Board of Education Meeting 11-16-22

001foreign [Music] good evening everybody I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Brookfield board of education for Wednesday November 16 2022 to order um first on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance please join me in the pledge one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have all seven members of our board here uh Dr Burrell and Dr Mann are here and uh and many of the uh principals and administrative staff of the district are here as well so first on our agenda is a student Spotlight for whiskey near Middle School so it's been our custom Dr brawl I'll let you do some information sure so we're really excited about a social study Spotlight for whiskey near tonight Mr Renda will be introducing his social studies students along with

0028th grade social studies teacher Miss Lane and our social studies instructional coach Mrs Bachelor so Mr Renda please take the floor [Music] good evening how are you tonight um I am very excited as always when I come up here I get very excited when we highlight uh some of the great things that are going on at Western Air middle school today you're going to see it's not up there yet um but we uh we I'm going to introduce um our instructional coach is Heather Batchelor one of our construction coaches at Whiskey near she's our social studies instructional coach and to to highlight and show all the great work that she's doing working with our teachers and how that's translating to the lessons that they are teaching oh that the lessons that they are teaching and

003engaging lessons that they are doing with our students um then we are going to have some of our students Miss Lane will talk our eighth grade social teacher and then our students will share some of the experiences that they had and I think that just to uh also say was the other night the other day I was thinking we were at the strategic planning committee we were talking about the four C's and being creative and collaborative and communicators you know these things that we're trying to make sure that our portrait of a graduate when they leave here that students are able to do I really think that you'll see that shine in this presentation that we have tonight so without further Ado Miss bachelor's up hi thank you so much for allowing us to be

004here tonight we're so excited and I'm so excited to highlight the work of the great social studies teachers at Whiskey near as well as the students so we really when I first arrived last year one of the things that we as a department identified is that especially coming out of covid we're really over relying on more traditional methods of teaching social studies and we wanted to come up with some things that would really help us get kids engaged in real world problems in solving things that were difficult challenges and one of the things in Megan and Kylie were the the eighth grade teachers were the first teachers who sort of jumped right in with me and said yep let's go ahead and we'll try to put together a simulation and then throughout the year we

005were lucky enough to put together a lot of simulations across the grade level so from starting in fifth grade we did an Aztec empire simulation so students could understand how and why this great empire fell we did Silk Road simulation in sixth grade where kids went on a three-week long adventure across the Silk Road we did a Boston Massacre crime scene investigation where the kids were detectives trying to solve the case of the Boston Massacre and in the eighth grade one of the simulations that we did was the California Gold Rush and that's what we want to talk a little bit about today we just finished it this year with the eighth grade we had a chance to revise it and the reasons that we think about why we want to do simulations in social

006studies is because they really bring out some of the core skills in the discipline so we really want students to be thinking critically we want them to make informed decisions come up with arguments that are based on fact and on Investigation we want them to really get engaged with perspective taking because it develops empathy and it also helps them see the world in a more complex way and then lastly we really want them to start solving real world problems and all three of these things I think are present in the Gold Rush simulation and you're going to see them as Miss lean describes a little bit more about the simulation so I'm going to turn it right over to her and she's going to tell you a little bit more about the California Gold Rush

007yes hi good evening so the California Gold Rush we start off with we assign each student a character that they'll experience the gold rush through and they'll get the identity of backstory most of them are real life people some of them are made up but like we've taken experiences and things we've researched and put them all together to make this like fictional character and so they get an amount of money depending on their lives that they started out with and and what they're leaving from home with to go out to California they're from different parts of the United States as well as South America and Asia as well and so once they get to California they have to make these budgetary decisions right they have to be able to pay for well one their trans

008the transportation over there whether by land or by sea they have to be able to then buy food right each month and housing and they have to get supplies right and so do they get the supplies before they leave out or once they get to California and the thing is once they get to California the prices are incredibly higher right and so there's there's a budgetary thing that going on once they're in California um they're tasked with then mining for gold and we brought a bucket and there's so there's rice and lentils and um there's like a spork right and um so they and then spray painted gold nuggets and they have to mine right the gold out and it's made to be like pretty difficult and so they have to figure out whether or

009not they can support themselves by just finding gold or what they'll do if there's any entrepreneurial activities or other business ventures that they can find ways to actually like support themselves out in the in California one of the things we did too is like a reflection on whether or not it's really working right like is their experience allowing them to um stay in California right so we do journal entries of reflection we wrote a letter home to where they kind of describing it to someone whether a family member or friend at home like what's going on and then at the final project which they're going to get introduced to tomorrow is a podcast that their viewers or listeners from will be back home and they'll be saying about their experience right and so there's a

010lot of tribulations that they have to maneuver through and they're going to speak to that tonight but it was it's set up really to to mirror that the Gold Rush was mostly putting people in debt right and that the the economic kind of environment was pretty harsh right and so if we can have Cameron Nicholas yuthka and AJ if you guys want to come up and speak to this and this what you're seeing on the screen is The Ledger um Jackie Whiting the technology instructional coach put together not only the slide deck that they used to to completely go through the project but she also put together sheets uh Google Sheets Ledger and so they entered in all of everything like you can guide yourself through their experience from their Ledger whether lost money earned

011money gold found monthly expenses loans from the bank anything and everything and it calculated it all for them and so like we all do when we make our personal budgets at home we're probably using exceller sheets like that they were doing the same thing and learning like the technology with that so without further or do you want to talk about this okay do you guys want to talk about why or how this is different it's like from something you did sorry so the the first question that we opened up to students is how was this experience different than other experiences that you had in social studies before now but in the past I feel like a lot of just standard you have your questions answer them like this was a lot more interactive and stuff

012people are a lot more fun doing it this is it was more Hands-On and creative you had more options it wasn't just option A you have to do this or option b you can do this you had the option to like go like kind of like think outside the box you had an option to like write your own story you were able to just maneuver the way you wanted to there were no like there were guidelines but they weren't strict you could easily like jump over them and it was like you were living through it it was like your life so it was more Interactive and why did you enjoy learning this way versus the way that you've described like Nick described as the in the original kind of thing it was a lot more

013fun we like enjoyed it a lot more it was kind of we did stuff like with the entire class not just say working with the partner on an assignment I feel like since we were kind of putting ourselves in someone else's shoes we were living through someone else's experiences but also making our own decisions through this I feel like I'm gonna remember it more learning it like this like sure I've learned things from my past experiences in social studies but um I feel like I'm going to remember more of it this way maybe remember it as more fun I thought this was way more entertaining and I feel like I learned a lot more through activities this way and can you can can you talk a little bit more about the real world and real

014life experiences in decision makings that you had to do and like guide yourselves as we threw out like you fell down the mountain right Nick you like you had entrepreneurial things you both have like different experiences right with um you guys your character was a Native American right you completely undercut the the store and sold your own food right so can you talk a little bit more about just real world things I think a lot of people like put way too much focus on the fact that they were making money each month with like the gold but it barely covered the expenses for like food and living there and a lot of people who started with say like a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars or even five thousand dollars ended up bankrupt and death

015because they thought like oh I'm mining for goldish I'll just keep making money not losing any gave you the option to show how good you are at something like if you had poor decision making skills it reflected your money like you would end up in the negatives if you had good decision making skills you would end up in the positive I was a farmer so I was able to come up with an idea where you had to pay like food taxes every month so you could like survive off of food I was a farmer and I didn't like that so I had a big debate with my teacher on it for maybe like 30 minutes before she invited another teacher to come and join her and I still won the debate yeah and I ended

016up selling my food and I made more money this way than gold as more people are coming gold gets scarce so it doesn't really cover anything for me gold barely could even cover like the cost for food I made most of my money by selling Insurance to my phone classroom yeah I also like had a talent for cooking biscuits which were like dum-dums so I could sell to other students in the classroom you we had talked about this today that that in in Nick's class there was two like their character's name was Lucina Wilson and so there were two people playing like having the character of Lucina right and so what happened what happened with prices like we would sell the Dum Dums to for 50 cents to a dollar and you would turn around

017and sell them for what but being that there was two of you well in the other classes people are selling them for five dollars ten dollars but we keep we kept having to lower our prices to be able to show them like they ended up for me I ended up selling them for a dollar each at one point because it's just a competition to sell them yeah AJ you want to talk about what we were do you want to talk about your experience who your character was uh so my character is a Native American and there was like at the time a lot of like racism so it was hard for someone like that wasn't like everybody else like in the mining like areas to like be able to pay the same amount and there's

018like uh like a tax that I had to pay double on because of my like like Native American culture [Music] and like I was also a Native American and because we had the ethnicity that we did we not only had to work just as hard as everyone else with other ethnicities we had to work even harder because we mined for gold and then we had to cash in our goal to get money to put in our Ledger um not only did we have to work just as hard as everyone else but we had to work even harder because the racism within uh California was so high and we had to work so hard to just get like 25 worth of gold and we had a lot in our buckets at least I did I had

019a lot of gold in my bucket and I was lucky enough to have that but when I cashed it in I ended up getting like 45 dollars for it and the person next to me who was say German ended up getting like a lot more money like 60 bucks for like tiny little pieces so I thought that was really unfair but yeah there were some people who made money just by selling other people's gold for them so I wouldn't have to pay the tax yeah it's quite the quite the game planning um we also introduced like so it's a foreign miners tax right and it was like historically accurate things that we would go the California governor he made an executive order for um like the treatment of Native Americans and coexistence of of different

020groups of people there and so providing like through the experiences and their decision making we were able to like allow them to to see and watch their peers right experience different things and so um I think we were talking today that this is something that like you're always going to remember right it's like I'll always remember the gold rush I think mostly you all said that today right and so is there any final thoughts anything even that like I saw everyone was really enjoying it people like paid a lot more attention and were a lot more engaged in the class and when we just like tried to find a like say we added just a sheet of questions on the gold rush but where people just answer it people did a lot more in the

021class and everyone was participating and like even like the mood in the classroom kind of seemed to shift as the gold rush went on like at the beginning everyone was excited to start Mining and stuff but then towards the end people were selling the like plots of land for almost nothing and trying to spend all their money on Candy because they were tired so we would sell vices of that would represent like the entertainment that would be available in California and we sold them Halloween candy for like 20 bucks for like a little KitKat right and so yeah they were trying to spend all their money but on a final thought um as an eighth grade social studies teacher and I can speak for my department as the social studies department at Whiskey near we

022wouldn't be doing any of this um we wouldn't be anywhere close to it we would be describing what they've been describing as like what we used to do without Heather and Bachelor and we wouldn't be incorporating the technology that we are without Jackie Whiting I can say that definitively so thank you very much right for allowing us to have such valuable resources at our disposal every day I really appreciate it job [Applause] Mike my question my question is did anybody make money or did everybody Nicholas did you made money did you guys did you did you end up being rich or just was a little it really well huh [Music] tripled the money wow okay so there was uh some people I always thought nobody came out of the Gold Rush with any money new

023entrepreneurs and we set up the conditions of it except the conditions of the game up so that it really beared that out so as you heard the mood changed because pretty much everyone just lost all their money so and that was by Design so is there any other questions Well we'd like to thank you all for coming this very very interesting thank you [Applause] so um why don't we take a brief break you guys are welcome to through the rest of our meeting if you want but if uh if you need to get up and go do school work or go home for other reasons we certainly understand so we'll take a break to let anybody who needs to leave uh you know head out and then we'll move on to the agenda [Music] yeah

024that was really cool that's awesome simulations are great [Music] all right why don't we go ahead and continue next up on our agenda is public comment um I'm going to read a statement for uh that I do at every meeting board of education really welcomes public comment um each speaker has up to three minutes to provide input to the board at the start of each meeting a maximum of 20 minutes is allotted for comment on any item that's included on the agenda for the meeting and at the end of each meeting times a lot of for comment on any other item that is under the board's purview um uh and we would also in that at the end of the meeting if we have overflow from the beginning of the meeting we will pick up

025people so everybody has a chance to talk but we do limit it to 20 minutes at the beginning of the meeting simply because we have an agenda we have to get on with and uh so we we limit it uh very purposely discussion of school Personnel uh any individualized student comments or any individual members of the board are not considered appropriate and I would urge any public speaker not to address those and I'll repeat this at the end of the meeting so there are one two three four five people who signed up two only two of which are related to an agenda item on today's meeting the other three will be at the end of the meeting so first up is uh Mr rudenis and when you speak I need name and address if I

026could Ryan rodinas one dark Angelo Drive in Brookfield I want to thank the board for all the work that you do as volunteers it takes a lot and I want to sincerely thank you I don't like to speak publicly but this is the second time that I've noticed something and I don't feel it's right to stay silent I have three daughters two left two of school age my wife and I love our children's teachers and want to commend them on educating our kids my opinion here in no way reflects the amazing job each of them has been doing this year and most other great teachers in our district I was made aware of the attitudes and behavior study from first selectman cards public comment at the border selectman meeting I want to give I wanted

027to give the district a benefit of the doubt so I went and did my own diligence acquired the court acquired the correspondence from the district and took the survey myself and was completely shocked the email that the principal sent to parents no way prepared them for the questions that were asked in that survey there was an opt-out but the survey questions were not made available for parents in the district only allowed parents to view in school during school hours I'm very familiar with that practice in my profession we do that all the time when we don't want people seeing our proprietary information we tell them to come view the data in our offices and while we look over your shoulders at deterrents we're seeing that data I want to warn parents if there's anybody listening

028I'm going to mention the survey questions and anybody that has young kids might not want to hear these it appears this survey was given to children as young as 11 years old and had questions that asked if children if they were straight bisexual or gay if they had sexual intercourse gone all the way what type of contraceptive they used how many times have the children used heroin crack cocaine driven a car while drunk or used prescription pills that were not prescribed to them the fact that you're asking 11 year old if they drove drunk should have been a red flag to the administration that the survey was not age-appropriate for middle school I'm not naive sadly I understand some children at this age do engage in these behaviors but most 11 and 15 year old

029children do not and this survey has now alerted the student body there are available behaviors and some students may now deem them acceptable I asked the board to work on transparency and continuity around the district last month I was told my kindergartner could not wear her Halloween costume this year while my second grader could the reason was because Center School administration didn't feel costumes were inclusive for all students and could offend some well this survey is also not inclusive for all students and is very offensive for some it is also not age appropriate I firmly believe these types of questions should not be asked within our school for any age I encourage all students to opt out of every survey until Brookfield Public Schools can be more transparent with parents about the questions they ask

030of our children thank you thank you um the second on the same topic is Mr Carr thank you for that you put it very well um I have to I have to start off by saying that these are my comments as a name and address oh I'm sorry Tony Carr 54 Indian Trail uh these are my comments as a concerned parent and did not necessarily reflect the opinions or Viewpoint of my wife the first election in addition to what my my good friend there just said I just wanted to point out that Behavioral Studies research should be um should not be funded by town taxpayers as part of Education and for every minute spent on this laboratory research it's time that school is not spending on educating our youth to that end we should either

