BOE Meeting 12 13 22

001of course um did you get this one yeah I'd like to call the police order at 7 15. and we'll start with standing with the pledge and isability I pledge allegiance to the water of the United States of America and to the Republic for livings and one nation under God indivisible The Libertines foreign so I first wanted to make an announcement that we as a board have um not holiday gifts for our support staff that'll be for Claudia and for Cairo Claudia is not here tonight but the task is over in Cairo for all the help and the support that you do for the board of Iowa thank you and then I'm going to turn it over to um superintendent case for suspension on board and before I walk number 9120 thank you thank you

002very much good evening everybody it's great to see all of you welcome to Our Guest here this evening normally at our first board meeting in December I should say our regular board meeting in December we have election of officers that's Board of Education by law number nine one twenty because of the full membership was not able to be here tonight with our chair being absent and we weren't sure if any other uh people were going to be absent today from the board um I'm recommending that we suspend bylaw number 9120 through January 31st 2023 this would require a two-thirds vote by board members all of you who are here present tonight in order for us to suspend that bylaw if you did vote to suspend the bylaw we would have election of officers on January

00310. so we're just moving the election of officers until our next regularly scheduled board meeting so that's the first action of business tonight would someone be willing to make that motion I'll make the motion thanks thank you everyone um next I'm seeing that we do have a few people here that want to speak we're going to move public forum up a little bit um so you're able to do that um I first wanted to acknowledge the fact that we did receive um an email um it's all in all of your packets it's from Casey Levine who's advocating for additional funding for their football program and then I'll open it up for all those that are in the room that would like to speak the public forum please limit your speaking time to three minutes okay

004yeah okay uh thank you uh everybody uh I'll be three minutes I promise football in Canton has never been better uh the youth programs the mud Hogs the bee and the C team had undefeated Seasons uh the youth numbers are growing the program has got us thriving and these are all future bears that are going to come play for our program uh the Bears went 8-2 only losses went to 10-0 smsa and undefeated Cromwell we did lose in the first round in the semifinals to Barlow who ultimately uh won the state championship uh we are a very good program 52 players eight great coaches um co-ops are not easy uh football programs are not easy uh nothing worthwhile in life is easy uh we have big costs you guys uh know about this from previous

005uh meetings and Casey's email we pay fifteen thousand dollars for the bus uh we have 34 000 at total costs we only get four thousand dollars from the school program imagine the soccer team planning out next year that uh yeah it's great you guys have a season but all the parents are going to have to raise money for the bus um the reality of Connecticut High School football is co-ops when we play Coventry we're playing Coventry Windham Tech both with Lyman when we played Windsor Locks we're playing Windsor Locks Suffield meets Granby right we are Granby Canton Hartford Grammy Canton Hartford we always leave the Hartford part out uh we had one of those groups of kids leave us the heart for kids leave us the Grammy kids leave us we'd be an average team

006uh but with all three of us the communities together uh we're we're a very good team so uh how any ideas how to raise thirty thousand dollars I could sell cupcakes I could make pies well um we we have five home games one's in Canton okay our one home game we weren't allowed to have the fencing so we lost about a thousand dollars on ticket sales because we had plenty of people come to our game uh but we had plenty of people that didn't pay we're down a thousand dollars this year from last year the concession stand is a great concession stand but it's run and all the profits go to Canton High School boosters uh nothing to us we do our our most successful fundraising effort is the golf tournament and I don't think

007anyone was there but if you were Mother Nature sacked us and uh you know in two holes the whole thing was canceled so here's the my conclusion is without financial support uh friends of Canton football and high school football in Canton is going to fail uh I know in the past there's there was talk of maybe a three-year plan to fully fund uh but tonight I'm here to ask that you guys pay for the bus for next year thank you thank you anyone else I just have to announcement hopefully some of you know one of our senior people in winter festival this is coming to Thursday I don't know if they were planning to talk about it so but sorry thank you we are planning on sharing that just so you know I'm getting a

008digital book because yeah and second announcement again sorry if I'm ahead of you um just I don't Mr Case knows about it but I'm not sure everyone member aware of passing your truck and some of the rotary students went to Simsbury last week to Healing meals Community project it's an awesome project and the lady in charge that unfortunately she doesn't have too many students from Canton who helped their who volunteered there and I'm not sure if the other community just not aware that it's possibility to help but also make some you know hours volunteering cars or whatever so I brought some flyers as well but it's an amazing project to be involved for grown-ups for students or anybody who's willing to spend a couple of hours here and there that's cool thank you anyone else

009can I opened up sure is that what I mean if there's anyone joining us online tonight that would like to make a public comment you can go ahead and use the raised hand feature zoom and I'll call on you by your new name I don't have any raised hands and move on to um the student reports okay um to start with past events um going back a little far just because with the last meetings past events um Saturday November 12th for the high school or the regional Festival auditions um Tuesday November 15th and through Thursday the 17 24 conferences class schools Monday November 21st was a CHS instrumental sponsor close to November 23rd was early release for all schools there was no school Thursday November 24th and Friday November 25th we did Thanksgiving recess Tuesday

010November 29th there was CHS Junior night it was in November 30th was the CHS Pearl concert Friday December 2nd was the Molly Glen trip to Newport um Tuesday December 6th was early release Pro schools Wednesday December 7th was its CHS four-year college night Thursday December 8th was the CMS 7th grade Winter concert in Saturday December June was the UPS PTO genuine announcement tomorrow December 14th there will be a CIS sixth grade Winter concert Friday December 16th is the Canton Middle School student council Winter Dance um Friday December 23rd there will be a half day for all schools Monday to December 26th um and January 2nd will be the district-wide holiday recess third I'm sorry um Thursday January 5th will be CHS astronomy night held by science National Honor Society and for ongoing we hope that

011everyone has we'll have a wonderful winter break thank you I mean we're not have any questions you see none I'm going to pass it over to Super Heaven peace thank you very much good evening again everybody um the first part of my report tonight is an overview of a program that I'm recommending we bring to our middle school and high school students here in Canton you have a copy of the um presentation in your packet and what this is called is the Canton Public Schools student assistance program so about a year and a half ago when the federal government released some Grant funds through the American Rescue plan also known as arva juliusa Ray the previous board chair and a couple of board members from our past board um served on a committee to determine

012what um the grant funds should be used for with the town and we determined that we wanted to put aside 45 to support students emotional and mental health during this post-pandemic period so that was about a year and a half ago it's taken us a while to find the right program and tonight I'm here to present you uh what I believe is the right program for our students this program is sponsored by hnsa the health management system of America um this evening we also have Bill Latz who's here in our audience who is the regional director or call a doctor plus um who assisted Us in getting this company to provide the service to our students now I do want to say that our chair Lou Daniels is also connected with Paula Dr Buss but

013he has uh written a letter recusing himself from this discussion and he submitted that to the town clerk and he's also checked with the town ethics board so I just wanted to make that uh very clear that the person we've been dealing with is Bill and he's here tonight to help me answer any questions once I go over the overview of the program so if we look at the third page of the presentation who is Health Management Systems of America so this company was established in 1990 a recognized specialist and work-life programs and if you approve this we're hoping our service to our students would begin on January 1st or January 3rd when we return back to school this says October 1st right we are hoping to begin this in the fall but there were

014quite a few steps we needed to take so we're hoping this will begin in the new year this is an independent and privately held company headquartered in Detroit with a network of over 13 000 providers and over 3 000 cities across the country the company provides Behavioral Health and well-being services to over 1500 client companies including Fortune 500 companies government agencies school districts universities and hospitals so what would this look like this program would enable any of our Middle School and High School servants or students to um call a number to get support and so any middle school or high school student who needed mental health support 24 hours a day seven days a week would have this hotline number they could call and they would get immediate support they would get immediate counsel now

015you might be wondering would a parent know about this a parent would need to fill out a consent form to allow the child to call this number so again it would give all of our middle schoolers and high schools 24 7 access to clinicians for in the moment support in crisis stabilization there would be an app that students could keep on their phone and there would also be many many website resources the Student Assistance Program would be a voluntary short-term coaching service designed to help students with personal issues family issues or School related concerns the programs could also help our students identify gain control over and resolve personal issues or conflicts that may be interfering with their life or educational performance along with daily life now for complex concerns those could be escalated to net

