Board of Education Meeting 6-7-23

001all right hello everybody [Music] um it's a big turnout tonight it's great to see everybody um I'd like to call the uh a June 7th meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order uh could I ask everybody to join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [Music] right we have six of the seven uh board members with us tonight our seventh member is at a recognition event uh for one of the sports teams so um it's it's a good fall group um uh before I start on tonight's agenda I had a couple of comments and I'd like to make a motion with the board to change some things up on the agenda first of all you'll notice we did all the recognition stuff before the

002normal business and I've written you all in the board that I was going to do that because I think it's fair to all the parents and the students and the teachers who are here tonight to do that first so for those of you who are here for the main part of the business you will see in the agenda that we start those after we do the recognition events and I will tell you guys this is my favorite meeting of the year because we get to meet you guys you know up front and personal and we get to honor our teachers and staff members of the Year tonight so um thanks secondly a board we have a couple of agenda items I'd like to adjust and I'm going to make a motion and I'd appreciate a

003second and and a vote on that first on the executive session that's at the end of our meeting there was a number of items on that executive session and I would remove based on input from the board members uh the superintendent's evaluation and contract from that uh from that content and then secondly I would like to move the item under old business which is the approval of the curricular tools on illustrative math to move it up into new business just after the correct review because we do have some teachers who are here tonight and I'd like to let you get that one out of the way so I'd like to move that we make those two checks thank you Troy any discussion all right all in favor unanimous all right thank you okay so firstly

004on our agenda this evening is some recognition um and the board would like to start tonight by recognizing our teachers of the year and we have four teachers of the year uh recognized by their peers from Center Elementary School Renee Richardson from Huckleberry Hill School Meredith McGlynn from whiskey near Middle School Jessica Ritchie and from Brookfield High School school Lori lazorchak um and and as well foreign and the superintendent would also like to announce that uh Lori lazorchak was from Brookfield High School has also been selected as the district teacher of the year so if uh if if Renee Meredith Jessica Lori are here I would appreciate it they come up come up we got some gifts for you and June were you going to help me with that I'd like to also thank June

005Gordon who organizes the teacher of the year and the staff member of the year for us here in the district thank you June [Applause] [Music] come on come around come on the inside yeah thank you for everything congratulations and congratulations okay the board also recognizes the staff members of the Year this is not from the T the certified teaching staff but from all the other people who make our districts run and run well so from BHS Jen oh jolio I knew I was going to butcher that from whiskey Diane cerasoli from Huckleberry Kristen Sheehan from Center Natalie Martin and from the central office Ken post so please so uh so if you all would come up also we've got some gifts for you yeah Diane's hiding in the back thank you [Music] congratulations yeah another

006hand for our staff members [Music] [Applause] in the third group the third group that we'd like to recognize are our top 10 graduating seniors who are all arrayed in front of us so uh and you're they're probably sitting there saying oh man I'm sitting here on the stage looking at these people I don't even know who the hell they are we uh we we always enjoy meeting you all and hearing a little bit about where you're going and what you're doing but I will turn it over to Mr belanda who will introduce each of you and and kind of organize our session absolutely thank you so welcome the top 10 is primed and ready to answer your questions and share a little bit about themselves uh we'll start we'll just go in order straight down

007so no pressure Matt you're up first so Matt esnall hello um I'm Matt esnall I am going to the University of Southern California and I'm majoring in Biochemistry wow wow congratulations thank you very much so do you guys I'll start and then I'll do one and you guys can do one and we'll keep moving around the table so Matt how did you choose UFC it's a long way away but it's a cool school yeah I mean that that is part of it uh being a long way away I mean I think that going somewhere a little bit far away is cool um it's a good experience to just Branch out and see what else there is outside of Connecticut you know this is where I've been since first grade and I've really gotten to know

008it and love it and I just want to see what else is out there don't that's great decision process let's ask a second question okay uh which teacher in Brookfield could you imagine being your parent and why oh I don't know about a parent um but definitely I think uh Miss Moses she's a she's a teacher here at BHS um I could see her being like an aunt like um she she gives really good advice and it's not always the advice that your mom would give it's more practical more you you can use this um yeah whenever I have a problem she she knows how to solve it and she's a really really really great person thank you thank you and best of luck at your experience at USC congratulations he's so on I asked

009him a question earlier and he was like wow he knows those right answers well done uh up next is Elisa Eddie [Applause] hi my name is Elisa Eddy and I will be attending Syracuse University next year and majoring in psychology okay so I'm gonna throw you a softball question but Psychology was my field so why psychology it has always been an interesting subject in school to me for sure but I think it goes beyond that I just want to be able to help people with things that not everybody always understands and I really enjoy talking to people and getting to know people on more of that personal level so I think it's really special to me to be able to study something where I have the opportunity to get to know people better and help

010them [Applause] is there a moment in the high school career that made you made you grow the most it could have been something a really big success or failure that kind of propelled you to help you crowd um I feel like that's really it's definitely difficult to say I feel like I have a year where I agree the most I feel like my junior year was definitely that whether it be my academics or my relationships my friendships the connections that I've had with different people and teachers in the school I think that was definitely a big growth moment for me in terms of success and failure that helped me to learn a lot about myself great answer congratulations we look forward to hearing from Syracuse what a great job you're doing there Thank you Lisa

011up next is Aisha Henner [Applause] on good evening my name is Aisha I'm going to Northeastern University and I'm majoring with computer science and computer engineering congratulations thank you I wanted to ask as far as your experience here at the high school is there anything a course offering or extracurricular that you think was missing that you wish that we had here at VHS um I've actually just had this this discussion with one of the teachers um this week and we talked about perhaps we can have like more Global awareness or like International discussions classes because I feel like as Brookfield we are like predominantly a white community and oftentimes a lot of the kids here have been here for their whole life and I've noticed a lot that there's a lack of um I guess

012International knowledge and cultural awareness so when we tend to interact with newer people that we've never met before it's like oh what do we do where do we go from here so I think that's something that's important especially when you go out in the real world excellent that's great great so so my my son who is a PhD student at Northeastern today he said is there anyone going to Northeastern that that that's in the top ten and he would love to spend a couple of minutes with you and tell you about his experiences at Northeastern if you would want to take the time to do that of course I would love to I take any advice so how did you choose Northeastern just out of curiosity um so I was between actually Northeastern in Yukon

013both of them were top but I think Northeastern was set apart from UConn because of their Co-op opportunities I know that was one of their biggest benefit and I think especially for my major it's important to have practical experiences with it rather than more theoretical and I think that would set me apart from other people that would have my same major that's great congratulations we look forward [Applause] thank you up next is Aditya Shankar [Applause] hello I'm Aditya Shankar and I'll be going to a Brown University where I intend to major in computational neuroscience can I ask a DTI read the Brookfield living profile on you how did you manage 19 AP exams first time at the AP exams like thinking back to the freshman year I took AP music theory which is something that

014like since I was little I've played piano and I've really enjoyed studying a music theory so like some AP exams were like already along like my interests took a lot of classes like that like I was already like really interested in so it was like easy to like to like it wasn't so much work because it was also kind of fun to learn about a lot of it so it wasn't so much of like work really that's amazing what do you hope to do with your degree when you graduate so with a degree like I hope to be able to use a degree in computational Neuroscience to not only like study the brain but also use math and computer science because like for a long time I've really been passionate about math and I also

015like enjoy like using math and computer science and sort of like applying those to study like biological things and then recently I've also become fascinated with like the brain and like how complex it is so I hope in the future to uh like I hope to attend medical school but I also hope to be able to conduct a research in the future where like I use computational methods it'll be great thank you thank you I want to note that I asked earlier I asked him uh who he admires the most and he said his sister and he looks up to her for all she does so that was kind of awesome too I feel like this is like uh what is it um Family Feud or is that good answer good answers because every one

016of them gives a fantastic answer it really is so uh up next is omkar marlonopanova I don't I don't I'm gonna get it one of these days on car [Applause] and I'm going to Uconn and I'm gonna major in math and computer science so if you were given a million dollars what would you do with it right now uh right now I'd use it for my college education and yeah I'll just save it up and probably invest yeah you know I don't know a lot about the computer science program at UConn or what was it that attracted you to that program there um so my main focus was the math program but um I also wanted to do computer science because they're both uh similar subject like they both were car logic and um at

017UConn they have like a huge community and a lot of courses so I like that okay yeah cool well best of luck congratulations [Applause] thank you omkar uh go Huskies um up next is Ethan metler [Applause] hello everyone my name is Ethan metler and I'll be attending UConn for computer science all right same question What attracted you to UConn computer science it would probably just for me it was mostly the ranking you know like they're probably the number one in Connecticut top 50 maybe in the US so I mean what more could I ask for for the affordable price like you know so I didn't ask our own car this was the follow-on question what do you want to do after UConn I I could go into anything computer science related really like designing apps

018I don't know working for Google any of those options seem pretty good to me as long as it's paying well you know I don't really mind someone else want to ask a question all right um if you think of your time outside of school right because you obviously spend a lot of time studying and on your academics but what outside of school has enriched you and made you who you are 100 track you know it taught me um time management skills not only that but discipline as well and I feel like learning both those things has helped me tremendously manage my time like with my other extracurriculars as long as like along with work and also just my academics in general and I see it like that's going to help me a lot in the

019future as well with college where the workload's going to be 10 times more intense and I'll have a lot more to do so yeah certainly will yeah good answer well congratulations thank you thank you Ethan up next is Nathan Schmidt [Applause] hi I'm Nathan Schmidt and I plan on attending Vassar College and doing a degree in International Studies what was the most surprising thing you learned about yourself during your time in high school um one of the most surprising things that I learned about myself was probably how well I can function kind of on my own I guess with coven and everything you know I didn't find I had a very hard time dealing with that whole situation and it kind of surprised me because I expected it to be at least a little difficult

020you know not being able to go to school but I honestly enjoyed it a little so great Amy I won't ask outside of the high school who is your most memorable teacher that you've had here um outside of the high school for elementary school I attended AIS in Danbury the magnet school and so I would say I had a lot of great teachers over there but I would say that the one that probably stuck with me most is um probably Mrs Dyer which is my second grade teacher because my family is an owner and my siblings also had her as a teacher and so you know she really just stuck out a lot for me and I think she and her she tend to be strict excuse me strict but I thought she was fair

021and that I feel like that really impacted Me growing up it's great that's great thank you thank you and up next is Kyle detner [Applause] hello I'm Kyle dotten and I'm going to Cornell University to the engineering school but I don't have a specific major within it yet I hear the engineering school at Cornell is really challenging I I've heard the same thing and I've heard that so my question for you is is there what in Brookfield highs helped you prepare for that I think Calculus class specifically helped me prepare for that because that was really a step up from other math classes and it was a lot of new ideas being introduced so I had to like figure my way through that as the year went on but I feel like that prepared me

022pretty well excellent here's a fun question if you're going to open your own business what would it be and why I think if I was going to open my own business it would be something in energy I think if I had like all the resources available I'd open something with like nuclear energy and nuclear fusion because that's something that's kind of fascinated me for a long time a huge future for the United States it's an engineering thing to focus in on well congratulations thank you up next is Rachel Tang hi my name is Rachel tang and I'm planning to double major in biology and dance on a pre-med track at Duke University so congratulations on Tuesday right you won a lot of your a lot of recognition and won a lot of awards I think

023and you're involved in a lot so what's your fate what was your favorite extracurricular activity um I would have to say dance um I mean I'm I'm double I'm playing a double major in dancing College obviously be involved in clubs and everything but dance has been definitely a big big part of my life um I've been dancing since I was like four and um I would say overall through dance I've learned so much about myself um about how I can like give back to the community and it has helped me so much like in my development from childhood to now you'll remember most about your time in Brookfield not just BHS but Brookfield as a community um so I've been in Brookfield since kindergarten and I would say um in terms of book field overall

024um just how tight-knit the community is especially since it's not like a huge town and everybody especially a lot of people in our grade they've been here since like Elementary School kindergarten and just being able to grow up in that community and be with everyone since when you were younger is something I would say that's really meaningful and you establish those connections and bonds um that are much more meaningful and you can connect with them on like a deeper level thank you thank you that's great congratulations [Applause] Rachel has assured me that Duke is going to eventually beat UConn but I don't know but we might have somebody else going to UConn here I want to introduce so the last person but certainly not least is Katrina anaki I'm Katie Anna cave I'm going to

025Uconn and I'm studying political science and statistics who's your biggest influence on just going to college instead of doing anything else I think generally my family um both of my grandfathers as well as my dad have a PhD in physics and my aunt has also pursued higher education as well as I think everyone in my family has gone to college so being surrounded by people who are highly motivated within Academia inspired me to pursue Academia and research as well I like that I enjoyed my time with you at the field was that the Strategic teacher yeah what was the other one with the survey uh youth commission youth commission youth commission sorry and the week there I thought I was very impressed with uh your answers I'm sorry I think you did great what was

026your biggest challenge in these last four years or something that perhaps you had to overcome I think that coming from being homeschooled to high school um as well as being the first person in my family to complete American public high school was definitely a bit of a challenge as I was unsure about how to go with about course selections as well as select how to best build my resume I wasn't really sure how to create a spike and Stand Out Among College applicants so I think being unsure of how this system worked in the modern day and age definitely brought some challenge to me through my out my high school experience but obviously it didn't really hold me down then well congratulations and best of luck Well we'd like to personally congratulate you so if

027you come up let us shake your hands and then we get to do it again on graduation day which is coming up so [Music] congratulations Good Luck Good Luck congratulations good luck to you congratulations congratulations congratulations good luck congratulations yeah congratulations nice job well that is always one of the most fun parts of a board meeting all year long so and then they can leave if they can stay and watch our meeting if they'd like but uh but they're welcome to depart we do have one additional uh uh recognition that we'd like to do and the board and the superintendent would like to thank Caitlin zeza for service to the Board of Education thank you guys so much Caitlyn you've been one of the best uh student Representatives we've ever had and I say that

028with sincerity and on top of all your Awards and accomplishments that were awarded the other night congratulations thank you so much thank you all okay dude uh you can give us your report if you'd like or you can bask it or you can bask in getting a gift okay so hello hello everyone sadly for I have lots to report for you today um it's going to be in a timeline format from when we first saw each other to now uh or last saw each other so um bear with me it will be a lot but we're gonna make it happen um so going all the way back to May 4th the swc leadership awards dinner was held for BHS students Shannon ackerly abides avinessian and Casey Katz on May 5th uh the student government elections

029were held for next year's executive and class officers uh congratulations to everyone who won a position including the new class president Leslie LaMonica uh on May 7th The ciac Scholar athletes awards were held for BHS students Aditya Shankar and Rachel Tang senior prom was held at Kenwood Inn on May 12th it was a red carpet theme and we were fortunate enough to have perfect weather the venue and setup could not have been better on May 14th National Honor Society sponsored the We Care Mother's Day 5K it was a hit we raised over fourteen thousand dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation the Western Connecticut superintendent's award ceremony was located at the Amber Room recognizing Aster Aston Sylvester and myself it was an honor to receive this award from Dr Burrell May 18th was packed with

030activities for the community the bef honor and education educator reception took place also the fundraiser for the classes of 2025 and 2026 held a Mario Kart tournament to fundraise the WMS chorus concert also performed that night the BHS School climate committee sponsored a clean Day on May 20th student volunteers were helped help to spruce up the building and classrooms on a Saturday the BHS music department choral and instrumental concert was performed on May 23rd May 24th was another busy day hhes field day number one was run by students in the BHS fields furthermore we attended the Connecticut geography challenge at Uconn and finished third in the state the science National Honors Society induction was held on this date as well hhes field day number two and the National Honor Society induction were held on May

03125th on May 26 12th grade students attended an in-school assembly by The Looking In Theater followed by senior yearbook District distribution excuse me the NHS inductee Retreat and hits coral and instrumental concert took place on May 31st and then on June 5th this past week the celebration of excellence awards was held in the BHS Auditorium I applied for many scholarships this past year and I was fortunate enough to receive multiple during this ceremony among those the Brookfield Education Association scholarship and the Ronald Reagan leadership award were my proudest achievements yesterday June 6 the Spanish and French Honor Society inductions took place along with the master your finals event for students today cap and gown distribution took place during ilt which was very exciting um tomorrow June 8th will be the last day of classes before

032final exams students are exempt from finals if they receive an overall average of 93 or above in the class the girls lacrosse team played in the state semi-finals against Guilford at Cheshire high at 4 30 pm today and joy I know Vanessa played today so do you have an update on how the game went oh they did okay great that's a good update um uh so yeah so that game will be postponed um and then the baseball team will play for the state championship on Saturday at 7 pm against Guilford at Palmer Field in Middletown on June 9th um The Powder Puff football game will be held at 2 30. this also may be subject to change because of how the air has been looking but the girls in 11th and 12th grade will have

033a friendly competition against each other in flag football coached by the BHS football team the grad walk will take place on June 13th where seniors will get the chance to walk through the elementary schools the middle school and the high school to see teachers and relive memories June 14th is the last day of exams and the official last day of school for students graduation rehearsal will take place this day as well and finally seed your graduation will be held at BHS on June 17th the grad parade leaves whiskaneer at 10 A.M and the graduation ceremony starts at 11 15. the night will end off with the grand Return of the grad party beginning at 10 30 at night a big thank you to the decoration committee and everyone else involved in the making of this

034special celebration for students and lastly thank you all for having me as a student representative on the board of education for the 2022-2023 school year this experience has given me new skills and perspectives and I just want to thank each and every one of you for listening to me give my reports each week thank you I'm just going to say you you do the best so you want to ask yourself we're going to ask you the tough questions too okay just I'll an easy one yeah so I don't know so where are you going what's your major sure yeah where are you going from here so I will be attending the University of North Carolina Wilmington um I will be majoring in Psychology um I'm not exactly sure what I'm minoring in yet but I'm

