001i'll just sit back and relax okay good evening ladies and gentlemen this is a call for order of the educational diversity equity inclusion committee the time is now 6 34 pm and attendance myself committee member bobby brown committee member erica castillo and board member sybil allen secretary mike testade first item on the agenda is approval of minutes dated may 28 2021. and i shall second okay any corrections okay motion carries all right now discussion and possible action on committee goals and objectives now they i kept them relatively the same since we have a community new committee member i'm going to read them out and just set the tone again the committee will use data-driven information to apply an equity lens to the entire bridgeport public school system to identify any and all policies procedures services
002and or programs that are disparately impacting any distinct groups of students and or staff committee will seek to rectify any issues found through committee discussions research and will also make referrals to other committees create focus groups and or make referrals to the full board for further action we'll also seek to promote initiatives and activities that promote unity amongst bridgeport public schools diverse student body staff and the greater bridgewater public school committee community okay i thought this was a good one we all agreed on it the first time around um if anybody has anything to add any of the directions we should take they should be included excluded i think i'm good at i think we still have a lot to work on with those i'm good is it um is that available on like the
003website the bridgewater board of website like the is that a description yeah it's part of the minute but it's not i could send this to you just like hold on i i have the minutes it should be included in the future i'll just send this to you okay and maybe so this the last group of them is from when fabian was chair so let's say you're going back to the original 2020 yeah so it's in the it's in the folder oh okay one of the 21. okay next item on the agenda is your staff student demographic data november 20 2020. uh i believe mr tesla is taking that out yeah i'll take it out i'm filling in for dr mcpherson we have the slideshow that we could could you get the slideshow is it possible
004to get the slideshow up i didn't get anything could you put it up uh yes okay sorry to put you on a spot i believe this works okay i shared it with you on your email i will i will go over just a couple of data points that's not in the slides at all um i think they're worth mentioning i know that when dr fabian had some questions in regards to percentage of teacher and staff that reflected the student body so i did reach out to the state department of education and they sent me some information that was related to teachers who hold certification in connecticut and are qualified to teach now unfortunately the numbers here include everyone who's actively holding a certificate in the state not necessarily living or residing in the state anymore
005not necessarily looking to work in the state anymore but they do keep their certification hacked but that being said um there was 6765 people that didn't identify with any race which is about 7.7 percent uh native american was 139 statewide that was uh 0.16 percent we have 1105 asian educators that hold certification 1.26 uh in the state of connecticut there's that identify as african american that's 3.83 we have 72 um which are identify as white that's 82.65 there are 3852 identified hispanic that's 4.39 so there's a total uh and then there's eight that identify as more than one race that's insignificant at all so total there's eight eighty seven thousand seven hundred and sixty four teachers or admit folks that hold certification um 462 of those are minorities um which is a 9.64 of educators
006that hold certification in the state of connecticut so when you look at bridgeport we do have one of the highest percentage of teachers on the second slide 12 of our teaching staff is considered black or african american and 11 is hispanic hispanic or latino of any race now compared to the t to the student body obviously it's lagging behind especially in hispanic latino where our numbers this these numbers are from 2019 20. there's been a slight increase in the teach in the student population the breakdown of hispanic students in british port is up to about 54 and growing as more and more folks immigrate to the bridgeport area and move into the bridgeport area um but these are the numbers that we currently have um and our numbers of our our population are up um
007we are higher than hartford we are higher than new haven um and we are higher than any of the other districts when it comes to the percentage of teaching staff that reflect student body so i think it's it's important to look at not only how many we have that reflect our students but also what the pool is if the pool doesn't exist and that's one of the biggest issues statewide is trying to increase the number of folks that are entering the perfect profession to diversify our teaching staff but the other problem that comes along with that is every one of the 169 districts across the state have the same goal which is to increase the diversity of their teaching staff so even as more and more possible candidates become certified other districts have the same
008um responsibility and it's not simply to reflect their student body but they want to diversify their teaching staff we're in competition again not only for teachers but teachers of color as well with districts that can offer them more in terms of of pay and and and benefits so this is going to continue to be a struggle um i i think the important strategy that we're trying to tap into is our own student body to really build them uh not only give them the opportunity to enter into the field through incentives uh but also to hopefully have them come back and have a responsibility to improve their their own communities okay can we enlarge them a little possibly but i don't have permission can we enlarge the text please trying to do so sir but at
009the moment i don't have that option i'm working around it trying to kind of work around thank you all right thank you all right and in the meanwhile i thought let's just point out the numbers um because these when i first saw these uh percentages they really stole my stark difference now the biggest disparity if you're counting positive and negative disparities will be in caucasians weight or weights there's a 62 imbalance of caucasian educators to caucasian students who publish that and african americans is uh 12 educators and 32 students and 20 disparity now the biggest negative disparity would be hispanic latino of any race would be 11 of educators versus 51 percent of the student body that's a 40 percent disparity now test on the uh allude to how we're doing well in the state
010and that's all well and good and it's good i mean that shows we're doing some effort but when we look at things from that perspective it tends to disincentivize moving forward i want to be a better bridgeport than we were yesterday i want to be better at this we got to be creative on how we're going to basically beat these other districts out to the limited pool how we're going to expand the pool for our bridgeport public schools i know i know it's a rough task but unless we have these conversations and take these actions these numbers can continue to grow sure and that's why we've uh this is our second year again um partnering with uh today's student tomorrow's teacher that was a program that had existed for several years and way back into
011the district but it became quite costly and determined that the benefits um at the time i guess i can't speak to the thought process but from what i would gather we weren't getting our bang for our buck um and now working with them again but of course two years at no cost it's now the last conversation i had with those folks two weeks ago um they're gonna be running out of funding and looking to the district to invest uh we also have the teacher residency program that we're working with sacred heart that we're hoping to build a pipeline to our graduates from bridgeport public schools to go into education they can get reduced tuition in their undergraduate years and then hopefully we get them to come back and work in our school building so these
012are a couple of strategies designed to try to build a pipeline from our own graduates the difficult piece obviously is when students graduate high school and go on to college being able to maintain a connection and being able to have have a way to communicate with those folks uh and to monitor and try to get them back and i know we talked about um last year well when we were taught together we talked about the issue that we've done a great job at trying to increase um black and brown teachers within our district so now we so to reflect our student body now the other issue became where we had more hispanic and latino students but not in the teachers of latino and hispanic culture i mean race so the the issue became what are
