MASD School Board Meeting - December 11th, 2023

001I'm going to call this meeting to order just okay good yeah it's 31 just like last one um okay uh we have changes and additions to the agenda we will have an executive session this evening [Music] uh does anybody else have executive [Music] session executive section but to change the agenda we add something about um uh the theater uh budget well we can bring it up during the budget discussion great what what's the the purposes session uh uh it's a Personnel matter okay what anybody else have any other additions to the agenda just just did order change if that's okay yeah so that some people here to talk about curriculum implementation can you speak um ccul C if I could say the word curriculum implementation would like to go first under the admin report and

002then flexible Pathways after that repres have a letter I don't have a letter a resignation letter another recation Li okay and that should go probably under items for discussion right curriculum implementation first or just above flexible pathway second okay and then that's okay and okay um I'll take a motion to approve the minutes of November 13 so move Davis second Nancy my goodness we are all here all those in favor of approving approving the minutes please indicate by saying I no um can we have a discussion well oh sorry uh we need a discussion before approving yes okay is there any discussion yes okay so for the um executive session part we came back and voted and none of that is here no what was oh that's right oh good on the U did that

003was that approved yes okay there wasn't bill obstain so I think that's probably important yeah it's noted up at the top but we did vote at the end of the meeting so oh is it it so we talked about it in items for discussion then be because of the we decid contract issue we voted after yeah just didn't see the relative y yeah it's not there thank you for that good sorry I didn't mean to interrupt uh anything else anybody else Corrections uh so all those in favor of approving the minutes of November 13th please indicate by saying I I hi are there any exensions I see okay the next is the board and development report um I attended and Larry was there I attended um at Hartford Technical Center Larry was there the quarterly

004um meeting for administrators um and it was great they happened to have on that particular day a presentation by students female students and female teachers that were their facilitators so they set it up in um different corners and each student was um performing a particular um uh presentation be it in technology I on that day learned how to change attire that was what I chose to do um so it was being facilitated by female um teachers or instructors and it was female students and that was just really exciting so um and that's at the Harford Tech Center I know last year there were a lot of our students that participated in Harford and probably the same thing they're just excellent I mean their programs are excellent um and um you know it's it's just a

005good place to be for kids you know for students just to learn other things that was really great thanks Rebecca um I've been able to get back into my drop-ins um just about every week if I can um and this past I think was this past week I dropped by um I got to see jent towns and some of her students work on a really cool mural up uh above the cafeteria in that little open space by the library chat with some of them which is really cool um and I'll be here what is it two three lunch tomorrow Mr in the grade school I also got to go to a really uh I thought a really insightful presentation that was streamed in this room a couple weeks ago about parenting and social media and

006some of the issues with that um so I I thought it was a really great event the school put it on you know it's good to see you know in addition to all of the great you know Theater events and sports and stuff that we're we're also getting sping on these conversations and engaging our our community because that's super important impressing stuff so I was happy to be able to make to that it's that well attended it it's pretty well attended yeah there's like like 15 Yeah we actually got a lot of we open it up to the schol in theu actually weather field presentation glad you guys talked about this play the bud and uh make sure you have the play in the that many of us saw and love I went to the

007jerky jop it was very very cute great Jesse did a great job organizing and the kids were very excited to be running outside I know mine's left really well that way thank you all um uh I don't have because I don't have my computer I don't have the thing that I normally read for public participation in announcements but um essentially uh public participation is is not required but we we think it's really important and it's not it doesn't turn this uh into a form so if you have comments um we we won't answer them except to clarify or to to follow up on something um but please state which town you reside in and please keep your comments under three minutes go ahead hello um David dad from wont um the first thing I'd like

008to say is I I want to congratulate Hudson on his new and exciting commitment that he's about to Endeavor on and I want to wish him luck I know he'll do a great job and make us all proud and I'm happy to say that through this political process me and Hudson have I'm happppy to say I think we're friends you know we we co communicate out in the public and stuff and although he didn't tell me the meeting was at 6:30 Lu we'll miss you I'll miss you um budget seasons coming up and um last year right around after elections and stuff you know we got into a lot of things and unfortunately um I don't think that this year is going to be much easier for any of you um it's been reported in

009the news recently that all verm moners can expect a quite large tax increase next year and on the news they're calling between 15 and 20% and um any increas is becoming more and more difficult for a lot of people but um one that large is um going to be really really difficult to absorb so I'd like to ask the board um during the budget process if we merged with Albert Bridge there four years ago or whatever I think that this year it's more important than ever to identify to the public um the cost savings and what the Verge has done to save money for for Windsor and West Windsor and I'm not just saying give programs that we Consolidated I'm saying I'm asking if you could actually give us the dollar figures that we've saved

010so as a voter and a taxpayer I can think about it and identify it and then um in the Valley news on Sunday December 3rd there was an article on the front page I got you we read it um about the rivendale interstate School District talking about closing an elementary school in Fairley and I know this is an emotional subject for most people especially West Winter people and I'm sure they won't even want to discuss it but with this being the possibility of the budget year that the dude is already reporting I encourage encourage the board to be prepared to define the costs and the benefits of keeping Albert Bridge open because um it it's going to be a tough year and to to have the luxury of another school with 46 students when we

011have the capability to bring them here I I ask that you be prepared and get ready for some of us to ask St questions about can we afford it thank you thanks for that input uh do you have a public comment here for the Cal update okay uh yeah this is just to publicly announce my resignation of the board after tonight's meeting as I this is just to publicly announce my resignation from the school board as the student rep effective after tonight as I'm heading to the usn program so it's for it's good news but I'm sad but I will miss this piece thank you well that was going to be my announcement was that this is this Hon's last last meeting with us and I I know that we don't normally do this at

012uh at school board meetings but let's give Hudson a round of applause you've been a great student represent representative I have love watching you dig deeper and deeper into what that really means both locally and personally thank you and uh you really I I can only speak for myself but I think you represented the students in Windsor really well and you um you stuck up for students in when they needed sticking up for and brought that perspective that we really needed um as a as a board so thank you thank you for your service and we are so I know I speak for everybody on the board saying that we are so proud of you and so excited for you thank you um does anybody oh can you tell in more detail what he's going

013to what his new Endeavor is it's the US Senate page program which a little bit sorry it's the US Senate page program which is a um you go to school in DC you live in Webster Hall which is an old funeral home and um you attend school school down there and then you're Ina to the Senate after um school at 5: in the morning so from like 10 to five or six at night working for the Senate your school starts at 5 yeah so it'll be quite an adjustment but um it shows that uh it's a commitment um yeah listen will you be working for for months Sen delegation or are you working or do they spread you out or how does that work um they you're in the since I was appointed by Sanders

014I'll be in the all any Democrat can take us any moment how many pages are there 30 in the whole country wow yeah it is a really big deal holy that's great it's really changing thank you um we can't wait to hear about it we expect you'll get to hear about it h okay anybody else have announcements they'd like to make I oh yeah um I'd like to announce that um I'm not going to be running for the 2020 hear you I'm not going to be running for the school board member for 20 March 2024 I'm I'm sadden saddened um by the decision but um I have to um say that I have loved I have really I'm honored I've been honored to be working with all of you your dedication and um your dedication

015and just love for all of the children as um has just filled me and I I want to thank you sorry thank you Rebecca we're not done with you yet no no so don't go anybody else all right um then let's move on to student presentation of learning that's I think Jennifer ABS presented I think Analise is online ready to take lead on that as our lighthous leader are you ready anise I am I just bear forgiveness I have not shared a screen on an iPad before so I'm sure there's technical difficulties that will come because that just seems to be my luck all right now I've got to get to what I want to share let let's see if I can make this bigger you know going my FES why is it always at

016you know like a true trauma informed person I'm understanding when we're under stress um we can't ever find our files it's coming right I'm so sorry I my apologies on this one I just can't see are you guys not getting sound no oh I wish somebody had said that well thank you Jennifer for um let me do is let me take out let me take out my ear my aods and that might help and I again I apologize but this is not um how I would want it to be actually you know what at least thanks for hanging in there with us call that perseverance oh I'll I'll persevere all right hold on me what and leis would it make sense for you to try and share it with me and I'll see if I

017can't present it maybe we can do one item before this while we figure it out yeah if you want to do an item before it I am gonna do is I'm just going in through um through the old way and just pulling it off of that so I I think that I am there so I can try per we are teaching students to understand that they are just one piece just did you attend the um I77 thing last week uh Tracy and Kim go were able to go so K on tonight she'll talk about it so I wasn't able to do it did you go no that's why I'm asking I wanted to I just couldn't do it I wanted to too yeah but but Tracy I she didn't fil you today she said it

018was really I could so no I'm here I heard talking so I was figuring it's not working again no no yeah we can't see it you couldn't hear it no no okay why don't you guys go to the next one I'm gonna problem solve what's going on okay uh let's go to the administrative report we'll come back before our items for discussion oh sorry we're gonna start with implementation am I [Music] right give me 30 seconds to log into the meeting and then I'll share it that's you want me to go so we just oh I'm Jessica Jack I'm the 35 literacy interventionist here at Windsor um Amber is our K2 interventionist and Mike is on as well he will do a little bit of discussion about the math he's our 35 math interventionist so

019we just did a quick little update about how the grum is going and with some feedback from our teachers so you can go to the next slide yeah this is just response for your question Megan last time just a where are we to dat with curriculum and we've got these amazing folks who are the Dream Team here to tell us a little bit sure if it goes okay so I won't review all of the slides we've just made a few quick glows and grows which after a teacher I liked to do a uh your conferences way so a you glows about this ccla curriculum um if used with Fidelity all students will receive an equitable education throughout our entire Su uh because as you obviously are well aware we adopted it through the entire Su

020there it's rich and oral language teachers feel like it's having a big impact on students in the future I think it will come up in the growth but it's it's a heavy hit right now um so in C C has broken up into two kind of Parts skills which is only taught in K2 and then knowledge which is taught in both in K through five uh so in K2 the skilled portion is grounded in the science of reading and current research so it's a big focus on Phonics and phic awareness which we know our students desperately need um it is explicit teaching of those Sonic and aope uh it provides many opportunities for formal and informal assessments it's very discussion based and and there's also obviously formal buildin Assessments in it so I already said

021this but teachers like having access to an explicit and systematic curriculum it ensures that all standards are being taught and they are they build upon one another so they have kind of a grab and gr grab and go that tell tell them what to do some units and topics students are engaged in making connections it has material such as workbooks and readers so that teachers don't have to Outsource or create material that's a really big glow I know that budget Seasons coming up so keep in mind that the workbooks are really helpful to the teachers and the students uh it also has the ability to accomodate all sorts of student needs throughout the digital tools so cqa comes with or we have it this year I'm assuming it's probably an add-on but there's a digital

022component so the readers students can listen to the readers they can also access all the workbook pages digitally and use things like talk to text and they can type in that answer so they don't just have to use workbooks to write and then there are some grows as with everything so it's not necessarily meeting the students current needs because there are large learning gaps especially in the bigger kids I live in the 35 so there is no phonic symic awareness explicit instruction because science tells us that students in those grades should have those fills but reality tells us that they don't so it's not necessarily meeting all the students needs um the old curriculum was lacking rigor in explicit in instruction and this new curriculum has a lot of rigor in a lot of explicit

023instruction so there's definitely a large gap that we have to fill the writing demands of CER are higher than we had in the past because we didn't really have much for ring curriculum so C killer has high rigorous spring demands um so we're seeing some gaps there it's a major time constraint for both preparing lessons and implementing the curriculum with Fidelity the lessons are very long C says that they should be 90 minutes but practice is showing us that that's not you can't teach a 90 minute lesson in a day so they're taking a lot longer um which leads us into the physical days in the school year there are is it's just not enough time to cover all of the units um so as of now there's not been any work done to consolidate

