001okay good evening everyone today is wednesday june 2nd and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order um before we start with the pledge i just wanted to remind everyone that tonight we are going to be adhering to mask wearing policies we are still indoors in a school facility so we're going to ask that you keep your mass on tonight and with that let's stand for the pledge on their way um but we are very pleased to be here in person tonight because uh we are here first and foremost to recognize staff and students and so the first item on our agenda i'm very pleased the board would like to recognize the following teachers of the year and i would just ask that when you hear your name called please
002come up and if you're comfortable shaking our hands with the board members and we have a little something for you so at center elementary school rosa barrero [Applause] huckleberry hill school d pearson [Applause] middle school kayla ryan so and at brookfield high school also the district teacher of the year social studies teacher chris buckley okay the board would also like to recognize the following 2021 staff members of the year at center elementary school beth o'connor thank at huckleberry hill school renee byrne [Applause] dennis hill [Applause] and at the town school office terry cavanaugh okay and the board would also like to recognize the top 10 graduating seniors from brookfield high school class of 2021 for their academic achievements and with that i'd like to invite mr bellanda up to properly introduce them i'll try turning
003it on there we go that'll work you all right you sweating yet okay it's okay if i could call you up at the same time i would you can get off the stage but um so it's my pleasure tonight to introduce uh our top 10 students for the graduating class of 2021 at brookfield high school in no particular order i'm going to start on the far left side and so our first student i'm going to introduce and bring up to the podium i'd like you when you come up to say your name where you plan on going to school your possible major and then get ready because as i told you the board might ask some questions okay so our first student is mahika yara okay so it is customary for board members to ask
004our top 10 graduating seniors a couple of questions um so since your first year it's going to be easy we'll get some softball questions first um oh yeah absolutely go ahead share with us where you're going hi my name is and i'll be going to stony brook university majoring in biochemistry would you say was your best memory from bhs oh there's so many to choose from um i'd say i can't choose the best story but my most recent favorite memory was definitely seeing everybody at the prom because this year has just been so difficult with covid and everything so we were all doing social distancing and distance learning so we're all remote um but the teachers and the staff really tried really hard to make sure that we were still like talking to each other
005and they all pulled together to make this prom like the best it could be under the circumstances so it was really nice to get to see everybody in person one more time before graduation and you know foster those friendships and see all those teachers again so i say that was one of my most recent best memories that's a good one [Applause] um yeah so one of the ones that i was in was hosa so that's health occupation students of america and um that was one that i joined freshman year and it really introduced me to the different occupations in the healthcare field and they have a conference that we go to every spring that they brought in different people across the healthcare field whether that was doctors or health administrators and they really showed us
006that there's a variety of different careers in the healthcare field and something else that i'm a part of is creative writing and that was just a nice creative outlet to go through because you know going through academics can be stressful sometimes and so having like a creative outlet was really nice [Applause] so mr velven's here so just get ready he has some tough questions i'm so excited he's here and avarice is now sweating because he realizes like if i keep going this way he's nervous uh so our next student introduced um would be grace hodginostan [Applause] hello my name is grace hagenosto i will be attending gordon college in massachusetts and my major will be mathematics and neuroscience so my daughter's entering high school on next year what would be the best piece of advice
007you have to give her there's definitely a lot of advice that is helpful but i think something that i've truly benefited from is taking challenging classes and even though it might seem maybe a little terrifying at first i think that has truly benefited me and helped me be very prepared for college and beyond and it's also helped me foster relationships with both my peers and teachers because we've been able to meet after school and also zoom this past year to go over difficult concepts which has truly been a great experience for me [Music] is there a particular teacher or class that had the biggest impact on you uh i would say mr vistasio definitely had a great impact on me he was my honors pre-practice teacher last year and my ap calculus bc teacher this
008year and i just seen him be such a genuine teacher and also been able to teach very difficult concepts like calculus in a not a simpler way but just a way that really helps us all understand it better and he's able to cater to all of our different types of learning and also he carves out a huge amount of time to help us and give us your help sessions like even on the weekends and during during weekdays even when it's during dinner time or when he might have already had plans he likes to make sure that he has room to always work with us so i've truly been blessed to have him thank you yes mr estacio did a saturday uh practice ap test a couple weeks back uh all right i was debating switching
009it up to give you a break but since jess recognized me at the reception before and thanked me i'm going to go with jessica so come on up jessica um hello my name is jessica huang and i'll be going to to northeastern university in the fall and i'm studying computer science she just said that it would be a layup for me asking you computer science gonna do questions so northeastern what a great college i mean what that's my son is a phd candidate in northeastern right now what is it about northeastern other than the academics that attracted me there oh there's so much well besides the academics i love that it's located in the heart of boston and it gives you so many opportunities to have internships like right in boston and as well as
010their co-op opportunities how i think it's like a thing to have about two co-ops in your career for undergraduate so i love how northeastern prioritizes real world experiences and that's what really draws me towards it as well study abroad programs and the whole environment and what they value is really important to me and i really appreciate that is what particularly in brookfield has helped prepare you for that oh i have to say to teachers like um you're mentioned that before in the library um all the teachers that are invited today there's a reason why you're invited you guys are great teachers and that's really what um drives us to do better and i have to say that like especially the math department has been really influential to me for deciding to major comp side possibly
011minor stats all the teachers have built me up and taught me life lessons and taught me how to have a great work ethic do things on time really they have encouraged me to do better and i love that about our faculty okay so if someone happened to be putting together a basket for a senior what is one thing you would definitely want in it number one thing or top three [Music] i have to say northeastern sweatshirt at the moment because i don't have one anything else honestly that's kind of good at the moment up next every one [Applause] all right uh hello everyone my name is avery huang and i'm also going to be studying computer science at european state university avery is jess your sister nope so what do you love about computer science
012uh i would have to say it lets you do so much like just like take your imagination and make a reality if you you know know how to program and know what you're trying to do it just lets you do so much with it it lets you make games it lets you make artificial intelligences it's a very large spectrum of things you can do well speaking of that then what do you plan on doing with your degree um graduate research maybe not really sure yet i guess so i'm just warming up guys so we're the board of education right if you were looking back over your experience here in brookfield what would you advise us to work on to improve you brookfield i think it would be simpler if you pulled a question from the
013ap calculus test and asked me that um we're as a board of education we've all raised our hand and said our whole goal in life is to make our schools as good as they can get and you've been a student here you've gotten some good things out of brookfield there's probably things you said and that could have been better what are the things that could have been better and you won't hurt our feelings by the way i guess i would say like offering more progress but in at least in front of high school students can just make clubs as they wish um i guess uh better technology at the high school let me just make it a follow on that so in terms of you're going to be a computer programmer and by the way
014i was computer programming in statistics that's why i didn't ask you questions on statistics and computer programming equipment programs around that area did you find you have enough or did you find yourself asking for more in general i had enough i was fortunate to have my own device for school but even in the um computer labs like those computers were always enough for what we needed to do the programs thank you [Applause] actually i'm going to say it differently it's elvenbee at us.ibm.com [Applause] computer science so i'm wondering um so you're going to have two friends at northeastern already which is great how do you think about um sort of making your own path in a new place even though you have some familiar friends to rely on how much you do that how are
015you thinking about that um so i would also actually think about that question just in general which is very nice and i kind of know how to answer it um i would say although i did there's definitely friends i'm going to have at northeaster that i already know i do have like specific interests i was thinking about enjoying maybe like the rock climbing club or there's just so many different things to do at northeastern and i think just with our like the nuances and our interests we're just going to eventually branch out and find other people one way or another so i'm not really too worried about that so i think it'll just happen kind of organically how have you persevered through this past year have i persevered through this past year um staying home
016a lot trying to stay motivated always trying to keep in touch with all your friends because you can't really see them in person and once we started getting the person just making sure you keep those connections never really forget uh like how you have your uh like i guess it's gonna sound cliche but your determination originally like i used to work when there used to be a lot more stuff to do and just kind of like sticking to your passions even if you're not really feeling about um so one thing that always interests me is that we sit here at you know close to your graduation and we're usually talking about colleges and we're talking about your high school career i've always been interested in what was it earlier in your life that most influenced
