Board of Education March 20, 2019

001[Music] she dresses good evening today is Wednesday March 20 2009 teen and I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order if we could all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the United States to Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have five of our seven numbers tonight Bob is away on business and first up is student spotlight we have huckleberry Hill students so mrs. Lapham could come to the podium we have some wonderfully dressed students tonight so we're really looking forward to smile and for a really big treat tonight so I am so excited to share with you all a project that our fourth-grade worked on and the culminating activity was a living museum

002so tonight I'm going to introduce introduce Laura cook there Kim Rachel elicit Alice and Kim's Holly half of our fourth grade team and also Oliver Cameron Izzy Jackson Shefali and Neeson and Samantha who have come dressed in character and are ready to present to all of you [Music] hello good evening so we are team for beef so we make up half of the fourth grade at huckleberry so we brought out two or one of our students today and what we did was a living museum so we just finished a unit of study around research and reading and reading nonfiction so part of what we did was we had them researching characters from the American Revolution so they were able to synthesize information from multiple sources to generate a speech and they're speaking as if they

003were the person so they use this information in order to speak clearly and knowledgeably about their topics and then we put it all out in the gym so parents got to come staff could come and see them present as if they were characters from the revolution so our first character today or figure today is John Hancock so he's gonna go first good afternoon my name is John Hancock and people know me for my nice famous handwriting on the Declaration of Independence I will tell you about my life so listen closely I was born in 1737 sabe my father died in 1744 when I was only seven when my father died my family lost money fast my uncle really wanted to adopt me so he asked my mother and she said yes so I went to

004live with him my uncle is also one of the richest men in Boston I always called him the king of Boston and because he adopted me I was the Prince of Boston when I was growing up I went to Harvard University all I really wanted was a friend while all the boys in my class were jealous of my uncle's wealth my uncle died in 1764 and left his business to me when I was 27 I bought a new fancy clothes and got powdered weights like other important men I was thinking that the Prince of Austin had just became the king of Boston a lot of stuff happened after that but what I really want to say happen after the Boston Tea Party this is what I'm famous for I talked through the Sons of Liberty

005we made a list called the Declaration of Independence I was the first one to sign it and I signed it nice and fancy so that people would remember me and so that King George the third career without his glasses during the Revolution I was a leader I was also an American merchant statesman and a patriot after the Revolution I became a governor and died in 1793 one lesson that you should learn for me is that money doesn't make you happy I was definitely a great man and helped the colonies get the freedom they deserved [Music] hello I'm Samuel Adams I was born on September 27th 1722 in Boston Massachusetts I have been known for many things such as being a 1700 Sporto polio organizing Boston Tea Party aside Benjamin Franklin and being and being head

006of the Sons of Liberty my cousin is John Adams in my childhood I was home-schooled by my mother tolerance grade the remnants of a university afternoon my father gave me money to start a business but I gave half of it to a friend and similar bankrupts to my most notable protests will the Boston Tea Party in the Boston Massacre in the I was Boston statement US government governor's you could call me during the time of the Revolutionary War I'm a political decisions is how the army shop is how the Amish I had moved forward and because of these decisions we had one though evolutionary war after the war I returned to my home in Massachusetts and so I died on October 2nd 1803 one was an airborne as that piece may have to be far

007for hello my name is mercy Otis Warren and I was a writer join the American Revolution I was born on September 14th 17:28 in barns and April Massachusetts I grew up in Cape Cod Massachusetts with my six younger siblings my life was very different than the modern-day human my father thought it was unfair that only boys were allowed to go to school so I went to school with boys join my free time my mother taught me how to spin and cook I mastered spinning and cooking at seven years old during the American Revolution I was famous for sending letters to the colonists to give them convicts I was also famous for our coats my favorite quote of mine is writing is how America is America no one really understood the Met so that's why it

008is my favorite when the Redcoats found out I was writing they tried to send me to jail but they couldn't because I had legal rights right after the American Revolution I married James Warren and all speaking close friends with Abigail and John Adams they helped me through this stressful middle of the newspaper and in the end of the first woman's write a paragraph in a newspaper the next year I became woman of the year and the same day I found a statue of me put up in front of my childhood house I passed away on October 19 1814 at the age of 86 in Plymouth Massachusetts I had an amazing life and I hope you love writing just as much as I do and remember writing is how America is America what is that quote

009means to you did you know there's a famous natural move through my horse about the Danbury Connecticut library my name is Sybil Ludington I was born April 1st 1761 in Fredericksburg New York I am human from riding my horse 40 miles to wake American troops to fight the British soldiers when I was only 16 years old I was the oldest of show children I helped my mom take care of my other siblings still had time to ride my horse fun fact about me is that while I was riding my horse and Kent Mahopac Putnam in Dutchess County I met a man who offered a ride with me I sent him the one who runs miss burstner a few years later and every dog did who was a lawyer and had a son heavy Ogden I

010then lived in Uniondale until I died in 1839 78 years old hi I'm Paul Revere who universe I did unable 18th 1775 I was born in genuine for some Kingdom fireman died May 10th 1818 I was in Boston the friend revolution I was a dentist and silversmith I want to score joy in the 13 and then joined the army in 1756 when my dad was a pyro silver and right - Deborah Revere are the oldest of seven children I'm going to name him each I have I had eight with each other with during the revolution I spy dermabrush and every nurse with the Windsor man to see British spies afternoon motion either the first fundraiser on fire insurance company and we move back to my service lift business I also had a comment about my

011first round on April 18th 1775 a fun fact about me and that they're all remember southerner today have you ever probably have resigned Benedict Arnold also notice when the biggest traitors in US history I was born in 1741 in Norrish Connecticut when I was 15 my dad was an alcoholic I ran away so they can I get militia and fought in the French and Indian War I got married to Marcus man field in 1767 but she died in 1775 soon after I got married to Peggy Shippen on April 8th 1779 I'm famous for being one of the biggest traders in US history during the American Revolutionary War man the Green Mountain Boys attacked Fort Ticonderoga and we won at the Battle of Quebec City I got shot in the leg and was badly wounded after

012I didn't get promoted Major General the Continental Army and I wanted to resign from the Army but George Washington won't let me at the Battle of Saratoga I led an attack on the British but I got shot in the same leg that was wounded at Quebec City after I felt that I can get recognized enough for my duty so he started to spy for the British after a spy for a while I became a part of the British Army and let attacks on the colonies I've written Richmond and New London after the American Revolutionary War I moved back to England at one point I moved to Canada but after a lot of bad business deals I'm offered a statue of me in front of my house I died in June 14th 1801 because a gout

013was an infection in my leg I didn't get I felt that I didn't get what I deserve so that is why I'm a trader have you ever wanted to meet a spy well now you have my name is Lydia Baron Pindar I was born in Dublin Ireland in 1728 I was a pacifist who is a person who believes war is not right I was also a Quaker who was a member of the religious Society of Friends during the American Revolution the British came the British moved to Pennsylvania where I lived General William Howe who was a British officer demanded my house or his headquarters but luckily as I think cousin helped me and my family stay in my house but the British were allowed in my parlor one day on December 2nd 1777 the British

014held a private meeting that they wanted me and my family asleep but I only pretended to go to bed and then went to the parlor and spied on the British in a linen closet I had my old cloth needle book to write down everything they set after they left I stuck to my room and kept all the information to myself the next day I went to a tavern and met up with soldier who gave my needle book to General George Washington and his forces were safe with the early notice without me General George Washington's forces would have died so as you can see all the hard work and research really paid off so thank you to the fourth grade team for instilling this love of learning and fascination about all of these credible characters in

015our history and good job everybody that was really great so that is truly impressive thank you everyone I mean from the research to the presentation I learned a lot [Music] I can't believe they did it with hardly any notes you know it was amazing see I might see some future actors in this what do you think I think the rest of the meeting yeah okay next we have public comment that was nobody signed up is there anyone in here in the public that would like to speak all right move on to student representative report you got a tough act to follow there ready where's your powdered wig since your last met things I've been running grease where they ever filled this weekend we have our annual spring musical and this year the show is the

016wedding singer and the show starts tomorrow night and end on Sunday afternoon the whole department has worked very hard on this summer looking forward to seeing them perform winter sports have also come to a close as our spring sports started up this past weekend and our baseball team will take a trip to Florida tomorrow and return on Monday most seniors are making college decisions as end of the third quarter comes quickly ready for the last part of the school see what it is t-shirt day for the seniors that declare oh I'm a papers okay all right written correspondence David sweet regarding concerns with the softball program at the high school Monique Matthews regarding special education program concerns sherry Stabenow ski regarding special education program concerns and Marshall Wilkins regarding resources compiled by the book field

017Energy Committee sir I'd like to before we move on to any of my report I actually wanted to reserve a little bit of time for the director of our regional education Resource Center and advance the director miss dr. Jeff kitchen if you come to the podium Jeff's gonna share a little bit about advanced services with us and also some of the work we're doing in western Connecticut or sharing services and some of the other work we're doing so let you know about advance thank you very much John thank you board members I appreciate the time I'll be brief tonight I just want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and talk a little bit about our agency what we're doing for Brookfield and for the region as a whole so coming around right now is

