education to the legislature they give you your authority and they can't take it away they don't do it often but they have so it's important to understand that um and honor your code of ethics you know
076most boards adopt a code of ethics cabe has one available um and boards like to adopt that common sense stuff for leaders for people in a governance position again i'll read just because people might see it strong people don't put others down they lift them up and that's by darth vader the philanthropist just had to do that so another thing that you want to be careful about there are too many board boards there are too many educators and this is a little dated now because i think things have changed a lot but the idea that the reason we have school is to deliver content and we're just going to shovel a bunch of stuff for kids and some of them are going to get it some of them aren't the fact is we know more
077about how children learn we know more about how the human brain gains and retains memories than we ever have and the idea is that we have to start implementing a lot of that science into the way we teach and i mean i can remember we had two reports one night at a board meeting the first report said half our freshman class at the high school failed at least one major subject let me repeat that half our freshman class failed at least one major subject that first marking period great consonation board members were like how could this be etc etc second report was even more telling it was the annual report on our evaluations for teachers guess what percentage of teachers at the high school were rated excellent 90 percent so i and i was that
078new upstart board member i said can you explain to me why or half our kids are failing but 90 of our teachers are excellent because there seems to be a disconnect and the first response blame the middle school we just got you know first marking period 89 of the teachers at the middle school were also rated excellent so but that was but that was okay back then because that's how we evaluated teachers by modeling behavior now there's a lot more data we look at the progress children make when we're starting to assess whether learning took place so that's a big shift and it's an important one we haven't they haven't we haven't taught it until they've learned it and we can do that we have we understand enough about the way children learn we can
079reach almost every child virtually every child it's a question of whether we have the and i say this small p political will because it's costly and it's a challenge to every community to say we can help every kid but there's a dollar sign to that and unfortunately the burden is too great in many places to actually be able to do that so again old rules some kids are going to get it some won't if they don't it's their fault and and really nowadays we really look at it is it all students will learn it and um if they don't the adults failed them somehow and caps had a um a white paper a while back where they talked about that in education basically it used to be that the calendar was constant but the learning
080was the variable and now we're getting to the point where learning has to be the constant and the calendar becomes the variable that we can't put it in chunks of you know nine months or what for ten months and expect every kid to reach the same place but that we should be trying to teach them all at whatever pace they're at and the calendar kind of goes away in the future and that's again going to take a lot of strength can i stop you for one second so i'm a teacher as well so looking at this slide and i know as a board we we support our teachers and our administrators but if you look at this slide this this is not supporting teachers i mean i would argue that i don't think teachers evaluations
081should be tied to student achievement i don't disagree with part of that i might with some of it but that's why we're all here first of all i didn't say that we are here to blame teachers if kids don't learn we have to provide the resources and the tools for them to be successful we have to enable them to be successful our goal is not to weed out bad teachers and only have incredible teachers because most of the teachers we have are good they just maybe maybe it's not a right match for what they're doing in class or maybe they haven't had the opportunities to work with the appropriate mentor what there's a lot of reasons but i guess my point is that as a leadership team your job is to figure out where can
082we bolster up the teachers so that they can be successful you know um my teacher my daughter's science teacher she was in ap chemistry and it parents night which i guess was tonight which is why all the cars were out there um parents like the t the teacher said i remembered her she was in the high school when i was there she was a good teacher she goes i want you to understand every you know these kids are lucky to have me as a teacher but i'm going to tell you right now three quarters of the kids are going to fail this year now i was chairman of the school board so what i couldn't say out loud was if three quarters of the kids in this class failed you're the one that did the
083failing because is it your job to teach these kids this course now ap is a little different but part of that systemic change is were the kids placed appropriately did they have the supports they needed before they were placed in this course so again it's not about look we're looking at data as a flashlight not a hammer we're not here to bludgeon people who do don't get it it's to say put the light on it where do we need more where do we have to do better and but i will make the point i think that it's the adult behaviors you can control because it's sometimes it's also looking at what else the student has to deal with because sometimes you can do a whole bunch of things and you're still not going to get
