Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] good evening today is Wednesday September 26 2018 I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order if we could all please rise for the president's pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God [Music] okay we have six of our seven board members tonight Easter that's unable to make it first on our agenda is public comment there's no one signed up is there anyone here in the public that would like to speak okay moving on we have a student representative report and a big warm welcome to madeline o'connor our new student representative for the year we are very happy to have you here hi everyone for those of you who don't know me my

002name is Mattie O'Conner and I'm the new student representative for the square I'm a senior and I play sports at the school and I'm involved in many clubs so I generally have a very good idea of what's going on with the students right now most of the clubs and the students are focused on one of the biggest weeks of the year which is spirit week which includes the pep rally homecoming carnival and of course the football game most of our clubs are working on booths fundraisers at the carnival and as well as other ways to raise money for the beginning of the school year tomorrow throughout the day we will be having our annual club fair for the underclassmen and more specifically the freshmen who can get a sense of ways to get involved at

003our school and in the community student council is hard at work with our spirit week planning which includes coming up with themes for each of the days as well as the pep rally where all of the sports teams will compete against each other in fun games and serves the purpose of getting everyone excited for that night's football game some of our other clubs will be participating in the town's rakin bake as a way to help some people in Brookfield and earn some community service hours as well and for the whole student body we must recently had our student council officer elections or multiple students in each grade ran for positions in order to make a difference in our school overall the students in the high school are very busy this fall whether it be with

004club sports or even just school in general thank you question when is the carnival in homecoming Oh Friday October 12th October 12th thank you okay hey mister if I might I just want to say a couple nice things about Maddie that we should all know is that not only she in the National Honor Society and excellent student all-around wonderful young person she was also an all-state swimmer in part of our state championship girls swim team so you know I think it's important for people to know she's a very high achiever and a hard worker congratulations on your success happy to have you here hey next we have written correspondence Howard Lasser regarding the proposed building project and Praveen tokus regarding sports facilities thank you minutes recommend a motion that the board approved the minutes listed

005below is recommended special meeting on September 5th 2018 and regular meeting on September 5th 2018 second any discussion regarding the minutes okay all in favor aye opposed superintendents update thanks mrs. term I'll be very brief this evening how I'm going to defer the majority of my time to our four principals who be reporting on their 1718 school implementation plans and and also to mr. Caldwell who will be sharing some of the summer facilities work that went on I did want to introduce mrs. Annie Bertie who is my intern this year she is working on her superintendent certification through Central Connecticut and will be with us for the year in attending meetings and Ann is currently the principal in Newtown at the Reid school so she's been with us for a couple of meetings already with

006the administrative team and and we're glad to have her in welcome Anne welcome and that's all I have okay moving on to subcommittee reports we have facilities okay so the money to replace the high school air conditioning and heating in the auditorium is in place Steve Don is granted permission for the reallocation of the 2015-2016 capital improvement projects funds to be used for this project and there are sufficient funds left over to cover all the costs I'd like to thank everybody who's worked so hard to fast-track the rooftop units in the auditorium for this and then and having the insight to go and look at the using it from the capital for 2015-16 because it's really been a help and it's really going to be a great benefit to the high well alright finance and

007so we had a our Finance Committee meeting on September 11th it was we talked about a number of different things first of all the results from the prior year there unaudited at this point but mister post recommended as reported to us that it's gonna we're gonna actually under run by approximately one hundred and ninety thousand dollars so we actually had a very active discussion with the town controller about how to clear up a couple of things like that old thirty thousand dollar balance that we saw on the audit and a couple of others and I can do you have any updates on whether we're gonna do any of that or is it still ahead of us still ahead of us still ahead of us so we've kind of teed up a couple of areas and

008of call so discussed whether we're gonna pursue an on lapsing fund proposal with the with the Board of Finance so that we could use it to help with my classroom raw libraries in particular and that also was ahead of us because that kind of comes along at the time of the audit so we'll have that'll be an ongoing discussion in the next couple of months the audit actually won't start until December January correct given the availability of the auditor so that's the final final results are ahead of us a little bit we also looked at the the current spending and you know to say the truth August is a you have the report in your in your packet and August is always awkward because you got that first month and you really have no trend

009to speak of the one thing that we did here though is that we've had some unexpected turnover of teaching staff here over the summer and that actually yields some some amount of savings and mr. post is at the final report at the next meeting about how much that actually yes but it will help us quite frankly we're over running a little bit on special education inspiration and were under running a little bit on special education costs so and but other and other than that there wasn't a lot to report on here in the month biggest worry we have budget wise is the Medicaid reimbursement because we had budget and a hundred thousand dollars and there's a lot of meetings coming up where we're continuing to communicate to parents and hopefully that will get a little

010more momentum than we saw at the end of last year hard hard to really build momentum in that area but that may we may end up having spent the under run that we might see on salaries because we're not going to get the Medicaid reimbursement so we also talked about the the BHS rooftop unit and we've got that facilities community in order to do that and we had a long discussion about sales tax a member of the public had brought forward some had some input and advice from his experiences on sales tax and we had a very I think effective conversation about situations where that the schools may need to be charging sales tax it's not very many of them but where we do it mr. post identified where those worry was gonna have meetings

011with as mostly in the high school yes and it's items that are of high enough value and their physical sales so things like inexpensive sweatshirt have a Booster Club store or something like that might need to have sales tax but we've identified them and now we're just starting to work our way through what to do and how to do it so it was a very effective discussion took a little while to get through that but it was a good discussion and that's it question um have they identified the origin or the ownership which we do know one thing it had to do with there was some activity actually in the account this year and it had to do with some sort of just clearing out clear it's a clear through type of account nobody can

012understand why there's a balance because it should have been a zero balance account every year but it had to do with the pay to play to play type of money going in and out and a couple of other small things but it was should have been in and out so nobody can understand what is it it was it was school-based okay I'm not sure if any if we had had a discussion before it the last auditor's report because we have a new honor dive for the town they identified thirty thousand dollars and it was just labeled education fund I believe it and they said it's been there for many many years and you may just need to take care of this eventually but no one could figure out where it came from who it belonged

013to like it's related to our bookkeeping okay but it's old the activity has been weakened he looked at it and concluded that it had been clearing through the last couple of years it really it should have been a zero balance but nobody understand was a balance to it because the wrecked that's a long balance so we talked to mrs. Marion about okay given we're under running this would be the right moment to just fix it all right thank you all right moving on to the security task force security task force met just this past Friday on the 21st and it was actually a very productive meeting we if you remember with the last reports we spent some time bringing in all of the principals and administration and just discussing emergency disaster protocols what they would

014do asking their concerns what they had and just really productive back and forth so this past meeting we took everything that was brought up in those and summarized it into maybe about five or six different areas that maybe we can take a look at some of them are hesitant to go where our safety protocols and emergency protocols are very good I hate to delineate where we want to work on them and we'll probably report after we finish working on them but some of the things that that I can report on is perhaps like a more streamlined Emergency Response flowchart that would be in each classroom to help in the different disasters and then we're also going to be looking at communications protocol which we had decided with the last social media threats perhaps there were

015some areas that we could improve on that and so the communications subcommittee is actually going to be working on that a bit as well and the other areas are going to be turned over to administration maybe budgetary items and we're going to be reporting on those as they're accomplished any questions I'll just echo something I was very impressed with our administrative team and the thoroughness of their response protocol and this was the first of the topical areas we were talking about you know we agree but this one was about response protocol and I was really impressed we have a very thorough plan in the schools in case of them absolutely that's it was impressive I second that okay if there are no other questions we'll move on to the consent agenda recommend a motion that

016the board approved the items listed on the consent agenda has recommended new hires and resignations any questions discussion ii emotions [Music] No all right all in favor aye opposed okay moving on to new business we have the up 2019-20 budget planning calendar recommend a motion that the board approved the 2019 2020 budget calendar as recommended by the finance subcommittee and director of business and operations can post we have a second [Music] okay it's in your board packet any questions regarding the budget calendar I can't believe we're already looking at the budget cycle again it just ended in joan and here we are again a matter of fact Ken's put together the materials for our principals and when we have our principals meeting next week we'll be going over procedures and protocols and having those first

017conversations about what 19:20 looks like the only the only question I had was on January 16th we call it a public hearing on the budget is that our round table that we've usually had and we call it a round table we have seven so what's the difference between that and a public hearing I know the round table we actually sit around the table and there's input from the public there's give-and-take more conversational where is the hearing I'm if I recall we've had people more come up to the podium and share and there is a given tone that the last two times so there was some conversation about more you know getting more public input through the budget process the regular time so I guess it's a structural thing yeah what do you want to have

018a table format or do we want to have it as a as a like this words of whatever the board liking so it's people last year we do both is relative we're at the meeting and just even for everything right it did I we had it structured this way and schedule this way and we ended up making both of them roundtables I believe if we are soliciting and put Donuts more give and take more give and take should be a roundtable yes it would that's exactly what I was thinking it would be hard to have the adoption without it well unless we would be having discussion on it prior to [Music] yes well before our adoption okay so we'll do it with a podium structure like this is the current plan I think we can

019certainly keep it this current plan and then change it should we need to based on how many actual meetings we need to adapt the budget and over at the cycle okay because there is time from the 16th to the 31st one is due if we needed to have an additional meeting not the following week or something like that we did last year which is I think why we could have it I just wanted to bring it up it just caught my eye when I was going through the kitchen so should we leave it as hearing or move it change it around leaving it as a hearing leave it as here okay I think for the time being we can do that any other input the only other thing I noticed is on Wednesday November 7th

