001we'll go right to the celebration of excellence and we'll turn it over to mrs hecht great thank you very much well it is my great honor this evening to introduce the 2021 valedictorian of bolton high school brooke begin let's give brooke a round of applause brooke has involved herself in many parts of bolton high school to name a few she has served as president of student council vice president of national honor society took part in many extracurricular activities including volleyball where she served as captain brooke has received many awards and this reflects how hard-working and determined brooke truly is she was recently you may remember the recipient of this year's scholar athlete award as well as the cave award brooke will be attending bentley university in the fall to study actuarial sciences brooke congratulations to
002you and to your family well done young lady well done would you like to say anything thank you i really appreciate it great job congrats next it is my honor to present this year's salutatorian for the graduating class of 2021 and that honor goes to marshall flowers marshall congratulations thank you sure marshall involves himself in different aspects of bolton high school he currently serves as president of national honor society a varsity letter winner in all four years in cross country and track and continuously volunteers for his community marshall's teachers report that he has exceptional academic credentials great work ethic and leadership skills as well as determination that will set him up for success and a desire to continuously learn marshall will be attending the university of connecticut in the fall to study computer science marshall
003congratulations to you and your family would you like to say anything um yeah i mean thank you for having me here means a lot that's awesome congratulations and well deserved brooke and marshall both well done next we have some cass connecticut association of schools awards the first set of awards is for the cast scholar leader for bolton center school and our first recipient is emma derosiers congratulations emma thank you you're welcome emma is one of this year's recipients of the cass awards she is a motivated dependable student who always gives her best as a high honor student emma's dedication to her academics is admirable she has proven to be resilient her commitment and dedication to her studies has never wavered teachers can always rely on emma to be an active participant in class work well
004with her peers and contribute to fostering a positive classroom climate she exudes the park expectations and understands the importance of treating one another with respect and kindness kindness especially during difficult times when asked one thing she has learned this year she said i learned that mental health and well well-being are more important than most people think when it comes to school and learning emma's heartfelt responses showcases her maturity and self-awareness truer words were never spoken young lady very insightful she is also a dedicated athlete she's been a member of school cross-country teams in sixth grade even offering up weekend personal time to help out it meets she enjoys playing rec league soccer is a voracious reader and she has aspirations to be a marine biologist congratulations emma to you and your family well done thanks
005a lot you're welcome congratulations our next bcs cast scholar leader recipient is shepherd livingston congratulations shepard thank you welcome shepard is an extremely engaged student both academically and extracurricularly he's received high honors all throughout his middle school years thanks to his unbelievable dedication and intrinsic desire to push himself and his learning further aside from his passion he has many others including running cross-country sharing his love of spelling words with the spelling team and participating in student council he also shows strong leadership skills through his involvement in boy scouts as well as other community service groups and projects he also embodies the bark expectations for bolton center school he's extremely reliable can always be counted on to do his very best not only is he an advocate for himself but he also extends assistance to others
006to help them achieve success as well when asked about the one thing he has learned this year he said i learned that i enjoy being around people and learning in a school environment more than i ever realized touche on that as well young man very insightful uh shepherd aspires to be an engineer business owner investor philanthropist or athlete congratulations shepard to you and your family well done sir would i say anything else shepard no i don't have anything to say just thank you all right that's awesome it's great that you're outside i think that's wonderful our next award is the bhs cass award at the high school for lillian gearing congratulations lillian this is a motivated and talented young artist lily is not afraid to challenge herself and develop her work to meet her vision
007her work has been shown in various exhibits and some examples include students art showcase at the art center east gallery in vernon and the annual artists of bolton arts show lily's learning extends beyond high school's art courses she attended summer intensive course at rhode island school of design and has taken uconn ece drawing one at bolton high school she chose to focus her senior capstone on animation because of the experience that she had gained for her project she challenged herself to create her own cgi animation short her capstone presentation was inspirational and honest she comfortably shared the setbacks and successes that she encountered throughout the creative process of her project she learned so much from the capstone experience and is eager to continue to study animation at the college level during these challenging times lily
008has turned to art to keep her centered and focused and she is dedicated to making her own way and being successful in her search for a place in the arts community lilly congratulations on this recognition she is planning to study virtual reality development at ringling college of art and design in sarasota florida congratulations lily to you and your family she's in the chat and says thank you our next uh cass award recipient this evening from bolton high school is george takulski congratulations george george is a young man who's an excellent student a talented musician and performer and helpful kind individual with a wonderful sense of humor he's received numerous honors in performing arts throughout his high school career he's been a featured soloist during several school choral performances including an adjudicated music festival in washington
