Board of Education Meeting

001okay good evening everybody um I'd like to call the uh regular meeting of the Brookfield board of education for November 15 2023 to order uh please uh join me in Rising for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the for it stands na indivisible with liy and justice for all okay so we have six of our seven board members here tonight but our seventh is at uh parent conferences this evening and will join us Midstream so um so um let me turn it over to you Dr Burl for item sure so um it is a a special board meeting for us um we um are having the uh farewell note for the Board of Education we have our four members strategically seated here that are going to be

002uh uh participating in their last board meeting of their their tenure and um uh before we have some gifts that we've prepared and we'd like to give to to the four of you um I'd like to give a real personal thank you um for everything you know you've done as I always share the board of education is a voluntary board and for those people watching it's very important for them to know that um of elected officials and it really is the most challenging board uh in you know local politics and and uh leadership to serve on given the amount of time and the complication and the complexity of the things you have to deal with and decisions you have to make and so I really am just so grateful for all you've done for our

003leadership team for our students for our faculty staff uh personally all you've done for me um and uh most importantly you know the the accomplishments on on for the kids things like um Candlewood Lake Elementary School I mean this has passed from several boards through but this board most recently really executing on that plan um the new school start times getting through covid um you know that was a long stretch for everybody and a challenge for all of us in the world um and the challenges difficulties we had to get through with that um applying those Esser funds uh to move our instructional program along with instructional coaches and summer school and interventions and things we needed to do for kids um I think somewhere over 100 policies on this board were updated in or

004uh developed um and of course uh you know along with health but security and safety in terms of capital investment um Personnel investment most recently and uh I just can't thank you enough I mean it's just an incredible board and incredible work that has been done so um if you'd indulge me I want to just maybe Lisa you can give me a quick hand just to make sure I give them to the right people we'll get our gifts for everybody [Music] Murphy you take your name plates yes you get to take your name PL the holder the holder thank you and while I don't mean to be anticlimactic there's the tradition in Brookfield there is a Traditional School Bell so feel free to open it if you'd like at some point and ring the bell

005but it's a beautiful engraved Bell personally engraved maybe when we adjourn the meeting perhaps um and so uh again thank thank you on behalf of the the leadership team faculty and staff um you know and everyone in town just thank you for everything you've done and i' I'd actually um I'd like to maybe give the opportunity to you know anybody on the board um whether it's a veteran board member or new board members if you have any parting comments or any things you want to say it's kind of a tradition here that we do this so I don't know Rosa you're putting your mic on start with you um Joy's not here right now so I guess I'm the only veteran board member that's actually staying but I just wanted each of you to know

006that I have thoroughly enjoyed working with with all with each of you um we've gone through a lot together and I've enjoyed our accomplishments just as much as our discourse personally because I know that it comes from a really good place and that each of you care so much about this town and our students and um I hope that we stay connected and you stay engaged and just a heartfelt thank you thank you Rosa little round Amy do you have anything I just wanted to thank everyone here as well um it's been like an incredible learning experience it's been a privilege to work with all of you and um yeah I've really learned a lot it's I'm going to I'm going to miss it I am some things I won't miss I will not miss

007the 11:00 end time to a few meetings a year but um this has been an honor and a privilege to do this and I really appreciate it and I will say I really appreciate um I would possibly still be sitting here after this if I didn't have a house fire and lose everything in that house fire and I just want to thank everyone sitting at this table and in the community as a whole for really supporting my family and me and it really means the world I really appreciate it so thank you did you have anything Hala I know you just started with us was there anything you wanted to say well i' I really have only attended what one and a half meetings I would say but uh one full meeting and it wasn't

00811 o'clock one so U that was a nice uh entry into it I'm really looking forward to this I think this is just from what I've seen from every single member here and what I've heard uh just some really intelligent and thoughtful comments and conversations and I'm I'm sorry to see the people going because I wish I would have had more time with you but I'm certainly looking forward to everything this opportunity has to offer and I hope we can all ser with the town the best we can thank you thank you very much goodbye and thank you thanks Debbie do you have anything yeah I just wanted to say uh that serving on this board for the past six years has been a great honor I've learned so much from the administrators and the

009teachers and the students and my fellow board members and I'm very proud of the work that we've accomplished together we did endure some challenging times but we always forged ahead in the belief that we were doing what was right for the students it's my hope that the new board will use their Collective talents to serve the district with a singular focus on the kids I look forward to seeing what the future holds for Brookfield Public Schools thank [Music] you Dr Murphy um I didn't know I was going to have to make a speech like this um I guess I first of all I I want to thank my wife for letting me do this uh because it it comes from you know support at home allows us to stay here till 11 o'clock at night

010especially with my three Knuckleheads at home uh I want to thank Dr an learned tons from you and and uh I really cherish our conversations any question I've ever had to John or an always got answered um and yeah I really enjoyed being a part of this board and and proud that of lot of accomplish that that we that we made so thank you thank you Mr Beldon I don't know how to top any of those so I'm not going to try um I remember my first board meeting eight years ago uh was the board retreat where we actually sat down as a board for the first time and um we all looked at each other and said let's check our parties at the door let's just focus Fus on the kids right and doing

011the right things for the kids in Brookfield and you know what that's what I've treasured about this board has been that every single thing we do you wouldn't know who's a republican who's a Democrat um who's unaffiliated uh it's all been about the kids right and trying to do the right thing for our children for our families for our staff for our all the educators of all ilk in this district and uh uh as a board um we had great conversations together right I mean in a lot of different venues whether it was in executive sessions or in the middle of contract negotiations or uh in committees or even here at the at the regular meetings and uh they we listen to each other we listen to each other well and I think usually we

012collaborated on a good answer no matter what we did so we didn't always agree right but we we worked together in a way that we could do it and we could do it solely focused on what was right for the kids we we had some shared experience we all got Zoom bombed if you all recall that was an interesting moment for all of us I also remember our first covid meeting when we were here uh trying to do an in-person meeting um and be what 15t apart from each other so we were screaming across the room to each other to try and do a meeting if you all remember that with all behind plexiglass barriers at individual tables it was uh there's some very funny moments so um thank you all I'd like to thank

013the administration you guys have been great great Partners in everything that we do um and uh and all of the teachers in the district we have super super teachers and Paras and special ed teachers and I'll tell you what we should be all proud to be part of the Brookfield School District in whatever way we can so thank you all thank you guys and and uh I'm going to miss this board but I'm not going too far thank you turn it over to you now Mr Belin okay well thank you all and thank you for the bell I will treasure that absolutely so um all right so we're going to get on with our uh regular agenda um the uh first up is a student Spotlight with from whiner middle school and uh Dr will

014do you want to say open sure turn to Mr Rena start us off with Mr Renda we are really excited we've got some technology integration and a couple of teachers here with us with our students so oops Mr Renda apparently needs his notes I don't know what's going on here Mr Rend he needs his clicker oh he need okay there you go I'll let you take over Mr Renda this is a technology presentation that's right all right at this time you guys can start walking over I'm very excited for um Miss uh Fitzgerald our literacy teacher and Miss Whiting uh technology um for the district uh are going to come up they're going to introduce what they're going to talk about and introduce our wonderful students thanks Mr R can you that' be great right

015here Mr renda's gonna click for us hi guys uh I'm Miss Fitzgerald uh I teach 8th grade literacy at whiner middle school and I'm here with three fabulous students from my eighth grade team and so I'm really proud that they're here to represent us at this meeting um I just want to give a shout out to miss Whiting because without her we would not be doing all of the new and Innovative things that we're doing and these students are going to Showcase some of the work that we have done collaboratively with Miss Whiting and so having her as an instructional coach and being able to collaborate with somebody who has great ideas who's bringing new and fresh ideas to our classroom has been amazing she's actually been in my class as a co- teer with

016me working with kids helping us through the writing process and so I'm going to kick it over to Liden first because she's going to tell you a little bit about what we've been doing in literacy and then she'll kick it to Annabella and then Annabella will kick it to Luca and then you know if you have any questions for us just let us know and then thank you to the board members who have served and I'm happy to be here for your last meeting so okay here we go all right go ahead um okay so there have been some changes in how we've been writing this year in literacy um first instead of trying to write a perfect first draft for our um writing we just did a brain dump where we spilled every all

017of our thoughts out before thinking about grammar and spelling and refining our writing and uh we had a choice of what to write we had control of whether we wanted to write um informational or um argument or narrative um and within that we got to choose what what exactly we wanted to write about like I got to choose the Battle of queson or I could have chosen um to write about the book we had just read um and we did a bit of a different per review as well we um instead of just reading it to your partner and them saying that's good and moving on we had a slide that your partner filled out um to give you actual feedback that was more useful than just telling you that's good um okay and now

018anabella's social studies Journey okay hi Board of Education my name is Annabella Carr and I will be talking about social studies and what we have been learning about currently so Miss Evans and Miss Whiting have come up with a new method um to learn about the American dream and unlike last year when it was I believe a podcast this year we are doing a video about the American dream where we interview either strangers or our family members on what they think like how accessible the American dream is and hold on um we ask their opinion and like how you know how accessible it is and then we work with students on the B team which is the opposite team and they have videos too and we collaborate and we form our videos together and in

019our previous unit we learned about the gold rush and we combine the two units together so our Gold Rush simulation characters we like see like how they would respond and we type a response to the videos and we put them into groups on how accessible it is like very accessible I don't know or like not accessible at all and now for [Applause] Luca hello my name is Luca daku and I'm going to be talking to you about a new method of collecting information about a chosen genetics topic we are going to be using a research journal to collect our notes and to find articles we are going to generate research questions um using a given format such as what if should and how we are going to Google these questions and find articles that will

020that will give us the answers to these questions in our research Journal we are going to find F we're going to collect the most the five most important notes of information and explain why the source we found is credible it is important to know that our sources are credible so we can understand and know how this information is true this way of learning has a much different approach than I've ever done before this is because we are taking notes and generating research questions which I never thought we would do um the next step after collecting our information is to use AI we haven't been told what we're going to be using AI for yet but we know it's coming up the final step to is to create a mini document entry using the site we

021video If you note back to annabella's presentation we are also using we video to create our Gold Rush video because of this we will have some experience creating that and take away probably one day of precious dedicated time to making videos thank you for taking the time to listen to the good stuff happening in eth [Applause] grade any question questions question any questions for our students that was great thank you well thank you so much for your time thank you Mrs thank you thanks forie need Dana yes oh yeah a lot of Brookfield seas in there so thank you guys all right so next up is public comment we have no one signed up for public comment this evening so um that is not going to happen because there's no public comment um so NE

022after that we have Ava so Ava welcome hi I hope you're all doing well tonight I have a couple updates to share about what's going on within the schools over the past month um I'll start with some of the past events that we had we had our homecoming dance a couple weeks ago at the Amber Room which was a really good time and we also had our homecoming football game um some upcoming events and what's currently happening I know I can speak for a lot of seniors um and saying now we're all really really really busy with college applications um doing early action um but we have a really good I said this last time but a really good counseling department and a college and career counselor Mrs Usher um all of them are really

023great resources for and I I know they're super busy um finalizing all the transcripts and first quarter grades um and this week there's some half days for all the parent teacher conferences um I have a lot of updates for athletics um the last home football game for the regular season is on Thanksgiving Day um girls soccer right now um has their state semi-final it's in New Town I don't know how it's going but hopefully going well Mr Banda texted me said it's 1 to one in the second half oh my gosh okay so I guess we'll see um and I know that girl swim and dive got a couple titles over the past couple weeks for S swc Champions and state champions um we've already had some athletes at the high school commit to play

024sports in college which is really exciting to see um and like I said I'm the senior captain for the dance team so I can speak to a little bit what's going on there we're doing a lot of fundraising we've we've been selling pom poms at a lot of the different sports games um we did a fundraiser at Four Corners and a big sale on Election Day at all the different locations and we have our last football game performance at the Thanksgiving Day game and we're also performing at the stards tree lighting um for a couple of the clubs I'm in I have a couple updates for that um for National Honor Society we focusing on finding a lot of community service opportunities because the main part of that club is community service we have a

025required 60 hours that we need by the end of the year um so one of those things is we're doing the winter workshop for some kids in kindergarten in first grade that's coming up soon um I'm in the Brookfield youth commission uh we did a candidate Forum on October 24th and that went really well that's always a great way we really like doing that because the students um direct concerns can be answered by the candidates themselves which I think is a really interesting opportunity to have and also in the youth commission we're starting all of our planning for our career fair which we do in the spring we hosted it in November of last year now it's going to be in March and finally I'm in the Morgan message club which is a new club

026to the high school as of last year um it's focuses on student athlete mental health and all the specific um struggles and solutions that we find with that um so we're just starting the planning of that for the year we do some themed games throughout the year and yeah I think that's all I have to share wonderful thank you wonderful thank you any questions for AA no thank you have a great night thank you take care AAA okay written correspondence Marne mcniff wrote regarding a student's PPT Greg preny wrote regarding a grievance Katherine bonello wrote a letter of appreciation Omar Nassar Mariam Aziz Hassam Ramsey Lena borri and Fatima belit wrote regarding the Eid holidays and Michelle French wrote regarding special education Staffing okay thank you uh approval of board minutes I will move that