084that that student to reach that level that you have no question but as any other things but as a a village i guess what other things do we have to figure out how to do to help those children and it might not be in this building but how do we work with our community to get that to happen but those are the types of things we have to strive for and continually work toward this isn't something we do overnight you change a couple of votes and all of a sudden this is happening but it's something to aspire to thank you if we had three weeks or three years i tell you a little bit about the lighthouse project we don't lighthouse was a research project that started about 20 years ago now the iowa school
085boards association wanted to really assess whether or not boards of education made a difference in student achievement and when you have a big question like that you start by looking at research and there was none so they put together a serious proposal they got some money from the national science foundation and i think maybe gates and um went to work and developed a study that showed in fact that boards of education can have a profound impact on student achievement if certain conditions are met and in the interest of time i'm just saying they exist i know there's been some talk about watertown perhaps coming into the lighthouse training and we'd be happy to talk to you about that at some point but part of our work is to get boards to understand what these conditions
086are and how we can enhance them in our own district and there's also a set of um expectations of boards and high achieving districts and again um in the interest of time i just want you to know they exist but we're not really going to spend any time on it tonight but it is all about learning that's our work that's the work that we all do and and your job as a board your superintendent's job is to provide resources so the success you know where the magic takes place in the classroom that interaction between a teacher and a student is what i call the magic and all of our jobs is to make sure that that interaction is as successful as possible and um there's a long way to go another issue the board makes
087a decision the board has a vote and you voted against it and so now all of a sudden people are out there you know hey i noticed you voted against this what's going on always be mindful that what you don't want to see is on the front page of the newspaper so and so said especially if it's above the fold and said i i can't believe what those bozos did yeah you know it doesn't make any sense to me sometimes you have an obligation to state this is the this is the reason i didn't support this but you don't have to do it in a derogatory and demeaning way and secondly part of your role as a board is that you are not only the legislative branch you pass policy that's legislation in a sense
088but you are also the executive branch you have a ceo but you make a lot of the decisions you you the contract is between you and the teachers the um budget is between the board the superintendent proposes but it's your budget when you go out and it's your job to see that it's implemented properly so all of those operational decisions or executive decisions are part of the executive branch so you have those two hats that you wear and you also have the judicial hat so you're all three branches of government because there are times when this board will have to have a formal hearing it might be about somebody on staff it might be a termination hearing it might be an expulsion hearing um there or grievance the expectation is that when you're in that
089hearing anything that you decide can only be based on what you heard in testimony so if you're in a hearing and the attorney representing a teacher for example and this actually happened in a meeting i was at mr jones isn't it true that you were in the supermarket and you said to so and so this was the worst teacher your child ever had while he's sitting in judgment on something that teacher had before the board yeah i guess it's true but how did you hear that i mean that was a direct quote that 15-minute meeting because it really was a minor detail it turned into a five-hour meeting and we had because we didn't expect it to be an issue we didn't have our attorney there so we had to wait for her to get
090there very costly even evening because somebody said something inappropriate at the wrong time and you're always on you're always the cameras are on especially nowadays you're not just going to be heard you're going to be recorded you're going to be taped it's going to be on video if you do it on facebook and say oh that was stupid i'm going to delete it somebody's already taken a screenshot so you are always on you're always vocal and you're never not a school board member that used to be the old ploy well i'm only speaking as a citizen tonight you're a school board member and you have to remember that um you really you want to be informed but you have to be careful about where you get you know there are board members that have to
091investigate oh i've heard this i'm going to go here and i'm going to go there that undermines the credibility of the board and the superintendent if we have questions we want to ask the superintendent please give us information or data to support what the questions are but we we can't be doing end runs all the time because that again defeats the credibility of our ceo and it sets in motion a divide that can only get worse and then we we end up not trusting each other and that can be pretty dangerous and i've already sort of mentioned the whole thing about checks and balances so we're going to go right through this one you always have an obligation i need to really change this because while i believe it's fight hard for what you believe