020for the budget roundtable at 6:00 we currently have a facilities meeting before the regular board meeting so maybe the facilities meeting would be rescheduled it's a good catch [Music] joining that perhaps at the upcoming facilities meeting we can take a look that okay all right if no other discussion all in favor aye opposed okay Thank You Kent for putting that together right next we have the school implementation plan results okay so I'm going to just introduce the principles for the what they're going to be talking about and just kind of structure what their conversations are going to look like for the board this evening number one and I just shared this with a communications committee earlier tonight is being very responsive to the board's feedback over the past couple of years and you see it

021in the newsletters the monthly newsletters that are sent out now asking for the administrative team to be more succinct and work very hard to use less educational jargon and speaking a little bit more plain talk I'm actually excited to share that our process this evening the principles have worked very very diligently to bring their presentations that as you know over the last couple of years the smarter balanced SAT ap presentations can get rather lengthy and really bogged down in detail because that they're they're important they're involved they're complicated and complex in many ways how the scores are derived and so forth and everything that goes into running the school system and so I want you to know that they really work to be around the 5-minute range in their presentations and then each principal will

022be prepared to take questions from the board and engage in whatever the comments wherever the conversation might go in the spirit of brevity if there is further information that we don't have this evening because we didn't delve so deep for the presentation we're more than happy to come back and file you know a follow-up meeting or something like that just to let you know so you'll hear from the high school about AP scores and SAT scores you'll hear from center school about some of our internal assessments because you know in kn1 the kids don't participate in a high-stakes external standardized test such as the smarter balanced but at both huckleberry and at miss Kinnear the kids do participate in the smarter balanced assessment so really what I want to share with you is that the

023smarter balanced assessment really is a we talked about this in great detail over the last couple years it is an assessment that really helps us understand our curriculum and understand the effective effectiveness of our curriculum and the effectiveness of our instruction and the results demonstrate that there is furthering of alignment with our curriculum and our instruction but we're not there yet and as you all know we have a lot of we're doing a great deal of critical InDesign work we're seeing the narrowing of the gap in some areas between our high needs and non high needs students but not everywhere to the level we would like so we're still continuing to work on that and so we have a careful analysis that's been done at the schools and that manifests as all of you know

024in school implementation plans which are based on the district implementation plan which is based on our strategic plan so everything is in clear alignment and you'll see that I think some of you I think all of you got to see that at the beginning of the year with our opening meeting and the different principals talking about what the work they're doing and how special education fits in and how debs work as a director of instruction and how it all fits so cohesively together so really without any further ado I'd like to bring up our first principle which would be the new center school principal mrs. diamond come on up to the podium okay yeah I think so I do have I unlikely over the five minutes I apologize in advance a little bit but I'm

025working on marriage I apologized to me and said I tied myself it's six minutes John is that okay a little bit so good evening I'm eros diamond proud principles Center elementary school and I think you for the opportunity to share with you the teaching and learning that then happening at center in our in our Center building beyond students parents and guardians the staff at center school arguably has the greatest impact and influence on the trajectory of the children and thus the town of Brookfield at our last meeting I spoke about what a happy place Center is but please don't let that deceive you there's a tremendous amount of critical learning that's taking place as staff support students and laying the foundation for their futures every day during the two years the students spend at center

026we're responsible for giving them the tool they will need to forge their paths foundational reading writing and math skills and we're shaping their mindset about what learning and school are all about depending on how these messages messages are communicated students are inspired to use their imaginations make mistakes collaborate with others and take risks or they learn to pursue in the one right answer color within the lines and always choose a safe path this is a huge responsibility and one that is not lost on the staff having been on the receiving end for nine years at huckleberry hill I know exactly how important the work is that happens at center school so as such the data I'll share with you today reflect students achievement and key leverage skills that are critical for students to become competent

027competent readers and to be successful in their learning for kindergarten I'm sharing with you as John said there are internal data around phoneme segmentation fluency and nonsense word fluency and then for first grade you'll hear about nonsense word fluency and our oral reading fluency these assessments are indicators of students future reading success and are used to inform the instructional decisions that teachers make to support students as well as to keep students informed about their learning both of which are essential in guiding students to become self self navigating learners so briefly there are three years of data included on the slides just so you're aware in 1516 there was a different version of the assessment that had different cut points so we really can't draw a direct comparison with a 1516 data in terms of student

028achievement but 16 17 and 1718 we were using the same assessment so as you can see our students consistently score high in the PSF measure which is again assessing students ability to fluently segment words into sounds and it's considered a strong predictor of future student achievement future reading achievement phony and segmentation it's a crucial component of phonemic awareness and that's essential in developing reading and spelling skills and we know that children who have strong phonemic awareness skills demonstrate better literacy growth so that's why that's why I'm reporting on it it's a fundamental skill and just so you're aware also while the this measure is not required of us to administer in first grade by the assessment system that we use we didn't administer it just the last couple weeks all first graders it takes a

029minute and we found that students who initially passed the PSF in kindergarten frequently struggle later on with phonological awareness and so we administered it again in first grade so that we can identify students who would benefit from intervention in the classroom now as opposed to more significant intervention that had to take place later on I'm also reporting out on nonsense word fluency heroes just I just want to stop you because we've talked about this and I know board members have received feedback and administrators have received feedback that we do a lot of assessment the assessments of how long it takes one minute one minute so we just want you to know that's part of instruction it's not stopping instruction for some long lengthy inappropriate for developmental level of the students it is a one minute

030brief assessment and the data that's gathered from that especially at this level will enable us to for you know kind of predict what's happening and where we need to put our efforts in terms of intervention moving forward so nonsense word fluency is also reported this indicates a student's ability to decode individual sounds and then blend the sounds together to read words which is another fundamental reading skill our students in kindergarten first grade they continue to have stronger achievement and correct letter-sound component of the assessment then in the whole word thread so they're they're able to identify the sounds and then putting them putting them together and blending them is where we're having some some challenges and that's where we're going to be focusing our interventions particularly in first grade and then finally first groups first

031grade students are administered in oral reading fluency benchmark which is that assesses accuracy and fluency the text this is important as fluent readers can apply their decoding processes automatically which require no conscious attention and that enables them to then free up more of their brain and thinking power for comprehension and understanding what they're reading so that's why we spend so much time focusing on fluency and our students again words read correct achievement continues to be stronger than their accuracy which indicates for us and need to support students with strategies for applying the decoding skills that they've learned in isolation to their reading text so that's where our focus is going to be in the area of writing like oh you only see kindergarten let me go to first grade so again I'll go back to

032the first grade slide in just a second so I'll just talk about writing students writing scores on the end of your opinion proms you can see that more than 90% of our students scored at a scale score of 3 and that most that you can get in this particular assessment in the scale score of 4 so we have a strong foundation for opinion writing for our students in and kindergarten and also in first grade then in the area of math you can see let me also mention that the on demand prompts for what we were not using the we just started doing in two years ago consistently where everyone was giving the same prompt using the same rubric so that's why you see two years of data and then moving ahead to the math on

033the my math we just started this year or Italy last year using the my math s back a lion benchmark test so that's why you only see the one year beta is the first year that we've given it and then you'll see how I'll go to forward the slide to first grade where we're using star math so in kindergarten we see that our students are demonstrating excellent achievement with 93% of students scoring at 80% or better that indicates that the instruction that they're receiving is supporting them in mastering the math standards all the the assessments are aligned with the standards so that's gonna be a good indication of that and then if you look ahead to first grade in star math again it was our first year administering this assessment and it's students first experience

034ever we have you know six-year-olds taking assessments on a computer so for that is certainly a factor not the only factor but it certainly plays a role and we'll address in this moving forward not on this slide though is the fact that 70% of our students did make average or greater growth from the beginning to the end of the year on the star math assessment so there there is growth happening it's just we're again trying to work out all the different the technicalities so in summary our student achievement data indicates that students at seven school love to read literacy and language of l and r at the heart of teaching and learning at center and most students are developing strong reading foundation and comprehension skills that they'll need to set them up for success they

035have strong opinions on many topics and are able to communicate those opinions through writing stating reasons for their opinions and then elaborating with details and our center school mathematicians are experiencing a lot of success with our my math program and focusing on firstly firmly establishing their concrete pictorial understanding of skills and concepts then moving to apply their learning to solve actual problems so that's where we're moving towards in reflecting on the data and thinking about our learners moving forward in this school year we'll be working to bolster students abilities to decode sounds and blend the sounds together as I mentioned earlier and we'll be working to improve students automaticity with their math facts which is also a key building block necessary for future mathematics success and I think you'll see if you're investing early automaticity

036is really important at this level so that's what we're trying to work building the skills and then helping students be automatic with them so that they can then free their brains and their thinking up or other things to accomplish this we're going to consider the following fundamental questions of ourselves and our teaching so knowing the huge responsibility we have to the children of Brookfield's and their families and given our belief that all students will learn how are we systematically supporting students who are may not initially respond to our teaching practices both academically and behaviorally how do we connect the dots for all of our data points that first develop a comprehensive picture of each learners strengths and challenges and then select appropriate instructional strategies and design learning activities that will engage every student how can