016Network clinicians for a limited number of counseling sessions and again the counselors would reach out to the parents and work with a parent on establishing those counseling sessions on the next page you'll find out what some typical coaching issues are that the clinicians deal with and support students with you can see three General categories General well-being School related issues and family peer relationships there's also counseling support for anxiety or depression addictive behavior concerns child abuse Dating Violence Greek codependency personality disorders mood disorders or suicidal ideation the clinicians would provide in the moment support so these sessions are meant to address a student's immediate need for support the service offers a direct access to account report and while many students may be hesitant maybe hesitant to participate in continued sessions due to ambivalence or resistance about

017the commitment or coaching relationship um the clinicians are available to work that out they're available to help manage a variety of concerns as identified by the students what's important to note is this is all confidential unless the student poses a risk to himself or herself right if that's the case counselors would reach out immediately to the local authorities to the police medical personnel or a designated support individual for that student so if the student was in immediate harm or crisis the local authorities would be contacted immediately as a school district we would get quarterly reports on the statistical data on the number of cases and categories that the students requested support him and then there's another benefit too which has to do with financial Wellness so if students were interested in financial literacy which we

018know is so important uh for our middle schoolers and high schoolers they would have a chance to talk with financial counselors as well who can help them with budgeting debt and credit issues spending and saving student loans very important planning for college how to invest in education and much more so not only will this service support a student's emotional mental health it will also help to help them develop skills those important life skills in financial literacy the students would also be provided with a variety of web resources articles on various well-being topics they be offered on-demand webinars mindfulness sessions and financial calculators and as I said they would also have the opportunity to have a mobile app on their phone to assist them with resources so again the specific program features direct ACCESS helpline 24

019hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year unlimited scheduled virtual virtual or telephonic coaching sessions short-term problem resolution sessions with a counselor where appropriate in the moment support Financial consultations a mobile app and work life website with access to online resources we would also have promotional materials posters to post in the school brochures to give out to students to make all students aware of this many times students are hesitant to reach out to our school district's mental health professionals as much as we would want them to do that and encourage them to do that this is a way that anonymously they can get help right away on a Saturday night if they're having difficulty with a relationship and they're distraught they have a counselor that they can call so this is another

020layer that I think is really important that we as a school district can provide our students in an area of supporting social and emotional health the cost of this program is five dollars per student per month we have approximately 722 middle schoolers and high schoolers and if you approve this this program would be in effect for one year so for all of the calendar year 2023 uh the total cost would be forty two thousand dollars for this support and again um we set aside this money in the arbor Grant funds with the town for this specific purpose I was not there to see what questions you have um Bill do you have anything to add that I may have left out I think you did a great job um the the program I would just

021emphasize is focused on students on this page the counselors are trained to speak with students of that age and that's that's their livelihood so it's not like you're going to be calling or they would be calling a counselor that might be talking to be for instance and deal with might if he was um and then maybe talking to a an apron or later these counselors are in focused this is what they do for a living and what we've learned I've been doing telemedicine virtual Healthcare if you will for 11 years now it will learn particularly in the area of Mental Health is that specialty is of knowledge of the customer from the client and the patient however you want to be referred to is very important so one of the reasons we really recommended this

022company interested to say is because of their level of depth of knowledge of the counselors and their experience in dealing with thank you very much if you want um it's a different animal it's a different group of people and they have to have that understanding compassion and so forth the only other thing I would mention is um probably the most I won't say the most important feature but the most discussed feature is the um the practice intervention or the in the moment or the counselors that Kevin discussed but one of the things that we really like about the program so much is that it's it's really there to help that student beyond that immediate need but to give them some of those life skills that they're going to need to go forward you know in

023the news almost every day is some kind of a report of bullying going on our bullying goes on and every pound when every school system in America If the child knows how to heal with that situation up front they're better to be successful and illness if they don't then this is just one example of many that we've seen where the success of a program can really help a student that really doesn't have anything to do necessarily with being depressed or having the United States that every day that you may be faced with um it has given those those opening skills and tools that we will so it's we think it's a very well-rounded program and that it does the immediate crisis management but it also does the day-to-day helping us to get through whatever their

024particular needs are um I have a question I don't know um I think this sounds really interesting and really helpful I'm wondering like during school hours if students are feeling like I know you said it's 24 7. I'm learning like during school hours how will teachers handle the situation like how will students like say they're going through something and they want to contact the people how will they be able to like leave class or where would they go to do that that's a great question um and you reminded me that if the board did approve this program we would have a meeting with all of our staff to inform them what this is all about meetings a meeting set up but I'm thinking that you know you could ask to leave class to go to

025the guidance Suite or to the nurse's office and find a private state the number of students that are in there are certain percentages of students use it or not correct that's correct okay and then if you have any data on similar size districts on like how many um students what percentage of students are utilizing something like this I don't know I'll pop my head I don't um keep in mind these programs are relatively new uh it's they really so um although patient Jose and mental health programs have been around for years programs that are focused on middle school and high school program or age students are fairly new students the statistics would be pretty young even if we had it but I can say that in general or if I look at our general population

026which is not just students again I'm talking and we do a lot of work with business and organizations you know all over the country um it's about 25 of the utilization of the program meaning oh and these and what they tell us is about 40 of any given population hasn't really helped me so which if you translate that because we're we're probably reaching out and helping about 60 of those in need I don't know if that answers your question but um I know it's new and the data may not be there yeah but it's because population is very smart and we don't have a lot of stats on the children um what we do know and I have a lot of data in that report um the Mental Health crisis almost younger age adults in

027the shoulder is it's enough of them right now um and if our feeling is and what a lot of those school districts believe is a good catch it early before it escalation be something more serious that's what you want to do um you know things particularly at a younger age what might be something that might be fairly simple or domain to us when we can deal with it if we have you know many years of coping skills to a young younger person it could be very dramatic uh and it could escalate with something bad very quickly so that the goal here is to identify an issue work-up plan help that student work through that issue and try to resolve it in an early stage before it comes to crisis management scenario but overall mental health

028is is across the country is it's an epidemic right now and then um for parents signing waivers I know this is a question for you having or for you at the program like how are they signing is whatever and when is that taking place yeah well I mean either way after the program was announced the a waiver or a discussion called the parental consent is given to the parents to sign but we know you know that every person is going to sign one right away sometimes they're going to sign them and return them right up some population will go right away but others will have good intentions to do it but we'll just forget we're not do it and others May resist it altogether so the situation and Kevin alluded to it earlier is they

029cannot proceed without a parental consent unless it's a an immersion situation however one student is enrolled in the program which they all would be and they're eligible for the program but they call in that and the counselor will know if that consent form has been completed if it's not a crisis scenario which they take a different direction um maybe we've been notified that student people understand they can help them kind of for a moment or two and then they'll say well we need to get that consent so we can talk to your parent are they are they getting 80 right now can we email you a copy of the email can send it whatever they'll work with that student they're prepared to get them considered back but that'll be the last call that consent doesn't

030get completed they won't be able to get the council thank you is any other board member any questions I have a question about like mandated reporters sort of stuff like if uh if a kid's getting bullied I mean that's really that should be addressed at the school isn't there like a three strikes and so let's say somebody calls I mean is it completely confidential or do you have some sort of link with to know that this child is the same child it might be calling a second time saying this is happening again to me I mean because yeah that's a great question so if it's again it depends on the severity of the situation but if you will again if it's an emergent scenario or aggressive scenario they're going to take immediate action and jump

031into into action if it was necessary we they do report back orderly and we can get uh monthly reporting that maybe if you can't decide that one of the reporting we were doing that their standard reporting importantly and then we'll talk about what type of situations have occurred um it's there is a strong emphasis that to get that student to go back to any school services or Talent services that are available you can coordinate with that now they can't force the child to do that but when they're done with their counseling they're they're always attempting to get that student to reconnect with whatever local services are available work with us with their principals work with their counselors here locally um again it's a matter of it's kind of forging them and managing them to do

032that they can't they can't force them yeah it sounds like my understandably confidential they can't go and call the school up and talk to a counselor it's strictly confidential other than giving them the resources and tools to go to they wish they're not supposed to be calling talking about it with the school correct thank you if I'm understanding correctly right you're kind of asking are they going to talk to the school they're I don't think they're going to talk to the school at all it's confidential they would give the student the information encourage them to follow that's correct yeah because otherwise you're violating confidentiality with Facebook triangulating and talking why is it confidential okay what's the uh what's the rollout plan we adopt this uh so that the students and the parents have the accurate

033information so what it is so Joe I am I am wondering if uh you all might be comfortable to vote on this tonight so we can get this rolling out in January we would have a specific timeline for each week in January with when information would be distributed we would set up a parent meeting a virtual parent meeting in January to let them know about this we would also meet with our staff to let them know what services are available and in particular our mental health support staff so that our school psychologists social workers so that they'll know that they can refer students to this service if they're not comfortable talking to them individually so we have a specific timeline we will rule this out the first month that it is implemented and are there