017you in middle school and elementary school at home what what what has formed adarsh as a person not related to whatever you want to talk about um i would say i've always been involved in community service i think since like i don't know maybe i could walk my parents do community service all my grandparents my aunts my uncles were just always involved in that so ever since i can remember i've always been doing anything related to helping the community and actually at uh bhs i was in key club red cross nhs and i did i had my own math club on the side that i ran so anything i guess helping the community and just kind of just by starting to do that i just kind of started um like interacting with all sorts of
018people you see people from all different types of uh different walks of life and it just kind of opens you up to a world kind of um yeah i guess you're just getting more experiences meeting new people and yeah that's how [Applause] all right next up we'll go to ian bells [Applause] hello everyone i'm ian bellis i will not be going to northeastern for computer science i'll be going to springfield college to study physical therapy [Applause] physical therapy um what what do you spend time here with panic what are you most grateful for let's see i'm grateful obviously for my family we've been able to stay together and stay healthy this entire time we've managed to figure out things to just you know stay happy stay positive we weren't able to like get all over
019the place and go out and do any like anything over these past couple of months this past year but we've managed to work with what we have and had a good time and you know make it to today we're all still here while still happy so yeah i'd say i'm very grateful for my family and helping me get through this so what draws it to the human body and biology in general um ap bio sophomore year was it rocked my world like hardest class i've taken to date but i just become entranced and everything um in that class you know it was a challenge but i learned more than i'd ever learned in my life so that was the like scientific aspect of it and then on the other side i played soccer since i
020was like two years old i played basketball i run and all that so i it was kind of like a perfect combination for me between the two aspects that really got me into the field hi han i'm wondering now that you're a senior and you're looking back over the last four years is there anything you wish you've done differently it's kind of bittersweet but um you know like all of us here we've all worked really hard to get here but sometimes you can work too hard maybe study a little too much instead of you know so like it's almost a piece of advice i would give to get out and have fun like there's a perfect balance you can have that i learned later on in high school where you can go out hang out
021with your friends you know have a have a fun night while also still getting the good grades and making it onto this stage so that's one thing i would uh offer as advice [Applause] up next this afternoon is paul kirkjee [Applause] uh hi um i'm paul kirchy and i will be majoring in chemical engineering at carnegie mellon this fall how would you describe the culture at vhs and or in brookfield think of your whole um i'd say that honestly the culture here is it's pretty good i'd say i'd say definitely the teachers are very supportive of the students just along the way in general since elementary school and i'd also say that the students you know um i think for the most part people are generally really friendly to each other um and honestly i'd
022say that's really sparked like good collaboration and generally i'd like to see a lot more of that in college and i think i'll get that that's what i've heard about elise carnegie it's a very collaborative school and i mean i am i don't know if i'm looking forward to much in terms of change necessarily i mean i like to see um that i'm just in a community that's like very full of driven people who are all very um i guess laser focused on their goals i guess that'll be a good change oh boy so i've got two the first one is what do you know about buggy races oh i know they have um they have an annual buggy race at carnegie mellon yeah i forget the name of the partnership whatever you do do
023it okay it is so much fun i will so um and uh and i guess the question i have about brookfield is you know you've done a lot of different things here in your career at the school um who is it that influenced you the most that's not the teacher or the principal uh i'm just trying to think of a specific person's person maybe i'll say i'll say my older sister honestly because i think um if it weren't for her i wouldn't have um driven for um as high of achievements and academics because she kind of set a good example for me in that regard and i think um i saw what she did and i think it kind of you know motivated me to kind of try to do the same because i think
024it put her in a good position and i think it definitely it definitely really helped and put me in a good position for the future in college [Applause] this has been good practice for two of our speakers up here because they'll be speaking at graduation um you know it is my pleasure to introduce the class of 2021 valedictorian matangana cheri hi everyone my name is matani military and i will be studying economics at the wharton school at the university of pennsylvania so i'm wondering you're entering in a field that is probably traditionally more male dominated how do you see your role as a young female entering that field and what challenges might you anticipate oh boy um well i think that the mindset that i've always had is if you act smart people will think
025you're smart so i think just going into it i'm gonna be confident and i'm not gonna let guys treat me like i'm not smart so so brookfield and philadelphia are very different what are you most excited about in learning about philadelphia i mean i think the obvious answer is brookfield is a suburb and philly's a city a big city and so just going into it i'm excited to meet so many new people i'm excited to try so many new foods and just the idea that there's always going to be something going on any day of the week if you go out to try and find something hi what positive outcome or aspect has come out of this past year for you uh like in relation to the pandemic or just the whole year um i
026mean it's been a rough year for everyone but i think one thing that i've actually been doing more of is trying to set a goal for myself to make more friends and reach out to more people realizing that the pandemic is kind of representative of later life sometimes you're not going to be in school every day seeing people every day so you're going to have to work harder to go out and meet people if you want to keep staying in contact and hanging out with people so something that i've actually been doing more of is reaching out and getting closer to more people this year [Applause] up next is by far the best dressed student hands down i'm rocking some argyle socks to the influences that uh mr chris estinal our class of 2021 salutatorian
027christ uh hello everyone my name is christopher esnal i'll be attending yale next fall and studying molecular and cellular biology with a possible minor in american history or gender studies all right well you have most likely been very focused on your academics uh for the past probably several years uh what would you say is a personal goal of yours as you grow as a young adult um i would say this goes along with kind of like a regret i had um leaving high school it's like kind of bittersweet because i've like made so many amazing friends like right at the end of my high school experience and i was always so scared i always had like a pretty good group of friends um throughout my four years i always made sure i had like a
028solid group but i was always so scared to reach out to reach out to people that i thought were different from me in like any way possible um and i so i think moving forward one of my biggest goals is to surround myself um with people who uh can challenge me to think differently um and will open up my perspective and my my thoughts and how i see the world which i'll be able to definitely get so i'm so interested in your two majors which are so different what attracts you to each of those fields um so yeah so um cellular biology uh i've always loved uh science like starting freshman year my freshman honors bio class with miss beyondcarey it was what started my my love for science and so ever since then i've
029wanted to go into the health field possibly medicine maybe research and i just love biology so much and i'm interested in american history because my hands down my favorite class junior year was my ap united states history class with miss blake um and i had up until taking that class i had hated history i didn't understand why we needed to sit in a stuffy room trying to memorize facts doing debates things like that i just didn't like history i liked math and science um and after taking that class i realized that history is probably one of like the most if not the most important um class in high school because you you learn how to like contextualize the world and better understand the world you're living in um whether it's um whether it's gender inequality
030or race riots or um anything like that economic troubles um when you understand history you are a more informed person um and i can use it for medicine medical anthropology um so yeah that's why awesome as a history teacher i thank you you're welcome and last but not least you know her as our board of education student representative but we're happy to introduce as part of the top ten uh tandy china hi i'm chambi chanru and i will be attending boston university majoring in europe science i know i asked this before but what club or activity or sport did you engage in throughout your high school career that really positive impact on you um i think the one with the most positive impact was the girls swim and dive team freshman year i joined that
031team and i hated it because it was so hard compared to middle school but i think just continuing doing that sport i met so many great people and that team is just such a close group of people that i met so many lifelong friends from that team as well hold on what was the most challenging part of your senior year i would definitely say the distance learning part of senior year um i know everyone already has like senioritis as a thing and the distance learning did not help at all because i was doing work for my bed um but i think i kind of self-motivated and i had my friends to motivate me because i don't i have had many thoughts of just like oh i don't have to do that assignment because you know
032i don't want to but like i just have that self thing where i have to do good and like my friends are like pushing me and they're all like working hard so i'm like okay we'll work together so i think just having each other was very important so i'll start by making a comment bu and northeastern aren't very far apart stay connected with your brookfield friends northeastern was an option i chose the universe they are very close so um one of the nice things about boston is there's so many universities that you can you have an immediate network from people from brookfield who've been there and then your network will all grow and then that becomes friends of friends and friends and it's always great to see in boston so um my question is about