013some of the so we can push all day that we want our students to become teachers who are um hispanic and latino but the problem is is that are these the type of careers that they desire based off of where they're from so a lot of times it's like you know it depends on what what the the culture of it is and also to what parents are preparing their kids to be because let's be real a lot of the non-traditional careers have given you know a greater stance a lot of our students so i know that we want to push them to become teachers and things like that but i think we also have to look at what they really want to do and then make sure the teachers that we reflect reflect that career
014path in some way um because you know we can you know i know someone said at the meeting you want students to be able to agree not agree but feel like the teacher that's in the classroom reflects them but if we you know culturally a lot of them are not going to want to be teachers because of pay right they can get a career being you know you know a non-traditional career you know truck driving plumbing or whatever the case may be and get way more money than what the what a teacher is getting so that is also another reason that we're competing against all these other districts because they have the money to pay the teachers and we may not have that so that we have to think creatively enough to say you know
015how could we get staff that really put that you know that desire in them to want to come and be teachers because i i will say as a black woman african-american woman i'm looking at like how a lot of my friends have went and you know went back to school became teachers because it became i think going to college getting that degree became a major need it became a major focus of a you know african-american home so now that students are doing it they may come back to the district and want to teach and i have a couple friends that are in the district that teach but the the conversation was different so if we think culturally what's the conversation and how can we you know either i don't know if i'm making any sense
016like bring that full circle for our students because if you know if being a teacher being a hispanic male or female and if that is not the focus culturally for them that's not something that they're going to want to do and it's going to be hard to get teachers to come and necessarily teach to a population that they have no connection to if that makes sense yeah one one of the things talking to kids um they don't view the teaching profession as one that that they're enticed to because of the way they feel teachers are treated by some of their peers um also the cost of higher education it's it's a huge investment and then to not come out and get a lot of return on your investment when it comes to earning potential that
017becomes also a barrier um and i think just given the last couple of years with the pandemic i think this is going to be much more difficult in general across the all races to entice people to come back in and and get into the teaching profession there are there are a lot of articles that have been i've been reading the last couple of weeks that really indicate that we're headed for a crisis in public education nationwide when it comes to teachers um simply because of what the pandemic has created in terms of a culture and that that's that's scary because we know the the the school districts that are going to be impacted the most are the school districts similar to bridgeport um and that's unfortunate and unless and let's think about too you know
018the teacher name teaching environment overall like you're dealing with you know no disrespect to like the ms you know the miss grant i'm so sad that she retired but like that level of structure in a classroom that you know those older teachers provided younger teachers are not gonna they're not gonna stand for behavioral issues or any of the of the nature so the culture of being a teacher has changed so drastically that even young teachers will come in and would rather like i said when we talked to the other me rather rotate they don't want to stick to a particular classroom because of either you know the environment in itself but also too a lot of them they got student loans to pay you know and there's what's the benefit on the other side of
019like if you're coming here what can we provide for them you know and it's a give and take like what can you do to help support me as a teacher and what are you going to do to get me to come because i'm if i'm going to be a teacher in a district i want to have a family here i want to you know buy a house here like these are things that millennials or younger teachers are thinking about when coming to bridgeport you know to teach in this district well i think that's why the the number that is cr we've been looking at is 40 of the teaching staff is in the first six years and then the number drops that's about the time people are looking to buy a home people are looking
020to start a family and the wage is not competitive enough to be able to do those things and still and drive a decent car go on a vacation uh many of our teachers have to work second jobs now that's fine i did it for you know when i was starting out but unfortunately that takes a toll as well because you don't have you have less time for preparation for the next day um depending on if you're doing an after-school program or if you're working at a bar or restaurant where you can make a lot more money but you got later hours you know i talked to a teacher a couple of weeks ago she works thursday nights um she was saying that at a bar she makes four to five hundred dollars that in cash
021but she's also getting home at midnight what does that classroom get on fridays from that teacher i mean she's she's running thin you know i talked to a teacher last summer hey why don't you work our early reading success program she works at a local place here and down bartending and she said she makes upwards of two thousand dollars on a weekend well she's going to make 3 500 for an entire summer program so i mean these are the things that people are struggling with and um i think we need to rephrase the conversation around i mean if you look at the media income of a bridgeport resident and if they've had their parents making is under a teacher's salary thunder what it's under the teacher's salary the median and comfortable okay yep so i
022mean once they get their top pay they're talking about close to 100 000 a year in a job where they got medical benefits where they got a pension one of the few areas left where you have a defined benefit pension plan i agree they'll set you up for life so these are the things that need to be emphasized uh some of the t our teachers are wonderful great staff but yes they are tired and sometimes the frustration shows may show through in the classroom so and it may be emphasized i don't get paid enough for this but they don't get paid enough from the places they're coming from maybe uh for the most part a 74 caucasian environment that didn't face the income struggles that other people are facing in our community i mean to
023be a teacher will be a step up an income and be that next ladder for their children to do better than a teacher's salary or move on to stuff because all the other professions that i mentioned they give a lot of wear and tear on your body i just retired at 55 very good job i got a pension had medical benefits i never have to work again but your body suffers physically sure and that your mind suffers definitely education is stressful and all that but i think miss brown made a good point we had a conversation last week i think and i tried to sell the pension component um younger folks are not looking 35 years down the road to what their pension could look like um you know it's one of the things that
024we're advocating for as alliance districts in this legislative session is somehow a way that if you teach in an alliance district that we recognize that maybe early retirement is is something as a benefit um simply because of of the extra work that you have to put in i mean we're dealing with class sizes up to 29 students where suburbans you know towns our neighboring towns have you know under 20. so there's got to be a draw and if if it's not going to be a competitive salary there has to be other benefits that we can sell as a school district um to folks that that will attract them to come here and work with great kids i mean we we have a lot of challenges resourcefully but we do have great kids and um you
025know if you give them give them your your care they're going to give you the world back yeah i wanted to say um you know the conversation seems to keep coming back to the the same issue and and as a college graduate as a bridgeport public school graduate i i'll say my from my personal experience that money talks you know it's that's the bottom line why i can't what i have such a hard time understanding is bridgeport is the largest city in the state of connecticut by population and the second largest school district right in the state um largest again yeah we're we always teeter back and forth the largest again the largest among the largest yes um sure then we should have the most amount of money to work with to be able to