027the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on October 18th and the special meeting on October 30th second okay moved and seconded any comments or questions on the minutes uh just a small correction to the um oh no sorry that's under different minutes it's under one of the okay all right so all in favor of approving the board minutes I hi okay Dr BR I'll turn it to you for your superintendent's update all right um please don't be intimidated by the amount of items there I will move through them I promise um uh a bit of sad news um that I'll start with is uh former superintendent from 1986 to 1995 uh Dr Mike Peron passed uh last week his son David called the office and let us know um and um we understand

028he had a beautiful and wonderful long life um he was 90 years old so um we appreciate David calling in and thank you uh Lisa for making sure I had that information um I next would like to have Mr Roland come up and give a very brief update on where he stands on strategic planning with the uh special education department thank you Dr Pearl good evening everyone I just like to say before I begin thank you to the board for the the warm welcome and the support and the guidance and the feedback you've shown me in my first few months I couldn't have gotten started and gotten off the ground without the support of the of the board at the monthly meetings and then some of the conversations we've had outside of the meeting so

029I appreciate that and wanted to say thank you uh in terms of the Strategic plan uh we're in phase one where we've had uh meetings with teachers uh we've had meetings with parents some of whom are here tonight and one of one of the themes that's emerging is what does special education look like in each School and what is our culture of inclusivity and that's one of the things that we're going to be exploring uh in phase two teachers have come up with uh ideas within their own buildings and we're going to try to align those to be able to present that to you in the spring um sorry my notes um in terms of the septo special ed PTO we had a meeting earlier this month one of the things that we're working on

030through that is to be able to give parents more information on special education as you know this CT said's uh portal can be unwieldy and it be can be kind of difficult we're going to have a presentation this month with um lean white our IEP compliance teacher to walk parents through what CT saids looks like from their perspective because the parent portal looks very different than the teacher portal uh and finally finally phase two of the Strategic plan to to close out is going to be about what the adult action should look like in our strategic plan as it's aligned with with our district strategic plan so I appreciate the opportunity this evening to speak to you and again thank you for the support and the guidance you've shown me over these first few months

031thanks go one of the great things you'll hear later with Dr corvo in her presentation regarding the phase two crack report is the recommendations that Bill's been and the team have been working with from the first uh uh uh program review uh the the second set of recommendations certainly it's a it's a more focused and smaller uh program that program review that occurred um and in integrating all of the uh recommendations together in a more uh comprehensive and cohesive plan so thank you both for the work on that um 14 minutes left one to one Mr Banda just texted me again just want you to know if you saw the light bing up um so um we're moving forward on that c athletic update in terms of the program review we're now getting to the

032point in between Seasons um I know Mr bland is working with the um uh CIA itself to get visit in here um they to be very candid they're having trouble with CIA um kind of officials from CIA getting out and doing visits so um again a lot was done in the spring in terms of surveys to parents and coaches and student athletes so they're compiling that information and uh we'll have further updates as that continues on but I wanted you to know we're there um oh please Anna go ahead just to add to that um I think that I mentioned either last time or a couple meetings ago that the CIA model has become the kind of model um an Exemplar or the beginning of an Exemplar for Nas uh the New England Association of

033schools and colleges which has taken the Connecticut model and is now kind of extrapolating that to a more comprehensive um framework for uh athletic departments across New England and so I am actually as I serve on the commission for neas I am a part of that subcommittee so um they are they're close to kind of finalizing the standards and the protocols and we're we're we be putting together kind of a again a Exemplar for what schools can um do in terms of inviting visiting teams in but it did start with the with our state so um and it was actually highlighted at the national Federation um and so I'm I'm just pleased that we're also engaging in that really and and we do we're ahead of the curve uh in a lot of ways in

034Connecticut and I'd say it's about 12 years ago 13 14 years ago I'm not sure exactly when it was the when I was a high school principal we actually brought the CIA in for a very early Athletic program review early on in the phase of doing this here in Connecticut so both of us are really familiar with it and we know it could be very helpful to the program I will I will say as a board I'll speak for the board we are looking forward to actually seeing the results of their review right because it's been out there for a bit it has it has been it's taken a little longer than we would like but it's um I think there's a lot of folks um at cic there's a lot of volunteers and it's

035just hard to get people down here um but under Athletics um we have the ski club kind of getting that going we had one a couple of years ago we have a ski club uh starting our technology director he volunteered himself at a meeting and turns out he actually is going to be the ski club advisor SL coach um so Mr Concklin is they had their first meeting they they're going to start some fundraising because it's h quite quite expensive of a sport um what's interesting that the people should know and some of the kids were even surprised they are going to compete with schools that have Varsity ski teams so they're going to work on trying to get them a matching uh you know jacket or that kind of a thing um I suggest

036that we get the B the the decal like on the uh lacrosse and the football helmets maybe get that on their ski helmet um and part of that competition is readying themselves um if they if we want to have an actual Varsity ski team down the road whether it's in another year or two they need the club needs to be uh competing it's part part of the kind of process with the CIA so we're really excited about that um in addition uh just moving along uh we had a wonderful meeting with some central Office Team and our principals with with the districtwide PTO um I have to thank Mrs Newman uh she's our PTO president for BHS she really got the ball rolling with that um fortuitously um uh we we haven't had that since

037covid we have not had the districtwide PTO and as I was walking out to go to kandlewood Lake to have the uh to meet the parents for that meeting Mrs frame was walking in it happened to be right after election day and she was walking in and we got to have a big hug and a hello and said we're getting districtwide PTO going again and she said it's it's about time she gave me one of those um but obviously a warm welcome it was great to see her so it was just so wonderful that I mean she was such a part of that districtwide PTO for so long so we're really excited at the parents engaging in that again and they're excited to uh work with each other uh to make sure you know calendars

038fundraisers and things are coherent and planned and certainly they want to be a big part of the budget campaign and and uh engaging in terms of the things we do um uh with the the admin team and our faculty uh quick candle with Lake update um I was over today uh got a look at the playscapes uh most people know we posted on Facebook that the playscape materials all the equipment has arrived um the there's uh U what are they called the foundation holes I don't know what you call those they're boring the holes and putting the concrete in they have um swing sets uh set up other uh play areas already set up and uh placed at both the prek and the K through1 playgrounds um the equipment is here for the 2 through

039five playground that just gets set up in another week or so they start working over there so they're really they had a crew of at least six or seven people out there today and you know all the machinery and safety equipment to get that to get that going um in addition to that uh the crews are working feverishly uh over on the north parking lot the it looks to me as I look at it for the most part the drainage uh pits are dug and uh the fill is in um you wouldn't even know Huckleberry was there and there there's one last pile of dirt we're really really hopeful that they could get to the grading uh uh phase of the work there and then before you know it start to put down the gravel

040and the stone dust and all the things they need to do so we can get at least a binder coat down uh in the north lot and get the driveway uh settled um as it enters through the old Huckleberry cutout um before the asphalt plants close so that's still the goal it could be two weeks away that could be four weeks away so Friday I'm supposed to get enough update from uh uh the folks at om as to where we're at and what they think they can accomplish um if they can't get that done we have the temporary lot in the South lot and we'll have to live with it through the winter if that's the case so we just don't know yet um when we get the update I'll be sure to communicate with

041everyone um and then uh Dr pepas will obviously communicate with the CES uh Community budget process just very important to know we're we're three short weeks away from presenting the budget on our schedule um that will be to the new board on December 6 um so everybody knows in terms of the process we started back on October 1st as an admin team uh collaborating um in terms of uh principes working with the building teams department heads working with their Department staff getting that input um assessing what they need uh taking a look at new legislation that's out there and everything that has to be done uh each school and Department have developed their budgets and put them forward um and we've held meetings uh with the principles and department heads with Casey myself and and

042Anna and really gone through Casey and uh Joan in the office are really fine uh fine-tuning the numbers now we're back and forth with the principles and uh have to thank Casey for some of the new things she's doing with Google as simple as Google Sheets and things that the principes are really excited about so we're tracking you know moves in the budget and so forth and uh uh we will be uh presenting that on December 6 uh in addition we've got the hand off meeting uh from current board to new board scheduled for Monday night at 6 o00 and that's really just a simple meeting to get to know each other a little bit share where we're at with subcommittees um what the status of every subcommittee is kind of how do you how

043do you form an agenda what's the schedule typically look like those kinds of things have a little Q&A together that's a public meeting we'll hold that at the TSO um on Monday night next week uh let's see what else B just a shout out to the bef Brookfield Education Foundation gala uh today is the last day to buy tickets so if you can go online if you want to buy a ticket December 1st it's a Friday night big the big fun rer for bef uh Brookfield broadcast newsletter our holiday edition is scheduled for December 1st we're looking to get that out and I thank Lisa for all the formatting work she does with me on on that newsletter and then um finally uh the cab uh the annual cab uh excellence and Communications Awards cab

044stands for um Connecticut Association of boards of Education um this is the eth or nth year now that uh the school district and the board are receiving accolades for awards of excellence in uh five particular areas for the cave Awards and we'll have someone down after the holidays from cave will come and bring plaques and certificates to acknowledge the board uh the district uh calendar of all things the district calendar quite often I think the different colors are very helpful there they they love our calendar up there I got to tell you um it's just kind of funny but they really love it um I think it's all that input on the colors um the state of the district uh that was put out in May uh our going green recycling project uh that is

045really an annual winner um Dr man's establishing the Baseline uh academic achievement uh report from last year uh was submitted and then uh in general everything we do with social media they're pretty impressed with so we're really excited about that and then lastly building on Comm good Communications uh our website uh Eric hlin mentioning Eric again he is really working hard with his um technology team and with the leadership team and there's a number of really exciting new website platforms that are out there um we're exploring those those and um they what's amazing about them we use this just loose phrase userfriendly what does that really mean um what the new platforms are doing we need to select one obviously is they are incorporating talking points School messenger traditional website other communication and texting options

046uh calendar so many things are being integrated and they're meant for not only the computer but they're really meant to interface nicely with smartphones and so um we're looking at a decision soon um the technology committee needs to meet again and then pushing forward probably a slow roll out uh as a transition after the holidays and then really a full um transition over after the April break is kind of what Eric's thinking the timeline is looking like so just wanted to kind of um salt the oat for everybody I'll let you know we're excited about that and that's coming um and then I think that's it I don't know if anybody has any questions I know I had a lot there the update is 22 there are four minutes left four minutes left 2 to

047two s if we win we move on to the state championship game they were down 10 or one the 2-1 in middle year report and we just came back just came back okay all right four minutes we'll get an update B it's a real Lo local battle going on all right so that's all I have Mr questions all right thank you next up are subcommittee reports um and find okay so um I'll go over our meeting on the 16th of October where we reviewed the September financial report um we really started off the year already with um a pretty significant um budget exposure um and at the time of this report um that was 41,100 special education Transportation there's some just very um uh significant impacts in terms of um student safety on the bus

048and needing um additional help and additional runs on those um and so that's posed some somewhat of a challenge um we've been working with at Advance um as well as uh using our own Services um to kind of um you know deal with that issue um special education tuition a typical um um thing that we that we see in the in the budget just some uh ins and outs in terms of students um and student services um there's definitely a a surprisingly uh big shortfall in teacher turnover savings that you'll also see when I report um next month um we're just not seeing the retirements that we normally see um and actually what we're seeing is a lot of of movement in um teachers that are at the lower end of the salary range so

049younger teachers um where we typically capture a lot of savings hiring younger teachers we see a lot of them leaving and then having to bring in perhaps teachers um or staff that are more experience and thus cost more so um we typically enter into our budget a $200,000 um savings for that so we already book in that $200,000 savings and um we're not even close to that so um that's posing a problem and I think that that's going to you'll hear that again next month when I report on um October and then lastly um athletic Transportation so you've probably heard a lot of that um kind of chatter all over social media about um athletic Transportation there is a driver shortage it with across I mean really across the state in terms of bus drivers

050um we're actually pretty l lucky um our bus drivers are not going on strike um which is not the case in other districts um we haven't had to cancel we've been using uh Carriage limousine services which are um comparable in in terms of their cost um but it is costing us a little bit more in order to do that um so so yeah so that's um that is generally where what we spent the bulk of the meeting talking about is that significant budget shortfall Rosa could I add a little something there so just for context on those two big issues um uh specifically um with the teacher turnover I want talk about that for a second um the piece there that people need to understand is we are in a nationwide teacher shortage a Connecticut

051teacher shortage and in many districts a absolute critical shortage I mean there there are districts right next door to us that are short 30 and 40 teachers and they're and they're still moving on with the year you can imagine how challenged in and how chaotic it could be in those districts we are not seeing that as a as a immediate challenge in terms of not filling our teaching positions um but to fill our teaching positions it is a buyer market for teachers and um the context is changed the game has changed it used to be um when I first started many teachers likely would stay in their district for the duration of that 30 or 35-year career it's just not the case anymore um our location we're a bit of a victim of our location

052on the western side of the state many teachers uh that are younger teachers either are from New York in the first place and they get their first job here in Brookfield or bethl or New Town you know on this side of the state and they have an opportunity after gaining some experience and winning a job in another in another District especially out of state where they can make a great deal more money just to be frank or go down County um or simply just move closer to home and similarly how we're filling our positions and the way our teacher contract is um uh arranged ranged veteran teachers that might be in a district nearby to Brookfield may not make the same salary and they see an opportunity to come to us and we pay them

