Board of Education Meeting

001foreign Brookfield board of education for October 19 2022 to order all of our members are here please join me for uh blessing for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I'd like to I say this more than once Dr Burrell but every time we have a spotlight I like to say this is the biggest crowd we've had in a year and this is a great crowd so I'll turn it over to you to do introductions we are really excited we have a lot of Huckleberry hounds here tonight as you can see Dr pepsoski are you can't hear the mic is up has to be buttoned up

002how about now there we go thank you Mr Belden uh we have a lot of Huckleberry hounds here tonight as everybody can see and we're really excited to have Dr P here to introduce the team and um let the kids Spotlight on EQ emotional quotient Dr pepsoski very exciting wow nope but no there I am I'm here yeah okay uh yes no no my social worker saying no okay so this summer uh I actually had this awesome brainstorm how could I get my school psychologist Antonio maglick and my social worker Brook ball Dali who does both do amazing amazing work with the group of kids that they work with I want everybody to experience their awesomeness like how could I do that so I got a little creative with a six day rotation and they

003were both thrilled I think I emailed you at 7am on a Sunday and you both got back to me by 7 30. yeah this is awesome let's do it uh and they created this EQ which is a basically a five day workshop that all of our students get and I don't want to say too much more I just want to introduce Brook baldelli Antonio maglick and the crew foreign gently hello hello oh Aiden I don't want to cover you do you want to just you guys all move down yeah there we go there we go let everyone get the spotlight not just me welcome and thank you for all taking the time to be here and listen to our wonderful star students and um to our mental health um team so um Dr prasowsky already

004gave a little quick introduction introduction and um we're gonna quickly just talk about what EQ is and where it kind of started from yes so as we all know I'm Antonia and I'm Brooke baldelli the school social worker and we're going to just quickly run through our special guests we have Aiden McKenzie and Vita Thiago Brandon Taylor Camden Natalie all right okay so our lessons oh sorry our lessons are called EQ for emotional intelligence and as we've explained to our students um it's them understanding their emotions better and how to regulate them so well it's kind of blocked um so what is EQ so EQ is an extension of our SEL program our ruler each class across Huckleberry will be introduced to the lessons that are included so exploring our best selves identifying and practicing

005coping strategies for stressful situations showing kindness and perspective taking regulating emotions and responses also problem solving skills which you guys will all learn about tonight very um soon okay so our mission statement is to expand on all of our students potential to become resilient through practicing self-awareness and interpersonal relationships so you guys already met that's us so best self IE so my best self kiddos please sit out stand up awesome awesome so this lesson introduces the students to EQ and its purpose so this is the first lesson that we do best self is in a lesson that allows students to consider their values in order to develop an aspirational image of themselves they can use as a tool for emotional regulation so I have a few students who are just going to show their best

006selves and say a few words come here [Music] I am helpful satisfied kind and motivated I am friendly I am kind I am funny and I am proud I am smart kind funny and brave all righty so now we have our coping skills so this is learning healthy coping skills to teach the students how to deal with difficult situations and grows their resilience during this lesson we talked about the various strategies that they can utilize for certain situations the students also build their own coping toolbox as we see in these pictures and if our toolbox kiddos can stand on up all righty so Natalie do you want to share your toolbox if you want to turn it around and show us first so you can do rainbow breathing you can um count to 50 and

007you could think of puppies um you can two grounding skills you can read anything and you could play with your pet if you have a pet and it likes you Logan you want to show us do you want to show everyone your toolbox you can do not you can watch a movie and you can play with a friend or you can read awesome thank you you can play um I could play my guinea pigs um I could go in a different room and um I could um I forgot oh beautiful you said you liked to read like Logan I would like to leave thank you so those are coping tool boxes next is kindness um so the kindness lesson allows the students to actively participate in acts of kindness students are asked to reflect on

008past experience in which a friend stranger family member demonstrated any act of kindness the students are provided with the opportunity to extend their act of kindness by postings positive and motivational phrases around the school so with my act of kindness group can come up and these students posted their sticky notes around the school so we had to take them down but they will be going back up so I wrote where a smile looks good on you so if someone is having a bad day they can look at this and have a better day [Music] I will be kind to yourself have fun show pause be kind keep going I posted this because it motivates people alrighty so we have regulating emotional responses this is another lesson that students learn about their different physical responses when

009they have strong emotions we practice identifying these responses through hypothetical scenarios which students role play with the partner so the way the lessons look like is they came together and they came up with some emotions that they like to feel that makes their body feels feel good and they gave an example and we also did some role playing in the classroom where they practice joining a group play and not understanding school work so some of these situations that they might experience in everyday life lastly we did problem solving the students uh built on their problem solving skills during this lesson all students participated in following the problem-solving steps so first identify the problem figuring out what is the problem second determine the size of the problem third regulate our reaction fourth brainstorm Solutions in fifth

010pick the best solution that will make the situation better again with this we also did a lot of role playing and as you can see we go through small medium and big and we work our way up to figure out what the size of the problem is so if my size of the problem kids can get up awesome basically we cut it out the SE and then we glued them onto just right reaction and overreaction yeah if you want to give some examples for an example a just right reaction is calling home when you miss the bus the overreaction is sobbing sobbing when you don't get your way awesome awesome thank you guys um and we just want to thank you from all of Huckleberry family for allowing us to come in and teach your

011students emotional intelligence and how to regulate their emotions because it's super important and a special shout out to David fasasi for guiding for guiding Us in this development for this amazing program and the students really seem to enjoy it so we're gonna keep it going Take a Bow any questions from the board okay thank you guys that was very interesting [Music] thank you oh is that up thank you kids thank you moms and dads thank you miss baldelli and miss maglick and Dr P thank you everyone great job thank you everyone foreign ER welcome to stay and listen to the rest of our long meeting but if not um we'll understand if you need to get up and uh all right um so next up on our agenda is public comment and I'm going to

012just read a statement that's in our agenda so the Board of Education really welcomes public comment each speaker has up to three minutes to provide input to the board at the start of every meeting we at we set aside 20 minutes for items that are comment on items that are on the agenda and the reason we do that quite frankly is because we want to hear from members of the public before we're actually deliberating on anything that's on the agenda at the end of the regular meeting we've allotted time for comment that's anything within the purview of the board so um so what I do is I take the sign up list and I look at what are items and are they agenda items and then we'll do those at the beginning of the meeting

013if we use up to 20 minutes we use the after the me after the meeting session for uh individuals who didn't have time in the 20-minute window discussion of school Personnel of individualized students or any individual the board shall not be considered appropriate so we have other vehicles to have those discussions um so with that we have one person who is signed up for and a comment on an agenda item and it's Mrs Matthews um and we have one who will be at the end of the meeting because it just says general comments uh Monique Matthews 18 Road I just have a couple questions that I hope will be answered tonight regarding the special education caseload spreadsheet first I would like to know how many kids started in the ELC program at Center School compared

014to today also I feel the case load breakdown isn't a great representation of how many kids are assigned to each case manager this information in my opinion is not correct I think the parents in the district should see a breakdown by grade not by school also the caselope spreadsheet we see a huge jump from kids going from Huckleberry to whiskaneer to whiskaneer to BHS nap pattern is over two years because I couldn't find any other information on the board of ed website to me it seems very concerning it shows that children aren't being identified early enough in District and I feel we should be questioning that why are the big jumps between the two schools thank you thank you I'm sorry I'm just writing down some notes questions to ask [Music] okay all right so

015that's it on public comment for now um Caitlyn you're up okay is this working yep the button should be up is it hello yes okay hi everyone I know it's been a while since we've been here last so I'm excited to share many updates with you all the homecoming dance on October 1st was overall very successful with a turnout of over 300 students yesterday the ciac announced its 2022 Michael's cup Award winners the Michaels cup is awarded to exemplary Athletics programs for their willingness to subscribe to the Class Act sportsmanship standards empowering students to take an active role in their student climate and their continued community service support the athletic advisory and Class Act student councils of BHS are responsible for this with their work with the athletic director Mr Baldwin an advisory Mrs Albin

016we are once again awarded for having one of the best athletic programs in Connecticut this week's sports games are pink themed for breast cancer awareness month boys soccer claims Victory against Stratford yesterday for their senior night with a score of two to one girls field hockey senior ceremony is tomorrow night we'll finish off the week with a pink out-themed home football game at 7 pm I'm extremely happy to be awarded as this month's student athlete and will continue to work hard with my team to make our community proud this past Monday our Administration welcomed Katie Rodriguez Brookfield graduate to give a presentation to each grade in the school she focused on raising awareness regarding the dangers of drug use and her journey to sobriety it was extremely important for us as students to learn about

017this because of the growing numbers in Fentanyl and opioid abuse finally student government is in the process of planning many events and a club council meeting will be held soon for more updates on activities thank you thank you Caitlin any questions congratulations and congratulations oh thank you okay um next up is written correspondence Nick Schmidt wrote regarding the Boe voting process Marnie mcniff and Denise rice wrote regarding special education Dan devorsitz wrote regarding the boys locker room project and Jason Eddie wrote regarding a Safety Committee okay next is approval aboard minutes um aboard approved the minutes from the regular meeting on um September 21st and the special meeting on October 6th second has been moved and seconded any comments from the board any adjustments hearing none all in favor unanimous um next up is our

018superintendents update Dr Brill I'll turn it over to you great thank you I'll be very brief but a couple of things that are not yeah I'll be brief we have a number of things on the agenda tonight but I have some key items that I really thought were important to share that are not either on the agenda or in a subcommittee report to share with the board and with the public the first is that all four schools in early November will have Veterans Day activities we want to make sure everybody knows that and they'll be publicizing those and working with their students and guests former police chief Robin Montgomery is involved in touching base with the principles and organizing those so we're really excited for that and we love honoring our veterans at Whiskey near

019I have two items for whiskey and air tonight there is a probably the first ever for the Middle School we're going to have a French Exchange program where students that have been uh taking classes with our students via zoom in the French classes in uh with Mr Johnson are actually going to be working with Mr Johnson and Mrs Abrego to come from France in the spring and stay with host families here in Brookfield so we're really excited about that Communications I don't think they've gone out yet Dean yeah the letter is going to be going up very soon so I wanted to let the board know let the public know the folks at Whiskey near and really anybody else we may have as many as 50 students coming plus chaperones so we may need more

020host families that are willing to take some uh chaperones their students in than just whisk and air families so it depends who's willing and who has the space and that kind of thing so that communication will be going out shortly in addition the walkathon on Friday at Whiskey near was amazing congratulations it has to go out to the PTO for organizing that 35 000 raise I think that is probably a record um and I know uh Dr P is being quite competitive with Mr Renda uh and they have the hustle I think you're in the middle of getting that already right Dave um and so they want to they want to get the numbers up there too so there's a there's some some fun fun camaraderie going on there and then I don't need to

021say the Michael's cup because Caitlyn already talked about that but we're really excited about BHS is continue to honor and recognition for the exemplary program award at uh ciac so those were my brief updates okay thank you thank you any questions for Dr Burrell will the um French students be staying here it's one week one week one week and there there'll probably be a field trip go ahead come on come on dude good evening Mrs Han you can hear me something loud they are going to be here a week before and they're going to be in New York City for the week and then they're going to then they would come to us and like Dr Brill said if there's around 50 students there's going to be if to host families and we put it

022out it'll be two students per family so you don't have a kid by himself so we have it so they've been with the another person so should be fun thanks Dean did I gather that this was intended to be an ongoing thing where we might have the chance of sending kids over to French students come to us we can't call it an exchange program Unless somehow we go to them so we really want to open up the world for our kids and we're starting to think about that so if that could be something possible I know the board has to approve out-of-state trips and overnight trips so this would be something we bring to the board but first we will have um Keith and uh Catherine come and talk a little bit more to the

023board sometime after the holidays uh about the program and what they're thinking and how it's How the planning's going at that point okay I'm really excited about it any other questions okay next we're going to move to subcommittee reports and policy and Communications is first up Demi okay Communications subcommittee met on September 21st and um a large part of our discussion was regarding um Connecticut state laws surrounding transgender and gender non-conforming youth um Dr Burrell wanted to share some information about the state law that's been in effect since 2007 and um we thought it was important to communicate the boards we think it's important to communicate the board's expectations in terms of locker room use bathroom issues and things that have been coming up recently so we are reviewing the policy on that and we

024had more discussions about it in our meeting tonight and we will have a recommendation for the board at the next meeting in November 16th we also um reviewed an existing policy entitled comparability of service it's an existing policy that will be making some recommendations for changes too based on capes input and then we also reviewed policy 6172.4 regarding Title One parent involvement and you'll see that later in your packet we'll talk about that that's pretty much it okay any questions for Debbie okay I'll do the next two first is a strategic planning committee that's a verbal update you won't see minutes in your packet on that we kicked off that that whole process of doing the Strategic plan with a long and healthy discussion from our coordinator August 18th oh Jonathan Jonathan Costa from ahead

025advance and Mr Costas walked us through a thinking process on how you approach setting a strategy and some of the topics we ought to discuss then we went into a workshop mode to come up with questions that we thought we would want to have answered before we actually entered into a real discussion about how to solidify the the strategy which is all built around the portrait of The Graduate and so we've come up with a I want to say a two-page list of questions and we split into six groups who are now in the process of going going and trying to get answers to that and the types of categories are methods of teaching goals and teaching you know getting buy-in right you know those those are all the types of questions that we have

026and so there's six categories we're working through we had a checkpoint just the other day and seems that everybody is progressing and we'll have a report out on those ques the answers to those questions at our November 10th meeting that's an all-day meeting that's a full day Retreat it's a full day meeting we'll get answers to the questions and then we'll be really starting to formulate the the pillars of the strategy and then that there's all serious meetings after that and with the intent of getting done before before budget season to be frank so and Bob if I may uh we talked a little bit about um probably have three different dissemination dates beginning at this time last year of the fraud exchange that went out where that was a very open-ended uh process for

027people to give input and then it um organizes by category the kinds of topics uh the technology that's involved with that and that was helped supported by Ed Advance John helped us with that and then a number of the groups of the six groups that Bob is referring to had some questions that they wanted to go out in kind of a survey format to the community and to or specifically to teachers or to a parent group or and so what Jonathan's going to do is everybody by Friday needs to get their questions to him and then he'll set them up and design the questions uh on a likert scale so it's much easier to gather the data and analyze it and sort it and so forth and so prior to November 10th a survey will

028be going out regarding strategic planning so that's an important one for sure and I will add that this is a big committee I mean we have two board members on it uh Debbie and I um and uh but we have a lot of teachers from all schools and all types of teachers whether they're coaches or special ed or regular ad math English you know the whole broad cross-section we have a number of Administrators on the committee the principals uh the superintendent and assistant superintendent in fact most of our home our core office leaders and we have some members of the public and they've been very big contributors which have been great so so it's a it's a it's a lively group but it's a pretty daunting task to tell you the truth so we're trying

029to work our way through it so you know what's been really exciting is the engagement and the desire for Clarity on the process actually had three different parents who are on the committee touch base with Jonathan and me uh this morning so that was really nice to be going back and forth and really trying to solidify the kinds of questions and how to ask them you know to get the answers you know uh that they're looking for um and so I'm just really excited about the process I really am and to your point Bob it's a large committee so it's really a lot of heavy involvement we already have the thought exchange information from I think about 300 different uh we have maybe 300 different people participated in that definitely over 250 if my recollection

030serves me correctly and then hopefully we get a very robust response from the survey that'll come out in the next couple of weeks any questions okay the next topic is the security task force meeting we did meet on October 6th if you recall we spent our early part of the summer all working on staffing issues at our schools which resulted in a sea change in terms of the uh you know what we have in terms of security Personnel in the schools we got a report on how we are on getting those uh staff in place and some of them are in our consent agenda you may have noticed that tonight but we have I think three of uh the the unarmed uh three of the security monitors security monitors in place are in place they're

