001of tomorrow we'll begin as we always do with the Pledge of Allegiance you please rise that's weird um okay uh so with first item on our agenda is our PTO report uh could you stand please so people can since we have so many people here thank you [Music] Phillies highly recommend even if you don't have something going on keep in mind also this week uh Friday is our chance um right now we currently are running a fundraiser that goes to the end of Friday um you purchase um and uh the best part about this official now um the best part is that once we reach 25 pairs the company gives us socks to donate to a local organization so what we decided to do with that is we also decided to extend that into a
002toiletry Drive so for the month of February we're hosting a toiletry Drive each it's a competition among the grades each grade has been assigned a specific toiletry item to donate their boxes outside the office in the lobby and the grade that commit that collects the most toiletries wins a prize of an extra recess and that recess is going to be monitored by Mr retail and the snapman so that the teachers of those grades get a little break for themselves as well we also included the staff if they want to wish if they wish to donate an item there's a specific item for them to donate as well we also have a spirit week coming up when it starts February 27th that has a Dr Seuss theme to that and um we're looking to get a
003Lego Club up and going that should be coming up in a few weeks and um planning has started going underway for our Spring Fling event which is which last year was hugely popular so we're looking forward to having another great event like that wonderful thank you and thank you for everything you do for the school uh we now have a presentation achievement by the BTS yes you're in committee my bet to be projected upon you are I shall depart foreign [Music] foreign [Music] uh I can I can just kind of start as we go and we're coming up so uh every fall uh we get our Smarter Balance results coming in uh and that data is presented out to the board I think it's really important data we want to be able to take a
004look at that longitudinally it gives us a good snapshot of our students achievement in their scores uh today we're here after our winter Benchmark uh window taking a look at several other aspects of data and it's being presented by our steering committee who is amazing as part of our work with this we're not only presenting for four wheels to presented out to the staff and as I let them know I'm always really appreciative as I am typically put on stage and kind of in this space but I know it's not always everyone's Forte so I really appreciate their hard work their effort and their willingness to join the part of this presentation um the reason we're doing this is because smarter balance is just one aspect of what our school does and what our students
005are doing so um we want to be able to tell the entire story of what we're seeing for our students what our teachers are able to accomplish with their instruction um and it really gives us a chance to be able to give a whole picture of the school and a whole picture of children uh we're going to be including discussions around attendance and discipline data our Odessa and social emotional learning our climate survey results and then additionally our iready reading and math scores and along the way we'll also be talking about not only what the data is which is important but I think what's really important is thinking about not only what it is but what we're doing with that so uh without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to working first um
006[Music] so we're going to talk about attendance and behavior data first so last year just in comparison um our chronic absenteeism rate was at 6.9 which is 25 students that means that there were 25 students with 18 or more days out of school this is well below the state average which last year was 23.7 in the state of Connecticut so this year um below these are our numbers for this year so right now as of January 26th we have 38 students that have five days or more absent and then we have 119 between 6 and 10 days which is 30 of our population and then that bottom one is where we really like to focus in on those kids that have more than 10 days out so we have 36 kids right now um which
007is nine percent these numbers are slightly higher than where we were last year and we can attribute this to many things one masks are off this year we've had a number of illnesses running through our school Lou RSV I'm sure you all know or have heard about it um stomach bug things like that so and students are not coming into school when they're sick which is what we want um but making sure we're having open communication with them and understanding of why they're not in the building Behavior referrals we are at 91 this year that is below where we were last year um what beings those are a positive recognitions from teachers to students we're at 543 which is up from last year so um we are up with positive recognitions and um lower with
008our Behavior referrals which is our process is uh positive reinforcement so we have pause that we hand out um PBIS award which is monthly each class has a PBIS award that is given during our community meeting and then there are supports in place for those students with five or more behavioral yeah the absenteeism do you keep records of what how many absences you believe to be due to illness yeah versus School avoidance or other yeah because as you said we want kids to stay home when they're ill right whereas we want to know if there are other behavioral reasons yeah I meet with um our school nurse uh Caitlin also every other month just to check in and see which students that she is aware of that were sick or had so just some next
009steps um at the end of this month we're going to be sending those attendance letters out again for students that have 10 or more absences just to communication with families and then conference with families of children uh with more than 14 000 yeah backslide behavioral at 91 kids how many of those that is something that we talk we have a monthly uh a weekly Behavior meeting so we are constantly talking about those students that have prefix referrals and any students with five or more have some type of con we're in the consultation process where they're we have a plan for them how many have required six or seven what is a caught being so a quad being is something that teachers can use as a positive recognition for students um so they might be caught
010being kind or caught um being a good friend and Mr Reed's whale will read the clock beings every morning on our morning news broadcast to recognize those students so that's a positive that's a positive yeah and it's at home yeah 543 is good yeah because that sounds like we'd be very concerned if it wasn't yeah caught being good okay so on the behavior side of things our next steps on the climate committee last year created a behavior Matrix with different behaviors and staff responses we're continuing to revise that behavioral referral process and the BCS staff is going to lead professional learning this year on tier one Behavior interventions and I want to make sure people appreciate enough to know if I'm mistaken about this I know it's apparent that if you're keeping home your kid
011because they're sick and then you get letters saying your kids got 10 options it's kind of annoying so I just want to tell me yeah I think that's a law that 10 days regardless of the reasons yeah it's not a judgment on the part of the school right has flexibility about even if they know that the kids know and there's that correct that is correct and there's certain um reasons why we can put in an excused absence after 10. um one being the main one doctor's notes um God forbidden death in the family or you have to go to a funeral that's another one um but we have we want to communicate that to family so they're aware after 10 absences these are the only reasons for state law that we can accept as an
012excuse absence and it's really just a communication piece so that parents understand parents have we have the correct records and parents have the correct records of absences I'm Laura Stokes most people I don't know me it's my first year here at DCS I teach k-3 Design Lab and I teach four to six Eureka which is our talented gifted program um I'm even talking about the our Universal emotional social emotional screener that we have um there are two we have the Dessa which is administered K to six and we have the DECA which is the preschool screener so our implementation progress today um year one was last year and last year um it was administered three times it's generally administered three times so fall winter and spring this year is year two what you'll see new
013for year two is the Pre-K version that I mentioned so this year was administered Pre-K for the first time and we have the fall Administration complete February is currently happening now so our winter is happening now and then it will be administered again in the spring in May so if we look at um some data regarding this so for on the left we have K to six we can compare fall last year to fall this year um the red is the need for instruction blue is typical and green would be that the students um have a strength in any of those areas um so you'll notice that the green got larger the blue the larger would be in the red got smaller which is exactly what we'd like to see pre-kb unfortunately only have the
014fall because it's new this year but it was administered to pre-k students and same thing the red the blue and the green as far as the readings so I'm Marjorie Newsom I'm one of the school psychologists and so for any of the students that in the screener it turns out that they score a certain level of score um and there are about 20 of them they're identified as needing more information so about 20 students we did a full dosa and gained more information about their social emotional competencies so for about those 20 students areas of instruction were were identified and it identifies those different social emotional competencies see the self-awareness self-management so social awareness relationship skills Etc and for this group of students goal directed Behavior social awareness and personal responsibility were the areas that
015were most identified in need of instruction for the preschool students they use different competencies based on different developmental research on preschool students and self-regulation is the one that came up highest area of need which I think if you ask the preschool student teacher she would be in full agreement with mm-hmm so what do we do with this information um so during data teams and case reviews we consider this child's social emotional competency along with that academic and behavior and attendance data to really think of our children in a comprehensive way as a whole child um and so paralling that model of academics we you know have a behavior support team and we provide consultation to teachers on how to address some of these areas of need and in some cases students need additional supplemental support
016and that might be a small group or that might be some kind of individual individualized instruction or a specific plan and we also use the information to kind of again um to inform whole school initiatives so things that we do in our community meeting or whole school lessons that we send out we've also identified some or created some resources uh some website resources for teachers for parents um where we can get more information on how to support those needs um so our next steps are we're going to continue to refine this this system of tiered support and and further Implement social emotional learning throughout the day back you see us uh these are climate surveys so the climate Committee created climate surveys in the fall and something that's really important that we do in the
017fall is we use the spring survey from last year and we identified questions or areas that we want to show as an area of growth for this year so we asked very specific questions that we know our growth areas for them so they're much shorter but they're much more focused um so we the first one up was we have the climate survey so we split it up into growth areas of glow areas and growth areas anything you see as a glow is something that was 80 or above positive positively responded to anything as a grow area is 79 or below so as far as staff support some of our glows are the staff leaves their academic expectations are high staff are provided with opportunities to serve on committees and contribute to school and or District
