001We have 6:30. I'll call this meeting to order and start hands of the United States of America to the stand. One nation under God, indivisible with justice. >> Welcome, welcome. Happy New Year to everyone. We'll start with comments from the audience. Is there anyone out in the audience today who cares to make a public comment? All right. I'll turn things over to the superintendent who will discuss some midyear strategic plan updates by school. >> Thank you. So, uh good evening everybody. Welcome. Um we're really excited tonight to share some of the work that's going on in our buildings. Um I'm going to talk about a little bit later in in the meeting um in my update about the the kickoff kickoff event we had last night to start uh the process of planning for our
002our new developing our new strategic plan for the next five years. Uh but our current plan um is in action and we want to give you a little sample of some of the things that are going on in both buildings. Um some of the things we said we're going to do at the beginning of the year is a little midyear check and an update on how things are going and what's happening. Uh and hopefully help everybody connect the dots and see the coherence that's happening through our district um guided by the strategic plan. So we have uh building principles and and Miss Kaler and Miss Goldfiner. Thank you. Good evening every on here. >> Good evening. Um, as Superintendent Cruso just mentioned, we did a lot of nice work last night kicking off the district
003strategic plan. And what we're going to talk about tonight is also in front of you. It's a packet of our two school plans and slides that you'll see up from the board. So, it's easy for you to take notes, follow along, any of that. Uh the team that's up here this evening is my name is Daryl Jared the principal here at Bulk Center School. We have Beth Goldsteiner the director of student support services and HR Kellinger assistant principal at BCS and Mr. Viselli the VHS principal. Uh tonight you're going to hear a midyear update from the school plans. At the very beginning of the year we shared an update. We had all the academic leaders come to the meeting of the plan. Um the plans are ongoing. A lot of the goals that you're going
004to see uh are action steps that are ongoing and it's not an exhaustive list. So, we're going to give examples of some of the work that's being done under each of the goals and then we'll have time at the end of the presentation for any questions that you have as well. So, the first goal at BCS is student success. So, Bolton Center School will challenge and prepare every student for success in school and in life. The first bullet under that is continuing to strengthen the work of the BCS leadership team. We also call them the instructional leadership team, ILT. Um, interventionists and departments. The ILT, the academic leaders. We have two to three leadership meetings a month where we come together on Wednesday afternoons. We have a very fixed and set agenda, very focused on
005the work that we're doing. The academic leaders are also in charge of their departments. So, every fourth Tuesday, they lead their content area teams uh on a meeting on those fourth Tuesday afternoons with a very set agenda. and they meet with the administrators to kind of set that agenda for their departments. Um to also guide that work, each of the academic leaders has a department plan where they write a plan that's in alignment with the school plan and the school plan's in alignment with the district plan. So there's a lot of coherence with the work that we're doing. Uh the academic leaders um they get appointed each year and it's a tremendous team as you saw at the very beginning of the year. They're very dedicated to the work that we're doing. Another important piece
006of the student success is our interventionist and our instructional coach. Um even the instructional coach along with the interventionist sees students in the classroom. So they work with the students one-on-one, they work with students in small groups and the instructional coach is instrumental in providing professional development and coaching to the staff and that's through PLC time for Tuesday's uh early release time. Instructional coach at BCS does a tremendous job. Uh, bullet two, sustaining and strengthening communication and collaboration among staff. So, I'm going to quickly highlight some of the uh recent uh communication and collaboration among staff. And I mentioned it a few board event meetings ago, which were peer visits. So, a couple times a year, the staff at BCS will identify another teacher to go visit. They'll go into their classroom. We have a
007set protocol that the following week that we'll discuss what they saw, any ahas, any things that they might want to try to implement in their classroom. Those have been very well received. and we have our next set coming up in a few weeks. Uh there's a lot of collaboration at during PD, PLC's and department time. As I mentioned earlier, we analyze data, we talk about individual students, and we compare and discuss instructional practices to move the work forward. At the beginning, end of the year, we have articulation meetings. So, we talk about individual students, we talk about curriculum, we talk about instruction amongst the grade levels. So, for example, we may have fourth and fifth grade teachers sit together so that fifth grade teachers can hear about the upcoming fourth graders. would be where certain
008hiccups in the curriculum occur, things that might have been tougher or things that they want to make a a note to revisit next year. Uh we also work very hard in general at creating a culture and this came up even last night, a culture of collaboration. So whether it's through set meetings or just every day with an open door policy, we're dropping into each other's rooms or into the office so that we're constantly collaborating and talking. So the next bullet is uh ongoing analysis of data to inform instruction and improve student outcomes. So throughout the school year we collect and analyze data a lot. Um we begin at the beginning of the year we do a deep data dive at the center school with all staff is a general staff meeting with all teachers and
009we look at all the smarter balance data and then we meet with individual teachers. Daryl and Amela met with all the general ed teachers and then the three of us met with all the special ed teachers to look at their individual student data to really talk about what it means and and to see what we can kind of gather from it. Um we continue our data dive all throughout the year. We talk about data at PLC's, at professional development days, department meetings, and this ongoing review informs our instructional decisions and helps us decide if we need to change any interventions or instruction. So that's for the uh data. The next one is continuing implementation and refinement of uh high quality interventions for MTSS. MTSS is multi-tered systems of support. You've heard about that before. Um
010but just a reminder, uh we provide tiered levels of supports for students in academics and behavior and social emotional areas. So it's not just academics. We look at the whole child and provide supports for for all kids that need it. We run six to eight week cycles. We have a check-in meeting midcycle and again at the end of the cycle. And progress monitoring takes place through LC um the intervention cycles. So we're collecting data to see if kids are making progress or again if we need to tweak or change an intervention. Uh and students can move within the tiers or three tiers. Kids can move from one tier to another based on progress or lack of progress. We have um really put a a focus on behavior and social emotional MTSS. This year the student
011support service staff, the two school psychologists, the BCBA and the social worker have really taken the lead on this. um and they're kind of helping teacher get some really good tier one interventions in place and they're addressing other things that come up in the classroom. Some of the behaviors that they're looking at through MTSS might be a child who gets out of their seat all the time, a child who is aloping from the classroom or from their teacher, task or work refusal or avoidance. Um maybe some aggression to either others or to students or themselves or to objects. So MTSS is something that we're really refining and tweaking as we go >> and we just thought it was very important on the next slide um to kind of bring some of this work to life.
