BOE Meeting 1 10 23

001uh okay all right uh welcome to tonight's meeting and call daughter for um January 10 2023. so I want to let everybody know my voice is a little bit worse because I had a basketball game like yeah so I'm not sick at all if I was I'd wear a mask but I just want to learn but I feel great anyways okay so tonight uh Simone and Bell are here and you'll lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you foreign was nice enough to um postpone the election of officers from the last meeting so that's what we're going to do now so I'll open this up to the board so what we learned at Cave was paper ballots we can have paper ballots but you need to sign them and then we have to read

002them into the into the minutes anyway uh we have to do that um locally so we can do that and that has been the tradition um but we I don't think we've ever read them out loud or reading them into the record we did avoid that step if you'd like without writing the paper ballots and just nominate and uh and handbook all votes have to be in public that's why there's no such thing as a secret battle or a secret book so we're just correcting that I'm not um trying to change the process and we just learned that it came so and by the way the executive session we can have we always can never have a vote so every vote has to be in public so how would you like to proceed we have

003paper ballots if you'd like to do it you can sign your name to it and then it can be read into the uh the record or we could just uh we can just um kind of cut to cut it quick cut to the chase if you will and just go to nominations for a second and vote how would you like to proceed does not matter to me yeah I mean quite frankly it has to be so what we would do is you would sign a piece of paper and then Claudia would read out the vote with the name anyway so there's no anonymity if you would in the vote foreign I would recommend we just go to nominations and hand votes but that's why I wanted to ask you what you wanted to do online

004they can vote it's legal they would have to do it by handbook yeah and state who they voted yeah they would they would certainly avoid the paper any any preference if not I'm going to suggest that we just vote okay all right then I would pass the gavel to boost your case who will um we'll start a song thank you very much um chair Daniels um this is the only meeting of the Year where I get the gavel for a couple minutes um just to remind everybody that uh by law number 9110 of the Canton Public Schools uh Board of Education indicates that all officers of the board shall hold an office for a term of one year and until their successes are elected elected and have qualified um section 9120 indicates that the officers

005of the board shall be the chair the vice chair and the secretary who shall be elected annually by the board at its regular meeting in December at our regular meeting in December uh the board voted to um to dispense with that bylaw until or I should say through January 31st which brings us to tonight which allows us to have the election of officers tonight uh my job is to call for nominations for the chair and once a chair is elected the gavel will be turned over to that person so um are there any questions before I open nominations for a chair any questions about the election process okay so I'd like to um have a motion to open nominations for chair if someone could support that motion okay Cindy thank you well thank you for

006your second okay so the floor is now open for nominations for chair Felicia thank you very much Felicia we know we um abalu uh Daniels being nominated Cindy I am Natalie Davis thank you are there any other nominations before we vote on of the one nomination we have I just want to say I think Liz has been doing a great job thank you so I nominated too if I can okay last call for any other nominations okay then we will now um have a vote all those in favor of Lou Daniels being chair nope things raise your hand s if I believe I don't see Russell I believe it's your name okay there we go Claudia you all set with that bro congratulations Lou thank you thank you thank you thank you you guys I

007I appreciate it I hope to make it better I know last year maybe there was some rugs and trip ups but uh I'm committed to making it better my my goal is always to make it better for the kids so thank you thank you guys online well Lou you're just so damn handsome you know what do you want to say today it's a great hair right Silver Fox silver fox okay if I could have uh so now we'll go to a vice chair I'll open up the floor for nominations for vice chair um so I just want to say something about you sure absolutely um I okay listen to me real quick I came to the board to you know work together and be Collective and I just wanted to say I feel like we

008can do a better job together being more cohesive and more Collective not as divided and with that being said I would like to nominate Joe scheiber for the vice chairman thank you do I have a second Joe three seconds but thank you we'll take care thank you any discussion any further discussion and all those in favor of Joe shoulder be your Vice chair raise your hand thank you thank you Vince and I hope now I know thank you very much thank you Felicia and thank you Joe okay Joe thank you for voting for yourself congratulations to tell my wife um Felicia I just want to thank you because um right after being newly elected to the board you were willing to take on the vice chair position and it really has been a pleasure for

009me to work with you in that role and to be able to bounce ideas off of you well thank you for your year of service yeah thank you I mean as Vice and I'm glad you're continuing um and I really appreciated you stepping in when Lou was not here on December you did a fabulous job so okay um so I look forward to our continued work together and we'll miss you in our leadership welcome to Joe to be part anyway so thank you thank you okay and now uh the final uh the final position is board secretary and uh came in by May nominate you again um you've been so great to do that and keeping all the executive session everything came out the notes and things so I'd like to nominate you again if

010we could yes thank you okay the easiest of the uh officers can I have a second please really a good hearing none all those in favor hi to Brian thank you Joe nine nothing okay thank you Kim so Kim is now elected as our uh secretary so I I really feel that 2023 is going to be great and this is a great board and we have some uh some wonderful things ahead so okay all right let's get to the business of the board and um student report please okay so good evening today oh oh sorry this is pass I'm sorry yeah senior Pope got into physical you have to sing your report number 14 the CIS sixth grade Winter concert happened on Friday December 16th the Canton Middle School student council on Japan on Friday

011December 23rd there was half days for all schools Monday December 26th through Monday January 2nd was the district-wide holiday recess okay for um upcoming there's going to be the district right halfway and finally certain things prior to the long weekend um The Selective students will be performing at the northern region Music Festival this upcoming Saturday which I see a separate paper already here from work um the there will be no school Monday it'd be 16 which will be Martin Luther King day uh another team already in here about it with more details but the senior Camp Expo presentations are going to be Thursday January 19th 2010. um those Camp presentations are pretty cool and we're all invited to those you want to give the board just a little background on Camp uh yeah so um

012really the aim of you know as a little senior certified to have you know as senior project um basically at the end we're tasked with you know tuning into or like having a lot of focus around what we want to do uh when we reach college level and Beyond so everyone kind of focuses in on either on the personal interests or possible career path or something of the source and they develop a product idea around it whether it be the way you want to help the community or is an actual intangible item you want to create um so you spend um basically the whole first semester developing your projects as well as you know doing in-class research and making an entertainment bibliography and you also have to reach out and find your inventors for the

013project to kind of help in like Aid your understanding around the area you're you know trying to pursue with the project um and then we have our in-class presentations soon to kind of you know develop them enough to then be presented to people on the 19th where you're going to be able to know do like a little walk around and get to see certain students for this you know a few little stops on the way and other ones are going to be like made presentations you can like sit down and listen into um but I definitely think it'll be very fun you know it's a very like wide variety like I'm personally doing an auditory poetry book and there's other people you know throwing out Trails or you know building a car or um starting

014clubs and whatnot so it's gonna be very cool to see like the broad like range of focuses people chose for women projects excellent that was a great over here and we'll be speaking with the curriculum committee too uh at our meeting next week to be able to talk a little bit more about what camp looks like why that's a part of of what we have within Canton and what how that's a requirement with the state but then also how we build that across our K-12 program too so great job really good okay and then just to finish up upcoming uh the prisons concert for the high school is going to be Saturday February 14th the theme is road trip it's just fun and I think it's the fourth right after correcting Saturday February 4th oh

015sorry uh yeah did I not say that 14th I think you said that was going to be my Valentine's Day I don't mean to cry I'm gonna have to think of something else yeah and then um the CHS Earth choral concert is going to be Wednesday March 1st um for ongoing we have that the winter sports have continued their games and needs and the CHS musical rehearsals have begun and the performances I know it says 17th 18th and 19th but it's 16 17 and 18. Thursday Friday and Saturday yeah because originally we didn't know if we would be able to do Thursday um also for ongoing and Sean to point out that uh we had a meeting with Mr Daniels Mr Case Dr karbal Mr pimpo Bella and I and we're talking about like the

016clubs we just mentioned uh speaker yeah we think that for the next three meetings we might have one speaker from each individual Club just so you all can like learn more about what we're doing in this school because when we were telling Mr Daniels about all the clubs he was really excited and like he didn't realize how many clubs there were so we might start talking about like all the different activities and like community service things we do at the school so really impressive and that's what the board wants to hear because we've got so many impressive students and clubs that you guys are are doing or just so um so so wonderful we want to hear more about it thank you is that the report yes you read the poor Bella small thank you

