001good evening everybody uh chair bro neal is uh not able uh to attend this evening due to a uh work um piece that ended up being an emergency this afternoon at work for him so i'm going to turn it over uh to the vice chair sue pike and i do apologize for my attendance at home tonight i had a procedure on my back today and i'm not allowed to drive so home i am sue over here this meeting is being recorded okay it is 6 30 and we'll call the meeting to order do we do comments from the audience first or pledge i will start with pledge of allegiance okay just making sure thank you all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which
002it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you now we'll do comments from the audience please thank you did anyone get anything in writing do not receive any okay then we'll move on to any additions to the agenda i do not have any this evening okay um routine business items approval of the minutes from september 10th 2020. we'll need a motion i'll make a motion to approve the minutes thank you that's a motion from chris davey second three a second thank you thank you any discussion comments corrections hearing none um do we have um a vote to approve them if you approve the minute say i i i i any opposed abstentions okay minutes approved um committee reports i was on the curriculum committee we met on wednesday and
003or tuesday sorry and we had a description of a potential personal finance 2 kick course for next year that sounds really promising and we're hopeful that happens there's also a search for a music theory textbook and we also had an update on how the stuff staff is addressing standards that were not fully met in the previous year which is going very well so sarah did you want to add anything to that okay um finance committee right um okay so the budget is 15 expended and coronavirus is an ever-changing landscape um and i'd like kristen just to review a few transfers that happen sure thank you ann so we have a uh we needed to get an online remote access for spanish text and it was just a transfer um from bcs to bhs again same
004thing um for from bcs to bhs and then an online french instruction for grade 8 it's just a from one line to another for bcs and that is for the program that we are using for eighth grade uh french at this time due to the fact that we do not have a teacher at this time the teacher is out uh funding for testing materials again it was just inline transfers reclassification from bolton high school to bolton center school for instructional supplies uh equipment reclass from bcs to replace chromebook cords just from one line to another and additional wireless mics for teachers to use when wearing masks so our remote learners can hear from one line to another at bcs and then additional funds to cover the cost of high power portable wireless speakers or pe
005so that the kids can hear again that was a re-class as well or a move from one line to another i apologize and that is not for transfers are there any questions i can't see everybody so i have a question christian thank you chris are there any updates on the uh reimbursement process from the state for coveted expenses so that's coming later in my report tonight thank you you're welcome okay i guess we can move on to our student reps report i'm not sure if emily's on this so i'll go first so the seniors are preparing for the team next which is being held on wednesday the 14th the boys soccer team is one two and the girls oh and three and their next games will be held tomorrow boys playing away at copyright girls
006playing home at against coventry and then spectators for the sports games there's only allowed at outdoor events with a limit of two spectators per athlete and those players will bring their own chairs this thank you jack um okay i don't know that i can't see everybody right now but i don't think our other student is on yeah she couldn't make it tonight yeah thank you we need to go back i was just going to we need to go back to the finance committee yes please to for transfers so we need a motion to accept the transfers for september september maria makes a motion to accept the transfers thank you for you second got i'll second it okay any discussion okay hearing none um if you approve the transfers say aye aye aye any opposed abstained
007okay that motion carries jack i am sure you have things to do tonight young man you do not need to stay on if you don't want to but thank you thank you thanks jack do we have any commun community meeting reports nothing okay superintendent of schools report great thank you uh i'd like to turn it over to uh casal and deb wagner and heather plourde for an update on food services please hi i'm heather port i'm the director of food services for east con and as you know i oversee the fulton food service program um so we put a little presentation together to kind of give you an oversight of where we left off last year and kind of how we've jumped into this year um um so as you see we projected the projected
008revenue last year was 257 000 we landed at 227 000 um considering covet and as you'll see going through the um emergency meals actually really helped us considering um we were able to stay act i mean stay collecting reimbursements from the federal government um we're feeding the families and the students of bolton um so you can see the projected all the way down and then the actual so we where we really fell short was the actual sales and that was because of the closure of schools once we closed schools we couldn't sell our car or any of them the cash deals that we did but our reimbursements went up based on the free um excuse me the uh reimbursements being fully free so we got free reimbursement dollars for every meal that we were able
009to distribute during um march through june so as you can see during school how many meals we sold and then we continued to distribute meals through the end of june and we did almost 18 000 more meals during closure so that was pretty impressive so in total i mean you can see the numbers the staff worked really really hard and um got a lot of kids fed it was an average about 100 students a day that we fed out of bolton um seven days a week we're receiving breakfast and lunch out of the fulton kitchen so that's impressive unfortunately because we didn't land exactly where we wanted to we ended up in a deficit but considering what we all have gone through in the last several months four thousand dollars or forty five hundred dollars
010almost in a deficit is pretty fantastic considering um we got to pay all of our employees the entire contracted wage for their annual agreement regardless of hours worked so that was awesome and they still got to feed people we kept safe we did all of that so i do a lot of this with a lot of districts and like i said no one likes to be in the rears but considering what we've gone through and what we've what we're still up against four thousand you know five thousand dollars isn't um is in a horrible loss and they like i said we got to keep all of our staff whole they all got paid and um that's pretty you know like i said that's great considering what people are going through right now and how many
011other people have been laid off so there's that there's a little picture of some of our school lunch heroes and some of the bulk meals that they were preparing during the pandemic so just a little shout out to them and thank you for all their hard work so whether you know or not um we did run the well i'm sure you do but we ran the seamless summer program through july and august as well the government allowed us to continue to do so um feeding families in districts that wouldn't normally qualify or be eligible to feed during the summer so we did that through july and august and then we got prepared to go right back into that running the national school lunch program which is what we were told we had to do on
012august 31st the federal government came out and released the mandate that we can feed continually through december free breakfast and lunch for everybody that means anybody in the town of bolton or even outside 18 and under breakfast and lunch seven days a week which is a huge benefit to our community so that went into effect the first day of school on september 2nd this year's budget our active budget right now we projected um when we did our budget productions it was probably right at the beginning of covet i would say so we really had no idea what how we were going to land last year and even really how to clearly look at what this year was going to to do and we still don't have a clear idea so we haven't reworked the budget
013but this is what we landed in our projected um but i have a feeling that based on we're not running with all the staff we did we should have staff savings we're selling we're gonna have free meals so lower expenses for food costs less participation so it's really hard to say where we are right now um or where we're going to do but this was all done pre-coveted so we really do need to look at that once we got a few operating months under our belt to see what the participation is going to look like and where we would need to make adjustments in in the budget so we'll be working on that in the next you know coming months a little bit of a comparison at the end of september where we were last