012So you can see there on the left side a couple of elementary students doing a math center with some manipulatives working on a problem and on the right hand side you can see some middle school students during an ELA class having a Socratic seminar discussion about a book that they recently read. So sometimes you hear something but then to be able to see it in action that just brings it to life. >> Our next goal is focused on our caring culture. Bulland center school will foster a responsive, caring and inclusive culture and collaborative relationships. So to start we really prioritize communication and relationship building with families. One way we do that is through our parents square app. So Mr. and myself, we post a lot on parent square to give, you know, all of you
013um updates about the school, but our teachers really enjoy Parent Square because it's a way that they can give classroom updates really efficiently and also talk to parents one-on-one through messaging, whether it is to remind a student to bring a water bottle the next day or whatever it is they need to talk to a parent about. It's just a super clean, efficient way for them to do that. Um, another thing we do is prioritize relationship building. And one way we do that is by hosting all of our family events. Um, some of those events include our band and chorus concerts throughout the year. We also have winter family night coming up. That's Thursday, March 5th. So, if any of you are available uh to come stop by, please do. Um, this is your invitation. Um,
014we also do conferences twice a year. And those are really, really important nights and days for our staff because it's a way to connect with families in person and give progress updates for their students. Um, and coming up we have our student led conferences for the middle schoolers. That's in March. And that is a really um amazing night and day for them because our students actually get to share their own progress with support from their teachers and and Mr. G and other um staff members too. Um Mr. Jarren and myself facilitate town hall meetings three times a year that continue to incorporate student voice. So, when we started town hall meetings, we didn't incorporate as much student voice as we wanted to. We kind of just talked to teachers and we said, "Hey, um, what
015should we talk about three times a year with your kiddos and they say, "Oh, you know, they're doing really amazing at this, but can you remind them to walk in the hallway?" So, we would meet with each grade level. We'd give them their reminders. We'd celebrate what they're doing well. And then we realized, you know what? What do the kids think we should talk about? What do they think their grade level is doing really well? So, we started having lunch with a couple kids at each grade level this year. Um, and it's truly amazing what you will hear from a first grader and then from an eighth grader on what they think their grade is doing really well and then what they think, you know, they need some reminders on. For example, a first grader
016told us, "Can you remind our kiddos um our classmates to behave in the bathrooms?" We're like, "Yeah, that's an awesome idea." So, we got a lot of um student voice. And so we actually have our second round of town hall meetings coming up in a couple weeks. We have lunches with the students next week. So we'll meet with each grade level and we'll talk to them about what's going really well and then what you know we can work on. Um we also promote relationship building among students across grade levels. We do that through building buddies. So our K through five um they like a kindergarten class will meet with a fifth grade class and they'll get together and they'll do a team building activity which is so awesome for them. Um, and we're also working
017on promoting our relationship building amongst schools. So, actually just yesterday, Mr. Jones, he's the family and consumer science teacher at Bullet High, he came down with his high school kiddos and they worked with our preschool kiddos. Um, and it was such an amazing experience for everybody. And so we're also working on promoting BHS events at BCS because we really want to continue to build that bridge between Bolton Center School and Bolton High School and show our Bolton Center students how amazing BHS is. We continue to refine and sustain our social emotional learning practices. We are always looking at how to support students social emotional learning needs um because it's just as important if not more important than academic needs. We currently use the second step curriculum at Bolton Center school. Grades kindergarten through five teachers
018teach their own students and then middle school the school psychologists and the social worker teach those lessons to the students on a rotating basis. Um at middle school especially the lessons and sub second step are sometimes a little dry as might say. So they do the staff do a lot of supplementing with their own resources. They may use if something has happened in the grade level if there's been an incident um maybe of kids not being kind to each other. They'll use that as the theme of a lesson and they'll get resources and kind of do a lesson around being kind and understanding and accepting. So um we really have a big focus on the uh secondstep curriculum and all the skills that it teaches. In addition to the curriculum, we offer peer mediation. A
019lot of times it's the school counselors who are doing that. If kids are having issues with each other, we get an adult there to kind of support them and kind of work out their problems. So mediate the issue. Um and we also do social skills groups and lunch bunches to kind of support social skill needs um at all grade levels. So that's for the uh social emotional learning. The next goal is monitoring attendance trends and um we have done a lot and I think co probably started all of this um to look at the attendance because we were missing kids during COVID. So we're always trying to find kids and and check in on them. So we really refined our practices a lot and um districtwide we've done a lot. >> Um we have weekly
020meetings at Blet Center School. We have a team of uh Daryl and Amela and I'm on the team. We have a school counselor, the school nurse, and an admin assistant. And we get together every week. We get a report prepared by the admin assistant of attendance for students. And we come to that meeting and look to see if kids have increased their days that they've missed school. um if there are trends of kids have been sick or on vacation or just kind of MIA and we look at that and then decide what the next steps are and the next steps could be that one of us will make a phone call home to say hey we haven't seen Daryl in school for a couple days you know what's going on um so sometimes we have
021parent phone calls we may have a parent come in to see what's going on and what we can do to support getting the student back to school um we also have letters that go home at um for tardy letters and um attendance mixed school letters at there's a at the five day mark and the 9-day mark. Um we have letters that get generated automatically so parents aren't constantly aware that um there's absences and they go home, they're automatically generated. So even if they're medical excuse because we get calls sometime, you know, he's been out sick and we're like they just get generated automatically so people can keep track of them. So we have that in place. Um, and I think the last thing that we do for attendance is we um do home visits too.