031uh they've been struggling to get an asso for the after school hours they're still interviewing do we have news uh I think we're down near finalist interviews next week with the chief and he'll be having a high school administrator at a minimum as part of that interview processing and we have uh and the four uh SRO roles in the schools has been very well received from from all measures so we got an update on that but then we switched our attention to physical security the buildings themselves so we got a report from Mr belanda Mr Caldwell Mr Conklin and Mr post with uh a list of you know here are some opportunities uh Dr Brill I appreciate your kicking that piece of uh work off of of what are things that we might work on

032right and right and and we've asked them to come back and there was a prioritized list but it didn't have any dollars and cents attached to it so we talked about each of the items and we've agreed to have a comeback at our next meeting with them dollars and cents attached and uh and some just a more meaty discussion about what should we bring forward um and I'll just say that the types of questions the things on that I'll just pick on one is um door alarms right do you spend the money to have on all the older schools you know put in a you know something that identifies when the doors open or shut we have cameras out there now right but this would give you another alert to the uh to the office

033if there was a one and the of course the first question you ask is okay that's a great idea right how much is it going to cost right so we needed to have that in context before we'd bring forward any recommendation but there was a number of items on there that would supplement the things that we've done in the past which we're focusing on camera security film access control and the PA systems which is what for those of you who are on the board two years ago those were the big things that we brought forward at that time um so that's kind of what the gist of that meeting was we the next things after we've been do physical the physical we'll be talking about threat assessment we will spend some time on the Mental

034Health crisis we'll spend some time on technology so and those are those are still ahead of us so a lot lots of to do on that committee we're meeting once a month at this point okay next up is facilities quick question the say something app is that what's the update on that the update on that is we're looking at a January rollout with these folks from Sandy Hook's promise were not able to promise us until mid-year in terms of their limits in capacity okay okay so facilities we met on October 6th we discussed the school due to reports we reviewed the work orders for leaks windows and or repairs for the capital projects HVAC at the high schools moving along quickly it's 80 complete and they're in the process of pressurizing they've replaced and installed

03536 control valves getting a lot of work done even though students are in the building ABS took over the Boiler Room they're running on New controls it's nearly nearly completed we have relative automative control of our systems looking to turn the system on around October 15th and we should now be able to manually control rooms paving at with skinnier some Paving will begin second part of the Bus Loop area the rain pushed them back a little bit looking to start early November and done by Thanksgiving so prep it on day one Paving on day two and we discussed getting a quote for painting lines for the parking lot for parking spaces maintenance vehicle um they spoke to the sales rep the 2022 vehicles are sold out so we're um we should have a price in

036a week or so for uh 2023 vehicles uh we have 50 000 in the budget for it custodial Staffing update we want to put in for an extra custodian so we're going to have to ask that for the budget on the capital plan we discussed we currently have in year one and we decided that it was important to keep it light this year for this upcoming budget season um we're waiting to hear back from the security task force on the recommendations as Bob had mentioned and they have a meeting November 3rd correct so some possible recommendations are upgrading the cameras additional cameras at the sports Fields parking spots and any blind spots increasing server capacity for cameras and alarms on Doors BHS locker room good news a board of Selectmen Board of Finance approve the

037request for additional funding so that's moving along quickly smoothly school security Mr Belden you know gave us an update from the security task force which he just did previously so um we'll wait to hear more about that so Huckleberry the furniture plan and our Board of Ed asset disposal policy I know we have that in later on the agenda but I'll briefly discuss it so we discussed disposal of all the furniture and equipment that will remain at Huckleberry once it's back vacated so we're getting the policy ready the first priority is to is to us the district other schools you know employees will tag and take TSO Town agencies and then invite other preschools Community groups YMCA things like that we can definitely do some selling but do we really want to deal with cash

038sales we might be better served to just put it out there for a donation to charities computers and Technology will be inventoried to use for spares and parts in other buildings there's going to be an HVAC grant that we're applying for we found out that the state is making 70 000 available for HVAC product projects and there's a retroactive component so the deadline for that is December 1st so we're working on hoping that the HVAC controls and the locker room possibly part of that project for that Grant eligible for the grant some miscellaneous discussion we discussed upcoming meetings with the contractor OMG and the NBC about the planned move into Candlewood Lake Elementary School we'll hear more about that later and that's about it okay any questions okay Joy I think we should just take

039a pause and congratulate everyone here thank the bof to get the locker room project that we've talked about for about four years for full Board of selectment board of Finance support and approval all of you your hard work the facilities committee everybody here really thank you very much I know Mr Baldwin and Mr belanda and and all the folks at the high school are quite excited to get that started come I guess the winter winter recess will probably be when the staging Begins for that project so thank you all right so I'll also add the I see every day I pass by Western ear and I see the blocks starting to go up in the on the side of that building and it's great to see progress on that so I think we're quite excited

040about that too it's been been a year a year of an eyesore yes having it complete will be very exciting any uh questions for joy okay next is finance okay um the finance committee last met on the 11th um I was actually not present at this meeting but I've touched base with Ken um not too much has changed from last month um where I talked about our um keeping an eye on a budget deficit that we have um already going this early in the year that's increased slightly um to 637-ish thousand um still mostly due to special education tuition transportation and Professional Services as well as heating oil diesel fuel and only about 92 000 in teacher turnover savings when we budget a lot higher than that we are capturing some savings as I mentioned

041before in administrator salaries in several key vacant positions so right now the plan is to just continue to monitor report and more importantly liaison cooperate with our Board of Finance colleagues issues that's it okay I'll I'll just follow on to that I did report out the next day to the board of Finance um it was a long discussion at the board of Finance meeting and they have asked us not to do anything Draconian um despite all the situation that we have there's some good news coming in for the town with some additional revenues coming in that they believe they can cover this year's potential over one so they've agreed with me to keep monitoring this for the next two to three months we'll talk about it each month but the chairman of the board of

042Finance speaking for his entire board and there was a lot of heads around nodding around the table is stay Frugal but don't do anything draconium so which I think was great support from the board of finance and I will thank them you know on this public meeting so we'll just think of puppies that's a coping think of puppies um the uh just as an aside I mean you sit through that meeting you learn a lot but just you know we all see interest rates going up it turns out that's a benefit for the town because we have all the money that came in from the bonds for the school and we're paying out the bills out of that but there's still a lot of money out there earning interest and we had budgeted at a

0430.01 and it's running around three percent that's a three thousand percent increase in the interest rate a million dollars of added interest coming into the town that covers a lot of things right when when when that happens so they had a long discussion about that one item but then there's some they they didn't assume any success on grants in their budget but they're getting some sick we're get we are all getting some success on grants right starting to come in so that's uh it was a healthy amount of revenues coming in that would help offset some of the one-time risks so okay any questions for Rosa all right let's move on next up is consent agenda I'll move that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations and the

044September financials second it's been moved and seconded any discussion on the consent agenda you know hearing none all in favor say aye aye okay it's unanimous so we're moving on to new business now and we do have a healthy agenda tonight for new business since we're only having one meeting here in the month of October the first on the agenda is the district enrollment well let me just pause we asked doc Mr checo to come at eight o'clock their give or take when he comes would you guys all be okay if we move the Candlewood Lake thing up in the agenda to be sensitive to his schedule and the time it's taken to come see us okay I figured it's as important as any other topic on this agenda all right so uh first up

045is District enrollment report and this is an action item not a motion um and Dr Burrell will uh present the enrollment report to us okay so um the board received this report on Friday uh it's posted it's a very brief report it's an annual report we provide to the board and while it's a brief report it's a very important report because we base our entire budget for the most part off of our driver which is our student enrollment and of course our student need and what you'll see in this report is it's a four-year report and we collect all of this data and by state mandate you have to have What's called the October 1 enrollment snapshot and then we provide this data to the state so they have an accurate assessment and so we'll

046you we'll refer back to the data from this report throughout the entire budget process because as everybody knows we have move-ins and move outs all year long so we want to plan from one steady data point so we use October 1st and then that's that's typical around the state of Connecticut the main thing that everybody needs to know is that while these figures will change we really focus on all of our students students with special needs are multilingual Learners and free and reduced lunch those are also other subgroup key High need drivers of work we do here in not only providing programming for our students but also compliance work that has to happen again under State guidance as you can see on the second page the four-year history is there and we've typically done that

047in the lower elementary grade you can see that the enrollment's down just a little bit when you look at the compare from this October to last October of 21 pretty steady along the way down a little bit at Whiskey near and then as you can see we have right now two less outplay students than we did last year our special education numbers are holding about the same similarly for our multilingual learners and that's actually good news because while students with English as a second language do move into our district our programming is helping students continue to matriculate out and test out of that programming so it's really we're really providing a tremendous service for the kids there and you can see our free and reduced lunch numbers continue to go up and that that's really

048concerning when you start to think about high needs families and things going on and perhaps kids that are in underprivileged situations it continues to grow here in town so we always keep an eye on that as well regardless in total our enrollment is down 39 students across the district not in any one particular grade I don't know if there's any follow-ups anybody might be interested in or any questions anybody has on this kind of general report I'll just follow it with a follow-up um just so everybody's aware um 108 housing units are going behind Jibo sibo um and two two stories of residential come into the Four Corners that will be above the Food Emporium so that's something to think about and have it on our radar it's increasing in the moment we do and

049and what we have our you know current enrollment and Mr post is looking at that as we start planning for Budget in addition to that we refer back I think it was last at this time last year I had Dr prouta Who is a reputable enrollment specialist do a study for us we're around those numbers we're pretty close and we still rely and go back that we don't rely on it solely but we go back to the Malone room report from a couple of years ago their update report and we're really hovering around the same no risk give or take 40 or 50 kids as I recently looked at it it isn't uh there isn't enormous swings going in there and they're never that accurate anyway but enjoy your absolutely right we have to pay

050attention see what's going on there yeah I would also when I looked at the report what's interesting to me is to I was going across the cohort right so looking at the second graders from a couple of years ago four years ago to the third graders three years ago to the fourth graders last year to the fifth graders this year you go down there's very few cohorts that are declining as time goes on they're all growing and uh and so the uh that just tells me there's people moving into town there is yeah so anecdotal anecdotally our Realtors will tell us that when they find out that the the families with younger kids when they're deciding among three or four towns and they're looking at the housing that they can afford and then they find

051out there's a brand new elementary school being built that's that's a something that's motivating them as well and that's anecdotal I don't have numbers on that but something interesting okay any questions for uh Dr Burrell on the report I'm sure we'll talk about this more and more are we planning to do uh for new at some point when would we do a next formal update of the Malone and broom type of you know 10-year report one of those things we're considering and Ken and I were just talking about that is is it time to build in for next year's budget to do that it's one of those things we're thinking about Maloney McBroom in terms of enrollment is not actually in business anymore but there's um some of those folks are working through cooperational Cooperative

052Educational Services in Trumbull we know I'm a CES there's a I think their acronym is slam and they they do enrollment studies now they're they're kind of the new New Kids on the Block so we'll take a look at those folks and what their costs are as well and we always can look back to Dr Prada as well he is for a lot less he provides pretty accurate numbers okay thank you you're welcome okay Item B is uh the special services caseload report um the recommended actions that we receive an update on the caseload report from uh Mrs Dina Cola Hickman so I'll turn over the floor to you yes um I wanted to Begin Again by expressing my gratitude for all of your warmth and for the community who's given me support throughout my

053transition I'm now feeling uh really great about being here and comfortable so I wanted to thank you again for that um it's my first chance at addressing you as a board and I have a very dry subject today which is numbers I'm really hoping next time I can come and share some of the wonderful things that uh students are doing which would be far more exciting than looking at numbers tonight um you um have had the numbers to review prior to this evening so I will briefly outline as Dr Burrell did I report and then allow you some time for questions um I would like to point out some overarching points um right before I begin which is that um the caseloads really remained fairly the same from last year this is the same format

054that was provided in previous years to the district um we um sorry they're fairly much in alignment also with neighboring districts and districts in our derg okay so let's change throughout the year remember this is a snapshot on October 1st um we're really not expecting any impact on the budget due to caseloads for the 2022-2023 school year I will start off with the preschool which I always put lots of asterisks next to and I will explain that towards the end but one of the things about the snapshot is that we already have 16 students just a few days later who've been identified as requiring an IEP um CES is has been pretty stable um and um I don't think that we have a lot there to look at I do want to say though we've

055had quite a few students move into district with IEPs this year I would say approximately 20. we did have a nice a large uh sorry 12th grade class that left us but we balanced it out with some new arrivals um and again I'm very interested in that piece about new buildings coming in because that always does give us more move-ins in following years um let's see um whiskey near is slightly lower than the Elementary on caseloads right now um which just was interesting to me however the fifth grade staff when we moved to Candlewood Lake will be heading over to the elementary school so our hopes is then to use the staff a little more efficiently at the elementary schools given we'll have the added staff from the fifth grade um Brookfield High School again

056very very similar to what was last year we do have 363 students in District we have 32 students who are out of District nine of those students are in the 18 to 21 which is now actually 22. I should have written that 22. category and we have seven students at magnet schools that we are still responsible for when we do our IPS in our account uh related services speech and language pathologist again we're very similar you do see a greater increase as you head into secondary because as far as the case loads go because many of the students have smaller amounts of times that are required on their IEP you may have 18 students at CES who require speech and language on your caseload but they may be receiving speech three or four times a

057week um which is a far greater quantity of time than if you have 31 children who maybe have one times 30 minutes okay so that kind of explains some of that difference there for you um School psychologists we are heaviest at uh Huckleberry so we're really hoping with the caseloads that next year we can take a look at um how we even that out a little bit between our psychologists that will all be in the building together uh School social workers I know it looks um a bit funny that CES only has eight on their uh caseload right now but when we are in the very early Elementary years that's where we're teaching our social emotional skills right in the classroom social workers are pushing in to to do small lessons it is actually part

058of the curriculum and standards that we teach those social emotional skills so I would expect it to be lower it does give the social worker much more time to also support families as they're coming into the public schools and with any needs that they may have at home so it just looks a little bit different at that age OT occupational therapy and physical therapy remained pretty much the same from last year and then this is my new preschool addendum that I just added for you one of the things I wanted to make note of and make sure that everybody was understanding is that October snapshot is much lower than we end up with at the end of the school year so 2020 2021 you added 16 students in preschool last year they added nine students

059into preschool and this year we're starting with the the 16 but what I wanted to note was that we already have 25 evaluations that we are know that we must complete which is very close to the numbers we ended with in 2021 2022. um so that tells me that we may have a larger increase this year oh questions any follow-up well I do have a question or two that maybe I should just ask a numbers question if I don't if you don't mind on the top of the third page there was the speech and language Pathologists numbers and it it looks like it's one and a half uh uh speech and language in the high school and this is it half of it is shared with WMS right is the half in the two for

060WMS or is it is it on top of the two it's on top of the two so they have two and a half it's not quite a half because it's a half time position where she picks up additional students in both of the buildings so it's a so you just counted all of the halftime position because it was very hard to determine if it's a 0.1 a point two it's flexible depending on what's needed okay and as most of that person's caseload at the high school um no it's actually mostly at the middle school right now okay okay so actually in actuality then the Middle School caseload is lower at the moment at the moment in the high school is higher right okay um the second is just a request sure for our ongoing reports

061it would be really useful to have the prior year caseload numbers absolutely here right because you're saying it's the same as last year but it's just we don't have that absolutely useful and it looks like there's plenty of room to do that and I can certainly also um send you a copy of that because I have that and then my third question was our public speaker at the beginning asked to know what's going on at ELC um could you comment on that okay so um in ELC we range uh from five students to nine students in the classrooms very honestly it just may be the makeup of the class so the the grade the cohort sorry um we may just have more students in the fifth grade than we do in the ninth grade there

062are some years we have none in the ninth grade who move up so it's really dependent upon the age of the student and where they are in the cohort but that's where the discrepancy comes in I do think you know we work really hard as well at the elementary school to make sure our students are in the least restrictive environment which would be with their general education peers um and so you know the smaller number in CES would mean that the students are in the least restrictive environment at that point if they need further time outside of that classroom is when they would start to move into ELC okay and and since the beginning of the school year have there been significant changes in either the number of kids in the ELC classes or the

