BPS Board of Education Meeting 1/19/22 @7pm

001all right we're all set go for it okay i'd like to uh call the uh a regular meeting of the brookfield board of education for january 19th to order please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and unity for all all right um so so first up is our roll call we have all seven members of the board of education uh here tonight we're doing this meeting by zoom considering the ongoing pandemic situation hopefully the infection rate will uh will turn down shortly and we'll go back to in-person meetings um uh so first up on our agenda tonight is a student spotlight for center elementary school and uh

002dr brill do you want to uh uh introduce or you know or do you want to have friends i gotta tell you bob i'm excited we have uh mrs diamond here and i see lots of our center school staff on and it's about the kindergarten bookstore so i'm gonna turn it over to mary rose to introduce for us if that's okay with you all right perfect good evening everyone i'm mary rose diamond proud principal of center school and i have with us this evening we have alyssa larson and nancy summerfeld two of our fantastic and amazing uh kindergarten teachers and i'm going to share with you um can i uh eric can i hear that i think i can yeah yeah sure yep you're all set excellent thank you so i'm going to um we

003just have a little slide show that we put together to share some things with you it is uh given that we're on zoom and um it's a little later in the evening we do not have students with us this evening however we have a video to share with you of some of the work that they've been doing so again uh we're highlighting our kindergarten bookstore um and so i wanted to just point out to everyone and kind of make this direct connection with the curriculum work that we've been doing for the past four or five maybe six years um uh and really that we we again um are taking the adult learning um that we we've been fortunate enough to to uh have garnered over the last several years and really applying our learning um

004in support of student learning so again um this is all connected back to the curriculum work that we've been we've been doing um as grade level teams um in okay to four continuum really with the support of dr alcock um uh initially and then also with dr ruby and and devarious um we again we're you're gonna see the progression of beginning with the standards uh were you utilizing the resources from our curricular tool and then really embedding opportunities for feedback from both teachers and peers opportunities for reflection as well goal setting for students um and we hear a lot i think the the term this of you know self-navigating learners um and we're really starting to lay the groundwork for that again at the age of four and five um in our kindergarten students in

005terms of how we are promoting their ownership and really teaching them how to navigate their learning for themselves so we start with skills we move to our learning targets that are student-facing so students are learning and and seeing what they are able to do and setting those targets for themselves and the next step for us is also then giving them some learning strategies so that's really where we're we're going to be focusing some of our work um also as i'm again mentioning uh moving toward those the the three components of cell navigation that the regulation the evaluation the motivation you see that's all kind of embedded within this uh this project that our teachers have presented and provided for our students um here is a a very long list of all the standards that are

006incorporated and that played a part in some way in building student learning that were again incorporated into this unit and specifically into the kindergarten bookstore project which is the context for the learning for our students [Music] with it around these standards so that the again we start with the standards the context is really where that the uh engagement piece comes in and where the application of skills comes in so i'm going to turn this over to alyssa yes are you okay alyssa to talk a little bit about the process yes i just want to you know highlight it briefly because um i i had the students kind of really explain it to you in the video because i thought it meant more that they understood the process and were able to explain back the process

007to you but this was our show-and-tell unit basically it's one of our units that we have developed through the curriculum writing process and it works a lot on listening for sounds that they hear in words and using their inventive spelling um labeling spacing all those kinds of things um writing for for a reader is a really big thing like teaching them that they're not just writing to put letters on paper but like actually for a purpose and matching words to their illustrations so it's not like you know they're writing about you know a beach and then drawing a snowman so you know teaching them that all these things come together um so they were then provided they were working on it for a little while and then they provided some context like you know you

008are actually going to be writing this for someone to read it you get to be the author just like all these books we've ever read now you are the author and it was really exciting to see this go from your this is work you're making me do to be like oh my gosh like they just got so lit up and so excited for this i saw in my class specifically the production tripled the quality of their work i mean it was at least double what it was before they worked so hard they wanted to make sure it was readable they wanted to make sure it was neat they wanted to put all the sounds that they could hear and they just they just kept asking every day when's the bookstore when's the books i had

009to put it on my morning meeting calendar because they were so excited to be the author and share the writing but even more so excited to be able to buy books with what we called kindergarten cash and read their friends books and i think it was equally exciting to get to go into another classroom since that was like what we get to go in a different room so they were very excited about this whole idea that there was a purpose to what they were doing um so they worked really hard to write and publish that and earn their kindergarten cash in my classroom i made a big deal about me being the publisher and you'll hear one student talk about let's talk about going to see the publisher um and the publisher bought the books

010from them and put the books in the bookstore so they were really learning about the process of how it worked and then on the very last day which was the week before the holidays i must say teaching in december especially kindergarten is usually very difficult um there you can imagine they're very excited for what about to happen but i have never had such a productive month of december ever as in my entire years of teaching kindergarten in first grade i'll even lump that in there um it's been it was amazing to see the amount of work that they put out the amount of joy they had to be working on it and even the fact that they would be asking to work on it during their play time and during their free time can i

011work on my book like it was just really exciting to see the passion come out and that's what the whole context really is the context is to teach them you're not just doing this to do it there's a reason why and um to put some passion into them and it was i mean i've never loved teaching kindergarten more than i did through this so i'm so sorry my controls got stuck let me go back here okay sorry about that nancy is there anything you wanted to add before we watch the video you wanna wait until afterwards um i i just wanted to add that this writing project and the culminating bookstore celebration really fostered a sense of community and connection among our students and that's something that of course we can't always connect in the

012ways that we were used to doing pre-covered but the students really felt like they were part of something bigger and just one cute little example we went across the hall and we were looking through the books that the students across the hall had written and one of my students just gasped and shouted oh i think they're learning the same sight words we're learning and that was just such a source of excitement for these students and and that's come up several times since then you know the other day in phonics we were blending sounds together to read words and making our sound power really strong and one of the students said do you think mrs dougherty's class is making their sound power strong today too and so they just feel very connected to those students who

013wrote books for them and the students who they wrote books for and just want to echo all of the wonderful things that alyssa said and i think the slideshow is really going to say it all when you see their faces and hear their voices so thank you for giving us this opportunity to spotlight our amazing learners okay here we go let's see them in action [Music] are you ready for our books [Music] the first thing we did to write our books we were the author and the illustrator we had to remember his faces [Music] we need to make the correct pictures to what we'll be writing [Music] we have to write clearly we're gonna just draw a scribbly scribble on our paper here we had to make the book good so that people [Music] okay

014publisher publisher there you go what's the publisher tell you he tell us to get um britney's books to them and what did the publisher give you when the publisher took your [Music] to book my books in the books [Music] [Applause] come on in okay yep you could take a look at the books you can open them up take a look just like you would at a store see what you like [Music] so [Music] all right show me your books that you bought [Music] did you have fun shopping at the book fair yeah [Music] we came to read it at the club [Music] so the excitement i think you can tell hopefully from the video and if you couldn't understand all the words that all the things that they were saying um they were describing the

015strategies or the the learning targets that they'd been instructed on um from teachers and and why you know what they needed to make sure that they were keeping in mind as they were developing their own books and creating their own books um what they'd be looking for in other other students books as well so they really um the the learning was evident came true for that so i'm gonna um just jump ahead and again nancy and alyssa please jump at any point um so just again we already just shared a little bit about what we noticed in terms of engagement some student self-reflection so i had the opportunity to go into classrooms while the instruction was happening leading up to the book sale and just the amount of again self-reflection of students knowing what the

016learning targets were and then looking at their own work and kind of measuring up whether or not they'd achieve the learning targets was was really a great thing to see in terms of students um again self-reflecting students their teachers really did a great job of giving them opportunities um to receive feedback as well as give each other feedback um and that was another um interesting thing that i noticed being in the classrooms was the kind of feedback the students were giving to each other um in terms again being related you know really directly related to the learning targets and making and what their learning had been around the particular standards and then just the application of skills again um you know taking what students what they've learned in discrete instruction and discrete lessons and then

017tying it all together to to create their own books was really it was really great to see i don't know i'm nancy ellis if you have anything to add in terms of what you noticed or yeah they definitely they they definitely latched on to their self-reflection especially and self-evaluation even um i remember one day when we were working one student came up to me and asked me for another piece of paper and you know i i figured they wanted to add a page to their books that's something i had taught them and i said do you need another page to add to your book and he looked at me and he goes no i have to rewrite this page and i said why do you have to rewrite this page i said well i forgot

018the spaces so the reader's not going to be able to read it and i definitely want to hit my learning target so the the fact that they were able to put that all together is just it blew my mind and it's funny because you do have different classes that latch onto different things this is my class that like is obsessed with that learning target if i forget it they're gonna yell at me where's my learning target what am i trying to learn today and they also vlogged on a vocab so i'm sure dr ruby likes to do that but this is my class that if i don't put those things up they're gonna tell me that they need a learning target so they know exactly what they're learning and i just i love to see

019that through them and then of course we're always learning and reflecting ourselves and looking to you know this is our first um you know journey into this piece of this this kind of context or this this part of the context um so there's lots of things that we you know we talked about again covered being impacting you know being an impact on on some of what are our kind of their our are what we could accomplish um and then just also kind of learning from the experience and moving forward and seeing other directions we might want to go in and that kind of thing and how to bring in other content areas as well so um that's it i just i just want to say a personal thank you to the the teachers and staff

020who again have have really uh stretched themselves tremendously and in some cases really stepped out of their comfort zones to make this happen and and just the the quality of the instruction that i'm seeing in the in terms of student engagement and student motivation has really um has really been phenomenal to watch um having seen this unit taught other years uh and comparison to this year it just i think everyone had a new life a new new sense of purpose um the staff as well as students it was it was really it was beautiful to see so thank you and also the board of ed for giving us the opportunity to then have all of this professional learning and really make this difference for kids so i'm gonna stop sharing go ahead maureen sorry uh

021i just wanted to share how impressed i am because this is exactly you know while kovit may have derailed us a little bit this is exactly where we want to go with the curriculum development we know we started as these teachers are smiling knowing that we are working with the bare minimum which is the the standards the standards are just the beginning but when we have talked at board meetings before about the identity of brookfield and context and teachers owning like i could feel like my heart's singing right right now the ownership that you have and that the children have because you know we could like some districts unfortunately we could have gone and bought some some people's services to just do a curriculum in some other place in the world and just send it

022to us because we purchased it but it wouldn't be ours the teachers wouldn't own it and the teachers wouldn't have the permission that we've tried to give them to uh iteratively advance the curriculum to meet the needs of the learners and then we want the students to earn it own it and that self-navigating learner that you talked about alyssa that's what we want we want kids to be going it not teachers going to kids telling them what to do but after the kids have the lay of the land from from the teacher the kids really taking hold of it and going to the teacher whether they're four years old or they're 18 years old and saying this is what i want to do with the curriculum and that's the dif one of the differences between

023having a an exclusive gifted program where only certain people get into the into that program and meeting the needs of all learners and allowing all children to take their work to whatever level it can be without excluding kids so i am just so pleased and so proud of the work that you're doing and you're doing this under the most difficult of conditions and those kids didn't look like their masks or whatever else is going on in the world that are adult problems was phasing them at all and you didn't either so you know bravo to you thank you so much yeah i would love to just say thank you to for all the professional development that you've given us to work towards this because uh it's just been great to be able to explore teaching

024in a way that felt like it mattered in more ways than i ever thought and i'm i'm finishing up my six-year program right now and i can't tell you how many times i would hear something that a district is doing and i'm like we did that like four years ago so brookfield is really ahead of the game and i was really proud to be able to say that i was from brookfield and put our good name out there like that so thank you very much for supporting us well i what i want to say is thank you for trusting the process because it's like when we started this we're in a dark tunnel and nobody could see the light at the end and we're still we're still not at that late because it's we're never

025going to be there because if you're really a learning community you're always going to be working to get better and better and like you two are like poster childs children for for what we're trying to do and and mary rose you know the support that you're giving because you know there are a lot of question marks you know six years ago when we started this but like these are two examples of um questioning because we should always question you just don't follow um but having faith in in our kids because and i don't know if you can add anything to this not to belabor this this point but the idea that that kids can't do this like that needs to be eradicated and it does making a difference whether they're little kids or big kids

026or us that if we have that they can't do it attitude then you're going to restrict yourself to a box of people just regurgitating things that we give them back but if we believe that if we challenge kids and we give them the space to think and to explore and to expand that kids can do amazing things and that's all that's what we want to do that's the environment and the teachers are just big kids if we give them the space and the freedom to do things and make mistakes and be okay like it didn't work but what did we learn from the mistake that we made and then move on but not like wallow in the mistake it's not about being chastised it's about being brave to take that chance so you guys are