018decisions our areas of growth are really around professional development so stat BCS are given opportunities for individualized professional development and then professional development is aligned to our school or District goals so what we are going to do as the next steps is we receive feedback on that survey about what staff would like to see as their professional development and we've already made changes for this year to tailor it to what staff would like and then staff is also going to be included on that planning for next for administration a glow is that Administration is responsive to questions and concerns to areas of growth are around one is around discipline so handle student discipline issues and Equitable consistent and timely fashion and the other one is in the area of feedback so administrators are receiving professional
019development to provide teachers with timely and effective feedback and then the climate committee continues to revise and refine our Behavior process while receiving feedback from and administration is a part of the climate committee foreign we have lots of blows this year so students and staff respect each other's differences staff feels that there's a support supports a climate of collaboration between professionals BCS creates a safe environment for all students and staff the last two are areas of growth from last year that move to Glow areas so classroom and staff areas are clean and then the technology needs and responsiveness are a glow area some areas of growth for us the cleanliness of student bathrooms facility responsiveness and then Behavior policies and expectations um as far as like the cleanliness and the facility responsiveness something that can
020be um that can be attributed attributed to that would be um the supply chain issues that we've been experiencing so when we need equipment or we need different things like we needed a urinal from the bathroom it took I think a month for it to come in so just things that are probably affecting you also affecting us here some next steps um thinking about future survey questions to identify specific facility needs Implement a ticket system to address facilities and Technology needs and then student bathroom issues are addressed immediately by our facilities team but again we're waiting for some equipment to come in sometimes and then thinking about developing focus groups to discuss and get more information about behaviors in the classroom I'm Becca Graham I'm one of the kindergarten teachers here at BCS and I
021did a little Deep dive into the student climate survey so like Jackie said anything that came up as 80 or above we considered a glow and anything that was below 80 we considered a growth area um I dove into the K-2 data because we have two distinctly different ways of giving the surveys whether the kids are in K to two or three to six um so some glows for Kata 2 is that students really feel like they can ask their teachers for help so they have those trusted adults here at BCS um students in K2 feel like they have friends in school and they are proud of how they do in school um areas of growth for us the students didn't necessarily feel like they treat each other with respect and then um there was
022one question on there where students had to say how safe they felt in different areas around school so whether in the hallways or the classroom or the bus um the place where students in Cater 2 felt least safe was at recess um and so next steps for that last year we had some really good whole school lessons pushed out about bus safety because that was a spot where kids said they did not feel safe so the whole school did a lesson on bus safety and that really pushed our scores up in that area so we're developing some more lessons around respect for each other as students and then as well as safety at recess and one caveat I do want to say as someone who administered the K-2 survey you get some interesting answers as
023to why they don't necessarily feel safe because we wanted to ask some probing questions you know kindergartner says to you I don't feel safe at recess I don't check that off and say moving on I then say to them okay tell me more about that why don't you feel safe at recess and while some of them gave some you know very clear answers that we need to address there were others like there might be a bear so there is and we we got that more than once and someone said they didn't feel safe on the bus because the power lines might fall on the bus so you have to take some of it with a little bit of grain of salt while we take everything that they say very seriously and we want to respect
024their feelings we do have to read into that just a little bit um and similarly to the um kindergarten intergrade data we're using a lot of our data to look at how the climate Community can create you better support our students and utilize every morning meeting when meeting with our students daily um this while you can see our data shows that students 95 of students were able to look our goal here at PCS is that every student continues so our focus is really on that cousin adult lesson and creating lessons particularly I can start to welcome new staff into our building making sure students are aware of this in the building and we're hopeful that that also benefits the other grow areas that we have with students feeling like adults in their school care about
025them and also students feeling comfortable going through adult and Hospital so our focus is really creating those lessons sharing them out whole class so that last one family so we did our family climate survey this fall this is not something that we did last fall but again we use the spring survey questions to Target some areas of growth overall we had a lot of growth in our family survey um so families feel as though there's clear communication from Administration and teachers BCS involves families in their child's education they feel so high behave there are high behavioral standards students treat each other with respect and there's opportunities to volunteer a growth area for us is that families actually volunteer at BCS um so something we think we would like to do is just ask parents what
026opportunities would you like providing lots of different things for parents to volunteer here at BCS so I know that there were 149 responses so I didn't you know we don't collect emails and who responded more than once um but there was 149 responses so Irene is our Diagnostics as well um students are administered this Benchmark three times a year beginning middle and end of the year for ELA assessment students are measured in their understanding of chronological awareness Concepts phonics high frequency words vocabulary General comprehension and the math assessment students are measured in their understanding of number and operations measurement and data and geometry a student has been given the overall performance for after taking all of those different measures so this first slide represents the overall growth for all of our students grades kindergarten through
027six and both math and Ela students reporting in the green range or what I ready designates as tier one has significantly increased from the fall and then turn we see the significant decrease in whatever terms tier two or tier 3 at risk um we should also note that not only did Super performance improve from Fall 22 to Winter 23 but there's an overall growth in performance from Fall of last year or excuse me winter of last year to this year a bigger increase as well yeah are the benchmarks that go into determining these static for the yearly different so is the large does the bar move up in the winter relative to the fall yeah so there's certain um scores standard scores that students are supposed to follow it in for each part of the
028year so if there are more kids doing better that doesn't just mean they're growing is expected that means they're growing more than the crack as a group you can say that yeah so the next slide here this is our five level placement chart on the slides to segregate that that through level of that that triangle model um so we're looking at the darker green is mid or above grade level the lighter green is on on an early grade level yellow is um below grade level red is um the lighter red is um excuse me yellow is yellow is one grade level below the lighter red is two gray levels below and then the darker are just three so for um Ela at the beginning of the year we had 183 students performing in that green
029level band so that's both the dark and the light and now the winter Benchmark we have 278 students performing within this grade level band of this green level band and math we had 200 we have 234 students Now with an overall performance score falling in the green and green Range band as compared to 126 students in the beginning of the year the next two slides will represent a student performance by grade level so across grades we can compare to last year that the student performance is either maintained or improved for both El for ELA and in math we see overall performance increases in grades four through six so this just shows an example of an individual student report um so the bar on the left hand side is their meeting is your score in the
030bar on the right hand side it's their middle of the Year score um and when a student takes the I ready it comes to both goals for them it's a typical growth goal which is um grows the Thursday and then the stretch growth pool which is in the story level uh so the following types to show progress to that the slide shows are medium growth as the sake of comparison last year bla was at 74 percent this is our current growth so this is our growth for EMA and by the safety for the signature comparison last year the mid or block was at 59 percent trouble with that says that says one grid level below was 75 two grades below was at 70 percent three or more breakables this is showing our growth in math
031we identified for the sake of comparison mid or about last year was 37 percent early on was 48 one grade level below was 62 two grade levels below is 78 the inferior more credible below was 115 sorry I'm trying to understand this so this means that a kid who was scored at two grade levels below at a growth goal and 100 of those gifts and all of this this is already educated right and this is a computerized computer administrative assessment or this is a teacher is successful thank you because it's it's also it's twofold so when we look at it it's split up by Queen piles it's both the median score so 109 so if we go in two grade levels below 109 is when we take all the students from the lowest percentage of
032growth to the highest percentage growth the median is 109 and then the percentage would met their full typical growth is that kind of thing right so 53 of the kids in that two grade level met their goals have already met their goal and the median school for that right now thank you I just tested was spontaneously or they put more so when you're saying spontaneously we we don't um teach to a particular assessment but we mindfully make sure that we're setting aside time in our day we go and also recognize that like we don't want to just test a child until they get to a fatigue so we go and we take a particular time typically in the morning and administer part of the assessment let them know that they can stop come back the
033next day work a little bit further typically come back the next day and finish it up it's a very purposeful process that's something where we just have them come and go today we're going to be giving the iron we really try and prepare them so that they're that they're in the best place for success they're only given it three times but that was the questions in other words are they prep for the test [Music] and then we're administering our curriculum and we have a mid-year Diagnostic and they're given more instruction and we're giving to the end of the year the iready is also based off of like s back it's same type of questions similar um curriculum base the questions are tailored to each student so they're random it's not something we can prepare for
034like you're going we know exactly what questions the students are going to get we don't know it's random and it depends on what they answer for one question what they're going to get next so it's not like an interim assessment that we can administer or practice with as an aspect we would do that so we practice IEPs they're called through grade three through six to get ready for the S back to get ready to recognize before mine looks like all the questions might be posed some of the questions that are asked on already are similar to those questions so the short answer is to a point they are prepared but they are wrong familiar with it yeah you're made familiar with the process yes and they also they also participate in um I read lessons