031reduce the board of education budget commensurate with the amount of time wasted yearly on these types of non-educational endeavors the state wants non-educational surveys the state should fund and participate participation participation should be an active Vice passive volunteering effort now this is important we should have a passive opt-out it should be an active opt-in for any survey that's being asked of students also according to school digger BHS ranks 32nd in the state of 125 schools and whiskey near 76 out of 250. so that's 25 and 31 if graded using our education standard of grading scale we'd have a c for high school and a d Plus for our Middle School I submit that our Board of Education and taxpayer-funded Educators should focus on teaching the kids reading writing in arithmetic the math skills they need

032to compete for University Vocational School opportunities along with the science Arts geography etc those courses that lend to a well-rounded pre-college academic education our children should not be Behavioral Science Lab Rats for the state or for our educators so let's collectively work on a goal of bettering our state school ranking so that when budget formulation time rolls around we as the taxpayers are more likely to look favorably on budget proposals and requests for funds that show a clear road map for achieving academic success for a high school and middle school students thank you thank you so for those of you others who've signed up on different topics we'll have we'll come back to you at the uh at this at the session on public comment at the end of the meeting um I will before

033I move on to the agenda I do will note that we purposely have put a couple of topics on this evening's Agenda One is a uh um is a discussion on the survey itself right and we will have a guest speaker Mrs Sturm from the Brookfield cares organization the second is we actually and it's it's a bit of happenstance we had our policy committee brought forward a policy on surveying of students that we will bring forward to for a first read this evening and for those of you who don't know how the policy process works we we accept it for a first read we have a month to review it and then we bring it back with comments and we have what we call a second read 30 days hence to approve uh policy so

034tonight we'll have the first read and we'll get a update from the policy committee at that time so there's two pertinent topics on tonight's agenda relative to this attitudes and behavior survey so and thank you all for your input I appreciate that next up on our agenda is our student representative hi Caitlin how are you hello I'm good how are you turn it over to you thank you so I have many exciting updates for you all uh starting with this year's Veterans Day was a success within our school we hosted a panel of four Veterans for a q a session we viewed American veterans documentary and Miss liebler's iot wrote thank you cards to be distributed to Veterans we are so beyond grateful for their bravery the football and cheerleading team celebrated their senior night

035this past Thursday there was a date change due to weather but everything went perfectly and each senior was individually recognized for their hard work today was the true team's second fundraiser of the Season at Four Corners nutrition and Mr Blanda made a special appearance and he ordered the Brookfield Bobcat energy tea and wanted me to show off this cup I designed for him so that was a lot of fun um yesterday November 16th we had our first ever career fair uh 35 different career Fields were represented and students were able to spend time with presenters in three different careers to get a better sense of what interests them um next uh This was oh this was all thanks to the organization and implementation of Mr Davila and the Brookfield youth Commission next college and career

036counselor Nicole Usher officially joins the BHS faculty on November 21st as a senior I'm extremely excited to welcome her to the district as the stressful application season is underway and seniors need all hands on deck regarding our clubs best buddies celebrated their annual friends giving together with food and conversation on November 15th the mental health and psychology Club celebrated November Mental Health Week by creating a beautiful bulletin board in the cafeteria holding resources accessible to all the School Musical was changed from Cinderella to little shop Horrors due to the amount of auditions we can't wait to see their performance our Winter concert will be held at December 15th and the winter Cabaret will be December December 17th along with a fundraiser for student government referring back to the information I gave you all last meeting

037regarding the Michael's cup 19 students will be attending the awards ceremony and Conference tomorrow November 17th at the aquatore Turf in Southington this is the fifth time in six years that Brookfield has earned this award which is very exciting boys golf won the Patriot Division and finished the year with their best record ever girls soccer finished the regular season undefeated until their final swc's game and the girls field hockey ranked six Statewide our athletic department is looking into the possibility of building a new concession stand labor and material would be donated by our community the Connecticut High School coaches association selected two of our coaches as outstanding Coach of the Year congratulations to them and this was the Class M field hockey Megan goida and class L girls soccer Barry O'Reilly finally National Honor Society

038held our annual annual blood drive this past Monday the Red Cross collected 36 units of blood which will impact the lives of 108 people thank you man your lists get better and more interesting every time so are you in the middle of applications yourself I am actually I did early action for a lot of my colleges so I have only one left Dukes to submit but my first um admissions decision comes back December 1st very very exciting so we're we will be sitting with baited where you end up going so thank you okay thank you um all right so next up is written correspondence okay Monique Matthews Korea wrote regarding a FERPA violation Denise Wright rice wrote regarding special education Staffing and concerns and an foi request Mark Ferry wrote regarding the Candlewood school delays

039Jason Eddy wrote regarding the safe School climate committee and the budget Roundtable Sherry styronovsky wrote regarding special education concerns Joe Carolla and other swc coaches wrote a letter of recommendation tarakar and Elena Lopez wrote regarding the attitude and behavior survey and Ryan rodanus wrote regarding public comment okay thank you um approval aboard minutes I'll move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on October 19th second it's been moved in second does anybody have any comments on the on the minutes okay hearing none all in favor okay so unanimous um so now we're going to turn to the superintendent's update and Dr Brill this is I think the longest list I've ever seen from you it's been a month a lot of interesting and exciting things that are going on so thank thank

040you uh Mr Belden and I'm going to Echo uh one item I think from uh from Caitlyn so I'll make that one fast uh this won't be a brief report they're usually brief but I will not uh take an exorbitant amount of time either the first thing I want to say is echoing on Veterans Day all four schools had events for Veterans Day it was incredibly moving um and um as we always say words are not enough for our veterans and uh it was just very special uh to be in a couple of the schools I didn't make it to all of them for the for the various ceremonies that were going on we have lots of PowerPoint presentations pictures and video we're actually going to put those together into a montage and hopefully in

041the next two weeks get that out to the communities to kind of see all four schools and how that's going in addition to that we have uh we were working uh video to Archive the college and career day so that's another nice piece of transparency and piece of History we'll have that we can showcase for everyone so we'll have that going out I did want to read from Robin Montgomery some of you know Robin's name he's a two police Chiefs ago he's involved with the VFW and he sent each of the principals and uh and me a thank you letter I think it just says it all um on behalf of our uh commandant of the VFW please accept with deep appreciation the events that took place at your schools and the inclusion of our

042VFW members the comments were very positive from our members about the different programs they had attended thank you all for your thoughtfulness including the VFW in honoring our veterans on Veterans Day so we're more appreciative of him but it was nice to get that acknowledgment and I know the many of the principals commented back and it's just a great relationship we have with them I certainly work with Mr Beale quite a bit uh with the VFW and the things we do here in District so really really proud and excited and thankful um one thing about Veterans Day it's important for people to remember probably about 10 years ago in Connecticut there was a big fall storm uh prior to Halloween and Halloween actually got pushed off in some of the towns and one of the

043strategies in trying to make up an early snow day or two that that different school systems had to take off was looking at where we could gain back some days and I know in the district I was in at the time I wasn't here in Brookfield but a similar decision was made which was rather than take Veterans Day off as a holiday where kids might not be getting the appreciation and learning about Veterans Day if you have school during Veterans Day and schedule and plan for celebrations and memorials for for our veterans they could learn more about it and we've been doing that and so um I guess it's been about nine or ten years that that's been going on in many school districts and brookfield's no different we're really proud of what we we

044do for our veterans and recognize them and bringing their families into in some of the schools so anyway I wanted to put a little bit of History out on that it's also American Education week and in the spirit of being appreciative today is actually educator support Professionals Day which applies to our pair of professionals so we send some notes out for a pair of Educators and just really thanking them for all the hard work they do with our most vulnerable students so we're really excited about that continuing on I'm not going to get too deep into best buddies Caitlyn talked about that already but at the high school best buddy celebration was yesterday and the joy camaraderie and the fellowship for an after-school program with that many students attending and faculty attending and Anna you

045got to be there a number of the principals were there Amy and the Gang were there we just just wonderful to see all the kids and some of the seniors who when I got here um I can't believe it's almost eight full years ago joy we had good meetings back then um the uh some of the the seniors remember being fifth graders going into middle school and we were laughing about the time zone reminiscing about how nervous we all were coming in with a new job and going to the big middle school and that kind of stuff and talking just like we did with Caitlyn about going to college and uh getting ready for all of that so a lot of good good spirits going on there cave Communications award I'm going to continue to

046move on once again Board of Education and school district have been mentions as winners uh either honorable mention or for actually winning the categories in the Bonnie B Carney award for excellent as an educational communication the four specific awards that the Brookfield Board of Ed is being recognized for in excellence in communication is in the going green project to thank Mrs gramling for the big going green poster project uh the district newsletter the district calendar and the Brookfield Public Schools um covid-19 opening plan a lot of you had input into that plan and all the work that went into that and of course the calendar and so forth so I thank everybody and just it's a big recognition that we need to stop and realize there's a lot of good that goes on and make

047sure we acknowledge those people who contribute the next one I wanted to talk about was actually if I can understand I went on to the cave website to look at how many people win these awards every year we seem to get three or four Awards and there's only about 16 awards given out it's not like there's lots of awards and we're pulling in three or four per year so it's uh it's a it's a tribute to some of the good Communications credit to the team you know and and everybody everybody contributing we're really um again there's just so so much good that goes on and I couldn't be more grateful um I did want to move on to another topic about 10 days ago there was an article in the paper regarding some uh FERPA

048eras that had occurred and we had some parents that wrote in and um those concerned me just as much as it concerns them we're listening to our parents um and there were mistakes that were made and we acknowledged that in the article and I thought the coverage was balanced um and so there are concerns we're going to address internally I have a six point plan that I put together on that in addition to some training that's already occurred that we've worked on with our staff and will continue to work on going forward I did invite our special services legal counsel attorney Cheney here tonight uh in attorney if you could come up to the podium and gents if you could put up the the one slide there Eric just to share very briefly a little

049bit about what FERPA is people hear that you know it's an acronym and how mistakes might happen and what we do when they happen how we disclose and how we work to have corrective action and make sure these things don't happen again so I'd like to turn it over to a attorney Cheney first and I promised her she could be brave and we would be brave it's not a long evening at all um and then I'll share with you the plan going forward so attorney chinny uh good evening everyone I think I've met some of you before but it's been a long time since I've seen a full Board of Education in person so it's it's actually a nice evening so what is purpose of federal law that's about uh it's about student records and

050it has sort of two components a lot of a lot of sections and subsections but basically two concepts the parents right to see their child's records and the confidentiality of those records um two other two others um the records are records are the only items retained but only retained by the district so it's not about what we have to retain it's about what we have to do with what we do retain so it's important distinction it also does not include directory information just the information that the government considers fairly generic such as names classless except in very limited circumstances so that's just a very very brief outline of what it stands for the family education rights privacy act so the next time you hear that acronym you know now you know what it means um

051I also want to talk to you a little bit about FERPA violations and the process that that's good practice to follow with the FERPA violations first of all most of you know that I've been an education lawyer for about 30 years and in my experience virtually all FERPA violations are inadvertent I can't in fact think of a situation I've been involved with in my entire years of practice where there was a deliberate FERPA violation I just want to give you a couple of examples of the most common firm violations one is suppose a student's document is incorrectly filed in another student's folder and then that student's parents request copies of their students record and that erroneously placed document is erroneously provided to that requesting parent and that happens probably more frequently that it should not

052just here in Brookfield but all the cases that I've been involved with another very common request is if a particularly a parent of an older student who may have a quite voluminous record makes a requests for the full record obviously a lot of redacting tends to be involved with that because some of the documents mentioned more than one student I have seen in one of these very large cases redactions being missed accidentally not redacting a name here or there not rejecting a piece of information here or there and that also is so those are in my experience the two most common types of FERPA errors and generally speaking they are inadvertent rather than intentional uh what's the best process for handling these kinds of FERPA mistakes FERPA errors first you want to inform any affected

053family as soon as as soon as it comes to life as soon as you learn we learn of it we let the family know this information about your child was inadvertently disclosed to someone who didn't wasn't entitled to have it we're very sorry um we're going to try to get those documents back and we apologize for the error one thing I did want to also clarify since you may not be aware of this sometimes there are certain types of things that happen in school district there's a mandate mandated report that has to go to somebody so for example if a student gets restrained there's a report that we have to file with the state there is no reporting requirement like that for a FERPA violation and no agency to whom it must be reported so

054it's really more reporting it to the family and again and then looking at our practices seeing where we went wrong seeing what we can improve I know Dr Burrell has been working hard with his team to look at FERPA and to look at how we can make our practice in the district better he has shared that plan with me I understand he's going to share it with you tonight um I can tell you that wholeheartedly support that plan is your special education lawyer I think they're all good steps to take I think we can all always look at how we can be better and so I commend the district for that so that's really all I had just wanted to give you a very down one let me give you a very brief overview what

055the law is what it covers and and so forth attorney Cheney we turn it back to John okay thank you thank you very much thank you so if I may I'll continue about the um so I put together a six-point plan and I'll be very brief brief on this that we're working on so the first thing is reviewing and revising internal process with Council so that was the first thing the second thing is looking at what faculty and staff training we need um Amy is already conducted for training and will continue to do so throughout the year um we've conducted foi training which involves records as well uh in addition to that working through training for the state special education manual and then the document repository work with CT sets which is the new technology

056platform for IEPs that you know is an enormous uh Initiative for the entire state every district is going through that transition um uh and and so those are some of the trainings we've already had we already conduct a end of year and beginning of the year training uh kind of a warm-up and warm down training at the each book end of the year we'll continue to look at mid-year checks some other things we're going to be looking into is IEP file training email records training and cumulative file training as well and we haven't conducted those yet but we'll be working on those throughout the year so faculty and staff training is point two point three is utilizing technology for complete redaction Eric our technology director has helped us with that it's a it's a very

057inexpensive software that we're working through so when we redact names or identifiers are completely blacked out and can't be seen through like a marker or something like that when you hand redact also looking at other efficient forms of technology that may help us with record records and responding to requests one of the other Concepts we talked about as a budget priority was a dedicated part-time clerk that could help us with FERPA and foia requests this person could also be utilized with we're talking about the principals just yesterday as a central registrar to help us with that that's another need in the district and kind of uh clerk secretarial type of work to give us some back back office support that would help with timely consistent and accurate uh you know responses to records and then

