BOE Meeting 9 13 22

001okay we're gonna kick off the Board of Education meeting for the 13th and and welcome everybody I am so thrilled and so sorry that we brought you out on a rainy night like this and everybody's dodging the uh the raindrops but thank you for telling me we're excited to meet you we're actually gonna break uh once the principals make their introductions we're actually going to break at that point so we get a chance to mingle those board members and get a chance to meet you I had a chance to walk around and say hello but um you know I'm the oldest guy in the room so I'm going to forget names so forgive me but uh we'll catch up on all that so but I wanted to welcome everybody I want to welcome our PTO

002uh presidents uh tonight that are here and Julie and Andrea are here and I think uh online is Who's online we have James online is Jamie up there yep hi Jamie thanks for coming this is kind of a new thing for the board we want to be better connected with our PTO presidents to be as supportive and helpful as possible you don't have to come to every meeting but we're going to leave a spot open for you once a month in our agenda so if you want to report on anything or you need our help or you want to give us some advice you can do that okay so we've cut that out for you guys also tonight uh I believe uh Dean and Steve Mandela Martel are going to be here we're going to

003discuss the uh the buses a little bit and we're we have some uh an excellent announcement on cameras and things that nature and then Chief RC Arrow will also be here to kind of talk about some of the issues that were we've been faced with so far with our buses so it's going to be uh it's going to be a pretty uh action-packed night but we're so thrilled that everybody's here and part of it you'll see that our agenda has changed somewhat we've moved those for they're online in those in the audience we've moved public forum later and me um and the reason why I did that was I wanted you to be able to hear some things that are going on with the board so the superintendent who is on his way here uh

004he'll be giving his report I'll give my report so if you have something that you want to comment on after you hear from the student report um you cannot you can comment on that so um just to make that that'll be a standing going forward with public forum being a little bit later in the meeting so people can catch up a little bit on what's happening with the Board of Education so having said all that we're going to go to our Pledge of Allegiance and Simone if you would be happy you know to meet us we'd appreciate it thank you you're the flag of the United States thank you okay so this leads us to the introduction of uh of our staff and I'm going to go in reverse order I'm going to ask Mr

005capippo and uh if you would like to introduce everybody from the uh from the high school side of things so okay I think I think so I think you look pretty good there so I'd like to open evening by uh dividing James welcome James James is our digital technology teacher and as many of you know here we have split staff funeral high school and James has beautifully filled that role and done it quite well so he splits his day between the Middle School and High School um James Bay Choice from Farmington where he's released a 15 year veteran teacher um in both Wallingford and Farmington graduate of Uconn where he earned a VA in the College of Environmental Studies he completed several courses in those areas at Binghamton and then later learn a masters of

006education technology at University of Hartford she comes in quite prepared um carrying several certifications here to support our students and as I said he he started Wallingford middle schoolers a science teacher and then uh continued on at Irving Robbins as a science teacher as well until recently around about six or seven years ago it became um the teacher of engineering and technology and education so we were very thrilled that he was interested to come over um and join us here at the high school and the middle school so at the middle school he teaches pre-engineering courses and he's very well equipped at the high school teach several courses which is really hard to find so this semester receives some Bigger Productions computer science principles to be teaching computer programming electronics mechatronics and computer programming as

007well and we also have other talents people will share with us um you know via ad or um you know Technology robotics after school so he's well invested early he's already coming with some new ideas thinking about some grants so I'm so happy to have James here we'd like to welcome him to Kent Public Schools you're in welcome it's a nice deal thank you speaking of Steel to the Board of Education so Eric comes to us also compartments in Farmington High School um they hate us over there so I really as with James I really do appreciate um Eric Wilbur as a veteran and taking a chance on Canton and making uh you know a later career move um to join us I came to schools it was a choice on his part to join

008us here in his hometown which I think played a big role in it James has two um daughters in the public school system here um and um you know we're happy to see them in school every day as well um so James comes I'm sorry air comes to us again from Farmington where he was there for um since 2006 it appears to that he had teaching experience in New York and Massachusetts he teaches physics at the high school and um you know he had his education was at Cornell University um where he hope he sees his VA and then a secondary math and science instruction you know earlier in his life and become social symbolical certifications as well so that's hard to find um this year he's teaching primarily AP Physics even few electives astronomy

009and um you know we're just so lucky that he's willing to come over I was very impressed and leaving and seeing Eric all summer long um most teachers stay away but he really acclimate himself to the school to his surroundings to his workspace he's really created a wonderful workspace for students pulling out as martial Jordan's impulse everything that was sort of blocked away so students can be you know interacting with that um and again I think commitment is already evident um you know with his hours and hours of time spent the summer making sure he was preparing the ready to move students so we're thrilled to have air I'll join us here at Camp public schools and I think we've been locked out with the physical situation [Music] I'd like to also take a moment

010to take the board here um we in our budget last year asked for a literacy coach and it was something we had asked more and talked about for some years and just really couldn't quite get to the to the end goal of the budget you guys really supported that and um as a result we're able to hire our experts that Dr Phil will talk about and she's already making a huge impact on our school thank you Dr Tidwell so thank you there's a little bit of thunderstorms um so we are very excited to welcome Gigi as our new brand new position as literacy coach new role for her a new position for us it's been a really nice partnership already in the last couple of weeks um so officially this is Christina di Giuseppe but

011it was by Gigi that's why you'll hear that um so Gigi has graduated from UConn with several degrees in the certification so a degree in English when she was an English teacher for several years she's also got a master's in curriculum obstruction her remedial reading certification finishing up another six years to have her reading consultant certification so definitely a student for life um she comes with most recently from Windsor Locks High School where she was an English teacher from 2016 and is no stranger to designing and leading teachers in professional development she actually presented as we asked annual conference on Fifth Grade division of graduates and advisory components so she's definitely got a lot of different pieces that we're going to tap it into and happy to use um when she's not being a student

012and designing professional development and trying to figure out what her new literacy coach role is she loves photography and theater and she's definitely already making herself at home at VHS so we are excited to do what uh what she'll bring welcome that's it on the high school side Mr Moore how are you sir we're doing well how are you okay thank you good evening everybody um thank you for having me here tonight and to introduce our new staff um I have one person joining online in abstention so I apologize for that phone so passion for what they do which at the middle school level you are passionate um can you hear me sir thank you all right this is another one of our shared staff members and so Dan and Mr robita will be teaching

013music technology at both the middle and high school level Mr Rivera has a bachelor's degree in jazz trumpet performance from Western Connecticut state and a mask um when I was speaking about genuine passion his love performance for arranging music and then people tell them is that in Denver he was a member of the uh the halftime brass band that performed at the Denver Broncos games so we're very fortunate to have Mr Bean and his talents and passion teaching music here in Canton Public Schools Mr Ravine welcome to you foreign will be teaching special education at Canton middle school she has trained she has her bachelor's degree from St Joseph College and a master's in instructional technology from Western Connecticut state um so that may be a familiar name Megan Rue she is a king High

014graduate and um and her first teaching job was actually at Canton Middle School where she was a building substitute and then a language arts tutor uh and then she began her full-time professional Journey uh honing her craft building her skill sets teaching in Southington Stanford and most recently Lincoln Middle School in Maryland so she's already made an impact in supporting our students here at Cape middle school and we're very lucky to have Miss room on the team so we welcome this room equipment Benjamin's record he goes by the Benji Benji sprecker I actually introduced it to you um last year informally he was a long-term building substitute Force so he's a familiar face to the the families and students of Canada he um had a bachelor's degree from Uconn and a masters from St Joseph's

015um in his bachelor's in biology and then education Masters and um he was a very successful long-term substitute teacher during uh one teacher's maternity he built extremely strong relationships he showed a master of the content that's one of the more difficult roles to do a a long-term sub because it's not your classroom but you have to take ownership of it for a long period of time and be delicately balanced his his role at that time so when a full-time position became available we snatched up Mr sprecker to bring on his talents to our school he is incredibly um calm he's got very calm demeanor he has an unking patience with students and he's also got some really sweet skills at disc golf and we're excited for him to share all of those talents with the

016students of PA middle school so we welcome Mr sprecker to our scientists and additionally uh Forest can served below um is another addition to our our science department he has a bachelor degree in biology as well and a master's in global sustainability from Central Connecticut state and uh so uh my introduction to mrpool not my introduction but at orientation I had my my personal phone out probably texting my family and he looks at my lock screen and goes is that the first image sent back by the James Webb Space Telescope and I knew we had I had found a fellow people I knew it and I couldn't be more happier to have another one running around Kent Middle School um this person's passion this uh Mr circle of passion for science is Extreme evidence uh

017and although his trainings in biology he's had a very purposeful journey to further his scientific knowledge in the areas of uh chemistry and astronomy which he was teaching most recently at Southern's in high school so that experience his deep knowledge and genuine curiosity are going to be great benefit to the students in with science classroom and kids middle school so we welcome Mr door below as well foreign hired as Sean Glenn but was married over the summer before the first day of school um I would like to welcome Miss Sean arel to CIS Mrs arel joins our fifth grade English language arts team and is enjoying life with Mr perotti you have a partner teacher up on the third floor at CIS Mrs arel is not completely new to Canton Public Schools she served Cherry

