001[Music] foreign [Music] like to welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the Brookfield board of education for January 18th 2023. let's start by everyone Rising for the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign all of our board members are here this evening um so first up is our student Spotlight for Center Elementary School so Dr Brill as usual I'll leave it to you to introduce thank you Mr Belden I'd like to have Mrs ferius the principal of Center School come up and she'll be introducing instructional coach Julie Vaughn to talk about grade one and their writing oh that was fast I wasn't quite ready to come
002up this quickly well thank you first of all I just want to say good evening and how excited I am actually super excited about having the opportunity to open a window a little bit into the extraordinary teaching and learning that occurs at Center School each and every day um this particular Spotlight is on our first grade opinion writers and how they use what they learned about opinion writing in order to use their voice to advocate for Change and change in their world which is Center School um and at that point I just want to give you a background on how this kind of came to be so one day right before break I had this first grade student Luca hamelick from Mrs natalino's class and he came to me and he said Mrs various why
003is it that first graders don't have recess on shortened days on the early dismissal days and kindergarten students do I said Gee Luca that's a really great question and I said aren't you finishing up your opinion writing unit right now and he said yeah and I said well I think this would be a great opportunity for you to write an opinion piece using all of what you've learned about opinion writing and um you know help me to understand your perspective and try to convince me um you know as to why we should maybe revisit the schedule and he looks and he's like yeah yeah and then I said wait a minute I have a better idea so what if maybe your whole class would be interested in doing that and then we can maybe get
004um you know our scheduling board I was making up that there was a scheduling board there really wasn't um to kind of come together and consider you know your perspectives and the points that you raise with what you've learned about opinion writing to be able to use your voice to you know help us to maybe think that it's time to revisit the schedule and he's like yeah yeah and he's getting a little bit more excited about it and I'm like wait a minute I have the best idea what if we got all of first grade involved and all of the first graders would get involved in thinking about this and using their voice and we can get a scheduling board together and we'll you know vote and you know get together for like an assembly
005and have a board meeting and see if we're you know if you've convinced us and he got really super super excited so um he left and then I got super super excited because I'm thinking oh my gosh this is such a great opportunity to have relevant real world context for our first graders and it's sparked by students like this is just fantastic so I immediately reached out to Julie Vaughn our K4 Ela instructional coach extraordinaire um I said Julie this is this is what happened this morning this is great and we collaborated and we both were like you know supercharged about it and she just took um took on the project and collaborated with our first grade teachers and students and um is here tonight to present so without further ado Julie Vaughn hey Julie
006I'll stay up here and help you because you know you got it all right there we go otherwise I'll just watch it all right thanks Julie no problem okay so as um Debbie said the background of the project really stemmed from this one student in in the context of their current writing unit that they were working on so then I kind of picked up the ball with the teachers we met and kind of laid out the groundwork for how we could really make this collaborative for students you know they do their own writing but it was really to bring in those those four C's can they be collaborative and communicate with each other um on this project and have a shared voice to then create a class opinion piece that they would present at this
007mock scheduling committee meeting so uh it aligns with the curriculum development process we're working on creating context so giving students in every grade level in each unit the goal is eventually to get there that provides students with a real world authentic learning experience to apply all of the knowledge that they're learning in the content areas in a larger Global Way um so we've been trying to engage in that work for the last several years and we're getting to the point where grade levels are really starting to be able to develop those contexts and give kids these um experiences it aligned with a ton of Standards writing standards the large one of writing opinion pieces um the idea that they can respond to questions suggestions from peers to make their work better the shared research and
008writing projects speaking and listening they also address a ton of the language standards with conventions and language acquisition skills so as well as some of the social studies standards with that being an advocate for for change uh the work we've been doing in the strategic planning of the four C's creativity communication collaboration and change making so really thinking about how these align Pre-K 12 not once they get to high school really thinking about how um that they connect to that portion of graduate how do we build these along the way and really prepare kids for the world that they're living in now so getting the four C's to be part of the elementary curriculum and planning and then highlighting projects like this will help teachers really give them capacity to create more engaging and authentic
009experiences with those real world connections is really kind of what the new strategic plan is really kind of focusing on so it's really exciting to see how we at the elementary level can build that that knowledge of this for kids and not just it's not just the high school perspective of that so I want to see the Kids In Action so this shows the process from planning to the scheduling committee where they presented their pieces it's only about six minutes I was trying to kind of capture all the parts so you could see the process so hopefully it all kind of works and the quality is good [Music] foreign [Music] because it's not fair that kindergarten gets recessed on late dismissal like life [Music] and we don't recess because we can all have fun and
010have a race and we can look at the Sun and everything oh Eric how does recess make you feel if you feel like a butterfly what do you want us to be happy okay we should have recess because we could get um um exercise I think we should have recess so we can get fresh air and we can deliver energy out I think we should have pizza so we can play [Music] I think we should not have recess because I think we have to learn more on half days [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] and then because it's like 1.1 on them all right so what do you think what's the agreement for the introduction to your opinion piece so Linda and Ben do you agree with what Lily's suggesting for an introduction
011yeah yeah so what did I say you could do yeah you can write it great talking about some suggestions for what to write for an introduction [Music] [Applause] [Music] you want to have recess on short days I do because we will be lucky foreign [Music] foreign [Music] out [Music] um foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I think the biggest thank you goes to the teachers for all their hard work with their students you know they did a wonderful job really getting their kids engaged and excited getting me the clips and the student work samples and all that so that I could put it together and really highlight all the great work that they did so yeah and I just wanted to also um second that and thank the teachers and thank Julie for really working collaborating together
012it was really an awesome culminating project um and a really fun culminating event and they did in fact um convince the scheduling committee to add a shortened recess on the shortened day thank you any questions any questions from the board that was really exciting have any questions I know they ran from the podium quite quickly yeah they did run away quickly what I'd like to do is arrange to have that presentation shown to the strategic planning committee absolutely when we meet next week Monday yeah we can do that I think that uh for that committee to see in action some of the things we've been talking about will be superb agreed so um well you can narrate it then too so thanks again Julie thank you Deb thank you thank you thank you guys okay
013next up is the youth commission um and uh the youth commission's joining us tonight to give us an update on the BHS career fair so uh I don't know who's going to be your spokesman but all right great mark [Music] good evening we're on all right there we go um I'm very appreciative of um Mrs mcniff and Mr Jaffe who approached me and asked me to introduce um the the people here tonight that are here to talk about the career fair that we hosted um on November 15th uh essentially the planning began last year uh when we tried uh we started planning for to have a career fair working with the youth commission um and through their due diligence and continued hard work they renewed that effort this year we were able to provide it
014for all students I really don't want to stand up here too much longer not because I'm afraid of the microphone but because they did all the work and it was great to be a part of it and see all the wonderful collaboration and communication that we had and so there are the members here so obviously Mr Jaffe is here Mrs mcniff you see Ernesto davia who was one of our Spanish teachers as well and then there's well two current students one former who can't seem to get enough of us but uh katyana kiv and Vanessa Greenstein are here as our current students and members of the commission and then Ben he just missed us so much and the board he wanted to make sure he was here as well so we thank him for always
015being involved as well so they have a little presentation and I just thank you for the opportunity to come up and introduce and we look forward to continuing collaboration with youth commission bringing great things to the school experience hello everyone we are the Brookfield youth commission as Mr Blanda said and we're really honored to be here tonight we are going to be talking about the career fair which we hosted a little while back but first I wanted to give everyone an overview of what our commission is so the Brookfield youth commission was started in order to give youth a voice in uh the government and in order to empower the youths specifically um in Brookfield to be able to stand up for themselves and make a change in their Community the Brookfield youth commission has
016hosted a few events as of recent for instance last year we had the uh uh of the the candidate forum for the people who were running for uh government positions and we obviously did the career fair as well as met with students on various other issues so without further Ado I'd like to tell you a little bit about what we did with the career fair so the goal of the career fair was to show students a array of different occupations and provide guidance in pursuing their interests we wanted to create this event because even in high school many students don't know what they want to do with their career and it's important to figure this out as early as possible like there's many opportunities such as internships and taking classes in specific interests that college
017is highly value but it's impossible to narrow down your interest if you've had no interaction with the professional word before therefore we found it absolutely crucial to host this career fair so the first step of the career fair was to have community outreach we needed to gather uh speakers and presenters to be able to teach our youth about the different careers opportunities available to them we created a Google form in order to gather a list of people who would be interested in presenting this is something that we did before I actually joined the commission this was earlier in the previous school year however we used the speakers who had signed up and showed interest then and re-contacted them once more in order to be able to get a list of speakers so uh we found
018um a bunch of people interested through this Google form and we created this graphic advertisement that we printed and posted around the school to let people know about what the career fair was going to be like and when it was going to happen students were sent a Google form and were informed by their iot teachers that they could select up to five presenters that appealed them the most and then they would be assigned to those rooms of the presenters we wanted to make the career fair more personal experience so we made sure that instead of just having uh places to walk around the school and look at like fold-up boards we actually had 30 minute presentations which students could experience three of they had they signed up for five so they had some options and
019we could easier place them but the way that we structured it uh it was much more of a personal experience for students and um based on the popularity from the response and the capacity of all the different classrooms the students as I said were placed into three presentations um of of their choice and of availability and students who did not complete the forms were placed into any remaining available sessions um now I'd like to hand over to Ben to talk about the different uh careers we had available and how the process of placing the students went hello I'm Ben Burgess basically to start off with the descriptions and everything so this is something that when the students filled out the selection form they got to view the descriptions of each speaker so they knew what
020they were getting into the other thing that I want to emphasize if Liam was here he would say it is that this is like a unique experience specifically because you're speaking you're picking specific careers as opposed to in the past anything they've had it's always been a panel of like everybody crammed into the gym and there was no individual one-on-one interaction like that um as far as the student selection form went so like we said um there were three options that they ended up receiving they had five that they could choose in the beginning obviously they didn't get all of them because there's only so much space but everybody got at least their first choice so we wanted to emphasize that there were a few students that were upset that they didn't receive any of
021them but that's because they didn't fill out the form so um part of just like going back to feedback that we got that's the big thing is whoever whether it falls on the student or the teacher is not telling them it's just a matter of filling out the form in the first place so we got those selection results since we had the five different options and then we basically just had to in the back end spend hours and hours sorting through it all copying and pasting and getting those three top choices to select them and then by doing so we could separate them out and see the totals for each classroom so we knew who was supposed to be where and then send that list to the ilt teachers to keep track of accountability so
022then we had the student feedback which Vanessa will talk more about but basically the overall consensus was that people like the career fair and I'd say if we were going to improve in the future it'd be that we're going to look into a different way of collecting the selection so it's not just through Google form maybe they could see a live view of who signed off already and that might give more of an incentive to say well if this one's filling up I better get on that and sign up so that's one Improvement that we thought we would make foreign just um going off what Ben started so our student feedback was very positive and as you can see here um mostly everyone enjoyed the career fair and wanted to see it happen um next
023year and the parts that were no were some of the seniors who would be leaving and who wouldn't be here next year to see this event happen but um overall the students got an opportunity to um not only interact with public figures within our community but to also see their leadership roles and kind of um see what opportunities they they would like to have in the future as well and like our youth commission members were saying it was very um placed for the students and specifically based off their interests and I think that's why it went over so well and all the students seemed to enjoy it was because they had a direct impact on what presentations they were going to see and we always ask for a constructive criticism and I guess the only
024thing was that we needed to make sure that in the future that students all know that they need to follow the form or else we cannot put them in their first choice but um overall the student feedback was great and even the teacher feedback was very positive all the teachers and staff saw how great of an opportunity this was for the students to get a chance to discover some new education fields and career paths they may have not known about um here's just a picture of like our pie chart that we did so we sent out a form um at the end just asking for feedback and some of the questions were like would you like to see this event happen again which you see here and then just some other um questions like is