033the board here you've been our representative and i want to from all of us appreciate you know than your participation in our board meetings thank you what have you learned the most from your time that you've spent with us um i learned that there's a lot that goes into the school um i know mr velandez told me like oh you can leave once you're done with like your part but i've stayed and there's like an insane amount of subcommittees about like small things that you wouldn't think so i guess it's just like a lot of gratitude of like having to run the whole district and not just brookfield high school because i'm just representing the high school students so just like all the work in it is very important you went through all 13 years
034in brookfield right um almost i moved here in the middle of first grade so basically basically so looking back on all those years not just high school is there a teacher or staff member or administrator or coach that really made an impact on you throughout those years um most of my team no all of my teachers have had an impact on me but specifically i know this was a while ago but my fourth grade teacher mrs cirillo had a big impact on me just like moving on to middle school and high school um she just saw that like i was able to do more and she always gave me extra stuff to challenge me and like going into middle school i was able to like skip a greater math because she was able to push
035me and like give me fractions when other people were doing multiplication like things like that so definitely say thanks to [Applause] [Music] would like to thank you for here service to the board of ed thank you so much [Applause] stay close but congratulations again to the top 10 seniors all of our teachers and staff all right the next item on our agenda is public comment is anyone here for that is report so okay so for the final time i'm tandy cheneru as a brookfield high school student representative um so seniors had prom on the 21st and 22nd which was so much fun and as a part of student council everything really came together super well and way better than expected so we definitely can thank mr belanda mr buckley and all the parents that helped
036with donations and setting everything up um most ap tests are over except there's still a couple left like i still have statistics on june 10th which is like last day school but we'll get there um sports have finished swc's and have started states so some sports like baseball are still going through their state tournaments juniors and seniors have one more event to look forward to before graduation which is the powder puff game on june 7th which will be held after school senior awards night is next tuesday the 8th at 7 30 here in the auditorium where students will be presented with academic and athletics achievement certificates and scholarship scholarships from the high school and local organizations and for those who can't come it will also be live streamed the distribution of caps gowns tassels and
037tickets for graduation start on june 9th from 1 30 to 3 30 in the cafeteria there will be a graduation rehearsal on june 11th at noon at the vhs stadium outside on the turf where grad party will also distribute additional raffle prizes and grand prizes and finally graduation is coming up super soon on june 12th where like i've said before there'll be the parade from the with from wisconsin to the high school and then the outdoor ceremony after that and that's all thank you thank you tommy great job this year we're very proud of you and good luck with everything thank you so much have a great end of the year curriculum [Music] uh approval of board minutes um the next item is the superintendent's update thank you rosa i'll be brief this evening um
038i wanted to first uh some additional recognitions i think the board is aware of the celebration and recognition of mrs dumbald our fourth grade long-term substitute with the regional impact award from ess we're very proud of her and thank her for subbing in and being the teacher for our students during a very difficult transition and we couldn't thank her enough and also our high school security guard and coach of many sports coach nick castellano nick was recognized by the southwestern conference as the unified sports coach of the year so it's an annual honor for only one coach for all the seasons for unified sports and our only castellano was recognized we couldn't be more proud of him coded update very brief in terms of our school numbers and town numbers we continue to hold that
039downward trend uh one case so far this week only one case last week so we really are doing well let's not forget last weekend not memorial day weekend but the weekend before we had two different uh prom celebrations for our senior class and as far as we know there are no positive cases that came out of that so we really are able to it's a credit to the high school team and the students themselves and the values the families have instilled on the students about how to behave and get through this pandemic and still have a great time and you heard some of the kids talk about that tonight so we're really proud of everybody there in addition to that um to follow up with some of what time do you was just talking about
040mr belanda is working for this coming fro next friday june 11th to be an early release day for grades 9 10 and 11 and the 12th graders will stay for graduation rehearsal um you may recall that in typical years we had exams so there's four or five short days where seniors have those opportunities with the administration and their teachers to work on graduation rehearsal we're going to be on a shortened schedule for that this year so june 11th mr glenn will get notification out to the students and family soon the other piece is it's my final uh piece of the report this evening i sent out an update j-1 yesterday and that was in regard to opening the school year in the fall i know we're talking about closing school right now and all the
041celebrations but one of the requirements from the state department of education is that our reopening plan from this year is updated with a safe opening and continuing continuity of learning plan to that end it is a requirement the plan is to ensure that everybody in the state is in five days a week we are already in five days per week so one of the pieces to this is that if it is a requirement so i sent out the updated version of the plan uh some people i think we're disappointed that there's not that many updates to it and that's because we don't have the new guidance from cdc dph local health department and state department of education there are still many things out there we don't know such as masking distancing cohorting quarantine regulations we
042have to wait on all of that uh most superintendents i talked to we're hopeful we get that information sooner than later and we'll make sure we disseminate that to everybody as time goes on so that is my report for this evening i don't know if anybody has any questions all right thank you thank you uh okay so we had a great meeting about a week ago um our first was a presentation which i'm not going to say too much about because it looks like he's on our agenda mr keith johnson gave i'll just give you a preview a really cool presentation about world languages um and about what kids are doing with technology so i'm going to save it all for him but it was really really great we were super impressed and then our
043second item of our agenda we had a discussion that joy and mike led really focusing in on ensuring objectivity in our curriculum and of sourcing of information with the teaching of current events and non-biased teaching and we had a good honest conversation about really how difficult this is in the times we're living in we know we're living in sort of hyper partisan times we know it's challenging for teachers but we know it's really important and and that teachers present both sides of an issue and offer sources of different sides of the issue we acknowledge our support of teachers that maybe additional professional development could even sharpen their skills we acknowledge that really what's the skill students need and it was great to hear from christopher about the importance of really understanding context and point of
044view in analyzing history and why that's so important so that was really exciting to hear that because i echoed a lot of our discussion at our meeting and dr ruby shared that um the building leadership um has been reviewing the board's related policies on current events uh with their staff to make sure that the policy is reviewed and that there's a common understanding amongst the staff so a really important timely topic that we really want to support our teachers in doing really the great work of helping kids grapple with difficult issues uh and that was our meeting for last week and we're looking forward to hearing more from mr johnson okay thank you any questions all right special finance subcommittee i will be very brief this evening we met on may 26th it was a
045preview discussion for the arp esser that's on the agenda tonight so i'm not going to say anything more we actually got a preview and gave some input and advice and had some good is the discussions agenda i'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are resignations and retirements second all in favor just like to say a brief congratulations and wish susan schmidt our huckleberry uh technology uh person uh susan has been with the district for 32 years she started off as a teaching assistant um and that was the former term for paraeducators and uh so she's been with the districts the district quite a long time we thank her for all of her service and we know she's going to have an extremely active and busy time in retirement we
046just look forward to all the best for her and thank her for just incredible over three decades of service to brookfield so congratulations susan [Applause] yes dr ruby's up to introduce mr johnson so we're really pleased that mr johnson was able to come again this week to present what he's going to share with us is a really i think excellent example of the work that we've done this year in all of the schools with a variety of teachers and that we need to continue to do this is one of the i think the positive outcomes of what we have experienced with the pandemic because we've been hearing about one-to-one technology in different districts for a number of years and we've been trying to increase the number of devices that we have available to our students
047but the real question is not how many devices you have it's what you do with them and we know that sometimes districts have purchased ipads or chromebooks or whatever the device of the of the year was for students and they became glorified notepads so with the the pandemic and the need to have distance learning and really support our educators in using technology we availed ourselves of the services of jackie whiting who is a technology integration specialist at ces which is in trumbull it's a one of the rests and i was able to procure a grant for her services and she started work at before the grant came in she started work at the high school and worked with every single department and then we moved down into the middle school and the elementary schools and