014year or were this year um it's not too drastic um based on expenses are lower revenues lower but considering we have no idea how this is going to roll this year we're hopeful that we can continue to feed in this manner there's actually um there's talks at the federal level now to continue the seamless summer program through the end of june which would really be a tremendous benefit to all families so we're hopeful that we'll con you know that will be pushed through but for right now we have the ability to feed children 18 and under free breakfast and lunch seven days a week holidays vacations all of that through december 31st so i think that that's going to be a huge benefit to the kids in school the kids that are remote learning families
015that are just home and it's what we're going to do we're just going to keep feeding families so what we're doing now is we're we we're still bolton is still running the hybrid model so we have food prepared for the days that the children are in school and we have days of pickup for the remote learners on their off days of hybrid and their fully remote days so i mean like the fully remote learners so we're feeding all of our students um and they have access as needed and we'll continue to do so and like i said it's not necessarily just for students so this opportunity is for any bolton family 18 and under to access these meals so we're doing it two days a week seven days worth of meals distributed in those two
016days so it covers the time that the kids are in school and then the kids are out of school once we go to an all-in model we'll be adjusting that to a um adjusting and adding an additional day to fridays only for a pickup for five day week in school learners to pick up two days worth of meals on fridays to cover them through saturday and sunday so again regardless of where you are in school or out of school you'll have access to meals seven days a week so like i said um i kind of reviewed this but meals will be free when they come back in holidays too the distributions are tuesdays and fridays we have a link um hopefully it's we will continue to encourage participation i know it's a little bit low
017right now and i think families need to get a little bit more secure and feel safe about meals outside the home so we understand that so the more successful we are in continuing our best practices you know and showing families that we're doing everything we can to keep everybody safe i feel that the participation will continue to increase and as the need increases again i think that as we see more people out of work and people falling on hard times having these options available to them is a tremendous benefit to the community so once again we're very uncertain about what this year is going to bring what next week will bring we don't know so um we're just going to continue best practices safety is really our number one concern it's making sure that the
018staff and the students are as safe as possible we've really enforced the safety of our staff um i know i have for in all of my schools for the reason being that the lunch ladies can't do their job like we're doing our meetings they can't do what we can do remotely so their essential work really has to be done in person and can't you know it can't jeopardize the entire program if we have to close a kitchen down due to illness so we're trying and we've been very successful since march to keep all the staff safe so i'm very proud of that and i'm very happy that everybody's following best practices um we're going to continue to follow meeting all the regulations like we always do and promote the program to encourage that more people
019have access to it so we're just going to continue really doing what we're doing and hope that we're going to get more and more people to participate and that we're able to you know provide nourishing meals to families that need it so thank you i want to um take this opportunity to publicly thank heather debbie our ladies in the cafeteria they have been nothing short of amazing they are heroes they have been there every day since this started all summer long um feeding our families and and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude we really do are there questions chris i see your hand thank you kristen thank you um yeah i would second your comments uh it's great to hear um everything that's been going on and absolutely kudos to heather and the
020staff um you really have been doing great work and i'm very happy that our students are able to be fed um i i'm wondering if i'm gathering the correct message um it sounds like revenues to the food program the the only source of revenues at this point are from the federal government reimbursing for the free meals um if that is the case then i i wonder if that message can be gotten out to families um in a bit more clear of a way because i i i know for myself i've kind of felt like well i don't want to take part or have my daughter take part in the food program because i don't want to be burdening the program or costing the town or the district money but it sounds like by not participating
021in the program we might be costing the district money so i just want to make sure i have that correct and ask if there's anything we can do to you know help increase participation i think that we just want to make sure that it's advertised appropriately we kind of slow walked how we were advertising it because um though the federal government told us on august 31st that we could do this the state of connecticut was finding out exactly when i was so they still so those the regulations or the ruling will come from the federal government then it's up to each individual state on how that's going to look for us so we had to wait like we we just finished up like paperwork this week so we've been kind of quiet a little bit
022quieter than normal just because things at this level were changing or i had to explain it it's like it's like every day in school for colvin it changes constantly and we're just getting final rules now on what we're allowed to do and communicate so once we're certain we know from the state exactly what we can communicate we will be doing so and the waivers were just approved so we are so now we can put it like on the town website like i said it's not just for the students it's anybody 18 and under that can access you don't need to pre-order it we go right back into what we were in the spring where you can drive up and say we have four kids and we need food or we'd like food it's not even
023about need we have families that are really enjoying just having a little normalcy that the kids enjoy the school meals that's the kind of emails i get or i hear my kid really loves the pizza day so when i get to bring it home it's awesome so there's pieces of that too so i guess we should you know and try to pull away that it's free for those or it's not just for those who need it it's really it's free for all everybody well yeah and it does benefit the program tremendously because of the amount of reimbursement we get for those meals so you'll be seeing something come out next week once we are certain we know what the deal is and we will get something out to everybody chris to your point great thank
024you for explaining are there any other questions if you could say that you have one out loud that would be great because i can't see everybody uh rhea has a question what what is the percentage of uh families that are actually who's uh taking advantage of this program now do you know don't have their actual percentage right now i do know that our participation is a little bit lower than we would like but again it's a little bit difficult because we have the kids on only in school a couple days so i think we'll see a little bit of a difference if and when we move to an all-in or even an all-out because of it gets a little bit clearer that way um but i would say like 100 kids we were getting over
025the spring so that's about what do you have about nine what are you at 900 or so in a moment close to 750. so you're a higher percentage of those students that were actively participating but once we run you know a couple months then we like to look at the numbers and more participation and that's where we'll be able to gauge better and then target where like i said we'll see it um we're not seeing it in any school a lot in school participation right now so when the students are attending school and they have lunch time everybody's getting free meals if they don't think they want they want it you know in their morning meeting and they can say that they like access to hot lunch it's available to everybody but again a lot
026of families are still bringing in lunch and it just may be apprehension and it's understandable this is you know we're all navigating a you know pandemic so again i think more and more that the more the kids are in the building and the more that they see the other kids eating or that they want you know that's how we'll get back to grow for sure and breakfast oh and breakfast too because currently breakfast is also free for everybody so that number will start to climb as well when families realize that they can have access to that or when the kids you know they do know we've been telling them but we just needed to kind of catch on we only had very few kids participate in years past in bolton for breakfast so now with