058the last one is auditing random files to see how we're doing with our processes so really at the end of the day these are attorney Cheney said these would be best practices to engage in and be consistent with so we want to move forward and we're working on it and we want to assure our parents we're working really hard and we don't want to make even one mistake um with any of this as attorney Cheney talked about of course they're inadvertent no one does it on purpose but we can't afford to have those mistakes it's confidential information so that's that's fur but I don't know if anybody has any requests for my update tonight we've spoken to other districts to kind of determine how they go through this process I actually talked with a number

059of superintendent colleagues and these are some of the steps they've taken when they've had a number of instances where they've had some concerns or even one and say you know let's stop records are important and they need to be kept confidential so how could we improve and these are some of the steps do they have someone assigned to that role or many districts especially larger ones but not exclusively larger districts have a dedicated Clerk or office that handles foi and ferpro requests because it is it's the the sensitive documents but the requests are many times voluminous and they're very complicated in terms of what the request is and how to put things together right now our administrators uh handle that and technology department uh mainly Eric help us put those together so it is uh

060kind of back office work that if we can get someone trained properly to help us with responding to requests at the times when it's request heavy it would be very helpful I think is there a way we can look at an attorney Cheney said there's some documents that go into the files that might attention to multiple students is there a way we can go up for the root cause and make sure that the only documents that the only documents um he's good at reminding me that the only documents that are going into a student's file only list that in that student's information and they're not like a schedule of all students that's going to make everything easy that's one of the pieces of this is working on exactly that well not just in hard copy

061but also in PowerSchool and how we log in PowerSchool because usually if there's conflicts between students it involves multiple students you know Johnny and Susie had a conflict and so how do we log that information have a record of it but when we go back to retrieve it for the purposes of a FERPA response we're not including another student exactly that exactly because just observing the ones that have come up more often than not it was those situations it was a schedule or multiple kids mentioned in a you know in a classroom or something like that where the inadvertent strikeout wasn't done sure and man if we could go after the root cause right it would it would help minimize the human error that might happen in football but it was it was I wanted

062to share that that with the board share for the public that we are taking it very seriously and that's just an important piece let everybody know would you be planning to periodically give us an update on projects I think we would I think we would given it's been a notable issue enough to be a front page article in the newspaper absolutely I would think as a board we would like to hear your ongoing report on progress would you all agree okay everybody agrees all right we can do that okay all right thank you um I guess item number six on my agenda here um Staffing update really important we're about 30 of the way through the through the uh through the year and um actually if you look at July 1 we're getting close to

063halfway through the year at this point being in mid-november at this point um I wanted to give an update just on Staffing so everybody knows um kind of where we stand generally speaking we have over 420 total employees and then if you add in athletic coaches and all of that we really have a lot of people who work for the school district we are really fortunate in Brookfield we started the year fully staffed we continue to be fully staffed that doesn't mean that turnover doesn't happen during the year leaves of absence retirements resignations and we have to replace uh folks um but there is a it's important for people to truly understand in some of what I say will ring true from what we've talked about uh in Recruitment and Retention conversations Human Resources conversations

064over the years the teacher shortage in uh America is 350 000. 350 000 teachers shortage Across the Nation we are very fortunate that we're fully staffed but it's come to Connecticut some of the key areas where we are still in a shortage in Connecticut and it's very difficult to find staff and faculty especially is math science special education speech and language mental health staff because of the needs there just is not enough we've heard that that has been something covered in the media quite a bit and that would include psychologists and social workers and counselors so forth tesol bilingual teachers even substitute teachers are hard to find especially during and you know it was always difficult to get substitute teachers when you add it in covet and now post covet a lot of people dropped

065out of the substitute ranks so um it is it is really a testament to HR to our principals to the teacher interview teams to the students who sat in for observations um for as mock students for Teacher observations to make sure we have the high quality staff that we do have here um this includes teachers Paras custodians secretaries nurses our unaffiliated staff who are fully staffed and it's really fitting that I say this in my report which is right before the consent agenda where we have each month there are the puts and takes on Staffing so we'll get there in a little bit but one thing that's really important is it's another layer it's nice to say we're fully staffed but people are absent people go to training things happen like I said before people

066go on leaves so you really do have to shore up your substitute coverage and as everybody knows here a number of years ago we transitioned from trying to outfit substitutes ourselves which is extremely labor intensive to using a service called Educational Employee excuse me substitute services or ESS we're working with them to continue to increase their recruitment of substitute teachers and their fill rate with us and so I think they're doing quite a good job but again going to kind of a six-point plan I want to share with you that in working with ESS we're working on the fill rate The Faculty the administration continues to work on Creative scheduling of professional learning days so we're not having on certain days where we might know that we could have high absentee rates scheduling training for

067those days so we would need less Subs we've added a second building sub at each building this year we started with one building sub we now have two to meet that need and Ken's working through that with the budget and the substitutes and so forth we're also looking at absentee data of paraprofessionals and teachers to see you know are there any any things we can do to help address those issues um and uh in with that we're actually working with the unions on what are the root causes is there anything we could do as a district to support and help and kind of figure out why are we having you know the absentee rates we're having and how could we uh put our heads together and be more creative and have less absenteeism which would

068be less Demand on substitutes we'd have our uh tremendous faculty in place tremendous pairs in place and have less need for Subs but also then that would increase our fill rate so we've got a lot going on in that area so I just wanted to update everybody and it certainly could do a comeback on this as well to see where we're at any questions on substitute coverage um it's not a substitute it's a staffing question with a shortage in Connecticut have we had any a column rating uh people you know departing our ranks with short notice type of things yeah one of the things I think it's a kind of a common phrase internally among Educators especially I can speak to Connecticut is kind of the covid shuffle that's occurred when covet came around a

069lot of Educators who had the opportunity to retire did others just left maybe we didn't retire but just left the profession it created a lot of openings and so many faculty staff administrators have moved where they're closer to home where there's another job opportunity could be a promotional opportunity whatever it might be and that's happening everywhere there is rating of districts we talk to each other and um are aghast at our own rating of one another and we don't like it but we have a job to do and we have to fill we have a responsibility to our district so we have to fill so I could tell you I know Danbury is suffering a great shortage many teachers left for surrounding districts here in our region we had three or four that we brought

070in at the last minute from at last minute last couple of weeks of August from Danbury and you while we feel bad about that we have a responsibility here and so if the teachers were ready to fill an opening it's highly qualified and we want to bring them on as part of the team then we're certainly going to bring them on so we engage in pirating from other districts we'll be very candid about that but there are other districts that actively seek some of our teachers if we've had them for a couple of years and they've been through a lot of our PD and they're doing really well down County especially is where we lose our teachers too because you can drive down County and to the Gold Coast and you know there's a significant

071are they in those areas that you say are General that's where we lose unless it's someone who's got an hour commute they're coming from somewhere in the center of the state or something like that yeah I know of one instance where we we lost a teacher like the day before school started and then we tried to get a replacement found a replacement who then left and turned up turned us down and took another job and then we had to go back to the drawing board yet again and finally brought them on the replacement on board I mean those are difficult situations and the other thing for us what hit us this year in the in the third year of the contract there was a change in the way the step movement was and so depending

072on where a teacher might fall there were some teachers who didn't particularly uh weren't looking forward to the way their step placement was and if they were able to be more mobile and move on and transition to another District they might get a better step placement so there was awesome there was a couple of people lost with the economic decisions in that regard and if I could just add one thing from the HR perspective um that this is the first time in my experience as a building leader or District leader that we've seen so many people leaving the profession it's and that's across the state so it's not just that they're leaving to go other districts they're getting out of Education so that's part of the Copic Shuffle is that people are leaving okay all

073together anybody else have questions on that topic okay last piece on that topic is the universities have a dearth of applicants and uh young people in the pipeline to become Educators so that's another area at University there's they're they're seeing less and less enrollment in the education programs yes that because just people don't want to go into education or their programs are not appealing to them I I think it's gotten I don't know that education is appealing as it used to be um and economics could also play into that okay yeah I guess I don't know if there's anything we could do in an advocacy role with the universities to help bolster that we just had a big conversation last week with Western Connecticut lower tuition well the least we can do is try to

074you know kind of Avail ourselves as a district that is very friendly to early Educators right so pre-education programs as well and building that you know I can certainly work on building relationships with between not just Westcon but also Uconn and Central and um Sacred Heart and all of those places that have pre-educator programs so that we can be seen not just because there are some steps that are you know that our teachers have we have Team trained teachers and people can be Mentor teachers but also you know availing off our schools to students who are their first couple years as education Majors have to go on and do and log hours of just observing so it's not even quite as onerous as taking on a full student teacher but those are good relationships that

075we can build as well that's a great idea and yeah I was going to say you've got an automatic recruiting machine going there and we ought to be as aggressive as any District in the state in terms of welcoming those engagement that will help you with the substitute issue well they're not technically allowed to subscribe but but going back to the the economics and the the contract one of the things in the lot and we've just had a teacher negotiation but in the teacher negotiation prior three years earlier uh don't forget what the board did which was make it more favorable for early career teachers in terms of the salary schedule you know so that that was something that could help bring you know um at the end of the day people do compare salaries

076while it's altruistic to go into education and so forth there is a market out there and um the board did take action on that so that's commendable I need to know that all right I think we exhausted that topic for tonight um I'm going to turn it over to Anna for a little bit she's going to talk a little bit about Merit scholar and I think also a little bit about niask just just this is just an opportunity and work even doing it yeah so just to inform the board of some um committees that I'm on and some you know kind of professional opportunities that I have that also um I'm able to be an ambassador for Brookfield I am a member of the commission for the New England Association of schools and colleges which

077I'm sure many of you are familiar with um niask as it is um as the acronym is refer is referred to um is not only the accreditating body for New England schools for public schools historically it's been focused on high school um but actually niask has now expanded to accrediting K-12 districts and part of that and it is comprised the commission is comprised of volunteer Educators or members of the public or education you know educational leaders and it is essentially the commission reviews every single report that is submitted to schools from schools to the commission and so we support the faculty and the staff or the staff rather of niac there are only six full-time staff in the public school side um but it also has an international and an independent school side that and

078the commission has gotten very the commissions have been meeting jointly so we're able to learn a lot from each other as public Educators and so it's a really it's I've been involved for about five or six years and so I have three meetings a year and so an October meeting a March meeting and then a summer meeting and so it's just that's I had my October meeting it's the first time we were back in person after a couple years of doing them through Zoom which is not fun um and so it's it's just a nice opportunity for me to learn about you know the standards as they're updated and I've worked with Mr Belinda a little bit on that and also something for us to consider as a district of going through that process as

079a K-12 district and so that's one of the Committees that I serve on I also just concluded a term as a member of The Advisory Council for the National Merit scholar scholarship corporation which is a non-profit that supports the National Merit Scholars of the United States and so that was actually through my role as principal of Amity I was invited to be a member of that group and so I was out in Chicago last Monday for the annual meeting and it's it's you know the National Merit Scholarship Corporation is just in a they have an advisory Council and so it is comprised of as I said 16 educational leaders from across the United States half public half Independent Schools and so it's another opportunity for me to be an ambassador for Pub for Brookfield Public

080Schools but also to learn a little bit about what some of the national Trends are with the PSAT and also act or you know different kind of scholarship uh Merit assessments so I just wanted to share with you some of the things that I've been doing outside of the district but also as an opportunity to put the district out to the country okay cool thanks stuff thanks man I love that yeah I'm excited about we talked about strategic planning and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves but talking about me ask K-12 quite interesting we usually think about it as high school it might be something in terms of New England schools and colleges something we need to consider um moving on a couple of two more to go and I'll be done just

081a shout out to the bef Brookfield Education Foundation gala they are so good to us I just want to let everybody know we did send out another school message a reminder not so much about the um Gala itself on Friday night because I understand all the tickets are sold which is fantastic that's a fundraiser in and of itself selling the tickets but there are on the evening of the gala so even if you're not going I believe around seven o'clock or whatever time it's actually going to start the uh there's an online opportunity for all the auctions and that's another part of the fundraiser there so there's a lot of good stuff going on there so I want to make sure people know that if they happen to be watching and didn't hear it otherwise

082they heard it here and then the final thing that I think many people don't don't just can't appreciate all the stuff that goes on in the back office you know we talked about FERPA tonight right and Records clearly very important there's another piece out there and it's very Vogue to talk about but a lot of people don't necessarily know what it means but cyber security and how critical and important that is I want to congratulate Ken and Eric today Eric signed the binder for um getting full cyber security insurance for us many districts in many towns are not in a position where they will actually be given cyber security insurance as you know karma is the typical Municipal insurance carrier uh coverage carrier for districts Karma does not provide the Cyber Insurance cyber security insurance

083you have to go out to separate insurance companies to to get that um and we were in a position very strongly positioned to be able to get that insurance because of four key areas the fact that we have multi-factor authentication the fact that our VPN access is for remote access is limited the fact that our security patches and updates are implemented as soon as available and the fourth fact which is we have a comprehensive backup and Recovery Solution and you know that's due to all the great work of our tech department and Eric's leadership so and of course board support to make sure we have the funds to make sure that security can happen and so we now are fully cyber insured why would you be cyber insured all the kinds of phishing attacks ransomware

084all those things you hear about we are covered for that now so we are really excited about that and I'm thankful that we have the opportunity for that I know I was along tonight I'll stop there any questions good crib note she gave America I read this pretty well you really handled them well that's that's why we have an I.T director not too technical thank you John any questions thanks everyone appreciate the time okay all right so next up is uh our subcommittee reports um and uh first on our agenda is the policy and Communications committee when you've got a lot of things on our agenda for tonight too okay uh policy and Communications subcommittee met on October 19th it feels like six months ago I don't know where the time went but um our

085full committee was there and we talked about three policies that are in your packet tonight for first read the first one was policy 5145.53 the chick transgender and gender non-conforming youth policy um the second one was six one six two point five one survey of students as you had mentioned earlier we had already started to look at that survey so that's in your packet and policy 6115 ceremonies and observances separation of church and state um so we had we spent most of the meeting discussing those three policies and just making minor edits asking questions getting them ready to send to you and then we had a brief discussion about Communications Dr Burrell gave us an update on videos that are being done for the district and you might recall seeing the school security video that

086Dr Burrell sent out a few weeks ago that was awesome and we spent a little bit of time talking about tonight's budget Roundtable and how to get more community members to attend and that was pretty much it pretty straightforward so you'll come back and tell us a little bit more about the specific policies when we get to them right yep okay let's talk it all about using talking point s or is called talking voice yeah okay for the budget or not like the budget Round Table yeah oh at Round Table we didn't talk about it no I mean like do we have to get people to come to as a way sequences like the app that you oh did we use talking points to send out a message yeah we have used it for messaging