048so all teachers and all all the departments at the high school and pockets of teachers that would be teacher leaders in the other schools have been trained in our initial efforts to really capture the power of technology in um educating our students and so i don't know kevin if you wanted to say anything at all you're just here for support because kevin has really taken this you know the bull by the horn so to speak with the world language folks and keith is here to show you exactly what can happen when we support our educators to use technology for the benefit of education kevin did you want to say anything just having keith on the hot seat a little bit longer thank you dr rizzi good evening everybody um i wanted to once again thank
049uh dr ruby for bringing uh jackie whiting the innovation and technology specialist from ces to each of our buildings and uh really i'm here to present our uh world language team member mr keith johnson he is our current french and spanish teacher at um wisconsin middle school and we were fortunate enough to adam on our team just a couple of years ago and really keith is here because he is a true innovator and pioneer with uh technology and bringing it into the world language classroom and i can't tell you you know how many conversations keith and i have had outside of the classroom he's devoted so much time to this project and you'll see how it really comes out in this presentation and without further ado here is mr keith johnson [Applause] so yes fantastic
050all right so thank you for giving me this opportunity i've been uh waiting since uh i think 2 24 today at school to give this uh this presentation so if i don't know it now um yes i am here i'm fortunate enough to have uh you know we were all of us we received good i think some really good professional development on the technology and one of them caught my attention was flipgrid and so i explored flipgrid and wondered how i could use that in the world languages there it is all right good and so good many of you are probably aware of it you might have used it or your children have used it and basically it's a learning platform where teachers will create these classroom groups and they'll put in a topic question
051there's something of course related to the the unit that they're studying and uh the students respond and they can record themselves via video which is the primary you know that's what you do with flipgrid you can also do it through just written or audio but it's primarily just recording the videos and then there's the grid pals same exact thing however is applied throughout the world and currently there are about 40 over 40 000 schools throughout the world that are participating in grid pals right now um and as far as as far as world languages are concerned uh i think it narrows it down to about 900 which is all the different topics so this isn't just world language this is something that many of the other disciplines can use and so yes it gives these
052students an opportunity to communicate here here it is why use it but you know this intercultural experience i mean how often as a world language teacher do we try to bring some of these videos to life and everything like that um in order to activate these this student learn and get their engagement uh going and um that here we have it we have this opportunity where students in the other schools in there you know they're trying to learn english we're trying to learn either spanish or french and we are addressing issues or talking about a particular topic and so the students are really there's that authentic audience that they have for one there isn't as these made up things they teach we do our best in there but there is just nothing like this in
053all my years of teaching that i've encountered and i'm sure there are many other uh you know technology uh uh technological uh device that that they can use our different types of apps or different platforms they can use but i found this extremely effective increases their engagement i think if if most of the students at the end of the year i always have a reflection for them and if they had if they talked about what if i asked them which i will what is the most memorable thing they have i imagine most of that would say being able to communicate with these students in other countries in their target language so it's very of course it's meaningful and it can be applied to like i said i'm imagining it can be social studies i'm at
054the middle school level but language arts you name it it could be applied so how do i how do we access it you have your flipgrid account and there's this little icon you click on it and you can set up your own description of of the class of the uh of our student class so i would put in my name brookfield connecticut and at the grade levels in a middle school level and a world language teacher with spanish wrenching and uh provide that contact information i did a little note there seeking parental consent that's just not just written pals but also the flip grid in general that went out i think that does it with certain whether technology using certain technology or what that has to go out there but even if a parent wanted
055their child to opt out of it the student can still participate in it just not they're not recording themselves but they can still watch the other videos and they can still if they want to they can respond to either audio or typing as well just in text so as you can see here look at all these little dots well those in the u.s those are all the ones that are participating in grid pals right now and i just focused on this little section here of central america northern part of south america those are the ones that that still hasn't been filtered because it's much less than that dealing with world language but uh just to give you an idea roughly of the schools that are participating and so how do we collaborate well i put
056the filters in set that up and then uh i would go you saw all those little dots they just go back you see all those dots i would say all right i'm interested i try to set my students up with a school in columbia i go in and click on that and there would be the little right arc on on the school let me just say without the teacher's name and what grade levels age and what whether it's languages it might have science on there who knows but i've already filtered it out so just wrote languages and then i'd reach out i would just reach out to them i click on it it's a little email and say hey listen we're at wisconsin middle school brookfield connecticut i have so many students are you interested
057in partnering having a partnership or collaborating with my students and you know it might be discouraging because sometimes you won't hear back from them right they may have just too much too many things going on especially nowadays coded and everything or they may say oh they might get back here and say i have uh sorry i'm already i'm already collaborating with three other schools maybe another time but once you get that first connection and i'll show you later about four i have four schools that are participating with my students it's just it's so amazing at the end of course i saved the description at the end you'll see some of the students showcasing them right so how you collaborate i did that uh and make i just have to make sure i think the teachers
058if i ever do uh i get a chance to either coach or give them a uh give some advice on how to do this you share your upcoming units tell them what you're pacing like i'm covering this in september this is november such and such and uh you gotta you gotta be proactive you gotta communicate constantly with these teachers uh because they're all busy and it's easy to forget you get caught up in things it's easy to forget um in order to harbor you gotta like i said you gotta communicate sorry about it um and so we gotta negotiate topics like in my i might have a unit and all of a sudden the teacher proposes a different topic and i somehow will try to relate it i said i just can't pass this up
059put on others on hold a little bit let's dive right into this because you can still you can still uh work on different types of learning modes whether it's interpersonal intercultural presentational interpretive types of learning modes in the language so sometimes you just don't want to pass up those opportunities all right and i'm almost there um and so i usually assign them somewhere between midway and towards the end of the unit because they develop the skills uh they have enough vocabulary enough expressions uh you know whether they just have to feel comfortable enough in order to explain themselves if i throw a certain topic question at them and it usually takes me about two or three class periods to do this um what i have them do is they're writing they're typing working on their
060scripts those scripts or what they're going to end up it's like many little uh oral presentations almost right they're going to be work they're working on that so they share with me at google doc that way i can monitor and see what they're doing give them guidance and also i have them share with the students other students in their class so they can peer edit and peer you know give them that little that feedback that they need say hey you're missing this or why don't you add this this is great and then each day i'll show example ours of students who actually like it's really like really nice what they've done and that way students can actually visualize and see okay this is what we're going after all right so let's see different types of
061griptile assignments all right we have the related topics of course and the initial introduction is great because they're doing it they do it in the target language and then they also do it in english i like them to introduce in spanish and french and also like part two is in english as well that way the other student then other students they're trying to learn english they can understand everything especially the introduction so video recordings questions uh presentations a presentation on anything even could be science projects they could present a science project and then you connect with a a group at a school in indonesia or singapore or you know anywhere in asia and and um and get their feedback from peers and other you know that are trying to learn english it's fantastic and then
062of course i put giving opinions read poetry that ties into zoo meetings because i have this uh monday to have a zoom meeting scheduled to a group in argentina uh one of the schools i'm collaborating with and um and it's great as far as zoom meetings one uh one breakout room will be all in spanish the other one could be all in english and then we have different topics like all right this breakout room is going to deal with cooking this jacob room's going to deal with sports this breakout room and so and then i'm there just navigating down to like pulling kids out okay we're done in this tough you want to go on the other one they're kind of jumping around and everything and it's really exciting i've done it a couple times
063so far already for my french class grade 8 but this is a grade seven and i got permission from the other teachers all the other classes during that period of my spanish students are going to participate in it too it should be interesting so now those those are the schools that i have so far and the great thing is about is each one of those most likely will continue next year as well in subsequent years because it's been such a positive experience so bordeaux france on the on the western side of france uh maxine that's on the riviera and that's really a tough life there wait do you see your presentation you'll just say okay why am i living there raphael argent argentina that's the one i have this monday and then in spain northwestern