037we maximize students time in our preschool program and integrate our youngest learners into the culture of center school and where are their opportunities for pre-k to 5 alignment and curriculum design instruction and assessment language expectations and how are we capitalizing on those opportunities to make sense of school for our learners their families and our staff so how are we planning to do this to make a difference for every student will be looking to refine our core instructional practices across disciplines throu so through modeling and targeted feedback will build on the professional learning that has already taken place around gradual release we've heard a lot about that and the district implementation planned in the strategic plan so we'll be looking at making sure that we're supporting teachers and presenting the lesson purpose or learning target and

038explicitly including the whom what excuse me the what how and why at the teaching point and then making sure that we're activating students background knowledge and connecting with their prior prior learning and then planning engaging in an age-appropriate opportunities for collaborative practice so those are all be part of the planning piece another big picture for us is continuing to implement our data team process and review and revise our intervention process and then purposely connecting the two of them so we'll be tracking our efforts through regular progress monitoring meetings when Jada will be reviewed against the anticipated trajectory for each student and then teachers will collaborative collaboratively reflect on their student achievement in comparison with the goal and then make instructional decisions as a result including how we're going to use our time and resources for

039intervention and then through the analysis conducting those data team meetings will identify and implement opportunities to group students across teachers for intervention and enrichment purposes to better match student need with expertise we will begin building the foundational social-emotional skills for our youngest students in order to support a positive school climate in which all learners are engaged so we're looking at our school-wide behavior supports those of you have been for centre school and know about the gold coins so we're looking at our gold coins and how that works what are the expectations how are we teaching them how are we consistently enforcing them and Andry emphasizing them across the school and we're also again through the district plan I'm looking at ruler and how are we implementing the ruler program and approach with our staff first

040and teaching staff all about the philosophy behind it as well as the tools before we move into introducing the tools to students later this year we're also again as I mentioned really striving for pre-k to five alignment by making sure that as much as possible all teachers are participating professional learning and collaborative time to revise and develop the standards align curriculum so that's a lot of the curriculum work that they were working on paying attention to supporting that coherence and alignment between the grades and buildings by fostering collaboration and communication among teachers and then as part of the curriculum development incorporating the vocabulary work that began last year including collaboratively selecting assured vocabulary under tax and translating our program assistance into the language of s back so that there's some continuity there as well and

041then whenever possible establishing vertical teams to participate in professional learning and collaborative opportunities so next week there's a week-long professional learning that's happening and on many of those days there are K to five conversation that will be happening we're really looking to participate in that as well so I am confident that if we are willing to hold up the mirror and examine our own beliefs and practices take the steps that I just outlined and remain focused on our goal of making a difference for every student that we will indeed do just that does anyone have any questions initially that I can answer or things that come to mind yeah it's not they're reading okay all right all right thank you very rose thank you much appreciated absolutely this will be you know posted on the

042website as well but sure yeah thanks Mary Rose so that's Center school so now I'd like to bring up the new principal of huckleberry hill pretty soon I won't be able to say new any more for either of you so at huckleberry hill we practice kindness act responsibly work hard and show respect every day staff and students take pride in showing our paws daily when Dave and I first started at huckleberry we really kind of embraced the school motto and initially the school motto finishes off with saying because we're a caring community and Dave and I looked at each other almost simultaneously and said of course we're a caring community that's why we just do this every single day and we've been really practicing that a great deal with our students there are many fantastic

043happenings at huckleberry that I will continue and there are also areas of needed growth and change I will continue to foster communication with parents to do so through monthly newsletters monthly PTO meetings email blasts teachers are focusing their efforts on updating classroom websites bi-weekly and some are using class dojo and other apps to foster the school and home connection according to the panorama parent survey results eighty-five percent of families feel well-informed about what is going on at huckleberry a decreased from 87 percent in 2017 and 87 percent of families feel well-informed about their child's academic progress which is in an increase from 86 percent in 2016 so the spies that are on the screen right now this is the growth model the growth model sets achievable growth targets for each student's smarter balanced assessment scores

044based on their scores in the previous year hence why this is fourth grade rather than expecting students at a very low proficiency its abruptly attained high proficiency this enables us to answer a very important question how much progress are their students making over time in this way growth results offer a much clearer picture of how well huckleberries is educating students so if you look at this and me becoming the new instructional leader here in huckleberry some of the things that jumped out at me immediately was what great work was happening in the 2016-2017 school year because I'm looking at this and I see that 47% of children achieved their growth target which is pretty significant going from 34% in the previous year so after I did a little digging and I had a conversation with

045dr. Ruby I found out that during that school year there was actually a math coach or math interventionist that would regularly meet with students who were struggling as we would say in tier 2 or tier 3 support intervention and also help support classroom instruction the core instruction and the following year she wasn't there and our scores went back down that growth rate declined again so moving forward to thinking about what are the changes that we're going to make it huckleberry how are we going to support that core instruction and new student learning and intervention we made some changes the staff has been consistently positive and accepting of changes one of the minor changes made with a big impact was to allow students to report to their classrooms at 8:30 even though this is only 10

046extra minutes this is this is time allowed for teachers to make connections with students that are there prior to others allows time for progress monitoring and even additional small group work one of the biggest changes since starting at huckleberry is our new schedule it has truly set the foundation for the work that we will be embarking on and something that I knew must be done to have effective change it was important to collaborate with teachers and other administrators in the district when creating the new sketch some of the wants that I knew that were non-negotiable that we had to have was every grade level community has to have a weekly PLC and a PLC is a professional learning community where teachers come together and we collaborate they have new learning that was really important to

047me to make sure that that was happening weekly reading writing and math blocks of 45 to 60 minutes everyday daily time designated to teach only phonics and read Aloud's plus content whether it be science or social studies taught four days a week for a minimum of 30 minutes also a 30-minute daily block called differentiated instruction block when no new learning occurs and students receive their targeted instruction intervention inside or outside of the classroom it was quite the task but we were thrilled with the outcome staff now has a weekly PLC built into their schedule this has been extremely effective in fostering new learning for staff it is not only leader directed learning but teacher directed communities can decide what they need in terms of new learning and invite appropriate supports whether it's Eric to help

048support with Google classroom dr. Cipolla to help with the rollout of ruler or a time to turnkey new learning from huckleberry colleagues regarding Murray Alka curricula work it is a built in time weekly that is specific to the needs of teachers the PLC block also becomes our surbhi meetings every six week six weeks Serbia's just a fancy way of saying that we talk about kids so consistently every six weeks staff the reading team and administration are talking about data student needs and creating plans for guided small group instruction and interventions and we're also looking at the data to see if it's working and what's not working and the next steps where we need to go again this change has been significant as it is a time that is built into the schedule in addition to

049preparation time for teachers during the DI block teachers will be working with students to target their individual needs yes this is differentiated instruction block however differentiation is a Tier one best practice and happening throughout the day this is just a time targeted towards tailored instruction whether it is a student who might need extra la or math support or a child who needs enrichment in addition the district classroom walkthrough process will help us look at such instructional practices and continue to guide our work and as if my thoughts are regarding why huckleberries growth rate increased in the 2016-2017 school year is correct the more efforts that are focused on individualized instruction and the core instruction that's happening in classrooms every day and meeting the needs of both staff and students will elicit effective growth and positivity

050for everyone so any questions okay thank you oh and I forgot to show you this slide so this was just this is just the smarter balanced comparison data the percentages of students who scored a three or four and as I said it's important information to have but knowing that growth rate is actually much more meaningful to guide our work in our instruction okay thanks Mel sorry all right mr. Renda from was Kinnear grades five through eight either gonna say our old principal no no familiar yes I'm not a veteran yes we would never say old good evening I'm Dean render the principal of Michigan and middle school at wizkid here we feel that our mission is to increase the academic achievement and social well-being of all our students and at the same time ensuring that

051they have opportunities to comprehend complex text form opinions and arguments in their writing and in their discussions think like mathematicians historians or scientists and in the end prepare our students to be brookfield graduates to be able to as you know as part of our four seasons our strategic coherence plan to communicate and collaborate with others be critical thinkers and problem solvers be creative innovators and lastly build their character and also a connection within their community and lastly obviously something that is very exciting to us and new we want to teach our students more about social emotional awareness and how it affects them everyday in their life we'll talk a little bit this year our staff has has a focus on teacher-student questioning a strong student engagement and opportunities for critical thinking and those problem-solving opportunities

052and also the social emotional awareness we're excited to continue our work around the gradual release of responsibility model close reading strategies and also a math workshop model this is going to be through our professional development and our walkthroughs and observations that we do throughout the year we will also implement our ruler which is a social emotional intelligence work with our students and parents last year we trained our staff and we've already started to roll it out with our students which again I will speak about in my last slide we think of this we want our students at WMS to be more engaged in their own learning fine learning exciting and more relevant to their everyday life making those connections with their learning to the real world we want them to develop skills we want them

053to ask questions be inquisitive being resilient when things don't always come easy to them bounce back from failure work collaboratively excuse me and learn to get along even when you don't like the other person's opinion etc we all feel that this will help them now obviously in their educational career and in life and their in their life beyond sorry lastly use the anchor tools that are involved in ruler it's going to help them to navigate their way through their emotions and how to react in a more positive way and through all these improvements in our instruction creating the appropriate interventions and helping our students understand that their emotions matter we feel they will based on that become more engaged in their learning and be more successful in developing those skills needed to be successful and

054achieve at the high school level and also beyond now as you know in Michigan area we have grades five through eight testing so we have four grades but I did also include the fourth grade great data also I'll give you a second to kind of just look at this I know it's a lot and I know there's a lot of colors but I want to make sure that the trained eye could go from one corner to the next the the colors are there the cohort group going from year to year again I'll just give you a second to kind of take that in now we're gonna do this one thing you'll notice our top is the English Language Arts smarter balanced growth model which melissa already talked a little bit about whether my community which