027like change makers so thank you well this was fabulous guys so thank you very much for sharing this with us tonight and also on behalf of the board of education this is one of the best spotlights we've had in a while it was just kind of exciting and fun to watch and you can see the educational content of it every step of the way and uh man this is uh wonderful for us to see as a board but and i really appreciate your comments that uh that you know that we're ahead of the game because that's what our goal as a board has always been is to be ahead of that curve so thank you very much for coming tonight and i'll just add as a grandfather of a kindergartner at center school it warmed

028my heart so i wanted to thank you for that too so all right why don't we move on on the agenda thank you all for coming tonight thank you great job and tell the kids thanks all right next uh on our agenda is a report of our student representative so ben i'll turn the floor over to you and thank you for sending your uh your report in advance that was useful to read so it's very it's a nice touch you've done here all right so first off with the events coming up the only one that i had right now is the musical that's coming up it's they're doing grease this year so that's thursday march 24th to sunday march 27th is when i'll be playing um so those were the main event i had and

029um for administration um just a big point obviously we're very happy to have mr belanda back and obviously you don't want to like get to a point where it's like one person that you always trust and look up to but he really is that so we're very happy to have him um and just from his perspective um he's had a lot of welcome back sentiments that have been humbling um and he's getting up to speed with a lot of the different clubs and student government um and other administrators and teachers like just like that and also from that perspective we going on to like dates we have the second quarter is ending um on tuesday january 25th so then the third quarter will start the day after on the 26th and then also school counselor

030week will run from monday february 7th to friday february 11th so just a special thanks to all the school counselors at the high school mrs burch mrs jolio mrs cintron henry miss mccabe and mission golo so then moving on to clubs so for national honor society um we had a very successful staff breakfast actually before break so all the way back december 22nd and we received a lot of emails from the teachers just letting us know that they appreciated us coming early to do that for them um also peer counselors are working right now to get the applications in for new councils and training for the upcoming year so we're working on that right now and also brookfield youth commission just one point we had um was that we're right now currently performing research and

031reviewing different anonymous reporting apps that can help school administrators be more informed in terms of different uncomfortable situations students may be in so they met with dr brill and mr blanda mr renda mr conklin all on tuesday to discuss the topic of anonymous reporting so that's currently just going around and being discussed and then finally with student government actually friday this friday we have an in-school field trip which we're going to meet with different leaders across the state which for it's called the connecticut association of school student leadership conference so that'll be this friday during the day and just again continuing to plan events for seniors juniors and the entire student body that's all i have for today so an in-school field trip is basically a zoom meeting yeah basically we all meet in mr

032bucky's room he puts on a zoom meeting and yeah that's about it all right that's cool so i was wondering if you had to get on the bus and ride around the block and then go back into school no that would be nice oh my right also that the seniors have been busily getting college applications finalized and submitted and all that fun stuff you do in your senior year definitely yeah i've got a whole bunch of applications that i put in and then obviously everybody else is also working hard on those too a lot of early applications and regular applications so yeah it's all going on well we pass on our best wishes to everybody who's applying to college and uh it's always a challenging and emotional you know process for seniors who are graduating

033and moving on to the next phase and waiting to hear back especially so good luck with yours in particular so thank you and ben do you know if there's any um anything special planned for school counselor week for students to you know recognize their counselors or do anything special for them deb i can i can share i'm going to step out i know it's a student spotlight piece but that's a conversation we've looked i had a meeting with student government today the executive board we met and i want to try to keep something secret but i can tell you we're going to absolutely recognize all different members of the staff from school counselors to paris administrative support staff everybody on the appropriate days school nurses so i'm really excited to work with student government we're

034gonna do some really cool things so that is coming absolutely i wanted and that's one thing that i highlighted because oftentimes i feel school counselors uh to come school counselor week um they often do a lot of self-promotion and holding you know you can go to their to their offices but we need to spend some more time really recognizing all the great work they do um so absolutely that's coming yep perfect thank you all right any any questions for ben uh ben i'm just gonna hold you to it i don't know if you're there yet but when you make your final decision where you're going you do have to share with the board that's part of the uh student representative responsibility i will definitely now yeah we're looking forward to it we are looking forward

035to it all right so uh thank you very much ben i appreciate that um the next up is uh written correspondence okay i have delania kellman wrote regarding kindergarten entrance and laura orban bunny tessier and leslie ruggiero wrote regarding policy 6563 which concerns challenged library materials okay thank you next is approval of the board minutes i will move that the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on january 5th and the public budget hearing on january 12th second okay it's been moved in second is there any comments edit suggestions okay hearing none all in favor of approving the minutes as written until it passes unanimously all right uh next up is our superintendent's update dr brill i'll turn the floor over to you all right thanks mr belden so um given the the presentation

036the spotlight tonight and uh program studies and the budget uh discussion i will keep my remarks brief i think the theme of the remarks for the most part is amazing collaboration between the town and the school district and so a couple of things outside of the realm of subcommittee reports and and other things you'll hear about tonight um the new youth officer has been hired by the police department it's going to be officer mitch heller we're excited for him to start um we're looking forward to it and we have to thank chief purcell he invited our elementary administration to be part of the interview process for the new youth officer so that was a great collaboration over the last month or so um in addition to that a very brief uh covet update for everyone

037um talking about collaboration um our fire marshal and uh working with our first selectmen we've been in touch with the state and demis they're actually putting in an additional order for us uh to help us with ppe um on top of that the school district received from the state uh phase two of test kits and masks we received 1895 masks and 1 890 test kits and so those are the test kits are certainly secured but they are disseminated to the schools for the nurses and or the administration to provide as necessary based on symptomatic or exposed faculty and students and then the the mascot for the most part been disseminated they're adult masks they were meant for adults so those have been disseminated more than three per staff member and we hold a little reserve

038just to make sure in case we're in a situation so um really some great collaboration going on there i have to thank everybody who was part of not only picking them up but bringing them back and getting them distributed they're really thankful um the next piece is the mbc meeting municipal building committee uh they've really been our main driver and partner in the building project and well i'm not gonna go deep into the building project itself because that's part of our old business on the agenda um just to let everybody know that um the nbc on february 15th happens to be a tuesday evening we'll be holding their regular meeting and techton architects will be there to do a full powerpoint presentation on the furniture and the board of ed is invited to hear that

039presentation and listen in and then from there on at the next board meeting on february 16th the board will be voting on the bid process going forward for the furniture for candlewood lake elementary so i want to put that out there to everybody it's exciting times and when we get to the uh candlewood lake update i'll share a little bit about our um gosh almost two hour meeting today finishing things up with mrs lavroshano and mrs diamond mrs baldwin uh pretty exciting times um in addition to that our uh 2020 2021 financial audit is complete for the full town but obviously that includes the board of education for both the town and schools it is a clean audit with no findings if anybody's interested in looking at the audit it is on the town website

040you're welcome to go take a look at the audit if you're so interested and then the last piece there was a couple of dollars if i could just add one thing to that sure um they at the last board of finance meeting and i attend those for the uh as a representative of the board of education um the town controller actually walked through the town audit and i have never learned so much about how the finances of the town work as i did listening to her walk through the audit report and so if anybody who's watching this is interested the video of the board of finance meeting is online and it's it's a worthwhile lesson right you learn about our assets our debt and you know what what what are the things we have to

041think about and uh it's just very useful so i just will add that as a comment no bob thank you you know what but you know i'm trying to i'm conscious of time but you it gives me pause and i'd be remiss if i didn't thank our finance director mr post our accounting uh supervisor mrs reynolds and of course the finance committee our board of ed finance committee and then certainly mrs marion for all the collaboration and work uh to to get us to a point where we really have such um strong financial uh in regulatory control it's it's um i think i think dr ruby talked about a dark tunnel six or seven years ago and and boy you know financially we all know the the where we were and scrutiny we were under

042and what what has become and that's been everybody's collaborative effort on the town side of that site it's just been incredible um extremely proud and then just the last thing i want to let everybody know thus far we've had two uh snow days so school cancellation emergency days so um there were some questions people wondering about the last day of school it's pretty easy we just add those on at this point uh in june so the last day had been monday the 13th of june um we had two days wednesday the 15th uh right now is the last day of school but we're in the dead of january right now so we'll see uh where we go from there especially with our delay tomorrow uh we'll see how the weather comes out but that's all

043i have mr belding i don't know if there's any questions thank you are there any uh any questions for dr burrell okay hearing none why don't we go ahead and move on the next section of our agenda is the subcommittee reports and why don't we start with uh finance and there's actually two reports on finance so mrs fernandez i'll let you give that report and um maybe do both of them at the same time yeah okay so on january 3rd during our special meeting we um discussed the 2223 operating budget um the most significant change to our budget um and i can't remember if we had discussed this in another previous board meeting but um we have a big change to to that budget and in the right direction um and we can uh reduce

044by approximately 164 000 and that's due to um a better estimate in our health insurance costs um the way that health insurance estimates are derived and ken you can jump in at any point if um to correct me but um we had built in a seven percent increase um which is the best estimate that at the time was derived from what the actuary state plus a half a percent and that's budgeted exactly the same way the town side does their health insurance estimates as well but recently ken was told that the insurance increase would be about three percent lower than it was originally estimated so still an increase but a slightly smaller one so we won't really know what that real number is until april but we as a committee and ken was comfortable adjusting

045our budget in that direction the town is doing that as well so you'll see actually a little bit later tonight that we're going to have more like a four percent increase in a health insurance cost as opposed to the seven um that alone brings the overall budget down by nearly half a percent so that was a really big um thing for the budget uh we also discussed uh finding potential savings elsewhere i'm seeing if we can scrub the budget any um anymore um also later in the agenda tonight you'll see some numbers related to the school calendar if that were to go to 180 days so we can save that discussion for then um and we also discussed and supported the transferring of an additional ten thousand dollars from our cafeteria fund into the operating

046budget now normally we transfer 30 000 every year but because school lunches are free this year that cafeteria fund is growing larger than it typically would and we felt an additional sum could be transferred into our operating budget that said it's important to note that what we could use that money for is extremely limited and specific but it does help with some of our expenses and then at our regular meeting on the 10th we reviewed the december financial report we are projecting at this point a surplus of almost 48 000 which is actually a lot smaller than the surplus that i reported at our uh last regular meeting the new expenses from last month that we note are more increases in regular and special education transportation we also reviewed some emerging issues so a few

047of the students who may be outplaced we have a few students that may be outplaced or that will not return to the district as we had hoped we're also seeing shortfalls or a potential shortfall in the excess cost grant money anywhere between 25 and 50. just keep in mind these are emerging issues yet so they're not in the financial in the actual financials yet and as you probably know our cost for substitutes is running high and that's an item that will get some more firmer numbers on by next month so all in all considering these potential issues that are on the horizon and our recent pattern of new unbudgeted expenses our 48 thousand dollar surplus isn't looking uh very comfortable so we may have to consider some budget balancing strategies as we end the end

048near the end of the year and that's all it great thank you any questions for rosa okay thank you rosa um next up is facilities joy good evening uh first thing i was elected chair of the committee so thank you sharon and bob we reviewed the school dude reports the water update at the middle school the phosphate injection system has been installed and is complete it's been signed off by the state but it's still open we have one more sample round of testing that needs to test for lead and phosphate and then the issue will be closed we went through all our capital projects the hvac at the high school the rfp has been issued but needs to be amended on january 13th there was a walk-through the high school locker room project this month

049the town will be um putting it out to bid there will be a meeting next monday with the town regarding this the middle school building management system is up and working properly the time and attendance system is working the first payroll went out successfully and just had only a few kinks the high school guidance wing roof and ac there's a meeting with the architect next tuesday to update the specs and everything needed to go out to bid the high school plumbing and fixtures replacement is ongoing security measures film dan is meeting with the contractor paving is going to be done in the summer and replacing the maintenance vehicle 50 was allotted but we're having a hard time finding a vehicle in that price range but more it's more of a supply issue than cost we

050also discussed the middle school wall winterization is nearly complete on january 21st it will be ready mr caldwell also reported that the engineer hired by the town is expected to provide us with specifications for restoration options by january 21st buildings condition study ken and dan are going to meet with the encore architect on january 11 to discuss scope of work bid specifications and cost estimates so we're waiting for that estimate what it will cost first developing the specs and scope of work uh the bha bhs roof over the main office john and ken we're going to meet with tara carr to discuss options to finance the necessary repairs it's going to be about 50 000 ish custodian staffing we have two open positions the high school night custodian resigned so that position is now open

051and has been posted we have two internal staff members who have applied and the huckleberry custodian is retiring so that position is open as well and has been posted and we the last update is the high school gym lighting project we replace 30 fixtures with led motion sensor lights they should be maintenance free they are brighter output and when not in use they go off after 30 minutes without motion so that project came in around 17 000 and our original fluoresce fluorescent lights cost about 10 000 just to maintain and fix what hasn't been working every year so that's very exciting and that's it unless anybody has any questions i will say they showed us pictures of the differences of the lighting in the gym it was astounding it was astounding so okay any questions