026like other cities should be competing with us absolutely we we're the mo the biggest inner city in the state you know and if we're breeding students graduates young professionals like you and i then we should be able to keep them here you know based on my personal recollection of um of my own experience um i you know everyone in my family gave me a hard time about buying my first house here everyone told me don't buy in bridgeport don't buy a bridgeport it's a bad investment and it turned out to be actually one of the best financial investments i've made in my life thus far but i don't think the the awareness i don't think the culture says that you know and i don't think that people understand the value that is to be had
027here and part of the reason why is because people feel like they can't make their lives here and a big part of that boils down to salary so you know it's tough for me because i'm a little wet behind the ears with this you know board of ed stuff and and i'm not fully um abreast of the financial situation but that has i feel that salaries have to become a priority because if if we're not um prioritizing salary then we're not um we're not being competitive you know and and with the situation being what it is we really should be the most competitive in the state especially for minority teachers these numbers i i get it it's an improvement but there in my mind as a latina these are abysmal this this is you know
028and i understand that progress takes time and it's going to happen slowly and it's not going to happen overnight and you know i'm committed to the the long term of it but um i feel like it money talks and that's the bottom line yeah to that point yeah money does permeate everything but you got to consider that the money is good enough to still have a disparity of 74 percent caucasian versus 11. sure percent hispanics so 74 percent of occasion teachers are able to find this salary acceptable enough to teach in this district and we still need to find other ways so salary is not the main impediment keeping this imbalance going okay that's what re it's even reflective of the number of people that are in the profession in the state right so when
02983 of the people who hold certifications are caucasian the likelihood of filling your vacancies right is going to be much higher it's going to be much higher right let me grab mr bennett real quick thank you yeah i'm here thank you mr chair and i agree with you mr chair and i agree what miss bobby said but one of the most important thing and i always say this we need to support our staff why i remember when i was in eastside middle school i don't know if mr pakistani remember that i have teachers they have teachers there that are still working in english for why because they care they care about our students they love our students and some teachers they say oh i don't get paid enough but i leave they stay here because
030they care about our students they care about parents and stuff so it's very important that we need to support all the staff we have to love them we have to listen to them we had to communicate with them and it's good when sometimes you know with us when we're working we got a good race so all these staff deserve a good race because they care so that's what i want to say mr chair thank you now let's um talk a little bit about uh what strategies have we employed in the past because when i was looking at the less let's go around we were looking at the administrators and the administrators have a far less disparity in african-americans to students it's like almost equal there was an intentional recruitment effort at some point to fix
031these things back in the past well i i think obviously there's much less of the administrative ranks i mean when you're looking at only i mean let's look at building level folks i mean looking at maybe 70 or so um and those are much higher wage paying positions so um [Music] it's much more attractive if you're going to be an administrator and is it is it challenging to be an administrator here and rather than maybe in westport i guess different different challenges i don't think i would say it's easier in either place but it's a much higher wage obviously um and there's less of them so and you pull from the teacher ranks the teacher leaders the folks that are here they're committed they exemplify leadership in in the in the teaching ranks and we
032we want them to be the face of our schools those are the folks that we need to implore to go out and help recruit teachers um i think the other issue is we have to work with higher ed and how they recruit into the teacher prep programs that's that's that's the one of the obstacles that we we don't look at because i've heard people say all the time why don't we go down south to these schools we've been here at it for years and and go recruit well a lot of those schools may not have teacher prep programs so it that's not helpful i talked to the superintendent the other day in hartford who went as we did several years ago on a trip to puerto rico to try to recruit teachers from their um
033institutions of higher ed that could possibly come here and fill some vacancies when it comes to bilingual and esau um it didn't pan out the way they would have anticipated going to the island they're going to try to go back again um i asked her for the contacts and everything from a bridgeport perspective we could do the same possibly because there may be family members that are in the greater bridgeport area that these folks would have a connection to come to bridgeport so she's going to share that information and we can make that attempt as well but i really think it's the job of higher education institutions to target and recruit folks into those programs because that's where we're pulling from right steer towards those programs as well now i heard uh i was speaking
034today with uh zagat phillies out a little overseas oh uh ex-union president uh mr traber he's telling me about a program we used to have where we're recruited from our paris and it was quite successful in the past and his funding got cut off work well we're working with sacred art now in the teacher residency program we also um started discussions uh two weeks ago with uconn um similar to try to see some of our para educators that may have a desire the the issue becomes tuition but also then how do they pay their bills so if we're asking you to leave your position in the district where your pet you're being paid a salary we have to then somehow give them enough of a stipend that they're able to live while they're going to
035school and then cover the tuition so that's that's part of the driving force that we're trying to look at right now um [Music] using some of the federal dollars we'd like to start with maybe a pool of 10. again that will create another issue on the back end that we don't have 10 pairs that we're already struggling to fill but at least we can start elevating some of our para educators that that basically have all the skill set to teach that's lacked the credentials and do we have don't we have a lot with some with uh already all the credits but for like uh teaching the classroom to things uh that's all no that could go through an old circle they don't have um some of them may qualify for uh a dsap that until
036they can go back and obtain the rest of the credits that they need um but we're putting together a couple of flyers right now through hr that we've worked with um colleges and universities we're going to try to do a couple of things we're going to try to fill the need with special education through a cross-endorsement tee saw through across endorsement and then the teacher residency to just bring folks into the teaching profession um through a one-year residency program with sacred heart university i have a question do we have so i have a friend she works in the hampton i believe it's hampton school district so she is she's uh trying to transition to be like a full-time spanish teacher what they did so she had trouble passing um practice the practices what they did
037was they paired her with the senior teacher and basically so eventually she's in the process of passing but it was so much easier and so much easier that she felt supported enough that she was able to even get that support from a season teacher is that something that we do within a year okay and we've had some teachers that practice has been a challenge we get them a coach that helps them through the praxis process especially when it's in some of the areas like uh 7 12 mathematics some of the upper level calculus those kind of classes you know are you know they need a little bit of tutoring because maybe it's been a little while since they went to school um so i mean we have mike brosnan that works out of our hr
038department he's a teacher on special assignment that works with our new teachers but also is our college and um liaison in trying to to help recruit um we're gonna expand he um with another teacher on special assignment to assist him in being because it's just become so much work that we we need two people there try to create these partnerships we're trying to inform higher ed what we need and how they can help us but i think there needs to be a shift as well at their programs and what it entails to prepare teachers to teach in places like ours that because my thing was going to be like is that is that advertised as well like so if you create a package for a new teacher here are the things that you know you