053on their annual uh step and so they want to come to us they have not only a bump in salary they're excited to come to a district like Brookfield and so we've brought in some veteran teachers and be been able to fill shortage areas like World Language like science uh like mathematics and those kind of things so it's just important for people to understand the context there on on the teacher situation in terms of uh the shortage cuz we are feeling it but we're feeling it monetarily right now in a finance place we're not feeling in terms of an actual shortage where we can't fill our spots um and then the other piece um actually a reporter reached out I think it was from the news times today regarding uh All-Star transportation and the bus

054driver shortage and the great thing about Allstar in our town um and really it has to go to Debbie and Kim who run our bus depot cuz they all o step in and drive buses uh for us when there is uh an absentee uh situation with with drivers they are facing a driver shortage all but they're just on the cusp of having enough drivers for enough bus runs if someone's sick if there's an e family emergency and someone calls out they're able to step in I think it's only been a few times this year thankfully on the dismissal end of things where we've had a combine a bus run to make sure the kids could get home in time there are districts right next to us using Allstar that are having buses that aren't picking

055the kids up and getting them to school till 10:00 in the morning 11:00 in the morning I mean it's a real real challenge that that some of the other districts are facing so we're very fortunate right now however to Rose's point that same shortage or the same set of drivers with the athletic Transportation after school has been a bit more challenging um so just wanted everybody to understand there's a there's a real complicated you know picture to this to understand the context thank you that was it any questions um I'll give the update on the security task force um with Rosa myself and Shar Mike it was uh Rosa Sharon and myself are on the security task force along with many members of the administration the police chief and uh the fire marshal so this

056meeting on October 26th we actually covered two topics we'd asked them to come back the team to come back um and talk about are we happy with the security Staffing is Candlewood Lake because it's new it's a big facility and the answer was resoundingly yes uh very happy with the Staffing situation and how it's all working with our our uh our security monitors along with the SRO um but there the challenge we actually spent most of the time talking about is the technology right we have the cameras working which has been a real Boon uh but the Wi-Fi and the parking lot's still not there and uh they haven't had some chance chances to do certain testing that they would like to do with the with the new software and so they're they're working it

057it's operating it's keeping the school safe which is great they're very the police chief was very comfortable with where we were and the principal is very comfortable with where we are um so uh um so in general uh it was good to hear that uh you know where we were on that whole situation and I think Bob one of the things uh Eric Conlin was able to talk about as our technology director was able to talk about was where the north lot is being finished there's a number of light poles that need to be installed which will have the uh the Wi-Fi spots expand on that because what he what he said was there's always been a plan to have full Wi-Fi in that parking lot right it just happened to be installed on the

058top of the poles in the parking lot that hasn't been built yet because it's in the center where the flag pole will be and the and the thing and so trying to retrofit it into another part proved to be impossible because there was no wiring to it so uh he is more than any single person looking forward to the lighting going in on this uh on the new lot so um the uh the second topic we talked about was actually an update topic it was about the iroy gas pipeline which if you remember is down the hill a little bit uh ways away from whiner um and uh and so the there with a gas pipeline you need to have an evacuation uh plan in the eventuality that something happened what we talked about was

059interesting there's little things that happen and there's big big potential of bigger things we've never had a big thing happen but if an alarm goes off right how does a school get alerted and what actions does the school take so Dean Renda actually uh spent some time with us and walked us through how that works and you know you on the small things you bring the kids in and you you you bring them all into the building and you you Hunker down in place um and we've asked to actually have uh the team come back with uh a little bit more in-depth discussion on what if something big happened um and the reason for that is they're doubling the capacity down at that pump station it's currently an inprocess project it's been gosh it's been

060going on for 10 years so far but it hasn't been built so it's a question of just staying one step ahead and being ready right so if you ever had to evacuate for example where would you evacuate to and uh and how reasonable can you get buses there quickly and things like that so so spending a lot of time just walking through the W ifs it's and it's a crazy exercise cuz it's all what ifs right um but but it's an important exercise and the security task force is going to meet again I think at the end of this month or the beginning of next John we de we try to get one in December I don't know that we'll be able to pull that off to have a comeback um with the uh the

061iry people to give us some very uh uh distinct input so that was the security task force meeting so actively not not on the got a good update on how the new school's working and uh and working on kind of a a horizon type of event type of e effort um just to add to that do you think that we could also hear from the um SRO of the other schools at perhaps a future meeting absolutely okay I think that would just be helpful not not even just from a Personnel perspective but just an overall building security they a lot of them have specialized in that absolutely and Rosa being the the veteran member who's going to be on that committee I'm happy to work with you and figure that out absolutely they and they'd

062be more than happy to come the police chief always is in attendance so he'll bring his SRO perfect I think you just is that a volun told go ahead I was going to say the asso also not just the asro yeah yeah yeah uh now Joy's not here so and Sharon and I were the other two members so I guess I'm I'm the only one left on the facilities committee uh we had a meeting on November 1st um and it was a series of updates on different projects I'll quickly go down through them um the air conditioning project for this room right here um if you recall the issue is that there was uh added uh construction needed by the last uh uh provider that doubled the cost of what we had expect it would

063be um so we've actually decided to go a different direction and we're bringing in Mark sakubo who did the work for our facility study um and they are um Mr C was engaging with them and they're uh they're very good at you know give and take and really do you need to build up more physical structure on the roof to install the air conditioner um so that's underway uh the guidance Wing update um uh it's pretty much done they just uh uh they just had to finish some flashing around certain things and they were coming back to do that in the next week or two um at that time did it y okay did it um the uh the longer discussion we had was because there was that leaking in the roof there's a lot

064of ceiling tiles that have been damaged and so we went through a variety of scenarios talking about should we just go replace all the ceiling tiles either with our own labor or with um with a as a project and they're going out and getting estimates for that it would not only repair damage things but it would brighten the whole place up right because so it kind of fits with the concept we had had our 10-year plan about doing some with fenestration uh on the building uh but the estimates were in the 17 to $33,000 to do ceiling tiles for that whole Wing so that's uh the healthy investment we'll have that in the is that in the uh budget presentation Capital plan Capital plan budget um applicants coming in for the open CES night custodian

065position uh interviews were going on yep did we hire somebody we did we hired somebody since then so that's good um and interestingly and useful the we have this thing called School dude which actually is the reporting mechanism for things that are broken and need to be fixed the volume has just plummeted since we took Center and hjs offline because that was far in away the bulk of repair work that had to be done so it's making it easier for the district to go address things quickly um and that's actually a good thing so um and then there's some small additional costs with both the whis Ander wall project and the whiskin electrical upgrade um not not significant but we spent some time talking about what the process for uh taking them through uh that

066they were like $5,000 here $7,000 there it was you know like a wrong switch in the in the in the circuit panel so um so they uh um that there's some comebacks and we'll do that at our next meeting so one of which is anything to do with the whisner wall we want the municipal building committee to carry for it so that's pretty much what we talked about at that meeting um holla joined us um to see how one of these committees was working anything you'd like like to add H okay I think you did a beautiful job thank you okay so that's it on subcommittee reports uh next up is consent agenda I'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations transfers a retirement and the

067September financials second it's moved in second and any comments Dr uh yes you can just see a new hires we've got some uh uh bcba has been hired uh these are replacement positions uh a new perah has been hired over at the elementary school and Mr Belding we just asking you see our KN custodian has been hired um in terms of our progress there in regard to facilities um we do have um a special person that uh just recently resigned I had shared that with the board last week our HR uh HR coordinator what do we call our specialist HR specialist we have all these special names HR specialist Beth squir has been with the district for six years she's been in the specialist position for just about two years um she made the big

068phase of life CH changing move with her husband who happens to be one of our technology people um they're going to move to Florida so they're they're done after this week so we wish them all the best and thank them for their incredible amount of service to the district um and then retiring is one of our special education secretaries uh longtime employee U mostly at the high school Lisa mazari um she has been our special education clerk for quite a long time been with the district 19 years and she's decided to retire after the holidays so we just uh can't thank Lisa enough for all the great work she done and her beautiful big bright smile that you get to see all the time so um thanks to both Beth and Lisa for everything they've

069done for us that's it thank you any other questions or comments okay all in favor of approving the consent agenda I all right so we're moving on to the main part of the agenda so first Up and Under new business is are a series of reports on uh we if you remember last meeting we had uh some one some some of our reports on uh on our enrollment and and other topics um and case loads uh this time we have multilanguage Learners the class size report and The Homeschool report so I'll uh uh the these are all just action items so uh who's uh who's going to do the Catherine is going to come Catherine oo Catherine our multi uh lingual leader this is my favorite report this is actually I look forward to this

070report every year Catherine not only is our leader for uh uh ml students she is also our leader K12 for World Language so uh Katherine has this uh annual report to share with us um Katherine before you go I do have a note from Mr Blanda regarding things so far so good let me get here hold on uh we've got it 3 to2 Brookfield have to finish this half 3 minutes and another 10-minute halftime soccer has some funky rules so there some over time funky rules going on but we're up three to two that's all I'm going to say when I heard a scrimmage is called a friendly when I learned that in soccer that a scrimmage is a friendly that was another one I oh boy I'm learning some good stuff here so soccer

071you are in trouble with one of your new board members who is a soccer FNA I am sure I am sure absolutely I have a lot to learn she'll teach you absolutely so Katherine please sure um so I will just take us briefly through the report um each October we have to do a snapshot uh that is sent off to the state so we're looking for a total number of multilingual Learners uh so at the beginning of October we were at 114 um I know that's not included here but we've even had a few already join us so we're a little higher than that number since um and then there's a breakdown for you by school so at clees we have 73 students so that is the majority um and you can see the breakdown

072K through five of students there fairly equal um grade three smallest at seven largest cohort being 17 in grade 4 uh and then there's language breakdowns for you as well of how many languages there are as well as how many students are speaking them uh you'll notice that the Portuguese and Spanish are both bolded and have an asterisk there and that just indicates that uh according to Connecticut state law Whenever there are 20 or more students speaking that same language in the same school um that we would provide them with bilingual education so we've anticipated the Spanish already and Portuguese would be the new one we are anticipating um at whis andir we're a little smaller with 23 students um Brookfield High School has 18 and then again you see our total languages in the

073district is currently at 11 um and that's mostly it so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them just for the public just to remind them a multilingual learner is defined as um a student who is not sufficiently proficient in English yet so they are working on that primarily and they may speak at least one other language at home okay and also for the public could you just read down the languages over on the right side I think that they will be very interested in uh in hearing what languages we have in our schools yeah you got it we have Albanian Arabic Bengali or B uh Bangla German Malayalam Mandarin Portuguese Russian Spanish erdu and Vietnamese it's quite a diverse group we have a very diverse group any questions Catherine thank you very

074much thank you thanks so much I always look forward to this I learn a lot about our certain population and in the budget presentation in December we'll address how uh we'll talk about how we're going to attack remember it's been running about this number for a while an aggregate around 110 to 120 yeah and and as I uh stated uh La last uh uh month when we're talking about the enrollment report while while it looks as though year to year we had about 16 I think new students qualifying it really is more of a swing of 36 because we exit students from the program during the year and then more students backfill so it really the number of kids that uh come from uh very diverse backgrounds continues to increase in the district but we're

075addressing the you said that the budget presentation would address the Portuguese the new Portuguese but we have something in place for the Spanish speaking cor we have program for Spanish but we now while we have 20 this year and as of October the beginning of the school year 20 the state um does give a provision that gives you time so the following year you're actually required to have the bilingual program and that's what we have to plan for and we anticipated that uh knowing how prevalent Portuguese uh is in our in our town but also they were in two different schools so once you put them in one school Under One Roof you're going to hit that 20 threshold we knew that was coming which we did yes right on the money next up is

076the class size report want me to start are you gonna introduce me Dr man doesn't need Inu well thank you um I would like to just take a moment to thank the board members um all the board members but particularly those who are uh exiting um including uh Miss Brooks and Dr Mike uh as well as Rosa for uh your work on Cape your work over the last since my um since I began in August of 2022 your support throughout uh my transition um and your service to uh to to us and to our um constituents and our community members I really valued our conversations and um the feedback and support that I've gotten from all of you um and you know you're you're warm welcome you know I came in here in August of

0772022 leaving a district leaving my home and um I've really appreciated the uh the welcome that you have given me so thank you very much for all that you've done and transitioning from the MLL report you know thinking about uh as I was listening to Katherine you know when she said the majority was at Candlewood Lake Elementary it's not um you know that this it kind of in light of the class size report and the total enroll enrollment report for each of the different schools um it really is a strong majority you know I mean if we have about 1100 as you see on and I you were given this uh report earlier so you've had a chance to read through but we have 1111 students at kendlewood Lake Elementary and 73 of those students

078are students who speak a different language um as well as are learning English versus 23 students at whiner um out of 592 and then the high school which is our second largest school has um 870 students and only 18 of those students which means they do exit out as they go through which is what Dr bro was just referring to so um on to the actual report so I'm pleased to present this class siiz report to you as we um do every year um it gives uh you folks context for the budget that we are working on building to you know serve those students that we are building the budget for um you may have noticed and I'll start with Candlewood Lake you may have noticed that um this is the first time we have