092in the word fight has different connotations nowadays that it used to i think and it's defend your position you know stand by what you believe but once the vote has been taken let's move on what's next because this alliance that supported this decision might be very different on this decision and if we're making it about personalities we can't guarantee that people are going to vote because they believe it's right i'm never going to support you on something because of what you called me in the newspaper you just have to be careful about that we should be issues driven not um personality driven and i almost said political driven same thing but we shouldn't allow our decisions to be driven by outside forces but really about what the work is about and do trust listen to
093each other just listen to each other you don't have to agree but listen i think of something like um a code of ethics i also think of this with voting as a contract that when you buy a car and you sign the contract you are accepting the responsibility of paying for something or doing something and i think it's exactly the same when you are either working with a code of ethics or if you are voting if i don't accept the outcome of the vote i shouldn't vote you know i'll walk out of the room and protest it i'm not going to vote but if i'm going to vote there should be an expectation that that vote is final and we're done it's time to move on at least for now you know but we don't
094keep bringing it up every meeting i want to bring this back i want to bring this back it does it does nothing um don't be the lone ranger you know you're out in the schools especially if some of you are educators if you've ever taught here and you know a bunch of people they're going to come looking for you you know i went to school in my district so they came looking for me and i i loved the teachers i that i had i mean they made me who i am today but i very quickly understood that they also saw a school board member they saw somebody that they could try to influence and what i learned very quickly unfortunately i had a couple bruises from doing it was that they have a process if
095a teacher is unhappy they can file a grievance and that is a formal process they are protected by law they have representation by the union they get their own lawyer for free if there's an issue they have the obligation they have the right but they also have the obligation to use the system and it starts with the building level goes to the superintendent perhaps doesn't come to the board unless there's a formal request for that and again the expectation is when that takes place you all need to go into that hearing with an open mind and so that's very important so we don't get involved early the parent calls with the problem same thing i i have to help you understand the process but i can't be your advocate that's somebody else's job we don't
096investigate and we don't want to be that board member that walks into school and everybody runs the other way you know there's a the teacher nearest the front door has to let the principal know that so-and-so is in the building and the principal has to let the superintendent knows oh no they're back you don't want to be that board member because you don't have authority this board this agency has authority in legally posted meetings in votes that is the only way that you assert your authority is by voting on things everything else is you are just another member of the public and if another member of the public is not allowed to walk into a classroom unannounced and just sit in there and observe a teacher then you can't either you know even school visits
097i mean i was a parent with kids in the schools i went into the schools but i usually let the superintendent know you know i'm going to be at the high school tonight but it's my daughter's volleyball game and i'm not planning on doing anything but if i wanted to visit the school to see the school as a board member it was a courtesy call the superintendent i'd really like to go i'm interested in this new program and then they the superintendent can work with the principal to the teacher and say when would a meaningful time be to go in and make this observation and that's just again you're you don't have those additional authorities you can't walk in and tell a principal drop what you're doing and do this instead they don't work for
098you they work for your superintendent um this board is a committee as a whole don't don't micromanage that's a word that's bandied about a lot unfortunately you know getting into the weeds we're really talking about we're at the 30 thousand foot level we are the ones looking out over everything talking about letting there be light and it's the superintendent's job to decide how do we manage that you're the vision she's the operations and that's basically the division sometimes it's gray i if nothing else from right now i would say you should you should be willing to accept sometimes your superintendent says would say that's really my job and you need to be and she may have to make a compelling case for it but you have to be open to the idea that she need
099and she needs to be free to say that i think that's my job let me explain why and you know what you're absolutely right but there are times when you have obligations and they'll be brought up through the agenda and again it goes back to concentrating on policy what you don't want to see are bombs being dropped during the board meeting you know um the purpose of having decisions made in a deliberative body you know having debate discussing motions and such is to allow everybody to be heard and have everyone's questions answered but the purpose is to have the decisions made you know you might vote no or you might go yes but we have a series of decisions that's our agenda we make votes on things and if the purpose is to to vote