035thinking studio art thank you come around congratulations thank you so Mr belanda you've got a high bar you set with her this year I we can't wait to meet next year's student representative so yeah okay so why don't I invite you up uh to give us just a quick update on graduation and then we'll get on to the main course of the meeting tonight Absolutely I'll make it I'll make it relatively quick um and thank you Caitlin for highlighting those things about grad walk uh that's on June 13th uh she already brought up grad rehearsal uh which is June 14th and then graduation I just took some quick updates for the board so they know um the car parade will continue again this year it'll be departing whiskey near Middle School at 10 A.M I'd

036say that as a matter of importance to you uh depending on how you want to arrive here and not get stuck in the middle of parade traffic for the board members that are coming to the ceremony so we anticipate it takes 20 minutes about at the most for the first card to get here um but so I suggest trying to get here before then I'm gonna hand out parking passes so that's for that's for you too Dr Mann uh so just put that in your window you're gonna come into the main lot uh one of our security staff will be there it might be our uh armed school security officer could be there or one of our other night security guards will be there and let people in when you have that on your uh

037windshield uh so you'll come here and we're gonna meet in the new gym um we use the last year we met in the old gym but because of construction so we're meeting the big gym and we will walk out and process onto the field uh I will lead you out there uh and yeah we'll start at 11 15 a.m as the actual start of the processional so that's about the we figured out after doing this for a couple years that's about the time that we're able to get everybody lined up ready to go I'll lead you out with Dr Mann Dr Burrell the rest of the board I'll lead you out we'll go up on stage uh followed by the students and then the staff as well and from there it's and after that we'll

038just go through the ceremony I anticipate probably about an hour and a half 12 30 is what I think of typically 12 45 probably more likely it'll take to get this done um but we're really excited and looking forward to it and there will be no weather issues whatsoever well I hope not okay no no there's just aren't going to be yep we're good thank you are there any questions for Mr belanda on the on the uh what we need to do okay I'm just going to say for those of you watching on TV or those of you who are here um it is a great experience for our seniors to do that parade and their cars and if you're not in the parade with your students set you've got like get on Route 25

039and cheer them on because uh the horn honking and the excitement is just something to watch so it's uh it's a great thing so I just urge everybody who's watching tonight or who are here tonight to you know join in it's a fun day on a special day so okay that's it for that update thank you very much so I'm going to turn the page on we've got a very full agenda for this evening um uh first up is public comment um the board welcomes public comment each speaker has up to three minutes to provide input to the board at the start of each meeting we allow a maximum of 20 minutes for comment on any item that's on the agenda the reason we do that is because the um we need if we're going

040to be voting on something at the meeting we really do need input beforehand right that makes only makes sense so at the end of the meeting we reserve time for any item that's within the board's jurisdiction whether it was on the agenda or not and and it would also include overflow time for individuals who are not able to speak in the initial 20-minute time slot discussion of school Personnel individual students or individual members of the board is not appropriate so with that we do have a sign up we do require that people sign up before the meeting starts and we have two individuals who've signed up relative to items on the agenda and then the other two there's only four on the list the other two signed up for uh for for General items so

041Mrs Rice is up first and Mrs Rice you know the drill I need name and address for the record thank you thanks hi Denise rice three old Hemlock Road I was hoping before I stood here to get a chance to see the correct report but in all sincerity I really just have a question a couple of questions for you to think about I was at a couple of the focus groups um one was Fight Night and the other one was another one um I can tell you for a fact that from both I do know how this report should have come out and I also can tell you that even though it is Tainted it should come out as we the parents all expected And to clarify it is Tainted because we were told no

042Administration would be involved but I know for a fact that a member of the administration not only sat in on an observation but participated in the class that being said my question is why parents spoke here had meetings with the administration emails were sent valuable staff left and children suffered yet nothing was done because we were referred to as a group of parents on a Witch Hunt and so a thirty thousand dollar correct review was done why did it have to come to that why did more money have to be spent when we were telling you what was happening and it went ignored why weren't we taken seriously and why is taxpayers and parents did our concerns not matter until everything was shattered the only conclusion I can come up with is that it was

043the plan of the administration of Board of Ed to change things like this but it didn't go as planned and we weren't silent we live here we raise our kids here we work here and we pay taxes I'm hoping since we were not valued you do value the findings of this report and act with Integrity on getting this District back on course my question will always be why thank you thank you and the second person who signed up to speak on the correct report and the executive sessions Mr Korea Andy Korea 45 West whiskner Road I share the same concerns as Ms rice the board and the administration actually committed to getting the report out to the public before the meeting so the ability for the parents to read it before and make comments here

044so that then the representatives of correct could be asked questions I think is very important and I sent an email earlier today asking including to crack asking for it to be posted and it wasn't I think that was the issues that we you know had kind of helping the board understand they needed to do a better review than the CES review that we've discussed on December 14th board meeting with the conflicts of interest the poor performance of CES and other in other districts and in its inapplicable scope I think this further you know degrades you know the trust with the community um and then on the executive session I wanted to talk about um of the contracts of Administrators that are under consideration to be reviewed one of them is likely invalid um but I

045think that the 2022 version the 2021 is probably still valid if you look at the contract the authorization paragraph references a back year contract so the person who signed the contract was not the person that was supposedly authorized and the author of the board votes reference were from board meetings in the prior Year and that would be okay if there was actually a real board vote but there was not a board vote authorizing anybody to sign the 2022 contract so 2022 version of that contract so for that contract it should be you know a year back level and only valid through 2024 and I'm asking the board for that particular contract to not extend it for that particular individual so that the contract only goes to the end of 2024 and then potentially offer them

046the ability to for termination by Mutual consent and I'd encourage that thank you thank you and by the way Mr Korea did write me about that today and I as I told you in my email I've reached out to the council just to look at the language in that contract so thank you for giving that to me I appreciate that you're you're welcome I don't trust the con the the attorney for the district because he's lied in board meetings and he's covered up board member misconduct so I think that you trust him or not that's who we're turning to get a check on the contract the board would be better off firing both of its attorneys you know that thank you all right so the other uh two that have signed up will be at

047the second public comment section because the topics were just generally stated [Music] um so next up is written correspondence um Andy Korea wrote regarding an foi on a vehicle purchase an executive session the correct report and the superintendent's contract Mark Casey wrote regarding softball at the middle school Amanda Marshall wrote a thank you to the board for the opportunity to serve on an interview committee Dennis Petrino wrote thanking the board of the community and Dr Burrell and Dr Mann on behalf of the teachers of Brookfield Sherry styronowski wrote regarding concerns at BHS and the budget Aaron sclera wrote regarding an foi for productive gear and a legal matter Irene Korea wrote regarding meeting minutes Monique Matthews and AGA stepniak wrote regarding illegal matter Nick Schmidt wrote regarding an foi in library books the Brookfield Children's

048Advocacy Council wrote requesting a policy change for removal of library books and Lisa Shang wrote regarding her story that's it okay thank you um approval aboard minutes I'll move that the board approved the minutes from the special meeting on May 3rd the regular meeting on May 3rd and the special meeting on May 22nd second are there any questions on the on the uh the board minutes all right all in favor all right the minutes are approved so Dr Brill I'll turn it over to you for a superintendent's update all right thanks Mr Belden I will be brief although I do have a number of items to go through given the um scope of the meeting tonight uh just an update for everyone regarding the science of reading legislation our K3 reading update for this month

049the Connecticut state department of education has granted us an official time extension for the one year that we had requested Dr Mann put forth so that has been granted and we have the time to work with our teams on that and actually when uh she talks about the K3 reading assessment uh tonight during her presentation that's the first step in this whole process moving forward um I do have a book reconsideration update I actually like to invite Mr belanda if he is there he can give the steps that the committee has taken to this point and when those who um completed the forums and uh asked for the reconsideration will be communicated with yep absolutely so thank you Dr Braille uh so I will make this relatively quick but to summarize kind of the steps

050we've gone through to date and what the next steps are going to be uh so so far in terms of book reconsideration forms um uh one book the first book I'll talk about is this book is gay the step one is to submit the form for reconsideration there were three individually submitted forms uh one group form that was submitted last week we're working with them to set up a time that I'll talk about in step two and step two is a review whether by by phone or zoom and so we've had one meeting on Monday May 1st uh with one individual we had another meeting on May 8th with a second individual the third individual who submitted a form did not respond to a request for information so we we couldn't meet by phone and

051set that up and as I said in the previous statement that we're working on getting a time for next week for the group committee the group that submitted it under their that particular form so working on getting that set up for next week step three is we have to either convene the reconsideration committee which is made up essentially of volunteer staff members from the building and so working to find common times after school and we had an orientation process on May 5th to go through I had to order the books to get them here so everybody had an actual physical copy of the book to read through it once we got the books and we were into the process of what we're going to go through to read the book re read book reviews and

052then set our next meeting date in terms of discussions the discussion happened on the second meeting was Monday June 5th um at that discussion we looked at the book reviews we looked at selection criteria we reviewed the reconsideration forms the the bulleted list of things that they asked us to reconsider we're in the I'm in the process now of determining if there will be action or there won't be action based on the committee's recommendation that information I anticipate having by Friday to the superintendent and then communicate that as the next step to those people that submitted that so that is for this book is gay we did receive one reconsideration form for a fun home a family tragic comment that comic excuse me that was a part of the group um Brook Brookfield Children's Advocacy

053group that submitted that form so we'll have some of those conversations that initial step two will be next week as well as part of the schedule meetings so that's where we are and we'll follow the same process for that order the books and then move forward and when did you receive the um the fun home form that was at the end of last week oh so just recent yeah that's the first one we've got was the end of last week was the one that came through I believe they copied the board and Ms Foster mentioned it in terms of communication with the board about reconsidering apology surprises me that no nobody has submitted a former earlier than that it's the first one we got on that okay okay thank you all right thanks Mark uh

054next on the superintendent's report uh just an update on kindergarten enrollment uh Mrs Ferry has shared with me earlier this week that we're holding strong at 152 with eight sections that puts us at about 9 19 per class at this point so again we continue to monitor uh we do need to remember that uh while 19 is is in that nice range that we like for our kindergarten students we did work with our kindergarten teachers last year when we had the move to bring in the four and a half pair of Educators and rather than have another section they would accept a little bit more in class size because of having those pair of professionals to support their classrooms so we're going to apply that logic as we look through and monitor new registrations that

055come in through the summer and then we'll see and we'll continue to update you and monitor closely so just remind me historically if we were sitting at 152 in the beginning of June how much growth is there usually after the beginning of June or is it pretty much historically there is movement in terms of students moving in moving out for the most part that number typically holds we're planning we projected in the 160s for the coming year so we shall see and we'll pay close attention to that and if there is any need where we feel we might need another section I'll certainly come to the board we have a July 19th regular meeting and we'll certainly keep the board of selectment board of Finance in the loop if there was any request for funds

056if it came to that and needing another teacher okay um France trip 2024 so last month uh Miss Abrego and Mr Johnson were here talking about the students that came to us as exchange students in the program from France um they are building a proposal right now as we speak for about 30 students to head to France from whiskey near for next year of course when that proposal is complete and work through us we will bring it to the board as an opportunity for students to travel and we talk about moving ourselves and working with our families and and our students and our staff to be world class in our new strategic plan implementation in the coming year these are the kind of things we need to start opening up we heard from one of

057our students today open the world up to our students as best we can so uh we're looking forward to that I want to get to yes with this so I'm salting the oats of the board right now and uh we'll bring that proposal forward sometime in the Maybe by August I would think for the August meeting we'll have every everything together and then there would be some early fall work with families to get ready for that trip to see who was ready to go how many kids are we thinking we're thinking about 30 that's not about an area to be cool it would be it would be to the same school that we expected with the sister school so they get to go to Central pay they do oh nice Central pay was mentioned quite

058a bit in the itinerary yeah a lot of that um the it was wonderful we had uh last week I actually have to thank joy for this I think last year you mentioned this to me joy he said can we get a memory walk in and so we did on June 1st um the schools were open to the public uh for a couple of hours each Huckleberry and center around 100 plus people uh enjoyed a final tour of the buildings and um we're just really excited there's a lot of good memories and a lot of retired teachers showed up and you know kids who had been through the schools and parents of course so it was great it was really nice um the next and final um uh piece of the superintendence report is just

059an update on the special education director interview process first round of interviews is actually tomorrow Dr Mann is facilitating that process um Sharon is on that committee I believe Amy is in part of the rounds going forward as board member Representatives we have a parent representative teacher Representatives para Educators and administrators on the committee and again we look forward to that process he's done a couple of these here yeah yep and we'll be talking about Administration actually at the consent agenda in just a little bit but that's uh all I have for the report so while you're there and we just talked about it at the facilities committee so I just um this is a leading question so maybe you could talk about it sure I get lots of questions from the public about what

060happens at Huckleberry right after um after school ends and with the relative to the new school could you kind of talk broadly about uh the timeline of what happens as we exit Huckleberry but also what happens to the stuff that's in this yeah sure in the school so we actually just had some uh we have a regular Wednesday meeting where we meet with the project managers and uh in the principals and so it's important for everyone to know that uh the week of the 19th is the week that Huckleberry will literally be turned off as a school in terms of Internet phone and those kind of things we are hoping that our secretarial administrative team Tech folks and custodial folks who work in the summer will be able to working out of Candlewood Lake if

061that's not possible because of you know anything with temporary certificate of occupancy or any issue like that we're likely going to be working out of whiskaneer we could for a couple of weeks just to make sure we tighten everything up at CLS we'll make sure we uh have the phones forwarded to there we'll have their computers hooked up for parent visits we'll set up times and or have them just report to whiskaneer and we'll take care of business whether it's registration or other things over there so really an exciting time Center School is actually going to be used all summer long for extended school year summer school and some park and rec programs so Center School really is while the boxes will be packed and ready to go there's flexibility in kind of leaving those

062there locked up before moving them over to Candlewood Lake one quick thing going back to um Huckleberry with the classrooms finished for sure in three four and five in the upstairs Wing um it's it's obviously imperative with the Demolition in pending we're going to be moving everything out of Huckleberry uh immediately by the end of June over to Candlewood Lake once we vacated Candlewood Lake during the last week of vacated Huckleberry and center and the whiskey near Portables can't forget about that there will be three different days aligned with our policy where we could do picking frankly not only has Mark and Dean been uh over to Huckleberry and center to see if there's any shelving or desks or things that they needed the town departments by policy can go to the schools first see

063if they need some shelving or chairs or anything that they can use it then goes on to different town entities and organizations from their individual citizens and employees will have an opportunity to go in if there's any furniture that they're interested in taking they'll have that opportunity as well and there's three three days in a row those days are for the uh June 22nd will be for the town Department's June 23rd for the different charitable organizations and other organizations in Brookfield and Saturday June 24th for residents and that is a um you you come in and you want something you take that out and you move that yourself and you know you have a truck or whatever you need to move that to be people there but there won't be uh mover help or anything

064like that so that's there so taxpayers have paid for that so we want to make sure that they have an opportunity if it's something they want to add to a collection of the house or a business or in a department or something they can get a hold of it that last day is like the 24th we're pretty much out of there then right and we turn it over to the construction firm yes we have they given us any indication when the the I think they demolished the gym first because we start with the gym but there's a work that the pre-physical demolition work that needs to happen in July so what I what we're we're making sure we tell people when we have the opportunity and and Dave and I are actually putting together a

065kind of a joint letter to let everybody know before the end of the year where things are at with a little bit of this um this communication about being able to go into the school and take a look at the furniture if anybody's interested we're hoping for Friday afternoon to get that up but yes we will be out of the building and people should not expect to see um like like you see on TV a giant building is blown up and imploded or something like that and there's dust everywhere that's not going to happen when it doesn't happen with schools it's going to be peace at a time um kind of a wing at a time and taken away bricks have to be disposed of a certain way metal another way et cetera et cetera

066and the NBC in the construction company have that all planned out okay okay all right thank you a lot any other questions for Dr burrow okay uh next up we do subcommittee reports and consent agendas so first up is facilities Joy so we met on May 3rd we reviewed the school district reports and here at the high school the guy in spring update we're getting the contract together the PO has been issued Barrett Roofing is going to come back with scheduling information we don't anticipate any delays in materials or supplies but we're hoping to get the work started in the next six weeks maintenance vehicle update appeal has been issued and we're waiting for the install date of the maintenance body and we're not giving up the old vehicle update on our capital projects here

067at VHS the HVAC we're getting software training from ABS there's a punch list of items on software that need to be tweaked so that we can do simple updates we will need a service and maintenance contract an estimate of about 13 000 for the first year and twenty thousand each additional year this would give us emergency support licensing software updates monitoring Etc the BH BHS locker room the demo is complete so we're moving along with that the seminar room seating at the middle school we contacted another vendor Sheridan seating atom Mystic and they they were given the details and were waiting for their follow-up the cafeteria at with skinnier regarding the Floyd floor moisture test unfortunately was not in our favor the moisture barrier has failed one of three companies can do the shoplasting we

068need a breakout of pricing with contingency this will require more expensive moisture mitigation than anticipated and would increase the project cost so the committee requested that Mr post check with the town controller on the availability of funding for this cafeteria floor project security updates door alarms are almost done actually we heard today that they're all done and the security film on the windows and at the high school are done as well they just need to come back and do some ceiling and other work there are six windows with cracks that will need to be replaced so that work will get done soon the repeaters for the walkie-talkies are ordered we found ballards similar to the ones at Target building condition study Mr Caldwell reported that Marx or Cubo has done their site work and requesting