018Brook Primary School several years ago as a para educator and a substitute teacher Mrs arel holds a Bachelor of Arts in theater education and a master's degree in elementary education from St Joseph's College prior to earning her Elementary Ed certification she taught theater and gardening and most recently she completed her student teaching at Forbes Elementary School in Torrington so we feel very fortunate to have such a well-rounded unique experience in Mrs Rowe welcome another new through CIS but not new to the district Edition is is MJ Sturgis prior to joining CIS as a part-time Library Innovation specialist to complement Mrs Conway who has moved back to part-time Mrs Sturgis served as the library media aide at Canton Middle School since 2019. or Miss Sturgis holds a Bachelor's of Arts degree in sociology and earned her

019Elementary education teaching certification through Regis College Mrs Sturgis is currently enrolled at Southern Connecticut State University um her The Graduate of information and Library Sciences program working towards her Mastery master of library and information science degree so welcome nope and is Caitlin O'Connor has joined the CIS staff as our long-term Social Work set Ms O'Connor holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Westfield State University and a masters of social work from Springfield College Ms O'Connor has vast experience supporting Children and Families most recently as a family Advocate at the klingberg Family Center and in a short 11 days of school Mrs O'Connor has already made many strong connections with students and has been a wonderful support person for students and families through the transition to CIS so thank you this is upon everyone thank you

020very much for the introductions Mr Robinson changing that I'm going on this side so good evening everyone so I'm actually why are you one over there so good evening I'm excited to share our new staff with you tonight what I've tried to do with my introductions is just kind of what set them apart from the group that we hired and what made them unique and what qualities are going to bring even better close even though it's almost impossible to do that somebody do it every time so Ingrid kind Ingrid is teaching kindergarten she had her undergrad from Simmons a masters from Southern Connecticut and then you have another Master's appointment yeah um her past experience she worked in soccer team as student teacher and an intern with San Diego part and the reason why we

021hired her was her reflective nature her hard-working any question can be asked that she wasn't sure to come back with an unbelievable little detail against it so we're really happy to offer in our kindergarten rooms and you're in school right now I have the question mark yeah [Music] okay um so every Monday Wednesday she worked at Cherry Brook as a long-term sub in kindergarten yes and then went to the tollington's on first grade where we stole her um one nicolette's clear strength it's her ability to adjust to what her students needed she did analyze this child needs that and just seamlessly makes it work for that child in each individual the real time welcome back Erica Stevens Erica teaches first grade she's a Westfield that you gratitude um we have a masters and two Bachelors

022from there yeah and made the hallway um previously she worked at a few schools in Massachusetts what's that Erica apart from our other candidates was her knowledge of the literacy she has a strong Lyricist background she's able to articulate it clearly and understand how the different components of the day tie up so that kids are ready to be great leaders and analyze the facts so welcome to charity yeah it doesn't just happen to be here it seems like children so like um but Jess has a masters of 20 piac undergraded from the University of Maryland Washington no uh University thank you um just worked previously oh yeah an undergrad at the Hartford yeah there it is taught in Farmington taught in Manchester we got her back where's she belongs to Cherry Brook Jess has a

023player for a lesson that brings all the students in probably has to do that for all the backgrounds remarkable but when you go into your classroom there's a lot of light and enjoyment into what the kids are doing and learning so we're happy to have a chance to be part of our school not here tonight is our third grade teacher Matt C he had an undergrad from the University of Mary Washington a masters of Liberty University this is a second career for Matt he did a lot of substituting he did a lot of coaching found during covert that this was a change of life that he really enjoyed working with kids um more for the coaching and he realized what we have when the teaching did a student teaching Avon math strength this is ability

024to build and maintain positive relationships um when he taught his lesson in our school he knew every kid by name checked in with them three or four times and was able to like do some small Pokemon talk to those who are interested in it it was really unique what about that yeah I'll just be in the audience to make sure he wasn't uh Carey leboine is one of our special educating teachers she couldn't meet us tonight she has her undergrad from St Joseph her previous experiences were in Torrington West Hartford Windsor what Kara brings to our school is she's thoughtful patient and you know with her special education background she's able to help students that have the unique learning profiles and students that you know may not be verbal they may have expressed themselves differently

025but she's able to connect and do whatever is best for them Rachel well she is our new speech language pathologist undergrad at Tufts a master from Case Western Reserve to University um comes to us from Granby and the private sector in Ohio we're excited to have Rachel she had to finish up her tenure in Granby but one of the things that she mentioned that we're happy to hear it's a very excited to collaborate with teams and bring that team approach to help our kids be able to thrive in an individuals welcome chairs if I could just add a couple things real quick um you hear that the talent you hear the accolades um this is a a really impressive group of folks who have joined us here in the Canton Public Schools um they went

026through a rigorous process to be identified as the top candidates but I think what really sets them apart is as we as we did our training through the the first few days of school every one of them said that Canton was a destination for them they wanted to be a part of the Canton Community they wanted to be a part of the Canton Public Schools that that tells a lot about who we are as a community and that puts a lot of trust in us as a group that looks to be able to provide for our staff and our students but it's a a wonderful thing to be able to know and recognize that folks want to be here within our schools and are willing to be able to engage in the way that we've

027already seen so far so to all of you thank you we're so glad to be able to have you so just tackle those comments um you are an impressive group and we are fortunate to have you in your um your training your your education is is impeccable but I want to tell you that um as much as we're thrilled that you're here we want you to be thrilled also that you're here with us because you're going to find the Canton school system to be and the parents in the community in this board of education to be so supportive and helpful and we want you to express yourselves we want you to be creative and we want you to look at the mission that we have behind us and you all participate in that and I've

028said this and you've heard me at the convocation that our greatest treasures are our children but our second greatest treasure are our teachers in our Paris and our staff that we have that are teaching our children so we want to welcome you to Canton we hope you stay forever and retire here but thank you for coming tonight on a on a rainy night we're gonna break for about 10 minutes because I want to give the board a chance to say hello to you uh we'll take a 10 minute break there's cookies and I'd encourage board members to uh to say hello and you have children in that school system um you know say a lot of new teachers and welcome them yourselves okay so let's just take a 10 minute break now thanks um thank

029you foreign thank you so I understand tonight in terms right um congratulations thank you um foreign thank you songs you know okay great and and obviously you're you're free to leave and you are so that's good sorry Abe and Chris you got to stay because we're gonna honor you in a second so no problem sorry to make it a little longer all right uh it's called meeting back to water and um I thought that was great thank you board members for uh mingling getting to know some of the new teachers and when we were in the buildings we can say hello and they know who we are and we know who they are so that's wonderful so with that we're going to move right into the student report Simone how are you tonight I'm really

030good having the first week here at two of school ago good all right good that's good okay so um past events we kind of covered this last meeting but uh the kindergarten had their meet and greet on Wednesday August 24th uh canned Middle School 7th grade orientation was held Wednesday August 24th Granbury Primary School grades monthly three had their meet and greet on Friday August 26th uh canned middle school PTO Lobster Loops it took place on Sunday August 28th on Monday August 29th the district began their first day of school Friday September 2nd CMS and CHS have their picture day um upcoming events tonight there's a flatbed fundraiser for the class of 2023 um CHS coffee house which is like another fundraiser for the Orlando trip and that's on September 23rd we highly encourage you

031to come before all the high school clubs are beginning to meet uh between this week and next week Wednesday September 14th Cherry Brook uh Primary School opened house curriculum night and Canton High School senior parents night Tuesday September 20th it's a Canton High School in canned middle school early release day Thursday September 22nd will be CIS curriculum night Monday September 26th there will be no school for Russia Rosh Hashanah yes sorry um and then ongoing events all school all students are back in school uh School sports are beginning their first game something season and I did want to mention this um we have this new club or program at the high school called we're just student ambassadors and there's about 30 new like 28 30 new um kitten high school students and we have this

032new program where we meet with them um monthly and like checking on these students and make sure that you know they're getting in the school well and I'm part of it and I really like it they pair us up with some of the new kids and we like to check in with them and it's a really good Target I really like it Metro program yeah it's just kind of like making sure they have someone because if they're new to the school you know that some of these kids don't really know anyone that's great yeah it's really nice it's probably really good um I I wanted to mention that and I I know um this is already always uh keeps us up to date on things are going on but you have our email addresses too

033you can if you want to sit like a flatbread thing if you want to remind us you can set your board um a note and say it'd be great for you guys because you're part of the board so you could say be great you guys can you know show up tonight and get flatbread we'd love to see or something like that so you you feel free to do that yeah um that's where khalila is right now actually okay so he runs is he bringing back Pizza right okay what's the date the 23rd again um that's that is the cafeteria okay yeah just like a little people perform their talent sing play instruments while there's coffee and adults so that sounds that sounds fun we used to have that right here that's now back because we're