055is the growth rate model you will notice an increase in our cohort excuse me by cohort in grades five seven and eight and that percentage of students that met their growth target each student has their own specific Scale score the scaler that they receive they get in the following year they have a target based on that scale score which you'll see in fifth grade three years we last year excuse me we had over 12 percent increase seventh grade over 11 percent increase in eighth grade around two percent and you'll notice that I have the you also notice that notice in ela over here this is the average percent at target this is you'll notice an increase in grades 5 & 7 and the this again was the target that was achieved by students on average

056for the whole class on average of the students that their target 5th graders over 10 and seventh grade was over 11% I will show you on the next slide the comparison data like melissa also showed and you'll notice and you'll see that three of our four group four grade levels in ela increased their percentage at at goal which is level three and above or above excuse me which is level four math this is our area down here will be is one of our biggest areas of need right now and growth if we start off with the growth and you'll notice that grade six has made great increases in the growth rate and the average percent of target achieved here we made large growth areas and the growth rate excuse me and also in the average

057percent targeted sheet in those areas and in the next slide again you will see that two of the four grade levels in our math increase the percentage at that level based on again that's not the comparison of cohort that is just year-to-year what this these slides do not show does not show but we also I know super-tender Borel talked about it earlier that we narrowed the gap between our high need students which are students as a any of our students with disabilities our English learners or students eligible for free and reduced meals that's the group verse our non hiney students in in a ela again this is not on the slide but in ela we had a slight increase excuse me narrowing and in science we actually went from 18 percent down to 10 percent

058of an airing of a gap so that was a one of our biggest successes also the the math increases our challenges and questions going forward we've talked as administrative teams and also with data teams and content teams figure out how to duplicate the positive increase in our students growth rate percentage at level 3 or above in our in our students in ela because obviously as you can see we are not seeing that same growth rate in our math scores we talk about what are we doing different in our tier 1 instruction in ela that can translate into our math in class instruction this summer we recently had a group of WMS and BHS teachers and administrators and Deb Farris also we went to a professional development this summer in Hartford talking about utilizing the workshop

059model of math again something maybe that in we are utilizing more in our workshop model and ala that maybe contrasting into into math and again this was just one of the opportunities that we saw for professional development we know our most important work is with continued to improve as melissa and the mayor has also talked about our Tier one instruction using a gradual release of responsibility model and providing the timely appropriate tier two interventions through our formative assessments the data that we collect and John also mentioned before how important that is if for our instruction with our star math and reading our dibbles assessments and also our interim assessment blocks which is from the smarter balanced as we go to gather our data we will see how much better growth we hope to see rates

060by our students our math specialists will be looking to provide more professional development to our math teachers around the workshop model and also using number talks especially in our lower grades especially in fifth grade we've noticed a difference students developing better number sense kind of like we think of it like playing with numbers meaning students can visualize problem solving perform calculations quickly because they need to do that mentally with mental math also and they're flexible and their mathematical strategies that they use there's not just one way to answer a problem but they're able to do that in many ways students that have strong number sense in research can solve problems in more than one way and check their answers to see if they make sense that's where you start to develop number sense when you

061actually when you come up with your answers new and you can look at that and understand that the answer that you have makes sense and they also have more flexibility just in the thinking of the way they think in general we will also we are also looking to continue to narrow the gap between our high needs and non high needs students again with the focus on our Tier one instruction in all the content areas utilizing our data from our formative assessments again to provide those interventions to make sure that those students we are helping them that are not at grade level and through these interventions this is these are interventions that are done through a remedial reading and also our math lab interventions and also small groups that we have maybe during the UNH block

062which is unified arts and also and ordering ELT with one of those specialists and/or their teacher the regular ed teacher and then going forward we've done a lot of professional development curriculum work with Amanda Aaron's around the workshop model and we are continuing to do that starting next week again and with all our literacy teachers so we feel that that's going to really help us as we start to with our curriculum but also in our instructional strategies so that was the second slide again just so you can see this in English language arts which is level 3 or above we had three of our four areas by cohorts that went up math similar we had to go up in those areas any questions on the back data I know it's a lot to take in

063with all those numbers yeah in the math it's kinda like the whole idea during a mini-lesson then having students being able to break up into you know into smaller groups and depending on what we when we went through the professional development they talked a lot about in also differentiating instruction for different levels of students but being able to have different strategies and ways to to answer say search or to work on certain concepts but also knowing that there are some students that may be able to do a problem just are they're working on the computation and there may be other other another group that may be working on a something to do with a puzzle or a higher level thinking skill of painting rooms and finding how much paint you need based on the perimeter

064and area again it was a present development that we went to we are we are you know gonna try to and look look to maybe develop that a little bit more and the reason being is because as we saw we feel that their workshop model that we've had in literacy for the last few years could be also beneficial for math but I think the number talks the more I took for the lower 4/5 and that and six also we feel that could make a bigger difference also it's more in that's a good question we did not I did not have the star data because if star Matthew star reading we have the dibbles even our interim assessment blocks that we are the ones that we had done that is just really it's it's we're looking

065the formative assessments that we do throughout the year like John talked about are more important to the individual instruction the aspects are more about our curriculum and where are those areas that you know we need to improve on based on because the information that it gives is not as drilled down as a star reading assessment or dibbles assessment scuse me would give you so that's more about curriculum you know for us to be able to improve and lastly I put this up here for a ruler like I said we have started it at whisk in here we've trained the teachers this year we are working with students and we're going to be also having some parent workshops on that rule I'll just read theirs recognize students able everybody I should say students adults and kids

066are able to recognize their emotions and self in the self and in others understanding that causes and consequences other emotions labeling their emotions accurately you know am I really upset am i mad or am I am i sad I don't know what am I really based on that so they want to be able to label or we want to express emotions appropriately and then being able to regulate their emotions effectively which is very tough at times for middle schoolers you'll notice a classroom charter that is something that we have done in the classes we are looking to do it kind of like by teams and in the grade levels they're not totally finished but it's talking about how do you want to feel in the class what are those words that describe I'm going to

067be respected I want to feel safe whatever it may be and then what are we going to do in order to have those feelings consistent well to be respectful I'm going to not you know we're going to make sure that we are silent when someone else is speaking we are listening to them attentively things to that nature and then after that what are we going to do and this is a hard part what are we going to do and those when we're not following those how are we going to resolve that conflict or manage that conflict the other thing is the mood meter this this is a lot of fun and when we get into this this is just the different areas that you you fall into with your emotions and you're able to label

068your emotions how you're feeling and the idea behind it is that when you find out where you are it's okay to be sad but what are those strategies are ways that you think can help you to move out of there and where do you want to move to that's something that we were going to be going into next the meta moment is the one that really makes me laugh it's kind of like you need to chill like what are you gonna do what am I gonna do in this situation again these are a lot of steps and things that you have to think about where some students and adults are very good at that where others are not so that's something that's going to be a focus for us and then the last part is

069solve the problems with a blueprint it's kind of talking about you recognizing again kind of what we've said I said it first but being able to say what are the next steps what's the plan going forward how am I going to make sure that when you leave my office when the students with me are they my classroom or as an administrator they leave me what is the plan going forward what are we gonna do to make sure that those inappropriate I should say emotions don't come out any questions on ruler Dean I'm curious if you've gotten feedback from the students on any of these yes yeah okay good question because we just literally we start it and the staff we worked on the first day I know some we've been working a little bit in

070ELT the problem comes in as you know with our schedule that we're trying to make it so all obviously the whole class is involved in it and right away we have students that need to go to Mandor course or they need to go for a pullout or something like that so we have we're taking it slow because we want we don't want to have it one day when the 5ru are not in there because you're going to band or chorus so that's good you know again we want it to be so it's it's it's true and genuine to the whole to the whole class and what the the grades are trying to do is if there's five teachers I may have what it is in my homeroom but then I leave and go to your

071homeroom and what we're trying to do is pick the top five words so when those students you know go to those different classes it'll be similar and actually what I've gone around and talked and we've looked at so most of the time the words are similar in what they're talking about respect and I want to feel safe that I might feel heard when one student that was it I want to feel smart but absolutely but yes we have not gotten the exact feedback because again we haven't had enough time to really delve into it one interesting piece Thank You Dean is that any of you have a smartphone you can get the mood meter as an so if you're interested in exploring the mood meter and plotting your moods and learning a little bit about

072that you certainly go online to you know to the the Yale website and ruler and Yale Center for emotional intelligence and ruler to learn more about these is that these aren't hidden tools that are out that they are readily available and we've last year we started to utilize this a little bit with administration and with certain students it really the mode meter itself but excuse me on the app it shows you and it shows your images you know like something that makes you feel good like a beach that gives you strategies or quotes to think about when you're in sir this is all based on obviously where you pick that you are in in the grid at the beginning so that's what John was talking about with the app all right Thank You Dean I'm

073sorry before you so I do I do have a question that's not on ruler yeah a year ago January we had if you recall you probably will never forget the rebalancing of your schedule and adding all that time for social studies and redoing the 5th grade correct teaching structure do you mean the goal of the social studies adding it end was to get more critical thinking results are you getting any early indicators of whether that's working we haven't I mean there's no specific specific data that we have on that I do know that what's interesting is they're trying to with the added time which have obviously in any subject is something that's good they are able to have the ability for students to write more to you know obviously discussions but one of the big