064uh part of spain so let's see if i can activate this yes so the topic question was let's see you have to uh demonstrate what you do in the kitchen you have five or seven different actions that you do most likely it is related to cooking um you know cooking a particular meal and let's see we'll start off with we want to see uh where we want to see their students only up four that's it so and i won't have you see the whole thing because we'll be here for a while i'll give you a little snapshot well i'll show you ourselves yes hi today i'm going to be making a grilled cheese for lunch to start i turned on the lights and got the ingredients i opened the pantry door and got so she
065does the first half in english for the students ingredient so isn't this i mean this is fantastic and that mark my seventh graders can see that as well and then other classes very inspiring to other classes we we comment on each other's uh other classes comment on theirs and never mind of course the other school and they can comment either using a video which which is great they video vague and usually at the end of these we'll have a question what is your favorite food to make and then the other others will respond and it's just a very good let's see if we get another one here that's enough from ours let's try this tough guy here here you go hello everybody i am going to perform my recipe of 34. there is you see
066the ingredients are lettuce porridge tomatoes red onions the wet pepper 2 hard-boiled eggs on choice tuna balsamic vinegar olive oil salt and pepper [Music] so of course it deals with fish and he's fishing for the fish he's cooking it so he goes all out but a great way is what i really like the most about it is our kids also get to see the other students struggle learning the english language so they're not the only ones that feel like oh this is really hard possible well they're having a tough time with english and they've been spending the last 10 years doing this is your first year doing or this is you've been doing it you know partially the last eight years or what so you know we kind of draw comparisons there a little bit
067and uh it makes them feel pretty comfortable so i think that that was right here i'm so used to going around the class so um so if you have does any of you do any of you have any questions because i think i don't know how to get back to this i was just gonna say it's so wonderful this is great let's see how it'd be absolutely motivating it's a nice tie into diversity and equity i know my daughter was listening to your presentation when we were when we met she's like i can't wait to do that so i hope that it branches out to um you know high school or other classes you know with teachers because this is wonderful [Music] oh my god um i just wanted to also say uh credit to
068keith too because he's really inspired the rest of the world language teachers to um really bring these authentic learning experiences into the classroom and what's awesome about this is talk about the opportunities that arose out of the pandemic it really had educators thinking outside of the box and you know what a great way to learn languages and to also develop that intercultural confidence i mean we heard our top 10 students just talk about how during the pandemic what really kept them going was authentic relationships and this i was just so inspired when he showed me this as where his peers particularly at the high school level where they've begun uh to engage in this project in texas performance-based uh learning in our high school classes as well so we're just very excited to you know
069have keith as a master teacher at flipgrid and to you know this is a great example of how an effective professional learning is brought into our district it inspires teaching leaders who then inspire the rest of the team so thank you so much keith thank you and i just want to give a quick thank you just having the professional development was because i mean i would not have discovered this if it hadn't been professional development so you know if we can just keep that going uh because there's just so much technology out there it's not the amount of technology it's how you use it it's what you use and that seems to be the message we're learning each time so i'm hoping that you know we get to roll this out more and more of
070the subsequently here so thanks again thanks for this opportunity all right thanks rosa so as mr belden said um the arp esser grant is uh something we talked about at the special finance committee meeting and i really have to thank bob and um rosa and jen and ken and dr ruby for all the help as we brainstormed and worked our way through uh this major uh third frankly installment of the federal grant monies that are coming in the next slide okay so okay so it's very important for the public and the full board to understand uh the rps grant um formerly known as sr3 it is uh 800 and uh almost twenty thousand dollars and in this grant um it is very similar to sr2 in that it's got four key tenants um academic support
071for our students addressing learning loss from the pandemic certainly learning acceleration and recovery and you'll see throughout the items we were putting forward to use to use the grant funding for very much about recovery and of course learning also number two uh we could use them for uh healthy school environment type items such as hvac if we so we're so inclined and of course social and emotional well-being of students the third piece is technology staff development for technology we just heard about that closing the digital divide and of course family and staff connections community connections community engagement so we're really excited about this opportunity to launch us even further forward from sr2 and point number five it's very important one of the requirements of the grant is of the eight hundred and twenty eight thousand
072dollars a hundred and sixty seven thousand or twenty percent of those funds must be used on social emotional learning supports as well as either learning loss learning recovery that kind of a thing um so everybody knows arp esser stands for american rescue plan elementary and secondary school emergency relief so everybody's familiar with that there's a link there for anybody who goes on the website and looks at this presentation later one of the things the state department of ed is really encouraging is for districts to use the funds to launch forward not just for remediation but that learning acceleration uh closing the digital divide and moving the district forward and we really are taking uh advantage of that opportunity and capitalizing on this moment to not only take the incredible support we have from our community
073in the operational budget this year and the work frankly we've all done over the last six years um in building our school budget which is the main resource that supports everything we do but also taking the last two installments esther two and s esther three are better to really launch us forward into the future of this district and build our capacity another piece that i took from the finance committee when we met last week they suggested in this presentation to the full board and to the public that we put the strategic plan goals up here to demonstrate the alignment from the esser grant and the needs and the requirements of the grant to our strategic plan and really you can see that they're they're quite aligned so our to remind everybody our goals prioritizing student
074learning goals to ensure success in life learning and work beyond school supporting learners to ensure rigorous digitally supported experiences aligned with the student goals above developing measures or assessments of student and adult success aligned with student goals and then aligning all of our organizational systems to ensure the acquisition of those goals so a brief summary of the recent grants we've received over the course of the past year a lot of money has come in there's been a lot on the news and on social media about all of this federal stimulus that's come in and recovery recovery monies um so as a reminder there was an sr1 or the cares act um that was 74 000 and you may recall over the summer it was really survival mode and we purchased 300 chromebooks with that as
075we prepared for the beginning of the school year there was an additional 54 000 uh relief fund that came in and we used that to offset cost of the kindergarten bus runs you may recall with kindergarten we did half day sessions for the first few weeks of school with the students we also purchased additional cleaning supplies and some services with those funds recently over the last probably six weeks ago i prepared a presentation and we had a board discussion of the sr2 grant which is worth 328 000 and i outlined that in just a second on the next page for you um esser ii like i said those priorities are aligned with sir three or the art best of the grant and then the recent uh ester grant goes through 2024 or for basically three
076years uh we have to spend down that 828 thousand dollars and we just received guidance last week on how we're going to apply with that we have to have an august submission part of applying for this grant as i indicated during my superintendent report is the fall opening plan which builds upon the reopening plan we have this year so everything is linked in terms of the requirements to acquire these funds all right brief reminder sr2 this is the 328 000 i talked about i don't know why this is misaligned it was lined up before so i apologize but you can take a look we have summer school there's some technology pd a tutor for center school for math the science and social studies instructional coach positions parent engagement and some professional development for coach the
077coaching of the the science and social studies coaching positions excuse me and then there's a year two plan in there so those are the the items that we're using the sr2 funds for for sr3 i again apologize for this misalignment this was nice and aligned before it got up here we are um continuing we're going to spend over three years and we're going to outline this on the next page continuing with supporting our summer school program we're looking to buy 600 chromebook books over the course of three years 200 per year to really get us to a point where we're one to one with our younger students as you know grades eight through 12 are already one to one we're proposing for a technology integration specialist um to and that's over the course the grant
078will pay for that for three years and that is exactly some of the work you just saw mr johnson present someone who has that professional background to really have us utilize all of our technology to absolutely maximize how our staff effectively uses that with our students we have an instructional tutor for the high school a part-time instructional tutor we also have a paraprofessional for the year for center school just with some of the needs of our younger students that we've taken a look at with mrs diamond it's really important that we put that extra support in there for the year funds for community and staff engagement this could be supplies professional learning bringing in speakers all the different things we need to engage our community social work services also at center school and the second