025there any constructive criticism that you may have or um things that you want to see in the future for this event that's it here's some pictures and we're gonna play a little video of um a of the career fair yeah we started uh discussing this like the second the school year started and for about two months now we've been meeting every Wednesday on Zoom for about an hour to discuss details and plan we um use like Community networks like signing out through principal announcements to parents and um also some other ways of contact we have through Tylenol I believe we are a local managed service provider so we do it for medical dental Industries and with our presentation they're going to hear a lot about you know all the different things that you can do
026in our in our industry so yeah excited to be here kind of tell a little bit delightful about it it's a great field to be in and I love to convey that to them I'm going to Mr de Bombay's room to uh listen to the former Attorney General Robert Marconi foreign [Music] so excited to teach all the students about their career so it's really great to see that I genuinely think everything's gonna go great the presenter is also so excited to be here I know the presentations are going to be amazing [Music] thank you okay thank you so much um for your time as um behalf of the youth commission we um thank you very much for your time and um do you guys have any questions for us well so I did have one
027question which is how many different speakers Did you have I think we had um 30 35 yes 30 35. and um we had um created like our own pie chart of uh what different presenters we had like going based off the different fields and it was all spread out and even we had covered every aspect of kind of um the careers that may be available to students and I'd say the big part was that it's four students run by students all towards the students so even if it's military not necessarily College that's also another path that we had focused on and did the speakers talk about what they did or did they also talk to the students about how do you get into that field a little bit a little bit their main I think
028their main focus was um the steps that as high school students they need to take to maybe get to this career or get to where they are in their life and had provided a template that they could use we had provided a temple that they could use but a lot of speakers Did different things uh the presentations really varied from person to person and it was beneficial for both the students who knew what career they're going to or if they watched the speaker and decided this isn't for me it was perfect as well because it at least eliminated some sort of path so okay and was there any videoing of any of the speakers I saw you had the one that you kind of went in on a visit for but the uh but the
029you know though our kids could see what they said afterwards not really no I I know it would be hard with that many speakers so yeah yeah this is that's really cool yeah I love it how were the um this big recruited or selected so the main thing was through that form that was sent out through I think just like the community email and stuff like that um and then word of mouth and then eventually I mean like everyone that wanted to do it basically had the chance to um and yeah so we did a lot of recruiting and stuff but yeah ideally next year we're going to start a lot earlier and narrow down exactly who we want and how you know so we can get exact like every single category I I actually
030was a speaker of this before covid and uh I was really impressed with the questions that I was asked um so I mean I heard the template idea um and how organized it was I mean the between periods when there's like I don't know seemed like thousands of kids in the hallway it's like how does everyone know where where to go um but uh it's a really good event so I'm just I want a good job um I I presented at the event also and um I think it was really well organized the kids did a great job um communicating even prior to the event about what would be expected and sending a reminder like the day before and then you know we were welcomed very nicely there was a nice little reception in the
031morning before we started um and it went really smoothly it was fun to be part of it and the kids who came to the sessions were you know really attentive and interested and you know even if it wasn't their first choice to be in the session they were put in I found everybody to be really respectful and just happy to be there so it was really overall a very positive experience I heard there was one speaker giving out chicken sandwiches and she was quite popular she was Mr Greenstein who had the most signed up for us Caitlin did you have something yeah go ahead Caitlyn um I absolutely loved the student Affair by the way I think it was so well organized and I loved personally in my classes I got most of my top
032ones um do you guys remember how much scheduled time was allotted for passing time in between um if I could just recommend I think maybe it would be a little better to do um six or seven minutes uh I had a few freshmen sophomores coming up to me in the Halls um and they were stopping me because they were confused um because like any teacher's classroom was like up for grabs for the career fair um employees so obviously a lot of the kids didn't really know where they were going um and then I saw a few kids walking in late uh and I kind of felt bad because you know they don't know where they're going so it kind of affected uh the whole presentation so um yeah that would just be like a minor
033uh recommendation but overall it was amazing and I loved having like that one-on-one time with the employees thank you I think we'll definitely take that into consideration for next year and I think also a topic that was brought up was allotting more time for questions afterwards because I know students wanted to talk one-on-one with the presenters and definitely wouldn't want to make sure that for next year yeah in one of your pictures um you had a I saw people in cafeteria tables sitting there talking to presenters I recognized a number of the presenters those look if they were having one-on-one conversations with students in the cafeteria did that happen that was with the um yeah it's worth a commission okay okay that was a welcome event that we that you mentioned okay and if I
034could just add that I was at the um the CTE the Career Technical education advisory council meeting today and so that is a an advisory Council that is comprised of teachers and students and local um manufacturer or business people and I think almost all of them had presented at the career fair so it was really nice to see that Community Connection and allow and they were commenting on how they have already some of the members of the of the commission already have students from BHS who are reaching out to them to apply for internships and you know kind of even just explore you know the the field that they were so it's it's lasting it's not just November 15th and then it's it that's it so it's kind of a nice Community Connection cool okay
035well thank you guys this was fabulous great job appreciate it thank you you guys are welcome to stick around and listen to the rest of our board meeting if you want but if you don't but don't feel like you have to midterm start tomorrow then go study uh thank you and thank you to the adult members of the commission for all yours thank you well we're gonna let the room clear here a second before going on all right so next up on our agenda is public comment and I'll read my standard blurb on it if that's okay board of education does welcome public comment each speaker has up to three minutes uh to provide input to the board at the start of each meeting a maximum of 20 minutes is allotted for comment on any
036item that's on the agenda for this evening and at the end of the meeting time is allotted for comment on any item which is in the board's jurisdiction which would include any overtime any overflow time you know if we run out of time in the 20 minutes um the discussion of school Personnel individuals students or individual members of the board shall not be considered appropriate and if we get there I will stop the uh the the comment um so first on the sign up list we do have a sign up lesson we do require people to sign up in advance if anyone wants to come uh speak to the board we have a sign up sheet before the meeting but first up tonight is Mrs Korea and if you could start with name and address
037that would be helpful for the for the minutes hello Irene Korea 45 West Whiskey Road um for tonight's agenda the Boe should not approve the BHS program of studies for 2023-24 because it does not align with the current Boe policy and regulation for graduation and grading policy 6146 graduation adopted in 2002 only requires 23.5 credits for graduation as opposed to the program of studies requirement of 25 credits the policy does not call out graduation requirements for community service personal finance or the current CT state requirements for health and physical education the K bought it from August 2021 required that 6146 be updated to me current legislation 17 months later it has not been updated regulation 6146.1 grading adopted in 2001 has a different grade weighting system than presented in the program of studies the definition
038of grades from transfer students and class codes underneath the grade weighting chart do not match up between the regulation and the presented program the K bought it stayed at 6146.1 what's appropriate as written but the Boeing Administration has not noticed that the program of studies does not align with the high school program one of the main jobs of the Boe is to implement policy we have many outdated policies do not match state law are aligned with other documentation in the district in previous policy subcommittee meeting in 2021 an administrator stated that they were waiting on feedback from the district attorney regarding policy updates the Boe spends a minimum of a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year on legal fees how is this an effective use of tax dollars if our district continues to have outdated
039policies thank you thank you very much I appreciate that um next up is Mr Korea again start with name and address that would be appreciative Andy Korea I'm also at 45 Westwood Road um I agree with Irene um and it's there are several policies that the board doesn't follow including the one on public comment that was just read it's not consistent with the board's policy on public comment and it's also not consistent with law but we'll stick to the rules anyway so I comment with regard to the special education um the item on the agenda for the arpa Ida grant for the purpose of a special education program review this originally came up I think on December 14th um meeting it was billed originally the original proposal was billed as an administration's opportunist opportunity to
040see where they could use some help with best practices and of course highlight where they're doing well this was in the context of embarrassing and public failures of the special education Administration including injuries rapid staff turnover violation of Rights Administration like the parents public of the press and parents speaking out be careful yeah I know um you know this is essentially a lack of trust um you know the need really for this review here is primarily due to the management practices right so it's if you listen to parents who've been speaking out it's identification to students providing an appropriate Services writing effective IEPs truthful and accuracy progress reports um with you know dated credible work samples and follow-up management practices so if we're going to do a comprehensive review the purpose should be to get
041at the heart of why these practices aren't working right additionally any review should try to help figure out the ongoing problem of you know sped sped increases that are unforeseen due to all sudden outplacements right and I think if you were to do a comprehensive review and really get at why these things are happening you know you might find you're going likely to find things that are not um like they're not pretty right the things that the administration would not be proud of so to keep it credible like like we have had uh like other towns have had problems with I've asked the board to try to firewall the administration and make it more of like an investigation or an inspection so that there's no opportunity to influence the outcome because the original proposal most
042of the most of the verbiage was around you know a welcome party and a wrap party so the board has already responded that they will not do that but I'm reiterating this on for the public record that I believe that appropriate firewall an appropriate professional distance like you would have in a financial audit be in place for any review so that the public can be informed because I think if you look deep enough you might find some of the reasons why we have you know an increase in outplacements suddenly that's it thank you all right that's it for people who've signed up for this evening um a year signed up for the after I do understand that um the uh next up on our agenda is uh is our student representative reporter Caitlin glad to
043have you again with us thank you it's it's a senior also I have many updates uh we are pleased to welcome new staff members at Brookfield High Miss Savage and Mr ferraria security monitors Miss Guzman a Spanish teacher and Miss Gamache in special education this has been a busy week for students as midterms are quickly approaching exams begin tomorrow and end next Tuesday each day of midterm students will be dismissed at 11AM we prepared with master your midterms which was study sessions with tutors last week I attended the principal's advisory dress code discussion last week and we reviewed Cabe model policies and regulations and compared it to Brookfield policies and regulations Mr Blanda and our dress code committee are planning the next steps for the second year in a row BHS received the honor of
044AP Community science female diversity award we are extremely proud and excited the information for the Winter Dance was finally announced we will be hosting a starry night dance which will be 65 February 10th at the Amber Room the dance is open to all grades voice for change is talking about the next steps and planning how to use the twenty thousand dollar Grant awarded to BHS at a student-led initiative now for athletic updates we would like to thank all sports booster club for providing grants to teams to buy extra equipment outside of budget requests approximately six thousand dollars was given to teams we are excited to be working with the booster club park and rec and the help of donors to build a new concession stand in the west corner of the stadium field for better
045better accessibility to all fields booster club has set aside funds for the project park and rec has agreed to run water and electricity to the new building while they are replacing the front Turf and redoing the track and d-zones Dave kekase has volunteered to donate his time and workers to redoing uh to build a new facility Brian Reeve has agreed to donate building materials we have spoke with Dr Burrell and Ken post about securing kitchen materials from Huckleberry elementary school that will save us a significant amount of money on this project we are hoping that this building will be totally built on donations and Community Assistance so I'm gonna go run to study for my back-to-back AP midterm but thank you all [Music] before we let her go to go study all right thank you
046good luck tomorrow okay good luck back to back AP midterms man that takes me back all right so next up is uh written correspondence who's wrote regarding a special education administrator incident at Center School Marnie mcniff wrote regarding academic support and a meeting request Melissa Yeager wrote regarding an ABA para at whiskaneer and the esy program Claire Abate wrote regarding RFP language and a datco meeting and Andy Korea wrote regarding the superintendent CL education group work affiliation and The credibility of the chair's response thank you uh approval aboard minutes I'll move the board approve the minutes from the public budget hearing on January 4th the regular meeting on January 4th and an expulsion hearing on January 12th second okay it's moved and seconded any comments from the board members you all received it in advance
047any amendments okay hearing none all in favor hey superintendent's update all right thanks Mr Belden there's just a lot of great things going on so uh enthusiastic report this evening want to share I know Bob you mentioned strategic planning for next week and having Julie share the video excuse me the 23rd which is Monday afternoon we have kind of a celebratory final meeting we're going to work through the the near final draft with our facilitator and the entire committee and talk a little bit about rollout and next steps uh going forward from there so really excited about that I really look forward to thanking everybody in addition to that uh this evening prior to the board meeting the policy and Communications committee met and we talked about Debbie's the chair of that committee as well
048as on the strategic planning committee and we really talked about uh the two of us kind of doing a liaison with the strategic planning committee and communication support for that what it might look like when we have the presentation to the board and presentation to the public and so forth going forward so we're really excited about where we're at in the process with strategic planning and you could hear a lot about that tonight and certainly with the youth commission report you can see the four C's among the students being evident for sure update on the Sandy Hook promise Anonymous reporting system that we'll be implementing we're really looking forward and really appreciative of Eric Dean and Mark really their leadership working on this there's training coming up February 7th and some testing that will be