039can be supported in so you know it may catch you know someone's attention saying hey you know it's worth me not just being a sub i'm gonna you know whatever the case may be yeah i mean right now we're getting that information out to our peer educators to our kelly services long-term subs um we do a lot with new teachers over the first couple of years a lot of training a lot of professional development to help them feel supported we front loaded a lot of it in years past year one and then it dropped off significantly so in the last couple of years my goal was to balance it out over the first three or four years so that the support continues and they're more likely to stay with us ms i'm just listening and
040taking it all in and seeing where my experiences you know landed me when i was a classroom teacher and going through the programs and taking the i don't know but i took a very positive approach with the students that i had and they always so i i want to say i seem to get the good the bad and easily and i had to set up a program for myself not from the system in order to manage those uh students that were behavior problems and who had learning disabilities and things of that sort so i sort of had to map out what i needed to do for those students so that they could be successful and i think i was successful to a degree because a lot of my i have students that are teaching that
041i taught and it was exciting because it was a challenge for me to make sure that i had good classroom structure that i gave the students who could have been very problematic i gave them a road map and rewarded them in some manner or something so that they could work toward that goal and so sometimes students need to be rewarded you know because that's their job you know we have a job our incentive is pay we get paid so their incentive should be something it's not just all reading writing arithmetic there are other things that go with it and so i prepared myself and i'm very proud of my grandmother who was a teacher she taught back in the days when i had one room class one all the students were in one classroom and
042they were not divided at grade level like this you know and so she managed to be very successful and she taught me a lot of things that worked in this area and this time too so what drew you to if i if i may ask what drew you to teach in bridgeport and to spend your entire career in bridgeport well i'm a south carolinian by birth my grandmother taught in south carolina and my mother was very busy and the students were getting in trouble here and so she sent me to my grandmother in south carolina i finished high school in south carolina which they had a very good program it was a new and the teachers really put their efforts into the children and i find that sometimes and i don't want to make disparaging
043remarks about teachers but some teachers don't put a lot of effort they feel that this is kind of a go by itself uh thing when they uh and and i just find that like i used to give my students incentives we'll go to danbury fair we'll do this we'll do that on a day or you know weekend or something like that they enjoyed it and they performed well i didn't have any discipline problems really because if they were late for class guess what they came to saturday classes i think i think miss miss allen touches on something that's pretty typical you know she talked about how she mapped out um a way for her to reach her students and i think that's something that we try to do through professional development with our with the
044younger teachers but i think you know one of the things that we expressed in in with higher ed is that it's different to teach today with the the diversity of a classroom not just in ethnicity but also in the needs of children and looking at the way we certify teachers needs to be probably taking a a better look at because i think all teachers need to be teachers of of children with special needs all teachers need to be teachers of teachers of english language learners you know we try to specialize and provide certification in a way where and i had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with dr steve perry you need to be able to teach and and that's it doesn't matter if you can teach a second grader or an eighth grader
045teaching is a teacher a teacher is a teacher we have teachers that are certified but can't teach we employ them as teachers but they can't teach and i don't mean that in a disparaging way i just think that the way they're they're prepared to enter the profession doesn't meet the needs currently it may have worked 25 years ago but i don't think it meets the needs of our current state of education and my worry is that's the reason why these teachers are leaving the profession in the first five years because what they've been prepared for and what they actually have to do doesn't match up anymore but the teachers also have to have some innovative skills creativity innovative skills need to be able to teach that's right and so in order to teach they need
046to provide themselves or research ways to do it because uh they always gave me for me the children who were problematic i got all of them you remember you were just over there and what i do i had to sacrifice until i got the reputation and the whatever skill sets and all that stuff to be able to teach i had saturday classes i had after school classes i had them open up the school on holidays so they learned very quickly how to get around and to do due diligence with their education need to be creative and i said how we can attract do you remember the kids used to come read school late every single day late late late you know what i did i had saturday a good day yeah so that was how
047i was able to create and do things well always can you believe that i took 40 students to disney world for six days oh fun and i did not have a problem as i had conditioned them and taught them and told them what i needed and they provided what i needed and i just laid it out and they delivered absolutely yes um i was going to say to add to what mr tassani was saying that from from the university perspective the programs for um for teaching are challenging to get into also from the admissions side i would say that ub's teaching their graduate programs and teaching are probably among the most challenging programs to get into same thing with nursing you know and so now we're in a space where we need a ton of
048nurses and we need a ton of teachers and you know we're not giving um them that opportunity at the um at the higher education level to to even try you know even those who who do have interest now that's obviously something that's not has nothing to do with the bridgewater public school system but i do wonder about what our relationship is like with um university of bridgeport um is there a possibility to build a relationship there with their teaching program we've we've begun to build that bridge again um we did that two years ago and again working with and taking interns which we hadn't done in a long time um i think one of the things that i you know when we were talking about you know renewing their the relationship i don't think they
049were quite understanding because i don't think anyone told them why the relationship was was being discontinued and part of that is that higher ed costs as i explained to them have exceeded on the cost of a substitute teacher because in essence when i started as an intern way back that's what i did they paid for my tuition and i was an intern in the school and i substituted every day with somebody out nobody was out i worked and tutored with kids so when higher ed got too expensive compared to paying a daily sub the district decided to just cut ties with but that also cut ties with the relationship of a pipeline of teachers because if it wasn't for that internship program i wouldn't be here today i can say that about bernadette brown palmer
050who's the assistant principal now i carry out she was my classmate we went through the program together i could say that about miss diana soares the principal at bma went through the program together so we were that group that pipeline and without that relationship for several years you see what happens right you know those folks now go to other places because that's where the relationships are built so we're asking everybody to give us their interns southern connecticut as many as they can send us sacred heart university university of bridgeport we're working now mike brosnan's working out a deal where we can create a paraeducator program with uh housatonic so that those folks can come in at an entry level and then we can shift them into the remaining two years to get certified as a