035so there are assigned lessons through their through this diagnostic the tests were placed them where they need to be so if they're missing certain skills they'll have lessons to complete in those areas and then we should see that growth as they're moving through it so they have access to everybody the entire year yeah so how has that growth done you said it's tailored to them how are they doing that on a computer is it something that teachers so they put in their name and it comes up and then the lesson is structured specifically for them yes and teachers can also add in lessons so if something becomes more challenging the teachers can scale it back if something is is too so it's really teacher observation through their you know small group instruction and then also
036the program itself is recognizing toothpaste so now you can go on and physically see what they're doing you have access to that see are they struggling with phonics and what are the skills that I need to focus on is it vowel teams is it Bland in comprehension what are they struggling with is it literature or is it information if it's information is IT Tech structure if it's literature is it character development so we can form our small groups right off of that so it's very Interactive so when I first looked at the slide I was struck by the excellent growth now when I'm looking at again I'm noticing the rather low numbers they're both suggesting that we're doing a great job by this metric we're doing a great job of providing the support that directly
037but perhaps we're not providing as much supported enrichment and then comments on that or is that observation correct so we can respond to that we kind of wrap it out I know that you're going to talk about the next slide with us back and stuff but we'll look at like our high growth High performing and we base our instruction off of that as well as well so it is something that you know we are aware of and working towards and I think we have SIMPLE sorry we had similar similar um similar scores last year the same kind of felt the same way curious I can see you're getting performance data from the kids based on their answers do you get um curricular data back can you are you able to identify sort of the methodology
038you're teaching and then see what's working what's not like are you just seeing their answer are you seeing their operations that they're using to arrive at an answer to that this operation is now you know or something so we don't see how they're how they're thinking of it I know that some teachers will just say most teachers give give paper and they collect it afterwards but um it's a safer math um it's not numbered they're using it as you know to decipher it but what we do notice sometimes is that we haven't gotten to that part of the curriculum yet and the questions may be posed that way so it's just good for us to note that we're not there yet it'll help you identify if there is a particular standard that the student destroyed
039on not why they're struggling on it but at least identifying that some reason there's a group of students that are clearly not beating this so that would make you look at your curriculum and go okay or your instruction and say something's off because we have an excessive number that haven't hit the standard not the why but at least identifying that there is something wrong that's going to give your target for small group so the classroom teacher can pull that back and say you know they can dial it down that way and because it is computer-based that's what kind of missing that human interactions with that sort of teacher comes in more authentic okay well let's Fade Out no by like a topic for a class yeah or my grade level yes and that's that's part
040of the work that we're that teachers engage in during their data teams so we can get information from this it says hey we should be focusing in this particular area and then they can look at what is our instruction around that how can we give some some classroom-based assessments and then from that they can really look deeply in and say all right here are the exact types of mistakes that they were making here's the instructions we try to deliver what was working what wasn't how can we improve on that and that's really great robust conversations that we have around instruction that we Target because of the data all right so um this is not I ready data but it was a question that was asked previously when I presented the smarter balance data um I
041did try and do similar uh quintile um extrapolations for our smarter balance and it just was not giving me information in something that was really um user-friendly this is equally not as user friendly but it I think it it kind of shows some of what we were talking about in terms of when we look there's a split if you look at the x-axis you're talking performance and then the y-axis is looking at a percentage of Target cheap and so what you get is in that top right box is your hydropy achievement um and then you've got your high growth uh sorry your high achievement lower growth and then your high growth lower achievements so these are students who might still have lower scores but they've been growing a lot and then these are low growth
042low achievement and so when we look at each individual colored shape is a particular student and one of the things you'll notice and this is kind of we talked about this previously around Smarter Balance data is that when we look at our growth the challenge is that there that the ceiling is capped so when you look at this graph or this one you can see across the top we've got a ton of students who are just pinned right here at the top and ultimately their growth is much higher than that but SBA limits it to 110 percent so they may have grown two three times what their expected growth should be um but they just get capped at 110. so it it's done obviously so you don't have one student who could skew an entire
043data set but I think when you look at this we have a lot of kids that are growing really really high and I think that in some of that it limits what we are when we're reporting out on that growth data for smarter balance so that's for we only have this data for our current Sixth and our current fourth meters have obviously so those are the four graphs from SBA that was just I know that was a question exposed by the board when ever yep there I'm struck by the number of Zeroes racing low growth but what's up with you you know yeah 20 15 7. yeah and I think I think some of that's where we really tried to take a look at our our work in Summit and we've really said um how
044can we make sure that as a group there we're really focusing on delivering as much looking not only through our typical process of intervention um for students that might need support but also looking and really dedicating that um that main intervention block really focusing specifically on math so we've got students in Summit who are getting their typical math block instruction but they're also getting that that support in math in that Wind Block right across through the week so I think we see that and that's some of what we had concerned in terms of overall the trend that we've been seeing in fifth and six and so we're really trying to address that specifically in terms of our instruction and we're looking to be able to push that yeah this is last year's fifth grade correct
045last year's fifth grade which we know that fifth grade an opportunity so this slide just presents for us the next steps what we're doing right now currently as a staff to move forward with all of this academic data we're using our win time and Summit to address math intervention needs with all the classroom teachers recognizing that we do need more of that in that math time and we see that zero percent growth there's a need to move forward we're also aligning srbi process for behavior and academics we're reviewing instruction and curriculum to the end of the year based on i-Ready data trends differentiated PD so we have that based on staff feedback and steering subcommittee work we're identifying students with multiple points of concern whether it's low academic or flagged Behavior or attendance concerns and
046review how to support them and their specific needs mindfully working with students to both emphasize the importance of our spring assessments without putting undue pressure on them and hoping to develop intrinsic motivation and personal value we often see a lot of growth mid-year and then we get a little nervous for end of year because there is a lot of testing that occurs at that time and by the time we get through all of it there's a lot of exhaustion and almost a sense of senior right if I need to do it to get it done we want to kind of be their cheerleaders to say oh we're not just going to get it done you're going to really shine and show what you have learned this year an increased focus on the iavs which are
047the interim assessment blocks that teachers use in the classroom they model the questions that are presented on the sfax kids need that familiarity with the language that's used and the vocabulary that's used asking the questions so having those opportunities to see them in advance really does help them to move forward in the actual assessment and then finally a focus on academic vocabulary to build a better understanding yeah and then long term in terms of our next steps we're looking at reviewing the summit together to consider how we can better support math instruction and increase instruction we've already got that process both for this year and really trying to think about what that looks like for next year and Beyond um we're putting a strong focus on the science of reading uh there's a lot of
048both old somewhat old and directly current research on reading that says this is exactly how a student should be taught how to read how they do locally and we're really taking the focus with our staff we've had presentations by Dr Alcock on the brain science around it we've had staff who are going and getting outside professional learning on that and we're having outside experts as well coming in and supporting us now so we're really trying to focus on that and as administrators as well right we need to have our knowledge increased and built so that we can be better supporting staff and making sure that we're all running um and then we're having an ongoing curriculum development focusing both on account unfortunately and those engaging projects so um I think the key in this as
049well as I hear a cat talking about things we have data from what we see in terms of behavior or attendance or how a student might be feeling and how they're reporting to us social emotionally right and that creates a whole picture of a child and so we can't just look at a i-Ready score and go oh we're just going to like fix that growth on their Iran export you've got to think about what we can do to support that whole child so if they're coming to that assessment with all the knowledge and the learning and the confidence and built as as a full whole child to be as successful as possible in every single moment and so all of these data points really give us a chance to be able to look at every
050aspect of the brand support every aspect of the child and build them to be successful in each of those ways um so that's all of the info that we've got is there any other questions that you all have for us um I mean we know that we've had a little bit of a struggle in fifth grade math obviously Complicated by the pandemic and that showing the aspect Source from last spring but I was struck by your winter event scores in the fifth grade it wasn't about five it's a distribution looked pretty similar pretty much they're different assessments so I'm wondering if you think that that those reflect progress that would be made there and we'll do an apple comparison we'll have to wait for the sfx course product we made there or do you think
051it's too early to make that I think if you hold my feet to the fire I can't I I wouldn't I wouldn't say on the stand your honor um definitively but I think that it's good I think that it's good data I think it shows that the work that we're doing to really try and focus in on that Summit work around the map of having it is paying dividends towards them typically we've seen even in i-Ready we had seen some of that drop off in 56 and I think we're countering that um I would actually argue that the challenge that we saw around smarter balance for in terms of impact of the pandemic we saw it not in our spring of 22 but in the spring of 21. we saw a dip in that 21