027it being free really gives us the opportunity to promote the program so that when it is no longer free we still have people that are interested in paying 1.25 for a breakfast are there other questions thank you though thank you all right hearing none ladies thank you very much deb and uh heather appreciate it very much and uh kiss those grandkids deb yeah have a good time i will thank you um i enjoy doing this immensely you're doing a great job and we appreciate it thank you guys very much okay bye good night next we are on to an update from bolton high school mr miceli good evening everyone here is a snapshot of our our numbers of students who have chosen the fully remote parallel and overall we're you know we're about a two
028percent increase for students staying home and that represents really only four students and we've had some students return while others go out and some of our subgroups have increased why others have decreased but that two percent is the is the overall for that i'll pause there before i go to the next slide there's any questions any of those numbers i'll bring in the same chart each week excuse me each month just with updated numbers okay um so we continue to see a lot of success with a hybrid model students are spaced out apart pretty pretty well even in our small rooms and i'm very proud of both our teachers and students who are doing a great job of managing remote at the same time that we're doing in school and teachers have used wednesday afternoons
029as well as our weekly plc's to share some really great ideas with each other some programs some successes and some struggles so our our professional collaboration continues uh even in these crazy times several weeks ago i had a lengthy call with charlene from charlene's portrait studio who is our our school photographer and we reflected on the success of the senior portraits that were taken last year um to give the students a special memory but also those those portraits became the cornerstone of the digital graduation ceremony that we put together so we looked at how we managed to do that in a safe way but also get quality photos and we developed a plan for our 9 through 11 9th through eleventh graders um so i know a lot of schools are not doing underclassmen photos
030or haven't tackled that yet um but again based on what we learned about doing it we have we've done it and we've had one day on tuesday um monday and our with the second half of the alpha but we'll be here tomorrow our remote learners have been invited after school one you know one at a time to come in the building as well so we've embraced them as well so we're we're excited about that and charlene has a completely touchless procedure for ordering and uh the images are actually getting drop shipped to families and my big motivation i think it's great if families purchase pictures but really is to uh you know maintain the quality of the yearbook by having those quality photos in there uh as jack mentioned we have some new rules in
031place for spectators and that's home games only no none of our bolton families can travel to other towns and only outdoor so for volleyball we've actually have a zoom system in place for families to watch the volleyball games i was actually sitting in a parking lot waiting for one of my children uh yesterday evening uh whether it was ballet or what it was but i tuned in and got to watch a little bit of the volleyball game over zoom so um i'd also like to share that the same is true for spectators um from other districts right spectators are only allowed at their home events for nccc correct athletic events um and my last item um is as you may recall last october we had our destiny annual visit from the new england association of
032schools and colleges and actually for us it was 11 years because they bumped us a year for that's a long story too after many delays and frustrations we finally received the final report over the summer and i'm happy to announce we're reaccredited the bolton high school team was very reflective and self-effacing and generated a very long list of things we wanted to improve and we'll be working on those items in advance of our two-year report actually we have actually completed some of the items on the to-do list before the visit was over and uh for some details on that i'd like to introduce our chairs of the nia steering committee to share some information it's jen carvalho and abby sacco hello um yeah so as joe mentioned we finally received our accreditation report i believe
033it was mid to end of june when we finally received the official report obviously the covid situation enclosures you know interrupted not only what we were doing but what the commission was doing and delayed all of their meetings on our status um so we apologize for the delay in getting the information to you but it took a while to get to us so just to review the process as joe mentioned um it was a year ago this week that the visiting team was at our school for three days three and a half days during which they collected a great deal of evidence to evaluate us on the standards that you see on the screen so the standards for accreditation focus on two major areas we have teaching and learning standards which look at our core
034values and beliefs about learning as a district in school our curriculum our instruction and assessment and then it also reviews support standards which focus on our school culture and leadership our school resources and then the community resources for learning um as they put together their judgment as to whether or not we are accredited they are pulling evidence from not only our self-study that we as a faculty completed but they met with groups of parents they met with students they shadowed students in classes they reviewed samples of student work um towards the facility um observations of classes so it really was a plethora of evidence that they that they drew from to make their final conclusion and as you will see on the screen they voted to award that our that bolton high school continues its
035accreditation in the new england association of schools and colleges so we are very happy about that they as as part of this accreditation process they release a final report it is about 97 pages long so we are going to do our best to highlight some of the accommodations in that report tonight some of their recommendations but we will say that the entire report is posted on the bolton high school webpage it's a little bit below the picture of the graduating class on there you can click on the link if you would like to read the entire 97 pages there was also a copy will also be forwarded to the town and a copy is forwarded to the connecticut state department of education so it exists in many places or will soon exist in many places
036but the easiest place right now for all of you to access it and read it in all its glory is on the school website um but as i said we're going to pull out some highlights tonight all right so some of the accommodations that we received from the visiting committee um was the fact that um we have a collaborative and a research based um dynamic process um to identify what the core values were um the beliefs and the 21st century expectations we have for our um all of our students as well as um the adoption of the mastery-based approach for student learning and that we give the students multiple opportunities to achieve proficiency the visiting committee also commended us on the achievement of standards in the focus of the instruction um towards those mastery-based approaches
037um the investment in atlas which is the curriculum management platform that um is used for us to organize and document and um keep track of all of our our school curriculum as well as the district-wide effort to identify the school's portrait of a graduate other commendations were um the impressive array of opportunities that we provide um the students to um demonstrate the that they are able to um master the transferable skills through different co-curricular activities and um inter-school athletics um also the great degree of caring that the teachers display and and have in their relationships with the students the fact that we have many opportunities that are afforded to the teachers for us to collaborate with one another um especially in our um professional learning community meetings on our plc's and that the school's commitment
038to providing adequate resources um so that we are supported in delivering our curriculum and again that focus on the vision of a bolton graduate and using that to progress towards those transferable skills additional commendations that they they um highlighted in the report was the dedicated and qualified professionals who support our students across the board so you know not just the teachers our paraprofessionals our school nurse our librarian every adult in the building they really were impressed with what they saw um they were happy with the use of a universal use of google classroom by all teachers and remember this was before we even shifted to distance learning so um you know they recognized this even back last october uh they obviously highlighted the the additions and the renovations made to bolton high school from the