024which units will have to be missed or will have to overlap on um so teachers are really worried about fitting it all in and when you miss a unit in one grade it obviously impacts other grade so the figuring out of how when and with what material differentiation can be implemented is a big big thing right now following on teachers don't know if there's lot okay there's not a lot of student voice and choice it's strictly teaching their curriculum it's very scripted it lays all the units out it gives you the topics it pretty much tells you what to say which of course you can add live and add in and put the teacher back into it but there's not student Voice or choice in it um teachers feel that some of the topics are

025not developmentally appropriate which is resulting in some Behavior concerns it is not easy accessible for substitute teachers which makes it challenging for teachers who need to be out um and it is not at all Hands-On so it's very workbook and discussion based so if you are not supplementing then it's it's not a Hands-On C all I will do my very best to answer any and all of your questions however you also could direct them at Patty and Andy who are the ones that know lots of answers but I will totally answer them I well I'm asking questions based on your slides strictly okay okay ready so what do you mean by a handon curriculum what do you mean by so there's no like projects that go with it there's no like students choosing what books

026they want to read about and an doing anything like that so with Wheatley I taught four here previously um with Wheatley it was like you could teach the standard and it was a based around a topic so you could do a lot of like Project based learning with that and see is not like that you have to teach the workbook pages and the lesson as it's scripted and if you don't then in four lessons ahead it'll say I remember when or it builds on the lessons build on so you can't necessarily take bits and pieces of it out and what do you mean by uh the development development developmentally appropriate um topics topics are like I guess what I'm specifically ask asking is are they topics that are too old or topics that are too

027young I would say that they're topics that are too old and or not of high interest to the students and there's some stories in the readers that when we had our training I guess on it at the beginning of the year a lot of the teachers within the SEO I know this is only about our district but within the SEO we're all like interesting story choices so teachers aren't necessarily feeling like they're all appropriate for students so have we are we using this or is it a trial we are using this we've adopted ccla across the SEO yes we piloted it last year but we didn't pilot anything else tested it out last year but we adopted it fully this year across the entire y were you on the pilot committee I was I piloted

028but only one unit so they send you certain units to Pilot for free and you have to just use the ones they send you so I only personally was able to teach one just where where it came in in the year I only one and what was your impression of that then well it happened to fall perfectly with where I was teaching the Revolutionary War with my unit so there's a Cula unit so some of them align pretty well with topics that Weekly our previous curriculum had so it was great for me but I was piloting it so I got to supplement and do a lot of fun bits that I normally did with the Revolutionary War um because we were just piloting it I didn't do it with the strict Fidelity that that word

029so you're not able to to I mean are you able to tailor it at all to you Pi your own book no no it comes with a reader okay so each unit has its own reader and the reader goes along with each lesson so it'll say like read this chapter read this story that how are the children um doing do do they like this going on I think it depends on the unit in a Grade so there's certain units that are of higher interest and teachers are doing their best to kind of supplement and make it more fun I know fourth grade was reading about medieval times so they added in like a building castles unit and we we've kind of shared at our Su meetings that teachers need more time and need more need

030a little bit more grace to kind of Step our toes into this so the Su has said like okay you could slow down a little it doesn't have to be like a lesson a day and strict with Fidelity like we were told in the beginning so I think they're liking it but it's definitely a different approach than I think what we used before it's a lot of teachers talking at you and and a lot of workbook PES a lot of kind of so I was wondering because you said that there are two other um interventionists y okay do all of the interventionists work with all of the children or are they pretty much focused on one particular group of of kids and and I'm just trying to get a sense of because you've already said

031that we've identified gaps Y and so I mean who seen those gaps um is it the interventionist and the teachers and and and how does that discussion go once those gaps are identified sure so we're all instructional coaches all three of us are instructional coaches and interventionists um we also are mtss coordinators so it all kind of falls under the same umbrella so we meet and look at the data and we meet with the grade levels to say okay here are the gaps we're seeing on the your curriculum data on your star assessment data which is our progress mon data and then we make groups from there so teachers are trying to fill those gaps in their win times in the classroom as well as the PLL kids that are kind of the next tier

032up we work with them in and out of the classroom so it's bitable we all see them we all share them we all we all do together so that's a good thing in some regards because you're all you're all gr own all of the kids so that would that's a good thing a little bit of our budget meeting I'll talk about about this model that Jesse Mike and Amber are part of because it was our big investment from last year's budget so shout these cre team folks out a little bit I can explain how Jesse did a great job you got it but I can't underscore what they have been able to do this year in terms of supporting our teachers and supporting our students I think they are moving us and I'm stealing my

033punch like for later but they are moving us uh I think at light speed which is really exciting I also just want to sh that we made the presentation but we sent out forms to our entire staff only to our wsor staff but um so the people we work with but this is feedback directly from our teachers um that was going to be my last question yeah it's not we didn't make it up it's directly from the teachers and we meet with them um weekly to have these discussions do the data meetings and such and so that came from there as well as the weekly or bi-weekly across the Su curriculum meetings some of this information came from from there Patty shared some things that were just was brought up at the um at the

034Su instru what was it the s in service day sorry thank you that's thing so some of this came from the whole suu as well as directly thank you thank you you Jess thank that was really helpful Mike oh yeah Mike was is here and happy to talk about Yuri he does all the maths okay Hudson can attest to the fact that this stff only does the reading good evening I'm Mike dogie I'm the 35 math interventionist at Windsor um new to the district this year so I um come from teaching fourth grade for a long time in another district and am happy to be here and working to support teachers 3 to five in math um many of the challenges and many of the glows from the cka sort of translate pretty well to

035Eureka squared we had some folks pilot move from Eureka and pilot some of Eureka squared last year and we moved now to everyone implementing the Eureka squared curriculum which one of the benefits is it's largely familiar to folks who are already using it uh slight downside is that not everyone was using it with Fidelity going back to one of the first glows that um this year Su wide uh everyone will use use this with Fidelity and then we'll be able to sort of make adjustments moving forward um many of the the grows are are also um pretty similar uh it is a has a digital presentation part point that the teachers can use the technology of that was a little wonky to get used to at first um but the teachers presenting visually on the

036screens the materials the students are going to work with in the workbooks is pretty helpful um end of day exit tickets are sort of very helpful for quick dipsticks of student understanding um with the technology piece it's also pretty challenging for substitute teachers and just sort of as a an extra piece on a side with a couple of the teachers we support being brand new first year teachers uh doing all of C for the first time and all of Eureka for the first time has has been a pretty uh Steep Hill to climb but we're we're in I'm in three five classrooms supporting um math like Jess said uh some push into the classroom supporting teachers supporting students in class and some pullout B based on classroom data and star test data from earlier in

037the fall any particular questions okay so you is this your first year is my first year Wier yes okay okay and where were you previously I taught fourth grade at the White River School for the last 28 years okay thank you so you I the reason I'm asking is I was just wondering if you were within our supervisory Union before now or or uh I was drafted to uh work at Summer Academy for a couple of Summers but no this is my my first full-time uh my first full-time job well thank you for your feedback on this on this curriculum it's really good and important for us to know both the grows and then glows gu um uh do you find that teachers understand the curriculum the there's a little bit of Technology challenge with

038the presentation materials sort of tracking internally in the lesson the for teachers who are familiar with the scope and sequence of third or fifth grade math um this flows pretty neatly um but if you're a brand new teacher in fourth grade say um you're you're starting starting from scratch and we we do a pretty fair amount of support in in those areas just uh math curricula tend to spiral and you'll you'll see a skill early in the year and you'll spiral away from it and come back third grade started subtracting with flexible strategy adding strategies under 100 and later in the year that comes back moving into thousands and and larger numbers um so yes I'd say that the the math the teachers are pretty familiar with okay all right well thank you very much

039you're welcome and it's nice to anybody else have any questions have the students um switched easily to this are they doing well we're coming up on the second window of the STAR testing just into the beginning of the year and we're looking forward to comparing data from the start of the year to now um exit ticket pieces and inside of the unit quizzes uh students seem seem to be doing well um part part of one of the challenges is likewise the time and the pacing having not taught these units before um so we don't have a lot of end end of unit assessments to look at we're looking mostly at at quiz data and end of class data but yes students are are doing well is it possible to finish the whole thing in a

040year that that's going to be pretty CH that's challenging for all curricula always um and for right now it does not look like it some of some of the early units are taking longer than one class session so they'll there'll be a bit of a squeeze at the end of the year but that's not unusual even with a curriculum that you've worked with over the course of several years thank you not to jump on Mike's uh time but we also were teaching Eureka Math before so square is just kind of their new version of it so it's not as big of a change for our students as the reading right I have a a pretty for both of you actually it's a general and kind of subjective question but do you think that with these

041and I know Eureka is obviously not brand new as you said um do you think that with a little bit of time like a couple more years of letting this implementation kind of sink in will get used out it's delivered do you foresee it there being a steep hill to climb to do some of the modifications and adjustments you need to be able to get all of the really crucial parts that into a school year or is that something that's that's a little bit more of a termal challenge with with either of these curriculum yeah go first Jess okay so I think with all curriculums it's definitely going to take time so in three or five years I think we'll be in a great place which is usually when curriculum changes so give it five

042years and then curriculum will change so I think the kindergarteners are going to have the best bet right because they don't know anything different this is the curriculum that they're teaching so they're they're is only a small Gap to fill um whereas like the fifth graders then going into Middle School have a lot larger of a gap or third graders moving up will do better so I think yeah of course with time it'll it'll be better and the more we can Implement our mtss process and tier one instruction is what should kind of fill those gaps but they're definitely I mean it'll be a few years I would say before so with those fifth graders I'm sorry you prob H me right now with I know with those fifth graders the Gap would still be

043there whether or not we switch curriculum correct absolutely so do you feel that they have a better shot of being prepared under this curriculum uh this so my personal and professional opinion is that if you can't teach the fun if they don't have a basic understanding of phonics emic awareness no matter their age they don't have as great of a shot at all so we're doing our very best to fill those gaps especially in the higher kids because it's not it's not explicitly taught it's expected that they understand it so when they move on when those fifth graders move on to Middle School there's no bonics in awareness because that's like topping out sounds and hearing the Sounds in the word and no sixth grader wants to be working on that so so it's fair

044to say that they had the gaps under the old curriculum for sure but I think that the gaps are even more now because there's no time to fill them with the curriculum and there's no it's not built in then so you know that the gaps exist we also know that those kids need those skills in order order to be successful in the middle school there's I I mean because forget about high school if they can't get you know make it in the middle school is it possible to look at what you know those gaps those big gaps are whether it's phonics or whatever and really come up with some sort of a plan you know with the middle school but I you know I don't know a teacher or something and offer those you know

045some intense courses those areas just to prep just to prepare the students because you don't want to send you know you send them on and they're not going to be successful they're just going to you know um they're they're they're going to just you know what's the word I'm looking for struggle they're gonna not only struggle but they're gonna tune out and then you're gonna then you're gonna talk about behavior issues you're gonna talk about all sort of issues and it's not that they don't want to be in school it's just that they don't have the skills and it either embarrassing it's like you know I can't do this so I'm just thinking how do you say okay how can we do something between that um Elementary before they jump into the middle school I

046don't know I'm just throwing that out I just know I've seen so many kids out it's fair full disclosure um I have ath grador right which is why my wheels are turning right now so I think it's fair to mention that there's almost 50 of them and were in two classes in first grade and that's when we shut down because of Co so to say anything about like curriculum or anything is really an unfair statement on my part right now when they had all the that happen as well it's also not a unique Windsor issue I mean this is a national issue that we have um the right to read film I'm sure you guys are aware but it's this is a national issue that the kids don't have these filled and I I think

047we like to say that it's the co shutdown that did it so for that class for sure when they miss That explicit instruction um but it's without the explicit construction it the gas won't be filled so yes I think to answer your question I don't know if it's for me I think we are doing that so with our intervention and mtss model that's what we're working on on our end and I know Middle School just hired an interventionist um so they're working on that as well so we're really trying to fill the gaps I know it's not easy thank you thank you both I think we should move on to thank Amber Amber's not here I think we've got the video going do you guys want to share see the um leader me stuff okay