017so um the board knows you guys are starting to get moving on the um on your mascot right or The Branding it's one of the other so anything I I know we just met on it but anything to report on that yet no I think it's just well yeah now I think as of right now this really um is lying on Mr hippo you know scheduling the assembly for the school sometime in January I think the 27th is the date they're thinking of like you know just like laying out all the information everyone of how you know suggestions for the mascot will work and you know guidelines and whatnot so I think that's the plan between him and well yeah and we definitely I think is like a student body you have like from what

018we've heard of like uh realized that a mascot is really important to our community so when students have something to connect with or like represent at sporting events and other things so I think people are really excited to try to figure out something that we can have okay okay so I know you guys have to get to rehearsal or something like that right so thank you for joining us tonight good luck okay Mr case I just want to congratulate um Bella before you leave for being one of the uh musicians that will be singing in the choir this weekend yeah right so um all of you have a sheet in your package um we want to congrat congratulate the following musicians who will be playing in the Connecticut music educators Association Northern Regional Music Festival

019this upcoming weekend so in two days they're going to practice and perform a fabulous concert this weekend so the names of the students are listed Grace Asmar Nicholas markinen Lauren marzey Kaylee trainer and Bella so thank you so much so this is this weekend you know um you have the sheet in your packet everybody the rehearse Friday afternoon and Saturday and perform a concert in two days so that's this weekend the 13th and 14th congratulations and let's see this is going to be is it at um it's at New Britain High School oh okay I know it was independent I didn't know about Central Connecticut yeah that'll be I think at three o'clock it is and I think to get tickets if you wanted you would buy those on the cmea website that would be

020like a part of a visit page I think for it if you were interested in putting out the tickets for that but yeah so if any board members interested let Claudia know and we'll work on getting you tickets for that well thank you thanks Bill thanks thank you both so much okay so uh good evening everybody it's great to see all of you I know it's January 10th but I think we can still say Happy New Year I like to say happy new year throughout the month of January uh but some people will tell me heaven it's a 10th day it's not the New Year anymore but Happy New Year it's always great um for me not to make resolutions per se but just to remind myself of what my intentions are for this new

021year when I met with the staff at Cherry Brook primary school yesterday we talked about what is your intent personal intention and a professional intention and the staff wrote a letter to themselves that I told them I will mail them that letter in eight weeks just to remind them what they stated their intentions were again to refocus in eight weeks if they're like me to finish the school year strong so it's a good time for us to think about what are our intentions this year um a few things to report on tonight um first of all I want to thank Peg because before the holidays Peggy went around to every school and dropped off four engines for the staff I know you don't want to be recognized from it probably but Peggy that was so

022right that was so greatly appreciated and every you know you affected every staff member in the district by your generosity so thank you so much um as you know um it's been a a sad couple of weeks with the tragic accident that occurred or the passing of uh Raheem and his mother Faye and I really want to thank uh Canton High School's principal Drew dipo assistant principal Dr Ruth Kidwell coach Bill Phelps who really came together along with the staff to plan what was a wonderful Memorial tribute last Thursday night I also want to thank the Canton Community for turning out for the the Wake On Friday night and for the funeral service on Saturday which was very very very moving um and the family in the Hartford Community certainly thanked the Canton Public Schools

023for all of their support and all of the love that they continue to share with me that they feel throughout this uh this tragic time and so our sympathies continue in our compassion continues to go out to the family and our own uh Khalil Thomas this was uh Raheem was his first cousin so he's affected greatly by this so I know we'll all be there to support him in any way possible I also really want to thank the executive leadership team at crack members of the leadership team attended the memorial service Thursday night which was really really touching that they took time to come out to Canton and be with us so I can't thank them enough either um I want to also let you know that the majority of my time um lately uh

024and needless to say of Donna's time has been spent on putting together the budget presentations uh I should say the budget budget presentation that I will give you on February 7th um while we were putting together the board calendar you know we know there were a lot of meetings in February regarding the budget so we are not going to need to meet next Tuesday in in reflection on the budget process and in being mindful about your time in the administrator's time we had scheduled a meeting next Tuesday just to talk about budget we won't need to uh I'll be able to share all the information in my February 7th presentation so you have one less meeting for budget so I hope I hope you're good with that that's great um but again my presentation to

025you will be on February 7th related to the budget all of the administrators have presented their budget proposals to Donna John and to me and now we're refining those and I'm looking at putting together a budget that will meet our goals and objectives for next year while also being as fiscally responsible as possible so that process is on your way tonight the finance committee heard um the draft of the capital Improvement plan that um we're looking to put together as part of our budget and you have a one-pager um in your packet tonight that lists all of the projects that we are planning on doing again the finance committee heard about that for the first time tonight and the finance committee will meet again on the 24th at 5 30 to refine the list that

026list will come to you at our next meeting as well for your approval so we can move the plan forward to the town officials the reason we need to move the capital Improvement project plan ahead so early is because it's part of the board of selectman's budget so what we present to the board of Select and they will include in their budget proposals back are there any questions about that we are currently determining a parent informational meeting regarding the mental health and wellness program that you approved at the last meeting I'm spending time with the administrators and we'll be setting up a meeting with our mental health and counseling staff to answer questions that they have about the program and then we'll be meeting with parents so if you wonder why that hasn't been scheduled

027yet I want to make sure our staff is well aware of the program and have all of their questions answered so we're moving forward with that program I also want to remind all of you and especially for the public and maybe tuning in today um that next Wednesday night will be our first diversity equity and inclusion Community Gathering of this school year we're continuing with our community Gatherings we'll be focused on equity and as part of our strategic plan we are conducting focus groups to gather information from individuals on their thoughts on diversity equity and inclusion in Canton so this first meeting will be set up as focus groups with our various stakeholders so parents will have a focus group together staff members administrators students and we have trained professionals through crack that will be

028the facilitators so we're asking people to sign up in advance if you haven't signed up it's not too late the link is on our website we just need to let the correct staff know how many people will be attended next Wednesday night January 18th from 7 to 8 30 through Zoom that's because there is these uh breakout sessions and they need to prior to the meeting have that all set up so if you can register sooner than later I'd appreciate it and so that that's part of our one of our goals for this year as a reminder we have Justine Ginsburg coming back for another parent presentation I believe the focus is on social media social media in the minds of our children on February 1st Wednesday yeah Wednesday February 1st that's at seven o'clock

029and that'll be in the Canton High school media center but we'll also be streaming it live uh did the last um one get posted was that live or sent out the video of it is on the school website okay let me check and we're we're building our our camp Public Schools YouTube channel to be able to have access to those types of recordings as well and I'm really grateful to care for her her Savvy with that as she builds our uh social media branding there too so thank you an email goes out about the upcoming one is there a way to send a link on the past the past it's a great idea it's a great idea thank you Kim we'll do that um the students mentioned the camp project um Camp if they didn't

030say this they might have stands for Canton Mastery project and as they describe it's really a culminating project where we expect all of our high school seniors to apply the 21st century skills that we want them to have in a project so that's our vision of a graduate right there to be creative uh excellent communicators collaborators critical thinkers and compassionate citizens and to show those skills through this project so for the first time there's going to be an evening uh where um any of us can go into the high school and listen to students projects and to do a gallery gallery walk Mr depipo's here today I think Mr depipo and Dr Kimwell for their leadership in these projects uh when me ask came to do the accreditation visit that was one of the greatest

031takeaways they walked away with how effective this program is how creative our administrators have been in scheduling time for our students to participate in the can project and so I put a flyer in your packet uh the Dr Kidwell sent out just letting you know that on the evening of Thursday January 19th you can have the opportunity to come into Canton High School to hear more about these projects and I believe that is from six to eight o'clock but again the time is on your wire so please take advantage of that I know you'll be very impressed with our students work so we've got a couple things going on next week we've got the diversity equity and inclusion Community gathering on the 18th and then we have the camp projects on the 19th which is

