001that was close okay now we're recording and you go right ahead i'd like to call tonight's meeting of the weather skills school award um at 6 30 the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first we have any changes or additions to the agenda i i don't have anything i don't know about brian no i don't so next up we have the approval of the minutes from march 8th i'll make another petition nicole is making a motion second yes i'll put the minutes in the chat too yes i am okay all right well then we'll do a roll call aye up next we have public participation and announcements dj's if you are online and you wish to participate please
002type in the chat your what information i'm collecting i just have one here that taught me a question after all about the principles report okay okay uh yeah time just type your name into the chat and uh what your topic is let me know i don't have my uh okay okay um well then we have one person who wishes to speak ryan gay but it's going to be following up about something that mr martin is going to be talking so something that's on the agenda yeah okay that's fine oh sorry i just noticed this yep okay yeah there might be two things with that here okay all right um as far as public participation went i just wanted to let everyone know that we do have a new policy regarding that not much different than
003what we have been doing but i just thought i'd read it aloud for everyone um it is the policy of the windsor southeast supervisor union board and its members districts heartland a spending weather field to encourage public participating preparation as needs background public participation is very important to the successful southeast supervisory union board and also the midfield school board um the boards want to carry out its business and with the benefit of public input and expertise we would also want to keep the public informed and up to date on what is happening in the community schools that said public participation is not a public debate or forum it is a period during which members of the public may voice concerns to their board members and have them heard mediation may follow as appropriate but not
004at the time of the comments further it is a transgression of the laws for individuals to preclude the board from exercising from exercising with transactional this is david um i assume we have somebody taking minutes tonight because becky's not here correct all right great i i remember we sent some emails back and forth but thanks nicole okay so if there's no public participation and there's no one online okay we'll move on to the lead learners report right already all right good evening everyone so please learn a report for april 5th 2022 first off without further ado we're going to go ahead we have some guests here from wise and they're going to explain a little bit about the wise program that's going to be going on here at weathersfield school right after spring break come
005on up where is the best place so that everyone can see it here probably that gives everybody else right there okay let me stop sharing that thank you for putting yeah you can stand this way hi good evening thank you for giving us a couple of minutes of your time we're so excited to be able to have wise um programming in the weathersfield school why class prevention education programming from kindergarten through i like to say kendall and hanover that's less funny here but um throughout a student's school career in nine different school districts across the upper valley including a number of private schools and home schools and the reason that we do this is because 28 percent of boys and 12 percent of girls who experience sexual violence across their lifetime experience it for the
006first time before they're 10. the majority of those never disclose as children and wise believes that everyone plays a part in preventing the abuse of children and in responding to kids so that they get the resources they need to thrive our program is really focused on three components preventing child sexual abuse by increasing protective factors encouraging immediate disclosures and supporting the teachers and adults in their lives who can respond effectively and building lifelong skills so that young people grow up to be happy safe and healthy in their relationships we have a number of different documents that explain the learning objectives the health standards that we meet and the um content of each of our lessons those are hopefully available on the school district website as well as distributed through the hub classes that they're provided
007through for great grades k through 12 we're really working with students to develop skills to ask for help to cope with feelings and identify them to ask for adults to help them to cope with feelings to learn about the names and functions of their bodies and the difference between public conversations and private conversations about those body parts to help build nurturing and empathy skills especially for caring for babies and to start learning about asking for permission that each of our bodies belong to us that we need to ask other people before we touch their bodies and they need to ask us before they touch cars we have these super cute little baby dolls that celine can show you that the kids absolutely adore and so many of the young kids in our classes actually have
008young siblings and like are so skilled and thoughtful and caring when they talk to us about how they take care of those baby siblings at home one little kindergartner made sure that we were holding the baby so that their head was supportive because babies aren't strong enough to hold up their own heads in the older elementary years we reinforced these ideas about how do we learn to name our feelings and respond to our feelings effectively so that kids understand that it's okay to feel how you're feeling but we're all responsible for our own behaviors and those behaviors when we're feeling strong emotions can't hurt or impact other people negatively we help them to learn about navigating their friend relationships especially when there's conflict in those friend relationships and think about how we can respond to
009those conflicts without responding negatively to the person and we help young people to develop a sense of their cells so that when their gut tells them that something is right or wrong they're able to identify that feeling and go with their gut and finally we really really focus once again on how to identify the trusted adults in your lives and how to ask for help from those trusted adults so that if the first person you tell doesn't help you in a way that makes the problem stop you know to keep telling us reaching out i'm happy to take questions while i'm here i don't want to take up too much time in your meeting we're also happy to show you some of the books that we use and the activities that are available there are
010also take-home sheets after every program so that every parent will get to see exactly the language that we're using the learning objectives that we're striving towards and some helpful activities or tips for reinforcing those ideas though does anyone have any questions nobody's thank you thank you so much right is that big enough for everybody yeah okay all right next up we have our spring sports update get my sound work right so jessica are you on there can you hear me okay yeah we can hear you great okay great yes i'm here um just a quick update about spring sports we're off and rolling with our third and fourth grade baseball teams fifth and sixth grade softball and baseball and seventh and eighth grade softball at weathersfield we've communicated with the other teams that we weren't
011able to host due to lack of participation but we found options for everybody we also have i forgot to tell brian is that we started our spring registration for soccer that's been announced and has been sent out to parents through bj and it's in brian's i think it's in one of his newsletters we'll keep sending that out registration doesn't close for a few weeks on that we're not starting that until after spring break anyways but we'll hope for some of this better weather and the sunshine which is really good for our fields so let's hope that that keeps moving hold on oh go ahead yes she done um she's got one more slide i was just curious about if there was any updates on you know doing some work together yes actually there is updates