052for joy all right so next up is cape so we had our meeting uh january 12th uh mike murphy is pregnant uh present was mike murphy deb brooks rosa fernandez dr maureen ruby high school principal mark landa kevin hawley andrew hill uh dr liz spencer and debtors uh there was no public comment uh we elected our chair uh myself thank you deb and rosa our first presentation was by dr liz spencer she presented on the state mandated uh elective of african-american and latino course uh study course as well as the proposed uh change to human geography from 10th grade to 9th grade this change would happen over the next three years and the next presentation andrew hill presented us with changing a small change in the introduction to marketing program switching the one full credit

053to uh two half credit classes one being a social media marketing the other uh condensed down to just an introduction of marketing that was supposed to open up flexibility and scheduling uh we next had a presentation by uh kevin holly on the french program moving french cinema uh well renaming french cinema not really changing it to a 4-h to remove confusion with colleges and french 5-h to more of a class dedicated to [Music] focusing and stimulating the interest of post-secondary learning abroad which i thought was kind of cool who doesn't want to go to france uh kevin hawley presented on the esol textbooks from national geographic uh they are more uh age-appropriate to the grade that they're given to that's a nice update there and uh principal mark blanda gave a presentation on the changes

054to the program of studies for bethel or sorry brookfield high school sorry we're gonna slip there uh brookfield high school uh 2022 2023 uh and also gave a nice presentation on class rank uh and then we did a uh a review on the book that is being challenged uh we're going to invite um uh d pearson to our next meeting uh where we will probably bring that to a boat so that's it thank you so much um are there any questions for mike right hearing none why don't we move on thank you mike um next is equity and inclusion we met on january 13th um i am the chair once again thank you rosa and sharon mrs holly updated the committee on where things stand as far as the programmatic and the achievement equity work

055that we haven't begun yet after speaking with mr hill at bhs and principal belanda about how bhs is currently gathering some in-house data um it was decided that we'll begin by focusing on brookfield high school specific data first since we have it and we have mr hill in the building to work on it and sort of lead the way and hopefully pave the way as a basis for what we can do when we move forward with the rest of the schools after we first do our bhs focused work then we discussed the timeline of the presentations that we're currently working on which is the stakeholder equity and the teacher quality um and the format as to whether both groups will present at one board meeting or if we're going to split it up so we

056had a little discussion on that there's some valid points made for both and it's pretty divided so we're um mrs holly made a google form we're going to get some feedback from the group before we decide and she also reminded everyone that we are adding an additional slide to those presentations to explain the why so why we're focusing on teacher quality and why we're focusing on stakeholder equity then we went into our breakout rooms each of those individual groups to just continue to work on these presentations which is basically i probably said last meeting but i'll remind again are for basically four slides the why and then what we already know about this what we need to know and then next steps that we suggest to gather this information so each group will meet individually

057we've been meeting each of the stakeholder and the teacher quality groups meet individually between our regular equity meetings to work on these presentations some more and that's the plan and then we will gather back in february we're looking at hopefully maybe march april depending on what's on our regular meeting agenda too but we're hoping to have one or both presentations in that march april time frame it would be exciting to see some of the outcome of what the work the team's been doing so it's been a lot of study and work and you know a chance to come see all of us would be great okay any questions for amy all right hearing none thank you very much good report uh good progress the next up is the consent i will move that the board

058approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires transfers and the december financials second it's been moved and seconded and i guess we've double seconded it um so any discussion dr brill on the consent agenda this week having trouble unmuting sorry bob no thank you there's nothing okay and any questions from the board all right all in favor all right so we've moved through the core of the report out section of our agenda next we're up on new business um and uh and first up is the proposed uh revision to the program of studies which we had heard from uh mr murphy that was an item at the last cape meeting so um so we have a motion on this one yep i will move that the board approved the proposed revisions to

059the program of studies as recommended by the cape subcommittee assistant superintendent dr maureen ruby and bhs principal mark milano okay so it looks like i'm up uh it's that time of year where i get to uh talk to the full board after having going pretty in-depth with the subcommittee cape subcommittee last week in terms of our program of studies um just a quick recap to remind everybody what the program studies program of studies is about uh it is a process it is a document that is uh approved by the board of education uh every year it includes not only the bulk of the work uh in this particular document is the courses that we offer uh and and that will offer for the upcoming school year in this case uh 2022 2023 is what this

060particular program studies is targeted towards uh it also contains information uh in the beginning in terms of some of our policies about how we work through instructional curricular minimum credits things of that nature i did go in depth with through it with the cape subcommittee but there certainly are some highlights i find that's the most important thing to kind of go through with the board so that everybody is on on par with some of the changes or at least proposed changes that are are moving forward so um if anybody has any initial questions i'm happy to answer them other than that i can go through some of the uh the changes that i think are important to point out to the board so everybody knows that we're on the same page any questions or can

061i go forward all right looks like none i saw mr belden unmuted so i'm going to take that as i was just asked i was going to ask the same question if there's any questions from the board but i'm hearing non-linearity i don't have a question but just bob fyi we got two seconds on the last motion we got no second on this one so if somebody just wants to start joy second did it i saw her uh okay i think there's a little bit of a sound issue there so thank you sorry i'll i'll second this you need one on this one oh no no don't joey oh okay so i think the easiest thing to start is to talk about just some of the uh the general housekeeping pieces that are in the

062program of studies one of the things that's in there is in terms of credits and what the requirements are those are generally set forth by the state of connecticut and public acts in terms of how many credits kids need to graduate a minimum number of credits there were some redundancies there really was a line of unit this many credits to graduate and then we had you know two full charts explaining those credits so we did delete redundant language that was one of the first changes we made we also made a change to we had several grids because of a change over time to the incoming classes we had a grid that applied to one class and then a grid that applied to the three other classes now they're all on the same page so we're

063finally to a point where everybody in the school next year will have the same requirements um in terms of to graduate so we were able to take out one of those charts uh that doesn't apply to any students in the school after that uh i'm going to skip over the mastery based diploma assessment i'm going to come back to that one of the the nice additions that we did have that we found over time is that as students start to go through and pick out elective courses which things they're going to take in addition to some of the core classes that they take um they're not quite sure where they fall into categories and what does it count for because there is certainly opportunities within each subcategory of humanities and stem and career and life

064skills electives where students can choose to take other courses but they're not sure sometimes which ones fit for where so we actually added a grid that clarifies questions it was it was a very easy ad it was something that the school counseling department had been using internally amongst their conversations and it made sense to put it in there to link it to kids so that they can take a look and families and see well if i take this class it counts towards this uh it is a bit of a counting game to determine what they're looking to take and and how they want to meet those certain requirements but at least it's a much clearer picture and they can get an answer right away uh in terms of what electives count i'm going to skip

065class rank for a minute and talk about some other minor things i did add an ece ece stands for early college experience it's some of the collaboratives we have with uconn the university of connecticut early college experience they have a pretty stringent process for us to uh have a strong instructor that is certified through that is a certain level of education in a particular subject that has taken some preparatory courses and continues with professional development that actually allows us to uh give credit in a yukon transcript for kids if they earn a certain grade in certain courses uh what was happening is we have a couple different courses that are overlapped for example the one i use the most as an example is ap biology so you can actually take ap biology take the ap

066exam and get ap credit but you could also choose to take that for ece credit you know there's a line enough alignment between the ap curriculum and the yukon curriculum and we have a certified teacher so that gives students some options in some cases we just have ece courses they're not ap and there seem to be some confusion in terms of what counted as ece was it really an ap course we just added a logo a particular identifier that allows kids to go through to see which ones um are ece and some have both for example the ap bio is going to have both symbols in that particular section we did do some other additions that mike murphy did talk about earlier and what i would say is this process and i say this every

067year it gets a little bit easier um because we've really we work to find the the biggest bang for our buck what we're going to do that's going to make the makes the most sense that provides the most opportunity for our kids um and the great part is it's a collaborative work with the teachers as well as the department heads and the administrators that i work with to really come up with things and one of those things was introduction to marketing and social media marketing to half credit electives that we decided to propose to add and getting rid of business marketing and business fundamentals so here's the issue that we had we had a one credit marketing and business fundamentals course that's available through 9th through 12th grade students but fitting that course in taking

068up a full year really eliminated options for kids to take other things and looking at the current climate um you know we we felt that we could still achieve those marketing basics through introduction to marketing a very um a half credit class that students can take or you could also talk about social media marketing which is uh obviously it's i don't know if a merging is the right term because it's been around for so long now but it's it's cutting edge it's what kids are looking at um and you can still you can explore those topics and either one of those courses will prepare you give you options to funnel into the second level of marketing marketing too which we used to have a much bigger and more active deca program and this would actually

069funnel kids into that program a little more successfully and then you know really expand what we can do for for those kids in marketing so that to us um and being a half credit and no one could still get those introductory courses in and get kids interested in taking it is really going to expand our offerings and some interest so we're pretty excited about that uh it was a great reflection from the business department um and so that's why we made that change there were some deletions and this one is a little sad in some ways it's because we just don't have the staff to teach it yearbook was really a full year class it doesn't mean we're getting rid of a yearbook we're not getting rid of yearbook we absolutely are going to have

070a yearbook there's no concerns there it's really moving to a back to an after school program but we found that that one credit or even half credit course doesn't allow us to offer as many semesterized electives for art for for our kids so we have two art teachers currently on staff full-time art teachers um and we were looking to and they wanted to as do i expand opportunities and and really open up another section of classes for kids to take um those sequence and arts and arts so yearbook will still continue after school it's just not going to be a class and the other one that we haven't run in several years is ap art history i always hate getting rid of an ap ap course you know i think that college prep pieces is

071important for kids they have the opportunity to take the challenge is we don't have anybody that's certified to teach the ap art history course we also have not had a ton of interest really the ap course in the art department that is the most selected and kids do the most is the ap studio art which requires a more of a portfolio um and it can be done in either ceramics or you know in our our 3d or our 2d models we have really two pathways for kids to go through um to do ap studio arts so uh it made sense to take it out it doesn't mean that we couldn't add it back later on in in the future um but that would probably require um you know some additional planning and possible staffing i'm

072always looking for teachers i'm always gonna advocate for more when we come to it but i wanted to be transparent about that one of the other things that we have in math there was a course called math essentials that has been on the books for several years but we have never run it it's it's an antiquated course that nobody even signs up for it was more of a cleanup we still offer um in terms of introductory courses oftentimes we we coincide in algebra essentials with an algebra class um really kind of doubling up for some students that need that extra support as they transition to high school they're in algebra one on occasion so we do have a course that helps support students that are at that performance level but math essentials of course we

073have not run since before i got there so it was what that was more of a cleanup piece um in terms of social studies and once i get through social studies and world language i'll pause if anybody has any questions about these basic additions and deletions the state department of education is requiring that we offer a african-american black and puerto rican latino studies course it is something that is from the state legislature that is being put through the curriculum is developed through the state education resource center circ and we will be offering it it is a full year course so that will come that curriculum writing and work will continue that is something we are required to offer next year we will evaluate as we look at requests and see if it's a course we'll

074offer again this process is there are so many courses in the 73 five pages uh that we have of this program of studies we don't offer every course every year we do in this process look to see how many requests we have for particular courses and make decisions based on staffing as to which ones we're going to offer to satisfy the most requests that we get the other piece would be a change in sequencing uh you may remember a few years back we came to the board with a new um a sequence of a set of courses called global studies and human geography and the way it worked was global studies was in the 9th grade class and human geography was in the 10th grade and the proposed change really came is driven by the

075teachers in the department and the conversation with our department head dr spencer uh and looking to see what kind of sequence we have um and what makes the most sense in terms of skills prerequisite skills that are important for kids to have as they build on their sequencing so the new sequencing really goes would now go human geography global studies us history and then there's some electives after that um you know it's important to note that students can in fact in their ninth grade year if they choose to take ap human geography that is an introductory course so we have you know an ap human geography option for kids to take in 9th grade we we also have world history as an option for sophomores that corresponds with global studies so the alignment and the

076vertical alignment and the offerings across the board in terms of leveling makes more sense in terms of this this new sequencing so there'll be some some tweaking there at that point and then um dr murphy also talked about world language sequencing we had some some funky sequencing in terms of world language um you know we really had a level one a level two a level three and then last year we named level four just french cinema but people were asking what what level is that is that level four french is that level five french which level is it so it was really a clarification and then a really a holdover for years ago it was actually the one the program studies it goes right to level six spanish with no level five um it was

077a weird quirk i'm not entirely sure why that happened but it's something that we have looked at and now the sequence the proposed sequence goes level one two three level four friend cinema and level five and i'm i i apologize for the french um my french canadian ancestors would be um very disappointed in my pronunciation but it's la cultura francophone which is not even that might have been an italian accent i used i apologize but um that's the name of the course so as mike said it's really exploring into culture and travel and things like that so um it is a much more aligned and we're keeping those numbers one two three four five which is more informative to colleges as well as they look to review transcripts and see where kids are in terms