022So if we need to, if we need to meet the parents and the families where the child is, see what's going on and how to support getting the child back to school, we will go out and do a home visit. And then here you're going to see some of um pictures of our car and culture truly in action. So on the left, these are photos of our looking in theater assembly. We do this once a year for middle schoolers and it's a performance ensemble made up of teenagers in the greater Hartford area and they come and they do skits based on socially relevant issues to our students. Um, and it's really amazing to see how our middle schoolers truly take these skits so seriously. They get to ask questions at the end and it helps
023support our car and culture because it shows our students how to be inclusive, how to treat each other, how to treat students, other students with differences. And it's a truly amazing assembly. We actually have it next week, which we're excited about. And then on the right, you're going to see photos of our annual fall food drive, which are amazing student council leads. Um, we do it every fall. Senora Jay, our Spanish teacher, leads the student council and she does an amazing job, really getting them excited to get donated food and goods for the Bolton Senior Center. So, we do that every year. Um, and this just shows you how we really, really have a thriving and caring culture at BCS. >> All right. The third goal is talent development. Bolton Center School will encourage a
024learning environment that emphasizes excellence and recruits, develops, supports, and retains high quality staff. So, we are always seeking ways to attract and retain staff because it's not easy to do. As you know, like school districts everywhere are losing staff. So, we really try to to keep our staff. We participate in any local job and career fairs that we are able to. We go to Yukon. We've gone to some in Hartford. It's amazing when we go to the um job fair in Hartford. I went to last year, people were like, "Where is Bolton? So far away." So, it's it's good to get out there and get our names out there. So, uh we try to do the job fairs. We form relationships with local universities, Eastern and um University of Hartford, Yukon, trying to get student
025teachers to come into the district and then maybe they'll want to come back and work here when they get their degrees. So, we're always trying to form relationships. Uh we support professional growth for our staff. If they want to learn about something or get some professional learning opportunities, we try to support them as much as we can as long as it's in line with our strategic plan and our district plans and our school plans. Um we provide and support a positive work environment. We try to let staff know that we appreciate them. We do breakfast at the center school. They do a lot of food related things to support staff. breakfast, the dessert things. Um, we did for Thanksgiving, we went out and delivered coffee and things to the staff, just to kind of let
026people know that we appreciate them. Um, we also try to do our hiring early in the school year. So, we want the best pool of uh candidates that we can get. So, as soon as we're able to, we try to hire because, you know, last minute hires sometimes um don't work out. So, we we try to get hiring done early. So that's how what we do to uh retain our our staff. Um strengthening the support systems to help new staff. We have team which is put in place for teachers to have a a trained mentor to work with new teachers to support them in the first couple of years to answer questions and help them. Um we also have at the center school we meet with all new teachers. Uh I was invited last year
027to start attending with Daryl and Amela and last year we did it as a group. We all met with all the new teachers at a meeting and kind of open forum for the teachers. Do you have any questions? Any concerns? Um, and then I think we had a prompt at one meeting, but we kind of revisited it and I think actually Darl and Amela thought maybe onetoone meetings would be better because we did this big meeting with everybody and people were a little timid to speak up. So this year we're doing onetoone meetings with the three of us and the new staff member and it's really great. They get to ask questions. we find out what kind of supports they need, if they need anything, and it's just a kind of a chance to to
028touch base with them. So, that's um some of the things we're doing. Related services staff when they come on board, speech pathologists, psychologists, social workers, they don't have trained mentors to work with them. They're not part of team. Um so, we hook them up. We're lucky that we have psychologists in our system that can train our new psychologists and our social worker is kind of uh being trained by the psychologist as well. Um so we try to hook them up with a veteran related services staff person questions, procedures, things like that so that they have somebody to bounce questions off of, feel a little supported. And some of the stuff that you're hearing is brought up a few different times and in the next couple of bullets you hear it again. So the third bullet
029is providing job embedded professional development and PD is provided by the instructional coaches, administration, sometimes teacher leaders and sometimes teachers themselves. So sometimes a teacher reads a book or goes out to PD and they come back and they share it in a PLC or another another one of our meetings we have. So we have PLC's, uh, PD days, so the early release ones and the full day ones, department meetings. Um, so there's a variety in fourth Tuesday meeting. So there's many different times during the month that the focus work occurs. And I want to give the board a big thank you because you continue to keep the early release PD days in the calendar and they're very well used and we had a leadership meeting yesterday and we look at every single day, every minute
030by grade range, K to 5, 6 to 8, special, student support services and who's doing what to ensure that it's effective uh work and that it's hitting their needs. Uh leveraging PLC time. So that that's our most frequent touch point. So that's every week we meet with every grade level one-on-one. Mrs. Keller and myself, uh, the instructional coach, the math interventionist. Sometimes we're getting updates on what director goer said about MTSS progress, how individual students are doing. This week we're talking about number sense. So, our math coach and our instructional coach are talking to the different grade levels about students ability to have a sense of like a reasonable answer when it comes to math and how to like round up. And we've had some fun activities where even the teachers because our coaches and
031um interventionists are so knowledgeable that they were like, "Wow, I can bring this into my room tomorrow or try this next week." So, it's it's very um useful information that can be put into action immediately. Uh purposeful Tuesday meeting. So, we often also survey staff. So, we don't just plan in isolation leadership team or the administration. We'll survey the staff to say, "Hey, we have these uh upcoming buckets of time. What what is your biggest need right now?" And sometimes it's with some of our newer programs. Hey, I need I need some time to look ahead. I need to look at the upcoming units and lessons and really just dive into the material because there's just not enough time in the day, especially for ele elementary teachers. Shout out to them. Hardest job there is
032be able to teach so many subjects. So that look ahead time is very helpful to them. On the next slide, you'll see two more pictures bringing the work to action talent development. And as director go mentioned, we do love our food at BCS. And you can see a few staff in the lounge enjoying some some food and and not it's not always bought. Sometimes we do things like uh crockot day. So staff bring all different types of crockots. We make sure that we're being very safe because it's a lot of plugs. And u so we have buffalo chicken dip and a bunch of stuff and staff jump drop in during the day and it's just really a nice gathering place. You can see people just sitting and eating and talking. That's what that picture is.