012on that so we talked to our maintenance department for the su so they are going to come up with a plan i also reached out to the parent that was here last month at the board meet and said that we're going to come up with something so we're going to start looking for some parent volunteers to also be able to help out what's up and running to the best condition that we possibly can just up into this point the weather up until this week hasn't really been worthwhile to go out but we will be able to start doing that absolutely i got your yep love to have you out there to help out for sure thank you you're welcome why is it not moving now yeah okay sorry mark just could you see the board
013members in case we're available to help with that field work please brian absolutely i will send out a call for all help actually once we go out there we'll do it on a saturday and do a little fun saturday yard work on a larger scale for sure but yeah no absolutely make it a fun day for everybody to be able to help out and do as much as we can sure good jessica i'm sorry no that's fine i just wanted to reiterate that i i talked to the facilities crew as well along with brian and that they just did windsors today so i know we're next on the list and thankfully we're hoping for more dry weather than rain so that will they're able to get on our fields but we definitely will look for
014some parent participation not just for the you know one day but we're looking for hopefully a few parents who will hopefully jump out you know once a week if they're there for practices and be able to help maintain the fields if windsor can do the big man um manpower work that they need to do to get the fields at least ready well and then jessica and i were talking today i had a parent reach out to me as well as about about possibly putting in some dugouts for the softball fields too so i talked to jim taft our maintenance department and he said yes parent projects are definitely possible to do so we'll start looking into that as well so i'm going to meet with her this week to be able to see if we
015can come up with a plan and be able to do some additional dugouts the ones that are there too could use a little love and care a little paint and everything else but to make it look nice for both softball and baseball great all right sorry mine let me unshare in the reshare because it's not sharing correctly so i apologize for the technical issues today june for the presentation there we go okay go ahead jess yeah so just uh over 100 athletes for this spring so far which is great and that's not including the 20 plus athletes we have signed up for soccer so i see christians on here so i hope he's ready to um get us get us going for some some spring soccer which is really excited that will start after spring
016break as well and then we're going to have our second annual panther panther paws pride night in june and we will make sure not to do it on any night like weathersfield got talent or any other nights that we might um have other obligations at the school but it's a great way that our our student athletes will be able to put their paws on our shed just like they did last year and we'll do a different color and we'll celebrate kind of the whole year as a group be able to share some food some kickball some basketball and just be able to be all together again and celebrate the entire year of sports and how great it was thanks jess it was great to go out there tonight and see our students out there practicing
017our student athletes so it's nice to see the nice weather and just see the kids out there having fun and learning some skills so thank you all right eighth grade business update last month and the month before our board means our eighth graders presented their business plan about selling t-shirts and being able to get um they had six different groups that came up with six different designs and they were able to put those online they ended the sale on april 1st and they sold a grand total of 101 items we were sort of hoping for 25 so we set the bar here and they definitely rose to that and so um that was a great opportunity for them so now they're working out the details of collecting the money to make sure that they have
018those um sweatshirts and t-shirts sold so if you've ordered one make sure you pay for it and then um that way then the kids can determine how much money they made and where the charitable donations are going to go to from set on like how much they can give to each one that they did so it's a great opportunity so thank you again to mr villa and mr santangelo for doing that and everybody that supported our eighth graders it was truly an awesome event um and thank you to bj who ends up having to count all the money and deal with all the bookkeeping all right this week we have uh practice a bucks evacuation drill make sure that our kids are safe it's always important we have four buses here at school and we
019did evacuation drills of all the students that rode the bus i think the top bus was 46 seconds if i remember right sounds like that and the kids did a really great job it gives our older kids an opportunity to show the leadership skills to help to make sure that our younger kids are getting where they need to be and to make sure that everybody is safe getting off the bus quickly uh one of the things that we have to sort of work with the little ones on especially is like leave your stuff on there if something would happen in a real situation we will replace whatever items are on your bus you are more valuable than your items are on the bus and just let it go and bj tells them that all the
020time but still some of the kids want to hold onto that backpack and make sure you play with them but it was a great opportunity to see the kids in the morning it was a monday morning a great day and we got through the four buses and we did it really safely and quickly which was nice all right leader and me is going really great so we had an opportunity we were supposed to go to manchester um new hampshire to see a school there and we had the opportunity because it was one of those days we were supposed to have icy road conditions so we all decided to see a leadership school or take our lives into our hands so we decided just to stay here and they did a virtual model for us which
021was great but we were able to meet with ourselves and some of the windsor staff as well as some of the heartland staff and we met at the su office and we were able to see some of the things and talk to some of the other schools in our area that are doing leader in me and it was a really great opportunity to be able to see um successful schools in a lighthouse school the tour was a little fast and it was a little bit hard to see because our um coach was doing it with her iphone and and so she was bouncing around a little bit but it gave us some really good insight and really started to jump kick us off a little bit so that week we met with the very next
022day actually we met with the um lighthouse team and we came up with some ideas and so we're meeting again on the 20th and starting to schedule things so we can go full steam ahead with our legal removal program which is great and so ms cole is continuing to do those lessons um in the classrooms and give our students the opportunity and more and more we're starting to hear that language that universal language across the school about being proactive and put first things first um and still sharpen the saw as my favorite one i just think that one sounds so graphical for us but just to work on those skills that the kids have already developed which is nice enrollment attendance for march 8th through yesterday april 4th total enrollment we're 240 students with an
023average daily dependence of 92.7 we've had a total of four new kids we had two kindergartners a third grader and an eighth grader this month so coming in which is great and so it's been really great to meet all those kiddos and have them added to part of our school and they've already seemed to fit right in and you couldn't tell that they've only been here you know a month or less okay covet update so a couple of things happening with coconut update so this fourth grade eating in the lunchroom as well so it's been really great we were gonna do fourth grade last week but because of the two minimum days and the really concise lunch periods we hadn't worked out this bug gym so we wanted to make sure that fourth grade had
024a really positive opportunity to be here so they started on monday so they've had two days in the lunch room which has been great um and so when we come back from spring break third grade will also roll in there and then second grade and first grade some of our kiddos have never eaten a lunch room before and so um it's a new experience for kids some of them will eat in there a little bit some kids are struggling a little bit with eating lunchroom because it is a noisier situation because you're going from eating in the classroom with about 16 kids to eat in the classroom with about 70 kids even though it's a larger space for some kids it is a little bit it's challenging at times for some of them but that's