018is a set of handouts that will guide my my comments and my comments will be shorter than any handouts I promise you start on the the front of the first page that has the map and just to let you know you hear all the time when people talk or ask me about any advance they usually say well you're the people with the vans I see your vans or I was behind one of your bands and yes as Christine can attest we do have a lot of ads but we do a lot more and we actually have over a 50 year history at advance normally education connection and the other five rusks in Connecticut were created over 50 years ago in 1966 we are statutorily required to exist we are the regional education service centers firkin

019for Connecticut near somewhat organized around County so at Advance covers all of Litchfield County and Northern Fairfield County we work with 29 school districts in our region 32 different communities in that northwest corner and as you can see from the list we do all kinds of things we have the adult that provider for many towns in our region we do driver's ed programs transportation we do food service for districts that need us and basically as you can see from this list if school districts might need it we can provide it and and that's really our charge in state statute that we work with communities to help them be successful more efficient more effective we are governed by Board of Education members every school district in our region has the opportunity to send a member of

020your board to serve on our board of directors we don't currently have anyone from Brookfield I know you're all dying for another night out every once in a while but if any of you were interested we would love to have a representative right now we're represented by were represented by about 14 of the 29 districts so over half our districts have not assigned anyone but we only meet seven or eight times a year they're short meetings we serve rarely good dinners as part of meetings I'm trying to sell it and it's not working so I give up on the bad side of this she is information about our funding contrary to what most people think there is no direct funding from the state of Connecticut for resks or for our agency there's no lying item

021in the state budget that's been gone for over 12 years now so the funding that we get is primarily at this point fee-for-service so those things that we can provide that school districts will pay our agency to provide for them and the only way that happens is if we can do it better and a fire quality and you do it more cost-effectively so in the last two or three years we've seen a real shift from about sixty five percent of our budget coming from state contracts federal contracts things the government has asked us to do grants and things like that it's really flip-flopped now and by the end of this year this 53% because there is 60 percent will come from those fee-for-service initiatives the services we do for schools and we get some federal

022money we run a headstart program it's a preschool program and you do that in in counts that demographic we meet Head Start standards Torrington Winchester and a few others and what we're really proud of if you look at the chart at the bottom you know almost 90 percent and next year by next year we'll be over 90 percent of our revenue goes right back to the school districts and the communities to pay for the services so we have a very low overhead for a nonprofit governmental agency like our - to be able to operate at 10% or less overhead is good some facts sometimes the right hand side we are the second largest employer in Fairfield are in a Litchfield County sorry we employ at any given time over six hundred and forty full-time people

023we cut between nine hundred and a thousand paychecks every two weeks so it's a large operation we serve over 46,000 students across that region and in the last few years have made a considerable capital investment in both trying to find facilities and hire professionals to to do more in the area of special education that's really been our push I've been with the agency for three years now and the former superintendent in Connecticut and as I made my way around the district where I heard from superintendents and special ed directors over and over again is that we needed to do more that districts needed help with regional special education options more cost-effective special education options so on this next sheet where you can see us will happen in culture connection is just a little bit about

024how I tried to change the agency what we've done recently to get that that concept across that we are you know here to serve you our vision is to really redefine what a regional education service center can be we are different than our five other risks because we do have run magnet schools we're the only risk that has no magnet school operation I spent my whole career in the Greater Hartford area you know we always viewed crack to the rescue in the Hartford air is more of the competition we competed for students for administrative and teaching talent for funding you know we're not in that situation so I tell our staff all the time we really can be arrest we can do what we're statutorily supposed to do via partner with the school district and

025approves two school districts to do things better and I ask my staff all the time if it's not us doing it for districts why and if it's not us who's doing it and why aren't we doing it and we've taken this this concept of culture connection and customization really to the core of what we try to do we change the culture in our agency to get away from being 13 or 14 separate departments who do their own thing without any concern for the agency as a whole to a culture where we practice this concept of system this Azal as a whole we're much more effective and efficient and we can package our services more effectively for school districts I require all of our administrators and all of our directors to log all of their connections

026with school districts every month we look at that to make sure that we're staying connected with our stakeholders I know the volume of email and phone calls and meetings that are happening in Brookfield and baffle and Litchfield and and Morris and Goshen so and the idea of customized customization that you know we don't we don't work within a region that can be a one-size-fits-all type of approach to the services and supports that we provide we have to be prepared to come down and talk to John and Maureen like I have many times and have them tell me well I need this but they don't need this and this and you know we need to be able to customize them and be able to put together a set of services that will work for Brookfield or

027will work for Brookfield Bethel and Dan berry in a regional situation so we're really proud of the work we've done there's some there's some to change our organization there's some information about the rest of Alliance we do as an alliance the six executive directors try to lobby in Hartford against some of what we feel are kind of the frivolous and and meaningless pieces of legislation special meant comes to the issue of regional regionalism and regionalization you know I'm happy that some of that is starting to appeal back because that you know there are educational leaders in Connecticut and and you're fortunate in this region to have a group of superintendents John and and some of his colleagues have gotten together I know can't attend those meetings and Christine is that a lot of those meetings

028where we talk about sensible solutions to regional efficient and effective services and support so we've worked on a regional special education transportation interactive map to help with some of those costs we're working on a regional education program we've done some chromebook bidding into a bit summer transportation pop possibly as a region so those are the types of things that our agencies should be doing to help and again I thank you for giving me a little time to just talk about how we're trying to change the image of our agency and what we hope to do not only for individual districts but as I said for the work of jaundice colleagues in this area and the business managers and special ed directors that come together to be able to show the legislators in Hartford that you

029know if you leave districts alone they really will do the right thing for all the right reasons and don't try to fit you know round pegs and their square pegs into round holes and say well you're too small so you've got to find another district to merge with some of the national science be happy to answer any questions because I promised your father that I have to say it a lot to be problem that was really impressive so obviously students that work hard and teachers that work really hard in and understand administration should be proud that was great question the day time and location of your meetings we meet on Thursday nights on the first Thursday of the month on about seven to eight of the months in the year we do not meet in

030July and August we typically don't mean December and January and do you switch locations we try to do a couple meetings in the Danbury area but most of them are our Litchfield office thank you thank you great to see you thank you really appreciate you coming up all right so next and this is really just it's a great news night there's just so many things to share um excuse me the next thing I want to share is our we Senor Unified sports program I understand we have a newcomer recognition and we've done some great things with the program so I'd like that bio dr. Cipolla and mr. Randy and some of the teachers who are on the program [Music] I think our teachers are reluctant to come up I am I am so pleased to

031tell you that our Unified sports program at whiskey near Middle School is gonna be honored on April 30th at the universe works banquet as the and male' Ferrante rookie school of the year so they are being recognized as the top new program in the state of [Music] you wonder what one second for Dean starts I do want to do a very special Dean's gonna show you some pictures of our students engage in your exports but I want to thank especially Steve Baldwin who is not here and Dean Rhonda they are really responsible for starting this program last year for organizing and resources that we needed to have this program and recruiting the teachers who then did in the paraprofessionals you did all work so I really want to thank Steve Indian for that and I

032can't really take the credit we have to show a little slideshow some pictures and I'm gonna read to you the the paper I got from this Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference CIA see about the award and some of the things that we do participate in [Music] as you can see this is one of our first events at the high school this is at Brooklyn high school with a banner with all the students that we have and the students and athletes and our coaches and paraprofessionals here's some of the athletes playing this is a soccer event here was a couple pictures I have some duplicates five of those as many as I could in playing basketball this was that was skinnier and the the great thing about what we played many time one day and every one

033of our first games and the when their students started walking into the gym they were coming they were just getting to the school and walking in if you remember we had a gym packed with kids all of our kids started clapping for the kids as they were walking in it was just really an amazing show of support and and we do always say you know I know the high schooler they have the program that they have through athletics where we do not we cheer for our team and we hopefully also cheer for the other team we did not even say anything to the students they did on their own so that to me was I know the principal I felt very proud of the students that we create students that we have here we are

034invited to we had the would call for the star what was the yeah bag what was the thing she got chosen for pure player and so we picked one one of our hat up here appears that and the athlete that she worked with and they were presented awards at the aqua turf at a banquet for the state so that picture in there nice a real having fun with her mascot that day [Music] here's another picture this is great so it's a little fuzzy that one waiting to get into the game here's a little stretching before we came at the high school here they what was this 100 before they start to gain they there's an oath that they recite businesses baldon again during the game some of the UT behind us Broadview was one of

035the teams that was there holding the torch little bowling at bowling activity that they participated it and my favorite they're lighting the torch at the top the top of the month so these are just some of the pictures was all about but the what dr. brill talked about before was the cie see the letter that they sent to us each year our staff selects a new school to receive the in Milan front row T Middle School Award for demonstrating excellent participation in school-wide and enthusiasm your school's team and coaches have gone gone over and beyond to make this year very special for athletes partners parents and school personnel your student body has also embraced your unified sports team and has helped to change attitudes and change lives my honor to express appreciation for your team