032another reason why I thought you'd appreciate having Tuesday night so thank you everyone that's my report for tonight excellent report any questions from superintendent okay hearing on if you move along so the chair report tonight is uh you're going to see in your packet we're going to vote on the approval to move forward with the submittal of the zoning regulation Amendment for the purposes of putting electronic side uh in the by the uh High School it'll be in the driveway as you move into the driveway it'll be on the left-hand side now electronic side signs are not approved in the town again so we're seeking a municipal exception the reason why we like that sign is well first of all our our students are very well electronic Savvy and we think um we'll be able

033to flash the messaging there that will be important also the town is going to share in that so you know we're voting is going to be held sometimes it's confusing is it in high school is it going to be Community Center so that sign will be able to communicate things of importance like that things of importance about the Board of Education and so on and so forth other towns have to sign like Burlington uh I understand why the town does not want everybody on 44 to have an electronic sign and I agree with that however um I think for the for these purposes uh Municipal exception makes sense so I'm going to ask you to uh to approve us of being able to it for that later any questions on sure what's the cost of

034this room so it's in the CIP at ten thousand dollars but I think it's going to be closer to fifteen or twenty thousand dollars it's in the CIP um I thought as maybe we'll do some fundraising for it too or maybe maybe stick with the 10 and maybe fundraise for the additional amount any kind of services that kind of thing but uh yes thank you just find again so just as you go into the driveway immediately to the left if you know to the right is the long sign that says came in high school we didn't want to take away anything from there right so to the left there's there's a nice opening of space uh and it'll be it'll be on timer so we won't affect the neighbors you know something you don't need

035to flash that sign past maybe eight o'clock at night maybe it goes on early in the morning morning can you visualize it to the left is it going to be flashing no it will just you know scroll information yeah you scared me there no I I don't need to be flashing no no it's the sign B how big is it we don't I don't have a drawing yet of it first of all I want to see if we can do it then we'll begin to go out and bid for it yeah everybody okay well I will get into that you can gather your questions we'll have more of a conversation uh as we go into the boat and you were saying there's going to be Town information on there as well the talk to Cloud

036vessel will share Town information on your tour it's probably controlled at the high school probably from Mr dipepo's cell phone something like that another thing for him to do all right um I do want to tell you that I talked to our uh for selectment there's no movement on the pfas situation at Sharon Brook School uh they don't have a plan yet I'm disappointed that we uh we um kind of ice that that field for no reason at all uh because it could have been used and you know there's soccer in the fall for the younger the younger children that was a great place for it so um they don't have a plan yet he doesn't think he'll have a plan this spring and I don't want to carry that through you know into the

037fall again because first of all the fence looks terrible and there's no no activity the problem with pfas is that the uh the state hasn't come up with any relief uh our insurance company will pay a million dollars mitigations two million dollars so they're having issues they're hoping with the budget surplus the governor might step up but that's that's the selections issue but I just want to let you know the Vets is off there and I don't see any relief and I don't see them needing it up there in the spring so maybe we'll see if we can get some relief uh to take that down and then um that's all really I have Kevin Went Over the uh the finance uh issue so that's all I have at this point Lou are the barrels

038gone yes okay the Barrel's in the uh and the uh trailers are gone uh they were stocking and I'm working with Donna to get those out of there at CIS it's empty it's empty and we're just figuring out if we can exchange the that one that we own or one that we rent that is spilled to the hill at the high school so so we don't have to empty that one you know I mean the good news is it'll be out of CIS that'll create more parking we don't have that eyesore of that big long trailer there uh the next thing is in the beautification I'd like to see us to uh somehow put some screening where our garbage barrels are both in CIS and Cherry Brooks we're getting better we're looking better okay any

039further questions for me um Ryder Russell okay so let let's move in to uh public forum and we'll first open it up online and then we'll go to Teresa so thank you so care anybody online that would like to speak to public forum to the board of Selectmen we're opening up right now so if you're joining us online you can go ahead and go ahead if you don't have any reasons okay great hearing none will uh we'll now move to the books here and uh Teresa bargers here and uh thank you for coming and uh you want to give us an overview sure please do just state your name for the record get your address please oh my name is Teresa Sullivan Barger and I live at eight Pond Road and I'm here as the

040co-chair of the Canton greater together Community advisory committee and we are a group of citizens who represent all walks of life in Canton theoretically the Hartford foundation for public giving has set aside funds for every town in Hartford County we're one of 29 towns who gets the funding and I'm coming to you to ask you as since you're on the board of ed I'm not just asking you this in your role as a board of ed member but also because you're probably a volunteer in other organizations as well so I'm reaching out to you as individuals as well as representatives of the schools to ask you to help get the word out to the the community we want to reach every facet of the community and we want to get as many people or organizations

041applying for Grants as possible we have this year we're setting aside up to thirty thousand dollars to give in Grants and last year we gave uh um twenty five thousand five hundred I think to seven organizations so I we we just wish we had more interest and we also need more members to serve on our committee Teresa what's an example of a request okay the Main Street committee last year they asked for funding for seating in downtown Collinsville for some of it was wheelchair accessible um so that people who were um it was some of it was benches and some of it was like picnic tables they had money for some but they didn't have enough money for how many they wanted so they got that was prior to coming to us and so we

042gave them funding for more tables the Collinsville Historical Society needed money for some um some upgrades to its electrical system and it normally might may have funded that kind of work through admissions but because of covid they didn't have people coming in so they kind of needed to make up for that um so Land Trust had um a project they had a new property and they needed some help with funding to make it more accessible like parking and stuff like that so this and there's there are there's also the library is doing something to make it um have internet service outside and then the Cherry Brook Garden Club is putting up a native plant garden near the river and then there was some the soccer Canton soccer did something for kids with disabilities so kids

043with disabilities could play soccer so it was it was a nice cross-section but still not as much as not as broad a cross-section as we would have liked can teachers apply for example absolutely can apply and you know you were you mentioned something about wanting to cover up the trash um bins I mean you could theoretically that each school when my kids were in school there was some kind of a group of gardening people you could apply for funds to buy plants to planted the schools to cover up the you know so there's a yeah there's really that we would love for teachers to apply I know the Canton Education Foundation always had a hard time getting teachers to apply and one of the things we're having an information session on February 9th if anyone

044feels it's too difficult it's really not we're happy to help people explain how it works for you know answering questions show them a you know a prior Grant application that someone else filled out so they can model it their application after a successful Grant application from another entity are the grants rolling or is there a time frame so you you need to apply by April 1st can you award once a year yes the award once a year the deadline is March 15th the decision will be announced in early June so the funds would be spent June 1st through um of 2023 and through the following year that's so it's a one-year Grant and it can't be for funds that have already been spent it doesn't have to start being spent on in June but it

045can't be spent before June and the grants are from 500 up to 10 000. and the one more thing is if if it's a group of let's say it's a group of um people who don't like if they did it as a member of the school staff they could use the school's 501c3 status but if it was a group of people maybe parents who didn't weren't part of a non-profit they could find a non-profit to serve as their fiscal sponsor and if anyone that wants me to explain what that is I can or Betty Canton um schools that are applied or been received received anything so I'm wondering if there's just a not aware of it well last year there was an application that wasn't successful that related to putting up a mural at CIS

046but it was we didn't feel that it was specific enough we didn't know what the mural was going to it would like show or what the purpose we did it just felt like we needed more information and that's it's really important that people provide it you know like answer any particular any questions people might have thank you that's helpful to know yeah that's great Teresa thank you so much um Kiera is our communications director we'll talk about how we can maybe get this more circulated in the in the school community and I'm sure Donna has a couple ideas already on where we might knock on your door so and we do have um things you could put on social that we can send to you sure so would I find your contact with information on

047the Canton Board of Ed website like what the process is so you get so many applications in how do you decide who gets what's the process like okay what we're trying to do is we're trying to get a cross-section of the community um give money to the cross section so we want to try to get young people and old people and people in between we want to try to get something that relates to sports and the Arts and maybe Economic Development maybe Recreation maybe environment you know we try we want to try to cover as many facets of the community diversity and equity and inclusion you know great thank you thank you Teresa thanks for coming we we have your uh we also have your immediate release yeah I just sent that well that's great