034any neighboring schools that have used this or something like it that you're aware much of this mental health support is provided for colleges and universities we would just be one of a few school districts using this which I'm very proud of it would give us a year to try it out to see whether our students took advantage of it and I think it's a perfect use of grant funding um you might be thinking well why don't we use the money to um to hire us an additional social worker Mike next question or an additional um psychologist well we know there would be a funding cliff so we as much as we'd want to do that we know they would have a budgetary impact this won't have a budgetary impact unless we decide to continue however

035my hope is that it's going to be very successful and there will be other grant funding out there to support programs like this moving forward I'm pretty confident there will be is arpa just for this one year it is I guess so if the the issues that we've determined if this is Superior or is a necessary supplement to what we already have and I can see that argument would make a lot of sense but if we're going to fall off a cliff either way the fish or with hiring at some point I want to make sure that this is superior to hiring someone else I don't think that the budget clip argument is as applicable I think I'd want to say well have we determined that this is more effective for our students in hiring

036another psychologist right and if he answers yes great but it shouldn't be the bunch of Cliff though I don't think I think from the student's perspective have we have we done that yeah I would like to having him we only have two we have a psychologist and a social worker right now in the high school and like this you say is like uh unlimited or whatever so yeah so it's like I think that's nice like on weekends so I think it is almost better this program than hiring I know a lot of students struggle with face to face like having to verbalize their concerns to someone just like in person so I think that could be helpful alternative to people who struggle more like with in person like social interaction because that was like what's

037like blocking them from being able to advocate for their issues so Ryan I do think that is the benefit it's Anonymous and all students would have access even on the weekends in the night at midnight where they don't have access to a school profession historically 70 of the calls come in after normal workout so that's that's when you know their kids were in sports they're in school they're busy they're home they're on social media something happens they get upset that's when they need to be have the availability of somebody to speak to whether it be seven o'clock at night you know 12 o'clock at night on a Saturday or Sunday on holiday that's when we see the highest levels of anxiety stress depression going on with the actually with all the populations but specifically the

038students I have two questions sorry but Kevin what um what did the social worker counselor principal I mean obviously I'm assuming everybody is aware of this what was their feedback the feedback is this is this is another benefit for our students this is this is terrific so they were so very important and then it's it talks so much about in short term like it's a short-term thing so what happens I just want to understand the process better like it's short term they call they have a concern they're struggle and they give them limited short-term feedback that and offer support but then what happens if they need to call again or again that then they direct them to counseling but then that's when the parent they have to find an outside counselor and the parents pay

039for that separate because I think that's the part I'm not understanding my understanding question so the way the program works is so for the coaching part there's there's two major component versus the Koji and there's the the capital is called the councilman especially a little bit more than that but we'll follow that there's no limit to the coaching that goes on development as name being for every student whatever the need may be on the counseling session they try to limit it to Pride quote so they don't it's not a harder to stop um recovery if you will and they needed individual counselor and felt like that succession was really what's going to get them there and they'll be certainly a lot of the Gratitude have it um but they generally focus on five and it's

040per incident so uh and the reason for that is they don't want this to become a program that's one of them some students are going to need long-term therapies they're gonna they're gonna need more in-person longer term sessions usually within five sessions if they can determine if that's the case and if that's the case there these counselors are going to work with their parents and the child to find the local Council they can continue that therapy with that child luckily that's less than five percent of the cases um but if a child is let's say in January having issues with school and they're upset because they failed an exam and or they're not ready for whatever it may be and then in March they're having trouble because they're getting bullied or or they brought their

041their girlfriend boyfriend or maybe they're I'm just trying to think something up if that's considered a different session a different so they could they would then be given five for that incident and so forth and so on okay thank you hey Ryan to your point your place a good one I think uh whatever you put a few more pages the reporting page I think after a couple of quarterly reports would get an idea yeah I think so too but the question is who who are the coaches and what are their qualifications these are all born sorted by counselors um most of them have a minimum of 10 years of experience they are again most of them are not all of them are specialized in working or whatever youth um they're all over the country so

042because of the the staffing issues they might be in Detroit but they could be here in Connecticut it just depends on where they're called it's a free program that is sort of phone call and we touched on it but one of the things that I think makes the part of also you know what you make is beneficial is the students are a hmsa has a student at that they would download to your phone your smartphone as we all know we all live in our smartphones especially the students right on their in their apps so that's how they're going to get access of the service primarily through the phone with performance when you say board certified American borders I get what what's what they are um I'm not sure I mean that's a reward certified if

043you don't know which sport right I mean come on yeah these are all licensed I understood well I think these are appropriate questions to be asked oh no absolutely uh I'm just not sure of the organization that license them we deal with a lot of other let me see if I can find that very very shortly is this this is just Middle School in high school and what about parents is there a your parental piece or no police students and the only reason why a parent would be involved is if the parent were contacted by this by a counselor yes exactly I noticed that on that website there is all these um like like information and informative stuff do the parents have access to those um the mobile app 5 000 articles videos and resources

044or adjust students bill I believe parents would have access to the website as well they do absolutely that's not they're not going to call Council absolutely could you just go over the course again five dollars per student five dollars that's how many students or 722 students okay a month it's a zero cost to the family zero across the families so the grant would be funding this for a year it's forty two thousand dollars and we quite a day can I or is it a one-year commitment it's a one-year commitment um I think it could be great I don't want to say that it couldn't be great like personal opinion it seems like big you know we talk about a couple thousand dollars here or there stuff that we know is good it's like I'm offer

045a lot of money to prevent to something that a isn't proven in our district but it sounds like it's not proven for the age category work targeting either if it's really for more utilized in college age students and Kevin also do we have um I mean I assuming just to check we have a demonstration of waivers for you know these kids get advice through our program and one of them to go is not as well as we would hope and something happens board blisters are identified yes we are absolutely so if a parent doesn't sign off on this and the kid can't use the the service that's correct that's important parents need to be able to give consent yeah I think the rollout if we choose to go with this the rollout plan is is

046critical because we're only as effective as we are community and communicating and you know encouraging those I think we would leave on you guys too to tell us how to encourage kids to use an event seat as like one more thing that we don't use you know I'm thinking about this and I was thinking like um I'm part of um and I think that like that club could help encourage this because we were actually thinking of like and this is perfect because we were thinking of doing like an anonymous reporting system and um having way students can report like things they're seeing because the whole thing the whole thing about the same Club is see something say something and so this kind of solved that issue and maybe like we could have um student leaders

047maybe learn like or get trades in some way on like this program and like how we can enforce it with our friends and you know someone should ask me like hey like have you tried this like this is a great resource like maybe you can have a certain group of students who are willing to like really understand the program and talk to their friends about it when kids call on the phone and talk to a voice on the phone yes I thought there was a virtual thing yeah no I think would you text like if it was text I think that would be like probably easier and I didn't know if that was that that's an option or these are just calls so the call center is banned live with people in live individualism people

04824 7 7 days a week texting is an option and it's not something that it's getting selected there's an addition cost to that and that's a brand new service that they just brought on in the last six months so um and the reason they did that was because a lot of the students requested I think but there's more expenses involved in that but you're always talking to a lot of body you know a live version of things wrong not it's not like they're falling into words the computer or something but I don't think that's what you know well I I the question I have like I have two young adult daughters and they're like don't call me you text me you know like I don't talk to me I think that's like weird so that's

049what I was just wondering if the kids would actually feel comfortable talking to a voice I think it really just depends on the person and that's like the hard thing like I know I wouldn't mind talking to someone on the phone but there's definitely people that maybe have like social anxiety and then that would like further in recent but if you don't know the person on the other end of the line and can be easier because you know there's no judgment you don't know who they are they don't know who you really are it's like there's not going to be judgment they're an adult in the train so I feel like the kid's not going to be thinking oh this person's gonna judging me or what are my feelings they're specifically trained in that way

050so like I don't think parents wouldn't care that right but maybe that could be another step like having students telling people about it and saying like oh it's not that bad like I've done it before like you know what I mean so I do want to add just one thing but it's not a I don't want to get confused we're not spelling but it's actually the program or like that not part of this package but if a student has a relationship with the council and that student says can I text you in other words that counselor and that student once the first session takes place it's up to the student in the counselor the scheduled future future sessions uh and this goes for the coaching as well if a counselor and the student want to