009d.c in the spring of 2018. he was accepted by audition to eastern region music festival in 2018 as a tenor singer and again in 2019 as well he also represented bolton at the n triple c music festival during his first two years of high school in early 2020 he was accepted in connecticut all-state music festival chorus through a highly competitive audition process in fact he was only one of two students from bolton high school accepted to allstate in the past 10 years it go george he's also performed lead roles in bolton high school drama club productions high school musical urinetown the adams family and a christmas carol and in the music classroom he has consistently served as a strong leader and role model who always supports and encourages other students george is planning on studying
010history and international policy at the university of limerick ireland say hello to my countryman george please congratulations to jordan and his family on this honor well done george so i say thee thank you so much thank you you're welcome congratulations next we have our scholar athletes from bolton high school so the scholar athlete program annually recognizes two high school seniors from each member high school whose academic and athletic careers have been exemplary whose personal standards and achievement are modeled to others and who possess high levels of integrity self-discipline and courage brooke begin is this year's female scholar athlete from bolton high school congratulations brooke thank you brooke is a passionate driven and involved young lady her self-discipline and integrity have her following her own path leading her school community could i just ask everyone to
011put their microphones on mute please in the classroom brooke strives for excellence and a deeper understanding throughout her classes she's not afraid to ask questions and reflect upon her own learning she challenges herself by enrolling in three ap classes and a yukon early college experience course her organization and pursuit of knowledge have allowed her to excel in these rigorous courses she exemplifies what it means to be an outstanding student athlete she is an active member of our school community showing her leadership through student council and various clubs she's participated in a number of extracurricular activities including being a member of student council youth group and drama club she's an integral member of the class of 2021 and on the volleyball court doing whatever the class and the team needs to be done she's also shapes
012the school by being vice president then president of bolton high school student council she's very driven on the volleyball court she's been a member of varsity team since her junior year eager to play any position asked of her she puts forward extra effort throughout the season to make herself the best that she can be brooke is a leader with the girls and does not put up with any drama she has shown tremendous growth as an athlete and a member of the bolton high school team and is a role model for our younger athletes one part of brook that stands out is her faith she fully integrates its values in her life she is accepting of her peers and finds purpose in giving back to the community she is grounded and purposeful in her actions she
013shows acceptance respect and empathy to those around her it is for these qualities that brook begin is so worthy a recipient of the scholar athlete award congratulations thanks so much you're welcome well deserved and finally this evening last but certainly not least our scholar athlete for uh the males jack gallagher congratulations jack jack excels academically and he has enveloped himself in every aspect of bolton high school he's one of the special individuals who has and will continue to make significant contributions in his future field of study workplace and surrounding community he has worked tirelessly to balance rigorous course load and is reliable and consistent participant in many clubs and activities such as student council president of future business leaders of america mentor for unified sports and vice president of the donut club in addition to
014his high grades his strong service and character has secured his spot on the national honor society as well as serving the board for two years he's a 12 letter varsity athlete meaning he has played soccer basketball and golf at the varsity level at bolton high school since grade nine his leadership shines on the various playing fields and he serves as captain of the soccer and basketball teams in his spare time he shares his athletic talent with others through his volunteer coaching of town recreational teams as well as his part-time work as a soccer referee jack gibbs 100 on and off the field and always fosters an inclusive and supportive environment jack is planning on attending uconn in the fall to study finance it's for all these qualities and more that make jack gallagher very deserving
015recipient of this award jack congratulations to you as well well deserved would you like to say anything jack thank you this means a lot i appreciate it congratulations again to all our award recipients can we give them one more round of applause mrs heck if i may could i just throw two pieces of trivia in here uh so for our board members who've been with us in the past recognizing our cast arts award winners and our scholar athletes is it's new to the board and i'm so grateful that you took the time to do that typically those awards are given at a very nice banquet at the aqua turf we sit uh i get the opportunity to sit with families and enjoy a meal and we've really missed out on that so i'm very grateful
016the board took the time to recognize uh george and lily for their cast arts and for uh recognizing brooke and jack for scholar athlete and i would be in so much trouble with mrs midford if i didn't mention that brook began is the first scholar athlete volleyball player at bolton high school so once again brooks setting setting records as we go along we love record setting at bolton high school that's awesome thank you mr miceli and that concludes our celebration of excellence tonight okay go on to any comments or communication from the audience i would like to offer to all our award recipients you are more than welcome to stay and continue to join us or feel free to enjoy the beautiful evening outside totally up to you and congratulations to all of you exactly
017okay i don't hear any comments so let's go ahead to any additions to the agenda not this evening none okay routine business um look we need to approve the minutes from april 8th 2021 the business meeting do we have a motion to approve i'll make that motion thank you second real second thank you um are there any corrections comments okay go ahead and vote um to approve the business meeting minutes all those in favor bye abstentions yes this is ben i abstain okay me too cause that wasn't there um and no any um objections sorry i'm just getting that word good all right approved um point of order i'm not sure that a 302 vote counts as an approval it's not a majority question hmm how many people voted in favor of the minutes only