049happening technology testing going on with uh it's called the tip test in mid-February and then we're looking for a rollout by mid-march we're really excited about this Anonymous reporting system and Sandy Hook promise with that they just came off of in North Carolina there is a mandate for anonymous reporting systems in the entire state adopted Sandy Hook's promise so the part of the reason they're a little bit later in the winter getting to us as they were finishing their work in North Carolina so we're really excited to get them here now and focused back up in this area so again really proud of that and thankful to Eric Dean and Mark for their leadership there while we'll talk about it later on the old business part of the agenda with Candlewood Lake just an update
050and really have to thank the municipal building committee last night they approved the all hazards school safety plan we're going to have a vendor work and develop that entire plan for Candlewood Lake Elementary School and they work directly with Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security and they'll be building that for us and obviously connecting with us here in town not only is it a lot about crisis team planning and protocols but there's a lot that has to do with the actual physical plant itself and working with First Responders so not only First Responders but Dan Caldwell gets quite involved with these as well so we're really looking forward to that and of course the Huckleberry and Center School plans come offline next year when we close the schools a big announcement here for everybody
051I think a lot of us have gotten used to the free school lunch over the last couple of years those funds have now run out we've already sent out at least two updates to families as of February 1st students will have to pay for lunch so we want to make sure that's going on and everybody knows about that we talked about the social emotional Baseline assessment uh the acronym for that was Dessa we had a presentation from Mrs xenicola Hickman and Dr Mann a couple of months ago February 17th we are looking for some staff training and then we'll be implementing shortly thereafter um speaking of program reviews we just heard that in public comment um Mr belanda and Mr Baldwin are looking forward to working and collaborating with the ciac and they're going to
052bring in some professionals from the ciec to perform a third party Athletic program review of all our Athletics here at the high school so we're really excited about that opportunity um I can tell you firsthand when I was a high school principal this is going back more than 10 years ago we brought in the cic and they really helped us with recommendations going forward not only where we can improve our processes but also where we could look to find ways to fund our programs differently or more effectively and it really helped the program overall so we're looking forward to the feedback we get there and then finally in thanking the board um and supporting our most vulnerable students the two bcba positions that the board approved for the remainder of this year and they're in
053the budget going forward um we've worked through the interview process and the paperwork process and both of those positions should be uh beginning of February should be starting those new individuals so we're really excited about that I don't know if anybody has any questions but that's my report I did actually have one question I read in the paper that there's a push in Hartford to secure funding for uh for continuing the free lunch program are we getting any input at all from the legislation legislators or the Department of Education Ken is in touch on that so it's a great question well I can't come up and talk to that I have heard nothing and nobody has reached out to me from the state or any other agency inquiring okay about it yeah and we're quite
054in tune with those uh I received weekly updates from the state department of Ed and I haven't seen anything no would you do me a favor and reach out to our state senator Mr Harding who used to sit on this board and see what he's hearing sure that would be very helpful and just to clarify what Dr Brill said before February 1st everybody who who does not otherwise qualify for free or reduced lunch goes back to full paid lunch and the impact for our parents is if they have an account that they need to make sure is funded they got to get it done yes and a lot of directions in the communications that have gone out of Ken's office Ken will there be one more communication before February 1 as a reminder yes yes
055we had that on the plan okay any other questions all right all right thank you thank you very much Dr bro all right so next uh we're gonna shift to subcommittee reports and first up in third up are Finance so I'll let you handle both of those Rosa and the same um so I'll yeah I'll do these both together um one was our special meeting on January 3rd and the other was our regular meeting on the ninth um it's kind of a rehash of stuff that you guys are probably already familiar with and we just talked about uh the vcbas which was um a big thing that we talked about at our meeting on the third the discontinued use of the of at Advance for those services in this current year and how that will
056impact the budget for next year in both of these meetings this section of our agendas that talked about the 2324 operating budget we mainly focused on our scrubbing efforts that I'm going to detail later on tonight's agenda and identifying possible reductions creative ways of using efficiencies and that was that was the bulk of both of these meetings the only other thing that took place on the ninth we talked about our our financial report for December we did our our shortfall is creeping up just a little bit it um and that's month to month just sort of um the major change is just a placeholder for an outplay student that's been identified as potentially on the horizon so something that you know doesn't just come out of nowhere we kind of get a little bit of
057headlights on that and so we're keeping an eye on it and the rest we'll talk about um later any questions thank you any questions for Rosa I will add that after the regular meeting I happen to have a chance to go meet with the board of finance and give them an update and that relationship has been stupendous right they have uh we are actually overrunning on our budget this year because of some real live exposures most particularly fuel cost being one of the biggest and UNS and surprise uh budgeted unbudgeted amounts for benefits costs and uh and actually not having as many turnovers savings and the town has agreed to make sure we're funded on that so I took uh took what we had done at our last finance committee meeting and I laid it
058out and showed all the forecasts we've done for the last five months with them and reminded them of that and they have reiterated they got our back right um because the it's actually interest rates on the town There's a one-time benefit that you know you always think of interest rates as a problem and when you've got cash in your bank account we have a pretty health the size fund balance in Brookfield it turns into a windfall right and it's a one-time windfall or at least you can only count on it one time right and that is helping cover the this year exposure and it does then play into our next year budget and they are very cognizant of that and they reminded us that they're listening very carefully and are committed to try and be
059helpful so I just got to share with you all but that was a really good discussion we had um and uh um and so very positive energy from both the first select woman as well as the board of Finance so so they have asked us not to shut off anything we're doing just because we are having the overruns this year and in particularly but they did ask us not to let it continue to creep up right so I'm going to communicated that to both Dr Brill and Mr poster we're going to keep trying to keep it at the total where we are today um and big surprises will of course be big surprises and we'd have to deal with that and Bob and Rose if I may we actually had a conversation with the building
060Administration about that just yesterday morning as well so we let them know that excuse me I gotta turn this off [Music] the first selection of the prior first selectment I should say um okay um so next up is facilities okay so we fourth regarding HVAC drainage and doors here's some updates on the capital projects so the HVAC we ordered new valves and store installed them over break 136 valves were changed at no no extra cost the project did get pushed a little because of winter break and staff being on vacation but in another week or so it should be done at the time of final walkthrough will happen the boys locker room at the high school it was decided to wait until after the basketball season to Begin work but there was a meeting yesterday
061with tecton Paul checo and the administration to begin discussing the work and timeline seminar room seating at the middle school measuring took place and now we're just waiting for a quote the cafeteria floor at Whiskey near we have one estimate and we're waiting for another security we have purchase orders for door alarms cameras at the high school for indoors and Outdoors gate to close off the back driveway specs for security filming and works being done with the principals on concrete barriers uh update regarding the water testing so the health department submitted a notification letter to us indicating that a number of violations were received that they rescinded because there were errors based on their behalf the health department is um saying that was their error so um also there was elevated chloride levels at with
062skinnier so instead of replacing the system we're seeking an engineering design quote for a potential project to partner with Aquarian and extend the water line to whiskaneer building condition study so they update we're checking references of two firms who submitted competitive proposals and we're looking to bring them in to do presentations we didn't have any new business and then our miscellaneous discussion was the very unfortunate situation that happened on Christmas Day the sprinkler pipe burst at the high school in the main office 15 000 gallons of water poured out of the pipe before the fire department was able to shut off the supply on the main office nurses Clinic cross hallway and Teachers Lounge were all affected but luckily it stopped short of the boiler room we lost office furniture electronics and some possible issues
063with the phone lines Service Pro came in and the insurance adjuster has been on site a special thank you to the fire department who was there within 10 minutes Dan cuola and Mark belanda for coming on Christmas and the custodial technology and High School staff for coming in during winter break to ensure that school is ready to be open on January 3rd so extra special thank you too workers thank you and that's it any questions for uh Joy No but I was just going to comment that I saw the main office yesterday I can't believe how put back together everything is it looks great last time we thought well done okay moving on uh Kate Mike uh so we met January 11th in a consistently different location again because it's always fun keep on our
064toes uh doctor oh sorry Mark Blanda gave a presentation on the program of studies for uh 2023 2024 I'll let him cover all the little specifics but we did as a as a committee we voted 3-0 to bring the program studies for a presentation for final board approval Dr May gave a update on the k-3 reading assessment state is going to require that we update the k-3 reading program and as you know there's there's a we'll discuss this before there's two portions of that the program itself and then the assessment which is also being looked at and uh rather than submitting a waiver we're doing a post one year postpone it to July 2024 and um that's all okay any questions for Mike all right one question I have is when when are we going
065to actually submit the the postponement request is that imminent or is that uh it's done it's done okay is it approved as far as I know okay there was no option for it to not be approved according to the webinar that I attended okay um and so unless the State updates that somehow we are in good shape we have confirmation Dr Burrell got that the confirmation email that the survey response went through okay and that's the confirmation all right perfect thank you for the program studies we're just voting on The deletions or revisions or additions right just those couple items correct yep well Mr Belinda is gonna present in just a little bit okay we'll get to that one and we'll need to talk about how it connects to our policies and save guidelines so
066I think while we're at it um all right so that's it on committee reports next up is our consent agenda I'll move at the board of items on the consent agent consent agenda which are new hires resignations and the December financials second I moved in second and any questions or comments on the uh on the items on the consent agenda okay hearing none all in favor okay oh it's been approved unanimously um so next up we're moving over to new business and the first item is the ARP Ida Grant idea Grant update and possible motion so it's just at this point in action so Dr Burrell why don't I turn it over you to uh brief us on uh on this uh ARP Ida item very happy to so um uh as I've been updating
067and I think I updated the board on January 4th that we're looking uh into several different firms that do conduct these program reviews and we're putting together a committee to uh to actually assess each one and review before selecting I'm a little ahead of myself there though um what's really exciting about this opportunity is Mr post and I were looking through ways in Dr Mann ways we could fund a comprehensive review um we would like to have always liked to do a comprehensive review but as you just indicated in the finance report we're over budget quite a bit so in proposing from the operating budget in December I propose a more targeted review as we reviewed some opportunities and and um things with the IEP compliance teacher that we talked about that we were going
068to use the ARP idea funds for um it occurred to us that given the timing in the year and the timing of the ARP idea budget and it was as a finite window of ending on June 30th it would probably be a better use of the I the ARP idea funds I hate to be so confusing for everybody to use that for a comprehensive review and there is enough in that Grant we haven't tapped into it yet where upwards of a hundred thousand dollars in that grant that we could apply Mr post actually contacted the state to confirm that we could use it for a comprehensive program review and that was confirmed and so we've chosen to utilize the administration wants to utilize the funds for that and coming to the board to let you
069know that that's what we'd like to do and we'd like to get your blessing on that this evening in addition to that we haven't given up on the concept of the IEP compliance teacher there is some money left in idea funds the regular Grant as well as probably a little bit of balance left in the current year for the ARP idea funds and then um kind of work on that through next year with the regular ieda funds so but right now the priority is to have the comprehensive review and to complete that before Year's End so we want to get moving on that um importantly in this uh not only listening to parents um and kind of going in a direction we would ultimately like to go um we talked about the audit for the
070uh or program review for the athletic program many of you will recall um and Bob you alluded to the great relationship we had with the board of finance that relationship was born out of a lot of hard work over the last seven to eight years but also we had a bloom Shapiro third party objective audit way back on our whole regulatory process and finances and that really helped us with a plan going forward so ultimately we'd like to get results from this that give us actions and plans to help us continue to improve programs for kids which is ultimately what this is all about in addition to that had a great conversation with Marty mcniff one of our septo leaders and she was all for this and thought this was a great idea so and
071I asked Marnie if I could use her name tonight to share that we actually talked last week you know not only as a parent but as a septal leader with Anna and myself and so so we're really excited about this in terms of the team to review the four different firms we're thinking of if tonight maybe if a board member might be willing to serve on that as well as we have a couple of our administrators that will serve on it and one of our service providers at least a classroom teacher a paraprofessional a special education teacher really trying to have a diverse group of people take a look at those get the pros and cons of each and make a selection and to be very Frank Amy and I are actually going to step
072out of that process and uh and and let the committee take a look at that and give a real nice objective review so we're really excited about it um the proposals are coming from PMG which stands for public Management Group CES Cooperative Educational Services krek out of Hartford which stands for Capital Regional educational Council and DMG which is District Management Group so those are four kind of known firms that do this kind of work so we're getting proposals and also actual reports that they have done reviews on other school districts and taking a look at that and we'll make our selection hopefully in the next week or two we plan to meet next week the things we have to get all the proposals in so um I've talked quite a bit we're really excited about
073the opportunity and we really like the board the board's support and moving forward and using the funds for for this purpose any questions from the board before I start asking questions make sure so I guess my first question is um uh first of all I'm supportive now that we we have can find money to do this that would go to uh full uh full review where we can because I was advocating the last time uh for a get started review and uh I've gotten some VM and pushback from certain parents and I understand why um and so I think this my input to the board is this would be helpful to us in fact we even kind of talked about that at the end of last year when we talked about both Athletics and special