048let's try it again Le I think I've got it working on my end do you want me to run it yeah I can try it again one more time for mine just because yours for whatever reason is up there's like that one clip that's upside down and I promise I would never have made an upside down clip okay can you hear it sound no okay we'll go with Jennifer's that was easy go at Albert Bridge school we are teaching students to understand that they are just one piece to a much larger puzzle using programs like responsive classroom collaborative problem solving students set not only individual goals but whole classroom goals students ask themselves if their goals whether big or small are smart goals specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound this helps them narrow their

049goals to ones they can find success in achieving last year our school goal allowed students to see the progress as a whole making sure all students felt they could contribute to the school wig this year our goal is not centered in academics but in making sure students feel connected in our Community I a part of this community I a part of this community I belong here I belong here I cared for I cared for I value I value I am curious creative and I am curious creative and caring I am a leader I am my voice matter my voice matters thank you our student leadership team has aided in helping us bring more student-based activities to our school throughout our school [Music] day [Music] we have used students to model for others how to handle

050getting food appropriately so no one takes too [Music] much nice job are you getting anything else nice are you getting anything else one egg good job students engage in team building activities that help them feel more connected in a community-based way versus in an academic way and then someone else is going to have to release a grab on it oh this [Music] is our school some sometimes plays as a whole this means grades K through six will go out onto the playground and play together which brings forward new [Music] learning this means they can engage together regardless of where they are and here they're asking great questions as we visit the Vermont Adaptive ski program students remember their community at large at our Veterans Day celebration and inviting community members to celebrate in our Harvest

051Festival right before Thanksgiving where we had many student servers serve dessert to all of our community members who attended we of course have fun with things such as dance party which is run by students they set up the equipment and we even have DJ applications out there so that students can learn how to use turntables to be DJs at this time our whole school morning meetings allow us to do deeper forms of connections as students are asked questions like when was there an opportunity for you to be a leader [Music] when it came to working at math you stick something that wasn't so easy raise your hand if you did that math was St nice job your hands down how about when leaving something we always end our morning meetings with a little bit of

052a rain stick so students can take a deep breath and find their center before they enter our building for the [Music] [Laughter] day students from all grades are invited to be a greeter as students enter the building everyone says hello by either doing a fist pump handshake or any other kind of greetings that is acceptable at this time good morning [Music] started and I want to be a leader ABS because [Music] I I'm S I want to be a leader because I like to I want to [Music] be peace hi my name is and I want to be of [Music] so my [Music] it's also important for our students to understand that there is humor in our mistakes and that it's always fun to have a little spontaneous [Music] fun [Music] is it pretty D

053oh the [Music] pretty [Music] whether it's a whole school celebration or just a class celebrating them meeting a goal we love having fun at Albert Bridge School awesome thank you an for all that work no problem I'd like to say we don't hold our morning meetings upside down or do side so something something went wrong in the conversion um so thank you thank you thank you okay we are now on middle school then middle scho she need to share her screen I Kim do you want me to share my screen or are you g to do it no if you could um I just want to apologize everybody I'm actually at campan rink it was my son's home opener tonight for the voice Varsity uh um hockey game so if it's a little funky in

054the noise I apologize I'm trying to be a multitasking mom here for a couple minutes um you know you got to make it work right thanks Christine can everyone hear me okay y okay great um so while that's loading um I'm going to do things a little bit differently tonight uh generally I like to share like all of our data um and who's doing what but um I have a small video for you tonight and I want to share some information about the conference that I went to I did go to the 10 years of act 77 with Tracy um and just wanted to talk about some successes and challenges and some of the takeaways that I had from that uh conference So Christine could you go to the next slide I sure can thanks

055so just to remind everybody I'm sure I you've seen this pretty much every time I've presented but when we say flexible Pathways it's not a class uh it really refers to a whole bunch of different options that kids can choose from from Career and Technical Ed to Early College dual enrollment uh online learning but it also encompasses stuff like work-based learning uh Community Based learning things that we call elos which we've talked about several times here at the board um and it can also Encompass things like high school completion or alternative programs to get kids to graduation you can go to the next slide so I kind of wanted to share a success story um you guys might him I thought it might be hting given this really cool opportunity that I heard that you

056guys talked about at the very beginning but to to connect the fact that Hudson is doing this really cool thing next semester to our flexible Pathways program because it there was an Exemplar I've had quite a few Exemplar students but but the way that s uh starts this his freshman year and how he's progressed to where he is now is really what Le Pathways could and should be in a perfect system or what hypothetically I would love if all kids took advantage of um and they won't but that's okay but this is kind of what I'm shooting for so can you start that Christine hi Hudson can you tell us about all the different flexible Pathways that you've done at Windsor high school so uh my freshman year I did a podcast um I also

057have done drafting a bill um I did a Harvard course I did Governor's Institute um and I also have taken many online classes through flexible Pathways as well as a dual enrollment class what's your most latest flexible pathway um I'm headed down to Washington DC to become a US Senate page for six months which um is crazy and uh it's a fully immersive program I'll go to school down there I'll live down there yeah imagine your education without flexible Pathways uh what would have been BL like and do you think you would have Ed up in this page program if you just had come and done sort of traditional schooling absolutely not I would have not ended up in the page program if I did traditional schooling um flexible Pathways gives you opportunities that aren't

058offered in the building I mean you can't learn how to write a bill in a school you can't I mean kids are out welding you can't learn how to do that in schools in at least in our tiny school um but it gives you those real life experiences and allows you to explore things and my education would be really boring without it I will say what's are some real skills that you think you've gotten how has it benefited you as a person communication skills um you have to communicate a lot while doing these things um I would say just like meeting all these different people through legislation and podcasting is really huge what about self-direction do you think that's important yes being able to direct yourself is incredibly important did you have to like make

059a lot of choices yes and uh it's not easy do you think more kids should do more flexible Pathways absolutely um everyone has some sort of Interest or Talent OR career that could count towards credit for flexible Pathways I mean it's literally called flexible Pathways the possibilities are flexible and endless and endless anything else you want to say about flexible Pathways do some flexible Pathways guys [Laughter] he said he hates hearing his own voice but I said can you tell us about I don't need that's fine um but I thought it was good just for us to kind of narrow down some of the talking points um and like I said he's the Exemplar but it's really kind of the model and you can see the progression from like just starting with a podcast something

060that t takes a little bit of um it was passion based kind of like a passion project but he was able to then choose things within the realm of political sence science which really is as you guys know his heart and soul and from that you know he did this bill but he added in a Harvard class all the way up to meeting all these people that he exposed him to this really cool page program and as you heard he he said he probably wouldn't even do it had he not done these other things that sort of were Stepping Stones to this this so 10 years back 77 great con um conference you can see there's a picture there I took that picture we were in the state house right where that bill act 77

061um took place and what was really cool is a lot of schools presented I wish I had Hudson to present there that day but he had to go to a social studies conference instead so that's why I wanted his video because they're going to do it again and we will share his success stories and hopefully the stories of others but um all of the schools that presented had kids like Hudson that were standing up talking about these really cool things that they did that a lot of other kids don't do and they do them outside of their traditional classroom sometimes and sometimes they were connected to actual classes which was really cool um and from this celebration there were some breakout sessions I got to spend um an entire breakout session with students and ask

062them like you know the same sort of question questions I asked Hudson but I asked also asked them why they thought more students didn't do flexible Pathways and their answer was very interesting and I'll get to that um but we should be really proud because my biggest takeaway was that we're doing it we're doing the thing we are offering comparable um flexible pathway options to many of the schools and I think that one of the areas in the state and talking with um some of the folks from the AOE that we have really fully developed that a lot of people are kind of unsure of um are the elos and so I've been working with up for Learning and hopefully some folks at the AOE and we are gonna hopefully try to get some consistency

063across Vermont um one other thing I saw is that because of local control and because of that big wheel of options around flexible Pathways it doesn't look the same in every school I mean it shouldn't look the same because all of our schools are different but some people just promote dual enrollment some people just promote uh their heart for tech center as opposed to what we're doing where we are providing access to all of those opportunities that I shared with you in my first slide which I think is great because we're going to hit more kids needs and give them what they need they saying well what's best for you dual enrollment or an ELO or the Harford Tech or is it is it high school completion is that your flexible pathway and that what's

064going to get you out of school and into a job um so I was I was really it was validating I guess to hear that we're we're doing you know some really good things here in Windsor and just as good as a lot of the places around Vermont so that brings me yep thanks uh to some Seck and challenges first of all we're doing it uh we're on the right track according to the Celebration I I feel confident that we are doing it to the best of our ability um we have a lot of offerings there's Equitable access we've dedicated money those the vans that we have make a lot of things possible um have a burn grant for cost for kids and I know I've worked with Kate about getting some money set aside

065for flexible Pathways so I feel like we are Contin to grow and on the right track um you guys have a program director that's really pushing the growth of this program whereas a lot of schools don't they either have like a flexible Pathways um they have a guidance celor that's trying to do this in addition to all of the other stuff that they're doing or maybe just a work-based learning coordinator that tries to do some of the other flexible Pathways or it's kind of scattered about so I think that's a real Plus for our district um I feel like we're really trying to evolve and get better between moving forward with the portrait of The Graduate the proficiency work that we're doing at all levels um at high school um been doing a ton of

066career exploration we put in Flex time which is to help kids meet their needs we have an alternative program so I feel like all the little changes are really you know starting to come together to make the system a system where kids going to access flexible Pathways more frequently um and we also have some amazing local resources some of the challenges that I've identified in talking with students such as Hudson and other students and our guidance counselors Christine and Kate um is if you look at act 77 and uh Christine can you just jump this slide for a second yeah I should can okay act 77 actually has three pillars it it encompasses flexible Pathways but it also encompasses personalization and a huge component of that is a PO and when I say a PO

067I mean like a really fully function functioning implemented po proficiency based graduation requirements meaning your PS but also content course proficiencies and a really deep understanding of proficiency instruction and assessments in grading and so as you can see by that sort of interconnecting thing they kind of support each other they're interconnected and lately since we've done flexible Pathways we've been trying to implement them without those other things really in place and I know we're on a path to I know we're working towards it but where they're so interconnected and where they um really support each other that's one of my challenges is that our system isn't in place to make it so that all kids are doing the type of Exemplar things that you heard that Hudson is doing um we're working on it we're

068putting in the leader and me skills but we're not quite there yet Christine can you go back one slide yeah so again um PG proficiencies you know the portrait of a graduate we have them we have great chers but we haven't figured out how to say that our students are going to graduate and demonstrate that they've met them and how we're assessing them and a lot of schools what they're doing are portfolios um and flexible pathways are actually a really big piece of those graduation proficiencies meeting them and demonstrating them and that PO pfio that portfolio that they would give on their senior year another challenge is the flexible Pathways requirement well I know we got rid of it a few years ago and I wish I was kind part of that conversation because what

069we were doing wasn't working um we were basically checking a box but now we kind of went to the very opposite end of the the Spectrum where kids don't have to do it and when I was at that at the 77 conference we talking to all the students there what do you think would get more kids to do it and they were like well kids are kids and if we don't have it connected to something that's meaningful or something that they have to do then they're going to take easy way out and probably not do it unless there's one of a superstar like Hudson um so I think we need to rethink that requirement not the way it was before but you know how is it connected to Capstone in our our stem program and

070our portrait of of a graduate and could we have those choices you know of a Capstone of Junior seminar of whatever the the places that kids choose to demonstrate where they've met those portrait of a graduate proficiencies so I think as we can continue to have these conversations and grow our how we're going to our PS how we're going have our senors demonstrate that we've met them flexible Pathways will continue to be more of an integral part of Student Success um that also goes for self-directed learning we're sort of in the beginning stages of you know voice and choice and building that capacity for kids that be self-directed and be motivated and be in charge of their learning and I feel like as those kids start to come up you know and as we figure