034back that's great I'm performing oh you are so that's the 23rd at seven we're now going I'm not sure about the times we got to support our board members oh so you got to let us know but we will be there all right Bella is too okay yeah thank you Lord appreciate it okay all right so but part of this uh this new uh this new world water that we have a little bit in our agenda is an opportunity for the PTO presidents to speak and I know that um Jamie's on maybe we'll go Jamie first and then we'll go Andrew and then you guys can go okay Jamie do you want to say anything do you want to report into the board on anything and thank you for attending tonight even video we appreciate

035it approaching yeah we're opening it up for you Hi how are you can you hear me yeah if we can okay all right hi um so I'll give you an update of what the Cherry Brook PTO did um on Friday we just celebrated back to school um with our back to school bash which was a huge success we had ice cream sundaes for the kids we had bounce houses uh we had live music from the substitutes um families brought uh their picnic dinners um met with friends met new families um it was from five to seven we sold our spirit wear we had raffle baskets huge turnout we had over 150 families um that attended our back to school bash prior to that we had welcome back popsicles for grades one through three the Friday

036before school another way for the kids to get to see friends that they haven't seen all summer and then for the kindergarten meet and greet we handed out Welcome to The Kindergartners with uh welcome back treats that's so great you know I I want to mentioned to the PTO uh president said if you want us somewhere you have our emails so if you say hey guys we need to support come on out um but we will definitely do that so I want to make sure we did that anything else you want to report it on Jimmy um we just have our first general meeting on Wednesday um October 12th and is that going to be a Cherry Brook in the evening that is going to be in Cherry Brook uh cafeteria at 6 30. yes

037great thank you thanks for that report we appreciate it and you guys are doing great work at Cherry Brook and it's exciting and the kids are all excited I know my granddaughter told me about the Popsicles and you had the best popsicle she had a lemonade popsicle oh I'm glad okay Andrea and Julie thank you for coming tonight and thanks for being here so we'd love to hear from you thank you so much we prepared a short report that's great thank you supported by chair Daniels and superintendent Keith for the opportunity to update the community on the Canton middle school PTO thank you to our board of education for all the work you do on behalf of the council and our our children we'd also like to thank principal Jeff Moore for his support of

038wpto our goal at the PTO is to assist in creating the most enriching Middle School experience possible themes we feel it's important to Anchor in our spreading positivity and full spirit keeping the Middle School experience fun and exciting and expressing appreciation to our school community I'm three weeks into the school year our PTO has 40 members we have five members on the PTO award myself and Julie our co-presidents and co-fresurers Courtney Vincent is our vice president Karen mcconville and Karen Ian article secretary we meet via Google meet once per month and in addition to our monthly meeting there are three other ways that we share our PTO news um the scene which is the Middle School's weekly electronic newsletter the middle Canton middle school PTO Facebook page and the PTO page on the Canton Middle

039School website so we wanted to take a minute just to share some recent activities and some current events um coming up most recently we held the largest fundraiser of the year that can being Lobster Loop which is a 5K held block we've had record numbers for recent years we've had over 500 I think 508 to be exact and registered not by strategy but sort of by by chance we ended up moving the day to the weekend before school last year we put the necessity and learned that it was kind of a great way to kick back to the school year people are back in town and we think we saw kind of a surge of diversity as a result so we're going to continue with that moving forward um and we try to engage a

040lot of families a lot of children to to participate in addition to the really serious runners in the community um we treated our staff to welcome back lunch on Friday August 26th so staff including all teachers nurses custodians and support staff enjoy crafts ballots and desserts provided by The Pasta Company and um also we are partnering with Progressive Farm a local Farm on another fundraiser currently so through the 15th of this week we're selling months and there's also been a big part of our one of our fund research again this year we had a great turnout last year people were even said if I knew I would have supported so we decided to run it again we're seeing a lot of orders come in so and last something that we initiated last winter was a

041sticker a water bottle sticker campaign and the concept was to promote school spirit and positivity so we are caught doing something well we have these really fun DNS logo stickers that staff can hand out to students and it's really fun imagery and we also have asked staff and specialist teachers like if they have an idea or if a club wants to um wants us to create a logo for them a fun sticker for them um a team a music teacher anybody at all a nurse a big lifelong that's something that will partner with them on and provides and they'll have those stand up students some events and ongoing projects for this year the first is our second annual student versus staff soccer game which I took the mingling opportunity to recruit John Bishop for his

042second event you're going to have to have doctors outside we're ready so we're in the planning stage of the dates are still to be determined last year over 50 students participated in the game we held it at the turf under the light that was like a really big deal we had music the student health local professions hot chocolate we had the middle school band played the national anthem before it and we encourage fans to bring can goods for the Canton food bank and we collected over 300 items that night it was a super fun event we were so excited to do it again um a picture of the plant that continues supporting student clubs and organizations such as Council an activities such as Veterans Day dancers otherwise events that they plan during the year and

043also guilt-term as always our school you're capped up by the needs grades promotion celebration last year we decorated the main ceremony space hosted an after-party dance providing food instead of games including glow-in-the-dark volleyball and the gym which was pretty cool um we'll also continue to focus on showing our teachers Administration office staff nurses Food Service teams custodians bus drivers and all educational support staff how much we appreciate them throughout the year we have conference treats to plan for November and March I love CMS theme for February bus driver appreciation day and teacher appreciation week in May we support teacher requests for items a handful of learning experience of the students and we discuss and include on them during our monthly meetings so we look forward to working with the school Community um this year and

044all families and ideas are always welcome to join our meetings to email us and help us bring new ideas to life and thank you thank you you know we yes we should have rcis about PTO you're just doing phenomenal work and we appreciate you because you know there's a lot of things that we can't do as a town could you guys step up and do to fill the gaps of the boys and we so appreciate it our children appreciate it and we're not going to let you go so you're going to have to stay in these positions you can't grow up right it's the uh advancing we're not going to March him but uh we will we know that people do move on but you got such great organization so thank you and thank you

045for that report so we'll leave it open the first meeting of the month for the PTL president report this change would be like all of us accountable to some things if you hear some things in the public he was a little attention any of the parents and you hear things and you know we like hey uh Lou if I could just jump in for one sec sorry I I work very closely with uh the head of the caspto um and she would like to uh say a few words if there's some time well sure I didn't know she's here she's here no she's she's sitting next to me I'm right here sorry I kind of sleep next week sometimes sometimes if our kids let us if our kids let us so I'm so sorry I

046completely Ryan's face and I didn't even think so thank you I know he lets you do it so uh well thank you everybody um if you don't meet I'm Whitney O'Donnell and Ryan's wife and I'm the president this year of the CIS PTO um it's I last year I was the secretary and I didn't think I was going to be on the PTO again but I'm back and this time I'm the president but I'm really excited because this year we finally have a full PTO at CIS so we have a vice president um Jen Violet has stepped up to do that we have two Treasures Allison Dolan and Nina um D'Angelo and then Amanda Garza will be our secretary so uh we're really excited it's a bunch of fourth grade parents who will be on

047our board this year and we're all really excited to have a great year for our kids um the cispto what we do is we support um and try to enhance the educational experiences of all of our students we do that through extracurricular activities for the children we do it through field trips and we're hoping uh that we can do that a little bit more this year um so far this year we have helped to support our staff by uh we did a welcome back luncheon like we do most years um we also on Friday during the since it was the first full week of school and it was a very long week we surprised the kids with popsicles um on Friday afternoon so that was a nice little treat for the kids um moving forward

048um we're just still like I said we're just finally have a board that's kind of in place uh we didn't have that for most of the summer but um Mrs Corto and I are very excited um to find to have a really full board for this um so we're working on our membership right now uh our secretary is going to be updating our website and kind of getting things moving um we have a couple things coming up as always we will be hosting fright night which will be at the end of February or sand of February at the end of uh October right before Halloween and uh we have two co-chairs for that and we have a couple parents who have already expressed interest in working on that so we're very excited about about fright

049night it was we were able to bring it back last year and we had over 250 Kids come out for that and parents and it was an absolutely wonderful evening and we really hope we can continue to do that for the kids we had the police department came out and did a trunk Retreat um with us and a lot of parents did as well so um we have that going on so I'm sorry this is just a kind of off the cuff little update for you guys but we will be doing a few more things um in the fall we have a Chipotle fundraiser coming up in October on the 12th uh we also have um a catalog fundraiser that we will be doing we're hoping to do a readathon fundraiser again this year um

050we of course will be doing more conference lunches for our tea teachers um we'll be doing hopefully doing the student staff basketball game again this year we also initiated a few years ago with something called Valentine's for the front lines where the students came to get made different cards for Frontline workers um first it was just at the hospitals last year we expanded it to drug stores and grocery stores in town so it was a really great effort and the kids really got involved and we had some really dedicated parents who kind of worked to organize it we actually got on the national news for it so it was kind of exciting um we also we worked with CMS last year on Sixth Grade on the bus driver appreciation which was absolutely fantastic and Andrea

051and Julie did such an amazing job on that um we also have sixth grade celebration that will be coming up and that was a really wonderful job and that was a a wonderful team effort for a bunch of parents um Sarah moribito headed that and Melissa trainer and a bunch of other people came together and just made it a really memorable evening for the sixth graders so if anybody has any questions or that was great and we appreciate that you move Brian out of the city I know I'll let you get his handsome face back much better yeah now now the view gets downgraded again I'm sorry sorry people they go above and beyond and I don't know if anybody knows but if we answered the lobster group with some teams and students that won