087um we typically use School message but we do use um talking about specific is it going to be used this budget season we certainly can oh okay we certainly can I think it becomes habit of which tools you use so yeah that's a good idea that's good tool right from what I've seen we use that for some other language program yeah those are different languages yeah yeah that was rulers we also put out just as a quick note while you're talking about communication just to put it out there um I think it was in the winter weather update that went out last week but um we're going to I've asked the principals to put out a little piece on um text option so parents could opt in if they want to get a text specifically

088so it's just a little bit easier um when you get a communication that pops up on your phone rather than having to go check your email so and wakes you up at five in the morning well I was up at four this morning so if I get a little Punchy right now you know just checking out that weather so okay any questions for Debbie and next up is security task force uh meeting um and I'll do that one um we actually had a lively meeting uh uh uh with the security task force and almost everybody was able to attend and we did that on November 3rd this topic was the second session on physical security first meeting we went through um what were what are we doing today what have we done recently and then

089what were things we should think about the comeback was what are what would those cost and what would be the you know the benefits of them and we reviewed all of that and the committee actually um approved that we go forward to request funding for a number of very specific security things and I will at a broadly it's more cameras um in certain places more storage capacity for those four cameras and and the video uh real positive report on uh open door alarms right which we could add especially at the high school where there's so many doors that would flash into office aggressively if a door was opened um I'm trying to remember what the other items John wore but there was uh walkie-talkie uh enhancing signals the repeaters the film um and so and

090and uh and uh and an expansion of our film program to hit the first floor of all the security buildings and of course in the new school all that's built in but it's so it's really the old the two older schools um I had a bunch of them yeah yeah so we'll talk about those on the facilities okay so then it went the next step is after the security team and reviewed it and went to the facilities committee and uh done oh guess what next on the agenda turns right into Joy so that's pretty much what we went through and I will just say this is the second wave the first wave was about Staffing the second wave of the reviews was about physical things that we could do the then we're going to move

091to I.T and threat assessment cyber security and tools right so there's there's stuff ahead of us yet but we're working it through in a very deliberate and I think just as a reminder of the kind of the the quality of individuals um on that committee we happen to have three dads who are in various roles in security either leadership or in the industry that attend these meetings with us and give us input is as well as the fire marshal and the police chief so I mean you know we've got people who really understand and the discussions are Lively they really are yeah okay that's it for that okay so I'll start with that since I'm going off what you said so we met on November 3rd so the security task force brought forward their prioritized

092lists which was security film um the alarm company can give us Open Door Alerts I'm going to determine who gets the alerts and how if it remains alerting us um we have a lot of management options a double buzzer system for the auditorium at the high school like a sally port system uh walkie-talkies we're looking to go on the towns radio system but that could be a while a gate to control access to the back of the Middle School um looking at dealing with not being able to hear announcements in the restrooms so looking into a PA system to possibly install to be able to hear when you're in the restrooms blind spots on the interior trying to identify those concrete barriers for front of this for the front of the schools ornamental type things

093like Planters or balls I'm adding a server with all cameras and cloud storage for footage which would there would incur a monthly charge in capital expense also and possibly gates to the campuses but we tabled that Mr blando is going to do a walk through regarding gaps in our exterior as far as that goes for security we talked about our capital projects the HVAC could you talk about the funding of that one oh yeah that we have the money over um needing to cover Yeah we actually have sufficient funding already to cover all those items once we saw the cost estimates the funding the the board of finance and the board of Selectmen have approved a regular amount of funding for security enhancements and the amount that we have is sufficient to cover those so

094we don't actually have to ask the town for more money which is great we will need some support from the uh from the town controller and the board of selectment and finance to consolidate the monies from Center Huckleberry and whiskey near into a single bucket in order to do that so that's that'll be a request that will go soon but the money's there it's just as unspent on you know we had to split across four schools and it'll now be in two schools and so we're really moving quickly on that while we wait for you know those approvals and so forth and go through the proper process uh Dan Caldwell and Ken post are moving forward on that as well as Eric uh with the the camera work and of course Mark and his team

095are doing a lot of camera work already and for the board um since the funding has already been approved we don't need to go reapprove right so we concluded that the facility the facilities committee approval was sufficient to deal with the specific projects underneath the overall funding that we had secured so we won't see those specific items as voted on at the board law so sorry about that so the HVAC at the high school we're taking control of the building we turned it on on the 14th so we have full control of almost all the pieces of equipment it's already identity identifying deficiencies and we've had a lot of positive outcomes so it should be complete completed by Christmas break Middle School the bus parking driveway was paved and we put fresh paint lines in

096the teacher parking lot there's a contractor coming to look at the seminar seating room in the Middle School the first number was well over what we budgeted for which is good and their vinyl tile floor will go in for the electric service waiting for the switch gear it will be a project for next summer the whiskey near wall masonry block walls complete Windows remain open the heat is off in the gym but by the end of next week we'll have partial heat to warm up the gym and we redirected them to work in the back and we also discussed the boys locker room a strategy session happened they did a quick walk through on Tuesday Morning some contractors are going to meet there for a couple hours and take notes and they'll coordinate with the

097building Administration on the kickoff and how to secure the materials like the construction fence we also had some new business so there's a town Capital committee Bob and I will be the official board members board representatives for that committee we met last night um Bob had asked if any capital projects were timing out um but were under budget on the electrical servers real allocating to the locker room any projects about to time out he was going to account was going to discuss with Marcia and keep an open line of communication in terms of that and we had some miscellaneous discussion so we recently changed our water testing laboratory the shop was in Newburgh New York and it closed without telling anyone so that left us without testing so hundreds of violations were popping up across

098the state and have impacted many districts not not only just ours so we did get a notice with multiple monitoring and recording violations so it's no negligence on the district's part on the state just may need to increase our testing Administration Administrations so our action date is one year from date and nothing really to be too concerned about our water system operator is reviewing the situation and rectifying it and as of that meeting there were no current updates regarding the new school flooring and that's it I think we'll talk a little bit about that later okay any questions for joy okay next one is uh cape Mike on November 9th at the Town School office and I believe that's takes the like third consecutive different place we've met it's nice it's nice and smaller though

099uh document got the meeting started off with a presentation of the connect Hub platform website that tracks the instructional coaching interactions with the teachers but more than just the interactions the subjects talked about between the teacher and the coach at those interactions and I want to give a shout out to Jackie Whiting who administers that at uh that website and it's a really helpful tool for transparency and and uh how to move forward with what we're doing with the truck and coaching and how it relates back to the curriculum uh the SEL assessment we a special shout out to Amy D Nicole Hickman for kind of hooking us up with a pilot program called Dessa I don't know how to pronounce that first Devereaux devro Devereaux student strengths assessment assesses eight social emotional uh uh

100the assessment is budget friendly Bob so that's going to be happy for you to hear uh so for this first year it's a pile program it's going to be no cost to us and we're going to be completing that get a base level of how we're doing with the SEL and the ruler program for this year K-12 uh and we're going to present more information on that once we get to more the information on the Connecticut State Department of Education k-3 reading assessment and programming this has two parts the first part is we are in compliance because we use acadians for the assessment portion but the program portion which is still uh from what I understand murky water on different programs available to us a couple problems they haven't been properly vetted and we're going

101to still wait to research that more and it is a substantial investment as well so we're going to Dr man's applying for a waiver so we're not going to have to worry about being any compliance issues for 23 and 24. but we are going to wait and research pilot invest in the appropriate reading programs uh when the state makes up their mind and how they are going what direction they're going to take with the reading programs so I can just expand on that a little but the um the state legislature uh passed some some legislation last year saying that the state department had to make sure that there are proper early reading and early literacy program assessments and programs in place and so the Connecticut State Department of Education took that to mean that there

102they should create parameters for districts for K3 reading assessments and then K3 reading programs that information has been coming out the assessment portion came out in the summer time this past summer for next year so this is all for the 23-24 school year and so that was first released in the summertime and then the program the initial list of programs that the State Department of Education is is supporting was released in October again this is not until June July of 23 2023 and since the release of the list of approved programs the the state department has kind of been hitting the brakes a little bit and saying that now districts can apply for a waiver for the next school year so that it gives them time to do their own research and kind of assess

103what which programs will be most efficacious and effective um and you know on a variety of levels and so we now have put together a group of Educators and administrators of teachers and administrators to one look into writing the waiver which again the there's a sample template online but they're still going to come out with a little bit more formal way of writing the waiver for next year's program so that we will continue with our with our current programming which is is working fairly well um and then so we'll write the waiver which has to be submitted by the end of February of 2023 and then we will use that the next year between now and next budget season to explore various programs based on that guy guidance from the state and see what we're

104going to do for the 24-25 school year so which programs do we currently use that are not on the approved list well so um currently the the various programs like open court Teachers College those kinds of uh you know reading and writing programs um is that you know and there it's a little bit uh unclear as to exactly what uh the expectation is of the state um in terms of the this is only for K3 our programs are either k6 or K-8 and so we would be looking at you know having to shift wholesale for either K3 or uh didn't we just shift wholesale just like four or five years ago to Teachers College so why would we shift again if the state is requiring questions tell them that's why we're applying for the waiver

105that's exactly Bob you're acting like we do behind closed doors right I just applied for the waiver you waves you waved your hand there so that's part of all this process so um so like I'm just gonna I I gotta say something please and I've said this by the way to uh Cabe right uh in a in the recent Chairman's thing we met last month on a great presentation that you gave us on learning loss right and the actions we need to take as a district this is not the time for the state to go take everybody and say let's go have everyone shift right one more time especially those of you who've actually just revamped your uh your curriculum within the last couple of years um just because somebody has a thinks they have

106a better idea and thing we need teachers focused on the kids right and making sure the kids are recovering the learning loss that the kids need to recover on before we go with another one of these circle the wagons everyone do it my way you know and uh and and consume tons of intellectual energy trying to work our way through it so I mean that's my personal opinion I don't know if it's shared by anybody else on the board but right now our attention has to be on priority number one which is fix the learning loss that or help fix the learning loss that the kids have suffered over the covert years that has got to be our number one priority not studying something else and I when I do when I get my hand

107motions it's because I feel strongly that we have to close that door and tell the state I don't care if you require it or not we'll take the violation our kids are our priority that's my personal opinion I'm sorry well and um the interesting news is that Dr Brill is getting kind of constant messages from various groups such as caps and Cabe about having similar feelings and soliciting the state for greater flexibility and opportunities to demonstrate the work that we are doing rather than saying here are the prescribed programs that you have to adhere to rather offering similar to how we're I expect the waiver will be tell us how you are meeting the expectations of what the legislation says right the legislation says nothing about specific programs that's so somebody's brilliant idea in a

108corner office somewhere so part of what we have here is legislation and the State Department of Education perhaps overstepping in terms of their interpretation and so that's what we're dealing with you need us to Advocate to give some air cover for the district to focus on the priority that it needs let us know and we'll convene as a board and see if we can do some advocacy work which is all agree with that we appreciate that okay absolutely I mean you need the air cover and uh and I I just would hate to have this be a distraction on what we all agreed was the first priority of the district at our last meeting much appreciated thanks Mike Mike said it I'm sorry okay um any questions for Mike on the K on the cape

109mean Okay so moving the page to consent agenda oh I'm sorry strategic Plan update um so I'm sorry I strategic do you want to do it John or you want no you and Deb if you'd like to okay so we um we did have our thank you the way Deb's face was there I don't know we did have our next we've been on a series of strategic planning meetings and I've been keeping everybody up to date the last meeting was a all-day meeting basically it started at 8 30 until about three o'clock and uh it was an energetic meeting I mean we did a lot of uh group small group uh workout sessions to um uh uh to do it we we went through everybody had taken assignment for questions that they thought they would

110like to have answered we got all the answers back on those we had a chance to discuss many of those then we took that information and started resorting it into what should be strategic priorities that will help us achieve the portrait of The Graduate right and uh and that keeps being the ongoing thing theme of what is going on so and it was a narrowing process I think we started with sticky notes that were maybe 50 75 of them and then we were grouping them asking questions where are their consistent themes how can you set generalize and summarize something to the point where we had three big initiatives for the life of me I didn't write them down and bring them but they well that we took a break because everybody needed to let their

111brain simmer and we're going to get back together again December 6th on December 6th to now discuss those and fine-tune them in preparation for bringing a broader picture to the board to look at and review in January I believe so so good progress I would say Debbie anything you'd like to ask no I was just going to say it's it's really been an interesting process I I really enjoy having the opportunity to interact with students we have some students on the committee as well as parents and staff because just hearing all those different perspectives I think is really helpful for us we don't often get to do that so everybody that's involved has been very energetic and has a lot to contribute has a lot of great ideas so it's been great what I've just

112found so exciting is the group of almost 30 people not everybody can make the meeting some people weren't able to attend uh coalesce around you know three big ideas that really Center on the portrait of The Graduate um critical and creative thinking and collaboration communication change making um and it goes back to some of the sentiments we've been hearing in some of our public uh correspondence as well as the uh I'll just follow up on my emphasis about talking about uh academics and how we really need to focus on that and your passionate comments just now Bob um it's critical that we get to that um and a phrase I've used at the beginning of the strategic planning process is ruthless prioritization we cannot be great at everything but if we focus on the right

113things in the high leverage priorities we can be great at those fewer things um and while we have to focus on academics kind of two areas we need to also think about and we'll talk to the team about this on December 6th is the undergirding supports for student wellness and the undergirding supports for some of the things we talked about tonight in that back office Operational Support system support and structures so I think we're we're really in a good place we've got a lot of great energy and momentum and just really excited about this still still more work to do plenty of work to do plenty of work yet to do on that and if you remember part this is a a plan that will last us five years so when we see it it

114will have structural here's the big picture things we have to do and then there will be a lot of filling in with those as priorities as we go through the each budget cycle and each uh annual goal cycle and each School plan right they'll all become in the fabric and if you remember the last time we did it we had you know teaching for learning you know was about teachers and professional developments about students it was about curriculum and it was about a new school right those were the big structural points and you know we've done all of those right and they've they haven't been one event they've been a series of events that have gone on over over six years I think at this point so this audit when we receive it it will

115you know know I I always get a little discomfort because I want to have real concrete things but when you think about it as it has to set the road the road signs that we're going to live by it will be a good discussion on our strategy right because it'll be things you can then flush around you know as we go on the other interesting piece is uh Mr Costa who has facilitated these strategic plans for Brookfield in the past he actually is is been commissioned by the state to come in and help them get clarity around their goals and what they need to be doing in their strategic planning for the entire state so we're really ahead of the curve as a district working with him because we could he could foresee for us