071out some of these other things proficiencies and the p and our PS then kids will have more of a reason to do more of the really great things that are available to them because they just don't take advantage of them the way that I wish that they did and the way that you see students like husand taking advantage of them um and of course the some of the old systems at the high school again when I think of challenges the course registrations being small school limited time in their schedule um still trying to work those out but I think the good thing in the successes are is you know I work with our guidance counselors very closely and we're still trying to make it better every year even though we're not quite there yet um

072so that's kind of where I wanted to land for tonight is does anyone have any questions I do I that that was awesome um I that information was so so good and um at the end of your presentation you talked about Capstone programs and I know that this students are acquired um junior year to present Capstone presentation senior year so I'm wondering if um rather than waiting until their senior year to present the Capstone if we can capture or we can require that students start doing a caps though maybe in their freshman year um at the end of that year we already are asking them to identify career um pathway um and and it's it's it's kind of focusing them on the fact that they don't do this in their senior year it's required now

073and then if you require it again in their junior in their sophomore year and in their junior year and their senior year by year four I mean they'll be you know a Hudson you know they have it together that because they've been doing it they've been asked to do it um I think what that also does is it really um allows student to um identify something that they are interested in and that they can work towards um and it doesn't need to be a straight academic um curriculum but it can be something different but it gives them option it gives them freedom to say I don't want to focus on the same thing that Hudson focuses on and I have that opportunity here to do that I I think that that would allow bring students

074in and say okay over I need to be here for another four years and and at least I'll be able to focus on something while I something that I want to do over the next four years in addition to something that's required of me I don't know but um to wait until your senior year to kind of say bring it all together is I I don't know if if we we keep we can keep them that long yeah and I'm not sure the Capstone we have a structured now is doing kind of what you're saying I mean what a lot of schools um a few years of ago before covid I visited Hazen and Harwood and a few schools that uh have graduation proficiencies and they do have instead of midterms and finals they have

075where students present pieces of their po that are linked to the supports of The Graduate and I think that's kind of what you're getting at is that every year at that time of the year with at least once a year you're like okay I have to do something that you know is aside from my content I have to pass all my classes those don't go away but I have to do something that's a little bit more a little bit extra that's reaching me towards those that may and I maybe I pick as a freshman one of those graduation confidences that I'm putting something in my PLP and that's what I'm presenting about but it allows for what you're saying those conversations about like what are you going to do next and how can we build

076on this and is this building towards a passion or is it building towards a career and I think that if we could make that portrait of a graduate competencies and portfolio and like you're saying less of the midterm and more of that demonstration of learning related to those like a lot of the schools that are doing these really well I do I agree I think we'll have kids Cho more of those things I think there's quite a few schools that do it variations of that too but I I think something to that effect I agree with you for sure I have a question about the um the grant money the dedicated money for it has there been any instances where a student picks something and there's not enough money to cover it or has that

077been so the problem isn't the lack of money it's the system in place to access the money it reimburses it reimburses okay and that's not that's not ideal at all necessarily Equitable how can we fix that what can we change it the budget no no no the money's there the money is there it's the ability to access it quickly for him put out of his owny her own money govern the ideal scenario I afraid to say this without here the ideal scenario would be that could had a credit card yeah it's true because the rest of the world doesn't function on purchase orders and so what the the sticky widget has been is when even when we have a money um I wrote a burn Grant so we have that sort of I guess you

078call it an a petty fund um but still parents need to pay up front and we'll only reverse reimburse them and that's been a limiting factor for people so and I can't give like we have a student that wanted to take courses to get certified in exercise science and we've had a few things almost everybody that I would interface with requires a credit card and needs to pay up front whether it's camps any of those things so it's been a conversation I wrote the grant to sort of circumvent the what you know what you had to do with the business office and um I've been able to have parents work I've worked with places like Governor's Institute to let parents like pay over time and then we re them uh we have sent places checks

079a few places do send checks but um I think just getting access to the money um in a way that works for the people that would attend conferences and those sorts of things that the kids would want to do is definitely been a little bit of a sticky widget um hold on a second um I just want to ask a couple questions first uh uh Kim I remember when it first came out and uh and uh you worked really hard on getting uh kind of tracks put together so I'm Sor I didn't hear you kind of academic tracks that would include FX flexible Pathways yeah um when did when did the requirement die what happened to I think it was the year before last and that was I'm gonna kick that question back to you

080because I wasn't part of those conversations which is a little frustrating always um a conversation during leadership team prior to that we had argued amongst ourselves and the leadership team was like how can inflexible pathway is the a requirement and then during Co we had to cut requirements we kind of have to and fible and uh what happened to the requirement of um the the uh FPS is it's still there but the problem that we ran into with we had one counselor wejust that was it um no middle school counselor no high school counselor um and something had to go something had to take a backseat during that time but it is back in the Forefront um and Jess is doing a really nice job I asked asked her a question the day about a

081kid who needed a credit and she was like well if you look at their PLP they'll be able to get their credit through that so it's happening okay and uh uh so just to clarify flexible Pathways opens up for students in what what grade technically ninth but we had a request um in eth this year and we did it okay and how are students made aware of flexible ta so that's where we need to do a better job with the scheduling and K and I been talking about that um about starting with our schedule this January to get that swarm time long longer which is um our kind of time where students can access things they're made aware of it Kim presentation usually at 210 through the year um Kim will do a presentation in

082this room um and invite different uh passes in different grade levels in to talk about it we could get enthusias enthusiasm around it we had more examples of what we can do do right um and how we could start it on a smaller basis rather than moving to DC is it is it possible because you make sure that parents get the um schedule for students is it possible for that sort of information to get out the parents also so that they yeah it goes out here um one I had that a lot of people especially freshmen are free to do something alone you know you're like [Music] sorry if we could do a flexible half almost like mini mini class like a mini C kids could do something kids could explore it in a rather

083than Al loone I think we get to get more but um that sounds like a great idea when we get budget conversation One impact we have of doing a planning room was that it allowed more time for me to do my actual job um and with that comes weekly meetings with Kim which I've been internally grateful for I put it out every week who or every month who wants just a weekly meeting that allows us to have the conversations that's why said we have these challenges and we're working on them like she means that because we are we are working on them because we have the time um particularly the self-d detering learning and the proficiency reading we're finally to to over with that because we put all these other systems in place the Sher

084and uh okay thank you yes um outside of Hudson how many students are actually by accessing the flexible pathway right now in this year well the number is high but that the majority would be an online class or a dual enrollment the taex center counts as the flexible popway so we count all the the definitions that Kim put out there so you can part of it is if you just want to take a another course that wind doesn't offer you can go through that was the whole idea of the law in the first place was to for for small schools and for schools in rural areas uh that can't afford to offer all kinds of stuff this is a way this is a way my question percentage wise I would my best guess would be

08550% I may be a little bit more we're always looking for mentors to you want to get involved oh yeah I got a lot to teach but you gota remember like that counts hard for a Tex Center that counts every kid who actually moment and everyone who taking in online it's probably that go outside of those options that percentage would be tiny thank you what what do we suppose are the odds that there at some point being a flexible Pathways ways requirement reinstated um and if there were how might it look different um um so I'm hearing it's it's valuable and I'm hearing we want more students to do it I also you know understand not every student I get it like if if a students offered the option of like you can just kind

086of like put your nose down and do what you need to do and not have to worry about these other variables like I I am not every student is going to want to pick up the ball and run with it that way and that's in no way a qualitative judgment I mean for some students just going straightforward and not the perception of like not accessing these things that could be like very psychologically safe for them I do think that maybe having that requirement and like giving just a little bit of push even if it's not going too far outside of that comfort zone could be could be helpful I mean I think that this this presentation demonstrates a lot of the value of that um but I also understand you know there's a reason why

087there is not that requirement anymore um there's also social draw to school of course a lot more a lot of kids come to school for the reasons of it and a lot of the flexible paway that they have seen as examples keep them out of that environment and I think that a lot of kids don't want to do that um some students some students feel very successful with the options they have not in flexible class students who want to be a Spanish major they have all Spanish one through four and take all of those and I wanted to recognize that too I mean that's kind of what I maybe I didn't Express that clearly but there may just be options here that students feel enriched and completely happy withs there's absolutely nothing wrong with that

088um yeah right that's definitely part of the case but I don't know I sitting here listening to Kim we were bringing the thought of doing it introducing it freshman year our goal next year for our schedule is to build that flexible time longer so that we can offer more during that time and yes it's only 17 minut I do think that if been freshman year this was kind of rolled out into small groups that it would have more Buy in yeah I wonder you know not to get too of brainstorming right here right now but I wonder if if providing some examples or or aspirational examples if haven't happened yet where you know maybe you and some of your friends could do a project together you could be engaged in the same kind of learning

089if you have common interests you know highlighting that I mean to as long as it isn't a requirement there's a certain amount selling the program that you have to do right um so I'll be yeah I certainly understand the constraints around doing that um and I think it's an exciting there's a lot of exciting opportunities here it's fantastic just hear about the depth and breadth of what there is you know this guy very much included um so I'll be I'll be interested to hear where that goes yeah I think a lot of kids do stuff and don't do it under the the lens of flexible it and something they want to do we almost need to like go kids from Hartford or wherever that are doing these things that may be more engaged to students

090and bring them in to present to Winter students freshman year even if it's a slideshow that you use for the next 20 years of what they're doing yeah and and a lot of the technical centers what they at first only offered classes to Juniors and seniors and one of the things they did was decided to offer this mini class to your ninth graders FR Mak a much shorter version of what you would be doing in building and construction or in some of the other classes and at that point you know the um um uh it it just blew open those classes all of a sudden all of the kids wanted to take them so you're right I mean if you can get kids that can stay with a group you know go around you know

091and and just expose them to I it's a great way to like bring them in to expose them I just have a question do you I know you're working a lot on the March intensives and having different things do you feel like some of those topics might be kind of brought into opening the kids up to having these topway I do we worked really Jeff worked really hard on getting Mar on improving March inance and bringing it back to original Glory or where the intention was supposed to be and through that we did get a lot of community involvement this year more so than other years um and even reached out to like the elementary school and said hey we had this idea for March and that would involve doing some work around the um

092Elementary School um so I it is it will be interesting to me to see what this year's what comes out of this year's March I just have one more kind of General comment I mean I what's very clear is that there's a lot of time in into this program one thing that that Kim said and I I greatly appreciate the amount of detail that you gave in your presentation Kim but the fact that we are resourcing this with a coordinator is really really important and I mean I think that that demonstrates again what the importance of of highlighting this program even if maybe we're not seeing the participation that we'd like to to me that leaves the groundwork to see that participation um so I mean I'm despite the challenges you're talking about I'm excited

093to see this going I'm excited to see what students are going to do with it um and and clearly it's had an impact on a lot of our Learners to date so yeah thank you to all of you for making this making this happen in the way that it's happening do so when you tell students about it is it um do they understand that it's wide open or do they I'm just thinking about my kid and their friends uh who when I've asked them some a small sample but about 10 people who are freshman um all think that it's not open to them until junior year no um it might be worth one of the changes we made with the schedule this year is that we took classes and we made them semester classes typically

094kids are more successful in a shorter amount of time that and it also leads us flexibility for the second semester to make changes that aren't working um so we might Kim off the meeting she might we might have uh the opportunity to meet with those freshmen in December we I know like with our IDL class we just out a survey to those kids saying hey what changes do we need to make what were you hoping for in this program that you're not getting it maybe worth sending that out to all freshman saying hey what were you hoping from witer high school that you're not getting specially changes we can make great in the second semester I was like You' could all take a class at the center for cartoon studies you could go all together