069a lot of follow-up information and data some of which Mr Caldwell doesn't have due to incomplete historic records so we're thrilled at the level of detail and it's very thorough and they were they spent about two days each at the middle school in the high school right here the media center the AC update only one bid was received and it came in a hundred and sixty thousand dollars which is double from two years ago specs are always changing and so far off and we um we need to kind of monitor that so we'll meet with the CES design team and the lowest bidder and a meeting next week to re-look at it custodian Staffing update Mr poster Mr Cole reported that there will be several custodian positions open in the coming months due to retirements

070a custodial reducing its commute and a custodian going to graduate school out of state some new business um notice from the Middle School Mr corwell reported that a water test at Western ear revealed an elevated level of chloride which required a notice to be posted at the school he noted that the water safe and the only action card was the Post-it notice the follow-up sample came in below the level and corrected it but we'll still need to engage in monitoring he also informed the committee that he was obtaining a quote from an engineer to develop an estimate for look for hooking up with Aquarian waterline well the schools are on Wells and we're looking into tying its aquarium many businesses in Brookfield tie into Aquarian as well so they'll come up with a proposal give

071us a worst case scenario and the cost of putting it in and monitoring it and some miscellaneous discussion we discussed a response to the board of Finance regarding a purchase of the maintenance vehicle Mr cuaba updated us on the status of the swings at Center School change chains and fasteners needed to be purchased were installed Mr Belden asked Mr Global to notify Parks and Rec that the fence around the front feel that was skinnier is detached from the poles is Rusted in places and is in bad shape okay any questions for joy all right finance committee Rosa okay we met on Monday May 8th um this is going to be a very short report because it was a very short meeting we went through the check registers with no major issues um and really the

072only major thing that we talked about was the April financial report which just saw some very small changes as you know we still have this projected deficit which is now 596 000 as of the time of this report and really the only change month to month that we saw march to April was just the estimated excess cost Grant Revenue which is a slight change from the month prior 22 000 less at this time when we had met it was just prior to the first referendum so we didn't have anything to discuss budget wise and that's that's pretty much it questions for Rosa I know this topic will be on the agenda later for dealing with the budget adjustments that we have to do questions for Rosa okay thank you uh Kate Mike yeah thank you

073so we met on May 10th seems like a long time ago uh uh Dr Vaughn oh sorry Miss Mrs Bond gave a really detailed and thank you very much Julie for that detailed presentation on uh this different screeners that we're going to have to be using based off of the Connecticut State Department of Education mandates uh with the Committees that was set up to assess these screeners assessment that m-class Dibbles I do not know what Dibbles stand for I know we covered that but that was a long one uh was the best going forward and also budget neutral uh we also had conversations around the the current screener star which seems to be not fitting students needs and will be phased out a motion was made and accepted for m-class Devils to become the universal

074screen assessment for k-3 reading and math for 23-24 school year uh we discussed the flexibilities in the kinetic guidelines for education sorry educator evaluation the uh the flexibilities that were established in 2020-21 uh will be extended to 2023-24 that's a state Connecticut uh request so motion was made to a motion was made and accepted to continue the use of those flexibilities for the 23-24 school year we next discussed the Middle School adjustments based on right sizing we were talking about how the middle school will no longer have a fifth grade and that there's lots of opportunity for elected classes so student voice and choice Dr May gave a nice presentation on the professional development I didn't know there was so much input from from teachers on what professional development goes so there will be that

075the topic is communication with a theme of enhancing practice through vertical alignment right vertical articulation vertical alignment which that is a way of saying that the Pre-K they're that some kind of consistency between pre-k through 12th grade all this will be in alignment with the portrait of graduates and that the teachers will indicate their top three choices of Pathways prior to the end of the school year and launch will take place during the initial teaching days of the 2324 school year the Dessa screener was completed Friday May 26th and that analysis will be made over the summer and lastly a brief discussion was made on the luster of math curricular tool and the cape maintains and can continue support of The Proposal bringing lots of math to the Brookfield schools thank you any questions for

076Mike yeah well the the Odessa screening be made available to us yes when we have an opportunity to kind of look through and look at the trends and those kinds of things try to start making sense it was like an example for the um the Middle School adjustments incorporation choice and voice around elective classes so it's like an example um well and I can always ask Mr Renda to come up but it was mainly an adjustment to the schedule because of having fifth grade being removed and so students are going to get a chance to choose a few electives I think that they filled out a form a couple weeks ago this friend is going to tell us about it so with the new schedule we used to have when a students got into eighth

077grade they're allowed to choose a couple of electives but that went away a couple years ago and we were coming back around to where students they're going to choose to be in bander course first if that's one of their their electives we're going to call it and then after that they're able to choose and we're going to try to get them their top uh choices that they have so they're kind of we asked them to rank them in order of what their preferences are and again trying to give a little bit of choice of what they would like to you know even maybe pursue more every year as they move on so so the building on what you said before they had to choose what they want to do both being in chorus and they

078were not there was a lot of and that wasn't thank you for bringing up that wasn't part of the the specials rotation before all right abandoned course that's the difference and now they will not be pulled out of classes um and they will we have elt times where they would have group they'd have to have the whole group together they won't have to have that now because it'll be part of their elective that that time that they're in their UNH so there's a new there's new time for an elective schedule it's a new schedule right so it'll be built in rather than and it's uh and again the whole idea button we're gonna actually be able to offer different types of music also now um with beginner percussion beginner piano we're gonna try to offer

079some other things like that too for students that actually even if they're in beta course could take that also if that's the the way they look forward and passionate about that's great yeah well so since you're talking about your abandoned chorus I've watched them in the parade yeah your middle school band is much bigger than it used to be and they were really good yeah so and we just um I'll throw a little shout out for them too they went to the chosen Thrills competition and the top ranking that you could get is Superior in both our band and course uh had Superior scores so that was really cool thanks thanks Steve thank you I don't know were they better than Huckleberry yes yes huckleberries was pretty darn good too but you know you would

080expect progress this progression as you go through the schools and uh um yeah they're about to get a lot of really good band members but not next year because this is fourth grade they stay at cles another year so all right any other questions for Mike all right last is uh policy Communications now Debbie's not here um Amy or Sharon would either of you like to give the report I think I didn't get any notes I'm sorry I didn't get any notes from Debbie I believe um Mr melanda did you say did you well if there was questions um when we uh go for the approval I think they're all the ones worse there's no questions there are several involved environments the weighted grades we basically took the whole meeting going over that okay um

081and Mr Belinda and Dr Mann were there and clarified they made some edits and stuff which you'll see later on um I think that was pretty much it and then we just did a brief talk on Communications we talked about the walkthroughs so we're going to talk about it when we get to the policies yeah okay all right so next on the agenda and I've just covered my agenda with me enough um the uh the uh next on the agenda is our consent agenda I'll move that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations and the April financials second it's been moved and seconded Dr Brill anything you'd like to say about sure we're really excited um uh you can see on the consent agenda our new special education

082Pre-K to five supervisor who will be starting July 1 and with us for some training and work with the administrative team on June 20th Taryn Argenta is here so I want to introduce her so Taryn welcome see you thank you for coming come on up Taryn comes to us with a recent four years of experience as a special education Elementary supervisor in Torrington prior to that was a special education teacher in Connecticut for a number of years and we are thrilled to have her here and maybe before Taryn shares a little bit about her excitement to be here but also her interest in the correct report tonight so she'll be here for the duration of the meeting to hear the report because that'll be something she'll be working on immediately upon her entry maybe Dr

083man you could share a little bit about the process I think that'll be helpful for everybody certainly you can hang out there so we um a pretty comprehensive process where we had members of the same constituencies as Dr bro referred to earlier you know teachers and administrators and para Educators and parents involved in the multiple rounds but one of the things that we included was to have a kind of a consistent group throughout rounds with other members kind of cycling off and cycling on so we could get as many voices as we were kind of able to to be participatory in it and this Argenta really Rose to the top and impressed us not only with her expansive knowledge and experience but also with her warmth and just general genial demeanor so we're really excited

084to make her part of the team and help have her help us build this new community at cles which we have been anticipating for so long I just can't wait to get it started thank you thank you I'm I'm honored to be here tonight I'm really looking forward to getting to know students you know working with staff and families as a special education supervisor I'm really committed to building relationships and being supportive just so that we can be the best we can for our students I'm really excited like I said to be here this is such an exciting time for Brookfield and I'm just honored and really grateful to be a part of it welcome and I think it's worth reiterating in terms of the special education supervisor with the new organizational structure going to

085the three School sites at Candlewood Lake Elementary School since it is Pre-K to five uh no longer will the elementary supervisor be moving between three different schools like it has been in the past Taryn will be stationed as part of the full administrative team while district elementary supervisor she will be the really at Candlewood Lake so every day they're getting to know all the kids and getting to know all the families so part of the fabric of the community so we're really excited about that that's all I have for consent agenda okay any questions for Dr burrow I've noticed a couple of the dates or future dates for the effective dates of the resignations are they actually working or are they actually finished work and and not in the office just out of curiosity if

086there's if there's a future if there's a future date there is working and there's there could be some people like using a vacation and things I'm not personal time okay okay thank you any all in favor of approving the consent agenda all right we're finally in a new business so uh we got a big agenda tonight guys so uh first up is the correct report um so the it's just an action that we receive a report from the the correct team regarding the special education review um I I talked to Dr Burrell and just for clarity tonight we're receiving a report that's all we're doing we're getting a presentation we're receiving a report we are not taking any action on that tonight because we need to absorb uh the recommendations and uh we talked about

087okay so how soon after this do we actually adopt the recommended actions or or do it and it will probably be in our July report but that gives the public also a chance to give us any input before any action is taken on the report and that's important to me right that we get the public gets a chance to give us input um the uh and the other reason for that type of timing is we're in the process of we're just starting the process of hiring a new director who should be part of that process of accepting the recommendations so Dr roll I'll let you uh do any opening remarks yeah yeah thank you Bob so um actually welcome to Dr Dana corvo from correct she is here with us tonight so welcome Dana thank

088you for being here with us uh Dana was the uh the full liaison to crack and also did observations and was here on site um conducting surveys and focus group groups and the like it's really important that you'll see in the structure of the presentation that correct provides and Daniel will provide tonight there are sections what are called promising practices or accommodations things were doing well and also recommendations and targeted recommendations that we really need to work on this is all based on the comprehensive program review that correct conducted and we're really excited that it's going to provide us with very clear steps and I think people will see that very clear steps to take while we rebuild the special education administrative team in addition to this the report is aligned it's amazing it's aligned

089with many aspects of the Strategic plan I would say specifically goals one and four from the Strategic plan it's going to be really helpful as we move into summer planning hiring the new special education director and as we talked about with cles as probably 40 of our kids being there making sure we not only take care of our middle and our high school students but our elementary students start on a really fine track so I think everybody's anticipating hearing from Dana and the other thing it's important for everybody to know there are hard copies of the report that Lisa had over there by the agendas and Eric will post all of the information tomorrow morning so everything will be on the website so Dana if okay you're already welcome and thanks again for being here

090sure no problem thank you for having me Board of Education Dr Brill Dr Mann parents staff students um you signed the contract correct you're you're official okay I just want to make sure where I placed emphasis on things tonight okay uh so I am Dana corvo and I am from correct Resource Group uh we are a we're considered a Regional Education Service Center there are six in Connecticut ours specifically is located in Hartford but we do operate across the state we partner with all districts some of our districts we even along the Massachusetts border we work with as well so I'm going to go over some of the report findings and recommendations tonight this in no way is as comprehensive as the report itself I believe the report is 44 Pages or so um my

091presentation is not going to Encompass all 44 Pages your agenda is long enough so we'll get to the highlights right here um I am obligated to share our mission on behalf of crack in terms of our mission our vision and our core values this was established by the correct Council years ago these are the tenants that we operate by and so just sharing those with you and to set the stage for this review uh the purpose was to review the utilization of resources organizational structures student learning and collaboration and communication there are essentially four domains or four areas that we were asked to take a look at our list of data collection includes uh District documents and reports that were available any State Department of Education that were publicly available re-reviewed some student files observations

092staff survey parent survey and focus groups and interviews so those are some of the the numbers in the data that you'll hear about tonight with this kind of research there's always limitations certainly there's a much longer list but these are the highlights and the most important ones to be mindful of much of this research is in fact perception based there's nothing we can do about it any researcher that does a mixed methods research specifically with a qualitative component is going to have perception based data that's the purpose and that's the design therefore interpretation is subjective again we know that going into this there's decades and Decades of Scholars who established this and so interpretation is in fact subjective and uh sampling you cannot have the expectation that sampling is going to represent everyone so we

093did not capture every parent voice of 300 some odd students we did not capture teacher voice of 200 some odd staff that's not what this was designed to do so going into this uh just remember those perception based and interpretation-based limitations and the representation limitations um before I go too much further the next slide is promising practices but I also wanted to make sure I clarify what we were not designed to do we were not designed to seek out actually just so we have attention we were not designed to seek out individual cases um so you won't see any reflection of any individual student or representation that we had done we weren't setting out to prove anyone right or wrong and we weren't setting out to advocate for any particular person or entity this was

094research this was information gathering as broad brush as we can capture it the recommendations may or may not advocate for certain things the recommendations may or may not do other things but that was not what we were charged to do so with that I would like to review some promising practices again the report does have more comprehensive detail within each domain but these were some of the ones that we wanted to pull out and make sure that we shared there is clearly a strong dedication to support special education and students with disabilities and that is true from all levels in the buildings your support staff and even the staff that you don't think interact with children on a holy regular basis they care and they are concerned and they have opinions and so they are

095dedicated just as far up as superintendent Board of Education and parents are I didn't we I didn't see or we didn't find any area where there was outliers that didn't support special education in the district so you have a healthy Community culture around special education here [Music] um they're a strong collaboration within the school buildings across members of a student's Special Education team and this did include general education teachers and para educators so were there uh some dissenting opinions about communication yes again this is not representative every single case but by and large the communication across teams within a building was was healthy people were able to seek each other out and share information people were able to collaborate and ask questions of each other um at the school level within a student's individual team

096um the recent um beginning of the IEP compliance teacher was a position I believe the district started in March so it was hard to gauge what kind of impact that position would have because at that point we were wrapping up but based on some information I was able to get towards the tail end of the review it sounds like there is a lot of potential for this position to evolve and to have an uh an impact on practice not just in the schools but also at the administrative and central office levels so there's a lot of potential there it's too early to tell again what that impact may be but um that that was something that we felt was a promising practice we became aware that the director of instruction position is going to be

097filled next school year our understanding is that that position was not necessarily filled this year although a lot of work had still been going on in instruction next year there will be leadership around director of instruction which has implications for students with disabilities in terms of instruction in terms of evaluation in terms of curriculum design so that will be really critical um there was comprehensive training in the district on IEP quality this year that probably was a byproduct of the State Department of Education forcing all 168 districts in the state to move to their system um and so they um Statewide had multiple trainings and districts were able to sign up for a lot of training um and so we were able to determine that there was a good amount of training on IEP quality

098which is different from compliance and the state department of Ed tries to be very clear about that but that's not always obvious to you know people who aren't in in the field but the IEP quality piece was spent uh to spend a lot of time this year on that um records indicate that 24 24 of your budget is dedicated to special education so it's a quarter of your budget so that's a healthy allocation um and the Continuum of services is already well established and that was really something interesting here this was not a case of a district where uh programs hadn't been developed or people didn't know how to implement programs for students at um you know a really intensive end of the Continuum apparently those programs had been here for a long time they're

099well accepted in the buildings um they're well respected in the buildings and so um the hurdle of the initial startup of those kinds of programs is well and well and done um and so having a Continuum as robust as the one that Brookfield does is really remarkable um the special ed teacher caseloads are desirable and it again will depend on what teacher you talk to it's not representative of every single teacher there are Peaks and valleys but by and large the caseloads here are desirable um and despite the satisfaction with the dissatisfaction with IEP implementation parents were generally satisfied with their child's progress this year again IEP implementation different from Child progress and so we wanted to make sure we specified that but there was a general sense of satisfaction in their child's progress okay

100key findings there are a lot more in the report but again these are the highlights so the district does need a strategic plan for special education um it became apparent to us that there was no comprehensive plan in place and um that creates a lot of frustration and anxiety for a lot of people so um having a strategic plan for special education is going to be really critical um there were individual claims of non-compliance but they were not represented at the systems level so remember I said this is a sampling it is not rep it can't be representative of every single voice in The District so individual claims of non-compliance were not represented at the systems level um we did find communication issues in special education and this was reported on many levels this was

101leadership this was school staff and this was parents so this wasn't coming from just one particular area um this this was this was apparent that it kind of went both ways um but the special ed staff really want to have a relationship with their director that is conducive to teamwork um a positive culture and collaboration there was a sentiment amongst a lot of special education folks that um they they just wanted to have a relationship and um that was really important to them so um we had to put that out there as a key finding for tonight um availability of staff to implement IEPs so there was definitely a disruption and it caused some discontent and when you layer that in with a lack of communication uh it's it's it's really ingredients for uh um

102really tumultuous culture um in in the schools and so um the availability of staff to implement IEPs was something that we found disruptive and and causing some discontent within the IEPs there's a certain page called present levels of performance we found some areas of strengths in those present levels um but but unfortunately more often than not some those present levels were written and articulated more generic information as opposed to specific information about students literally their present levels of performance and if you have weak present levels of performance uh it's likely that you are going to have other weak areas of the IEP so again it's a promising practice because coupled with the IEP quality training and the pockets of strength we saw in some of the present levels there's something to grow on there um

103we were perplexed by how differently IEPs were written between Elementary and high school particularly when it came to the pages that talked about um staff support time resource time and so it was hard to do an analysis of Staffing against student needs because there there was just there was there was a significant difference when we were trying to compare those data Points Elementary to high school level we can't say which ones were right or wrong we just know they were very different um inconsistent responses to requests for resources through special education leadership so it was shared with us um pretty consistently that certain resources staff members were either told you know it wasn't going to be possible or that there was you know money in the budget wasn't available or that it was going to