116what's going on to the exact conversation we just had about K3 reading let's kind of go Whispering is here absolutely so um but that really helps us because at the end of the day we are under the state the state of Connecticut Constitution for education and we need to make sure that we are we are in alignment with those things as well so um but it doesn't mean we can't Advocate and push where we need to yep I feel like we're very fortunate to have him leading us through that process he's a great facilitator and I think really helped get to a lot of things that maybe we had trouble articulating so he he's been really great to work with okay any questions sorry I I missed that on the bottom of the list I

117maybe I did it on purpose um all right consent agenda the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires transfers and resignations second can anybody have any questions on the consent agenda John any comments just a couple of quick comments just to Echo what Caitlyn talked about we're really excited next week we get Nicole Usher um our new college and career counselor she's coming to us from Ridgefield uh with that same experience there so we're really excited to get Nicole in place um another teacher we've just brought on she started two weeks ago he's our land guard she is our ELC teacher at Whiskey near we're really excited to have her with us and she's actually just moved into town with her new family so really excited about that um and

118then sad but happy down at the bottom um Kristen lanese she used to be a paraprofessional for us for about a year now she has been our special education department secretary she is moving on she will be Mrs Carr's secretary she's going to be replacing uh Jenny who we all know is retiring um it's funny I was talking with Kristen and Ginny has been in the position for 28 years and while this is about Kristen I had to say something about Jenny take my opportunity um obviously been been with a lot of uh first select people over over the years um the two of us together we were joking a little bit that we've been into our third first selectment now and our third police chief together uh working with that and our third Finance

119director so we've had a lot of fun you know with some jabbing and and that kind of a thing but Kristen um was tremendous in the role she'll be great as a support for the town in the first selectman's office into the board of Select Madam and uh and so forth so we're really happy for her and I wanted to wish her well and we're actively searching for her replacement that's all in favor of approving the consent agenda five okay moving on we're moving into new business so the first item on our new business agenda is discussion of the attitudes and behavior survey right we had some public comment on that tonight and uh some of our board members have asked that we discussed it but I thought that the right way to start would

120be to give the Brookfield cares team a chance to give us some background in history and for the public to get some background in history on what the survey is about and what Brookfield cares is about and so I'd like to invite Colette Sturm who I think all of us know well used to be the chairman of this uh board to join us this evening and Colette thank you for coming I appreciate it and uh and maybe give us a brief kind of overview of that so we can it forms background for all of us in our discussion absolutely [Music] speak about Brookfield cares and the survey um it has been my privilege to be part of Brookfield cares for the last two and a half years and for those that are not familiar with

121with us we are a non-profit volunteer organization that works to create awareness and positive change around the issues of substance misuse depression suicide and other mental health concerns we do this by actively engaging the community to reduce risk behaviors destigmatize Mental Health and to promote and support healthy choices now Brookfield cares has been in existence for about 30 years and some iteration or the other actually more than that I believe it started as the substance abuse Coalition and then about 10 years ago combined with Brookfield acts which was a sub um a suicide prevention coalition to form what is now known as Brookfield cares um we work very hard to represent the entire community so to do that we try to get sector representation within our coalition as an example we have mental health professionals

122in the Coalition we have medical professionals we have representatives from the schools the Town Police Department Faith Community we have coaches and importantly we also have individuals and parents with lived experience be that with substance misuse mental health issues or even suicide so this survey is really important to Brookfield cares in order to help guide and advise the initiatives and messaging that we do the survey that we use has been constructed by search Institute which is a well-known organization Nationwide that works for data research and solutioning with student achievement particular survey we use is called the attitudes and behavior survey it's been developed by search Institute over 25 years using with like 5 million students the attitudes and behavior survey really works on two separate aspects one are students assets these are 40 attributes that

123are reliable predictors for students resiliency success and their ability to thrive some of the assets are internal such as a student's value set their positive identity and their interpersonal communication they can also be external assets and that would be our support structures for the student within the schools the community the neighborhood their peer relationships and their families the survey also works with risk behaviors as well it's not surprising that these two tend to be conversely related in areas where students have strong assets we also find risk behaviors and that goes vice versa the attitudes and behavior survey was designed for grades 6 through 12. Brookfield has been these past two times surveying our 7th through 12th grade students this was the sixth time that Brookfield cares has done this survey since 2009 within the district

124we did it last week our time before that was in the fall of 2019. um the questions generally tend to be very similar year after year survey after survey and this is very intentional because that way not only do we get a snapshot of what our students are doing and what their issues are but we can also track Trends year after year and Survey after survey this really is the best way we can get a handle on our sweater students are thinking what their issues are what their needs are where they're strong where they show weaknesses this survey has been used throughout the nation with thousands of schools and it's also used locally within several of school districts here as well the state divides all the local prevention councils of which Brookfield cares as one

125into five specific regions we are in region five which is Western Connecticut um We There are in Region 5 25 local prevention councils that work with 43 separate towns or municipalities out of those 25 local prevention councils 18 of them have used this attitudes and behavior survey um within the the close region we have New Milford Bethel and New Fairfield that have also used this attitudes and behavior survey so because it is very standard we have though auditionally added some extra questions to it a couple of years ago both the nation and locally we've noticed a disturbing Trend within vaping so Western Connecticut Coalition which is the the regional behavioral action Organization for region five crafted a series of eight questions regarding students attitudes and behaviors about vaping they were carefully vetted reviewed formatted and

126then added to the survey for our 2019 survey and they're also used for many other Regional towns and schools as well this year we also did add four additional questions about students experiences with Safety and Security within the school these questions as well were carefully reviewed and formatted and vetted by search Institute to make sure that they had the validity they needed to be part of this survey so there are two separate ways we can attain parental consent with surveys there is an opt-out and an opt-in option for that opt out is generally used when there are no personal identifiers with the students when the information is being used overall for group purpose versus personal identifiers it's also used for middle school and high school students versus our younger elementary students and it's also used

127when a large sample the size is needed this survey checked all of those boxes and I do want to emphasize again this is a completely Anonymous survey for our students Brookfield neither Brookfield cares nor the school district nor the community nor search Institute for that matter has any identifying characteristics of our students the questions go straight to search Institute they tabulate them put them together we get the reports as percentages of students and groups that have answered these questions that's all we get from that aspect so when we sent the letter for an opt-out for this survey the parents do have permit have the ability to come into whiskaneer or the high school to look at the survey search both search Institute and other leading survey administrators do not recommend sending the survey home or

128sending a link home with parents prior to the survey and this is really just because that would generally precipitate parents reading and discussing the questions with the students prior to it which would definitely influence and then skew the responses for the students with the survey and and then vastly decrease the validity of our answers and our data [Music] um I also want to emphasize that this survey is completely voluntary for our students at any time prior to taking the survey the students have the option to opt out of it and as a matter of fact we had several students that decided either on the spot right before taking the survey that day or even in the middle of taking the survey they just decided they didn't want to do it and they were completely allowed

129to do that so I talked about how invaluable this data is to Brookfield cares and I would like to give just a few concrete examples if I can every time we administer the survey afterwards we update publish and produce a parent guide such as this generally they're handed out at all of the open houses curricula nights anytime we have a presentation anytime we have a table anywhere we're pressing this this guide in people's hands unfortunately as I had said before our last survey was fall of 2019 and then we had covid and all of these times that we would be in person had been virtual so therefore we did send this parent guide we mailed it out to every single household in the Brookfield Public School District we also made it available digitally and since

130everything has started to go back in person we have once again resumed trying to press it in as many hands as possible we do update this every single time based on our survey results and we use those results to help the messaging for our parents the first part of it for example does talk about the survey and gives brief results in regards to the survey but then the rest of it is information and resources for our parents so for example during the 2019 survey we found that 17 to 20 percent of our students across the board 7th through 12th grade were demonstrating eating disorder behaviors predominantly bulimic with binging and purging but some anorexia as well so we definitely have a section in here for parents about eating disorders information about it where they can

131get help how to discuss with their with their students we also know from from the 2019 survey that's seven to twelve percent of our students have attempted suicide at least once and that 15 to 25 percent of our students 7th through 12th grade reported being sad or depressed almost all if not all the time so that's fairly concerning information and so we spend a great deal of time in the guide talking to or giving information to parents on how to have those discussions with their children what it looks like at in elementary level versus a middle school level versus a high school level talk they give some sample maybe conversation starters to have those conversations and most importantly it gives information and resources and helplines where to get help we then take that information though

132and bring it out throughout the community and the other schools in general um with it we have created a campaign that we've used for the last couple years it's okay to not be okay it's also okay to ask for help we have that messaging and with posters in the Middle School in the high school with helplines associated helplines we have if anyone has been in the High School stadium we have a big sign on the fencing surrounding the stadium with that um with that message and then a QR code which will lead directly to our website helplines we have that same sign up at the cadigan field with that information we've also continued to support and sponsor the parent support network which is a peer-to-peer group for parents that have children that are experiencing mental

133health issues so one other example of how this is used is with our vaping questions I had mentioned we had some supplemental vaping questions in now we found that only three percent of our middle schoolers were vaping which is good but concerning um is the fact that over 50 percent of our seventh and 8th graders thought it wouldn't be wrong if one of their friends Vaped so we know that our middle schoolers are very susceptible to vaping and really don't see the danger in it once we got to our high schoolers we were finding that over 20 percent of our high schoolers were vaping and then with some focus groups we just did last year we do know that a lot of these high schoolers are finding it very difficult to stop vaping should they

134want to so all of this will guide our messaging in the Middle School the posters that we have deal mainly with the harms of vaping that that are seventh and 8th graders and all of our middle schoolers may not know that it's not just harmless water vapor that there are dangerous chemicals and addictive chemicals that are low used within the vaping once we get to the high school we give more helplines as to how someone can get help whether that be text free anonymous text messaging or some peer-to-peer messaging or other various helplines bringing it into the community um if anyone a few months ago had been to ShopRite and the big screens that you have with the checkout counter we had some large digital messaging about the dangers of vaping with links to additional

135information and helplines and then we also produce several pamphlets about with parents talking to your teens about vaping and then information about that so the information that we have is used so many different ways and the survey that we administered last week we believe is going to be crucial in guiding that messaging forward this is the first survey that's been given since the pandemic and we all know how that's turned everything on end I just attended a webinar today that discussed how the assets and behaviors have significantly changed for those that have administered this survey since everything has has gone back in person since the pandemic in addition it's the first survey that we have done since the legalization of marijuana and we know from some anecdotal reporting that students are a little misinformed either

136that there is actually an age restriction on the use of marijuana with the legalization and then also not really informed about the effects of marijuana on a developing brain so we really do need that information once we do get it we plan on hosting a community Forum to discuss with everyone these results both the assets and the behaviors we'd like to pull students again in because again this is their voice this is their voice that we're getting with this survey and then of course we'll be sharing the results with the schools and also doing a presentation with the boards of selectment and education as well so um happy to answer any other questions that someone might have in regards to that you just mentioned we'll be getting the results of the survey that was just

137taken do you know roughly how long that takes um usually a couple of weeks to a month and then we package it up I know you all are going to have a very busy December going into January with the budget season so we're hoping to see you sometime you know after that if not before then so we'd be thinking maybe february-ish give or take whenever whatever was convenient for you once we get it and once we have time to put together a presentation incidentally I do if anyone did not have um children in the district or did not get one I have plenty of extras and if anyone here would like one I I do have plenty of these I'm happy to hand out I want one okay okay um anyone else I'll give it

138no foreign how does the uh how's the survey make its way into the school like how's it going from how would that that connection came back how is the Brookfield cares and School District connection um we're very grateful to have the collaboration with the schools to administer the survey so we contact them send a copy of the survey for approval we usually work in collaboration with them with the letter to the parents as well the survey and again um the principles can can usually respond to this better but it's generally given during ilt time which is not direct instructional time it's the 30 minutes surrounding lunch time and iot time is done in the Westerner school as well yeah um yeah so so they're vetted through Administration like the surveys vetted through the administration before

139it's given to the students so it's approved through the administration just kind of get an idea how it's going and if I recall from our prior discussion that uh there was actually some adjustments made by the administration especially at the middle school by the the um um yes um the Middle School requested there are generally two forms of the survey the only difference being the first two questions that ask about gender um I know there were some some comments about the questions they asked about gender that was the one that was administered to the high school the one that was administered to the middle school just had a male female question regarding gender my other question goes to kind of the value of the information you said it's it's Paramount to the presentations that you

140put on and all those presentations sound very valuable uh all the community outreach all of the information depression eating eating disorders um but so that would change based off of the results or like let's say no kids are depressed you don't do any depression we would still do it but we get a finger on the trends that are happening if I can give another um another example um alcohol has been and Still Remains to be the substance of choice that our students are doing but we found out through this that instead of students perhaps going out and drinking it somewhere else they tend to be drinking more at home so our messaging has changed and it's through the schools as well like through the High School freshman Forum to educating parents to the legality of

141providing alcohol to not only their their children but friends and hosting parties where alcohol is present at their home so we're going to guide our messaging based on that so yeah I just don't see why I need a survey for that I mean alcohol is bad we know that there's an alcohol problem a vaping problem all that depression definitely Mental Health I'm not seeing but she's saying how it's used where it's used when it's used is changing based on Trends the data that they receive from the survey so that get drunk at home you get drunk at somewhere else it's it's not using alcohol abusing alcohol is abusing alcohol while they're underage where wherever it is so I think the the programs are really great that the information you put out and especially the the

142services to the parents on how to deal with kids and students I think that should be done anyway right well if I could jump in I think part of it is the survey also helps prioritize what what messages are out there and how much I mean Brookfield cares has limited funding and so when they look at what they're going to invest their time and efforts on maybe some things are listed in the parent guide and on posters maybe some things warrant bringing somebody into the high school I could guess speaker to do a full day of uh assemblies to students so you know I think the results from the survey sort of give a broad perspective on not just what the issues are because you're right they're all important but really what weight do we

143give you know is is vaping the hot thing right right now or is alcohol you know alcohol is always an issue like you said but we see other Trends happening whether it's mental health suicide things like that that it allows Brookfield cares to say you know what this year we really need to focus a little more in this direction right and if you're going to have Target messaging that's actually effective and not generic alcohol is bad then you need to understand how exactly students are using it you have to understand that if you don't understand the context in which they're actually having this problem how can you effectively communicate a solution for them it's it sounds like to me it's already being done and and providing people providing well not well it's not I don't

144think it's providing any new information on it's being done based on the survey if I can give one more example sure um and this is more of an asset one um which I really we've we've been speaking so much about the behaviors but not the assets we do as well um as I had mentioned before one of the uh advantages of having the same questions year after year is we can track Trends and two assets since we have started administering this survey in 2019 have been steadily declining one of them is our students reading for personal pleasure that's gone down to 12 percent only 12 percent of our students are reading for pleasure the other one is engaging in Creative Pursuits and that's gone down to 18 percent and those are generally steady declines [Music]