052but we really recouped back to and are starting to exceed where we were pre-pandemic in that and getting back on track whereas a lot of folks in the state are still lagging eight to ten percentage points below where they were pre-pandemic we've already gotten to that recoup and I think that what we're in right now which I'm really proud of is that we're really looking to get further back on a track of growth overall as opposed to recouping where we were pre-pandemic and I think ultimately that's you know without question due to the dedication and the hard work of everybody that you're seeing here in the school thinking about kids not only academically but everything that supports them to be successful thank you everyone [Music] thank you all this particularly nice to see the whole
053group here presenting and it's also nice to see all of the data in the past years I think was primarily an academic data and to have you know the behavioral data and Survey data is it's a nice comprehensive absolutely [Music] okay [Music] we move on to our first opportunity for visitors public comment um we have a large group here it's great to see so many people coming out I'll ask if anyone wants to address the board at this time and if so I'll review uh the rmometers [Music] okay so we have at least one so let me review the parameter so so uh folks are welcome to address the board on anything about board policy um and what's going on in the school um we'll I'll ask you to uh come to the podium state
054your name and uh Street in Bethany and I'll ask you to limit your comments to three minutes if there are extensive comments I reserve the right to limit comments on any particular topic to 15 minutes in the interests of moving forward though that's rarely has needed to be enforced um this is uh as I said an opportunity to address the board about anything relevant to board policy and the running of the school however it's not an appropriate Forum to make comments about individuals whether students staff or community members for reasons of confidentiality and fairness any such comments are better addressed in a private uh setting with the administration or whoever else the appropriate person might be uh so with that Preamble please good evening everyone 55 old Amity Road here in Bethany I'm the parent
055of a former UCS Student who I consider to be one of the BCS success stories a few years ago I'm here tonight because I took advantage of the um wonderful thing we have now in our community and that's the ability to watch our public meetings online um because people like me who work multiple jobs you want to come to the meetings you want to be involvement Community but you can't you know always make the meetings you have you know things to do like to feed your pets or say hello to your husband you know those kind of important things so I'm here tonight because of something I saw at the last meeting I'm very concerned about the nominee that you have for the absent word position now this is a role that's been essentially empty
056because of the person who had that role when I looked at the meeting at the meeting minutes from the past it didn't come even though he was elected for that position and like I said before I appreciate a busy life but somebody was elected for that position and they didn't make very many if any of those meetings so suddenly we're looking to fulfill that role even though it's been empty for all this time and I think it's interesting that the person that you have to fill out this role is essentially somebody who's very well affiliated with a particular political party and one of the things I respect about this board is that there are moderate members on this board and they're members that really truly remember to keep the kids first to keep our children
057first and politics is in the background so tonight not when you vote I want you to remember that you also people who know me know that I'm very passionate and one of the things I'm very passionate about are elections in our town I spend a lot of my personal time making sure that our elections happen fairly honestly and with a great deal of integrity and I take a particular umbrage when individuals one of whom is supposed to is potentially going to serve on the sport attack our poll workers attack the Integrity of our elections particularly if it's a factual basis I'm all for it go to the state make that complaint I'll be the first one behind you but when there's no basis for it when you have to say to somebody repeatedly our tag
058leaders are not connected to the internet see our type leaders are not connected to the internet and this is an experience I've had with this particular individual on multiple occasions I don't think somebody like that should serve our board because somebody like that to me says that they don't believe in democracy they don't believe in the fairness of our process right I have to remind you that this is not a foreign and my suggestion is that you leave that spot empty I'll tell you the Republicans or whoever can find somebody who's actually qualified for that board and that's somebody who's being voted simply on a long party line basis and again I respect this board this is thankless work you guys do a great job our teachers in this community do a wonderful job and
059I support them 100 it's it's tough to be in those classrooms it's tough to deal with all the individual needs of all the children in our community I'm hoping that my my step grandson will actually come move to Bethany and attend the schools here I mean I'm doing everything I can to make that happen so again I I don't come here to criticize the board I respect the board but I think the board has more options than maybe what they realize with regard to filling a vacant Spain on that board thank you for sharing your abuse thank you others would like to address the board [Music] please I thank you for hearing me uh Katie Erickson Catherine Erickson excuse me 91 Sperry road I did submit a comment through the system I don't know if
060I should still speak here or not like I didn't know what you recommended okay well um thank you it actually um my question or comment was based on the curriculum for the K to two and specifically with the regard to the meeting minutes I saw about submitting a waiver against the legislation for um selecting a new curriculum and I do have children in the school system and I'm familiar with the the queuing methods of the curriculum that you guys have been using for for a while you know and I'm just recently learning about the science of it I know Mr reedswell did say that you guys are going to have a strong focus on the science of reading but I was just curious if you could um elaborate what your approach is on that are
061you planning to move away from the teachers College View of queuing the three cues for reading and what is the plan there I mean it's been scientifically sort of debunked and I'm just wondering if you're continuing you're doing submitting a waiver to continue with the balanced approach what is your plan if you're really committed to the focus on the science of reading I guess that's the misalignment I see so this isn't the right Forum to give a thoughtful response to the question but the questions noted um I'll ask Mrs Kiesel to whatever extent you can to respond tonight but but in your report but perhaps we can get back to you later with a maybe an update on the waiver that would be how like that would be helpful that's if that's possible tonight okay
062thank you [Music] others here who wish to address the board here at the beginning [Music] my name is Robert G white Jr I have been a resident of this town my whole life I've had two kids graduate from this school I just want to offer a comment in response to the first comment that the voters elect the board members here and I agree that this board I think is great in not being political but I was here years ago on a different subject and made a comment that the board is elected ideally by a diverse group of people from an electorate putting a diverse group of people in here to challenge ideas and ideas and I would just ask that you know as into consideration and then I don't know if it's possible but if
063there is any concerns please reach out to public to any nominee that maybe people have worked with them and you can take those opinions and if you don't personally have experience thank you [Music] anyone else James Bruni 62 humiston Drive couple observations from our presentation that I think are worth noting number one I want to commend the Educators who are part of that because I know the work that goes into these committees with minimal minimal compensation so kudos to them for all the time effort and energy that they put in to be the voice of what's actually happening in school that's number one number two I don't think it goes without noting we have devoted a fair amount of instructional time to social emotional learning with our school nobody's going to argue that that's not
064appropriate however 30 minutes of instructional time a day has to you have to give someone so um you know what I encourage the board to look into again we've been using i-Ready for for years now so some of the questions that were asked I was kind of taken aback because it's not a new assessment assessment that we've been using that we're pretty schooled in in terms of ins and out of the assessment so it was a little taken aback by some of the questions for uh clarification on that the other thing is to look at instructional time devote to mathematics in grades five and six in grades K through two if we were to look at a longitudinal study of instructional time devoted to mathematics you'd see that there's more time devoted to math in
065those earlier grades it's no coincidence that the scores indicate more need in the higher Gates especially when you're looking at 30 minutes of instructional time for math content and we know that math content grade five and six it's best and it's also a necessary foundation for moving forward if we want our kids to excel so I'd ask the board to look into the instructional time dedicated to that throwing it in win time for an extra 20 minutes if you're lucky I don't know is the best approach uh so you know it again observations that are not necessarily evident in the presentation let's look at our instructional time and see if it's giving us the bank for a buck 30 minutes of instructional time to sel should be giving us results according to two assessment pieces
066of evidence up there and that was not noted thank you [Music] anyone else going once going towards all right there will be a second opportunity for public comment at the end of our agenda this evening oh I'm sorry I should uh it's also possible uh to submit public comment um online do we have any other comments beyond the one that was noted okay thank you all right we move on to uh the review and approval of the minutes from our January meeting which are in your packet I'll entertain a motion to approve those minutes I see nimita and John Paul II thank you uh I trust people have had an opportunity to review any corrections or concerns before we move on to the vote okay hearing that I'll call for the vote all those in
067favor of approving the minute to please indicate by saying aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes the minutes are approved and will appear on our website we move on to our committee reports beginning with Aces EJ anything from Aces to share um they're really heavily working on probably something similar what you can call your Australian committee here and I really re-evaluating intensely the work they do what works what doesn't trying to make sure they achieve some efficiency one of the things they've identified and they're working through is a little high so there's been some conversation about how to reassign people in those administrative roles into places where they can still be useful or the sunset those positions entirely some of usually Associated but they're also looking at their methodology they're over a regional organization that
068serves you know a number of towns they want to make sure they continue online product that are you in so they're just really trying to and they have a pretty sizes [Music] great thank you any questions for EJ before we move on hearing then we'll move on to our curriculum committee report everything is what we discussed today um we met last Wednesday we had this presentation given to us um and then miss Kiesel provided us with an update of the professional development which she'll talk about in her report Miss keys will also talk to us about the work that she continues to do with the BCS staff on the completion of the waiver or the K2 re-reading which you'll also present in her update and I think the only new thing to add is basically
069that we will get an update on in April as to how Spanish is going here with our curriculum okay great thank you any questions for namita about the curriculum report and of course we'll hear more feasel's report okay uh facilities [Music] it's a funny Monday morning something to look forward to okay March March okay great uh Finance so you'll see the uh operating uh budget summary for January in your um packet and I'll review that before calling for a vote uh there are a few changes from our December report um one is in under general education there's a slight increase uh fifteen thousand dollar increase in the balance in our favor under salaries and general education and that's because of a couple salary changes um specifically the PE and music teacher when those new individuals