079year of a math tutor so at center school what i'd like to do now is i'm going to open this link up and turn the presentation over to ken what's important here is ken is going to scroll through this and share and we did this with the finance committee last week is how we take these funds and we avoid a budget cliff going forward i think that's really important to see how we ease this and phase in uh to the operating budget over the next few years so can i let you take over thank you so the top section section is the sr2 the middle section is the art besser that dr harrell just went through and the bottom section will be the operating budget impact when i scroll down there and you'll notice that
080a number of the items have letters next to them on the left hand side that indicates items that will be gradually phased into the operating budget things like the technology pd from sr2 the uh high school tutor and art messer do not have a letter and they are just one time fundings so they're not going into the operating budget so the bottom section with the operating budget shows where all of these items will come into the budget and for example letter a summer school you can see is funded in the first year in sr2 and then in year two and year three it's in the arp esser and then in year four it's phased into the operating budget and so on with all of all the other items so you can see that at the
081very bottom in year 2223 that accounts for 144 thousand dollars being into the operating budget and that would be on the investments we bring forward that year and then in 2324 the incremental increase again would be our investment of almost 104 000 and then in 2425 the incremental investment would be a little over 70 000 and that would gradually get all of those items into the operating budget and ken um could you because it was mentioned in the finance of freedom could you explain that the incremental increases that we see there are essentially the increases that we would see they wouldn't be on top of new investments in that particular budget year but they would most likely be the entirety of it certainly in the first year of 22-23 that would be the only investments
082unless something dramatic came up that we needed to address this would be our intent and one of the things rosa and we talked about this finance committee meeting is we're all very cognizant the whole administrative team is working together we're monitoring as always the special education budget because that's that's our most volatile department in terms of student needs and we've talked about that at length in addition to that ken um is going to be working with the finance committee and we'll be going out to bid in september for the update to the transportation contract and obviously that involves the new school and the new start times and the bus run so we're keeping an eye on that as well and then a couple of other things i'm going to let ken speak to this in
083just a second so pardon me ken is we've worked with um mrs marion and mr dunn this week and looked at the bubble years which we are approaching in terms of debt services and so forth um so we're very cognizant of that in our planning and then the final piece in that is uh one of the things every um you know five to six years it's very important to take a look um in a collaborative way with our faculty the administrative team the board uh some parent representatives other stakeholders at some of your curricular programs and in our case specifically we want to over the next year to two years three years be looking at whether we need to supplement or look at different programs for both english language arts and mathematics so those are
084some other investment areas that we're really taking a close look at as well paying attention to but specifically where you see in 2223 the 144 thousand dollars the phase in so when we come to you in december this coming december likely unless there's something we can't predict today we're looking at a status quo budget plus that 144 000 give or take obviously as where the investments would be like i was saying earlier we're positioned well as a district now especially with the ester funds to really launch us forward i think what i like i'm excited about with this plan is that it seems to accelerate us to the point where essentially we should be which would otherwise take us maybe a decade to get to this point i mean 800 27 000 is it's quite
085a bit of money and so we want to capitalize on the opportunity but one of the things i know the finance committee and even working with mr dunn and chatting with some of the board finance members and border selectmen and other superintendents the one thing we need to and i mean the nation needs to pay attention to this you can't just buy lots of people and then expect to to magically have them stay with you you have to have a plan to phase this in over time so there isn't a shock to the budget it's critically important for good financial management so um i appreciate that you recognize that rosa thank you any other questions joy just brought up a good question and i think it's embedded within this plan but maybe we should highlight
086it how might some of these investments service our enl population english language learners yeah did i say that right yeah well one of the things is the the tech integration specialists and the instructional coaches are there to raise i apologize i've got the mask on i feel like i'm stumbling over my words here um or to raise the level of our effectiveness for everyone so that's going to reach all students but don't forget our operating budget this year we received everything we asked for the board the district the principals that means the faculty everything we asked for this year uh for next year we received in our budget and that includes a second tesol teacher so that's another piece that's going to help in that area specifically yes that's true but looking forward to the
087following year looking forward to to beyond that we did recognize and bring it to the forefront that we didn't need more in that area um so looking at like so summer school are we targeting a specific group of students you know thank you jerry for that question actually dr ruby is heading up our summer program so i'm going to turn it over to dr ruby students are being invited to the summer school program based on the work that the teachers and the administrators have done in vetting their the student data and so we are inviting students based on their their need and that is stated in the invitation letter um and we have a you know without disclosing information about students we have a very systematic approach to how students are being invited into the
088spaces that we have available in the summer school we also have both of the programs have a certified tesol teacher because there are other teachers in our district who have t-cell certification who are in other roles but we have a tesol certified teacher at both the k-4 site and at the 5 8 site to ensure that we are giving the teachers the support because we're not taking students who are second language learners and clumping them into one group they're you know we're including folks and that those tesol teachers will be supporting um the teachers our real goal here is through the coaching and the technology integration what not is to really be able to provide that targeted pd for our educators so that we can really raise the level of on the educators that we
089have in our district really to build capacity so that people have the skill set to solve the problems that they're facing instructionally and in any other way in their in their own classrooms which then just feeds upon itself and builds capacity and efficacy over time so we're really looking not for a band-aid approach which sometimes is appropriate it's the only thing you can do when you're facing a crisis but we've come through such an evolution in the past six years in the terms of the way our principles are really strong you know they're strong instructional leaders because we've done a lot of pd with with our administrators our teachers and we did what i called and everybody calls it the same thing pretty much spring pray type of eating where you have to get everybody
090together and do the same thing to roll out things like our graduate release of responsibility framework those are things that we had to do in mass to because we were delivering content to everybody in the districts that we'd all be operating on the same page but now we're i think i talked about this a couple of meetings ago now we're at this this level where just like we need to differentiate instructions for students we need to be able to provide differentiated targeted and supports professional learning opportunities for our teachers and so that with the tutors that are in here and in the sr2 that john was talking about earlier is important supports because it's the teachers that direct the tutors to what they're doing the tutors don't do it you know just of their own
091volition so we're really committed and i think that mr johnson uh you know the appreciation that that he expressed for the pd i think that's that's what teachers are looking for and so this approach really allows us to do that which in the end impacts students all students specialist students regular students elle students everybody yes i guess that was my question do we feel comfortable that this proposal or summary reaches all students um even for learning acceleration as it's covered and as they're current too like i just feel that confidently this is a proposal to even help our accelerate students so that the um learning acceleration is also going to be addressed through um through coaching because if i'm a teacher in the idea of coaching where a teacher is working with a coach and
092a coach isn't supposed to be a guru of all things that person doesn't exist that coach is a resource so if i have kids like the one student who was accelerated by her classroom teacher in mathematics that if a teacher has brings that as a problem to a coaching session like i'm not really sure what to do with you know joy she's really appears to have you know a a real draw to mathematics or science or whatever it might be you know what can we do for her that's so before who did you have to talk to really you know you can talk to the principal but they're so busy doing eight million things now this coach is going to be able to work with that teacher to try to advance that student also remember
093that the curriculum development that we've been doing we're now at the stage we didn't get to do it during this year because of the pandemic but we're at the stage where we're about to add that context that authentic context which our technology integration specialists if they find the right person will be able to help us do so that students are able to take in the way we're designing the curriculum those last couple weeks of a unit one and a half to two weeks there's time that will be built into if you want to call it the pacing guide or the curriculum timeline of the unit so that students will be able to do their own study in whatever the unit is that they're studying and that would be appropriate for those children who are more