079CES in this report last year we had CES and HH um and so we actually as we were building this report accidentally used the target for HH which was 20 um you know it's what we're shooting for um as our uh Max size for grades 2 through five um and actually the the target for grade five is 22 but we were still thinking about 20 um and as I was working with on this um and I talked to Dr peps saski you know it's I think it really has to do with the focus uh that we are aiming to that's a big school 1100 over 1100 little kids is a large large school something that we've talked about something that has been um you know continues to be a conversation even with the security task

080force and we really want to make sure that we maintain that sense of intimacy and connection with our students and so we really are focusing on that Target of 20 um for most of our students up through grade four and then uh 2020 for 22 so it's what we feel comfortable with but I have the updated numbers for uh the class size in terms of the um what the board approved uh uh guidelines classified guidelines are um and by the way we will have to up update that document because it still says CES and hes so it's a future business item so as we go through Candlewood Lake Elementary um you know you'll notice that uh and there's also something I'm anticipating as we go forward in the meeting uh we have 38 kids in

081our prek that's going to be a conversation um as we move forward with the kindergarten age entry um so just you know something to to take note of that 38 of those students although not all of them would be moving into um kindergarten cuz not all of them are four going on five um that's just kind of a precursor to what we'll be thinking about going into next year um as you move through the uh you know the prek and grade uh grade k um there's no max range for prek because it is a a program that we use to service our our students um but grade uh for our uh K grade you know we went down from nine sections last year to eight sections uh and and we have about four are uh

082over the class max range of 40 of sorry 20 we have four of those uh the largest class is 21 however each one of those uh kindergarten classes all eight have a full-time par educator it was something that we had talked about you know last year was the first year that we had a half day par uh par educator in each of the classes so we had 4.5 par Educators so four full-time equ 4.5 full-time equivalencies um for the nine sections of kindergarten this year we have eight par Educators one to each kindergarten class and that was one of the ways that we kind of were balancing out that little bit larger class size in kindergarten is that each class has a par educator right now if you go to the second page um in

083grade one we continue with Clay uh eight sections three of which are over the max range um or the uh of 20 but the largest is 21 one so we're just over um in grade two we had you know we have eight uh that are above that target range but only three above the actual class max of 21 um so there are three over the range of 21 the largest class size is 22 we have five of those nine sections that are actually at 21 so right at the um max range in grade three the target is 20 we have zero over the Max uh of 21 but three right at 21 um and so we are we are just barely at that you know we're again in a good good spot with grade three

084in grade four we had the um max is also 21 so grades three and four the max is 21 2 3 and four uh we have four of the classes uh over the max class guidelines um but the largest is 22 so of the whole of all nine sections four of them are at 22 and five of them are at 21 so right at the at the edge we have a pretty large grade four and then um for grade five which again was that incorporation of whis skiner uh middle school and right sizing the middle school and making you know an appropriate comprehensive Elementary School uh the target is 22 of which we have um eight at that uh at the targ I'm sorry we have 20 we I'm not sure exact uh 23 um

085is the max we have four at 23 and um zero over 23 so the largest class size is 23 and so most of them are uh the other four are below 23 um so that's where we are with that I will update this report and resubmit it so that it can be a part of the record so that you have the updated record um as far as whiskin goes our total enrollment is 592 uh and you'll notice as you go through I'm not going to go through every single grade um in every single um uh elective um but the some of these uh these sections have been adjusted uh based on the schedule there has been an adjustment to the schedule to rightsize when we rightsize the Middle School um Mr Renda and the school

086administration and counselors um worked to create a schedule that was more Equitable for students and gave them more opportunity to um have access to their uh elective classes specifically they're performing arts um and so now rather than pulling students out of elt time of the you know Educational Learning time they actually have chorus and and band music built into their schedule so I spoke with the uh Performing Arts um content leader today and she's thrilled she said she skips down the hallway every day she's so happy with it so um you know as you move through you can see uh that that we're in pretty good shape at the middle school I think that the it really is a appropriately sized at this point for a true Middle School experience for our students um a

087little bit larger on the class size if you look at PE and health um there are many about 88% of the of the sections are above that has to do again with that schedule adjustment and if you notice um we have 2.5 fed teachers um and the way that they're rotating through 1.5 Health teachers uh versus it the three uh full-time um music and music teachers so just the way that the schedule fell out you know kind of played out as they were building it over the summer uh I know that Mr Rena is looking at that and he has some ideas on how to address that for going into next year and then finally at the high school you know we're holding strong at that 870 last year I think we were at 872

088um and these are really you know kind of reasonable sizes uh you know sections sections definitely fluctuate a lot in the high school it is a it is you know constantly moving adjustment to create create a comprehensive high school schedule um because not only do you have all of the requisite compulsory classes but you also have all of the electives which are part of the required um uh credits that students have to amass as they graduate um you'll notice I wanted to kind of um highlight the fact that the business class um out of 19 sections all 19 are above um the guidelines uh with the largest class at 28 it is a very popular area for our students something to kind of keep an eye on as we move through um it is an

089elective class um but certainly you know with personal finance being in there um which is one of the required courses uh that's one of the reasons that that class size is um pretty high and um that kind of bring me brings me just again to this last page which is the class siize uh bo the board of ed class siiz guidelines which we um will need to update to reflect the new school structure um and that might offer the opportunity to kind of look at the guidelines so that'll be something some business that we will take on in the new year so I'm happy to answer any questions any questions thank you all right and up three oh they won we won wooo just got it we're going to state championship I was catching up

090on my test I was going to say they're up 32 with 5 minutes left three to two we won the game we're going state championship all right congratulations girl all right uh home school report okay me again this will be much faster um so I want to just take the opportunity to thank Sarah Lynch who was the HR coordinator for her continued work and communication she is really the person who is the um you know the the focal point the Touchstone for our families um she sends out the information she talks with a lot of them she works uh with families as they have questions so I just wanted to uh recognize her and thank her for her work in gathering this information for this report um and so you'll see that uh you know

091this is we have 29 students out of our entire population um who are being homeschooled this year which is roughly and all of these numbers are pretty consistent with last year's numbers um it there was 28 last year so we're right around the same uh number um 24 families so those 29 students come from 24 families um and and last year I believe there are 21 families uh who represented The Homeschool population uh we send out uh notices to all of those families and asking them about the information for their students uh you know it's a Noti of intent form um of those 29 students we had five uh return so there's really no recourse for us to um ask them what their plan is um so but we did receive five and we appreciate

092any response that we get um and 24 students were not uh we did not gather information for three students parents were um parents sent uh refusal to cooperate to complete the form so they let us know that they are not they have no intention the others were just not returned and then you'll notice you know we kind of go through just for some um context last year uh grades one and two um we had four students and this year we had one grade three was consistent we had three in grade four we have one student who's homeschooled as opposed to six from last year in grade five we have six who were homeschooled last year there were four um in grade six there are two last year there were zero sixth graders in grade seven

093we have two last year there were three who were um homeschooled um in grade eight again matriculating up there are the same three well I don't know if it's the same three but three were also being uh homeschooled last year there were zero and in the high school um zero for n9th grade which was consistent with last year we had zero um last year at the high school La this year we have zero um 10th graders there were two last year this year uh we have 11 and uh for 11 and 12 we have five um last year which is up from three last year and then we didn't um know the uh grades for six of the students um and so this is in compliance with uh provision with Section 10-1 184 and section

09410-22 of the general statutes so there there we go thank you any questions on the homeschooling report no okay so that's it for new business U moving on to Old business uh first up is an action to receive uh the special education program review um from C all right so I'd like to invite Dr corvo up from C A friend of ours who was here last spring with the first program review and she's got a presentation on her second program review that was conducted uh over the summer into early fall this year yes this is Dana if you don't mind I'm going to move over there so I can see your charts easier and people don't look see me looking down at my a good idea want to do off over there I don't want

095to be dozing off like the wizard okay thank you all right all right there we go good evening everyone uh thank you for having me back uh I was here in the spring to deliver you some information about the districtwide special education uh program review this time I'm back and I'm going to share some findings and information specific to students who are placed in out of District programs and um some of your more self-contained or uh what we would consider the restrictive end of the Continuum in your in District programs um so I'll go ahead and get started um I am Dana corvo from CRA Resource Group we are in Hartford we're one of the six resks in Connecticut I know Brookfield uh I believe you're a member of the Ed Advance resk um we

096are CK so we all work together and uh this is our particular Mission Vision and core values the purpose of the evaluation as I said it was twofold one was to take a look at um your out of District placements and then to take a look at your IND District programs what this review did not do was review whether or not any programs were um addressing student outcomes so we did not look at any one particular student program to make determinations about a student's program just want to make sure that's clear um so everyone's expectations you will not hear about any individual students um for this data collection we again reviewed some District documents of reports Special Education data that is publicly available through the Connecticut State Department of Education we did look at some

097special education student files again specific to the population we were studying uh we had a staff survey for in District staff with 21 people responding to it um and then we did a variety of focus groups and Inter interviews we did seven out of District teams some of those teams were uh a count of two people and some of those teams were a count of 11 people so I let the out of district schools decide who they wanted to bring um and that's who they brought um we talked to nine families in the district who have students currently attending school outside of Brookfield public schools and then we did speak with four IND District staff um in those programs for the IND District programs uh just to make sure you understand the limitations of this

098kind of research uh again it is largely perception based as was the spring so that's always something to take into account um in this particular situation the sampling size obviously is very small compared to what we did in the spring uh we're talking singled digigit numbers for some students and families so that always has its own um challenges when you're trying to do an interpretation that you're really probably not getting as representative um with such a small size in the sample group um and we did have one out of District School uh it's a it their program actually has three programs within it uh so we kind of missed a big chunk of info there but they actually declined to participate they explicitly said we would like to not participate said okay so we made

099do with the best we had um so I'm not going to go through the entire report you can do that at your leisure I will highlight for you the takeaways um and you will make decisions about what to do with those um as you will the promising practices we found in the district um particularly in those programs where we have uh more restrictive settings um and just to clarify I'm specifically talking about two programs you may refer to as the social emotional enrichment program and the ELC so those seem to be popular titles and names of the programs in the district so we're going to be consistent with that those are the IND in District programs we're talking about um and those students are accessing the general education setting regularly so I'm not saying whether

100that's good or bad but it is a promising practice in the sense that students who are in out of District programs have zero access to general education settings it is not an option for them um there's also something to to be said that these programs already exist in your buildings um there are many districts that have no IND District programs and they address the needs of uh students in different ways some may be better some maybe may be more challenging but the fact that these are established in your buildings um for a relatively long time you know they weren't just invented last year they've been around um is really optimistic and important for growth moving forward it's not changing a culture of people to accept these programs um it's maybe just looking at what improvements

101or adjustments need to be made um so that's a different kind of lift than if you had no programs to work with um you have very strong School base teams so in each building as we worked through the teams and then as I looked at the data from the uh spring report because we still had that information um your school-based teams for each of these programs seem to be very strong and intact they they almost rely on each other if you will um whether that's by Design or by default I guess we could argue either way but um that's again really something to work with in terms of just the culture and climate within the teams you don't have dysfunction you don't have infighting you don't have uh bad chemistry at least not from what

102we saw so that's a really positive um piece there um you do have special education leadership support and focus so um I think you had some of that in the spring perhaps among many other distractions leadership was not able to address some things um I can say that with your new director um and some other changes at the leadership levels um there seems to be a more explicit focus on special education and what these programs mean to the buildings and to the schools in Brookfield so that's really promising as well um and then from what we can tell the there is fiscal support there's budgetary support in place um for some program enhancements changes improvements or adjustments so there sometimes is a perception that you know money is a big bad word and so things

103can't be done because we have no money or because there is no budget didn't actually find that to be true despite the perception of some people who thought that to be true so the flip side of that is something's miscommunicated there's a reason people have a perception about that but upon following up with um Mr Roland and then his follow up with um I think Karen is the newer member of the team Chris okay sorry Casey Casey sorry um we discovered that there have the financial support is there to an extent um you know we can't turn the world upside down and uh gold plate everything but there's there's a there's a healthy healthy nugget to start with there um some of our key findings you're out of District programs and this is universal this

104was not unique to just the students attending um schools on behalf of Brookfield public is they have the ability of really manipulate their schedules to have really high levels of protected collaboration and targeted professional learning time some of these a District programs have staff return for an entire week before school starts and students show up so that's five full work days dedicated just to adults talking planning collaborating and learning together before a student steps in their door um I don't know that that's a luxury most public schools can have um and then during the year year you have some programs that will um every every every Wednesday is a half day because the second half of their day is professional development period end of story that's the design that's what you've signed up for and

105that's what's happening in the building and it works because they have the ability to manipulate those things they're they're private um some um some can take longer weekends or uh rotate schedules easier so again those are protected times for teach I don't know that public schools can pull that off as easily um we did discover that the ad District programs have these established theories of action or core values or just kind of known mission of their work and it was to the point where in some of the interviews I would say to the to the team you know what's your theory of action what what are you about you know what whatever you call it in your building and some of them would literally look at a like beyond the screen and they like oh