100on things then it's your superintendent's job for example to provide you with the information you need you should have any that those big audacious questions that you might have should be sort of put up front ahead of time so that the superintendent has time to answer that question because if the purpose of answering that question is to give you information to vote it's important that the superintendent understand what the question is going to be and have time to especially if it's a big question to get that information collected for you and um if the purpose is to embarrass or humiliate that's when we we just throw the surprise at but if the purpose is to come up with a decision then the purp then we have to give advance notice it's perfectly okay to call
101the superintendent say on tuesday night i'm going to ask the following question she may be ready to answer right then and there on the phone but there are some community members that might want to know that question was asked and answered so it's not bad to ask the question in public but it is it is bad form to just throw it at somebody with the idea that well i'm going to play gotcha because that's not about getting information that's about embarrassing or humiliating likewise it is you as a board should expect to be prepared up front so your board packet which is an amazingly intricate thing to put together we've spent time working to get towards to make it easier for boards to put packets together and there's a lot of efforts central office basically
102shuts down for a few days while the agendas are being built in many cases so in your case as board members what you don't want to do is walk into the board do you still have paper or do you use electronic okay the worst thing a superintendent can hear is the packet's ripping open at the beginning of the meeting because it means you didn't do your homework and your colleagues on the board are going to be angry because you're going to take up their time their precious time asking questions that were answered in the packet so it's really important if you expect to be prepared by your superintendent that you also have a responsibility to be prepared and that's fair for everybody ah here we go and that's basically what that's ice is this is
103really important again those 26 23 or whatever the number was those children require that you focus on them that's the reason they exist um and frankly some of that gets into party affiliation i don't spend a lot of time with boards on politics because if you are political nothing i say i'm not wise enough to convince you to stop and if you're not i don't want to give you any ideas but i can't say after working with 161 of the 169 boards and it'll be 1500 workshops in a couple weeks that i've never seen a board that focused on politics succeed in helping children learn i can honestly say that with a with an open heart that's enough on that so ball carriers somebody approaches you and says i need you to do something for
104me or i need or more devious because sometimes they're not actually asking you to do something we had a guy in our town his name was bob and bob would call regularly and bob's wife was entrenched in the junior high faculty they were the um sort of the troublemakers in the school district and the um the this guy bob would call me regularly to go i have information here we go again what bob well i really shouldn't tell you was told to be in confidence well then i'm going to hang up no but it's something you really need to hear okay bob what are we going to talk about so he and it was always meant to inflame always meant to have me go running off to the superintendent what's going on here why are
105you doing this i learned after the first time that the only one getting burned was me when i acted as an intermediary because he was full of baloney but he called all the time anyway but so sometimes it's just i want to give you one for i'm giving it to you this is a there's no quit pro quo i'm telling you this out of the goodness of my heart but he was only telling me half the story and it was the half of the story that would easily make me upset that there's always always always another side to any story and your job is not to judge that after hearing just one side it might mean you go to the superintendent you know i heard something i'm not sure if it means anything or not
106or the board chair i think it's probably more appropriate sometimes to work through the board chair first don't keep bothering the superintendent unless it's a rumor that's really kind of disturbing and then she'd want to know i'm sure but work through the board chair i'm hearing this or you know what can you tell me about this and if there's something to it if she starts hearing it from two or three other board members then maybe we need to have something on an agenda down the road but you know sort of you have a filter for some of this stuff because people you know there's the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and you don't always get that so you want to be cautious um people call you there's a chain of command
107please use it what was the the lowest common denominator it's the teacher it's the principal it's the superintendent but it's rarely the board because the board has to remain impartial most policies manuals have a position for the board if there's an appeal beyond the superintendent you have to be able to go to that hearing without prejudice or without prior knowledge and it's still a matter of conscience and ethics just listen to your inner heart inner voice um you want to keep communicating um you know is this one of those situations where somebody's trying to influence what we're doing and not always sharing everything that they need to share but talk about these things communicate about them this is a great statement to remember for those times you get those phone calls this problem could end