078of sequencing um that's the big ones i see that joy has a hand up so certainly um you know after joy if anybody else has any questions feel free and then i'll get into some other things that i want to bring up thank you how does the um the human geography and so for the current ninth graders how does that work with the rollout for next year that's a good question right so what does that look like so what what's gonna happen is so right now the current ninth graders are in global right and they'll take human geography next year they will take human geography so we're gonna run both 9th and 10th grade students will be taking human geography we'll have a lot of human geography going on um but that's how we're going

079to make that transition to to where we need to be we find that it's you know the level it builds on itself while the content itself from human geography to global studies is not a direct this is the first thing you do in the next thing the the the way the curriculum has been written and um and worked on and modified as we go through it it's really we talk in terms of skills that human geography gets us what we need for those freshmen when they come in and then they're better prepared for that next step for global studies whereas we found it was we are having issues and and not like horrible issues where things weren't going well but there was noticeable gaps for kids and so we wanted to make sure that we

080addressed that and it's a good hook human geography is such a relatable topic um in terms of of what we're learning what the kids are learning in the curriculum that that really hooks them into so it helps in a lot of different ways so that's a great question joy i forgot to bring that up thank you it even seems like geography should be touched upon every year really yeah well i think geography as a whole is is a lost you know um in a lot of different ways you know even in my house the kids don't know where it really is frustrating i remember memorizing state cat like we drove i was at annapolis this weekend and you know well that's the state capital of maryland of course you know that and kids like what

081i remember having to memorize you know state capitals back in the day i'm not saying we go back to memorization of state capitals but certainly awareness of the world um and geography around is important so thank you are there any other questions before we get into the topics that you skipped over from anyone all right hearing nothing all right so the two the two big ones and i'll start with the smaller of the two um it's really it's it's an important change um when i was at with cape uh several years ago as we've had conversations about what was capstone that event developed into a senior demonstration project um has been you know and at our conversation at cape last year we really talked about making this a course the senior demonstration project was going

082to be a course that we wanted kids to take challenges really come with staffing and how to make that happen given the requirements that we have for all other courses it really is is it's in a lot of ways starts with the staffing issue so how do we find a way to make that happen with our existing staff and still offer a robust program um across the board so that was the first roadblock that we ran into one of the second roadblocks that we run into is this you know i've talked about this before is unfortunate the pandemic and one of the the key components of the senior demonstration project was you know volunteerism or student internships and things along those lines there's a pretty robust expectation of what kids would do to be out

083in the community and do a project that also ties into community service later on but we're finding some challenges with you know getting kids out in the community to do some of these things the state law as it's written requires that students starting with the class of 2023 complete a mastery-based diploma assessment that's the actual language that's in the state statute um so that comes next year without an honest a really honest ability to to run a course like that would support that work we really need to flex to a mastery-based diploma assessment which can be met in several different ways and i've done a lot of research working looking at other districts and seeing some things they do i looked at you know been working with the connecticut association of public school superintendents caps

084has some great resources in terms of mastery-based learning uh mastery-based diploma assessments also the great school partnership is another affiliation that we work with that has a lot of fantastic resources and ideally what we want to do the whole concept of whether it was a senior demonstration project or what i'm proposing which is aligned to the language is a mastery-based diploma assessment which those four words don't mean a lot to most people it doesn't really even quite frankly mean a lot to me the mastery based piece is is the part that i'm focusing on in terms of diploma and assessment um it's tied to the diploma but what we're looking to do is really create um to take a look at our our three academic expectations that we have at brookfield high school um and

085have students develop a portfolio over the course of their senior year that demonstrates so this is outside of um you know a class assignment that they would um create uh or do it would to show that they've over time learned to master these or at least come close to mastery or at least shown growth over time in the areas of research critical thinking and communication right those are the three things that our community has identified as some of the critical academic pieces that kids need to be successful right now we don't measure that well a portfolio right with with a process and a rubric to go through to help kids select pieces the reflection of identifying here's here's here's how i can show growth over time and show that i've learned or moved towards mastery

086on this particular piece um is invaluable for students to go through that process so that they can show and really self-reflect there's a reflection piece on this of course across the board that they've learned to develop those really three really important skills that we've said outside of the general grades in a class and performance on sats and those sorts of things if we truly value the student's ability to communicate critical thinking critical think and problem solve then we have to have something like that that shows um to be a portfolio of some sort that they're going to create i would work with my administrative team and teachers over the summer to develop the the rubric and outline for that plan um and work with through our ilts which are grade level based so you have

087like 12th grade ilt next year um and the support that exists from that natural structure will help kids to develop a portfolio over time where this where i see this going longer term um is we have we can start to collect pieces um and working with jackie whiting who is one of our um our k-12 uh technology integration i i'm not going to remember her title i always mess it up when i say it but working with jackie whiting has been very rewarding and very informative and looking at how we make this a digital portfolio that follows kids over time you think about when we start looking at the application process for colleges or the application process for a job or a career the importance of having a portfolio of work i think it's something

088that we all know when you go to an interview when i go to my principal interview the first time i came to work i had a portfolio of work that showed things that i had done that demonstrated i was able to master these things right now we send students out with a transcript that says here's the classes i completed and here's maybe a resume but to have something whether it be in hand or digital that shows a reflection over time that is a collection of their own work i think is is a fantastic way to really demonstrate that kids have learned and worked towards mastery of those particular um you know problem solving skills critical thinking and communication so um that will be done all in house there's no additional work from um you know

089in terms of requests for extra money or things like that we all have the ability in-house to do that work uh and support that we will also have some alternative pathways certainly for kids um that may struggle uh to work through that um you know and that's uh that's something i'll be working with our school counselors um special education staff um for any students that and just general education and those kids that may struggle through that um to help create a portfolio we'll be able to identify those pretty early on to make sure that they can meet that requirement to so they can graduate i know rosa you had your hand up first so yeah so i was as you were talking about this digital portfolio it kind of made me think that maybe this

090is something that might be good for beyond high school is not beyond after like beyond before high school um is that anything that you've talked about with um jackie like you know extending it into eighth grade or seventh grader earlier you know there there is there is certainly a piece in terms of you know we start talking about student success planning and what that looks like at the middle school level when kids start planning for their future um you know that i think there's a way to leverage both of those things right to start have kids in the middle school start to prep and plan i know jackie is working doing some portfolio work conversations at the elementary level i can't speak on those necessarily maybe dr ruby who has her hand up might be

091able to speak more to that um but the process of creating a portfolio is is so rewarding and so eye opening into your own set of skills and what you're capable of doing and identifying you know here's some areas that might be weak out here's some things i'm great at too it's not always weaknesses which i think is a skill that we can translate from middle all the way through and beyond um and to have it collected like we have the technology in terms of you know the the use of google it's amazing and look mary rose so at the elementary level we're piloting portfolios with first graders yeah so i'll let those people kind of talk a little bit about that because i think it absolutely does feed into where we go one of

092the things one one of the things that we discussed when we were looking at the um the coaching model and bringing in a technology integration coach was the um the vision of having a k-12 um portfolio a digital portfolio and we you know through it you know we got a lot of stuff going on this year and so you know that was broached with uh principles and mary rose um you know decided to work with um it's it's easiest to get the children into doing this when they're young and then have it grow up as they go through you know because you can't do everything with everybody at the same time so that work is actually being done and i know that people hate um edu jargon but you know it exists and part of

093the edu jargon that people may hate is very important it's um that self-navigating learner concept and we've been harping on that you heard about it tonight and this the digital portfolio really provides us with a with a vehicle for teaching students to take control of their own learning and be researchers and collaborators and communicators like mark is talking about we want them to be at the end of their journey and to be able to demonstrate that and do that in at a very young age so they're building their skill set they're not all of a sudden oh my god we're we're brookfield high school we have to suddenly do this project and we have to fulfill all these requirements but starting them in a digital portfolio and it's video because their um skill set whether

094they're english learners or in or english is their native language at that age their um their uh oral language is you know much more proficient than their written language and so they're doing videos and they're speaking and they're also writing you saw a demonstration of that but they will be able to create their own pathway and as mark said we want kids to be able to reflect on their own learning to own errors and not see them as um you know like bad marks but see them as part of growth and be able to see things that they do that aren't as you know as advanced as they might want to be and be able to pick out what was good about that what needs to change and then to be able to iteratively improve

095their pieces over time and so that's we started that work and i have no doubt that i see dean turn his camera on so he must want to say something um that that is going to continue um as we as we move children through the grade level so i'm going to shut up now and turn it over to dean no no i just wanted to say because you said a correlation from eighth grade you know moving up would be we also do uh we we work with naviance which then flows right into the high school our counselors and their counselors have been on the same page with that and we start to do the students here start to do career clusters career inventories um we've had career um people come in with it from the

096community come in and do a career day uh but the last two years as you could imagine it's been canceled we haven't been able to do it um but we did do some video type career um things with the students but that is something that we have been doing for a while and that whole idea of what are the what are their strengths what you know what are some of the things that they need to work on through whether it's through a writing piece or um you know something that they could put together even in art if they wanted to um would be something that they could upload and then move along as they go to high school to figure out what are those areas that they might want to look into for some of

097their elective classes and things like that um so that is still a part of what we do yeah and i think like dean said he highlighted something important like in terms of art there's multiple ways to demonstrate these skills it doesn't have to be a classic we do this in english and this is the only class we do this in we want the skills to be transferable across content so kids having the opportunity to to develop and show that um you know we'd be working with the seniors next year um and then probably the year before and then the following year for uh 23-24 i'll be we'd be looking to expand the process you know down to juniors into seniors just continue to build that capacity um so it's it's it's such an important skill

098um i'm seeing it much differently than i did before it doesn't take away from the opportunity for kids uh certainly to have internships to go out in the community it's there are ways to absolutely do that outside of um you know and that may be more connected directly to some of their career and um and life skills things they're looking to do post-graduate but this is where right now i think where we need to be uh for at least next year and as you can see we're not on cruise control we continue to change the program of studies and look to see what makes the most sense where we are and not just sticking with something because we say oh that's the way it should be it's always been let's try something different um this

099is a pretty radical proposal um in terms of where we've been but i think it's the the best way to make it happen next year given the unknown constraints of a whole bunch of other things and still worthwhile for our graduating students you know our current juniors our seniors next year all right are there any other questions on this item we're gonna move on to the next one all right all right thank you thank you for that so and this one i ask you just kind of bear with me um this might be somewhat radical to some people it's actually not as radical as it may seem the reason that is included in the program of studies because it really is how we operate the the term class rank has been um part of our

100lexicon in many high schools for many years perhaps it was where you were when you graduated high school um i'm proposing that we eliminate class rank basically um starting with the current freshman so the last class that would have it would be 20 24. so the classes of the current sophomores will be the last one we have not done a ranking for ninth graders um and my proposal generally is that that happens uh i have a very i'll go through very short presentations just so you can see it because i think it's important to hear some of the bullet points and i don't want to miss any of them so eric i can share my screen so i'm going to do that now let's see if i can do this the way i let's see

101and i can now hide controls hide floating meeting controls and theoretically hopefully you all see my screen correct about eliminating okay great go thank you um this i brought to the i had a conversation with kate last year about this particular idea and this just gives you an idea as to why um this is one of those things when i said you know we don't we don't rest and say it's great for all of us it was great for us then let's look forward and say what what works more for kids now these are some of the reasons why i propose eliminating class rank at brookfield high school and i'm going to go through each one of these pieces very quickly but certainly available for questions this is work that i did with uh our

102college and career counselor shannon longarello who every time i get a chance to plug uh the work of the college and career counselor i will continue to do so uh she's fantastic and i even got a note from a parent today about our interim who's sitting in for her how helpful this person was the parent didn't know how to navigate the college process and our interim um musician gold mr gola was fantastic and i got a great email so but these are some of the conversations that she has with her counterparts um that i've been having with other principals as well so let's just talk about them relatively quickly the first one is diminished importance in college admissions and i'm going to show you a graphic um it's not as important as it used to

103be or at least people perceived it to be i think we all have a we do have a false and by we i mean a collectively have a a perception of how important um class rank is this information and i will certainly it's a little blurry because it was a screenshot you can see here um across percentages of colleges attributing different levels of importance to factors and admissions decisions so you look at this first time freshman in fall of 2017 so this is a little older data i have some newer data as we get closer but look at where class rank falls you know i want to say it's around ninth in terms of level of importance you can see almost 20 27 of colleges said that class rank or 28 as of no importance