051future so we're we've got a lot in the pipeline we're hoping that with all these seeds that we're planting that over the next several years we'll be able to see the fruits of these relationships that again as erica castillo said it's they were fractured because they were cuts to the budget that obviously had a cost that no one saw that was greater than the financial cost later on now back to um the power programs um but how much was that how much would it be would it cost to like support like one power or whatever well you figure if they have a two-year degree to go on and complete uh two more years for example with sacred heart we can probably work out about 25 000 a year with the tuition cost and then whatever
052the stipend would be that they would need to be able to at least live during that period of time now we could cover the first year in most likely the first year would be tuition only while they still stayed as a pair the last year would be where they would need to do that one year residence where they work under a certified teacher uh the old days you know while they still do student teachings for 14 weeks we find that the residency program that we develop through national teacher residency center in chicago you get a teacher that at the end of that year is more prepared to deal with um the profession than that 14 weeks but uh if you have a parent in the classroom they've been like basically under a teacher for all
053that time it's one thing to be supportive it's another thing to be able to deliver high quality instruction and we want to make sure that that's the goal is high quality instruction because the 14 week seems like a bigger a quicker shot well they would still need the two years of classes do we have it maybe we should get a survey of how many of our powers have four-year degrees versus two-year degrees because the four-year degrees would seem to be something we could use more immediate in conjunction i'm not saying it's the best-case scenario because there's somebody going out of income for one year and a cup of that and we could cover the 14 week well the 14 weeks is after they do so if you have a four-year degree that's not in an
054education right or in a a specific in math which they wouldn't have a math degree or science degree most likely because they'd be in the field but if they do have a four-year degree they would have to get into a master's program so it'd be a one-year master's program and then the 14 weeks so it would at least be a year and a half investment that we would make but they would also have to quit their job obviously at some point that's where we would have to compensate them at some level for the time so that they can they can pay their bills and live and we've got a breakdown of our powers and like degree wise then a demographic hr has been working on that so that we can have a targeted recruitment of
055folks if in those areas so we're going to invite them to a a kind of a workshop presentation to see how many we can sway to if we could get the demographic data for the next meeting that would be great and we could take a look on that and what now what do you think a realistic goal would be for decreasing the disparate numbers in our a convocation 2024 would you think of a realist with the things that we got in a pipeline now because right now is 74 21 it's a good question if we got a goal to shoot for it if we have a metric we aim for and get it i think i can hear because they had an incentive to push towards that goal i mean they may or may not
056be met and i mean if we can increase by five percent i mean that incrementally i think that's that's huge um you know i i think we're really looking at this point to make sure that we turn over every stone like i said i'd be more than willing to take the opportunity as hartford has to try to go and be creative i mean our el population is growing um we need teachers to to support kids and their language acquisition skills i mean we're up to almost 4 700 students that that are identified as ls in the district i mean that's that's a huge number and not only don't we have the staff the staff is not out there i mean there's very limited uh programs that prepare teachers in tesol and it's not an easy
057program we're working now at anna sousa martens our director um between uh uh uh and hartford's using as well uh a program called arctel that's five thousand dollars to certify an existing teacher and a cross endorsement um we're going to try to get a cohort there and we're also working with uconn to try to get a cohort they're opening a stanford campus graduate campus in uh the tesol bilingual educators and so that's going to cost us a little bit more about 13 000 the person but it's worth the investment if we can get two cohorts of 10 to 12 to fill a huge need and hopefully some of these folks um have already speak they already speak a second language so that would be helpful not necessary but helpful we talked about our we talked
058okay we talked about everything that's within our power and what we could do is there any stumbling blocks like on the state certification process that could unnecessary stumbling blocks well that praxis exam is is a problem um i wouldn't say it's a major problem but it is a problem at times um but i also think just revamping you know some of the certificate programs [Music] there may be a need to try to tear salary schedules based on um you know the difficulty of being able to attract folks into those certification areas special education tesol bilingual education we these are historically and will continue to be historically more difficult to fill and um those are our most vulnerable students so maybe a different salary schedule for for teachers that take on those certificates i mean we
059have to start being creative not not every certification is created equal i mean but we are getting to a point where it's hard to fill elementary vacancies which has never been a problem so i'll come back [Laughter] we have do we have any um policies in our hr department that prioritizes pps graduates or bridgeport natives or anything like that there's nothing formal but we do take that into consideration that if we can get folks that graduated from a bridgeport public high school or just a bridgeport high school you know whether it's bullard havens or bridge academy um and also folks that that are residents it's it's very i mean right now with 72 vacancies um you know we've been promoting it everywhere linkedin we're trying to use all the social media outlets um to try
060to cast a wider web yeah to attract candidates here but as other districts historically have had less vacancies they're getting more and more vacancies and they're taking folks i have heard stories of people who for example already work in the bridgeport public school system or those who you know graduated from here who had a hard time getting into the bridgeport public school system for a number of reasons and i do feel that there should be some some level of priority placed on applications that um that meet the qualification and are from the local area because as miss miss allen was saying you know those are the types of uh relationships that that build heart in a teacher you know so it's not just about teaching in a classroom but about you know getting the teacher
061to connect with the with the students that we're serving and that seems to be a very obvious way of of doing that is is by just you know i will say don't believe all the stories you hear i mean i had somebody call me a few months ago and said you know you guys lost a great teacher they're going to new haven i can't believe you didn't and i called the human resources department i gave them the name the person was a karate teacher yes there was no way of hiring this there was no certification anywhere remotely near being able to help this no dsap no alternative route so the information that the person gave this individual that we let them slip by they were just going to new haven to be a sub we
062offered them a sub they lived closer to new haven than they did here but that was one of some of the things that we kind of encounter i mean we we've been trying every angle we call the state constantly if we can desap somebody if we can you know that it's 12 credits in the area just to get decept and then and be enrolled in a program so one of the stumbling blocks is just getting people to follow through that they're going to be enrolled in the program once we help them get the dsap because a lot of times we get them the dsap they start and we find out really quickly that they didn't enroll in the program as they said and unfortunately then they go back to being a sub right and let's
063be honest like i love bridgeport i love living here i've been around my life but the culture it in itself is enough to make somebody not want to be here and that has really and i know that and i know that we want to not necessarily blame the school district and say that you know it's it's the public education it's it's all this and you know i applaud every teacher that shows up all the time it is the culture that is here that no matter how good the schools are if the outside of the district and the community isn't well people are not going to want to come here and you know the first thing that they do when people come in or moving into this neighborhood the first thing they're looking at the leadership