063Staffing no no there have not okay yeah so the caseload's been pretty consistent through the first two months very consistent okay okay anybody else have questions okay Bob I'd just like to uh make sure it's clear uh similar to the enrollment report the caselo report as Amy mentioned she was talking about thinking about the budget for next year and taking a look at this and doesn't think the case loads as in Prior years because we've really invested in special education and added special ed teachers or we've added speech and language Etc the the halftime or Coda um this is a budget driver so we always need to be looking at this carefully so again the reports that we're providing feed into our December budget presentation and so next uh meeting we'll be talking about class

064size reports and some of those things so it's just very important that we don't just have these annual reports because we like to give these annual reports they have a Absolute Concrete and immediate impact on our budget planning and this one is just this whole topic is very hard to do a projection of it's easier to do big enrollment projections this one's really hard it is very difficult and we could have students um where we would very happily exit them because they no longer need the support that's always our goal so you know we have students come in and we have some students who exit every single year I don't think there's any other questions I'm sorry you said the 20 that moved in with an IEP is that reflected I'm sorry if you answer

065that already is that reflected in the numbers it is reflected to 33 yes and at center or is that at Center School you said they're at both uh Center and Huckleberry okay and you don't expect that to impact the budget no because we had a night a nice large clasp that left in uh this particular year that cohort that graduated so it really evened us out but I will keep an eye out as we move forward because we do seem to have a lot of families moving here which is a nice thing for all of us right thank you thank you thank you thanks Amy Bob Mr checo walked in okay so it might be a good time um we'll just uh yeah I do think it's a good break point because the next topic

066will go a while I think right um so uh I'd like to make a motion to move that uh the Candlewood Lake Elementary School building project in its entirety to uh be our next item on the agenda second moved and seconded all in favor thank you all right so um Mr chekhog now you owe me one so uh we actually have there's three topics on here um no three topics I'm going to do them in and uh you know over there um I'd like that the first we'll have Mr checo give an update on where we are on the new school we've had quite a bit of discussion over the last 10 days I'd say we've had quite a bit of discussion yeah I'll check on chair of the municipal building committee um we've had

067quite a bit of discussion look we all know the Candlewood Lake Elementary School it's um it's progressing it hasn't been without its uh trials and tribulations we've had material delays we've had the lazy Roofing we've had uh thankfully we haven't had much of a weather Delight we've had some good weather which has helped offset some of this but it's a you know it's an ongoing process and it's like in true construction form nothing ever goes you know right according to plan and you know right out of the gate when we started digging on that site we hit a large amount of what we call unsuitables so it was soil that we had to take out and replace um you know that kind of started off the the tone of the project and we overcame that

068um but with that we've moved along it's moving along nicely um but again it's not going to be looking like December is going to be the move-in date um we actually you know Bob John and I have uh discussed this over the course of the last 10 days quite a bit we have asked the construction manager for a list of deliverables for that date and in looking at that and with some material delays that I'll get into in a moment we would be moving the kids out of a school which is actually a perfectly good school into something that's lesser finished and you know looking at those Optics it's just not a good plan to disrupt the kids and move them into something where there's going to be a lot of activity and it's lesser

069environment or lesser educational environment than where they are now and one of those things is flooring and we learned last month that one of the largest flooring manufacturers in the United States Armstrong Flooring um when chapter 11. and then they were that portion of their business was bought out by another company that didn't start happening again until September October now of course we have a large amount of Armstrong Flooring in Carpeting and tile and such throughout this project we've been able to recover and move to another manufacturer but again things like that create these types of delays and we didn't really think it was appropriate to kind of move the kids into school when we don't have flooring down um sheetrock is up the place is being painted ceiling tile is going in but without

070a finished floor it still is largely looks unfinished um Mr Belden joined us last night for our walk through the Board of Ed was at our September walkthrough you saw how much time we did gain and how much work we did gain over the last month but it's still just quite not enough where I would be comfortable and I know you know leadership here just want to be comfortable making that move too soon so Bob we want to have a go beyond that um so the uh the first shock that I got was exactly what you said where there's a lot of things that are not going to be done by the December Readiness day right they uh for the board they gave us a four page uh checklist of of items when you go

071down that list over half of them is flooring right and it's not just the Armstrong Flooring it's all the types of flooring whether it's the terrazzo tile or the uh or the carpet tiles the vinyl flooring in certain places the gym flooring I mean that's everything you you just do a flooring flooring flooring and I'll pass this around in case you guys want to look at it but it's um significant it is and the second biggest category which to me wasn't a big surprise their Landscaping Outdoors work right so the uh um of course moving in in January means you're not in the at a time of the year that Landscaping gets done very effectively and when the project is a little bit behind and they're trying to keep up you couldn't get it done

072here in October and November some of that item so so that means that the areas and the playgrounds the courtyards the front the the the stream in the front would not be ready and the stuff in the front probably wouldn't have been ready anyhow because it's all tied into the paving project which doesn't really get done until okay gets knocked down so and then once you got through those it and you guys will scan it it's relatively small things here and there it's a little bit of uh wall hangings and a little bit of ceiling things here and there but it's flooring flooring flooring flooring flooring so um Mr Chuck Cook visited us and said would you be willing to move in with a polished concrete floor now think Costco right and exactly you know

073and and our reaction was no way um it's just not we want everybody to feel really good when they move into the school um and uh so it was the the next question was well when can we be ready right if it's not going to be into we had original date for everybody the original plan was like a mid-December uh clearance by the town and the occupancy certificate move on January 3rd so um so the question then was okay how do we get um comfortable and I'll just show this to the board again the colors on this are um green is we can get done by February right not a lot of the sun green on it but not a lot all right uh red is I can't even get done by mid-February and most

074a lot of Landscaping on that some of the flooring items but the yellow which is 70 of the items are we're waiting to hear from the flooring companies right we don't know the lead time so last night I visited with the MBC and I asked our our building contractor OMG to please get us firm dates and firm commitments so we can make some decisions because we're in this awkward position right now of saying it's not going to be January 3rd because that's not the right environment to put our kids into but we don't know what date we can tell people and we need to get the Huckleberry kids moved into that school because if we don't get that done early enough we won't get the rest of the uh the kids in by September right

075right we have to start knocking down that Huckleberry building and building the parking lot because you need parking for the staff who are going to teach the kids when they all come in I'll just remind you it's a thousand plus kids in this one school that's a lot of teachers and a lot of staff so um so it's a it's a deep breath moment um it is in the spring off of uh you know where Bob left off we've been working with the construction manager Ong on a constant basis updating these lists doing material tracking um we did ask them last night uh to come here at the November meeting and present a forward-looking schedule I mean we receive it every month I think it would be helpful for you to hear from OMG and

076then we can start making decisions based upon more realistic or harder dates as we get you know firmer dates on some of these flooring materials one thing and I know Bob was a little surprised and he grilled me on it you know can we pay overtime can we get contractors to work around the clock and while some of that is feasible and we have done some of that we're talking about a lot of consecutive items that have to happen that you just can't truncate or overlap so I know you mentioned the terrazzo flooring and that's a lot of the school all the first floor in the hallways it's something that can't be done while others are in the building you know you can't hang a ceiling over a wet terrazzo floor and you can't lay

077a Terrazzo flow while the guy's hanging a ceiling so um these consecutive um construction items really are what making this schedule kind of stretch out then the other thing is obviously as one flooring or one material is not ready schedules you know contractors do plan their work windows and you know and some of that gets shifted around so we are working with that on a daily basis with both Ong tecton and arcadis and uh you know we'll be back here in November with a presentation of this is how OMG foresees the next two or three months happening and at what point can we get into the school and move the students into something where we all feel when we walk in and go wow this is what we expected yeah it's a standard the standard

078that uh Dr Brill and I agreed on was the part of the school that we'll be occupying now just remind it we're not moving the Pre-K and kindergarten in so there's a corn One Wing at the end that we won't be occupying but the part that we're occupying has to be complete right it has to be something we're proud to have people come into right that includes all the common rooms that includes all the hangings that includes all the classrooms includes all the flooring it has to be ready playgrounds and uh no we're going to live with this and live with that in that space so um I will just if I if you don't mind uh I found the tour that you had tour it wasn't a tour I just joined the NBC on

079their normal rate uh their normal walkthrough we all had a chance to go on a formal tour a month ago I was stunned hey guys for those of you who are on that tour every one of the back wings so there's six back Wings classroom Wings every classroom is wall boarded now every classroom has the the grids up for putting in the panels right there's a handful that we did not but they were mostly in and I found two or three classrooms that the ceiling panels were already installed so you can see what they look like they weren't fully installed but they were there so the back of the school other than the flooring you can see you can actually visualize that you know that that's a very clear path that's going to be done

080with with the exception of that flooring right the front of the school a little different here so much right the the cafeteria is all wall boarded now remember it was uh just uh just uh uh girders before it's all enclosed now you get a real sense of what that is they're working on the uh they're working on the serving area this week um they told us um the stage area and the multi-purpose room are all wall all fully wall boarded and uh and uh that's starting to look relatively complete yep the gym is not right the Gym's like a big storage area it's a staging area it's a staging area and then as you get over to the the Pre-K section the front classrooms exactly as they were there's no wall boarding at all and

081those common areas for the youngest children are are they're just having gotten to those yet for the the framing it up but the admin area was all wallboard the admin areas both on the second floor in the first floor um the uh there's still some important stairways that have not been installed the main in particular and the one in the library the library actually started seeing it take a little shape and we were all worried about that um so it's moving fast but when we went through the specifics of the flooring stuff they're 12-week lead times and when you restart in in uh there's the two key numbers I walked away was was 12-week lead times to get the flooring in assuming that those suppliers aren't overwhelmed with Armstrong being taken out of the equation

082we don't have dates from them yet and then the second was the terrazzo flooring is there a window of time I think the Cure period was like six weeks yes it is um that you need to have that they can't be in those areas so they're working hard to finish up the construction in those areas so they could get to work on that flowing so yeah and again on the flooring especially with the Armstrong a little bit of a ripple effect so Public Schools we do most of the construction especially in renovations additions and alterations during the summer months when Armstrong went Belly Up and this actually started in April this this process where they started not fulfilling orders everybody went to Target Shaw flooring and some of the other major manufacturers a lot of

083that stock and inventory was used up during this past summer construction months so as we got into September and the new flooring company took over the Armstrong line well there's a depletion of existing stock so now we're waiting that 12 weeks that's actually manufacturing time and that's exactly what we're waiting for at this juncture there was a couple of other good news items that I heard at the NBC meeting last night that the school will be fully enclosed that right now it's almost fully enclosed there's a couple of doorways that are still open to the elements they're either putting in temporary or permanent doors in those doorways and the heating gets turned on next week so that says uh you know the fundamentals are start are continuing on some of those important things the other

084thing we talked about was the whole playground playgrounds can't go in in the middle of the winter they can't but they were targeting to have them go in in April yes so this if moving this date will actually allow the kids to be closer to when they'll be playground equipment being installed and we asked them to put that into the scheduled discussion so that we could start seeing will the playground be in at the same time kids go in right and that's something thing we're directly responsible for that's not under Ong that's something that arcadis and District leadership has been working together on so yeah our Target is so there's some big meetings on selection of uh equipment and getting this next week next week so so that's uh that that the the Landscaping will

085line up a little better if it slides out as long as April and there is a chance it could slide out as long as April um but we need to hear from Ong before we make any decisions right right now they told us if you look at the color coding that they can't get a lot most of the stuff they're not committing February 15th is what we had asked them to assess in the gym they didn't give us anything on Jim Jim they gave us no input on so so this is based on initial conversation sounds like partial use of will be all they allowed if it but that was for this the comment was for December okay right that was comment was for December so we don't have a good answer on the gym

086that was the only one they didn't color code so uh and uh yeah we have a better indication on that but um right now because of staging we're just not allowing anybody in to do any work yeah this we need the space so uh so there's a couple of little nuggets of good news in there that uh but there is overall it's uh probably it's not over Christmas break it's probably in March or April it's spring we're talking it's spring-ish it's springish and uh and the school will be largely completed yeah um bikes by the original schedule with the lack of form I'm guessing if we go through a walk through in January would be like oh yeah this is done except for flooring right and uh and because that's the big stuff inside the

087building that are a problem right um you know on other good news budget wise we still have a healthy contingency um which is good in this market because I think we hit the market at the right time um you know we've seen a lot of escalation we you know fight with it every day because obviously people do ask that question but you know right now financially we're in a good place so moving forward I know technology and some of the larger items that were just bid out came in under the estimated budgets so those things are you know we do have a lot of positives here and uh you know I said to Bob and John and they expressed some great disappointment as we did to Ong as well but what we say to our

088clients is at the end of the day nobody's going to remember you were four months later or six months later than you wanted to be they will remember if it's wrong so you know on behalf of all the taxpayers let's do it do it once do it right get it right 10 years from now nobody will remember that uh we didn't open it in August of 22 we waited till spring of 23. it just will be really a faded memory I just want everybody to kind of hold on to that and say let's get it right so I've done a lot of talking here so what do you guys have any questions for uh Mr checkup thank you for coming by the way Bill my pleasure Bob can I ask you a question um Paul

089I I really appreciate where you're coming from on that um to remind uh for people watching at home for the public for the board um it's not acceptable for our kids and our staff to be in a classroom with polished concrete floors with an expectation that the tile man may show up after school one day and my furniture has to be moved out and the tile goes down and the next day my furniture is a mess when I come in and that disruption we don't want that uh we want our kids as Bob talked about and our parents to have time to tour a finished facility so they could be excited and we want our staff to have that opportunity for field trips and to bring the kids over and get them ready we thought

090we'd have that in December clearly that's not going to be the case um but with the community putting 78 million dollars into this project it has to be done it has to be done right and we need to in a very informed way plan the move in and that's what we had planned planned our whole District calendar around that um I want to assure everyone we are not going to touch any of the vacation time on the winter break so for those people who are planning to go visit family over the winter break or go skiing or whatever their vacation plans might be the days off are the days off we will work on the district calendar and where we might need to accommodate a day and we'll bring that for board approval and discussion

091when the time is right one Assurance I'm looking for Paul and I know we talked about this before there's a group we cannot disappoint I can be disappointed all day long um but my job is to solve problems the fourth graders I I hear what I think is really good news from you in terms of even though there's a delay we're still moving in in this Academic Year the current fourth graders must be fifth graders next year at Candlewood Lake and I just can you talk a little bit to that and some of the timing up of that and how that looks to be the same you look two through four is what is contained right now in Huckleberry we have no place else to put them because we do have plans to redo the

092ball fields and take down the modulars at Western Air um you know we have to bid it out it's got to be done it's not something that can be you know bid let and then say Oh wait hold on we're going to wait a year on this so these plans are already in motion the fourth graders that are in Huckleberry just like the second and third graders will be going into the new school I mean because of that where we have to get new Portables just kidding out of all your reporting that's something that makes me smile so thank you John the money should make you smile yeah I mean yeah no I know everybody knows it's what I do for a living absolutely look I'm in a lot of schools in the Bronx um

093you know the kids should be excited to move into the school exactly we're really looking forward it'll be a positive um one of the things that that I will do coming out of this meeting tonight is Penn um uh a communication to go home to parents because uh while we've talked with the various Union leadership this week to give them a heads up that we'll be having this formal discussion tonight I also went over to Huckleberry um with uh Dr rudel Dr P was on PD today so uh Dr Rue and I shared with the faculty that the move will not be happening for January 3rd but sometime in the next few weeks as Paul's alluded to we should have a a date uh for move-in and we'll work on subsequent calendar plans um so

094we're ready to go I think I think there was a comment from a few of the staff members to say Dr Burrell with all due respect this is the worst kept secret we we knew there was no way you were getting in at that time so um blind optimism I suppose but really really want to see this so so much for the kids um and the staff the staff is excited about it but they uh some of the procrastinators shared that they're happy in the sense that they have a little more time to pack so that was something the other thing I do want to share and this this will benefit parents who drive their kids to school and parents were wondering about how the buses are going to work um as well as staff