095and and have it be and they were really adamantly uh insistent that that's not a possibility not that they would take class at Center for car studies but right um so I just want I just wonder Kim is Kim still on no son had like well I'm Kim thank you very much and thank you I um I was actually really appreciate hearing how how it's moving on a question I have to do an midterm tonight let's do so [Music] early oh anise I'm sorry I didn't see your hand oh that's okay I just wanted to say that I think the flexible Pathways is like an an really awesome program for our high school students students to have um I think anytime that you can have intrinsic motivation to have a student complete a project it's

096really important um it would be really cool to see though in the future if there's ways to connect like some of our local trades so I know like there's construction outfits and things like that and they talk about having new um people come into the workforce and like having not a clue and so that might be a great motivation for kids who really do want to go and do these jobs when they get out of high school and then um additionally it's becoming harder and harder to motivate kids um to learn things and so when you can provide an outlet that like captures them you've got to go with it yeah the vocational interaction I think is really interesting I think that last time Kim presented on this that that it come up because I

097know just like thinking about all of the different industries that we have in town I mean you know there's they've been doing a really nice job with work city the city like why can't I think the right word um Explorations around town and I think we had something like four we have five sophomore St at the tech center and I think we have 40 want to go visit this visit it this year nice thank you and are there any other oh the Middle School model it's part of the admin report I'll pull that up if that's okay oh [Music] yeah ready so our big Ideas tonight are Jen and I touching Bas on the mney Middle School model collaboration algebra data and family engagement Jan so albertbridge school just some of the things that have

098happened recently um since our last meeting we've had our community dinner Harvest Festival which some of you were able to join it was fantastic to so many people come out um our skip which is our parent organization has got the ice rank set up um and they're preparing for a holiday shop uh we have our student Lighthouse team up and running and meeting um which is really pretty exciting even though they're young they still have a ton of energy and insight um I'll come back to collaborate problem solving in a minute um we've done some recent field trips um involving um understanding some of our science particularly around human body so some of our classes went to Vermont adaptive and actually got to see um a longtime Community member who's worked with our school Laura

099frell there who started um Vermont adaptive years and years ago so it was great to have that kind of extended connection over at pico um we have um did some work with vins we had some classes go over there as a part of their um trying to engage more with the science content and some walking field trips that have just been um wonderful around town um one of the challenges we're working with right now is how do we meet um for all of our curriculum particularly um when it comes to multi-age um but I want to share in the pictures here um we've got some of our students who um just need some more ability to make math um more meaningful for them and are moving very quickly compared to the rest of their peers

100so they're actually working on model training uh trains and ratio proportions and then they're doing some research on the the geography of the area um and going to start working on creating kind of um the the regional train systems we moving through um over time building on things like even our rail Trails building uh local just local um landmarks on trail so for example Windsor station is the first thing that they're going to work on actually developing skills um for scaling we have members helping us with that as well as community members who donated all this stuff which is amazing and um got it up and running kids are learning about you know the the basics of engineering and um we talked today about one of the kids talking about um how to fix a

101light bulb like actually rewiring a light bulb and what a great skill right so that's kind of coming out of that process the goal is for them to then become teachers of others as they're becoming skilled in building an understand in the process we have our upcoming Winter concert coming up and our winter solstice coming up so Cloud problem solving Christine okay if I quickly just switch screens yeah because share um I want to share what our collaberate problem solving work is um moving towards we've been working with the grant through men scotting hospital we have some brochures and they've been funding a lot of the professional development around collaborative Pro solving and um recently we finished just a blur that the goal was so it could be social media oriented I just want to

102share that with you because I think it really speaks to where we've been for a very long time you know 11 years now in this supervisor Union we've been embedding and practicing and getting better at making Cloud proms sling an anchor for how we're addressing things so I just some children and young adults struggle with challenging behaviors that hold them back from their full po potential it's not that the kids lack the will to do well they need the skills to do well collaborative problem solving or CPS is Sor some children and young adults struggle with challenging behaviors that hold them back from their full potential it's not that the kids lack the will to do well they need the skills to do well collaborative problem solving or CPS is an effective evidence-based approach that

103is changing lives in Windsor area schools in our communities and at home and it's Guided by a simple philosophy kids do well if they can developed and owned by think kids a program based in the department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital the CPS method teaches young people skills like flexibility and adaptability tolerance for frustration and problem solving techniques the collaborative problem solving approach is getting results and is helping kids and adults to build more constructive understanding relationships to together it starts with adults identifying what triggers challenging Behavior then building the skills with kids to make real lasting change learn more and see how collaborative problem solving can change life for you at think kids.org is that is that one of our our is that one of our um adver I didn't know that it's

104a really good one we just made it we just made it so you guys will first preview it outside of and Angie oh okay so we happen to have so one of the questions is like what what's the value added of us being merged and things like that you know one of the values it's hard to pinpoint what it really is but you know clever problem solving we brought this in around 11 10 years ago started really working on that understanding that this is has a huge impact on the future of children when we are able to better understand and more effectively intervene to help them develop skills versus um just compliance um and you know anise and I are two of the seven certified CPS people in we do work um within our community

105we do work within our schools we do work um you know across across state lines just to help bring this forward and so not exactly savings that you might say but I think it's value added and one way to maybe reframe our thinking on um just the impact that we have when we work together so just want to put that out there all right pass that on I think Sergio you're up no I am yeah uh thanks Jennifer uh Windsor Elementary got a couple exciting things coming up uh as Colleen mentioned one of our big themes this year one of our our big rocks is family engagement so we've been tracking uh and trying to bring in in as many of our families and engagement and engage them in all the things that we do

106here at Windsor concerts to conferences to uh curriculum nights uh so on and so forth so it's been a big push of ours this year and in that Spirit we have two events coming up this week one tomorrow night it's our Winter concert 6 PM in the theater looking forward to a packed house last year it was standing room only so hoping to repeat some sort of performance like that again uh that was very cool uh and then uh Wednesday we have uh I I think and maybe Jesse and some of the other folks in the room would have to remind me exactly because it predates me a little but uh bringing back a tradition from uh Windsor of past uh with with our lunch in with a loved one uh so a winter themed

107um meal to bring families in and have them share a meal with our students in our school Community during the school day uh we're doing two sittings or seatings one is the elementary school the Middle School um with Colleen and and her team so we very much looking forward uh to that and bringing folks back in uh for a meal during the school day uh we have been trying to take numbers to sort of see how we're doing and testing various different ways that we're getting out the word to families uh and I think so far we found sort of a combination of things but uh looking more close to 100 RSVPs for families to be here on Wednesday coming on the heels of I think it was 90 point something uh um fall conference

108participation uh a little bit earlier this year so pretty excited about that and looking forward to uh bringing our families into the mix more uh long-standing research has always told us that uh the more you involve families the better students do uh so if we're looking for student outcomes here uh the more we bring in and partner with our families uh the better for for our kids and that's ultimately what we're looking for uh so great thing there uh very exciting uh last week um we had at the beginning of this year started uh morning meetings um to bring our community together with a short News segment announcements of the day some leader me uh uh things a few odds and ends to sort of bring us all together with one uh message to start

109the day with the goal being uh this meeting being taken over by students so that happened last week and I have been replaced so it goes I offered to to stay in there and uh Miss Mayfield's class last week told me I was not needed so what a great thing uh so fifth grade is currently taking over our morning meeting uh that's broadcast to the whole school um and then it'll go through the grades and I'll fill in a few here and there when we have some funny gaps around vacations but that's really really exciting uh and our bigger th I thought I'd throw a little bit of a longer term goal in here uh we're getting ready for student Leed conferences a little bit later on this spring so it's in line with our

110leader me uh work um Jesse and Amber um and Paige are are part of our Lighthouse team along with many other folks and are really leading uh this work doing some awesome things in our school to help increase student voice and choice and for our students behind the wheel it's been awesome yeah um high school and middle school Winter concert is Wednesday at 6 p.m. we had our first play which most people are out it was murder of the murder mystery and it was a nice debut um from Lauren who was able to show her own style but at the same time she welcomed back Julie as her mentor and that's just how we do things that wi right we're just kind to each other and so that was nice to see we've talked a

111lot about Hudson I want to tell my report but also I want to mention a second student Brianna Barton who this is a really big deal she was chosen as a inaugural member of the um nfhs which is National Federation high school student count student advisory Council there's only 16 students in the nation and it was a reg application process and Bri will be going to Indiana um to take part in this that's another example of something that could easily be a flexible pathway but she's just doing right she's not she's not drawing it in I have already talked to one of these students and I'm going to talk to the second one because I like to be thoughtful that the focus always remains on the student and the celebration is not about school so

112um we will be planning celebrations but in conjunction with what those students wants and comfort levels are so stay tuned for that um we've made it one of our goals which I also think will help Flex little poys is to bring bring more bring kids more opportunities and to bring more opportunities in I think that's also s part of the problem is lack of exposure to what possibilities are um so when people are reaching out and this time it was a vpa who reached out they like bring in choices matter um and that's around making safe choices especially on the road which I don't know how many of you have a kid with a license but I feel like I have a 100 kids with and I hate everything about it um so are coming

113in to talk about safer choices in a row but it's real interactive they've been I don't know if you've been to any of the playoff games they've been set up on on the side and they have uh video games and the drunk goggles and all that other stuff so they'll be here this week um I did see on the beginning of the Big Ideas was the algebra data yeah here and I didn't know if I was supposed to be presenting that or if I was supposed that was going in the middle school but are you doing this in your York where and I'm just talking no I just okay so there's I know that that came up at the Stu board meeting and that we've been talking about it a lot here in school but

114sometimes when you pause and actually look at the data you think oh I just I might have a little tiny bit of an overreaction there or now we have some more information which makes this problem easier to solve so right here is our data about all our freshman so if you were in algebra or geometry that means you're currently where you need to be or you are above where you need to be and that's 32 out of 58 foundations is still a strong um base and sometimes at the end of that Tammy's great I don't know if any of you have ever met Dy but she rolls up her sleeves and she works um and sometimes at the end of foundation she says hey here's the data I have this kid getting a full algebra

115credit because that's what they have demonstrated but what's interesting about that data is out of those 16 students 13 are not did not come through witer school system so they either transferred in or a sending school and it's a sending school that makes the choice that makes the recommendation of what algebra class that is so that pie of data then opens up a ton more questions right are we are we just not are we just not attracting the average student to Windsor which I've heard before that Windsor is really good for the really high students and the really low students but we sometimes miss the middle of the road I don't think that's true but I know that that rumor is is out there so are we not attracting that student from stud in school

116are is there some advantage to being in Windsor School System straight through the St I don't know the answer to that question but just sitting down and and getting the data together allows us to be able to explore um what we can do to improve and now that we've broken the classes down into into semester there there an opportunity to move kids into algebra at the start of the second semester and that is my present let's context yeah I was so sick at that last meeting and I just could not get there and then I was like I have this information that would probably be useful anticipating more complete picture of what what those numers actually say right that sounds way different and kids are we have to many kids not ready for Al that

117it's a totally different so our Middle School model that we've been working toward for the last year two years and Jennifer and I um put this together along with our teams um the teachers here at Windsor and Miss Cindy at Albert Bridge sixth grade and we reviewed um all the things that we're doing together this is a short list I think there's more but some of the big points is that all of our Middle School teachers are working as a team when we have our professional development days throughout the Su um they are preparing for um everything together like the the common ones our leader and me our advisory program our student Le conferences those are things that the Windsor teachers and Albert Bridge Miss Cindy are doing together um with leader and me um

118similar to what Sergio Shar in the elementary school Mr poer is our Lighthouse leader here and our students are now taking over um working on creating the advisory slides and putting pieces in and taking over because first um three months the teachers created the daily slides and now the students have I think prepared at least four weeks for slides right now and they're ready to move along um when we come back in January and just keep plugging away at um having different groups in the middle school and in our um seventh period clubs um participate in adding more to to those advisory slides the things that we all feel we need um to be aware of like theme months and our um our an Equity Group who had their meeting here today with Miss price