074ears if you remember was when seventh grade when it came to seventh grade one of our teachers had been knew she'd been there for a couple years she had noticed in the few years how the ability to to write but also you know I'm being able to form an opinion and to take to two different sources you know primary sources and be able to to talk to those was less and I think we talked about was that the opportunities for those experiences were not as much in social studies because obviously it was every other day so you lost that one remember why yeah you know the indicator that it's taking root the only thing I know is that there's been more opportunities to be able for more writing and discussion and any particular feedbacks on

075the restructuring of the fifth grade and how that went after the first year yeah you know again it's it's it's students going from five or most of time is for two to three classes I have not gotten any you know feedback per se the teachers like it the fact is they what we have them as most almost all of them have they all teach social studies but they have their first core is is in their homeroom so again we're trying to make it a little bit you know so it's a smaller not so so much moving around for them but other than that there hasn't really been any specific things but I think there's been less of Dean I think you need to take credit for this with all that work that wouldn't there's been

076less concerns and complaints that I know you have shared with me you there's just been less of it coming from parents about Obama in transition and I've certainly had less feedback from parents about the negativity of more teachers so less data actually is good which means there there's likely anecdotally a much smoother transition because of less concerns about it yeah that was the goal of it was there was a lot of stress and a transition and that was one we tried to fix so I just and you're not you're seeing less stress related issues rolling up you know again there's what things I haven't you know when things don't come to I come to us necessarily you would see that it you could say that's less stress number wise although I can't say that the

0775th grade counselor has seen less students or they know we've noticed anything to that nature as of yet because again we've been in for for a short period of time but definitely you know from last year to that I think the kids when they're when there's less movement to it's easier for them a lot of the things that we talked about with their organization being able to when you have less teachers I know the amount of homework there should be less homework because I don't have four or five different teachers giving homework at that time so I think that's part of the stress reliever also that John did say you know in the past we've had conversations with parents about that that is something that you know as they get older in sixth grade seventh

078and eighth grade you have you can have a night where you have five homework assignments that's just to don't be another way it is so there's less of that yes thank you I'm sorry go ahead joy it was helpful yeah and that's what I mean is it's you don't necessarily always hear the the positive of it it's more when that concern comes up but you know as data arises Bob and we take a look at that you know for follow up on the critical thinking in the social studies to your question we will definitely get that to you I think I think of budgets yeah we had big initiatives in each budget not was the single biggest initiative and that budget year right was revamping what we were doing is a little school and Dean

079lived through many meetings with us organizing that and so I'm always going to like the circle back on absolutely we can do that all right Thank You D thank you thank you all right in principle the Landa from Brookfield High School good evening everyone I'm mark bilenda the proud principal of Brookfield High School I want to start with the statement we now read every morning before we do the Pledge of Allegiance it says Brookfield High School is a learning community committed to fostering intellect respect and integrity this statement collectively embodies what we believe is the role of our high school and our efforts to prepare students for life after graduation we continue to expand opportunities for students parents and staff so they can provide input to our constant improvement process new additions this year include

080coffee with Belinda that's tomorrow morning first episode we'll see how that goes everybody people responded so I'm looking forward to that for parents come in and outside of the pts no meetings which we also have scheduled every month I'm doing a principals Advisory Committee for the staff to come in and just provide feedback as to what's going on and to give them a voice as well and I also did the first of monthly student voices sessions where I had students come in and voice their concerns opinions and questions they might have about things going out at school what we can do to improve the climate and community last year we plan to proactively communicate with students and families and while I can only share my specific work here with what I've done with the weekly

081email updates our school climate surveys showed an average of an 8 percent increase in positive and responses from parents on to categories and hearing from teachers as frequently as needing needed and knowing what's going on in high school so as an 8 percent increase from the previous year so I was pretty pretty happy with that information so then let's move to test scores because we know that's the metric by which were measured and fostering intellect I talked about in the opening statement is one of the main reasons educators choose their career and the measure of our success is based on our test scores particularly SAT and shortly I'll talk about the AP results as well just taking a look at this chart quickly and it's kind of light a little darker up here it's different

082on the screen so you can see it so the colors correspond to cohorts so on the left-hand side of the chart you'll see that's erw that's the evidence based reading and writing test that is tested both on the PSAT and the SAT so on the left inside of erwc fall 2015 fall 2016 and fall 2017 so those are the PSAT score PSAT tests that are given in the fall and the corresponding students of the grade level and the benchmark that they've achieved just a note about that benchmark that 84% as you see for ninth grade and fall 2015 or the 81% what that refers to is 81 percent of the students have a 75% chance of earning AC or better and a first semester credit bearing course in college so for editing based reading it

083for excuse me evidence based reading and writing we're talking about those English 101 courses in the fall we're talking about some sociology courses possibly some history courses they might take that's the percent chance they have of earning a C or better in those courses and if you look at the colors you'll see there's the cohort so that gray is a fall 2015 ninth graders you see our fall 2016 10th graders 81% and then fall 2017 11th graders at 80% that next column that's section on the right you'll see spring dates that's the SAT so we're lucky enough to be able to give two assessments and get that results back relatively quickly to see growth between years so we've seen an average of about 4% growth our goal this year was to increase the percentage of

08411th grade students reaching benchmark and evidence-based reading and writing from 87% so if you look at what it was in that yellow column and have an editing based reading or revising for the 11th graders in spring 2017 you see 87 and then unfortunately we went 81 so you know what we saw from the fall 2017 11th grade in the gray and evidence based reading writing was an 80% so it only 1% jump and typically we saw a 4% jump you know when you look at the math scores which on the right hand side the same thing as far as color coding those are the same colors class 2019 which is the current senior class you can see their scores over the years and fall 2017 actually they were only 48% of benchmark they actually reached

08560% which is a 12% increase which is more than our average increase as you can see you know generally we see a lot less in that case but we saw a 12% increase but unfortunately our goal was to go from 60% in the yellow to I was trying to get it to I believe it was and I have it here 65% but we actually stayed flat at 60% so a bit about those scores because it's important because we didn't see the growth that I was expecting and hoping for and playing for you know I can share by looking at data from the districts and from the state scores generally were lower and both the US the SAT evidence based reading writing and math scores did go down a little bit across the board in the

086state and relative to our Durge which is a conversation for those of you that were here last year we talked about the district reference group we're in the same relative position so we're flat I'm not saying I'm proud of that but we're flat is where we are but I want to make sure you you understood that as well we do believe as a staff right that SAT is an accurate measure of the intellectual skills that are necessary for success after high school we also believe that the majority of our work to improve student attainment of those skills is to a guaranteed and viable curriculum coupled with effective differentiated instruction while also embedding assured learning experiences so our work across the building to develop a standards-based curriculum is the first step in that process and we've

087been doing that you know over the last you know we're a year and a half in now our work with dr. Alcock we're taking those positive steps forward to make sure we have that guaranteed and viable curriculum we are also committing our CLT we call it CLT everybody else in the world calls a PLC we have to of course have another acronym put our name on it here at the high school 83 minutes every four days we've committed to doing that work to working on curriculum and helping the teachers develop that so right now they're working on ensuring their year-long contexts are in place we're working on our p scales and our assessments that's what we're doing every four days we've committed the time to get that done because we believe that is one of

088the most important steps also the classroom walkthrough process that we're undertaking will help us to analyze instructional practices relative to active student learning and engagement I also mentioned as it's several other the principles talked about s RBI and that's something at the high school level that has been a tough tough nugget to crack you know the response to intervention is it's called every other place but Connecticut is is a challenge at the high school level and I've talked to people in the state I participate in these netstat sessions where I go with other districts from across the state that are working either in school improvement grants or their Alliance districts or those sorts of things that we talked about SRB I know one has a really good model of what works well in high school

089it's very challenging model the high school level that being said coupled with the work that's going on k3 we actually have a consultant coming in from circ actually next Friday I had a conversation with her today she's coming in to do some rapini next Friday on October 5th to work with our teachers to help them teach to the edges right because if you look at these numbers and we talk about percentage increases yes I'm disheartened by we had 87 we went down to 81 but in terms of our student population numbers what that looks like so what's my numbers exactly it is it comes out to be 1 percent change is to students when it comes down to reach and benchmark so I'm talking you know a seven percent change or six we're talking 14

090to 12 to 14 kits that we talk about benchmark that's not a lot that means we're close there's kids there but such a small fluctuation can make a huge change and what the data comes out to be and I in mark if I could just jump in I'm sure I brought that up just for the board to understand the public who's listening those are the conversations that happen at the school we talk about individual students we talk about kids we don't talk about percentages so to Mark's point into all the principals point while scores are reported in percentages and people want to see that and some compared to other towns and things like that we're talking about students and it's to students here there's 10 students in this particular situation and how can we help

091them and we do that through our formative assessments that are more on an ongoing basis and all the instruction that we do and to that end you know to John's comment about percentages and really talking about students themselves our goals this year for SAT SAT to SAT you know our based on a hundred percent goals and not about reaching percentages of benchmark but talking about growth for each student you know relative to where they are we took a look at historically where our growth has been from PSAT to SAT and we've upped that and said okay we're going to do this so how we're going to do some of those things so some of that stuff is through SR VI and our Tier one instruction to make sure we're getting to all those kids the