039last nest visit that was 11 years prior um and anecdotally they were just impressed the entire visit we kept hearing um just how beautiful they thought the building was how well maintained and clean it was so they just they were really blown away by just the quality of our space um they commended the budgetary support given to the schools by the bolton community the district strategic plan that carried the district through 2020. obviously we have a new plan now but they were impressed with the old one uh the safe and respectful welcoming atmosphere that they observe that's conducive to learning our connections block which acts as a bit of an advisory period that gives students opportunities for individualized attention and some personalized learning the broad range of you know clubs and activities and athletics that
040we offer and the time built into the district calendar that supports professional development as well next slide so along with the accommodation we also got um some recommendations and the um recommendations were given based on the evidence that the visiting committee um saw but also what um was identified in our self-study so we had actually figured out that there would probably be some of these recommendations um listed after the visit based on um what we had seen ourselves as we were um going through the self-study process and had already begun trying to to kind of think about how we were going to attack some of these recommendations for the next two year plan so some of those recommendations were that um providing adequate formal time and resources um for the teachers to reflect on the
041application measurement and being able and um revision of those transferable skills so being able to use um the data and really and the rubrics and having time to um dig into those in order to to revise um the transferable skills as as needed um as well as developing a process to review the curricula and um the assessment maps um to ensure that there are multiple opportunities for the students to meet all the learning expectations in across content areas and courses as well as providing professional development opportunities so that teachers can work together to increase student engagement in the classroom again across the curriculum other recommendations included the implementing the use of transferable skill rubrics consistently and with fidelity um with all students so that um the school can assess um the whole um sorry the
042whole individual student achievement for those learning expectations um the the idea of also establishing a formal process um to report the individual and whole school um process towards achieving those transferable skills um to the student and um as well as the school community and um the other recommendation is ensuring teachers are consistently communicating to students um prior to um each unit of study what those objectives are going to be that they'll be studying in that in that unit um so that they're aware of what they'll be assessed on additional recommendations and i will add that this may seem like a lot of recommendations but really the main goal of the of the niask visit and and the self-study process is to help districts grow so these are this having a list a long list of
043recommendations is not a bad thing um this is just sort of guiding principles to help us as we move forward to become an even better school than we already are um so continuing on with our recommendations um they'd like to see us dedicating ongoing professional development time for teachers to work collaboratively in ways to um revise and analyze some of our formative summative and common assessments they'd like to see a more formal process to ensure that students have adults in their lives who know them really well and can help them with their acquisition of specific transferable skills they'd like to make it possible for students to have regular access to the library media center during the school day throughout the week and ensure that staffing levels in the library are sufficient to accommodate student use
044create and increase efforts to our open choice and columbia families to engage them in school and community activities develop long-term planning to upgrade and make the athletic field complex safe specifically they pulled out in the report the poor drainage on the soccer field the lack of track and field facilities and they highlighted the tennis courts which as we know is is um being addressed already at this time um provide consistent funding source to support technology and its integration into instruction and explore alternatives to expand or improve the performance venue of the high school so now that we have the report back and we have all of the recommendations the next steps that we'll have to do is submit the two-year progress report which will be due september 15 2021 and that report will respond to
045the recommendations that we just kind of explained briefly and what we're doing to address those recommendations and the school's accreditation status will be reviewed again um based on the progress of the two-year report and and i just want to add having been through um those reports i arrived um when it was time for a two-year report and you don't have to have met every recommendation and fixed all those issues you just need to kind of respond to them um so for example some of them are going to be easy rebuilt tennis courts right done some will be we're continuing to investigate or we are working on um my first two year report was a building project has started but everything you said about our facility is still true i'll see you in two more years
046right so um this is not a that whole list of recommendations as jen said is a is a good thing for us it's a list that we self-generated to guide us um but it's not uh what needs to be done in the next two years i just want to kind of be clear on that too and again the progress that we've already made um towards some of these recommendations and again it was based on the self-study and the recommendations from the visiting committee and again because we had done the self-study we had an idea of what some of these recommendations were going to be so we had already kind of started to make a plan as to how to address many of these so what we have done um since the visit is updated power
047school to to be able to communicate mastery towards the transferable skills on specific individual assignments in real time so the students are getting those reports when they complete assessments um that have transferable skills tied to them we're also have developed reports for families and students to communicate overall achievement of the identified transferable skills and we improved our efforts to utilize the connections period for um a more formal student goal-setting activities as well as time to review student progress with them the connections teachers were able to really take the time to um work with the individual students which is about nine to ten students that that they have um to review their grades in all of their classes and talk about what kind of goals do you want to set for um this marking period and
048and we'll check in at midpoint and trying to figure out um and really support those those students and um giving the students an opportunity to also reflect themselves and we began to analyze and improve our scoring criteria and are able to use that now to also continue to measure the mastery for those transferable skills we've explored ways to utilize our plc our professional learning community structure to reflect on how we measure how we revise our transferable skills our application we were kind of in the thick of really doing this before we left school in march so we're hoping to get back to that soon we continue to use department meeting times and select professional development time to align our curricula to the transferable skills and develop assessments that measure the mastery of transferable skills and
049tag and upload all that into atlas so that we can map where any gaps may be um and we were working last year in our plc meetings to explore the use and communication of learning targets which was one of the recommendations they had um i will say before you get to the questions portion niask has already released new standards that when we go through this process again there's a whole new slew of standards that we will be evaluated on one of those is looking to have a portrait of a graduate so in terms of progress made we're actually ahead of the game on the next batch of standards and that we already have our portrait of the graduate defined and when the deputy director of niask came to meet with us before the you know
050our annual visit our biennial visit last year um she was completely blown away with the fact that we had already developed a portrait of a graduate and that wasn't even in the new batch of it wasn't even in the standards that we were being assessed on yet so uh we've made progress and in some ways we actually are ahead of the game and the new batch of standards that we'll have to tackle nine years from now so along with the new standards it's going to be a new process we were the last group to go through it the the old way um it is going to be um it's reported to be more of an ongoing uh interaction with nyask as opposed to you know we'll see in 10 years except for a couple of