048in case you need it some details in case I couldn't remember the exactly nice to see you there's the informational meeting except February 9th it's it's at the community center room C and we're going to have cake Gypsy cupcakes should have started with that honey Theresa thank you so much for being here you've always been so supportive of our school district even though your kids have grown up and are no longer in our district thank you for all that you do for camping oh it's greatly appreciated thank you I I'm still really care about the school district trying children benefited as to hundreds of other kids and definitely we want to keep supporting the schools any way cheaper than you can thank you thank you thank you and I said because ice cream place used

049to be they're gonna open up a coffee shop in cupcakes yes Republican form thank you very much so we are fortunate tonight to have our uh our head of School counseling and guidance uh David schwaggers here along with the Pitbull is to support her and uh if you want to come to the front we have your presentation and I think we can pull it off we just lost internet Viber and um able to am I able to uh are we able to continue yeah so twice a year uh we love having Mrs schwager come and talk to us about uh what the counseling department is working on here in Canton because she and Mike Fury and Jennifer theorados in the high school along with Amy brindle at the middle school and Lynn Kaufman at CIS

050are always working on initiatives that really support our students so it's great to have you here and we look forward to hearing about all that's happening in the counseling department thank you I have two hours right absolutely okay uh no I'm so glad um that there was a room on the agenda because I've not since really had a pandemic um as other priorities took to Prestons really I haven't had an opportunity to kind of catch up and talk with the board and you know a lot is um sort of staying the same and and and shifting and we've had to Pivot a lot and so I think timing is really great to give you some updates we can go ahead and move on to that first slide um and in talking with Mr Capo about

051you know what are areas of focus for us there we go um you know it's a it's a lot of bullets but what we realized was it might make sense to give a little bit of background about what School counseling is really about and for some of you this could be a little bit repetitive knowledge that you might already have um but some of you uh might not have this so it seemed worthwhile to talk a little bit about um our Back to Basics what are our Focus areas so we really are sort of First Responders in the building in times of need and in times of Crisis large and small that's a primary role that we play as school counselors um and we collaborate along with particularly at the high school of course that

052would be our school psychologist and social worker to serve student needs individual needs and to provide responsive services and that can be you know something like managing getting through a really difficult or traumatic time or it can be just a student that's having really really rough day so we collaborate together on that um where we sort of differ or vary in our responsibilities from the other people Personnel Services um Personnel like a school psychologist or a social worker is that school counselors serve all students in the district so that really is what we must do so we have caseloads that Encompass our entire School building and when a student's needs start to grow beyond our ability to meet all of the needs of everyone on the caseload is where we collaborate and ask for help

053and support and and team with our partners um and so we work under a set of Standards just like academic just like our curricular folks do um and you can see our basic responsibilities up there they're exactly what you would expect them to be they're things I've already mentioned but really we are that sort of view of the whole picture and the whole student um from an academic perspective a social perspective and eventually what's their personal plan their career and their college plan so what have we been doing so that's just a little glance at our fall curriculum so we'd like to jump into really our our outgoing and our incoming is sort of how I like to put it freshman transition is a focus for our curricular areas in the fall and we really

054want to jump right on in with um meetings with our students individually as well as in classroom settings to talk about what how's high school different from middle school how does it look different we try to embed rather than sort of teach social emotional learning we want it to be organic we want it to grow and be embedded in all of the curriculum that we do so there's always a component that has to do with particularly in ninth grade for example it's about self-awareness who am I that's what kids need to first start to understand who Am I who am I in relationship to others how do I understand others how do I work with others and all of these of course are parts of the vision of The Graduate we're also working heavily heavily

055with our seniors and as you'll know from your packet we'll talk a little bit more about what are going to be brought to um they have been up to so it's it's hot and heavy with college applications and it's support across the board um particularly for those students that might be feeling really uncertainly oftensive parents these are the students and parents we want to talk to the most um the students that are feeling uncertain in a small community that feels very focused in one area and we have our students who might feel like they're looking for a different pathway so we're very committed to making sure that we're having individual meetings with every single senior by about the second week of October um grade 11 we've sort of launched if you've seen the kinds of

056things that we've been doing we had two programs at Connecticut College and Career Pathways program um to start to sort of start to bring everybody to the Baseline of oh my gosh is that now and already did you kind of get past that anxiety I like to have a lot of questions about with students and parents um I like to talk about scaling on a scale of one to ten how anxious are you about what's to come regardless of whether that's about um you know being uncertain about your path having no idea being afraid about applying to competitive colleges and not getting in all of that kind of thing and I typically say to students you know a zero to three means you have to wake up and join the party and eight to ten

057is not where we want you to be in we want you to you might have to live in an eight to ten world of anxiety on occasion and we can help you cope with that but we really want you somewhere sort of in the middle because we can work and collaborate on all of these tests together um grade 10 we always worry about the sophomores in School counseling what about those 10th graders they're not finishing anything they're not starting anything they're not brand new what about them so we made a concerted effort beginning about two years ago to say we need to see every single one of these sophomores before semester-wise out as well to find out how it's really going and our individual meetings take a lot of time but they bear great fruit

058we really feel that connections that we make sitting with kids um and just saying how's it really going help us to identify um you know those students who might have a need so we started for example this year actually last year we embedded a new question in our freshman survey that all the students do and it really was drawn right from the school climate surveys do you feel connected to an adult in this building um how connected to you feel somewhat a little not at all and we're looking at that data right away as soon as we finish those and we're grabbing these kids and those become the students that we're going to see first to connect with so we become more and more data driven in the work that we do all the time

059um what else have we done we've had our tungsten's Northwestern application day we think I've talked about the other things um our seniors parent night and our college fair came back we were thrilled about that that's really not something that uh Canton works on a loan that's a collaboration among Hartford area schools the Consortium a lot of people work really really hard to organize and coordinate hundreds of colleges seeing high schools attending fairs over a crazy week-long period and it was gone for a couple of years and it was really exciting to have it back and to have it in our in our gym this fall so that was really awesome that's what we've really been up to we're going ahead here everyone so of course I wanted to give you a little bit of

060information about what we're seeing when we survey our students and talk to our students about their social and emotional health and this has been this is always an area of concern and it's certainly been underscored over the past couple of years um so I wanted to talk a little bit again about the surveys that we do so we do these periodically and these are strictly School counseling surveys for information that helps Drive our curriculum and our work and that we can respond to so some of the things that they sort of say perennially that you can see there is you know they really want help with anxiety that's drawn from our senior exit survey and it's we're always in a little bit of this push-pull and anybody who's sitting here there's a parent which is

061many of you if not all of you understand what it's like when your kids are growing up you know they need you they know they need you they don't want to admit you but they need you and so students will say to us we really need help with anxiety we really need help in this way but they can tend to be naturally resistant to asking foreign so what do we do we take that knowledge and we just keep trying to build more and more opportunities that are both educational they're informative they're Rapport building they are opportunities for connection that aim to make them feel more and more comfortable so when you look at the fine print that's down on the bottom so you might look at it and I even have to get a little

062bit closer to see it on on the screen here so something that we're really pretty excited about is I started implementing the survey here um when I joined the district almost seven years ago and it was something I just always done in previous schools and I was really surprised to find 24 only 24 of our students at that point felt comfortable talking with counselors we're pretty happy at a 53 and I gave you the context for it so that you would understand that 53 is pretty pretty good among kids who say I don't ever want to talk to them um and so that is always what we're always working on in any High School is how do we help students to feel as comfortable as possible discussing things with us sometimes it's family pressure too

063it's a sense that school isn't your place for school and not a place to discuss and so we do what we can to try to sort of work through that and help students to see and families to see that even if we're just talking about college or a future career path or academics what are the things that help your student to feel successful and how do we um how do we have our doors open wide enough for them to feel that they can walk through so really happy that we feel that we're making progress over time in that area I often hear Mr people talk about growth over time um same thing with academic issues well thankfully you know they're pretty comfortable coming to speak with us and and we provide a lot of support