051text back and forth that certainly allowed but it's not part of the program that we're providing today so that's up to the council and the student who will make that Arrangement and so we'd have to be mutual and readable and readable would that cost money for like parents then if it's outside of the program only if there was an additional you know texting data charge to the full service of that nature is this all communication sessions in texting whatever you use is through that portal and through the the app or the site as opposed to an actual phone number no no on this whatever the student is comfortable so there is an 800 number they can call on a regular rotary guy on the employee Pages they can do it on their computer there's you

052know a website on your computer where they can schedule a virtual session again the counselors are available either telephonically or do a video chat so if the child wants to have a video chat with the counselor do they most likely to get abusive in a laptop computer to do that is that as a Polish well you I mean your phones have a camera um so that works as well or if they just want to use the app on the phone that's perfectly fine when I when I call uh you know 99 of the time I get through to somebody right away or am I frequently you know on the 12th one in line or if you know when you call and you're yeah you're not busy yeah yeah no they're usually there's someone picking up

053immediately but this is it actually is not only a price system but also as a Counseling Center so they want somebody to be there right away dance on the phone it's not it's not a callback service you know but it more often than not counselors are available immediately they're gonna they're gonna speak to somebody um this is not the right term they're going to kind of trade out of the situation understand what that student's needs are because it can go down the coaching path we could do it on the counseling path and that's the only connect they'll have but they're not gonna they're not going to disconnect from that student they're going to learn the student what they want to put their the topic of course now they can always call the 24-hour crisis limit

054as a different as a difference today because whatever Services they need but future counseling sessions go are scheduled with the counselors and the students and whatever time is convenient with them and then in crisis there's open 24 hours a day a week thank you any other questions did you find out how their boards are certified are they psychologists or social workers there's I will get back to the with you on that I don't know what the it says they're counselors so they're probably the national nbcc the national board of certified councils I know they're all licensed counselors more certified um I don't know who who accredited but we'll get back yeah that's what I wondered how are they vetted like did your company vet them or there must be is there some program that creates

055the list of possible candidates for this yeah no it's not mine it's not my domain is investment hmmosa goes to the betting I mean this is what they do thank you and they've been they've been I mean I think they've been in business a long time and they've been doing a lot of government agencies and so forth so it's not your first rodeo um it is yeah yeah I mean unfortunately and it I mean the study showed that there's a lot of issues and depression before Covenant but that put a little Spotlight on it and it's just exacerbated the issues um you know when I started in the business seven years ago you can get a counseling session that you could schedule a meeting with the council in a few days maybe a couple weeks

056today if you and you schedule if I had to go see somebody privately on my own I'll probably look at it eight to ten weeks before I could get a scheduling session you know they're they're a great demand so that's why our program has become so valuable Kevin were there other options considered with this funding and this is made action so thank you for asking that because that addresses Russell's Point too about the cost um we were looking for a program such as this one that is innovative and unique something that we didn't and couldn't already offered so that's why we thought this was a great use of the arbor funds to do something Innovative and unique to um to see how successful it could be some of the other ones that just wanted or

057like other ones other other ideas there's no other programs for mental health that we compared this to or is that what you're asking this was the only program that would be open 24 7 to to all of our students versus putting this money toward a curriculum program that would only be offered during school hours yeah this would support the whole child which really isn't is in alignment with our mission of our school district we've always talked about how academics are important but we truly believe in the social and emotional well-being of our students and I think this would be putting our money where our mouth is where we believe this is really important especially now two years after all right still as we're struggling with post-candemic issues um I'm going to go over a report

058with you tonight that shows that over the last two years we've had more students absent from our schools than we had previously and that's called chronic absenteeism and we're working hard to address that now one of the reasons students are absent is because of depression and anxiety this is another way that we can support students yeah not just a good question so um you said that it would just be for the year because we're using those are funds that we have now so then and then um I'm curious about how would we know or would we know how successful the program is meaning like how many kids are accessing it and and so forth and so on and then if it is successful and we have it only for one year then what happened you

059know I know Mr Bishop will be looking for grant funding yeah uh to continue the program yeah currently there are Grant funds that we're applying for uh to get additional social worker support we see these grants continuing into the future the grants that are becoming available are for mental health support so I'm confident that a year from now there'll be other grant opportunities and Cindy as we said before I think if we look at the monthly we can request monthly reports how many students access the service each month yeah and we'll keep track of that data moving forward I think that will let us know how successful the program is right and and maybe to our students who might be willing to share their experiences anecdotally that would be really helpful also or even like

060an anonymous survey or something like just you know reporting back on their experience like is it is it good is it you know is it helping you yeah it's how long does a graduating senior go to use it for six months January through June I have a good question yes I just got it when you said the parents waiver if a student calls this number the confidentiality do they notify are they notifying the parents that they've contacted these people or is that just is like the waiver just for one and I guess the captain's plates like obviously let's say um my daughter's the mom by the way because we'll let you know congratulations we're talking about this year if she calls the number let's say my thought about calling you up let's say a student

061calls a number does the counselor have to what comparability receive the phone call from the student or is that no I mean because since been been signed then no they're not going to be talking to the parents that's part of the confidentiality okay so just the HSN number so so let's let's just say one call to call let's say a third call comes in for a certain issue and they make a determination whether the parent gets contacted or a school or if if okay to prepare has signed the consent form okay then the dialogue is going to be between student and the council the parent will be involved unless unless there is a need for the parent to be well they want that child to be able to speak openly to that possible no no

062I I I completely yeah I agree with that I mean there's some things obviously that he could say to some people something I just just wondering that it it at what point does it become a you know the scale does it become if a student continues to say you know they keep calling I mean you put the service in now they know it's there they call two three four times before time well let's say well there's something here that's bigger than just however you're going out so okay if the counselor determines that there's a deep I don't know I'm using the right terms or um but we'll say a deep-seated issue that we use a long-term counseling and they're exhausting the five or six sessions that they're allotted for that Incident That's when they're going

063to work out but they're going to the the H of those a stat is going to work with the school with your parents to say they're will identify the student they need to be more than we can provide for services and they're going to try to and by the way at that point they'll shoot if if it's allowed if the student's permits it they'll share the notice with the new counselor that they would be if they go down they would sure those are that in the counselor so that student was not starting to explore one or whatever yeah that's what I meant to say I'm just saying is it but you know to use the term loosely but you know just so it doesn't become a crutch and it's something that someone will use repeatedly

064let's say that soon for whatever reason calls five six times or an issue that seems could be a great issue could be just yeah I I really can't address it I mean the council has been trained to identify the issues I guess and if they feel like I really don't know what at one point they may say that the student isn't really using sort of properly that perhaps is another reason they have an item of it okay yeah I I just why I I guess I didn't understand what the wave and parent thing is so it is a confidentiality once you sign the waiver between that counselor this service and the student bill yeah yeah I think I think part of it like when we do if we do move forward with this like the

065rollout in the parent communication and the questions from the parents I think that's a good time to kind of figure out how all that works but I think what you're saying correctly if I'm wrong that once the parent signs the waiver the student then has the opportunity to use everyone inside and they're not reporting back to the parent or doing anything like that unless there's like some emergent situation where they need an appearance or the school should know like my daughter made that point Bell they've said it you know if they're at school and say I got to make this phone call to this thing and I guess the school would at this point once this if this is we go with this program they say they'll know and then you know the nurses off

066at their attend high school middle school they'll say okay this is you know whatever you know called whatever you're going to assign a name to is I got to make this phone call and this place so they would know ahead of time what they mean by you know and I'm not saying that I'm not trying I'm just saying it not to be a crutch every time someone said you know I mean I just and just just say that if if a parent then is informed that this was once you sign this and if they go past five calls like he said I think that we didn't even save that for when we get to that point and I just like take too much time on it but I didn't understand like how it works um

067from that point on but thank you for your coverage yeah I just had I think there's like two questions um first is it like taken into consideration about what finals maybe would look like if they're gonna kind of all the counselors would be like bombarded was there any like risk of there being a shortage of counselors from like a big like Peter you know like I mean his final speed for example is like coming around and lots of students are stressed and think they need an outlet are there enough counselors for this scenario that they're just like all at once just kind of you know right so um the answer is yes they every time we bring on a new group they they make sure they have an adequate number of counselors um they're familiar

068with the seasonal beings that they go along to be a holiday students still investing and so forth so they would staff up for that um you know they just brought on a large school system out in Nebraska and so but it was considerably larger than n it was in a thousand so they had to actually stop looking at for that immediate and that's why they generally want to ask you the head count so to make sure that they have enough Staffing on them involved that's a good question thank you I also had a question about the reporting so it's it says like counts um are given the quarterly reports and is that and apply to that the schools would be receiving a report about you know where that they're like our issue areas and could