104be taken care of a different way and in other instances staff were readily given and granted the request for the resource there were a few times where staff noted building leadership supporting special education requests for materials so um sometimes that seemed like it could be an opportunity that staff realized um the building Leader's role in special education is limited there are some Pockets the middle and high schools seem to have some more involvement among the assistant principals um but other than that it seems like the the building leaders role has limitations on it um across the board and then when we get to the district's intervention systems you might know this as srbi or mtss or some other fancy acronym but it's really just a system where students receive interventions um it appears that it's

105more consistently implemented at the elementary and middle school levels and the high school has um some inconsistency and maybe some gaps that they have to be looking at so those were promising practices just highlighted for tonight again the report is much more comprehensive and we're not going to go through every single finding in there I'll move on to some recommendations so we grouped recommendations into two levels we grouped recommendations into systemic meaning like everybody should be looking at this and everybody should be paying attention and they're probably going to take a long time and a lot of work so these are kind of your bigger picture and then the next slide you'll see a little bit more targeted and local recommendations that might you might be able to implement sooner rather than later okay um

106so along the lines of that strategic plan the goals for special education have to be identified [Music] um and they have to be identified as actual goals for special education so strategic plans can't include every single thing that any department or leader or person can do right we we do a lot of things on a daily basis but there should be some sentiment of everybody is working in the same direction to achieve these goals and there is agreements that these are the right goals to have again that's a three to five year process that is not an over the summer of 2023 process so that's a pretty deep one um along with that again the three to five year plan and transparency and frequent communication about progress so it's great to have a plan but

107you have to check on the plan uh typically a district has points in time throughout a school year where they're checking on their strategic plan and Reporting out to the public on how students are doing good bad or indifferent the same should be true about special education to the extent information can be shared you can't share individual student information um but again that transparency and that check-in model of how's it going how are we doing on those goals should be available um professional development across special education should be aligned in alignment with that strategic plan so for example if the district were to prioritize um literacy and and the identification of students with dyslexia in the district there should be professional development aligned with that but according to each person's specific area so the school

108psychologist may have different professional development in that than the second grade special education teacher it's purposeful and it probably makes a lot of sense and then there's also a lot of wisdom to having training together but there should be some differentiation there um re-examine re-examine the building administrator's role in special education and establish shared expectations shared should also be probably comma transparent so that people do know where the go-to's are where the questions are going to land and where the answers are going to come from um you know consistency in at least knowing who's going to help me out here is is going to resolve a lot of problems I think in that realm of communication um along with that also revisiting the special education supervisory model you have the IEP compliance teacher you've established

109two special education supervisors you have building administrators [Music] um the the expectations of each of those roles really should be laid out and clear and articulated um so that it makes sense to staff members who don't have to search to figure out who to ask a question to or who's going to answer this question or parents who need to understand and or administrators who need to know how to rely on each other um take a look at how those IEP services are written across the district and just establish a consistent expectation so whatever you're calling at the elementary level the middle school should know what that is as they receive IEPs and the same should be true as those Middle School IEPs are going up to high school what does this thing on this page

110mean and do we all have the same understanding um and continue the training with the IEP quality development shifting to the new system on a technical level will take time that's probably looking at you know this year was a rough year of year one for startup uh year two is going to be a little better but it's probably still going to be rough for another school year um and then you know that's the technical side but on the actual quality of the IEP educational benefit meaningful inclusive practices kind of all those things that Encompass a solid special ed program should be Revisited um and continue the training in some of those areas that had already started a while ago so those are the big picture systemic things for the district to be considering there are

111more recommendations at the systemic level in the report but these were the ones that we felt were priority for discussions to take place around sooner rather than later and then we have some more focused recommendations which may or may not apply to certain buildings or certain people or certain programs so they were put on a separate slide so any further plans or proposals for changes in Special Ed should be discussed before any anything else happens they should be discussed with your building principles they should be discussed at central office level they should be discussed before any further changes happen um the practice of special education teachers simultaneously providing adult support to individual students within the district's most restrictive end of the Continuum those real special special education programs that practice probably needs to I don't

112say probably that practice needs to change um it's not logical in the long run at this point in time for the certified teacher to also serve as an individual adult support to students there may be an opportunity over time for that to happen but right now that's not going to be conducive on a lot of levels so um that is something that I think should we think should be looked at um along with a deeper study of those special education programs so we did touch upon them while we were out here we looked however across everything those specialized special ed programs we did find highlights we did find some areas that need Improvement um nothing was done at a really deep level with them again because this was a more systems level study but um

113now that you're moving into one building at the elementary level your middle school is going to shift out a grade level um you know that problem it's the opportune time to be looking at at those specialized programs along with that at the high school the academic support model probably should continue being looked at there were indications that some of that work was happening this year um knowing that staff were pulled in many directions I'm not sure that um administrators were able to achieve what they wanted to this year but that academic support model should be looked at um it was interesting it's an interesting conundrum that occurred this year where the IEP says one thing but the school's schedule says something else and how do you make that match it's not unique to Brookfield High

114School by the way this happens in many high schools and they deal with it differently um but finish out that process engage in that process more of looking at that academic support model establish what are you really trying to do with those Services what are the non-negotiables around those services and you have to get the rest of the building on board with that academic support model um and by on board it really just means being transparent about expectations [Music] um independent evaluations so this was interesting um apparently in the district whenever an independent evaluation that that terminology is literally used in a meeting it appears to have a global sense to it meaning any I any evaluation that is not done by a certified staff member paid through Brookfield Public Schools human resources resources is

115automatically an independent educational evaluation and that's actually not true um there's a difference between an outside evaluation and an independent educational evaluation and so I think the district should take some time to understand those differences because they have different implications and we were not able to tell which of the ones we saw were truly an independent evaluation or an evaluation done on behalf of the district but outside of the district to Garner more information about a student um so that has to that has to get looked at and then with that if if the terminology syncs up and the understanding of why these evaluations are occurring syncs up it implies you can start creating professional development training and technical assistance at least for the things that are within the district's control to improve upon or

116change or be more transparent about um and then revisiting the professional development in specialized reading programs for special education teachers apparently there was some time ago before kovid where literacy was deeply invested in the district general education and special education teachers and then covet hit and you know even to this day continues to disrupt things but um some of those practices didn't have some of the follow-through I think that the district had anticipated so what we noticed was there is a wealth of literacy resources in the district literally but uh you can't you can't just hand someone a book and say implements there has to be that follow through um with that and so with kovid knock on wood behind us now would be the time to kind of reignite that training reignite that engagement

117reignite that so that everybody again has that momentum towards literacy um uh foundational literacy and uh closing any gaps that students may have again the report has many more these were the highlights the end thank you Dan sure so shall we say first round yesterday you say we're gonna ask the board if they have questions for you that maybe we could deal with tonight but let me just start we we got this tonight sure right um that's going to take me time I'm gonna read this thing from end and I'm presuming all of you all are as well um would you be willing to come back at a future meeting for us to ask more detailed questions yes um can we send questions can we send you questions what's the best way to engage with

118um depends on the timing yeah summertime is more difficult just because we tend to be out of the office more frequently in the summer yeah um so if you wanted something in the summer I would say you're gonna wait a little bit longer than during the school year we're kind of all back on board you know and we full steam ahead together that has you know I'm just trying to figure out how we best engage to really get some deep understanding on some of your findings I would say July 1 is a nice restart date like for our calendars so at July 1 and after we could be pretty responsive but between now and the end of June it's probably hit or miss I'm guessing with graduation ahead of us and all that we're not

119going to ask you a lot of questions between now and the end okay so we also need to hire a new uh new director so um I'm going to open it up to the board to ask any kind of high level questions for you tonight sure and I'd like to start if I could um they there's a some interesting items in your key findings sure I kind of which put little check marks next to it and where you talked about availability of Staff yes to implement IEPs creating disruption and disconnect and then a couple items later you said the services were written inconsistently and not as well understood sure you said verbally some people got what they wanted and asked for and other people got didn't get it right can you talk a little bit

120more about Staffing and what you observed as you were here in terms of services availability and that are being provided sure um so throughout the visit we heard from all levels all constituents all stakeholders about Staffing and the perception of Staffing being an issue people aren't available teachers and or Paras and others may be being pulled from one child to go service another child to stay in compliance with the IEP and those kinds of things so we did take a look at the Staffing and we we initially were trying to figure out Staffing not from a caseload perspective but from a workload perspective because no two students are the same so an IEP for one student may call for very [Music] um limited and and small amounts of support while in IEP for another student

121may require full-time Bell to Bell five days a week support so in backing into that analysis is where we notice the IEPs being written so differently between the middle and high school in order to say you know these are the accurate and appropriate Staffing levels so we had to rely more on the focus group the survey and observation data to do that so in through those methods um when we did the Staffing analysis based on just positions so not workload just did the district gain positions lose positions did they move in and out did we increase did we decrease Staffing levels pretty much stayed the same year over year so it it kind of begs the question of what is happening in services that the Staffing levels are no longer sufficient that was number one

122number two was absenteeism rate so while the district really didn't lose or gain a significant number of positions in Special Ed I think you actually increased some paraprofessionals um when we looked at absenteeism that was a second area of concern so filling those with substitutes or temporary staff by and large those were really difficult for the district to fill and again it's not unique to Brookfield but it did seem to have an impact at least when we were in buildings where staff had gotten pulled you know while we were there and then we heard it again at focus groups um and then we saw it again on the surveys so I don't know that Staffing and positions [Music] I can't confirm that Staffing in positions is high or low because compared to what student services

123look like on IEPs that's hard to determine due to those inconsistencies but the absenteeism of Staff definitely created an issue and then again just not knowing what is happening with the shift in services that the Staffing levels aren't adequate anymore and then when we talked about resources it really was material resources so I'm not talking about Staffing in those particular lenses [Music] um you know it would be you know maybe a request for a pizza party for a group of students or something like that where you know maybe the teacher would have expected it to be part of their program and then um you know that hadn't that hadn't occurred for some reason um some teachers were more persistent than others perhaps so that there was some inconsistencies did you find situations where the IEP

124or the teacher said I need this service and this service and this service for this child and they're not getting it or was that pervasive maybe I should ask it that way it wasn't pervasive it wasn't pervasive that's why it wasn't at the systems level um at some individual levels we would have a teacher say well earlier in the year I needed X Y and Z and I talked to so and so about it over and over and then finally I got it so we had a lot of that it was hard to get it right but you know the initial perception of having to do that causes discontent you know and so you layer on these instances of just challenges and barriers to an already difficult school year um you know and you can

125see how things grow okay thank you because I of all the topics we've heard about uh and we've heard about IEP compliance we've heard about a lot of topics yeah the number one I've heard is Staffing right Staffing continuity Staffing levels ability to get services and and the like so and again I don't know that it's positional in terms of ftes um but to better understand the services from that workload perspective instead of a caseload perspective that would shed some light on whether the Staffing is appropriate at this point in time so my next question is you've met a lot of people in the district what is your assessment of skill level you talked about their dedication level and their focus on it I was happy to hear that how about skill level and training

126level on both paraprofessionals and certified staff did you sense that that we have the right kinds of people on our team or is it do we need to do something on hiring practices and or professional development practices to help raise our hand [Music] is the challenge I think the professional development is is an area of need to to be looking at um if I expand on that a little more you know covid did disrupt what this District was doing if we looked at the professional development plans and and the records from before kovid they seem to be pretty robust targeted and and aligned like they were very logical and then after covid you know we are what three years out let's say um it's time to get back to that targeted aligned and really deep

127professional development [Music] um the other kind of note on that I would place is in fact the paraprofessionals you know your parent professionals want training they want to learn they they know better but they don't know how to do better and it's really frustrating them um and so having an a a targeted look at paraprofessionals and the the students they're servicing not the skills they need to have you don't start with that you start with the students they're servicing and then you build upon that for what they need there's a lot of noise from that table over there I just will ask if you keep them let's let her answer the questions um so the third question I had and I'll turn it over to the other board members um in your review of the

128organization structure right um is is there are there clear lines of responsibility on who's responsible and authorized to make key decisions I mean because you mentioned up a couple of times about the school leadership versus the special ed coordinator and then there's the director versus the special EDS and we we actually made a decision to put administrator jobs in at the elementary and the upper schools so that there was Clarity on decision-making Authority did you find that decision making was clear and organized um I I in most cases yes um I would say that by and large the two supervisors had a lot of responsibility and expectation to be making decisions at ppts with teams you know kind of on a daily hourly minutely basis um to the extent that those supervisors the two supervisors

129were guided or directed or expected to to implement or follow through with the director that's unclear the relationship between your supervisors appeared to be much more intimate in your school level than with your direct then upwards with your director if that makes sense so I think that causes some again some discontent and it's not necessarily because someone can't or wouldn't but your supervisors were in closed door meetings from what I can tell probably 90 of their time this year wow so the ability for them to collaborate or or strategically plan or answer questions naturally it's not gonna it's not gonna work um so I I think um just to kind of go back to your original question I do think there was relative Clarity in the who I just don't know if there was Clarity

130in the why um and so highlighting that again administratively from director down to your building principles your assistant principals supervisors in there your IEP compliance teacher like all of that should be a team that has those expectations laid out so Clarity is key okay so let me open it up to anybody else on you're kind of asking questions about this but the key findings availability of staff to implement IEP so because what you're saying was there's not enough staff in order to implement IEP goals it's possible okay we can't confirm that because if you look at your Elementary IEPs and we did this analysis in the report and there's two caveats in there that say you can't really rely on this data but here's an example of the problem when you look at your Elementary

131IEPs and you take service hours divided by staff members that ratio is vastly different than your middle and high school ratios so if you you can't make a definitive determination on whether or not Staffing levels are appropriate because it may imply your levels are appropriate but people in the wrong places we just can't follow that through a trend line for some reason that that Elementary to secondary Service delivery is is a very it's captured very differently um sorry no go ahead okay on the recommendations for consideration you mentioned um you know who's helping me out right you have your IEP compliance teacher your two special ed supervisors and you said building Administration so would you are you insinuating that strictly the building principle or are you is that a blanket meaning the assistant principals as

132well should have just as much if not the most important role um I mean that's really unique to to the district and what what the district expects their assistant principals and principles to be doing as instructional leaders I would say your principles and assistant principals should have the same level of capacity and confidence to sit at a PBT and engage with any of the decisions that have to be made alongside the supervisor and if there's someone in the the mix that doesn't have that level of confidence then you got they've got it they got to bring that up um if you're expecting your administrators to implement IEP goals and objectives and services and there are recommendations that are disrupting things in the school for them to work with then it only makes sense they would

133be at the front end of the decision making to know what's coming and to maybe have an opinion about it or problem solve it a better way because they're the evaluators as well yeah and I'm not necessarily talking about evaluation of teachers I'm really talking about structures so if a student has a a meeting and there's been a decision at the PBT that the student will now receive this particular service there's a trickle-down effect and if the principal or the administrator is not at that table and they learn about it afterwards it's kind of like good luck you have to implement and they're kind of left perhaps feeling like how am I supposed to do this I don't even have those resources so it's really that collaborative administrative team which I didn't get a sense

134principles won't or can't I just don't know that the structures are set up for it so I think it's an easy you know an easy thing to incorporate Sharon you had a question purpose of this is the purpose of this review to point out what needs to be better or is it to point that out and then advise on how to make it better for example many nights some of our special ed parents have complained that their child is supposed to get service one two three provided by paraprofessional a but if his absenteeism or other things in the building paraprofessionally is asked to fulfill another responsibility do you have a solution of practical everyday solution so that a child who's supposed to get service is getting it no matter what's going on in the building

135I wish I did I that's a million dollar question that's a billion dollar question and I'm sure some entrepreneur out there is going to invent something that you're going to pay a lot of money for that solution of um but no that's probably why we get called a lot to come do these kinds of reviews doesn't help the student say it again it doesn't help the child who has special needs and is required by IEP to have those needs met and so I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly you're saying no it isn't done and it's impossible to do well I wouldn't say impossible but there's no one answer like just do this it's not that simple all the recommendations and I think when you look at something like a special education program in

136a district there's a lot of moving parts that you have to look at so to say do this first and do this second is really just a drop in the bucket of what over the long term really has to be done and I get that there are a lot of moving Parts but at the end of the day the only part that's important is that the needs of that child are being met and maybe I misunderstood um the parents don't necessarily feel that's what's reality they're upset that on Tuesday their child was supposed to be with para a but Power a never showed up so how do we help the parents help us meet the needs of those kids because that's really okay I know why because I get that that's all very important it's

137not as important as meeting the needs of the children I think it starts with communication and transparency and not communication that pacifies but communication that is even internal again among the administrators among the special ed teachers and the building principal among the supervisor and the building principal among you know all those kind of intersections for communication has to be happening about individual students and individual instances um and you know that also includes communication with the parent I mean you can't clone a body so that magic isn't going to happen overnight but communication that lends itself to problem solving that lends itself to trust I think could actually solve a lot of those problems won't solve all of them because you can't again it won't clone people for you um but knowing that this is a

138consideration it's a concern and here are some options to try and solve it I that goes a lot further than than non-responsive kind of you know and that goes for any District again brookfield's not unique but by and large I think that communication has has got to has got to be available for the revisiting professional development and specialized reading programs for special education teachers is does that hold true with math as well or you didn't look at that area we didn't see as much math special implementation we saw mostly literacy and can you could just clarify or maybe give an example um you had mentioned you know the IEP says one thing and the schedule says another would you give example [Music] um which are you referring to here it was on that recommendation for