064in that area so it's this identification and the use of the data that we keep trying to grow and respond to we're fortunate that we have terrific support as a counseling team I've had great support from Mr Case I've had great support from Mr de pippo and Dr Kidwell on the school level certainly for Mr Bishop um superintendent distribution assistant superintendent Mr Bishop who's building more and more Tech pieces that he's brought in because he understands that we need those systems and that technology that help drive us getting the information that we need and lay the foundation so that we can provide students what they need um so everything that we do is with an intention and there's been a lot of pimping in it we continue to Pivot and we continue to try to

065grow and to be responsive I'm gonna go ahead and jump ahead and definitely about five more minutes yep and we are on I think I'm saying the last one so typically I'm asked what do the seniors do um and there it is uh so here's what the teenagers do so what's been changing a little bit of a shift so everybody now realizes knows and understands that we've got three Community College and not only do we have free Community College in Connecticut and I don't think it's going away people often ask me that in fact our state is probably a little bit late to the party with that so I think it's here to stay and we have more and more students who are saying you know what it's hard to turn down free and I'm

066not sure exactly what I want to do so um our role is always to be looking out for the students best interests so we are finding that our workshops to help students apply and the applications are now free have become more and more successful the numbers are even higher we have about 79 I think um we're looking at for this coming class looking like they're looking at two or four-year College we've seen a little bit of shifting on small percentage points every High School seeing it everybody's feeling it I think if there's some lemonade to be made out of the lemons of the pandemic it's allowed a freedom I think among families to say um you know is this my pathway do I need to follow a certain pathway because that's what everybody else has

067always been doing and so therefore it's what's right for me um and I think that the pandemic era shook it up enough in a way that's helping students and families to maybe have a stronger consideration about things like academic fit Financial fit Readiness and those sorts of things so that students are more likely to stick and stay in a pathway because it's not about them going it's about persistence in the end right we want persistence so we want our students um we want them to exemplify the vision of The Graduate and then be able to feel that they're going to be strong and successful in the programs that they choose and so this is what they say about you know their choices where where they were what they were influenced by uh we tell parents

068all the time that they are still still the number one influencers of their students and just some trends that we're seeing are on the right side so lots and lots of students are interested in business courses that hear it often um so I noted that pre-health of course is always something students are interested in although they often shift from pre-med once they're in it um and they're certainly looking more and more for credit on the high school level in high schools everywhere in our state and there's more opportunity for that Statewide than there used to be um so that can lead us to my final slide which is really that things are changing in terms of what's available for students more than they ever have so we now have Connecticut now has Auto admission programs

069for students who have um an unweighted grade point average is determined by a state measure um they're automatically admitted to certain colleges and don't have to pay an application fee and don't have to do a lot of extra work to apply um the community college system is now under a single umbrella so our community colleges for example tungsten continues to build their manufacturing center which is uh was a little bit on hold but is now um growing the Northwestern Connecticut Community College for example has had some sort of Hallmark programs and things like um they've got a vet tech program they've had for a long time Middlesex also does different community colleges around the state have sort of specialty areas but what's now different is they're all part of the cscu which we think is

070an unfortunate name because it sounds too much like CCSU and the logos similar um so it's tripping and my tongue continues to trip over um but they're all under a single umbrella so now a student can be a Tunxis Community College Student but they can take that same English class that the other kid has to take at Middlesex online for example and just be concentrating on certain courses within the actual physical institution so there's a lot more flexibility the pathways are much cleaner straight on into UConn as well as any of the other State University Systems it's super super exciting they're working out glitches in the logistics of it but it is it's pretty thrilling really because I've seen our neighboring states have something like this um more fully fleshed out and operational for decades

071really in New York and for quite some time throughout New York State quite some time in Massachusetts so seeing this come to fruition in Connecticut is exciting it also creates more opportunities for potential future project collaboration credit collaboration in terms of what can happen on our high school level those are the kinds of things I get really excited about and talk to Mr Bishop about or Mr pimple about who know that I have 30 new ideas every day and we can't do them all but I am excited so lots and lots of exciting opportunities and I think we all collectively as a community and as Community Schools and the state need for our students to know and to see their wonderful opportunities for our kids to grow here in Connecticut to be employed here to

072stay here to live here and seeing more and more of those possibilities becoming real in terms of what's available for kids so we're excited about that and look forward to working on that excellent yeah so that's a lot of words in a short period of time and I'm happy to answer questions so you're busy we are busy what's your staff like what do you have for staff well they're awesome I mean what do you have so we have certain other counselor we have three counselors um so as director I carry a smaller caseload and then Mr fearing this is theodorado split the the remainder of the students among the two of them so in terms of as a School counseling team we carry the case loads of the 500-ish uh for Canton High School is

073it a good ratio I mean it works I would say that's a really great question and one I've been thinking about a lot lately it is it is but I think how we determine and Define ratio is going to start to shift it used to just be an easy what's your number now it's relative to what is the need of the number so you have to have Apples to Apples so in Houston Texas where we have case loads of 400 to 1 we could never imagine such a thing so here in Canton our caseloads sit right where they should theoretically compare to peer schools I think the challenge that we are facing is that in terms of that general population the needs and the need for more regular individual counseling is rising so the need

074of the population is rising so I'd like to open up the questions to the board but I want to ask Mr depipo if you wanted to make any comments or any highlight any points sure thank you for uh offering that to me I uh I don't know if that had enough to um I just um create a buzz around how rehearse happens and how reassurance that you know I'm thinking reflecting when she's going through everything she she brings forward the the ten years I've been here and the first three or four years we had none of these programs we had none of the parent opportunities that we had we had none of the communications that we have um none of the established protocols and process pieces she has a great team that has stuck and

075stayed with us for over five years and as a result they have a great Synergy amongst them um I can also say sort of as a parent of three students who've kind of gone through the the game of high school kind of getting demand here to know and compare a little bit to how prepared our students are into what they're exposed to and the opportunities that they have to you know connect independently or through programming what parents have to connect to through programming what information fiscally um you know process pieces or College and Career and readiness you know is outstanding so I just want to make sure you know that you heard that from from you know myself and then in addition I think um what that didn't talk about today because of the time

076is just how um influential she is in our in our bigger picture that is she has a a ton of resources in the state and and with other counselors she goes to Statewide meetings and has counseling groups and she brings tons of ideas and thoughts back um it pushes all of us to be thinking forward which we need to be doing in terms of curriculum options you know different types of coursework to to prepare as she's speaking to she makes um great connectivity between the policy that's been going on what we need to do as a high school so she's a great days are in that one so I just want there's so much to talk about today I'll give you the give you the Baseline because I think with the newer board it was

077good for you to know and understand some of the basic stuff that's happening today but I do feel like we as a community are very fortunate and I think our students are very fortunate because of the video I agree just listening to this is very exciting so open up the Boardman any questions then and I have a question and we I don't know if it's possible to find out what happens once they leave yeah it will it actually is Believe It or Not the technology exists so sort of that stat that follows them um there's a program I don't know if you have a program that talks about persistence I know there's a state report that that is available to the public um that you can click on and it tells us so their track

078students are being tracked by their I'm also I'm almost hesitant to say it out loud but no secret I think by their student their static number their ID number in terms of that number follows them into college and that persistence measure when I looked at the State website sometime this fall I feel like it's firstly it's not all the way up to date and the last one that I saw I think only goes through their first year persistence do they persist through one year so a lot of the information that I sometimes have is and it feels anecdotal in a in a community as small as Canton anecdotes can add up to a lot but the anecdotes are things like how many kids are asking us for transfer transcripts how many kids are calling us

079sometimes a little too many you know so I worry a little bit about how do we help students to make right choices out of the gate right choices that are right for them because none of us want to see our students in debt and and those kinds of things so um yeah you're right I did try to pack a lot into a short time but you know give a lot of credit to the counselors they're Innovative they're great I do like to think that we've created a Synergy um they we would not have a collaboration that we do with finance and economics um in which students actually have to do work for us for credit which we think is so cool because most of the stuff we just sort of have to bribe them to

080do well I'm not writing a letter of recommendation if you don't have your senior meeting oh okay um so my theory for example gets credit for that for having the idea to have that collaboration Mike and Jen just started a new group um just last week because they picked up on through the Freshman meetings that I was talking about um a trend toward particularly um young female students in in the Freshman Class who are highly driven and highly anxious about brains so they've just launched a lunch bunch and we're gonna see how that goes and it's based on the Yale Happiness Project so we're using some resources from that to sort of talk about you need to make it sort of a low-key you know let's watch this and learn a little and hey what