069that be used to like then moved to the school and be like if there was like a notably like pretty like big issue like oh we see like a lot of students are reporting with you know severe like feelings of depression or signs of depression maybe then address that in school with everyone or Implement any like changes to the school or try to address that like aside from that absolutely it would be it would serve as A needs assessment for us to know what kind of programs possibly to bring in for our students absolutely Noah you're right and so um I don't have that roll our account rollout calendar in front of me but Bill can attest that we've spent several hours taking a look at what that rollout will look like so we put

070a lot of thought into that Joe hoping this program would be improved billboard questions um on how many if you can answer this how many schools of a similar age category is are using this program yeah so I think it was said middle school high school yeah like as opposed to how many college level schools are using this program like are we the guinea pig I'll ask them yeah I'll ask the question are we paying guinea pig paying full free and having to lock ourselves in for a year or something that hasn't been proven for the group that will go I don't know the number of how many schools are in the program I don't want to answer that I know you're not beginning but you're certainly not at the first program in the program

071loving School in the program but I don't know how many they have we've just so I should probably explain who political Moses and the relationship following action plus is for lack of better terms a broker or Telehealth Services that's what we do we are an independent company that works with a whole bunch of different Telehealth services around the country tell the dock you've probably heard of paladakoo the biggest so we're one of the biggest Distributors with all of that but we also do the MD live me MD I'll Advocate hmsa dial care and others so um we work with all of those companies as well as any others because we're independent like an insurance broker would be independent but we're not part of parcel days like so when a prospect your client comes to us

072and says this is our needs what we're looking for and we go out and do a canvassing on try to find the best solution for that particular need whatever that salute that challenge was that was presented to us but when we did that we identified two programs in this space that works specifically with high school or middle school students that's a challenge I mean the big School a big program with colored activities before they really don't want to work in that age bracket that would be so pressured and they're talking about maybe having to do that in the future but there's a lot more it's a lot more complicated to put it that way to do it to deal with the Adolescent age groups it is paid adults right so um there's very few companies

073that are in that space that are doing that we identify too that medical criteria that can they gave to us one was hmsa the other one was the company called dialed here in the order the prior to be more expensive so but I don't know to answer your question I don't know how many schools are on board with hmsa at this time and then the second part of my question is if we said go and we voted since this is a telephone number call-in thing can we just get the number tomorrow and people can start calling and the reason I ask that is if we were looking for a little bit more of a detailed plan on the rollout or maybe some of the information that couldn't be answered tonight about you know how many

074other schools are doing this age bracket or what board is certified that could we wait until the next meeting vote and not impact greatly the rollout time frame since we don't have a rollout plan right now well I have a rollout plan okay we have we do have a roll-off plan um if you waited to vote on January 10th then truly the rollout would need to wait until afterwards yeah I'm just saying the obvious right yeah you vote on January 10th if you approve the rollout would start later than the first week of January which if you approved it tonight the rollout would begin the first week of January we begin communicating this before the holiday break it then send out January dates for the parent meeting I appreciate having two students here who actually

075seem like they think this is a great idea so I mean that's that is nice I know I definitely use it like if it was a program I don't know about you guys Russell did you have another question all right um no I mean I'm just gonna keep hammering down on the same thing like this one-year commitment seems like crazy the game we just say guys let us try it for six months it's still twenty thousand dollars if in six months we we have 10 students using the program or none or 300 then I think we get a better idea but we're not just giving away twenty thousand I just feel Guinea very guinea pig I think it's great I think it's very important topic I just it feels very much like a program for

076employees and older kids that were that were I think we're trying to get down to younger folks and that's great but just you know I want to make sure that is really kills them and and so I think the trial period is awesome whether it's a year or six months bill is it a possibility to do six months I don't believe it is in our discussion well I'll ask your questions but the contracts um you know I've been doing this business for a long time I don't know that I've ever worked with a operation that didn't have that's pretty well it's common in our in this industry um just if as if you were working in Blue Cross Blue Shield and a signal or like Aetna your scientific when you do your medical renewal there's

077like you know one year every goal right that you're signing a contractors and we're agree into these terms and so forth there's a lot of expense involved with these companies with a lot of startup expense on their repellent um slow curve as far as thousands of the success of the program goes how well we roll it out you know I so I'm not trying to be defended contract so I'm trying to have you understand that I'm working clients over the years for days before they've been playing and say yeah we're going to do everything but we're going to sing from the highest knowledge and raise a little program and then they don't or who's that fault for the success or failure in the program under a contractual world we all know when we can make

078a great contract right and my company called Dr plus would never try to enforce a 12-month contract for anybody they have 11 working for both parties so if in six months or seven months it was a disaster and nobody was using it and we said we got to get out of it but we you know without any legal but if you wouldn't want anybody to be unhappy that's our reputation and so that wouldn't that wouldn't benefit anybody um you know in our company has a 16-day cancellation we've never enforced that because there's somebody who's on that unhappy we don't want them right as a client so that's just good practical business you know practically business tactics that you're building um but on the other hand it is a volatile contract which means you're going to

079you're putting people down and they're going to do their best to make the program successful over the next 12 months and I don't know that really anything sort of qualifies would be a feared best exactly we have to think about the seasonality that's going on you know one of the and I'm just talking off anecdotally one of the biggest areas of my times of the year is coming on us right now it's really trying to do that if you don't have the program in place now because statistically there's going to be a lot of stress over the holidays right this is when the program can be used so we're going to go through a period of time kind of like the closing to work on a general telemedicine you know it's coming and going so

080who knows what's going to happen in the spring would have been event worldwide events could take place to get escalate and ask in the stress and names but then we come into the solar lights and so forth so I think it's fair to have a 12-month contract and I think that's the true test for the program um you have to think of it this way also but now I'm trying to be really understandable as well but you're making a five dollar per month times twelve you're gonna get a 60 investment eight or spoon that's it sixty dollars per year for your students to provide all of the services that are being available to them so it may seem like a lot of money when you make 5 times 12 times 722 but if you break

081it down as a parent you can just think about what was sixty dollars be able to provide to a student for a year I mean that's that's not a lot Kevin what would These funds be spent on if they weren't spent on this so they were slated to be used toward um social and emotional support for our students that's the category okay so if they weren't spent on this they would just until we determine how else to use the funding okay in that category okay okay we'll we'll come back to this later on the agenda under um since we do have a motion does anyone have any questions at this time Bill thank you so much for being here tonight we appreciate it I appreciate everybody hope you have a nice holiday thank you and

082I'm always available for the future meetings you know thank you and thank you to everybody for your great questions a couple of other um items I wanted to let you know about One um we're just so pleased with our latest um visit by the New England Association of schools and colleges so last week was the the serial visit for the ass team they came to Canton High School as part of the niac accreditation process so I believe it was 12 years ago they initially came because of the pandemic but decennial visit was put off for two years a team visited five years ago and then two years ago um to look at what the recommendations were for our high school and how much progress we've made toward those recommendations so a team visited our high

083school last Monday Tuesday Wednesday several of you met with team members on Tuesday morning thank you so much for taking the time to do that normally when a team visits we don't get immediate feedback um but we did receive immediate feedback um John and I in particular when we met with them as district-wide administrators um they were so pleased with the progress that they've seen at our high school so um the message I'm like YouTube have is thank you for your support um to make our our high school one of the strongest in the states uh and those were their words and it's nice to get that affirmation that for a small high school we offer such a comprehensive curriculum the committee was impressed with the rigor of our curriculum members of the committee visited

084every classroom at least once many classrooms they visited a second time they were able to talk with students I don't know if the committee members talk with yes talk with you what kinds of questions did they ask you um I think most commonly what they would do is they would come in and just check in with students whether you know we currently working on and then after explaining it they would say you know what is the objective of doing this what is this like working towards and what's next on goal or final product for work right now yeah I I gave them a tour on Tuesday morning of the school and then I did the student panels the next day and they asked like what's our favorite thing about Canton and then um what areas

085do we need to work on and they seemed really happy so I was getting fun the team was very impressed with the quality of work that you were doing that all the students were doing the quality of teaching that was taking place and also very impressed with the camp projects and also with um uh PLT time that uh Dr Kidwell and Mr Pippa worked hard to create professional learning times professional learning teams to work during professional learning times in small groups multi-disciplinary so and our teacher would work with the social studies teacher who would work with an English teacher who would work with a World Language teacher to get different perspectives surrounding different topics it's Unique not every High School allows those professional opportunities so there's so much to be proud of and the committee