106yeah so those are our core values and like they were reading core values off of like printed something in a room that they were in and you know there's some disagreement um amongst education about what what do core values really mean what does a vision really mean um but the fact that the majority of these programs could just rattle them off and it seemed like that's how everyone operated there was no wonderings about well I think we kind of do this and I think we really like that so um that was really interesting to us they also have selective admissions criteria you do not so there are programs designed specifically for students with significant cognitive disabilities who do not have behavioral challenges there are programs specifically for students who have social emotional challenges with high

107academic achievement rates um and uh you know again you don't you're a public school district so you do not have selective admissions criteria um they again I said they don't have access uh in out of District programs to General Ed setting peers or sometimes not even the general education curriculum so that's um just by nature and design of these AO District programs if you are in a program for students with significant cognitive disability um you're you're probably not following a traditional Public School curriculum um these out of District programs also have a lot of opportunities for parents and families to build a sense of community so for example one out of District program has like um two times a year uh like a a Gala if that's what you want to refer to it as

108but they invite parents in it's in the evening at the school they have it catered there's a silent aution on all kinds of you know goodies and stuff like that and throughout the night they're also showing off um student work and sharing just kind of different themes across the night and so these programs attempt to create that sense of community amongst parents because as you can imagine they have students from all communities so some of your students travel really far to get to their schools there might be a a loss of sense of community for them unless they're going to these kinds of events um so those those programs tried hard to to do that um and it was in our study it was difficult to determine in in some of those cases why the

109students were now in an out of District placement um it wasn't always clear in IEPs and so we could make inferences if you will but that was really hard and that was really uh presumptuous on our part but in other instances um it it literally would be like a PBT occurred on this date and then I we would see another PPT occur um maybe four months later and all of a sudden like the placement changed on the IEP and we're like what happened in the middle there again we can make assumptions and there are Rarities of why something wouldn't connect the dots that way but I didn't see anything in the records to indicate that disconnect of of dots so that was interesting to me I I I expected to see a little more explicit

110information about why those decisions were made um so those were our findings there are more in the report and again I'm not going to go through every little Nuance in the report these were the highlights that I felt you would find beneficial tonight um and that you know you can kind of build upon and have discussion about um and then we got into recommendations so you may recall the report and the presentation the spring there were a lot of recommendations and so we try to write recommendations that don't just say do this but it's you might want to consider this because of these things so when you look at the report you'll see a little bit more elaboration around recommendations um again these are the highlights if you will and um these are systemic so

111big picture um I think there's not much here in terms of granular comparing building to building uh you might see some of that in the report but it wasn't enough for me to call it out um here so kind of going back to that idea of theory of action core values Universal practices um and in particular in the district having your general education colleagues and leaders part of that discussion um you're students in these programs are part of your community in school and out of school and so you also want that same representation to have a voice when doing this kind of work um you want to have I think you want to look at times for opportunities where teams can collaborate vertically so the sense that your team at kelwood Lake for your students

112with um significant social emotional um challenges is collap collaborating with your middle school team and although you don't have one at the high school you might down the road uh you know you're having kind of a consistent conversation K to 12 so that there's a predictability to some of this now students with you know student students are humans there's always going to be a level of unpredictability but going back to the idea of the first recommendation if you have a theory of action if you have a set of core values and those core values transcend and K to 12 you all have done this work already for your large population of students 2,000 students total so you can understand the expectations as you move through the experience as a Brookfield public school student there's predictability

113in it there's some confidence in that um and it's it's a you know it's like it's like a guaranteed experience um so you want to be talking about those things um one thing that is very common uh not necess necessarily unique to Brookfield but could have a lot of potential and opportunity is to really be looking at these programs and talking to those practitioners about what specifically they need for professional learning a lot of those special ed teachers probably don't need the same professional learning in science of reading that a lot of your other teachers might be getting so what specifically do they need because your out of District programs already do this inherently and it's they're they're bringing in all kinds of stuff for professional learning so you want to make sure that your

114teams in District are able to keep up keep pace and be ahead because you don't know what student is going to show up tomorrow um and so you want people to be ahead of that um to the extent that additional opportunities for family involvement training and support could be available you know families sometimes they just want to be private and they don't want to put themselves out there and just by virtue of show going up to something you've put yourself out there so you do have to respect that level of privacy um and I know that um Mr Roland has engaged with septo and so I think to the extent that you have opportunities for all parents is maybe just conversations for parents with children in these programs specifically they are likely going through some

115very different experiences even than students who have IEPs that go to the resource room um the it's likely these families are having very different experiences um and then there's um there are quality indicators for programs like this um we used a couple in particular from um Colorado is usually the one that's most referenced we pulled some other resources and came up with a list specific for Brookfield but you probably want your IND District folks to be aware of what those quality indicators are so that they are kind of almost self reflecting on a continuous basis about where are we in these different indicators not as an evaluation I want to talk you away from that do not evaluate using these quality indicators um use them as self-reflection self-evaluation and opportunities for growth um they could

116be really powerful also in calibrating that vertical conversation from K to 12 so um those those were some of the the things that we we thought would like really start to pull together um and really enhance these programs um along those same lines again that self- assessment there is um I put this in the report but I didn't want to put it here because it could be kind of risky um but I'm not part of the district so I guess I can say this sometimes you if you're really good at it you could align um teachers and their professional goals to some of this work and so in my experience um we got really Savvy in some of my districts where we knew these quality indicators existed and we knew where our weak spots were

117and just by virtue of my staff coming into awareness of that they were like oh professionally I want to learn more about that and I want to do more of that and make it better and collect data about that and find out where this lands at the end of the year I didn't tell them to do it but they figured it out and I I was pleased because it kind of took care of two birds with one stone but that's an aside and um that's not necessarily something that you can um require but it is an idea sending some of your IND District staff to those out of District programs to observe could be a form of professional learning for themselves but it also could be a way to build uh relationships and that sense

118of community with the families that have those students in those placements um your staff can bring back some good practices they can't bring back everything because that's the design of the AUD addition placement but certainly there are things that they probably could bring back bring back and grow up on and if there is ever the point of a student who needs to return back to District you may already have that pipeline established if you know that your staff have already been to that building and they're familiar with what that is um ensure the language in the IEP has more specificity to it um Mr Roland and I have talked a little bit um about calibrating expectations in IEP language and this was something we found in the districtwide review in the spring um just the

119clean up if you will of language in the IPS I looked at this through the lens of a being a previous director if I had to go to Due Process how will I defend this decision in some cases the IEP wasn't going to help me when I looked at them and so it does put you in a vulnerable space of just on paper alone you would have a lot of work to do so uh we've talked about that in terms of you know there's no like compliance way to write it but there is a defensible way to write it um and then the big one which you've talked a little bit about tonight in terms of strategic planning but the alignment of brookfield's portrait of a graduate along with the district's for CES specific to

120students in the district's programs so a lot of times districts write visions of The Graduate portrait of a graduate and they have vision mission statements and yes it should universally apply to all students and for all intents and purposes it probably does but has anyone had the actual sitdown explicit conversation to say what does a good communicator mean for the student in the ELC program in grade 4 what does that actually mean by the time they're ready to leave Brookfield that's going to look very different even than your students who are um in more of a resource room model it's it's just it's going to look different on purpose as it should those conversations should be had um and I think that was it zipping right through it it was a it was a smaller

121review but still intensity and again the report has much more depth to it um but you can read that at your leisure I'm happy to expand upon that at another time if you needed to but Mr Roland is on top of it um and we've been in communication so I think he has the capacity probably to to fill in any holes there Dana thank you for coming out tonight in the presentation um I mean at this time it' be appropriate if any board members have uh couple questions or anything like that for Dana sorry so thank you Dana appreciate that um we might need you back up here I'm not sure might as well stay up there than so so one question I when we kicked this off that I always had was the process

122for determining when and how we do an outplacement do we have sufficient discipline in our process I mean you kind of touched on it a little bit here on documentation but what's your sense of you know how do you make that big decis big financial decision right but it's also a big individual decision for the kids and so how are there areas on on just practices on making that specific decision Point yes there are um CT saids the new States IEP all that training will help some of that okay uh because it has to just by design of the new state IEP people are going to be forced into putting things into IEPs that maybe they weren't as focused on before so that will clean up some of it but I would say the other

123conversation um is what is what is the student need in their program first and then secondly where do they get that and I don't know if that's how the conversations have been had here um or in actually a lot of places to be honest with you and so what the student needs should be driving the I AP not where the student's going to get it um and so that could be an area of vulnerability for teams if if if that persists um the other one is a little bit more of like a legality piece in that you really should have a an idea of who is initiating the placement decision whether it is the school team or the parents because that matters you know there's a reason that parents might come to a PPT and

124say I want my child to attend this school out in Stratford and and the school team needs to investigate that and so in the IEPs we sampled um and the parents that we spoke to when we triangulated that there wasn't a depth of conversation captured um around those those reasons again we were led to make assumptions okay so and Bill you got enough insights that will help you drive sure yeah and I think Dan Dana and Bill if you could just mention or maybe I'll just mention it that uh some of these decision points that we're talking about are many many years ago and others are more recent so this is this is a a Continuum of students for many years Ju Just To Echo what Dr corvo said the questions that I'm asking of

125the teams now is you know we don't put kids in programs we program for the student what does the student need and I think to turn that conversation rather into we can't or we should outplay it's what can we do here what have we tried what do we know about the student and I think that piece along with CT saids being datadriven and showing that this is what we've tried so that when the decision comes for my from my thinking a Farther Along along the way to say we have done this and this and this in conjunction with parents in partnership with parents and with the teams to show that we do not have the capacity to provide the services that your child needs not to have a knee-jerk reaction frankly and that's that's not

126Brookfield that's in many teams where it's like I don't know what else can we do we just we we've done everything I don't know that that's the case and that's what we're looking into to be able to build those cases so in conjunction with what Dr corvo said tonight that's part of my discussion with teams and with supervisors and buildings okay uh my second question was you didn't talk you did a lot of surveying but you your your your observations and and recommendations didn't touch on those did you did in the you had a big population of our staff that you surveyed did they feel that they were getting the support that they need were they were there areas of weakness in terms of uh the structural support that they they need in the in

127to do their job excep so yes to both of your questions um I will say the staff's responses sounded much more positive and optimistic this time around than when I had spoken to them last year okay now it was September things are fresh and new still changes have happened I don't know the reason for that but I will say they sounded much more optimistic they sounded much more hopeful um it wasn't I hate to say but it wasn't like a doom and gloom kind of situation um and so that was better but the support there still needs to be some support areas looked at and again I get into those into the report but again Staffing still you know you're not going to fix that overnight as we pointed out in the spring so that

128has to continue being on the radar which I believe Mr Roland is working through um and then the perception by some of the staff that there is or isn't funding for something there's a disconnect somewhere and we talked a little bit about this in the spring because it came up on the larger districtwide review and in particular this came up when you're looking at um programs like this you usually one characteristic is you usually like a universal Behavior system right and so that requires different funding than what the school principal gets for their schoolwide social emotional learning program for some reason the the some teams didn't believe they had the ability to pull that off from a fiscal standpoint so it sounded like because of that they really didn't explore that programmatically and when I

129checked in with with Mr Roland you know he confirmed that no specific requests have come through and even requests that came in for special education generally none have been denied under at least his tenure and I even think last year we discovered none were declined so either someone's not asking the questions because maybe they think it doesn't the funding doesn't exist so why bother or they need professional learning to understand what kinds of questions to ask you don't know what you don't know sometimes um but that perception of the funding phenomenon probably should be discussed more explicitly among across across the teams and again if you're having that vertical conversation then there are no surprises when that student goes from kelwood Lake to Wiscon it's all intact yeah Casey I would I would observe it's

130not just special ed too it's across across a lot of fronts you'll hear people say well there's no money for something right and yet you'll be sitting in your chair and you'll say of course we have money for that right and uh we had that last year on pencils and paper and all sorts of weird things and uh there was never a constraint on the money we spend eight months um haggling frankly over the money that is discretionary if you will where we have control over it's not contractual it's it's instructional supplies and it's other kinds of instructional materials and why that perseverates it's something that definitely was here prior to my tenure here and I've been here now into my ninth Year and that in some Pockets that continues and I just don't understand

131where that comes from we talk to the principles about it and frankly uh things aren't denied I mean if if if there are materials that people need um we find a way to get them and the principles do budget for that so well there's something there's a perception issue that is pervasive in the schools and uh and I think the best way to deal with it is when somebody says we don't have money for something and you hear about it Bill we tell me why you had that perception right don't don't just say do an approve disapprove but see if we can root out where it's coming from it may be a simple as there's somebody on a staff who they they chatted with over a cup of coffee and then they said oh well

132there's no money sure and there have been line staff to be very very Frank that might be the first person that a staff me another staff member goes to who says you can't have that those rubber gloves for the nurses office or you can't have that and was we then get remember that rubber gloves isue amazing and then we correct that as fast as we find out and so um it's communication up and down the chain just for everybody in the middle of Co there was a situation where people said that the nurses couldn't have rubber gloves and we had boxes of still have extra rubber gloves plenty of rubber gloves anybody needs rubber gloves got rubber gloves so it was uh it was it was just that's a really important thing that we root