074education this is an opportunity for our district um on the selection criteria for the uh for whichever firm is going to do this I would ask two things and then we can ask the board that question but uh for you I want to make sure that uh engagement with parents is a very highly included right that we have an opportunity to get a broad spectrum of Parental input on the fullness of our program right um and uh because we have parents who are happy with what goes on we have parents who are unhappy here it goes on as with any special education program secondly um God I'm going to lose my train of thought um secondly I want to make sure the board gets input on Staffing levels right um that that is it's not
075just a procede drawn and it's Staffing levels it's also care and feeding of students and parents and families right that was our number one concern when we spoke you know six eight months ago was about tone with families right so that would be um I want to make sure we have those as a high and we we have that and that the committee when they get going actually has a disciplined set of criteria they're evaluating against it's not just a who made up the best impression yesterday right that they actually have a checklist that they have here's the objectives lastly I would liken that to make sure that whatever their deliverable is it's a written public document uh like we did on Bloom Shapiro that says here's five recommendations or 50 recommendations whatever the number
076is but they have actionable items that we can then use to tick off because as a board that will probably be the best way for us to monitor progress against yeah Bob one of the opportunities with that just so everybody knows is that you you you work out with the firm to actually come in and give the report so it doesn't have to be filtered through you know an administrator or a board member or whatever the case may be or a chair of a committee whoever they might be actually bring in the people who've done done the work and they you know who do this around the state or you know the area and uh and then just kind of soft things I'm hoping we will be getting references from other districts that they have
077supported whether they're in in Connecticut or in another state but just you know what did they get actionable stuff out of it and then secondly we ought to make sure to spend one parent who has been on this point that they disclose to us any relationships they have with our senior leadership of any ilk right we want this to be above board and and open right and that ought to be part of what the committee reviews so so my question to the board my question to the board is would one of you like to be on this this committee that's going to make the selection over the next couple weeks you were on the uh you've been on a special ed some of these special ed committees in the past year right I would love
078to have you do this is everyone okay with that all right you're it yeah thank you that was easy thank you very much yeah okay um that's all I had anybody else so you said there's no parent involvement in terms of on the committee that wasn't there wasn't the thought okay because when we are selecting firms for all other things we haven't done that in the past okay I would think someone like Marnie you know the have SEPTA appropriate fit that would be my recommendation I think it would be a good idea to include septo directly right and uh in a positive and constructive one here um okay yep so um I would like to put a motion on the table that the board the board's action here guys is just to approve the use
079of the idea ARP idea grant for this purpose so um and we don't know the dollar amount yet What's the total available total available in the grant is approximately 130 000 Ken yeah and what's the range that you're expecting this um the range so far is is 40 to 85 I think is kind of the initial conversations again when you start sitting down and customizing things for the district and asking for more of this or less of that that could obviously increase costs and labor my instinct and I'm just going to ask the board members is we ought to put a dollar cap when we put a motion and up two amount but it ought to be room enough that the committee can operate and I would suggest a hundred thousand dollars as and with
080with the ability to come back to us okay does that seem rational okay um and I can make a motion that the board approve utilization of the ARP idea Grant to conduct a con comprehensive Pre-K to 12 special education program review as recommended by superintendent John Dr John Burrell up to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars if it's to exceed that they should come back to the board any discussion all in favor hi okay it's unanimous thank you so I'm glad we're moving on with us absolutely thank you all right next is setting the class of 2023 graduation date I'll move that the board set the graduation date for the Brookfield High School class of 2023 as recommended by VHS principal Mark belanda second in uh Mr belanda would you like to come tell
081us what that date is everybody's waiting for Mark on this one sorry about that happy to share that so uh the date I'm proposing is uh Saturday June 17th 2023 uh and the reason just to as with so many different state statutes have continued to change and evolve I'll just read it to you so you know what it is it's uh section 10-16l establishment of graduation date notwithstanding any provision of the general statutes a local or Regional Board of Education May establish for any school year a firm graduation date for students in grade 12 which is no earlier than the 180th day noted on the school calendar originally adopted by the board for that school year so June 17th puts us well past that it's perfectly fine not putting an offer discussion but just so
082you know the board did approve their calendar for 23.24 it's 182 days I'm not suggesting we suggested 2024 graduate situation date but we can certainly do it a lot earlier next year and I think parents would be happy to know like the start of the school year this is when graduation is going to be we have that Authority Under State Statute but that's for next year so right now I'm recommending Saturday June 17th 2023. for the high school graduation date so let me just suggest you not you bring this to us in September I will next year and absolutely happy to do that it's relatively routine because you we've been setting the date based on the fact that this the state allows us to do it based on a formulaic the model as opposed to
083have an account all of the snow days it used to be like after April 1st you could set the date then they said after the 185th calendar day and now they're to 180. so because people we were working calendars quite interesting so yeah so let's do it earlier next year that's uh once you know we gotta I I would urge us not to do it now because we got to get to the point where we know the school's opening uh you know on schedule and there's no no changes and I'm as you can imagine I'm a little cautious until we get there so um okay any discussion or questions from Mr belanda I would like to propose an amendment to the motion to include the date of July 17th in the text of the uh
084June 17th in the in the text of the motion anyhow can I get a second for that oh I'll second the amendment okay any discussion on the amendment okay all in favor of amending the motion hi okay and all in favor of approving the motion as amended hi okay good you're all set made a lot of people happy by not saying July yeah that was a bit of a slip of a time but I apologize for that all right stay there you're next too so next on our agenda is the proposed revisions to the program of studies I'll move that the board approved the proposed revisions to the program of studies as recommended by the cape committee assistant superintendent Dr Anna Mann and BHS principal Mark belanda second moved and seconded um to Blanda why
085don't I turn it to you and let you give us a briefing yeah happy to happy to share as part of our our annual process we reviewed the program of studies that we put forth for the upcoming school year so this is the 2324 program of studies uh that I proposed to Cape last week and there's a summary of some uh some basic changes that are there you'll see there's really not a ton of substantive changes as I brought to you in the past um I'm happy to go through some of the highlights the basic ones um there's a lot of revisions in there you'll see things starting at the top of this sheet so there's a revision uh the collagen career on page 16. those were older requirements that we put in place prior
086to making the change to align to state law and mandate about 25 credits for graduation so that page just reflects what our actual grid says that's that was buried within deeper than a narrative in College and Career and we somehow missed that last year and we made the changes so we reflected that on page 16. uh and then I think probably the biggest one uh that I want to share with you is the revision of academic support which is on page 18. um so academic support in previous years was listed as a one credit course uh so students were in there uh and they received a full credit for it uh as we move forward in looking at IEPs and how they're written in compliance and making sure uh that we stay aligned with where
087we are looking at the service Pages not every student requires a full 80 minutes every other day of academic support so you can imagine a student a student might have let's say 40 minutes of academic support every other day and it reflects that on their IEP what we were doing was they were staying in academic support and for the entire 80 minute block so work with Misty Nicola Hickman over last spring and summer to kind of get that in alignment and make it really reflective of the credit reflects the amount of time the student is in that course so you'll see in the program of studies it's changed now to an opportunity for 0.25 which is a quarter credit half three quarters or full credit based on the amount of time you're actually in that
088academic support class so that more accurately reflects what the hours page and IEP says for a particular student we now are mimicking that in terms of the credit that they're awarded that does create additional uh concerns would be the wrong term but additional um additional situations to address because now if we have a student in a let's say who's in academic support for 20 minutes or 40 minutes we don't offer a class on the back half of that 40 minutes right so that student who's there then has to leave at the end of that academic support time so that creates a bit of a how am I where am I going to get this other half credit right and what am I going to do um our students are certainly on track across the board
089if you look at the number of credits that kids can take in any given year we have eight periods worth of courses over a four year period eight times eight times excuse me four times eight will give you plenty of credits you can get your 32 very easily right so it's not going to affect kids right now with this change for this coming year for 23 24 they will earn their appropriate amount of credit but what we're going to do is look at different opportunities and in conversation with the subcommittee and Mike and Debbie and Rosa we have the conversation along with Dr Mann about what other shorter whether they be executive functioning courses or you know something in terms terms of enrichment that students can take and that we already have in the program
090of studies ability to get Grant credit for online courses taken so if we do this appropriately and find some different alternatives for online programs with support students could then backfill some of that credit in with things that are relative uh you know to what they're learning and what they need to know to move forward so that's an idea that we have moving forward for the coming years so we're going to investigate those towards the end of this year you know and move on from there so that's the one big thing about academic support I wanted to put out there I figure if you have questions you can certainly ask towards the end um critical literacy one and two is not just available to students that receive special services it's also available to regular education students
091there was some confusion so we actually moved it to what was considered the English Department took it out of special services to eliminate some confusion and then we have a bunch of updated terminology so basically multilingual Learners it used to say El now we're multilingual Learners a couple other revisions in terms of names I'll skip AP Capstone for a second but like technology bobot didn't mean anything to anybody in fact I'm not entirely sure what bobot stood for and I shared that honestly with the committee I think coding for Robotics and talking to the team actually makes sense to a student and a parent who's reading that would say we know what Boe means you know they thought Board of Education so it's just a more accurate representation of what that course is and students
092have a better chance of actually selecting that course rather than Blowing by when they look at the program of studies um there's you see English we added the critical literacy from above musical theater hasn't run in more than eight years just a kind of a cleanup of that program physical education when we changed uh requirements a couple years ago to align with the state of having one credit of physical education we didn't we have not offered these um courses physical education for the future and Lifetime and leisure activities we're taking them out of the program of studies same thing uh because we can't offer them and so if a kid signs up for that we don't want to be misleading and what we're actually putting in there it we have historical uh information and curriculum
093that goes along with that so that course doesn't ever really actually go away we have that archive so if we ever decide to expand or the ability to expand or maybe we want to switch something up we could always go back bring that up to Cape and go from there there was a great alignment a realignment and social studies this year um because we found that in talking to students and working with other our curriculum Specialists that it made more sense uh to switch the um the alignment of human geography and for ninth grade and World modern I mean um Global themes for sophomores so this year in order to make that alignment initially everybody took human geography and so now we're switching it so what you see is the 20 there's requirements of the
094class of 2025 10th grade they're already moving past there's no need to include that because they've moved past that grade they're not going to be Juniors next year the class of 2025 which is hard to believe um and then uh you know of course because we have to change names of everything it's no longer AP World History we have to call it world history colon modern advanced placement that's college board at its finest making a change that really didn't need to be made we also added as an option for 10th grade students to really align with the um with the global themes program that sophomores have advantaged the opportunity to take so that's there replaced a name that's just a name change the Apple assessment with stamp the Apple assessment is what we used to
095use in World Language we just use a different assessment now so we want to be transparent about the assessment we're using and then going back to the first page about AP Capstone we wanted to offer it we after having conversations with Mrs maltesta Mrs Rocca and some of the value of AP seminar and those skills with ap seminar and research opening it up to students as an elective that they could take in 10th Grade and then also complete their next section 11th grade and AP research if they wanted to so there's it's just opening up more opportunities and electives for kids if there was a way that I could and not saying I haven't figured it out yet but the skills that kids learned in AP seminar you know and some of the conversations we
096had today at the CTE meeting after school today about some of those soft skills about research and it's fantastic I know some people were able to come and see some of the AP research questions that second course it is probably one of the most applicable for those kids that are going on to the next level to college first to help them Master some of those skills that they need to be successful but we want to expand that a little bit and see if anybody's interested in 10th Grade we did have some kids interested last year and we said no but this year we're gonna we're gonna open we'd like to open it up to them so that's a general overview certainly of the changes that are here um and while it's certainly not my purview
097I'm absolutely open to any questions uh about um board policy and things like that how this could be affected with the program of studies if it was not to be approved today and all those things I will share that if asked happy to share that so any questions on the proposed program of studies no question so that's it Mike here your committee's reviewed it and are fully in support of this we had a really a good conversation on what possible online classes could fill you kind of kept me up at night with that AI stuff with the writing papers I'm not gonna lie to that that was that pretty now what else what else can I do uh so yeah no it was a we spent a lot of time on on the first part
098of the academic support uh the rest you know like I said just it's kind of like clean up stuff and name changes and I apologize I need to keep you up with chat GPT Mike um oh that's what it's called chat GPT but you know I'm going to a seminar next week that's put on by Ed advance that talks about how to utilize it um you know we've had discussions at uh District leadership meetings about um what to do with it um because it's there it's not going away technology continues to evolve in fact we went to demo it uh yesterday and there's so many people on it that we had to wait to get a response wow wouldn't it be good for a board member to attend that training with you if there I
