001tonight will be a good uh a good meeting but a brief meeting uh as we move uh through a very uh short agenda so uh we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance and I'll leave that in the flags to the back and the right I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [Music] no I think it's my uh my grandson is in first grade and he can recite the pledge I just think it's so cute when those little guys get up put their hand on their heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance you smile and cry at the same time it's just a great uh great thing so okay so um in the summer there'll be no student reports so we'll move right to the superintendent's report sir okay thank you very
002much um Lou good evening everybody great to see all of you um it's great to be here um at Canton High School for our last board meeting of the school year and in a few minutes we'll look forward to hearing from Mr depipo and Dr Kidwell on the highlights of the year at Canton High School um I'm very proud to say that we had um a fabulous High School graduation on June 9th thank you so much to Mr depipo and Dr Kidwell for all of your outstanding planning and the weather Gods cooperated in the way the rain stopped before the ceremony and went around us thank goodness so it was a beautiful ceremony Outdoors the senior graduates then went to cherryburg Primary School where I had the pleasure of helping to serve them dinner which
003is a tradition where the elementary school teachers who the students love to see their favorite elementary teachers from Cherry Brook Primary School in Canton Intermediate School they were there serving dinner as well before their post-graduation substance-free party which again was a success we also had our promotion Ceremonies for grade six at Canton intermediate school and I thank Mr Daniels for being there and saying a few words and we also had our grade 8 promotion last Thursday night and I thank Mr scheidler for uh for saying a few words during that evening as well so we've had a we had a great smooth end to the year with outstanding celebrations as I work to to close out all of my tasks as the ear finishes I want to let you know that Dr Grossman your incoming
004superintendent and I had a great transition meeting this morning so we've been communicating all along and I know we'll continue to communicate as the transition and Leadership evolves those are great meetings today um it's hard to believe for me that this is my last Board of Education meeting with all of you having been in the Canton Public Schools for 16 and a half years it's really hard to put into words what the past 16 and a half years has meant to me I truly have had the privilege of serving you as board members and serving the community partnering with the parents and as I said at my retirement party and as I said in my emails I truly am a blessed man I'm a blessed individual so grateful to have had this privilege over the
005years I have had the privilege of working with outstanding board members such as yourselves the most outstanding administrators teachers and staff members in the state of Connecticut and I know that to be true and I know that the district will be in great hands as Dr Grossman comes on board but I do want to take this opportunity not only to thank our community and our parents for your partnership for allowing me to come into your homes when when people thought you know I was crazy going to homes doing neighborhood coffees the community really responded well and I want to thank each and every one of you for your partnership and your support over the most rewarding times there have been many highs and many successes I'm proud of and then there's been many challenging times
006the most challenging of course being the covid years and I thank you for your support with the difficult decisions that had to be made during that time thank you I believe being a board of education member other than being a selectman is one of the most important ways to serve the community and I thank all of you for your service I thank you personally because you have continued to challenge me you know I thought I'd be in Canton just for a few years but I woke up every day still feeling challenged through each of your thoughtful comments and questions you continue to allow me to grow and for that I am eternally grateful I have grown both professionally but most importantly personally working with each of you has made me a better person and I
007thank all of you for that so it's hard to say goodbye but I know of the district is in great shape and I'll I will continue to hear great things about the district because of all of your service thank you very much [Applause] foreign that's all I have to report tonight okay so Kevin thank thank you and uh so much has been said but I'll just say it again that when you were here when we hired you and now you're leaving you you are leaving this District in much better shape than when you got here and that is through all the improvements and ideas and help in the mentoring that you've done and the way you've LED your boards of education and I've witnessed it now twice so I feel that uh I get it
008so thank you for all that you've done and you will be missed the good news is you're next door in Avon we hope to see you around town and check in with us from time to time and um you'll always be a a good person to run an idea or a thought by so uh if you don't mind we may do that from time absolutely so thank you thank you okay um as far as the board chair uh report goes I've asked everybody to come up with a couple uh goals and you know the term goal was probably the wrong word um I I re uh I took your input those that have given it to me and I changed it to board areas of review and attention and the reason why I've made it
009review and attention is because we will go through a goal setting process uh in September with our superintendent of schools that will talk about long range and short term and and more wide uh wide brush type things but for tonight I thought that we could at least provide the new superintendent with some areas to review and attention and I'm going to pass these out for everybody I think I have 12. so that way and if you see something there you want to uh modify or something you think should add um please do um but these are the things I'll communicate back uh to you have an extra Orchestra um does anybody want these I have an extra I have extra okay so um these again are these are these are just areas to review and
010the first of course is the school space issues in central office space I think um we're working very uh hard and I think John Bishop for his help on this in trying to um we're coming up pretty quickly on to what we're going to have to do as far as space and it's leaning more and more towards at least temporarily Portables uh maybe that's long term maybe it's not um so we'll be able to give you more information on that as we go on I might call on John just to give a quick report on that when we get to the and I skipped over you John but I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to you all right um I just think I'm right after this nope all right uh in any event so um
011so space is going to be underneath and also central office space uh if you've been to any other board of education we are so cramped down there and so tight uh in the old police station um and we really need to think about and we're disjointed we have a technology somewhere else we have our pupil Personnel somewhere else we need to have our management team together we are the largest uh part of the budget we are the largest uh employer uh here is part of the town so for that we need to bring our management team together so at some point we need to come up with a plan that covers uh central office space Also uh second on the list is budget forecasting the development some of you have mentioned that um how we
012do a better job forecasting out the budget maybe it's over two years how we develop the budget how we put our reports together and then we need a better plan for communication and approval what we heard um what we heard really pretty consistently for from uh the community is they didn't feel that there was a good job communicating I disagree with that and I can give you all the reasons why I think it was well communicated at least the Board of Education side and I do believe the town side too but in any event we're going to pay attention to that thirdly we're talking about measuring academic achievement and data analysis some of you had mentioned that is is a concern and we've talked about consistency in the reporting from our our different schools and
013how we're going to be looking at that we have contract negotiations coming up um and we have to be mindful of that and I'll get it's more about that on the teams that we put together but contract negotiations are coming up it was also suggested to plan for continuing the Dei work that was done in 2023 2022-23 what are going to be the things that we're going to do going forward to continue uh the um the progress that we've made in that area um we've also talked about hey Ryan we also talked about calendar meeting uh calendar meeting invite system that syncs with other systems so that everybody can easily just download onto your outlook or your Google so you know where the meetings are make it a lot easier that way uh we'll continue