033Then you see a picture of the entire staff a few years ago on the last day of school that decided to just go to the side of the building and said, "Hey, let's get a picture together as we after we wave the buses to kick off the summer." So, it's just a nice feelgood um things like that that really create a positive culture and climate. Goal four is resource stewardship. Uh this again directly aligns with the district strategic plan. So, Bolton Center School will champion the needs of the school system and be responsible stewards of the public's investment. uh the first bullet there really lends itself to the work of the academic leaders. So they meet with their department for Tuesday time and right from when we go back to school in September to start
034building the budget at the department level um with a kind of a needs-based zerobased budgeting approach. So they meet with the teachers they say hey what do you act what do you need right now? What consumables have you exhausted? What do you need replenishment of? And all of those things that's like the first step in the budget process. Uh bullet two is when I start meeting with the building principal uh director Gileio Casper, Director Bullsiner, myself um to really look at the budgets. Hey, what are you bringing forward to the building level? We have the office budget, all those pieces. So the bigger picture starts to come together and then we meet with Superintendent Russo Casol and everybody else. So it's a very multi-step process where obviously budget season is coming up soon. Uh but
035it really starts right when we come out of the summer and the school year begins. But it's not just the money that's in the budget. We have a lot of partnerships in the community. So, two of the biggest ones I'm going to highlight, and you'll see a picture of them in the next slide, is the PTA, absolutely amazing PTA. U they organize events. They're they're constantly championing for the students and sending us ideas for enrichment programs and resources. And I have we have this money that it's a good problem to have. Sometimes we we have money to spend. What do you need? Um the PTA really is absolutely amazing. Um, AllTown Fresh, that's just one of the ones I'm going to call out. They are tremendous, uh, partner in the community. Um, they do coffee
036for educators every September where a portion of coffee sales gets put into like a pot and then they're actually going to cut us a check at the end of this month where Superintendent Caruso, myself, Mrs. Keller, are going to go down to Oldtown Fresh. They do a quick photo op and then they present us with a check that goes towards uh, different enrichment activities and programs in the school. So, Oldtown Fresh is a great partner of ours as well. If you look at the next slide, so resource stewardship and action, you can see the PTA sponsored walk-athon. And you can also see in the middle picture to the right some people in inflatables. I might not I might know who or who that isn't. Uh but it's a tremendous uh opportunity. The kids pick those
037rewards and incentives to really work towards and raise money for. And then the other picture is last year when we went to AllThresh and uh they presented us with a check and they again a great partner in the community. I'm going to welcome Mr. Mateli. >> So, we had our own goals this year um aligned to the strategic plan. Some overlap with what you saw at the Bolton Center School. Uh starting with student success um ongoing use of the digital platforms. We've talked a lot about this. We launched uh parents square a couple years ago. Uh I agree with everything Mr. G said about amazing that is to link to families. Um our latest and greatest is we have kicked off school links. Um there's a current software that we're phasing out called Naviance that
038um is important for the college process. Also it does inventory starting in 8th grade. Well, school is going to replace that and more. Um it is does a better job for that. It is it meets certain needs for the college process. For example, um if Grace wants a letter of recommendation from Mr. Smith who retired, there was no way for Mr. Smith to access Naviance. There was an extra layer. Schools addresses that. Um if Alexa is trying to keep track of her community service as a graduation requirement and trying to get that great group that she volunteered with who keeps forgetting to send the form, they're going to be able to do it digitally through schoolings. So that is a our newest digital platform to enhance life at Bolton High. Um you heard a lot
039about MTSS. Same thing at the uh at the high school. It looks a little bit different. Our our focus certainly is on things like mathematics but also on executive functioning, right? Where are the deficits? Um, if we have a student who's really struggling with work completion, well, let's find a time to meet with that student several times a week and offer them, don't just say do your work, but offer them organizational strategies and tools to try to meet those needs. We've also increased this year the um our tracking of success within MTSS. We have feedback forms from our providers, back to the organizers, forms from the teachers, back to the providers. Um, so we're very happy that we're able to do a better job of providing needs, targeting needs for students because of those new
040processes that were put in place. And you know, we talk about student success certainly. We've talked about the distinction award. Um, but that is a group of students um that did the which one is that? >> That's the NC music group right there. Okay. Um, if you could someone could click for me. Um also under student success the whole week we you've heard about this connections period that we have twice a week um we have done some restructuring for that. So we looked again at the needs. So with our seniors high stakes things right getting that portfolio taken care of dealing with that capstone and whatever their life will be after high school their post-secary plan. So, we reorganized our connections period to provide direct support to seniors for those three categories. Um, we're already
041not only feeling good about that, but already making changes looking ahead towards next year based on from feedback from the students and the faculty. Um, and we also from a schoolwide MTSS standpoint implemented two things this year. We started the first quarter. We asked all teachers to spend some time really put a lot of emphasis on greeting students by name daily especially the beginning of the year. Um we were at the um and I know uh Mr. is going to talk about it later a little bit more, but the kickoff to strategic planning last night and one of the questions I was asking um our student representative who was there before the meeting began was, "Did you see this?" And I had to kind of prompt her a little bit and then she the cries
042lit up, right? So at least to that student, there was evidence of that greeting at the door. The second one that we started for second quarter and we've got one we're going to kick off each quarter, but the one for second quarter is just about movement, right? Elementary teachers are great at in you know embedding movement into the day and certainly the fizzed teachers do it right but if you're in English class or science class what are we doing especially during those longer periods to give students that small movement break so we've asked teachers to uh try different things and then often during our PLC's we'll share ideas about what did you try what worked what didn't those kinds of things um freshman Year science has a unit on energy and momentum and the lower
043left picture is a winners of the year's pumpkin chunking where they uh build catapults to launch little pumpkins in the in the gym. Um so those were the successful group there and then on the right hand side we some see some of our um culinary students serving Thanksgiving dinner at the center school. if you could click. So culture right a big thing you heard you heard some great examples from this for the center school we put a lot of emphasis on this as well um one of the other things that we do with connections and we target connections a lot because it doesn't impact academic instructional time it's time set aside for other things. So we want to do something we do it then so we don't cancel classes or pull students out of classes.