036for that you'll be presented an award at the Michaels Cup Unified sports award banquet at the hockey turf in southern zone on April 30th which will movie will be attended to be qualified for this or the we had the schools had to have at least participated in more than one sport the first year we participated which was last year percent participated in basketball soccer in bowling this year we've added track and field in volleyball the first year we had about 20 athletes and peers together partners this year we have over 40 that have been signed up and participating we have also participated in game days where they played board games and also field days and the field day was that day right at Danbury some of the schools that we partnered with are Bethel Danbury

037Newtown in New Milford and the last thing is some of the campaign's that we've also participated in as part of the program itself is to rid the r-word campaign that choose to include and with lunch buddies and also a movie day as a part of a whole school partnership one of the other things we also do this not in here just I wanted to also talk about is we have a unified theater program that was scanned it's been running for at least eight years very exciting wonderful staff members so two staff members are unable to be with us tonight that's Tammy Giordano and Cassidy Rio lo but here we do have a me Kelly Kathy Roman and kori Rafferty who are three of our special education teachers that have devoted their time and energy and

038passion to this room who is not here tonight was one of the coaches but like mrs. Dawkins Apollo said we had two of our newcomers two of our brand-new especially sat members this year jump in and have been a great addition to our school and also to the program so I think it's something that we talked about as kind of in my eyes kind of changed the Piazza culture in the building and just the students that are our partners with the art with our athletes is a mate it's amazing for both the athletes and appears that work with them and I've got nothing but unbelievable plays from the parents of both sides just saying it's been a wonderful wonderful experience for them both so actually a couple ever actually been in tears when they've been

039talking to me about it how emotional and how exciting has been for them so to me that's the best thing you can ever you could ever say so thank you any questions well thank you everyone it's an amazing program and I'm so impressed with the entire program thank you Thank You Dean thanks everyone great job so the next thing on my superintendent report for this meeting is a special award that dr. ruby was recognized with from the Yukon Nia School of Education she received the outstanding administrator award for 2019 as an Alumni Award for the MEAC school and not only is it prestigious award in tremendous honor certainly I am extremely proud Maureen for all the great work she does and I know we all join me in that sentiment there was a awards banquet

040on Saturday night up at UConn and we had a great time I was there with my wife and Maureen and her family former board member mr. Cecco and his wife were able to make it up and of course the mauryans very near a difference and we really had a great celebration as well seven other ores the beautiful thing they did with the ceremony is a very brief about a minute and a half video on each of the awardees and so Eric has that video and he's gonna link that for us I'd like everybody to sit [Music] Maureen she does worry [Music] holy teacher leadership there also education at every level [Music] burner readers [Music] compassion for students a salad serve their students foster success she goes up versus making sure each drill is [Music] thank

041you very much for all you do for the families oh you're very welcome miss Ananda and then we had just two more pieces for the superintendent we're at the first one I sent a quick note right before the board meeting miss Miriam our town controller sent us the management letter regarding the 1718 audit and while I mentioned it at the last meeting that it was a clean on it and it was another year of that which was really proud of there was absolutely no findings and not even any recommendations for the Board of Education so congratulations Ken and Jonah in the Highness department another job and we're he's asking for more money and so and you know just we can never forget just short five years ago where we work and where this is where

042where the passport is current board and where all of us together are taking the district so thank you everybody and then the last thing I wanted to turn over quickly to Kent just a piece on time in attendance just another update that one of the blue Shapiro recommendations I work on that with our hourly employees so ten and eight or sure so as we move along in this process we met with the Union presidents a couple of weeks ago to bring them up today on our our hopes to implement this system sometime this year and we wanted to get their input on methods of clocking in for time convenient locations of timekeeping devices and things like that just to make sure that they were were part of the process so we had a bit of

043conversation with them and we gave them a bunch of information and asked them to think about to talk to their members and we're gonna meet with them you got on April 11th annuity conversations hopefully finalize our vision of how we want to do the implementation and yesterday Joan Eric and I had a conference call with exactly time and that's the time heating system that works with Mewis their system we discussed how the system would handle a lot of the unusual situations we have a time even especially with the paraprofessionals you know for paraprofessional substitutes for a teacher they could be five dollars an hour extra and how are we gonna handle different different things like that and we wanted to give them all this information so that they could give us feedback on on how

044much work we would have to do up front to properly implement the system and how time it would take to implement such a system and give it all this this discussion they estimated it would take for six months so that's after we signed online and a get us in there q when we started implementation for us so we're hopefully will be able to do it sometime by the end of this calendar year and then after we need with presidency and go well into the company to do it right is a lot of work and a lot of that will fall on Eric and Joan probably with my assistance it's it's very very important to set it up properly to begin to be able to make sure will function properly miss a certain point well I

045inadvertently left off the approval of Board minutes I'm going to make a motion to move approval Board minutes to after the superintendent's update second favor okay so now we have approval of Board minutes recommend a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below is recommended the regular meeting on March 6 2009 teen and the special meeting on March 12 2009 teen okay any questions Richards all right all in favor aye okay so now that moves us to subcommittee reports and facilities or if not we can wait until next video sure so we discussed looked over this little to add report we discussed from Hillier that presentation we compared the pricing between Hillard products and what we use now to be approximately 7,000 dollars more per year and we decided to defer decision until our

046next meeting we got an update on the CES cafeteria floor we're supposed to add a phone call the next day with a journey handling case we discussed the portable walkway at the middle school and the difficulties we would face with trying to enclose the walkway because of Building Code locations in our current projects mr. Coe will report it on the press box the water project the auditorium each track system and the boys locker room the roof and the generator and mr. post received an email from the Girl Scout troop who a Girl Scout troop who'll I could do a project to install hand sanitizers in all the classrooms cafeterias and gymnasiums we did a question to get more information regarding this who would be responsible for refilling it maintaining it replacing it it was damaged

047we loved the idea but we needed further clarification on some of those concerns that we had and he said he would get back to us with the response by the next meeting so our youth continued to look at enclosing them pretty much at tables we decided that we weren't a further half of sessions on it because it didn't seem that would be beneficial given that the new school project passing exactly we looking to me be making do or put a little kind of band-aids on it - yeah and the difficulty of something either more permanent or larger hard to describe how you might close it a little bit because it has to swing open for emergency vehicles and things like that so that's the issue right it's just no space over there beyond the the

048oracles is between the portables and the school the emergency vehicles have to drive through so we have to have that fence able to open up and there's over 200 bolts using all the way around the portables because that's a hill that goes down the church so there's just no there is no space so that's our concerned us you know weather-related you know it's heavy rains or snow yes students and wet and their books and but we did why incur the expense for I think that Yannick dan felt that it would be very costly and for the three years they embrace sure but as John said it was really the safety vehicles and you know rescue vehicles that was the main problem trying to accommodate them on the other around back any other questions for sure

049moving on to finance since Papa Sottero get that reviewed the variances in finance report we're starting to see fewer variances at least this last financials one with the X p.m. excess cost grant which gave him less than we had budgeted for and we were going to check to see whether that was a change in the percentage every person or whether we just have less units our services qualifying Andrea like that okay so we're trying to determine which one it is in addition to that there is an increase and a special education tuition as well so with those saying that there's only three months left in the fiscal year we're going to start trying to recoup the cost else or maybe cutting not as such as and supplies over the schools just to make sure that

050we can make up that your problem this year other than that we discussed the budget which we will be further discussing in full business and then Marsha Marian the the time finance director was there and just and she has been heard so everything it was just a tremendous asset movie works by way to improve communication eat on a smaller time that she does reported on the way that she was changing the revenues the Board of Education revenues in requested were defying us and that was that's very much those any questions okay so we are on to the consent agenda recommend a motion of the board approve the items on the consent agenda is recommended new hires new transfers second any questions just like to thank miss lavish on oh and mrs. diamond for communicating with

051parents regarding our exciting opportunity to have our new teacher West Marchena who is part time at Central now moved to a full-time music position here in the district and we're really excited about that he's transitioning over to huckleberry and still working with some of his assignments over the center school and a whole plan in place the principals and it work with the parents on this and as I understand it we will still have a kindergarten performance and we prior to the April break so Wes is working with the kids on that so it seems like we've had some of the transition and I think the principles for their work on that and very happy to see Wes with us a little time now the only one was carolyn dr Angela will be taking over as

052the full-time principal secretary at the high school and while we're excited for the high school with Carolyn going over there mark will be in very good hands she will be leaving her her post under mr. post in the finance department in the great work she's done there so we certainly will miss her at TSO I do have to give a big thank you to Lisa Genovese the former principal secretary at the high school she's been doing double duty she is not transitioning to the Dale Ren's job they'll recently retired and while she's been doing Dale Ren's job for the two assistant principals she's also been the secretary for the principal for the last six weeks she's done both without complaint a heckuva job and we're really proud of her thank her for all her service

053and continued service going forward so you just wanna comment on Oh sick so is there plans for replacement or miss Virgie that's the plans that are going on right now right now we're transitioning and we're also working with we we did yeah we did post a part-time job but we don't have anybody at this point we have some before but the concern for that is finding a certified music teacher for a part-time position for the end of the school year a lot of the cases would take those kind of jobs coming out of college are a little mr. Southern College lightweight certified so we do have subbed in there and we're working on it and again the thank you for reminding me morning the substitute at center school was the same substitute that was at