086will write up a report which I'll be happy to share with you in a few months but they they wanted me to pass along to the board um congratulations to all of you and you know especially to our staff and our administrators and our students who are such hard workers really making our high school the flagship over the community which it should be and as I look on as I look back over my 16 years here to see the amount of growth that have been made in our high school I'm very proud of so I wanted you to know that and I wanted you to know the visit went very successful and thank you to those of you who took time to speak to the committee members and then thirdly I wanted to let you

087know that we're planning um for um the first um Community gathering this year you'll remember we had four Community Gatherings last year focused on Equity we have a gathering plan for January 18th you'll recall well most of you will if you were on the board when we adopted our Equity policy as far as the implementation of our Equity policy um is concerned one of the areas that we said we would focus on is having Community focus groups on the topic of diversity equity and inclusion so this will be the first in a series of focus groups again January 18th we're going to send out information to the entire Community this week we're going to ask folks to register ahead of time so that we know how many parents will be joining us how many students

088how many teachers how many administrators because each of those stakeholder groups will be a different focus group with different questions asked of them we have a tree that Collier Dickinson and Shannon Boulder and Olivia Hussey from grec who will be helping to facilitate those groups on January 18th so it's going to be at 7 p.m from 7 to 8 30. so please save that date so we're moving forward in there that area and I'm really excited I'm hoping to get great information uh that we can use for future Community conversations [Music] yeah it's gonna be virtual so we can have as many people join us as possible The Guiding Coalition the group of approximately 45 community members um they're each going to get a personal invitation to um to attend because I really value the

089expertise of that group and want to build upon what they began working on with us in our Equity policy and our Equity statement that's part of my official report and the last thing that I'll talk to you tonight is listed on our agenda under presentation I want to give you an overview of our Statewide accountability index and where we are um and how we are doing as far as that code but before I move into that does anyone have any questions for me about anything within our district okay in your packet um you have a presentation I'm going to go over with you tonight um I'm calling it an accountability index report and this is out off the press which is why you didn't get this with your agenda if they just released um the

090latest accountability index report on last Friday thank you very much our students have a good night keep up the great work we'll try thank you Mr Mason thank you so according to the state statute um superintendents are to present to their Board of Education this information on an annual basis I always like to try to do it in November or December um because these were just released I wanted to give you an overview tonight and again we won't get deep into the weeds tonight um this is meant to be an overview for you each of the principles reported on their specific school scores um so we're not going to get into specific scores but I'm presenting to you a 30 000 foot overview if that makes sense of the district and where we are at

091this time so the first page talks about what the accountability index is it's a broad set of 12 indicators that help tell the story of how well a school or school district is preparing students for success in college careers in life it moves Beyond just s back scores and graduation rates and the state tries to provide a holistic they call it a multi-factor perspective of district and school performance incorporating student growth over time that's the key student growth over time there are 12 indicators that we are measured on and I listed them for you here on the next page you can look at this when you um when you have some time to do so this next page accountability index talks about the percentage of each indicator that makes up the total score for our

092elementary schools middle schools in high school so it's color-coded so for example at the elementary level the green indicates academic achievement the red area 42 percent is weighted on the academic growth of students looking at the same core cohorts of students the same group in their growth over time so I thought you would be interested in this we won't spend a lot of time on this right now but I hope that's helpful and Page four this shows our accountability index over time and what you're going to see tonight is a dip in performance um over the last two years so we did not get performance grade zones for the year 1920 or 2021 because of the pandemic you'll see the last score we have is from the year 2018-2019. so there's a two-year Gap and

093what you're going to see as we look at these graphs are dips in performance as most school districts are seeing and I don't want to say the pandemic was an excuse because it's an ad but we have to understand what the factors are more students were absent students were working remotely from home in math classes students were not allowed to work in groups or to use math manipulatives in groups as our curriculum was designed to teach so there were mitigating factors that I think we just need to acknowledge when you look at our district accountability index over time the Target that the state is looking for is 85 in 2018-19 we were at 83.4 we've dipped to 75.3 so we are working to get back up to that mark the next page looks at overall

094English language arts performance and we're looking at all students which is the top line and then the bottom line are students with high needs so it's very important that we want to see an increase in performance with all of our students and also students with high needs and students with high needs is defined as um students who receive career reduced lunch and students who have individualized educational plans so we see special ed support or have 504 plans and that's an area that we're going to focus on um throughout our new director of pupa Personnel Services Barbara McLean this is something that she has started looking at and addressing right away but you can see we did from 75.5 to 70.7 and students with high needs we did 60. 358.3 overall in the district on page

095six it shows growth the state has a formula where we measure student growth over time now the good news is that here students with high needs are improving going from 44.8 percent up to 49.3 percent but we're seeing a dip with all students so that Trend we do not want to see continued so what are we doing about that we've already put plans in place based upon our reading curriculum uh the curriculum committee tomorrow we'll hear about decodable books that we're purchasing for our students and the training in the Wilson program and the foundations program we're already taking steps to address these issues and also with the hiring of our literacy coach at the high school which NES commended us for um that's also um in an area where I thank you for providing that

096support because that will help improve student achievement at the high school level as well and then math we already talked about um did their presentations uh you can see overall that we dipped there too from 72.5 to 66 points students with high needs from 60 56.1 to um 53. so it as we say to our staff it's time to re-center and get this trajectory to move upward moving forward on page eight again we see that dip in math gross and we have we've identified several reasons for that and you know that we hired an additional math instructional coach for the elementary school so each Elementary School now has a math coach and that certainly is helping as well we've also provided additional professional development this year at the middle school they're using a program called

097Bridges and we weren't able to provide that professional development training in 2020 when the program was first implemented because of the pandemic so now we're providing that training and we know our students will improve their math performance what's really important is on the next page page nine so this shows the number of students who are chronically absent and chronically absent is defined as being absent for nine or more days so when you when a student hits that tenth day of being absent it doesn't matter the reason they are deemed to be chronically absent and we have to report that to the states so you can see how we've spiked out with the number of students who are chronically absent over the last two years now students who are quarantined because of covid they're reported as

098chronically absent so we can disaggregate that data but the state doesn't do that we just report the number of students absent 10 days or more you can tell this is an issue so we have plans in place this year where um staff each school has an attendance committee and staff meet to look at student attendance before it hits that day 10 um that they 10 10 level so that we can intervene and hopefully prevent students from being absent that much now if they're sick we can't prevent that but we couldn't prevent it for other reasons mental health emotional health and so forth I didn't want to forget um do we have have we been able to look at the data and break out whose absent for being sick who's absent for mental health issues absolutely

099we have we have internally okay but the state they don't care about I mean but for us like how does that reflect in this in this uh spike is it illness is it the threat I mean yeah it's both much of it was illness or quarantine due to covet and then the other part is anxiety overcoming the school because of Governor generally said yeah I can't be as specifically they had no idea for other reasons but certainly the schools you know that's one beauty of Canton the schools know we know every student and that's why they're absent good um we're working on hiring um the student engagement and family coordinator we're having second round interviews coming up shortly this is the position you approved in the fall we have not found the right person yet

100but we're getting close and you'll recall that one of the important job responsibilities is student and family engagement as it relates to attendance so we really are trying to work hard on this and again we're not the only School District that is struggling with this however um this is a major factor that we don't want to see again that's Mr Campbell's replacement that's right the choice liaison is part of that acquisition right there last year if you were home five or six or seven days Kobe quarantined there was no online option you're right here before that's correct you were home vendors for quarantine you know the option of going online yes that's correct John and I agree with that that doesn't make sense but I did want to explain the data so when you see

101this you'll understand what this means moving on to page 10 um some good news College and Career readiness um the state would like us to be at 75 percent we're hovering around that 75 percent this is the percentage of students in grades 11 and 12. who are participating and at least um at least one of the following during high school three courses and advanced placement two CTE courses in one of 17 career clusters so we continue to do well in this area the state sent out a message today saying that they did not calculate this correctly in most districts most districts would see an improvement because they didn't calculate one factor so I'll get back to you with the recalculated number we made above 75 percent here I wanted to show you the advanced placement

102score report which is the next page what I'm very proud of over the last several years is that um we've had more students enroll in advanced placement courses and we've offered more advanced placement courses so you can see by the bar graph that in 2022 86 percent of our students received scores of three or more with five being the highest score and you can see on the chart from 2018 through 2022 the total number of advanced placing students the number of exams that are being taken the number of students with scores uh above three and the percentage of students with scores above three so our students taking advanced placement courses continue to do very well they do not have to take the exam is there a choice whether to take the exam we've worked to