018three which is not a majority of the board but it's yeah okay sorry wait um hold on andrew's on andrew did you he was on what do we do with this so um why don't we come back to it to it um when it why don't we table it for later on in the meeting have a good idea we'll table that for now okay let's try the april 29th quarterback special meeting well we should table that one too i think staple that one because it's in the same situation why don't we just do that yeah why don't we do all that we'll take it i don't know it may not be well let's try and see what happens yeah i think we're fine for the next one i'm just looking to make sure that i
019was there before i um all right do we have a motion to approve the special meeting minutes so i'll second it thank you thank you ian thank you and any discussion or corrections hearing none um we'll go ahead and any all those in favor say aye any objections opposed sorry abstentions all right that one passed okay so let's go on to the committee reports um curriculum is the first one on there so we met last week we had a great presentation on a new text for environmental science that looks like it's going to be very engaging that you'll hear more from sarah later on there was also an update on world languages which will also be updated later by sarah is there anything else chris that you think of that's it okay um finance committee
020um finance committee met this morning and at this point we are 72 percent expended in our budget compared to last year we were 75 and i think mrs hecht is going to take us through some things in the budget you're on mute thank you mr miscella could you pull up the pdf on transfers please above that first thank you so we have um some transfers uh to share with you this evening the first one is the transfer that the board made at the last board meeting for the 50 000 for uh the chromebooks and i have an update on that we were able to order them we've already received half of them so that's good news i have even better news uh we wrote our sr2 uh grant request to the state and in that
021we had put 20 000 of the 50 000 uh for chromebooks and that grant was approved moving forward with that this past monday uh superintendents across the state had a sort of an emergency call if you will with the state department of education regarding the american rescue plan funds uh which are also esther funds for ease of understanding we'll call those sr3 funds it was made clear in that meeting that the sr-3 funds bolton is receiving 169 000 and some odd dollars of that 169 thousand 20 must be set aside for either summer learning extended learning um helping to address learning loss that is required by federal law for every uh district that's receiving money so having said that it was stated on the call that districts could put in a revision to their sr2
022monies because many districts wrote as did bolton for uh part of that grant to go towards our summer program so we sent in a revision and asked for the chromebooks to be fully paid for out of sr2 and we're going to be putting the summer program into our sr3 grant request our sr2 revision has already been approved so we will be able to return these monies to the town so i wanted to just share that with everyone so that's good news uh we had to purchase the domain uh five-year subscription for the high school on godaddy some more pe instructional supplies some additional supplies in music as well as world language as well as math we needed a laptop power cord supply adapter some more math supplies we need calculator batteries for mathematics we have
023a couple of lines about port-a-potty rentals for outside for spring athletics of busonic uh and cart for pe and to upgrade sound equipment in the commons at bolton high school if we could go back to the other um one please and if we could go to the last page and maybe make it just a little bit bigger please so as you can see here we currently have a projected balance after returning the 275 000 initially that the board committed to next year's budget plus the additional 000 towards next year's budget um we we trued up some more savings due to positions we still have not been able to fill uh so we're looking at that projected balance um the 50 000 that i talked about is in that balance i do anticipate there will still
024be additional monies uh once we finally finalize the year out um so we will be returning uh money to the town that will go towards the following year's budget any questions so are you saying that there's there is or is not more than 50 000 that we could commit to the town now i didn't think we were discussing committing any monies further to the town i didn't say that okay i apologize i must have misunderstood so when i talked about the 50 000 to return i what i meant was we're not going to spend it out of board of ed funds the money that you transferred we're able to spend we're able to purchase the chromebooks with grant funds so we'll be able to return that money because well we'll be returning it this year
025which will go in to the till for not next year's budget but the following years right so okay so my question is we can't i guess my question is can we return it this year so that it goes into the budget that's currently being discussed so certainly the board can do that if they wish to do it the one caution i would offer which i have also shared with the board of finance previously is that if we don't have some monies that just simply get returned once june 30th ends and we finalize our books at the end of the summer we will not have that um to start with for the following budget cycle so while we have a hole now i am very concerned about a what the what the future also brings so
026i just think we have to be i would just urge the board to be cautious um i i think the board has done a great job of of you know having a short money and returning money to go for towards next year's budget but again i i just worry about the following year um just so you know christian your audio is breaking up quite a bit so i'm not sure if we missed some of what you were saying or yeah my internet connection just went unstable can you hear me now yes that seems to be better okay so again i just i am concerned about making sure we're not in a hole for the following year if we don't have some monies that could simply get returned as part of the normal process of events