014with the facility Improvement we've we've had the public reach out to us in a couple cases um on the fact that they want to see Improvement to our fields in other places but I have to say the improvements that we've done in the high school which is beautiful if you walk in I think I think our high school looks wonderful and it is our Flagship we did do some work at Cherry Brook but it's kind of Fallen back we've done some work at CIS that has fallen back we have to stay on top of that maintenance so we'll have to figure that out and then we'll have to review which kind of plays off of that review of the shared services if that is in fact working on how we operate with the town and
015is that being as effective as it can be both from a financial standpoint and from a practical uh standpoint on the services that they provide so those are the things that I've taken from your goals the the things that you've outlined uh to me I've kind of synthesized it down to those eight things anybody have any comments on those or something you'd like to add I know you want something you want to add not had something but okay you can what would you like to say I one through eight is great and those are so essential um it's almost like to me they're like a given but that is the priority um I didn't know if there was something for like culture climate I wrote culture climate mental health behavioral it's kind of a big
016a lot of stuff but just like you know reinvigorate student and staff um covet I think really exhausted people and teachers and staff and we've heard you know through our planning and stuff you know [Music] though sometimes the lack of uh I think I think that's a good one the word I'm trying to use so I'm going to put that motivation to do some extra things and you know we've talked about some things that have been you know Fallen by the wayside so that's what I thought I don't know the proper thing I just put culture climate um I like what you said reinvigorate students and staff yeah I think that and I wrote the word fun and then we can get into the detail of that yes and the mental health and behavioral might
017be another one another like number 10. and that could be you know broken apart in many ways too okay but I don't know how others feel they feel that's of importance again this these are not necessarily goals as I talked about these are just areas to review attention concerns of the board that we will pass on to the superintendent when he comes on and he can approach these as he has time because he will be working this is where we would put policy to because and the policy meetings we were talking about a lot of policy work needs to still be done too I think that would be part of the general goals okay because uh to rework the policies that would that where we need where we think we need policy work I think
018that'll come out in our September uh board Workshop about setting goals on policy curriculum even more on the financial side of things with what we can expect so I think that's a good point though any other questions okay I I also mentioned to everybody that we the goal of this board has to be more driven towards um the subcommittee work the committee work of curriculum policy Finance CIP and then the negotiation teams and it has to be equitably uh spread out so that the workload is being shouldered by equal amount of members on the board so what I've done is I've re-jiggered this a little bit uh on on committee assignments the chairs all stayed the same but we've we've evened out the uh the committee assignments pass those out so what you see is
019in adman policy Joe scheiler will stay will remain as chair Peggy Cindy and Ryan uh will be on the policy committee on the curriculum committee Erica remains his chair and Kim Felicia and Peggy are going to go to curriculum and finance Russell remains a chair and Kim Ryan and Joe are on finance CIP will stay Russell is chair because of the financial impact and Erica Cindy and Felicia will move to uh CIP CIP meets infrequently um I thought Felicia could remain as our Communications and publicity liaison she'll be working with Kira and John and making sure that our Communications get out I know we have three contracts is there all four contracts coming up for negotiations you know I believe three three the three you have listened right so teachers Paras and custodians are going
020to go into negotiation uh in 20 uh this fall so on the teachers I think I've talked to Ryan and Felicia and Cindy about leading on uh teachers on Paris it would be Joe Russell and Kim and uh custodians will be Peggy Erica and Russell all right because of Finance being in in these meetings um won't be at hopefully they won't be as uh time consuming but what I am going to do is I I'm going to take the superintendent out of um those those negotiations he will consult but he won't be lead uh because I wanna I wanna keep the superintendent out of is managing and I don't want him also in in the trenches trying to negotiate where he's upsetting you know his board members we might upset people on what we have
021to do representing the town but I don't want the superintendent to to feel that Flack so uh especially when we get to teachers we'll be working with board attorney but Ryan Felicia and Cindy Perez again Joe Russell and Kim custodians Eric and Russell and of course I serve as uh by uh by Charter I serve as ex-officio on all those subcommittees and I try to make as many as I can and I'll be at the um I'll be at the negotiation meetings too so I'll lend as a fourth so I'll be the fourth wheel on most of this any questions on assignments I I asked earlier if there was anything specifically that you wanted or didn't want nobody really responded to the uh to the assignment so uh I feel that if if you have
022a question or an issue you can you can certainly approach me on it and we can see what we can do and and again I know that um policy and finance are going to meet before board meeting so that can make it convenient for folks curriculum is the only one that will be meeting um primarily during the day because teachers are involved sometimes students are involved so that that's why curriculum um I I hope that works for Kim Felicia and Peggy um I thought maybe day meetings are a little bit more flexible for you guys if if we um I know we're allowed to bounce around to otherwise oh of course tending like like say there's a policy meeting and I'm not on policy and there's members who aren't going to attend um for whatever
023reasons it's almost helpful to know so that we could bump in to support because we really need a certain number to attend not that I want to add myself or somebody else in but if you understand what I'm saying like the work needs to be done so so I like I really care about policy and I'm not on it but if someone's not going they're not going to attend and we know that then maybe we could adjust so sure to bump in as that extra support I mean typically we try to post an agenda for these meetings and I think the um the respectful thing to do is if you can't make it and sometimes you can't make it you just have to report to the chair to the appropriate chair or or that chair
024can also let folks know that we're a short one for policy or we're short going for that's an excellent point Kim but if we are down one uh and like I said I'll try to be that that fourth wheel or that that felon for most of these meetings any questions so that's that's uh my report that's it for time so now I get to go back to John and uh John a couple things for us yeah absolutely um I'd be happy to be able to give you a little bit of an update on the um the space work that we're doing with fire architecture they are currently in the process of um connecting with the state looking to be able to determine um the possibilities of the um uh the reimbursement that the state would
025provide for US based on the types of possible projects that we may have in place for us so they're trying to be able to bring forward a good Financial picture for us to help us in making our determinations they're also uh I've asked them to be able to work out a reverse timeline of what things might need to look like for us depending on the um types of of build or or whatever project we might look to be able to go into with that so it would give us a better perspective on what we need to be able to do and set our level of urgency to go forward um I expect to be able to have some conversations with them in our board and Leadership likely in the month of July to be able
026to start moving lower that word forward and then the other update is we continue to move forward with the Cherry Brook Primary School uh principal search uh Russell thank you for being on board to be able to support that we continue to do well as a working group to move that work forward and excited to be able to see that um bring yourself to a completion at some point so John just to back up on the space sure um there is some Financial uh requirement if if we're looking at Cherry Brook for Portables and that's why we're going to go to town leadership which is for Selectmen and the um and the board of Finance chair uh and we've been keeping them right along but there may be a um a dollar amount that has