119um some of the things that they want to put into the slides for um some of our anti-racism and not and anti-bullying pieces um so we're all doing leader me together we are we all worked very hard at the last um not this not well yeah both last two um inservice days together we did some SCA in for what we want our students to have for that spring student Le conference um what all of our students need to have and then just um the other day when we were together for the half day um our teachers um did some more planning and Scaffolding and and helping the kids look at their plps um for their their conferences and um some some students were struggling with the PLP design so we do have um some options

120for some um plps that are more user friendly for students so they have some options on how to present that and just kind of getting them ready for doing invitations and scripting and and how they're getting all their um work together for their their conferences coming up next thing we're all doing together which we just did at our last inservice meeting was our Math teachers were doing their curriculum alignment and all the Middle School teachers are doing their Middle School curriculum mapping we did those along with Angie do on our inservice days and we are offering more student choices for our sixth and seventh periods at the end of the day M RoR um our school counselor has um reached out to um I believe Jennifer and maybe um Miss Cindy on what we are

121going to be offering in the second semester we've had a couple of our albd students here at Windsor for the end of the day to do some band um some other classes and we will have more options for second semester and some of those could include like a it could include a whole Mount Ascutney Lighthouse team where all the kids are making the slides together so that is um in the works as well as M RoR um helping set up Shadow Days a few of the Shadow Days in the spring for the sixth graders from Elber bridge to be here with us um so that's the student choices and the Shadow Days yeah and that is a picture of our most recent students of the month um in November and then go ahead sorry no

122it sounds like your middle all of the Middle School teachers are meeting on a all of the Middle School teachers all of the Windsor teachers and Missy sometimes Angie will have the whole Su meeting but we usually like break out into teams and Miss Cindy always joins our team so we talk about how we're doing things together because sometimes they can be here with us so we're all doing the leader andme work all the student Le conference work the the curriculum alignment yeah all of those [Music] together just for you guys moving forward for you to think about you don't have to have answers now but we're curious from you all um so one of our goals is to help with the intentional C collaboration as um Colleen mentioned Mary's reaching out to um collaborate

123with our team over at Albert Bridge school but some of the things we want to know from you is like what would you want to see for this uh what are some of the barriers that you think are um worth going to the town and saying hey this takes money or this is going to require a lot of time and so what are we going to ask teachers not to do in order to do that as well as students and then do you see structures that um might help us meet that Vision so just things for you guys to think about at some point maybe you can share back with us if you have ideas about kind of next steps in this collaboration process one of the things that Miss price has been doing with

124um about 20% of our middle schoolers came out to be a part of our um Bulan um diversity leadership team and they want to have more of this in the advisory they're looking to do posters and bullettin Boards I all of it that's up here behind Megan on the wall um they're doing preparing some read alouds for kids in the elementary school and they're also as Jen already talked about collaborative problem solving they're going to do some training to maybe do some of that collaborative problem solving with younger kids on the playground um they're very invested right now to help with that so we want to keep that going and one of the things that Miss price wants to do Tracy wants to do is anything that she's working on with any of the schools

125that's going well she wants to start drawing it bigger to the whole SE so if something's working here she heard of something that's working at Weathersfield um she wants to bring it into all the schools so there's another connection to all of our middle schools as well go ahead what is curriculum mapping so that is our teams um um not our CK EA in the k35 and not the Eureka squar curriculums but all the other curriculums that we are making sure everybody has that are not canned curriculum that we call them when you buy them but our science and our social studies so that we are showing this is exactly as a team they're all writing so the weatherfield teachers The Windsor teachers the Heartland teachers Miss Cindy we're all showing like all the science

126lessons that they're doing here are all the units we're doing in the year here are all the standards we're hitting these are the themes of that unit and this is how we're assessing them so they might be because it's not a can curriculum there might be a few that are off from weatherfield to Heartland through wings or to Albridge so Angie is compiling all that and doing all that work together with the teams so that we have a cohesive agreement on what the map looks like to to show that this isn't Eureka square but this is what our Su shows for Middle School curriculum mapping so I have talked with Christine and Angie about uh couple of concerns that I've had about um uh the Middle School model but specifically about uh kid the sixth

127graders from Al Bridge transitioning to Windsor um and I I wonder whether uh there could be more I wonder whether uh there really is a middle school model in the whole District whether the middle school is here or whether when we a year ago we agreed that before we talked about um moving sixth grade the winter we would G we would really give the Middle School Model A a shot and um I I wonder what uh whether that integration is um is working with whether it's between West and wior between West Windor and wior as a middle school model that includes both schools correct yeah let we talk about being intentional about that in work ahead of time not not thinking about it as an afterthought um which which we we've we've started talking about

128what that looks like how we structure that so that it is intentional um and that I think I think having a lead with the school counselors brought in will help will help develop that over time but it is you it's Jennifer and Colleen getting together more which we haven't really built that into our system either but getting them together to talk about what do we want to do how are we going to do it when are we going to do it prior to the school year starting so I think part of the thing is that um the Middle School model is grades six through eight and um so and when you get to ninth grade a whole bunch of more kids get dumped in because High School um but uh and uh My worry is

129that there isn't really enough um kind um valuable time learning time um that includes all of the sixth graders so that when they have um when they have uh punctuated interactions with each other that's not really the same as being part of the Middle School um it means that they get to meet other students but they don't necessarily have any kind of relationship with them they may have seen them before but uh you know sixth grade is for kind of scaffolding for obviously seven and eth grade but I don't I don't I wonder what scaffolding there is between howbridge and Windsor that will help the um the sixth graders from Albert bridge to to uh be successful at Windsor when the Windsor students have already been have already together they've already been together so intentional

130so I mean and it's fine if it's if that doesn't happen that's fine but let's not call it a middle school model I mean we're not truly it's kids graduating from Al bridge and coming over to Windsor but it's not a middle school model well when that's that's fine when I think of the Middle School model and what the Middle School teachers have to do I think of Cindy and teachers here all doing similar things and the leader me is a part of their daily routine and we have not talked about being together to do that because that's we we most of our schools have spaces have focused on doing that in advisory and we don't have access to them all day long so we we could definitely discuss how they could be with us

131more but the things that we're doing that are the same is definitely our math curriculum is the same Cindy and Scott and Mary have the same ma curriculum that's the same we all have the leader and me um lessons and habits that are the same and all working toward the same pieces um all of us have to do the Middle School curriculum mapping so when Melissa and Cindy are talking about science that that to me is part of the Middle School model in I mean for us the leader me was a huge part of that piece and I I think we can definitely talk about them being with us more voice and choice was the other big push in Middle School model is that the seventh grade seventh period sixth and seventh period is when

132they have their electives and the choice but the other thing that comes with equity and things like our academic support that Kate had talked about since Co and um how students have had gaps after covid we have as a as a whole school have talked about we are no longer a silo of special education and regular education we all work together so another place where we need to be Equitable in our school is in our interventions and our Ms and giving that to all students it is really hard to say some kids need this intervention we know that but having time in the schedule where all students can have that universally no matter what they need we call it win time call it intervention enrichment finding that for everybody is really important so when you

133put more of those things that we need into the schedule sometimes it has to take a little bit of a back to a lot of the choices so trying to balance it all and right now we believed that our day with our electives when we share them with Elementary and high school that the majority of them are in the afternoon 6th and seventh period that seems to be a good access point for anybody at albertbridge to join us because the morning and the day are hard to be together we could definitely talk about doing more of that I I remember when um Christine I think was last year yeah um you created four dates or six dates I don't remember how many but where um we've talked about the Middle School model and you invited

134parents both from you know from all the communities and um in the supervisory Union to come to talk about that and I know that many people didn't show up right unfortunately which was you know but I think that there are SE there are like three prongs here and I I really appreciate that at least the teachers are talking to each other but then you do need that those other components you need the parents to be part of that conversation and you need the children to be the students to be integrated in some way and I and I think that there there seems to be a gap there where those two areas are you know the teachers which they have enough on their plate but seem to be working towards that um but it's how these

135other components which are really important to make a middle school model yeah happen how is that happening and and you're right I mean you know I'm sure that sometimes scheduling allows for it and scheduling doesn't allow for it so how do you create that sort of environment because even across the Su our schedules are kind of similar because we do have to access like almost a third and a third and a third of students from Heartland Le field and winds who come here for algebra for aiod so we even have to like kind of at the end of the day have some things that work because it doesn't in my opinion make sense to have a lot of back and forth throughout the Su or in our district throughout the day it we've got to

136be strategic about making it fit like the way we have Hartford they have half a day here and half a day there it wouldn't make sense for them to be there one three and seven they do half a day so we have to look at the beginnings of our day when we have connections across buildings for transportation and we look at the end of the day because those those seem to be the easiest components to do the the transportation because we have the bus company to help us for at least part of it at least morning or afternoon and then we only have to do some of that Transportation the getting back hardford is is a good example because those kids do go in in their junior year and and their peers become those students

137in those tech classes yeah in their junior year and in their senior year at that point they they relationships which um which would you know if if in a middle if I think the ideal Middle School model um if that can happen and kids go into the high school um sort of like knowing each other and prepared and you know um and having all the skills necessary to be successful that would be that would be the best but how do you get there no so that's I think that's the first question Jen what do you what do you see for more collaboration and it sounds like more points of the kids being together yeah I think that that's important for them to know each other to have some sort of interaction with each other um

138it's a place to start oh goodness yeah I think if that's a primary goal then we'd be more intentional about that versus the components of do we have passion courses do we have an advisory do we have when right so I think thinking about do we have a leader and me Lighthouse team right I think the idea is if we think it's a middle school model that we want these specific components in versus a middle school model where we're looking at sixth grade kind of like almost integrating a part of the day into Windsor those are two different approaches right and one of things colen I've talked about is like next semester is it possible to do sixth and seventh period together give them both their special and an elective or their passion course so

139we're looking at that but I also think you know Mary's brand new with as a as a school counselor um we're we're making sense of like that kind of work of when are the when are the important times for them to be together that sets the stage for um them to get the most of their education both ways and you know one of the things that we often have talked about also is it doesn't have to be just ABS going over to Windsor right I mean there's a lot that Albert Bridge has to offer in our communities are there ways to do it in the reverse it's much more expensive because right now we can essentially take you know a van twice and get them over to Windsor versus mney it'll take a a bus

140probably right to get the kids over on any given day so it's a resource labor thing right so right now we basically miss somebody for our afternoon because they come drop them off if we're having um them doing it for longer do we need staff coming with them which would make sense that at least Cindy would come with them if um it was all sixth grade coming over um so just thinking about some of those Logistics based on the values right and as Colleen said like switching I mean as soon as our students leave Elber Bridge or Windsor to go to the other building they're missing 15 minutes of their instruction time right it's 15 minutes gone and if you do that five days a week over the course of a year that's a lot

141of Miss time totally okay we just need to know like that's a value that we're gonna say we would rather them miss that so they can have that and I think that's kind what we're looking for in terms of like what you guys have for Visions what are some of the goals because I do feel like we're moving in a direction where we're getting more capacity for us to do like these passion courses at the end of the day more students to participate um we talked about the second semester being theater um having an option for sixth and seventh grade band um and so really think about like that's kind of the passion course option versus intentionally mixing them so is a different goal that makes sense right you got kids at Elber Bridge school

142who are studying Russian because that's their passion so that's a part of Middle School model it's just not integrating with other students in Windsor so thinking about just from you guys what what you want to see again you don't have to have anwers right now sorry okay thank you thank you very much you're welcome okay I'm going to be really quick because I'm cognizant of the time I just saw the time I'm so sorry it's okay you oh you're all at my superintendent report oh my so um I'm just gonna quickly this question came up about software and I did check in with Angie about it um and she I think confirmed what we talked about she does she does approve um soft software purchases so they should go through her and depending on the