133out why when there is a real budget constraint it ought to roll right up to Bill and Casey and figure out what's going on but that seems a lot of these are not real budget constraints there just I mean we in this instance we were able to debunk that um and I think in my experience once you remove these perceived barriers and once staff are brave enough to ask really cool things can happen and and I have always been pleasantly surprised by my team when I say that's not true so in a perfect world if we wanted to meet this kind of need what would we do and then you get into a flow but uh that perception is still holding people back perhaps my third question was about Staffing levels I know you looked

134at Staffing levels broadly without you know getting a details are we staffed at the appropriate levels given the IEPs or are we understaffed or overstaffed um I think by an FTE count you're probably appropriately staffed but you still have to go back and do the investigation of the phenomenon where the special education teachers are providing the adult support par educator coverage and are pulled away from running their program um in your specific self-contained programs you can't necessarily expect your certified staff to be operating as a par professional uh because they're the they're they're the they're the conductor of the symphony they're the conductor of the orchestra they've got to be available to make sure everything else is running um you know is that unique to Brookfield no but I do think that is going to

135hold back a lot of progress um it might also mean not Staffing but it might mean role definition and responsibilities it might mean expectation for different people in different programs that have to be explicitly explored and not just assumed um so it's more than just a numbers thing it's probably a little bit more work with roll up your sleeves and and get the conversations going too okay thank you sure I've asked my three questions who else wants to ask a question I have one kind of piggy back so the certified staff uh kind of you know being pulled does that affect Maybe frequencies of ppts being done I know you mentioned it like earlier in the I don't see any recommendations related to that but it seemed like in the presentation you started with that

136and then yeah back the the PBT meetings did not surface as a an area of concern I think in the reality of the system trying to operate if you're pulling a resource from here to give it over there then yeah you're going to have a void so I know last year in the spring we talked about um a lot of meetings were happening and so there were reports from all stakeholders that students were either missing services or rescheduling services and those kinds of things that did not appear in this particular study as much and the PPT frequency did not come up as like an area of concern but it does have the potential to as the year rolls on for sure thank you yep okay anyone else thank you thank you for taking our questions

137much so Bill you've got the challenge of turning this into an actionable list now so okay all right next up on our agenda is the uh first year capital projects approval and there's a recommended motion yep I will move that the board approve the 2024 2025 one-year prioritize prioritize Capital project list as recommended by the finance subcommittee second okay it's moved and seconded um Casey you want to lead us on this one absolutely so I know this is um at least the second time sometimes the third time for some of you to um look at this list um when I presented this last year I presented it along with the 10-year Capital um Improvement plan for the district um since that meeting we we thought we had a little bit more time um to sort

138of marinate on on this data and this information and get some um more refined numbers for some of the 10-year um Capital plans but since then um I was informed that um the requests are due to the town um actually on Friday so um that necess necessitated uh springing this to um the finance committee um fortunately there was a lot of overlap in the board members so um that that was great um for approval tonight the only thing that changed um on on the uh on um what you're looking at right now um compared to last month is the addition of $35,900 of funding um for the whis caner uh cafeteria floor there um it wasn't on the list before because um um it actually is already in the capital plan um for 2023 however

139there is not enough funding so this um this brings it to a complete project uh we are very hopeful um there's a moisture problem underneath the tile flooring in the um cafeteria at whiner and so in order to to replace the flooring correctly and have it last um long enough and and as it should um there's a lot of prep work that has to go into the concrete has to be ground down and then um apply a moisture barrier so that the tiles don't continue to pop up so um the funding for that line is to take care of that issue and then um and then the the extra the escalation is just because we anticipate perhaps that um initial $35,000 request might be a little bit high so um or a little bit low

140since that request for the tiles was from um a previous year so that is the only change on this list um I'm happy to answer any questions so this just as a reminder we went through this list at our last meeting right and we went through this and the 10e plan and 10 yep um so there's I don't know if any body has any wants to go back and go and go through what the projects are if you just want to you know accept the addition and approve this so I'll just leave it up to everybody here we've gone through it formally with the uh finance committee but I guess informally with the facilities committee because Joy and I are both on the finance committee so um and we were unanimous right mhm yeah so

141any questions no I'm good all right there's going to be a long road to Marsha did tell us in our meeting that 2 $2.2 million is basically everything the town has to spend uh is as they look at their overall budget so there's going to be a lot of discussion um on this along with whatever else is coming from the town there uh I already got asked in my new role to or actually Steve got asked to um put on the agenda re uh reinvigorate the capital committee for the town so they can start through their budgetary review so um and so that's I'm expecting this that's why they need this now so they can get that going so it'll be a December January even into February type of discussions I think it'll probably be

142a big piece of our budget review as in the end so okay no questions all in favor of approving this to move it forward okay thank you casy okay so um next item is uh approval of policy 5112 ages of attendance I'll move that the board approve new policy number 5112 ages of attendance for a final reading as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee the first reading was October 18th 2023 second okay Debbie um I didn't receive any comments or questions about this policy so I don't have anything new to add unless John do you have any updates on this uh no not on the policy okay okay any questions from the board on this one okay all in favor of approving it say I I any opposed okay uh next is approval of

143Regulation number 6563 School library media I'll move that the board approve regulation 65 hold on I'll move that the board approve regulation 6563 School library media for a final reading as recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee first reading was on October 18th 2023 second okay mov in seconded debie okay I did receive um some input from Bob on this on this policy um most of Bob's input had to do with um formatting things and grammatical things and clerical things that um Lisa went ahead and updated for us and Lisa is that the copy that's in here now it's the newest from from the okay it's the same word in just different format yeah oh because I saw I saw a bunch of typos but I don't know if I don't know if that's uh

144I don't know it was just like a couple of different little things um I I can go through them if you want but yeah we well we just adjusted them I mean we could also depending on what the decision is tonight there's nothing like nothing sub we could always correct those afterwards um you know this this has been a very hot subject for a lot of districts and we've been the policy committee has been sort of continuously doing research with other districts to see language that they've Incorporated um Bob passed along some new language from new Town's policy um which you know is something to consider but I think that um being that we don't have any other glaring things that we need to address and this we could continue to sort of debate this

145and tweak it and finesse it um forever um I think Amy and I agreed tonight that as a committee that we're ready to go ahead and recommend that this be approved as is unless anybody has any other input for us tonight and then you know the new board or the new policy subcommittee could certainly continue to pursue any other um enhancements or expanding on the policy and regulation moving forward as it is like I said as it is such a sort of a Hot Topic these days so I didn't receive any other input or feedback or questions from anybody other than what I received from Bob so um policy committee is good with it as it is any comments questions I just um I'm just like not completely comfortable with the responsibility for selection that

146it lies solely um in Char of the individual Library specialist I'd like to see the language of uh collaborative effort of the school staff and faculty Administration also in that selection process not just line solely in the hand of the library mediate specialist you mean the line the line underneath it says participation in the selection process is encouraged by the collaborative efforts of the school staff I think that wording is just encouraged is I would want it to be also to include the school staff or faculty Administration not just resting solely in the hands of the libr media specialist but that's their job yeah I completely disagree with that I look at all these books around here and there's how can principles and teachers honestly be responsible alongside equally with the library media specialist to

147pick out every single one of these books that's ridiculous that's my opinion that's what I'm comfortable with yeah I mean I think you know we talked about the criteria for selection and the fact that you know so our library media Specialists are trained to be able to identify um meaningful and worthwhile pieces of literature based on their experience and and also professional reviews and um vetting of you know um professional journals that review these books all the time so I I feel like bringing in yet another party into the equation who you know isn't familiar with that vetting process and and isn't frankly as familiar with the literature that's out there I'm not sure really helps us um I would say as a you know as a literacy specialist I'm I feel capable of just

148as much vetting as a library media specialist and I would like involvement in the books in the library that I use utilize and check out um active engagement with that would be important just like I would expect the administration and the faculty and staff would be just as qualified hence many of them teaching the content and use utilizing those books um are just as qualified to be collaborative collaborators to well I believe when it comes to curricular items they do have that input these are not curricular items these are library books sure they're absolutely curricular items these are not items that are mandatory as part of the curriculum they are accessible access these books for their C teaching I'm sure if they are using it in their classroom they have probably read and reviewed the

149book hence they should be part of the process but I think there's an open invitation here for them to be part of the process it says that it's encouraged by the collaborative efforts of the school staff nobody's saying that they can't be so I think they would welcome input from somebody like you who's passionate about it um but to to say that it's required I think just puts an added burden on the teachers that could we could we just I'm threading a needle here could we say actively encouraged and and uh proactively sought right um not require not quite go all the way to require but solicit you know just solicit it right go ask go ask people we'd like you to come participate sure right and uh and if you have time and not

150would that kind of Meet the you know the objective because I I agree with joy here that being too passive here right we would love to actively encourage others to participate right get as many views as we can in Joy's case in your school you probably would be one of the people who' say yeah I'm I would love to be part of that not sure every teacher would what they're very busy right they've got lots of things but uh but to actively you know seek out input isn't a bad thing to me I mean it it just says it's encourages are actively solic yes so just I put the word actively encouraged at the put the word actively before uh on the school staffs it's just that last it's just it repeats itself around here

151I just uh this is so get our th it's a thorus point I'm threading a bit of a needle I know but it's uh how about we just delete the second sentence and go right to faculty administrators recommendations are actively solicited and student recommendations are encouraged and just go right there and the second sentence kind of softens it too much sure I'm fine with that I mean that's fine I don't think the goal Joy yeah I think so okay Deb would you be willing to make a note on that so we can make sure that's typed in edited properly yep assuming an approval we will amend the motion to say as this with amendments as this thank so and I I kind of have on the acquisition criteria kind of want to see since because

152it's it's been brought up now three times uh appropri appropriateness of content Concepts um can we put like a term sexual nature why is that specifically mentioned and not about because essentially pornography is like okay I I want I want to see some language that it's like no well this this could qualify as that since it's been done three times I I think it's prop to say that pornography is allowed in the schools under our policy or that it would show up on any of our bookshelves but you you specifically said sexual content I believe is what you started out with and and I'm not in love with that term either I'm yeah my view of that it's all very hard to Define right it's very hard to Define and you can't just explicitly say

153that oh we just care about sexual content I guess you have to go out and now say well we don't want political extremists content and we don't want well I'm saying based off of the three challenges yeah but you can't I don't think year make policies that are supposed to supposed to stand for the district based on very specific hopefully we are not changing this policy every single year right uh yeah I'm not saying that I my exact terms are are good but maybe you know um say something that that you know addresses the the current the current comment but aren't the words appropriateness and suited those the key terms there so something has to be appropr feels like same thing is like encouraged the language is I think I think the language is a

154little too soft I could be wrong but I'm just throwing out there I think they're pretty strong appropriateness and suited now who determines what's appropriate and suited is you know that's that that has to be you know obviously discussed but those two words I think are key it has to be determined that it's appropriate and it has to be determined that it's suited to the audience and the audience as our students so if something is if something is contentious then this would you know that's where it would be argued is it appropriate and is it suited to the audience I mean I think the language is there m I agree suited for for the audience right that's saying that something that you might consider sexual in nature that's appropriate for a high schooler is obviously

155not geared towards a second grader because it's not suited to the audience it's not appropriate the content might not be appropriate for that age or something that's too violent I just I just would have liked to see something that keeps pornography out of schools but that's that's fine well I don't think pornography in school there's a definition of pornography and it's not what we have okay any other comments I'd like to amend the motion on the table to include uh the edits as we've discussed tonight and any typo edits that uh any of us identify to uh Lisa uh by tomorrow morning I'll second all in favor of the amendment hi hi all right so that leaves the motion as amended so basically the motion to accept this as it is with a one one

156sentence deleted and any uh just technical edits um any further discussion all in favor please say I I any opposed okay move on uh approval of policy 61 6251 survey of students I will move that the board of approve policy 6162 do512 second moved and seconded Debbie okay this one um I did receive input from Joy thank you Joy for your very organized comments um we did review them as a committee tonight we haven't met since you gave me the input so we had our meeting tonight and reviewed the comments um we we feel that um some of the things might be easy fixes to incorporate but because um we were recommending that we adopt Cap's policy some of the questions that Joy had or or recommendations that Joy had I think really need to

157probably go back to Legal so um our committee recommendation would be um and oh and of course if there's any other further comments tonight we can talk about those but right now the committee recommendation is that we table this and let the new board um take a fresh look at it and see how they want to proceed but also get it over the recommendations over to Dan to take a look at right okay so I don't know if anybody else had any input uh or questions about it this this survey is going to it's going to take us forever if I remember the the history on this one we we we we originally picked up theirs it was like gobleg it was hard to follow so then we went and rewrote it with the with

158a lawyer time to do that and then cab issued an updated policy just as forward next day the very next day an and now we're kind of starting from scratch and we're going to go through it again so I'd rather just my advice would be let's take all our thoughts and get it the way we want it not be wedded to caves and uh and then let's go tell cab this is a better policy than you have use this one as the example I'm willing we'll see what C what we can see see what say I'm willing to do that John they'll say who are you our original yeah I have a stack like um that'll be one of the handoff items right um so uh is everyone okay with tbling us mhm okay so