094advanced and ready for something more challenging like the okay type of assignment that's self-selected so you get that engagement or students who are still earnest learners that need a lot of support will still be able to engage in an independent um study of interest that's related to that unit but they're going to be able to get that support and since everybody will be working on something that is a um an individualized personal project kids aren't going to be able to tell who's who like you know you're you're the top student in the class you're you need to teach your help we want everybody to have that same opportunity which is why we're doing the work with marie alcock in our curriculum development that we're doing so that all students get the opportunity to you know
095do independent study on a topic that's related to the united states that they're involved in in some way because kids are going to be more invested when they're studying something that they're interested in and that's with the youngest learners the other thing i'll add in that is an aspiration for us as a district with regard to what we've been able to see with when you have the support of some of a professional developer who really understands technology integration and the power and how to really help teachers operationalize that is digital portfolios for all students starting at the very youngest grade levels and that will also tie it into our portrait of the graduate concept and those senior projects that the high school has to work on that are a requirement for high school graduation you
096know we talked about that in in the cave committee and the earlier we start with the children on this portion of the graduate the more likely we're going to be able to achieve that goal because culture undergraduate doesn't start when they get to ninth grade and i think that that's um that's kind of how a lot of people have been doing it because we think of it as when they get to high school we do this we want them to be collaborators creators but you know all the c's we talked about we have to start that as soon as we get our relationship started with still with our students and we want to teach them how to capture what they're doing and digital portfolios are the way to go but the teachers need support so
097we're very proud of this work and the thought that's behind it and we do think that we're focusing on our teachers and the support of the students so that all students no matter what your label is or you know what group you fall into you are going to get the the type of education that i would want for my student and that you would be proud to offer your student so that's that's how we're looking at this i guess my question really is if i look back to the beginning of the presentation when john you said that they they really encourage districts to be bold and innovative with the use of this money i i'm not getting a sense of that right now maybe maybe i'm just not understanding how all of these how all
098this new staff will execute things in a bold and innovative way but i guess i was hoping to see um equipment or programs things that were aspirational that we never thought we could get but now we have this 800 thousand dollars um i'm seeing a lot of people and i'm seeing chromebooks and those and i think i agree with rosa if we could get all these people it would really move us farther along the path that we have set for ourselves but i'm not i would love for you to explain what part of it really addresses sort of the bold and innovative use of performance sure i i would say that bold and innovative is instructional coaches and a technology integration specialist to be very honest with you i think tutors and like are and
099even summer school to some extent although very important are a bit of a mandate to be very honest and they're not really bold but they're important to bridge the gap and and build from where we are and we need bodies that are directed by excellent professionals to as maureen explained i won't get into all of that um the other piece is in terms of this is a great question that about you know is there equipment or things we really need and a lot of i'm not sure which one of the students said it today um but one of the questions was asked was there something they needed in terms of computers or equipment or or software and they really said they pretty much had what they needed we need the equipment and we need the
100faculty expertise to be those guides on the side for our students to do that work and those that the extension work there and i think that's really the bold place is that individualized pd for our faculty i think that's really the bold piece and the uh opportunity that we're using to capitalize on to build district capacity to do that so that's how i have seen it uh in this part here and i i wish that was clear for you but i hope that helps thanks maybe you could explain what a technology integrator is and maybe that would help sure sure well we actually got this this is this is a great one here so we just literally are i did we actually posted did we post it at the technology animation yeah we just posted
101it so we have the job description up there so really it's exactly what we've been explaining and what keith was talking about today it's someone who's a professional in the area of technology and software but is an expert teacher and professional developer as well is to take curricular assignments right and extend those assignments for students and take the opportunities to build whatever it is that we're working on so actually doc i'm going to turn it over to dr ruby because we're really just going through this and a cape that was one sliver of what uh keith presented tonight that could be done for example with grid pals but there's a whole host of other things we can do so turn it over so if we have a lot of devices in the district we had
102devices in the district when we first came in we had a lot of ipads but if you really asked teachers what they were doing with the ipads we weren't really doing that much with them so a technology integration specialist and i would i wish we'd have the job up on the um screen right now so you can see it they are people who have expert first of all they're certified teachers and they have been they have expertise through their study they could have a variety of different certifications depending upon what kind of study they've done they also might be google innovators they might be google certified teachers there's there's just so many ways that they could have gotten their expertise and they also are they have a lot of they have coaching skills so they
103know how to work with teachers without making them feel like they don't have any skills so these people will look at the work that a teacher has to do and find ways to use technology to number one make the the content more accessible to students in an engaging way also offering students choice i think that's important to joy's question because when you have a standard that you're required to get students to mastery of their that's that's what your goal is but there are many ways to get there and there are many um everybody does not have to do the same assignment the assignments that will help you demonstrate your knowledge of the um the content or the mastery of the standard can be varied and through working with a technology somebody who's got expertise in
104technology they can help you find and learn ways that are they become very simple like flip grid if you've never done blooper before you look at it you're like oh my god how do i use this once somebody shows you how to do it and talks through your ideas with you it becomes if you're like how could i ever thought that this was so difficult and then that's step one and you get to see all of the other things that you can do with it grid pals is just one little tiny sliver of flip grid there are so many apps that are available that the state of connecticut has you know they required agreements with those con those companies that we can legally use but we don't know teachers don't know how to use them
105so if you look up at the qualifications there are many and the performance responsibilities you know providing teachers with strategies on how to use technology to achieve the district goals and expectations um that's that's really in it can be done and we've done it we have principles here we've done it in all the schools um with just just to get the teachers give them um give them a leg up in this very difficult time because we have all we've got all these kids on zoom and we're trying to manage it we're trying to do sel and so they were given just a small taste of how they could manage their classrooms and keep kids engaged so we want the technology to be a learning tool and an opportunity we want to be able to support
106the teacher also staff not just not just the educators but the staff and the students in developing these skills in technology and being able to use all the stuff that the taxpayer is paying for for us to have in our school and be able to use it in the service of learning not to be enough to be using it as a notepad if you were to go on to ct reap or any of the other job sites for teachers in connecticut you will see that there are several districts that have these positions posted now because they are bold moves they are they are new positions for districts that they are realizing because of the pandemic that we thought we were maybe tech savvy we kind of were fooling ourselves because there's so much that we
107did not know how to do and there's so much that we can do and um you know i think that we would be best to show you examples i i'll tell you that i've sat in on the pd that we've um you know this was like zoom that we've done at the different great uh great spans one of the things i don't know mr volandis still here oh good mr velanda one of the things when we started the high school was what we heard when we met with students every we met with students every week last year from the time they were put remotely until the end of the year and what we constantly heard i can't remember whether it was wednesday or friday that we met but i'll say wednesdays we met with them
108every for an hour and a half every after every wednesday afternoon and they they talked about engagement they talked about boredom it talked about meaning to be connected and so one of the things that we started with in high school was social emotional learning and the use of technology is correct in in the classroom so when i met with this person that we hired for the pd i said here's the deal you're gonna you're gonna be working with these different um content area features you know because that's how we have them grouped for their plc's and i said you can't come in and do the same thing with the history teachers and the same thing with the math teachers because for that we should have like a big you know everybody in the auditorium if
109that was legal at the time but everybody on zoom doing the same thing it has to be specific to the different um content areas can you do that she said yeah i can do that i was like yeah okay we'll see about that so i'm going to turn it over to um mr bellanda because it was miraculous yeah so some of the things that i was particularly impressed with with this particular presenter was they were um specific strategies like some of the ones that i honestly typically that i um when we plan for professional development oftentimes we focus on the core subjects right we talk about reading you know uh humanities literacy science like those are i don't want to say easier to plan for but they're more in the forefront of our minds so