054public when this is like this without so no no that wasn't it it's not same so I thought it was okay we have something we have a substitute will be on to new business to see my trip recommend motion that the board approve a trip for the Odyssey of the mind team to travel to Michigan State University in East Lansing Michigan from Tuesday May 21st two of nineteen through Sunday May 26 2009 teenth participate in the world finals competition as requested by IOC the mine advisor Sarah Amaya hi I'm yes Oh second all right hi oh so I'm super grateful to be back here again we had a wonderfully successful year with how to save in mind ten teams consisting of 62 students competed this year action last Saturday and seven of the time one

055in first place so I'm here once again asking for permission to allow these students to travel to East Lansing to fundraise their hearts out for the next eight weeks and to go out of the time their life that's congratulations thank you else amazing this does it tie or doesn't surpass it Hill's record so I think we're filled the most myrtles ever sent is six teams at one time and two years ago when we sent six it was six out of 12 teams that qualified it was the largest representation for the state of Connecticut I think the team closest to us this year is 14 so I so like we're 20% of every of the state of Connecticut which is which ability one is very small community that's a tremendous shout out to all of our

056students and all of the corners yes isn't it six months worth of hard work but it is it's just it's a major testament so that the kids the parents the parents the coaches they the support of the school district they it's it is not it doesn't operate on its own so we're very very fortunate and very very excited any other questions okay all right well thank you congratulations again good luck and I expect to see some chickens in my yard yeah well yes yes you were checking us on our way yes thank you guys thanks for hard work we appreciate it all right next we have the next-gen accountability report 1718 oh that's just an action so that repeat you are up good evening you have a packet which has the PowerPoint slices up there's

057a lot of numbers and one of the first things that I'm going to show you is a very brief video that really succinctly explains several of the slides but I included because I know that some of this stuff is like foreign language to folks I included all the slides with the description so you would have it and be able to contact me if you had any questions [Music] it is a picture of this condition we're gonna kill a lotta Considine weeds in this purse and it didn't use this waters [Music] therefore when it comes to a nine-week schools and districts Connecticut uses eat water and moralistic approach called the next generation basis poor grace of the 12 key leaders these indicators focus not just on academic achievement contest they also build this dynamic growth chronic

058absenteeism college and career readiness graduation will secondary interest physical fitness and participation some thoughts even when it comes to test scores the next generation of ability system looks at things for students in grades 4 rewards and Harry Cornish this means the schools with historically lower achene students system if they help their students grow we're students in grades 11 and 12 because different students show their abilities in different ways the system reward schools will soon speed benchmark scores on any exam not just the SAT but else will be a CT Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate dis or some schools are using this system to identify areas that media through the state uses the system to identify the certain schools that are doing well and those that may need resources and support for additional information on the

059next generation accountability system please visit the ED site data so the next slide I'm going to show you are basically restating what Ajith had said in that video and I will be happy to take questions on any of these but if there aren't any questions I'm going to keep going so ok great so SD state of the accountability system has several purposes help us track progress help schools make improvements show the state where towns and school districts might need some help and we've received that help in the past of their high school recognize the schools that are having successes and so that we can recognize our own successes as a district and it's it's a system that's trying to be more transparent than our previous system was and it's also designed and at be approved

060by the federal Department of Education because it's designed to meet all the federal and state guidelines and these are some of the things that as these the 12 indicators that he identified are ones that we look at we recently have a meeting with all principals and little tech all the scores or those indicators is if you look at our Brookfield report right now you will notice that one of the areas that we have concerns with is physical education it was it was a number that you know caused our total number to be lower although our 82 27 is a very respectable number and when I saw it if you look down at number 11 we have seven even though we're above the state 70 point eight percent of the points that were available were their

061place that we learned and we pride ourselves in having very excellent athletic programs and our sports teams are very good so I was like what the heck is this all about and so Steve did some work in looking at some of the assessments and what I want to tell you is that we've already taken corrective action we understand why we had such a low score when we think that as as a district that's an area that we shouldn't be low we should be well above the state so the first thing that I can tell you is that the tests of the students take for this particular indicator has four parts and we generally do very very well on three of them and can you guess what the one is that we don't do well on

062upper body strength and so the the phys ed department in our curriculum revision has already taken that into consideration to improve opportunities for students to build upper body strength the second area of concern for this year in looking at our performance was the way the test was the test window existed so participation is critical and I'm going to talk about that in a minute with regards to the rest of the test but participation is actually figured in to the calculation of the percentage points that you earn so when we have students who are enrolled in school who are exempt from phys ed for time period for a concussion protocol for a broken leg for whatever that goes against us which doesn't make much sense so they are not there the window for next year the

063the directors for physical physical education athletics for the area had a meeting and what's going to happen next year is that window for students is going to be the entire year so if you look at the high school we have this children don't take this at at the middle school as well all year long and so when they have is that they have a broken leg or a broken arm or whatever is precluding them from participating in gym we will have our our teachers of visible education and under our directors watchful eye watching those students so that we can have them take the assessment even if they're not enrolled in visit when they become eligible to be assessed so that that score in itself really hurt us in the our total score but we did

064look into it immediately because it really should be a no brainer basically if you look at these scores you see that you see what in the far right column the state average percentage points earned that's in blue and then the column right before that is the percentage of the points that we earned so you can see how well we did benchmark with the state average points earned a thing that's really important because we're talking about growth the different and graduation rate gaps you will recall some of you as parents some of those board members that several years ago we had a very large gap at the high school which caused ice in ela each main high-risk students and non-irish students and that caused the high school to be identified as a focus school so that

065was a gap I'm happy to tell you that we have no gaps in achievement this year and in fact I'm gonna be talking a little bit later about how how much high school has improved because there are there are five total categories that schools can be put into categories one two and three are the main categories that schools will fall into based on how many points they score and then there's categories four and five which are special categories that the state assigns you to and the high school was assigned to category four because of the gap that we have so hold on to that information if you this is the the report that shows you that we have in the final column is there a gap or an outlier we have across the district we

066have no gaps or outliers in ela math or graduation rate you will notice that there is an absence of data in the row for science performance that's because the science test is not does not cap did not count last year because it was the implementation of NGSS we were going to pile it before but last year everybody in the state took that test and since it was the first implementation no scores that reported the data were used by the state to analyze where a cut scores should be etcetera one of the reasons that I'm really been a proponent of providing our teachers with the professional development and the materials that they need with the Smithsonian science is because we need those to be in alignment with the standards for the science for the state and

067also those numbers are going to be filled in in in that room next year and we don't have the we don't have the opportunity to professionally develop our teachers and provide them with a curriculum and curriculum tools that align with the standards it will make it very difficult for our students to perform well at the bottom of this slide this is something that is very important for folks to understand this expectation is that 95% of students purchase at least participate in the assessment if you have less than 90 percent participation rate that does not affect your total score that 82.7 nothing was detracted because we don't have participation but here's what we have to help everybody understand that affects the category that your school is put into so while our high school was didn't make

068level one two or three several years ago that got put into a special category for for having a huge gap it was I think I think it was I can't remember the number one hundred thirty fourth from the bottom in the state in terms of the gap so there were only 133 schools that had a larger gap in in in ela so our stands for for the high school places Brookfield High School in category one the highest category that you can be in however because I sound like usual however because we have not achieved the correct participation percentage we get dinged and they get downgraded to level two that's what people look at that's what real estate agents show people what they don't show them all those numbers on that other page because nobody's going

069to look at those but they tell them what category your school is in so the same thing happened for our middle school our middle school is in the lowest of the three categories that you can get put in with unless you're put in four or five for other problems because of participation they were level two so this participation piece is really critical and I would love to if people are listening or people talk to each other people who typically opt their their students out we would love to meet with those those parents and learn more about why they are compelled to opt their children out it's their right obviously to do what they see fit but we would like to help them understand more about us back and more about common core and why it's

070so important to us as a district to to have all children participate so we get a really honest picture of how our whole district is performing that informs the work that we do with teachers that informs curriculum that informs the resources that we provide for teachers and unfortunately if we don't have participation our schools will get downgraded and people looking at our data who are interested in purchasing a home in Brookfield will will not know the true story because they'll only be looking at a number that doesn't really represent what we have in Brookfield right um you know that didn't participate what percentage of those were students that had opted out I'm sorry so so let all the students that didn't participate do you know how clique is that whole you know those are opt

071outs those are opt outs some of the student is absent those that yeah those numbers are on this chart reflect pop house you're not believing the point the principal's do their best to work with the families and try to assuage them of any concerns and this kind of thing the parents to what mornings Thomas are different reasons decided about again we would relish an opportunity to have further conversation about that and explain as that gurus is playing tonight the importance of the assessment on this slide you can see the accountability index at the bottom for the district which is what that big report card showed but this is breaking giving you breaking out for the individual schools I also tell you that for a center school the only they they don't take any of the