139consideration systems level the focused item number number four the high school's academic support model yep oh okay so um the IEPs may say a student is going to get some academic support for 30 minutes a day seems pretty straightforward right but at a high school they probably have block scheduling of 80 to 90 minutes so how are you going to take 30 minutes of the 80 to 90 minute schedule get the student their services and then return them back to where that kind of coordination sounds like it could be straightforward and it's actually really hard um and so either you're going to over service the IEP just because the schedule says the student is going to room 2A for 80 minutes of this block you know this in this block even though the IP says

14030 you have to go for the whole period we have nowhere else for you to go or okay you're gonna go for 30 minutes but you gotta have a solid plan for what you're going to do after those 30 minutes and at the high school level students have opinions about that and so um you know we we did we did have evidence that some students really liked having the model of I'm going to go to a study hall after 30 minutes because I can be independent and I can exercise those skills and I want to just be out with the rest of my peers and we found some students feeling like no that's really disruptive I get into a Groove and if you're going to tell me to stop pack things up and relocate at

141the 30 minute Mark I lose all momentum and it's very disruptive for me [Music] um I can't say there's a right answer because each student and each district is different but it's something that should be clarified and and established as this is the norm this is why we do this and that should be communicated down to the Middle School so they know expectations coming up as high schoolers we actually had discussions about that a couple keep meetings ago um about that scheduling when we're talking about the program of studies and planner that was that was a large part of the cape meeting was discussing what to do after those 30 minutes and uh there's some interesting ideas toss around but it's a frequent challenge in special ed at the high school level okay I just

142got a question on the uh just a clarification because you spent some time on it I didn't really know what men uh number two on recommendations for consider consideration uh removing the practice of special education teachers to simultaneously provide adult support for individual students I don't what does adult support mean times this translates to paraprofessionals like literally I I'm a paraprofessional adult supporting an individual student but at the same time I'm the certified teacher who has to help plan organize orchestrate all the students in the room and the other adults at the same time did you find that was common or was it just exceptions no it was common it was common okay and again there may be a point in time where that is appropriate but given the Staffing absenteeism and issues this year

143now and maybe that was a solution to address the Staffing I don't know it but it didn't um it didn't have I I don't think it had the outcome that that maybe it was expected to have so you're saying this practice is not common but it is like a last resort in situations of absenteeism it could be um I've seen it in literally Last Resort um case-by-case situations in in our case in this study it was a norm so from the beginning the certified teacher was expected to be in the count of adults supporting the students individually and you feel like this might be a covid leftover response to I assume there's a lot of absenteeism during covid so you know this was just for this year Mike that okay okay that's a changing practice

144in some of our self-contained rooms that school administration and you know have tried to advise and work on and it was a practice that Dana says in the report is not sustainable yeah so so related to that in that Staffing levels you said you said that uh we're at 24 and that was one of your positives on in terms of budget sure on special ed as you look across the different districts you've touched over the over time how does 24 Stack Up and relative to our percentage of students who are on on IEP so I'm going to codify that in the reference to durgs so in Connecticut the state classifies 168 districts by groupings and those groupings are largely decided upon by income levels and and Taxation in in a community and all those kinds

145of things so I would say that relative to 168 districts it's it's great that's that's that's very healthy relative to your durg you're probably average slightly above average I think there's a few outliers that are really high and I don't know that that was their choice um but I think you're you're you're within your dirt your average to slightly above average with a few outliers yeah you update on that yeah there's some in the report by durg yeah and then you go online and okay okay there's so much more oh no I dig around in that statement actually compared us with uh three similar towns uh Monroe New Fairfield and Guilford in terms of the dirt she's talking about drug bait okay and that date is uh laid out in the report okay um you

146mentioned the Sheridan mentioned some of the dissatisfaction that we've been hearing and you were saying that communication and Clarity of communication is key um and in particular use the word non-responsive that as that's not an acceptable approach I would obviously agree but did you find that to be a pervasive problem and was communication looked at how was that looked at in your review so it depended on who was in the focus group and what kinds of um groupings we had so we found that there you know there definitely is a cohort of parents who very much feel and and emphasize that um non-responsive was the norm and so again take that and build it upon some of the other challenges this year and you know that's that's a real Troublesome area um staff were inconsistent

147I would say staff largely relied on the special ed supervisors for communication and that seemed to be okay um but it was harder outside of the supervisors for communication to to be happening was was there any kind of objective review of communication in other words um was there any way to ascertain that there wasn't responses that were alleged no we we didn't do any granular analysis like that okay you mentioned how we need a strategic plan is that something that other districts have that were lacking or is that not so interestingly strategic plans and special education are a newer practice when you compare it to District level strategic plans districts have been doing Improvement plans and strategic plans and action plans forever um special education has probably within the last I would say 15 years

148again this is relatively speaking you're starting to see more of that as a best practice and in some districts it's just a clear expectation from the Board of Ed I would say in Connecticut you're probably trending towards more districts having a special ed strategic plan than not at this point in time and the Strategic plan is not the special ed director's evaluation goals just to clarify that might be your teaching plan is a direction statement right any other questions thank you for taking the questions I appreciate that sure no problem thank you Dana thank you sure um so let's talk about next steps here a little bit um Dr Burrell um there's a lot of General directional statements that Dana has provided uh to you and there's a very detailed report that I think we

149all need to sit and read first question is will this be online so anybody in town can get a copy absolutely uh at the beginning of my remarks I talked about Eric putting that online okay tomorrow morning secondly how do we I mean we need to engage on a how you turn this set of General recommendations into a workable detailed deliverables plan right uh we're gonna you know are we gonna do a strategic plan when how who's going to lead it you know what not I know you need to have a new director um can you give some thought and come back to us on how we would attack turning this into something that we could monitor as a board of real actionable deliverables um that we can we can be looking at every meeting

150on here's the here's the steps there's some meaty things here there's some very meaty things um third and I I I do understand you have it you have to bring in your new leader um and the organization and get them engaged so that's I just need you to think about when's the right time to come back to us on that hopefully we'll hear from you on the July 19th meeting with something [Music] um third is um as I mentioned it's really important we get public input on on this report is there a vehicle other than public comment that we would be you should be utilizing to collect input uh collect emails or a mailbox that people could send input to or should we do it at the public comment I think you know public comment

151becomes this formal um let's be frank engaging with the board but not that opportunity like we talked about to engage with you know the school teams or the supervisors or or uh Anna and me so we've talked about with Erica setting up some kind of either Dropbox or email or something like that where if there's Clarity questions that need or suggestions based on people's you know very um thoughtful opinions or ideas as they take a look at the 44-page document we'd be glad to ascertain and that can help inform all of the work we need to do I'm really excited to think about the interview process tomorrow because um if director candidates are paying attention they were watching this report tonight so that'll be very clear in tomorrow's interviews um been paying attention to Brookfield

152if they're really interested in being okay okay um we just need to turn this from a study into actionable items in my view right we can and and think about did we miss anything that has come up through other means because I know we didn't as you said this is a systemic review of everything are there other areas that we need to add to it that we've heard about and I think the first start is making making sure it's number one just post it on the website and available for everybody tomorrow but tonight we're actually sending um the press release regarding taryn's appointment we are we're prepared to do that we are sending the parents of children with special needs um the news that Aaron has been appointed um in her start date and those

153kinds of things and making sure that the staff obviously is aware too through communication so the next step with the correct report is to actually it's one thing to post it this is a big deal in our town so send home a little letter and then have the attachments or the links so everybody knows it's done it's been presented to the board and we're going to be working on plans addressing the specific recommendations as we go forward so as with any strategic directional statement we've put together groups who've kind of led us through that including parents and teachers in Paris and and the like much like you've done in your interviews there's a moment in here about how do we turn you know the thoughts here into how do we move back up to a

154place that we're all happy with so because I don't think that we're all happy with it but yeah there's some good things like this a bad thing that's why we did the report we listened and uh parents gave us great input not only before but throughout the process and the other piece is what we talked about early on in the fall um when I brought the idea of a more limited study to take a look at our self-contained programs and are out of District placements that's something that could offer to us as well and I do have a scope of work that Dana has laid out for us that we do have uh funds left in the ARP idea grant that we could apply to this and correct could get to work on this right

155away for us if we would like okay so we're ready to engage there as well is there a deadline on when we have to use it well we have to spend spend the funds by uh end of August or September September 30th there you go Ken's got that down so you've got to make sure decisions yeah we're ready to go okay so that's kind of me sharing with you that we are ready to go in that direction as well and get further information um actually it's it's these are I love strategic planning and so getting these recommendations is really helpful as the superintendent to help move the entire District Tara and I look forward to getting your input and perspective coming from another District so that will help that will also help I think a

156lot so welcome to the district and there's a lot of lot to work on I need to do so all right so we'll put this on the agenda at our next meeting and and dive in in depth yeah it's next so so great okay thank you everyone good on take on where we ended up tonight all right thank you much appreciated um thank you to crack and uh Dana corvo for coming out to charity Elise okay okay next item on our agenda we we at the beginning of the meeting we agreed to move um the approval of the illustrative math curricular tool to next on the agenda so the next items we have are um uh I I think it's going to be the Anna show for a while um so uh so we'll turn

157it to you on the uh comebacks on the illustrative map sure just we have some tripping hazards so just yeah okay so um I'm gonna get going just so that we can move along here there he is look we have the whole team here whole team is up here so we're excited I'm excited I had to have the kind of the integral part of the team as though you know there was a lard there were many many members of this this Review Committee but these folks up here are really the people who are the Genesis of this reflection one of the things that I got I received from all of them when I got here some feedback was you know a huge excitement for looking at our practices K-12 with math instruction and the opportunity

158to spend some time and really reflect on what we do what we do well similar to the program review we just heard I've heard about what we do really well where we see some gaps and how we can enhance the math experience for our students particularly K-8 but then how that kind of trickles up to the high school program so we're excited to offer this presentation which we hope will both cover some of those questions that were brought up we're happy to answer questions at the end but also to demonstrate why we're so excited about this instructional and sources shift that will enhance our students experience so um just I'm not sure everyone can see that but you all have a copy of the this was our comprehensive team and as I spoke about last

159time what the way we approached it where it was kind of a vertical approach um so these uh these folks who are on each one of these subcommittees um represented across the district uh different levels and different Focus points for our students and as you see these fine people uh kind of were the team leaders of each of those groups so starting in the beginning of the school year early October we kind of formed our we we met we did an alignment conversation about what our goals were we reviewed five different programs and or five different resource materials and then as we moved through all the way through March we narrowed it down to illustrative and so one of the things that's really important and Dana just spoke about it a lot in her presentation

160is looking at various points of data you know we've been working with Dr Alcock throughout many years and she this is actually a slide that she has shared with us but the idea that you know you never want to make any changes unless you are using at least two data points and preferably more and so in our search um we or in our review we really focused on student achievement data as well as perception data from instructors and from students uh curriculum data so what do we see in our curriculum currently and then kind of the environmental data that piece of you know what are what's the actual experience of students in every day but then kind of systemically throughout and so just a little background on why the switch um you know again observational

161data from teachers instructional coaches administrators uh really indicated a greater conceptual a need for greater conceptual understanding and transference of math skills so that students understand the not only the comprehensive application of math starting in kindergarten all the way up building those skills but also the transference of skills across disciplines so we've talked a lot about and we heard about you know our focus on literacy we've been talking a lot all year in the instructional coaches teams and at the administrative level and through strategic planning about our about developing skills in students and what that inherently means is that interdisciplinary connection and so we were looking for curricular tools to help us shift our instructional approach in order to help with that that kind of interdisciplinary mindset for our students and for our teachers um

162the quantitative data from this from the state testing historically indicated that while we were working on really kind of meeting the needs we were kind of falling a little bit stagnant um so we really wanted to kind of address that obviously we understand the impact of covid we've talked a lot you've heard a lot about that from me this year but even kind of looking prior to coped um I mean there was also a need for more organizational integrational continuity in elementary and middle school in preparation for high school math courses again Mr Hill has talked a lot about you know that that real approach to getting kids comfortable with problem solving and articulating those problem solving approaches and so that it becomes second nature for them to talk about it we needed to change

163organizationally the way that we are thinking about the institution the institutional aspect of math [Music] um and then we the as we've shared earlier a desire for closer alignment to Connecticut core standards which you'll see in the next couple slides um and then you know really as we've talked about throughout this year the approach to learning loss so um the next couple slides I'm going to turn over to Mark Jewett our middle level instructional coach this data shows us uh quite a bit and you can look at data in many different ways um I tend to look at cohorts of data through um through the way that the lens of each class that goes through the schools and you can do that here so I've shared it with you because because you you might want

164to see that if you start in 2015 with a third grade class and you move towards the Middle School you see their um their achievement levels going lower and then back up at the middle school level um so when I think about curriculum I really think about why is that Trend happening and at the elementary level the Math teachers the support that they have in terms of lesson preparation and all this and all this as well as the background in terms of pure mathematics is not as strong as you would have it in a middle school or High School level just because you have a specific discipline that people study and that they teach all day so at the middle school we our Math teachers are Math teachers that's the subject that they teach except

165for a few that will then have maybe a social studies class or an English lesson that they'll teach but for the most part they practice mathematics so it makes sense that the time that they have to spend doing that that their scores would then start to creep back up um but at the elementary level I talk about the support that's needed in a curricular tool and if the curricular tool gives you wonderful problems it still doesn't mean that the kids are going to get everything that they need out of it there needs to be support in those curricular tools for teachers and the support that's given in this IM curriculum gives lesson design uh it allows teachers to implement lessons at a different level than at the problem level and I think that's really important

166it's the from the lesson setup and the way that the lesson evolves as well as the actual problems that are being asked of people one thing that I would like to point out in this this data is if you look at the first column oh sorry the second column the 2015 column to the 2021 column the scores start lower and that's just the time frame that we implemented my math in and we know that there's many things that go into this the the data but it's part of the tools that we have at our uh that are available to us as Educators that need to be need to support the learning and the teaching that we're doing in classrooms and just that data alone shows us that there's a change that's happened since 2015 to

1672021 in every grade level the scores are lower um if you were to look at the most recent data last last year there wasn't much change in the data from the 2021 column in the cohort data this year we have targeted some very specific things we've also been piloting a lesson illustrative math in several classrooms not only just units but in seventh grade there is uh almost whole scale uh piloting of illustrative math throughout the school and we've seen a 10 percent increase in the just the early um Planet plenum Plum preliminary preliminary numbers that have been coming out um in our SBA data and so that 10 increase moves us closer to where we'd like to be and where we expect our our students to be at so uh then we asked the question

168why a lesser of math and I think I talked about this a little bit but what I will talk about in this slide um is that the language principles that they do in terms of the lesson setup um in terms of this just talks a little bit about what the lesson looks like in illustrative versus a typical um textbook that you would get in a regular math class you know I think when I went to school you open a textbook and it has four examples and then a bunch of problems and that's very similar to our my math curriculum and like I said the my math problems were good problems but it's the same textbook that you and I probably had in school and illustrial math isn't that way and it starts with discussions or

169prompts for students based on areas of either support that is needed to get into the next um the next topic that they're discussing or IT addresses the topic itself and it has students discussing it it has students working with it it has students can pairing and contrasting doing very rich language tasks and all set up in an El framework or we call MLL now support supported structure so that you have real um real research based interventions in terms of the way that the the lessons are are made up the way that people discuss math the way that students discuss math and it leads them to seeing how mathematicians discuss math and that problem solving and understanding of math comes from the work that they do together and that the discussions that they had that start

170in Broad scope or moves towards very specific ideas and students discussing math is what we want in our classrooms as opposed to just doing problems or being told this is how you do it now you do it and the Common Core has shown us that real Rich understanding and long-term understanding and math is from the rich discussions that we have it's something that at a middle school and high school level we do have time to do to plan lessons that way um and so this is only going to help us in those ways it's only going to lead us better into working with uh you know problem solving understanding and discussion and discourse with our students um and and you know again with the work that we've seen we're really excited about everything that's coming

171in sure so these next couple 's um uh a kind of a crosswalk of you know Ed report is a um site that we have available to us and they essentially do some analysis of you know aligning uh different resources to the standards and so pretty much when these and these resources become available is when they do the analysis so that's just why you see the different dates there it's not that one of them is out of date or not out of date it's just that's when the report was done so you see that when we with my math the Ed report from when it was initially done kindergarten through second grade it had alignment it had partially met those expectations um and so that was then that was pretty good that was toward the

172beginning of Common Core when everyone was really adopting that at the state level and there are some strong alignments there what you see in the illustrative math Ed report for kindergarten through second grade is that there is very strong alignment it meets expectations for each one of those grades and the same is true with uh the next slide as you can see my math gets more highly aligned as you get old you know go up in the grades illustrative math maintains that alignment throughout um and so again it's the just an indication of uh where we are with those two different resources both strong resources illustrative and we're taught what we're talking about is not necessarily throwing the baby out with bath water not getting rid of everything that is my math this is really

173more of a discussion about a shift in instructional practices using different resources incorporating different resources but along with maintaining some of those other resources to create an appropriate balanced approach and that's really kind of what we're excited about is the capacity that this Pro that these resources have to help leverage higher impact instructional practices for the teachers so that they can really enhance the learning for students and the next example of the person who's really lived it this year is Jim Fitzpatrick media this is a workbook that would come in the program if we would purchase this this year in lieu of the current workbooks so um I'm going to go through this the bullets quickly because the the typical lesson clip that uh is linked here is going to show and explain kind of

174more of the routines that we're going to be using for illustrative math so um my task is just to tell you the the typical lesson what what it entails how students react to it so for me I've been uh started out by observing other teachers do this at other districts and everyone was so excited to say how wonderful the program is and how much they like it how much the students like it um they kept on using words like you know less is more um just they love the synthesis so let me just the the basic structure is that students come together go over some kind of a warm-up but the warm-up is not like uh the routines that they have for warm-up are not typical for um like just like well here's let's just