051written reports so uh it'll be interesting to see how that rolls out before we take questions i would just like to acknowledge and give tremendous kudos to jen and abby uh chairing a kneeask visit is a very heavy lift for sure i don't think uh the general public has any idea the amount of time energy and work that goes in to a self-study and a preparation for a visit the actual visit and then waiting on pins and needles for the actual report so we thank them we are very grateful to them to our staff to joe to christine for the tremendous effort done in this and very very proud of the work that they are doing and i need to piggyback by saying you know we had some other folks on the steering committee um
052mark mushriki uh maggie klepfer and that's it that's it okay and you joe yeah yeah angie you know and and lots of help from from kristen and sarah and beth as well um and the other little which we can we can look back and maybe smile now at the time we were not um about two weeks before the visit was to happen the chairman who had already come out already met with us done a bunch of work and already built relationships um and some impressions um had a had a serious medical issue and they put in a very last minute very unprepared pinch hitter um that resulted in in really abby and jen kind of doing things over and over and over again um november december january february march april so we kind of did
053the self-study like three times as a result of that and that was just unfortunate circumstances but you know to christian's point the chairs do a lot but these guys did like five times that amount so thank you thank you now what questions do you have joe will answer them you'll have to shout it out gang because like mr davey god thank you um i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the staff development uh continuing ed recommendations i guess i was a little confused because i i seem to recall during the uh when you were talking about the uh kudos that we received one of the things that they praised us for was the amount of staff development time and the efforts that we currently do in that area and then there
054also seemed to be a lot of recommendations in that area and the the praise and the that that didn't quite square so i just wondered about that my my my understanding again a large report but from what i remember from from the 97 pages is that they applaud the amount of time we have for professional development i think the recommendations were in terms of other weight like ways we can maybe start to shift how we use that time to address some areas that we maybe haven't been addressing um you know we've been focusing a lot on a lot of the curricular pieces in our professional development that now that we're in a much better place with that maybe we can start shifting and you know looking at ways to use that professional development time to
055diversify what were you know and those were things that we said you know what the next thing we want to do as a staff is xyz and they turned it around and said the recommendation is you do this and and that's okay we're not our feelings aren't hurt because one of the the realities about neo let's so let's rewind the clock 11 years ago nias came into bolton said you need a building right and often the s groups come in and say what is your agenda what is it you need so they the reports often generate recommendations to kind of push agendas in our case it was our agenda that got reflected in the recommendation so we're we're very comfortable with all of those those pieces all right thank you for explaining that uh makes
056it much clearer in my mind um and then if i could and i apologize because my computer froze and i had to restart so i missed the end of the bhs update but i did have a question for principal miceli if if i might i noticed in the enrollment census that we were provided this month that the high school population has decreased by 10 in just last month i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that um some of those were folks that moved away um and some of those 10 were students that i i don't think were correctly accounted for at the opening of school which is not it's not abnormal like hey where's the kid right if school's open you're still on the books from the previous year and we
057don't exit them officially until there are certain steps that take place um so we've had some students move away for different reasons um some of them good some you know good choices right um but that that that number is is looks a little bit larger because of of the way thing shook out because often um we know at the end of the school year hey i'm gonna we're gonna move day i got relocated whatever it might be well the last time we really had those kinds of conversations with kids was in march so um we were carrying students on the books that we just we didn't have a reason to take them off until we were back in school and they weren't here and we and we followed up thank you for explaining um i
058have a question about the niask report um so i i fully understand your explanation about um how they take a lot of what you've done in your self-study and put that into the recommendations my question is were there any surprises that you had not anticipated there were some in the original draft that because they made no sense they were they were wrong um and and that was part of the back and forth process and um as frustrated as i i was with the process overall i will say the executive assistant executive director allison gary could not have been better she spoke to me several times she spoke to kristin and she was willing to to keep working on the report until it was right so if you ask me that if the first draft i
059would say oh my gosh where did that come from um but you know when it's all in said and done no this is this is our roadmap for the next you know five to eight years and we're good with it yeah i think the only thing that might be slightly misleading is when they talk about the reporting of transferable skill data i think i think it was confusing we tried to explain to them what we were doing when they were here and i think we just in all their meetings with different teachers they didn't really have a clear sense of what exactly we were doing in power school so some of those recommendations i personally feel read a little harsher than what reality is um but offer on that one particular piece i think that
060our staff and what we are doing at the high school is light years above what most of the people who came in for this accreditation visit are currently experiencing in their districts you know you heard jen talk about the next time around in 10 years they're going to be looking at the portrait of a graduate and as you know we've been one of the leaders in the state and you know farmington being the leader because they've had one for like a decade but you know we we jumped on that bandwagon a few years ago um and prior to that and you know we had really gone into the piece about the transferable skills and i don't know jen and abby how long ago was that when i came to a meeting and said hey i
061think we ought to dive into this can we give it a shot it's yeah that was five or six years ago five or so years yeah yeah i guess it's there too to be honest another good example is one of the things that said about a report home to families about that i handed them that report during their visit it was something we had put in self-study because when we wrote the self-study six months before the visit we didn't have it done but we were working on it we had it done by the time we were here we handed it to them we talked about it but they still put it in as a recommendation so it is what it is yeah okay thank you and thank you so much for all of your time
062that you spent on that thank you are we okay in that library i'm seeing some movements and head are we good or not oh i can't keep the lights on not enough movement in the library is the issue [Laughter] okay just check it thanks are there other questions or comments all right hearing none thank you do we have one joe no i think we're good i can see everybody okay thank you so now i'm going to turn it over to miss safran for an update on bcs and then about the summer learning adventures updates um mr giardis not with us tonight because he is home uh with his new baby boy and his wife and uh baby number one yes so we are ready um here is our chart similar to mr miceli's um working
063and we'll keep updating it so we actually um have our numbers of students in the remote parallel track has decreased since the last month um currently uh we have 92 students that are participating so that's 19 of our school population and is broken down um it did go by grade so we've seen a few grades as you'll notice while uh kindergarten went up it went up one um every other grade you know kids have been coming back or numbers have been changing so we've had more students returning to school than are choosing to switch to remote in our building are there any questions about that chart before we move on i have a quick question real quick this is ben um so what is the process if a student wants to go from strictly remote