145and you compare that to the amount of screen time our students have either on the phone social media television and video gaming and it's completely Converse so that's going to guide what we provide there so since then 2019 we have been doing presentations about Internet safety about what healthy screen time looks like we've been recently supporting a Western Connecticut Coalition initiative which it talks with parents and students and creates modules about video gaming and and putting video gaming into perspective it's not a bad thing but is it taking over what you're doing so so they they do influence how our messaging is and what we are what Outreach we are providing so right it like me I'm I really want to listen to you talk about the the value and that sounds a lot better

146I think I think a lot of the big issues come around with the the risky behaviors I think you mentioned those are the exact words used uh the concerns around the survey is around the risk behaviors uh you mentioned the opt-in opt out I know this is a I'd be Remy if I didn't mention this because I had a lot of people approach me about the opt-in opt out um is that you said there was an option for opt-in It's better the opt-out option was better because you get more people um what is what is the opt-in option that you were opt-in options are generally sending information to the parents they have to sign a permission slip and once they do the student is allowed to take the survey so kind of like a field

147trip right yes um so I think the one of the bigger issues on because we called the attitudes and behavior survey is that parents weren't aware drug sex alcohol weren't covered or aren't explicitly covered in their knowledge of what their kids are taking I think that's probably the central issue of the I don't think so of the main issue so um with the Brookfield cares like can consider more of an opt-in with like that permission slip mentality field trip um I'm not sure we would get a sample size that would be appropriate if we did an opt-in and why why would you say that so it's always lower when you are it's kill I can't answer thank you yeah it's it's generally when parents have to do an extra step of filling out a permission

148slip and putting it in we generally get a much much lower response again to my knowledge most all of the at least area schools that administer the survey do do the opt-out option could could we be more informative to parents on the nature of the questions their children will be asked without telling them the questions um we probably could I I will say the the information that went out to the parents was generally directly out of a template yeah that was provided we could certainly insert some other wording to that yeah I think parents would have been much more comfortable even with an opt-out if they had been informed here's the nature here's the general nature of the questions that are going to be asked and yes they're uncomfortable and they will be uncomfortable for

149some kids and in my mind the younger the child is the more uncomfortable it will be but there's a lot of parents would say yeah that's valuable right and I think we should share with parents what the survey looks like it's been three years as part of the issue nobody's seen the survey in a long time now and I think it's great that we're going to be able to hand this stuff out again again but I think if we were better communicators even they opt outward or even an opt out method would work if you just had communicated it better yeah like is there anything like that search Institute has given you guidelines in terms of how to communicate the nature of the survey without confounding the food collection and again I will say that

150the the information letter that went out to the parents was generally from the Texas but you could change it right like you could say the survey is going to be asking questions it could be sexual activity and drug use when you say mature content sexual activity drug use yeah I think specific examples suicide you know you could we could be more specific yeah absolutely I think that's pretty simple solution so I think the goals at you know is transparency and improved communication um I think I think if I ask you the question why would you not have a big sample size if it was an opt-out you know an opt-in situation I think the truth is a lot of a lot of families would not have their children often um because I think that if

151they did know the truth of what was detailed in the survey I don't think they found that it would be appropriate especially at the middle school level so I think that's really the reality of why it's not that so I would like to see it as an opt-in um and more time given you know it really was a week by the time I found out um when the letter went out from the principal to this can be looked at during the day so that doesn't um that's not convenient to working parents to even make arrangements to go in and actually view the survey um so that's one of my concerns or at least goals um and if I'm if I'm hearing you correctly so the goal of the Brookfield cares is to kind of to

152do the survey to gauge with Services need to be provided for our students correct and to get a general snapshot of what's happening with their students so what their issues are what their needs are this is valuable information um so what's the goal of the survey Institute what is their goal for the survey search Institute yeah is their goal in relation to us save the survey they produce surveys with the intent of allowing communities to have the valuable information informed that's one of the things they do they provide also their own data they do not use this data for their research if that's if that's what you're asking it's it's a service that they do we purchase the surveys from them the distribution if that's what you're asking okay so I see it as a

153psychology test because most of the questions are asked anywhere between five and ten different ways right and students are going to either tell the truth or they're going to lie um I don't need to we don't need to ask a student 10 different ways about vaping they're either they either Vape or they don't Vape um and we're asking specific things on those vaping questions if you if you've seen them right yeah where they are vaping what they are vaping um do they what do they feel about vaping what do their friends feel about things right and it's a lot of questions it's 172 questions and they're not black and white questions they're not straightforward um almost every single one require you to think and determine to which to to which you agree or disagree you

154know strongly agree agree not sure just to really strongly agree or determining the amount of time you know zero one two to three three to five six to ten eleven or more um so I I think it's extremely excessive to get the kind of information that you're looking for it seems way too comprehensive given you know the goal or intent of it I think that the messaging and the intent of Brookfield cares is wonderful and I think it's an invaluable resource that we have but I don't need a survey to tell me that kids do drugs and drink I'm not naive to it I'm not naive that there are kids in our district that have eating disorders I hear it when kids are in the back of my car I hear things all the time

155when I have children over in my house let's just do the messaging and I get that you want it targeted but these are not new issues this has been around since the turn of the century we don't need to waste instructional time and don't justify that it's during ilt or elt that's a very valuable time um to do something like this to tell me that we need to offer services for our children for these things let's do it let's continue to do it like we've always done in the past we know vaping is the new thing and students do it and to be honest a lot of these kids don't take this seriously and they check out I've heard kids say it I've talked to students about it um they really don't take it seriously

156and they they think it's a joke which is sad um but being that it's so excessive that's part of the problem a lot of the questions are asked like they are because they're questions that that gauge the assets and that is that is a little bit more um of science believe it or not this is very science driven on the assets guinea pigs I don't agree with that okay well we'll agree to disagree there but there is science based on the questions and why they're asked yeah I I just speaking from a lot of experience in psychological surveys both designing them and conducting them you have to have in order to have internal validity meaning your survey is actually measuring what you intended to measure you do have to ask questions several different ways because

157you need to be able to see that consistency that inter question consistency so it might seem redundant but that's absolutely necessary to even validate the survey so we're giving a psychological survey too the asset part of it is yes I would probably consider it a psychological survey yeah I will um yeah greater than they have yes they have thoughts they have feelings I really do I really would push and opt-in um I mean I'm not running profile cares but I would kind of I would push more towards an opt-in after hearing the psychological survey because I sent my kids to school not a psych forward you know what I mean there's a lot of psychology that's okay not a doctor's office it's a you said it's a psychological evaluation no it's not an evaluation of

158the students it's it's a data collection the word psychological it is assessing their psychological some of their psychological processes how they feel about each other their self their self-image explicitly put it's a psychological survey on sex drugs and alcohol to parents it's an attitudes and behavior survey it does have it that that's not going to give the full that's not transparent enough it's not there's a bunch of parents here in that that very disagree with that assessment of what so the term psychological assessment just has a naturally negative as a clinical term as a clinical aspect of it I think it's frightening for studies um he has a word psychological because I think most parents would feel that it's an evaluation of their child so maybe a better explanation would help I think some of

159the questions are extremely inappropriate they belong at home not in school um and I think if parents understood more of the goal of the survey I don't know I just I wouldn't let my child take it in response to some of that I will take away the term psychological really again we're looking at their assets these are attributes that students have that are predictors of success and resiliency that's why are they not using psychology tactics to trying to get you to tell the truth they're trying to see if you can if you're telling the truth or not that's an absolute no no no 40. they're they're asking questions for 40 separate assets that's going to take a little bit of time um when we have the results and and give them you'll understand a little

160bit better what this is but but it's it's asking about um go ahead a thousand is going to give you examples on page three on the whole I like myself all in all I'm glad I'm me and then on the flip side at times I think I'm no good at all I feel I do not have much to be proud of yes that is going towards the student's positive identity so that's trying to get them to tell trying to figure out if they're telling the truth trying to ask a question in three or four different ways so they understand the question that's what it is I to my understanding my understanding with Detective work in the field that's a tactic that detectives will use to to find out if the person is talking we're not

161trying to we're not trying to catch up so then why as well do you get let me let me ask a question do you get reports of how often children are lying when they take the survey no no of course you don't no we don't um so this isn't a study of whether I will tell you this is not a survey that Brookfield cares has sat down and created to try to determine if students are telling the truth this is a survey that has been vetted and validated for its reliability which is why we use it which is why 18 out of the 25 local prevention councils in the area use it which is why you know thousands of people use it nationwide it's the best tool that you have you wanted to measure truth-telling

162there are survey questions that are designed to be asked 20 different ways to gauge your actual truth telling your how much you're telling the truth if you want to gauge positive Identity or self-image then you ask questions like that you ask them in Converse ways because those twos should then be inversely correlated that's how a survey is designed that's how it has validity because you need to see that if you don't then clearly the student this the student either didn't answer the question or the survey has flaws collect your parents have the opportunity not at a board of ed meeting but in general to address their concerns about the survey the way we're doing here is that something that parents have the opportunity to um in what form are you talking about I mean we've

163had some email to our email at Brookfield cares we've had people requesting copy the survey so we'll see okay people have the opportunity to express their concerns ask their questions and get answers from you that might address parent I think a lot of parents are just plain afraid of what truth may come out of a survey like this but is there a forum or a meeting where parents can sit like we are and Badger you they want to know they need more than a piece of paper we haven't done it yet but I'm happy to sit down and be badgered whenever any parents would like yeah I think it would be a good idea to have a parent meeting and then you know what the parents like anything else the ones who don't show up

164too bad well but parents were given the opportunity to request a copy of the survey to see the survey two week at least two weeks before the survey was administered but I I read it and I've listened to parents talk about it I still had a ton of questions even though I read it um it's been discussed in my house with my grown children and two high schoolers who are getting ready to take this survey I think this was more beneficial to get your feelings and your questions out um than just reading the survey yeah and I I didn't understand all the the questions so I would hesitate as a parent but maybe if I had the opportunity to express my fears that I think parents are afraid of what they'll find out uh my

165concerns and just any question at all regarding this survey I think parents should have the opportunity to discuss can I could I just make a comment so I've got the greatest hair on this group so uh I think of everybody except maybe Sharon I've been in Brookfield 34 years I remember it wasn't this survey was the predecessor to it I forget which of the organizations did the first survey substance abuse substance abuse coalition the first year they did it uh everybody was all up in arms right and it was the same question so there's the tons of questions Mike you were asking well we know that right we know there's a problem after the presentation of that first survey that came out they got all the parents together it was a mostly High School survey

166it became real right there's there's a lot of denial in the world right about oh that's those other kids right you know it's not my kids right and when you see numbers like 24 and 30 percent it started becoming very real to the parents and the next however many years after that there was no complaints at all they the parents wanted their kids to take the survey because they wanted to see what the updates looked like because the parents wanted to learn um yeah they're great they're difficult questions for kids to answer I mean I hate to say it I mean as a parent you look at the questions just in the Raw light of day and you go oh my God that's the kinds of questions my kids are being asked that's that's scary

167until you've sat and dwelled and the results and say did I learn something from it and then you start having the reality check and the value and I've watched the organizations morph over the years into what's now Brookfield cares the value of those organizations to helping parents work through the fact that yeah my kid as you get through Middle School years and into high school years is going to be subjected to all of this right in one way or the other and the and the country is filled with drug issues overdoses uh teenage pregnancy I mean you name it it's a problem and uh and getting people to pay attention and get focused on it it's in the outcome of the survey it's not in the questions of the survey I mean I hate to

168say it we have an interesting issue right now we're not communicating well right we haven't we haven't done the survey in three years so because of covid right people haven't been dwelling in the issues of the day they haven't been getting the book they uh we've done some things with the kids and we just had a wonderful thing about drugs at the high school like a day of assemblies that I've only heard fabulously positive things about that you know kids were having the oh my God moment that could happen to me um and uh and the uh I I'm gonna just urge that we see what the results of the survey look like we ought to see it as a board right we talk about how do we get out and talk to parents about

169the issues and with the numbers you know where what are we learning and then let's come back to it and say okay let's talk about opt-in opt out let's talk about the questions we're asking let's only ask questions that are valuable to us let's do it in a way that's statistically and appropriate so we know we've got a valid survey and let's have a community discussion about this right but do it in the light of having some of the more recent results because usually people learn more having seen the results of a survey than they do having just dealt with the questions and I've lit and I've I'm sorry I'm not done I've lived through that I watched the transformation of a whole generation of parents who went from oh my God I don't want

170these questions being asked to my kids to hey when does the next survey gonna happen right because I want to hear if we're making progress with our kids and you know what we may or may not have that we're in a different world than we were 20 years ago or 25 years ago when my kids were home um but the um and we're in a world where people react strongly to everything that happens and this is something that needs some time to simmer right and we're not going to take another survey for two years two to three years so so we have time to work on this and I just I want I think we all take a little bit of a deep breath say let's come back and talk about this again let's come

171back and talk about a third time but let's focus on communication let's focus on how we're talking about the results of what we learned what we're doing about it and let's focus on how we talk to parents before the survey is taken seventh grade parents are the ones that are most up in arms and quite frankly they were surprised right they were surprised about the nature of the survey and you know what that's bad right I hate to say it that was bad we didn't tell them enough about what to expect right and you know what the shock value is stunning when you do that right so I think it's an opportunity for us to take the next survey and make it better and I'm but I walk into this starting with if you pay

172attention to what you're learning here you go man we got a problem that needs addressing and it starts little bits in the element in the Middle School it becomes big in some cases by the high school and if we can get ahead of that curve maybe we can avoid overdoses and drugs maybe we can avoid lifelong tobacco addictions maybe we can avoid suicides by depression and to me saving one kid is worth it I mean I hate to say it saving one kid is worth it and and I'm a big fan of this whole Brookfield cares approach and because the results help our kids and if we can tune how we do it right so we communicate better to parents and don't get the surprise factor out maybe take not ask questions that we're not

173going to take action on anyhow because I think some of the Middle School questions were maybe too much but that's a discussion and that's a discussion that Brookfield cares needs to be part of it's a discussion the schools need to be part of and if we as a board need to be part of it we ought to be part of it right and I'm sorry I had to get on my bully pulpit there but it's really easy to react to the questions on the survey and do it out of the light of reality I mean I hate to say it and I think this is gives it reality it just gives it substance it's not just it's not all those other kids it might be my kid that's where the survey is valuable Mike right

174now you go to your question earlier why yeah we all know that right yeah I feel like I'm getting the sense of getting attacked because I asked them no no no no no no no no I'm not attacking literally wanna know yeah no I'm not I'm I'm I just wanted to share with you my feelings on that because uh because quite frankly I watched a transformation of a set of parents who hated the survey when it first happened and it didn't have the sex questions and it was a drug question it was a joke drug questionnaire they didn't want their kids being asked about do you have you tried heroin and have you you know how often do you smoke marijuana and stuff like that but man the uh it was a it was a