025okay they're getting through it and they're doing a great job also students are using lockers which is great for them to be able to keep the belongings the teachers love it because their classrooms aren't having all their jackets and stuff but um we also just being able to have the kids have that responsibility and our kids are really good about not lingering in the hallways and hanging out too much they're putting their stuff in there and going on it still blows me away that we don't actually have locks on the lockers coming from california that's something we didn't have lockers for one thing but everything's locked up um you know tighter than a drum there so it's important i mean it's just weird for me to see that that happens we do have tests available
026for all students and staff so if someone is feeling like they could have some symptoms we're more than happy to give them tests so that they can test if we do have someone that tests positive for covid we do have an email that goes out to families some eighth grade parents got one about 25 minutes ago um so we did have another positive case in eighth grade um but we've had four students and two staff members since last month that have happened so pretty low numbers um as a whole but it's still it's still out there with that eighth grade class though yeah they've had they've had like three yeah i think so i think so the eighth grade classes had more than a share so we're also able to mix pods we're mixing them
027obviously in the lunch room we're also mixing them outside in playground area recess time so kids are able to mix so they don't have to have those set areas and that's been something that's been a little bit of a challenge for some of the students as well because they're so used to like oh we're going to the gaga hit today well you can go to the gaga pit but you could also if you want to go to the swings and so for having them because they've been so used to being entrenched in that specific area they're supposed to go in to start to reach out and go out of the regular um their norm or their new normal so to get them back into the old normal it's just been nice and then we also
028have some student clubs that are happening student clubs are clubs that are designed by the students and then they have an adult supervisor on campus as well to do them and so we have a dungeons and dragons club which the dungeons dragons clubs it's open through sixth through eighth graders and it's sort of a mix between a virtual type of game and an in-person game where they can roll their dice and then they strategize and they work as teams so it's really interesting i was a little bit taken back at first by dungeons dragons because i remember when i was a kid it was sort of this dark thing but it's more of a use word academic type of game now um and so it makes it interesting and then we also have the weathersfield
029school alliance which is a student-run club with a mission to promote inclusion for all students and they work together and they meet once a week in that club as well and it's also open just the sixth through eighth graders um so yep i think that's about it for that all right building community so continuing those monthly conversations with chief spalding um regarding fires fire safety and just general safety of the school um talk to them this morning because there was a fire today not here at school by any means not by school at all but there was a fire so just to keep us in the loop of what's going on i'm also part of the weathersfield town safety committee which is exciting to be part of that to be able to share with our
030safety plan with our community and be part of the whole town as a whole and then we have an opportunity for students to um share at the annual weathersfield memorial day ceremony and so be able to share if that's coming up back in november i was the guest speaker at the veterans ceremony and so they want our students i guess they didn't like me as a guest speaker but they they're going to have our students be part of their to share some different ideas or some a little bit about information about memorial day and what it means to them so that's going to go out um to the staff as well tomorrow so that they can know during our sapping and then also met with chief daniels a couple times to talk about internet safety
031and things that kids are doing online and to be able to follow up with any type of issues of that so trying to reach out and have that constant community with weathersfield all right parent-teacher conferences are wrapping up um i know i've had some teachers that were still doing something today um last week was the official days we had thursday and friday that were both early release days for the school so students got out at 12 o'clock as you well know his parents um and we were able to have a lot of the conferences and do that so it was great feedback i got to sit on some as a principal and as well as a parent so it's always great to have both of those sides of that and get that information and to
032see that our students are really doing their best and to make sure that we're getting all their needs met whether it's intervention or it's enrichment needs as well for students to make sure that we're meeting them at their level of where they need to be at right now um mrs barry our wonderful pe teacher who always goes above and beyond she's amazing by the way um so she's doing the kids heart challenge which is to be known as when i went to school and up until a couple years ago jump rope for heart so now it's just an overall kids heart challenge and she does this amazing different activities that are all glow stick related for the kids so today i was in there and they were playing a game of battleship with they had
033um the volleyball nets up and then they had like tarps over them so you couldn't see and then you were supposed to throw the ball over and if you hit somebody and i think i hit your son um because i got to play too which was fun and so i you throw it over and then if somebody caught it then they got to run to the other side and change and go and so it was constantly moving and it was fun to be able to go out there and play with the kids so they have different activities so they'll each student will go through that twice during their pe time for this week and they get to do different activities in each time and then we also raise money for the american heart association our
034school last year was the top producer for the area which was great so they raised almost seven thousand dollars and so our goal is just a little over seven thousand dollars this year to try to increase that and see if we can still be the top school mission vision core statements still working on that um the kids are a tough group they really are like they are really taking this seriously looking at it and they're tweaking it and they're not ready for me to present it yet so we'll continue to meet with those group of students to be able to go over that so we can have it so hopefully we'll get that done and move on with that um school improvements and maker space at weatherfield so there i have a packet for you
035guys and it talks about some of the things that we would like to take a look at for improving within the school so um one of the things we would like to do especially since we're starting to eat lunch in the cafeteria in here again is to have round tables we've got a sample of one that they bought a few years ago some of our tables are pretty old and they're starting to fall apart a little bit so it would be really nice because round tables are a little bit more collaborative um they're just making for a 90 nicer sitting atmosphere for the kids rather than just the standard benches so we put up that on there so for some options for some benches and then the big one in there there's actually a design
036of it's an initial design of what our makerspace could potentially look like and so when i say makerspace it's that maker space room right now or not that room it's that maker space area that is our current computer lab so it would be our makerspace and our library we'll get a little bit of a retrofit and with that we would have more flexible seating for the kids in there as well as replacing carpeting which is on a couple more slides over on and then just a general facelift with new furniture that's more conducive to collaborative working for students so there's a couple pages in there some different designs and it's just the basic design right now of it we can tweak things a little bit but this is just the actual physical material as far