104at all at all and another 34 say was limited importance that comes to 62 of colleges consider class rank to be of limited or no importance and the ninth most important factor all those other things that come above it you know you see it's interesting you see portfolio on there right um which is interesting but it's something you see teacher recommendation counselor recommendation grades and courses college prep the rank the relative rank for where a student is doesn't hold as much importance as it used to this is another set of data that shows a little bit this more longitudinally over time from fall 2007 to fall 2018 you can see this is percentage of colleges attributing considerable points so they asked these colleges you know where did classrooms class rank of considerable importance in 2007

10523 of colleges surveyed said it was considerable importance by 2018 it's down to nine right so in terms of college admissions where a student ranks is not as important as many other factors that are there you see things the one that blows my mind the most if you look two below class rank demonstrated interest right and so what demonstrated interest is that students have gone to college fairs they've connected with college admissions officers that to them is more important than which demonstrated commitment is just an interesting thing that we need to teach our teenagers but commitment and interest is more important than where you rank in your class academically so if colleges aren't necessarily seeing this as the most important factor there is there are certainly ways they'll talk about later that we can still

106recognize academic performance i'm not saying we don't recognize the academic performance of our students there's just different ways we can do it that are a little more um i think appropriate the other piece is there's variable factors so no matter how much i try as you can imagine in any school and those of you that have been in school they're grading policies how an individual teacher grade something in in a building you know or across departments or just individual teachers they're going to look at things a little differently i can't say that the grade that i got that i give for a student in one class of my honors biology class is the same grade that joy is going to give a student in her honors biology class there's just inherently differences um you know

107and what happens as a result of that when we look at how to to come up with this this arbitrary rank in so many ways um we do find that students in competitive high schools have a high gpa but a lower class rank right and then we have other schools that are less competitive um have a lower gpa but a much higher rank so it's an arbitrary number gpa doesn't it's not universal across the board you can have a student who has a 4. 4.97 gpa in one school and is is 15th in their class and you can have the number one kid in another school because they wait on a different level have a 3.98 and they're one's number one one's number 15 their gpas are vastly different so and with weighted courses it's

108just there's so many different factors the other piece is it lacks contextual information every time we send out a transcript electronically to a school which we do every year when students apply we always have to include our our school profile so you can't compare an a in world history to an a in worlds in brookfield to an a in world history in fairfield or at danbury or at newtown they use our school profile and take a look at what is offered and this is what goes out so it's a general school profile which talks about give some important statistics it's really more about the school itself than sometimes the grades the kids earn which is very interesting so being able to offer the things that i bring to you tonight in the program of studies

109that shows all those different advanced courses and certainly there's some information here on test scores absolutely but a grading scale this is what they use to kind of normalize they need to find a way to compare so every college university has a different process of doing it but you can't simply take student a from one compared to student b from another high school it doesn't work they could have identical grades but they are not the same student based on academics alone so you have to really look into the numbers i think the part that really for me is one of the most important things is it creates unnecessary pressure for students and families we have kids that don't take courses that when they come in their freshman year or they plan to take other courses

110they'll avoid taking that ceramics course or that second ceramics course a student could get into ceramics one fulfill their art requirement and absolutely love working with clay and they take they self-select them out of that opportunity during the school day to continue their their path in art because it's an academic weighted course not an honors course and i want to get those extra points to get to a higher gpa to get to a higher rank it it doesn't nearly carry the same amount of weight that it used to in terms of class rank and it really limits our opportunities for kids we have the kids that are all taking the same courses i'd like to find a way to diversify that so that kids could take different courses and feel comfortable to expand a little

111bit more and not be as worried about where is my um how will my gpa suffer even if i get an a in an academic course the other part is we typically and and this is this is a tough one right we typically i'm the one who brought in the top 10 uh scholars dinner right where we recognize the top ten so i don't want anybody to think that i take this lightly in terms of my reflection and things that i haven't thought of i've thought about this realistically even though we recognize a bunch of students at the scholarship night when it comes to our students in terms of recognition with class rank we only recognize the top 10. between 10 and 11 there can be thousandths of a point difference they can nearly statistically

112take almost the same cl same classes across the board and because somebody got an a minus versus an a and a course one's number 10 one's number 11. you look at those kids and say wow there's a lot that went into that minus versus that straight up a is it really fair um so one of my proposals right and this is where um i think it's important to recognize student achievement is go to a latin honor system right to move to um laude magna laude and summa laude based on percentage take instead of have an arbitrary one like a one through ten set like you can only recognize ten kids you look at the percentages in the class let's recognize the top 25 percent 15 and 5. that number can change every year gpas are

113relative a relative shift you know and i looked at what would happen if with the graduating class of last year of 2021 if we went to a latin system instead of recognizing 10 kids in you know whether it be publicly in the newspaper or whether it be something we do at graduation in the program or there's another scholarship night instead of recognizing 10 kids we'd recognize 56 kids 22 kung lao 22 magna laude and 11 uh summa laude and then one of the other questions is what do you do with valedictorian and salutatorian well going back to latin roots and i know because i did take latin for four years um so magister would be very proud of me that i'm coming back to my latin roots when i talk about what we do with

114latin um you know valedictorian salutatorian wale in latin means goodbye salutations salutatorian means hello it was an arbitrary thing that was created to who talks first and who talks last so yes it became the first and second in the class but they had to come up with some delineation so that's really what it means to me more importantly if there is a way to apply and vote and have a committee review or the kids themselves the student body pick the student who's the most representative of their graduating class that is the way to go rather than valeditorian sleditory we would still have to identify a one and two because colleges like uconn for example will still offer a full ride to the number one and the number two student in the graduating classes but that

115may change over time i think it's a better representation it doesn't take anything away from the efforts of the of the students we're still going to have kids that perform at the higher levels they'll be recognized for it and then we take some of that that weight off we still have student speakers they represent better represent the class and sometimes it may be the kid who ends up being who would have been the first in the class is chosen that's entirely possible that student may be the best representative for that class they may not be but we're going to give some voice back to students and some choice the other thing is is i always look um to see what my neighbors are doing right i don't have these great ideas on my own all

116the time sometimes i look to other people to see what they're doing um and i took a look at some of the higher performing schools and while i try not to compare ourselves to everybody everything is relative it is interesting to me that over time schools like new canaan wilton fairfield both ludlow and ward staples in westport trumbull newtown massac and pomparog they don't use class rank anymore they haven't used it so um that's basically my presentation these are some of the resources and i'm happy to share with the board so they can see this particular presentation and i will stop sharing but really i think overall this process benefits students um it opens up opportunities it eliminates an unnecessary competition that really doesn't that doesn't get them anywhere it doesn't change the ability or

117the the the close-knit group of kids that may be at the top of their class we're still recognizing kids but it really is a diminishing it really does not matter as much for college admissions as we used to as i used to think as well speaking of someone who was just outside the top well maybe i'd telephone maybe a little more than outside the top ten but it was i remember being upset when i realized oh i was i'm not gonna be one of those top 10 kids in school um that has changed over time so it's in the program studies because it's a core uh concept for how we uh have done things in the past and it was important to put it out there um so i'm certainly open to any questions um

118i know members of the cape subcommittee have heard heard this and i know uh like for like joy i know heard this conversation last year um and we have some new people on board this year so i'm certainly open to any questions concerns any anything i'm happy to answer and talk through and talk about options all right i'll raise hands and i'll uh i'll do any questions people have hey bob just a comment i think mark did a fantastic job of that presentation um yeah i just uh speaking for one who thought that was a really stupid i mean i i wasn't really you could say it sorry mike we were talking about that you know at first we're like what what yeah i joined i was like is this is this a thing like

119it so it really the rationale and everything really i love the objectivity that the data everything's great i have to say that mike mike actually said you know the first time i heard you talk about this i thought this guy is crazy i could vouch for that you might you did you did you did say that mike you did i did i don't know i i i own it uh yeah well he must have been talking to my wife because she thinks the same thing so well i will just jump in and say as a parent of two children who were number 11 in the class um i'm all for this right because i like the thought of recognizing more and having broader things i'm not a 100 percent sure i'm a fan of removing

120the valedictorian because i always think that's a mark of very high distinction right and and it carries a history in a in a school um but i like the general construct of class rank is less important and broader recognition is is a stronger way to go involves more kids and it doesn't draw those hard lines right you can you can you can be a little bit more um you know you know that guy that person who's number 11 or number 26 it still could get an honors right because they're in the next grouping down right right and i and i've seen it and and so you know when we calculate class rank when we do that we calculate you know the five bel you know the 11 through 16 we go back course by course

121grade by grade you know to make sure and when you're sometimes you're talking thousands of a point and depending on how a student did in their first semester their senior year with a class that it's unbelievable a minus to a to just a straight you know a middle of the road a versus an a minus can change students by you know so you're talking the separation is just um you know and so the proposal here talks about i'm just eliminating class rank um you know the the other part of recognition is not a part of that that's certainly something we can have a conversation about down there you know as we move forward in the coming years in terms of recognition of valedictorian there's a lot of different ways that we can do that for

122me the important part was to put it out there as as a way that we could approach things at brookfield high school and then you know depending on where the board sees this going and if it passes or we have additional conversations there would be multiple information nights for parents that with school counseling staff to help them understand the change and why it's important and what this looks like for them including inviting college admissions officers to be a part of that conversation because i they can hear it from me but they may not not that they don't believe it but it's so ingrained in so many different ways of our society that class rank is so important so that's part of the rollout but we do have some time to make that happen so right

123i really appreciate you listening you'll still be calculating grade point averages and things like that correct oh yeah we're still gpa is not going to go away so we'll still use that because that is a point um and it's not going away like with this graduate we're talking about the current freshman before we've done any numbers we haven't run any numbers there's no class rank so it's not like you're pulling it out from underneath somebody if the students felt they were number 12 and i could have gotten up there there's been no calculation for the the current ninth grade class uh for that to happen so any other comments discussion points guys i for one like all right any other points you'd like to bring up um mr belanda before we uh take a vote

124on the program of studies i i just appreciate you listening to me and you know even if you can keep it to yourself you thought i was crazy first you know and then it's changed your mind i just appreciate the openness of the board has always been there to listen to proposals and suggestions or thoughts i might have and give feedback i really appreciate it um yeah that's all i have i just want to say that when that when apple does its new commercial on the crazy ones i think mike is gonna volunteer to have you be a part of that you know the commercial i'm talking about right all right so we've got a motion on the table it's been moved and seconded that we approve the proposed revisions of the program of studies

125as recommended by cape and dr ruby and principal belanda any further discussion okay all in favor aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously congratulations mr blandon well presented very well done um thank you for your leadership and creativity thank you so much for listening i appreciate it thank you thank you very much mark well done tonight okay so next on the agenda and we're moving on to old business we had uh we had tabled the school calendar until uh tonight so there's a motion on this item i will move that the board continue the discussion and approve the 2022-2023 school calendar as recommended by superintendent dr john grill do i have a second second okay so we've gone from two to kind of one but nobody heard it to to having to go just a

126second now uh man we gotta get into the the designated seconder um the uh all right so it's been moved and seconded uh dr bro would you like to leave the discussion sure just to start off and i think there was definitely some feedback uh when initially proposed and uh some feedback earlier this week uh so happy to have conversation um basically basically with the calendar there were two two uh it was a very traditional calendar in most ways in terms of the winter break the spring break um the short winter break uh meaning the february break um and professional learning days and so forth um it was my you know recommendation to the board for two specific uh differences uh for the year one was specifically about increasing our uh existing four early dismissal

127plc days um to adding three more of those and i know we had some feedback and some thoughts on on that particular proposal and then the second proposal um was specifically around accommodating and making uh the practical work uh with fiscal responsibility in regard to the mid-year move of the huckleberry faculty and students from huckleberry in the mid-year time around the what we anticipate will be the winter break time over to the new school candlewood lake elementary and so uh part of that proposal was moving um to to make it work within budget from a 182 day student year to just for next year a 180 student year student day year which is the state mandated requirement of 180 days so those were the two really big issues that i think perhaps um some board

128members might have a little further conversation so did you get into specific input on those two and what's your again or your reaction to the inputs you got from people well i think there was just question on is this and we could go back to december 15th that was the last time we talked about this was is it the right time to increase the early dismissals um for collaborative time i think the board and certainly the educators value that collaborative time with our faculty to plan for students review student assessment data plan for differentiated instruction work with our technology integration specialist gives us more time for that at certain checkpoints in the year um and so those we thought would be needed we currently have four of these early release days we used to have

129five it was reduced a few years ago and we just stuck with the four days um the other piece to it was we've had them kind of typically on fridays that are against longer weekends and the thought was to move them from the these proposed seven days or keeping it before whatever the board ultimately decides and we talk that through from fridays to wednesdays and what that would do is you know most will recall that several years ago we worked with negotiations with the teachers to add an hour uh on wednesdays so almost every wednesday during the years about 30 meetings during the year where we have collaborative time after school for an hour with the teachers and so the thought was if we have an early release on a wednesday which many of our