095there will be a temporary parking lot uh as part of this yeah we're looking at site Logistics and you know as we move forward and you know depending on when we're moving in um you know we'll redo the site Logistics plan we'll go through that with you sure I'm not gonna make any promises on how many parking spaces or bus Loops or parrot drop off or parents um that's going to be very fluid depending on what's available on the site absolutely we will always strive to maintain to give everybody's normal living experience but if it's springish at the end of the day we're probably looking at eight weeks maybe 10 weeks of inconvenience versus you know years and years of enjoyment exactly and and so with a a later move in time there's less time

096in the winter where you have snow removal and what could be a lot more inconvenient and messy for parent drop-off bus pick up and drop off and also uh staff parking so there is a benefit in that regard um not trying to paint a Rosy picture or anything like that we're all disappointed but um with challenge comes opportunity all right let's make the best decisions possible you know reality not expectations so Paul are you going to organize Ong in here work with Dr Burrell again on get an agenda slot and so we can invite them in yes I've already prized Dave kravenzola of um that plan to come on November 16th for Dave to present from OMG you know LLC recovery schedule but the schedule moving forward to um give us some firmness and some

097Charities of what they're going to deliver when they're going to deliver it so we can make our proper plans for the future of moving kids I mean we have a lot of uh we have move Management Services that we need to kind of work on as well so that means boxing up teachers moving them over I've got Furniture coming in there's a lot of other moving Parts other than just construction being completed so um you know that all comes into play as well we're probably going to be utilizing the K in one areas because they're not moving in for furniture storage for the time being because I think that's slated to come in sometime in early December I've got to put it somewhere and then technology arrives and yeah there's a lot of moving pieces

098to this and that portion of the building will be complete enough to and secure enough to house that type of expensive equipment and furniture right well site security is the responsibility of the contractor um you know we do have insurance and and and stuff on that but as Bob alluded to earlier it's being closed in we're getting the balance of our enclosure pieces in the forthcoming week or two so that building will start to be buttoned up for from a security standpoint we do we have a lot of Technology moving in um and like the installation of all that will continue ongoing as well I assume right yeah Eric will actually be done sometime in December with all the technology pieces and smart boards and everything else being hung up uh thankfully you know we

099live in a great Community we haven't had any issues with site security you know there's a lot of material there's a lot of money materials and tools and everything on this site and uh you know the community at large has been great about respecting the site and um you know just kind of keeping their distance if you will one more question um with the the delay in moving the Huckleberry kids out we're still okay though with the Demolition of that school and the site work that has to be done and then moving the center school kids over the following yeah and again Dave kravitzola will address that that is still the current plan so if springish we're moving the kids out of Huckleberry abatement will happen demolition will happen the asphalt plants actually don't open

100until mid to late March anyway so that kind of puts us right back in the time frame for site work to commence even if we did demolition in February I can't move Frozen the Earth you know it's just not feasible so that would have to come out you know kind of stayed as is for a little while and initially we were taking that down not until June the end of June so um if that all had happened this year so it still looks like it's feasible to get all the site work will some of it dribble into September October with Paving and you know we have two sides of that parking lot I would say probably but you know let's see where it lands when Dave comes on November thanks I mean I want everybody

101to know contractors don't make any more money by stretching things out they all have summer jobs or school work that they want to get to for the following summer so uh they want to be out of there just as much as we want them out of there see what they really do okay any other questions all right thank you Paul all right appreciate it thank you thank you Paul um and so you're planning to do this communication like in the next 24-5 hours uh by the end of business tomorrow I'd like to pen a note and perhaps it could come from Dr P myself and you um so it's all of us you know be great if uh we put the link to this oh yeah we'll see let people see this so absolutely okay

102Bob would you be able to take maybe a brief recess before the next presentation uh well let's finish the The Candlewood Lake stuff um do you want to talk a little bit more about the the Huckleberry Furniture disposal plan Yes actually if Ken could come up to the microphone just to uh embellish a little bit of what Joy shared um I think she pretty much covered it all it's the uh the board's policy on the sale and disposal of uh obsolete folks equipment and supplies and she caught the order could you just walk through the order of how we're going to make things available uh a little slowly sure so first of all all the computers and technology equipment of any value uh will be inventoried by our technology director and technology department to be

103used for spares and parts moving forward uh our other schools and as long as the and also with the TSO we'll have first choice on furniture and Equipment after that um after we have taken what we want the policy dictates that we will notify Town agencies that they can take furniture and Equipment free of charge and after that Surplus not taken by the schools or town agencies can be sold or donated to the public or disposed of if there's no value on community groups and organizations would have preference over individuals and employees have an equal but not preferential employee opportunity to take any of the surplus furniture or equipment and that's just a summarization of some summarization of what's in the policy one of the approaches we want to take with the policy is the

104taxpayers have already paid for this whether they're a business in town or you know they live in town their kids may have grown we're really not interested in getting involved with holding a tag sale and asking people to pay twice for something that they you know a second time for something in their taxes they've already paid for so we want to be able to provide furniture for our different Community agencies of course Mr belanda and Mr Renda have first dibs on things that are going to come through and take a look see what they can use I don't know how many tiny chairs they need but but there's definitely some teacher desks and shelving and some other things so we'll have an organized fashion I know that was a a particular the furniture disposal was

105very interesting a particular interest for some folks and so we wanted to put the policy out there for people and walk through what that's going to be Ken actually wrote a memo that's in the board packet so again if anybody's interested they certainly could go look at the policy itself but but see Ken's memo and that's how we're going to approach it I think we ought to make a point point of communicating it to the first select woman and to make sure the finance committee is aware of it okay um just because there we talked about it I could do it I could do that at the next Board of Finance meeting great and maybe you should talk to Tara yeah all right so I don't want any surprises no and Ken well we talked

106to Tara maybe we could get Marsha involved in that conversation just to let them know exactly what we're doing sure great and it's policy number three two six zero if anybody's interested in looking it up and um so I assume that at some point when we're ready to actually do this that there will be some sort of like dates of like okay this is the last day that we're tagging stuff this is the last day that town agencies have so that it's organized and we know okay now there's nothing left we're gonna donate the rest or whatever Mr Mr Caldwell's been put on notice to help us think through some of how that we should make that work our facility directly yeah I can also see that process dragging out once we get a firm

107move out date then we can uh yeah put together a schedule like that can't give the furniture away until the kids aren't using it anymore that's that's def uh for sure okay thank you thanks again and uh Dr Bill you're going to give an update on the new school start times yes related to all this yes let me find my notes here just to make sure we have that um so there was another point of Interest more from staff than from from families just double checking on new school start times uh to to recall probably about four years ago we with the board put together a subcommittee called healthy school start times and we really looked at um student sleep um obviously as a as an adolescent health issue frankly and so reviewing the studies

108um conducting parent surveys Etc et cetera and really having a very long and thorough process uh having the athletic director involved everybody always talks about sports how's that going to Impact Sports at the high school um we we came up with going from a three-tier to a two-tier bus system that serves the uh the new school start times which we're supposed to begin this year but because of the delay in Candlewood Lake and at the time almost a year ago now not being sure where we stood with the pandemic and all the other uncertainty the board decided to hold off on 2223 implementation of start times and we would revisit that um with an understanding that we're really looking at 23 24 which is next year So the plan is still to move forward with

109the board's wishes for 23-24 implementation the start times for Candlewood Lake Elementary School only one Elementary School we don't have two anymore uh is 8 50 a.m it will end at 3 35 pm and it'll be on one bust here and then the high school and middle school big change for the high school only a five minute change for the Middle School the start time for both whiskey near and BHS will be eight o'clock with an end time of 245. while we're on one bust here for both high school and middle school they will share they will not share buses they will be on separate bus runs so I know that's a concern for some Middle School uh families kids are young should we have a sixth grader on the bus with the 12th grader

110uh very um legitimate concern uh although Bethel next door there are middle school kids around with their high school kids so it's it's kind of community value there Ken's worked that through that's part of our new five-year contract with All-Star Transportation Ken is actually working directly with All-Star now they're doing analysis of the runs and the addresses and the number of kids to see if we might need a couple more buses or not as we develop into the budget season as well so that's the update on furniture and the update on new school start times I don't know if there's any questions okay all right thank you thank you all right that's it on the elementary school building project you're off the hook yeah we're doing a report we got Paul to do it um

111all right so we're going back to the the original agenda so the next topic is a very important one on the school Improvement Plan update um and that we're going to get a report uh from the assistant superintendent and the building principles on where are we right now and so I'll turn it over to you recess thank you Bob that's sad [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] I'm standing because I'm going to go over here so I can see the screen a little bit better and the board has kind of shifted over to the side because this is a very important presentation on where we are with from the learning loss on from covet and what actions district is

112going to be taking so with that I'll turn it over to Dr Mann thank you very much I'm hoping that you can hear me I'm just on the verge of losing my voice completely so I'm going to project and use my best teacher skills um similar to Misty Nicole Hickman I'm excited to formally address you as the assistant superintendent I've now been here close to three months two and a half months um and I'm really enjoying working with this amazing team and I'm excited to be presenting with the entire team tonight many members of the district lead are key members of the district leadership team are going to be joining me with this because it really does take a team effort and we are going to be talking about I know that the board has

113a lot of experience with presentations regarding growth over time prior to the pandemic that was one of the main focuses of the presentations and this is a little bit of a different presentation we are going to data that we're going to be reviewing tonight is student achievement data from this spring so what this really this past spring spring of 2022 and what this really provides us is a a piece of the foundation from which we are going to be building I want to remind everyone that as we move through this presentation you know this is the data piece which is the first half of the presentation isn't a very important part but it is not the entire picture and uh these these class these uh tests that these students take oftentimes for sat for example

114is a one day test SBA is a couple different days um this to the S back data but um it still is only one piece of the puzzle and as you saw earlier today school is not just about the the testing it's about the whole child so we're going to use this information for uh helping inform our practices and helping inform our work um and so this is going to help flesh out where you your understanding of where we are so this is just an overview of the presentation kind of a mini agenda for our presentation we're going to be beginning with setting the scene and kind of giving A Brief History of Time for Brookfield Public Schools um with our illustrious superintendent and then we'll move through those data points and then all of

115that as I said really kind of builds up to where the rest of the team is going to be sharing aspects of their school Improvement plans based on much largely based on this data but also based on the feedback and the work that they've done with their faculty and staff so that the professionals are really engaged with and involved with the work and then we'll talk about where we're going with the future so I'm gonna ask Dr Burrell to come up to kind of set the scene for us from Fall 2019 through now thank you Dr Mann so um it's really important to think about the story where we were what's happened to us over the last two to three years where we are right now and where we're gonna go and I want to

116set the stage for you using the the literature frame or the movie frame of the hero's journey and many people are familiar with Marvel Comics and Harry Potter um Star Wars and all their favorite literature in terms of the scene gets set we understand the context of where we're at we have rising action adversity that's faced and then we move forward into knowing exactly A spacebar where we are so what I would like to do first is set the scene it's really important to think back from where we came as far back as 2015-16 uh to 2019 as we started strategic planning and getting ready and then the pandemic that came right in March of 2020. we really focused on as you can see in this uh Orange Box investing in our school facilities investing

117in the new school which we've just spent a great deal of time talking we're almost at the finish line with Candlewood Lake there was a great deal of Financial and Regulatory control that we needed to achieve and we did we also had reports there was really a specific report about BHS being a focus high school and we had to work on our high needs students in closing and narrowing the achievement Gap many of you will remember the hundreds of thousands of dollars we had in the school Improvement Grant um and we had those issues with high needs students and not achieving and having a large gap between non-high needs and high needs students that we've addressed K-12 we're really proud of that work and we've narrowed that Gap a lot of investment in digital context

118technology infrastructure in terms of Technology we've done an incredible job the community has really invested in that area as well and of course our curriculum development and then really seeing the need straight from our teachers mouths I'll take you back to a little bit when I talked about the tour my first tour going around trying to talk to every individual teacher during their prep times and they talked about the need to really support our students emotionally and that was from teachers of seniors in high school and the next day I visited with our kindergarten teachers and they were saying the exact same thing we did all those things and as part of that when you looked at our total performance index Dr Mann mentioned the whole child in 2019 when you took into account not

119just test scores but exposure to the Arts graduation rates attendance rates all kinds of things that matter when we educate the whole child that the state measures we had it gotten to the top of durg B we were within the top four districts in durgby we still have plenty of work to do academically plenty of work to do in other areas but we're really proud of that work and then adversity hit in March of 2020 we all know about what happened and we had a lot that was really going on uh in our community the sudden School shutdown transforming us very very much School online no one no one had ever done School online Public School online K-12 like all of us in our region in our state and around the country had um we

120had to do a lot of work on reopening with an enormous focus on student health and wellness and in addition to that making sure that we didn't drop the ball on academics the other piece that's really important and Bob mentioned it in the introduction of this presentation we had learning loss the parents know that it is not the elephant in the room we talk about it we've put a lot of pieces in place using the grant monies that have come in from the federal government summer school more intervention technology intervention math intervention we're really working hard on that in addition to that as we were going through the last two years there was a lot of Milestones that were missed I think about proms for the kids and dances and sports and all those Milestones

121our musicals there was lots missed lots of no connection limited connection families having loss friendships lost loved ones lost we've gone through a lot there's a lot of trauma that people are still trying to overcome having said that I think while there was lots of fracture in the community I think we're coming together in an incredible way which brings us to the next phase of where we are right now which is overcoming the adversity and that's our theme for this year of reset and relaunch here's our opportunity to change and take advantage of how we've grown and it's important to acknowledge that and that's exactly what I'm doing here before Anna starts in with the principles we're building new teams the team of Candlewood Lake Elementary School led by Dr pepsaski and our other great

122administrators and bringing all of our wonderful teachers and staff together with our students a number of new administrators in the district we're really excited about how our team is forming there and of course tonight both uh Mrs D Nicola Hickman and some others have talked about move-ins and move outs and new community members and we're really excited to welcome those folks and we really need to create a bold New Vision for the Brookfield public schools and uh Mr Belden talked about the strategic planning committee and the work that's going on there so we're really excited about that and the real Focus needs to be on student achievement and making sure that not only are we narrowing the achievement Gap but all of our students are rising with their achievement and we're excited to get going

123on that Journey there will be one more orange box but that'll come at the end of the presentation with Dr Mann finish this things up but I thank you for your time Dr Mann will turn it back over you all right thank you so as Dr Burrell said this is where we are and we are looking toward that transformation and we believe that at this point um one of the things I've been impressed with in this District um are all of the various resources people have spoken about it tonight we've seen demonstrations of it and it's not just the fiscal or physical resources it's the personnel and the the infrastructure that has been built with our people and you could see that with our kids tonight you know they are they are ready to learn

124they are excited to to develop and they're really um at the point where they're going to be able to do amazing things and they have infinite potential that we are ready to help them grow so um this is the data portion of the uh presentation and as a reminder for everyone the smarter balanced assessment is the state test that is given Every Spring to third through eighth graders it was not given in the spring of 2020 obviously and in the spring of 2021 they did not really release data for us so this is the first time in 2022 that we've had the this data for um you know for a solid two years um it tests Ela and math it's uh and the scores are four level score from does not meet to met and

125exceeded and what we're looking for is to have as many students at the Met or exceeds uh levels as we can and also paying particularly a particular attention to those other uh two levels approaching and does not meet because that's where we want to kind of disaggregate what's going on and why those um why those students are struggling on these assessments so this is our SBA data for English language arts in each of the grades so you'll notice that in third grade and fourth grade I'm going to try to use this excuse me um we're at in the mid 50s high 58 to almost 60 percent range have met or exceeded uh fifth grade and all the way through eighth grade we get between that 50 and 60 percent so I want to do this

126as I said to you this isn't um a presentation about growth but there's a little bit of some comparison in this these are our scores from 2018-19 and what I want to draw your attention to is that those third grade these are two different cohorts third and fourth but they're essentially the same outcome in terms of achievement so the third grade in 2018-19 was at 59 and they were at 57 this past year so what that shows me is that the third and fourth graders that tested this past spring didn't have a significant difference in terms of their outcome then the third and fourth graders who tested in the 1819 school year well why is that what happened with that most likely it's that these students were not academically as impacted with the pandemic but