070came in their salary adjustments also because of accounting for some maternity leaves and the sub coverages for those leaves and so those when you put all of that together it comes up with a slight increase in the balance in our favor in that account there continues to be a large but unchanged balance in our favor in the general education benefits line item and that's because uh we had more people than we had anticipated during budgeting did not take the family too many negatives in that statement but uh but people didn't didn't take the full benefits and so that left more money in that account that is unchanged from earlier in the year uh the rest of the line items under general education are basically on budget although uh then those will come into better into
071Focus later in the year um but there have been no no significant changes uh relative to budgeted amounts and any of those other line items under general education uh leaving the overall balance in our favor under general education all of which comes from salaries and benefits at 138 595 dollars um under special education we have an increase balance in our favor under salaries uh and that is because of why is that okay that is also because the maternity lives under special education and accounting for the coverage for those um there is also a balance in our favor that is unchanged under benefits in the special education light item that's for exactly the same reason as under general education um and the other items under special education are unchanged from the previous month leaving us with
072a balance in our favor of eighty nine thousand one hundred eighty nine dollars in special education under operations and overhead we have a small increase in the balance in our favor under benefits uh that is uh because of um workers comp monies that were encumbered but have been released because we don't currently have any active workers comp so those uh release there's still some money in that account against the possibility of workers comp later in the year uh Small Change in very small change in the ballot in the deficit and the services line item under electricity there's a new uh deficit uh fifteen thousand dollars and that's well we all know what that's because um and there's a new small balance of sixteen hundred dollars in our favor and the other line item um which
073is because of some small stuff um I believe there's a uh equipment that that was budgeted didn't we go so uh overall the operations and overhead balance in our favorites 4 239 you put it all together because of the the uh Savings in um both salaries and benefits in both general education and special education we have a rather large balance in our favor of 232 thousand twenty three dollars this puts us in a robust position to manage any unexpected expenses over the course of the spring and um finance committee discussed it's a bit early to discuss but had an initial discussion of what happens if as we would expect we end the year with a surplus our uh rainy day fund which we've been advised to go to five percent is pretty close to five
074percent so we top that off to five percent but then the rest of the balance would be considered to go back to the town um so we're in good position if unexpected that things come up and it's likely that we'll end the year with a circle that's the report any questions okay so I will make a motion to accept the report as presented for the January finances thank you John Paul any questions or discussion before we move on to a vote on accepting this report okay hearing that I'll call for about all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes uh the rest of the finance committee meeting was brief and we'll hear about it in in case report we heard about our passer funds there are no
075major changes we heard about uh the budget which will return to under old business later in our agenda and we heard about something else that also wasn't added under our best anyway so uh we'll be getting an update on that uh later under case report questions before we move on from the finance okay hearing then we move on to policy committee okay Transportation committee no okay and that completes the uh committee reports for this evening so we now come on to our unfinished business uh and uh the review of the proposed 2023-2024 budget uh so to remind and Orient to everyone we heard a presentation in January from K for the pre for the budget uh proposed budget for the 2023 to 2024 school year that she and her staff have put together with input
076from the board um and uh she went through it in some detail and we had a discussion on on some points on that budget uh K and I then presented that budget to the board of Finance on January 20th because of when that meeting was scheduled which was earlier in the year than it has been prior to last year uh that was presented as the superintendent's proposed budget rather than the board of education budget and that was made clear to the board of Finance um so that we made that presentation we had some questions and discussion um but overall seemed well received we'd have not received any feedback from them as of yet um to the best of my knowledge we haven't gotten any feedback from members in this board of members of this board
077on things that they'd like to see uh changed remanded in the budget Escape presented so I've asked her to just very briefly present a couple slides to remind us as well as the attendees of where we are with the proposed budget and we'll then go on to any further discussion and a vote to adopt this budget either exactly as presented or with amendments as our board of education budget we'll then communicate that action to the board of Finance so they know that either what we presented or something slightly different from what we presented is now the board's budget and the process will move forward over the course of the spring so that's where we are okay I just shared this slide at the beginning of the presentation to remind everybody of what our commitments are
078to our children to our staff and to our community as it reflects our mission statement and the things that we have committed to in our strategic School plan we started our budget as we always do looking at those non-negotiable contract increases which gave us a starting point of 4.49 then we considered proposals requests from departments we looked at Grant offsets and insurance adjustments I made one proposal to the board uh which was to add one additional teacher due to enrollment and the need for an additional section of sixth grade there are no Capital Improvements being proposed for the 23-24 school year so when all was said and done uh the presented increase to the budget was 3.58 percent and that 3.58 is actually two hundred sixty thousand dollars 260 to 90 902 dollars I've got
079to go to your math classes we'll get uh this is just for some additional context of people were asking what the percentages looked like uh over the years and so these are the percent increases or decreases that we've experienced in our budget over the last 10 years and then I also provided this slide again as a summary to give some additional context of what the current rate of inflation is it's at 6.5 it was 7.1 when I presented last last month and just for some other information with regard to budgets in our area The Amity budget was presented at 2.93 the Woodbridge budget is an increase of over four percent Orange has not yet presented their information and among the small District superintendents I had a meeting with them in Hartford yesterday and the range
080is from 2.62 to 11 and that is small districts that's not encompassing any of our larger Urban centers or Alliance districts it's not the Hamptons or the meridians it's places like Colchester tiny little places like us that are either one school districts or even smaller in some cases you know Scotland has a school that's half the size of equity of Americans I hesitate to tell you who the 11th person is because they are not getting their proposals to their board until later on in this week so but the Casbah which is the Connecticut Association of schools business officials sent out a survey to all the districts in the state of Connecticut so as boards are as superintendents are presenting to their boards they're adding those numbers into the spreadsheet and some of them added them
081in but they're presenting either tonight or tomorrow so that 11 person has already presented uh at six o'clock should we read about religion so yeah and again this is what we're seeing in districts that look like Bethany because I know sometimes it's hard for people to conceptualize but it's not really apples to you know what we present is very different than you hate very different revenues or don't get as many revenues just to give you some additional audience where do we stand with our utilities gave versus the budget is that good enough to cover it town getting our rates set and all of those kinds of things were in a good shape for next year and actually the school's oil for heating is not in our town case um sorry in oil right now so
082turn off the lights when you leave the building great thank you for that recap um [Music] so I'll ask the members of the board any discussion uh questions for Kay or anything about the uh budget as presented which is identical to what was presented in January or any point that you want to be reminded of in more detail before we move to a vote what exactly is in our fund balance by fund balance you mean the account with the town no our rainy day account yeah so that's an account that's held by the town that is uh it's 4.6 put a dollar amount on it well yes one person one percent's about seventy thousand dollars we just had under 400 000 I would think it should five percent should be through 350. yeah yeah five
083percent of our budget would be 350. where's I have no problem with that [Laughter] is [Music] means for any educational expense yeah so if we had to add a teacher because of a sudden surge in students at the last minute we could tap into that fund rather than going back to the town if we had a sudden large unexpected a special ed expense [Laughter] [Music] exactly that problem it's easier to take out of a rainy day fund which is exactly that then having to go back to the towels and uh yeah in November trying to grab uh you know 150 000 from the teacher position yep and then that's and we can put up the two and two percent of our budget from the shortfall correct no you have to cap it back you actually
084buy but you can put so my understanding is my understanding is you can put up to two percent of your total budget into that fund every year and there actually isn't a statutory cap to that fund that's my understanding the five percent is what we've been advised by our Auditors as a reasonable amount so we decided a couple years ago when we were you know we were built we built that fund up we had an opportunity to build it up again and we asked ourselves the question we're not going to build it up forever what's a reasonable goal and our Auditors advised us that a reasonable goal was five percent and so we but that's an internal thing that we've set as our sense of what's reasonable it's not statutory but I haven't heard any
085argument to change it so that's what we'll do but it's not statutory [Music] ask I'm struck as I'm sure others are by the savings this year in benefits and so I'm wondering about the the assumptions that and I'm aware that the reason for those savings is you have to make assumptions 10 months in advance about what what the vet staff's going to look like and what the benefits they're going to take are and it's prudent to make those assumptions on the conservative side right and then that opens up the possibility of so I'm just adding are those do you think that this this year is a bit of a fluke in the assumptions that you're making are reasonable I do think they're reasonable assumptions and again you're right we have to benefit as though any
086new teacher in any new position that we have we benefit for full family benefits for that staff person they may come in they may not take insurance at all they may take you know a single person's benefits and then that's when we actualize those things um we did a account for staff that we know based on their sharing with us there are a lot of stuff that we have that are on the younger side that are going to reach the age of maturity and can no longer be on their parents insurance so even though they've been here all along 26 you've got to come off the parents insurance so we know we have a few staff people that we had to account for next year now we know that they're not going to need family