052for a station and they went and brought their fries and pizza and popsicles and jukeboxes and delivered it and presented it and served it and they didn't even have their own children there you know they really go above and beyond all the PTO so those uh all of them and and we encourage more parents to join and participate I think thank you guys thank you okay okay moving uh right along we're gonna go right into Mr Bishop uh thank you Mr Daniels I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share with you all tonight uh the the first thing that I want to be able to uh speak to is actually in reference to some work that we have already done and it's uh surrounding our summer work um uh we have over the the

053past two years had the opportunity to be able to engage in some some summer work with our students in ways that might look a little bit different than we have in the past and that has been through some of our uh our arpa funds uh to be able to support us our uh our our funds um and that actually was a requirement for us to be able to make sure that we were continuing to support students as their work uh in their work as we continue to move through the uh the pandemic uh we have been really thrilled with the work that we've been able to do from last year into this year and look to be able to do some uh really impressive work as we continue into the future but I wanted to

054be able to talk with you all a little bit tonight and actually have uh the folks who ran this program for us speak with you a bit tonight and just give you the opportunity to hear a little bit about what we've been doing and how we've been working through this um so so highlights for us tonight are to speak about the K5 uh summer Learning Academy our um CHS credit recovery program and then our CHS Pathways our CHS Summer Academy that we that we sponsored as well so I want to go to the next slide here if that's okay and and this is this is the big why behind this and it's this concept of the summer slide um summer is a wonderful time to be able to get away and it's a wonderful time

055to be able to uh to play get your get your feet in the sand uh run around outside really enjoying yourself but there's also a real reality to a lapse or a lack of Summer uh engagement for students in work um there's a study that uh was done that in Children of grades three to five even prior to the pandemic that on average they would lose about one-fifth of their school year gains in reading and better than an order of their games in mathematics over the summer break some of that is natural for kids to be able to be out of practice and just be able to be removed but the the fact remains that time on task and time to be able to continue to engage in meaningful work is really important um our

056younger children are really are really prone to these uh opportunities for learning loss and I think this is this is a real key for us here uh in general kids learn a lot more in kindergarten first grade and second grade than kids in middle school or high school because learning follows a curve where it's accelerated early in life and then plateaus things like decoding letter knowledge and word reading skills are very susceptible to Decay without frequent practice as our math facts like addition and subtraction so it's critical for us to be able to take care of our youngest students and really make sure that those who might be vulnerable uh that they have an opportunity to continue to be supported throughout our summer months and and give them an engaging experience that brings learning to

057life so we're excited to say that we've got that in place with our K-5 summer Learning Academy this Academy Works to be able to provide acceleration enrichment and engagement for students through small groups small group instruction with with prioritized standards and skills through a workshop type model the academy is intended to keep students engaged in learning and prevent that summer slide it provided academic supports and math and reading for targeted students and as well as those opting for attendance enrichment was embedded throughout with steam connections for students as well we had about 60 students who were joining with us for that K to 5 age range and the dates went from uh mid-july through the beginning of August we had an outstanding staff and and two of them are leaders here Abe Amery and Christy

058Johnson Avis our math science specialist our math science coordinator for Canton Intermediate School and Mrs Johnson is our literacy specialist for the intermediate school so they worked with a number of outstanding certified staff and great tutors to be able to provide this program including Molly henneberry Cora much Carrie Campbell Denise Doria Megan wood Tracy reichen Stevie Giuliano Ellen raposo Lisa Frawley Brandy Scott Tanner Clark Riley Gaudet and Tyron Jemison I'd like to invite Aid and Christy to be able to come up and and give you a peek into what we saw and what we learned from the process and some of the thoughts that we have uh moving forward for this as well David Christie welcome come on thank you and sit right in front of the cookies sorry if you wouldn't mind going to

059the next slide push that so I will speak to the slide I just want to start by thanking you for giving us the time to report out on the Summer Academy and not only talk about the programming but celebrate some of the successes that not only our students saw but staff as well just to add on to what John had said you know really our goal in putting this together was thinking about not only preventing summerslide for students but also just being really mindful about how do we put students in a position to grow and close some gaps and we did that by really thinking about priority standards or key skills that students would need to learn and then grouping students based on where their needs were so it was really purposeful um and allowed

060us again to be thinking about that small group work and individualized instruction um and give lots of feedback to students in real time and so as a result of that programming we have some outcomes here to to look at and for students who regularly attended Summer Academy it was a total of 16 sessions um or Ela 80 of those students either maintain so preventing that summer slide or made rope in ela standards that we were targeting and for mathematics it was actually 95 of students who attended regularly either maintained or may grow and so when we look at this data we're really thoughtful about how a majority of our students were better positioned to tackle the demands of the school year um and just thinking about just specific performance data better suits teachers to kind

061of hit the ground running with students and support them where they are and where they need to grow I know just based on the data up here this is quantitative but another goal that we really tackled that can't be captured in numbers is building student confidence and we really were thoughtful about that in terms of students who need support in reading and writing or reading and math rather and don't always feel that success in what ways are we supporting and celebrating small successes and helping them set goals and meet those goals and by and large I think we helped build Independence and identity as readers and mathematicians and I think you see that more in a lot of the pictures that were sent home to families in our weekly newsletters and even some kids walking

062in in the morning and like skipping down the hallway to class during the summer so I think by and large you know thinking about not only the academic growth that we can celebrate here but also students being more poised to start this school year I'm feeling ready not only as readers but mathematicians too that's pretty Christy thank you here you wouldn't mind going to the next one so feedback is another important thing for us maybe doing my channel so at um the end of the academy we send out a survey to families and then to staff as well just gain feedback with that mindset of always what can we do better what what can we build on what can we add for future academies um so I captured some feedback from from two parents um

063we had about um almost 20 parents respond to the survey which was nice um every little piece of feedback is so important to us and we definitely use that information for future planning but I think the the biggest trend line and theme throughout all that feedback was how parents were so appreciative of having the opportunity to keep their kids connected to learning um through through all the activities that we had planned so through the math activities through the reading but also we had Parents comment about how much their children loved learning about space and the steam and then the social emotional learning component of it having having morning meeting having a closing Circle having time to do some movement um throughout that morning was really important so like thinking about the whole child so the

064feedback I think the main feedback from parents was that opportunity to keep kids engaged but also to make it fun for them and to Christy's point at the very last day of the academy we had kids crying not wanting to go home they wanted to come back that following Monday to the academy so I have an iPhone 8 so I wasn't fast enough to capture that picture but um but no that just I mean that was that picture in itself and that that scene itself just spoke volumes and just the hard work that the staff put in to make it such a special experience for our students and I think having it at CIS has been nice and you know boat building all buildings are nice but it's especially for our third graders moving up

065to CIS it gave them a really nice opportunity to to get their feet wet in CIS and learn the building and see some of the teachers that they were going to be seeing in the fall at CIS so that was really nice um but before we go to our next our next slide I really want to be able to celebrate these two and highlight how excellent they are um if you think about it they ran school for a little over a month a K-5 Elementary School of 60 kids um the reason that that kids were successful the reason that teachers were successful is because of the hard work that they continue to put in you can hear the the Poise the confidence the Excellence in in their presentation and how they bring their work forward

066um this is what we see and experience every day and we're really grateful for the partnership with YouTube and your leadership so thank you so if I could just say because I had the opportunity to drop off my granddaughter who's in the program Juliana and Christy and they were out there every day smiling faces my daughter would run out and wait until my granddaughter couldn't wait to go and truth be told she was one that was crying that said I can't believe I'm not going back I'm not going to see my friends and she was uh so I I wanted to thank you both for for the job you did there and my daughter tells me the progress that my granddaughter made was significant so it really does have an effect and you know very

067grateful that you sacrifice part of your summer to do that so thank you yeah it's a great opportunity thank you um so future opportunities as I shared earlier the feedback survey from staff and from parents is so important and something that's that Christy and I um when we meet with Mr Bishop and central office to kind of think about future summer academies we always go back to that feedback and and see what can we continue to build on and and improve and maintain so some of the highlights um we always our our Academy is built around the staff that are involved in it um so expanding our highly trained staff to meet the kids students needs this year we're fortunate enough to have staff members who are trained um with specific curriculum to support students

068who needed specific needs and so if you can keep that model going um and be able to tailor students instruction throughout the academy um I think we're going to see research says we're going to see the most impact and the most acceleration with their growth and and what they're doing the this year we we collaborated with our extended school year program and we look forward to continuing that collaboration I know Christy and I and Mr Bishop are really looking forward to meeting with whoever new director of people Services is going to be and really looking for more opportunities to integrate the programs together this year was exciting that those students joined us for the social emotional components so the morning meeting closing meetings and also this theme activities so we'll continue to kind of look