127if you look at our fifth grade cohort I'm sorry you can't quite see it I'll get out of the way for a minute in 2018-19 as fifth graders we're at 75 percent this is the same group of students in eighth grade and they had significant learning loss for ELA so that shows us all of the impacts that the pandemic brought and that is consistent across many communities across the country the other thing is to think about the age 5th to 8th grade there are so many developmental aspects happening not just academically but socially and emotionally and this District was poised to have those resources available but not knowing how to really and like Dr Burrell said none of us knew how to do school online we certainly didn't know how to help kids develop those

128social emotional skills those soft skills online so now we know that this connection between academic and social emotional is so strong we'll go into the this is the a comparison of where we are in the demographic reference group of Dirk B so this is Brookfield so we again this is Baseline understanding where we are um most most districts dropped in their scores uh but this is you know a good kind of comparison it we also it gives us a frame of reference for what we want to work toward this is the same chart but with SBA with math you'll notice that similarly we're in the 45 to 50 range except for our fifth graders they really struggled this past year at about 28 who met or exceeded but if we look at the comparisons again

129third into fourth grade similar in terms of 1819 cohort and 2122 cohort sorry Joy trying to move out of the way um and then again we look at these fifth graders they were at 51 in 2018-19 they were at 51 this past spring so there wasn't learning loss but they also didn't grow like we would hope and and work toward and what that demonstrates to me kind of the difference between you might ask yourself what's the difference why in ela and not so much in math math is a much more scaffolded structured approach to learning which might translate more easily to a disrupted learning cycle hybrid or completely online Ela reading literacy are socially based academic skills kids have to be with each other they have to be interacting and so I think that that

130kind of demonstrates a little bit of the reason for that learning loss however we want to be better than 51 percent so we know that we have our work cut out for us with the math scores as well similarly this is a dirt comparison and then the next Generation science standards test which was newly uh newly rolled out before the pandemic its first iteration was in the 1617 year but we didn't get any scores so we really only got those scores in the 1819 year so we're in that 50 to 60 range as a Next Generation science is tested in 5th 8th and 11th grade and so if we do a comparison from 1819 again you see that cohort of fifth to eighth grade and again Next Generation science standards are largely literacy and based

131in terms of the phenomenon and the self-discovery it's also social students work together in order to develop those skills which align directly to our vision of The Graduate portrait of the graduate with that collaboration communication critical and creative thinking so um it makes sense that our kids when they weren't able to be together and even last year we know that we they were in school last year but they had masks on I'll tell you from my experience of being a building leader kids were waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire year I was asked constantly do you think we're going to go out again as soon as they'd hear something on the news do you think we're going to go out again so they were distracted from learning even last year so while

132they were in school there was still an impact here's the durg results for the ngss so we're at 65 overall and then the last portion of achievement data that we are that is released by the state is the Connecticut sat day so as you know the state of Connecticut tests all 11th graders in March um this past year the for the first time ever the SAT was done online so our students did uh online sat which not only they they may have been actually more familiar with it our teachers were not familiar with preparing kids for an online assessment in the essay in for sat and frankly college board was giving it a go they had never done it before they did some AP testing during the pandemic but they wanted to see how this

133would work um so the scores range in terms of they're actually from 400 to 1600 in terms of composite score with evidence-based Reading Writing and then also the math score one quick uh caveat that I want to mention is that an impact from the pandemic which isn't in my educational opinion a terrible thing is that many colleges about 65 to 70 percent of the colleges well all the colleges went test optional in 2021. most of them have remained so so our students and again I speak from personal experience because I have a senior our students are under different a different mindset with these high-stakes standardized tests than they used to be the PSAT in fact is a little bit more of a high stakes test than the SAT because the PSAT qualifies them for a

134National Merit where they can earn scholarships but the SAT is really just a test for us at this point they don't have to submit scores it is not a part of their their application and in fact because I didn't believe it as a mom or an administrator but when you talk with college reps they are fully they they fully support the fact that if you don't submit your scores it is completely not considered it's not like well that person did submit scores they must not have done so well they both they they do not even put it as part of the college application process but back to where how our students did so this is an explanation this chart is from college board it's not from the state of Connecticut it's from college board and

135it's the College Board Readiness benchmarks for 11th grade College Board sets cut scores essentially that says if you meet this score you there's a large correlation because again they are trying to get themselves back into the college admissions process there's a large correlation to a score of 460 in ela and 510 in math or above that if you if you're able to achieve that the likelihood of you earning a c or better in an intro course during your first year in college is very high so it does give some feedback some formative feedback to students and to to schools to kind of get a sense of where our kids are in terms of their college readiness but it's not the only way we can measure college readiness so those scores again um and the reason

136this is over here is because I had to find it I had to talk to the state of Connecticut so basically 460 to 620 is in the Met range and 630 to 800 is exceeded for um for college readiness and 5 10 to 640 for Math and it is uh met in 650 to 800 is exceeded so as far as the LA went our high school kids did fairly well 73 of them met or exceeded um the college readiness benchmarks the state average was 55. so you'll see that that was actually true with a lot of our a lot of the students in our Dirk um and again that I I think that just to me that highlights the importance of those formative Middle School years with their social emotional skills and their access to

137their academics these kids didn't get as impacted and the littler kids didn't get impacted but those middle years were severely there's a very strong tie our SAT Math we're at 50 percent of our students so again we need some we're thinking about those math students but I want to draw your attention to this whole Yellow Part there's a large amount of kids who are very close so we need to think about them as well as well as what's happening with those 13 of kids who are really struggling with their college readiness benchmarks and here we are orange and Woodbridge are Elementary only so they don't get factored into this um so this is the rest of the Dirk all right so that's all of the achievement data but kind of how does it fit into

138where we are as a school district so the good news is after three years of limited data certainly external data and really kind of even internal data because our teachers and our administrators and our Support Services have struggled to really get a set get an assessment of where our kids have been um you know that we we started off the night with an EQ presentation I can't tell you how important that is we have seen so much a huge increase in our students struggling not just with their mental health but their capacity to cope they really are struggling with those skills of when things are not good I don't know what to do and I think again that is definitely a testament to the pandemic it's also it's not just the pandemic it's the pandemic

139with social media and general isolation and so we have to make sure that we um use this to use this external data but continue to focus on those social emotional pieces as well we also have the opportunity to continue the work that was started and one of the reasons that the Next Generation accountability report was so great in 2018-19 is because of the achievement Gap that was the major focus of this district and the hard work that went into that from 15 through 2019 that as Dr Burrell said that next Generation accountability report which I'm excited to come back and talk about when it comes out in February um is a more holistic report card of the district these are test scores so this is just a portion and so we have to make sure

140we're still paying attention to the subgroups because if we're not paying attention to those subgroups then we're going to lose a whole bunch of our kids and remember all of our kids have infinite potential so we need to tap into that we we are sorry even mentioned about strategic planning and we focus on educating the whole child so making sure that we're incorporating into all of our work the academic social and emotional pieces um and then I just mentioned the next generic kind of accountability reporting but again all of this information is just information unless it's put into action and so what I would like to do now is to turn it over to the principles I want to mention all of this and what you're going to hear from now this is our top

141priority for our district we are going to focus on it this year and take another Benchmark when we have our Assessments in the spring but we're going to continue to work we expect to see those scores go up but we also expect to continue to dig into this work and keep reframing and working toward meeting the the dispositions that are set forth in the portrait of The Graduate so each of the um principles is now going to come up and give you a sense again a summation of how they are going to take how they have already taken this data and put an action plan together through their school Improvement plans so I'd like to introduce Mrs sparius from CES good evening everyone so I'm not going to speak to every data point sorry is

142that better okay I'm not going to speak to every data point but I certainly do want to um you know start off with where we are at Center School the kids over at Center School really begin their Journey as a Brookfield student in the whole pre-k through 12 Continuum starts with us at Center School we obviously teach the basic early literacy skills basic early math numeracy skills and there are a whole heck of a lot of more assessments than are listed on this um you know this slide that we administer but I did highlight some of the ones that give us a lot of good information but there's certainly a lot more that we're using so the core phonics assessment is basically a Mastery assessment so it's not a timed fluency assessment it's really Mastery

143based the information on this slide shows the beginning of your data for our incoming kindergartners as well as our incoming first graders and then it also gives you end of Year from Spring of of last year of 2022. so just to highlight some of the noticings if you will that we discussed as a school-wide data team to just bring that forth The end-of-year Kindergartners last year as you can see some of the things we noticed was with their letter ID and sounds 86 percent of the kids were at Benchmark or above so they mastered all the letters and all of the sounds and the letters and then one of the things that we also noticed was that with the CBC words which is basically single syllable words with um a um oh my gosh a

144vowel sound in the short vowel in the middle the CVC words um they were at 77 at Benchmark or above one of the things we noticed is our incoming first graders um taking that same CVC word assessment um we're at 37 at Benchmark and we were kind of looking at that going whoa what happened um and that was one of the things that we what we said wow um you know why should that have been so one of the um I guess uh hypotheses that we came up with was that the um the CBC words in terms of the um when that you know comes up in terms of teaching on the Continuum is more toward the end of the year in kindergarten where they're actually then decoding those single syllable um words with the

145um short vowel in the middle and um then when because it was more toward the springtime we noticed obviously in first grade the beginning of first grade that those skills didn't stay with them um and we had to ask ourselves why that was so you'll notice in the next slide when I talk more about you know moving forward with information it's more about how we can make sure that we're teaching with some connected text to make sure that they can transfer those isolated skills into context so that it stays more solid for them um one of the um really I guess celebrations if you will and now we're last year of first graders excuse me they were at 96 at Benchmark on those CBC words so again that's something that's continued in first grade it's

146a really a beginning skill frankly in the end of um you know kindergarten and it continues into first grade and builds on from there from about winter around December is really what you expect that to be mastered in first grade um one of the other highlights was that in terms of the testing from acadian's Reading which is more of a timed fluency automaticity test um with the reading of whole words red was it 84 at Benchmark and that's really a test where there's again a lot of the CVC words and they're reading them then within one minute how many words are they reading um the whole the whole word read versus you know Sound by sound if you will and that was at 84 at Benchmark one of the things you'll also notice is the

147composite score was at 70 percent Benchmark and that's where again a higher level skill of reading or reading fluency rather than reading passages and getting the words correct and accuracy on that um that's a skill that's again building more toward the end of first grade and that test doesn't even come in internally to the end of first grade and that pushed the composite score a little bit a little bit lower but certainly to have 96 percent at Benchmark 86 percent at Benchmark and 84 percent at Benchmark those are pretty solid scores especially compared to some of the other scores that we heard before our incoming kindergartners right now and you see letter names at 11 at Benchmark these are incoming kindergartners they're first learning their letters and sounds so 11 have already mastered that at

148the very just coming into kindergarten when they were tested around September October so that's certainly not alarming um you know scores at this point um so I'm going to move to the next slide because this is where we are right and where we were at the end of last year um so let's talk about being moving to the Future right so the school-wide data team looked at the data in terms of how did the kids coming into kindergarten and first grade how were they scoring how did we do with the kindergartners um that left kindergarten last year and the first graders that left first grade last year so that we could reflect on instructional practice and be able to think about what um what went well and what we still need you know what are

149the opportunities to improve and to continue and to change so the school-wide data team met and some of the highlights to our school Improvement plan was to incorporate instructional practice that would Encompass the components of the gradual release responsibility model this is something that we've worked on as a district excuse me pre covet and we want to refocus in terms of reset and relaunch to make sure that that instructional practice is solid and tight because we do know that that is best practice and has great effect sizes on student learning instructional opportunities to transfer learned skills into connected text we're going to be certainly investing more into codable texts and that was as a result of one of the noticings that we had was like hey these kindergartners came you know at the end of

150the year they were at um you know 70 percent with reading their single syllable um short vowel of CDC words and and then get lost that coming into first grade why was that and that was the hypotheses that we really need to do make sure that we're including in practice multiple opportunities to transfer those isolated skills into context and connected texts so that there's greater learning so that it's automatic and not just isolated skills engage in data informed collaboration through the survey and the data team process and one of the things that we did this year was built into our schedule a professional Learning Community time so there's some collaboration time for our kindergarten and first grade teacher teams to meet once a week for 45 minutes and that's built into the schedule um Implement

151data informed flexible student groupings during the elt at course grade levels so that we're efficiently and effectively using all of our human resources to really help support kids so um in a nutshell what does that really look like it's again using the data to make decisions you know the early basic early literacy literacy skills are based on a Continuum of it's really systematic and explicit instruction and it's based on as I said a Continuum of really when you teach those skills and we basically took looked at the data and then made some groups you know which who are the students that need some more help with syllable you know blending who are the you know kids that need more work with some concept of word right so just looking at the phonological awareness skills test

152and our phonics tests and then made some groupings and across our elt time which is our extra learning time we're using our reading interventionists our math interventionists our teachers and then basically and our kindergarten powers are involved with this as well we've been doing some training with them and basically making those groups during those elt times so that we're able to service every single kindergartner based on the skills that they need to look to learn and the skills that they need to practice so that's something that we're working on aggressively in kindergarten and we'll be starting up as well with first grade so those are just some highlights I don't know if anybody has any questions or move on all right questions at the end okay okay so I'm going to have Dr P come

153up to talk about Huckleberry but I just want to reiterate what Mrs Feria said about um you know that individualized piece and really that personalized piece regardless of where students are that we meet them where they where they are so we can help them on their Journey forward and that's for all kids Dr P is going to talk about his plan as well thank you uh the the nice thing about following Deb ferries is we worked very closely together with this so really technically I could stand up here and say ditto and I could sit down and leave you but I will talk a little bit about uh things that we do at Huckleberry that she didn't cover only because we decided we're going to highlight different areas so if if you look at the

154data it's pretty reflective of what we saw in the escrow especially with uh you know respect to our math we're in the 57 but again that's beginning of the year uh these are arcadians reading which word's correct kids you have a minute timer set read how many words you can uh and then your accuracy is what percentage of those words that you read did you read correctly acadians math we have the computation which is you know your addition subtraction Division and you have your Concepts and applications which is your word problems and applying those Concepts into real life situations so we see the data we know where we're at I'm gonna hit the wrong button like I did and I'm gonna need Dr rootle to come running out and save me all right so when

155we talk about our school Improvement plan we met as a staff and we thought you know what we're starting in the 70s 59 percent sure it would be great to get to 90 but when we set our goal we set them at 100 because we're not going to walk into a classroom with 20 kids and say all right we're gonna get 18 of you but we're not going to get those other two so our goal is always 100 we're going to get you to enter above Benchmark that's our goal always always always how do we get there Deb talked about the purposefully planned meeting time to review data that's called our PLC block and our staff gets one every six days and what they do during that time is they review student data not just

156as the grade level we have our math interventionist we have our three reading Specialists we have our math coach we have our literacy coach the admin team and the classroom teachers we look at the data we see which student is struggling and why once we have a clear picture we work together to move forward and we come up with a plan srbi is it tier one is a tier two as a tier three what is the internet intervention that were needed we come up with a goal we come up with a plan six weeks to put the plan in place we revisit the same child how do we do does the child need more intervention no intervention less intervention and again we have the same group of experts sitting around the table to put that

157plan in place we're doing curriculum development work with probably one of my favorite people Dr Muriel Cox she's brilliant and she's really ensuring that our curriculum is tightly aligned with the standards as the SBA is tightly aligned with standards uh you know I I think about when I was a kid in classrooms and and I remember Miss Coyle my second grade teacher loved her to death uh and she loved the koala bear and we spent three months on koala bears and it's kind of getting away from that and saying okay sure koala bears are great as long as we're aligned to the standards and what our students need to know and understand to be successful creating student learning plans is the third strategy and it's awesome because what a student learning plan does is it

158gives the student power and ownership of their learning when we're doing a particular concept uh if if a student is struggling or a student gets back his classroom assessment or her classroom assessment not really where I wanted to be the student learning plan is right in front of them okay you didn't do well here well here are some resources here are some programs you can go to here's some some worksheets or skills builders that you can do here's a you know sitting with small groups with a teacher to further develop your skill and really just watching my favorite site was I was in a fourth grade classroom and they were got back their math assessment and the kids immediately pulled out these learning plans and they were saying okay because I'm struggling kind of here