175warm up and there's you know practice what we're going to be doing today this is you know there's like say five instructional routines for um doing a warm-up and it could be like which one doesn't belong it could be a computational warm-up it could be um just overall procedural fluency but that gets the students thinking there's individual think time share out time during that warm-up and then the warm-up leads to the lesson and then the lesson has two specific activities that build on each other both activities are problem-based and really has a stem approach where students are thinking about a problem and how they solve it with their peers and then they go and do those instructional activities usually in a small group sometimes individually and then we come back and talk about you know

176what what learning happened what kinds of observations can you make that's through the lesson synthesis so the teacher kind of brings out the really important points then there's another activity that goes from that that builds on the first activity and again illustrative math has so many really great routines that teachers can use don't have to use all of them I think you know for next year it would be more really focus on the instruction routines that are the highest leverage so again students will do another activity then we come back and do a synthesis there is a cool down for everything you know cooldown is just an exit ticket that we would normally have everyone's got their own language but that could be used you know as a formative assessment for each lesson or it

177could be provided for you know as a homework or whatever it is so the thing that is amazing about IM is that it's open source so everyone has access to it we are the only way that you know we would get workbooks like this is if we contact a publisher so Kendall Hunt is the the publisher that we've been using um and I was lucky enough to have a couple of teachers that I worked with um really pilot and get get down and dirty with the the program really try to understand it and without a lot of support um one the fourth grade teacher is still using it just since the beginning of March just because she loved the instruction routine so much and was noticing just that that students really love it so the

178lesson that I'm going to show you comes from that classroom where students have had experience with it since March and this lesson was I don't know a few few weeks ago or something like that yeah so anyway you'll see um just a real basic okay uh elementary math coach so we started looking at uh new math programs and illustrative stood to the top primarily because it's an instructional shift the teacher really becomes the facilitator in this entire process of students really figuring out and problem solving themselves today we're going to be doing one of the instructional routines called the card sort and the cards or uh again has visuals it has numbers so they're really trying to make connections with the visual the the visuals and the numbers again another mathematical practice any questions before

179you begin okay three minutes starts now okay so we're supposed to take these cards and match them to each other and then we write it here and it's not just like on paper and pencil like you can actually like move it with your own hands too so like you get like this oh my family right here right here it's okay so for group two um well um the old program like explained the thinking for you so you didn't really have to do any work and also there was a lot of problems on each page so I think this one's better because it has like um like less problems and it lets you do the work I like it and same as her like the other problem basically gave it to us and um we can't

180they didn't they didn't really have the right type of problems like they made it confusing there's a lot of card sorts and different like games you could do like with cards or with just like trying to figure out math problems on the paper and it's just really fun it makes more sense yeah there's not as much problems I like that it's challenging but easy to understand so much and no matches how about you young man you like this yeah you're gonna be a mathematician when you grow up really aligned to the standards where the other program is not aligned with standards it is partially aligned to the standards uh this one embeds the mathematical practices within every lesson in some way shape or form which all the mathematical practices align to the portion of the

181graduate with the the Brookfield C's so we're we would have to try to find ways to fill that in in the Elder math program right now it's all completely embedded with just the critical thinking the communication all of that is embedded into every single lesson you're off Eric is there a better way to present um professor all right so thank you um before I go into the slide I just wanted to state that it was really an honor and pleasure to be part of this crew working to find uh to to search for this uh the ideal curriculum shift that we needed I knew coming into this that the efficacy of how easily easy this would uh be able to do would have to do with the alignment of vision and values for what we

182really wanted out of a K-12 mathematics progression and with Dr Mann's facilitation um that happened extremely quickly and everybody was uh really a pleasure to work with and to be able to be part uh as the K of a Ka search for a math program as the 912 head of stem for the high school was very important to me and I was and I just want to thank everybody who was on that crew again because um I thought I thought they did a terrific job and I was glad to work with them um so a big part of those beginning conversations was uh what do we ultimately want out of our students when they leave our district from a good math program and I very selfishly said I'd love to throw out there that I

183think our priority should be problem solving for many many reasons it seems uh cliche but it's it's absolutely necessary to identify and build off of so it's the first mathematical practice in the common core standards make sense of problems and persevere in solving them there are eight total mathematical practices and that's number one because the writers of the standards understood that that was the superordinate goal of good mathematics instruction every other practice and everything else you do Falls underneath it to support it right so that's ultimately what you're trying to get out of your students um educational researchers such as Hattie at all talk about the necessity of problem-based curricula with strong instruction of procedural fluency and conceptual understanding to promote transfer learning of mathematics which Dr Mann discussed earlier so not just understanding the

184math they're learning in the classroom now but being able to apply the Knowledge and Skills to become better Learners of mathematics after they leave our classrooms which is ultimately what our primary goal is um Simon Smith uh researches mathematic mathematics education talk about the use of uh problem solving through analysis and of variables and construction of models they call that doing mathematics which often gives people the wrong idea because they're like isn't everything they do in the math classroom doing mathematics nope not by their language just because solving for x isn't always problem solving it has to do with what is your ultimate goal and to what extender students applying novel or applying skills and conceptual understanding that the teacher has provided through the instruction and facilitation of the courses to a truly novel situation

185and that's the key so also selfishly a long-term stem aim of mine is that problem solving is a summative goal in mathematics classes so not just understanding the content but being able to apply it in truly novel situations um and being seeing that as a way to empower themselves rather than be concerned about oh did I ever see this exact problem before because if they're truly problem solving the answer that should be no um and uh and the importance of that is also to uh promote vertical alignment and the spiraling of good mathematical practices so the fact that that was a major key component of illustrative math was one of the reasons that made me very interested in it and I think was ultimately a major driving point for the conversations that we had and

186ultimately ensuring we're always trying to get the kids to problem solve is get ensuring the why and the what why how we know what why we're doing what we're doing because that goal is that transfer learning and the other thing I I wanted to elucidate a little bit is something that illustrative math talks about which is the math language routines or mlrs which doesn't seem any easier to say which is eight techniques uh coined by Stanford University for creating meaningful student talk in mathematics so I discuss um two types of instruction math classrooms direct instruction where the teacher is the primary source of information and content and dialogic instruction where students working together they become the primary sources of knowledge instruction for each other and both types of instruction are necessary for really great mathematics

187learning but a lot of the transfer and real development of the deeper elements tend to come from really well done dialogic instruction where students are working together and having good mathematical discourse in the classroom so what Stanford University did is they um they described eight techniques and I would say none of them in isolation to a an experienced math teacher are going to be too much of a surprise but to have them put together in a nice concise cohesive list makes it a wonderful goal for teachers to try something new and to work together to try to get different types of discourse out of their kids some students may be really good at some teachers Excuse Me Maybe really good at getting one type of discourse but may not have even thought to get another

188type of discourse um so the whole purpose of mathematical language mathematics language routines is to promote good mathematical communication thinking and problem solving which are outlined in the standards of mathematical practice in the Common Core anyway so there's that alignment again some of these I just listed some of them they're easily googleable if you want to see all eight but ones I listed that I thought were worth mentioning peer feedback to their own responses synthesizing information so bringing different parts together critiquing the reasoning of other students politely close reading for information and perspective which is always a challenge and comparing contrasting mathematical perspectives and compare contrast is one of the easiest most high power ways to get deep ideas across and get good communication so I already discussed that really this is about Pro a

189framework for sound dialogue construction and ultimately our goal is that teachers will be able to not just use tasks given to them but construct tasks new tasks novel tasks that will require students to engage in peer-to-peer mathematical discourse that directly supports critical thinking and problem solving and to me again this is really important a lot of these as I was reading through these mathematical language routines and going through this process with the other people in the committee I found them already aligning with techniques we have discussed and implemented in VHS mathematics classrooms and that got me really excited because again I think it's another step towards a true K-12 vision of mathematics instruction so I thought that was fantastic and I am looking forward to continuing to work with everybody uh vertically as we continue

190to see the positive impacts that they shift will have for our students and one of the things that came to light um I think I may have mentioned it uh previously but one of the things that came to light while we were having these conversations was the excitement from some of the teachers from the middle and elementary levels when they heard Andrew give a presentation on problem solving that he had delivered at a at the atomic conference earlier this year and they they lit up and they said we have professional development built right in he's right here he can just come teach us how to do this um and he was excited about that Prospect too so um that's a that's a really nice kind of bonus for us um just as a little side

191note uh one of The Amity Math teachers has already reached out to Andrew because she and he do math team together and she cannot wait to have him come and help them as well so he is a resource across the state um so one of the things I mentioned earlier is that this is budget neutral as you know we currently um obviously budget for our materials and our budgeting is done well in advance of um our capacity to have gone through this comprehensive review um and so this next slide just kind of gives you a quick kind of breakdown of what we had budgeted for my math materials along with um other professional development aspects and extended Duty for this year which the sum total without the professional development are extended Duty was 37 753

192the adjustment to these materials so supplementing out those my math materials and and implementing materials for IM which would be primarily focused at grades four through eight for this next year with some piloting happening at the earlier grades but the next presentation you're going to hear from me is about K3 math or K3 reading so that's going to be a little bit more of the focus for the younger folks um but I know Mr Fitzpatrick is really excited about getting into those earlier grades but the budget materials for next year for those folks would be 32 650 so actually slightly less than what was budgeted for originally and then looking forward projecting forward for the next year um buying materials again you see these are mainly consumables they're not um textbooks so they are things

193that we would be buying on an annual basis um similar to some of the materials for my math but a K-8 projection would roughly be about 48 300 total and so we would see how you know what we needed from that and how that if prices stay the same that kind of thing and then just our final kind of uh Point um and then we'll be we'll take some questions um it's just our you know you know me I love to connect it back to our strategic plan and our focus on the Brookfield sees and our development of that portrait of The Graduate and so really This truly aligns very very um kind of seamlessly to strategies one two and four um so the foundations of illustrative math will assist teachers coaches interventionists administrators District

194Leaders with ensuring skill development and communication creative thinking collaboration and change making so directly align to those dispositions outlined in the Brookfield Seas it'll enhance reverse strategy too enhance our capacity to incorporate authentic assured and immersive instructional experience practices for students in grades K-8 you know that was something we talked a lot about at the Strategic plan level are those assured experiences where students are able to have an authentic application of their skills and the um and their learning and then the idea of strategy four making sure we're always cognizant of our resources and of the taxpayer dollars that we are charged with being the stewards of this is a budget neutral adjustment and it just maintains fiscal Opera you know stable fiscal operations um so that is the conclusion of our presentation just want

195to highlight Tiffany Johnson's participation in this she um was super super important to the beginning of this and has just joined us back after a maternity leave so congratulations uh to Tiffany where she had twins very exciting um and so she uh but she and Andrew partnered early on in this and so it was a good chance to have the two of them work together on each end so say you know thank you for this it was very thorough I know I had a lot of other questions originally so I appreciate the presentation all the work that went into it and staying late to go through this and so just kind of connect and this is more for like Tiffany and Jim for the elementary level um connecting this to our hopefully soon to be

196special ed strategic plan how does this program fare with our special ed population or you know students who may struggle with reading and writing because from what I can see from the workbook and where we want to move with problem solving and math it requires a lot more reading and writing so has there been any resistance from students not at all actually it's been easier uh the fourth grade teacher responded that the specialty students that she's had in her classroom are actually participating more are more engaged because there's more dialogue involved so you know the when you have somebody to work with instead of sitting there and just listening and waiting for you know my turn to you know do something but that I don't understand it anyway they always have a thought partner and

197with illustrative method all the routines provide thought Partners so it's more collaborative so they feel a little less and and visual representations along with the number of representations as well yeah I have to lower this um so I think I have like a unique lens looking into this too as a former third grade teacher and now interventionist and I think for the special education population and those students in srbi it is going to be very valuable um I think piggybacking off what Jim said no matter what we're continuing our best practices so even if I am has more writing the children don't necessarily have to do that the important part is that discourse and the collaboration between the students and the teachers are going to be right there to support those students as needed um

198I do want to highlight quickly which I know I sent you my little blurb um I was on maternity leave watching the last snippet of the Board of Education meeting so I was caught up to date and I know there were a lot of questions about fact fluency and something that I've seen this year across the board in grades two three four is the lack of conceptual understanding and without that conceptual understanding the fact fluency is not going to come um students using very low level skills because of lack of number sense um abilities to break apart numbers and put numbers back together they're just not where they need to be to support that fact fluency so I am's really going to support it a little differently than we're used to it's not that rote

199memorization anymore I know that's one of the biggest questions I get and Jim gets from teachers there's no rote memorization anymore could you be successful doing that some people maybe but the general and most of the population need that conceptual understanding in order to build a solid foundation for the fact fluency so I did just want to highlight that because I think joy that was actually one of your major questions was about fact fluency and there will be plenty of opportunities too for the drilled assessments or practice for those assessments that are I'm sorry there will be plenty of opportunities for practice for computation to support the students taking acadians math which we're still going to have so things like extension block or morning work at the elementary level there will still be exposure to

200that even though it doesn't necessarily exist within IM at this time thank you no anybody else have questions just comments um you know going through the the K process I'm just blown away by everyone's enthusiasm for for this this topic and wanting to make this a lot better so you know someone on the outside you know I'm not in education I'm Blown Away by Your Enthusiasm so like that thank you very much not only in the meetings but here as well today I do have the opportunity to speak with other people in other districts over the course of my job they I could speak for Danbury they love luster of math they've Rave about it so when I mentioned it to him they're like you gotta you have to do this and with as much

201enthusiasm as as everyone up here so um I just want to say a great job and then great thorough work so I had a question about uh professional development it's a different mode of teaching right so how much professional development is needed for the classroom teachers as they get going on this I mean I mean we can we can never have enough professional development I mean I mean that's the bottom line but the the major shifts are instruct you know because there's two activities and it's the structures are in place it's more just about teachers learning how to let go you know and letting students do the work and not be like you're struggling here let me help you it's more about letting them have that productive struggle talk to each other and that's gonna

202be the PD that we're gonna have to really focus on because we have great teachers it's just more about giving that permission to just stand back and watch a student struggle when they want to just like you know bring them in and and help them so um the PD that we're going to be doing is just getting some um I mean we're going to be talking with we're not sure exactly how we're going to be doing yet but we're going to be getting some PD uh the the main part is going to be that we're probably going to be bringing it in throughout the year and Tiffany and I probably at the elementary school level are going to be kind of like the Train the trainer type of situation um and since we have some

203teachers already that have like really taken to illustrative math they're going to be like the lead teachers where we send people to go watch that unless I'm um just to watch the routines happen and watch how that the the students work with each other so and I'll let you talk more about the PD because squeeze in here it the the nice thing actually is that it kind of um as Jim was talking about and Tiffany was nodding and Mark has already kind of has built this capacity at the middle school and we also have Andrew which is wonderful um it really aligns to our whole approach to PD next year which is this this Pathways approach um and so creating these various Pathways which one of which is K-12 math and math instruction and math

204philosophy and so um you know I think it's really important and we kind of heard about this from the uh the correct report you know change always takes time and the first part of a change process is kind of sense making for folks and making sure that they understand the why and kind of the vision of where you're going we are in a position I at my observation of of where we are with math instruction is that the teachers are um they they feel like they're you know they have adequate the materials and they feel con comfortable in what they're doing but they are are not inspired necessarily with the their approach there for the so the the most we have are people who are kind of just saying this is fine but we have

205a lot more people who are really excited about this so that change process isn't going to be as difficult because we have super enthusiastic leads and people who are excited to take this next step and so the professional development that we have embedded thank you for the instructional coaches and um with invent interventionists who are going and doing this research um that is going to be that nice embedded ongoing professional development we'll use extended Duty time sometime set aside this summer to prep and make sure that we can not only identify the curricular ships but those the instructional needs in terms of professional development so that when people come in in the fall they will have a plan ready for them and so they'll know okay if I'm struggling I'm going to have a PLC

206on Thursday with Jim so I'll be able to ask him questions or I can ask Andrew to come down and so I'm really excited not only about the the actual content shift but the collaborative shift that this is going to sh that this is going to facilitate throughout our district and kind of breaking down those silos of High School versus cles this is remind me what the rollout plan is we are going to do four through eight formally next year um and threes most of three is is going to be incorporated um with the idea of piloting some units in K through 2 or k-3 um lots and lots and three uh so that we're prepared for the following year to be a total shift K8 so 23 through 25. will be this shift any

207other questions thanks I just want to say thank you so much to all of you I can feel you can feel the excitement about it so Amy I think we have a motion we have to put on the table here yep I will move that the board approved the recommended curricular tool titled illustrative bath as the new K-8 curricular tool for math instruction being phased in beginning in the 2023-2024 school year as recommended by the cape subcommittee and Dr Anna Mann and as discussed at the May 3rd 2023 Board of Education meeting second moved and seconded any questions discussion all in favor thank you you're good to go all right thank you very much okay so next item is uh is the universal reading assessment and there is a motion so why don't we go

208ahead and note that the board approve m-class Dibbles to become the universal screening assessment for k-3 reading and math for the 2023-2024 school year as recommended by the cape subcommittee and assistant superintendent Dr anaman second it's moved and seconded thanks I'm gonna uh oh boy invite Julie Vaughn up in the instructional coach for ELA for elementary so you've heard a lot about this over the course oh and also actually Aggie Burns if you you want to just stay there okay all right but I might ask you for some support this is a little smaller but that's because we knew kind of our marching orders from this so this is um the impetus for this was the K3 shift for um reading from the Connecticut State Department of Education which we've talked a lot about as

209well I'll just remind you that the that legislation has two parts one is our approved Universal screeners for K3 reading as well as a K3 reading program both of which have uh prescribed approved screeners and programs from the state and so as Dr Brill said earlier we did get our extension so the first thing that these folks that you see on this these committee members we first met in October of this year as well to kind of discuss what did we want to do did we want to ask for a waiver did we want to ask for an extension did we want to just go full bore into it and you know again thinking about the change process and thinking about all the things we were doing none of us felt like we were going