130neighbors uh chose the middle of the weekday because they also have these meetings um you get more continuity because you have that extra time and you're not so short on time and you get you get that extra hour with the teachers and there's just more time once you get into the flow of thinking and planning and working you just have more time to get get that work done so that's that's the plc part i i don't know if we want to take this holistically or a piece at a time um so okay anyone want to start discussion i can start if you'd like i was gonna say we could start with the plc days i think that's uh the easier aspect to tackle um you know i wrote john and said that um i didn't

131feel that now was a good time because we needed to you know capitalize on more instructional time and having our students in the classroom you know and design a you know calendar that's least impactful on our students and having that in the middle of a week on wednesday i know kind of leverages for the teachers um it's a disadvantage for the students um it's really breaks up the continuity of the week it seems very disruptive for students having it on wednesday right in the middle of the day it's hard on the families who have to arrange for you yeah my problem with it is the combination of the two you know taking a year where you're going to shorten the school year and then shorten it further by taking more learning time away from the

132kids it's just to me it just didn't seem like the right timing for the discussion and i don't like it in the middle of the week either to be frank because it's hard for parents and hearts for families so yeah but i i also agree i just think uh the kids missed out on enough instructional time over the past probably two years now at this point um that we probably should leave that alone and you know just so everybody knows in our planning that wasn't that was part of the discussion you know and it was you know weighing and bringing that forward to the board for exactly this discussion john are some of the half days that are on the calendar already that we that we typically have are i believe some of those are

133half days like before a holiday let's say are those half days for teachers as well or are they i think just just the one before thanksgiving is the only one right that the teachers have that in the in the one before um before christmas eve is typically the two half early dismissals that do not have a plc attached to it okay and then we have early release days of course for conferences based on the way the teacher day and teacher contract works so i mean and i wrote this i wrote this to dr brill as well but um i am also not um right now in favor of taking any more instructional time away from students when i heard it it just kind of just was like oh it was just kind of like something

134that was like more time being taken away out of and they need to be in school i mean they've had a really rough couple of years a lot of students missing a lot of school and so i feel like every minute in school is just precious right now um so it just kind of my initial gut reaction was just like oh no not more school but i would i don't know if it's possible um you know i would support you know massaging the calendar a little bit so that you could get maybe a couple extra half uh half days for teachers maybe that means those are you know full days for teachers before thanksgiving or christmas eve and that's not that's not going to be a popular opinion but um you know if if that

135kind of prep time or time is needed for those teachers you know that might be something at least until we can revisit this topic maybe that's something that we could do yeah and you know without getting into the the tales of woe i i definitely know that uh for any of us against the holiday is something you know we all loathe to to you know while being creative and brainstorming i get it but that's something i don't know that would be something that would get it would be productive time or yeah but but i understand you're brainstorming coming up with ideas the um so like i said that wasn't lost on us in the conference the leadership conversations about bringing this forward and um you know like i've said this is something just like mr

136vallanda talked about that he talked to kate last year about the class rank issue so um i'm wide open to the thought process of uh several of you have articulated that this might not be the right year for this but it's definitely something i um depending on the board's appetite and the board adopts the calendar um and we can make adjustments tonight we can you can give me some direction and even assign a board member to work with me in the interim and we can bring this back on the 16th of february to adopt all depending on what the board would like to do we continue to have that conversation um but as always wide open to board feedback uh in consideration of our context and where we're at so we talked about the plc

137days any inputs on the 180 days given the scenario of doing this transition uh the big huckleberry transition uh this year which we talked about at length that our last time we discussed this we want to end that the other discussion first it seems like maybe we should tackle that and then tackle that i mean they kind of go together so but uh i mean i i throw if you want to end that one i for one am not in favor of increasing the number of plc days and i'm not in favor of doing them on wednesdays yeah i just see them as two separate entities but okay they're definitely related but um that's my video i don't know how everybody else feels anybody else have a differing opinion let's go go there i think

138we ought to continue down the path on on the on the plc days all right hearing none let's go on to the 180 and we will we'll deal with emotion as a whole when we get back to the motion so how about uh input on the 180 days versus 182. so maybe i could just start just to get a brief summary out there as a reminder for everybody so with the mid-year move we've got a couple things to consider um the mid-year move involves a good deal of time for our huckleberry faculty and staff but we're really talking faculty here to pack up classrooms and some offices obviously but classrooms um although we'll have movers contracted and so forth there's there's lots in a classroom in the middle of the year mind you um to

139pack up and move and have it moved and then have a second time where we really need to have a day for teachers to set up their classrooms for students to arrive in an organized efficient and happy place to make sure everybody's prepared to receive the students at their new school and so we built a a calendar that still provided us with our professional learning days that we traditionally have that are necessary throughout the school year teachers work up to 187 days in their contract that's what's been budgeted in the 2223 uh superintendent's budget proposal and so working within those days planning for all the faculty but specifically around huckleberry grades two three and four having a day to move before the winter break and a day after the winter break to set up classrooms

140and then subsequently having time built in for the grade five teachers from wisconsin the center school staff to have a pack up time at the end of the year and building in professional learning on those days as well it's all articulated in the memo i put out on the 15th but just giving big picture here where we would utilize the time for the other half of the faculty that aren't involved in the move on either end of the year or in the middle of the year for professional learning our principals and leadership team would obviously plan accordingly with input from the faculty at that particular time of year what's specifically needed so that's in a nutshell what the the plan was and it would be a one-year proposal for the 180 days not um and

141then turn around right away the following year in 2324 and get back to the 182 days so two questions i have um one is what are the specific duties of the movers what are they going to be exactly responsible for so um you know i am as a teacher responsible for putting my items into a box and then they are taking the boxes or are they literally stuffing the boxes so the bid has not even been put together yet joy but so i'll give you my best understanding of this through the nbc and the architects is that the teachers were packing all of their instructional supplies curriculum supplies um other manipulatives and scissors and interior desk supplies all the things they have in their classroom if they have bulletin board supplies they'd be packing those

142and there'd be a specific list for the teachers exactly what they would be responsible for the movers actually move the boxes and any furniture that we're taking with us to the new building um of course everybody knows we talked about at the beginning of the meeting there will be new furniture in all the classrooms and offices and so forth but there are a list that we actually work with today i'll talk about that a little bit later of of items that do need to be moved so the moon's removing those pieces of equipment uh whatever those equipment pieces are furniture as well as the the boxes that offices and classrooms pack okay so so given that this is not like a district-wide impact right it's just impacting current what the initial plan is you know

143grade two three and four is there a way you know we can leverage that and um provide time for those three grade levels you know uh like i suggested in the email like a non-instructional rate pay i don't know if you've spoken with the union um say three hours um you know and i'm just going back to when i was a fifth grade teacher and when i had to pack up my classroom and move to middle school yeah joy there's am i jumping in too quick did you have more to say i apologize gonna say um not discounting trust me i know all that classroom teacher has um and a lot i'm sure will be thrown out hopefully um gather a lot through the years and i've got to give the the faculty and our

144uh melissa i'm not i'm not sure where our fifth grade team is right now uh middle school they tend to have a little less in the classrooms than in elementary uh but i know melissa and mary rose been working with their faculty over time on the purging portion of things you know things that they aren't going to be necessarily moving everybody knows they're going to be moving so that's been kind of naturally happening over over time but what i would say is in working with the teachers union um uh and again anything we do needs to to be negotiated with a teacher's unit but definitely they they uh talking with mr petrino they are open to that kind of concept that you just talked about joy so if if we were to budget more dollars

145in the budget to compensate teachers for their time outside of the day and we didn't use it as a regular day where we shortened school year for uh packing purposes say you know you use three hours as an example but time we were thinking more in the in the area probably four hours to be honest with you um that teachers could put in over let's say from after thanksgiving recess to the winter recess over time to get themselves ready because we'd be able to give them a memo with direction of exactly what to pack and here's your boxes here's your labels you know those kind of things and on their own do that and compensate them for the time that is something we definitely can consider um the one thing though and having a conversation

146with the teachers union was kind of the the moving in and setting up the classroom that isn't something necessarily that you you could do in an hour here or not we're there i mean we really have a pretty definitive line in our timing where we're not going to be able to either have have school or depending on where this conversation goes for a day where we can use our time wisely and and let the team set up uh the rooms and ready to go and this is really an enigma it's a mid-year move so there could be a combination of the idea you were talking about and kind of what i proposed i think there might be some room to have that uh discussion um and go back and count the days and you know

147make sure we're within contract and then go work with the teachers union so again it all depends on the board's appetite and where they are with my specific recommendation um and then if there's any direction you might want to provide it's a tough time a year to be asking people to do it on overtime even paid right people had a lot of pressures in their life about organizing around holiday holidays whichever holiday you celebrate right it's a tough time of year yeah so um i hate to say it right if you could if you could pack it over you know some time here and there over three weeks right maybe that's perfectly doable but it's uh i for one i'd rather take the time and do it right and as you've proposed here bob did

148you have the numbers i know you said it wasn't much but budget savings wise if we do eliminate those two as well well 20 to 25 000 right it's not a huge number it's and the only place you save any money is hourly employees right who uh that you know it's not really a teacher savings what the proposal is actually would take it around the other way we would end up not getting the savings and we would add an added cost right for the overtime right so i would argue it would go from being uh slight savings to a slight extra cost right in the budget so if we did it on overtime any other comments or discussions i think it's a creative way to handle a challenging situation i don't think two days you

149know it's not the best but i don't think two days are going to make or break the school year for one year so i'm in favor of it anyone else you know one thing i didn't share and i just wanted to put this out there i don't have um i didn't take a deep look at it but i understand from uh dr constantino out of new fairfield they have a big renovated new project um and they're they um are planning for a mid-year move as well and they took considerable amount of time extra for the winter break to build in some time it was i think it was a few days that that week at the beginning of january so you know these are vexing situations and we all have to look at our context

150and work and try to give a heads up to people and our families as well you know and our faculty and staff as to what it might look like so um so it's such an exciting time at the same time there are inconveniences that we we do have to face and think about okay what what happens at the other schools um while the huckleberry team is doing their packing and setup uh are they doing actually professional development work in other schools so we would plan professional development uh work bob and i wouldn't be able to predict right now on you know mid-year what that's going to look like but it would be on the real-time data um or particular project uh whatever it might be um at that time that would be necessary and knowing

151the calendar ahead of time in advance our principals can plan that and start looking at the year with their teacher leadership teams as the you know this time of year doing x is going to make most sense for us so why don't we start preparing for that whether that's inviting someone in to work with them or uh spend time you know with student data or instructional coaches whatever it might be portfolio work like we talked about tonight you know there's a host of things that we can spend time on okay so i don't have any doubt that would be very productive how does the team feel about um allowing the other schools to operate and not have pd during that time and just not having students attend huckleberry does have 180 days at huckleberry not

152180 days across the district correct what do you think about that john the reason i proposed it the way i did is i thought we try to keep a uniform calendar for the families for those families that have children across the various schools and grades so the kids i got that man that was where i was coming from thinking of families so i just don't think it's a hard concept to kind of matt we manage it with early dismissals you know like early dismissals at different times at different schools um i mean people still ask what time lunch is served and if lunch is served um so i think that no matter what it's just about communication really oh yeah i also kind of wonder about uh you know the number of of because they're

153specific grades um you know we're impacting a lot more grades by going into school those days versus the two three four um yeah it just does it seems like we're by not having school that day it's those days it's it's impacting a lot more students than just two three four so yeah i don't know i just kind of kind of grew joy in this as far as is that is that going to be a large number of like i said because i get that you know keeping the parents in mind i think that's great um but yeah keeping again going back to the whole keeping kids out of school awesome instructional time it's going to affect you know grades you know and you know and again that that's that's why we have this discussion i

154mean i would just you know if let's just use i think it's january 2nd is the monday that that we're proposing as an off uh for for the students so we can in for some of the staff so we can get huckleberry to move in and again this is putting this together assuming there's not another delay the building's ready that's the great assumption we have here is let's just say i mean i i have genuinely wonderful rule-following parents who contact the office and ask about the last day of school like how many snow days do we have we want to plan a vacation but we want to make sure the kids don't miss out on an end of the year party and we want them to be here so you know those are just real

155normal things that people ask about and so if you have one child who's in school on january 2nd in a family and the other isn't going to be in school you just start getting all you know i'm trying we're trying to do the best we can here and accommodate as many people as we can so those those are some of the the real kind of questions you get um but again these are the ideas these are the discussions we have right but i think there's a central value here the value is we value instructional time of course juncture and you know people's vacations yeah well that's that's an individual value um and i think us you know as a board we're we're on the lookout for the community and stakeholders by and large and then