069for opportunities to build that integration because we're all one Canton family so there's no no need to be in two separate silos um and then as Christy shared she shared some data up there you know we'll continue to evaluate you know the needs um and curriculum needs and the learning needs of our students and making sure that we're putting the right staff and the right information and programs in front of them and then continue to adapt I think this year what made it so successful was we had a lot of highly trained staff members to be able to meet the wide range of students and Learners that we had and then the other opportunity that we started to look into like this past year we're going to continue to look into is how do we

070capture or attract the Canton Community Resources so the Reps at the rec department because we had a few families asking is there anything that my child could do from 12 to 3 or 12 to four so looking to maybe bridge that community outreach with with the Canton Community and see other other opportunities after the Summer Academy for these students to you know partake in whether it's Sports Camp or a day camp or something with The Parkers Parks the next apartment so we're excited we thank you you know thank the board for your support we thank the parents for their support obviously Christy and I are so grateful for the teachers for giving up their Summers and and it's and you know for next year you know your Phil you're you're more than welcome to come

071in and check out the work that's happening and it's so incredible for teachers to come in on their Summers and and welcome these kids and make the kids you know give them the feeling of wanting to come to school in the summertime so thank you both thank you any questions your thoughts go okay it sounds like a great program thank you very much putting it together and do reports and I mention my questions for John I think this was funded through the Essa Grant yes and that continues at least one more year am I right on that or not I think this is the year that we this was the end of our our timing for this and so part of the reason that we're going to be able to share right now is we

072want to be able to put together a sustainable a sustainable plan for this future we believe that there's value in it we see value in it and I expect to be able to show to you our spring to our fall data to be able to show that it holds we held off the summer slide and that's that's that's value for us so uh we'll be preparing a a presentation for you all to be reviewing for our budget buses it's a great question just to clarify um yes the grant is over so we used it last summer and then this past summer um we have not broken down the exact plus but we'll talk about those posts during the budget preparation period all right I guess it's possible there might be more grants out there as

073well because it's not it's an issue across the country it is and there are some some Grant grants that are available within Connecticut they're highly competitive and very selective in their populations as well so that's something that we're going to work very closely on be able to identify what might be the best way to be able to support this but we definitely see value certain type of program I'm trying to be attractives and those people that are Dole after grants scalable successful absolutely enrollment in enrollment was good and I'll let you two speak a little bit with it too the I think the issues that we found for folks feedback that we received was oh I wish we could have known earlier I wore I wish we could have known that there was coverage throughout

074the rest of the day because some some families needed to be able to have that coverage all the way through so that was a barrier the the challenge for us in advertising when it's going to happen is we need to be able to have staff and then we need to know our numbers and we need to know a second so there's always a little bit of uh um a game that moves back and forth however I think we are going to find things uh become more stable for us and as we move out of what what is the the Terror of covet and we have a little bit more normalcy for folks where they have the bandwidth to be able to do more in their summer time so we do expect to be able to

075communicate earlier and we talked about that earlier today yeah promotion is going to be important is there anything else that either of you wanted to be able to add to that and feel like I mean my question was this yeah everybody that got it that wanted to get in yeah yeah we didn't hit that's a good point we didn't hit our capacity we were able to operate we would expand based on whatever the capacity was um so to answer that point the answer Erica thank you oh good this time hey thank you for coming tonight absolutely appreciate you so well thank you yeah we'll see you at school sounds wonderful all right have a wonderful evening thank you all right thank you I wanted to provide a a quick tour of our CHS credit workout

076recovery as well um if you wouldn't mind just getting to the the next slide for us as well so uh last year we had a number of students that required credit request Credit Recovery opportunities um this year because we were able to be in person because we were able to support those um those personal relationships with students better we didn't have as many students who were in need of credit recovery experiences uh however we did have 15 students who participated nine nine different courses were were used throughout this uh what we're able to do with this partner that that we have uh called Apex learning is we worked through and we developed the entirety of courses and ensured that there was Fidelity to the instructional content and uh and the practices that were involved in

077this to ensure that students had were able to receive quality credit for the work that they were doing this was available for students who were just missing the bar for uh accessing credit within their classes and they had an opportunity to work with fourth grade staff James annunziato Amanda Bernhardt Tara Smith and Julie Monaco um this is the second year of this program we see successes in providing this alternative Pathway to support our students um and it was a great way to make sure that our kids can continue continue to move on in that uh direction towards graduation on the next slide that's something that's been ongoing we always said that right that's not a grant program that is not a grant program we did support Staffing under a grant program like that and the

078state has provided an apex learning this solution as part of their art of funding um and so there we're waiting to be able to see where the state is going to come so we don't know where that funding is either we don't necessarily know where that funding will be coming from yet okay now the state may be looking at things and saying this is going to be a great solution that we want to continue to support we're making good things happen all right good um RC rchs boot camp uh we had 14 students uh join us for this this was uh an opportunity to to work for uh kind of the ninth grade at orientation for students who needed that opportunity to be able to reconnect back with school we had several key staff uh

079Jillian latcher Matthew britzel and Jen zenu they work to be able to promote engagement social skills and academic preparedness um and this was great this allowed these kids to be able to come be able to have um a fun way to connect back into school to be able to do some school-based skill as well and then have that rolled into our ninth grade orientation so that they could they could look at that transition from middle school to high school and feel that they were very successful in them um any questions for me on on that end I just think these programs are outstanding and we can't afford to promote them so we're going to have to figure it out I guess a lot of Grants a lot of work a lot of hard work to

080be able to figure out how to be able to support this but this is we see the value in this for sure and we want to keep highlighting um the success of these um the the final piece that I would share with you all is our professional development and evaluation committee uh met recently and we were able to pass uh flexibilities flexibilities in the educator evaluation process which was allowed by the state this year we're very excited about what we're bringing forward this year uh for our staff it's it's it's similar in a lot of respects but what we've done is we've streamlined our systems of work to ensure that our teachers uh some of the um some of the laborious elements of adding information into a system that that was taken away so the

081teachers can really focus on doing the job and working on getting better our goal uh our bet is really on supporting the Improvement in teacher process uh and teacher practice and that will continue to support uh student growth and student learning so we had a great involvement from our administrators from our bargaining units and from our our committee to be able to work on this and we're we're thrilled we're in a very supportive position to support our teachers going forward so again coming back to this conversation of people wanting to be in Canton we're working very hard to make sure that we are supportive of our staff and support of our students through the work that we're doing foreign that's for sure absolutely thank you all for your support okay I apologize I miss Mr

082Moore Mr Moore wants to uh talk to us about a we're bringing back the Washington DC field trip booking table so you're going to find a very uh easy board tonight yeah right so go ahead and let's go back to DC thank you for your time all in favor uh no I so um as we all know we we paused uh overnight field trips um as did as did many uh in the midst of the uh pandemic and I believe that we are in a position where there's enough predictability all right this is still a part of our lives but there's predictability and and um skill sets and how we respond uh to to things where I think that we can offer something that requires a lot of long-term planning uh from both families and

083staff to leave the state go overnight and return to something that's both an important tradition to Canton and an incredible academic and social opportunity uh so I am uh partnering uh with a I'm exploring along with Tina Olson one of our staff members she's working with me to collaborate and find uh opportunities for the trip and as of right now what's been uh put into your packet is a proposal from academic and performance travel which is the company that we came to know through Rachel antonucci and her Florida trip um we've vetted several different companies some of you may remember we previously worked with Nations classroom not Nature's Classroom that's a CIS tradition that was also paused but uh nature Nations classroom and this company that Rachel introduced us to we actually uh explored with

084both of them different packages and different Partnerships and we strongly preferred the package put forward by academic performance and travel so you can see I've got some dates proposed here in late April a three-day two-night trip to Washington DC um returning to many of the sites and traditions that this community has known for a long time I think it is uh it's in direct alignment to our 8th grade social studies curriculum and it is an important developmental milestone for students it requires a great deal of social skills and resiliency and maturity to travel right beyond the easy reach of your folks and be overnight and be walking out there in a major Metropolitan City and taking in everything and students that have done a wonderful job with that I've had the opportunity to do this

085trip once in my time before it was paused and I think that we are due to return to it this is something I'd like you to consider the Improvement so that we can begin formally inviting families to plan and prepare for it so Jeff before we go to the board with questions because they really do but uh I pulled the board before this and the board has an issue and the issue is that Joe scheidler has to be a chaperone again he doesn't go we're not going to vote this thing in no you're right right right there all right let's get to the question to move this along so who is okay Erica um I'm thrilled to see that it's back on the table paper is there not over this one is shorter than usual

086it has uh it has been a four day three night trip and this is the one time that I'm proposing uh it feels most appropriate to do three nights uh three days and two nights so yes I'm I'm proposing a reduction of one day um for this for this one trip so my thought it might so different schools in our in our area and nationally are taking different approaches to the reintroduction to field trips right this will be an 8th grade trip that has never done a school overnight trip right Nature's Classroom is usually an introductory experience to being away from home for a couple of days and they are just in was it Coburn right and so they go away but like you're there these these eighth graders have not done that and I