175sea change and I think there's going to be some of those parents watching out there who are nod in their head because they remember that sorry about to your communication point I did have a few teachers I'm not trying to throw anybody because I think it's just a miscommunication with Administration but some middle school kids did not feel that they could opt out they thought it was mandatory and I'm not saying I'm not trying to say you guys said it was mandatory but it was more than one that had been approached with so the communication definitely to your point Bob I think that's the central issue communication and transparency on what this survey is yeah and just what kinds of questions are going to be asked right and uh and I think that there's enough

176involvement with the school leadership that if we don't think the questions are age-appropriate we ought to we ought to not ask age inappropriate questions I mean I'm serious and that's uh that's I think part of the role of our administrative leadership so and I'm I'm glad Dean that you said the questions about sexual identity should be out because they're not ready for it that was you told me that and I was very happy that we did that because at the middle school level it might be too young I'm sorry I'm now off my bully pulpit um so in the fall of 2019 I was here and I heard the presentation when you shared the results um and many of the topics or questions weren't um reported on so when we come back to the board

177I'd like all of the questions that were asked to be reported on sure I I would like to see that I will tell you in 2000 even how many times do you sit at the dinner table with your family um every question if we're asking it I want to see the results sure I I will tell you 172. 2019 I was at that table with you so um so I you know was not in there but but sure I mean usually we figure if we're going to do that we're going to get a whole lot of glazing over so we just try to put the pertinent results in there um but but we're happy to we can provide a copy of the actual search Institute um reports I mean we pull it together for presentation

178but we can provide copy of the reports yeah could I just suggest a a course of action here which is let's see what that report looks like let's learn from it and then let's ask Brookfield cares to kind of talk about how we might enhance Communications the next time around and I would ask our high school principal and our Middle School principal to be part of that right so that we can do it and we have to check that it would be it wouldn't invalidate the survey including how we're doing the opt-in opt out right and so because I think they go together and and let's talk again before the next survey is done right and and I think it's a discussion with Brookfield cares and with uh with the school district and and the

179other part about this is the nature of our policy that Debbie talked about earlier is that any student surveys going forward um taking a look at the mandatory from the state the mandatory survey that we need to have on surveying students would only come to the board on the recommendation of the superintendent and the board would have to give approval for that and we haven't had that in place that policy and it's important to have that policy in place so the discussion is going to occur prior to any survey at all okay so we ought to take a look at very carefully at that surveying policy yeah it's very nice we go through our next month here so because that'll also inform an influence is that you guys okay with that as a as a

180set of actions let's I mean the survey's done I mean at this point the survey is done they're not going to be anything we're going to do to change that so but I think not letting it go off the radar screen before the next survey would help us a lot and I think it will help Brookfield cares so everyone okay with that Mike stop doing some research on vaping I didn't know they made a king crab flavored Vape that's interesting to me there's a king crab who would want to who would win well no that that one might be very popular [Music] um okay so uh thank you Colette I appreciate your taking the slings and arrows and questions today um is everyone okay with the discussion I just want to make sure everyone's nodding

181okay um I'm gonna recommend we take a five minute break um I don't want to take B long but in case anybody needs to take a bio break and then we'll continue with the rest of the agenda which should move along pretty quickly I think [Music] welcome foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] okay um so we've just had a long discussion on a couple of topics um Dr bro in your area and then this last one on the on the attitudes and behavior survey there's a number of items left on our agenda but I don't think any of them are going

182to be very long discussions they're about receiving over reports and uh and getting some policies launched for review so um and the 10-year capital projects plan which I think we could be pretty quick about um so what I the I'm going to just try to push us along if you guys are okay to get through the agenda we do have a couple of people who want to speak in uh public speaking at the end the next so we've done item a under new business items b c and d are receipt of the class size report the multilingual learner report and The Homeschool report and all of the actions are the same that we received the report um Dr Mann would you like to give us some highlights on each of those reports there's no votes

183we need to take on that certainly and I will be brief and just to give context to all of these reports again these are presented to the board um at the kind of beginning parts of the budget season to kind of inform our thinking as we go ahead and start planning for next year so similarly what we spoke about at the round table earlier this evening that's kind of the reason for the timing of this so just um to highlight at the class size report as you as you saw just in terms of the formatting of the report um I tried hard to streamline the report this year so that you see the same data for each School even though the different levels of school will have different needs obviously when you get to Whiskey

184near and the high school there are multiple different class size reports because of the different elective courses and UNH and Etc um but you'll uh and you'll also notice that in the class size report I included an addendum of the Board of Ed policy that was set in 2009 and to guide class sizes um that was set by the board of education so um those are just general guidelines for the class size so that is part of the data that you received is the the number of sections that are over and so we are keeping an eye on um certain areas so for example and and we also use our uh enrollment projection reports to help guide this information so for example we had an enrollment projection where we estimated about 180 students being enrolled

185in kindergarten this year and that number actually was only at 100 157 so sometimes you know we have projections that we are preparing for and then the reality is a little bit different so you'll notice as you go through or as you went through I'm sure that there are some that the trends are fairly consistent and again we are going to be keeping notice and thinking about not only you know in terms of FTE and those kinds of things you know full-time equivalency with uh numbers of sections or a number of teachers but also the way we use those teachers the way we assign those teachers to if we have to shift a teacher from grade two to grade 3 for example as grades move forward at the high school there and at various places

186there are some sections that are over um in terms of the you know the uh the class size regulations some of those are not surprising and are in fact you know appropriate so for example in a music in a performing arts class you would want to have more kids in a performing arts section in order to have an ensemble or you know those kinds of things less desirable in um you know an English class or math math class those kinds of things so we will be taking a look not just at the budgeting impacts but also the scheduling impacts and seeing how we can create you know look at our scheduling processes um and you know use our resources to the greatest capacity that we can so that's really the class size report any any

187questions on class size reform is there a reason like grade five is I mean everything's like in the teens like 17 13 but grade five is 47. is there is there a reason for that I'm sorry it's 47 of the sections are above recommended class size on grade five under whiskey near School so you mean when it says of the 32 sections of classes in literacy and social studies 15 sections 47 class or are they so as far as that goes up sure Mr render is going to talk about the reason that is because we have eight teachers in uh fourth grade of fifth grade I'm saying we only have eight teachers we're in sixth grade we have nine teachers okay so we ought to be looking at that at budgets yeah and that would

188be you know that would be us looking at the way that we are assigning our staff um and as things shift around with CLE s and those kinds of things because even though it's a smaller number obviously you're you're breaking it up by only eight instead of right that's you have to look at Trends yeah so so each year we have to make make decisions right with our budget and our uh our staffing and we do so just as a reminder we do the best we can in terms of um assignments and schedules which are all done in the spring of the year before the the school year um these but students move in not just in a certain time to the district they're coming in all of the time and these numbers are set

189based on the actual you know uh class sizes as of October of the school year so schedules are set in May June and then people move in through the summer and then throughout the school year so things shift around so as Joy just mentioned you know right now it's it's projected to that fourth grade when we will move up into fifth grade and be consistent but that's well it could change well I remember I remember last year in the budget time you know it's important to remember the heist the Middle School classes sixth seventh and 8th are teams right and they rotate within the team and you know I have so many teams and you have one teacher for each subject in the team and you know so they kind of behave and they where

190they are the fifth grade was a funky hybrid of the elementary model and the Middle School model where kids are rotating but not always and I remember I don't remember the specifics but there was some discussion you can't just plop in another teacher and say now it's nine it was something about the count of the yeah the right mixes of uh kids on the in the rotation well I think what I think you're saying is is in fifth grade this year with eight teachers every teacher teaches social studies one class of social studies and then they teach their other content area I think that's but I think in the scheduling that limited you on how you know throwing in a knife teacher what made it a little more difficult because you'd have an odd number

191and well honestly we could have it like in sixth grade we have a night teacher and only one of the two teams uh one of the two teams teaches their content area and the social studies class so it happens to be say Team B teaches say math and social studies science and social studies where the other team does not it's the it's the five where everyone teaches their one okay there's ways to work it yeah yeah okay when it goes to cles are we going to take fifth grade back to a traditional fifth grade will look a lot more traditional but there will be changing of classes all teachers will be teaching social studies um so we have some rotation um but that's the the nice thing too about that is we really can um

192prepare Upper Elementary School students for a more traditional transition to a middle school given the new structure and we're excited about that okay again it has to do with scheduling and use of resources and cles you know having a a more um traditional Middle School model six through eight rather than intermediate and middle school together will help things shake out a little bit differently and we actually are very fortunate uh that the board years ago put in the class size guidelines uh that they did they're quite small to be quite Frank uh in regards to the region and so with grade five eight sections at 182 kids you're looking at 22 or 23 kids in a class depending how it breaks up in some districts they may have a limit of 25 and so forth

193we want to keep them lower that's better for kids we all know that but 22 students in a fifth grade class is not necessarily something that's outrageous so we want to you know but you do Mike you see 47 you're like whoa wait a minute but if we have a smaller you know range a lower range then it's going to look like it's above our rank right sure okay any other questions about class size I just have one quick question on Pre-K um you have four sections with the average class size being eight but the largest class has 12. so if the average is eight does that does that mean that there's a class of like four we're gonna have Amy come up and talk that through and remember we have Am Pm right so

194those four classes are all of the classes so there's two am classes and two PM classes just as a clarification can you hear me yes if it's up the button should be up yep um so so children can enter if they have a nice nope nope not up there you go now we're up sorry Pre-K rolling and rolling I'll start again so um for preschool we have rolling enrollment uh children who qualify for an IEP will qualify on their third birthday so we technically have to have a seat for them exactly on their third birthday so some of the classes fluctuate quite a bit because we are expecting many more uh three and four-year-olds to qualify during the year this year actually we have the most evaluations then we've had over the last couple of

195years from what I've looked at we already have 25 students on our list for evaluations whereas the past two years they completed only 28 29 evaluations for the entirety for the entire year so certainly the numbers will change and fluctuate quite a bit from now to June and that's also one of the reasons there's no guidelines with regard to right it's a board of ed set guidelines for pre-k correct so I think so we've talked about some things but we never answered your question yeah different um districts use different practices but right now they're divided by threes and fours so the four Le the four-year-old classes are larger than the three-year-old classes and then the three-year-olds will keep coming in throughout the year right so but my question was are there classes smaller than eight

196if or is it truly the average I believe it's truly the average but I'll have to double check on what it is this week because okay it was just confusing because if the average is eight but there's a class of 12 that would sort of imply the other the other three have to be five or six right so so I will double check for you and I can get those exact numbers for you but I wanted to explain why things might be very different okay okay thanks yep any other questions on the class size report next one okay the next one is the multi-lingual learner report um and as you know from this report last year um it was discovered that we were in need of a bilingual program to do our best to provide

197that at Huckleberry and that is again based on criteria from the state if you have a critical mass of students in a particular language then you have to provide a bilingual program based on the the information we were referring to earlier the dearth of teachers available for bilingual in the state we are actually servicing our students through we happen to actually have a teacher who is bilingual certified and also Spanish language certified so she's working with a lot of those students at Huckleberry along with our tesol teacher working with our students but this again is going to inform us as we go forward it confirms that we still are in need of a bilingual program at CLE s next year it's something that we're also going to have to keep an eye on as we

198as we administer the last links test which is the state test that allows us to kind of identify what level of language students are at in terms of their acquisition of English and so that whether they still qualify as a multi-language language learner or if they are you know kind of matriculating out so they are no longer in need of bilingual education um so you'll notice again that our languages are continuing to shift and increase and change a little bit this year for example at Center there's a student who speaks Bengali that is not something that was on last year and we're also seeing a rise in our Portuguese native speakers and so we're keeping an eye on that and Catherine Abrego who is our new world language and multi-language learner administrator K-12 has been

199doing a lot of work with the the administrators and the teachers across the district to build this capacity so I'll just for the people listening in at home the summary of the reports is a hundred and one students whose primary language at home is not English in our district it's a sizable number and there's 13 different languages spoken across all the schools of which Portuguese and Spanish are the largest but the next biggest two are Mandarin and Albanian so you know the challenges of a multi-ling and then and then there's a lot of them with one two and three right Beyond those um but the uh the challenge of a multi language lingual program is the variety of languages that children speak at home so it's been an ongoing uh investment in our in our

200schools and will continue to be and we'll continue great we have a lot of diversity here in Brookfield any questions on that report all right the third one is uh um The Homeschool report so as the board is aware I'm sure that um you know students who are homeschooled there is a form that families have to complete when they remove their children from the district and then we ask them to identify a notice of intent that is what that we are required to send to these families but there's no uh purview that the board or the school district has for them to have to return the information so the information that we currently have is that 28 students are homeschooled of the that number uh there that's 20 that represents 21 families we had 20

20123 students of those 28 we did not get any information back on so really we had three out of the 21 families return information about their students that they are intending to homeschool their children and then we had two other students uh for two other of the other students parents sent refusal forms and they are not going to fill out our form so that's that information okay any questions on that one okay so that's the prepared thank you very much thank you to the team for helping me prepare these reports all right so next up are three policies um Amy do you want to do the motion so we can move that off I will I will move that the board approved three new policies for a first reading as recommended by the policy and

202communication subcommittee they are policy number 6162.51 survey of students policy number 5145.53 transgender and gender non-conforming Youth and policy number 6115 ceremonies and observances separation of churches okay second all right moved and seconded um as we has been our practice uh Debbie you want to give a brief overview of each of these policies um I won't spend too much time on them since you do have time to read them before our next meeting so I'll just try to go quickly through these first one is survey of students 6162.51 this is required by Cabe and we do not currently have it um so this just really outlines the fact that um the board the different ways the Board of Education may use surveys to assess the need for student services to determine prevailing views pertaining to

203proposed policies or practices to determine student knowledge and or attitudes related to specific subjects or units um and you know there could be many other reasons why the district would want to administer a survey uh this policy would require administrative approval for surveys well administrative approval would be required for any survey but then there's a list of factors that would require board approval and those factors are listed here there are eight of them political affiliations and you can go on and see the rest of the list there attitudes and behaviors all that um so basically again it outlines the fact that parents and Guardians would have the right to inspect surveys uh and the request would have to be made in writing so um that's pretty much it again it's this is a required policy