156there's the the fiscal piece which we we can't ignore um that if we ask first it might not even happen because we have to negotiate the more time for huckleberry staff to to work outside of 187 days or whatever it might be and so so we might have grandiose plans that that can work and feasibly it can but ultimately there may there's a whole agreement process that we would have to go through so we need to you know be considerate of that as well and then if there's an agreement there's an extra cost to that so that's another piece to consider when we're trying to put together a budget um you know because fiscal responsibility is another value of the community so again my proposal was was my my best recommendation to be as creative

157as we could within the confines and the framework we have trying to uh to your point might follow and work with the brookfield values so my understanding is the it's those those moving days would not be part of the 187. everything is everything i proposed as part of the 187. it works within the confines of the collective bargaining agreement 180 in classroom teaching days and uh and seven uh either seven teacher additional work days yeah which are either moving or professional development depending on where you are it'll be seven professional development days for the everybody but huckleberry and huckleberry would have five plus two moving days in effect correct right and fifth and center would have a moving day uh so they'd have the six pd and and they'd have other you're right yeah at

158the end of the year those would be that'll be different sets of people who are moving right correct and that's the one that's on the 13th of june on this screen i believe the ones we're talking about are the ones in pink um i think the 22nd and the second and december and january and then the 13th of june i think yep yep yep okay and as long as we don't work more than the there's no need to negotiate the teachers are assigned and they those are the days they work and then of course we use a pd day at the beginning of the year time with the fifth grade team and the center school team to actually do their move-in work uh to follow the classroom and that's naturally built in in late august

159too okay all right guys are you guys ready to go uh a vote on this i mean let me just ask everybody if you're ready we're ready to go take a vote um so let me just let me just explore one thing so we kind of as a as a group our kind of straw polls we're not don't seem to be in support of doing the added half days you know for plc days this year so john have you thought about this eventuality and what you would recommend taking out in that instance or is it something you want to go back and study no no i you know i i'll i'll uh work with the boards uh at the board's pleasure for the coming year because i really do see the merit in the in

160the uh in my proposal certainly i wouldn't have proposed it but i also understand where the board is coming from uh in in a year coming out of the pandemic and let's hope this is more back to normal than ever before um i get it um where we've been so you know if that's something we want a table and i'll i can come back to you i guess my question is we have uh uh do we want to take a vote on it or just want to table the whole thing right for for tonight or do we want to table the calendar yeah we want to approve part of it and not the rest i guess is my question i mean so for example we could approve the 180 day plan and then come back

161on the on an amendment for the plc days um that would give us some strength for the budget discussion we're about to have um and uh or we could just table the whole thing does anybody have an opinion one way or the other because that doesn't sound like you're ready to tell us which days you would want to take out if you know by backing off the plc oh no no bob i i said i'm i'm willing if the again you straw hold it here if the board feels very strongly about the plc days given the context we're in and would would like to either have that conversation a little bit later because it doesn't impact the 180 um or make a final vote on that tonight um kind of leaving its status quo from

162this year to next year i understand that and i would accept that as part of the the the board's vote tonight if you went in that direction is there also still debate or discussion about whether those days should be on wednesdays because it sounded like that was that some people didn't like the the wednesday part of it not just the number of plc days no i just for one think it's be it's a big interruption to families right you know that when you start doing it midway i mean i think unless we have some sort of like major comeback that we need i think we should just vote so vote on the you can't vote on the budget as the the calendar as is or you can vote on the calendar as is that the

163motion has made but you're going to end up voting it down so i'm trying to figure out if we could amend the motion in a logical way that would allow us to improve something that's what i'm actually trying to figure out right that's why i was thinking breaking it up making a motion that refers to the keeping uh pd days status quo and keeping them on friday i think joy if you say status quo i think you cover it all right for plc days right on fridays as proposed by superintendent and i'll i'll make going forward the assignment will be to adjust them to the proper uh fridays and you know that are more typical to this year i'll match them up so i could definitely do that um all right so look let me

164try this see to see if this will work for everyone and just just tell me if it doesn't work just say stop let's redo it okay so i will vote i will put a motion on the table to amend the motion that's on the floor right now to read that the board approved the 180-day calendar as proposed by the superintendent however we ask that the superintendent come back with a final proposal for four plc days instead of the proposed seven okay and and target for fridays to be as much as possible similar to what we've done in the past okay i will second that amendment okay so i got it so okay um it's a it's a challenging amendment it's kind of a partial approval so um so any discussion on the amendment okay hearing

165none all in favor of approval on that amendment please vote by raising your hand hi okay we are unanimous so um so dr brill you got your one you got the 180 days but uh we've got to come back what i would suggest you do is as a comeback just bring back the calendar with those adjustments and at our next meeting and we'll just approve it at that time uh the fi the final uh the final calendar with your you know adjusted plc structure then we can move on thank you okay everyone okay with that decision we just made good discussion by the way i think so appreciate everybody's input thank you okay next up is budget transfer i will move that the board approve a budget transfer as recommended by director of operations ken

166post and the finance subcommittee second question we have a second second um so mr post you want to just walk uh the board through the what the changes are i think these are won't be a surprise to people but i think uh if you could just kind of give a summary to everybody sure it's actually two budget transfers one is to account for the hiring of an athletic trainer which we've discussed in the past for the remainder of this school year and this would be accomplished by allocating savings from professional services which we would have spent on the service for the trainer uh and from the teacher salary savings so it's uh thirty four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars in salary five thousand six hundred thirty eight dollars in health benefits and then offset by

167the services cost of 26.9 right 26.9 and then teacher salary savings of 13488. any questions on that one before i move on to the next okay and the next would be to transfer budget funds for the nine additional days that the interim high school principal worked and this would be accomplished again by allocating savings from teacher salaries and that's six thousand and twenty one dollars okay any questions on either of them okay i'll wait till joy gets back take a vote or we'll give her a short bed how about that there we go all right so hearing uh no questions for mr post all in favor of approving the uh the budget transfer please just raise your hand okay it's unanimous thank you very much all right so the last uh of the old business

168items is the uh superintendent's budget this has been on our agenda each of our last i think this is the third or fourth meeting now that we've had it on our agenda and and and dr burl thank you for all the very helpful presentations you've done over the uh the last meetings they've been very informative and i think have helped answer a lot of the questions that the board had um what i what i'd like to do is um let's perhaps start by um asking mrs fernandez to kind of just recap the work that the finance committee has done just so we're all on the same page of the scrub it i'll call it the scrubbing work that uh that we all go through and then off the back of that maybe we could have

169mr post give an update to the um to the board on where are we off the back of that work so uh rosa let me turn it over to you sure so um what our process has been and this this started last year and it worked really well so we've um we've continued it this year and we've even made some more improvements so um i think we're in a really good spot but generally what we do now is the finance committee has been meeting every single monday since dr brill first proposed the budget to the board of ed and at those meetings what we initially did was is we divided the entire budget line item by line item across the three of us and we took our historical data what you find in your budget

170books as well as additional information that ken has provided so the actual budgets of each school the ones that were proposed and we go through them we have a couple years of actuals even for each school and we delve into every single line item and collect all of our questions into a document that is now 25 typed pages long so it is very extensive we have each asked a lot of questions about every single line item like why is it increasing this much oh it looks like the driver is coming from this school what was the estimate can we get a better estimate when will we know an exact answer um so we have a lot of questions that we fired away at ken and ken has been exceptional at answering every single one of

171them and it's a document that you guys all have access to so you can see how well we've poured over this budget and it's also a really nice document that we will be able to now turn over to the board of finance and the board of selectmen and they can see the work that we've done in scrubbing the budget and analyzing feeling support for the budget that we are now going to hopefully adopt and then put forward to the town so um so that has been our process and i think and i hope that you guys can um trust the work that we did and i know that some of you have contributed questions to that document as well so um i think we're in a very good position to say that um you know

172our number is the number that we uh stand by and something i forgot to mention in my finance committee report we actually did vote to recommend this budget we firmly stand behind it we've we've gone through it for the last month and a half and it's something that we um we can stand behind now so hopefully that explains that that we also have a member of the board of finance on our committee as an as a attendee and uh and the town controller uh mrs marion uh comes and they also ask questions which has been very helpful by the way we had some good discussion part of the discussion we heard earlier today about maybe using a little bit of the cafeteria fund came from one of those discussions so oh and mr lucas is

173with us as well uh the town treasurer so so we've tried it you know i it's it's been a very collaborative set of reviews i think and and bob if i may um at this point now um ken prepared a couple of um sheets that we just went over in the special finance committee me um that i think would be important to share kind of as a reminder of where we were in the superintendent's budget and where the superintendent's budget is now because we present on december 1st so early we learn a lot through the process and refine a lot as we go through the last um almost two months now so maybe cam if we could start with the the sheet that goes with the you know the um the original proposal and then

174the reductions over time and then there's also a couple of puts and uh puts as well as reductions put some takes there um in the ad of the conversation to the budget roundtable which is how we work with our our community uh about athletics and hockey and that is in there as well so ken i'll let you take it sure so the superintendent's proposed budget was 48.8 million dollars which was a 4.24 increase over our current budget uh rosa mentioned earlier about the health benefits reducing our premium increase from 7 to four percent saves us a little over a hundred sixty four thousand dollars uh we're always hopeful that the rates will come in better than that but we will see in time as part of our scrubbing process uh we found that we could

175reduce our postage ask by fifty two hundred dollars i got additional information from the town wc uh wpca which is actually gonna increase uh our sewer cost estimate thirty six hundred dollars i heard from the voag school that we go to on their tuition intentions for next year which increases our tuition cost by 2 580 as part of the scrubbing process we found that we had double counted some textbooks in our request so that's a 7 500 reduction uh we also discovered in our whiskaner extended duty since we are part of our proposal is to increase the the principal secretary to full year we need less extended duty for for summer work as was also mentioned earlier we're gonna propose to increase our lunch fund transfer from thirty thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars per

176year uh we had a bid opening for our transportation contract last friday um we have not awarded it yet we have to review have another meeting with the finance committee to review it uh but taking the the numbers from the the bid that appeared to be the lowest it would translate into 9 370 less than what i put in my original estimate uh adding hockey we currently we can we can pick whatever number we want for this but currently we have nine players uh all being charged eighteen hundred dollars a piece which amounts to sixteen thousand two hundred dollars um the last two lines on this section are chrome books that we just literally found out days ago that eric had applied to e-rate for 600 free chromebooks and just found out that we got

177we're gonna get them so that allows us to take out the two groups of chromebooks that we were going to be buying 175 for k7 which is 41 250 and 200 for grade 8 for the one to one program so 55 000 those reductions bring us down to a little over 48.5 million dollars or a 3.66 percent uh increase and then with the 180 day calendar nurses paraprofessionals monitors and occupational physical therapists would be allowed to work two days less which saves us another little less than 24 000 which makes the revised proposed budget 48 million five hundred and seven thousand six hundred twenty one dollars which is the three point six one percent increase does anybody have questions about any of these individual items so now i don't think everybody was at the the

178public hearing was did everybody was everybody at the public comment or no i think we had one or two of us missing so we only had one parent who had a real question on budget at our um at last week's special public hearing on the on the budget and the the comment the question was a very simple one there's only one sport where the kids have to pay in varsity sports right now and then that's our the kids who participate in the cooperative hockey program and uh it's an expensive program right there's not that many kids that were involved that's quite a cooperative program um and uh and john i think we participate with bethel and henry and burying in that and there's but just the cost of ice time alone right it makes that

179an expensive program so the parents said would you consider um putting into your budget uh not having to require the kids to pay right you know because they're the only kids who have to pay it so we asked ken to include that in this budget proposal and the finance committee agreed to carry it forward and uh and we just have to decide if we want to include that add back in right as a group right that's that's that's a simple it's not that expensive but it's uh but it was it came from a parent request for those of you who weren't at that meeting ken does that what it was something just as a reminder too bob if i if i may something we talked about a couple of years ago um with hockey and

180it was it was you know we added uh gymnastics and volleyball in last year's work for this year um great turnout in those sports we're really excited about that the kids are super excited um and so the thought was you know we got rid of pay to play years ago hockey was the only one that was kind of acceptable for that because of the expense of the sport but maybe it's time to to make that move and so i'm thrilled and i'm really pleased that the parent brought that up and i'm excited that the board generally was open to having the conversation about it thank you and that the cost of this is actually comparable to the cost of our gymnastics program and our boys volleyball program when you talk about uh the gymnasium rental

181the coach and assistant coach and other costs involved uh transportation officials game workers those other sports cost us about fifteen thousand dollars per year that's what's in the budget for next year debbie i think you were going to say something i'm sorry i may have talked about it yeah i was just going to ask if those if the hockey costs um are basically all inclusive or does it leave anything that parents have to contribute our understanding from uh athletic director baldwin is this is this is the fee that parents are charged and this would this would cover everything and you said that's for nine students that's for nine students correct what if we have uh more than nine what would you do i would recommend allocating the the amount we have budgeted amongst the however