092English and math departments will also work on how to continually leverage the information from star reading and math that we talked about before with joy about you know those start reading and math reports that are those progress monitoring pieces that give us much more data than this larger assessment how do we work with those and leverage that to make sure we're meeting kids needs to move them forward to progress their learning and integration of assured experiences into embedded into assessments to make sure the students have the opportunity to practice the format of the test they definitely have another PSAT when they see it they've seen it three times by the time they have to take the real one that makes the difference and as our spring 2017 or spring 2019 PSAT they've seen the format

093several times but how often are we actually giving them that format when they actually work with it the plan initially was to use Khan Academy to do some work in some of our flex B courses the challenge I'm running into now is the state privacy law and Khan is not necessarily I have to be very careful about what I mandate students to do to exchange information with Khan and we all we've heard about the Privacy Act Eric has talked about what that looks like and what programs the state of kinetic is working with Khan to make sure that was my initial plan that's a new a new wrinkle that is just unfolded in the last week so I'm hoping that we can get that agreement and then what that allows us to do is student

094individual students can actually and they can do it on their own now it isn't to be careful not to mandate on my end from the school systems perspective students can actually link their College Board accounts to Khan Academy so it links directly they work collaboratively and that students get a prescribed practice plan that they can work on base that's tailored to their actual score what they've done so it's it's an interesting collaborative but I have to be careful on the administrative end from the school side minding all sorts of policies and laws and expectations about data privacy with sharing student information because it is confidential students would be releasing to Khan Academy here's here's my information here's the score I got on my PSAT you can get some really helpful information back but we want

095to make sure all the bases are covered as far as student privacy and that information so if that doesn't work out we'll work to something else but Eric told me that the state is working on what they can do to get that sort of piece together you know I also I'm sending teams of teachers to College Board workshops as well to better understand the dynamics of the SAT suite of assessments we've done some training before I've sent people there already we're gonna continue to do that to make sure to build everybody's capacity to make sure they truly understand some things like not the cross-cutting concepts I'm in my NGSS mode but there's and I'm forgetting one of the cross scores the cross section scores so you can get SAT scores when you look at that

096information you can actually get cross section scores in history and you can get cross section scores and science based on some of those things so what we do to leverage that information that I can get back not just from the English and the math teachers to spread the wealth with other courses so you know and I said our goal in this area is one of growth for each student with an expectation that 100 percent of 11th grade students will increase their scores from the fall of 2018 PSAT to the spring 2019 SAT by a minimum of 50 points in math and 45 points in evidence-based reading and writing those are loftier targets than we've had before and our typical growth we're gonna set the targets high and we're reaching it for every student that's the

097expectation we want for our juniors it is important to note as I share this stuff that BHS remains of focus school based on 2015 smarter balanced scores from several years ago because the achievement gap and reading between our high need students that are non high-need students existed I'm pleased to report that we have significantly shrunk the gap and the results released last spring show our discrepancy between high knees and non high needs is smaller than the state average for the first time in three years so that's really good news I want to share some sometimes it looks a little grim I want to make sure you understood that as well so we're really excited about that and we're gonna continue to utilize money from the school improvement grant to improve reading instruction not just in

098the building but also build a capacity of leaders and teachers district-wide we made that our model that I don't just train high school people we're working to integrate and bring all their elementary and middle school teachers in as well so it continues to improve reading after SAT is AP and I've had multiple discussions last year we said we have this discussion talked about AP exams and what I did in this column you'll see there's three different shaded colors it shows up a lot better up here than on this screen but the far left is the the year and the average score so under 2016 you see the average score for the students that took that exam it also shows the number of exams taken in that particular subject then 2017 and 2018 this is sorted

099by score for 2018 so that's why you see calc BC you see 2018 the average score was five which means all the kids but we only have three kids take it now there's a reason for that we've done some instructional shifts particularly in calculus to kind of rearrange what we saw our scores were going down you saw three point nine one two point seven five realizing one to make sure our students were perfectly placed and so we did a combined abbc calc class this last year in 2017 and 18 where students work all in the same class and then Mr Fitzsimmons is able to differentiate and see which kids were ready to go to BC and take that test and which kids are ready for a B I can tell you that and you'll see

100though the a B scores are a little lower down at the bottom a 2.63 towards the bottom of calc a B we did have 43 kids take that test though we have a lot of kids that take AP exams so um we generally saw lower scores BC calc I showed you one up English language and composition went up statistics Spanish language culture Spanish language and culture also went up in spring 2018 we had 256 students take 526 exams which is the most for both categories in the past five years so as far as participation and students engaging in the coursework it's higher the highest it's been in five years we're pleased with the participation we're taking an even closer look at why scores are also not increasing some of the things that I'm doing right

101now we're sending a team to the Connecticut ap mini conference at the University of Hartford in October I'll be attending with them as well to learn from other districts about how they have worked to improve their student performance at the instructional level I just recently had a meeting with all the AP teachers had some real insightful in-depth conversations they started to put together actions plans for the things they're gonna do themselves also having conversations and things that I wasn't necessarily aware of when I did an analysis last year for the board and the subcommittee I looked at course grades and the correlation between course grades and AP scores we got a little more in depth one we got all the AP teachers together and certainly having discussions about some of the things we're thinking things

102I learned like AP psych right AP psych UConn does not take AP psych it does not matter what score you get on it they are not taking your AP psych score but if you look at ap psychology we have this past year ap psychology hadn't to be a 96 students it was the test that was taken the most often 96 students 2.81 and you see that that number has decreased over the last couple years what we're finding is that some students have you know gladly decided to take 6 AP courses 5 AP courses they've gotten into colleges and schools and maybe they've gotten into you come and this happened with several kids now again the reason I only bring up several students is because when you get to some of these scores if you're looking

103at 43 kids 23 kids your numbers can be skewed as you start to look at averages they get into UConn they know their AP test that particular test is not going to be taken by that school so they're gonna focus on the AP statistics test or some other test also depends on what it falls during the week you know as you're well aware you know the macro burst that happens that happened the middle of computer science you'll see no score for computer science AP is still working on how to calculate those scores because that test was given that's right May 15th the day that live in Infini in this town in I had the pleasure of telling Martha we had to stop the tests and we hadn't dismissed the students early so there are environmental

104things that occurs and that's for one test right so I'm not saying that's what happened necessarily for everything and certainly there's other factors we talked about when we wet met as a team of AP teachers you know we talked about we're not blaming students that's not we're not looking to blame students but what other factors are out there what might be there that we need to talk about you know when you look at things like environmental science human geography those scores are some of our lowest and talking to those teachers about what's going on there those those are the classes that kids decide I would like to take an AP course to try it out you know those are you know some kids take it certainly because they're looking to go into environmental science very

105few students take Human Geography because they're looking to go into that but to take an AP course and be exposed in that college level and pace and curriculum is really important for them to take not everybody is necessarily prepared to do that at the same time and when it comes to taking five or six different courses if you take that and there is certainly a GPA weighting issue that you actually get a higher weight for your GPA if you take that course we see a little bit of gamesmanship going on in some cases so we're looking to really change the culture of what Advanced Placement is here at the high school to get more buy-in my teachers have looked at scores they've looked at their grades we've had you knows about an hour discussion most

106recently and they've all submitted their steps of action plans that they're gonna take to ensure their actions again not blaming students but what are we gonna do as teachers to make sure that we can improve experiences for our kids I think one of the most the best ones that I saw was a teacher who talked about giving my students timely and meaningful feedback and that's tough in an AP course anybody that's taught an AP course the pace is quick and it's a lot of expected work at home independent we're coming back in they want to try to focus on that so that students can grow because what happens is that course keeps moving because that test date is set and it's not changing and doesn't matter if you have nine snow days that test is

107still gonna be May 12th doesn't matter what it is so how can we find a way to give meaningful feedback to kids so that they can grow and from that so you know at the same time that's our AP scores I'm just gonna finish up here and then obviously open to questions about SAT P SAT or AP you know it's also important for our learning community reinforce the concepts of respect and integrity that's the last part of the statement I read in the beginning of the my presentation we brought a program Rachel's challenge to jumpstart the student kindness movement we've already seen some changes we had hi-5 Friday was was an interesting day on Friday kids went around the Friends of Rachel Club decided that they want to do hi-5 Friday so they were going

108around giving high-fives to kids throughout the day I was giving hi-5 something that seems so quite I'll admit corny so you know but to watch kids who walk through the hall sometimes with their focus on phones or devices that are in their own world to step up to look up and get a high-five doesn't happen to have to be me contact you for the first time you know like am I really doing this okay I'm gonna give a high-five but kids got used to it they enjoyed it and someone said to me a teacher said to me at the end of the day said you know mark there's some kids that may not have had any human contact throughout the course of the day but because we did this teachers and students they got to

109high five ten fifteen kids they actually had human contact they smiled they went about their way so the kids are really excited they can't wait for a high five Friday you know it's coming on Friday I have kids who've taken initiative already for this friends of Rachel Club they've already designed t-shirts they've got their orders are getting are being placed as we speak and we're ready to roll out this high five Friday is going to be a climate and culture thing we're gonna do but they're gonna pick a monthly thing to do from here on out for the rest of the school year to promote kindness and you know positive social interaction with their peers so it's a really exciting thing that we're actually able to develop pretty quickly so you know I also continue

110to celebrate the work done in our learning community with our 212 our condition program that allows anyone in the community recognize a colleague friend peer coach mentor etc for making a difference in someone else's life so we're seeing a lot of positive pieces certainly that's going on here at the high school but I wanted to share that with you so anybody has any questions there might be certainly and again like John said I'm certainly willing if you want me to go more in depth about a particular topic whether it be a PE PSAT or SAT I can certainly do that but I'm happy to answer any questions if anybody has them now about either one of these slides mark I just have a clarifying question if something you mentioned I was just curious you mentioned