064to come back to school is it is it an application process can they come back instantly how does that work exactly um what what happens is they reach out to either their classroom teacher or myself or mr giard and the parent says you know i'm really interested we're ready to come back and what we do is really just begin a conversation with the classroom teacher to make sure that they're ready they have the space that they need they feel and we try to get them in as soon as we possibly can but we did ask parents in our um back to school uh plan uh to give us a week's notice but to miss saffron's point you know we once they tell us we want to come back we try to do it as quickly
065as possible but you know we can take up to that week from our perspective if that's what we need to do to make everything the way it needs to be to get them in but we try to do it much sooner than that right and it and a lot of times it also depend truthfully on what letter of the alphabet they are if they tell us on one day and their cohort doesn't come again i mean they have to wait a little bit longer where if the teacher has spacing ready we've had teachers just excited to get those kids back in the classroom so they'll say yes tomorrow i'll take them so you know we really just work together to be that partnership between school and home and doing what the families need just as
066much as we support those that need to make a shift for whatever reason they need to you know we're all working together awesome yeah that makes sense like my wife in some of her classes has four and some of her classes has twelve so it would make a difference on some days rather than others so well all right thank you you're welcome well in part of the process much like high school is we are really focused on student engagement in many ways and so we meet weekly with the teachers at different levels grade levels plcs um at the middle school just to continue to talk about how we're teaching how is our learning going um our students engaged and we really are focusing on just making sure that any student that's struggling to engage with
067the learning whether they're a remote student or a hybrid student that we're reaching out or connecting so we've been spending a lot of time talking about that looking at some of the different practices that we've been using um how do you you know this moving into a hybrid model is still new for all of us as much as we learned so much about distance learning this blend of having some in some at home some at home every day is still something that we've worked on we've made a lot of changes especially at the middle school over the last month regarding um meets and having more opportunities for students to really we're really encouraging them to attend their full day because it's a full day and we're putting out a full day of times and things
068for families or students to be involved with um another change this year that we're seeing a lot of excitement from is the seesaw and connecting with students at home so we've increased the number of classes using the seesaw platform and that was something that the board supported last spring and we're still working with especially in the area of specials so in our pe music depending on the grade level they're um really using that seesaw and it's allowing the teachers to really get access for the students and to see because the students have the ability to videotape take pictures to provide audio and it's helping the teachers a lot for the kids that aren't hybrid or remote so they've also noticed and shared with us that it's really also increased our students communication skills as they
069will happily talk out to the camera i think we're making a very good youtube population they will talk out to the camera they're thinking they'll hold up work they'll explain it though you know bring to life outside i know our pe teachers are really really excited i mean they have their students at home practicing their sit-ups and they're recording how many steps they can get done so the teachers are still seeing that learning as it's really hard to live stream pe out in the field so they're feeling connected with their students like they they struggled to feel that in the spring so we really want to thank the board of ed for that continued support with that learning management system and it's something that we're really looking forward to continuing having and using as we
070continue teaching throughout this year we are also working with our staff to collaborate a lot on how we're going to be transitioning our students especially our k5 students into the building over the next few weeks um you know we're looking at furniture and spacing we're looking at how it's going to shift with the students no longer being hybrid and how the teaching is going to change to making sure that we're just really doing our best for all of our students and we're continuing to collaborate with the middle school and looking at how do we provide a safe environment for all of our staff and students and quality education but with that technology has been a big part of our time so we can now say that 100 of our students have access to technology and
071internet access mrs malinowski has been working hard as we get and we solve those problems day by day i like us to stop getting warnings on losing power because i twitch every time the thought of us not having power potentially not having wi-fi comes up but you know we're working through it and we've also started working in our k5 classes um many of the students have begun receiving chromebook protective sleeves as they're you know getting used to bringing those devices back and forth to school so we've been really excited about that are there any i'll ask for other any questions before i move on all right so then transitioning to very different um we are very excited to talk about and wrap up our summer adventures in learning at bone center school i did share
072with you this with you i believe in june to kind of talk about what we were going to be launching for the summer but becky sullivan is going to co-present with me she's in here and our instructional coach and we she and i worked and we were planning this throughout all of last school year and really wanting to look at how can we motivate our students to continue learning over the summer so with the shift to distance learning it put a wrinkle and some changes into our plan our students had spent a lot of time on the computer we were really mindful of that we were also mindful of what our students maybe didn't practice or didn't have access to as much as they typically would have so we really were thinking we need to
073get our students engaged even more than before so we were excited to work on this and like um jessica had said we did start planning this a year ago and one of the reasons was over the last few years we've seen a decline in the number of students participating in the opportunities we did have available the estate math challenge the governor's reading challenge so we really wanted to provide something that would encourage students to do that and we spent time throughout the year looking at research and other programs that were being done both within the state we had the opportunity to listen to some things being done with some of the correct schools um we both attended a conference in december where we got to hear what one of the another school was doing for
074math related to keep the summer going and we also talked with our teachers and we talked with parents and talked with the parents who are the ones home with the students over the summer and really wanted their feedback into what they were looking for and we adjusted our plans up until those minutes based on what the parents were telling us they felt they could manage or what they were looking for to help their children over the summer oh go ahead becky no is it my turn you ready okay so um we did talk to the students as well we had a couple of focus groups over google meets asking kids what they would be interested in earning they knew they would be earning raffle tickets we also sent a survey out to students and we
075were able to share the prizes before um school got let out in june we did a quick little virtual assembly and the pta um did a great job with helping us to purchase all of the prizes so we are so incredibly grateful to the pta for their support in this and i have to say there are many students that made the difference seeing what they could get i mean that kept some of them going all summer long so it was really wonderful and um when we so we provided i'll get to that part later um the students had the part opportunity to do lots of different ways so we really went for multiple platforms to try to give variety and options to families and students what worked for you what works in one house might