159and just listening to that conversation they're ready they're ready to go they're invested in there and in their learning and they want to succeed add to all that the presentation that you saw today where yes we're going to increase the rigor at huckleberry and thankfully we have this amazing mental health Team who's putting forth these EQ courses for our kids so that's our planet huckleberry all right so as uh Mr Renda comes up I just want to kind of highlight what uh Dr P just pointed out about uh Marie Alcock who is a consultant that the district has worked with and has established a pretty strong relationship with and if you take a look at my newsletter that got that was sent out last week and click on the link to go to the video

160you'll see some of the some of this work in Action a little bit of what Mr rendez going to talk about right now but also the work that Marie already came and worked with our elementary school folks to um you know start really reflecting on that curriculum and doing all the good work that Dave was just talking about so here's Mr rendo a lot of data mm-hmm thank you so here you can see I did a little bit differently I know in the um at uh Huckleberry Dave broke down the scores and and Deb for um accuracy and where it's correct ours I put up as a composite score so you'll see for fifth grade acadians this is the beginning of the year scores that we had 60 percent of the students that were at

161or above and then it just said then our next two scores uh the below and well below so you'll see when you look up there I mean again our biggest area a need of improvement is in our eyes we've met is really our acadians with our math with is with our math I should say you'll see that like if you look at our sixth grade acadians right now we only have 31 that are at or above uh with the composite score and the big thing we've noticed and we one of our PD at the beginning of the year um well not I should say I mean it was recently at our PD um was we were going through all of these scores our s back scores the the the teachers know about their new data

162that we have they have their uh each individual students data so go backing off of what um Dave and also Deb talked about it's individual to the students so I have a class in differently than when when in elementary where they have one class of students ours have the five different classes that they would have throughout the day and they have the individual results of all those things for those students now obviously in in our classes we have students at different levels except for in Upper levels we do have honors classes but students are at different levels so it's our teacher's job as we go through is to figure out within the classroom tier one what can we do because depending on the amount of students in that class in the weakness that they have

163that is a big differentiating thing so I have a larger amount in one class I may have two separate groups going because I have students that are still we are noticing and it's it's sad to say this because I'm a math person is we are still noticing students struggling in computation basic computation and I know as we talk about this is not an excuse but as I know I talked to other Area Middle Schools where middle schools in Connecticut we have a group that we meet and that is one of the areas they still see we still have sometimes our seventh and eighth grade still struggling in basic facts and I kind of equate it too for years when we were the last so many years some of the things that we did were zoomed

164right behind it wasn't in front of the in front of the class and we had students using calculators a lot students doing things and again I'm not blaming students for this trust me is they missed out on that really direct um interactions with the teachers and going through the computation type things and held accountable for them also um so again I just wanted to point that out it's it's obvious that that is one of the our bigger areas um and then also in uh seventh and eighth grade as you can see we're at forty percent and thirty percent uh seven percent and those are areas that I'm going to talk a little bit about um what we're doing as we move forward and then the down below I just broke down for the uh s

165back uh s but testing I know um Dr Mann already spoke about this but I just wanted you to see across the board what we had for ELA and uh also for math and some of those are obviously the scores that she had shared with you but the big thing is what are we going to do to improve those to improve on this so part of our school Improvement plan is I didn't highlight the first one but I know that Dave um and Deb already talked about it so then that we are working with Marie Alcock this year um we didn't last year but this year we are working with her and really trying to make sure and we've had conversations on both Ela and math but specifically with math like where we want it

166where are we we going wrong here do we have those standards and not just do we have all the standards in there because for people that realize there's so many standards but what are the standards that you get the highest leverage in and I know this is something we always talk about um and what are those big priority standards and making sure that not just that we're covering it but that we're using using like Dave was using the koala bear thing for uh months that we are spending the most time on those High leverage areas and things that we are struggling in uh to really get the biggest bang for the buck if you want to say um the next thing I I went down to highlight was utilizing our reading and math intervention inventionists

167uh and I put slash tutors which I'll talk about in a minute to create small groups again based on this data that we do have and we do similar to the other schools we're meeting for Serbia we are talking about the students data a little different in the middle school they meet as Partners instead many times so if I'm the sixth grade math teacher I'm meeting with the sixth grade the other sixth grade math teacher then we also do meet as a larger group but being able to create those groups so my math interventionists for those of you don't know we pull students from their specialist classes um and it's for a certain period of time that they are in there um and and we do that because we want to make sure that we

168are increasing these skills and again it could be based on a certain skill it could at the beginning of the year honestly we did a lot of we're still doing some computation and some basic things at the beginning of the year but as the year moves on we also take into account not just our benchmark assessments but also assessments that teachers are doing in their classrooms because what are those areas that we say we just had a test on I'm just going to say fractions what are those areas that the students struggle the most in with the weaknesses and then that is something that the interventionists will work on also and for periods of time like David talked about um tutors this is really we were lucky enough Dr Ruby thank you uh she's not

169here but I could thank her that she part of the grant that she uh was able to get from the state for us was the ability to have multiple math tutors and and also Ela tutors and that has been a huge thing another focus of theirs is computation but we are able to have three this year so during elt times we're not pulling them from class time it's from for the from their elt um that they are being able to work in small groups with those um with those interventions and again taking the data from the beginning that they have comparing it to at the end of the cycle and if students need to continue to be they did not make enough growth then there's sometimes when kids again will be in the next session

170um you know that doesn't happen as much obviously but we really want to be able to push and I and we do have some pushback sometimes and I could say this out there is sometimes parents will say Well they're doing okay in their math class and we always just say to them that's okay because what the the the um concept that they're learning right now is a they've learned to last say week or whatever maybe they did well on a quiz doesn't mean that they're able to retain that and if all of us that have uh you know I I was okay I was good in math um but there are people that always talk about their struggles in math and I know a big thing with all kids is being able to retain all

171that information in any subject but with math being able to retain it so those kids that aren't able to retain just because they can do it for the what they've been tested on in the last week or two is great trust me it's great but being able to retain is the most important thing so that's our job to be able to help them to retain them um my next thing is again using that Benchmark data that we have but also progress monitoring tools for the purpose of planning these interventions is is it's a it's a big task um but obviously those are on our areas of weakness and then utilizing the uh they call it the S back interim assessment blocks there are some new um things that they put out through the state that

172we are going to be starting to utilize which I think will be helpful again it's one of those things where we don't want I don't want us to think that we are tet we are we are um doing this to to prepare just for the test because I I honestly don't believe in that but at the same time these are examples that they use for the smarter balance test these are examples of Standards so we do utilize it for our instruction because again I give you an example of if they take one of these um interim blocks and they see an area we can you know most of the the kids didn't do well in that area so you know what as teachers and we've had these conversations I need to reflect as a teacher

173now if I didn't teach the concept yet that's different but if I taught the concept in a large chunk of kids are not really understanding that is it the type of question it is um is did I maybe I didn't teach it in a way that the kids understood so now I do have to go back to reteach that right as as we always do that as Educators we have to reflect on our on our own abilities and seeing where that may be so that's one of the areas that we do talk about student data and obviously it's always to ensure the growth over time um I I wish I could say that every kid makes that huge growth some do and and you know some don't but I do I want to make again

174point out to it we do have these the math interventions and also and this is also in reading the uh reading interventions that we have that have been a huge huge help for us and our our reading intervention is a little bit different than maybe some of the the younger we have ones that uh work in some more small group of students that we have there we call it tier two or maybe even a two 3 that they're working with kids that our students have their literacy blocks that they're in but they're also pulled from a different block that they are able to get more small group two three students in there to be able to really focus on certain um certain areas and again depending on what it is reading interventions so any question

175oh any good all right all right thanks so as Mr belanda comes up um I hope that you're hearing kind of this theme of all of the resources all the passionate Educators the kids are ready to learn I've been at each of the schools over the last month and a half a couple times in some of the different schools and I have to say how impressed I have been with the the energy and the excitement and it doesn't matter what what level really I mean kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade the teachers are excited they they seem poised and ready to go kids are excited and I think that you can also hear it from our administrators so we're going to hear it now from Mr belanda thank you Dr Mann we're all

176like a little congested the whole administrative team it's like we've been hanging out too much Anna's lost her voice Deb is I don't know right sorry I'll talk like no it's it's this is my after nine voice my radio voice um so it's it's very great I'm I'm I count myself quite lucky that um you know Dr Mann is here and has such a a great understanding being a former uh recovering maybe High School principal maybe we'll call it recovering High School principal who truly understands um the measure of the SAT um and what that means and is able to explain it so well and even get a little bit deeper into the state's perspective as to where you fall in the yellow or the green and the blue this is specifically this comes from

177the College Board specifically Dr Mann did share some other scores here um again she talked about what the Benchmark score is so you'll see uh in parentheses next to each of these the PSAT 460 480. so uh that's the Benchmark that they use it obviously increases as you go on throughout the year so the PSAT it's 460 and the SAT is 480. so looking at the class of 2022 the graduating class from last year when they did take the PSAT to the um sat you see that there was certainly a drop and then in the evidence-based reading and writing looking the fact that we had 83 percent that met at the PSAT and thinking about when they took this so this would have been fall of 20 yeah fall of 20 they would have taken

178it so they'd just come back to school and it's an impressive number at 83 it really kind of blew me away that we were at that level coming back um as things changed over time you saw it did drop slightly I don't like to see those strengthen numbers go up um from that perspective in terms of math we're always we have typically and and most pretty much every High School in the country has lower math scores when compared to the evidence-based reading and writings course you know but you can see and you'll see kind of a theme almost uh there's a little bit of a plateau here you know obviously The Benchmark has increased the concerning one here was that strengthening of 52 percent right that needed to strengthen their skills in the class of

1792023 is the current seniors so this PSAT that we're talking about for them was taken fall 2021 and again a plateau a strength an area of strengthening which I don't like to see right uh from that perspective here and then in the SAT interesting we jumped uh 43 to 50 and kind of reduced everything that we needed to in those right areas so in terms of highlights and I don't often get to say that about math relative to the SAT we definitely saw some growth now it's 50 where I want to be no and Dr man talking to the state average of something like 30 it was it was relatively low the state average is pretty low in terms of that but these kids when they first came back for example the class of 2023

180they had not taken any high stakes tests like this in some time we really backed off and we focused so much on certainly about learned teaching and learning but we also talked about the importance of mental health and getting reacclimated and focusing on the whole student not just one particular test store and any of you who have teenagers or have had teenagers understand the level of value they place on certain things so as the SAT does continue to be it's an option certainly for kids to demonstrate their knowledge and we will certainly have kids who will submit their SAT scores right they're gonna that's gonna help them because they do well and there are some that won't and so working with teenagers and helping them to understand the importance of taking a test and what

181this means they don't care that this matters to me or for our state average or how our school is scored right they have to have a personal invested interest in that but one thing I do want to talk about besides just the PSAT and sat and some of the the information that we're going to break down I'll talk about that in the next slide something that Dr Mann talked about that none of us whether it's uh Dr P or Mr Renda or myself talked about the ngss you saw that data presented earlier it wasn't really here um on this stuff uh Dr Renner to talk about those interim assessment blocks for SBA they also have those for the ngss right and so as that test continues to evolve and it is a very complicated test

182I think some of you have been uncaped and gone through and seen the structure and the the complicated nature of taking that sort of assessment if you haven't we can certainly be happy to walk you through it so you can see what it looks like but there's a whole different way of taking a test it is not just filling in the blank it is those kind of dreaded tests that you took in college maybe if you did that where if not a but C you know how much you hated those I hated those multiple choice questions where it could be a and b but not C or D this goes in so much more depth and requires particularly in science for students to manipulate variables identify things actually having them for example the one I

183think about all the time is that sample of ngss one if you've seen the science one where the kids are actually manipulating data they have to pick the variables they have to make decisions so it's more than just bubbling in the right answer it's so much more complex thinking so the more we get into these interim assessment blocks and and you may have seen the previous screen that our scores went up in the 11th grade from last year to the previous year to this past spring so that's a a positive thing on our end but there's always things to continue to work on I wish I had more room because I'd put more up here as you can tell it's very small but one of the things that has been a challenge at the high

184school as you get into content Specialists and making sure that all our curriculum is aligned to standards we do have a standards-based curriculum I don't want anybody to miss quote me on that we absolutely do and we have that information one of the things we want to do in terms of student achievement and scores which is what we're really measured by I would argue that every single one of these things regardless of what's highlighted or not factors into student achievement across the board if we can do all these things and do them all well it's going to be better and that's going to and you'll see some of that stuff when we talk about the um the performance index that'll come out or the accountability index that will come out probably in February but this

185is just continued correct the development for that forward-facing document we get a lot of questions about curriculum at the high school one of the things we want to make sure we're very transparent the srbi process at the high school is a challenge across the board it's a different model where you don't have teams or groups it's a little bit different and we're going to continue to work through that process we've actually separated our srbi process to include we now have a static srbi meeting in terms about it talks about academic achievement but we also have a student and family support team that also meets the reviews that students that are brought up for those concerns because oftentimes it's behavioral things that are brought up we want to have those additional questions so it talks about

186analysis of sub scores and that's the thing I wanted to bring up across the board including with AP tests we did start some of the we had some of those initial conversations with our AP teachers at the most recent professional development session where our AP teachers were taking a look at their course grades the grades they assign kids in class and comparing them also just at a very basic level to their actual AP test score and what we're finding is in some courses it is pretty well aligned not that it has to be an a equals a five on an AP test or a b equals a four but we did have some instances where they were not as aligned as we thought they might be and so we're having these conversations about utilizing the

187AP classroom resources and taking a look at those specific strands and the different content areas that we might be weaker from a curricular perspective and also looking at how we're providing feedback throughout the course of the year if I'm a student who gets an A in an AP course or a B I'm not saying I should expect a four or a five but I also shouldn't be able to get a one I should be getting a much higher score than that but we'll break down all these um in Parts in our data team at the administrative level and then also work with the teachers as well ilt is going to continue to evolve including expanding academic interventions and enrichment offerings and then one thing that we're really looking at is the loss of credit piece

188when students get D's or F's and what that that at-risk group it's amazing PowerSchool for those of us that use it on our end or the parents that use it as well there's a lot of back back level algorithms that can actually you can pull up I can on my PowerSchool dashboard I can pull up and click at risk students that's going to give an attendance rating and a grading rating I can at a moment's notice take a look and see which kids are at risk for possibly failing classes or or maybe heading towards truancy due to attendance if we can start to address some of those things specifically and intervene with some of our additional strategies I think Mr Renda talked about the reading Specialists and the work they do thanks to the board

189several years ago we not we added an additional reading specialist one of the great things that they're able to do is not just work in their small group classes that they're working with students that need the most intervention but they're now also pushing out into courses like science right now they're getting into science classrooms if anybody's ever been in a high school science classroom you've been at the biology you've been in that Earth Science some of the vocabulary and some of the supports that kids may need they don't necessarily have that support so our reading Specialists are also pushing into other content areas to provide additional support there and with the addition of a math interventions two years ago it's been a great help to work with our students that need that level of intervention

190so there's a ton of things we probably could have put a lot more on here if we wanted to um but that's just that's the highlights of some of the things we're continuing to do at the high school all right so as you can see there's a lot of work that we are already in we've already embarked on um and I'm hoping that you're beginning to hear the um kind of the the connection between curriculum instruction and assessment those are not three separate things those that is a Continuum that is interdependent um and so the curriculum work we do with uh Dr led by Dr Alcock and the capacity we're building with our teachers to continue that work is is going to inform the instruction the instruction that is going to be high authentic learning

191experiences and high engagement is going to impact those assessments and then that assessment information that we get back not just from the standardized data but also within our own formative classrooms will help inform that curriculum again so that we can all kind of connect to all of the debts um and the other thing I just want to take a minute to say is that testing is a skill building process so uh Mark mentioned that our kids hadn't been testing they hadn't been used to testing so while we don't we we are not going to teach to the test because if we do the right things in the classroom the scores will come but part of that is getting them comfortable and used to being assessed that's partly not and it's not just a physical skill