027not been I don't believe it was budgeted right um any no not not not for this at this point so we may have an unbudgeted expense it may come out of CIP it'll be up to where Finance wants to I'll go with this but we we've been meeting with Finance right along explaining to them where this is going and they've been very supportive but uh in order for us to move forward with anything we're going to have to test Wells and and septic and other things and there'll be a little bit of expense to that and and I want to thank uh Tom Richardson and Donna misskowski for their partnership and making sure that things are lined up to be able to make sure that we can continue to do the work are being taken
028care of so far for some of our fields at Cherry Brook having the opportunity to be able to do the septic uh the septic review um and uh beginning some some connections to see about the the next steps of work that we'll need to go on there but another another step will be coming forward with the RFP process of them moving on there hey John are you aware of the uh the Cherry Brook Dust Bowl situate you know where that stands for Donna perchance I know that the I think that um actually I'd rather not say if I don't have the correct answer for interesting yeah so we've we've gotten some we've got numerous uh over time parents asking about Cherry Brook School by the um playscape Joe you know that dust bowl that is
029just stripped down it's hard pan so um a parent today met with the first selectman who was very upset about uh that particular area however and he wrote me a note too and I responded that Donna does have a plan for that we're not sure yet if it's going to be um if it's going to be hydroseeded or it's going to be topsoil and seeded we're not sure yet but we are going to fix Cherry Brook Field and the point of getting that field to the left is you're going through the driveway and it's kind of roped off now because we're not allowing cars to park that will become the Playfield because the field that we're going to fix is gonna have to be roped off and children can't play on that probably all fall
030won't be open until the spring I hope the children will have that field to the left to be able to utilize and of course we've lost the front field because pfas and we will do the parking on that side so whether that gets a little bit torn up it's going to be torn up anyway it's going to have to be replanted so the Overflow parking will go where the snow fence is you know over in that area on either side by the way so just in case you're you're cornered by someone in the public that said um I'm not happy with cherry book we aren't either uh with that particular piece of property but we're going to fix it to that I do understand that there's going to be work that's going to be happening
031either end of uh July or early August and that's where we were trying to plan the septic um exploration prior to that I'm just not sure where they're what they're choosing to do just yet right any questions for John [Music] then uh tonight uh we have uh posted the Pitbull and Dr Kidwell here to go over to neosh report and also the uh their continuous Improvement plan and I'd just like to add an echo what a great job you did on graduation and the building will break and the fact that the rain held off from everybody looked and sounded excellent so thank you good job thank you okay good evening everyone thanks for taking some time tonight to have this come forward we're very excited to be here so we're understanding that this is the
032fourth ish report that that from the schools that you will be hearing so we're going to try to keep it brief please know that we could talk frankly for hours about how excited we are about how our year went uh we've had great successes we continue to have some challenges we won't talk for hours we're going to try to keep it brief um for you but please know I'm going to kind of speed right through but knowing uh that if you need something that will happen to answer any questions at the end in general I think we've had a great year um I feel like um a lot of things came together through the course of the year a lot of challenges were met um you know can you mentioned a little bit about um
033you know social emotional um awareness and and kind of teacher morale and and there's an arc to the to the school year without a doubt I think we finished something real high and sometimes you have to get to the end to kind of look backward to see the growth and I think in the last two months of the school year um with a lot of positivity around student growth around some of the opportunities that students have during the school year left us feeling um like it was fulfilling school year and and that made us feel great but the numbers um you know don't always bear that out I think in this case we sort of see both we see some really positive numbers and we see uh kind of a feeling of positivity um and
034some Focus points for next year as well um so I want to thank everyone for their support and um I do believe some of some of the decisions that were made early last year during last budget season really really helped this year run well and I feel like some of the the budget um decisions that were made and supported throughout this year's process will your benefits next year based on this year's model so there's a lot of um kind of a nice cycle of utilizing thinking and implementing that we've been doing and I do want to mention as they jump in that anything that has happened here positively is really based on the teachers hard work they continue to be committed they continue to be dedicated they continue to kind of work through a shift
035you know with our students and making Necessary modifications especially flexibility I want to use that word with staff at the high school there's a tremendous amount of flexibility that has to take place to kind of meet the needs of students because they sort of come out um them with different um social emotional needs different motivational kind of contacts and then clearly what was always sort of uh struggled a little bit with or you know it's always a challenge is to kind of close gaps so those three sort of moving Parts have afforded um teachers to think differently a little bit and I think as a result um they've shown just a ton of flexibility to get students to to their next year whatever that might look like every year um as we know you know
036we have academic and school climate goals I want to speak just briefly about that the academic growth that we saw this year at the high school unlike the middle um and CIS Cherry Brook you know we don't have the layers of measures incremental measures that they might have we have a more generalized measure around sat um that is summative in nature and therefore maybe not as effective in seeing things like at a pinpoint but it does give us a global understanding of process and progress in in how it's going so as we talked about in November we say that you know we want to see an achievement it will advance as measured by this PSAT sat work there's tons of mini layers in that meaning we have 8th graders ninth graders 10th graders 11th graders
037all on sort of an arc of taking a particular test we do some things in between the tests um in each subject area to afford students opportunities to develop skills and then you know the next October we'll take another test um and so what we said as a goal this year where we had several mini goals but for tonight's purposes um I just want to highlight two pieces because I just feel like you get really in the weeks right and we have next October November if if we want to talk more about it so one thing I do want to talk about is that first Red Bullet the aggregate score from 2022 PSAT 11 to 2023 sat will increase by 20 points and then the second one eight percent of students the fourth floor down
038uh will individually improve during this Administration that we took um last March okay so it's pretty recent so we could jump to the next slide a lot of numbers here but I just want to give you the good news um is it okay if I just going a little bit sure absolutely please do so um to make clear to clarify the blue numbers across are how many students take the test the first number here average total score is is the cumulative number so what we see in this First Column is eighth grade this is our sitting these numbers represent people who will be seniors next year so they finish their junior year so we have five iterations of tests that they've taken you can see that when they took in eighth grade this was their