027that happens every year at the end of a budget cycle okay so i guess i'll make a motion then to approve the uh transfers that are presented this evening thank you so much this is ben thank you you're muted i'm too away guys come on thank you um is that are there any comments or questions okay um all those in favor say aye hi hi aye any opposed abstains absentions sorry all right motion carries and was that everything for finance that's it thank you okay personnel committee do you want to take that ben or i think he's engaged in child care so uh yeah i'm carrying the baby if you could feel this when that would be fantastic uh personnel met on tuesday to uh with the superintendent to discuss her forthcoming review and contract
028and we'll be discussing that with the full board during executive session and then if if i might um i did just i was able to check robert's rules of order and i was actually incorrect earlier um it is just a simple majority that's required and we had a simple majority of the quorum so i guess you think checking it because i no thanks the vote was completed so i think it can be counted as as a proper vote so it was three in favor to abstain correct yeah sue and then abstain thank you for checking yeah i'm sorry i jumped to the wrong conclusion no worries okay that's it for personal and bhs student report please is this their last one no okay on spring sports championship season is quickly approaching the tennis team has
029a record of one and twelve softball has a record of three and eight the boys track team has a record of six and two and the girls track team has a record of three and five both track teams have athletes qualifying for entrepreneurs in state and so far this year there are four new school records set the upperclassmen have started taking apa exams which will continue for the next few weeks the golf team has a record of one in seven and their next match is on this upcoming monday the baseball team has a record of zero and 14 and their next game is tomorrow on friday and students and staff have done a great job following covet guidelines in school for the rest of the year thank you and as always if you want to
030go go ahead thank you for staying with us um community meeting reports chris yes so the correct uh meeting for last month was apparently cancelled at the last moment i never heard heard why uh so obviously i didn't attend that um but the bolton scholarship fund um met last month uh i was also unable to attend that meeting but i can report that uh the deadline for scholarships has closed uh it was uh this past tuesday so all scholarships are are in and um the committee that reviews them is beginning its work and awards will be announced uh in june thank you anything else for committee community reports nope okay and superintendent schools report thank you so first we're going to start with a bolton public school learning update so we return to five days
031a week of in-person learning this past monday uh for distance learning we have eight percent or 44 of our students now uh remote at bcs which our num our numbers are way down which is great and uh 13.5 or 36 of our students are remote at bolton high school again families who have opted for full-time distance learning continue uh to be allowed to learn from home for the remainder of this school year uh we had a we participated with eastern highlands health district in offering a vaccine clinic for students 16 and up uh this past tuesday we had some students from the highest will take advantage of that that was held at coventry high school and we transported uh the students uh by bus there i'd like to thank director goldschneider um for uh going
032with the students as well as one of our nurses and making sure everybody was okay the connecticut state department of public health and the connecticut state department of education will not be mandating due to public health necessity continued voluntary remote learning options for next year as such the bolton public schools will not be providing voluntary daily access to remote learning at the unilateral request of a student or family in the 2021-2022 school year next slide please so there are two exceptions to this for students the first is students who are required to quarantine due to contracting copit19 or being identified as a close contact will be allowed to participate in remote learning students will continue to access instruction through platforms as they've done this year that may include but are not limited to live streaming
033learning management systems school provided materials and or the ct learning hub remote learning may also be utilized according to the state department of education and districts are taking advantage of this for weather related closures and obviously that will be as determined by me on on a particular weather day whether or not we can even do that and now i'm going to turn it over to mr giard for bcs end of the year activities good evening uh the energy of bcs has been very positive now that we're back in person five days a week and we're approaching the end of the year um we're excited to be able to celebrate some of those end of the year activities in person which last year we were not uh the eighth grade parents were notified yesterday afternoon of
034the details for the in-person eighth grade class afternoon on june 3rd and promotion on june 10th both events have a rain date of the next day promotion is going to be on june 10th at 10 a.m at bolton high school so we're going to be utilizing the same setup for both events we let parents know that we'll be following all of the current coveted safety procedures that we've been following and we mentioned that there'll be more information to come about seating parking promotion practices and other logistical pieces of information in addition to the eighth grade events we have virtual parent meetings planned for incoming kindergarten parents fifth to sixth grade transition night and a fifth through eighth grade academic awards assembly which again we didn't have those last year but those are going to be
035virtual that series of events a quick update on the summer alerting program the staff continues to work hard in the planning of the summer learning program and invitations were sent out last week to families and those invitations were based on school team recommendations so far there's been a lot of positive feedback and quick responses next slide for bcs world language update along with planning for the end of the year events we've also been planning for next year part of that planning for next year includes looking at staffing current classes and the master schedule after thoughtful analysis french will not be offered at bcs next year for grades six through 8 students in the 2021-2022 school year it was a very difficult decision it was made after considering many factors given our size and scheduling needs