099I can certainly ask if Mike would like to you know I'll it's it's online Mike I can certainly get you registered so if you're interested this could go over a lot of people so we discussed an AI that can essentially students can plug information and it would write a whole paper on like Macbeth and it wouldn't be plagiarism because it would be totally unique I thought that was that's incredible but yeah yeah well I'm at plagiarism by definition right the electronics yeah and just as soon as one technology comes out uh this is Princeton right I think it was Prince star Colombia um a college student has come out with an app or some solution to plug in to see if the probability was that it came through an AI bot to determine so it's
100just going to keep going it's just well technology moves right so I think that that the smarter we are on this technology the better we are in knowing how to work around and with it absolutely um so I'm thinking it's a good thing to get trained up here yeah it's you know how to use it you know just like we talked about the evolution of you know um you know what calculators to cell phones to all the communication devices to radios and you know I had a zoom at one point a Microsoft zoom and remember those that was the yeah Mike and I had one but those are so Obsolete and gone and everything's on your phone and web-based now so things continue to change so quickly and we're working to to make sure we
101keep up with it and make sure the students are you know learn how to use it appropriately because they're going to use it yeah they will all right so let me ask the the elephant in the room question so our public speaker this evening said that the program of studies is not in alignment with our own policy nor in alignment with state uh requirements is that a true statement that is a true statement I did I we went back to board policy after this the speaker came up and shared that and took a look uh the credit alignments are not the same some of the GPA weightings are not the same as well and what's in the policy and regulations so there's build policy and regulation in uh in the board um so that is
102correct from that area um my concern and again I'd leave this up to the board to make that decision obviously it's not my purview but um I understand the process it takes to approve a policy and in terms of first reads and seconds just hold on that thought for a moment I'm not sure we're proposing that to you yet but uh but so and the state law side the state guidance are we not in alignment with the state Guidance the board policy is not in alignment with statement how about your program of studies program studies is an alignment so the issue is our policy correct and it was last updated in 2001 or two one so let's have been on our radar screen Debbie it's from you have to have so but I jotted it
103down we will definitely look into it and what's the policy number it was six one four six it's just without a DOT six one four six I think it was dot point one one I think it was point one that was point one there there are two there's there's a graduation policy and there's also a grading policy that that is in the board they're two different policies and now we're not in compliance with that one the grading one has a essentially has a weighting chart in terms of what an a is worth the B is you know in different levels whether it be academic honors or advanced placement those weightings are not are not matched for basically academic and honors most of them are and this is just a real quick glance uh looking at
104it you know trying to pay attention to all the stuff going on but clearly the AP column from what I can see the weighting that we have in our program of studies which is not connected to to state guidelines or mandates that's something we do that's something we do um so the policy has a lower weight the actual program studies has a higher way for AP courses and those are the things we've reviewed with you over time yes we went through a whole big section section on that we did yeah the AP waiting uh in the program of studies has been there that particular waiting has been there prior to my arrival here okay and if I could just share a little bit on the the iterations of State expectations for graduation requirement the state
105in um I believe 2012 change had a rollout plan for the class of 2018 which included a whole bunch of changes to expectations for graduation requirement um those subsequently got pushed off um I think to 2020 and then to 2023 and where they added in World language for two years as a requirement math was going to be for four years then what while they were rolling it in from 2014 through 2017 they changed those requirements and adjusted them for the class of 2023 and beyond that also was where the Capstone project came in and then they adjusted those those changes um during you know as people are actually supposed to be graduating with these expectations um to reflect the now current for 2023 and Beyond where they categorize not only did they roll back some
106of those like the World Language requirement and the four-year math requirement but they changed the Capstone project to a mastery-based diploma assessment requirement which is up to the school districts as to how they determine what the master-based diploma assessment one credit is as well as categorizing credits into career areas or areas of study so instead you know Humanities and um and stem as well as career and life skills and then that's where the PE and health piece came in where they you know parceled out the PE Health requirement into one credit PE and one credit health and so that is for this graduating year and Beyond so that's why one of the reasons that there have been a lot of changes to programs of studies and policies over the course of these past what are
107we in 23 so about eight years ten years because there have been major changes as everybody's gone um through what the state has been setting and then rolling back and the board also has the ability within those categories so example nine credits in Humanities the board and the working with the high school can set those expectations in terms of how many credits of English do we feel they need to take how many credits of science how many credits of math as long as it still matches up from nine in that category and different schools are doing it different ways we actually roll back our math requirement right I mean we used to be four years of math and four years of Science and four is in English and four is the social studies we've changed
108that but we've still kept some things like four years of English we decided that's that was an important piece for US based on the standards that we teach so there is the state expectation for following for their guidance and guidelines into the minimum categories you have to have and then we also have board and local control over setting some of those requirements as well foreign so just from a policy structural point of view we're not in compliance with our own policy but we are in compliance with the state guidelines yes and in terms of grading there's no State guidelines we are not in compliance with our own policy correct and but we are following the standards we've talked about over time yep in particular those grading teams have been here I've this is my eighth
109year they've been here that chart about AP waiting that includes AP waiting has been in place more than eight years so Deb I'm thinking we just have to get these up on I think two things first we the policy committee ought to make sure these get updated and it's high on the priority list right to make sure they're up to date and I would suggest on this given how much the state's been moving things around that we put something in there that says to the extent the state changes it right and this policy has not been updated yet we'll follow the state right so something that gives you the out when the state moves because they've been moving a lot if I remember um and I think as a board we need to waive these
110policies before we approve the approve this program of studies right we'll have to go through a small waiver process for this year until such a Time the policy is updated so I'm going to put a motion on the table to waive that before we vote on the motion that's on the table does that make sense to everybody are you okay with that any other questions for Mark okay hearing none I'm going to put a motion on the table thank you Mark um that the board that recognizing that the board's policies are out of date uh the board waives policy number 6146 uh graduation requirements and six one four six point one grading um uh for the purpose of updating the uh program of studies and directs the policy committee to you know uh move on
111getting those updated as soon as possible second is that okay for everybody has a motion okay it's moved in second and any questions on that motion all in favor unanimous um and all any further questions on the program of studies okay all in favor of approving the program of studies all right you're good to go mark okay that was complicated more complicated than I thought it would be and uh we'll have to thank Mrs Korea for pointing that out to us policies do get out of date every now and then and this is an important one that we get back up today all right so next up is old business um and the first topic under old business is an action to continue the discussion on the superintendent's proposed budget so um Dr Burrell I
112know we've been doing a lot of work over the last number of meetings and in the finance committee and I know your staff has been extraordinarily hard working on this uh if I'd turn it to you and Mr post to give an update on where we are sure so I think if we start with Mr post he's got a couple of uh charts he'd like to show and a lot of this work has been worked through not only with uh with Ken's hard work here and John Reynolds and obviously the team but the finance committee and I can't thank the finance committee enough um and Bob I appreciate the acknowledgment of the uh the team the uh leadership team and all the work they've done so Ken has those charts he's going to share which
113are broad picture about the budget itself and then there was one more comeback from the Board of Ed regarding the dean of students position at whiskaneer with the transition from a 5 8 school to a six seven eight school and the AP moving from one AP position moving from Winston air to um uh Candlewood Lake but we will get that after Mr post speaks thank you we have been doing an awful lot of work in our office and certainly in the finance committee I've lost track of how many meetings we've had the committee has been populating and some other board members populating our question document and we've been responding I still have some responses that I crowed but mostly it is populated approaching 30 pages worth now which is quite a lot of information and
114some of the some of the questions are are answered with links so it would be even longer if we embedded everything in there so Dr Brill proposed a budget in December of the 51 million 480 452 which was a 5.78 percent increase over the 2223 budget and in that time since then we've been reviewing a lot of accounts uh we got some great news uh just the this morning actually with the health benefits I attended a um virtually a meeting with the partnership plan where they lowered their health benefit increase estimate from a range of 8 to 12 percent to eight to ten percent and our position all along and accompanying with the town has been to use the high end of the range so our first pass at health benefits was 12 percent increase
115so now we adjusted that for 10 and made some other adjustments to the to the model so that allows us to bring the budget down by a little over nine uh 196 thousand dollars which was great news and I was uh very pleasantly surprised that they actually gave us solid information like that at cells that it could be this early in the process which they had been hesitant to do and pass and I know the the three board chairs sent a letter to the plan or to the state uh insisting that we get better information more quickly and hopefully that helped along with the rest of us who were complaining uh next uh we're working with several local towns with that advance to uh and form a cooperative for special ed transportation and we've gotten
116a quote from an advance that will allow us to reduce our budget by almost 226 thousand dollars uh heating oil and transportation fuel we started the budget process with a higher assumption on pricing and we've been following the markets we have not locked in yet but we did get a uh a quote a week or so ago that's trending in the right direction so we're going to and the town is doing the same thing as us going with the these rates and the plan is to lock in in February or March and even though we will have submitted our budget by then then the town will adjust up or down depending on the information we get um salaries we've been a lot going through a lot of the salary accounts and we've identified a little
117over twenty four thousand dollars that we can take out uh Eric reported on his fiber win where he could uh since we're going down from five sites to four sites he can reduce almost fourteen thousand dollars uh which uh has a corresponding reduction in e-rate Revenue which is 50 percent again in a regular scrubbing of the budget we've found that we could reduce special education legal fees by five thousand dollars facilities Professional Services by two thousand dollars I got the actual tuition rates from the uh shapog school so I can reduce that by 947 dollars and then we went back to the principles and and asked them to hold certain Supply furniture and Equipment accounts flat from year to year so that allows us to reduce the supplies by thirty eight thousand eight thirty one
118Furniture four thousand uh instructional equipment twenty five thousand and Do's and fees eleven thousand dollars so all of that adds up to six hundred and seventy seven thousand eight hundred ninety dollars in reductions or 1.39 percent so Dr Burrell's revised proposal is now 50 million eight hundred and two thousand five hundred sixty two dollars or 439 or 4.39 increase foreign so again we start with the 2223 approved budget uh we wanted to highlight the status quo budget drivers you can see the status quo budget is increasing by itself is one million nine hundred thirty one thousand four hundred twenty nine dollars and that's really inflationary um health insurance accounts for 753 000 of that increase uh that's the ten percent uh rate increase assumption on health insurance and six percent on Dental uh salaries is
119a little less than 732 thousand dollars which is an average 2.4 percent increase which takes into account uh puts and takes among the populations uh general transportation we're under contract for four percent increase plus we're going to be adding two buses to the fleet for the the um uh the go into a two-tier system with the new start times heating oil is a 76 rate increase with no assumption in usage and all of the other accounts add up to a little less than 33 000 some are going down some are going up but nothing significant and then as we've identified before we have savings from moving into Candlewood Lake Elementary School administrator salaries and benefits a little over 157 thousand dollars uh we are adding the dean of students role to the middle school and
120removing the Spanish FTE that has made unnecessary due to our reconfiguration so there's no net cost to that we will be adding cost for natural gas we'll be reducing our oil heat because we don't have to heat Center school anymore and reducing our electricity because we don't have to pay for electricity at Center School and as you may or may not know Huckleberry is all electric heat so that saves quite a bit so that's 302 540 reduction uh security the Town arpa Money covered all of it in 2223 we're adding five security monitors who are all on board at this moment including benefits and uniforms for 228 649 dollars and then the Investments we have the continuing of the ARP s or phase-in which is salary for a social worker salary for a science instructional
121coach and a partial salary of the technology integrator for a total of 214 379 and then the other investment we made is the reallocation from contracted services for bcbas to adding our own BCBS with the net cost of 64 497 and again that comes down to 50 million eight hundred and two thousand five hundred sixty two dollars 2.1 million dollar increase over the current Year's budget so do I read that that the total increase is 2.1 million and 1.9 is inflationary yes that's correct I just wanted to make sure I read that clearly yes okay I'd be happy to take any questions do you want to make any comments from their our reviews yeah um we had talked at our um our most recent special Finance meeting uh last night so I wrote down some
122notes um because I thought it was important to detail the work of the finance subcommittee we had what you see in your section 3 of your binder we divided up those budget summary sheets between Bob joy and myself so each had about 25 line items to inspect and not only those summary sheets but we also had access to detailed some detailed budget sheets from each department that were submitted on the school level so we could see everything down to the number of pencils and baseballs and chairs and so we were able to question how those items were budgeted the rationale behind them at a really granular level um and as a committee um you know we were very keenly aware that bringing forward a budget even at this size which is great from where we