072tests they're not graduating they're not doing any of those other things there so they're basically looking at attendance chronic absenteeism and they don't get categorized because if you are only scored on a hundred points or less of the total points that are available in the system you don't get categorized and that's typical for lower elementary schools you see huckleberry musketeer or fill high school the accountability index indices for those schools the participation huckleberry did not have a gap with participation just the middle school in high school but there was no achievement gap in any of the schools between the high knees and the non-id students which is a first for us which we're very proud of and those are categories I already explained this slide just shows the last of the current year when I

073say current year I'm talking about last year's data and the two previous years and if you look at under achievement gap you see there we had yes yes no and we've never had a graduation right gap you know that we do well with our students graduating on time and you can see that participation has been a problem for the past three years so this is something that if anybody has any ideas to help us with I'm all ears but we would love to be able to explain to parents about common core about us back and about the relationship of s back to the SAT so if you want if you would like to know about how we compare to the other schools in our dearth this is this chart gives you that information statistically speaking

074a point above a plus or minus one is considered by the state to be no change so those are the 21 21 schools in our district and we if you look at the mean median and mode and you consider the plus or minus one we're smack in the middle and we do believe that we're going to see some nice increases over the next couple years with all of the curriculum work there doing because we are becoming more and more aligned to the standards with both our instruction and our assessment so when we looked we sat and we looked at all of the principles met with us we met in central office and we talked about you know what are our strengths and opportunities based on these data and other data that we have and in

075terms of academics we our strengths our curriculum revision the what we've invested in curricular tools early literacy skills in our students the professional learning and the fact that we have stayed the course of the strategic appearance plan the opportunities that we have based on the data and looking at last year's data as well as - the first one is to improve our science instruction and be in line with NGSS as I referenced before we we have definitely some growing room in mathematics and one of the one of the things that we felt would be important would be to have st map brought in to provide students with that some temporal spatial learning opportunity to increase their understanding of mathematics and the opportunity that we have to increase our early literacy skills all the way through

076grade five so the foundational skills that are in a common core that's with the word analysis curriculum tools for fourth and fifth grade which we have in the budget with regard to talent we've been doing a lot of professional learning we've worked with collegial calibrations through region learning with our administrators for the past three years we have a walkthrough plan that you'll be later we have elevated the human resources department and have a director we are continuing to improve our onboarding process as you know we did some rework last year with the administrators and we had Special Education reorganization while there are always bumps in the road when you change things we really believe that these are an asset to our talent Department and what we have opportunities we have discussed our our vision for

077having a visual and performing arts person district person and a civic and community partnership leadership person as we endeavor to improve our social studies program and have more civic engagement opportunities for students and we with regard to the challenges that we feel in the growth that we can do in mathematics we believe that one of the things that we should be looking at in the future our tutors to support the filling the gaps for students in that area with regard to culture and climate we're very proud of the work that we've been doing with social emotional learning and ruler we are going to have a three-day conference in the beginning of April here with our our faculty and folks from surrounding schools that were invited and creating trauma sensitive schools will be doing training in

078that we're collaborating with the book field early learning professionals with regard social-emotional learning a high school degree shalls' challenge and we have kindness initiatives at both the high school and the middle school and our elementary children are always kind are they and unified sports what you heard about the opportunities we wanted to start with a parent University this year dr. pearl brought that forward in last year's budget talks and we probably didn't do it where we still have that on the burner and then we really would like to see more participation in the assessment with regard to operations the folks under Ken's watchful eye have been doing great job with munis you heard about time and attendance you know about the new school project in the new school configuration and we are continuing our work

079on the employee self-serve portal our opportunities which we've been looking into when you've heard about our breakfast program and what dr. Brule refers to as small our regionalization but I like Jeff's regionalism terms for efficiencies and purchasing transportation and you know that's you know that we're not just saying that I mean Jeff came tonight and talked about it it's a reality so that's questions I'm happy to take them and if you you know when you go home and you look at these numbers if you have any questions I can try and answer them I know Rose and I have communicated and there's a really nice easy to read I think manual that explains in more depth than you've ever wanted to know about about this test but thank you for your attention Thanks progress tickets

080right so the students at the high school opting out if I actually had a one particular success or multiple tests I'm gonna turn that over to mr. moment the scope of the issue yeah the some of these high school really look at participation numbers you lookin got one grade level of class are you talking about we were I believe our individual participation numbers for the SAT or somewhere in the 90s I want to say 91 92 so like 3 or 4 percentage points short what ends up becoming 8 kits or nine kids who didn't take the test and they're talking about si si that could be for anybody for different reasons kids that were out sick we have kids that are just not there we have kids that you know we have some students who

081are technically enrolled as 11th graders right because they didn't have enough credits earned to actually take also the last year they were loved craters there's still 11 craters this year because they have enough credits there maybe a quarter crash or the state can so does some 11th graders to get those kids to sit and take the SAT again is a real challenge you know and then you balance that do we hit the participation of numbers hit that up and then run the risk of the possibility that I'm taking the SAT and not doing well so it's a real delicate balance Act we're working really hard on Jewish IDs working with Maine in particular is the new principal here at the high school to figure out some strategies to make sure we get to that 95

082percent room easily seems to have an NGSS though I'm not sure how that's going to factor in with a whole new test I don't know that those numbers that you saw really are SAT yeah and while this celebratory night we don't like the self-aggrandizing really important to talk about that Jeevan cabinets it's closing the incredible work that's going on in all the schools especially the high school in labels the focus school four years ago and the work that's been done with the the the Sea Grant if we can't hit the big state grant that my mark put together and all the PD this one is that and all the effort you can't make teachers enough and the administration enough we're working on that do a great job yeah we have two more years of that

083grants how incredible we have the a walkthrough protocol project thank you so first I have to say that is a Brookfield resident and as an educator here in the district about well here's there's a lot to be proud of this has really been a celebratory night so to speak so a lot to be proud of in any event I'm excited to have the opportunity to present on the walk through process the administrative team and I have been in working on this since the spring of last year I entitled this presentation the power of the walkthrough process because indeed the northen process does have the potential to be very powerful in impacting teaching and learning especially when it's done in the context of the continuous improvement planning process which is exactly how we're doing it here

084in Brookfield all right so what is a walk through a walk through is really just brief classroom visitations it has a specific focus and a definite set of look force unlike a classroom observation in which you're really getting a single classroom snapshot the district walkthroughs really present an opportunity for us to get a district-wide snapshot which is a bigger picture of of many small spec loss snapshots so it's really a strategy for providing the school or district in this case not an individual teacher with non-evaluative feedback so with that you'll notice this slide has a huge exclamation point so the old walkthroughs are but what our walk there is not they are absolutely not a teacher evaluation tool so I'm going to be really clear about that the focus of these data walks is really

085in the understanding of the supporting the improvement of teaching for learning and again not evaluation of the performance of individual teachers so the big why right you talked about what they are well they're not but why are we embarking on this so again we began our district walkers in the spring of last year and one of the reasons that we began this was because in our district implementation plan we specified that the gradual release of responsibility model is the adopted framework here in Brookfield so we really started this burrow through process was born out of the adult action to be able to measure the efficacy of a professional learning relative to the gradual release of responsibility additionally we wanted to measure the efficacy of a collegial calibration work that we've been doing with were actually

086our third year I believe with revision training with the administrative team in order to build in excuse me administrator capacity as instructional leaders that has changed agents in the advancement negative teaching and learning so in order to make sure that we're actually seen changes in student learning outcomes and engagement and instructional practice we need to get into classrooms to see what was actually happening in the classrooms were the professional learning initiatives actually going to classroom for the student learning outcomes additionally we wanted to make sure that we were also seeing the quality of the feedback and the supports that the administrators were providing for teachers relative to the observation performance observations of teachers so what is the process first what we did is we identified our focus so our focus was with the gradual release

087a responsibility model and the active active learning environment as well we then how to identify the participants and what were the team's look like so the participants were the administrators and we had six teams three administrators from each team except pointing at four people on I'm we then identified of the data collection tool so the data collection tool I'll show you in a moment was really just taking the components of the gradual release model and the components of the active learning environment which really comes from the Connecticut court teaching the Common Core teaching and that is also the instrument that we use for the performance of practice observation of teachers and it made sense to use those components since we were using those components for a collegial calibration work with revision learning to really unpack

088that rubric as administrators to calibrate with one another on what is effective teaching look like and how can we prepare effective and quality feedback offer teachers so then we created a schedule the schedule is really a two week window three days in each week so about 60 s in observation in our offers and the schedule is such that we do be in classrooms for about five minute clips at peace we have again three three three administrators on each team so you had AM schedule and p.m. schedule we had three teams going out morning 13cm afternoon in about ten classrooms per team so we were doing about thirty thirty walk throughs per team per day communication of the plan this was pretty critical adopted Burrell with email D of the staff on Tuesday prior to our

089two-week window commencing communicating that you know this is the window of time attach the checklist so that everybody could see exactly what the tool was the investors were using in the walkthroughs and also putting in bold the way that this is absolutely not something that would be part of evaluation in any way shape or form that it was really about the administrators the building capacity of administrators to really impact you know teaching and learning collecting the data so then the walkthroughs commenced and we went into classrooms and collected data using the warfare tool so what the tool is on a Google Form again I'll show you that moment and we basically just went in with iPads the checklist was right iPad in our teens after doing a walkthrough looking to see whether or not certain