036we require a dually certified world language teacher and with some uncertainty with that uh french certification is an area of shortage and should we be in a similar situation as we were uh this current year and it's highly unlikely that we would be we'd find a certified teacher to work with the students so for those of you that know we had to have the french students um in during the beginning of the year uh start the ingenuity online program because we didn't have a french teacher and we couldn't find one after posting for it since we didn't have a certified french teacher at the start of this year current sixth through sixth and seventh graders all took spanish so we're in good position next year to offer spanish since all the students this year had
037spanish french is a very specialized program usually about 12 to 15 kids take it each year and it does greatly limit the elementary middle school scheduling options with that said these schedules need to be completed before the end of the school year in order to plan for next year this shift in programming will have very limited impact on the high school students will still have the option to start french in grade nine finally we'll start offer we will not be able to offer fifth grade introductions world languages next year due to covet and various instructional models we were not able to fit into the schedule next year we anticipate needing the time used for grade 5 world language to be used to ensure academic success in english language arts mathematics and science and that concludes
038my report thank you mr giard any questions for mr jared or myself okay hearing none mr macelli good evening um both high school is beginning the process of planning our end of year events we've really tried to reimagine these events to prioritize safety uh while still working to honor as many traditions as we can and i met with seniors excuse me senior families well actually and the seniors too we had a meeting during the day for students at an evening meeting for parents where i outlined the following plan so in terms of prom uh the class of 21 had no problem last year at all uh in the fall the senior class advisors and myself made a 100 commitment to have some kind of prom um this year and and that's not something that all
039schools are doing but but we are so the problem will be in person it'll be just for our seniors and it won't look entirely like a traditional prom we're trying to make sure it's enjoyable and fun lots of of non-traditional things packed in there and our school photographer we will be there on site taking formal photos and each student will receive a free download of that the second event typically held is the senior awards we call it to senior celebrations excuse me friends we usually do scholarships and awards there and this year that will be incorporated into our graduation ceremony so the graduation ceremony this year will be in person at bolton high school and will be live streamed on the bolton high school youtube channel um as mr giard mentioned there's no indoor option
040we really cannot shift this event indoors as we normally would where we say hey this is graduation day we're out if we can and if we need to be we cannot be inside so we um are lucky i feel with it being a thursday because that gives us friday and saturday and sunday to find two hours of sunshine for me and two hours of sunshine for mr g yard and we will work together with the weather prognosticators and figure that out um so we will um include as i mentioned all the awards and scholarships um and we have been in conversation with the buller scholarship fund and we've gotten that all organized to maintain safety of all our families we are issuing six tickets per family and they are going to sit in pods of
041chairs each group of six chairs will be six foot separated from other families and i measured and consulted i took pictures mr mayland uh clark climbed up on the roof and took pictures and we figured out that we are very comfortable in actually going all the way up to six chairs per family so we are we're excited about that the ceremony will not be open to the public as it has been in the past and again charlene will be on hand and um each student will be getting a free download picture of their uh as dean christine johnson likes to call the grin and grab picture that smiley moment when they get their uh their photo and you may or may not know last year we did the drive-in graduation ceremony which included a video
042and we needed images of each graduate so we did a family photo shoot and that was so successful and we really know what we're doing to be efficient and to be safe for that and charlene has graciously arranged that again for this year's seniors we're asking all families to schedule a time on sunday may 23rd and most families already have and that's an opportunity to come out no sitting fee no fee at all to charlene a free digital download and then if families wanted to purchase other stuff there may be a depending on how many people they bring there might be quite a collection of photos as a special moment for this year and that concludes my report if there are any questions i'd be happy to entertain them chris thank you uh since it
043will be in person and family members will be there will we be reviving the tradition of former graduates family member who's graduated or alumni presenting diplomas short answers yes two caveats um we continued that tradition last year uh even though i was not there um they were by themselves but we still did it last year and charlene captured that and we live streamed that but yes it will involve my theme this year for graduation is um streamlined and live streamed so in order to make that happen um what mr dave is referring to is a very long-standing tradition of if you are a bolton high school graduate and you have a or if you're graduating and you have a family member or an employee of the bolton board of education or a board of education
044member as a family member they can present the diploma when your name is read so doing that and keeping all the guidelines in place have created some logistical challenges for me that i promise i will overcome i've got it mapped out in my tired little brain but we will be continuing that tradition this year yes sir i believe miss goldschneider has something to report out as well regarding preschool right i just thank you i just wanted to mention that we are doing um a preschool screening this year we're trying to get our preschool program up and running again fully for next year so we are having a screening on the afternoon of uh may 25th which is a tuesday it will be um a lot different than it usually is but we had tried to