108up requiring board action and if i'm involved in it at this level i'll be unable to act on it as a member of the board because it could be a violation of due process you need to go through the proper channels due process is critical it is critical because there have been times when judges overturned decisions of boards they almost never in fact i can't recall ever hearing of one where they said well i just looked at everything you looked at to make your decision i don't agree i'm overturning it what they do is this person got a notification a 30-day notification on the 31st day or this one the form wasn't the i wasn't dotted or the t wasn't crossed there are technicalities that usually bring down decisions or you were quoted as saying
109something derogatory about that person prior to the hearing and now you've been prejudiced and they can overturn things so you don't especially on a serious thing you don't want to be the board member that caused that person to keep their job because of the way you acted or what you said so you you have a role to play and it's not that um keep things global keep things at the 30 thousand foot level i'll try to breeze through the last of these quickly because i know we've got a time issue here um we could spend the whole evening on foi we just could freedom of information rules and procedure etc um in general executive sessions meet certain criteria by law for instance security personnel student matters areas are very clearly prescribed by law if your
110superintendent's not sure she's going to call the lawyer or the board chair is not sure she can call lawyer you can call k because those are free phone calls our attorneys know foi very well would rather get the call the day before than the day after because the day after it's too late so really be cautious about what the rules are don't share confidential information you not only can damage the district's ability to do work but sometimes you could be held personally liable for damages if you're out there taking information you heard confidential confidentially and sharing it with the community you can get in trouble and you can hurt the district could get sued even if you don't individually get sued the district could have a penalty to pay and that takes money out of
111the kids or off the fields there are those other things um don't go home and talk to your spouse about stuff i know it's easy you get frustrated you come home two o'clock in the morning i can't believe what those yahoos did and it's two o'clock in the morning so you forget to tell the significant other that you shouldn't repeat this because it was an executive session and hypothetically this significant other meets the biggest mouth on the town council the next day and say i heard there was fireworks at the board meeting last night oh yeah you wouldn't believe it just spill the beans that's not good so um just call up another board member if you have to i'm really frustrated but don't talk around town um etc but understand the rules enough but
112know that there's plenty of places you can get answers to your questions but if it feels wrong at least stop long enough to ask and find out am i okay you do have to have time foi has people that can come out and do like a whole town-wide thing we can do a separate workshop just on foi i don't think 45 minutes will do that one though that might be an evening um and please ask it's just important in general and i've kind of alluded to this a few times when you're not sure it's probably even more important just don't say it and this not just on confidential stuff be careful all the time about what you're saying there was a board chair one time they had to recess because they were in the middle
113of a contentious issue and they were starting to snap at each other the chair declared a recess so the local reporter was talking to him while everybody is milling around the room and the reporter put his phone down like this and started talking to the chair about this issue and the chair probably said too much and then found out the whole thing was on the blog the next day because he had been recorded through the whole thing you are never off you are never off the cameras are always on just assume that and don't just think about do i want my colleagues reading about that in the paper do i want my colleagues seeing this on youtube do i want the community seeing that or the teachers or whoever the answer is usually no i've
114heard quotes for example and i've heard this outside the community sometimes you know we'd have so much more money to spend on kids if we didn't have the teachers didn't cost so much you know one thing i heard tonight in your budget deliberations is that one or two percent that we might need for this or that the other part of that is 85 of our budget salaries and fringes that's locked in so we only have five to five percent maybe discretionary because there's insurance and overhead and stuff so we might only have two or three that two or three percent is a significant part of the extras you're trying to do so um if sometimes the mindset is well it's that 85 percent go after that well that's the part where the magic happens i
115you can't diminish the number of teachers because then the teachers can't do their job and their job is to teach children so that's one thing if someone from outside says and and you could spend a little time helping to school them on that but when i hear board members saying stuff like that we need to step back and say what don't what haven't we taught them because obviously if you're a board member saying things like that or another favorite one we have way too many administrators no you don't no you don't you know the the work that they have to do because of mandates all the reporting they do all of the paperwork they have to do before they can even do their job is really frustrating and um you have to think of we