090components again of the gradual release and happy learning environment or observed we just you know check them off if we observe them the groupings that we observed and then he also asks student engagement questions and again I'll share the checklist with you and on it so after of the tuak window ended we got together as a diminisher council team where we analyzed reflected on the data and discussed you know any kind of trends or patterns that were emerging from the data we shared the aggregate data and discussed data and trends with staff so that the principals basically the building principals on a Wednesday afternoon after the Administrative Council team met would share the aggregate data with the with the staff so in terms of an action plan the next steps at the Administrative Council meeting

091when we would analyze and reflect on the data we also discuss and possible adult actions that could occur within buildings these walkthroughs are really kind of like benchmark assessments if you will where you're kind of just really taking the temperature and seeing if there are any red flags relative to you know any of the components of gradual release or the active learning environment in terms of components of the learning that we had on the checklist again I'll show you Don it and then we decided whether or not there were reasons to do some additional Diagnostics what we see in certain you know trends in certain areas and then building principles which share that with their of their teams back at the ranch so to speak whether it was through data themed process or climate learning

092teams whatever teams at the different schools to discuss whether or not there were some additional things that needed to happen at the building level and I'll share with you some of the things that did happen a little bit at the building with a little a later slide and then obviously after the plan so let me show you what they look through to look like let's see if this works all right so he's nice some technology works Thank You Erica so this is the walkthrough tool that we used and again dr. Brown shared the world through tool with the staff you know as I said at least a week before the window open it starts out as you can see I'm not going to read it to you but with a brief purpose right we always

093want to start with why are we doing things and then there's some demographic information here time to day grade level subject area number of adults in the classroom excluding the teacher you'll notice teacher name is not on the checklist we're not getting any data at all that could bring us back to an any individual teachers classroom hour we had about three hundred five data points last spring close to 306 I believe the minute that the beginning of the year and unfortunately due to the snow we had 185 data points in the middle of the year so as you could see there were no teacher names it would be really difficult for us to try to figure out which teacher which you know was in what class or when you have 300 data points so that

094was not our goal it wasn't the purpose of this so you can see the following elements of instruction for active learning were observed and again these are really components or attributes if you will that were coming really from the Common Core teaching record for effective instruction because it made sense that it was an alignment with oral-b they're doing with the Collegium calibration work as well and the room beans again was a whole group small group teacher led students because that gave us information about the gradual release of responsibility model and then we have some student engagement questions we really tried to get to at least three students but in the five minutes sometimes it wasn't possible and if the teacher was doing direct instruction or modeling sometimes we didn't want to interrupt that instruction we

095added these student engagement questions because certainly we have understood and have been working with teachers as well as students to help really understand that students really need to be active participants in their learning and the work that we're doing with Murray Alcock you know curriculum development work is really helping us to to really get that message out and also to again help students understand their role in that prop in their own learning so this is just the checklist and that's pretty much it on that let's see if I can get back into the slides so last but not least I wanted to share this slide with you because it kind of goes with the rest of the celebrations if you will for the evening one of the areas that we have identified in the spring

096of last year as well as in the beginning of the year this year as an area that was least observed in a classroom so it was more of a trend that we had noticed was the setting of the lesson purpose it was one of the areas of components on our checklist that we noticed was least observed as a pattern across across schools in the district so in terms of the action plan if you recall this library talked about the different steps that we took after analyzing and you know reviewing and discussing the data one of the action steps that was taken at the buildings was to do a little bit more PD on learning targets and success criteria with teachers and then teachers certainly working with students to really kind of help them understand their

097role as to why are we setting why am I talking about learning target why is it important to have one why is it important to understand the broader context of learning and why is it important to understand whether you have learned what you're supposed to learn in terms of the success criteria and it was really nice to go back into the schools in the middle of there and really hear the the setting of the lesson purpose really clearly articulated and also to be able to see it increases you can see here of 16 percentage points of students being able to clearly their response clearly reflected the learning target and then the the why are you learning was an increase of 15 percentage points and how do you know if you know is an increase of

09812 percentage points so that was really a nice celebration and again kind of goes to why I indicated the beginning that I entitled this the power of the walkthrough process because this really showed how powerful it can be when you work within a continuous improvement process to really impact teaching and learning so this was really I think a cause for celebration because I know that the building principals have worked hard with their staff and the teachers as well to really understand learning targets and to help students understand their role as what we're working on with our curriculum development work to create self-regulating right self navigating and self monitoring students I don't think I thought there's something right but we're gonna get so that's so that's it I thank you of your time if you do

099have any questions or comments butwhat's I'm happy to hear them if you can't think of any questions now because I know this bit on a long evening for Souls and we'll day from so you can certainly call me or email me and I'd be happy to talk to you more about the process me personally or the oh yeah so we were in the classroom for five minutes Pervis Pervis right that's why it's a walk through is it is great but I have to tell you ju really do get some good information you're not going to see a lot in terms of length lesson progression necessarily in the five minutes but you do get to see depending on what given time that lesson that you come in you might be able to see where the lesson

100purpose I was either clearly articulated but even if you don't see it necessarily expressed you know you know you know I couldn't eat the beginning when it's a lesson a lesson purpose the setting the lesson purpose is something that really can be articulated and will add multiple times you know in the session and when you speak to the students you can clearly see whether or not they are reflecting the learning purpose which is the whole reason that we talk to the kids right because you can't really you can't really go to a feel for student learning outcomes unless you talk to the learners right because I could be teaching and if you're just in that will be compliant stage you might not be learning how many classrooms so um yeah so in the in the

101spring of last year we had 300 I think about 306 classrooms that we were in and in the beginning here we also went to about 300 and unfortunately snow was on a friendís winter and we had 185 yeah and I have to say also that we really as the administrative team we've had conversations about this it's really really foster a collaborative you know calibration if you will around you know the the again the CCT rubric to really help us work with one another to really understand what effective you know instruction looks like and the relationship between teaching and learning that cause-and-effect relationship so so we've kind of bonded around the waters so deep like administrators from the high school might go to the elementary Thank You Jenna exactly right and that was that's been awesome

102as well I know that you know Marple and I really enjoyed going to see the kindergarten classroom yeah and I gotta say yeah - two big guys on our administrative team I I was on the team last spring within Eric and Dave Petoskey and they enjoyed sitting in preschool chairs - having a great time you know in kindergarten and everything else it was like any card table it was hysterical and and notice they both are in different spots this year so they really got excited getting out of their comfort zone individuals and so it's been great for the administration's and get to know each other as well and mom you know work together a lot of camaraderie and actually if I can just add one more thing that they just load up now in terms

103of you know what's happening back at the ranch so to speak and response to this work that we've been doing together I know that speaking of dr. pate mr. rosovsky a doctor - saucy he actually the last professional development you know opportunity conducted a PD opportunity for teachers called the CCT and named so really are working with teachers to look at again the Common Core of teaching for effective effective teaching at rubric to really look at the different attributes the indicators and look for key letters you know in terms of language you know what does it mean to you know to be developing versus fish oil into the exemplary level so looking at that together and then talking about the possibility of getting teachers is really worrying about teachers in this process right to get

104them on board to do some walkthroughs as well so we're really looking forward at the building level to begin that hopefully if not by you know this year certainly by next year so when you bring the data back to the buildings to you the teachers look at the raw data and sort of talk about it analyze it what does that look like yes so we share with them it's not just a raw data but it is the aggregate data in terms of you know what percentage of let's say you know the lesson purpose was clearly communicated what was the percentage of the observed opportunities for that one of the things that were that we saw a change in was from last year this year was the groupings and yes so when we shared aggregate we're

105seeing a lot of direct instruction this is important not all the time we've seen slowly but surely more collaborative blue book so when you think about the gradual release responsibility we've seen you know people really embracing that and we want kids to be working together on challenging problems and hearing perspective and you know speaking and listening which are standards which we didn't have before and all of those really important things to become in and the learners so we saw a big change over when we started through the beginning of the year and the middle there so they get that information and I think it's when you're working when your teacher and you're in the classroom with all these children a working hard to do it it's nice to know sometimes you feel like I'm the

106only one that's doing it to see that you know people across all four schools are in the same you know the same framework and working together then one last piece wanted ad that will be coming out just a little piece in the newsletter I'll send out next week is the three questions we've talked about when we ask the children what do you learn why are you learning and how we know when you've learned whatever that lesson target is I'm actually seeing you know getting a give it a try to the parents give this a try you're the quietest talk a little bit about walkthroughs and give this a try instead of just what did you do at school today and the answer which I get my kids all the times not that we all know

107that is really ask points question and really I say it's not per tuning for connection conversation or obviously learning what what's going on in school but it really it moves the conversation deeper between your kids as well so it's just another thank you thank you thank you very much moving on we have a district technology update good evening I'm gonna give you a quick little update about some exciting things in the term of good news and things to celebrate the exciting things happening in technology but you also want to remind us some of the things we've done this year how we got some right now and what we're gonna do looking flow going forward so what have we done this year you know you'll notice some of this the same as what we did in