044Uh, one of the things that we tried this year um was enrichment opportunities. We offered it up before teachers volunteered to provide different kinds of activities just to do something different and fun during connections. Um, for example, pickle ball, right? Um, a lot of our students like the idea but really don't have a chance to. Well, they got a chance to go out to the pickle ball court here and do that during the day. So, that is something that we've um we're already starting to plan our next round of enrichment activities for connections. Um, and then we're really trying to do a really good job of highlighting the life at Bolton High School. I hope you're subscribed to our social media at Bolton HighCT on all of our platforms. Um, we don't send everything out
045all the time, every day, but when there's something meaningful that we think there's a something really important happening, maybe something different to draw not your attention, but the the attention of the public to it, um, we're trying to highlight that. And um I know you're looking at that picture and and wondering what that is. It's a bunch of students standing at at the camera awkwardly. Um but when you know what it is, it's a really impressive picture. That picture was taken at I believe 10 minutes after 7 in the morning. That's the Spanish club. And look at how many students are in the Spanish club. So a group of students who want to continue the Spanish club. It's been around for a lot of years. They do a lot of culture stuff. You'll see you'll
046see snacks in the foreground, right? But the availability of students after school with everything else going on is tough, but they're so committed that that club takes place before school. And I think that's a really great example of the of our positive school culture. Um monthly recognition um of staff and student achievements. Um we have we have I know it's it's not necessarily typical for a high school, but we have a student and staff of the month. Um, we stopped putting the pictures on the TVs because the students asked me to. Um, but it is interesting. There's certain things that hit the TV that kids don't pay any attention to at all. Usually, it's the stuff I want them to see, right? About like being on time and those kinds of things, but when certain
047things pop up like the students and the staff of the month, they pause in the hallway. They do. Um, so that has been a a huge thing that we brought back. And then again, the communicating of all the different activities um and expectations to stakeholders, right? So the the digital software that we have, especially student square, not only is for the the interesting scheduling event type stuff, but also um the information they need to be successful. For example, if you pull out Grace's phone right now, the very first post on her student square right now, I guarantee it because I pinned it so it had to stay there, is the schedule for next week for midterms, right? So let's take away the obstacle of oh my gosh, where am I supposed to be? Let's make
048it really easy for people um using those kinds of platforms. The lower leftand corner was powderpuff football as part of our homecoming. Um that's a nice tradition that we've had for a long time. We do have a dance, but typically before the dance, the Friday night before the dance, the football and I think it wasn't just powder puff, it was also it was flag boys and girls, juniors versus seniors. I think they alternated quarters back and forth. I don't remember who won. >> Glassman. >> Albert Glassman won. Okay. Um, and speaking of upper classman winning, um, pep rally. So, we'll, um, we'll talk a pep rally in a few times a year. Again, we have the ability in our flexible schedule and the way to communicate to students about what a schedule will be. Um,
049that was at pep rally a couple weeks ago. That was a tugof-war instructional practices. Um, you know, cultivate that professional learning. the um ongoing NTSS tier one. So I know that Miss Gold Snider talked about three tiers briefly at NTSS and I know we presented on this in the past, but tier one is what happens every day in the classroom and we put a real concerted effort in this this year to have conversations with all the faculty during our our different meeting times to talk about what does it look like for tier one. We even um took advantage of our special education teachers who have like a different lens on strategies and they put together some strategies to share with the regular red teachers. That was a really interesting kind of a a cross group
050kind of a sharing of different kind coming from different worlds um for tier one the stuff that should be taking place every day in classrooms. Um and that's that is ongoing. We have all sorts of different stuff happening there and um observations and and reflecting on it. So, we do peer observations several times a year. We've been doing it for many, many years. Um, even our new teachers where that can be kind of intimidating. You're you've been here for maybe a month or so and now there's a stranger in your room. The the faculty has done such a great job developing a positive culture around peer visits that it's always a welcome type thing. So, you can see and actually as it as it turns out that is our new teacher this year. That's our
051calculus teacher, Miss Colnne Snider. And then you can see in the foreground Mrs. Bradley, a fellow math teacher had stopped by. Every time we do an observation, there's a there's a focus like what are we looking what are we talking about and then an opportunity a structured opportunity afterwards to to debrief on that. Um another topic we did this year was collaboration. We talked during PLC's about different collaboration strategies that can be used in classrooms and then um folks paired up and observed each other and tried different collaboration strategies. So maybe I went um to best classroom and I saw what she was doing and then I tried something similar and she came and observed that. So the peer observations and then um the MTSS we are small we are able to leverage our flexible
052schedule. One of the things that we have done is if you take a student who needs some help perhaps again in that executive functioning we're not pulling them out of study hall five days a week right we we do it as needed. Maybe it's once maybe it's twice maybe it's three times but that also then allows that teacher to meet different students on different days. It allows us to take the few folks that we have to do this kind of work and spread them out over the day. And that has given us the ability um with that new model to be able to provide intervention to students every single period of the day as needed, which is which has been a real strength. Um relevance. So that's hard sometimes like the old why am I
053doing this, right? And um some teachers are really good at answering that question and sometimes that's that's kind of off-putting depending on how it's asked. We here have have engaged in ongoing conversation as teachers about relevance and putting it in multiple buckets. Maybe relevance is it's relevant to today is relevant to what you need to learn tomorrow. That is relevance. Maybe it's towards a future class or um or maybe a college class, right? You need to learn this so you can learn that. But also, and sometimes this is the trickiest part, relevant to outside of school life, relative to not being a student. So, uh, Miss Keller talked about the visit from Mr. Jones and his child development class to the center school yesterday, and that's what you see on the right hand side. So,
054that's not just fun. I think it was fun for the for the center school staff. Um, and it was fun for our high school students, too. But that's relevance in action. So, they're studying child development benchmarks for kids and now and they have their focus and then they head off and they observe actual students. Um, and we were able to do all of that at no cost to anybody. We have some generous teachers who will use the school van. they've gotten their special license and they'll give up their prep to drive other teachers and students around the district or surrounding areas to do those kinds of activities especially when those can provide a real world or really you know a solid relevance uh experience and um okay full transparency that's a total stage picture in
055the lower lefthand corner because I don't usually bring a a camera to my weekly PLC meetings um and there was somebody who was having a bad hair day and you see they jumped up and ran way. You can see the empty chair in the background. Um, so we meet weekly up to 80 minutes. Um, we have three groups. They're interdisciplinary. It's kind of just kind of the way the master schedule kind of came together. And we have uh different topics each week and and sometimes it's about those observations. What are we going to look at? Let's come back next week and talk about it. But our schedule um and the and the support of the faculty enables us to have meaningful um out typically an hourong PLC every week and that kind of keeps the
056ball rolling on all the instruction practices. Thanks. >> Does anybody have any questions about any of these? >> I do if you don't mind please. Um >> so I'm the new guy here. And so my when I see action steps, I think risks. We're trying to mitigate to meet that goal. Is that the how you're using in the context or how using action steps? >> Um to hold ourselves accountable, right? If we're going to say that we're going to work on instructional practices, we're going to g whiz, we're going to get better at that, how are we going to do that? What are we going to try? What are we going to reflect on? Those are our actions. >> That's a great question. And the work for the school plan starts in early summer. So
057when school gets out, we then have a series of summer workshops per se with the academic leaders, myself, Mrs. Keller, and we look at ESPback data. We look at student, staff, and parent surveys. So all of that data helps us to determine what our goals and focuses will be. And then the action steps are kind of lasered in based on what the data tells us from those different types of questions and data. So for example, one of the questions on the survey is my child understands the importance of homework or something similar to that. And listen, our survey, I hope you've seen the survey data. It really is very it's very impressive. I mean, right, we're very proud of it. But that might have been one that was just a tiny bit lower than others.