039score when they took an evolving test this was their score in March this is as a school The Hope was that we grow from the from the October sitting to the March sitting by 20 points if you grew by uh about 50 points okay that's our that's the biggest jump we've seen in several years okay you know I could almost end the presentation now okay um so that's great to see I also want to highlight down here that this growth in math of 30 points the last six months of the school year is market right a lot of hard work is paying off you can see some some years of struggle around here not a lot of growth not a lot of growth and this was really our our struggling years you know you can
040see two full years of students you know kind of the norm back these are these are numbers that we had kind of pre-covered so I do feel like when we're talking about like where are we I do feel like we have sort of re-grounded ourselves in our Norm here at Canton of what we'd expect from students so this is really good news for reset we're way above State we're way above benchmarks in the state this was The Benchmark for the tasks we can see that we're you know about 80 points above and there's always a confusing question about the math benchmark versus the The erw Benchmark this is reading and writing and this is math The Benchmark is lower therefore you know we're more successful it seems but at the end of the day you
041can see that the scores themselves are very close these red yellow and green numbers indicate students achieving this benchmark since achieving its benchmark you can see that 10 more students see The Benchmark in five five months okay that usually doesn't happen that's just just a big jump for students so these are all really good news like we as a you know generally speaking our students did better as a school and we can see that number um we'll know against how we did against you know other schools in durg in October but these you know this is a report for today so that first bulleted item that I said you know we wanted students get 20 you know as as a school to improve by 20 points we did that and then some I'll talk about
042this a little bit more when I get to the successes right but you know we always have concerns that students still have map Benchmark these students are still in our school we still you know I think what I want to say right now you know exactly who these kids are and that's the key when you're going through all of this is keeping an eye in affording students more opportunities or our sales more opportunities based on this information which again I know we want to celebrate but to go for us isn't so much this score but to know who these kids are this is really in my mind why we do this we try to figure out who these kids are that we can you know [Music] um help support um you know throughout so if
043you're just about to the next slide that the second goal there's a lot of words in have you just sort of state but we had talked a little bit about was we wanted we want all kids we want all kids to improve so that was the global score 1104 but what we want is individually we want kids to be better from one iteration to the next iteration to the next iteration to the next iteration and an average High Mark for us is 80 that's a good goal eighty percent of students would improve so in this case I just want to say that while 80 we want 80 of the kids to improve but we also have to keep in mind is we want every kid to approve so some kids might get a really really
044high score but to see a really really high score on the SAT is 13.50 so that could forget 1340 on the next is still a tremendous score but they didn't improve so they fall off our statistic so even this is a little bit you know just another way to use data but I think so that's why I like to speak in sort of like broad rushes this is exciting 86 of students improve again pre-cover we get to these years where we don't see this was our hardest year we don't see a great amount of improvement a better year in a solid year this was in erw all right this in math 76 of our students you know improved so this is what I mean by that is they they took the test here and then
045they took it here this is how many kids improved they took it they took this number I put it here and then they took it again this time somebody assume it's improved cook this number put it here this is how many students approved and we only counted that if they took both tests so this is pretty good we wanted 80 we came up just short but but that's a high number for us and where we've evolved to is we want to know the students who continue to struggle a little bit so there's some good news here of the students that were not were not like um of the students increasing several students were below the benchmark but 25 percent of the students below the Benchmark here ended up above the Benchmark and still we say
046well how come not 80 well 25 is a pretty good number because the benchmarks continue to increase so students did better and they continue to do better on both sides and my last I guess point of data on this is this 25 percent actually only represents 13 students totally like you know only like of the 13 students that increased um to get to a benchmark all of them actually improved in the test and of the 22 students here 20 improved on the past so I guess what I'm trying to say here there's a lot of numbers there but what we end up with is saying is that we want kids to do better you want to say you know how has Ruth's gotten better from freshman year to senior year and all the numbers sort
047of bear out if you just followed her and plotted her we'd see in our uh you know a trajectory so those were two goals that I just wanted to pull out in that bury you in every number because I could do that for every class you know you do it for ninth graders the 10th graders another favorite companies but this was the Arc of students from beginning to end so if I if I could just Advance one more so we have a lot of successes I would say and I just sort of divide this into almost thirds the first three bullets is really about process and how I think we a real I think success for our school this year was some changes in our process to understand students better we did two things that
048we've never done before one is that we we started to use as a pilot star data you've heard more about star data than High School teachers to a degree because you're hearing about it in Cherry Brook and CIS and in the middle school this was the first year we implemented the three tiers of of the STAR testing fall spring and winter fall winter and spring so teach us for the first time start to understand they have content and they have these Star skills and how they start to marry so this is going to be I think a more powerful opportunity for us to ask our students better which is the goal of all of this because we had this formative assessments our student intervention team had more information to talk about kids to help kids
049in our literacy coach which again you supported last year was a tremendous asset in taking this information and getting it down to brass tacks with students this is what's happening let me work with a student in this way and you know the number of students that she assisted is must have done about 40. well I mean in a variety of levels too she was working directly one-on-one with several students but she was also supporting in assessing for other interventions and she was also working with classroom teachers directly to give them strategies to help support the students in the class so so it was a layered position where again again if you think about it like a you know pie chart you know percentage of her day was directly with students percentages working on assessments and
050then giving information back to staff she worked directly with staff against Dr kilo mentioned so these two dedicated to the high school excuse me yeah yeah high school high school right um and that was a new position this year you know we hired her this time last year and she came in and they just hit the ground run and then again this is something that we've done in the past week where we go back to all those numbers that I had on the previous slides and every teacher has the names of students and where they land and they kind of look at the skill challenges that students are having so those are successes for us um because again I think our process is better and growing um and then you know these other things are
051basically you know how we use our time in our day you know so we have a resource center we figure out who's struggling and then we give them some assistance um and then teachers through the professional time look at that look at the students and look at their practice and again try to support students um you know some of the time that we have for professional development this year you know a lot of it was around this data around to the progress and around our curriculum so we put a lot of work into that and then we continued and I think this was a real uptick this year and some people might not have used so much of the success because it was hard work it was a struggle but really getting back to attendance