076not work for there so we're just trying to get engagement and can and will build off of this as we continue with it's not going away um so they had still the governor's reading and math challenges were options and we still promoted them mrs herrick the library media specialist had started her own kind of reading challenge and she's noticed it so we really pushed that out to our students um we designed i learned i learned to create a google site um that had just options for math games reading activities mrs sullivan put podcasts on there we broke it up by k2 band a three five band and a six eight band really trying to gear different ideas for the different ages and we also had buster's challenges which provided multi-disciplinary activities across the different content
077areas there are many still planned for the future not as many there are many plans there they're there i'm excited um and then we also did um this each student got a flat buster and that is inspired there's the flat stanley series and a few different schools we got this idea from them and it was an idea of taking that um character and our buster around with them so you'll see a little bit about that and as jessica said we had lots of different ways that students could engage in their learning over the summer and we also provided them with multiple platforms so students were able to use seesaw and students uploaded pictures some kids typed in a journal and some students did little videos and we also had google classroom where students could just
078upload pictures to google slides um so so that was excellent and students in grades one through eight could all access their i ready personalized learning path as well and we had a lot of students who engaged in that and it was definitely fun over the summer i learned the other side of seesaw and getting to reply and getting to comment mrs sullivan i did we had some teachers ask if they could be a part of it so they'd go on and you know comment to the students and it'd be great there was one point students were talking to each other and complementing each other's work which we you know just hoped would happen and it did fourth graders too so it was nice to see the big kids talking and complimenting each other's work and
079then on wednesday september 23rd we held our virtual assembly and um we live streamed it out to many and um it was very exciting and we took a moment to congratulate a lot of the students that really pulled in a lot of tickets and then we pulled and we gave out a lot of prizes and it's amazing those students from the tiny little things to the big things they were very excited um we got reports that there was squealing there might have been squealing in my house too you know listening students were cheering their friends on um the next day at school kids knew who got what so it was really exciting and i think it definitely gave us motivation to hopefully you know we'll have a little bit more of an in school kick
080off this next year mr misali can you yes thank you so we have some numbers for you so we did have um 93 students participate across ka and previously um last year we had 23 students participate in the reading challenge so we were we were happy and we did get students from every grade so um we we hit a goal there and when it came to the raffle tickets we gave out we cut up 1488 raffle tickets so that was exciting and students on our website we did explain that you can get more raffle tickets for doing something versus other like the buster challenge every challenge you did those are worth two um so it was it was fun we let them know there was a different way to earn and we had one second
081grader with 84 raffle tickets which really was our highest although we did have we did have quite a few up there having between 30 and 60 raffle tickets so some of those kept going all summer long and then for some grade level stats our second graders had the most tickets overall they earned 383 raffle tickets and fourth grade had the most iready lessons completed at 207 so 207 lessons on their path were completed and see-saw the second graders had 47 posts and kindergarten was the top grade level our incoming case with 63 entries in google classroom so it was wonderful to be able to get them to be a part of it as well all right and we did um as i emailed families letting them know they won prizes and i'd be sending slime
082home with their children just giving them a heads up um they we did get some feedback to us so we we took a few little snips of it so one of our students this was actually the student um our eighth grader who was very involved she said thank you for thank you thank you for all yours and mrs sullivan's help with all these fun adventures and in fifth grade parents summer adventures was a fun and motivating way for my son to remain engaged in learning over the summer months we had thank you for all you do my family appreciates it so much from a kindergarten second grade parent and then for students in grades two and four their parents said this was a fantastic idea to keep them engaged over the summer and then we
083had the girls enjoyed the different ideas you had for buster's challenges they were very motivated by the idea raffle prizes and look forward to earning tickets and finally jackson was ecstatic during the assembly today which is actually exciting to hear because during a live stream you don't know who's there you don't see the other side so that was great to hear yeah and uh we are very excited we have a few of the photos this is just a tiny bit of some of the work that got submitted and some of the things that the kids were doing and we're going to share it with you now mr missell is going to do some magic on his end [Music] when we wake up hear the birds and see the sun side by side our fears are
084done all the good [Music] found what we're looking for in life call us crazy but things are finally right with you and i the future is [Music] we don't need no more even in the [Music] before i sleep hear the crickets see the moon [Music] oh [Music] but things are finally if you right i the future is [Music] you and i can't wear [Music] oh [Music] we don't need no more [Music] that was great thank you thank you any questions or comments about summer learning inventors at bolton center school i'll just make a comment can you hear me yes okay um i'll just make a comment that i was very thankful we didn't do it as much as i had hoped to do it but we did have a place to go to find some
085easy lessons when it was time to kind of get back into it a little bit so i do hope it continues and um great job thank you for putting that all yeah absolutely i was going to say something similar very impressive those engagement numbers are awesome especially the increase absolutely and i want to commend jessica and becky they worked so hard on it all year long coming up with different ideas and then cove it hit and it was like a five alarm fire how do we turn this around and still make it work and and they worked so hard to uh to make it a great experience for our kids and i i want to commend them for for the amazing work that they did well done well done thank you and there were many
086moments where in many of our zoo meetings getting those little video those pictures would ding at me and then i was like oh okay they're having fun kids are outside having fun and doing things so it was wonderful so we enjoyed it and we you know we had plans that you know we could only roll out so much so fast so we have we're ready for next year ready which is great thank you all right thank you very much so we are on to federal and state covid funding update if there are any if there are not any other comments for jessica and becky all right so um for the esscr grant elementary and secondary school emergency relief bolton public schools was awarded 17 146 dollars this number uh is based on our title one
087funding so that is how that uh these monies were divvied out across the state the award period uh started on the 13th of march 2020 and went through the 30th of september 2021. our grant request was to go towards the purchase of 54.26 not really sure how you actually do that with the touch screen chromebook but that's what it turned out to be uh with a per item cost of 316 uh to address our urgent need to provide equal access to technology at home for all students during distance learning as a result of the pandemic our grant was awarded and uh we had originally had those monies um come out of open choice for um towards those chromebooks so that portion was reclassified out of open choice and into the ess our esser grant and
088we have already received those monies and those were purchases that happened last fiscal year federal and state cobid funding coronavirus relief fund bolton public schools award was based well all districts awards were based on two surveys that the csde sent to superintendents one was completed on the 17th of july and the other on the 5th of august and those surveys were basically asking us to project give a best guess i guess really is really what i want to say on costs um that we thought we might incur um and to be honest really at that point we really didn't know i'm going to be really honest we didn't even have a plan yet for our return to school we were working on it so um we received um i have to minimize this so i