045figure out a way to do a preschool screening by a zoom or google and with three and four year olds it just doesn't work that way we need to kind of hear them talk and listen to them and try to you know get peers for the program so we are doing it in person we're doing very small groups um four children one adult for each child and it's all outside so um very short session like 20 minutes to a half hour session for a screening and it is again on the afternoon of may 25th with the rain date of may 26th and we don't have four or five additional rain dates so we're hoping for a sun for at least two hours on one of those days so there are screening flyers and applications up
046on the district website if you have a three or four year old child will be three by the first day of school and four-year-olds so go ahead and fill out your applications thank you thank you all right that brings us to a strategic plan update so before i introduce mrs malinowski to talk more about it i just want to remind everybody about our mission statement to inspire all students to grow as learners individuals and citizens and that our vision statement is that all students in the bolton public schools are empowered to embrace learning as a healthy mindset continually build knowledge develop skills and become engaged global citizens we have used our strategic plan um as our roadmap throughout this year and i'm i'm thankful that that we have the road map it's it's been very
047helpful and it's been a good great uh sort of north star for us so with that mrs malinowski good evening everyone uh to make it a little more clear our goals you can see a little more clearly on this slide uh first goal of being student success the second one caring culture the third one talent development and of course the fourth one with resource stewardship and this has certainly been a year where we've been able to focus on all of these goals throughout all of the work that we've done i will say that certainly goals one and two had a lot of activity this year so the rest of this presentation will be a combination of uh my annual curriculum update as well as professional development update uh and how all of that aligns to
048our strategic plan so next slide please mr maseli as you had seen in the winter we used the images for each one of our goals with student success caring culture talent development and resource stewardship where they align to the different areas so in all for to me all of these goals are to support all these growth goals our curricula work curriculum work this year we really did need to work at prioritizing our goals we've continued that look into the spring so that we know where to start the fall that will continue into next year so we've already started the work as to plan for next year it's been a year of really seeing what is essential looking at our priority goals and standards in all curriculum areas and you'll see that as we review the
049different curricular areas we've also added quite a bit of community building and sells just back joe scl activities into all units and all content areas as well as one thing that you've heard throughout the year this year was a slower pace we needed to be because we had so many different learning environments and by doing that we also learned what was essential in our curriculum and what perhaps we will save when we have a little more time and to to reorganize there was also as you had heard less opportunities for hands-on experiences for safety reasons so we continued to look at various resources that allowed for alternative activities but also opportunities for individual hands-on experiences the learning resources really changed this year the management systems of seesaw and google enterprise were essential and we will
050continue to use those next year as well the ongoing professional learning technology has been like no other and it has been part of our everyday work so teachers are not waiting for a special time to learn about technology this year it's part of our conversation everything we're doing we're looking at ways of capitalizing on that great professional collegiality and sharing as we move forward with our professional development plans we've also had quite a few additions to our online resources the common end-of-day planning was to support the teaching and learning was essential for this year and we are very grateful to the board for offering us that time so i don't want to end this year without acknowledging your great support and allowing us to be able to do the hard work that needs to be
051done we couldn't have done that without it um we are looking forward to getting back to a normal schedule next year but we do want to thank you for the time and the grace and the space for this year um that includes having the opportunity to move our wednesdays to remote that allows allowed us to meet with learners but also the opportunity to collaborate in a way that was just essential so a huge thank you thank you from the staff from the administrators for your again endless support as part of that i'm just going to detour joe this is where i'm going to take it for a moment the professional development piece as part of um the work that i typically present hopefully everybody is seeing the 2021 professional learning summary i do oops not
052yet i didn't hit claire share it's clear not share there we go is everybody seeing the 2021 professional learning thank you this was also sent to the board members every year i do provide an overview and these are the big topics of what we covered this year this certainly does not cover every little detail but these were the big things that we did for professional learning at the top of our list there was um many days devoted to anti-racist leadership and educator training for administrators and teachers the leadership development continued with for the administrative team and the academic leaders all of our work with personalized professional learning goals were also related to our district goals and again that was very responsive to the learning needs this year team training i was also very impressed with
053our staff that so many people stepped up to take on student teachers as well as mentor new teachers as you know we had quite a few new teachers and the support for beginning teachers does provide a lot of training prior and also you may not be aware that many colleges really struggled this year placing beginning teachers and we were new teachers student teachers and we were able to accept student teachers so again thankful to teachers for having taken on that added layer this year we also spent a lot of time with our curriculum with analysis and refinement as i've spoken to about momentarily ago uh the integration of scl and technology tools blended learning and ap art had a huge focus this year for curriculum changes in our instruction and assessment blended learning uh again