111something called a flex B course explain what that is so it's not really of course so the way our current schedule set up there's a 25-minute block that occurs every day on an a day it's called flex a we use that for advisory a kind of advisory program student connections flex B has been a bunch of different things iterations from when I was first created years ago it started as a take time to read a kind of silence sustained reading we know that over time research has shown that's really not improving student achievement scores and reading having them sit there and oftentimes it leads to student rebellion you're gonna make me read for 25 minutes I've just been in three classes for 83 minutes I just need a break so we're trying to figure out

112how to utilize that instructional time to give them a little something not too much but how we might be able to use that 25 minutes every other day to utilize some possible SAT practice I'm also I also convene a scheduling committee so you're aware where I'm looking within my own school with a team of teachers at this point in time we're looking at our current schedule some of it is because of we don't we want to leverage the the most we can out of time with kids and if that flex B program isn't something that we feel is valued and we're not using it utilizing that time well enough we're looking at that right now actually the scheduling committee meeting tomorrow we're talking about options and things we might be able to do to increase

113the opportunities during this school day for student enrichment and intervention actually during the school day and find a better use of time so we're it's the structure we have now it works a definitely could be better but that's what that is Thanks yeah but we have speed correct yep well that's interesting right right you know this this you know I want to be really careful not to blame the web like I said blame the weather I blame the blame the kids for the scores but I think to say to say that weather wasn't a factor would be misguided I'd have to say weather certainly was a factor in the preparation overall for getting the kids ready for the test and then afterwards and then missing five days and kids that were prep you know in

114those last exams that they have to do on makeups you know it's it's when that when the macro burst happened on that Tuesday the 15th so that second exam that computer science exam was canceled and so the the fuel teas that are going on now is you know did everybody have to make up the whole exam some people made up part of the exam it was a different exam and it's one of those things as well where you know as you know teacher says if you take that makeup exam it's gonna be harder that's what some people really believe because we had to miss the rest of our AP exams that week so there was three more days of AP exams that were supposed to take place we missed because they didn't have school I

115don't necessarily know and I couldn't tell you with any certainty that those three sets of AP tests that happened after in the makeup were harder I think certainly kids felt that way but it certainly was a factor I would I would speculate but it's something I can certainly look into and Mark our AP courses are open enrollment American Roma absolutely yep thank you thanks everyone [Music] thank you for the presentation next we have the summer facility's project update so I'll invite mr. Caldwell our director of facilities to the podium he's gonna review you've had bits and pieces but he's going to give a comprehensive review of our with lots of pictures of the major facility projects that have it there's a lot of pictures so good evening Dan Caldwell with fuel school's facilities and just

116wanted to give you a little overview of our summer projects that have been completed or are very near completion as as we're wrapping up and so give you a little look at what went on so I'm going to report on six different projects tonight and as you're all aware we had a shortened summer recess so that puts some some time for strengths not our work yes I do happen sure [Music] okay so as I was saying we had a shortened summer break because of the macro burst and blah blah blah filter that so it did but some of our contractors who had scheduled work put them off a week to get started and then I had to put pressure on them to pick up the pace and get them finished in a timely manner so

117we could move ahead so I'm going to just start with huckleberry Hill elementary school this summer we installed some hand railings on handicap ramps and under main door steps at some point some previous phase of the construction they had been removed but necessary to have and so we had town for ornamental welding the local contractor came in fabricated railings for that makes a little more compliant with our a DA accessibility so that was a project that came in on budget was thirty two hundred seventy-five dollars and then thanks to macro burst we ended up getting a new section of roof at the western air Middle School so immediately after the macro burst we developed a number of leaks in the building and we had a contractor come in and make numerous repairs and it got

118to the point where I was not comfortable that we could be dependable with the integrity of the roof that was there so our insurance adjuster contracted HP fishermen to come in give us an evaluation of the roof and we did some core samples that was determined that moisture had penetrated the roof and that we didn't indeed need to replace that section of the roof which would be over the second floor of the middle school so 9,000 square feet of roof and insulation was replaced the bare roofing company out of Danbury Connecticut was the contractor that did that this work was done through the insurance this was not a capital project at this time but it was difficult to coordinate to work because we couldn't have students underneath the area while it was going on and

119with with other projects the water system here at the high school that we'll get into that displaced program some are programs that would have taken place here put them into the middle school so it was a summer of logistics and balancing class lows and thank you to the administration for opening their doors and distributing the summer students throughout so we can make these things happen so the replacement cost of this project was one hundred and fifty seven thousand nine hundred ten dollars that project has not been closed completely however all the equipment is down it's just a final inspection walkthrough and that will be complete sometime in the next few days so a capital project that went on this year at the whiskey nerd middle school so a pallucci o J a Pluto from row

120fill was a contractor who won this job and this was phase one of a multi-phase paving project that was to improve parking lots curving sidewalks and lighting in front of the middle school and those of you who have been through know that this work was the emphasis was put on this Center Drive at the school so as part of this project the old sidewalks were jack-hammered and removed over time they had settled and heaved it was very very uneven area part of the work with a sidewalks we integrated the curb with the sidewalk so they wouldn't break and move moving forward we use a concrete mixture similar to a gunite swimming pool very water resistant and was looking for a good longevity on that we also in planning of this this project we look for

121future phases and and perhaps reconfiguration of how we move buffing through the parking lot so a lot of things were taken in consideration with the initial layout and hoping we could streamline traffic through there we all know that there's a lot of congestion morning and afternoons at at the middle school all the schools for that matter but the middle school especially is very tight moving cars in and out so initially they were going to dig up and remove the asphalt that was there but we had a little change of plan and we reclaimed the asphalt it brought in the machine as you can see here in these photos and actually ground up the existing asphalt and manufactured sub base material we estimated that we may have saved as much as $20,000 in materials by manufacturing

122this having an on site and saved us handling charges and gave us a really nice base which would equate to longevity of the project and so along with that I'm gonna stop here before I go any further so along with with that change in the the sub-base and those savings here we were able to equate that to more asphalt on the ground and we paved a larger area than we had initially anticipated with with phase one of that project so the next thing probably the major project of the summer is the profil high school water project so this is a long awaited project that was underfunded initially and we had rebid the project looked at and how we could pull this job off doing it in multiple phases and fortunately we were able to get

123the appropriate funding and move ahead to do it as a single project and I'll have to say we did end up with a very nice finished product interstate artesian well company out of Greenwich was a contractor on this and this project included demolition of piping controls wiring and new Electric Service nuclear fuel systems and new storage tanks so you see on these photos when I first came to work here and I walked into that pump pit my eyes got wide and I said I've never seen anything quite like this be functional but Wiener so long until the project came so what you're looking at now we're existing conditions so part of the project removed we've removed a 75 100 gallon of water tank pulled it out of the ground you'll see we left a large

124gaping hole in the side of our pump station and another consideration of this project was that the previous pump station and the condition it was in had confined space consideration so you'll see on the the bottom right as part of the restoration we installed a set of precast concrete stairs that allows us to walk in so lighting and exhaust exhaust fans installed in a project eliminate that make it safer for us and we can move freely in and out of the pump station so the the former system incorporated a 15,000 gallon storage tank and that blows water was boosted into a 7,000 gallon pressure tank so what you see here in the upper left is the 15,000 gallon tank that came out it was 30 feet long and a foot diameter and the new tank

125directly below it and to the bottom right set in place anchored to the ground and ready to pipe and fill so the new tank is a steel tank it has a portable water lining and it's similar to the project we did back in April where we line up water tanks the exterior is also an epoxy type finish ask about exception give us some some extended life the ability to monitor corrosion on its Hank so the the the heart of the system here is our new variable drive pumps kit so what you're seeing here is the unit being delivered and set down into the hole so we have the ability to pump three hundred gallons for a minute as 60-pound pressure far exceeds any of the requirements but this system also eliminates the need for that

1267,500 gallon pressurized tank but the fact that these variable speed pumps they speed up and slow down on demand so we can pump anywhere from about four gallons a minute up to a hundred gallons a minute per pump and they will stage in and out accordingly so if you remember back to the first slide it was a piping disaster down there so our contractor did a really nice job of doing uniform work and making everything nice and neat you're all welcome to come down and take a look into my world anytime you like but for for me it makes me smile compared to what we were working previously and so we have this is Eileen pump station it's a really nice state-of-the-art controls variable speed drive touchpad control system very user friendly allows us to

127have a lot more a lot more of the bells and whistles alarms from many different aspects of our operation that we we didn't have before it's also equipped with a cellular auto dialer to alert us for alarms it can call me directly it will call our alarm company in the past we relied on somebody noticing low pressure in the building before we were alerted to a problem so just overall in improvements on this across the board and you'll see those two blue water tanks in the corner of the building they have a combined capacity of about 300 gallons and they replace 7500 gallon tank that was removed and this project had a budget of three hundred and forty thousand dollars give or take their number of different aspects there was some work that had done

128previously a couple years back in preparation of this that that wasn't included in in that number but it I expect that will be on budget right now we're at the punch list point with the contractor and we're looking to wrap that job sometime in the next week we have a little bit of a little bit of call back from minor adjustments the next capital project also here at the high school was we've refinished the gymnasium floor in the small gym and James O'Sullivan flooring out of Quincy mass was a contractor on that he's a repeat contractor he'd done good work for us in the past and we're happy to have him as a little better coming back and again so you know if you've ever had florist on a home you see the guys come