087think that it's appropriate to take that into account in terms of the duration and experience that they're going to um some schools as rather explore the different options some schools are staying closer to home they're doing Boston uh or New York we explored in both Boston and Philadelphia but these different companies and quite frankly just the experience of what they will get and its alignment to our curriculum is not is not worth it so as I was thinking about different ways of balancing what the appropriate reintroduction to a pretty significant trip um given their their their previous experiences DC was clearly the winner in terms of where is it valuable to go and where will kids and families want to spend their time and money to send their kids um but that that one less

088day um it's exhaust right there's just there's so if that's the main the main reason and there's also Financial component by reducing a day this is a group that will not have had the opportunity to fundraise for two years which in previous years they we did two years of fundraisers so some students and families could mitigate the cost they could offset the cost by hundreds of dollars and uh with a shorter trip obviously I'm able to keep the cost below even what it was before as costs for everything is skyrocketed we can come in below where families would have expected it to be a few years ago because it's shorter right so there's a financial but also developmental reasoning okay thank you good answer we'll see your point Joe yeah I was going to ask

089the same question that makes a whole lot of sense Jeff um and it was two nights three days for many many years um so it certainly can be done chaperones teachers parents what do you have in mind my history with this is that the goal is to have teacher chaperones uh to do so you need about 13 staff with a 10 to 1 ratio with the size of size of a grade which in the school of Kent Middle School side size is um half of them uh right and so um I have not yet put up feelings for that right I anticipate that I know that this has support within the school Community but I also would be very empathetic if people would say look you know I love the trip the the bus the

090Close Quarters I I would understand if there's if there's some hesitation there but I think that things are going to be continuing to get better and I think that maybe even the reduced time makes it a little bit more attractive to get chaperones so teachers would be my first preference but obviously we will need to explore if I don't get to that 13 Mark we would need to consider where we would we would want to go next for chaplains but in my experience we've been able to get there and we I would certainly hope I can again so solution that was that was my question too when we got the board traffic over the week for the weekend I looked at it and I that was my initial thought too like gosh they're gonna go

091all that way but then I I actually dug a little digging in other districts are doing the same you know Granby's doing the exact same amount of time and then you're all your rationale makes great sense I'm just thrilled to see that it's back on the table because I know over the years it's been such a disappointment for students and parents too I think you know value the trip Mr Case do you want to say anything about this Mr Moore and I have had several conversations over the past year about to begin planning for this because we both feel how important um an educational experience this is um I've gone twice myself uh possibly I'll go again we'll see what April brings but I told you something we do that it's a it's a it's

092a great trip it's what our students remember from it's one of the high points of their time in Canton so I hope you support this so so my only Point comment is going to be every child that wants to go has to be able to go right I know the PTO is going to offer scholarships I don't want any family to be embarrassed to ask or uh any child to be embarrassed not to be able to go so that would be my own you know absolute in this statement every child that wants to go can go can you assure me that absolutely from my bone marrow I couldn't agree more right like this is a place that is something that everyone should be able to uh to go if they want to go and although

093there is the barrier of you you need to ask for help sure from from the bottom of my heart we try to communicate things both written important and in-person experiences uh this that's a judgment-free request right because we recognize that anyone could be in any type of situation at any particular moment great and uh through both your support and this really amazing PTO who've said a lot of great things about what they did today but I think still undersold how much they support Canon staff became Middle School staff and students um I can absolutely guarantee that we will get every child that wants to go and our goal is nothing short of 100 okay all right that's our goal thank you all right having uh everybody oh right you want to ask a question for

094chance Ryan okay um sorry thank you um okay so thank you this is a first reading for the board so the board will uh we'll we'll um in the consent agenda will uh we'll go over this is a first reading we'll bring it back at the 28th I think you get a sense that you can get going on this thing but I mean the process is the processes will vote on 28. okay and others without planning in the meantime thank you thank you for coming tonight thank you for staying thank you Mike we're getting to you I'm sorry this was kind of an unusual night I'm trying to adjust things yeah it can but the superintendent is going to give his report we're going to talk to the Chief and the bus company and then

095I'm going to give a very brief report and then we're going to have a public forum this is not volume but we're getting there yeah thank you okay thank you Mr case thank you good evening everybody it's great to see all of you um in the interest of time I will make my report uh brief and and send you out through email what I think you need to know that I won't have time to share tonight but very importantly I want to let you know that we've had a very smooth opening of school we've been in school now a little over two weeks it's hard to believe we started with our staff convocation uh which um some of you were able to be at Mr Daniels said some welcoming Words which were really well received

096allowing the staff to really understand what the goals of the Board of Education are going to be this year and we focused on staff wellness and one of our Canton community members Kelly vascubiak who's also a life coach and wellness coach did a fabulous engaging presentation for our staff that was so well received that staff members wanted her to come back so we're arranging that and then we had some vendors from throughout the community uh with the help of Lil and Felicia and other members of our community they were on hand to talk about what they can offer our teachers various discounts various Health Products to support their own Wellness so we kicked off the year with with a great start and I can't thank our administrators and teachers enough for what they did to

097create such great learning environments for the first two weeks of school we also know we don't take for granted that we couldn't have students in school without our buses so I want to talk a little bit about busing because busing can always be a little bit tricky in the beginning of the year we've all heard what's happening on the news in various districts and while I lose sleep over a few things as superintendent I rarely lose sleep over the quality of the transportation that our students receive because of Martel Transportation who uh Dean Martell is here tonight the owner of Martel Transportation whom we have a contract with and um um Stephen is uh sorry Stephen Martel is here as well from Martel transportation I want to just um talk about a couple of uh

098Transportation issues that we've dealt with and continue to deal with one I just would like all of you in the community to know that we have 13 full-size school buses and we have several Vans and the goal is to get students from home to school and then back to um back to home uh within a certain amount of time based upon our school starting and ending times makes it very challenging to do to do this an inefficient man so some people have raised concern about middle school and high school students needing to stay on the buses for a few minutes in the morning before being able to get into the building some people have expressed that as a concern because uh it was said that some buses were late to school where children even though

099the the bell rings at 805 their children are walking up the hallway at 803 it creates anxiety um and and that's how conscientious our students are and we realize that so what we have been working on is those bus routes that we are aware of and there are are a couple bus 11 the CIS rule being one of them where um this has been zakowski and Mrs Patel and I've received most emails we changed the um the bus pickup time for the middle school high school to be earlier so that that bus can get to CIS in time and that seemed to have worked for uh this week so we continue to tweak different routes that way that's solving the issue of buses getting to school on time we did a Time study over the

100last five days to see when buses are getting to the schools so we could base our decisions on that particular those particular pieces of data the second issue we're working on now is getting the middle schoolers and high schoolers off the buses before 7 20 which is a concern the challenge is our staff does not have to be in the building until 7 20. and so supervision is an issue so we're working on a solution to that by the end of the week we will have one so and just ask your patients um just for the rest of this week until we can figure out the best solution to allow our middle schoolers and high schoolers to go into the building as soon as the bus is around so those are two issues that have

101been brought to my attention that we are working and then one of the issues that was brought to our attention last year was the issue of cars passing school buses when school buses are picking up or dismissing kids from the bus while the safety lights are are on that's totally inappropriate inexcusable we cannot have that for the safety of our kids our terrific parents have alerted uh Mr Martell police chief R Fierro and myself as to where these situations seem to be happening and that began last spring and we've got a great partnership here in town with our police uh force and I thank the police chief Chris arceier over his partnership and for being here tonight at this hour after a very long day uh just to be here to show support for this

102effort um so we really want to do all we can to curb um drivers from not following the law around our school buses to that end I want to thank Mr Martell for purchasing a camera One camera for one of the buses that we are using as a pilot that takes pictures of cars and their license plates if they're passing a bus so one of our buses that is in the high traffic areas where this seems to be occurring has a camera in that um Dean I want to thank you very much for purchasing that for us um let's um we talked about yesterday was uh the board purchasing nine additional cameras they're at a cost of six hundred dollars each uh Mr Martel was able to get more than a 50 discount on the

103cost of the cameras um I'd like to propose that we as a board purchase nine additional cameras uh to be installed so that 10 of our 13 buses will have these um these cameras I present that to you tonight as a proposal um and then our next meeting I can talk to you about where the funding for of those cameras will come from great question um so is there any reason why we wouldn't put them in all the buses because like three boxes remaining it's a good question for Lisa Felicia there's always a reason um in three of the buses it would cost um if I'm correct one thousand seven hundred dollars each because three of the buses need to be retro retrofitted and they don't have the latest technology that the other 10 buses

104have foreign [Music] over to the police department who can research the driver's license plate we follow up Chief our Sierra would you like to speak to that what the process is for that sure thank you Kevin thanks as well thanks for coming certainly even though we have a great partnership and we just think that we must safety is just the extension of the normal school safety protocols that would be a big partnership with the school to make sure that the school is safe for everybody that enters that building and buses are no different every year I can present the Martell bus company drivers just a concern about bus safety um so I think the camera's going to be a great addition to the extension of the Social Security program now the violation does occur the