052with families with students and expectations um and what we do about that at the high school because attendance is tied to credit that's not that's attendance is very important it's probably the most important thing but in Middle School it doesn't the seat time doesn't account to a credit we need to have some alignment with the amount of absences versus the amount of the affordability of credit so we've had to do some things um in terms of communication some some attendance contracts some opportunities for students to do additional work to gain back seat time and I think we've we've actually come forward on a process that is somewhat effective but that's going to be some good Hard Summer work this year but I would do that as a success as well and then for all the
053students that you know despite a lot of these interventions work you know I do want to say a success for us is the affordability and allowability for students to come to this room next week the week after July 5th or July 10th um I guess a few weeks away to initiate a four-week summer recovery Credit Opportunity this is the third year we'll be running this our numbers are around 30 issue a little less a little less it's great less is better um um but again it affords students this opportunity to continue their progress of credits um and it'll they'll get you know um kind of pushed back a little bit in terms of courses they still need to take to get to their 25 credits all students take 25 credits to graduate so so this
054is a success for us that we have the program that we've budgeted for that um some of the grants that we received during the covered years have to support this so we just feel like we have a good process in place and um so I talked about successes actually outcomes an improved process some use of the interventions with the time and then some outcomes that I think are important so that's the academic side I want to turn it over to Dr Kidwell talk a little bit about the climate um so I'm just going to Echo you know what Drew said originally we're just so proud of this school year there's just been a lot of growth and just um I think actually Kim used the word like reinvigorating people and and though we might have
055a long way to go that is just we've felt that this year in a lot of ways and so there's so many pieces we could talk you know School culture and school climate there's a lot of different directions that you can go on that and some of it very much actually overlaps some of the academic pieces as well that they've just connected as much as we talk about academicals versus culture goals they're just you know Universal with each other um so you know we continue to strive toward the idea that as we work harder to create an inclusive welcoming um environment for students that they're going to engage more in their learning families are going to engage more in their learning it's going to cause academic achievement to increase and it's going to allow students
056to feel like they are a part of the community and that's what we're always going to keep working towards so we have a couple of pieces and and this was part of our nearest recommendations part of our own self-reflection to create this as a school-wide goal there's some pieces that we look at for Success we do use the Panorama student and family survey data to create these goals and to work toward those we don't have that for this spring quite yet in our hands but we know we've been working with these numbers for the last couple of years we've got and we've had a couple of those members on a few indicators be a little bit lower than we wanted which is really what sparked some of our our work for the last couple of
057years and that's um you know that's not something to lose heart about but it's just something to say right how can we reinvigorate ourselves and and work towards some of these pieces we're looking at students who are participating in extracurricular activities and different um experiences outside the classroom we're looking at written curriculum as that becomes again an overlap between the academic pieces and part of what is school culture teacher expectation student engagement in the classroom all Linked In Those ways and how teachers are incorporating some of those goals and strategies in their own planning and goal setting for themselves throughout the year so it can flip to the next so some of the places where we've we've really just felt good about what we're doing and it might actually start kind of bottom up just
058to tag team off of what Drew is talking about you know attendance obviously is inherently connected to academic achievement into students succeeding but it's all about the culture why do we have attendance issues with certain students if they want to come to school we want them to want to come to school we want them to be in a place where they feel like they are accepted they're welcomed even if it's hard some days they want to be there so as we review our academic pieces and and and you know we do use contracts as there's that credit card and they have to get there it's also how can we help you how can we work with families so we've been working on that communication just making those connections to get students back into the building
059and we have seen improvements we really have this year and some of it has been tough conversations um just having families kind of reorient with the expectations of you know if it's not okay to miss 37 days of school that's a lot that matters and that's not a number that's crazy to even say out loud like those are the numbers for some students that we're dealing with so we've seen um a decline in some of those those High numbers which is a great thing our teachers have been working on their curriculum up a part of a niask initiative but all evolving process and we've specifically been working towards um having teachers embed vision of a graduate attributes which again speaks to some of those culture pieces looking at collaboration how to how do students work
060with each other looking at those compassionate citizen pieces how are we kind to each other and actually seeing how do we play those out in instruction and assessment in the classroom um something that I've been really excited about this year is just the teacher conversation surrounding grading practices and Grading consistency and as much as that seems like a specifically academical it's so related to the school culture and school climate how our teachers creating expectations in their classroom how does that translate into assessment practices how does that translate that into the grade book and what does that mean for student and teacher morale how do we look at things like participation and effort how do we how do we look at late work policies from absences are they all sort of end up scaffolding into each
061other so we've had some great conversations among the staff in our professional time throughout the day to really dig in and be reflective about those those practices and to make some changes moving forward kids excited to come to school um is that really what we I mean in terms of what we're telling kids isn't it about setting expectations and having them meet those expectations as opposed to changing our approach to make them want to come to school um you know as they get older they're going to have to go to work and have to do a lot of things they might not want to do they're not going to actually cater to them um then what are we doing to make sure we're going to go too far in the direction of catering to students
062who maybe just need to get a kick in the ass and come to school so Best of Both Worlds so we want we want school but there are those pieces those contracts for attendance specifically as you're talking about there is that piece of you don't get credit for this class if you're absent this many times you are coming in for the summer to do x amount of hours and units for this class because you couldn't come to school didn't come to school throughout um even looking at discipline and behavior issues with students you know um we've had a lot of great success but we've got some issues we've got some issues of students just being unkind to each other and so some of those we will continue to work restoratively and look at those practices
063but there's also consequences for those actions so we work sometimes the hardest part is that balance and knowing knowing particular students of what's going to work best so I think it's about I really do I think we're never going to stop wanting kids to be excited about coming to school sure but that doesn't mean that we're not explaining to them that there's hard consequences for some of their choices and that choices matter okay can I how many students are coming to summer school from the high school this year or have to come because they have to um they fell below grade and they need to to make it up in order to get that credit so our number for is is we have students who are eligible we just haven't confirmed their registration so it's
064about 25 I would say 20 to 25. 25 out of 125 practically you say no and that's out of them oh on the entire School 400 yeah okay yeah okay it's a good number um not to go too in detail with it but there are some students who are you have to be eligible for summer school as well so if you if you fail too much if you're below a certain number we actually would require you to retake the full course versus the credit recovery option so there's a mix there you would have to repeat your grade if you didn't meet the requirements are we do we have that still yeah you have to have a certain number of credits to become technically grade nine technically grade 10 right so what we have more often