129in with a single sanding machine these are multiple machines bolted together was a ride on seat and the guys drive up and down the gym just tripping so here's a photo of stripping in progress two specs on this call for several different passes of sanding to bring the floor down to raw material removing finished and striping that was there multiple coats of finished that went on and then painting new stripes we also added two new volleyball courts to the floor as we finished up and on the left is before lines and on the right is after lines with them doing a final a final burnishing for a top coat also is separate from from the actual flooring project there's a new logo here so since we had floor painters in we have done new logos

130at Center core of both of these is an extra outside of that project but the capital project for flooring was nineteen thousand seven hundred twenty seven dollars and then while this next project on the on the screen is maybe officially a Parkin rec project it was a group effort between Brookfield schools park and rec town of Brookfield and I was happy to work with Mary Knox from Park and Rec and helping with the planning and the coordination of this since most of it effectively came out of our building and was associated with our building so we put in the new Musco lighting system after the storm came through and blew over the lighting this is the light that was on the back side of the field that crash-landed onto the turf field out and back

131so Musco lighting was a general contractor who did the work shock e-electric i'm dan berry with a subcontractor who did all of the field installation and they were ray never one-stop-shop they did although they did all of the work right there is a picture of the pole that came down and on top of that that red mark there that's my cell phone so those balls were 18 inches in diameter and they had rotted away and that's all that was left was about of florence diameter holding that 50-foot pole up in the air so after after the storm and we took a look at them all the poles were condemned and they all had to they all had to come down so it's part of it there was new wiring that came out of the building

132or previously the power supply came out of the field house and so there's miles of wiring involved getting power out to all four of the leg poles and so they use an auger and they drilled anchor holes for the bases each of those poles are set twelve to fourteen feet down in the ground and then these are the fellows from shock electric Mike environ were the true leaders on this project and the poles were preassembled on the ground they're pretty aimed and pre-designed at the factory that are all laser sighted so they set it in the hole they spin it around it's one of those plug it in and forget it so things went relatively smoothly they worked very hard and our target date really was to be open and have the lights on for

133the first home football game and I was shocked one night when my phone jingles and I looked down and Steve Baldwin had sent me a photo of the lights on in the field so that was like Christmas in July so very pleased what you're looking at right here is the control panel that's installed on here in the basement they have the ability to access that with a smartphone to turn lights on turn lights off different sports have different lighting requirements so intensity of lighting is different from a soccer game a lacrosse game or football game so it's nice that we're able to do that and then a really nice feature that's been added is at the bottom of the stairs walking onto the field there's a pedestal out there and so people who are walkers

134or coming in early coming in late after dark you hit the button at the base of the stairs it turns the lights on at about 10% capacity and allows you to walk the track and have some safety and security while you're out there at night little features five minutes before they're going to grow up go out it gives you a little flashing strobe so you can double time it back and hit it again if you have a few more laps to go so that was it and here is the the opening night home football game which Pro Field was victorious and I'm sure the lights had a big part that is a quick overview of our summer projects dan thank you very much thank you very much anybody have any questions are doing I mean

135the summer projects we can put that up the PowerPoint on the website oh absolutely yeah great that's might work thank you very much another aspect of the lights I just want to add being there for the game last Friday is a lot of tremendous feedback again safety and security we named one of the lights down toward the back of the home bleachers and so it lights up where the current concession stand is that whole walkway now is lit up where it was very dark before so that's just another great safety feature that we have and you could really see all the students who are running all over the place that we need to admonish so it's actually a real monitoring help thanks to everybody presenting you thank you thank you very much okay next we

136have the new school project update and thought perhaps because we were used to receiving updates on the strategic facilities as a subcommittee report each time and we really need to continue the discussion continue the updates both for ourselves and for anyone in the public listening so thought we would put it as a new business item this meeting and then it would go as old business every time just to bring up anything we need to discuss anything to talk about just I guess as a an update from where we were at our last board meeting the Municipal Building Committee met last Tuesday and formally set forth a steering committee for the new school project which is going to be consisting of the chairs of the Board of Selectmen Education Finance Steve Harding as state representative John

137Lucas as town treasurer and dr. guru they additionally will be inviting in a construction manager not as a someone they're hiring but just someone to learn the technical expertise in that position and they have yet to identify that individual there's a presentation scheduled for October 16th fairly certain it will be at 7 o'clock in the evening at the BHS auditorium this will be a presentation for the Board of Finance and selectmen hopefully for their approval to bring the project for the referendum because that really is our first large hurdle it must be approved to move towards referendum we are inviting the public to this though because it will be a fairly detailed presentation and then after the presentation to the boards of Finance and selectmen the public will have the opportunity to comment or ask

138questions as needed as well save is that anything that I any questions anyone has at this point everyone is very busy gathering all the data for the October 16th on energy savings for the new project any other consolidation of service savings capital projects that don't need to be done for the old schools and just going line by line and see where our savings are realized as well the only comment I had which I have said before but just because you're on that committee now there needs to be some kind of firm discussion on what it's going to have them in the center school yes because that is going to come up at this meeting and it's gonna be a hard stop for some people so I can share in terms of you know will be

139exiting center school that's for sure if the project goes through and we need to do that and that's the problem we need to solve is the the problems of our aging facilities is the there have been members of the library committee whether it's still a formal committee but people who have been involved that reached out to me and asked to take a tour of the building they did that with mr. Caldwell I think was the first week of school then they took that that walkthrough and perhaps with a consulting engineer that had worked with the the the group before in addition to that Jeff was new ski from tech town the architect was had been contacted by the committee and he shared with them some of the conditions study report findings from center school directly

140to the folks from the library committee so I know the library committee's interested I have no other conversations but that's just some information I can share publicly and that I'm aware of I think the other thing we need to be prepared for as a board is to have you know I think we all know what we hope to get out of the new building in addition to cost savings but I think we have to be prepared to discuss the educational opportunities that the new building will give I think there are some people who are saying well why can't we achieve why do we need a new building to achieve what we want to achieve what are we going to be getting out of a new building that we can't get with our existing facilities so

141just you know for future discussions I think we have to be prepared yeah I mean those are really good talking points I think Colette and that would be I just think some of the wall should be familiar with and you all make sure we can clearly communicate that and communicate it often and we will be elaborating on those yeah so is there anything that is there anything this board needs to do to prepare for the 16th meeting or is it all being handled by the staff and the steering committee at this point at this point the information has been gathered by staff by administration by the steering committee there is a meeting next week that we're going to be meeting to go forth as well but we will definitely be pulling in the board as

142we need to programmatically and just for input as well but at this point it's just everything is focused to the presentation on the 16th and are the architects presenting at that meeting again yes yes they do a good job and in the architects collette myself I believe we're gonna be meeting to talk about you know kind of the order and who will be saying what and those kind of things perhaps mr. Chekov as chair of the NBC so it'll be a number of people collaborating to make the presentation fruitful for the board fine sports allotment for the public and by the way we're scheduled at whiskey I think you may have said this club but I want to say again we scheduled that meeting that presentation the joint meeting of the Board of Selectmen Board

143of Finance here in the auditorium on the 16th because we would hope to have a large audience so many could hear it live and participate afterwards and ask questions and share comments and things like that and we'll also livestream it it'll be recorded for everyone [Music] thank you everyone three main points I think the facility projects updates you know facility projects achieved and maybe even just a link to that yes especially he puts out the other PowerPoint a PowerPoint yes that would be great you got with the tone it was an amazing number of projects we got completed in a short period of time [Music] I'd say testing or assessment updates areas of growth or areas of need I'm not how about strength strength so my strengths challenges path forward something something to that effect

144and we can kind of Rosa we can kind of bullet that through do we want to do touch on the new school project update there's that I mean we've we've pretty much repeated it's a repeat with everything we've said before so I'm not sure it's anything other than I've been reminding of it's a sixteen I like that meeting I let the meetings yeah [Music] [Laughter] articulating number two Rosa shrinking that down that was a lot of alright up coming events okay since we're meeting again next week there are a whole lot of events going on but as far as middle school goes there's a PTO meeting on Wednesday October 3rd from 9:30 to 10:30 at the high school the math League meets on Monday October 1st from 2 to 6 and there's a septa meet-and-greet

145on Monday October 1st from 7 to 9 in the library there's no upcoming events at center school or huckleberry although I would like to take a minute to also bring attention to the in addition to the parent volunteers who helped paint the beautiful murals at huckleberry also recognize the three high school art students who also volunteered their time and jumped right on board with us who were a great addition to our team and assisted us in painting those beautiful murals and their names are Victoria Andrews grace Collins and Gabby Muscatello they really were wonderful and helped you know put the foundation to a lot of the murals and they were a good guide for us in helping us it was nice to have young art motivated and I'm excited art students and that's right they

146did the bathrooms that was skinnier as well so thank you and also thank you too there were some people that gave cash and gift certificate donations Irene Korea Ashley O'Grady Kelly lefaucheux Lissa Emerson and Heather Loftus so that was helpful to get some specialty brushes and other specialty items that we needed it looks really great project grease is actually doing that as part of her goals it's gold yes that's it no more upcoming events stay tuned next week thank you great executive session recommend a motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing unaffiliated salaries and the lawsuit filed by former superintendent Anthony Bivona second favor opposed okay thank you because the aired portion of our of our meeting thank you very much for joining us everyone [Music]