108the fall but we did put 22 network switches in it with skinnier and Center improve their bandwidth connectivity reliability and and in turn Wireless which organism or Wireless later on and with that also upgrading the entire district to be capable of doing 10 gigabits per second internet connectivity speed that were utilizing now and preparing us for the future as as more and more technologies used big copier project 270 copiers and Printers that were installed and configured using what's called Canon Uniflow solution so you have the copiers the printers that you know are obviously more efficient or part of a contract for supplies and anything like that but on top of that it's the software solution that brings in badge printing jobs get held until the person actually walks up with their badge which not only

109reduces jams but also eliminates a pile of paper sitting at the machine when somebody goes to pick it up this software solution also enables us to get more granular reporting and actually kind of real time to see our cost savings one of the exciting things is we recently had a business review and it was reported that with these new machines we've seen 99 percent uptime which means 99 percent of the time every machine is up and running in elastics today 9 9 months now it's been it's been very exciting to see um I did want to I hope inter previous because I didn't want to get the previous but when you don't have a new solution like this Uniflow solution of the equivalents that are out there getting uptime reports just just as it is

110easy so I looked and I looked but I couldn't find anything on on uptime for for the older devices which of course there's also a lot more of them we also put it in an interview the principals can tell you about downtime because they complain we put in interactive displays at Burke Phil High School a dozen of them in math and science departments um they've been heavily utilized throughout the year and I'm hearing positive things about and it came in a great price so we'll continue with that in the next school year um also the big news at huckleberry where we're trying to start looking towards eliminating big physical labs and doing mobile apps and we did have the Chromebook cart coming in huckleberry and the old 400 computer lab was turned into a classroom

111um the district did receive 530 new Chromebooks which we're all using today in the elementary schools and as part of the one to one program on what studying about these Chromebooks is not only the number of them that we have and the usage that they had um but as defent mentioned when he was there earlier on these Chromebooks were actually purchased with the region's regional efficiencies group that he mentioned you know that came from attending meetings for and through them Brookfield and many other districts work together to really drive down and get some great pricing on on Chromebooks and we're excited at the opportunity again for the coming school year the BHS 101 program was expended expanded to the 8th grade at whisking here so now it's a district one-to-one program I've heard some great

112things over with skinnier mr. Randy can agree that they're using them and the teachers have been excited the students have been excited and and they really hit the ground running with it and the staff here took off and and we're supporting them as well and the tackle over there has been great Barbara McCarthy had some and adapting to changing and doing more of that work now that that's been going on in high school for years so they're gonna really nice so what we're doing now back in October we didn't finally get our next generation district firewall in salt which brings improved connectivity security and safety to everybody district-wide oh it was actually installed in 2000 in October of 2018 on I did want to put that it's still a work in progress um you know

113when you put something in like this you still want to monitor you know update what's protected what's blocked and monitor usage to make sure that it's accurately protecting blocking and actually securing our network so that is and will continue to be a work in progress and what's nice about it the fact that is the next generation is as new technologies come out and new concerns come out the firewall automatically updates those for us so they're kind of like one step ahead of the game which is great some work I've been doing with the security task force was reviewing some of the various applications regarding student safety and protection they include a Chromebook web filtering when students are at home anonymous reporting of issues and situations and a lot of it some collab had mentioned at

114the last meeting during the security task force report and we had proposed looking into the goguardian platform which encompasses a lot of separate features but one of the most important being the ability to filter and control on not control but actually control the students access on Chromebooks when they're at home the idea being that when they're here they're protected by our network when they take their devices home they're not um which then leads to potential security flaws that can then be brought back into the district the next day goguardian helps take care of that and working with facilities department it's called well we we got some principals as well and student resource officers who had a lot of input putting new cameras in at the high school and whiskey near we finally officially formed the

115Technology Committee had our first meeting in January of 2019 where we discussed a lot of topics such as student name privacy and talking about going forward district needs for technology and professional development and how we have in the community can help look to how we support staff support students and get training in there as we require more and more use of technology we always need more training to go with that and and who better than the teachers that are expected to use it a staff that's expected to use it to provide input on that with the increased number of chromosome you know they need to keep getting more power to our wireless network so during the year we've added a total of 22 access points spread out between the high school skier and huckleberry on

116to to help both provide more coverage space but also allow more devices to connect at once one of the cool ideas and I barber McCarthy over it was here of mentioned this to me last week I thought this was kinda nice what she did is we have Chromebook carts in that school as well they attached a wireless access points directly to the chrome ball carts and they go around with them so whenever they play your Chromebook card in a wireless access point comes online and they'll connect to that so it's wireless wherever that Chromebook car goes as long as power and and we have the two access points for the athletic fields that were are going along with the pressbox project that are going to be installed a lot of work with the the student

117data privacy law we're still working on identifying software and products that contain student data that we then need to get assigned contracts or addendums with those vendors based on what the state wants say about data retention and destruction of data and who owns the data we also have to publicly share that list of software and those contracts and privacy policies on the district website which leads me to my third tab on here is that um when mr. Bowman's here a couple more beans go get introduced in Brookfield Athletics on a website um which had left an empty space on the district website so we had to turn that into a technology corner and I was going to click that quick and take you here so we've expanded our technology services offering and there's a lot

118to do here but we wanted to get this out and released and share it with everybody um that it covers all the information related to data privacy the Google products that we use and district resources and access to the help desk and you know a one-stop shop for anything technology related whether it be looking at a policy looking for a resource that we use in the district we're just getting ahold of somebody so we're excited about building that cat ecology there's a lot of work with that with the website company and I thank her for that let's ask what's coming up but we have looking into the next year and a half the Technology Committee will continue to build we are going to look the district reading plan and use that to help create a

119technology strategic plan looking out in in the next five years on the technology technology committee can also work to help us evaluate on the district's website and how we communicate using that tool feedback from them as to what they like to see what if they'd like to see changed and we actually have our next meeting scheduled for this upcoming Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. where we're gonna move forward and and of course what else we can do as a committee with support from the security task force we are going to look in towards a phased in approach or a implementing goguardian on all the Chromebooks for the one to one program at once it all depends on and how it works out with budgeting on a number of Chromebooks we'll be installing network switches at huckleberry

120over the summer is the last school that needs those switches open all the schools on the same infrastructure equipment all of the same level and it prepares the district for more access points more bandwidth and a potential foam project sometime in the future that would be an internet-based foam project will be like oil we'll be putting more interactive technology and classrooms more boards on continuing insulation at the high school hopefully getting a whisk in Harris quickly as we can more Chromebooks will be brought for the one to one program which will then make either those Chromebooks or other Chromebooks available for the lower schools and next year will be the first year that the one-to-one program is fully Chromebooks our senior class currently is the last class that has my pass so when that class

121goes next year all five one-to-one grades will have Chromebooks and so that transition will be complete if you will and data foxy will always be an ongoing item nu nu and knowing contracts will happen to be signed at the time of renewal so working closely with vendors on that and a new law that we have to deal with reporting a special education software if used by less than 50 students and it is actually exempt from the law because of the needs of special education students so it's now an added layer to the data privacy law that we have to address and that's a small part of everything that's going on but over here everybody joined I have any questions there's a question as far as the Technology Committee is there any discussion or work towards

122technology benchmarks or standards that's why I kind of want to see the strategic plan part of that come into place utilizing that too you know we do have morning and Ed both on that committee and and you know utilizing their important and some of the things they spoken about tonight um towards that thank you very much thank you very much thank you next we got the letter to Minnesota building committee recommend a motion that the board authorize the board chairman to send a letter to the Municipal Building Committee regarding technical assistance okay so um I attended the NBC meeting last night focus was on the missile project and they will be initiating the process of a architect projects it actually has to be done as part of the application to the to the state grant

123it's detect on isn't working with us firms and I wasn't here about how sorry I was for me yes and so then we'll attack time you all know how valuable they are been with us since that really I joke about it they have and have passed with flying colors actually so it was our intention to send a letter to the MBC just um indicating our desire to continue the relationship that I've done I kept okay I guess I don't know I say I don't give a that's right so you all have it for you this was my communication of what I wanted to sign but since this coming from the orchard a second option tiny as I can second okay sorry jumping over guys pushes Dewey's does the Municipal Building Committee still have to interview

124others and put out an RFP for other's work does this letter suffice to say that we no no we need a little more transparency that's out there right now trying to figure out whether they have to do the full RFP or and to continue as a face to they're bringing that to the First Selectman National Council direction just absolutely or do the correct steps in this it's called our request for qualifications and since the interview processes she talks about Colette was done a year and a half ago descended it from notice the MDC is that they've already gone through the RFQ process and so this would be kind of a second phase of the work they've already done so that's where they want to check councilman that kind of a thing oh there I thank