065is students who will fail a course or two okay so they still have enough credits to be deemed grade 10 even though they're taking English 9 again or if they've failed three or four courses and they haven't hit X number then even though they're still moving on with their class and we would consider them a 10th grader via you know PowerSchool they would still show up as grade nine okay so and on the flip side of that how many kids do we have that are just like overachieving just you know blowing it away do we have that number do we know if we have that number a lot you know we used to we used to have the gifted and talented right we don't have that anymore so it's not nice oh no but but
066we have I mean that could speak to the numbers of students we have enrolled in AP classes yeah those are those are growing numbers yeah yeah look at yeah both sides yeah and we'll have that data in the the fall as well to be able to give an update on those AP students thank you so um in addition to those pieces you know it's is we are moving forward with looking at some of our Equity related pieces we did I was excited to bring on the concept of no place for hate um and we had a small But Mighty little student Equity team um who worked with other student leaders from other clubs and activities to kind of create this blanket of what is no place for hate what does that mean so we spent
067some time looking at um their their statements to stand up not be a bystander speak out what does it mean to better understand people with different backgrounds so that work is still continuing we use our chat our high school advisory time um almost every week now we've actually had more it's not a daily it's a weekly um program and I've never had faculty advisors and student leaders fighting for chat time fighting for their activity so that's been actually a great problem to have this year but a lot of those chats have been related to just doing different kinds of activities team building activities um providing curriculum SEL kinds of curriculum working towards the no place for any pledge statement so a long way to go but it's a nice thing and then really just kind
068of want to point out you know speaking of anything that's quantifiable but for such a small school we really have over 40 opportunities for extracurricular activities for students at the high school that is not including Athletics at all that is completely unrelated to Athletics that's just our clubs our class officer programs our student council is so active with those numbers growing it's just a tremendous amount of offerings and most students can't give a specific number on that one but most students are involved in something and we have a pretty good pulse on the ones who aren't and are continuing to always kind of work with those students work with those families find something to engage them in some way and chat becomes a big part of that as well but um that's really where I
069felt like this year has just it's been almost rebuilding and just rebuilding some of that culture and getting kids involved and feeling active and feeling the buzz and fighting over time and fighting over space all good problems to have in terms of when they're meeting um long way to go you know the year hasn't been without its challenges I think as students are back into interacting with each other so much they have to remember how to do that nicely and kindly sometimes and so we'll keep working through those challenges but really feeling good about where we landed this year and looking at some things for next year you get the same sense that next year will be equal to or if not better based on yeah yes I really do I truly believe that I
070think we're in a really good spot and this is just like to show you some good pictures is there proms we got back to traveling this year which we actually didn't even say out loud going to Orlando with the music department was honestly the highlight of my year I mean I was just such a good time um these are award ceremonies you know just it's really just felt music how often do we do like we we do other trips like that I mean um well they were put on pause for you know a few years obviously so now I know the the music trip will go every three years every third year okay to assure that every student in school has a rotation through it yeah and then the foreign trip the international trips again
071we had prior to covet it was an every year thing it was like in every other um like when I say every other it was South America versus Europe right um so there's some proposal some thoughts for next year already but I think the original thought was took to wait one year um but we might be coming to you you know in early September with an idea so um again I appreciate uh Dr Kidwell sentiments and again I I do think you know it is an end it's not an indoor I think it's yes we have high expectations we want to hold students to standards but yeah we're just trying to understand our students better and uh Mr Bishop says it's a lot you know well-known well I do think that's our biggest sort of
072I guess takeaway if we were to summarize this like you just feel like we have a better handle on our students and therefore we're doing a better job to assure that that they're getting what they need you know our last couple minutes um I just want to highlight the board on on any ask visitation we should watch again it feels like forever ago it was a huge highlight at the time it's just everything else was going on um we built up you know just as a reminder to the board um and he asked visitations to decennio visit so every 10 years right but there's iterations um you know um within the 10 years you have you have a two-year report a five-year report and um so this was the decennial visitation so this was a
073lack of right away I'm saying it it was the visit to kind of bring some things together we had like a pre-visit two years ago where we helped develop with us an action plan and then they came to review that action plan and see our progress and the beauty of the process now is we work together with them about where we feel like our needs are and then over the next couple years you're checking in our on our action plans they're not sort of saying you need to do this you need to do this you need to do this it's saying here these are some things that we think you you know we've all agreed that can improve so as an example curriculum writing is One Vision of a graduate is another you've seen these
074before um so they came from the fifth to the seventh um you know we had a wonderful visit you know we sat um the the chair of the visitation committee met with our staff at the end of the two days and you know I think he brought almost half to tears he was just so complimentary of their effort um in in really you know the pride that the students showed in the school and sort of it was all I got you can't I feel like a better way of saying it you you can't cheat in the ass you can't fool it there's just it's too comprehensive like they might not get everything right but like they get if it's going well if it's not going well and so for them to kind of stand up
075and say there were so many things going well in this school you know congratulations you should feel good about it um and then they listed them all out and I it was too much to put on slides so you know we include it in the packet there's over 50 accommodations you know from the different learning stand you know the different standards whether it's learning environment climate um and you know so so there's just a lot to kind of get your head around and then there's some of the recommendations you know none of those are surprises to us these are things we've said we're working on and we will continue to work on and those end up being you mentioned CIP you mentioned some goals we will these will fall under you know the achievement goals
076and their climate goals you know that that will be coming forward you know from this board from the superintendent so I'm excited about that um and so that helps us sort of guide our thinking which is the whole idea so they came um and again it was it was a two days or a lot of people had to come together students staff yourselves in some cases came to meet as well I want to show you the video maybe just to conclude tonight this is what was shown to them um and before cure hits the button on Play I Like to mention this um as we put this together um we randomly talk to students like no one was prepared we didn't say hey I want to let you know we're doing dance visitation so we