081do you think about this what do you think about that so he's just launched Mike and Jen just launched that a week ago so we're trying to be as responsive as we can but so much credit goes to having brain counselors to collapse with as well as a great social worker and school psychologist right in the whole state marriage and collaborate with too um so I really think it's just it's it's it is synergy it's it's when you've got lots of people with different ideas and different backgrounds who who love kids are passionate about what we do and want to work together um this generates the ideas please give your team and and your secretary out front I forgot her name and Demon and yeah our gratitude I know Ann did a lot for that

082college fair yeah she sure did she gets the credit so we have the board let them know that we're we're all very appreciative of what they do and it's very important absolutely absolutely I appreciate take the time this evening any other questions oh sure um thank you I uh you know how you mentioned like probably 2017 to 2020 like that that increased my things felt more comfortable like yeah two quick two or three quick questions you could be questions sure sure is fun I'll try sure and one was Luke the one that Lou always asks but what do you think has helped increase that comfortableness like what do you think you attribute that to me I think we just have gotten out there and when I came we had a freshman experiential set of lessons

083that happened once per year so we have a curriculum we have prescribed what we call Guaranteed experiences in sort of counseling lingo guaranteed experiences you must meet with your counselor you must um and so we We Make It Happen by prescribing the things right the things that we do and we hope that we as trained counselors we hope that we then bring to that inability to help kids build some rapport with us and then the second part was the anxiety we keep hearing that everywhere even for the younger students in the middle school now and we mentioned again the Freshman that agrees like Lou this is usually your question like what two or three things what like is there are there things that you know of or you've thought of maybe you've talked to the

084gym about but like I don't know that would help support you're yeah all of you like what are but really in theory helps the students like what are some things that at the high school level really would help them they don't have that yeah well you know that's hard because it to look for a tangible answer for you one thing I can say is that we have to normalize anxiety to a certain degree and we have to have a collective understanding um about the difference between our responsiveness our compassion and our training as Educators and counselors to help students to understand their individual strengths so when a student comes and is saying I'm really afraid you know an upperclassman I'm really afraid of public speaking and I'm not going to go to this class anymore

085and wants to go right to that I'm not going to go to class and I might not come to school and that's going to be a pattern it's about helping to understand where the anxiety is driven from what level the anxiety is to normalize that feeling unprepared and feeling nervous about public speaking is a completely um appropriate feeling and to build tools towards success so part of it I think a bigger chunk of it um that I think would be important if we had all of the time space and ability for example a space to have workshops you know for a quarter for each grade that would be sort of the dream scenario where once a week counseling is running a class so we don't have that kind of a structure available at this time

086um and then we're sort of hitting it all the time but a big piece of it is helping the kids to understand well what really is normal normal typical what's a typical experience and I think that's vitally important because when we over accommodate a student emotion that we can do is build a sense of cannot do instead of a sense of but you can and we're going to help you learn how so I don't know if that's answering you exactly or directly but I think a big piece of it is helping students collectively and the community to understand how we help kids because right now there is a lot of escalated everything can feel big and huge and so where's the balance between helping students to understand themselves and to honor and respect that that

087is the way they feel while also trying to help them learn and understand greater context around it and gain strengths indeed to collaborate with counselors from the other schools like I didn't know we all work in the schools work in isolation or do they all work together do you talk to the middle school counselors about the same yeah so you know I'd love for us to have kind of a more structured sort of time together I think that's a good that's great goal to get to but we do the short answer is yes we check in with each other we mostly check in mostly with Amy but I check in with Lynn on his dis level as well about Trends etc etc you know what's happening um we definitely directly have programs in place in

088which we collaborate with the outgoing and the incoming structured meetings with Personnel at the other schools as kids move up and through to discuss our students that have identified needs students that might sometimes the most important and fruitful meetings are students that don't have an identified need but the school counselor is going to sit with the counselor in confidence who's going to have the student on their caseload and say I want you to know about so and so here's something I just want to get to Cindy's question done yeah thanks um so I wanted to say thank you for all the you and the guidance Department to do for our kids I have a freshman and a junior at school yeah so I do appreciate that um my question is about the percentage for the

089outcome so after high school and I know that you talked about likes new programs and incentives and that sort of thing and how can you had enough time with these programs to see um an impact on those percentages for example the four-year college or the two-year College um to be honest I I would have thought that number would be higher right yeah so I'm not surprised by that so it's been the highest it's been is about 84 yeah that's the highest that is a year well for the for the four years yeah um and it did take a long it took a little bit of a dip we had more students take a gap year yeah particularly in the class of 20 and 2021 we also had students there was a group of students that

090we struggled to capture on our survey and we figured out a way to make sure that that wouldn't happen again who gave us sort of non-answers yeah and that had never happened before and we had to sort of chase them down and figure out what does what does this non answer mean without getting too technical into you know the inner gods of the survey um I would not be surprised to see the the directive for your number make a corresponding shift to the availability of free college for two years and and that would be expected um that it makes sense it sort of makes sense when families are staring down hard choices of you know I'm hearing a lot about eggs this week are we not hearing about eggs much less um you know 70

091000 is no longer an unusual number for a private college yeah there's some that are over 80 now um and a vast a majority of those of for your privates are in the 60 in the range of the 60s but you know the program you know is college career Readiness you know college careers and the arc yeah 85 Navy and now it's closer to 80 but I think you know when we talk about that last fight there's a lot of the program itself that that actually talked about was bringing like we we have a automatic admissions day when it comes just comes to our school and sits with it which she's created like you know so we have 20 students before they walk out the door they've already have an application in when they use

092it might not have to be tomorrow but it's there and they have a planet I think what we've done is sort of foster Pathways for kids and families to think differently maybe than five years ago because of what is available to them and then there's a strong reality of the costs and things like that so I think there's a measurement that that doesn't necessarily look at say Canton schools and say oh what's going on with you know unless your mother in fact it's actually more about better education and better understanding and better thinking I think than a few years ago and I think that's where you see maybe lowering that number it makes more sense well yeah and I would say those kinds of programs are that kind of what I call a small dip

093that's too soon to call a trend I think we have to see what happens is the same thing that I'm seeing in our our neighboring districts right more Gap years more I don't know what I want to do more I can't pay for it and more I'm going to do two years well in the 20 20 school year like that doesn't surprise me yeah yeah and that shifted yeah and I I that that really sort of carried a bit because I think what we all see and feel collectively as a society is you know that there has been maybe maybe 20 20 periods feeling different but that sort of post-pandemic malaise if you will yeah regardless of what it is whether it's what whether or not you get your laundry done as often as you

094used to you know not to sort of put too broad a point on it but um you know I think we've all felt that the teachers and felt that kids have felt that families have felt it um and so life's just it's a bit hard and people are looking to get back to that sense of normalcy mental tell us a question sure you've got an order No Yeah by any means no this should be it but you know I think it's great and you know mentions 84 is our highest dollars so the colleges go but yeah I would think that the technical education would be higher because there's a lot of kids that now I mean the pressure to go to college yes is not as great as if you're gonna go I mean my

095God my son-in-law is an electrician yeah and I wish I was making him money he was making you know sorry um so what do we do about that reaching to the fire so I I love to hear you hear you ask the question so the hardest thing that that we're sort of against in helping our students to understand those possibilities is it cultural and societal Norm that's really big and really Beyond so when we have something occur like an admissions Scandal um a few years ago happening right before the pandemic that sort of says it all right um it's a societal Norm that there is one pathway and this is best and oh by the way if you're smart it's going to be this pathway when the numbers of those getting into Harbors this team

096on you know a pin compared to the applications so it's hard for families sometimes has been hard in districts like these to buy into the idea that there are other pathways um because of the focus on that they see in the media and in society but you must be able to see a child Yeah by 10th grade and say forgive the term but maybe you're not College material please put out for that but you are so great down in shop or you're down doing this and you know have you thought about this this and this right well we right and and we I I just would want to say that of course um we never want we want doors open for kids you want kids to succeed right and when you're a school counselor so