204that we don't currently have so uh it's pretty straightforward okay oh it also says um the important thing is that surveys are always anonymous okay so the next policy is 5145.53 and that is transgender and gender non-conforming youth um I touched on this briefly last time but I think it's important to say again that Connecticut state law has addressed transgender students and um the handling of things such as public bathroom use since 2007. we this is a policy that's recommended by K but not mandated but we have already been following these guidelines but we thought it was important to communicate the board's expectations about how locker rooms and bathroom issues will be addressed so that's why we're recommending this policy at this time the policy itself really just um goes over some common definitions uh

205really just outlines how staff is to handle certain procedures um and several of our neighboring districts are adopting policies such as this one or this one that's recommended by Kate it also very importantly talks about their students records right and the and the privacy of that right so this is so it's there's a lot here to to read especially on this policy so again I won't spend too much time on it tonight I suspect that at our next meeting when you have feedback we'll probably have a more in-depth discussion the last policy is oops I have two here six one one five ceremonies and observances and separation of church and state this one really is very straightforward um basically just States that the board states that the schools will at all times be neutral in

206matters of religion stresses the fact that um students we need to teach students to be tolerant and respectful of religious diversity the direct the district will approach religion from an objective curriculum-related perspective and that all students and staff uh will be encouraged to be aware of the diversity of beliefs and respectful of each other's religions and then it outlines just the handling of holiday celebrations absences for religious observation and recognition of religious holidays okay I just caught my eye on it there's a reference in like the fourth paragraph it references the No Child Left Behind Act is that still in place it's still active I thought that was old news but it's because it's from O2 so yes but but it hasn't lapsed it's or been replaced there's a lot of things that are not

207laps that we Implement that's interesting [Music] so those are the three for tonight anybody want to have discussions on any of those this evening or do you want to have a chance to read them and we'll send feedback in like we normally do everyone okay with that okay when do you need input by um I was looking at uh possibly by December 19th so that we can process it before our next meeting our next policy meeting November 19th uh December so because we need 30 days right oh okay you want to give the full 30 yeah for 30. I think for these okay I'm sorry yeah I think our next policy is November 30th that's why I was just thinking about yeah I think that's too soon in the pipeline gotcha I'm talking about this

208okay so uh so December 19th feedback to you we'll talk about them in again at our next meeting at the next meeting after that which will be early January yep okay all right thank you very much um all in favor of accepting these three policies for first read please okay any opposed all right it's unanimous okay the last item new business is the uh prioritized 20 2324 and updated 10-year Capital plan uh the action is that we discuss and approve so there is a motion that we need to do uh the updated 10-year priorities catalog project as recommended by the facilities subcommittee uh Joy would you like to give a brief overview yes RS for next year are very light thank goodness we only have Paving and restroom upgrades and repairs so if you look

209at year one that's all you're going to see is Paving a mushroom upgrades and repairs and then we'll plan to continue to look at the 10-year plan after the building condition study so it's not a big ask for next budget for this budget season so I asked Ken what the right words to use were and the after year one it's unchanged with the exception of minor modifications for updated estimates so um we we as a committee we chose not to adjust it because we're going to do a whole new building condition study and it will have to be updated then so so we've we as a fine facilities committee was we should just let it go through as is and tell the capital committee we'll change it when we get new input yep I think

210if a major says a quick point of emphasis um we're really focusing obviously on whiskaneer in the high school because we'll be in a new elementary school so all of our effort is going into a building condition study that will really assess uh the infrastructure of each of the buildings and everything else we need to do over the next 10 years and we'll really tighten up and be much more targeted in the remainder of that plan going forward yep yeah there's flat out zeros for Huckleberry and Center for next year as as is appropriate um so we need to formally submit this to the uh the town so I think we need a motion to approve the uh 10-year prioritized capital projects plan as as presented so moved second okay moved and seconded um any

211discussion all in favor any opposed okay all right that's it for new business uh on Old business uh broadly we just have an update on the Candlewood Lake Elementary school project um yeah so um I'll do uh just a brief um update um because um you know progress is still is still moving forward um there's going to be some progress updated photos that we'll be able to share um maybe I'll be able to share them on the Facebook page before okay yeah so I'll I'll be making a new um post so that the public can kind of see some of the the newer up um updates and and how the progress is coming along because it's really starting to kind of take shape and like some of the the Cubbies are in some of the

212classrooms and um some of like the the gross motor space you can kind of see some of the angular designs starting to take shape and a lot of sheetrocking so it's looking really good um obviously flooring is is still an issue we do have some install dates for some of of the flooring throughout the building like carpeting tiles but the major Terrazzo flooring is still kind of an unknown and that's that's the flooring that's going in the main hallways so you can't really do and from what I understand to put in this Terrazzo flooring you can't be doing other work in the area it's got to be like pretty much everything's done so having the terrazzo flooring is still a kind of an unknown hanging out there is is a big sort of problem in

213terms of our our timeline moving in um so I think at our mid-December meeting we should be able to have kind of a firmer date on when that might be and hopefully Paul knows that you know I'm sure he's putting a lot of pressure um on on all the contractors to kind of get in those dates so that we can we can actually have sort of a move-in date hopefully by next month um so that's that's pretty much it do you wanna you wanna add anything yeah we talked to Paul and that's you're right the terrazzo flooring and for any of you who don't know what Terrazzo flooring and what it takes to install is there's a there's a couple of great videos online if you do just search on Terrazzo flooring it first of

214all when it goes in it's going to be magnificent in our hallways it's really durable and it's really really gives a good feel to the school but the supply chain it's the resins and the the physical things the crushed rock and things like that and that go into it are both in short supply so they're talking to the potential suppliers and one of the big suppliers also went out of business like our carpet and tile surprise so the ones did he did tell us the good news was all the carpet and all the tiles and all the vinyl flooring is going to be in and installed by February right so and remember that was one of the big discussion points last month and uh and so that means the the classroom wings are going to

215be largely completed right it will be because they have a carpeted hallway down they don't have the terrazzo for the flooring there it's the front of the building where things are going to be in the main Halls that's where it's going to be it's going to be challenging so we're hoping to get some breakthrough thinking so we can get in and that's at the spring break it's kind of a big picture but we're not sure yet yeah so yeah any questions we could bring given the hour we certainly could bring more photos and uh we actually have a uh Amy put together a little slideshow with the project manager regarding the playscapes and the accessibility and so forth so we're really excited about sharing that as well okay let me do that in two weeks

216okay so that's it for all the business items we're back to public comment um and uh and this is our second round of public comment again I'll repeat we have three minutes up to three minutes per person need name and address at the beginning um on this time let's slot we can talk about anything that was an agenda item or anything under else under the purview of the district but we did need to have people signed up and so we have three uh and I just will repeat discussion of individual School Personnel students or board members is not considered appropriate so keep yourself any comments to the the business items um so first on the list is Casey and Owen Clarkson this is I think we're good hi thank you for having us this evening

217as a former Brookfield high school graduate it brings me great pleasure now to have three children oh sorry Casey Clarkson 48 Mountain View Drive as a Brookfield high school graduate it brings me great pleasure to have three children now in the Brookfield Public Schools the teacher staff and administration that we've worked with at Center Huckleberry and now at Western Air have been nothing short of amazing and they deserve to be celebrated but we have a very serious problem in our district the privacy and safety of our students is at risk a few weeks ago I was made aware of my son's personal information inadvertently being given out without proper adapting strangely enough this information was shared with me not by the district but by another parent um I wasn't made aware of this by the

218district until I reached out and said hey what's going on here and that is when the head of the special ed Department acknowledged the breach of security in response to my inquiry she was very vague and did not share the full scope of what was shared out I understand we're all human in 21 years of personal um Public School educator experience I understand accidents happen but we need to do better the lack of clarity from the district led me to file my own FERPA request last week when I picked up my own FERPA documents I was given a document sharing the information of yet another student in the district this time no attempt at redacting was made I was given the name grade address phone number parent names parent signature academic concerns and referral to

219special education about another student in the district that goes beyond the scope of oops we didn't read act I immediately reached out to the head of special ed and she blamed it on quote multiple FERPA requests submitted by parents who seem to be out to get the district I am not out to get the district I'm out to protect my children I'm appalled that these mistakes keep happening I've also reached out to the superintendent several times via email and my emails have been ignored if this was a threat to the physical safety of my children the district would act swiftly to remediate the situation instead of ignoring parent concerns why isn't the district taking immediate action to protect the privacy and security of students and their information I encourage the board to look into this

220situation form a committee find out what's really going on at the district head the head the district's head of special ed and her office I tasked the board to uncover what safeguards protocols or Personnel will be put into place to ensure that this does not happen again we need to do better to protect the privacy and safety of our students in the district and this is not a faceless thing that's going on this is a student whose information was shared and he would like to speak to you tell them your name where you live I'm Owen and I live on 48 Mountain View Drive I feel unsafe be when my info was shared with another parent my teachers do a great job of making me feel safe in school but the board event needs to

221help make sure my info stays private I should not have to worry about my info being shared with another with another parent or without my permission or my past permission thank you for taking this seriously thank you very much and thank you for staying with us so late into the evening okay next up is Mrs Scalera you're good now I don't probably don't need it up um so again I've sat here at every Board of Ed meeting for the last year and I continue here month after month that we're over budget for special education and it's constantly mentioned about out of District placements and related transportation to be honest knowing what I know about education educational laws all of this is quite frankly a moot point as state law requires that school districts must provide

222tuition and transportation to any student that resides in district and the school is unwilling or unable to meet that child's needs Brookfield is not alone with the growing number of districts that having to fund out placements my question to you this evening is what is Brookfield doing to identify children earlier and meet their needs I sat at the last Board of Ed meeting disgusted when I heard when it was stated that the district will happily exit children at the high school level when identification levels were being questioned I think the tables and immediately need to be turned and the district should be asking themselves what are we doing to ensure proper identification to our struggling students how do we drive meaningful instruction and better yet how do we develop and ensure we consistently follow IEPs

223how do we move from a one-size-fits-all approach to meeting our students exactly where they are my son fell through the cracks for five years and parental and teachers please for services yet fell on deaf ears in August the district funded over seven thousand dollars for an added District test none of the testing reported was anything outside of the scope of what could have been identified in-house we lost five years if it were dealt with years ago I still wouldn't be fighting for remediation this day therefore seven thousand dollars was wasted because our special education program fell short this is one child how many others are seeking outside testing because the district is turning a blind eye to the area areas of concern or the validity of testing my son is capable of learning at the

224same rate and level of his peers yet I stand Here questioning if Brookfield is capable and willing to drive meaningful instruction and Remediation necessary to my different different abled child my son's needs and accommodations are not something that would break the bank it wouldn't require utilizing outside service providers at what point do I simply throw up my hands and seek out placement I requested special education Financial records under foia specific to outside testing and added it up from 2018 to June of 2022 and we've spent over three hundred and twelve thousand dollars after looking at the line item closer I do not even think the records that I was provided are accurate as my son's Audiology testing from December 2020 wasn't even in those records I'll end with brookfield's mission statement the Brookfield public school

225district is a dynamic Learning Community dedicated to providing a superior education experience which challenges supports and prepares every student for success in a changing world I'm here to tell you that's not happening for every student I am begging each Board of Ed member to commit to an evaluation and audit of this entire special education program and it needs to be a priority I've been in this district for well over 13 years dealing with special education and this year by far is the worst I've ever seen it our kids needs are not being met IEPs are not being followed questions aren't being answered one-on-one parents have now become shared Paris many children who require legally required pairs don't have them goals are not being met with necessary progress monitoring data provided BCA bcba contracts were terminated

226and changed parental concerns are met with constant pushback resistance and passive aggressive approach by sped administrators which sadly then falls on the principles in classroom teachers I have heard of more State complaints filed in the last two months than I have in all the years that I've lived in ma'am your time's up so if you could wrap it up this is a systemic issue affecting all four of our schools our children deserve better our teachers deserve better thank you and just for the record I'm not going to ask her to do it she didn't give her name and address it it's uh it's fine Aaron sclera five Jackson Drive so you're on the sign up sheet so I just figured I'd do it for you um all right next up is uh Denise rice Denise

227writes three old Hemlock Road I understand that you're all concerned about the typical Children's Mental Health surveys are done but what about the mental health of the children with special needs here are my thoughts special needs students and paraprofessionals in this District are treated with complete disrespect under this Administration it is the worst I have seen in my 20 years in the district powers are the backbones to a special needs Student Life Powers not only drive home the goals on their IEPs but learn how the student functions to be able to get the most out of that child they do it with caring and give that kid the push and confidence to achieve everything they can the new Administration feels that if a power can quote lay eyes on a student in the classroom they

228are getting power support this couldn't be further from the truth it is unfair to the child and totally minimizes the work these people do for our children now in this District powers are being treated as disposable kids are being pulled out of ELC and plopped into regular classes with no support support is being changed without parent knowledge IEPs are not being followed I myself have six violations filed with the state progress is declining and behaviors are up parents are approaching me constantly about this let me tell you what all of this is that is a district that is affecting the mental health of the special needs child affected you see if a kid can't express themselves or speak at all I guess nothing's wrong well not true behaviors that means something's wrong you're affecting the

229mental health of these students by disregarding them and their powers and the support they give them how do you think a child feels when they were doing well with the support and then you changed it and it's taken away and suddenly they're doing horribly how do you think this affects their mind depression sadness avoidance of school are only some of the ways it's displayed just because they can't explain what they're feeling doesn't mean they don't feel at all this is not even looking at how Paris stopped the special needs kids from being bullied and yes it happens every day and the effects are permanent some of you might remember me from my oldest I'm tired of only hearing about the cost of the special needs Community do you think any of them ask for their

230difficulties what about the mental health stresses you are causing they didn't ask for that either what are you going to do to fix what's going on and treat the students and the parents the way they deserve to be treated stop the shortcuts our kids deserve to be treated fairly I do promise you one thing I will go as public as possible I will continue to go to the state and I will help any parent that contacts me to push this District to get it right thank you very much okay so that's it for public comment I appreciate all the input um moving on the uh three main points uh I thought we should cover the whiskey near spotlight and the Brookfield the discussion of the Brookfield care study and then the Candlewood Lake Elementary School

231update foreign okay with that okay I'm saying no it's all around sounds good I think those were like the big points of tonight the um okay and then class size reports were interesting but yeah um and upcoming events um pretty quiet we have the bef Gala on Friday night and the auction at 7 pm with the candle went in all schools have early dismissal next Wednesday and are off Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday Center School has picture retake tomorrow as does whiskin ear and Huckleberry has picture retake on Tuesday November 22nd and on the 22nd Center also has a turkey parade and rescue as the culminating event for their PTO turkey triathon fundraiser very fun that's all I have okay thank you so that's it for tonight I appreciate everybody staying for a

232long meeting we kind of when we said we're going to do this once a month we all kind of said we're going to do long meetings once a month instead of shorter meetings twice a month and um this is a this was a long meeting so um so without objection we're adjourned [Music]