077just went up to students on the hallway and said hey answer this question what do you think about this and this is this is like one take it took about about an hour and a half to put this thing together um um total it just we just talked to students and this is what they came up with so this was I think a nice way um to end our year but also to kind of show you what what the knee uh the me ask visitation committee saw as part of of their work with us [Music] thank you questions foreign thank you foreign [Laughter] [Music] ERS known as star and I think you can really support our students better you know student our sip process I think you know we supported this math interventionist through the
078through the budget we'll be interviewing the next few weeks to build a person on board we're hoping that that will certainly support our students um we're offering a new class that we discussed with um through um you know some of uh the policy committee or the curriculum committee here to support math Learners so we're excited about that course are we really looking you know how that goes um we have 30 students in two sections to to again support sort of this math process moving forward so that's a real priority for next year we want to continue our growth and vision of a graduate we made some inroads this year um you know that really it could be it's really we're getting to a better spot but is that really a high school thing you know
079it really is K-12 you know and um you know having some cross cross conversations or the other principles to bring that more on board um again we're going to look at our data through igss and our Panorama surveys to kind of figure out some things that we could do a little bit better yeah to use our advisor program with Dr Kidwell talk a little bit about they will spend some time trying to bring some people forward next year I think we do need a few more presentations that we haven't had for the last couple years to bring some outside people in to talk about some of the social emotional needs or talk a little bit about [Music] um um just kindness and um maybe just just the ideas of you know um you know maybe
080accenting our camp group a little bit but we just haven't had outside speakers come in the last few years because of it and there's room for that I think again for people to do outside perspectives um and so that that's an exciting thing that we'll be talking about this summer day to get going for next year so I think it's a good year and um we're looking forward to the summer to kind of rethink a few things but we feel balanced again and ready to move forward in in retrospect um having completed the budget and it's a good you know we're very fortunate with the budget we got sure um looking back is there anything that we left out or you needed that um would help us continue to make that difference you're talking about
081yeah it's a challenging question I you know you know I think that the couple things that that we know are coming forward are the professional days and the the literacy of the math intervention issue I should say you know those are are two big wins for the high school so we feel really good about that I hadn't thought about things that we didn't get good good well that's that's good news yeah yeah questions okay just got one comment in the question um you said something about you can't fake Report with me asking or in your fake a report about what a great job you're doing with the school it just comes through with with so much that you shared with us tonight and so much you'll be here in the community as well so I
082had to thank you for that and uh for a great report tonight as well um the math interventus 7 to 12. it is seven through twelve okay uh and they keep talking about attendance and you can't and emphasize attendance enough that the kids aren't here they aren't here and you know you can't impact them at all and we heard from I think each school that there was talk about limiting chronic attendance taking steps to limit that have you thought about ideas to work with the middle school and you talk about credit a couple of courses in middle school that are for credit and there should be attendance requirements there or other ways to sort of it shouldn't be a shock to a ninth grader that they got to come to school so I don't know
083if you I'm not sure yes is the answer yes we we spent I I you know it might be an Ask here but I think as you roll into next year I think we do need a Common Thread message you know to the superintendent through the board that no it can be set in a nice way but tenants really really matters right you know so I think not that we haven't done it before I just feel like you know with you know with our years of struggle with covet the expectations just change and the family unit change and just it you know there's just a lot more layers there it's not just as simple as they just come to school the right thing so I think as we dive into it more I think um
084yes more communication more understanding of those courses more work done at elementary schools not to say the work hasn't been done but I think after coming to ninth grade the hope would be that a lot of a lot of that has shifted you know um but but it's something we all we all need to invest in it just is as a community I think it's just we can help while you're here you know it's it's hard it's hard not to happen I mean they'll always be challenging space to start the more you can limit that and I think too just the the the community piece I usually say there's there's only so much we can do in the building and then just thinking about different ways that families could have support as well because sometimes
085it's it's it's not that families or parents aren't trying to get their their child into school they are so it's it's what do we have available to help to support them on that side too I kind of think in terms of how do we better educate the community on the importance of attendance and how do we motivate those students to to get get to school yeah I used to miss to my daughter who didn't want to be here I didn't have to do it often as I would literally missed her like a plant and uh she laughs about it now but um yeah yeah so she had to get up she did and I'd just like to say as a former High School teacher I used to work with a woman who would call the
086kids children all the time in high school because that is something they still are they still are they look big but they're still children so sometimes you have to peel to that you know okay all right well thank you very much thank you for spending your uh your evening with us and I hope you have an enjoyable and relaxing summer as much as you can get your vacation time in recharge those batteries and we'll see again this board we'll see you again in September I'm sure okay if I could if I could just add sure I mentioned earlier that I had the privilege of working with the best administrators in the state and sitting in front of you are two of the most outstanding High School administrators in the State uh Mr depippo is completing
087his 10th year uh Dr Kidwell how many years have you been in the role of assistant principal in this role testing you four years four years now but an outstanding teacher here prior to that so you are both very humble people Mr de Pippa you said it was a good year I'm going to say it was a great year um the knee ask work is all consuming and starting five or six years ago when the school received their five-year report um Drew and Ruth put together Committees of Staff members a committee focusing on each standard so what you need to know is that every staff member had a voice over the last five years as to how to improve the school in each of those standards and so the way that you both structured it
088you worked collaboratively with the staff they each had a voice I've been on several me ask visits myself I've co-chaired visits I've never seen a report with so many common commendations and so few recommendations so you had a great year you've done a great job with me ask you're providing more opportunities for our high school students I couldn't be more proud to see Drew your leadership over the last 10 years how the high school has improved over 10 years so personally I just want to thank you both for your leadership and I want the board to know how much goes into the neaska accreditation process I know you're aware but the way that these two administrators structured it every staff member had a voice and it really emphasizes the value of collaboration that we have
089in our district thank you both Andrew happy birthday [Applause] and thank you thank you thank you very much okay okay um we're gonna go to public forum uh public forum we we move this um because fixed patients being here just so you know we've moved this a while ago more towards the middle so that you can hear or the public can hear the reports and then if they have any questions they can also use public forum to do that so we'll go to public forum now we'll check online first and see if anyone has anything they'd like to stay in public forum again reminding them of the three-minute uh limitation that we'd like to live by Lauren so if you're joining us online you can go ahead and use the race hand creature zoom and