087benefits but based on right now but what if they get married over the summer but if something else happens and they're left in a different way you know we have to prepare for that now how do we budget for our staff I mean historically I hate to say this but we lose a tremendous amount of staff here every year how do you budget for that we historically we lose about 10 people a year so when you do your budget with payroll do you Budget on who's currently here or do we add a little bit either way to that we don't add a little bit either way to that so the figures that are in the budget are based on the contractual amounts that we have to pay for currently in that position okay so if
088someone leaves it a year and they're an 80 000 employee I know it's really high number I just made it up I guess we don't use that number right so if somebody's making fifty thousand dollars a year and then we bring somebody else in and they have um less experience in terms of they've never worked in the district this is their first teaching job or they don't have a master's degree or they do have a master's degree maybe they come to the doctorate degree after all that is based on what's in the teacher's contract they go the other way what do we do you have some bring someone able to match the green and all that they move up I believe they call them steps here how does that put you down with those savings
089and salaries and benefits right so if we budgeted for 10 people to have family plans and only five take those family plans when that person that's maybe a little bit higher on the step comes in that's where that money gets adjusted and that salaries and benefits but but if a new teacher came in at a higher step than the person who left and therefore it's higher salary then that would be a balance against us on that particular line in the budget and we hope it all comes out in the wash right that's why I'm trying to figure we add extra money no we budget we Budget on the baby good enough for what we have yeah that's also the purpose yes we're not panicking but this is also the same process that's been done for
090years these questions have been answered over and over well but it's new board members come on we can answer them again but yeah but yeah and now I will say so one of the challenges we have with staff and this was discussed at some length during public comment at our January meeting ER my my recollection from the last time I dug into the contract in great detail at our last negotiations is that our starting salaries for our teachers are fairly competitive um but it takes a long time for teachers to move up we have a lot of steps which means the gap between the steps are narrow so it takes a long time to people move up which means that when teachers leave it's often some of our more seasoned teachers who have an opportunity
091to get substantially more money at another District if that's the reason that a teacher is living which of course it isn't always but when that's the reason which means that the replacement is often at a lower so the replacement it's often a more senior teacher leaving is often replaced by a more Junior teacher in part because of the nature of of Bethany as a district but in part because of the structure of our contract and that's why we have this year and last year and the year before Savings in the salary line at him because the salaries were budgeted for the staff in place and then when teachers leave and are replaced they are usually replaced by someone coming in at a lower level because of the nature of our district in the finance report
092in the purchase yeah my and our daughter I mean we seem to be every year running pretty substantial surpluses to our favor that's why I was just wondering how we get there because we're running 160 hundred eighty thousand dollars surpluses that's a quarter you know to half a mil on a taxpayer we have a lot of taxpayers in town if you truly are hurting that's why I'm asking him to figure how we get all our numbers that these are important questions yeah to do things we're having to go to the town and this year we're in the fortunate position the fact that they take care of water Capital expenses or facilities and that's we talked about this last night about giving back the budget whatever we have is a surplus we hit the five percent
093and everything else goes back in town well that's kind of where I'm going yeah I think that's it better in April we have a better end yeah we'll have clear clean numbers in April and we'll make these decisions but yeah [Music] to some extent and yes we're talking about potentially giving it back to the town but to you know kind of address what you said about you know taxpayers are you know things are tight right now us coming back to the town doesn't necessarily mean the town gives it back to the taxpayer that's up to the town to decide that's their yeah that's right but the idea we talked about it last night that will have a better handle on this and enable and at that point we'll make a formal recommendation to the the
094board as a whole and I'll give you that answers whatever we have up over it all goes back one of the other shows you're going to see towards the end of the season two that we have every year is that a big very dutifully try to budget in what they expect our grant you know to come in at but they're always funded at 20 this year 45 the next year so they'll they'll guess that well let's hope it's at 50 that's what we'll budget for which is conservative and then if by some you know Miracle they come in at 65 now that's extra 15. yeah so these are these are the this is why we so often have a surplus because it would be foolish to budget assuming you're gonna get a really you know
095High Grant level so you budget conservatively and then you have that but that's I mean that is this is exactly what's behind my question about benefits I want us to be responsible take care of our our school and our teachers and be covered against you know eventualities and I want to do no more than that you know try to do it is so that that's exactly what was behind my question about the budget how we budget our event s looking it's looking good yeah Charlie all right any other any further questions about any of the items in the budget or anything else for Kay and her staff before we move to a vote okay hearing none I'll entertain a vote to accept the superintendent's proposed spending plan for 2023 to 2024 as presented thank you
096John Paul in a second namita thank you any further questions or discussion hearing none I'll call for a vote all those in favor please indicate by saying aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes the budget is adopted so this is now the board of Ed's proposed budget identical to the superintendent's proposed budget it is available on our website and will communicate to the board of finance that this has been approved in identical form to what they saw on January 20th all right [Music] thank you uh okay we come on to uh the topic that was brought up in January and mentioned in public comment which is the filling of a vacant seat created by the stepping down of Angel irigoyan which we uh accept whose resignation we accepted at our last meeting um so I
097actually need to make one correction something I said last meeting last meeting I said that um it is our uh practice that an empty seat is filled by a member of the same party as the person who departed which is true but I said last week that that was our practice but was not statutory after doing a little bit of research I've been corrected it is statutory that the replacement for a vacant seat is nominated by the part same party as the person who uh who uh left so it's not not just practice um and uh so the process is that the uh Republican since the the individual who stepped down was elected as a republican that the Republican Town committee nominate an individual of their choosing and we have the opportunity to briefly uh
098meet with that individual uh because normally when a seat is filled the election is the process by which we and the town get to know the person since this is a nomination this is their opportunity for us in the town to get to know the the nominee that can be done either in Open session or in closed executive session at the discretion of the nominee um and so that's what we're going to do next so I will ask uh if there's a representative of the of the Republican Town committee who wishes to convey a nomination to fill this empty seat [Music] okay in case other in case the uh recorded the microphones couldn't pick that up Robert White who is the chair of the Republican Town committee has nominated Susan Bradford uh Miss Bradford you're
099here do you accept the nomination all right so I'll invite you to come up and I don't know let's figure out a chair or something and we'll we'll just ask you a couple questions uh about um your your candidacy do you want to stand or sit totally up to you what okay so I I realize nobody knows okay so I made uh I wrote up a little intro perfect if that's okay with you I'll just uh go through that okay so my name is Susan Bradford my home address is 825 Amity Road in Bethany my husband and I bought our house in 1996. and so we've been residents and registered voters for 25 plus years I'm now 65 years old and retired I spent the vast majority of my adult life in a career as
100a professional real estate manager with businesses and investments in the city in New Haven I bought my first apartment building in 1984. I became a licensed real estate agent in 1987 a broker in 1989. and in 1990 I became a principal president in managing director of Beasley Property Management Inc at the time I don't know if maybe too old these days but Beasley was one of the largest real estate companies in the the state of Connecticut uh that business serviced a wide range of commercial and condominium customers in Greater New Haven including Yale University's Investment Portfolio of 30 plus properties for a number of years I sold that business almost 25 years later in 2014 and the remainder of my real estate investment properties in 2017 when I retire in that career I spent the
101entirety of my time helping people make successful and mutually beneficial agreements and contracts for housing business locations and real estate related services many of those people were formed into Boards of directors where I supported organized and conducted their business as a managing agent now that I'm retired and have the time I desire to give back to my community in contributing these skills to the needs of the town of Bethany and I welcome the opportunity to do so as a member of the Board of Education thank you thank you so members of the board does anyone have any questions that they wish to ask it's time [Music] so I appreciate that willingness to give back to the town I'm curious why before today [Music] there seemed to be a need for a contribution to the board
102of education so I volunteered all right Angel is sure was well intentioned and had a change in job circumstances and so I wanted to step up to the plane and I don't have any kids I haven't had any children of my own but in the course of doing my professional career I feel like I've had hundreds of kids because I owned and managed apartment buildings in the heart of Yale so I came a role model I feel as a housing provider for hundreds and hundreds of Yale students that circulated through there from every corner of the Earth and uh you know I enjoyed doing that my basic principles were always Goodwill and equal treatment and I was very successful with it and so I can incorporate that perspective as well as a good understanding of
103how a board operates and its needs and its midis and its finances insurance attorneys I mean you get into or all these different aspects of of how to operate a school it's very similar to what I did so it seemed like a good fit [Music] can I ask um you've heard a little bit in the report at the beginning of our meeting today about the different domains in which we try to support and help our kids academic but also social emotional and other things um and we have to make decisions obviously in partnership with the administration about the priorities about where to put more time where to put more dollars where to put more attention what do you think are the most important priorities that we as a public school elementary school should be focusing