159uh so I'll make a motion to uh we've moved and seconded um I think we ought to vote on the move and decline it for the second reason that will start the clock all over or do we want to just table it no I'm just going to table it so um I will move that we table this item it's an open motion we'll table the item for at least 60 days right to let the new board come in and get established and have a chance to get a committee formed so I I think that'll help the new board a lot thank you give you some time I'll second that okay in favor I okay it's Ted all right uh next up is the school calendar I will move that the board approve the 2024 2025

160school calendar as recommended by the district calendar committee and superintendent Dr John Burell second okay moved and seconded um so at our uh last discussion meeting it was just an action item to receive it we had received some public comment um about uh a couple of holidays that had not been recognized on our then then draft calendar and we had as a board we asked Dr world to go back to his committee and you know do some real you know deep thought and Analysis and you sent us a letter on that John would you like to summarize that sure sure so um I have to thank the calendar committee uh for their work um and uh really put a lot of time into this over the last month as you can tell I did share

161the memo that's in front of you tonight with all of you electronically yesterday it took me you know the whole month to get this work done the calendar committee met last week and the leadership team which is our principles and our central office team met to discuss the calendar committee recommendations just yesterday so it really was right up until uh this board meeting uh for anybody viewing this memo will be part of the board minutes and documentation going forward so they can see the rationale of the decision so in in retrospect just a little bit of background Bob started to allude to we had some public comment um in regard to the original September recommendation on the calendar that was put forward by the calendar committee for the 2425 school year um and the the

162the two um young people that spoke was Omar and miam Omar is one of our sophomore students right now um a real great example of communication and change making so you know I I did express that to him I really appreciated that um so we really had a deep process over the last month there were five different review areas that I've taken action in uh we just talked about two of them but I'll walk you through um uh and then bring you to the uh recommendation of the Cal committee going forward um so we we wanted to get an understanding of how many students um and even faculty and staff might take uh time personal time uh excused absence time for religious observance those uh holidays that typically aren't recognized in uh by federal or

163state law uh or are not in our Cal our traditional calendar um just as a point of uh interest I wanted everybody to know that we did have two employees take personal time off last year we looked at last year's uh information um for religious holiday observance um and then I put into the memo from CES uh Huckleberry Whisky In the High School um we had five students from Center School uh observe uh and these are excused absences in Brookfield if students share what their religion is and their uh observance that is an excused absence so at the center five students uh took a total of 11 days off for observance at Huckleberry 12 students took a total of 17 days off for observance whis skiner 15 students for 23 days off um and 19

164students um observed on 20 different days so that's that's the data in terms of the number of students um and that's any religious uh excused absence that we had on record I also put together a very brief survey with questions that I've included here in the memo uh to all of the superintendant in Connecticut I have to thank caps for helping me distribute that actually hold on sorry I don't want to just before because I wanted to clarify um with the like for the absences M where it says like for example 19 students 20 days off of school um so that means one student took two days okay all right that's what I okay you follow me so five students took a total of 11 so it all depends on their family their religion that's

165what I was that's this all religious not just all religious not just muslim okay which was what the public comment was about um requesting uh uh taking the uh the holy days Muslim holidays off um so then we went and looked at the the the survey and the survey asked some simple questions does your District of the superintendents in 169 districts um and uh 86 responded uh does your District recognize any Muslim holidays on the calendar does your District close school for any of the Muslim holidays um and if your District uh does close which are the specific holidays because there's there's different holy holidays obviously and and the major religions here in the United States um so like I was saying 86 of 169 Poss possible districts responded that's about half 18 of the

166responding districts do recognize Muslim holidays on the calendar in some fashion either including a list on the back of the calendar of the major holidays and the Muslim holidays are included um and of those 18 that responded eight of those districts so eight of the 169 districts actually take time off for Muslim holidays um by closing school so that's that was attendance and the survey are the first two areas of action the second was having a conversation with legal counil one of the things um that step back from this religious holiday uh particular issue for a second that many many people in the public uh who aren't working in education or not volunteering on a board um often think there are Simple Solutions uh to what they think are simple questions or simple challenges or

167simple problems and the reality is they're very complicated and very complex much has to do with uh contracts and uh the law that we must follow and in confirming with legal counsel um we only have a certain window of time to get our 180 school days in in Brookfield we have 182 but there's a statute that we all public schools have to have 180 days and you cannot go to school into July in addition to that we have six different bargaining units we collectively bargain with six unions uh those those include nurses teachers custodians secretaries par Educators administrators they all have different contracts and they all uh while there's commonality they recognize different holidays and you also have to have a window of time to get in all the required work days for all six

168different unions so you can't just make decisions on a whim frankly or fast um when it comes to uh taking time off for any reason so it's very important for people to understand that so from a very practical matter it's not easy to just make a decision and say you know what next year we're going to take a day off there's a lot of conversation that has to go into that if you're going to go in that direction um so please know that that's that's very important um so there's many obligations we must meet and we have to be careful and very judicious in making decisions in addition to that uh like I said earlier we talked with the calendar committee um they're they really were very respectful understanding um kind of excited to have

169the meeting and Tackle this this issue um I shared with them the survey results the attendance uh from last year uh my legal consultation and when we talked they really thought the calendar that was proposed in September was the calendar we should go with next year given some of those things I've already talked about some of those constraints we have to deal with however they did have some significant recommendations and I'll get to that in just a second um and then in addition to that I ran everything by the district leadership team yesterday and they agreed with the calendar committee um and in their uh recommendations and kind of philosophy on how we maybe approach things a bit differently and a in a bit more an inclusive tone with our calendar and so the recommendation

170um simply put is that we want to make sure that we don't put any student at a disadvantage um or um have any students singled out because of their religious observances and in the case of um the students who came forward at public comment what they're talking about is they're having to come to school on their religious holiday and then having to get an excused absence they they really have trouble with taking tests and and there's all kinds of things in top of the respect and the inclusion and the importance of their holiday wanting it to be recognized and so we all recognize that and so we don't want anyone singled out we certainly don't want our kids placed at an academic disadvantage um so some of the things we talked about that we want

171to move forward on very explicitly with our faculty and staff is that um on religious holidays that are not um school holidays where we would have the day off uh homework not being assigned on the evenings of significant religious holidays um many observances do begin in it sundown no tests scheduled on such religious holidays um adjustments being made by faculty uh regarding deadlines um when these things fall um teachers making adequate Provisions for students to make up any class assignments missed due to excused absences for religious holiday observance um and certainly we're going to always like we even do now try our best not to schedule special activities during these periods and as we all know there's only so many evenings uh in a school year and there's just so many activities going on the

172two main recommendations that are coming from the the calendar committee and supported by the district leadership team uh is that the district calendar committee recommends including a list of significant religious observances of the major faiths represented in the United States as an addendum to the 24-25 district calendar um and we would cross check that with the American def defamation League that has that very comprehensive list and then additionally the calendar committee recommends uh beginning with 2425 school year that no tests be scheduled on the day after or the day of religious holidays um and so those are the two recommendations however they do not recommend changing the calendar as proposed back in September so they're not recommending anything on the homework um even though you had it on your list it wasn't part of the

173recommendation yeah so it's the the formal recommendation is no tests and then we're going to work with the schools on on the homework piece um and we can talk a little bit further on that but we will be consistent at all three schools okay so the difference in the calendar that people would see is we would include either as an addendum or on the back of the calendar obviously depending if you look at it electronically or uh in hard copy we would include all those uh all the major uh religious holidays that are recognized here in the United States on yeah the high holded days Etc so sorry no that was it for me personally I don't think I think these recommendations are great I think they should be implemented immediately but I don't think

174it goes far enough to be quite honest um I think there are two major religions that are given a day two days weeks um and I think no matter what we do if we do these recommendations and only these recommendations are Muslim Students still are singled out they still are alone they still are not in school and that is exactly what they came here and explicitly told us they didn't want to be excluded and yet we're still doing that all of that said I understand and I've I've looked at the how the Eid holidays fall for the next 10 years and it's very complicated because it it changes pretty frequently sometime some years there would be one day off some years there would be potentially two days off of school sometimes it would fall really

175nicely with our April break sometimes not um and so I understand that that poses another potential problem but I do think we need to come back to this as looking at it from an equity lens and that is just we're not looking at religions the same so whether we add days off to the calendar or remove days from the calendar that are recognized explicitly as religious holidays I could be in favor of either one um I think I think the what we call the Holiday recess in December that would be very difficult to try to to pry back um and I don't think we'd have any students or teachers coming to work that week um but it could be our winter break I don't think they has to change that but right now on the

1762425 calendar we just have rashash Shana that's the only other religious holiday that I see on here I say we make that a school day and then going forward as a standard practice same thing some years we have good Friday off that'll be a school day now well I think let's think about the message that they were sending to us too that they want to feel included so why don't we use it as a way to set like we do on Veterans Day right now that's different a little bit different but it's the same concept that kids are in school and we celebrate I did think about that too and that's my initial reaction was is was like well if we have a day off of school I mean I don't know if kids are

177really gonna like actually learn about that holiday you know would it be better to have a school day where it is like explicitly recognized but their practice is to be at home with their families and so the idea of saying oh we're including you by serving a special food in the cafeteria even though we know you're not going to be here because that's how you really celebrate the holiday that doesn't send a good message I think to me about what equality really is I also I believe you asked that you Rose asked that last time and they said like no yeah you know very nicely because they said we we would still like to be with our we don't want to be we the whole point is to not be in school and we typically

178take the day off and I understand that but I also understand the complexity of having these holidays that kind of are very difficult to incorporate into our calendar I have a couple of things um one of the things that I heard them say both of the the uh young people who stood up last time to talk was that they're very concerned about missing curriculum missing school work um and so that obviously would be addressed by the tests and I think the this the recommendation for the following school year about not having work due the day after the holiday I think is Extreme ex important because um you know just even on the religious holiday they they they can't be doing work while they're at home celebrating but the other thing that I wanted to I

179actually have two things do we know when we've got these statistics about religious observance I mean you use the word reported so these are the people who actually told us especially in the younger grades where it doesn't really matter we don't these are the on there may be more we just don't know it because they didn't tell us why they were absent but do we know that these were for Muslim holidays we don't so we don't know we have no way of knowing that unless we do a survey and parents would be willing to tell us what their religion is right so then my next qu not question but comment is dwali is taking place right now this week um and so what happens with things that are not Muslim holidays what happens with dwali

180what happens with hly what happens with Quanza um you know it's it's a it's complicated because then if you're if we're talking about inclusion why include this segment of students and not another segment and especially with demographics that are changing clearly across many districts in the state that may be coming up more and more so just comments I mean just things to think about but I think that I think the the like you said Rosa I think the um idea of not assigning work is really really important yeah I mean in an ideal situation and I thought about that too you know is it a is it a dangerous slippery slope where now there's a there's a bunch of other holidays that maybe we need to observe those too I mean at least you know

181but that becomes very problematic and I'm honestly I a huge proponent of adding instructional time not taking it away um I actually get very frustrated with all the days off in half days [Music] but what I'm weighing is what is the most Equitable way to address a problem that students have brought to us and it's a fair one is it possible um to keep this as an ongoing charge for the calendar committee like incorporate the recommendations that they made now for next year but maybe do a deeper dive to some of the other holidays and see what the observances include like some holidays maybe their practice involves doing something in the evening or you know on a weekend and it doesn't require them to be out of school so it's not as critical that school

182that you know school be closed on that day you know these holidays specifically say that part of the observance is being home with your family right um so it maybe might not be as big of an issue for other holidays we could still apply the same recommendations about not having tests on those days and not having homework do after those holidays but maybe not necessarily close school on those days so we can be inclusive of other holidays in you know the list on the calendar and the guidelines regarding homework and and assignments but there may be some holidays where the observance itself doesn't require that they not be in school I don't know I don't know the answer to this question my mic is actually is it working I guess it is um does Brookfield

183have a policy in general about uh breaks not having homework over breaks so for example the you know the Christmas what or the winter holiday do do do you do teachers not assign homework on I have to double check that H so for the Christmas I can't I can't give you a full confirmatory answer okay because sometimes they do sometimes they do and sometimes they don't okay because um I know the the so the district that I came from actually adopted the homey and it was across the board so every Rel Christmas you know rashash Shana yam kapor uh K Quanza whatever every single holiday that was listed on the calendar just like what the recommendation is now the homework policy AC applied across the board so I mean that's one way of being a

184little bit more Equitable and then the other way it's rather than because I I'm with you like taking off instructional time you know that's so tough and with calendar it's really really tough but there could be inclusion in other ways and it doesn't have to be you know recognizing a particular holiday on the day itself but it could be something like that's done the month of for example you know it doesn't so I don't know I mean these are these are just ideas and and thoughts to try to kind of go around taking off school but trying to be I really appreciate that and those were all discussions that have been been had um I hope I hope the board appreciates the work that went into this in the last month AB so complicated and

185and these are the conversations that that we had like I said um it is a very practical they're very practical and sensitive recommendations clearly trying to strike a balance um people could agree to a degree or not uh to to that statement um but we the the board this is a pretty clearly defined role of the board to adopt to to select and adopt the calendar superintendent and the calendar committee can only bring so much forth um so it really is a board decision there's those operational decisions that many times we tell the board that is not your role we are the administration or we are the teachers we handle that but this is a board decision so I do want you to know that but we do have to at some point we're not