210to just rush into this plus the state had yet to finalize their list of the suggested or the required programs and so um at first we were going to do a waiver but then we realized you know what this is something we are committed to and we really do want to expand our resources and we are ready to start making these shifts to again a balanced approach to reading instruction and with uh largely due to Julie's leadership we figured that the first way we would start was with this Universal screener in hopes that we would get an official one-year extension to fully adopt a new reading program so these are the folks that helped out on this committee as well and so this is just I'm just going to kind of go through kind of

211where we've been I know that you you have heard a lot about this but one of the things that happened with this review is that once you start pulling out a thread you know everything start coming kind of undone and so when we started pulling at the thread of okay Universal screener of which we have uh two right now kind of um well what does that mean in terms of other resources do we really need all of these resources we don't want to over saturate our students with assessments um so where we have been is that we have acadians which is an assessment for reading and math for grades K through six we also use star as the universal screener for Assessments in Reading 712 and in math for first grade through 12th grade and

212so the stars is administered three times a year and depending on the level um you know it is an Adaptive assessment and so students can either fly through it or they take their time sometimes the older you get the less focused there is on taking it very seriously but the the data you get back is really and how is really what you're supposed to kind of focus on where students are and it's it's fair you know they say that it's fairly predictive um star has been around since 2016 2017 in this District um and so that along with other tools in terms of teaching reading instruction including Teachers College reading and writing the workshop approach open court and Lexi are some of the tools that we have currently and that we have been using throughout

213this year but again I mentioned that you know pulling at the thread so once you start kind of thinking about all right so we have this star star was not originally on the um approved Universal screeners and acadians for only one portion of it so we would have had to include other um Universal screeners in addition to acadians we couldn't just stick with that so when we realized that we knew that we had to kind of look at these other um Universal screeners so we uh we have some proposed adjustments that will impact not just adding a universal screener but also the way we will use the current resources that we have so rather than adding a third comprehensive Universal screener we are proposing that we will keep star not as a universal screener but

214as a kind of a benchmark or diagnostic for students who enter our district mid-year or for students who star has a Spanish component so you can use it for students who English is not their first language um acadian's reading will continue to be used and will be expanded to grades seven and eight because we won't have that star component um and then we will also we've really focused this year um with the leadership of the instructional coaches uh on really using SBA and um uh interim assessment blocks which is part of the state assessment uh Consortium in terms of using those as formative assessments so getting a good read on where our students are throughout the year we also do PSAT Administration for eighth all the way through high school so we'll continue to use

215those and expand the data collection for from all of these aspects so this slide is kind of uh a crosswalk from the slide before so you'll see on the left hand side that's where we are this year the right hand side is where we're moving to and you see that it's kind of just an adjustment so for the first bullet acadians reading and math for grades K through six uh next year the proposal is to move to m-class Dibbles for K3 reading and math because m-class Dibbles has a reading and a math component as the universal screener maintain acadians four through six for math and reading and Implement acadians seven and eight for reading only simply because they don't have a math component for seven and eight so that would be the shift in our

216acadians last links which is the um you know kind of the assessment for students uh who are multi-language Learners that would continue um to be an assessment we will administer the PSAT data for 8 through 12 we will continue to use that along with SBA results informative assessments such as the interim assessment blocks and other teacher generated formative assessments and then the star Universal screener assessment rather than being a universal screener would move to that Benchmark assessment we would maintain a certain number of licenses as kind of requested at the building levels so that we would have those that that appropriate number as um as students move into our district so the next slide is the proposed timeline of this rollout as you heard you know we did get our extension so next year is

217the assessment um adoption uh that's what we're really looking at kind of building capacity with our teachers the the it's not a heavy lift between acadians and m-class Dibbles they have some kind of core and Julie's going to talk about this in a minute they have some very they kind of found it similarly at the core so the shift is not we don't anticipate being hugely difficult for teachers but it is still something new in addition to everything else that they're doing at the elementary level so we want to make sure we take our time and do it judiciously the following year next year we'll spend time in that same group and maybe expand it to be similar as our math folks to looking at the the proposed reading programs the ones that are approved

218and looking at the alignment to the universal screener that we're adapting and then make some decisions with a reading program that we could then start rolling out in the 24-25 school year okay I'm going to turn this over to Julie do you think I'm too short um so as Dr Mann said this is one of the state approved um Universal screeners that's also available in Spanish which is going to be beneficial so we can see if it's a reading problem or just a language acquisition problem so you know our population is growing and changing so I think that's going to be really key to make sure we're assessing all students effectively the components are very similar to acadians it did add nonsense word fluency Beyond grade one so grade two and grade 3 are also

219getting nonsense word fluency it's going to give us the opportunity to assess more syllable types with all students versus waiting to kind of see those red flags and then doing deeper Diagnostics so it will give us those red flags earlier on for kids in grade two and three that are still developing decoding skills it also has a word reading fluency so words that kids should know by sight by their grade level is on that test so it's giving us um factors where some kids can read words in context that they should know but not in isolation so it's just another layer of kind of checking to make sure all kids are growing in all areas of their reading and then oral reading fluency begins a little bit earlier on in grade one and goes all

220the way through um grade six and then there's the maze for comprehension which starts at grade two instead of grade three so we're bringing that down a little earlier and doing those checks um earlier on there's also additional measures for dyslexia screening with spelling vocabulary listening comprehension and Rapid automatized naming and those are all indicators um for kids that could possibly be dyslexic and then this is what's exciting because I love the data um so the word use re word reading fluency will help another given us another check of those fluency measures on kids the deeper diagnostics for all Learners as I said those nonsense word fluencies into later grades is going to give us the ability to really check on all kids earlier than waiting for them to kind of show signs of struggle

221and then go in and diagnose so that's going to be um more proactive and efficient it provides instructional groupings and suggestions the database and the way teachers can access manage run reports is more user friendly so we can really look and use data in real time in terms of progress monitoring and really make those instructional changes and shifts quickly and the Intervention Program is if we choose that option we'll create flexible groupings plug in your staff you plug it it pulls m-class data it will make groupings for you it gives you lessons so you can really do a great job at meeting the needs of all kids those who need a challenge and those who need support so those pieces of the data and the way the platform is developed is really exciting so that

222we can really meet the needs of all our kids and get kids hopefully all of them much stronger in those early foundational and decoding skills as quickly as we can so this final slide is I'm actually a little bit updated from what I believe you have in your packet but it again is just a cost comparison one of the things that we worked really hard to do was to make sure that we didn't go over what we had already kind of out earmarked for some of these assessments and so you'll see that you know for the original budget for 23.24 star for the universal screener was earmarked for 24 329 the crosswalk will m-class Dibbles for K3 reading is 16 per student for roughly 800 students again in those four grades plus the intervention tool

223which Julie just talked about uh which is a I think about four thousand it's a site license it's a site license yeah so we can use the for the entire cles folks it will come to 16 800. and then the acadians again kind of crosswalking that and keeping some of that is uh similar to what it will have been so our grand total um for originally was 39 829 for star and acadians the various changes and including some of those reserved licenses for benchmark assessments for Star would bring us to about thirty three thousand dollars so we're within the budget that we originally had proposed um I can go back to that if you need to and then same kind of thing with professional development we are um you know there's less need for professional

224development with the universal screener it's more about how do you use the data right so what are what are the what are the ongoing supports that we would have for teachers as they are receiving this information and as they are trying to do interventions and that again is where um you know Julie will certainly be integral Debbie will be really important to uh doing this and then also looking at the materials that we currently have all of the those other instructional materials that I mentioned in the very beginning how can we leverage those based on the information and changing up our instructional approaches like Julie was saying playing with flexible grouping or you know kind of targeting student needs whether it's in both at tier one and in tier two um and so that's what

225that professional development would be focused on so that's m-class Dibbles any questions forward any questions yeah so I did have one very general question um on the reading initiative from the state of Connecticut it was on I'm trying to get that certain term like the science of reading is that tied to this or is it unrelated to this nope it's um so go ahead I'm gonna have Julie talk about it it's directly aligned okay um really looking the the idea of you know science of readings really just the practice of how your brain develops and learns to read and really finding a balance between the phonics and decoding but also the other parts of reading which is comprehension and language comprehension so there's two strands to that a language comprehension and then your skills which

226is your your phonological phonemic awareness decoding um and those need to combine so really looking at those factors um together yeah and this and this assessment tool captures all of those characteristics it does okay yeah and actually what the so what this you kind of think of it as the programs um that the state has adapted uh are all aligned to the science of reading and those programs have kind of backed it they've backed into creating assessments or screeners that provide data on where students are in those in that skill building and those Concepts and so that's but we're starting with the screener first so that we can kind of see where our students are and then we'll build into a reading program and then and then the second question I had is over time

227you have acadians at some grades and you have the m-class Dibbles as a with 800 students well eventually Cadence acadians get phased out or do we always live with them both of them so that is at the bottom of this slide m-class Dibbles is currently piloting um a math and reading screener for four through eight we chose not to be a part of that pilot for next year um given again everything that's going on um and so but we're gonna kind of be in close touch with them and see what uh what the results are um they're they I think they actually started a pilot this year and they're gonna work on it's really that math side that they're finding it is acadians part of the approved state of Connecticut for Middle School for the

228middle schools um well so there's not necessarily all that this doesn't go all the way the state of Connecticut is not going all the way up to they're just dealing with just k-33 m-class devils and what are the other options that they they uh I can't even remember anymore there's I think five Universal screeners they keep flip-flopping and chain off and then in I want to say February of this year they put it back on um star was and that was off so you have I think five so Dibbles eight easy CBM um Ames web uh and Amira which is all Ai and there's one there's one more I cannot think of right now but there's only five approved Universal screeners what comes okay thank you any other questions all right thank you very much

229thanks so we have a motion on the table uh any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed all right you're approved thank you very much okay next up on our list is the approval of the idea Grant application I love that the board approved the annual submission of the district idea Grant as required by state law second moved and seconded a post you want to give us a quick brief I will do that um as I think you all know the idea Grant is the special education entitlement grant that we get every year entitlement Grant means that we are told how much money we are getting approximately five hundred forty thousand dollars for special education K-12 and about twenty thousand dollars Pre-K and we have to submit an application which we did last month

230basically telling the state what we are going to spend the money on within the parameters and goals of the idea law which we did and it got approved in our case we use it for teachers and Paras and at the preschool level apara and we've done that consistently in all the years that I've been here and we talked about that before I remember we had a couple meetings ago so what is it we're approving here tonight just the formality of submitting the the document correct to the idea folks correct okay and it's consistent with what we talked about before correct what we talk about every year yep any questions for Ken all right all in favor all right thank you done thanks again okay next up is flexibilities for implementing the Connecticut guidelines for educator

231evaluation for the 2023-2024 school year I'll move that the board approved the flexible CT guidelines for Education evaluation for the 2023-2024 school year as recommended by the cape subcommittee and assistant superintendent Dr anaman second okay moved in second and it sounds like Anna you're back up again this is the last time and a man show um so you have have um as exhibit I in your packet the uh the indication from Dr Russell Tucker the commissioner of Education that uh for the neck for one more year um the State Department of Education is approving the flexibilities and extension of the flexibilities for Teacher evaluation plans so really all we're asking you to approve tonight is to continue what the district has been doing since 2020 since the 2020-2021 school year this is in anticipation of

232a pretty strong straight big shift for the 24-25 school year where the guidelines for Teacher evaluation and administrator evaluation are going to have wholesale shift from the state department where they're taking away summative evaluations it's much more focused on growth we'll get into that some other time but really this is just a continued extension of what we're currently doing which is based on the formal plan that was approved in 2017 but with those flexibilities so taking out some of the excessive formal observations and those kinds of things um the the P deck is it p-deck is the name of our committee professional development and evaluation evaluation committee they've looked at this and they're okay with it they're okay with it all right I figured they would be yep had to ask though Dr P is

233the chair the co-chair of wikipedex so he's happy to talk about it they're okay with it all right all right I have no questions any questions this seems pretty straightforward okay all in favor all right all right very good all right uh field trips okay I'll move that the board approved the attached list of field trips for the 2023-2024 school year as requested by Brookfield High School principal Mark belanda second you get the next one um all right um any discussion um John anything you want to say what we've uh this has been a practice for the last few years where we approve agenda item e uh any out-of-state field trips that we know of going forward in the coming year which aligns with item F which we'll get into the second one and there

234and it's no real change any major changes no and we do not have the any french trip scheduled on there at this point that'll be a separate uh piece but yes and I don't think Mark has anything to add if there's questions he's certainly here no I didn't mean it that way Mark any questions from the board we approve these every year okay all in favor a unanimous all right approval of field trips for sports [Music] approved the athletic director's athletic director Steve Baldwin second okay moved and seconded um any uh any changes to the list of uh of uh events here are any big changes there you want to mention thank you yeah so the only uh there aren't any changes currently but there certainly have been um some coaching changes uh in in

235the middle um so looking I look particularly at the very bottom of the hockey coach we have a new co-op team that's going to be putting together it's now adding Immaculate to our group so I'm not sure where they're going to go what the coach is going to do but typically they have gone to Maine over that break um you'll see a listed there three different trips uh connected to April break for some of the the sports teams those are sort of holdovers from last year that didn't go away necessarily this year but it's possible they could be going away um uh this upcoming year so they'd like to get back to that although I think Steve Baldwin lost the majority of his hair during that process last year bringing that many teams down to

236Florida for that long um so I'm not sure that we'll do that specifically again but there has been some interest in doing some level of trips and so no matter what happens regardless there's a full set of permission slips and approval from the superintendent so it's not like we just take kids and go we go through the entire and we greatly appreciate that yeah it's a great organizational strategy thank you any questions all in favor all right moving on thanks Mark thank you Mark all right we've got one two three four five five Palace six policies to approve first one is six one four six dot one I will move that the board delete brookfield's version of policy number six one four six point one grading assessment systems weighted grades and adopt caves version for

237a final reading as recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee first read was on May 3rd 2023rd second major okay moved and seconded were there any as you guys went through your review at the policy committee were there any further changes I do I do have one comment it might be something that already came up but I could have sworn we saw it when we saw this last time we removed the part for uh rank class rank because we don't have that at the high school so what we um so what we've removed was a specific sentence in the middle of the paragraph because of the change to class rank um and I don't know if this really wants to come up or not but I I can handle this I think um there was

238a there was a statement in the middle about how class rank would be available to seniors in October with a final ranking that based on the removal it wasn't a removal of class rank that you did prior it was just that you're not going to be focusing on that uh but class rank is still maintained it's maintained through PowerSchool um and actually based on some things at the state level you have to maintain classrooms um so it was really just that when it is available to students because a person could ask for their class rank at any point gotcha so we just remove that one sentence okay okay any further questions on this one were there many changes that came in on that or yeah okay yeah all right all right all in favor hi

239hi unanimous um next is policy6141.52 new required policy number 6141.52 challenging curriculum criteria for identification of eligible grade eight and nine students for a final reading is recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee first read was on May 3rd 2023. second moved and succulent any comments on the process leading up to getting here any major changes to it the only thing that was taken out was that highlighted version that was in your previous packet and then some adjustment to pronoun usage changing from specific pronouns that was it all right discussion all in favor okay policy 6141.51 I'll move that the board approved new required policy 6141.51 Advanced courses or programs eligibility criteria for enrollment for a final reading is recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee first reading was on May 3rd 2023. second moved

240and seconded uh any significant pronouns again one pronoun on this one okay and no inputs given any discussion okay all in favor all right X1 is six one four six I will move that the board approved the deletion of brookfield's policy and regulation 6146 graduation and adopt cape's version of policy 6146 graduation for a final reading as recommended by the policy and Community communication subcommittee first reading was on May 3rd 2023. I believe this was this was when we had some feedback from from the public so I think that was the second right yes I moved and seconded one of you kind of talk about what changes came on this one so the them again from some grammatical changes was that there was a paragraph toward the bottom of the original um policy that talks

241about uh foreign language requirements beginning you know as part of Middle School course completion and as we don't offer credit for Middle School World language courses we just deleted that paragraph um so that was one change the second change is that the original policy referred to a policy um that Brookfield doesn't have uh so it referred to six one seven two point six for virtual online courses the policy that Brookfield has is 6146.19 which is called credit for online courses so we just switched that number to make it align with the with what we have okay thank you any further discussion okay all in favor all right unanimous uh next one is eleven twenty I'll move that the board approved the revisions to policy and regulation number 1120 public participation for a final reading as

242recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee first read was on May 3rd 2023. second okay moved and seconded any changes on this one I do have one that I caught as this last sentence where it says a period of three minutes it sounds like that's like the whole the whole thing you only get three minutes per person yeah we could adjust that as amended yeah you want to do that yeah that's tactical more than anything so yeah thank you okay so we would like someone to make a motion to add per person though right no that's not the policy that's on the policy okay it's a regulation for the next page um so I I will I will move to um add the words per person or yeah per speaker maybe um after the words

243provided for speakers per speaker um after the word provided in that sentence I'll second okay that's all in favor of the amendment okay any further discussion on the on on the policy as amended okay all in favor of the amended policy okay that one's approved do we have to approve the regulation that's uh part of the motion part of it realign that with current practice there you go all right so the last one is byline number 9325 almost adopt caves version of bylaw 9325 meeting conduct for a final read as recommended by the policy and Communications subcommittee first read was on May 3rd 2023. second okay any uh discussion any changes to this one pronouns or anything there's nothing nothing significant okay any uh any further comment from the board all in favor okay all