105bus company contacts us we will get the information whether it's an archive they can be shared by email or phone Drive will take that information or reach out to the voters for the operator of the vehicle or due diligence and it is an infraction of about 450 dollars violation of testing stop school buses displayed a stop sign so certainly uh we have the investigative effort ability to do that just a matter of once you're up there they work with Mark caliber make sure that you know the problem is aware started an education campaign already putting on our web page about violation devices passing stop school bus and notice again has been challenged with the campus last meeting you met with uh one of the residents who made the complaint with the enforcement came out there

106so this incorporates some of this bus safety in our normal selected traffic influence she puts the rule on Route 44 because we have four lanes and I see cars getting confused sometimes certainly you're coming you know um southbound Northbound or is eastbound westbound I'm sorry east and west but again Minneapolis of any type of convenient divider has four lanes of no meeting divider the bus is stopped on the eastbound side the cars traveling on the westbound side have an obligation to stop okay on the first you know wait if you will on all four of those Lanes to stop and respect once the school bus stop and exactly leaving this emergency red lights and around the stop off so will camera be able to catch all the way across the four lanes uh that I

107have to defer probably to the technology involved in the school buses but um yeah and just you know the you know the bus company we've been talking to them each year they have the ability to instantly communicate to the Martell off School contact us so if there's a contentment contemporaneous violation of the violated a stop School Bus they've been called in and we'll be notified and then we can intercept that neighborhood what streets are most violations on okay is it there so I think it's great to hold sport but is there a way to advertise I mean because enforcing it somebody getting a ticket I think you should get it taken but is there a way that you can advertise that this is happening just so it's out there for people I mean yeah I

108think I think the chief passing on his uh website you know he sent out a couple things it's been in Canton chatter Canton tonight you know people talking about this um I suspect you know maybe it's commuters you know coming through town but um I'd like to think that our community knows that don't have to do that but we it has been advertised pretty well I think and it's come up as a real concern for the parents that um this is happening more frequently and I I know when I talk to the chief they've tried some some treatments to try to you know help the buses out a little bit or track the buses on and so forth but I think the cameras are going to be that's what the parents have asked for and

109I think that's what we're going to get to them I just want to be clear though uh we are so grateful to the Martell bus company for installing that one camera but it'll be the town of Canton that's purchasing the next nine so um and we'll have to find that in our budget but uh you know safety is is Paramount and we'll do that so Kim any other questions um for the high school middle school when children when students are dropped off by parents or Vans is there supervision out there or they're just they're old enough to be able to supervising themselves yes um I believe the doors are locked so students cannot go into the uh the building so Kevin has actually is working on a solution to that right now because I know

110there's parents personality issue of when the building when the buildings are occupied and Kevin's working on a solution right now so we possibly will have uh adult supervision earlier uh so that we can open those doors sooner yeah because some are remaining on buses and some are waiting outside or I don't know what they've done in the past don't start sitting in cars yeah um I get dropped off just to answer your question around like seven o'clock and you're supposed to start over at 7 20 and I wait outside thank you mentioned and there's no like supervision but there is like coach Cole who's this he's our director of yes yeah um he's always just standing there like you know fist bumping kid he's the supervision yeah he's what we have so I mean he's

111great so we are working on that yeah I I think Kevin's going to have a solution on your tour by the end of the people we've been working I guess for fifty four hundred dollars I'm I'm concerned about waiting two more weeks and then whoever long it takes after that that were by the cameras that installed uh the the forget about school buses the traffic on Cherry Brook Road is very frequently uh concerning frequently in terms of people racing up behind you and all that stuff and and if school buses are being passed when they have the flashing lights on there's serious potential for a disaster it's just fifty four hundred dollars I uh Joe I was I was awaiting a question where will the money come from and Donna and I just wanted a

112couple weeks to uh to uh determine where we could take the money possibly from an unused Capital project um we just needed that time to decide but certainly if the board chose to vote or purchase these uh right away we could do that and then I could come back to you um in two weeks and talk about what line item that funding would come from for your approval so I guess what we're saying then is we're covered softball um in favor favor Brian okay um so on a soft vote I think you know if you can go through with the ordering uh you'll you'll get a hard vote on the 28th so you can you can proceed I think but we'll do we'll do this we'll do the reading uh we'll vote the reading we'll

113give you the hard vote on the 28th but you have you know the permission to go ahead and start the alarm that's fine Dean do you want to order and then we'll get together and reimburse I'd like to say something about the ordering part right now we're putting this camera out we want to make sure it's a good camera it's going to do its job so you want to test this right yeah I don't want to waste any money and it's not going to do it okay we have the camera installed but now we're trying to we have to reconfigure the camera system and the reason why the cameras are only five I suppose a 5.99 or whatever is because I have created all my radios except two radios it's a 1700 package that's what

114it costs to do each bus I already did the radio so now the 500 whatever 600 was I gave you the slip on the company but anything 5.95 yeah but I'd like to try that system up first it's it's on the bus but it's not active right now okay we're still we've still got glitches to get through with it but I want to make sure that the camera is going to be good enough to do its job before we go out and spend that money that's a good point okay all right so we're going to go through the bus I think you have the approval of the board we'll work it and superintendent it'll work with you and the chief and we'll get this thing squared away I think I think it's on every parent's

115mind um so then until that time I know the chief is is providing some uh some covert uh operation there so give us the location of the times and we'll address that we do have a Camp angle starting next week with all the speeding and we'll appropriate and school bus by the way just let us know and I'm ready we appreciate you guys thank you very much anything else you want to mention on school buses I think you want to mention Kevin that um uh the interior cameras I just said Ken did you have something no Ryan he asked if Brian that was back up I did I did wonder though about educating I mean you know we think um it's common sense to stop Crucible bus but sometimes educating or reminding everybody like putting

116it out there because then maybe the buzz gets out like this has been a concern and people talk and neighbors and we can find a flyer find a way to remind people use our message boarding because I think Kevin made a French letter John people put our message to get the message out there exclusively but I hate to say this but we've been passing the right side also oh she's Chris yeah that's terrible not this year it was about a year ago that happened the Public Services well you you all did a great job with years ago um my kids used to have to cross very Corner if you remember and they were speeding by there and now you come up Charlotte Meadow and turn on closet because cars just buzz around the Box they

117come up and I still have the concern there's some parents that don't want their child on Cherry Brook Road is one of them that don't want them to do that route and then get dropped off on the way back so I have them have to call the board and we have to figure that out because I just got a list from the driver yesterday because I'm concerned about that and it's the parents that went on the cross but I don't want them across yeah yeah they just want to get up with us early it's going to do a whole room yeah um I think there's like seven of them we have to deal with and I didn't I just got this yesterday so you know and so you're Route 11 that we discussed yesterday it

118was fixed today and he was 10 minutes early at the intermediate so route 11. and we did that with Kevin John so um I also want to let the board know that um all of the buses have cameras installed so we can view what's happening on the inside of the bus as well Mr Martel took care of that also and um you know I just want to thank uh Mr Martell for his Recruitment and ability to retain the drivers forward Hotel Transportation thank goodness we have not had as many vacancies as other districts have had which is which have caused problems in other districts so even throughout the pandemic thank you Dean for all of your efforts we really appreciate it Dean just recently uh donated um the time of the bus is to take

119the kindergartners on their kindergarten orientation tour and also the new teachers who were around town so thank you for your support thank you Stephen thank you Dean thank you Chief thanks for coming tonight we appreciate you thank you very much um all right so we're gonna we're gonna pause to let Mike we're gonna go to our public forum for everybody that's still with us and this was an unusual night because we had the uh the commuters here but Mike represents the Granby Canton football team and wants to give us a little bit of an update on where they are in their budget thank you thanks for being patient no problem um yeah so friends of playing football um you don't know is a registered non-profit we've been around for about 20 years and our we're

120fundraisers and our mission is to uh support and promote football in the town of Canton um first of all I know this pandemic has been not so thank you for for all you guys do I know it's been a crazy couple years um what I just hand it out is our budget so uh before we go through the budget because I think the budget tells a story um do you want to mention football right now in this town has never been better our youth program the mud Hogs went to the Super Bowl for B team and C team B team one uh the numbers are are growing our flag program has over 400 players in it uh it's really grown big time and our Co-op is great um you know we we co-op with Granby

121they're the host uh school but um we went to the class end second round playoffs two years in a row and uh you know I would I look at it as you know we're playing Big Boy High School football right for the first time in a long time um so I know the town I know the town loves the football program uh come we're gonna whack uh winter winter locks on September 30th that's the Canton game um come come check us out uh we you know we have a a real solid team this year I think we're better than last year to be honest with you despite the week one loss but um so we our numbers okay we have 20 Canton players six are Hartford families okay uh so friends of Canton football right

122now we last year we were three families right that are responsible uh for the budget that you're looking at and you know proud of the report that we picked up two more families so now we're at five so uh just real quick I know I'm going to get out of here in two minutes um so if you had a son or a grandson if so if you and if tackle football I know football is part of the mission football if Khalil we're here I mean I've seen what football's done to that kid uh all through the youth level um at our golf tournament Khalil took it upon himself because we had the golfers helping everybody with their bags and Khloe was a leader Club ran that whole thing and uh I have no doubt that