186going a rush but we do have to get a calendar adopted our community expects the calendar in December or January typically here um and there's a lot of implications for things going forward in all of our planning you know we start the budget process very early for planning for next year so this is one of these things um we want to be careful not to conflate all of the other issues around that curriculum instruction um the things that holla was just talking about all everything's related is very holistic but we do have to adopt the calendar and make some decisions so I just want to um encourage the board to be thinking about that we can't try to solve everything with the calendar it's just not going to happen so so I just will put

187my two cents forth then um the uh the the thing that actually resonated with me on this discussion was how hard it would be to deal with the employment contracts right we but all of us have dealt with it so to to my way of thinking if we were racing into approving a calendar that had those days off or took a different day and removed it um ahead of actually having thought through how that would fit into our employment calendar um employ employment contracts we would be shooting ourselves in the foot right because and and let me finish Rosa because I know you want to react to that so my reaction to this is It's a reasonable First Step but it may not be the last step um and uh and I don't think your

188recommendations went far enough um I think the including the list of the the the the key holidays is is a very good thing but I think no tests and no homework would be a much stronger signal for equity and inclusion but I would also think that saying we're not going to let it go right we're going to come back and think through all of the employment stuff over the next year before we do the 25 26 Calendar and come back with uh here's what you can do instead of what you can't do I'm smiling Bob because the the committee didn't want to be presumptuous and tell the board we encourage you to continue looking at this but this this is really a first step in going in this direction so um they wanted to and

189you could certainly take the homework piece and as a board make that decision as part of this we so I I mean my reaction is if we can do the we're faced with approving a calendar to take the steps to really say we this is something that we in we've internalized in terms of doing it but really say we in terms of days off of school it's is a complex Rubik's cube right and let's make that a serious analysis that not that it was this wasn't serious but a really something you take time to do you take time to do you look at I mean you know adding one extra day to the end of the school year in order to do this doesn't bother me for one um but if it's uh or maybe

190moving around your PLC day or your PD day to have it float on the days that that would happen makes sense but it does take a lot of work to get there and number one work is those Union contracts um because as all of you who've served on those negotiations they always are bringing in here's the next calendar here's the next uh holiday I want to do and we've had to look them in the eye and say there's only so many days in the year right you're going to open up a can of worms here in terms of whose favorite holiday they want to take off right President's Day uh Martin Luther King day I mean there's a a bunch of them right that are um that are not holidays on calendars Veterans Day right

191not holidays on calendars but uh because we only have so many days in the year and I got a guarantee those Union groups would love to open up that discussion right and take two three four more days um and then on the paid days off and on the flip side of that there's actual work days that have to be conducted in some of the contracts and you might not be able to meet them and you have a hard stop on the end of June so so I look it's a to me this is a first step but I would like it to be harder right uh I mean firmer on what we're doing for the kids on those days that's my two cents I agree on that I do think the no homework and the

192no assignments do the next day would be a harder stance and I would be totally in favor of that test so yeah and no test okay um personally I think and I I I do think that there's a larger discussion to be had because I don't think even even just this group is enough viewpoints to really understand the complexities of the different religions and how they're celebrated I really um so I do think there needs to be deeper work a deeper work with you know Representatives Stu student Representatives would be fantastic from if we had students from the major religions that could provide input and how they observe those um holidays but in terms of us needing to approve the calendar I still need to see equity and I I think I think I always

193did but I think now that it was sort of brought to our face I don't think we can to me I I don't think we canot act I wouldn't be in favor of having rashash Shana off and not other I think well that just H so happens to be the only other the only religious holiday on here explicitly but um Good Friday right it that one's actually I don't know when Easter falls that year but I'd have to check Good Friday might be a state holiday Good Friday might be a state holiday I'd have to double check that not just religious holidays I think it's buried in the I think it's buried in the uh April break April break sometime sometimes our April break it doesn't always align with uh Easter doesn't always align with

194April break but yeah the part of Easter the issue with Easter and the issue with Hy is they move around so much yes both of them do yeah and I'm actually thankful I mean not not selfishly selfishly I kind of wish it always aligned with Easter but looking at it really from an equitable standpoint I'm I'm happy to see that it doesn't um because then that would be favorable to to Christians Good Friday is off yeah Good Friday is Good Friday is a state holiday so in in Connecticut yep State [Music] holid any other discussion I would just say that if if there is going to continue to be work on it as I said I would like to include a a deeper dive at the some of the other holidays that we talked about

195diali and other things that members of our community celebrate and what are the practices for those you know because somebody else will come to the next meeting and say we should have this holiday off you know in Brookfield isn't isn't the first uh District to uh have these requests and and this kind of a thing there are people we can learn from I'm sure there's some Consultants that we if this is a real priority for the board the Consultants can be hired to help the board in their decision process uh and engage the community hly you said that the the your District it was uh no homework no tests in and and and on all a whole list of holidays all all the religious holiday religious holidays and how was that received by the students

196and the families no the students and the families really appreciated it and of course no homework who's going to argue with that but I think sometimes it frustrated teachers because um you know when you have a whole list of religious holidays and if you're I think Brookfield is on a block schedule too so we were on a block schedule so if let's say a holiday fell on Wednesday and you have a Tuesday class and you're seeing them Thursday so you're not giving homework that day but then the next day the teachers aren't giving so you know it sort of compounds um but that was just one way that they the district um kind of took a hard line on it and said this is this is only fair I did anecdotally connected with uh Kevin

197from from Wilton and Marty from Trumble and uh uh Allison from Watertown and uh and Rob from Oxford who uh similar approaches uh in that in that regard but my question keeps coming back down to the students in the families did they feel properly that the district was being properly respectful I think anecdotally the superintendent said that I don't know if that did a survey on it or anything like that but anecdotally I think I think anybody would appreciate the the effort for sure and then that way nobody was singled out at all it's just across the board doesn't matter what your what faith you follow or everybody everybody in in the school on these days does not get homework and there's so it's there's nothing due for the next time you know and we

198could work with the spirit of that and work with our team yeah I don't think as a board we we stick our nose into the policies on homework and testing but we can give you guidance absolutely um so anybody [Music] else well then can I put a motion on the table and if it gets shot down it gets shut down but I would have move to amend uh the calendars to remove October 3rd rashishana as a day off and instead make it a school day is there a second I'll second okay it's been moved and seconded any discussion on the motion for Amendment okay all in favor of the amendment please say I I I all against please say no and wait I'm the amendment is to remove rashash remove rash we're just voting on

199the amendment yeah we're just voting on the amendment not the not the calendar okay then I vote in favor of the amendment okay so the amendment fails 3 to four so um okay so we're back to the uh motion to approve the calendar I'd like to propose an amendment to the motion that in addition we give guidance and uh direction to urge the uh superintendent to Institute policies for no testing and no homework on all religious holidays do I have a second second we do have to do I thought for that part to the list well that that that would be that that is that is that is the John in the in the adoption of the calendar Does it include item one here which is the including the list of religious holiday the the

200list I was uh we're developing it right now um and crosschecking it obviously I told you uh with the uh ADL uh published calendar uh along with looking at some of the other distri more like a regular let me let me modify my motion my motion is that uh my Amendment would be that the uh the calendar would include an attachment for the significant religious observances for the major faiths in the United States as an addendum to the calendar and that we would urge the superintendent to work with his leadership team to have all those holidays not have tests or homework on religious holidays on the day after the day after the day after a second clear okay we got that this on the on the day of or day after yeah so you don't

201assign you know the the holiday is Wednesday you don't assign homework Tuesday and nothing's due Thursday right so that um you know people don't whoever's observing that holiday isn't doing work for the next day so you're clear on objective here is because that's an we can only urge as a board here so do I have a second on that I did second okay so moved and seconded any discussion on that Amendment all in favor please say I I I okay we all agree on that okay so the amended motion all in favor of approving the amended motion which is to approve the calendar with the amendment uh the attachment with the the religious holidays and the guidance to the superintendent on homework and uh testing please say I I I it's unanimous okay just housekeeping

202on that too um Lisa the fall conferences are still not colored I don't know if it was the spring or whatever before right they're not in the might be a cop maybe out of purple yeah I think electronically remember remember cave loves our colors on our calendar if we get award make sure the bar and and John just as a to finalize the discussion let's not let this die let's use the let the the discussion on days off on the calendar let's let's continue that and and long before the calendar approval bring it back to the board for a discussion I think um yeah and like I said the following year yeah and and that also is a very deep discussion though that if if the new board feels the same way as this board

203feels tonight um there are those who are experiencing expert in the field that could help us as well I want people to go get advice much advice and I love the thought of involving students in the disc oh it has to be a public engagement absolutely I think it's a good public engagement to have because I think this is right now your data says it's a relatively small group of schools that are doing recognizing these holidays it will grow over time and uh you'll do this report three or four years from now and it will say 8% of the schools are doing this so it's actually 44% of the 18 that responded are are closing closed on Muslim holidays eight of 11 eight no eight of 18 eight of the eight of the total districts

204take the days in the in the state no no it said 86 responded 18 recognize the holidays and when they recognize the holidays they took the day off 44% oh I see okay yeah so it's so it stands to reason it's basically half the districts responded to the survey in general so perhaps instead of eight 16 may may districts may take if they well the 18 is going to go up yep the point it's just going to go up because there's a population change going on in Connecticut so okay um the last item on our uh old businesses pay rate guidelines I will move that the board approve the pay rate guidelines for special programs as recommended by the finance subcommittee effective January 1 2024 second okay um you want to go through sure thank

205you Bob um this is old business this predates my arrival here in the district um I think the finance committee has been discussing an update to these guidelines uh for some time um I tried to make it um as easy as possible and thank you Bob for I hope it works your suggestion um I did um indicate in blue any items that um actually necessitate a proposed change in the rate itself and first just to back up up what we're looking at is not um to be conflated with like stiffened positions coaches positions or um advisor or um student council or anything like this these are um very specific needs um that are outside of the normal work day um or sometimes within the workday as a substitute um um but um and so they

206they are not dictated by in most cases Union contract however there are instances where the contract does um speak to um the the need so summer school and summer work for teachers that actually is addressed in the teacher um in the teacher contract so essentially what I'm what we're recommending here in this update to the pay rate guideline is that it reflect that language and it just refers back to what um the Union contract says so anytime um the pay rate is um is disc is addressed through a contract the language is just suggesting that you refer to that contract um anything that's only um outlined in black is just a language change um a description to what the the work being done is um but you'll see that the the rates that change um

207the the pay rates that change are all necessitated because as of January 1st the Connecticut minimum wage is increasing and um so our daily rate for par professionals um which is $95 a day is no longer adequate to meet the Connecticut um minimum wage increase so our contract with ESS which is our vendor that um helps you know Supply us with our daily substitutes um we will be getting a new contract to also reflect those increased prices so we're just reflecting that um additional increase here as the pair of professional daily rate increased we also are recommending an increase by $5 a day to the um the teacher um substitute rate uh the permanent building sub um and then clerical custodian and student helpers are all um we're also recommending that those just go to

208Connecticut minimum wage so you don't have to come back and continuously update those um nurses we are um recommending an increase there because it's just um frankly impossible to find a nurse um for the day for less than that rate um and that's essentially it this I think this is and um Rosa you can attest to it I think this is a long time coming updates to these guidelines and it's very helpful especially when we um have our annual audit and we have you know time sheets that we pay individuals for these um very specific functions that we have um an updated guideline that says this person was paid for this work this amount because of an approved rate guideline by the board so it's very helpful if this um if we have this so

209that's it any questions for day-to-day substitute teachers it says you know so propos 105 a day aren't a lot of the districts around us 125 um that seems a little high I don't I don't recall being that high okay yeah I I heard a rumor oh oh B is 125 I heard a rumor I'll double check I I I haven't verified but I heard a rumor we'll double check that get back to there's there's D 125 yeah you do find higher rates in the cities than you do in the Suburban districts um I do know that Danbury struggles to get substitutes right any other questions everyone any questions guys no okay all in favor of approving the pay rate guideline updates please say I I okay thank you thanks okay uh just get past public

210comment since there's nobody here uh three main points my last one yes um well definitely the correct report M and then I thought for the second item I would combine the multilingual learner report class siiz report and homeschool and just say that we got updates on all three of those areas and then I think after this lengthy discussion on the calendar that maybe the calendar should be the third one I agree okay that sounds everyone okay with that all right okay upcoming events okay all schools have an early release next Wednesday and are closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday at Candlewood Lake The Candlewood craze um ongoing fundraiser culminates this Friday November 17th the fourth grade has field trips to the capital on Monday December 4th and Wednesday December 6th and they have

211a picture retake day on Tuesday December 5th whiskin has early release for conferences again tomorrow and also a PTO meeting tomorrow and picture retake day on Friday and the high school has early release for conferences tomorrow and a PTO meeting next Tuesday that's all that I have okay so uh we do have one last item on the agenda which is an executive session um and uh I'll move that the board and so for anyone listening uh uh we're not you're not going to hear us adjourn the meeting cuz we adjourn it after the executive session but we are ending The Telecast at this time so thank you for listening in um I'd like to make a motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing and approving the superintendent's goals second

212moved and second and all in favor of entering executive session all right thank you all for attending all right thank you everyone there's the Bell good for you Deb [Music]