097everybody has their story in their in their professional career of The Stereotype when your school counselor can be my counselor told me 30 years ago that I was good for who's heard it right that I could never succeed in anything so we want our students doors to be open yeah and so it's a fine line and then that sort of gets to the kinds of programs that are not as big and Hefty in high schools everywhere anymore are those programs that validate those kinds of things why wouldn't you do a career day that if you have your college fair day why wouldn't you do a technical school in Fair day I would love to do it have you read my mind that's also on the list so it's it's time space and opportunity absolutely time

098space and opportunity well if we can help you with that if you need support we've talked about Dr tonight but uh yeah I'd love to see something like that because I want every child to feel like they succeed absolutely and I want them to have options and I want to thank you thank you for your time and it's very gracious thank you thank you um if you have any further questions on anything please feel free to reach out and thanks for your time thank you for your knowledge for being a leader in the state which is why we are a lighthouse District and you're like the Energizer Bunny always having us always having no no always having an Innovative idea so we appreciate you thank you for that Mr case I appreciate that thank you

099okay great great report Mr dipepo thank you thanks for coming here okay let's uh let's move along then um Amazing Story assistant superintendent Bishop you're wrong um thank you everyone uh it's great to be able to speak with you tonight I've got three buckets that I want to be able to speak to you uh on tonight uh Safety and Security uh teaching and learning and then um continuing our our Communications from Safety and Security uh I spoke with you prior to the break about the request for proposals coming out for our new camera systems we had two folks or two organizations come in to be able to do our walkthrough with us we're expecting that the actual proposals will come into us at the end of this month and we'll be doing uh a final

100review of that and then we'll be able to actualize that that element for us we're really excited about that um continuing in that direction uh with Safety and Security uh we met Sean Paul and I are a security director met with Kim uh Myers um she is the Regional School Safety coordinator uh who works with Western Connecticut State University University and as a part of our rest so what's happening right now which is really really neat is our state has started to realize that the safe School climate legislation that they have in place um it's not just about safety and it's not just about climate those two things have to be able to merge together and they have to be married together a bit um and so this woman is fantastic she she actually grew

101up going cheaper Sierra she grew up in Simsbury well steeped in school safety but also understanding um how to be able to work well with the individual School populations and provide opportunities for continued hardiness and support she was one of the first people who ranged out to us after the tragic passing of our students recently and she's been a wonderful thought partner with us some of the work that she's going to do with us moving forward is some Consulting around some of our safety practices and protocols um she's also going to come in and do and I shared this with the youth Service Bureau last night but she's going to come in and in our multi disciplinary teams where sometimes our our police will come and be able to work with us she's going to

102do some continued Burpa training with our with our folks that they everybody knows where we sit at the table and how we how we uh communicate with that so she's a fantastic resource to be able to work with um and um from another perspective with this a a piece that I think our community needs to know we did send out coven tests which we received from the state um we have received another uh bundle of them in August we sent those out prior to the break because we we had a number of them we wanted to make sure that they were operationalized that people had access to them um those come up for disposal by February 1st we're now out of those um out of those tests that the state has provided for us we're

103going to be communicating to our families just to remind them that although we don't have those to continue to provide right now they still have the opportunity to be able to reach out to the to the government to the federal government before tests that there are multiple free testing clinics that are still available throughout Connecticut and obviously through through their doctors or other things as well um but those are a couple things from Safety and Security any questions for me on that okay um from teaching and learning the camp Fair glad to be able to hear that that has been hit on several times here um the main thing that I want to be able to share with you is the continued Saga of the reading legislation um and I want to share some good

104news with you um as we continue to to refine our plan for uh a proposed waiver to the state to be able to review what we uh what we have internally in our program and what we have for data for it we reached out and had an outstanding conversation with Dr Melissa eke who is the the overseer of the uh The Literacy Center for the state so she has been a great thought partner over the past couple weeks working directly with us to be able to support our efforts with that we continue to work directly with our crack uh Regional uh service Collective and area districts uh with the meeting coming up this week and next week and another on the 26th as we would be able to refine our applications to the state for

105this tedious process but we feel like we're in a a much better situation I want to share a lot of gratitude to Kathy Watson and Chris Woods who have done a phenomenal job the the effort that we that you all have um committed to by being able to have two outstanding specialists at our Primary School have helped us to be in a really good situation better than a lot of districts to be able to to work through this um and then finally I appreciate the superintendent bringing up uh our meeting on February 1st and also just to be able to cast out the vision of the anxious child as we we hear again these are important things for us to be able to be aware of Justine Ginsburg will be working with us on March

1068th to be able to have that presentation as well so February 1st and March February 1st for uh social media in the minds of our children and a very interesting study just coming out about uh social media over the past three years so that'll be an exciting one to be able to have a conversation for and then March 8th on for the NS China any questions for me you guys online okay thank you John thank you I'm really quick all right um first up is just an FYI that's during the finance committee Uh Kevin and I reviewed the proposed uh continuous Improvement plan yes I'm sorry oh my God it's not a call always look in the continuously include that's true absolutely the capital Improvement plan uh so uh that's something we'll be working on

107and we'll be uh uh you'll see it again um and uh we will be submitting that in February so um it's just a draft that you have in your packet so um we're working on it the other thing uh is that I also during the finance committee reviewed the financials that you have in front of you uh so you'll see um the demo along with several Financial reports uh the Food Service report is last in your packet which you haven't seen in a while um but um I'm not going to go into the detail of that that I did with the finance committee um and the reason being is first of all Donna did a great job updating the finance company but we're just halfway into our you know so we can't really get our

108arms around a lot of things and there's nothing to really get too overly concerned about and it's like we're not getting into too much detail with the board tonight right exactly it's you know and we did you'll see on there that one of the reasons that we're uh not uh too worried right now uh is that we also calculated our anticipated reimbursement from uh or uh correct from Capital Region education Council and our very conservative view of our reimbursement for excess costs so that's going to offset a lot of these costs that you're going to see negative on your variance report so the bottom line is is uh you know not not to worry [Music] uh I asked Scott and I said what's keeping you up at night and she said nothing right now so

109we're good [Music] the audit the audit was completed uh at the end of December uh and although I don't have the formal report uh there were no findings or uh anything anything outlined exactly that wrote that report will come to the board you all get a copy and we'll accept the report okay so that was that was good news of course it's only a couple months when we start the next daughter so any questions for Donna nope you're good just so when are we discussing these probably in the 24th the finance committee will take one more shake at it they're gonna they're gonna prioritize it they're going to come back to us there's some things that are going to probably filter out and then under 24th we'll take a look okay that's just to give

110you where we're starting if there's if there's something that's not on that list that's on your mind right please email dot that's for everybody it just has to be in excess of ten thousand dollars that that's going to get approached necessary but okay um and then just key takeaways thank you Donna for being brief tonight uh but just key takeaways um our special ed budget um shows that it's a deficit uh but as Donna mentioned we expect to get four hundred thousand dollars from the city of Hartford because we middle Hartford for the services for our students who are part of the choice program and also we're expecting at a 65 rate a conservative rate with 600 000. so um we do have eight additional outplace students since we developed the budget a year ago

111so that's important to know last January we had 22 students receiving their education outside of the district now we have 30. um there's a specific reason to read to those students some of them were new to the district this year and we realized boy we can't provide an adequate education for them and others we knew about in the spring but it just came to fruition now that they needed to be outplayed so you'll hear more about that if I could so I asked I asked the Supreme technique because you know I'm concerned about the correct how many uh there's only four of the 30. so correct is not overly stretching our resources 26 are are internal students for only four correct because and we build hard for directly so we don't pay for those out

112placements just sounds like that number is going up quicker and quicker it is because of the social emotional needs of our students and we do a good job and Barbara our new director will be here at our next meeting to share with you what she's seen over the last two months and to answer specific questions you may have um and then with the food service this is the first time you're seeing our food service report um we have a balance of 185 000 in Food Service which um as Joe reminds us is quite remarkable because for those of you who were on the board for a few years you know we had a deficit for I mean we've always had a deficit until this federal government kicked in this grant over the pandemic to provide