089can see it we received um three buckets of money but in total uh 133 826 i want to be clear that we have not received the monies yet we have to apply for the monies so we were awarded allotment to go towards personnel related supports with regards to cleaning ppe health and safety you'll notice that's not a large amount i gave a much larger amount i'll offer that non-personnel related supports really is our cleaning ppe and health and safety we were um allotted 94 000 and for non-personnel related supports for transportation we were awarded 37 783 dollars the award period is goes all the way back to the first of march in 2020 and it goes until the 30th of december of 2020. we completed the grant application for the ninety four thousand dollars and
090we are waiting for the csde to process uh requests for reallocation up to two thousand forty three dollars and the thirty seven thousand seven eighty three i had we had been told superintendents have been told on a call with commissioner cardona several weeks ago that um those monies were going to be allowed to be reallocated then there was word that well we hope to be able to do that this afternoon every superintendent in the state received word that in fact we will be allowed to request a reallocation for both of those pieces we have been notified bolton has of csd first level approval for the 94 000 uh drawdown request that we have asked for there are several levels of approval in this process right now which is not always the way with grants but
091opm uh is overseeing these monies which is why there are other levels uh involved in the approval process next slide please so as i shared under the personnel related supports we wrote right into the grant application that funding was not needed in this category and we were requesting a reallocation for the non-personnel related supports for cleaning ppe health and safety the ninety four thousand uh fifty four thousand one hundred and sixty of this we applied for for the rental of the air conditioning units for two months at fulton center school the purchase of air scrubbers two at bcs and two at bolton high school there's one in each nurse's office and one in each isolation room and we ended up purchasing them because it was more cost effective for us to purchase them than it
092was for us to rent them and the cost of those was ten thousand two hundred dollars and we're very very happy that we have them um because it is cold and flu season right now um and there's a little bit of a stomach bug going around and those are also symptoms of covid so anytime a child exhibits symptoms like that they are sent to the nurse and often times are sent directly to the isolation room waiting for a parent to pick them up to then take them to see a doctor to determine whether it's one thing or get a test and to determine if in fact it's covered and lastly um the desk shields for students and staff that's not the full amount cost for dust shields um but um that amount as well and
093then we do not need the money for transportation so again in our uh request we put that we did not need funding in this category and a reallocation would be requested so that is my report on the funds and the information i have to date are there questions for me on that piece okay i hope to have more information next month where i hope to be able to uh hopefully the state has come up with their process for how the additional funds will be reallocated so i can report out um about our application for that as well um they often say it's coming in a couple of days and then it's coming in a week and then it's coming in two weeks and then it might be three so i hope i have information to
094share next month thank you that ends my report this evening thank you everyone um under unfinished policy unfinished business we have policies um second read chris do you want to do an overview or should we just move through uh yeah well we did an overview last time but if if anyone needs a reminder of anything i'm happy to find my notes um but i'll uh go ahead and make a motion uh perfect let's see i think we can i think we can move them all together that's what i was gonna ask yeah if we could do them all together so i'll make commotion to approve uh policy 1010 c-19 1470 and all of these will have c-19 at the end of them so i'll just skip that going forward policy five one three five one
095two four zero one two five zero one three three zero one four five five four one one two dot five four one one eight dot four five one one two five one three four five one four one five one four one dot one r six one seven two dot six nine three two one nine three two two and nine three two five do we have a second i would like a second any questions comments okay hearing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed abstentions passes unanimously under new business more policies first read chris all right thank you sue uh so again the vast majority of these policies uh in the 5000 series first read are ones that we are asking to delete um mostly because they're either no longer required or they're covered
096by other existing policies um so briefly uh 511.1 foreign exchange students this policy is not required um it also doesn't take into consideration any issues related to immigration security our flights finally came back and liability uh policy 5118 non-resident attendance again it's not required because we only take tuition students if we have an agreement with the sending district and that agreement with the sending district covers what the policy would cover um policy 5124 reporting to parents well not lives for that again again it's not a required policy policy 5131.1 bus conduct this is already covered by our student discipline policy policy 5131.11 video cameras on bus this information um will be is is it already in the student handbook kristen or it's going to be in the student handbook there is information in the student
097handbook and we will make sure it continues to be in student handbook perfect so because of that it's not required as a board level policy uh 5131.7 weapons and dangerous instruments again this is already stuff that's covered in the student discipline policy 5131.81 electronic devices this is one that we will eliminate because it's covered in another policy namely 5135 student use of private technological devices which i think we just approved yes so we just approved the new policy there 5133 cyber bullying again this is up for elimination because it's already covered in our safe school climate plan which is policy 5131.911 policy five one four one two two communicable and infectious diseases this is up for elimination because it's covered in policy five one four one health screenings and assessments and again that's a policy
098that we just adopted an updated version of i'll see 5141.231 psychotropic drug use up for elimination because it's covered in policy 4118.234 prohibition on recommendations for psychotropic drugs policy 5141.24 staff with hiv aids-related complex or aid the attorneys recommend that we eliminate this one because it's not required by connecticut law policy 5141.27 first aid emergency medical care this is already covered by policy 1430 which is currently up to date policy 5141.4 reporting of child abuse neglect and sexual assault again marked for elimination because it is covered in this case by two other policies um 4120 on reports of suspected abuse or neglect of children or sexual assault of students by school employees and policy 5145.511 child sexual abuse and assault policy and reporting procedure next is policy 5145.6 this is the last marked for deletion
099student grievance procedures uh it's already addressed in policy 5145.4 which again is an up-to-date policy then we have three policies that we are asking to revise uh policy 5123 promotion and retention this is one where we're moving from an older policy to the shipment model policy uh it'll also be renumbered to become policy six two zero five policies five one two 5125 confidentiality and access to education records this is being revised to include student data privacy and other recent legislative changes and then lastly policy 5141. administering medications this is being updated to include latest requirements on the state and federal level as well as provision for use of narcan in schools so those are submitted for first read and we'll revoke next month on those thank you very much and move on to resignations uh
100we received one resignation this month and actually happened this week from corey percy world language teacher at bolton center school and she will be leaving some time within the next month or so and we want to thank her for her dedicated years of service to the bolton public schools so we are in the process of trying to find additional world language teacher let's see how that goes that is all i have for resignations so i think you're a mute i was i was talking away is there anything for future business okay um motion to adjourn all at once now i guess i'll make the motion thank you thank you i guess everybody wanted to hang out tonight i'll second one thank you scott all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed sentience all right we're
101adjourned at eight o'clock thank you everybody