244right now we're moving on to Old business the first item is Board of education's budget estimate for 2023-2024. I will move that the board approved the reduction of adjustments to the 2023-2024 budget in the amount of 126 275 dollars as recommended by the finance subcommittee and that the board adopt its budget in the amount of 50 million 384 287 a 3.53 increase over the current budget as voted on at the May 3rd 2023rd Town budget referendum second okay moved and seconded Mr post I'll turn it over to you to walk us through what the process has been and what the conclusions have been sure Dr Brill did you want to go through the the process first I think you did a good job explaining just give a little brief update Canada let you go through

245the details so thank you um so as we discussed with the um committee a special meeting earlier this week to review the 126 000 reduction when we initially had the first referendum that failed some of the talk in the community up through the rest of that week was that it could be as much as a half a million dollars so we immediately held two different meetings with our leadership team which includes our principals and really started to think about if way if we had this dramatic of a cut what would we do and so we started to come up with some uh a list which includes what's on here today in addition to some other more uh intense of something called Draconian type cuts that we might have to make share that with Mr Belden

246who talked with the uh Board of finance that that next Friday and shared some of that information when we found out that we were down to a 126 uh 26 000 reduction we had another couple of meetings with the leadership team and really sharpened the pencil and also got some updated uh information in terms of different estimates and different uh cost lines and so that's what the we ultimately recommended from the team strong consensus brought it to the finance committee who is recommending it uh for approval tonight as the specific reductions to the already adopted budget uh from the board uh Ken can walk us through those specific details okay I'll turn it over to you thank you Dr Brown so the first item on the list is professional development which came out of the

247assistant superintendents department and the uh what we call the epidippy which is the contractual obligation in the teacher's contract bringing that number down to um a number more in the range of what it really actually falls in every year after having a conversation with the teachers union president letting them know we were doing that as we did a few years ago when we had a very tight budget um we have a lot of Title II money available which is specifically for professional development so I know we talked a lot about that tonight so I think I'm very confident that we have enough funding to do whatever we need to do through that um instructional supplies some of the principles went went back through and identified some specific consumables and manipulatives that they would be able

248to do without for the year and to put that in context our total instructional Supply budget is usually in the neighborhood of 350 to 400 000 so this is a relatively small amount um you'll see a few items on here such as other supplies furniture and Equipment which is uh repurposing things that the middle school and high school principal found at Huckleberry they will be taking such as a laminator instead of buying a new one there's one working over there that we can take and move uh we are going to delay purchasing a couple of textbooks totaling about 9 7 56 dollars at uh Center School in wisconeer Professional Services from whiskey near a thousand dollars uh where the prince will be principal will be seeking uh grant money from either from the bef or

249the PTO extended Duty primarily at clas and some at BHS really related a lot of it related to the capacity to get all of the work done we're finding that and by capacity I mean you know people's willingness to put a lot of this work in over the Summers and there's just it seems to be less of it the last couple of years so we think we're bringing this down to a more realistic number technology Eric found additional grant funding that he's going to use for Chromebooks so he can take I'm sorry Smart Boards so he can take that out of the budget without without getting any less our LEP which is a liability in property insurance and workers comp insurance like on the final renewals which came in lower than we budgeted and then

250keeping the director of instruction at an 11 month as is in these existing contract saves us 12 946 and then the replacement savings from uh from my successor another 15 321 and that brings us to the 126 275 dollar total thank you Ken you're welcome [Music] um oh oh sorry yep it's on um so yeah the the finance subcommittee had a special meeting this past Monday uh we reviewed each one of these um line items and um we're actually very pleased with it and all in some it's just a very painless um you know most of it is sort of just kind of like John was saying sharpening the pencil you know kind of finding efficiencies repurposing um not a lot of drastic drastic Cuts so and certainly nothing Personnel related so that's always good

251any questions okay all in favor okay thank you Kim thank you that officially makes it um eight months of budgeting right that uh eight and a half eight and a half months of budgeting and yay all right um so the um next item is a Candlewood Lake Elementary School uh building project all right thanks Eric here all right so here's the main entrance um yeah there you go oh yeah sorry so yeah so here's the main entrance you can kind of see like that um I believe it's called is it the East East Brook East Brook has actually been is now Visual and it's a it's a whole landscape um design element of the of the property so it's really starting to look nice all the brick work is done you know you can see

252like on on the front as well this is coming around like the back side of the building all the brick work the wood the metal paneling is getting done the main stairwells are finally going in which is great um you can kind of see there's like a platform almost up here so from the second level it comes down a couple steps there's a nice big platform that looks into the multi-purpose space and then it comes down into the rest of the the main entryway there this is um that multi-purpose space so the stage is done all the wall panelings are done this is like that special acoustic type of wall paneling that's gonna really make musical performances sound really great in there um the terrazzo flooring in the cafeteria looks fantastic um this looks like

253it's polished up right yep kind of looks like it's covered now but yeah yeah so um so it's covered for protection now but it's kind of you'll see these sort of patterns just continue up into the designs on the wall and into the ceiling more of the terrazzo flooring um kind of in the first floor administrative area the gym kind of looks like a staging area still a little bit but looks like it's getting more organized so that's I think it's important for everybody to know by Design the gym um because of its ability to store kind of like you saw with a multi-purpose room although that's more finished the gym has always been planned as the last room to be completed so the gross motor area um this is adjacent to the gym so

254a lot of the wall elements are are installed and I think it's probably even progressed farther than this since these pictures were taken but the um you can see the the beautiful sort of cloud and lighting elements that are up in that area and the terrazzo flooring this is down in the the lower grade cafeteria so that's really starting to look really nice more of pictures of that cafeteria the entry into the neighborhoods those are those are starting to look really nice um there's going to be screens and projections up on the walls and um all the the ceiling paneling is in classrooms are done um most I mean all the classrooms on the on the top levels are are done the floors are protected and they look fantastic we even actually got to see

255some of the furniture in so that was nice yeah Rose if I made the upper uh level floors are done in terms of the classroom floors with the carpet tile the three lower grade Wings the second grade Wing is having the um grinding work and adhesive put down and then the tile will be finished in there they believe next week and they'll continue moving into to finish the flooring everything else is done the flooring in grade one and then in kindergarten and Pre-K some more of the terrazzo flooring some of the the patterns are just really beautiful and these are throughout all the hallways and they tie into obviously the theme of each neighborhood um I think the kids are going to absolutely love it um the media center um still looks like it's a

256little on the unfinished side but um there is glass work that you can't see in there so there's a lot of glass work that has gone in um some of the um the Amphitheater seating so there's so that whole area is being nicely landscaped there's lighting that's in that area it's really turning out to be a nice Gathering Place for performances and other types of learning activities more of the terrazzo designs because of the dragonflies this was a little out of water from the project but it's all right the main floor Terrazzo which looks amazing um there's this whole Like Water Theme where um you know it looks just like the stream that you see on the outside um there's this stream that kind of goes through the main the main hallway and while we

257embrace the Eastbrook that is um the model of the still River as well in the naval and it's not polished yet but yeah let's go so this was the unearthing of those pipes that were below the um the the fields essentially that were in the back of Huckleberry at one point um so that once the beautiful landscaping kind of comes in this is going to be a really nice um semi-flowing some of the year um little riverbed so it'll be really nice some more pictures of that Amphitheater some a lot of the furniture is in so the office furniture is in we saw a lot of the classroom Furniture so it looks really good and that's last picture so looks great thanks Rosa yeah every time we see it it's looking a little more finished

258a lot of progress so um John I'm getting requests from the Press if they could bring a photographer in could we was we're getting closer to finished I know that MBC has control of the building until it's ready but we ought to start talking to them about when would be an appropriate time so a couple couple updates on that so the before I go there Bob if I if I might I really want to give kudos to our administrative team our faculty and staff custodians the project managers we are full steam ahead on packing and preparing for moving so it's just all the extra work that's going into that um not only throughout the whole year but right now it's crunch time and so I just can't thank everyone enough for that and there is

259excitement for it as well um it's kind of Labor of Love at this point um the other piece uh just want to give everybody an update on small Wares uh talked with Rob tenza who's the original project manager is handling that part um everything looks like it's in order and it needs one more green light from the state and they'll be ordering from the smallwares playscape has that third party review that should take place next week we could then get the green light from the state and move forward on the playscapes so um on our end we've done everything we could we're just waiting on the uh the red tape at this point to get the approvals um and uh to answer your question Bob I actually had a conversation with Paul this week talking

260about getting in uh media opportunity uh also um Alan who does some of our homemade videos or Alan made videos to get in there and have an opportunity not only to capture students and staff with some of the packing and some of their anticipation but also opportunity to get in the building and see some of the different parts I think the NBC wants to have things a little bit more finished before they they let anybody in there and so uh Paul and I are working on that and right on in alignment we just need to answer the question of the press I told them I would probably be in August right then um when it's more finished and like we said we really on a number of occasions in uh communicating with parents we really

261cannot wait to get the kids and parents in there to tour the building and see so as soon as we have that certificate of occupancy whether that's mid or Late July or you know sometime in August as soon as we can we're going to move we've actually worked with policy Communications committee kind of brainstorming some fun ideas to bring everybody together and of course a ribbon cutting ceremony and all of that well related to that did you have something wrong definitely a quick question is it 100 that it's set to open September I don't think we have a choice and and yes the the debate and some of the angst uh right now and uh the back and forth between our Ong our construction company and the NBC and frankly Administration is we were waiting

262on that updated schedule from the last NBC meeting that we were all at and um there were some deadlines for third week and fourth week of June in terms of I think I alluded to it earlier getting our administrative team in Candlewood Lake and working from there and that's still up in the air right now I'm going to be completely honest um the alternative plan will be to work at whiskaneer and we'll obviously communicate with everybody when we're there that involves our administrative administrative summer administrator workers and our secretaries and of course technology team and custodians so those are the folks summer impacted uh parents and students wouldn't feel or see any of that uh struggle if you will that we'll be working through to make sure we're ready to go for uh opening for

263Labor Day after Labor Day but it's also important to note for parents like when you drop your kids off that first day it's not going to look like this beautifully finished site I mean remnants of the building are definitely still going to be there from Huckleberry it's all going to be dirt like driveways um there'll be sidewalks but a lot of the sight work still has to go into Landscaping her and into next spring the site work Dave and I are actually we're pending a letter right now to next week as kind of a closure to the year getting excited and ready and one of the things we mentioned is right away like I said earlier tonight you're not going to see just massive quick demolition of Huckleberry that's not how the process works the

264south parking lot will be finished to start the year as well as a temporary parking lot Paving that's on the schedule it has to be done um whether something changes if that has to be done and so then the temporary parking lot will probably be gravel right yeah and so that's to make sure we have enough space and we might not have all of the driveways we have to have enough room for buses um there may be um logistical things we need to do with parent drop-off um and the first couple of months of the school year and we will be in the building but to your point there will be some muddy or dirty areas and the building will not necessarily be fully down uh if it is fully down depending on how they

265work their schedule the work will be going on to build the north parking lot the north parking lot is scheduled to be complete before the asphalt plants close prior to Thanksgiving time so the parking lot will be done but then in the spring of 24 Finish Landscaping plantings things like that in the spring of 24 will have still have to occur so I'm glad you brought that up that we're going to allude to that in the letter we're drafting okay all right thank you um that related to that there's uh something that we have to talk about on the Board of Education meeting location so we have a motion for that and then I'll explain it I will move that the board authorized the superintendent to move the location of the regular Board of Education

266meetings to Candlewood Lake Elementary School starting with July 2023 depending on facility availability just this background we have we have all talked about having some of our board meetings over there we approved our board meeting list for the dates at our last meeting but we inadvertently put that they're always in this room so what this motion does is gives Dr Burrell depending on when that uh that multi-purpose room is available to us the ability to move the meeting over to that facility and we'll try it out and if we like it we can continue to meet over there right or get or we could come back a meeting here so but this that's what the motion is just gives some flexibility against something that was hardwired to always do it in this room so so

267that's the background maybe Eric give us a demonstration of that thing in the gym yeah yeah and yeah Mike I'm glad you're saying it the whole point of trying to have the meetings there is we want to showcase the new facility and have opportunity before and maybe even after if it's an earlier uh ending meeting uh to have people tour the facility and have some of our student leaders bring bring parents and citizens through so we're really all walking around with a phone like this and saying okay I'm going down this hall now it's gonna be great um so uh so all in favor of that flexibility for Dr Brill to change it okay public comment this is our second round of public comment and uh we have two people who had signed up for

268the second round and Mr Korea you were first I think you're still here foreign so during the correct this is mostly about the correct presentation I was able to um pretty much fast scan the whole report while she was presenting and some things stood out to me and then also listening to the representative overall I think it was an awful presentation um primarily because uh you had a lot of the um her script and what she said really hid the truth right she had to bend over backwards to to say things in a non-negative way right and it's kind of this thing in education where you know you don't fire somebody they resign on their own right anything negative gets kind of polished up a little bit um you know she sugarcoat stuff so there

269was one key thing statement that she made is Steph wants a relationship with the the um the leadership administrator of the special education department right and that's you know I think we're kidding ourselves you know if we look at it that way I mean I think we really know what happened right and when you go through some of the data a lot of it's you know sort of everything in what she and also what she said a lot of stuff turned around literally in one year right so this was really a lot about personnel and Leadership there are also specific data data in there that stands out if you look on page 36 you'll see some aspect data and Brookfield s back results are half for students with disability of pretty much all the other

270comparative towns for the 20 2021 school year and it's less than half of Brookfield the year before right so there was a huge crash in 2021 that didn't occur elsewhere so there's something going on there and that's that's you know that wasn't in bright flashing lights up here I didn't see that right that's something that she should have come in here and said um you know 50 she said 50 of parents are okay with the services right and that's also listed on page 17 and 19 or with their child's progress I mean also sorry 17 19 their parents are okay 50 of parents are okay with the services provided on the page 37 parents are okay with their child's progress but 50 is low right and our experience with uh parents of special education students

271particularly what I've talked with kids in Brook my parents in Brookfield it's they came here for the schools and they trusted the schools it doesn't really mean that the progress is okay it just takes some time to figure it out right and a lot of the failures come by pushing off services in the elementary schools and then they get worse in middle school and that's when you find out and I don't I didn't feel that that was highlighted you had to dig for it right I think the board should bring her back and have her speak plainly because of a parent if a parent or a person in the community to go to watch this video and they they really didn't know how to look on you know behind the scenes of what was being

272said they would think everything's pretty good right I mean there was a lot of there was a lot of focus on what's going well and there's um page 27 is the special director said there's no predetermination going on in the district that's just patently false right so I will write up the rest of my um concerns and send it over to you but thank you I don't think that this presentation was representative of what was in that report and I think it was sugarcoated and I don't think a lot of people are going to think 46 Pages thank you okay Mr Montero [Applause] all right awesome Ontario 17 Dairy Farm Drive that's way past my bedtime so uh bear with me here but um two things really tonight one I want to talk about and

273Mr belanda brought it up just the overall process with the request for reconsideration of books in my experience how it's been I submitted my form on April 21. we did have a meeting over the phone on May 1st with Mr belanda and the two Librarians which I believe breaks policy already um at that point nobody has had read the book I've personally read the book five times I reached out again May 17 just to get an update of where we are at at that point they're still forming committee and according to our emails again the book had not been read at that point so now we're pushing a month without even opening this book up on May 31st I emailed Mr belanda again to get a status update and he gave that today which was

274that they were meeting on Monday June 5 two days ago and I would have an update by the end of the week so that's 47 days from my form submission no reply yet 37 days from my meeting with Mr belanda and the Librarians no answer yet so at this point it's hard to see how that's not in some way shape or form just dragging your feet and slung the process down purposely the book takes two hours to read it's an easy read after 10 minutes I believe we can make a decision and move forward here in some way shape or form and I'm fully open to making whether it's yes no or some sort of compromise in the middle I think people are open to to that idea um and just a second point I

275just want to make a comment publicly about the whole book ban crisis here that's going on in Connecticut um to me I see it more is a fear-mongering approach a more realistic description is all classic literature is still available what we have is some disagreements over a small small number of explicit obscene works that are in libraries throughout the state that I fear will be will go into the curriculum down the road as was mentioned at the Newtown Board of Ed meeting last week and what we're basically looking for is you know especially after covid parents are just unwilling to defer to a unilateral Authority an expert especially who was not read said books and for them to decide what children should have access to without Democratic oversight or any parental oversight I feel is

276wrong and we shouldn't be open to public discourse on that topic without getting any hate any negativity any of that so again I hope this process moves along quicker I hope we can get this to a board of ed meeting and see where we can go from there and again I've talked to other people and we'll say this side of the coin there is opening I think to a negotiation of maybe there's an opt-in version an opt-out version of Parental Advisory sticker something along those lines so appreciate your time and uh thank you all right that's it for tonight uh three main points what do you guys think crap crack for sure I think and I think we have to talk about the no the kids the record all the records yeah recognition in general

277I mean should it be the budget I mean that's how we communicate yeah yeah I think that's right let's just do the budget as the third budget we work with uh Damiana or just make get that word WWE and I already communicated this way she's gonna get the video of the meeting and she'll still work the three main points okay so it's going to be the recognitions correct and budget yep um okay uh upcoming events we're getting into the quiet season the last day of school for all schools is next Wednesday June 14th and it's an early release um Center School has a summer reading whole school assembly kickoff this Friday June 9th Huckleberry has the grade four end of year party at the YMCA on June 9th um whiskey deer has the eighth grade

278dinner dance this Saturday June 10th and the high school has the grad walk on June 13th and of course graduation on June 17th that is all I have okay thank you um all right so we are going to enter into an executive session so for those you listening we will be uh slopping the broadcast at this point in time we'll we will adjourn the meeting after our executive session yep so could I have the motion for the executive session that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of finalizing the assistant superintendent's contract Director of Business operations contract unaffiliated salaries and strategy and negotiations as it relates to collective bargaining it's like a joy joy second on that one we'll give her one uh all in favor all right all right good night everybody