116have to support it like you have an obligation to support your superintendent you have an obligation to support the people who work for you because they're working really hard especially in the last couple years they were they've been killing themselves trying to do the work and you want to have a good strong relationship with the superintendent um part of that work in lighthouse is about the team working together and working effectively together we can't do lighthouse training if the superintendent is an active participant just like we can't do lighthouse training if only half the board comes it's really a team pro team learning process almost done policy i mentioned it a couple times this is how you do your work it is one of the things identified by law that you have an obligation to
117do right and um and manage policy it's your job to make sure policy is adhered to you know through your chief executive officer the ceo the superintendent a principal can't look at the policy manual and say well yeah that's what the policies is but i don't think i'm going to do it this time they don't have that responsibility they can't they might come to you and say we have a situation and we think the policies may be overkill so we'd like to make an exception in this case and they can make that case to you and you can vote to do that i would be very careful when i do because you're setting the precedent but it might be valuable to do that from time to time but when you do make sure the motion's
118worded to clearly identify why but no one else can only the board can so it's really important to do that and if you find yourselves not doing what your policy says fix the policy because if you expect others to adhere to it then you need to do that as well in the interest of time i have this great little thing i usually do but i'm not going to do it tonight but i am going to share with you the secret that i found a presenter once at a workshop talked about he said you know if you have nine members on a board or ten members on a board you may have nine or ten different opinions on what we're trying to fix or 910 solutions to the problem and we can't agree on the solution
119because we never agreed on the problem and so we need to spend less time up front thinking about solutions but rather do do is there a clear majority of us that all agree the same thing that the problem is this rather than this because if we don't agree on the problem we can't agree on the solution and that's where boards usually fall down the most so sometimes it's the superintendent bringing the question a little differently to say we're having an issue i'd like to have some help troubleshooting this to make sure that we understand what it is we're really trying to fix or i have i need the board to set some goals in this area and but while they're in the process make sure do we all agree this is what we mean i
120think is very important and then after that it becomes easier to accept solutions and um and such final question unless you have any um think about when you leave the board someday um 20 years from now two years from now it's going to be a rough two years not as bad as the last last couple but um do you want to be remembered as the great counter of paper clips or do you want to be remembered as that person who was really cared deeply about children and was a strong advocate for the children in the district you get to make that choice you get to make that choice they don't name schools after the counter of paper clips and i got that quote directly from a board member i didn't make that one up but
121it's something that you want to think about because we have obligations and the obligations are we have to provide good schools and we have to implement the educational interests of the state and if we can do that in a way that helps kids that's awesome and i'm going to leave that and i know we took some time so i don't want to prolong it if necessary unnecessary but if there are some does anybody have any questions from mr caruso questions thank you madam chair mr caruso i've been on the board for six and a half years this is fantastic i mean just the the content the delivery everything was i think spot on um i wish we had more time to kind of go more in depth but uh thank you very much for taking
122the time to join us you're very welcome i'm more than happy to come back another time and hit specific areas if you want or you know we can continue pd with the board it's part of your membership with cape so it doesn't cost more so we speaking maybe even just a workshop with like a board of an education workshop you could do so i mean i'd love to do lighthouse with you um we're waiting daily we're waiting the state department is supposed to fund our work with with districts so there would be no cost to that if we can get this contract signed so we'd be very happy to talk to you more about that this is very good thank you it's a good um gives everybody a little better understanding of what actually our
123role is thank you thank you yes um so you said that anybody could call and get like the questions and things like that can afford members call or is it just specific to the board chair or the no you're all members of kate you're all members of cape yeah we we don't take calls from the public per se it's our our members are you so and and we do our very best to follow up on every question you know we have two attorneys on well we have an attorney on staff and our deputy director is also a school she's an expert in school law but um we have you know policy department a retired superintendent does our policy work and he not only knows the policies and the laws but he also knows the practical