143request the expense could be an Su expense or it could come out of local your local expense so she keeps data on that and if a lot of teachers are asking for the same thing it makes sense for the Su to take that on so that's how she's handled it um um so that's just answer that question I was just gonna shout out um the play and Hudson and Brianna so we have lots of exciting news happening and um but I'm not going to go into that because it was already covered and just some upcoming events we hope that you will attend we are doing an all staff gathering on the 20th which we did last year for for little celebration which is lovely um and so that the stuff really what time is that

144it's 1 to three it's the early release day okay looking forward to that as well I know the staff are looking forward to a gathering and um a little great and I will stop there because I know we have budget to discuss before um do you do somebody have a share and we do that under discussion y you want to do it now or do you want to do it um it for discussion or now I present it now I think they approve it dur action items uh about two weeks ago uh we learned unfortunately that one of our first grade teachers um needed to resign for personal reasons have her letter here and copies for the board folks would like to read it uh we did notify our families and have worked to get

145a group of really amazing guest teachers in there to as best we can on very very short notice um get uh uh some great folks in to steer the ship in first grade uh we did successfully make a hire for that position that person should start just before the winter holiday our hope is that that will be at the beginning of next week um so tonight I'd like to ask um have made an offer to this person I'd like to ask for the board to um sign off on that and and get their approval for Molly Murray M Murr is a dual licensed Elementary and special ed teacher um who is coming to us with a background from Caston State uh and some really great uh student teaching and Par professional sports staff member experience

146in local schools and is ready to hit the ground running so we're hoping to bring her in right away so we've got just you know uh another week or so uh to Gap again with some really amazing guest teachers who have uh given up their time to to come in and make uh make things go in first grade um so not a great situation um you know it's personal reasons in there um nothing having to do with Windsor School but some some unfortunate circumstances for this person uh and I think you know big kudos to our team for making the impact as uh little as possible on our students and families I think folks are really coming together to to make it fine I'm pretty proud of Team Windsor and uh very thankfully have a

147hire to uh take us through the rest of the year so to that how many students are in that class that class has nine 10 students yeah first grade is a 12 sorry uh first grade is relatively low numbers obviously they're little see in our one of our later slides but when does the new person start our hope is that they can start at the end the middle of next week that they're in the onboarding phas right now and did you say their name was Molly Murray and in the middle school we had a resignation at the beginning of the year and we were lucky to have an applicant um the person went through two committees um as well as student committee and met and accepted the position and we have just um included Miss

148paig Daly on our Middle School team and she is within our eighth grade uh teaching rotation with m Mr Lord and Mr meager because our eighth grade class is our largest class and that's where our last person was but our last person had a um Team teaching role and Miss Daly does not miss Dy is taking on half teaching and half interventionist on our team which we had no applicants for both of those positions for a while so we are happy to have had Miss Leo help us make that happen that's great news yeah very good new yeah on both counts thank you what is Mr Wood's name name is that Andrew Mr wood no this person who we hired in the middle school is Miss Dy paig da I thought you mened in a

149wood no okay good all right um we're at the budget okay so when do you need a all right when do you need to vote on this we need to vote the January meeting and if we can't if we need additional meetings we should an additional January budget meeting right right okay but um this is the preliminary I know that the team's been working with Ed up until today and nothing is firm yet so and I'd like to say um uh especially taking Mr tap's um comment into consideration that letter comes out every December 1st it's called the December 1st letter this year it came out on November 30th you're talking about what was in the paper about the 18% and I understand it is every year it's a it scares people and uh because

150every year it is a projection from with no no um uh even estimates of any kind of um uh profits coming in there's no balance whatsoever to the budget and this year and last year I mean we I get hit last year last year because of the um where West Winds we took a hit uh because of the um property evaluations which will have changed this year but and and that doesn't come out until the the end of the year but also um this year going into this budget season um our uh equalized pupil weights the amount that it costs for each student is being totally redone with this with this budget so um some districts are going to see a huge increase because uh they've kind of been getting it P for the last

151few years because of the way that our our education is financed it's going to change for those they're going to have to take up some of the costs and I think we're going to actually do okay we're going to benefit we're going to benefit at this time we don't have all the information yet but it looks like wi wi W wi will benefit yeah so we there are a lot of factors still believe me I've been doing this a long time and I'm well aware of it but I do read and talk to people and I hope you're right but um I'm I'm aware and I keep doing my thing with the public that I do yeah I just wanted to at 0% per that number was based almost exclusively on the school districts that

152have already passed passed their budgets sent their budgets up to this state what I mean obviously we haven't even heard our budget yet so the only ones who have passed their budgets sent their budgets up to the state and that's what that number was based on and it didn't have any of the other factors included it so um there's some there's some new there's some new um things at play this year as well in terms of keeping your budget your per student cost well just said you have Ed come in here because what I've read is the whole way that the education funding's coming from the state even Ed's going to have a hard time it's changing it's changing and I am hopeful that what Elizabeth says is accurate you know because people cannot afford

153anymore yeah definitely not 15% so I will be there doing my part to try to understand it and and deal with it and will invite Ed in January we'll have more of the information that we need so this is preliminary preliminary data and long long time I know the CLA doesn't come out until week Christmas and he doesn't have the tax worksheet yet either so it's still that a little we're gonna start our budget me budget um presentation you have is their surgery y you can just lead me through it s okay so um we Face everything we work on through our strategic plan in our portra of The Graduate one of the um strongest pieces of work we did as a whole Community our portra of The Graduate um we didn't put all the

154details in here for the Strategic plan um because we wanted to get to the point of what was most important where we asked for things last year and the impact they made but we do did receive recently from Christine our report card on every place where we're working and achieving and growing and have made it in our strategic plan report card that we are sharing out with our our teams and that is um that helps us stay focused so our next slide is our enrollments for next year our um proposed estimated enrollments for next year that read them all but we do have good number of home study and we always have the unknowns for our um estimated kindergartens and who will be coming in from other schools for tuition students and Jen we all

155plan to talk to you about what we um asked for our f24 and what impacts they made and what our asks are for FY 25 Jen okay so for Albert Bridge um one of the big asks was to go from a0 6 multi-age teacher to a full-time teacher because our classes were just too big to support um multi-age independent classrooms uh based on best practices so when we had seven grades and five teachers plus a flex teacher this year we went to sixth grades and we have no flex teacher Seven Grade sorry for six teachers no flex um which is causing some challenges um but we were able to shift people into positions um based on kind of their areas of expertise which is not always easy to do um but we we were able

156to hire a couple of really outstanding um upper elementary teachers which was an area of weakness for us um so we add that and I think one of the impact is that we've got more students getting taught at grade level with the new curricula the way it's laid out um it's really hard to do multi-age we haven't figured it out yet um and so we're we're still struggling with that but if we hadn't added that extra person we um we would have like two grades basically not getting or four grades getting half the instruction that the C current curricula expects we also for a permanent sub to support um the absences I don't know if you guys are aware but um staff absences are are they're pretty significant we don't have a good pool of

157um Subs that can come in on on a day's notice so we asked for a permanent sub and we were able to um find somebody who actually connected with our point for art position so we actually have that person in our building full-time so they get to know the culture um they get to know about the students who the students are students get to know them so you build that report that relationship um so that's been a nice impact and that allows the people who are typically pulled which was either a social emotional team or myself to try to do more of our job that right we're we're primarily designed to do um so we're being less reactive and more proactive um we also asked for some funding to help support the new curricula as

158well as um to support a middle school model with somebody who can really come in and um get into the curricula at that level specific around that we've been able to do that um as well to support the addition of trade books for both our Equity audit and the new curriculum and to and co- plan with our interdisciplinary work so overall I will say I said 11 years I've been in this job this is by far the year that I'm so excited about team that we have not only at Albridge but across um scotney School District as well as supervisory Union because I feel like we're the vision that we've set five years ago right with this um idea of The portra Graduate I feel like we've been slowly picking away at moving in that

159direction and I feel like we're coming very close to realizing the U the potential that this Vision has because we're funding it with what's needed to make it happen pass that on to you Sergio I think you're next am okay uh Windsor Elementary um wanted to start as Colleen and Jennifer talked about with our review of the substantial investment we asked the board uh and the community to make in wi Elementary last year which was the addition of a 1.0 FTE interventionist instructional coach combined with our two Title One folks in the same position have made uh the Dream Team sweep which is Jesse Taff Amber Bennett and Mike Doogie uh who have done a truly remarkable job of moving our school forward uh so I wanted to talk a little bit about that investment

160and where it has taken us and where it will take us uh these folks are responsible for helping move and double down on our integration of mtss processes to uh better use data to meet the needs of our students um and uh and to to absolutely great effect uh these folks are also instructional coaches for supporting instructional practice ice across our Elementary School uh as was mentioned a little bit earlier we have several great new teachers who are coming into the fold here and these folks are a critical support uh for those folks and and our our veteran CRI uh really invaluable uh for supporting curriculum roll outs so this year we have two large scale curriculum roll outs those are certainly no small thing and these folks have been absolutely integral in supporting that

161roll out so that it makes sense for students students that makes sense for teachers and is ultimately moving the ball uh forward for our school really excited about that these folks are also our interventionists uh through our mtss process who are working uh with students in one-on-one small group and pushing to classes uh so these folks have a real uh upto-date uh in the moment uh feel for where our students are where our team is and what the needs of our school are uh through an academic uh and behavioral lens so uh these folks are our Dream Team No Doubt um I would certainly say I was really excited about this model last year I think there's a really seamless lend of the various roles here that fit together really well to do the work

162of moving our school forward um I think what has made this model really fly are these three people who have gone above and beyond you have invested countless time to uh build this airplane while we're flying it uh and have done so in a way that I think has really exceeded all of our expectations so really big shout out to these folks they're doing amazing work and I think our our team is really flying so um lots of appreciation and appreciation to the community and the board for for supporting this investment last year uh certainly we'd like to keep this going because it's great so that's a big part of this uh our ask for f s fy2 um is you know essentially level funding keeping our our all our programming in place for the

163elementary school and adding for the elementary school6 FTE uh foreign language um there is uh uh hopefully here in adding this position an opportunity to address equity and opportunity across the Su uh some of our other schools have foreign language Windsor doesn't at the elementary level so the hope is that that opportunity will get to come our way to the students uh we'd like to make it a 1.0 FTE across Windsor School to share some of that capacity with the middle and high school as the best uh for Kate and Colleen and their respective parts of the program uh which makes a 1.0 a little bit of an easier position to higher than a a parted out position with the elementary school the point6 uh really excited about this part too um this Flex allows

164and we haven't put all of these pieces in place still have some envisioning work to do uh that our that our team uh will lead um but it allows for the possibility of pulling our library position out of our prep so that's sort of a schedule function and allows that person to have a little bit more flexibility in their day to more fully integrate uh steam uh into our curriculum across the board in the elementary school uh a more mature version of this is in place at Weathersfield andart um and so part of the Hope here and again it'll need to be at Windsor scale and we'll need to do it with the Windsor team as we're ready to so I imagine a a staged roll out with a lot of intention it's not something

165we're just going to flip the switch on it's G to make it's got to work for our team um but with this investment um The Hope here is to get foreign language and to get a lot more um uh steam work in our Elementary School uh we will at some point um Poss be looking at some Renovations for our library space to increase uh the capability of that steam lab U so more on that that would be obviously outside of this budget here today but um that is our our ask investment for Wind Elementary for for this next year what language are you thinking Spanish okay as opposed to a different language because you already offer spent so why would you not offer another language I think a good question Spanish to help build the

166program and because of the ability to share it with the middle and high school I think keeping that position um as a as a resource to be used more fully across the building is the initial thought we love to build it out tomorrow I mean some someday along the road um but in sort of building up our our Runway to our program that's already in place that's at least the initial that that's certainly subject to change I just think that worth thinking about another language I I I just know I hear parents talk about other schools that offer more than one language and they yeah I don't disagree at all you know they're just like you know one language and and I hear it you know but I I know it's costly I do want