192it's also that resiliency piece what do I do when I sit down in a computer test and the computer freezes and I start panicking right those are that's all of it is is interconnected um but if we do that and we work on those transferable skills that will impact their achievement then that's what we kind of will uh when we'll really start seeing those results so as Dr Brill mentioned in the beginning you know we're now we're getting toward we're kind of looking at this transformed experience and transformed hero of our schools so what are we moving toward we're moving toward that extraordinary with a focus on the whole child I mentioned at the beginning that all of our kids have infinite potential we need to fully believe in that and fully invest in that

193and we appreciate the investment that you have already given us and we're excited to work with you to have you continue to with that investment so that our tangible outcomes such as student health and well-being the new school a stronger sense of culture and you know again connectedness to the school facilities and the school climate will result in that high achievement but more importantly will result in those intangible outcomes such as resiliency trust belief Unity not just for our kids but for our faculty our staff our community members our parents so that we're all we all can remember that this narrative happens together so again this is just a visual to close us out these this is our portrait of The Graduate right the vision of The Graduate of the four C's but this is

194really the connectedness the interconnectedness of everything for our students so with this that's how we'll get belief trust and unity so I know it's been a little lengthy but I do want to open the floor um for any of us to take questions okay so I want to go back well I can just start by saying wow this is uh [Music] going from the holistic top of the durg view to where you showed us where we stood gets your attention doesn't it um the uh how I guess my first question is as a board what can we do to keep attention on this and get the right support to you and to the principles in helping change the full direction of where we've been right your Turf well I think um to the first thing

195is to continue doing what you've done you know I mean the resources as I've said from the beginning since I've gotten here I have been so impressed with the in and when I say resources I don't just mean fiscal I mean the the intentionality and the focus on school and the whole experience for kids Athletics the Arts the extracurricular the co-curricular aspect so continuing that investment and continuing that focus and intentionality is what I think that we can ask that how you can support the work we're doing we'll we've already um Dr Murphy and I have already talked about kind of the focus throughout the year with um cape and that we will be talking about and we started off the year with a curricular Focus um and Debbie and Rosa were there as well

196um we can you know we'll continue to work at the cape level to kind of hash through some of this this progress um but I think really that just that continued intentionality and support and allowing me to come back and Report out as I said you know throughout the whole presentation this is one data point one snapshot there are other things that flesh out the experience of our and the success of our schools so I'm looking forward to sharing those as we go through it strikes me that one of the things that we can do is lessen the churn right you know get a lot of stuff great ideas coming in from everywhere right um and uh oh we got to go work on a new you know K through 3 Ela curriculum right and

197comes down from the state I to me this is like the house is burning and we got to spend our time focusing on getting getting the getting the house the Flames out and it uh and the kids where we need them to be and if we can get some of the shaft out of your way don't be at all afraid to say can we just put this sort of thing off a little bit right because I think that's important that we stay focused on this absolutely um and there are some things that we can as you mentioned we can't control if the state is going to say you need a new K3 reading program um but we can leverage our resources and I've already talked with Debbie and Danielle rudel on those but I agree

198with you if they're extraneous things that are getting in the way that are taking up bandwidth and time and you know intention we need to put those things to be like number one priority absolutely everybody so if I may add Bob to exactly that and I love the phrase lesson the churn the the I started to say our Focus needs to be on achievement and and uh Dr Murphy and I've had some private conversations um matter of fact you were with me at a conversation with the board of Finance Bob in the Summer where I really talked about um while we talk about the whole child and who doesn't believe in that we need to be focusing on Reading Writing math science social studies the academics we need to put a renewed focus on that

199we're coming out of the pandemic and clearly from the snapshot and again the date is six months old at this point um we we have work to do there we're excited to engage in that work we're not running from the learning loss and we want to make sure we're moving toward the top of our comparative and Regional neighbors um we owe that to our kids we owe that to our families and so we but we we to your point um while there may be State mandates that come down that feel as though they're in the way and is right we need to leverage and and make that work but if everything's a priority nothing's a priority academic Focus must be a priority going forward right thanks now the other second question I have and then

200I'll turn into the rest of the board this I you know and this is a connect the dots question in the beginning of your presentation you showed us that there was a big drop off in the middle school years right in achievement and then you saw it again in Dean's charts right in terms of what you saw on the more tactical scores you know as you kind of went through the years it started high and then dropped I suspect that's part of the developmental issues of that age group and their Readiness to focus on what are ever increasing complexities right because the the you know we've we've spent time with if you remember with Dr Ruby about social studies you know you're moving from basic reading to complex reading in that window right that is

201where that transition happens so I saw that in the data right so there's kind of one reaction of let's get everybody up right let's catch everybody up but there's that specific focus and I didn't see in the action items things that say oh man this fifth to eighth grade group who are now becoming high school kids we have to put some extra focus on uh to catch it up they were and it's not meant to be critical at all but they're kind of the standard approach okay we're going to keep working people up we're working people up you know use our assessments use that but there's something else going on in there and I'd love to spend some time with Dean with you and Mark probably in the high school because you're inheriting that group

202who just got slapped you know with the coven learning loss how are we keeping our eyes on the whole child in that window and and doing extra things to help that group in particular reset because I'm not sure business as usual the approach we're using at the elementary schools that that will help you get everybody up a little bit I love what Dr P said about this goal is 100 percent right on on meets the standards that's exactly right but the uh um but I think there's some Pockets that might build off what you're saying so I was trying to think of some things um specifically for the Middle School like have we looked at maybe like increasing our star administrations to happen more frequently to allow us to give us more data points to

203track you know areas of weakness um you know year after year at least I've seen with my son an area of geometry you know he's an honors but it's an area that's continually low and I would imagine that that's the same because that's the area where they suffered where they kind of lost out when code first hit was that's where they covered in the spring so um looking at those math areas that were are tend to be weak and the more data points you have for Star the better right you take it in the beginning as a Baseline and you take it in January and then the end of the year it's not really going to help us I mean it will help us for the next year but only that one data point in

204the middle of the year is really only helping us but if we take it more frequently in November or again in March then we can really maybe track more areas of growth and weakness so I'm happy to have um Dean and Mark come up but I did um one and again from my perspective coming in new with fresh eyes um knowing that the instructional coaching team was put in last year knowing that all of these interventionists and the tutors were put in in the recent years and thinking about the srbi process both at the middle school and at the high school which again as Mark mentioned is a different entity and has to be approached differently than in the um than in the longer younger grades to me that is part of addressing those specifics

205and not doing business as usual in addition I think that and so there's definitely I think we can continue to dig down and use those uh the iabs as well because those are specifically targeted to SBA but also to those standards so combining that those data points um as far as you know leveraging all of our data points Star as another one for 712 that we have both for um for Math and La so all of those things and it takes it takes the structure it takes this right we can say we need to do all these things but we need to make sure that we have the right people and the right structures with the right amount of time and when you will afford um team teachers or classroom teachers that time because kids

206are working with interventionists or they're working with instructional coaches or tutors that is what that's going to I think really shift this tide a little bit um and those those pieces of the puzzle have never really been brought together in such an intentional way so um I know I'm new but it doesn't sound to me quite like its business as as it was I think there is a very specific Focus I think that Dean's work last Monday with the teachers at the middle school when they're all in the in the calf and they were all looking at their SBA data as well as their parent feedback and their student and their peer feedback data it was it was a palpable focus on what is happening with our kids and I Dean should speak to it

207but I don't I didn't get the sense that that was what had we had done previously go ahead I give just a little background with this star and just sort of I meant to say this before and I forgot I gotta tell you one thing is as teachers I I actually met with two teachers today it was it was about something and they were just teachers take it very personal like they are so upset by the scores so I watch I mean obviously people that are teachers um but they it's a big deal like we that's why we're having those conversations I think with uh Dr Maine saying is we were there in I think in the even in the video I might have said it there's a lot of discourse going on we're trying

208to figure out what are those areas number one where are those areas that we've dropped and even in subgroups it does not just the overalls achievement for grade but and what are we currently doing and we're going to be looking at what could we do differently um I could tell you this much the star we do give it to students that um multiple times that are in interventions the problem with the star is is that it doesn't really give us really drill down data as much as like an acadians might um might give us that it's not uh something so for instance so you understand it it could give us a kid a a question on GI geometry and we haven't even taught geometry yet so that's the when you're when you're going through those

209skills sometimes depending on the score it doesn't tell specifically what they got wrong so it doesn't say to us they got the questions wrong on fractions we'll say so then we could drill down and say oh we know that they need fractions it's based on an average and I want to make sure am I say that it's an average for a student in that grade level say at the beginning of the year at that time of the year um and then the same thing with the middle of the year we do like I said before we do give it multiple times to students that are in our interventions but that is just kind of like a baseline that we continue to use as we go along because it doesn't give us real specific like standard

210per se that people might think it does it does say things about that but it doesn't give a specific to it so I don't know if that's helpful or not to know yeah no I mean it does get very specific I mean it's just the report that you pull on it but it gives standards reports and things like that no it does yeah yeah but it doesn't a very valuable tool break it down yep and we do utilize it no doubt about it but we don't it's not something that we give multiple I mean that it's made to do the beginning middle and end of the year and what we've been told them and again is that we do do it throughout for students that are struggling Target see so so that I don't miss

211get misinterpreted yeah because I don't want to be misinterpreted I think what you're doing is great right um I worry I worry that it's deeper than the specific uh topics that are being taught it's they've lost the thread at the middle school of dealing with complex and Readiness to learn and Readiness to absorb and Readiness to engage because that's what you need them to do at that level so I I would be when I was talking about maybe a little bit of out of the box you know it's looking a little bit step back from the wholeness of the child and I love the interventions you're doing I love what you're doing in assessment I love how we're going to go focus in on the ones that need the help but there's something cooking here

212right and I'd be interested in getting it may be anecdotal but is there something that we need to start helping our children who are in that moment right middle school during the covid years move to a new place right and mark from your point of view the kids who've just arrived at the heist school I would surmise and hypothesize that two years from now when you show those SAT scores for the graduating class of 2020 X whatever it is 25 you'd be going oh my God right um there we we need to figure out how to remediate if you will you know that that that moment it's not really you didn't see it in the data in the younger kids right you're moving them up the court for the basics of Reading Writing arithmetic and

213all of that it's as they move into the complex topics there's something cooking there and I'd love to spend some time on that at some appropriate moment right it's maybe you know you've got to get going with what you got here one of the other points I just want to make was the use that the different use in uh of the iabs this year and based on what the state is has changed a little bit with that I mean I think that's one of the bigger things that will help us to get more drilled to help us drill down more with certain standards um so that is something that that we are definitely working on it just was that I'll tell you just a little Side Story it was uh it happened to go over

214and visit a neighbor it's at one at one point in the middle of covet and the kids were at home doing their remote learning and I walked in and the uh the phone was right below the screen they're playing their video game and looking very attentive but they're focusing on the video game they there was there's a developmental point in there of that age group that uh they were losing the will and engagement to learn and I worry about that a lot right that has stuck with me that that moment that I observed and I don't know if any of the rest of you who have middle schools and young high schoolers but that's uh even College fine I think to speak to that a little bit just quickly um you know I kids are

215our students want to please and they are very good at doing school but we want them to be engaged with school right and um I agree with you completely uh in terms of what is those what it's almost like you could physiologically what changed you know changed in their brains um to not quite be ready to to really be you know engage with school so I think that um you know what we've talked about a lot is also you know there is a connection between the social emotional piece and the academic piece and so now with all of the the focus on uh increasing social workers and school psychologists and slps and support staff um I wonder if that's a way to uh and you know Mark was even talking about it running those reports

216of it's not just attendance and um grade reports but also discipline reports and maybe maybe some different fun things that kind of get some of them and focused on engagement right and yeah so um and and talking to our teachers so that they have you know our instructional coaches can go in and help them with instructional strategies but also engaging with our parents and help and making sure that we're out reaching out to our parents and and being transparent about this I mean this is a one of those steps um but saying we need your help we need you to engage and and ask us here and here's five things you could do right right yep yep maybe that's what maybe that's a kind of an out of the box thing so I just thought

217there's a there's something cooking and I can't put my finger on it but it's cooking can I actually have one more thing like and it's not out of the box but the traditional homework is being an option to like authentic homework that reinforces what was taught and then just to practice like old-fashioned practice um I think there's a I know how people feel about it I know some teachers feel about it because I heard it open house but I mean there's you know you can't not practice and practice leads to you know production so it's uh you know from a homework perspective I have an eighth grader at home um as well and um it's an interesting dialogue and conversation nightly about homework um and some you know he'd be mortified to know right now

218that I'm talking about him right now but I also he's definitely not watching um but you know some of those conversations I've had right as we transition and getting them ready for high school in the com I have to do homework I do it in school I don't understand and he's getting it he's just not doing it um he doesn't see the value in it right and so that's speak to kind of your point um but also I think in terms of executive functioning pieces that we continue to talk about um I'll bring up two points because I don't want to belabor all this time because we've been here for some time but I will share with you the board party members the pillars committee that brought forward the um social worker that we're bringing

219in from Civic from the outside um we're still pending on that we're still waiting they're low on clinical staff side note but that same group now has a new Focus right every year we're looking to kind of and one of the things we're talking about our Focus this year is talking about executive functioning and looking at um particularly for high school students and what we can do to help support them and make that transition and whether it be working with staff to better understand it across the board but I think that will pay dividends down the road as we continue to help our students do that the other parts about the ninth graders in particular we did just give the ninth grade essay PSAT uh last you know last Wednesday and the 12th so that'll

220give us one that gives us another data point at least a standardized data point to look at we have star we're also going to look at but also you know it's it's a reinvigorated focus I talked about running those reports right now I'll tell you on the of the 879 kids that I have in terms of in terms of looking at students that are we're concerned about grades and attendance there's two ninth graders on my list two out of a class of 200 and now it doesn't those those are the highest risk right those are the ones that are the highest risk there's more seniors on that list than there are ninth graders so that's a whole nother issue we're working on and I'm not ignoring them but I just just know that um we

221want to explicitly tell you that there are things certainly that we're paying attention to and as we get that data we'll be able to have a better measure of where we're going to do moving forward so stop asking questions um not to beat a dead horse but I just I'm gonna go sort of more Broad and less specific with my sort of overall reflection which is I I I didn't hear a whole lot of new terminology that I would have expected honestly given really honestly How Far We've fallen in the durg um sounds a whole lot like you know we're gonna we do a lot of really good things and we're gonna do them harder and we're gonna do them more and I think I connected actually really quickly with what you were saying in

222the beginning um which was especially with um you know Middle School aged kids who went through the pandemic and their particular learning loss and and how there's a connection there with some social emotional issues so then maybe that's there's maybe like less of a focus on not necessarily academics but if that's what we're sort of feeling like there's this really big problem that we need to address then let's go really heavy on that um I think my My overall reflection is just you know um you know I think there does need to be something more drastic I don't know what that what that is but um I hope it's not like a just sort of wait and see sort of thing so all right that's that's good feedback yeah um I just again coming in

223kind of from the from the outside and and there are a lot of um things that aren't easily measured that are felt and that you know that are kind of I can I can see um and my observation is that again there have been a lot of things done but they've been done in isolation there hasn't been a cohesive approach to many of the things and while it may not seem like a drastic approach helping teachers focus on alignment will be game changing they don't if they feel like they have to do this and then they have to do this and then they have to do that and then there's this thing from the state and then I also have to worry about the kids emotional and I they and also they're you know kind

224of have that vicarious trauma that they're dealing with that they're feeling I mean dean said it they're pretty shell-shocked right now um so and we started off you know super enthusiastic with the year and that's great and then we kind of hit him with some reality um I I anticipate and again I just want to clarify that this is this one piece um and I think that it may maybe it hasn't been as explicitly explained before that next Generation accountability report which we have no control it comes out in in um February it'll be interesting to see where that is um because that's where we really kind of shown in the dirt before not so much in these test scores so I just want to be clear about that the comparison from 2018-19 to now