123started um but it was going to be really tough for many of our taxpayers um to support so we were um very much focused on being as prudent and economical as possible with our suggestions to um the administration and through this process as you can see we were able to make several adjustments that have helped the budget overall the document that Ken mentioned we documented every question that was asked in that Google doc and as a committee we've been discussing this budget since November a little bit before it was actually presented to this board we've met every single Monday um since then um including up to um last night and um so I have to give a lot of credit to Ken for answering so many questions um and also the building principles for doing
124the same because they contributed to the responses to that Google doc which you um will soon see once it's formatted nicely all 30 plus pages of it and that will also be a public document um and I think year after year of doing it this way has really made it um easy to demonstrate that the budget is really constructed from the bottom up in a very responsible way and it makes it easy for the board of Selectmen and the board of Finance to really see the work that we've put into it and see that it's something that we can stand behind um so last night as a committee we did vote unanimously um to support this budget as presented with the adjustments that you just saw um Dr Bill mentioned there's a few comebacks that
125will continue to talk about um but as a committee we feel that despite the huge challenges that we're facing with inflation which is what we're seeing tonight health insurance which is really I mean for all intents and purposes the the reason we're seeing the increase that we are um this budget is actually very frugal so we support it fully as a committee can I take a moment to also give credit to Joan Reynolds our accounting supervisor who did a lot of the work putting pulling the budget together and a lot of the uh work researching uh the responses of the questions yeah thank you I'll I'll just make one or two comments I did all the salary and uh and uh and benefit stuff I was that that health insurance that says 753 on our
126chart but that's after our share uh you know the employee Shares are taken out and the fact that we've been negotiating contracts to increase those shares over time the actual impact of the health insurance is a million dollars right I mean it was stunning to me what is going on with health insurance for a little District like ours so um it's uh I can't imagine what it's like in some of these bigger you know uh City type of budgets and what that sort of stuff is doing to them so and uh and I the other the comment I'd like to make is there's other than the conversion of two contracted people one and a half contract people the two full-time people and the bcbas there's no increase in headcount in here right there's all there's
127there's just a matter of it was things were fun and there's no decrease in headcount right there's uh it's just oh then it's all about changing it from uh grant funding to uh to budgetary funding right as the grant money runs out but I actually went and inspecting all of the categories whether it's teachers Paras nurses there's it it actually proves out there's no change in head count um and uh because they're all people we hired this year or before it's just a matter of you know who funded it so John I've got to say that when when the Ford of Finance spoke to us when we first did the arpesser stuff they said you're making all your investment decisions now for the next three to four years and you stood by that so yeah
128someone will say thank you for that so that's a hard thing to do thanks for that acknowledgment Bob and the other thing I do have to to thank can on the work with Energy savings and obviously all the work we've done with the administrative team um we did talk way back with Candlewood Lake in the consolidation that we would uh look to achieve some savings and even with inflation and everything else we still have done that as well and that's really important to acknowledge okay so look um any questions from the board I do we do have one comeback item that we need to talk about tonight before we approve the budget but any questions on this presentation from Ken that's actually pretty good news Ken so thank you yeah I have a question or
129comment um I love all the savings that we were able to find and I appreciate all the work that went into that um looking at the list of identified adjustments you know it all seems like most of them are things where we were able to negotiate a better rate or we were able to look at usage and decide that figure out that we weren't going to be using as much fuel or or um oil but the two numbers that really stood out to me and kind of sting a little bit are the instructional supplies held flat and instructional equipment held flat and I feel like those are the two things that directly impact our teachers and our students and I just wonder I mean I just did quick math and if we added those back
130in it doesn't make a huge what I don't think is a huge increase in the overall number or could we compromise and instead of holding those numbers completely flat could we fund part of their requests so I think amongst us Rosa you had those line items you went through with them yeah that was a question that I asked um not that long um you know I had specifically asked it would that create any kind of hardship and the building principles were asked specifically that question and they said no right so um we felt comfortable you know supporting those Productions just to put in context even if after taking that taking it flat there's still a total of 361 thousand dollars or sorry 367 thousand dollars in the budget for instructional supplies and also um it's
131important to note that I think that all falls under um um like a what's the line item that all of these fall under because what's driving up some of the increase there um is specifically uh like office supplies so like paper and stuff like that was really affected by inflation so that that specific account got an increase whereas these could be held a little held flat and comfortably so they were when they say instructional supplies and equipment it's not necessarily there are different line items within that it's not necessarily like um manipulatives and things the kids are using in science or math or or yeah I mean we would have to ask the principals to dig in line for line and they're gonna have to make some choices as to what's the priority to purchase
132out of the level funding line that's the discussion we had I just feel like you know I feel like our staff is careful to not ask for a lot of unnecessary things so if they're you know to to not spend that money I don't feel like it's a it's I don't feel like it's such a huge number that we shouldn't look at ways to to fund it but if you guys feel comfortable I didn't see the items that were on those lists so you know if you've really thoroughly looked at it and you support it then I guess it's okay but but those two items just really stood out to me yeah I mean those those particular buckets are very long long lists um but but yeah um overall you know the the principles were
133asked and so I felt comfortable once you know as long as that was you know a box that we checked that we asked them and so that I was comfortable with it okay okay thank you um any other questions or comments right so before we go about we ought to do the comeback because there's been a number of board uh members who've asked privately and also at our last meeting about this Dean of student physician that's in the budget so I think you had to come back order I did so so I'm gonna invite Dean up and I'll give a little context as Dean is walking up he has a couple of slides he wants to share for the the rationale behind why a dean of students which I alluded to back in December um
134but just for some context as a reminder with the consolidation and and the right sizing of uh of Western ear to uh to a three grade model we are eliminating um there's currently a principle and two assistant principles we're eliminating one assistant principal position from whiskaneer and moving that position to Candlewood Lake the assistant principal supervises half or 400 of the kids now that we're moving and we'll be moving uh so that's 400 students that position will move to Candlewood Lake with 200 students but 200 students that are being supervised and by in the current model will remain at Whiskey near so it's just for context there the other pieces I did bring up the concept of the dean of students last fall when we started to have some initial conversations of the structure at
135Whiskey near so it's a concept that's been around we've been talking about but it's really important to to know that this is this really when Dean was thinking of needs of his students knowing the school for as long as he's known the school and how it operates um from his perspective this was something Dean brought forward to me as a superintendent into the team and you know I was behind so that's why it's been brought forward in in the planning going forward with all of the transition but I'll leave Dean to bring forward and then answer questions about all right well thank you for giving me the opportunity to come back tonight to to speak about the importance of this position and what it does in my mind to truly be able to continue to
136Foster that positive and safe environment and school climate it's built on strong and mutually respect um students and family relationships this position in turn continues to help students staff families feel safe valued and respected um I actually had started this conversation as Dr Brill talked about you know over a year ago a year and a half ago because I felt so strong with the need to be able to continue to provide for our students um for those of you that do remember last time I got up here to speak to the board about the importance of a position it was about 10 years ago when I spoke about the fifth grade counseling position and how important it was to be able to service the needs of our students obviously with everything that has gone on
137uh post pandemic 2 positions like a position like this in my eyes makes it vital so with this position why why is it necessary with this position I think about uh one of the things I think about is maso's hierarchy of needs for our students we all know the physiological needs the physical needs that um students and and and even adults have food clothing shelter etc those are things that happen from home um before kids even come to school but when they get to us the the needs of safety needs feeling safe and secure at school and having that social stability and consistency of a excuse me an adult consistency in school is is huge that belonging and love we all know the importance of friendships especially for our students and strong connections that students
138make with other students and also the adults in the building if we can't meet those basic needs it's difficult to get students to achieve to the best of their ability build confidence in themselves and to become Unique Individuals that we really want to help to Foster as they go to the high school and graduate from Brookfield High School so just as a quick uh Panorama survey that you know that we do every year some important stats that I point out yearly to our staff is about making students and families feel safe and welcome I have with these stats I understand and know that these stats don't come from just one person and we're only successful because of our whole team this position helps to make us that complete team so just some of those stats
139of the last four years one of the things again I point out to our staff because it's so important uh to me is school is a safe place for my child over the last four years we've averaged 93 for the parents who again who took the survey school is a mostly safe place for my child 90 School environment is carrying in support of 93 percent the principal and assistant principal are available and willing to listen to parents 95 percent as I move through my slides tonight I hope that you will see these recurring themes as I go forward that I'm going to talk about number one student support and engagement we all know that students are engaged and feel supported that student achievement will increase this is done this would be done with this position
140by assisting teachers and administrators with student management fostering positive and constructive student behaviors and engagement next would be family connections this position would help build a strong positive and joyful School climate and culture create safe and productive classroom environments and be and be close to our students and Families the daily School operations this person will have a great pulse on the school community Through collaboration with students staff and serve as a strong and visible Mentor for our students and you'll again you'll see the themes as I go through for each one now I don't normally put a lot of words on slides because I always talk to some people's like I know you can read right the reason I did put um these on here because I know this is something that will be posted
141to the website in the presentation and I didn't want community members to lose out if I just put like something like being visible in the school I want them to really understand the depth in the depth of a lot of these things that we talk about because we all know that when we are not in a position or say in a school or I don't work in a certain business I don't really know everything that goes on I could think I know but I really don't understand that everyday uh operations and things that do go on so I apologize for so many words I did try to underline some so there could maybe uh pinpoint certain things but being visible in classrooms hallways cafeteria and arrival and dismissal again this is that whole idea of
142building those relationships collaborative with our teachers counselors nurse Administration for those student support interventions what are those interventions it could be academic socially Behavior attendance anything like that that they could be helping out with those support interventions and again they're part of that team not any one person when we do things with intervention it's not with just one person necessarily it's with a team approach accessible to engage with students individually or small group to be proactive before conflict arises a lot of people don't realize if you or you're not in education but don't realize how many proactive conversations our teachers have really are any one of our staffs when we see conflict or things starting to brew is like I said it was starting to happen I'm watching I could see the interaction between two
143people two uh students that I'm going to try to interact and when you know the students and you know their the situations that have happened in the past you know this person may be a new person but they will learn those things I can tell you if I go into the cafeteria and my assistant principals do that assistant principals do we know I know Deb and Sharon have a little something going on and I can see something starting I'm going to walk over there I'm going to pull them together I pull students together sort of our APS are so do our counselors social workers we all do and have those conversations but they're not in the cafeteria they're not always in the hallways where they this person would be one of those people that uh
144would be con it would be one supportive in developmental guidance lessons with our school counselors again just another resource participate in planning coordinating engaging co-curricular activities and establish so that's this engagement part and establish expectations for student attendance conduct and learning performance aligned to to ruler consistent support for staff to be proactive in interactions with students and families a 10-week weekly team meetings which I will point out later that uh our fifth and sixth grade assistant principal does at this time and a shared responsibility with with the principal assistant principal and school climate leadership team for the safety Health and Welfare of our students the next one family connections maintain positive ongoing communication relations with our families um you the this position May and also have more of that maybe our at-risk students or students
145that are fall more on our radar that there may be more communication with those with those families but it doesn't mean that's the only those are the only families that there would be communication with ensure families experience a sense of welcome and belonging promote shared accountability for students academic and behavioral performance coordinate regular timely communication with families regarding student conduct obviously that's like behavior and academic achievement meaning students that are falling behind in grades um as as part of that respond to family concerns properly and effectively that's really important communicate and meet with families regarding student conduct and find ways or talk about ways to improve that behavior organize family learning opportunities for Middle School families around it could be academic expectations could be social media pre-adolescent development in middle school students parenting tips I
146like to always I like to talk about the emotional rollercoaster of being a middle school student I mean all those things are important plan and coordinate the sixth grade student orientation with the families but also with the cles staff and administration because prior to this those students coming to visit which currently has been the fifth grade for many years um our assistant principal 56 goes down and speaks with the principal and also every single teacher about students that they're they're concerned about with scheduling so on and so forth so that is also um you know a very very important thing that we do every year before we even start our scheduling and it liaison to community organizations that can help support our students and families you know some will say well we have a social