103eliminate any obstacles from students enrolling in advanced placement courses because we want high expectations for all students and we have a variety of students enrolled in advanced placement courses that years ago wouldn't have been in an advanced placement course comparative government for example an AP environmental science so we're providing more opportunities for all of our students that's something we want to continue to do and we're proud of and Kevin that excuse me that that 2021 dip is no surprise I mean post covet right yeah that's how we see it yes moving on to slide 12. um this is the uh the percentage of students who attend college after graduating Canton High School so our students continue most of our students do attend two or four-year colleges or universities other students go into the military but

104as of um 2022 86.6 percent of our high schoolers depended on post-secondary school yeah on page 13 this gives you an overview of physical fitness results in the number of students participating so we've trended upward for the most part as far as our students performing well on physical fitness tests and Jen please feel free to jump in and continues if you'd like any other additional information on page 14 shows you the percentage of students in grades now includes well participating in at least one art class and this is all about access to the Arts so this is participating in at least one dance theater music or Visual Arts course in the school year the state says that we should have more than 60 percent of our students participating and we know how important the Arts

105are so we want to continue to encourage students to take both our classes foreign the next several Pages include information that you've already seen in the school reports related to the smarter balance assessment um but I I would like to highlight page 19. yeah because I want you to know where we rank in comparison to our dirt and um the Farmington Valley so when you look at English language arts the average durg score and endured just to remind you it's demographic reference group um it's it's the groups are the school districts are grouped according according to socioeconomic status right so uh durg a towns are along uh Fairfield County for the most part Dirk D towns are towns like Farmington Simsbury Avon we're surrounded by dirt B while Canton is a durg C-Town a dirt

106sea Community but the average durg score for dirt C is 62.7 we our average score was 64.2 a little bit higher than the average dirt the average area score for the Farmington Valley was 65.3 remembering their dirt B schools and the state's always uh alerting or cautioning us don't compare yourselves to schools outside of your dirt but of course we do because we have high expectations for our school community the state of Connecticut averages 49.1 so overall last year we were fourth out of the eight area districts and we were in the top third of our 15 third districts and that's in the area of English language arts if you turn the page 23 you will see the same statistics for Mac overall in the school districts students math achievement drop it's wrapped across the

107board so whenever student achievement grabs across the board one has to wonder is it the curriculum in each of the school districts or is it the test so it's something excuse me that we're questioning but the average drg or dark score is 54.8 the average area score is 56 and we were at 56.4 just like English language arts we're fourth out of the eight area districts and we're fifth out of the 15th District so we remain in the top third we know that we can't just rely on one test score the S back that's why we have other assessments that you've heard of the Stars that's what we've heard a lot about over the last few weeks and those are the assessments that we put a lot of weight on to determine how our students

108are doing on a daily basis right this is just meant to give you a broad overview as to where we are at this current time and so a year from now this I mean this will be your Baseline data so a year from now you can look to see that these percentages will go up I think the one thing to to be able to add to this it's it's definitely not where we want to be um but where I was pleased with it uh where where I was pleased was with our process and um I hope that as you see this and you think back to the presentations by the principles the the time on task and the time and focus on the the problems of practice that we are seeing within our district those

109are things that we are actively engaged in and it was confirmed for us in this report to be able to see yes these were issues for us to be able to work with and we are continuing to be able to we are doing that work actively right now so it's not a situation where we're looking to be able to try and catch up on it already we've already been doing it for the past several months to be able to really try and move this ball down the field as it were any questions about anything you're seeing here just a quick observation point if I'm reading it wrong the common wisdom was that the pandemic was the hardest on the youngsters with special needs based on what I see here that's not the case in Canada

110that the national special needs had a relatively small decline the AP students is better and I guess you'd have to conclude that the the rest of the students the the front of the of the client whatever I call it yeah that accurate it's accurate I mean I we know students don't learn as well online as they do in the classroom in person with the teacher right in front of them right but the pleasantly surprises to the relative success of this young just with special needs yeah absolutely relative less decline absolutely you know that's a that's a good that is a good way of putting it and it does confirm um what we would call some of our sometimes we have our lingo in education but our Cosby kids our kids who could move up or

111our kids who might slide down and based on the number of different factors for them right last year whether it be attendance or it be an instructional model whatever it is there there was some slide what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to grow those students the continued time to be able to focus on the data that we see for our ongoing progress monitoring our curriculum work to be able to support the needs of our students we're putting big bets on that making a huge difference for our kids going into going into the spring and being the right type of response for them at this and we measure ourselves by so much more than a test for including our arts program um and today we did get a

112nice [Music] um certificate of accomplishment from state senator Chris Murphy on our music program so I'll just pass that around um so the state of our school district is strong and improving I'm happy to say and um you know this is important for you to have as Baseline data as we reset ourselves and we continue to move forward are there any other questions on that at all and we're going to move over to um assistant superintendent Bishop with his um information and research all right thank you very much I appreciate it uh just a few things to be able to share with you um briefly tonight for some updates and then a quick update on our program of studies uh website it finally it finally happened uh so we're really thrilled about that I really

113want to be able to thank my assistant when young um Claudia for all of her work uh Robin nardini Kira for her support is our new Communications coordinator as well and all of our uh office staff at our schools too for all of their support we think it looks beautiful we think it really is reflective of who we are in Canton and we know we can get better with this so thank you to those of you who've shared us uh shared some information with us we've also Kira thank you so much actually put in a tell us how we're doing button in the bottom to be able to give feedback to us directly are you going to show that right now you are the best show tell us what tell us what you think and

114it will completely jump right to a Google form for us to be able to give us a sense of what might we need to be able to add what might we need to be able to adjust and our goal for this is to really be able to make sure that we've got um uh certainties of expected communication for our our families and our constituency making sure that we're really clear and that folks know way to be able to go on our website to be able to get the homes of information there might need to be able to be but again a story well pulled from us this is one of our major tools to be able to work on with that so I know this was a major goal for um the district and the

115board to be able to work on together and I think we'll all give ourselves a quiet applaud in our heads on this right now because this is a great thing to be able to know about um in the the vein of continuing to be able to move a ball down the field with uh with some work here last year you'll recall that we had conversation around Capital improvement work and that specifically revolving around um uh our safety uh infrastructure with our cameras um I want to let you know that our security RFP so that's request for proposal has gone out and we'll be working with vendors coming through in the next couple weeks to be able to do walk-throughs and then have uh initial proposals in by mid-January and we hope to be able to

116have a selection made prior to the end of the month to be able to work on moving forward to getting some great new features in place for us to be able to support Safety and Security for our students and our staff and then I also wanted to share with you as well um you know the community community workshops we have a community conversation but Community Workshops the opportunity for us to be able to work together uh in support of our students we as a school are going to do everything that we possibly can to support students and we always need the help of our community to be able to do that so part of what our our job is is to be able to engage our community in conversation around important issues for us we

117have one um recently uh regarding bullying and online Behavior with that um and um Justine Ginsburg from the Farmington Valley Health District did a wonderful job we've got two more settings that we're going to uh to put in place two more offerings uh one will be social media in the minds of our children that'll be February uh February 1st at 7 pm and we're going to have a little bit more of uh um uh an enclosed setting to be able to really encourage conversation for it but we'll also offer it via um via Zoom for folks as well and then we'll also have one on March 8th to be able to follow up in our series talking about the anxious child and I think that this is a germane topic uh surrounding some of the

118conversations that we had tonight and just overall for the state of our students so that gives you a sense of some of the things that we're working on from um uh an operational and surrounding the web interval any question on those three elements there excited to be able to see things continue to move for us at this is great uh and then the additional piece then is the uh program of study uh which you'll which you'll find right here this is our first review of our program studies um wanted to be able to highlight a few things for you here in our in our program uh the first one we had a conversation with this around our um our curriculum committee but the first was to be able to adjust some of our math uh

119our math program based on the needs that we have seen over the past several years and the opportunities that we see for our students moving forward so so we kind of come that thing at this through a theory here if we can improve our intake of students into the high school and provide them with the supports that they need to be successful then they can achieve that success and find greater opportunity as they move forward in their in their High School career [Music] um I can direct you to that page if you want to be able to see it it is on page 20. um and with this in in the past we had had um algebra 1A in our freshman year then we had um or algebra or geometry uh College prepper honors multiple