110some of the things that i was really considering is okay how do we how are we going to plan some of the stuff for the business and the cte teachers what are we going to do for pe and health right because these are you know one-off electives that are critically important but in terms it was and i still have them uh saved in my google drive individual presentations that were connected to everybody's content so for example some of the engagement piece like one of the ones was for pe and health it was a they were talking about it involved not just the idea of running right and for health and exercise which is clearly something we talk about all the time but it was development of a tool that would allow someone who was blind
111or hardly difficulty seeing to actually run like a marathon right so for the first time this person was cited they lost their site there's a challenge put out there and you know this technology team developed prototype that actually allows somebody to run without the support of anybody else around them so somebody has no sight so it's just such an engaging gripping thing that involved both current technology and things that are cutting edge also problem solving it just got the our pe and our teachers so engaged in you know what can we do how can we hook our kids what can we do particularly the distance learning which is such a challenge this year right and how do you teach distance learning pe i think that's not an easy thing to do um so she gave
112them all kinds of strategies supports and resources and continued to find him and was sending things to us so and it was really tailored to each uh content there was really um you know language there was conversations about charlie hebdo and some of the things that happened there um you know in paris several years back there's also conversations um and i'm trying to think of the other ones i don't have all the top of my head but being in science i can't remember what that one was everything was tailored specifically too it actually made me feel somewhat i don't want to say inadequate but in terms of the ability that this person had to integrate the technology piece into um really diversifying professional development for each set of teachers was just remarkable and then when
113we went to the uh when we got the grant okay so we used pd rpg money at the high school because there was such a student need for engagement and we had a focus with our teacher evaluation as you recall when the state gave us the leniency to go off of the regular teacher evaluation plan and focus on seo brookfield high school was the last school in the district that was launching ruler and so this was more of a challenge for the teachers at the high school because they didn't have the same experience as the other teachers so that's why we looked at social emotional learning and technology integration for the high school after we got the grant i said okay so now we're going to work with the other three schools we have to
114take the same approach as we did with the different content areas of the high school and now you need to make sure content area at the middle school but the age level is different of the students and then at the two elementary schools it had to be age appropriate and i'm not going to put the other principles on the spot i only put mark on the spot because they'll they would tell you that we were able to focus on the age level of the kids so the people at huckleberry didn't get the same presentations as the people at center school even though it was the same topics and so this is really about differentiating instruction i can guarantee you that as good as our teachers are none of us have background in this and so
115none of this can happen and we can't advance it and these are the skills if you look at our portrait of the graduate as we wrote it a year and a half ago these are the skills that come shining through in this type of work using technology really focus on that and i'm going to go back to what i said about joy's comment that use how to use things like choice boards so that kids can pick what it is they want to do or be engaged in to demonstrate their learning so everybody doesn't have to do the same worksheet that should not be happening in our classrooms kids need to they need to belong if we didn't learn that from this past year and a half we didn't learn anything they need to belong they
116need to have their voices heard they need to be engaged they need to like the young man who talked about i think mike you asked him about how he got interested in physical therapy and he talked about you know it was it wasn't even on his radar and he didn't say that but that's the message until he took that one course and he was hooked when he took it was heather's class right that was i mean these we need to do things that that kids can really sink their teeth into and the technology is a way to get it there's ways to gamify and i'm not a video game person i'm not talking about video games but there are ways to use technology to get kids to be able to work with the content that
117we're responsible for that they need to have but in a way that appeals to how their brains work would your brains work and kids work a little differently than ours did um in others there's science on that so i don't know you know we can we can bring you examples um but it's really transformed the way we operated this year and we want we don't want to lose that thank you mark i appreciate it i don't know if that helps thank you yeah thank you very much um but i don't know personally i think that you know you can buy a bunch of things but ultimately i mean what are you really going to do with that i would rather see even though they just look like positions what these positions ultimately give us is
118a deeper the opportunities for all students just seems more more widely available with these particular positions so i think they're bold for baroque field i think these are positions that where it would probably always stay aspirational for many many years so the fact that we could get i believe three of these coaches right the science social studies and technology i mean that's that's pretty cool i like that i'll just say one more thing this for me professionally like the technology integration specialist has been paramount for me i mean it's really transformed my teaching and i don't know how i would have gotten through the past year without the several that we have now um it really i don't know what we've done and i've really taken our teaching to a dependent level so i see
119the value in that for sure and it's very much needed now more than ever just to kind of summarize to go back to deb's earlier question about bold i think i'm imagining what kids are doing in our classrooms will be bold and exciting because of this work you know so we it probably is more straightforward to say we're going to have a new course called x and that's like sexy and exciting and that's easy to understand but i think this program will really develop exciting bold curriculum and opportunities for all kids and in a more sustainable way so that's exciting any other questions or comments i think that's enough so we can move on food service contract extension the extension of the woodson's food service contract for the 2021-2022 school year that's recommended by director
120of business and operations and post okay um [Music] when i first came to the board and asked for permission to take advantage of the uh the opportunity to extend for a year and the board agreed with that so we have the extension document within your packet uh which was reviewed by the finance committee at the our last meeting and they endorsed it so we simply need a um vote of the board to approve that and then i can have the chairwoman signing i can send it into state for approval the document that you see before you is dictated by the state word for word the only thing we fill in is the numbers the only change would be an increase in the um management and administrative fees for witnesses the state said we could go
121up to 4.5 increase we negotiated down to three percent again that's not this is not out of the operating budget this the lunchtime any other questions we have the subcommittee meeting scheduled for july through december i'll know that the board approved the subcommittee meeting scheduled from july to december 2021 as discussed with adjustments at the may 19 2021 board of education meetings all right any other questions or you know comments changes edits to this okay looks good okay so all in favor [Music] elementary school building project i actually don't have any um updates on that umc no the only thing was mr checko talked to me today and asked if during the summer the nbc meetings could be held at huckleberry so they can do the walkthroughs of the project before the meetings and not
122have to do a drive that's really the only update and please check out the camera or drive by on non-school hours to see the walls that continue to go up foundation is like we said the majority is in and the walls are starting to tower i mean it's amazing what's being built there all right so we are on to three main points definitely the yeah it is a recognition of the top 10 students and the teachers of the year in each of the schools and um i think mr johnston's physical presentation yeah i agree all right upcoming events okay at all schools um collecting of school-issued devices will begin next week it's already done at vhs next week at the rest of the schools the last day of school is monday june 14th that's an
123early release at center school tomorrow is the smart spare via flipgrid there's a pto meeting tuesday june 8th and a community meeting and spirit day on friday june 11th at huckleberry on june 4th is the virtual second grade field trip animal embassy june 7th through june 11th is a scheduled incoming second grade virtual meet and greet june 8th is the scheduled incoming fifth grade virtual meet and greet june 9th is a virtual author's visit for all grades june 10th is the fourth grade end of year celebration and june 11th is a virtual pto meeting at 9 30. at wisconia monday june 7th is the eighth grade field trip to quasi wednesday june 9th is the eighth grade field trip to bellamos adventures and friday june 11th is the moving up ceremony at the brookfield municipal
124center and at the high school on june 7th a pre-recorded presentation of all undergrad awards will be shared with staff students and families june 8 is senior scholarship and athletic awards at 6 30 and june 12th is graduation that's it and amy just very quickly mr belanda just whispered in my ear the senior awards is being moved on june 8th to 7 30 instead of 6 30 mr landon can you share yes so tomorrow night we're supposed to to try to get some back of normal some sense of normalcy we're supposed to have an outdoor concert tomorrow and if you pay attention to the weather it's not going to cooperate so the next available date really was june 8th so we're moving that up we're going to do that june 8th a little bit earlier
125and we're going to push the award ceremony back to 7 30 just so there's not as much traffic and congestion in the parking lot so thank you thanks mark okay we have an executive session plan i'll move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the employment contracts for superintendent dr john burrell assistant superintendent dr maureen ruby and director of operations can post and the superintendent's evaluation and unaffiliated salaries thanks okay uh all in favor okay so that concludes our broadcast tonight