147worker that does that works with uh within the community and organizations true but also with this person as another uh person to be able to um to be on let's say it's Brookfield cares in in situations and uh organizations like that that again we're looking to help support our students and their families in need and then obviously comes with the territory down The Daily School operations supervision of cafeteria lunch waves now will only have three instead of four um but currently you know our fifth and sixth grade principal does the fifth and sixth grade and seventh and eighth does that so that's an hour out of their day this now would be a supervision of lunch ways there'd be three of them and the importance of arrival and dismissal for that 15 to 20 minutes
148in the morning and afternoon as we know these are the chaotic uh times of the day manage everyday behavioral issues uh initiate bullying investigations follow up with and I know years ago we had this conversation about the amount of time and uh it goes into when you do have for instance any just regular referral that comes to you or there's a situation the amount of time that it takes and we have to investigate and things like that and obviously when it becomes into initiate the bully bullying investigations it's a little bit of a different level but following up with the appropriate consequences including restorative practice and communicating that with families staff and paperwork as part of of the due process and making sure it's in in a just and fair manner that this is done
149collect data could be formal informal regarding School climate culture and the support structures that we have to improve those existing structures and overall School climate and culture collaborate with staff on Intervention systems some of our behavioral interventions and engagement opportunities for students including our after-school non-athletic activities that we currently have or look to maybe start facilitate implementation of our restorative practices and oversee against the the the part that you have to do is oversee our detention issues that we have um Crisis Support is a consistent leadership in collaboration with Administration and mental health staff again that consistent uh person uh work with Administration and school resource offer to maintain safety uh excuse to maintain safety and build relationships with our students and our parents so just to kind of again to give you just a
150general idea currently the fifth and sixth grade assistant principle there's about 380 students between the two grades about 190 sixth graders will remain again that number may be 200 by next year uh supervise this person supervises 17 teachers of those 17 seven will go down to class and 10 of them will remain of those it'll be split between myself and the assistant assistant principal so that means there's 47 teachers to still be evaluated during that time I'm sorry what's that oh um and again just to give an idea evaluation so just if there was five more uh of that ten if I split and I took five of those and Mr Bernard took five that add that is another 20 meetings because there's four different things that you do with goals mid-year review of practice
151end of the year and then 10 to 15 observations depending on the teachers that we're observing uh this person supervises fifth and sixth grade lunch waves like I told you sixth grade obviously would remain coordinate substitute in the many coverages that are needed during the day to cover for for uh meetings uh ppts um emergency things that come up that we have to uh cover for uh weekly meetings with uh fifth and sixth grade this uh Miss Gordon does 5A and 5B and 6A and 6B so that's uh weekly meetings responsible for fifth and sixth grade discipline student scheduling and staff assignments uh in the in obviously in the summer before school starts but also throughout the year the changes that we have Benchmark and SBA testing fifth and sixth fifth grade student orientation family
152night again which would now be sixth grade and our fifth grade in uh fifth and sixth grade survey meetings uh which are every other week and just as a an idea student conduct and physical emotional well-being in fifth and sixth grade this was last year there was 125 decimal referrals seventh and 8th grade 190 discipline referrals obviously if if we even said it was cut in half which it wasn't perfectly half you know it'd be half of 125 uh discipline referrals that um come off so again I would just wanted to be able to tell you that so you give you a context of some of the things and and I have to say there's there's so many more things that uh June does Miss Gordon does um but I just those are some of
153the ones that I wanted to just point out to you if you have any questions comments so in addition to I know you'd mentioned uh the two assistant principles currently we have guidance counselors for each grade correct yep uh social worker assigns the building yep five through eight a school psychologist assigned to the building sure just want to clarify that yep any questions so if I if I if I get the gist of it yep um you've got three administrators today which means the two remaining administrators have to pick up the supervisory duties that are left behind including a bunch of evaluations and the like and still have to cover more students and so is the fundamental issue that two of you can't handle all that added load with uh losing losing a full administrator
154for half the population and that kind of the gist of it and half the stuff and on top of it it's middle schoolers which are probably in the most I mean I talked I'm just going to tell a little Side Story I called my daughter who's a guidance counselor in a middle school in Vermont and I said so how many administrators you got in your middle school and she told me it was she has this much smaller school and it was two and she said well how big's your school and I said well it's almost uh it's right now it's going to be about 600 right give or take a little a little bit less and she goes oh man you need like five or six so she says she says these are six seventh
155and eighth graders dad you can't let I think the word she used was you can't let the inmates run the uh the the zoo so uh and we as educators of course if you guys want more normal but I don't want you to see that as this could we do it years ago I'm telling you before the pandemic years ago we had three people and there was over a thousand kids in our school I'm telling you that was a long that was a while ago that was probably 10 years ago um but it's it's just a it's it's different in in many ways um in my eyes it doesn't and I want to say Controlled Chaos but that is Middle School and a lot of people always say when you say you're in middle school
156they're like really how do you deal with them and that just that's just the the thing it is and I love it and I I don't want to go to any other uh grades um but there's so many things that need to be addressed my concern and John could tell you when I went to Dr bro when I went to see him was I I see us as we I pride myself as we do the best we can to get out there to be in the hallways to talk to kids to know what's going on to go to the games I I have to tell you and even getting back to parents we do our best I do my best in a timely manner um a lot of those things will be very hard to
157do because we'll be behind closed doors and or you know again we're going to do that anyway but this person I see as uh as someone that's going to become you know um um that I like to say that pulse of the school because they're going to be out there all the time they're not going to do any evaluations okay that okay that's fine but they're going to be able to pick up with the amount of time that we do I said before fifth and sixth grade Miss Gordon does fifth and sixth grade uh Mr Bernard just seventh and eighth but when things cross the plate if I'm sitting there and a kid comes in and there's something happening Miss Gordon may be in PPT I pick up that discipline I don't wait and say
158sit there until Miss Gordon gets out of the people like things need to be taken care of to the best of our ability sometimes we may do that for a little bit but that's how we work and I I truly believe in this case I worry about things getting pushed off and then things brewing and becoming worse if we're not able to get to those so I I hope you see that as that it's not trying to make less work because as you can see it's not less work so so I I'm going to ask this question I think I know the answer but I need to make sure it's publicly stated um your proposal here is not an administrator uh correct per se this is a someone in our teacher contract similar to like
159guidance counselors or in our teachers contract sure um and the reason for that is they're not doing supervision right they're not actually evaluating others and managing others they're doing they're dealing with students strict students families you know the building you know everything going on what kind of percentage savings is it by doing a teacher contract versus administrator is that a it's a cost management it would depend on the yeah so so for example if the the we moved forward and there was a position and there was interviews and someone from within or someone from out of District in the teacher ranks is has many many years of experience they would be higher on the teacher pay scale but they wouldn't be coming in as a early step administrator so there's a differential there if it's
160a a more a newer teacher to the profession under 10 years for example or something like that then they would they would fall on the teacher salary step in a you know accordingly but that's a lower rate of pay then or in the administrators as a teacher contract is is a cost management effort as well one of the things we talked about is well it's also an activity management thing because because I've always learned you guys have taught me well that the difference between the administrative contract and the uh and and the teaching contract is all about supervision right that's one of the reasons we did what we did on the special ed a couple of years ago is to make sure that the the upper school and lower school administrators could in fact make
161financial decisions and do uh evaluations and you also have a an hourly um day for teachers versus administrators and in addition to that we did it with the athletic director years ago as well so you could have the those decision makers one thing we would do and post the job is we would prefer that this is a stepping stone so this is an experience opportunity as well a door opener for a future sure so that's that's either you know that is that is uh succession building here in District or if we bring someone in you know uh from the outside is succession succession building as well um and so that's an important piece that we need to remember to that end we would prefer someone who does have an administrative degree they've gone out and
162gotten their sixth year or something like that um so down the road if there's somebody who's very talented and we want to you know we have opportunity in District we would be in consideration of that so it is a good experienced Builder as well okay that's excellent okay I think I just have while this budget is a very it's a very big number still and this is something that even though it's budget neutral right now um you know obviously not having this position we could recognize even more savings however um I think when we when we saw the results of the academic results back in October I want to say our middle schoolers are really really struggling academically but also very much socially and I think they are that academic part is related to that
163social part and they need that connection and I think for two main reasons our middle schoolers really really need someone that is I think if we can add supports we should um and also this is the year to do it if we're going to do any other year right if we if Dean you know a couple of years from now it says you know things are really slipping we really do need an extra hand it's going to be a big increase to whatever budget that is um I think now is sort of the time to sort of capture that FTE [Music] can I you just maybe think of something when you look at these discipline referrals that is one that's when we say discipline referral as a teacher that's something that's finally written up we
164all know how many times warnings are giving how many conversations you have so these numbers don't even indicate the amount of conversations that you'll see June at the counselors the social work that they're having ahead of time but mostly again just talking about with the aps the conversations and things that they do then contact the counselor to help out with mediation or whatever it may be that to us the most important thing is students learn why that was you know inappropriate behavior what could you do differently the next time where did you go wrong so they learned so we don't continue to see now some kids have a harder time learning that that skill but you don't this has no idea the amount of time those take because those are just as important as a
165kid to be written up that's the Punic part I get it there's consequences at time but the most important thing is that the the student learns you know it's not just saying you you were wrong go sit in the detention room type thing so thank you for talking about that because there's a lot the social aspect you do not uh really it's hard to to put that in in numbers of how much different that is the last so many years than it was before and I love every part of that part of my job but it is a lot more difficult yeah not just students and staff and if I could just make one other observation um to kind of also add on to capitalizing on this opportunity we've talked a lot about over the
166last since I've gotten here over the last six months about creating cles as a school Community this is recreating WMS as a new school community and um you know Dean and Ed are have been there and that's really important to have that kind of administrative oversight and institutional knowledge but having that connection between teachers and administrators or staff and administrators and families and administrators to help build that sense of community I I have never been so appreciative of middle school and the important aspect of the formative experience of middle school since the pandemic and I've seen it and I think that probably any High School teacher or person who lives in a high school would say over the last two years the current 9th and 10th graders when they missed out on middle school has
167been so impactful for them not only academically but socially emotionally behaviorally cognitively they just it's been so I've been astonished in my own my own personal life and also um as a former High School administrator so I just can't tell you how much I think this could help rebuild that sense of a of a school Community because it's going to be an opportunity all right any further questions for Dean um I don't have a question but I was just gonna say although I you know agree that you know adding supports could potentially you know help but I think most important is really looking at our current supports that we have in place and really capitalizing on those improving the systems within that we have currently um to really kind of strengthen our path moving forward
168you know looking at ways to improve what we already the systems we already have in place improving engagement student management strengthening connections and things like that um I don't think that we necessarily have to make a shift like that in order to re-look at you know the supports that we already have and improving that in those areas okay um so I'll just I'll just get my comments on this I'm supportive of this position but I'm supportive after having listened to some of the discussion because uh and just remembering back to what we learned about the situation with kids right now right and uh you know some of our discussions here is that we need to make a first priority you know getting kids recovered from the pandemic impacts so this wouldn't be the time for
169me to stretch the leadership so thin that they can't focus on that right they can focus on the wholeness of the kids so while I I actually understand what you're saying Joy I kind of agree that with the number of people we have in the Middle School There's an opportunity there this wouldn't be the year I would do that I'd do I'd actually put this in where we can and then let's look at it next year and look at it the year after look at the year after with the thought of is there a time when we can get down to two administrators and then the other support staffs that we have I think it's something we shouldn't let go away but I support this mostly because of what we all agreed as a board
170that this is the time to focus on the recovery of our kids and I just don't I've listened into the numbers floating on there I just worry that what will end up happening is you'll end up you know stretching yourself so thin you don't do that and and I think Joy's point is really flows through Anna right to Dean in terms of looking at our existing Staffing instead of two to enhance and strengthen what we have is all part of this which is that opportunity for school community building which we can certainly do so I try to be thoughtful on it but it's uh and it's a hard one because you don't want to go put in staff that you don't you might not need but I just timing is everything to me so oh
171I did have one quick question how many um parents took the survey uh uh do you remember like 30 I think normally it's like about 30 percent there's a 20. did I tell you 20. yeah yeah and again I'll be the first to tell you I get that's why I said to you it's the parents that yeah that did the they I know that their parents out there that may not feel that way I totally understand that um I'm just give the only reason I gave you those numbers because that is how I started because to me the most important thing is we want kids to I always joke around and say we know they don't want to come to school right are they but for the most part I mean a lot of the