125you and next we have the education specification Smith school project threat and that's just action wash and that should be a motion because I have to approve this um I had slated for approval on the third I wanted to get the board to draft tonight so there's time okay they just say a little bit about it that I want about the coming six a we do that to you guys um so just so you know which would you have for any this is the ED specifications this is a very detailed outline of an oxymoron a fella it really goes through classroom by classroom area by area I hesitate but from technologies is a 40 page single-spaced very dense document that is a requirement of the grant process of the state remember we're fogging grant and

126a range of fifty million dollars or so she's very serious we need to make sure we do everything in our power to submit that grant properly I'll talk about that a little bit next agenda item but this is a wonderful yes fax I really asked the board I really need you to go through this if you have any feedback questions thoughts ideas Johnny might have left something out can you check on this or thumbs up things look good to me if you could get this to me maybe by the middle of next week because I want to have any feedback that needs to be incorporated or ideas that need to be added ready to go for the April 3rd meeting which is only two weeks away so we can approve it the reason we need

127to approve April 3rd is we really need to get this uploaded to the state grant website remember there's the June 30th deadline we don't like to get to the deadline when we need to get our materials in we want to have the majority of this done but and so we can have a meeting with the state to ensure that we have every piece of documentation in so if there are any changes from the state that they attend that we take care of plenty of time to get that done so it's all a lot of timing on us the aspects I had drafted he's done prior to the referendum I don't know if it was an omen or not I kept it quiet I was doing that but we need to turn this stuff around so

128I couldn't wait do you want us to get comments directly to you or should we follow them through Colette and do one document on everything or like I said let's just separately yes it suddenly just send it to me that we don't need that sure and hey if I'm gonna shoot for Tuesday night next week the data's f26 and it's a bit of a short turnaround but thank you this thanks in advance for taking with this an ocelot I thought it was just so exciting fly right on it as always it right all right that moves us to our business and first is just a discussion of the Board of Education of pleasure estimate as I had mentioned to you all late last night quite late that [Music] the Board of Finance is talking about

129a reduction total from our budget of 384,000 $432 I say discussing that right now because they're meeting probably as we speak I asked I asked them to give me a shoot a message if they made decisions prior to best missions beautiful amount but it seems likely that that will be the reductions that we will be looking at later because it's not definite I really don't think we can talk about specifics now so I asked dr. Brill and ministration to come back with a list of suggested reductions that we can be taking that that explores all options preferably you know non-instructional that might be tough given what we have to ask last year so we'll probably be making having those tough discussions and making those hard decisions next week as far as capital projects go that

130seems to be all our projects seem to be over here with the exception perhaps of center school paving which may even be modified or reduced I'm not sure which one day they've been discussing those options there there was a discussion because they did have some money that they were going to do to like not recurring capital or cash capital of using some of that for the whisk in your mobile or language lab yes I should know I thought that would be decided upon by the other two ages so that may advance even though it won't be part of our budget any questions with them and so there's nothing definite the minute I do find out I'll shoot any mail to you all that you know and then we'll just roll up our sleeves and already

131they have that discussion on April 13 is that it definitely so the world language lab it's not that so could that sheet as far as what they want to use that money for or to get input on that no that's their decision to be made they want to keep that within capital and not put into operating because they want to maintain the three-person operating budget model and that is the one item in our recommendations that could technically versus the other person's equipment yes it really is some software software but the category that they were using they written capitalized for that club thanks for all the work you're doing the engagement of the fortifying us on all of this with a budget can you share a little bit about what we talked to talk about just

132prior to the meeting regarding our next meeting April 3rd and with an iteration task to come back with you know ideas for the Farrington $84,000 introductions just the timing of the meetings and some decision points as the board yes um last year because we had so many service and I think we missed two meetings literally with snow days we weren't able to discuss the reductions prior to the referendum as a referendum even our second thought upon them and I really think that that may have an adventure because I think it's really important to communicate to everyone what these reductions look like before they go to referendum so it would be very in our April 3rd meeting we'll probably it'll actually be a day after the Board of Finance public hearing so we won't have that

133decision for them but it will be our last meeting prior to the town meeting which is may to say may seven so it will be very good to communicate those reductions so from the Board of Finance decision tonight there will be a public hearing by the board of Finance on April 2nd that's seven o'clock I'm not quite sure actually the location it's been listed both Orion and media center but it's traditionally been about 33 so I need to thank you 133 this isn't a little bit up right now though I'm a second it's a day prior to actually our board about need so we won't have those decisions for that the tell me to determine a referendum date will be to will be on May 7th in addition to determining the referendum date there will

134be a presentation with by both town and school a budget proposal and the proposed referendum day as of now is May 21st okay I stress booth because that doesn't become official until the time meeting is over dinner D April 2nd meeting for the court finest is here okay all right [Music] ladies oh yes if you look on a couple of different sites and solicited different places okay this is here great okay so let's just for my memory anybody yes approximately how much did we have to reduce our budget last year proposed okay and there was a lot there there's a slide in my original PowerPoint from December 5th really what's out of all the things we had to reduce custodial position secretarial position administrative position there was a number of things that we had introduced

135and it's been very difficult the clerical positions in special education so we really dr. Ruby said this the other day while we don't complain about it we live with it and we feel these these reductions every day next we have the new school building project just an update on that and as I had mentioned well we have put forth the next steps I think that has been since our last meeting but which I will anything for everyone any recommendation Debbie I did it on the NBC meeting last night and they will be going forth and meeting every month now and the right now the NBC is really reviewing and actually had some someone come in to discuss the different models would look like as far as construction management whether they go with a general contractor

136with a go with a construction management advisor or whether they go with a construction management at risk and they had every one of describing this and then there is a presentation with a owners project manager as well so they're deliberating or another model that they want to use I think they feel pretty strongly about the ochio model as well and that was included in the sulfur baths and that's just someone that's that's representing the town with no financial benefit to doing anything else besides trying to look for the town's best interest if I may just so in the newsletter next week I'm going to in a little bit of a different format repost the the next steps and that's important and the timeline we talked about that communication committee prior to the board meeting tonight

137in addition to that and working on the grant I want to thank Andrea the staff in our town clerk she's working with Lisa they're locating a lot of different authorizations and historic documents to prove that this project and the municipal building committee are actually established and the minutes from meetings of approvals and all kinds of things that have to be uploaded for the grant we found the you have to have a document that shows the establishment of the municipal building committee we found it from 1982 so we were able to get that one we'll upload that soon so I want to thank obviously Lisa and Eric helping move that as well as Andrea the other part is a few staff members that I responded to back and forth as well as many members asking about

138opportunities for input on the project there's going to be plenty of opportunity number one I want to remind everybody that at the very beginning of this three years ago the billion project we did internal focus groups and so we from every bargaining unit here in the district dangerous audience me and secretaries nurses everybody paraprofessionals we had it in and we've got a lot of our administrative team of course many divisions that actually soliciting input from the community it really doesn't make sense yet to do that until we have an architect formally hired for this next phase of work so once we have that we want the architect there to listen to the ampulla because they're the the folks are going to be actually designing the project so that is on the way Oh we'll get

139there soon enough but I just want to put that out there publicly for everybody to know three main points it's taking that next generation kind of bet early report I asked you tonight that's pretty yeah me that's that's a young I don't know there's there's a there was a lot of information gave her the same he wasn't there are the love for her process was Irish unified sports there's a lot so what have you had for one of the bullets you had reports and then you could have just a brief you know bullet on each of the reports that we game yeah no I mean yeah I mean if you if you want to talk about the reports around that that you know on the sports fest one and the moment obviously the mind I'll

140be too and then the reports under reports you have the three reports there's so much stuff that would equal a size four way to have it we do you take the news report sir good know whatever lockers you can see all those reports and everything we talked about that I was an extension of mine and your goals updates that we had last last me so does that work well yeah it's good stuff I'd like to see like we do have a management letter so you know link it or something you wanted to do like celebration so there's a category or we can call it category or any it's the number of stuff along yeah I'm gonna put it all in there that she was yeah there's the celebrations are Kachinas yeah it is nice to

141see sort of yeah oh yeah yeah so we're in admissions so just to clarify so what are the actual breeding thing you know Vice worse that's not I see the minds on something okay and we have the documentation there that Sara provided of all the different teams that break down and then reports right okay so the celebration reports thank you for doing this thank everybody that's it's a lot of work after the medians it's so helpful right now for me that's okay at center elementary school those early dismissal at 12:15 for spring conferences tomorrow March 21st and Friday March 22nd there's no afternoon preschool the smart Fair is next Tuesday March 26 from 5:30 to 7:00 at huckleberry there's an early dismissal for spring conferences tomorrow at 12:15 and also on Friday March 20 the

142same a Thursday may March 21st per second that was fin year there's a mathlete competition at Newton middle school tomorrow March 21st from three to five thirty and the 8th grade field trip to Washington DC is on Wednesday March 27th through Friday March 29th at the high school coffee oval and is tomorrow March 21st from 7:30 thirty in the staff lounge and the spring musical the wedding singer will be on Thursday March 21st Friday March 22nd and Saturday March 23rd at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday March 24th at 2:00 o'clock all another forum thank you all right you have an executive session recommend motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing a confidential student matter second me thanks everyone for joining us evening [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]