064that's here they're looking at the community that's here then they're looking at the school then they're looking at the site it starts going down there and i think you know you mr tastani and the staff have done a great job at trying to build up this morale around bridgewater public schools and you know you to we take our hat off to that but let's be honest it's not just that it it may just be that we would have to really amp up the district enough so that it outshadows all of the negativity that is happening here and you know and i and i it hurts me to say that but i see how hard it may be compared to a harford compared to new haven because it's it's it is what it is so we
065work 10 times harder to to make people believe in the district to even get their kids or staff to be in the district so there's there's a lot of it there's a lot that we're up against and that's why i you know if we can like mr sukulovic said like let's think of what we can aim towards and even if we don't get it all the way but enough to change the morale the idea of what the city looks at when it comes to bristol public schools you know and i was sitting here and i was just like thinking to myself i'm like man we have so many different barriers and it's not even just british republic schools but if you take a step out of that and you look at everything that's around i'm
066not a mom yet i'm not married yet but when i start thinking about where my future is you know i don't work in bridgeport anymore but just darken my where my future is it's kind of scary to look at and be like no you know but we've had some folks that obviously there's been an influx of of people that left new york to come into bridgeport over this past summer they've enrolled their kids in in our schools um it's interesting to get their point of view or what they've expressed especially early in the fall a couple of parents and i sent an email to the board that um i told them the conversation had to end because the way they were depicting kids in bridgeport you know when their children were getting into some things
067and it was it was insulting i mean it really is and i think that's part of what they read what they've heard more than what reality is i mean 99.9 of our kids come to school every day willing and ready to learn it and you know over time it is our job to keep that flame lit you know every kindergarten kindergartner walks in excited to be in school and somewhere along the way you know whatever the things are that are external most of the time you know we can't control what happens outside of the schoolhouse though um and this pandemic has really made it much more difficult because kids spent a lot of time at home and unfortunately home wasn't the place they wanted to be they wanted to be here you want to back
068up for a minute sometimes castilia said got me thinking about what she heard and you stated that not everything here is true we've been focused on who we hired the demographics of the existing staff what i think we should do also is take a look at the staff we've passed over building by building for instance like for instance how many qualified applicants may have been passed over in certain buildings is any trends where certain buildings are not because we still got an institution of certain areas or subconscious biases that we may need to look at right and we can go build entire building if there's one building to hire jones and mccarthy and dancing but no but in every one of those interviews rodriguez applied and was passed over every time maybe that's something that
069could be looked at as well is there any way to get the demographic data of the people we didn't hire is that part of the application process like this i'll ask um i know in the last couple of years unless you know you didn't show any ability to be able to teach or good for kids we had enough vacancies to hire i mean i had a principal say to me last week that they hired a teacher for a vacancy if this was any other year prior to the pandemic they probably would have passed over the individual but because of the situation that we are in um and the area that this person was uh certified took a shot out to see so i think we are in that position right now but we could see
070yeah yeah if we if we could just gather that data just to put my mind on it because you know you never know you never know also definitely oh sorry yeah yeah yeah thank you mr chair that's a question for me to understand in one comment understanding how many um vacancies you say we have we have 72 at last count i think we were offering uh two people positions today um on i don't know how they panned out because the applicants were defending much higher steps than the experience that they had but based on their certification we're leveraging us against the other districts so and when these people um apply in human resource they totally exactly close the person so you can maybe know them and you can do the search so what happens is
071when there's a teacher vacancy the application's done on apple tracks and then those folks are interviewed by the building principal or administration possibly other teachers in the in the building and then the recommendation to hire is done at that level and i'm agree with miss miss brown said about people talk about obvious things about bridgeport but exactly they don't know what's going on you know they like to say a lot of things you know you missed the study for almost three years you did it so many things that another superintendent never did and us as a board member we had to deal with so many things they don't know exactly what we do you know it's something it's a process it's a protocol it's a policy we got laws people think because they can open
072them up for educational british foreign for that no they don't know exactly what we're going through they don't know what's going on the secret like i always say when people hear this stuff you know i'm making some time table marine but if you go under you need to investigate you need to find out where the sound comes from you know and we always say in my life latino we always say in my country or if it's cooking they know what ingrid is inside of the pot so we know people say negative stuff but they don't know what what we have to go through that's that's mr chair thank you disgusting um i was going to say about um your point about new york is that something that we can maybe tap into you know we're
073sort of in in the midst of this like great migration from new york to um to connecticut and i understand that these uh teaching certifications for connecticut and new york are different right yeah it's not hard to get um to get folks in new york certified in connecticut okay we've worked to do that um do we take the new york certificate oh yeah yeah i mean we did hire one of our special ed supervisors i hired this summer came from new york living in connecticut um we offered another position to a woman that was working in new york that recently moved to bridgeport she said no came back a couple months later wanted to reapply offered her another job at that time and then she backed out of that as well so you know it
074depends yeah okay yeah i mean right now i we're being extremely aggressive in hiring we have i'll come back no problem we have more aggressive in offering higher steps um to folks because we know that it's it's been a challenge like i said today was the ask was unreasonable and we're still considering it yeah um because it's a biology teacher yeah yeah to uh tell your point mr felive when you were talking about um did you say any teachers have been passed over so do we have like does does hr have like a like a box of teachers who didn't make it yeah and not not without just you know saying that they were um they were you know skipped over but like if we needed to go back and say hey like you know
075this person you know didn't we didn't pick this person but in this folder they may fit for this position do you do like second callback oh yeah oh yeah okay so like so you know you have a like a box that you can just i guess it's all on apple track so what we do is we we like for the folks after the interview to put some notes and they're they're on by the applicant's name so when you look them up so you may say you know better suited for middle school or you know better looking for a high school position you know the 712 certification most people want to teach in the high school that's why they get it middle school is a unique time of adolescence and um we have a much more
076difficult time finding middle school math and science um even though we do have some challenges at the high schools but not as much um it's interesting i like it you know if i ever went further with my my teacher at the time i probably would have just stuck to the the younger kids the high school is just different it's an easier cert to get the case k-6 um you know and again we're spending a hard time finding those now now that's one of the other issues is as the need for teachers grows in the state the the colleges are going to need to expand the enrollment in their programs as well one of the huge barriers to our findings speech-language pathologists is i think mr rivera said there's two programs in the entire state and