037as like furniture boards everything in there it's not the actual equipment that we go with for that this is just the outfit the room for the maker space so and then if you have questions on those we can have somebody come back and we can talk a little bit more about that but um and it depends on what base we choose what color she originally did one because our school colors are red and black where she did the furniture in red and black it was a lot of red a little bit too much so maybe tweak a little bit and go with something a little bit different but there's some good ideas in there for us to start to be able to think about that and then the one we might want to really jump
038on really quick is our carpet so our carpet as i showed you guys last month i think i should last month in our music room is coming up um the music room is a huge room we've had some issues in there at the carpet so we had somebody come out who has the local company um he's done different carpeting for the suv before so he looked at the replacing the carpet in the music room as well as in the office all the office spaces because it's pretty worn in there as well and in the library on the space where students sit on the carpet and do more carpet type short story sharing time and so he's got each room broken down and with a total installation price for all of them which is a pretty
039good deal for um the carpeting so this is somebody that we've used before gym tap what he does is he's able this guy's able to get us he sells carpet into a larger company and then when they have leftover pieces that are remnants he gets them at a reduced price and then shares them to us but it wouldn't be remnants of carpet where you're gonna have one room be different color than the other they'd still be universal across the school and so would be a color wouldn't be like you know orange or something like that it would be a color that's still pleasing to us and to the eye on that one what's the difference between options for the maker space no for the car for the carpeting let me go to that page sorry
040so this is actually it's divided up by rooms so on the first one it's library for that space up there and then down here on option the next page which is option one and option two um the first one we looked at rubber mats in the music room no they're way too expensive way too expensive so what we were looking at was more than just the carpet special so we would look at option two and then he also did an option three where we could do half and half i prefer just have one surface in there across the board it makes the space look better bigger it's just more uniform and then the other one is the the different rooms in the office so the guidance area the principal and conference area we'd actually extend
041and add some carpeting in the main reception area when we first walked in it would still be tile but then the rest of bj and kerry's area would be carpeting to make it more of a uniform flow the storeroom that's off the office would still be tile but it makes it a little bit easier for that and those are those areas of carpeting i know that's a lot of information i'm going to talk about so yeah we'll think about it absolutely all right upcoming events spring break april 11th through the 15th everyone's excited about that getting ready to um go on break and have a little bit of vacation and come back ready to go once we come back we will start with s-pac testing for fifth and eighth grade for science and then we
042will jump into s-back testing for grades three through eight and the first two weeks of may so our testing schedule will be going out to our teachers tomorrow going over everything as far as how we're doing it when we're doing it and it's really important with testing to make sure that we keep those two weeks sacred that kids aren't doing homework they are focused on just taking the test and then the way i do testing we do testing just in the morning if students need to make up or continue on testing they can do it we have makeup days embedded in there but it usually takes just about two weeks and then we are done with it so we should be done right around the middle of may for s back testing but it's important
043um just so everybody sees what we're doing and how well our our students are doing at school all right talent show june 6th at 6 pm um excited about that and then eighth grade graduation is tuesday june 14th so a couple of long-term things and then we've got lots of stuff planned in between there um tonight we did have um our opportunity for our parents who have never been in the school or even if they've been in the school to come and visit we had over 20 families that came in um for the tour it was originally set for march 12th but we had to change that because of the weather we also cancelled that last um vaccine clinic because of the weather um but it was off it was a great opportunity some students
044wanted us a tour guide so bj and myself were tour guides carrie was a tour guide as well or some kids decided that they just wanted that self-guided tour because they knew the school and it was great to see the kids really come alive and share that information with their families about the school and where they go each and every day so that was an awesome event totally just optional for families and the family seemed to really appreciate it we also had pto representation there um to just have a little prizes for the kids when they walked in weatherfield stickers a pixie roll and a little toy knickknack to be able to take home as well and so the kids all seem to enjoy that which was great all right and that's it for me
045questions yes ryan thank you um so i'm here to speak about um what's the acronym for the group whether weatherfield school alliance or wsa weathers field school alliance wsa yes thank you mr martez for allowing me to speak and thank you for your report and thank you for your time earlier we had a pretty good discussion i think earlier today w-s-a-u just wsa wsa wsn all right okay people like to give things nice warm vague acronyms right it's very acceptable but i think it's important we describe this group as what it really is as it was told to me by several students who've attended the club at the school you say it's orchestrated and developed by students kind of find that hard to believe because of what is being discussed at this group not really
046aware that my child was aware of these things or any child for that matter but the group is as reported to me by the students and l g b q t plus group that's exactly how it was described and it's great to include everybody uh but i think as long as there's reasons for me to be here as a voice for the kids and the parents who aren't comfortable as i'm not comfortable speaking to you guys on this matter i'm going to be here all right the other parents i've spoken to are not aware of this club they don't know what's going on they don't know it exists they don't know their children are going to this club all right they're not happy i'm not happy as i believe you said it's been going on
047for maybe three months now and parents are not aware what's been going on since last year yeah right i'm assuming that's how the flag got on the school last year but last um right um they came to us they wanted to purchase pipeline 855 to fly for the month of june on a pedestal on top of the school then they wanted to start a club right um we received two very eloquent speeches from very well spoken members of that year's eighth grade class and we decided to improve the club it was totally student run student the students were the ones that came to us with the idea okay but i'm here to acknowledge the fact that the parents aren't aware it's happening they're not where their kids are going so what i would like to
048see is some notifications you you you've announced it today at school we didn't really say what's discussed or what it's even about right it's nice that you brought it up um i'm happy to speak to that mr dave how are you about that sure in a minute but how about how many people are here attending the meeting not very many i don't think we're watching at home not very many the parents are not aware so you really need to send home something physical on paper you know a leaflet whatever and i told you i could i could definitely do that i think that would be appropriate the discussions that are being held you know if you're having gender identity discussions and transitioning discussions with children who are 11 years old the parents should be aware