182many students we have so if we had 10 or 11 that students would end up having to pay something but a lot less yeah that would be my recommendation unless we want to unless we can find money in the budget elsewhere to uh transfer but there's no guarantee that early in the year that we would be able to identify that okay all right so let me just kind of start because i think then you have another chart uh well let's come back to this so can you add another chart that kind of then portrayed what the budget now looks like yes now can you see the budget driver's worksheet now yep yes you can good so we have the 2122 approved budget we have our status quo budget which is uh 47 917 505 which

183is everything you saw on the other page [Music] with certain things broken out um we have five different categories or four different categories here new required which is the bilingual teacher which is a little over 90 000 uh enrollment-based changes which would be the proposal to at four and a half kindergarten paraprofessionals uh in lieu of adding one additional section of kindergarten and that's a little less than 101 thousand dollars uh we have uh we are expecting an additional outplaced student for 124 thousand dollars uh we have the investments from the arp esser phase in which we've discussed in the past and that would be the social studies instructional coach and a portion of the technology integrator salary and then in our other investments category we have what i mentioned before the 12-month making the

184principal secretaries k-8 12-month making the athletic director a 12-month position which is something that was negotiated with the administrators union already increasing the center school art and music teachers from .7 fde to 1.0 fds adding the athletic trainer and taking out the budget that we had originally put in for this for the service adding boys hockey and then at huckleberry adding a math interventionist and reducing two regular education paraprofessionals those positions currently help with math and again all those come down to the same total 48 million 507 621 3.61 increase okay can i ask about the uh the the so the a the rpser isn't that isn't that already paid for through the art for the esser funds yes but the esser funds mike are uh have to be spent in over three years right

185so instead of having a budget cliff where we introduced um summer school instructional coaches and other interventions we um talked right from the start about a phase-in plan where the operating budget would need to take on anything new that is not a one-time investment that we want to continue in the regular program so this is this is the phase-in uh of that over time so so so now the our money goes to this this year well it went this year but next year to continue that we would have to put in the budget for next year that's what all this is covered for the first year it's not covered for the second year and and we're making those decisions and working with the finance committee on um smoothing out the phase in so there isn't

186a real heavy bump in any one particular year right yeah if i remember it was so so some things phase out after year one some things phase out after year two some things phase out after year three years ken has a worksheet on that we've gone over a couple of times and we've talked with finance committee on i think that's something as we go forward we should we should plan into our next level of presentations and we've talked about that okay so um guys we need to vote on the budget you've heard you've heard the finance committee is supportive of this um and uh and ken has now given you a recap it's been good good news i think you know from especially by the way eric great news right getting those uh getting that

187uh e-rate thing um and uh and ken we're uh it's good news on the insurance i'm just crossing my fingers i i for one don't trust the uh the state level estimates yet so uh we'll have to watch and see that one but uh but the good news is the town and the schools are in the same boat on that stuff so um so we have two ways we can go right we can go down those list of items that are on the investments list and say do we agree with each of them take a straw poll vote and make sure we're all in agreement item by item which i think which is what we did last year and that served us well um or we could have just you know we've all had a

188chance to review this we could just take a vote and approve it so does anybody have a preference on approach here you want to talk through each of the investments or have you had plenty of that over the last couple of meetings i guess is the important question i mean i'm ready to vote on it i mean yeah i think i have enough with it so i'm ready all right and then i i'll we'll run the best process so there's a um we need to put a motion on the table and i will um uh move like i can you're going to have to fill in a number for can you just tell me again what the total number is i'll put it into the motion 621 right okay all right i'd like to make

189a motion that the board of education approve a budget for the uh for the school year 2022 2023 to be forwarded to the town for a final approval in the amount of forty eight million five hundred and seven thousand six hundred and twenty one dollars as presented and recommended by the superintendent of schools and his finance director mr post we're going to give this one to amy she gets to make all the motions she gets a second one every now and then um all right so it's been moved and seconded um any discussion hearing none all in favor please designate by raising your hand okay it is unanimous so we have a budget that we're taking forward congratulations it's good work everybody thank you okay um and i think the next major step uh dr

190burrell is that we will have a presentation with the board of selectmen we have to submit let's start there which has to be done by the 31st so we have uh basically 10 days to do a transmittal letter and get that some formally submitted um and then after that what date did we settle for a meeting with the oh um gosh it's my birthday february 10th there you go so you remember don't worry great way to celebrate oh man so february 10th we will we should all block our calendars because we will have a we will have a board of education meeting and the board of finance will have board of finance meeting the board of selectmen will have aboard a selectmen meeting to actually go into session let us review and tell them through

191our budget and over the next couple of weeks therefore we will be revamping the presentation that dr brill had given us i'll make sure we float that out amongst all of us before that meeting so we'll all of us seen the the messaging on it but it's very consistent with everything we talked about when we get there um and uh and then just for the public this starts the the town side of the process the first selectmen gets a chance to review the board of ed budget in the first two weeks of february then it goes to the board of selectmen in the second two weeks of february they deliver it to the board of finance in the beginning of march the board of finance then deliberates on it for a month basically along with

192all the other parts of the budget and uh i think there's a public hearing i think i saw on mr rooney's calendar on the 29th of march um and then they submitted for the town meeting which is the first tuesday in may and then the referendum is midnight two weeks after that generally that that date actually gets set at the town meeting but it's uh usually two weeks after that so there's a there's another couple of months of review um still ahead of us um where others get a chance to look at it for us as a board we also will have a session with the board of finance in march uh that uh we should all plan to attend that meeting as well it will not be a meeting of the board of ed

193it's just it's it's a meeting of the board of finance and we're there to answer questions and uh and and discuss it with them so we don't usually go into session of that meeting we do go into session at the joint meeting so mr post you were going to add something yeah not to prolong the meeting but i just wanted to to take the opportunity to publicly thank the principals mr conklin and mrs wygonic for all the thoughtful work they put into their budgets you saw the details that they send me that we used to put the budget together and it's uh quite extensive and a lot of work and i want to publicly recognize that and in i wanted to let ken go first on that one and i appreciate that ken because um

194i have to thank ken for all of his work and the board and the finance committee for all their work um to what ken just said and starting right from the beginning of the meeting with the center school spotlight tonight none of this happens with without a great team of people and a supportive board uh supportive families and but just an incredible faculty staff and administrative team um considering we are rounding out and heading into year three of what has been a very challenging time and generational time for all of us um i continue to be impressed by the the work level um and the the patience and cooperation and flexibility it's just it's incredible in the commitment and dedication so thanks to all um that includes mrs ferris and dr ruby as well in

195their budget work that they do to put it together um and make it all happen um it's just it takes all of us and it takes takes this board as well so thank you everybody and can't forget mrs reynolds for all the support she gives me oh of course mrs reynolds we love mrs reynolds can't do it without her okay so uh congratulations all on uh probably one of the most challenging parts of what we do as a board you know getting to a budget to take forward and we do have more work to do so next on our agenda is an update on the candlewood lake elementary school building project uh mrs fernandez why don't i turn it over to you and between you and dr update sure um so winter conditions on a

196building site where there's no roof is making it very difficult to work there's a lot of ice buildup on some of the concrete slabs that are still exposed so workers are having to mitigate those dangers with salt and sand so you know that's creating some issues that they're working around um but steel walls for the gymnasium are going up so if you again if you i always mention this but if you take a drive by that's what you're seeing you're seeing the steel walls for the gymnasium going up while there's still concrete and concrete walls being poured in other areas um the radiant flooring for our pre-k and kindergarteners who spend a lot of time on the floor that's starting to get going or at least like you know the whatever the foundational stuff for

197that um is needed the exterior materials have been approved and hopefully we'll get to see a mock-up of that soon um in some areas where there's going to be brick the style and the layout of those bricks are being reviewed right now if you remember we at some point we had added timber beams to the exterior to kind of soften the look of the entrance and those beams are also delayed along with the canopies that go over them um again this is not this is not a portion of the project that's really going to delay um that's going to delay very much because it's not you know something as as big as like the roof which is causing the real delay we're still waiting for the roofing materials that's expected at the end of next

198month and furniture selection and layouts are essentially complete so the completion of the furniture and equipment selection which is no small feat but its completion marks an important milestone in the project which must be reviewed by the state's office of school construction grants and reviews so just like we did at the end of the schematic design phase and the design development phase the prior to the meeting with oscg r tekton will need to get the board of ed and the nbc sign off on the work that they've done for that furniture fixtures and equipment for the state to review so that meeting and i know you guys have we've already discussed the date on that but that meeting will be will we all get a chance to review those materials at the nbc meeting and

199that's on tuesday february 15th at 7 pm so we should all make a point to go there because we will need a quorum well actually i guess we don't really need a quorum because we have a border bed meeting the following night so but that'll be our chance to um to really get a glimpse at what we are going to be approving the following night at our board of ed meetings we don't have to do we do we have to go into session that night i don't think we yeah okay and i'd like to add just a very short piece on the furniture um i have to thank i mentioned it earlier mrs baldwin our supervisor of special education for elementary school as well as mrs lavroshano and mrs diamond met with myself um eddie

200from tech town who you all have gotten to know the two interior designers and we really i wouldn't say for the first time but we we really got to see the nurses office and what it was going to start to really look like with the furniture that we talked about that's going to be in there and the classrooms and the elc room and the pre-k um and when we have all the chairs lined up in the multi-purpose room we went through all of that methodically today basically through their powerpoint presentation that they'll be doing for the nbc so we could ask the final questions that what the library media centers are going to look like up and down um and so to see uh crisp clean the colors the the furniture and the the most

201prideful piece for me and and i was so um pleased with the with the techton team of taking in mr baldwin's physical education along with mr cudney who was a representative physical education teacher and mrs fitzgerald from visual and performing arts and our media specialists our classroom teachers and our special education teachers in otp and all the work in the user groups that went in to see it coming to fruition on the specific feedback and hey we're going to need this um we're going to need this kind of cabinetry to store these kind of instruments that down to that specificity bile cabinets you know all of those pieces to see that really coming to fruition was incredible and i think you'd be very proud when uh and pleased and excited it's going to really start

202to come to life for you when when you see the furniture um walk through that presentation uh next month and we spent about two hours on that this morning it was a great deal of time it was just incredible cool i love to hear the excitement about it that's really uh that's that's i can't wait now yeah okay um is that it any other any other updates nope not on that all right thank you um next up is uh public comment uh there was nobody who signed up and there are no members of the public on our on our zoom so i will say that we're gonna there is no public comment for this evening so thank you you know that's an easy one um uh next was three main points what do you think

203i was re thinking it would be really nice to talk about the center school kindergarten book sale project um also the high school program of studies yeah i was going to say that sorry go ahead say your third one well i'm torn between the school calendar and the budget well one thing we do with the school calendar is we send out the school calendar but i don't i know there's a comeback to make sure the board's comfortable with it even though you've approved it so right maybe that's where i was waffling okay well i know we just planned to do the school calendar after our next meeting yeah okay we'll have to give a final approval anytime i was going to suggest um the program of studies is good i was going to be even

204more specific and talk about the elimination of class rank um we don't have to you could just highlight that if you want but um i was just thinking that that's such like a big deal and i feel like yeah people are going to hear about and be like oh wait when did that happen yeah that might be like a good you know a piece to just highlight because it's kind of a big takeaway of this meeting yeah i definitely planned on having that as a major part of it yeah okay so uh the the kindergarten book club um the program of studies featuring the class rank and then the uh and then the budget yep everyone okay with that yep all right cool done okay next up is uh upcoming events okay i have some

205things at center on friday the 28th is spirit day and community meeting on monday the 31st is the last day to bring in a snow person for display monday the 31st through friday february 11th is a valentine bingo challenge from the ptl the week of february 7th through the 11th is the kids heart challenge tuesday february 8th is the 100th day of school that first graders will celebrate there's also a pto meeting virtual at 7 p.m and wednesday the 9th is the 101st day of school these are also weather dependent right now and that kindergarten will celebrate so those could change and then at wms uh this week is upstander week is ongoing tomorrow is shine bright day wear neon colors and friday is where your bobcat blue to speak out against bullying and that's

206all i have this week mr rendo was showing off team up against um team up against name calling and bullying today so of course i wore the best team out there i heard a couple boos on that all right uh all right um okay so uh that's it for our mainline agenda we do have a brief executive session scheduled for this evening uh we have a motion on that yep i will move that the board enter into executive session to discuss the superintendent's mid-year goals second okay let's move seconded all in favor all right um so for the the public who's listening in this is the end of our uh broadcast uh portion of the meeting because executive sessions you it's a it's a private unbroadcasted section so we're going to go over to a

207different zoom i think for the board members you'll all receive the zoom link and we should meet over there and uh for the member for the public thank you for listening in uh always appreciate those of you who stick out for what has been our three-hour meeting this evening so um i have a good day and we'll see you next time take care everyone you