172deposits we hear a lot of positive things and there's I I understand there's the negative things but we wanted kids to feel safe we all we always talk about this all the time especially in the last time you're safe emotionally physically they want to feel one of the ones I didn't share was do they feel that there's at least one adult that they can go to that was I think in the 90s over to you like to me that's so so important and this person will be a person that like our school resource officer did when he first came in as another person for her kids to connect with and really because he's there and but they're also the the the disciplinary they're the bad guy and you when you talk about when Jerry talks
173about the counselor and stuff like that we have I I my counselors I tell them they're not the bad guys they're the advocates for you could ask your daughter they're always the ones that are Advocates if we're not around they kind of jump into some of those roles where now you know I don't want them to be I I want them Strictly To Be The Advocate I'm the bad guy I'm the one who gives out consequences to kids because the kids need to feel that there's still someone in their corner I hope they still think that way but maybe not at times because I give the consequence um if that helps anything else and then they um um well I'm gonna put a motion on for the total budget as presented are you going to
174make a motion to remember are you gonna or just let it go no I'm uh yeah all right so how much is this costing us how much would it How much would it be cost how much if we if we were to not include it in the budget how much would the budget reduced by so including that on average on a huh yeah 90 000. this includes the health benefits of the teaching position but it could potentially be more given who is being hired because we have teachers that are very highly paid on this you know same average that Ken uses when he builds a teacher but it should potentially be more it can be potentially could be more absolutely it could be potentially a lot more because given we're asking the expectation of this
175person even though they're just a teacher well not just a teacher but um the things that were asked we would ask in this position for a really dynamic dynamic person absolutely I would have a hard time getting behind someone that's a not a veteran or seasoned teacher to be put in a role such as this Duchess my opinion okay one more question uh do we know how much so we're we're getting rid of a Spanish teacher at grade five do you know how much that is because we can know exactly it's not um it's not directly aligned because the that's why we have to use the average that Ken uses because we you know we have to have that as the model because we're not actually neces we're not necessarily reducing an actual human being
176right because of reallocations and backfilling the bilingual position we talked about and with certifications and so forth so it doesn't mean somebody's necessarily losing a job we're reducing that FTE Spanish FTE okay yeah so he uses averages on all of the pluses and minuses so and we try to use the consistent figure that we use throughout the budget building process I don't know um your microphone sure um I don't think under any circumstances money should come before the needs of our children and children have more emotional needs now then there was a six-year-old who shot his teacher so if we can't get them from this age Middle School is tough then I don't know why we're aboard we're here for the needs of the children so if nothing else has to go if you have
177to choose between heat and hot water you pick what's more important and the needs of the children should be the number one priority in every decision we make foreign any other questions all right so we're gonna We got some voting to do guys um so I'm gonna put a motion on the table if you remember we started this discussion as a discussion with a potential motion right so we're at a point where we need to decide are we ready to take forward a budget so I will start Us by saying the board approves the budget as presented in the amount of 50 million eight hundred and two thousand five hundred and sixty two dollars to be carried forward to the town as our budget approved board of education budget second okay so it's been moved
178and seconded uh any discussion and emotions so I like to make a motion to um to adjust the budget with the deletion of the dean of students role to the budget okay do I have a second okay it's been moved and seconded so um any discussion on that reduction proposal okay so we're going to vote all in favor of reducing the budget proposal as a as a proposed amendment by ninety thousand dollars uh please uh raise your hand and say aye hi Annie in any opposed to it please raise your hand and say nay nay any abstentions the one abstain so it the the amendment fails so we're back to the original uh motion uh to approve the budget as presented uh any further discussion on that okay hearing none all in favor of approving
179the budget as proposed in the amount of 50 million eight hundred and two thousand five hundred and sixty two dollars to carry forward to the town as the board's approved budget please raise your hand and say aye hi any opposed one any abstain Mike are you bony no sorry you're about to approval okay so it passes six one okay so we have a budget so congratulations and thank you to everybody involved in this process I will remind everyone that as much as it feels like we've been working on this forever we're not at the end of the uh Road uh we do need to submit to the first select Min this budget by the 31st of January what will happen between now and then as Mr post has some questions to finish answering update all
180the formats and Ken you will give us all updated sheets for our books so that this becomes the Baseline for all presentations going forward and we have to do a budget letter which I will work with the administration on putting a cover letter uh on our behalf um the it will be pretty dry to tell you the truth this is an inflation discussion right more than anything but I'll talk about some of the ins and outs of the budget and I know not expect it'll be a very complicated letter um the then on February 8th and please everyone marked your calendar for is it the eighth ninth or Thursday night the Thursday night the ninth we have a scheduled session with the board of selectment and the board of Finance to present our budget to
181them both and the reason it's important that we do that in the early part of February is because the first selectman needs to finalize the ninth which is a Thursday the first selectman has to finalize her budget recommendation by the middle of February sends it to the board of Selectmen who then have two weeks to review it before they send it to the board of Finance at the beginning of of March so there's a whole process that's now starting that will go between now and March uh we do have a chance to talk to the board of Finance about our budget um directly in the board of selectment about our budget directly but I'm guessing we will be asked to come in during the board of finances more extensive budget reviews during the month of
182March that I would want all of us to attend if we could so uh and it's usually a q a right where they talk about you know what's underlying this and you know they might have some ideas and we may have some new news right I mean for all I know I do know for example they want to talk about maybe budgeting in the middle of the range on on the benefits and they carry some contingency right and that's a fair discussion on how you position a better budget it's a question of where you know where you take risks in the budget whether you do it in the aggregate or in the individual pieces so so that's all ahead of us and then this will all go all the way up to the middle of
183May when there's a budget referendum so there's a still months ahead of us in terms of budget review so thank you all good discussion I think um thank you to the finance committee Rosa Bob joy for doing the heavy lifting okay thank you to the staff for all answering all the questions so next up on our agenda is the Candlewood Lake Elementary School building project update some um some updates um there are some challenges with Manpower and mud on the site but um they the the floors are starting to go in so that's why mud is kind of like a tricky thing right now they don't want to damage the floors or create too much of a cleanup issue but on the inside light fixtures are going in in the kitchen area taping sanding and
184painting is nearly done in the Pre-K and K wings those the last Wings to be completed Millwork and Cabinetry have started going into some of the kindergarten classrooms doors are going in around the building the media center stairs are in but they're not finished quite yet tile has gone in the locker rooms um the bathroom stall partitions are going in in the other restrooms the acoustic ceiling which has kind of like a really cool looking design is in the cafeteria is Being Framed out and some of the areas that have wood ceilings are having those currently installed on the outside the roof inspect actions are on roof inspections are ongoing the brick work on the exterior is done so if you take a look at if well you can't really see it but um if
185you all I'll post some pictures of it you can really kind of see like the nice design in the brickwork the steel for the main entrance canopy so there's going to be that that huge sort of canopy that's in the front of the main entrance so the steal for that is going up and I think there's some Timber and some wood that's going to be related to that so that'll be really pretty um and the cedar window trim has gone in and is being staining um the staining is ongoing the project is still under budget and the building itself is considered 80 complete but the site work itself is still less than half complete so it's just a good reminder that while we're building this huge brand new school the site the land that it
186sits on has just undergone some really dramatic changes and there are still a lot a long way to go with that that's it which Segways perfectly into the demolition of Huckleberry which won't start until the students are finished and the year is over hopefully that's before June 17th and Saturday uh the graduation date that Mr definitely before July yes yes exactly exactly I have a couple updates but if maybe Dave can make his way up to the podium as well uh Dr P has a few announcements too uh some of the uh the cultural things that are going on at the school which are really exciting I did want to let everybody know that move Management Services along with the project manager uh on Friday afternoon did visit with Debbie at CES and with June
187over at whiskaneer regarding moving because up until now move Management Services have been focused on Huckleberry but now they need we need to start getting the staff ready at the at the other schools so quite excited about that and I do want to say a reminder before Dave talks um thank the NBC again for approving the uh all hazards plan development is really really important for us Dave take it over please sure so we have a name for Candlewood Lake just a little bit of a process every classroom grades K through five we're given the opportunity to submit a suggestion we received suggestion for mascot for the mascot I'm sorry uh and so it was great some of them you know aligned with the alliteration that we have Brookfield Bobcats Western Air Wildcats so the
188Candlewood cookies it was a suggestion The Candlewood candy canes courageous chickens so there were a lot of really nice creative names uh we honored all of them and put it up to a vote so any classroom name that was put forth we put out there for the vote I asked for the top three and our top three were cougars Bobcats and cubs so then we took the top three and did our final vote and overwhelmingly we will be the Candlewood Lake Cubs so it's very exciting I'm excited about that thanks Dave I believe catfish was also one yeah it was there I heard crocodile too right crocodile there was a crocodile there's a lot of alliteration there um and to that end uh in working with Mr checo in the NBC I actually spoke with
189him the other night he's ready to get working with a graphic designer on what what the Cub logo May ultimately look like but first and foremost one of the the thoughts we had is kind of the commonality of a paw that works through pre-k through 12 and so they need to get moving on a Central logo for the gym floor and so we're thinking that it won't only be used by Candlewood Lake so you know how a lot of Park and Rec the community is going to be using it sometimes high school or middle school practices maybe using that magnificent gymnasium so there's some thought that's got to go into that so we're paying close attention there so thank you okay is that it that's it all right thank you all right next up we're
190back to public comment um this section is about anything that's under the board's purview and again I'll just remind speakers that uh nothing on school Personnel students or board members is considered appropriate we only have one speaker who's asked to speak in this section Mr Korea um sure you know that you know the drill yep Road um so it's interesting in a lot of board meetings um you know sometimes it's a lot of formality comes across sometimes as rehearsed like when we had an agenda item come up to you know try to quell the issues of the you know the FERPA issues and such that you see a little theater going back and forth but um you know if you look sometimes you get little windows with like hot mics right or you get body
191language right so I just want to let the board know in terms of that blurb that you read about really value you know valuing input if we go go and look at the tape right you'll see on December 14th at about 11 and a half minutes um one of the board members pick up the sign up list and look left and right and said look at this look at the sign up sheet all the same handwriting and we got a couple couple snarky laughs on either side and a smug look you know and those uh people that came up and spoke we're speaking about special education issues and have been coming up some of them you know for the better part of a year so that kind of reflects I think on the board in
192terms of public relations and real what they really think about input and it concerns me you know also at the board of Finance meeting on January 11th it was representative from the finance committee um you know they are discussing the budget I'm sorry discussing actuals if you go and you look at the board of Finance meeting that happened on January 11th around 33 and a half minutes he'll does a long discussion about how we're doing right and there's a lot of a lot of the word a lot of discussion about special education spending and the term is the town is suffering with increases in Board of Education spending the word suffering was brought up several times like the town was suffering and I kind of find that offensive where the you know children are suffering
193without the appropriate resources and the view of a representative of the town is that they're suffering and then at around 44 and minutes and 45 seconds um it was a discussion that there's sped overruns the demand keeps creeping up ever increasing demand and at 45 minutes and eight seconds the the speaker said that we're trying to keep a lid on it I told the administration keep a lid on it and to me that body language is very concerning because when you keep a lid on something you're trying to hold it down right physically you try to contain something well it bubbles up well it keeps creeping up needs keep creeping up but we're trying to keep a lid on it almost like a child is struggling and you're trying to keep them down so terminology
194is important right you know we often see you know in the board of Finance you know we're asking yes of course we have to support the kids but how do we how do we control the spending and when it comes out like that naturally you know it kind of reflects on you know what is the value of the board that's being represented right you know and then the discussion went on about your time's up Sir yeah about fuel costs and I don't think I hope it doesn't have to be warm so we can actually spend special education dollars next year thank you all right so that's it for public comment um uh three main points um I thought I would mention the special ed program review that we discussed the budget discussion and the presentation
195by Mr Renda I thought was helpful and the CL es update well I was thinking of that but I thought maybe Mr belanda would probably do a communication about that now what does everybody else think yeah what was your first one that you mentioned the special ed program review that we approved yeah so that the budget and the dean of students including the dean of students presentation and the cles update in the dean of students presentation Debbie would be in the board adopted the budget tonight that kind of thing okay everyone okay yep all right okay so uh coming events okay uh Center School has a Lions Club vision screening um the 24th that's an optional opportunity you need to pre-register for and on Friday January 27th there's a PTO sponsored glow dance here at
196the cafeteria at the high school from 6 to 8 pm Huckleberry has fourth grade field trips to the Capitol on February 2nd and February 7th with skinnier has a PTO meeting tomorrow it's virtual and at the high school as mentioned before midterms are starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday with an early release at 11 A.M anyone else anything else that's all I have okay hearing none thank you uh so we're gonna now move to an executive session I will move that the board enter into executive session to discuss the superintendent's mid-year goals second and seconded by Joy we'll give her one um and uh so all in favor of moving into executive session say hi hi and so for we will be ending our broadcast at this time so those of you been watching at
197home thank you for attending uh and uh we will formally adjourn the meeting when we exit uh executive session good night everybody