049that these discussions are happening at school it is not part of the curriculum the parents need to know so if you'd like me to speak to i have been um this is melissa cole the school counselor i'm one of the co-advisers of the club um what you're describing just so you know mr gabe those conversations have never happened as a part of the hell club what we have actually done for the club thus far is i when we've sat with the kids we've created a very clear mission statement and the mission statement actually is not just for lgbtq students it actually we opened the umbrella to minority students in general and so as a part of when we were asking students to come we also encourage students of minority whether that is race or creed
050or gender orientation as well i can speak to the fact that i think that a lot of our students um in that club have openly shared things than saying you know their pronouns for example that's the one conversation for students who have said oh actually i would like to be used that they pronoun and so that's the extent of that the other part of what we have done so the first part was me really working with the students to what is our mission our mission is to create an environment in the school that promotes inclusion for all students regardless of your background that's our general mission um and then the second part of what we have done is students were very interested in being able to raise funds so that we would have money to
051promote whether it was special events that we brought into the school with permission or events for the club so so far from our meetings those are the only discussions that have been had there was one meeting where students did make posters to share to let other students know to let parents when they came into the building to know that that was what the club was and when it was held and as mr martin said it is only for sixth and eighth graders thank you for the clarity but being that it's at school the school is facilitating this you can say the kids are doing on their own but they're clearly not okay as well this it's great to involve everyone make everyone comfortable at school but don't you consider the fact that having this going
052on at the school is also distracting other kids from their learning right we want everyone to be comfortable but this stuff going on these kids are having weird conversations and they're being distracted from what they're at school is to learn academically so this is also very distracting to the kids who are trying to focus on what they're here for which is academics yeah i'll wrap it up um but this is also resulting in bullying going on in the school and i address this it's happening a girl should not be made to feel that she's too girly she's a girl and she's happy being a girl and she's gonna be a girl she wants to be a girl she can dress how she wants in the school and she didn't be discriminated against for the way
053she dresses other people can dress the way they want they can wear a wig they can do what they want and that's acceptable and it wouldn't be tolerated and an opt-out you know method granted for parents so everyone's well aware of exactly what's happened after school thank you when is this it's during their recess time on thursdays during their choice time um there's someone online uh nathan would like to speak great thank you i'm actually in line boarding a plane right now so i'm going to talk really quick i just want to thank the school for giving this opportunity uh to have this club um to create this safe space so kids can talk about real issues that are real to them even though it creates a lot of anxiety in adults who are not
054prepared for that conversation so again i just want to thank you for having the courage to have that space for these kids thank you but some feel these conversations should be had at home right this is hard work okay you can't just speak out whenever you feel like it thank you um any other questions for me yes i'm curious is this the group that's out there are all sorry my name is kristen um grace um i have two children here one is in sixth grade and no i didn't know about this group and i i'm fine like knowing but are parents all aware that their kids are in there are they notified what is going on in the group and are the parents told my child i would want to know my child is participating
055in this group as a parent he's my child right and i'm all for it he came to me to talk to me and ask me but i think it should be a permission based right because i if he wants to join clubs or sports i have this uncle right um i would want him as a parent as well because he's under age and that's my responsibility as a parent he's under 18 he's mine so if he's in a club my son is very open with talks to me about everything talks to me about certain posts but i've always been very well informed between emails things i didn't know about this club i think it should have been told to parents and who's in the club so parents are more aware i mean if my kid's
056going to school telling his friends or selling so about i want to be called this or change as a parent i want to be aware because if other kids are going home and hate my body is selling so and then it finally gives back to their parents i think the parent would be very upset not knowing that this has happened and that's just my thought as a parent that everyone should be informed what their child is doing because i trust you guys i trust you to take care of my child when i can't so i would love to if my child is in programs that i don't okay thank you um meet up to more people online um john for example john this is actually kelly so we're we were both here so this is
057kelly broker campbell um i just want to say that i think having this safe space and and a school that feels inclusive to all students is so important students in this group that might feel that they're in this group or belong to this group are at a really high risk for depression and them being bullied and having issues so having a group that supports them i think is really great i also love that it is student-led and that it was their idea and that they want to have it um and then my question is do students have to science or parents have to sign something for students to join the dungeons and dragons club um is that a policy that the school has with clubs that things go home to parents for every club that
058students are in because it should just be same across the board is my feeling no there isn't a policy for student clubs as far as parent permission no matter what the club is if it's something that's during their recess time it's open for them to choose to go to it hi there my name is amy hill i wanted to also express that i feel that having a space safe space at the school is wonderful and very important for our students they're uh saying that they want this and um and leading it themselves um my child what you know told me a year ago that she joined this group so i you know knew about it and she shares it and what they do so it's it's been something that's communicated and i want to you
059know expressed that i also believe that it should be the same across the board with all clubs my daughter also was in the dungeons and dragons club which i've heard about uh and neither one requires permission um and i think both are wonderful uh additions to the school community thank you thank you yes nobody in opposition to the club itself what i'm upset about what other parents are upset about is the fact that the parents aren't aware and that we're also not aware our children are going we just want some some clarity of what's going on and we feel like we should be able to get a club like this exists the parents you know and if your kids go in you should certainly know melissa would you like to explain why the kids might
060not want them um so i mean a part of the idea behind the club is that it is a safe space for students to talk about issues regardless of how you identify i can tell you that this was something that was discussed at the very beginning of our first meeting and i had quite a few students who said to me miss cole please don't tell my parents um because this is something either the student has certain things in some realm that they're a minority and to be quite honest we in our community we don't have very many students that are minorities based race agreed our minority is students and their gender orientation um or their gender identity that is a large part of the minority students that we have we only have a few students