090I will call on you by your Zoom name somebody online tonight to raise okay all right thank you online um public forum dick I don't think uh just just a gift for the record I know we have to state your name and your address yes thank you I besides thanking John and Mr Case for what they doing I want to thank all of you guys because I don't think Community everyone lasts and how much time you spend in all the meetings and what you do and the paperwork that you read oh my god um and I guess the community members who do care what you guys doing can sometimes disagree with your policy so with your decisions that they care so I just want to thank you for the time you spent and again Community
091needs to be aware of the enrollment you put and hours you put into what you're doing towards the district and jumping ahead a little bit I just want to say hopefully um whoever is on board in a year or two new members do whatever possible to get me strong back as a Spanish teacher I'm back into Cantonese because she's a big big part of this community and I just hope that Camden kids will be able to have here the teacher right a year or two thank you very much thank you for those comments thank you thank you first off Kevin good afternoon to talk to the other day congratulations there is life after retirement shows them into today read the newspaper to sign for lunch my name's uh Richard Barlow 321 Cherry Brook Road class
092of 63. probably don't even have to watch no uh good evening uh I presented the information to you uh about my comments this evening some other comments I had and also a copy of contract for mental health services but if you last meeting on June 6 2003 after public comments regarding the mental health support for Kent Middle High School students we should approve to your December 13 2022 meeting following my time as chairman Daniels indicated I would be receiving a reply I'm disappointed and I have not received any written or verbal response to date nor in reviewing the minutes did I see any of you choose to comment on the June 6 meeting tonight I request you had to agenda the topic discussion possible action on the mental health support program for Canton middle and
093high school students being provided under contract entitled mental health coaching contract with Health Management Systems America signed by Kevin DK superintendent schools dated 1220 2022 such an addition to your posted agenda may be made by a motion or any member of the board second or by any other member and passed by a simple majority in accordance with Robert's Rules of Order I provide each board member president with a copy of the contract under Section 1.0 hmsa sculpting Services the contract States the client organization shall comply with the attached business service agreement referenced herein in my review of the documents provide in response to my foia I've not been able to locate such a BBA document the board staff has continued to search for BBA and through their efforts this afternoon I received a copied response
094to the board's staff from staff at hmsa stating apologies for the delay and closes the general BBA pending our new business development executive being on board and I am sure I'm not sure if this document was already executed I'm not able to secure copy of a briefly in A Brief Review of our file for Canton looks like nobody's on first base well I endorse the efforts of the Board of Education to support students mental health needs it is obvious to date that participation and services under the hmsc contractor not net expectations unfortunately this contract was approved by the board at your December 13 2022 meeting despite concerns and unanswered questions by board members I request he refer to the issues and questions that I've raised in my comments at your last meeting and those additional
095written issues and questions I'm providing to you tonight under separate cover is my determination this program was severely flawed in both his development implementation and the results of one less than acceptable I realize you're doing many good things on the education side I think that you need to focus your improvements on some of your fiscal and business business manners thank you I think we'll try to get you out get back to you because I'm sorry you haven't gotten it yet so thank you thanks for coming tonight appreciate it okay anybody else for I guess that's it for uh public forum all right so let's move to the consent agenda Mr Case if I could just say Mr Barlow I'll make sure Mrs mizikowski gets back to you with answers to your questions so thank you
096for your comments um consent agenda tonight consists of approval of the minutes of the June 6 2023 regular meeting and there were two additional items added to the agenda we um prior to the agenda being developed we have two resignations one is from Ms Colleen Barnhart who has been a middle school social studies teacher for the past several years Mrs Barnhart is relocating um and uh unfortunately he's resigning her position so I ask that you approve this letter of resignation Mrs Barnhart is an outstanding teacher and she will be greatly missed also we received a letter of resignation from Ms Michelle trab also an outstanding World Language teacher who has served students in our district at all levels and um I know Ms tribe has come to the board before so you are aware of
097all her hard work and helping to teach our students to be globally aware and so again she will be greatly missed so I ask as part of the consent agenda tonight do you accepted letters of resignation both effective June 30th 2023. okay um motion jump second right uh motion Joe second Ryan any discussion I I would just say both uh for for Colleen who Joe reminded me he he taught her she's a Canton resident I know the Barnhart family we will certainly miss her and certainly Michelle trov I know that um she has a vision and she's uh she's got a bucket list and she's checking off the boxes and we wish her well too um I know she put out some statements and said sometimes you have to go out to come back hopefully
098she'll come back at some point so so uh any other discussion first and second all those in favor aye and Felicia how are you thank you Felicia okay so that is a uh 8-080 thank you okay uh the uh the finals two more things on the meeting but um we've been going over these policies quite a bit and I'll turn it over to Mr scheither to refresh everybody's memory from the first reading I I'd be happy to go to the mall again but I'm afraid someone will be angry with me if I do because I've been through this so many times with you but we did have questions on one uh as I mentioned last time from Ryan we had a very very good discussion and proved that policy I think haven't heard from anybody
099else uh with questions or concerns but if you have any or if you really want me to outline them again I will be happy to do that Lord John will be happy to do that I'll just say that we had an exhaustive conversation with lots of red lines back and forth I was not satisfied with the initial presentation um but I am very much satisfied now of which one was there a specific one um was it 60 months okay great all right so Ryan I don't think you were here last time I don't remember anyway but the folks at Cape appreciated your comments too and they revised their recommended policies that they put out there but it asks as a result of our conversation so I was very production I appreciate that all right Nick
100can I have a motion to accept policy 6161 6161-1 and policy 6144 thank you Erica thank you for the second so any further questions on that all those in favor aye opposed okay so that's 8-0 again thank you very much I'm going to ask you for a vote on the committee assignments that that is standard uh that we accept the uh the assignments is provided so can I have a motion on the uh committee assignments thank you Peggy thank you Russell first and second any questions on the committee assignments again we can be flexible if you take them home you're thinking something else but I think Russell ought to be on another committee or thanks yeah I've got nothing all those in favor aye opposed okay so that's it all thank you very much uh
101any any board comments as we move into uh we're gonna have a very brief executive session relative to um contract contract um negotiations right it'll be very brief so yeah one comment sure thank you Mr Barlow for coming tonight and raising I'm bringing this matter to the board all right as you did on June 6th unfortunately I missed that um when this was presented to the board back in December um I'm not sure how well the minutes captured it but there were some concerns raised by some members of the board um I was one um I'm still concerned and this report is disappointing um and uh you know I can assuring the board's gonna do what it needs to do to get to the bottom of it and figure out what's going on thank you
102for taking the time this is very comprehensive any other board comments okay um then I'm going to ask for a motion if we go into executive session and the superintendent and the assistant superintendent interest or just the superintendent of schools will be here uh it'll literally be four or five minutes okay so um I have a motion to move in thank you Erica thank you Peggy first and second any questions on that all those in favor aye okay thank you everybody