104on based on what you know of you know that the world today and Bethany Community School as it is I think you know the k-6 is a very important time period for kids they're little they soak up everything and so but Reading Writing and arithmetic is is you know the basics and uh you know to help them learn how to take care of themselves in the world so overall give them those tools the basics are are the most important in my mind now you know I have to admit I'm 65 I'm a little old school for the newer thinking that is then coming forward in the world of Education so you know I willing to listen and learn but I can't say that I'm an authority on the subject I think any of us are
105when we first joined the board or when we leave um can I ask what you mean by the newer thinking in education what are you referring to social emotional learning and those Concepts that come along with it um what do you foresee as some of the biggest challenges moving forward for this board you've seen different things of topics we've discussed as you come on to our board what do you what do you foresee will be challenging hmm getting up to speed will be a challenge okay so you know it's sort of all-encompassing but uh I've taken a lot of time to try to read through your minutes and uh your bylaws and uh you know 241 policies that's sort of a little overwhelming uh but uh you know so I can't say that I've narrowed
106down what that would be but I'm a quick learner and uh I would probably be better able to answer that question after a month or two I mean personal tones is more like topics are there any specific my question wasn't there any specific topics or areas that you think will be challenging but nothing comes to mind [Music] okay if there's nothing further from the board ah thank you very much you're very welcome um and so we'll move on to a vote um for context so uh Angel was Mr agorian was uh elected in 2021 his term goes to the end of the current calendar year this replacement is to fill the seat until the end of I'm sorry I lied his term would have gone to 2027. however this replacement is not to fill the
107entire balance of the term but rather until the next election next election is November with the winner of that election to be seated in January uh and so the uh the Mrs Bradford uh if confirmed uh will be in this position until January and then the um we'll have an election in November to fill the balance of Mr igorian's term which would be to 2027 so that would be a four-year term different from our usual six so that's the process when we're when we're filling a vacancy midterm any questions about process okay then I will entertain a vote to uh accept and approve to approve uh the nomination of Mrs Susan Bradford to the vacancy on the Bethany Board of Education the motion we need emotions I'm asking for that motion and is that let's
108make sure we get this right I asked for a uh do you have we have it lit here so let's all right so the motion that I am requesting is that the Bethany Board of Education appoints Susan Bradford to fill the Bethany Board of Education vacancy created by Angela goyan's resignation with the term expiring at the next town election on November 7th 2023. thank you a second Lynette thank you uh can I ask for clarification Sue this motion says with the term expiring on November 7th that implies that the individual who is elected on November 7th would be seated immediately rather than in January of 2024. is that okay because that might be so it's unclear to me whether the person who wins that election is Seated on November 8th or on Jan on January
1091st when everyone else is [Music] hmm does this in accordance with an ad in accordance with state statute Paulette you have clarification right okay so I propose an amendment to the motion which is instead of saying with the term expiring at the next town election on November 7th I would propose that it's a with the term expiring at the end of 2023 in accordance with state statute that creates flexibility to uh follow whatever guidance forgiven so John Paul do you accept that friendly amendment to your motion okay just following the rules all right motion has been made in second and any further questions or discussions hearing that I'll call for a vote all those in favor please indicate by saying aye okay any opposed any abstentions motion passes [Music] congratulations Mrs Bradford so process I'll
110invite you to so you'll need to be sworn in at Town Hall I invite you to arrange that with the first select moment at your convenience uh between now and our March meeting and then I invite you to uh make an appointment at the board of education office with Mrs Carpenter and she can Orient you give you phone numbers and everything else and uh we'll we'll take it from there and we look forward to having you join us here at the table at our March meeting thank you okay uh we have no new new business and so we come on to our administrative reports beginning with the superintendent sure I'll start with the enrollment update update uh in your packets you still have the historical enrollments you can compare month by month to the 20
111to 21 school years kindergarten projections at this time kindergarten enrollment for fall of 2023 is projected to be 55 students so we are still anticipating three sections currently there are 45 students pre-enrolled and nine of those were not on Sue's original enumeration Personnel update so I'm Miss Katrina Potts was hired as our new music teacher Mrs Potts comes to BCS with over a decade of teaching experience in both Massachusetts and Connecticut schools she actually joined our team on February 1st 2023 and then uh Mr reedswale is working with Mrs Potts once she gets uh settled in to revisit what we offer to students for before and after school music activities for the remainder of the school year we had a paraprofessional vacancy and that vacancy has been filled by Michaela snow Ms snow was working
112here at BCS as an ESS paraprofessional substitute and she did such a wonderful job that BC has hired her to fill that vacancy and we are thrilled to have her on the BCS team are grade 4 vacancy our next Personnel update is a little Bittersweet to report and the information is being shared with permission from the classroom teacher Miss Carrie McLaughlin was his fourth grade teacher who was recently diagnosed with a chronic illness that will prevent her from continuing in her teaching position prior to becoming the fourth grade teacher here last year Kerry served as one of the instructional aides in the curriculum Department at this time the news was shared that we had at the time the news was shared we had a part-time instructional Aid position open very similar to what Kerry had
113come from here at BCS and rather than lose a quality educator in Miss McLaughlin we all agreed that it would be wise to transition her back to the part-time instructional Aid position that she had here at BCS as part of our DCS team and no sooner than we posted that vacancy created by Miss McLaughlin's transition we received several applicants interested in the position here at VCS and the team began their interviews at the end of January at this time I'm very pleased to announce that we have found an excellent teacher from our very own community Mrs Brooke hemperly she will be our new fourth grade teacher Miss hepperly comes to Bethany from Hamden where she was actually the Camden teacher of the year for their district and she will begin her term here uh in
114Bethany on March 6th I'll have her my official report but since there was a little bit of uh action earlier in the week uh you heard spoiler alert if uh we had a little bit of a water situation here on Monday and as much as I love Mr bartolini you never want to get a phone call from your facilities director before 5am then there's no snow it's fine for me to call him that early but when he calls you and says we have a situation it makes your heart skip a beat a little bit we had a pipe burst in the ceiling of our nurse's office sometime after Saturday afternoon around four o'clock because we had a custodian here in the building and Monday morning so we're very grateful that the water was contained sorry
115Tom primarily to the main office um no impact to the teachers or any of the student classrooms who didn't lose instructional materials or things of that nature and thank you to Fred and Kevin and Kyle and Steve who were here with us at five o'clock in the morning cleaning up the mess and getting everything situated and I would say around 11 30 12 o'clock we had the water back on most of the office cleaned up and we're ready to go and back in business for it's not because I like a long weekend but we had a situation on Monday we're grateful that it was not as bad as it could have been yes no issues about residual water damage removal vegetables that was the question yep and then the last thing Dr Pinger alluded to
116it a finance report just by way of an update on the professor of dollars or the specific project that we have our Pavilion is looking like a pavilion um and we're really grateful I'm really grateful to the support and guidance and I don't know if he's still here from Rob white with all of the troubleshooting and everything I don't know if anyone's been outside but take a look at the Pavilion we hoping that it will be up and running and ready to go for our sixth grade graduation so that so that it's working the team are not out in the field making big round circles in the grass to for people to even join after graduation so we're really excited about that part thank you any questions for Mrs Berger discussion on any of the
117points that she's reviewed okay hearing none we'll move on to our director of special services curriculum and instruction so first I'd like to talk about our professional development that we have coming up on February 17th we'll be having Margie Gillis come to work with all of our teachers and the focus will be on the science of reading and we are currently planning a full day of professional development on March 17th to be responded to the feedback that we've received from setup regarding curriculum Andrea Hubbard and I will continue to work on the waiver for the science of reading and that's due on February 28th so we're in process of doing that now and this is the most exciting part for me to share is that we finally received notification about the mental health Grant and
118I'm pleased to share that Bethany was selected as one of 20 districts out of the 92 that applied for the competitive Grant and Bethany will receive a total of three hundred sixteen thousand twenty one dollars and fifty cents over three years this will have an incredible impact on our school Community as we'll be able to provide a full-time social worker for three years congratulations well done yeah and then on the special education report we applied and received a ten thousand dollar stipend Grant from the State Department of Education which will support our work with CT saids which is the new computer program that houses all of our individual individual education plans and just as I've shared each month we continue to have many referrals to special education in the past we've used the excess cost
119funds to address any of those overages that are due to an increasing questions for Mrs Kiesel our discussion okay oh three years what's the end game at the end of three years so we would be looking to hire through an agency so that way we would address our needs at that point but that's why we're not hiring the info in-house person it would be through an agency with knowing that the funds would be ending unless the needs continued so we have a different structure for a point and then we the board would make a decision at that time Administration make a decision at that time as to whether there's a sufficient ongoing need that it needs to be budgeted or two weeks do we know if there's like longevity to that they haven't said anything
120about that there are other grants that should be coming out that is forced to be applying for [Music] about potentially talking about the reading waiver at some length at the next uh to elaborate a little bit more is that something just because it was brought up absolutely yeah we um we're in process on it right now and it's a pretty lengthy process so I will have definitely a lot more information about that and if I can just give a little background you tell me if I'm if I'm incorrect so that where this comes from is the state passed new legislation that said all schools must purchase a reading program approved by the state they didn't approve any of the reading programs that the schools actually liked they approved three that are quite costly and that