061that have different racial backgrounds and very few that i'm aware of that have different religious backgrounds so this is our largest minority community so it is the largest and i would what most of the students who are minorities in the group identify as and i had quite a few students who said that they were afraid that there would be repercussions at home from parents who would not understand their desire to either be in the club to support a friend who identifies in a specific way or that they would have some sort of repercussion for having to come back to their parents when they weren't ready and it has been my experience i have this was not a club that i started last year it was students who came to me and it actually this year
062took me and i can show you the emails mr gay of students bombarding me with emails saying can we do this club again and what i said to them was you need to write up a repose a proposal to mr marquez i did nothing until i had several students for several months respond in my past history i have supported students at my other middle schools and run this club we did not tell parents about it because it was in the middle of the school day therefore we did not need parent permission to do extra things the school does not allow a child to come to school dress the way they choose but you want to have gender identity discussions and transitional discussions with our children so you're okay with our children choosing their gender at
06311 but you're not okay with them dressing the way they want so just so you know i don't write the handbook i can just follow it based on what the board says um and your question about how children identify i we actually have never in the club actually had a conversation in depth about any student transitioning they haven't been to two of the meetings i think that we helped um it's possible that it happened but i would tell you that the advisor who was there in my stead would have aggressed me immediately because i don't think she would have been comfortable at all for that conversation if those conversations are happening in the school they are happening outside of the club that that may be the case that's not how it was reported to me
064by people presently again i strongly feel that parents need to be aware parents do have the right to know what their children are doing at the school okay that's our right as a parent we need to know if we're having these kind of discussions some of us might rather have the discussion at home most of us as parents are very comfortable talking to our own children and we accept our children it's great to have a safe space for everybody here at school but i'm pretty sure the children feel safe at home if that's the case right then they will come to you and they will talk to you about this your children don't feel safe about it then they won't come to you so your children are coming to you so you know about the
065club you know what you know if a parent doesn't know it's because their child is afraid and we're not going to out kids to their parents i wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's because the children are afraid that their parents don't know i don't think that's fair to the parents you're making judgments on a child that hasn't told you that's how they feel so you shouldn't speak for everybody it's right thank you are there any other questions for mrs thank you okay up next we have the superintendent's report yeah i will uh brian are you going to stop sharing problems so i can just share mine is very quick uh brian usually covers all the bases which is uh which is great um so brian are you still sharing there it looks like you
066might be or no no i'm not still you can go and share okay so i can share all right that that sounds good and uh let me do that right now so and this is really quick uh and some of it brian already mentioned i'll just do this quickly uh just some general updates um we have noted the covet transmission cases stayed a bit higher last week throughout the su heartland seems to be having the biggest issue with staff uh infection and student students getting infected but not to the point again where we can't operate and the aoe just last week uh recommended that we all all districts basically just stay the course don't get too wound up with uh with what the cdc is saying about uh the different grades of of infection but
067uh we'll stay the course with optional masking and trying to mitigate where possible i think brian mentioned this but we are going to send some test kits home this weekend encouraging parents before kids return to uh after vacation that they do a couple of days of antigen testing um and report any positive cases of course to uh to the school nurse i think that'll help it did help back in february so we're thinking it'll be helpful uh this time around um talking about equity and the work around equity uh you know the equity audit uh request for proposals went out uh to about 10 vendors uh we are partnering with springfield on this endeavor uh the proposals are due back on april 15th we already have our first proposal back uh i've been in touch
068with superintendent springfield and uh and we are going to try to set up a process by which we we vet these proposals and look at these different vendors uh probably it will involve a couple of board members from springfield um and then maybe a couple of people from each of our equity task forces uh uh parent if we can get a parent to to help us with that and then try to choose a vendor that will do the job uh that you know we've asked them to do um and we'd like to have somebody chosen you know by early may middle of may so we can start scoping out the course of work we don't think that any of the actual surveys site visits um will actually happen until probably the beginning of next year
069but what's nice about an equity audit from those people who i've heard that have had one is it does give you a baseline in terms of uh you know curriculum hiring practices job descriptions policies procedures quite frankly clubs and activities all of that will be taken into account in the equity audit and we'll get a full report back to both the springfield board and the windsor southeast supervisory union board these these will be the springfield artery the springfield audit and the windsor southeast audi will be the windsor southeast on it so it's not like we're going to be mixing up the data on mixing up the surveys but i'm just glad to have a district close by to us that was willing to partner because it will help defray some of the expenses especially when
070we talk about you know traveling and materials and resources so stay tuned i'll keep you posted on that i i i reported this at the supervisor reunion board teacher and support staff agreements have been signed the teachers have a three-year agreement and so did the support staff the difference is the teachers master agreement the union agreement it starts this year because they didn't have a contract for this year so they'll actually go out two years and then the support staff will be out through 25 to 2025 but that's good because then you're not negotiating teachers and support staff at the same time it it should help but jackie was a great a member of the weathersfield board was a great uh addition to the to the team that negotiated those contracts at will contracts are
071already out this week and uh the individual teacher and support staff contracts will go out by the 15th of april teachers and support staff have 15 days to return those we like to make sure that uh you know you kind of know who's returning enough in advance so that you can you can make uh you can make changes uh and advertise positions where people are not uh coming back uh parent conferences uh seem to be going well uh brian already talked about that i think they're finishing up in most districts now but good comments back from parents who have done those uh free lunch wednesdays i always make sure i'm in the building on wednesdays because that's when we get fed uh and uh hats off to our uh our kitchen and cafeteria work is
072actually in all four buildings uh weathersfield has uh an especially uh fine uh uh lead head cook and and and uh and assistant and the food in there is great but i'm hearing very positive support from teachers and support staff thanking uh the boards in the union for providing this it was just a little token of appreciation for the last uh two years kids eat free through universal lunch anyway but it's getting more teachers and more support staff who might not normally eat in the cafeteria to see how great our food uh really is uh last day of school is the noon dismissal on june 17th i think i've announced that in my email blasts uh we'll um we'll also probably in this email blast announce all the graduation dates as you know we do