077they limit the number of candidates into their program so if one program is releasing 10 graduates when they're done we're all compete in all of 169 districts for those 10 candidates so that's part of the other problem is are there enough candidates in the pipeline to fill the need now i asked the state if they had any data on retirements um or potential retirements they gave me data over the last i think it was since they've prep the pandemic really didn't push a lot more people out but this we lose in retirement around 1400 on average a year teachers across the state leave um so that's 1400 vacancies i don't know what the number of graduates coming out of higher ed prep programs are in the state but that's a big number and if that
078number continues to grow do we have enough candidates to fill all those positions because it just may be simple math that we have you know 1800 retirements but only 1200 graduates and then we have out of those 1500 retirements say 300 or special ed do we have 300 folks that are getting certified in special ed so i i think that's where we're going to have to all be at the table to look at state department of ed the higher ed folks and the districts to really come up with a way to strategize on how we can fill the needs because this is nationwide now [Music] well we have the high school students that theoretically might pursue bachelor's degree programs upon graduation they have the graduates that we need in our you know to teach in
079our um school district so there's there could be an opportunity there or sort of like entry exit um rotation swap whatever you want to call it um i think incentivizing folks though for the the high need areas like special education esl bilingual have to be somehow made a priority i mean no disrespect its teachings a difficult profession but there has to be an incentive for why i would teach you know a high need population as opposed to kindergarten for example right or kindergarten special ed children or you know we have some challenging kids that sometimes and not just us across the state across the country that those teachers asked to do more it's just the reality of it okay so it looks like we got a bit of a framework it's like it's like it's
080like a giant jigsaw puzzle i can see on people's faces that it could become overwhelming mm-hmm but like a giant jigsaw puzzle if you've got to work on their edges a piece at a time and eventually it'll all come together because if you focus on the whole puzzle at once you're gonna just lose your mind yeah okay now um next item on the agenda equity review of ap courses by student demographics do we have that on that i think it's uh honest it's in the pack obviously did not have a chance to review it i believe it is enrollment it's uh page 22 they're the last three pages yeah so we have it by school by course and then as you go across hispanic american indian asian black islander white two or more and then
081male female non-binary l and the totals so do we have an early education program in the city anymore early education when they take four and a half year-olds yes you did yes okay what's what is l e-l-l english language learners instead of e-l-l it's not just l okay english learners okay have it now you're going to see the the majority of the classes of ap here at central high school obviously because the magnet program is housed here for years so there are more of a historical component to ap um do we still have the um like feeder program for students that that are in magnet and k through 8 go into yes yes and is it do they all feed into central or they have the option to go to other so high horizons multicultural
082park city magnet um feed into here central magnet and then discovery is a blind lottery that's the requirement of the inner district it's a blind lottery same with fear okay got it looking at the numbers like this is a little difficult i know i should have been looking i should have looked a little earlier but yeah no no yeah um in the future if possible i know these are these are a lot of numbers right here you see the way we got the prior data with the bars the bar charts if we could get like numbers next next to each other in the future not not for this data second just just a quick glance at it i could see that it's not that disparate unless i'm missing something it's not it doesn't appear to
083be disappeared at all anything it's you know oh cool but is it's a lot easier to see when it's like yeah i'll have them if i would charge i'll have data management convert this into a bar graph and send it to you um tomorrow and basically any data i request from this committee that that would be the best format to have it in because it's it's like it's like at a glance you can see it like with the teacher data you can see it's like some of it's like this and yeah like that and you can see okay wait that's yeah no i need to focus i'll have them convert it send it to you and then if you want to put it on the next meeting agenda i think dr mcpherson will be better
084but no no it's well i i can look at the numbers as is if you can send it i don't think it needs to be on the next agenda unless there's like any glaring disparities that need to be addressed but if you could send it down it would be easier to look at just like that and now these are you know and ap courses just from my experience at the high school you know as much as you'll push some stupid i'm sorry to take the ap courses um especially as they get to be juniors and seniors senior year is a difficult year to kick kids unless they're really highly motivated to convince them to take ap courses um you know as a former counselor and also as an admin you know really trying to get
085them to um build their their transcript to fit their desire to go to what schools they'd like to apply to is is always challenging because you know they they want to ease the ease up a little bit that senior year and you got to keep pushing them to to stay focused and to push harder the other the other challenges and it's really with the scheduler at the building is to make sure that they're not all offered or there's no overlap in the in the period they're offered um so that kids can take multiple ap courses because they are singletons uh you have to really schedule those first and to put them throughout the day so that kids can take multiple ap courses the other challenge is a lot of the kids that take ap may
086be in aqua here at central so that they're at aqua part of the day which then doesn't give them the opportunity to take uh ap courses that they may want to take if there's conflicting uh times of day i'd like to rephrase what i just said i'm just i was just looking at the racial breakdown but if you go over to the far right to all right looking male to female we've got some uh numbers interesting like uh for instance you go down to bio the last line with the subtotal 173 females and 55 males and i would like to see definitely like to see demographics of male 2 female students in that school yeah and um also with aero 66 female 99 male 1 on the other side 213 female verse 106 male 1
087and the harding harding looks not too far away same thing in i.t there seems to be a it yeah because we still we still got the um gender conforming roles in a lot of our heads through history possibly and maybe i mean so if we can look at all those numbers side by side with the female population and male population to the school and just just to see where it falls maybe there could be some effective strategies to balance that out maybe it doesn't need to be balanced out just because the disparity exists doesn't mean the problem exists exactly so okay yeah look at i don't know um offhand our high school enrollment by um by gender right it does fluctuate but um usually we end up with less males than females correct on a
088historical perspective so even that being considered um the ones with the i would assume just being i guess my own bias is males that number one the females in any area might be more problematic than the other way around yeah but yeah just yeah if we could have the financing is brown any questions no questions this question no questions the banana no question very common when i see that i mean i see hispanic the numbers is very high and then when we go to the right i see the females is more female that male like the females are very very smart no it's good numbers you know they lose some maturity as well right all right and there's also not the clarity yeah i know people have to pause this right there these are the
089gender conforming stereotypes that i had it's just said in the classroom bicycle my son had the six years and we addressed it girls are smaller than boys in this boys are better than science these are the stereotypes we have to eliminate starting right here at this table for everybody to be more conscious of their language clear data shows that emails are more mature than males especially that that research has proven that well that's i'm sorry as far as academics and it's just leave me there because they're gonna attack us but um but that but that's language we definitely gotta be conscious of our language especially at this table everybody has the same chance girls are just as good as science boys are just as good at someone or whatever however you didn't do why do