120pathways then in grade 10 we had geometry and data analysis geometry College Prep geometry College Prep uh geometry data analysis or algebra 2. and then it moved on and on and on so it but what I want to really be able to to bring attention to you for with this was we had essentially for students who were struggling with mathematics they would have the opportunity for algebra 1A the first half of algebra in their freshman year and second year they would have the opportunity for geometry and data analysis their junior year they would be able to take um uh algebra 1B the second half of algebra and then they could take Algebra 2 or probability of Statistics or some stem elective what we saw was that those students then because you you um you take

121your sat and your junior year those kids were missing out on Algebra 2 content in their junior year they were they were uh engaging in that in their senior year so they were missing out on some of that content and that algebra 1a1b combination some schools were looking at it and saying well that's just algebra we're only going to give you one credit for that what we saw the opportunity for us was to be able to revamp this then and actually if you scroll down a little bit for us there what we're going to do instead of having algebra 1A and 1B we would look to be able to offer conceptual Algebra 1 would be like the uh algebra 1A and 1B however what it would it would condense the work into one year with

122a concurrent lab what this essentially does for our students is it gives them one and a half credits one and a half stem credits which is really important in the in the credit game that is high school right now with with Connecticut's uh requirements for high school credits it would give kids an additional credit for that structured support in mathematics given the data system that we have to be able to review student performance and then provide Direct in um uh direct support into that we feel that we can do an even better job through a model such as that which then allows our students to then move on to geometry and data analysis in 10th Grade which they would have anyways but have the opportunity to then get into their Algebra 2 or conceptual algebra

123too with financial applications by their junior year this gives them an opportunity to be able to engage with additional rigorous content in preparation for their uh for their sat and then finally what it does is it opens up the top Branch for those students instead of taking another other one of those math courses they can then have an opportunity to work through a range of electives that might be at math electives that might be a CTE elective that might be a science elective something that can work within our stem credits for that that is the major change that we're looking to our program for this year and we feel like it is very responsive to the needs of our students it continues to be able to provide opportunities for our high achieving students as well

124to be able to have additional opportunities by being able to move through in this method it allows us to be able to keep building more of those senior level electives that we can work toward data science for students or everyday statistical analysis a lot of opportunities that kids could be able to work in and engage in at a deeper level are there any questions for me on that all right so this is a first read so you'll have a chance to look at this ask any questions that you have and then vote on this on January 10th and I'll be happy to be able to revisit this with our curriculum committee tomorrow morning if necessary as well thank you John um saying no more questions in regards to that we're going to move to the

125recommended action action which is the consent agenda and the approval of the minutes for November 21st 2022. and the motion is to move at the board the Canton Board of Education improved the consent agenda well first Joe Erica second all those in favor give me the evidence thank you and then we're moving on to the approval of the 2023 Board of Education meeting dates and on the second page you can just notice the dates in red are all budget related so I know that the companies talk about there being a lot of meetings in February but those are the budgets related meetings so motion is to move that the board the Board of Education approved the Board of Education minute meeting dates for 2023 excuse me in the first Kim Russ is second all those

126in favor then we have a motion for the first reading of programming studies we moved up the Canton Board of Education approved 2023-2024 program on studies as a first reading so the first job second right all those in favor yes and approval of the mental health support proposal um so we move that the Canton Board of Education moved to accept the proposal by Health Management Systems of Americans to provide mental health support to Canton middle and high schoolers beginning on January 1st 2023 it will have occurred thank you delete all the favor do that again um I think so you raise your hands again please those in favor um guys we just don't even know what certified these people they could be certified we're supposed to begin to get the information and we haven't finalized

127about this is only a first this would be cool I'm all like I said before I'm all for it I think it's great I feel like it kind of a profit upon us a little quick tonight without a chance to ask yeah I I think conceptually it's great I mean I think we also buy yoga classes for everybody for 40 000 now we're getting better than this but I mean yeah we got at least know how these people are certified okay they're licensed I think we have a duty as board members to know who we're sending our kids to go talk to the guy couldn't even tell me what board they're certified with if you thought saying board certified or something sufficient and I thought it seems like this is an easy sell for college

128kids right and in a really good thing for college I guess yeah and so at the very end the guinea pig issue but Kevin you know at the very least they're licensed clinical social workers they are certified counselors I mean I know what mental there's there's various different degrees I understand what you're saying like I couldn't answer but I I think there's so many different yeah conservations they have I also know there's a huge need for mental health right now and there is absolutely and I don't know how this will play out I just know that our kids need more resources that they're able to go to aside from like I I understand there's also a huge shortage of like Pediatrics like psychiatrists yes I can get them in yeah see them yeah yeah well

129I I also wonder are there other jobs that tell me in one sec but um I also wonder if if we're talking about really getting sort of outside the box with some of these issues and I'm sort of sure taking that kind of money you could do for proactive things like whether it's meditation or whether it's you know yoga or any kind of practices that can help these kids with mindfulness or I mean there's I I would love it if there's something other than just push a button on your phone when the phone was probably half a problem anyway you know I don't it's it's very certainly I think we should be this is a great program I want to talk about how great it could be that's just my perspective on it Tim and

130I gather you have studied this journey into the summer of the summer right and you feel this is the best way absolutely absolutely absolite I even found any other program that's 24 7 for our students yoga mindfulness emotional intelligence we are working to integrate that into our classroom as it is and we've seen great progress that's not going to take money that's not going to take money this this is where if we value our students they want to give them opportunities to get support outside of a school day this is this is the program that I found to be the best are there guarantees there aren't but how will we know how do we know that it will be successful until we try it we wouldn't know if if he said if like let's say

131three months or six months nobody's using it then you could say we want our money absolutely yeah can we get some information on this um some data sooner than maybe they should work maybe that would month or something didn't you say that but meaning we'll be can Kevin get that to share with the book oh I apprecially I can share that with you monthly okay I'm in the same Reserve interesting that you've done the research betting this that the counselors or School psychologists our social worker everybody's weighed in on this and that there are no other options in that because of my loading yes was because the students are expressing the concern and interest in that unfortunately you know this one there isn't anything available through our school system after hours so I guess that's

132where I feel that there's the need in this provides after hours you know Ryan that's what I was thinking yeah but I understand I agree honestly it's soon and we didn't have any apply information and we're having to vote I only read tonight I want to be in addition to pair walks up to me and says who is my kid talking to yeah yeah I don't know they said well you you voted for it okay I mean I just think if something is if anybody can help me and I I understand your point solution there are lots of lots of services but I'd like to say you know when your child uses this application they'll be connected with a um it's fantastic I just think we have an obligation to the town to tell folks

133here's who were you know it's different you said the counselors come from all over and so it's different state by state yeah they have a different but they're all licensed counselors because we did say that but each state has a different company they were board certified and so I said well what board which I think is a very fair question and that that's all the information that we got yeah certainly I can get that too and I would just share Randy right I was looking online um it does share that their staff's average experience exceeds 17 years in clinical and account services but to your point of trying to be able to understand exactly where it comes from if we've got a problem with absence or data that says absence is up because kids get

134stressed or they don't anxiety and they don't want to come to school it might be you know fixed by calling up somebody at 1am because somebody's texting about nonsense I remember a kid telling me Oh I read all these texts last night and I didn't know what to do about it you know you can feel bad for them but this way they could maybe call someone and kind of talk down the ledge of you know it doesn't matter or it does or I understand how you feel or something like that you know I don't know there's a lot going on so I say support the kids with this kind of and see how it goes I mean I wonder about that too like if I if I was a parent my child was in the

135school and you know part of me would want to know like what's what are what are their issues especially if it was like a lot of issues or something but it might just be social you know like Sally and saying mean things to me again she's my best friend how do I deal with this foreign yes because I trust that you've been in Kevin and Ryan you might make very good question there very good point I assume they're licensed certified clinicians how maturity I don't take it back you're asking great questions [Music] thank you from the man any other comments you know we call these wrap around services you know the supporting students not only during the school day but outside of the school day it's so important so I appreciate your support on the

136health and we will measure the progress as we go along and in the contract that if students are taking advantage of it yeah will there be can we have language in the contract because if the contract says 12 months and they say no you can get out of it I'll work on that yeah thank you I have the contract right on my desk so I'll take a look that way thanks again I appreciate your questions I understand where they're coming from and I understand concerns you have um but if we waited until the perfect time I don't think there would be a perfect time and this is what we intended the money to be used for and midterms come are coming up mid-January so Nathan we would have it in place for that we begin

137communicating by the holiday break yeah and then set the parent meeting for January yeah we are just very clear Boardman requirements though um do any board members have any other comments move to Executive session for a personal matter inviting John and me okay