058And that's why you see us talking specifically about relevance and defining it and and making sure that we're focusing. So just as an example of the data from the survey kind of the rubber hitting the road in terms of an action step. >> Go ahead. >> Thank you. >> None else. >> Yeah. Quick one. >> Sure. >> I had a question about the peer observations, but Mr. Kelly, you largely answered that for me and I think they're a really great idea. I do think that obviously it's probably beneficial for the observer as well as the teacher because the observer can pick up tips and tricks and the teacher you know can get help with if there's classroom management issues or reaching a certain student or whatever the case may be. So thank you for that.
059My question very simply you guys are going to do the winter fest I heard. >> Are you also going to do the art showcase? >> Yes. >> Awesome. >> With ice cream. Yeah, >> music to my ears. >> Does anyone else have any questions? >> Thank you all very much. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> All righty. On to our student representative report of course. >> So, our winter sports are in full are in full swing. Athletes have been working hard with girls basketball's record going from three to three. Boys basketball 0 to four. Our cooperative boys hockey team is two to three. And indoor track and field had their first meet last weekend. And some of the track athletes will be competing at Yale this weekend, such as Alexa. U midterms begin
060next week. Students have been studying hard to prepare for these tests. National Honor Society hosted the annual Cookies and Cram event during connections today in order to help prepare the nth graders for their first ever midterm exams and drama club has begun rehearsing for Spongebob the musical that will be performed February 26th, 27th and 28th. Uh there are more than 50 students involved in the show and the whole cast is having an amazing time learning and practicing. BHS modern band held their bi-annual coffee house before break. If you missed it, check out check it out on BHS YouTube channel. This was a huge success. Many wonderful performances were put on and both audience members and students were very happy with their performances. 32 students performed that evening. Our pep rally was a huge success with
061games of tugof-war, dodgeball, and teachers versus student basketball. Students and teachers had a lot of fun and it was the perfect way to kick off our winter break. With the pep rally as the culminating event, the junior class won the battle of the classes. Despite the seniors making a huge comeback at the pep rally, the tiebreaker was a head-to-head game of dodgeball that crowned the juniors as victorious. All right. Thank you very much. I know homework is back in full swing and if you are so inclined, you can excuse yourselves and if you're so inclined, you feel free to say. >> Good luck. >> Thank you very much. >> Uh I don't believe we have any additions tonight. So, we are on to team business and the approval of minutes. Could we have a motion,
062please, to approve the minutes of the December 8th, 2025 board of ed workshop? >> So moved. >> Thanks. >> Thank you, Ben. Is there a second? >> I'll second. >> Thank you. Does anyone have any questions, comments, or edits on these minutes? All those in favor of the motion, please say I. I. I. Anyone opposed or abstaining? Now, could we have a motion to approve the minutes of the December 11th, 2025 Board of Education regular business meeting? Some move. >> Thank you, Ben. Second. >> I'll second. >> Thank you. Do we have any questions, comments, or edits on these minutes? All those in favor of the motion, please say I. I. Anyone opposed for abstaining on to board of ed committee reports and finance? Um >> yep. So from a finance standpoint, we we did
063not meet yesterday. >> They say a lot. >> I was traveling. I actually missed the meeting. So it was my fault. Um but apparently there's not a whole lot to really report on. Um looking at the the budget, we are 39% um expended, which is consistent with the prior year. And I understand there's not any transfers. >> No transfers. >> Correct. >> Um, anything else I guess notable to report out from? >> No. Cass, did he have anything? >> Thank you. >> Um, the curriculum committee was also unable to meet, but we were going to have to get a date together prior to our February meeting because we are looking for um a new economic textbook. um to do a first read on in February and that spoiler alert for talk about it momentarily but
064um Ashley Puli and Jennifer Stall are the people who I think are going to be taking over curriculum. Um so they will be I guess we'll have to arrange one a new meeting time that works for people are but it's usable so she'll reach out but all right community meeting reports does anyone we have a PTA stuff to say I'm sure we um fighting for you with last person arriving lately. Um so no like crazy events because um well I guess we big one um we haven't met for the month of January yet. That's next week. The biggest thing is that came through if you haven't followed us on socials is that the bonding came through for the playground and not like bonding like it's oh we're going to have to pay it back. It's
065more like grant like here's money. It's I don't like the term bonding for it, but that will be um because it's not like a long-term like 40-year loan. So, in case anybody's got questions on that, it's an actual like grant. It's fully funded from the state. We do have some extra um um donations to that are still coming in that will go towards it as well. So, there will be some, you know, upkeep and maintenance on it. So, we are super excited about that. So, I'm sure they're going to start planning all of that. Um, other things coming up is our someone special dance on February 6th. Um, the I know um, Mr. Davey brought up the uh, art show and stuff that's getting into the mix. I think it's becoming more of like the
066spring festival at this point because there's a whole bunch of other activities between the ice cream social, the art festival, and there's something else thrown in there now and I can't quite remember. Um, those I think are the big stuff and I'm sure by February I'll have more for you. >> Thank you very much. Is there any other community meetings to report on? Involved in that category much. Um, all right. >> Now, I'll turn things over to the superintendent for tonight's superintendent report. >> Right. Thank you. Um, so I just want to start with my student chats. Uh, I've been doing those with seniors. I have my last group, I think, next week or the week after. And I'm happy to say I coordinated with uh, Principal Gard today to start student chats with eighth
067graders tomorrow. So, looking forward to getting down to the uh, middle school students and and meeting with them uh, hearing their perspective, their thoughts on how we can improve our schools and what's going really well for them and how we can best support them. So, I'm looking forward to that. Uh, we kicked off our strategic plan meeting last night. I referenced that earlier. Um, I came away feeling extremely um, inspired and fortunate to be in Bolton. Um, we started off by talking about why people came to Bolton, why Bolton schools, what our role is in Bolton, and and the the information that was shared with the group was just uh, was really, like I said, it was really inspiring. It was really uh, awesome to hear um, how much love there is for this town