054the job embedded technology pd ready math instructional coaching blended learning playlist now this sounds similar but it is a little bit different this was a grant we received from the state of connecticut and we had 24 hours of free professional development and we're even more fortunate to have a the staff developer from correct who's been with us for five years now so we had a great continuity of service with that and that was especially focused for our k5 teachers for how to reach all of our learners to supplement that we also made sure that our middle school teachers had opportunities for blended learning experiences and focusing with reading and writing workshop strategies for eal students equity in action our life both of our librarians went through a specific training about looking at equity and doing
055equity audits for our libraries we have had continued pd on strategies for working with specific specific student needs our new visonic boards gave us an opportunity for some more training uconn ece instructional training desmos is a specific math software that was used and then work on our success criteria so going back to the presentation mr miceli i'll turn that back to you so in each content area you will see that just as in the winter we presented the work that we did for the curriculum overview the critical resources and here the teachers and departments specifically listed what were essential there were other resources used but these were the essential resources so you can see in english language arts um you'll see things specific such as the teachers college videos won't be showing up in another
056content area so i'm not going to read everything because we will be here all night we have all the content areas listed here but i'll give you a moment to take a look at the various critical resources and these are mostly online resources but not all of the time and then the professional learning that was specifically pertinent to this content area is also listed so while teachers participated in other ones listed these were the ones that helped that so this is information directly from the teachers that they felt specifically supported them this year so you see a bit of their their reflection here and moving on to the next slide in math we do have the ready math program which is an online program and so that did give us a leg up and providing
057access to resources and again our teachers need to spend some time learning about all the new resources that they put out for us and likewise at the other levels such as cuda works which i believe we've presented at the board before on how that allows our older students to be able to use digital devices more easily and then again you can see the professional learning important to the math department and then the next slide in science we see our focus on the ngss standards i did fail to mention that in english math and science you may have seen that the elementaries were prioritized standards that was information and support given to us from the state department of education at the upper levels we did not they did not prioritize our standards so the teachers worked
058together to do that based on our curriculum the one piece from the science department they did feel find that the engineering practices were integrated less frequently because many of those were related to labs and as we talked about earlier that that was just more challenging this year for that so that is something we're paying attention to for next year as an area to make sure that we're not missing any learning areas for students and again you will see our critical resources and professional learnings social studies again you can see the teachers reflections on the standards that they covered uh you do see in social studies in the k-8 level this is where they had a specific integration of our sel program second steps so that was a specific area content area where that was integrated
059more deliberately that was not the only place it was delivered but that was where they found some more natural ties and then again the 912 did feel that they prioritized their standards but given the different learning environments there were challenges of getting it to some of the depth especially in some of the analytical pieces it's hard to hold debates in zoom or google format as we can all imagine just holding a meeting some days is our success so finding the other ways of doing some of that deeper level so again that's what we've noted in our curricular documents and we'll be paying attention to our learners next year you can also see our world language eighth grade uh was edgenuity this year was an online resource for this school year uh which also helped a
060little bit in our decision for that that just reinforced the challenge of of trying to provide a quality program and felt that you know we just we're not doing our students the services that is bolt in quality um and then moving on to cte courses now the cte that will be business family consumer science tech ed these areas uh are hands-on and so those are the areas that the teachers really did feel that they went more slowly and covered a little bit less just by virtue of what their content areas are again very thankful for the many resources that helped pe and health likewise uh the challenge of sharing pe equipment and as we saw throughout the year the challenges with athletics safety was first and so i do give all the teachers where their
061content areas are mostly hands on c to e p e r arts which we haven't talked about yet our teachers certainly went above and beyond in trying to make meaningful learning experiences and we're excited that many of these activities that we tried and learned about will carry on into next year and only enhance our experiences when we get back to some of the more hands-on and shared materials experiences and the arts again i know that we had a presentation earlier this year the challenge with music we was quite significant and so that did have an impact on what students were able to do likewise with art being able to make sure all students had the appropriate space and materials that just was more work that the teachers need to find their ways around and again
062hats off to our teachers for the for the amazing job that they did given all the challenges that were put in front of them for that and our next steps so as you've already heard about this evening there's been grant funding for summer programming uh and as superintendent mentioned there's more grant funding that we'll be looking to support other ways of making sure we're not not missing any learners seeing what unfinished learning might be there how we can accelerate that learning any of those gaps so that we can get our students back on track as soon as possible and so fortunately state federal government is seeing that this is a they're committed to a multi-year plan and we are actively planning for how we will begin next year now teachers are really just doing the