124side of policy because he was a superintendent for a number of years so when he a policy comes out of his hands it's not only legal but it's also doable so that's the kind of stuff that we try to do for you all of you thank you anybody else okay thank you mr cruiser well you're very welcome thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you okay next on the agenda is regarding snow days and adjustment for the 20 20 2021 2022 school calendar um if you guys remember last year we talked about adding um three i think there's three virtual snow days to the calendar um but the state has actually taken that action away you are correct miss rinaldi so if you actually look at the school calendar
125that's in your packet it looks almost identical to the one we have in place at the moment however on the bottom left hand corner you'll see a little bit of a white white blank space goodbye um there used to be a statement down there that said that the last three asterisk days in june 22nd would be makeup snow days and that throughout the season three snow days would be remote if there was inclement weather just as miss rinaldi said on the state is no longer pushing forward those remote days and so we took that statement off and if we do have a snow day it will officially be a snow day and students will remain at home as will faculty and staff and then it'll just be tacked on to the end of the calendar
126in june i'm not gonna lie i'm excited about that there is something about having a true snow day what is the last day of school so at this point it is one two june seventh okay fingers crossed yes um anybody else have a question for dr villanova nothing at this time um community reports okay curriculum instruction there is no um report at this time mr malibu policy and leader no update at this time thank you mr makowski yes madam chair thank you we did have a budget and finance committee meeting tonight um dr villanueva walked us through the budget development process her and her team have a clear calendar which they will be adhering to for the budget development as all the way up and through public participation presentations um as well as ending with
127the referendum additionally we introduced a new board members to the capital improvement fund talked a little bit about the process the role the town council plays as well as some of the projects that we have gone to the town council with requesting bonding so they've got a nice fat packet to read through to get up to date on that exciting stuff next is facilities and operations we have no report at this time and back to you mr mikowski for community engagement no report at this time moving on to item oh reporting reports here i do have a small report this evening communication is defined as the exchange of information or news communication between the watertown public schools and our families is essential for the safety and success of our children it is very important to
128this board of education to have open communication with our community we encourage you to continue attending our board of education meetings and being involved in the educational process for your child and know we will do our best to address your comments and concerns in a timely manner however what is more crucial to us is that the communication between you and your child's school be open and transparent if you have a question concern or even a complaint please know that our teachers counselors administrators are the best resources to help you and your child building relationships with the adults who share the day-to-day interactions with your child is the best way to establish a positive and productive learning experience for our children this board of education is looking forward to a bright and exciting year thank you
129um i think next is action items okay we have kind of a lot of action items tonight first one consideration of the approval of mr john de valles to be appointed as chairman of the facilities pbc operations sub committee do i have a motion yes madam chair i moved that the board of education approve of the appointment of mr john gavales as chairman of the facilities pbc and operations subcommittee thank you i second the motion thank you um oh i'm sorry any discussion opposed abstentions in paper madam chair i moved that the board approved the report hold on hold on we have to read it first um a consideration of the approval of ms karen hosking to be appointed as chairwoman of the curriculum and instruction subcommittee do i have a motion madam chair i
130moved the board approved the appointment of ms karen hosking as chairman of the curriculum and instruction subcommittee thank you mr boss do i have a second second all in favor any discussion i'm sorry any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed extensions motion carries congratulations mrs huston consideration of the approval of miss christine faresa to be appointed as chairwoman of the governance and community engagement subcommittee do i have a motion madam chair i moved that the board of education approved the appointment of ms christine faresa as chairman of the government's governance and community engagement subcommittee thank you mr mcdo i have a second second any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries congratulations for consideration of the approval of change in names on the watertown public schools child nutrition program account do
131i have a motion madam chair i move that the board approve of the change in the name on the watertown public schools child nutrition program account at karen hosking board of education secretary effective november 23rd 2021. thank you mr a second second any discussion all in favor post abstentions motion carries any future agenda items and board members no okay seeing none we're going to move on to our second second round of public participation would anybody from the public like to participate virtually do i have anybody from the virtual audience that would like to speak you could just unmute yourself seeing none do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second second all in favor aye oppose a sentence okay the time is 9 21 and this meeting is