113free meals for everyone and the district was reimbursed for that so we're in good shape now with that and we'll keep reporting on that for you so those are just key takeaways from the finance thank you Don I was too quick thought you were good I probably went long no no you're good too so you're going to take us through the consent agenda please yes so the next time on the agenda is the consent agenda which consists of the meeting minutes of December 13th 2022 which are which was our regular Board of Education meeting um we're also very grateful to the Canton Education Foundation for providing four um grant opportunities for four of our staff members who applied for these grants so tonight we're asking you um because of our board policy which asks you

114to approve Any Grant in the amount of 500 or more or more with the generosity of the an Educational Foundation I'm asking you to accept 3181 from the foundation to support um for Grants and okay um very quickly the grants are for materials for the art show at Canton Intermediate School for a new book club for Canton High School very exciting a startup after school choir for Cherry Brook Primary School students that starts on January 25th and already 40 students have signed up this day after school to participate and at the high school we have what's called a snack trolley which funding will be going toward that program that's where we have some students with Specialties work on their communication skills with teachers and students by bringing around a snap trial and giving out snacks

115to teachers and I remember when I filled in as interim principal at the middle school this one student that really helped him grow and develop by having those social skills and maintaining social relationships because of the snacks absolutely that's exactly right so um so those are the four Pro projects Lou thank you for your leadership and Education Foundation as well so if I just might say um really the credit goes to there there's a couple in norcom gives quite a bit of money and uh really the shops the shocks give five thousand dollars a year every year there's more money in the Canton Education Foundation I feel a little bit like Teresa that we can't give enough of it away and we publicize to the two teachers about projects to fund and the process is

116you see the board members during the young the letter there but the superintendent or the principal has to approve the project is worthy it can't be a typical budget item it has to be something that you know shows some initiative and of course educational so um I just want to let you know the shops do a great job and uh we're actually talking to them about doing a teacher's day and a student again in August where shops generally will give a 10 discount with your item your student ID or your teacher's ID on a special day that would be a Canton shopping day so I'm working with uh Liz Ackerman on that so I just tell you that that you know you can support the shops they are they truly are good to us and

117they want to be good citizens in time thank you so that's the consent agenda for tonight okay um you may have a motion to accept thank you Kim in a second and I'm uh Erica thank you very much so we have first and second any conversation discussion on uh the consent agenda everybody looks about right okay all those in favor aye online okay good 9-0 under consent agenda okay just in case okay the next item is the final approval of the 2022-2023 program of studies at our last meeting in December um you heard an overview about the program of studies the major change was within the high school math curriculum we have not received any questions from any of you since the last meeting but John is hearing exactly the answer any questions you have

118before you vote on the final approval but maybe we should have a motion first and then discuss correct so I have a motion to accept thank you Alicia thank you Cindy I have first and second all right any any uh discussion or questions okay hearing none all those in favor it's eight opposed none abstain one I wasn't here really to hear the presentation so I'm not gonna vote on it so it's 801. thank you okay approval is the middle of the zoning regulation I gave you a little bit of an overview of that um I you know this is a 50 50 coin clip but it would be nice to have or at least get the approval we may not put it in this year because it doesn't get approved in CIP but to get

119the approval and hold the reapproval that would be great so uh I'd ask you to support that that motion so can I have a motion thank you Felicia second Russell thank you all right any any discussion on that or concerns about applying for the uh for the sign ing okay hearing on all those in favor aye okay 9-0 thank you very much yeah and is Don presented the financial uh the financials um the 2022 financials through December any questions on that okay we have emotional accept thank you Peggy thank you Joe again questions all those in favor aye opposed today 9-0 thank you very much okay any any more comments about what you heard tonight anything that's on your mind that you'd like to bring up sure is it true that we're down a lot

120of Staff you know the preschool teacher mentioned their teacher was out and I know that I'm sure you're looking good question fill that position because it is hard to find staff so that's naturally challenge so um we do have an opening for a long-term substitute in our preschool at Canton intermediate school so we're currently interviewing um staff for that um there's um the teacher has taken a leave for January February March so it's a three-month long-term supposition so if anyone knows of a highly skilled preschool teacher or anyone listening at home please apply and let me know because there is a need there our staff shortage is more now than being four or is it just up and down I mean I know this is across the country so it's not just candy right so

121we currently have two special education teacher vacancies and I interviewed two people today and we'll be interviewing two people Friday so it seems like people are now beginning to apply but those are the certified teaching vacancies we currently have um and then we continue to have some vacancies for para Educators um no one is required para educator Physicians and not only in Canton but other districts too so we're having to go to outside resources such as crack which has provided us with two parent Educators there's also a company called delta T where we had a para educator begin this week and um All Points Care has provided um a staff member to work with us so we are shaking the trees to find highly qualified people for our non-certified physicians and these are positions who

122work with our most challenging students right who need the most support so excuse me certified teachers we're good with we don't have any extensive Staffing shortages um we have a couple teachers going on maternity liens in the spring which were we've posted for but it's really the certain para educator vacancy as soon as we hire someone it seems like someone else leaves or goes on maternity leave we've had we have several Heroes who have left or will leave maturity Loop they plan on coming back and we're happy for them and their families but yeah not for us thank you for asking the question um speaking of staff is there any update on the Open session for community outreach yes so um John and I are interviewing um we're bringing well John has interviewed two if

123not all three candidates were bringing in on Thursday on my conversation yeah I have not had the opportunity so this will be my first time meeting them and then as of Saturday we have two additional leads um who may be applying this week so I'm very very excited with uh the people we have in the pool while I'm not happy we haven't been able to find the right match for us over the last six months I'm very hopeful that we will fill the vacancy very soon I just have one question um I do get actually got re-parent questions now about immigrant and immigration um what was the immigration that we used to do at uh yeah yeah that they were they were sorry they were wondering if it was coming back they understand because of

124covet do we have any update on that you might not yeah we spoke about it during um our our curriculum committee meeting and and and that the the love of experiential learning is one of the things that came out loud and clear the opportunity to be able to do things that were immersive and engaging was loud and clear as a desire for it the changing in the standards around what students are expected to be able to do with the content that they engage with has been something that that has has moved so something that was loved in the way that it looked in the past yeah is needing to evolve to be able to follow around the shape of what we need to do for the future so what we're working on with these this

125new social studies program is to develop something that maybe it's not exactly immigration day but it's an experiential opportunity that's in a similar vein to that that connects directly with their study that's been part of the work that we've done with connecting with the um uh historical society as well so give me a parent answer in simple terms yes really simple we know that kids love to be able to have experiential learning we're developing something new that will be great for immigration 2.0 it's going to feel it's going to feel different but it's going to be experiential a 2.0 experience where it is a good way to say it okay the state has changed the standards at each grade level which is why we're piloting the new social studies program that meets those standards right

126so there will not be immigration day as we've known it okay speaking of the experiential on come volunteer for the new like like Collinsville turn of the century so that that's really the focus on is on understanding the the community and its resources and where you're at and there's where we see a parallel opportunity to be able to take something that's you know coming into the area seeing the opportunities I spent a a long time with our Historical Society I mean Bob vessel was there meeting with us as well to to Really Drive some excitement for this we just need the opportunity to be able to work on it our curriculum committee was great about saying hey this is something we really want so we're making sure that there's going to be time provided for

127our teachers now to be able to engage in that work and prepare something new and I will tell you I love our teachers for this they want something like a tune they really have enjoyed that experiential piece and we want to be able to continue to offer that in Camp yes and the same line where we would Nature's Classroom doesn't experiential activity for kids yeah I'll have to check with Rebecca and get back to you on that yeah because the survey went out and we've not heard any information about that when we get down to the 2020. absolutely uh any more board comments for tonight and questions you want to have answered we're going to go into executive session and uh I'm going to ask the superintendent to uh to to be present here um

128I have a new meeting set up for Ryan and Russell to join oh good yeah I don't see this being prolonged at all the superintendent and then he'll excuse himself and then we're going to have a brief session and maybe 10 minutes 15. all good okay thank you so uh they have a motion to go into executive session and invite the superintendent schools thank you Felicia thank you Cindy any other uh conversation discussion all those in favor I I have a good nine oh