068and the reasons why. A lot of it was around the community feel um people really caring about each other, caring about the kids in school um and having previous positive school experiences themselves um having grown up in Bolton and now raising their family in Bolton. So uh that was really great. We're off to an awesome start. We started talking a little bit about um what we wanted the school experience to be like for kids, what we wanted uh the work environment to be like for staff. Um some of those were overlapped a little bit and so that was really neat. We talked a little bit about uh educating the whole child, making sure that our students leave our school system with skills. Obviously, we want them to have content, but real world skills, communication, problem
069solving, uh being able to work with other people, um in those those types of skills we talk about a lot. So, I think we have had a really good first night. You can chime in if you want, people that were there. Um, I thought it was a great first kickoff to um our process and I'm looking forward to seeing uh what the next steps are going to be. But I'm excited about uh what that plan is going to end up being. I think it's going to be um uh a better version, improved version of what we currently have. I think we're going to use what we have as a nice foundation. Um and you heard the work that's going on in in our district right now as it aligns to the plan and uh looking
070forward to the new one. So that was great. Um, I attended my first legislative breakfast this morning as a superintendent. A lot of area superintendents went to Coventry High School. Miss Gold Snider myself attended. Uh, we had a few legislators there and just kind of listening to what some of the concerns were. Uh, a lot of the superintendents, all the superintendents there, uh, represented smaller districts. Um, and so we have sometimes some unique concerns and needs in smaller districts than larger districts do. So, it was nice that they take time out of their day to hear our concerns that they can bring back to the legislative session that I think is going to be happening next week. Um, a lot of it obviously is around budget and money that we get from the state. One
071person said very appropriately today that, you know, there's a discrepancy with funds that large school districts get in small districts, but the cost of a roof for one building in a big district is the same cost as a roof for a building in a small district. So, um, having conversations about that, having conversations on how the state can offset the impact that special education costs have on districts also was a was a big topic for discussion. Um, that was followed up this afternoon by my URS NASA meeting, which is area superintendent um, of small districts. Um, the budget process dominated those conversations. Some of them uh they asked for to put in the chat what people are coming in at with their budgets as some are starting to finalize their proposals right now. Uh just
072to f um fire off a few local districts 8.9% 5.9% 7% and 11%. Uh they're coming in in pretty high. Um and the major driver for these are special ed costs and um and the cost of uh contractual obligations. Most of the increases right now are just the fixed costs that that we incur year after year. And I I know we're experiencing some of that right now as we work through ours. Um but just wanted to give you an idea of what's happening around around Bolton. Um I had >> too stationary right now. We need a movement >> classroom. >> Um another exciting thing I I want to bring your attention to, I had a conversation with Mr. Hum over break and Mr. about our our gym and trying to um improve the atmosphere for
073kids when they come in the gymnasium and and organizing a student section, having some signage up there and um and also uh refreshing our gym lobby when people come in. Uh maybe getting some pictures of our student athletes up there and and liven it up a little bit and um showcase our kids. So, I think that'll be that'll be a neat neat update to to the gymnasium. That's it. Uh, is there any questions? >> Any big thing themes coming out of student chats? >> Uh, you know, I I think I mentioned this before. One common theme and is, you know, is they they all have said that they love the fact that Bolton High School is small. They rave about the small class sizes. They rave about the connections that they make with teachers. Um,
074they often talk about connections they make with teachers. K12. And I know I've just met with the high school students, but they often have mentioned teachers or adults at the K8 school, too. And that's something that was mentioned last night um at at our um strategic planning meeting is, you know, how kids are supported in this district from K12 and beyond. Um one of the persons in my group last night talked about how even after graduation from high school, they maintain contact and support from staff members in both of them, which was kind of cool. So, that that was one of the themes. Another big theme was uh with the high school kids, they all rave about the improved lunch. They all say that the lunch in the cafeteria is much improved from last year.
075Um they love that. That's been a big hit. Um even though I had nothing to do with it, I took credit for it with them, but yeah, they love that. So, those are a couple themes that came out of it. um those budget numbers that you're referencing, do we have any indication about how our insurance increase is going to be this year? They they're monitored some obnoxious numbers like they did last year or do we not know? >> The last update we got was they said budget between I think 15 and 16%. So we're sitting at 17% to try to be safe. >> Wow. which is >> high every year. >> Um, but some districts are reporting 40 and 50% increases. >> All right. Is there any other questions? Um, moving on to unfinished business
076and the wellness policy that we have now had a month to digest and analyze. Um, guess we are looking for a motion to approve policy 5140 wellness. Anyone interested in making such motion? Some move. >> Thank you, Dan. Is anyone want a second? >> A second. >> Um, okay. Does anyone have any questions or comments or suggestions or issues? All right. Um, all those in favor of the motion, please say I. >> I s opposed or abstaining. Okay. Um, now new business. Uh, resignations. >> We have one resignation. uh Noah Fila, a BCS PAR educator, has left us. We wish him uh best of luck in his future endeavors >> and uh the cafeteria feed it forward donation. >> Yes, we um we had two donations um to help offset some of the cost incurred
077from um student unpaid launches. >> Sounds great. really nice. >> We'll do this as future I guess really the so we're going to send out an email with the committee assignments but the futuress of this business is communications um committee we do not currently have one. I think everyone here is likely thinking that this is a good idea. Um, and we were going to Did we ever figure out if there's any formality? I I don't think that there's formality to committee formation. So, I guess if we're all in favor of that then um we should have a communication committee and I don't know uh I know several people had indicated interest. So that's the only one that's really up in the air except for policy. Policy only Jud Stall had said if needed I believe.