073sometimes share students we do try to organize those dates around so that they don't conflict with one another understanding uh that uh you might have a high school student you know in weathersfield and an eighth grade student in wethersfield so you want to make sure that you you you have those dates organized uh and and they and that that it works out um we're hoping for good weather there were some outdoor graduations last year weathersfield did not do that but we got some great feedback on the schools that did but uh our graduations are always well organized uh and they're really they're really fun and i think this year's eighth grade will deserve a special send-off because they've spent you know the last two years in this very difficult climate of quarantine and covets so
074hats off to them and masks off to them as well i mean i think they they did a great job we've got great kids in the supervisor reunion and uh we should all be very proud of of of what they do i think uh i think that's it for me if there's any questions i'll i'll take them uh i'll stop uh presenting now and um i'll turn it back over to you anne-marie find this question peter ryan good evening dr baker i just wanted to say i concur and fully agree with your uh feelings on the cdc i just wanted to announce that they announced today so everyone knows they're pretty much doing a full revamp of their institution due to in their own words you can get a speaker uh a lack of transparency
075and expediency in their data release so i think that's good news hopefully things will get better for the cdc and this is also a new mass study a scientific study released i believe yesterday that you can view on daily clout dot io uh and it mostly pertains to the younger children that were masked as far as how damaging that can be especially with identifying people their growth development so i think that's uh very eye opening and people are interested in that they should look that up but it mostly pertains to like toddlers and the younger kids did more develop accelerating the kids so i just think people should you know take a gander at that before they think about masking young children thank you dr baker when you've mentioned about the apple and all the
076contracts that you said that are going out are those contracts for next year just for clarification those those would be contracts uh for employment next year based on agreements and the at will contracts many of our at will employees already had two-year contracts so those salaries have been set including your new principal who by the way i think is doing a great job he had a two-year contract so some of those you know they're just automatic uh and usually what we do with the other uh at will contracts which would be uh you know administrative assistance clerical folks uh administrators um we tend to take the the negotiated teacher rate and we just apply that that that's what we've always done but but to answer your question jamie yeah that's for next year thank you
077any other questions [Music] up next we have items for discussion and the first item that we have is from the speech all right steam camp so steam camp the information has gone out there to our teaching staff because i'm trying to get the right staff or the right staff on board before we send it out to families so so far it has been very slow with getting static so i am going to send it out su-wide to try to get some more interest in doing it we have geared it so it's going to be in the afternoon so if kids are going to the academy at windsor then they can come here as well or they can just come and it's purely going to be an enrichment activity so it is going to be fun
078for students and it's all going to be steam based so we will work out the logistics as soon as we get the right people to be able to teach it so we are working on that process i do want to mention that um the uh river valley tech center is having a steam summer camp the week of june 27th through 30th yeah ours won't stop until start till after the fourth of july holiday i believe the dates are july 7th through august 5th something right around there i don't know if stop talking about this so it's right around there so it's for four weeks it's the same as the same summer yep we're paying the same that they're paying we're doing everything the same to be able to get you know the right people on
079board so we're working on that question yes meredith oh sorry i don't know if i'm supposed to just answer questions sorry i'm just all take it over here or ask the question yeah can you give her your name yes meredith kelly it's a set time so it's going to be it's 12 30 to 3 30. but for like day a certain day but not come next week is that or is it going to be it should be consistent unless but but we'll because it is a summer camp so we can work on figuring that out i just need to get the right staffing before i can figure out the logistics of it and yeah i won't get too excited don't get excited yet but it's it's if we're able to pull it off it's going
080to be fun thank you okay my son's roblox team would love to come and give him its first robotics they would give a demonstration with another robotics team have their team robots sort of battle it out because not that loss they don't like you know each other they just shoot baskets and the robots climb up ladders very cool okay all right i'll write that down so we can take notes on it so yeah so we're trying to people i'm talking about it again tomorrow our staff meeting then throw out there so i'm gonna try to get some people excited about it so anyone else have any questions regarding the steam camp we will um so we'll put that on our agenda for next month yep put it on there we're gonna we'll get it we'll
081get it going all right um we have uh next is plans for the spring production okay so our spring product production we agreed upon that we're gonna have the talent show it is going to be june the 6th um we have zach um zach chambeau our music teacher who is going to be helping out and organizing eric emily and then we have our own carrie jewel here who's going to be helping with a dance production for some [Music] awkward adults that are going to be trying to dance meeting the staff um so we're going to be working on that um it is that second to last week of school it's on monday night it also coincides with our book fair so our buy one get one free book fair that we're putting on so parents
082can come here and hopefully we'll be able to do it in the stage area if not we'll have an alternate or outside we have 13 applicants from students so far we are doing tryouts the week of the 25th so we will push it again that week we get back from spring break and then start having tryouts so kids can start participating and then the talent show is also for students for any student who has a talent even if they can't perform on stage then you know if they have a video of something that they've done if they're like i think i mentioned last time that like they're in the motocross or something something like that if they record themselves doing that then they can present that so we have to present talk a little bit
083about what they're doing so we're trying to open open it up for as many students as we can we have a date set we have people involved we have some volunteers we're moving right along yes thank you uh it's great you guys are doing that uh i can't leave without mentioning this because i promised my eldest student i would um but there's strong interest uh for a school dance so i think maybe that's something the board should consider you know having the students something they're really that is that is something we've talked about with the students as well many students have brought that up to me so that is part of our planning process so tell her it's in the works okay all right thank you i think she mentioned it to me by the
084way next we have a clearing of these so we are deep into hiring right now we have some really great candidates for a fifth grade elementary spot so we're looking at those dr baker got to meet one of the candidates today um so we're in that process we also are now getting ready to start interviewing for the foreign language teacher world language and then we do have to interview for a music teacher so that apple that posting will go out because mr shambo and his wife mr shamba who's ours we also have to look for social emotional interventionists because their love of disney has taken over their lives and they decided to move to orlando so um that's a huge loss for our school great for them but um they shared that with the students