121our team doesn't think are effective or good and so the waiver is to request permission to not purchase a program we don't want is that correct which is completely independent from our internal discussions of what is the best you know resources program curriculum to help our kids right right so they had originally approved about eight they're now slowly approving a couple but they have approved two more programs are waivers um you have to do the waves so they've approved a program okay um the waivers to get to continue with what you're doing currently um would allow you to continue with that if they do not approve that then you would have to file for extension while you determine okay the costs jump in so the costs run anywhere from 50 000 to 93 for a
122school our side and you guys know yeah that's perfect for the gym the the challenge that we've had and I know Cheryl has talked about it in our career and stuff committee meetings and I know I've talked Ad nauseam with superintendents first they don't tell you who the districts are that are currently using there are 12 districts out of the 169 districts in the state of the state if I happen to know one of those districts is Ansonia superintendent has been very vocal about the fact that he has this program and it's not not that great like if you look at the school when you look at them and I know their hard-working folks in Ansonia but he's been very vocal at a lot of our meetings saying you know I have this program see
123what I'm what I've got as far as my scores if there are other things for you to consider by all means consider that we only know about him because they won't release the names of any of the other districts so that we can say oh is it is it an Avon a Simsbury like what are the districts who are the districts that are using these programs so that we can see what their return on investment can that be done in former electric caps and superintendents choose to relate they can but they're not okay so do we know what percentage of schools have decided to go with the program um what I can share is that uh in the aces region and in the skaza groups specifically every single district is applying for a waiver so
124every District that has been represented at Gaza has applied for a waiver how long is the waiver for like if you apply for that and it's accepted is this something we have to reapply for over and over again do we know they haven't really said fantastic and they also haven't been the challenges they also have not given us a definitive date because there's one person at the state who's reviewing all of these waivers that are going to be submitted by these other districts and so typical for Connecticut right and they're averaging 60 plus pages long each waiver and they haven't given us a time frame for when we can expect an answer which has also been a challenge because here we are talking about budgets and if I know that the waiver is due on
125the 28th of February but you might not give me an answer until April maybe May I might have to come and say hey guys you know that Surplus we'll take it we might need it for the reading program that we're now being forced to buy and then the town can have everything what happens so that's the other question what happens if there are many districts who are just kind of like what are they going to do if we don't do it that's if I was going to give the superintendent and the director of special services and instruction would you tell them hey guys [Music] don't sign the certified letter okay can they potentially withhold Grandpa there is nothing in the legislation that indicates that they can't take money today [Music] you know there are some
126districts that are like all right so we'll buy one set like literally one side of the book so we can say check the box we have it if anyone comes and visits our district we so it's a one-time buy-in for the program there's not a yearly support cost for it too for updating it yeah so that's just to get our foot in the door it's always an end game there's always it's the consumables it's the renewable s so then again I would recommend that maybe we discussion with my instructions to support directly special services if we don't get the waiver okay TTFN is one of the rules [Music] we're not spending that kind of money on something I don't think Winnie the Pooh said that I think that was some other bear [Music] okay anyway
127so that's thank you for that update on the waiver process and to be clear that is independent from a process of continually revamping our own reading instruction you know curriculum yeah thank you any further questions from Mrs Kiesel or comments on any of what she's reviewed [Music] okay did you read 12. report so an update on steering we met on January 19th a significant amount of archives not only creating the presentation but also really thinking about how we take that data not only to be able to present to you Paul which is important to really think about what we're doing with that what we can learn from that and how we're then Translating that into our practice and bringing it to other committees like our climate committee or others to really think about what we
128can do to improve the school so there's been a lot of time dedicated to that we presented to the curriculum committee on the first and the morning first we also presented the certified staff at our morning our subcommittees continue to work with the greater staff they did that at one of our January staff meetings on the 25th and we are continuing to move forward with those three subcommittee focuses of equity high quality instructions and social emotional work as far as BCS events uh we on the 27th uh celebrated Martin Luther King Jr day at our community meeting and we're very blessed to have a special guest of Morgan tuck who has far more accolades than it is possible for me to be able to list out and she was amazing former Yukon star a member
129of the WNBA and now an assistant GM to the Connecticut Sun resume but she came and it was wonderful we had two students who had actually done sent out surveys students collected different interview questions um went and interviewed her behind the scenes in our BMN Studio she came and presented uh to the students at community meeting took pictures uh with classrooms with students it was really just a great space for kids to be able to kind of have her as a special guest kindergarten was wonderful and presented around kindness and Martin Luther King Jr uh just recently we had our winter and holiday staff party on the 27th as well which was a great chance for our staff just to get together and not talk about school um we just finished as we shared here
130our winter benchmarks in January and we are now um taking that data and translating it into action uh for our students and held uh around case reviews just after that to discuss students uh who currently received here at intervention um and those students who have been brought for consultation from uh staff members or any additional support and then finally uh uh just on Monday night I had the distinct pleasure to attend the elementary celebration of Arts honoring two wonderful BCS students uh Charlotte winter and Angela so very excited to be able to celebrate them at the Aqua Turf and then things that are upcoming we've got uh we're bringing back our buddy day connections between our older and younger students really kind of getting back to that spot where we're not keeping everyone separate in
131their classes away from each other and really trying to build that community and connection across grades definitely something that was really popular and I think beneficial all students free pandemic and we're trying to get back to a lot of those great things uh Friday we're having our soup herbal um where different staff members are cooking soup and then uh stashed upon a practice later are donating five dollars to get a bowl and that money is going to go to the Woodbridge food pantry which also serves Bethany so we're really excited to just have a little bit of fun with that also for something that's a really good cause back uh just a huge thank you to PTO for all this amazing work um and they are also sponsoring a popsicle day next week which is
132super fun um and then we are just going through our process and meeting with certified staff for their mid-year meetings uh discussing all of their goals and their progress on that and being able to look at how we will be moving forward so that's where we've been where we are and where we go thank you questions from Mr Reed Swale or comments on any of the issues that he has reviewed [Music] hearing then we move on to Chairman report the only thing I have to note is that we will be having our board open Forum in late March or early April we have not yet selected a date we usually try to do this on a Wednesday evening and the Wednesdays through that period are difficult because of conflicts with parent-teacher conferences and other meetings
133so we don't have a date to propose this evening it's at least mostly my fault uh and um I'll discuss with the administration and we'll suggest some dates to the board and coordinate that via email so that we can get it on the calendar I got nothing else uh correspondence do we have any correspondence to review this evening okay uh and so now we have a second opportunity for visitors public comment I'll ask if anyone here wishes to address the board here at the end of our agenda yes please come forward same ground rules [Music] definitely is I'm so sorry about exactly and the last thing I want to say is I'm so touched tonight by how important everything is that you as a board are you doing and I just want to thank you
134you can show up and not just a few minutes but the committee meetings and the phone calls and the email that I know how much work it is I really hope that the Contin do you need me to start over Okay thank you very much thank you thank you anyone else wish to address the board before we close our meeting this evening everyone my name is Gina texier I live on high-end Court in Bethany my daughter is in the preschool so I'm really new to this process but as a former teacher I find that this meeting has been very interesting I do also want to thank everyone for your time and commitment I have no doubt that everyone in this room is committed to doing what's best for the students so thank you for your
135time and and commitment to this board I was wondering Chris if you could share with with us what um what you what site or authority you looked at in your conclusion that the replacement process um that you used if you could share that site with us that would be great here at section 10 219 of state statute 10-219 is that sufficient reference for them to find it [Music] I think that's I think that's what I was looking at too [Music] I have them here I'll invite you to come up after okay thank you thank you on your read 58 North hummerston Drive I believe the state statute 10-219 I read it too because I was curious how our process worked and who would be nominated so when I interpreted it I thought it was that
136it only had to be Republican if there was a minority and I believe that there is not right you're even so I was kind of confused as to why we only had could have that one nomination so that's why I think we're looking for some clarification on why it was only that one party was there an additional [Music] on your read so we were just looking for some clarification is there another statute or another other bylaws that clarify that so we will review I have the statutes here but I will say that prior to that it is also our past practice for at least 15 years to that we will uh that this is how we fill nominations I recognize past practice is not the same as statute yes I would like to if you
137have rules or processors follow whether it should be formal and not just informal this is just how we do things so that's my expectation of our processes that we're actually following thank you [Music] anyone else yes please [Music] uh Melissa zaldo 191 Beacon Road um I it is known that I volunteer a lot I volunteer with the PTO I volunteer with my church I'll be at me to anyone to volunteer for anything I'm just a little disheartened that this is the most recent nominee Brandon I know she said she volunteered but this is like there's no experience here I'm a nurse I know what my experience level is I certainly wouldn't volunteer for something I don't have any expertise then I'm a mom you know there's just I'm just rather disappointed that this was the
138best nominee that the Republicans could come up with nothing against her but they're just nothing when she spoke that spoke to me to her experience of what she could possibly contribute to this board to the school to this um I I know it's a moot point at this point but I just wanted to share that I'm rather disappointed in this nominee thank you anyone else wish to address the board this evening before we close our meet can I make a comment can I make a comment no not in business public comments [Music] okay going once going twice done uh thank you all very much for coming this evening we are adjourned I think we can do better today coming