078>> Yeah. So um Chris Davyy was as an editor a natural fit for this role and we don't enjoy having him anymore. So, um I guess the policy. So, we have for finance and I have submitted your names to the town clerk and she'll be emailing you if she hasn't done so already. Um Ben Davies and D Johnson for finance and that will entail the monthly meeting with internal and then um the finance committee meetings which I believe there's one maybe next week um regarding Kappa. Kappa is the capital asset planning and allocation which is um the charter requires that uh one mil be spent on our infrastructure. Um sometimes it's more but um that responsibility with the charter change two years ago is now the finance committee's um purview. So um we generate a
079list typically as a board of ed and then the town does and then the finance committee we used to have a kappa committee that was some of us similarly the finance committee some of the selectman and some of town folk um but now that's just part of the finance committee um so I believe that that meeting is coming up um >> buildings in grant >> cath next I believe cap is next Tuesday. >> Okay. Um uh the buildings and grounds committee was sort of overlapping with Kappa prior to this change. So since it has since the change, we have not met maybe as often as we should um considering the variety of issues that we've dealt with. Uh but we have Ben and myself for that. We are open to another person although we have
080meetings scheduled as needed. So we have to come up with kind of a new meeting and deal with uh John Butcherich and see if you know maybe it's still as needed or maybe it's a quarterly or something but um we have not been meeting much and I think we should meet more personnel. We have myself, uh, Ashley Felen, and Dr. Perkins. Um, that's also scheduled as needed. And, um, we have teacher negotiations coming up next fall. Maybe um, a meeting, uh, this spring to discuss a couple of things. curriculum. I already mentioned we have Ashley Poli staying on as curriculum and Jennifer Stall stepping up. And then policy is the only question. Does anyone else have any interest in being on our policy committee? It's scheduled as needed. Also, um, historically speaking, I would say
081that sometimes we've have a number of policies, but, um, we redid many of our series, um, a couple of years ago. Sometimes over the summer, there'll be like a list. Uh, but are you willing to serve still on policy >> for some help? So well likely take your volunteers hear from anybody else about that communication. Um I believe we had several potential people. So um I think Dr. Perkins fall maybe someone else say communication I don't remember and all finance is big so I won't ask >> but um maybe Ashley put that down person >> she's not here tell her she >> why don't we I'll send an email specifically >> but I think that she had said that she was interested in being on there and then transportation um we have again Dr. Perkins
082Ashley, the two Ashley's actually um for transportation um which will be um contract is out to bid. So we have to have a meeting or to but um I don't know how involved that'll be and we'll have to communicate once you have >> something to discuss. Y >> but uh then we will not have much in the way of meetings for several hundred years. And then we had a couple other representatives. Um, historically, one was the PTA, although we have very good PTA representation now. Um, so I don't think we have to have somebody who necessarily attends the meetings and reflects. Although also Ashley Boli was a former board member and also I know someone who is a very good board member also. And um I think we have enough awareness to report out in
083your absence. So we don't I don't think need to have a specific PTA. >> Um we did have a crack rep also. Um historically speaking, again, nobody has done that in the last couple of years. I volunteered to do that last spring, but it was never connected with when the meetings are. I think they were like the first Wednesdays of the month or something. I think it was like during the day, so it's hard for anyone to make it there. >> Um, I don't know if we can get to the bottom of whether or not it's appropriate for us to even have a crack. It was kind of like you went to a monthly meeting and you kind of had an idea of what was going on in the magnet schools, but like >> and
084like some of their long-term visioning, but we do have kids from town that do go to these schools. So maybe it's a good idea, but I don't remember that much useful coming out of the meetings that like was anything that business that felt to us for instance was more just an awareness and then the other rep that we had was for the scholarship fund and I had said that I wasn't even sure that we had a formal rep um volunteered to do that and was wondering if it was appropriate because you have kids that might fall in that but So, as far as I was concerned, Chris Davey had been our scholarship. If if we did have a rep, he would report out on what was going on at scholarship meetings mostly just to say
085we met and we've gotten our applications or we we're reviewing the applications or that kind of thing. I know the scholarship fund is always looking for help. Um, >> yeah. Trish didn't seem concerned about it. She >> Oh, yeah. And I think Chris just when it came time for, you know, his own child to apply for scholarships, he just wasn't in the decision making parts of the meeting. So, um, we'd be happy to have you do that. I'm sure they would be happy to have anybody. So, I think just with communication, but did we >> we want to decide a everybody's in favor of having communication, right? I think it's important. I think that um I know that the board hasn't you know our outreach to the town especially when it comes to budget seasons
086and like what's going on in the schools and just to sort of let everybody know about all the good things that are going on like you said maybe everybody's on our social media you know we do have like the videos that come out are great like the social media posts are great also so it's just nice to build the sense of let the community know all the good things that are happening So, as far as the membership, are we going to say >> Dr. Perkins and Ashley install as well? >> Okay. I know that you had said, but you don't want to >> feel free and we can always, you know, these are not set in stone. >> They don't have to be there. So, and then you said policy. Yes. >> Thank you. >>
087Okay. So, we'll send out that email and I think we're all set there. >> And does we have any other features? >> All righty. Looking for a motion to adjourn. >> Second. >> Uh questions. Uh all those in favor please say I. >> Oh. anyone post start using >> one time uh it like fell apart like several years ago. >> Thank you everybody. Thank you.