085recently so we are in the process of looking now for music teachers so anybody knows of the music feature and an sti please let us know because we need somebody that has that right fit and has that energy that mr chandler and mr chamber both have so huge loss from willie's field sad to see from going but hopefully we will have a name for you shortly for a fifth grade teacher and then we'll do that and we'll introduce that person at our next board meeting so hoping to do it sooner than later but we're still working on it um do we have any items for action i think i have something that doesn't really fit into the agenda anymore program um it would be on the as a clerk to sign on performance and i
086went in to go sign off on the parts and put the uh just for transparency by the person that was supported before me did not sign a lot of awareness and there's a massive staff um and i don't feel comfortable signing on anything before i became on board and i was wondering it was also as i've gone through all of my patients and both of my writing versions i haven't been able to find anything about further explaining rewards and so i was bored somebody who had been here prior would come in with me one day and sign off on things before i was in david do you know um something do we need are these warrants that need to be signed from the previous ones no i know i know that i was told that
087there was quite a stack of weathersfield warrants at the supervisor reunion office i just found that out uh on on monday so who's supposed to be signing those napoleon nicole is now our um our clerk but she has only been here since march and so she's not comfortable signing yeah i know what's happening what's happening with heartland anne marie is that but i know your day is i know you don't you don't get a lot of time but nikki's been coming in just just in the interim until folks get yet used to it to sign to sign those warrants uh so i don't know whether there's another board member who'd be willing to do the stack that's sitting there that you know somebody's been around for a while uh you know the office is open
088from i think 6 30 in 6 30 in the morning to you know 4 30 in the afternoon so if if somebody would like to do that it would be great i know there are two stacks there and sometimes that'll tie up the vendors you can't pay them unless the warrants are some of them we can but some of them we can't okay um mark and i will work okay that would be helpful and gail you know gail mccoy is the one and i can let her know too that you know she she can reach out to both of you and then you can work out somebody because i and i do agree with nicole i mean you know she'll be looking at a warrant and she won't know whether it's you know she's brand
089new so it's going to take a little bit of time i think but hopefully within the next you know next month or so you know she'll feel more comfortable with that uh yeah just david can you have gail contact us directly please that that's what i'll do i'll i'll have a reach out to both of you sometimes i think it would be wonderful if i could be included in those so that i could perhaps coordinate my schedule and go in and maybe get some hands-on experience with the other board yeah that that's that's a good idea i mean i can have her email all three of you and then let's say mark you're going to go in you know if you could coordinate a time with nicole just just to kind of it's really and
090the nice thing too about it and this is good for you to know too nicole gayle is right there gail answers any questions you know what's this you know one thousand dollar uh trip to bermuda which i'm only joking but i mean you know she would you know she'd be able to tell you exactly what what those expenses were for and you don't sign every single one you simply sign the master that's why it's called a warrant you sign the master warrant do we know why we would have so many outstanding well you know bills uh uh i mean bills come in but some of them are payroll warrants you know but that's those are the ones we can pay uh you know in terms of you know we're required by laura obviously to get
091the payroll out on the 1st to the 15th but then there are other you know contracted services um you know small items that teachers buy you know you know for classrooms resources materials supplies uh it might be copy maintenance i think some of that goes through the su but you know it believe it or not it can over the course of a month or two it can stack up and this is the time when it starts to stack up because we don't even really have a board until we appoint everybody you know in march so that's why i think right now early april is when you've got you got the pa so it's time to get somebody in there as is the bottom line yeah i i agree nicole should be with when we do
092this if at all possible yeah i'll have i'll have gail reach out to all three of you um okay so nothing else to vote on today um but next we'll be setting the next agenda and um i know they want to talk some more about the steam camp hopefully we'll have good plans for that um do you want to keep the spring production on the yes please and also the hiring update i think we also add student activities um clubs or and or dances and other opportunities for students to have extra curricular activities at school we'll talk a little bit about eighth grade and what we're doing with for our eighth graders whether i said enough we already have a plan but i'll share that with you guys yep oh for their end of the
093year activities yeah is that underrated yeah let's talk about that too because that's always fun we're sending them off with a blast does anyone else have anything on the agenda oh yeah we should discuss the um the building maintenance oh that's right we're supposed to have a um school improvement uh dr baker um we had put down that in may we would have larry and jim task of a building report sorry my mic was off yeah and they are prepared to do that so we should get that on the agenda they want to give you a draft sort of three to five year maintenance plan so you can all look at it it will certainly and they'll be in touch with you brian it'll if they haven't already it'll include you know some of the
094things that um that uh you know brian mentioned with carpeting and uh there's some painting some routine painting but yeah i would put that on i would put that on the agenda i the other thing i forgot to do was share out just quickly i won't do it now but i'll put it in the in the chat uh ed did provide the um ed did provide the financials uh for uh wethersfield school district for tonight um and you're still running up you're still running a pretty good uh surplus um let me just put the let me put the link in the chat you should be able to open it and then if you have questions um next uh you know next there it is uh you can uh you can ask those questions but uh
095i think it's about 282 000 surplus right now um partly because we haven't been able to hire some folks but also there are some other you'll see when you look at the report david if you have a chance if you could see if they have any recommendations on our ventilation concerns that were brought up before um if they're available to address anything they have on that uh next time in that report it'd be appreciated thank you i will do that mark thanks meredith kelly i'm now speaking as a representative of the pto and we were wondering if we could request an update for the main meeting to just kind of close the year and let folks know what we've been up to as we've been as active as we can be would you like me
096to include that as part of my clean learner course or do you want us to separate them um let's see that seems like a pretty good agenda i think we've got enough um okay and um and that meeting will be the second tuesday of may at 6 30. may 10 at 6 30 and it'll be insane hybrid format yeah i think that's the way to go it allows people to come on what what's the date again anne marie sorry i missed that at 6 30 6 30. and then um do we have any need for executive session tonight i don't think so brian i'm good thank you all right i guess um i'll take a motion switcher good question okay people made the motion to adjourn in evil second all in favor say hello hi
097hi nicole nicole if you want to hang on just for a second and i i just want to talk a little bit about the minutes with you okay are you on your own are you on your own computer spelling moment yeah yeah okay so i'm going to close out this one then okay god i'll just have david send it to me i'm ready whenever you're ready i figured i probably would forget about it okay great i'm gonna stop recording here just