063final steps at documenting what they need to in the curriculum so that we can pick up at the beginning of the year with you know getting to know our kids and i'm going to be optimistic and that glass half full when we're back in class and seeing some smiling faces and and um really getting to know our kiddos in ways that were as educators way more comfortable with and so fortunately we will have some funding and some opportunities to enhance our programming the summer programming again is for this summer only we learned an awful lot about ways of integrating sel activities and again that will be continue next year and certainly harness all the learning from this year i know that people are exhausted overwhelmed and some people are like let's put this year behind
064us but i have to be very honest it is amazing to see the incredible new learning from teachers and students and we are working to capture the best of that so that we can bring that forward because much of that is very well aligned to the mastery work we had started a number of years ago with a portrait of a graduate so we started talking about how we can harness all of that and begin moving forward in the work that we had started and then finally of course we would like to continue with exploring and learning and using the best of the online resources and blended learning experiences because we did learn that when students have more choice and opportunities to show what they learned that it's a it's better for them and teachers are
065much more comfortable with the new ways of students showing their learning so we're excited to continue with that piece so with that that concludes my overview again all of this is to support our strategic goals and our portrait of a graduate as we empower build develop and become any questions well done thank you thank you was that everything mrs hecht yep i'm sorry that concludes uh superintendent's report for this evening thank you thank you is unfinished business we have the 2021-2022 budget yes so the board of selectmen voted to postpone the budget referendum uh until june uh there is a new budget meeting scheduled with the board of finance on thursday may 27th both the town and the board of education have been asked to provide health insurance budget information at that meeting as a
066result of open enrollment which will close on may 24th so um because sal and i are going to be really busy for a couple of days getting that all uh worked out uh i also shared with the board of finance and i've shared this with with board members before that um it is likely in fact i'm certain of it that we will be needing to add monies to special education uh to next year's budget uh as a result of recent unanticipated changes i've shared that with the board of finance as well and this piece will also be a part of what we share at the may 27th board of finance meeting i believe the board of finance's intent is to hopefully uh set the budget at that meeting um and likely make further reductions based
067on the numbers that are brought forward uh potentially it is possible that there may be additional uh information um to be shared in terms of monies that will be coming to the town of bolton although that has not been uh officially announced or shared to my knowledge at least at this point um so i think they felt strongly that a little more time was wise and prudent uh before they set a budget number and sent that to referendum that is it for the 2021-2022 budget update thank you um new business we have the first read on the environmental science textbook yes thank you so it is time for us to purchase a new environmental science textbook for our yukon environmental science program our current text is woefully outdated and so mrs carvalho did an excellent
068job at comparing various texts and communicating actually with uconn about different resources and actually has chosen the text that yukon does not use because she found a text that was actually better lined to their syllabus that she felt offered more opportunities for having an ebook as well as a textbook in an affordable manner but also aligned to the ap exam so should we ever be in the position where and i can't imagine this would happen but you never know so let's always plan if um uconn was not available for credit this uh course would then be aligned to the ap course with minor modifications you know and um so that also serves us well in that regard so we would like to offer up the text name is um in ba uh i guess sorry
069i just switched my slide and i didn't need to is titled environment the science behind the stories we would be interested in purchasing approximately against varies based on our enrollment so her numbers are based on how many kids over the past few years but approximately 30 texts and she would like to purchase or we would like to purchase the e-text and for 30 e-text copies which is a six-year license it's 3629 we would also recommend purchasing some hardcover textbooks for various learners or should that resource be needed uh and if we had bought 30 of the hardcover taxes four thousand four hundred and forty dollars so um you know it's just a small ask to add for three to five hard copy texts so we do have a hard copy text that is available for
070a public viewing of this text and we would like to put that out for first read thank you um mr suspect i'm guessing you are the resignations yes ma'am so uh i would like to inform the board that our cafeteria manager debbie bogner will be retiring at the end of this school year i say that with great sadness she has been a godsend for us as we uh maneuvered the pandemic in the area of food services which has been a tremendous challenge she is going to be greatly missed and i would like to thank her for her dedicated service of 21 years to the bolton public schools and i wish her health and happiness and enjoyment with those grandbabies in retirement and that is it for resignations this evening okay any future business no okay
071to move to executive session what do we do yes so we need a motion uh to adjourn to executive session and invite me to attend please okay does anyone make that motion i'll make a motion uh to adjourn to executive session to discuss the superintendent's evaluation and contract and to invite the superintendent to join us i'll second that any discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed abstentions okay we're moving to executive session recording stopped joe can you be the last one that stays on so you can make sure i'm all set here absolutely thank you