167to uh also say that I just um am so thankful for the explanation on the interventionist I think that those grades are are the most important as Jesse mentioned those those kids if they don't develop those skills you're going to have problems throughout there you know they're going to have the problems and you will also but I think that that is really a time that you want to Target and make sure that those kids can move forward with the skills that they need to be successful very much thank you for explaining what's going on with the interventions yeah I think it's a really sound investment in you know building a a really strong foundation for our students as they go through all the grades and I couldn't agree more on your point I would love

168to see much because currently we have done so yeah yeah at that yeah at that level it would be great also it doesn't matter which language but yeah it would be great for don't disagree exactly elementary kids have a language option thank you yeah there there was a time where we had three Spanish teachers and one French teacher um one point in our high school so um having one language teacher now in this building up just the Spanish program that we have um would be definitely another thing that would benefit the Middle School model as another place for some choice in sixth and seventh period at the end of the day for our students and students at outler Bridge um and the other piece is that we heard about flexible Pathways that is another place

169where our students have opport OPP unities for some of those other language courses online well yeah I think one of the things when when when they were talking about flexible Pathways and the you know the benefits to small schools because um small schools can't have five different language teachers language was one of the things it's like through flexible Pathways a student could learn any language we actually put in ASL in the high school because so many people high school CL made more s class right so we do have a different language we have American Sign Language yes yes so for the middle school what we asked for last year was the in here at Windsor was the middle school counselor and the impact of having a middle school coun for the very first time has

170been unbelievable our team has just raved over the hire of Miss Mary RoR and the work she's done and what we have in her is someone who can focus on the 107 students here we are very thankful to Mr MC Phillips who spent a day a week here when we were down to multiple um counselors in our building um like last year but we um are able to see the support in student academic and social emotional needs on a daily basis regular check-ins and checkouts part of our mtss system where M RoR has check-ins with students as a universal plan for many um she is also a teacher of SE curriculum our social emotional curriculum we've never had that before in the middle school so having the social emotional curriculum in place has been exciting

171um she is a strong teammate and Le leaon between the team and um Jennifer school and the service providers and the families to organize and um help help events happen help students get what they need she's a huge proponent for new students coming in checking in with their their former counselors and making their transition in their schedule um everything that a school counselor would do and um she is also a a whiz at our new at power school and doing all of our scheduling that we um had our other counselors do or Our IT team do so it's it's been a huge um impact for our team to have a a middle school counselor um what we asked for next year bless you was an additional teacher for our bubble class and that was our

172we did have that and we have res and we just had Miss um daily join us again that position was Esser funded the ask for next year is that we make that Esser funded position full fully in the local budget for a fulltime Middle School teacher not what is DA's doing right now which is half intervention half teaching so it'll be full teaching um position is the ask for next year the third thing we had on here but it wasn't impacted by the budget was our Middle School interventionist at one point we did have an interventionist locally funded on the budget but we took that off when we were able to access Title One funds we did not have any applicants for either but until Miss Dy came along was she able to do half

173of our intervention role so our hope is to have a full-time Middle School interventionist title fund next year again and one fulltime um position in that that was eser funded yeah um so we our situation was a little bit unique because we didn't hire our health teacher because we had no applicants so I came back and asked can I use this money for these two other positions that we need one was a sap Student Assistance Program and the second was a planning room attendance um this the sap I I don't know if any of you have had the privilege of meeting Rachel but it is another case of we are so incredibly lucky to sometimes when we work with outside agencies it's very clear oh I don't work for you I can't I'm not doing

174leg I'm not doing any that Rachel is anywhere and everywhere for communication skills to adults and students alike is amazing when our science teacher resigned and we had just a couple days to fill in before the new one started she said oh I'll do it um she is amazing and she's bringing those evening events that is that is from her pushing me from behind saying hey we should do this hey we should do this hey I want to do this um in addition we she is actually the actual job of C is to meet with students she is currently accessing 14 students and 12 are voluntary and are not mandated to meet so that itself is remarkable My Hope Is that this is Grant funded but I won't know that till January um if that

175is and then that would be able to come out of our local budget but um we also added this planning room attendant because we didn't have any health applicants but we're going to have health applicat for next year right so I don't want to go backwards right yes I don't want to go backwards and the planning the what this says here on paper of all of what the sap has added to our school it that's just numbers on paper what she has brought to the school is been remarkable in her short time here right she didn't need any handholding in terms of like hey these are some ideas that I want to like she's constantly coming to me with the ideas which is a huge a huge relief a huge me right it's not one

176more person Comm manage it's one person to work with and I love that um our planning room attendant I do think the biggest point out is if he wasn't here this year 21 students would have lost 40 school days because we would have had to put them in out of school suspension because we didn't have the man power to do it and with having him here those students are able to stay in school they're able to work with him they're not sitting there doing nothing they're working with him on process and behaviors and getting caught up on the school work that they don't have so I would like my big ask for next year is we're going to hire a health teacher but can we please keep these two positions I'm hoping thatp winds up

177being Grant funded but I'm I I will know that till till January um and then third thing I threw in there just show you that I am trying to do things without asking for money is the inter disemployment learning program with the schools in their school and our masch which is our math and science hour and we use staff that we already have here um and just kind of reallocated where they go what they do um that has brought us the mass program has allowed us students that maybe finish the end of freshman year with a two are now have the opportunity to move on to sophomore year but go back and earn those freshing credits and the inter interdisciplinary learning program allow students to access um their four classes um they're four core classes

178in a flexible manner while really spending a lot of time looking at um job shadows and things like that we are putting out a survey to those students to say hey what why did you buy into this program and what piece are we missing because we kind of did do it with with a bare bone like we have't teacher here who wanted to do it and we are going to regularly start meeting on Thursdays which are uh subject to which are curriculum meetings to talk about how we can improve that program for next year so right there Dave is another 12 students that I wouldn't count in flexible halfways but they're totally doing a flexible pathway um so do that's my big ask for next year to to hire health teacher I couldn't imagine going

179backwards now I mean that having this planning room attendant is the reason um I'm able to meet with Kim on a weekly basis I'm able to talk about incling flexible Pathways forward and I'm talking to my staff about getting a good reading handbook and starting to work on the proficiencies of the class I couldn't imagine I'm doing that last year because we weren't we had bigger things to worry about and now I don't know if it's a cell phone policy combined with these all of these things but the the energy level here in terms of behaviors is way way down and we're able to move forward with academic work I almost don't even want to say this out loud because I don't want jinx it but like we we're moving forward and it feel good

180so all right um so these are pre preliminary without all the information necessary and you'll see an increase but I just want to just kind of settle the anxiety that that brings when the longterm weighted when the new long uh waiting system is in place so let me back up and I'll explain it as simply as I can there is a legislation in place which probably speaks to it better than I can if your per pupil cost does not increase more than it can't be over 10% so has to be under 10% tax rate is capped at 5% so our goal is to keep the the budget under that 10% which will cap the tax rate at 5% so when when all the information comes in the long-term weights and um the CLA and the

181tax worksheet will'll know better what this looks like on the tax rate so I don't want you to panic that it's a higher amount of money and also oh the um a lot of the increase is I noticed and there it is I mean really health insurance health insurance 16.8% yeah and we have no control over that right we knew it was GNA happen y um when they made the change what five years ago yeah uh oh um so I did thank you for sending that budget I appreciate that um we were we were thinking it would be next month that we would be diving into that so apologies for well I I just wanted to ask uh for one thing um I didn't see any so you're still we're still negotiating contract still are

182negotiating yep and uh so I asked at the the at bill to make sure that four stiens got put into the contract and I just want to make sure that um stipended positions are they're local right yes right so I just want to make sure that we have included in our budget some of the stiens they should be in there already okay we haven't talked about that I don't think there were any substantive changes but yeah there there was one form to school added um just to try to I mean again we have one school that has home to school uh Farm to school coordinator who's doing amazing things with teaching about nutrition and working with the food service um people doing doing taste tests of the month and you can do that when you

183have somebody leaving that work Wier does not have somebody leaving that work or this weather scale so we did add those two stiens to that one stipend to both winds and weather SP so that we can coordinate across the SE that's great yeah it really is it makes a huge difference Craig when asking for it and asking for it and asking for it so y um we think it's the year to do it because we are we feel like the schools in RSU are going to benefit from the long-term weighted averages um we just do right uh the other thing was we wanted to know and um I guess this is a question for Kate Sor I'm cheing I know it's very late I apologize he's like are you okay make sure that the theater

184mics yeah I actually so if you on that I'm not sure what page um on the spreadsheet on the spreadsheet I I put out to teachers like I want to guess your budget what is it that you need and I know that the music department did come back with hey I really love this and they thought they were asking for like a huge ask like $2,000 which doesn't feel like a huge app a theater Department that we're trying to get up and running but I'm not sure if it was for microphones but it's on the spreadsheet um on the put my check with that to make sure yeah okay I'm just asking I'm asking you without looking at anything so I increased the the I increased the general supplies for the we're all so the

185benefits are pretty enough increasing us and the cost of everything is just so much more right so more we're running a Project based MTH F that depends on Lumber that we have to increase that budget um and we're trying to run a new class without hire or new program without hiring any staff um and this is our first year doing it now we see like oh we need money for this for next year but it is minimal what what we ask for in those terms um I'm just trying to see what Lauren asked for but I don't see it and Jennifer I know it it's late um but I was wondering if you can tell me whether it worked out in absorbing um Mr Justice's departure whether there's stiens that can be added to pay

186the teachers who had to absorb that extra working responsibility so Jennifer had a plan for that um I mean obviously we're we're trying to hire a longterm stff but she I believe Jasper is her permanent sub is currently we have our art teacher who's also our 6 permanent sub who is covering and we're getting we're paying um Patrick Allen actually to help support him while we're waiting for a long-term certified PE teacher to join us okay that's how we're doing with the PE when it comes to the other part that the point5 that was Place based um we're actually talking with staff about who can take what leads and that may lead to us trying to stien them to do some of that extra work it also means that some of the stuff isn't going

187to happen as it used to so for example um I used to have him go out on Mondays to go do the ice rink um when possible during the winter We're not gonna have that option so it's just gonna have to be I mean it's a parent organization thing to begin with we'll see what happens right that's kind of just one of those things um so we are talking about some people taking leads on specific components of play space for the rest of this year as we're um Bridging the Gap between the leaving and having somebody who's got the ability to put their head around this in a meaningful way okay all right thank you did not ask in the microphon and the increas in their budget she asked for she want she likes what

188we do about keeping ticket prices low but that also impacts often that she used to and impact the program so she wants to compete in the Vermont New England one act festivals which requires registration fees busing um overnight travel expenses uh she would like it was a minimal increase put that in our budget as opposed to how to get fundraising but I can talk to her about the micr and see and that's also something we can talk to our it team about I was just gonna say it's not necessarily A could be a shared it could be a shared budget thing it team yeah we'll figure it out yeah I mean it it's almost a maintenance thing or I don't know where it would fall but it's benefits the community benefits all it's not just

189the theater programming correct yeah okay but it's need yeah it's hard to hear I no that too in the third row still didn't have um slides for transportation and maintenance and insurance these are broken out from the can you share this share it we'll the portal I can give to laori not final so that means parents would also be able to access it that's aw yeah give and we should have better numbers okay great thank you um and all right our items for discussion are voting to approve the departure and the hes Y and The Hires so I'll take a motion to approve the one departure to Ires can I just say it that way all those in favor of approving the one departure and two hires is indicate by hi and uh committee to

190work on budget presentation Logistics and March elections um is the guy meeting with Larry excellent and uh okay I'll do the executive session oh our next meeting uh we need to have at Al Bridge Okay because we've gotten we haven't we've only been to El Bridge once this school year so and that is oh the date yes January 8th January 8 and um what we mostly focus on budget that night yeah focus on the budget um and then if we not able to adopt it all right I'll take a motion did you stay the next me my ear at Alber bridge at 6:30 think