090you think you have to say something so i don't know what she's trying to do it's a new day we all got our own things for me it's particularly hard i'm a conservative republican from way back and it's a learning process for me going forward so it's definitely we just got to be intentional in all language and intentional in our actions because we gotta we gotta set the example we got a lot of work to do to get this stuff settled hey anything else on this agenda i don't hear the last item on the agenda is possible agenda that's for 2022. what would everybody here like to see this committee discuss what possible agenda items um i would like an overview of hiring practices is there standardized practices do we interview in committees for example
091just an overview of of how hiring is typically done specifically for teachers yeah it's there is board policy that's followed it's on the um under board policy on the website um [Music] sorry i think summertime hiring is a little more challenging but um principals are highly competitive in interviewing and job offering to make sure that they get best candidates even against their colleagues here in the district but there is there is a formal practice to it okay i'm gonna go more on the student side of it um how is how we continue to make our curriculum reflect our students i know that we recently from the state were the first to be able to include that in the high school curriculum for african american studies and latino studies as well how could we um do
092that across the board not just for the high school students but making sure that we get them while they're younger and then to high school as well because high school is important but i think you know children are sponges from that age and as we continue to make our curriculum reflect our students the easier it is for them to have those conversations um with the teachers and their parents because if we want to be honest a lot has happened i believe covet is going to be in some type of history book in the next couple of years so like you know i just want to make sure and even kovit want to be honest a little bit diversity all of that is going to be all in one and i think it's important that we
093i'm not saying we have to be the first to do this but be the first to make sure that whatever is happening in the world we're on top of it um to the point where if it's going to affect our students that are coming from all different places different races different colors different backgrounds we are the ones that you know can start that conversation curriculum-wise yeah and i think one of the good things about bridgeport public schools is that when we do our curriculum renewal um that is one of the main focuses um in selecting curriculum especially when it comes to you know like reading wonders one of the main aspects of that was the texts that were available um it was reflective of of our community um dr jenkins and the team and the
094team of teachers really had that in mind when um viewing all the possible possibilities when it came to uh our literacy as you can see i know with teaching and learning we went through all the different um subject areas and and that is the lens that we want to use first and foremost because you know the importance of making sure that we're reading uh selections that are reflective of our cultures and and are expanding our our view of of the kids that we are with in in class um you know i think all our schools really have uh make a strong effort to celebrate um could we do better absolutely and i think that's the goal is to continue to just do better are we ready to move on to it because we have been
095reviewing each curriculum with under the equity lens through the teaching and learning for the past uh like i said past year now yeah one of the only things left i believe is the 8 through 8 social studies yeah because that was the next that's the next yeah the committee was fi had to finalize everything with the um high school and then it was going to trickle down um and really getting some other folks that have more of an expertise at those grade levels to help with that and how soon we'll be able to on that we can get a committee um together in the next couple of weeks and they can get their marching orders to begin um working on the social studies curriculum and then again same process we did with um back to
096the teaching and learning give you updates and and i would post was it any oh and then i was gonna say i know we did that um that training with the that was like absolutely amazing um with dr gay yeah so he's he's been okay working with the district he's come back uh on [Music] four other occasions we have another we just finished a new training with administration because i think that's you know one of the focus areas has been how we lead our buildings um and the next one is going to be for clerical staff because and um so we gave him some um some information so he can develop and cater it to our clerical staff because we we know that that's an area of weakness as well i don't know if i'm
097gonna be reaching with this i really like the presentation that he gave is there any way to get something like that on the student level or is that the responsibility of the teacher no we can we have more work contracted with him and we're just going through a progression but we can't have him do one since it is virtual that can be utilized in the classroom for students as well absolutely yeah um i think it'll be i think it'll be very beneficial he he doesn't um from what i from what i've seen from the presentation he doesn't make it seem like he'll have to be way up here to understand anything so even with the example i thought was really good that it was literally like in layman's terms for anyone who would be able
098to see yourselves i would love to see something like that um reflected on the student body level because then i can also speak up conversations um to what's happening as well um in the world but on that diversity equity inclusion side of it i think you can really get the students um speaking a lot on what's happening because a perfect example i know a lot of them are watching um forgot the name of the show but it's a show about football on netflix and in that show a lot of the students take back the power of all american all-american there you go so all-american the students take back the power as to how they want to see their schools run when it comes to issues that are around diversity equity and even though football is
099the main focus it's good to see how the students have a greater impact in the school culture absolutely i know that that's what you've been trying to push but even on a deeper level when we start tapping into this particular you know dei area it's it's going to be amazing to see what our students talk about so then you know maybe they are seeing you know biases that maybe we can give they can give a lens to us to say hey this is what we are experiencing absolutely no and then that may be you know eliminate some of the negativity that they teachers may be feeling our students may be feeling whatever the case may be because let's be honest at the end of the day where we're impacting the leaders that will change tomorrow
100or today or whatever that however you want to say it so i think having that same presentation maybe just tweaked enough for us it will be very impactful and if you can do it i'm gonna ask him i mean like i said in 26 years i've never been to a workshop or and it was virtual and i wasn't bored oh my god i saw him time was in person and um i knew we had to bring them here absolutely oh that's awful and i would like to add to that um additional trainings um talking with a group that wants to do provided that's the board with uh free anti-racism anti-racist training is gonna be very valuable it's more proactive hard hitting and a little more about down in the dirt next month's agenda really looking
101forward to that you know in whatever you guys you know what are you putting the change and i'm support you it's the best thing for our staff and students and parents so you know i'm here for that so people are if you think of anything you like just referred at any time well now i agree what mr brown said that's amazing you know and i'm going what she said yeah with that awesome yeah miss alan do you have any suggestions on any items this committee should take up in the future well i just think that you need to continue some of the things that you're doing and get a little more in-depth absolutely in some of the things that are being discussed and uh i think that we'll you know we're never going to be
102perfect we can improve that that's fine absolutely and a lot of the things we're trying to change here we might not even see in our tenure it's going to trickle down i'll be satisfied if i could build something somebody else could move forward with after i'm gone and i think that's the last item in the agenda if anybody has anything else hearing nothing i'll say entertain a motion to adjourn everybody you