225is not drastically different okay we were eight 16th the 20th in the Dirk and some 22nd in the dark prior to the pandemic okay with these test scores all right anyone else just a point I uh there's been a theme that we've been kind of circling around this whole time and I think it's time right you you just kind of mentioned all these things that are flying around um uh Dr uh David he mentioned two months of working on the koala bear I I think that well obviously you know these assessments are born but it's it's scheduling the time to within those assessments to kind of around those assessments really to to better those scores and I'm I'm kind of wondering because I didn't see much of that and I'm sure those happens in the

226meetings but you know I'm kind of interested in that that aspect of it so how we allotting more time to this area where we can say hey we're good in this area or is that kind of we're still covering this area even though we're good and we're just trying to I don't know speed up within the same amount of time this area that we're not doing is good I don't know if I'll get my point across yep no I understand what you're saying sorry well um right so because you can't get blood from a stone right I mean you have to you have to make sure that you have your finite amount of the school day um but I think it's a matter of being creative with the time Dr P reworked the schedule this

227past summer for Huckleberry um Hill so that he could build in that time for those teachers um you graciously gave seven days of PD this year I know that a lot of it was to transition to the new school but we're using that time with our teachers you know we have it is it is Coveted time that our teachers can sit and work and look at this this information um and and get trained there's also incorporation of those developmental counseling uh that we you know the developmental counseling lessons one of which was presented tonight but that affords teachers time to be able to work on other things while their those lessons are being Incorporated so and and kind of the the overarching focus is if you think of curriculum instruction and assessment again as a

228circle kind of like this last Circle you know there's the academic social and emotional but it's curriculum instruction and assessment they are not a linear Continuum and they're not any in isolation but we have traditionally not we Brookfield we education have thought of them as such up until recently now we're kind of seeing there is this huge connection between all of these things and if you do those things correctly you find time anyone else I would just I mean I think we've sort of touched on it but um just to sort of add one more layer um I I do really feel like the trauma that people went through is a big factor here and I don't know that um the test scores and all the data we have is really getting us an answer

229for that um so I wonder you know if it's possible I know we've we've kind of surveyed people to death but you know maybe it's worth talking to these students in that group that's struggling and talking to their parents and finding out what what do you see as the issues what is your child struggling with where do you see the gaps where can we help maybe not just as a school district but as a community what what other resources can we pull in if we need to to help get these kids through you know this rough period And I I Deb you're making a great point I want to share because we haven't really announced it but the Brookfield cares the asset behavior inventory uh survey will be coming out in the next couple of

230weeks so that is something that's a community support that we have and we haven't had that assessment of where the students are at in three years at least now so I think that's something right there that's already in place but wide open to the ideas you're talking about absolutely that's all thank you okay anyone else okay so a couple of final remarks okay um the teachers need to know we're 100 behind them right they're the solution they're not they shouldn't feel pressure from us right just to go do something you shouldn't feel pressure from us because we we're we it's all I think all of us are in the same boat about we want to do this for the kids it's all about the child right um and so anything that we can do to

231make sure we have their backs and then we're providing the resources and support that we can provide as a board we're all for it I would think as a board we should have a more regular Cadence of meeting with uh um with Dr Mann right in terms of where are we how what are you seeing you know what help do you need right and I think John I think we ought to make that uh every meeting or every other meeting type of uh visit doesn't have to be data Centric on this it's just like and we ought to have our uh any uh spotlights focused on learning app you know the excitement right things that things that are happening so I think this has to be our number one priority on number two close behind

232is getting into a new school so the second thing and I'll say this to the board I was looking carefully at those charts did you all notice that Amity was number one on those rankings and I'm so glad you're here so thank you for coming thank you for coming to Brookfield and my kids were up in those data too because uh you you've lived this and uh really looking forward to seeing how this journey continues so I'm excited to be on this journey with you okay thank you thank you thanks everyone thanks thanks to the principals all of you 15. okay I think that's the last long uh long discussion we have we do have enough a couple of other uh relatively quick things we have to do next item is um uh grants approval

233I'll move that the board approved the attached list of Grants as recommended by Director of Business and operations can post and superintendent Dr John Burrell second moved and seconded just as a reminder to the board we agreed to we have to approve all grants and we agreed we would do this on mass you know instead of one at a time on our agenda so Ken once you give us a quick overview sure with the exception of the first grant on the list they are all entitlement grants which means that the the it's Federal money that the state allocates to us and we have to submit an application telling them how we're going to use the money within the parameters of each particular Grant uh the first screen is the after school Grant which it was

234competitive and we got again this year it's a one-year Grant and again we're partnering with the Brookfield Craft Center and the Brookfield YMCA to provide the after-school enrichment programs uh to uh I think mostly middle school students and also making tutoring and extra help available uh Title One is used to support struggling students in math and reading and we provide salaries supplies and professional development to give tutoring and we're using it for uh regular education summer school program I believe at whiskaneer and this is again supplemental to what the district already provides similarly Title II is for professional development to provide opportunities to teachers and coaches beyond what is provided for in The District budget title III and those two the title one and title two and title three are all two-year grants title three

235is to provide materials and supplies to support English language learners idea has two parts six eleven and six nineteen and I apologize and neglected to put a narrative in for 611 it is used to provide two special education teachers and 18 paraprofessionals plus some tradition transition coordinator services uh Ida 619 is specifically targeted for preschool so we provide a paraprofessional support in the preschool program Carl Perkins is actually that's a little bit of a typo because it's a one-year grant that is to provide support for the high school technical education program and then title IV is a grant that we use you're allowed to take that money and transfer it to another Grant and Dr Mann as we have done it at times in the past is transferring that money into Title II to support

236from professional development and those are all the new grants this year okay any questions these uh We've touched on these in the past so yeah there's nothing nothing right hearing those no questions all in favor opposed thank you thank you thanks Ken uh next up is uh budget assumptions and priorities this is where just to receive this from uh the superintendent so I'll be very brief especially considering the time of the night the budget assumptions and priorities is an annual update to focus the board Focus the administration on the development of the budget specifically the assumptions that will all work under it's kind of a expectations agreement the board has had the report for several days though it's part of the board packet it's certainly for those citizens who are interested they can go on

237read and then the following two pages of the report talk about specific priorities in the area of curriculum assessment instruction which will mirror what you heard tonight so I don't need to go through that work for leadership to do in climate and Community Building as well as supporting our teachers in highly engaging instructional strategies and developing those and then there's a number on the third page is a number of operational in facility priorities specifically all the bulleted points transportation we talked a little bit about that tonight enrollment Staffing certifications structures packing and moving all the things that go into Candlewood Lake and whiskaneer and looking at schedules and all the Personnel that will impact both schools and the transition in addition to that there's a lot of work with technology that you could see in

238there a big part of our budget development will be the continued operationalizing of the Esser grants and some of the instructional coaches and those rolling into the budget and we'll be working on we'll be revisiting this document and then there is one piece of talking about we'll talk about it during budget time is looking at a clerk to help us with public information things such as FERPA and foi requests the hours that these are taking are really uh when you talk about the the churn some things that are distracting the administration from focusing on student learning and so we want to make sure that we have our administrators that are highly compensated and expert in leading their schools to be focusing on leading their schools and not on something we can train someone to do

239specifically and kind of routinize um responsive documentation I'll certainly answer any questions so we'll have a chance to talk about this through the whole budget absolutely and if anybody has a chance to dig in on this you have a question send me a note we'll have a conversation that can help you understand or wrap on this okay hearing none we'll move on um uh the next one which um are both policies and these are oh I got one more after this so uh I want to see if we can merge those into a single one okay I will move that the board approved the deletion of existing policy number six one six one point three compatibility of service and adopt cape's version for a first reading is recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee and

240I will move that the board approved new policy number 6172.4 title one for a first reading is recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee second okay moved in second and Debbie do you have any comments you'd like to make to us I'll just answer that policy 161 3 is actually called comparability of services there was just a typo on the agenda but it really just um it really just ensures that the district is providing comparable Services across all the schools in the district um whether they receive funding for Title One students or not um we had this we have this policy currently have it but kabe's version of it includes some language regarding maintaining records about that comparability so you'll see there's our original version that has everything crossed out and then cabe's version which

241is very similar but just adds language at the end so we're recommending that we delete the old version and adopt cape's new version the second one 6172.4 is about title one parent involvement we don't currently have this policy um it is mandated so uh I believe Dr Burrell said Dr Mann will be implementing the procedures on this managing the title one parent involvement um Title One supplements how much money each state allocates to the schools to ensure there's there's not an achievement Gap um so it's pretty self-explanatory when you read it but um again it's one that is mandated but we don't currently have okay all right so just as a reminder for those listening in a first read is we start a clock moving to give the board a chance to review these it

242comes back for a second read which is when it actually gets approved so we're not voting to approve it tonight we're voting to accept it as a first read Debbie when do you need in football um I was hoping by November 11th November 11th that's your next meeting for close to your next meeting yeah okay okay so November 11th any input to uh Debbie um any discussion okay all in favor of accepting both of these as a first read unanimous um last business item on the agenda is a Cooperative agreement for athletics or to prove the creation of Cooperative Arrangements consistent with the state statutes for hockey and wrestling and further authorize the superintendent to negotiate applicable written agreements with participating Boards of Education in such Cooperative arrangements and move that the board approved the

243creation of Cooperative Arrangements consistent with State statutes for hockey and wrestling and further authorize the superintendent to negotiate applicable applicable written agreements with participating Boards of education and such Cooperative Arrangements I felt very repetitive I feel like that was said twice was that yeah right I'm sorry Joyce second when you work with attorney Murphy sometimes it's said twice John why don't you put this in simple English terms on what's what the issue is yeah very simple um uh Mr Baldwin uh approached uh principal Belinda and me regarding our wrestling program we have 14 wrestlers for the coming season and uh we're not going to be able to hit all the weight classes we still can have a program region 12 only has two wrestlers at this time and they actually inquired of us could we

244be part of your program in a co-op Arrangement and Mr Baldwin was very open to that and we had some discussions about it and actually in the way we're writing up the agreement they could have up to five before it would change the agreement um and shared costs Etc and they would actually help our program because they'd fill in the gaps where we don't have kids for the particular weight classes so it's really going to be a mutual beneficial win we have the written agreement region 12 is the particular District they now have the written agreement and so um we're working on that and so this authorizes you authorizes me to work at Council work with the the other athletic director or the principals and make this happen in addition to that hockey has been

245a long-standing co-op we want to make sure it's with two districts with Danbury and Bethel hence BBD and we want to make sure that we have a very up-to-date modern agreement with both of those school districts as well so that's what we're working on we have the agreements they're in the hands of the other districts we're ready to roll for the winter just wanted to dot our eyes and cross our T's with this particular approval here twice twice twice so do we have to vote twice I think he could only vote once we'll be accepted as any questions on what the goal here is and what we're approving no all right all in favor all right thanks for the support on that no problem like I said these last ones were going to be quick

246so um all right so we're back to uh public comment this is our second round of public comment and I want to thank you for being patient I hope it was interesting for you but our first speaker is Irene Korea foreign Korea 45 West whiskey near Road um in 2019 the Connecticut definition of bullying was changed in Connecticut public act number 19-166 and became effective July 2021. the new definition removed the keyword student and repeated the new building definition is an act that is director indirect and severe persistent or pervasive which one causes physical or emotional harm to an individual two places in individual and reasonable fear of physical or emotional harm or three in fridges on the rights or opportunities of an individual individual at school the bru received a thorough 41-page audit of

247all district policies from Cabe on August 26 2021 the superintendent brought up the bullying definition change at the September 21st 2021 policy and Communications subcommittee meeting the meeting minutes stated that the definition has changed and the district is waiting for guidance from Cape and the board attorney regarding revision over a year later the bullying policy has not been brought up for review nor has anyone realized the inconsistencies in the student handbooks the BHS handbook reflects the new bullying definition but the link in the handbook is broken does not work the WMS handbook reflects the old definition Huckleberry has a handbook but it does not mention bullying and Huckleberry and Center both have links on their websites to the outdated Boe policies the policy and communication subcommittee meets on a regular basis they decide on the

248policies requiring updating revisions over the past three years almost all policies were devoted to be taken to the Boe for a first read this gives all Boe members an opportunity to voice their opinions and receive feedback from the public this provides oversight and gives the subcommittee input on what changes if any are needed the policy subcommittee brought up the first time at their 427-22 meeting to have a Boe approved new policy 411 5.3 without a first read on May 4th 2022 the Boe voted to waive bylaw 9 d311 and adopt a new policy 4115.3 evaluation and employment of coaches what most people don't realize is that right before that this was quickly approved there was a high school coaching issue ironically there was quite a list of Correspondence regarding a high school coach on the

2495-4 BOE agenda my question is why is the Boe and Senior District administration has not updated the polling policy despite Connecticut law that made it effective over a year ago but they race to approve a sports coaching policy in eight days where are the board's priorities and how does the Boe and Senior School administrators put our children first um if I still have time I have a quick um update not update I wanted to point out that the additional funds for the locker room came from money that was appropriated for the whiskey near electrical system the town voted on that it's a bonded amount of money 117 thousand dollars um for my professional experience I'm an engineer I'm a project manager it's about a 50 year old building [Music] insulation electrical wires degrade over time

250and one day you're going to have a problem I've seen it you're going to have it's commercial electric it's outdated in obsolete Parts um one day you're going to lose an electrical phase I've seen it you're going to wonder why all the you know a third of the lights off how come my computer is acting weird you're going to be in for a lot of bigger problems I really hate it when we you know was it steal from Peter to pay Paul um I was not happy that that money was taken from there and a lot of people you know it's not you don't see the electrical change but it's something if it fails it fails and um that's all I have for tonight thank you thank you very much just as an aside on

251that and now just to clarify something that project was largely complete when and it had under spent its budget so it's and those bonded projects just can't leave money just sitting aside around for some future thing so it was pragmatic that that we did it it didn't take anything away from that project so it just isn't aside so I spent a lot of time on that one as some of the other board members know um okay thank you for your input um and Mrs Matthews I think left us so um so I think we're done with public comment um three main points okay um I'm thinking that we should lead off with the Huckleberry Spotlight about EQ and then uh I think it's obviously important to review the CL es update and school start times

252and construction delay and then the third thing I will try to summarize is the school and school Improvement Plan update yeah it's a lot in there though I would suggest you put it put in a really high level summary that says we spent a lot of time reviewing that and it's really worth listening to right and don't spend a lot of time trying to summarize it that would be my advice so there's yeah almost have to listen to it to really get anything out of it so is everybody okay with that okay uh upcoming events all schools are closed for students on Tuesday November 8th for professional development at Center School this Monday through Friday is the book fair this Friday evening is the PTO sponsored fall family fun night from 6 to 8 PM

253next Wednesday October 26th through Friday October 28th is an early dismissal for conferences on Monday October 31st is the Halloween dress down to dress up whole school pajama day and Friday November 11th are the Veterans Day is the Veterans Day assembly wear red white and blue and Thursday November 17th is picture retakes Huckleberry has the book fair starting this Friday through next Friday Wednesday October 26th through Friday the 28th is also early dismissal at 12 20 for conferences Monday October 24th through Friday October 28th is a spirit week and Monday October 31st is the PTO sponsored Huckleberry hustle Friday November 11th are the Veterans Day assemblies the book fair at whiskaneer is October 24th through 28th October 27th is PSAT testing for 8th graders October 28th is the 7th and 8th grade Halloween dance November

25410th and 11th is early dismissal for parent-teacher conferences November 11th is take a veteran to school day November 14th is a Jeff feely parent presentation and November 15th it's his student assemblies and November 17th is a makeup picture day and at the high school Wednesday October 26th is picture retakes Wednesday November 9th and Thursday November 10th is early dismissal for conferences a lot of upcoming when we only have one meeting a month oh man it gets longer so okay thank you for that all right so that's the end of our agenda for this [Music] um no no but I'll come over and talk to you after okay um so uh with uh without objection we're adjourned [Music] please [Music]