123Chloe you know is who he is but one of the reasons who he is is because of football uh so if you if if you were uh like me and you wanted to play well we we have to uh we have to fundraise thirty four thousand dollars uh the bus right I don't know about I'm guessing the basketball and the soccer team they don't the parents don't pay for the bus right so the football families have to pay for the bus uh and you know that's going to be a cost of about 18 Grand um we pay a ten thousand dollar seven or ten Thousand Seven sixty uh Co-op fee uh we pay a three thousand dollar pay to play fee uh we feed these kids like you know listen feed these kids throughout for

124you know home games and stuff that's what boosts their clubs and fundraisers should be doing um you know so you're asking a lot from Three Families last year five families this year it's a big it's a big number to uh to come up with uh we do get four thousand dollars this year from you guys which is great and then you can see the uh the other income so I'm gonna close with this is that you know uh just wanted to get that out there show you the numbers um and that you know if I lived in Avon if I moved any town outside of this or you know you talk to other programs talk to other co-ops try Ops talk to other towns right no one's dealing with this I mean when they fundraise

125they're sending their team out of state you know they're buying fun stuff for the kids I mean they're doing all the fun stuff that a booster club is supposed to do uh but you know if football's important to this town which I think it is if football is important to the board of ed uh which I hope it is um you know my I just got one ask is uh I don't know maybe pay for the bus or uh any little bit you can increase uh we go a huge a huge uh you know way to keep football in this town uh short drive right they're the host school they have they we have eight unbelievable coaches the hours our coaches have put in before the season started is mind-blowing uh the kind of these

126guys have put in so uh five home games ones in Camp yeah oh by the way our golf tournament is our big annual thing uh right every year uh this year eight holes into it storm so uh you know we did okay but did we we lost it we we could have done a lot better if we weren't for mother nature that hurt us so back to the back of the drawing board thank you Mike thank you guys so my my observation on this is um so if you take what the board of education is providing it's about 206 dollars per student for this Sport and I'd be interested in how that compares to to other sports uh between you know the busing and uniforms and all the other things that we do I mean

127it sounds like we're a little bit I would think sounds like we might be a little bit late what we provide for for this this team and there should be equity and parity uh there um so it'd be interesting to find out when the athletic director you know on average what are we spending Sports wise thank you well I know the sports they take in 125 per person um and like my daughter plays volleyball the food is not provided we actually actually have to pay for that any additional food so it's on top of that 125 I know or a regular sport but we can look into would you say if you aggregate them um you know just 206 a reasonable number is it is it anemic and we should we shouldn't provide these kids

128you know some type of Equity they can certainly look into it you know I just paid like 295 for volleyball Kim Church does a study every year so we have those numbers on our fingertips she's not here tonight but we'll so Mike we'll take we'll take a look at it okay thank you can I ask a question sure please I don't know I may be completely not entertaining why how did the football program funding different than say soccer or field hockey it's not part of the athletic program the dates back to November 2006 when um the Canton Board of Education at that time agreed to allow a team but it needed to be um the cost with Matt was not supported at that time by the board of education project it was to be the

129cost was to be provided by fundraising efforts so we fast forward now we're part of a co-op with Granby and this is the agreement that was developed to become part of that Co-op a few years yeah so the town had an issue with the fact that football is an expensive Sport and we were funding it ourselves so you can imagine you know what the cost was for 36 38 kids shoulder pads helmets and so on and so forth so we put a cap and we left it to the uh to their own booster club to form and fundraise to the board had always given a x amount of dollars trying to keep parity you know because of the other sports but it sounds like during that time frame you know 206 dollars sounds to me

130a little bit light if you take the average but we'll find out because that's that's how it all came about do we know what Granby contributes do they can shoot like because we're playing we have 20 Canton families right playing and they have 30 grand baby so I have no idea what their budget looks like I have no no idea I mean to see how Brandy funds their their portion of the football program is it fully funded by the district is it partially funded it'd be interesting to see where they are and what they contribute on an average basis just to give us an analysis thank you yes that was an answer was it well I I guess it is it real is it part of the athletic program or is it like we're donating

131to the football club no it's it's it's a million percent part of the athletic program okay yeah okay that's it I just want to make sure but um but Russell the agreement um maybe in the agreement what boards in the past have supported was um offering to pay half the cost of a coach or the cost of a full court coach I'm not remembering now but but what it comes down to is four thousand dollars in our athletic budget goes to support football that's all you know in 2011 . so maybe it's time to revisit yeah and revisit and how we want to vote we're a new forward and you know ask yourself if you watch football it was worth it it's important to the town because we wanted so bad we'd like to get

132another game yeah I think we get more games we have five home games the way a whole school they're the whole school this is important okay this has come up in the past they're the whole school the coaches are based out of there the services are based out of there the program the the we feed the kids every Thursday night on home games the um we do a sleepover Camp I mean all the stuff that uh we paint rocks with their numbers there's so much done and it's uh we have the best of both worlds it's a we are we're not the whole school uh there are 40 co-ops in the state of Connecticut there are two that play games in the non-ho host schools stadium where one of them we should we're lucky to

133have our own game our home game is going to be booming uh the Boosters club I mean they're going to sell more hot dogs in the hamburgers that night and you know then and then then every other sport up there for the rest of the year so I'm gonna sell crushed ice so I'm going to come out with a crush no that's fine yeah listen we do support it and that's why we love to see more but we understand we know we are so it's an 11 game schedule though correct and then but you can play 11 now who does the scheduling I I don't know okay that's weird their ID is more response is is responsible primarily well so they're the whole school I don't know sure back room but I would probably do

134the schedule yeah okay yeah yeah and can integrate together Rockville is going to be our big one yeah um you know I'm Cromwell we won the state championship last year that's gonna be a big one yeah all right and you have a Thanksgiving Day game this year no Northwest uh broke up Gilbert um so that schools is no longer so we're Thursday Friday night before thanks that's where you lost your 11th game maybe yeah yeah that's where you lost okay okay thank you Mike thank you we're we're looking at him thank you so it's worth your time to wait yeah no ahead and take some put a win all night take some cookies yeah Martel transport yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh martial Transportation supported still supports the pool pump football program when it first

135came out Martel donated them a thousand dollars and one year we gave that's when it first came out yeah yeah I don't know if we'll have sex on him going into the call um and then uh I'd cut my bosses in half one year I don't know about maybe two years ago but so we did support them no I I listen they transport five days a week six days a week because they gotta get yeah our program is done yeah okay because the parents are not going to be driving to Grandy right and these guys do they do a great job and our kids our our friends get football I get on the bus and remind them that that behavior and you know whatever it is so and then please come off absolutely so thank

136you thank you thank you ladies okay I just want to say one thing I'm still on right yeah sure I want to thank you for having my bus drivers part of you know appreciation they did a great job um and it really meant a lot to the drivers that that was never done like that before I thank you who is my wife so I don't know oh [Music] um and also before I leave I'd like to introduce it's kind of late now I'd like to introduce myself to give you a little history my name is Dean Martell um I started in Canton in the gas bus that was um standard um and I've been here ever since I was a mechanic for FR teach on Enterprises um and then I bought the company from Frank

137with Frank teacher oh Joe remember spring um and then Frank bought it from Lloyd Hinman and he was Lloyd's mechanic and I have Lloyd Hammond's son driving he's in his 60s so we have a pretty good history yeah history and yeah thank you for your support the super cool bus no I just go to Google okay yeah you won that you won that um really excellent I donate that to the big deal but they don't have that anymore auction there must be an event though at charity yeah that's my blog for donating 1938 Outback School Bus you should donate um thank you very much thank you thank you Stephen thank you okay do we want to do the rest of public forum for anybody online first we do thank you all right so we'll we'll

138complete the uh the public forum at this point if any of you online all right I have raised hand from someone named Lisa I'm gonna allow Lisa to Sure hi Lisa go ahead Lisa hi Lisa hi can you hear me yes thank you for uh thank you for being patient on this public pool oh my gosh I am so grateful I I'm gonna keep it brief because it's so late it's like almost past my bedtime but um I I wanted I first of all I regret not being there in person tonight because I really I really did just want to thank Dean and and you Lou and the Canton Police Department and the board of education for their Swift action on the dash cams for the for the buses it's just really important and I

139I'm really grateful for that um I I actually really want to thank everybody all the volunteers like I everything I heard tonight was so amazing just a PTO and just like the you know the summer program and and the Board of Education you know you're all volunteers and and I don't thank everybody enough you do an amazing job at night I'm really grateful for it um one of the other issues that I I wanted to mention was about uh a Google Classroom daily summary but it's kind of a detailed thing and I'm a little bit too tired to to go into the details so I think what I'm going to do is just send in an email maybe to the Board of Education email and and maybe discuss it at the next time because I'm

140I'm I want to go home I'm I'm tired I'm sure everybody else wants to go home as well so I just just wanted to say thank you to everybody and um and I'm grateful for to have this hybrid opportunity to to speak even though I can't be there in person tonight it's so nicely to say so and we appreciate the kind words and the comments we don't always hear that so we really appreciate you so thanks thank you so this is uh Kevin super the superintendent how are you yeah well thank you thank you thank you thank you I also want to thank you for your comments tonight uh I'm wondering if uh Mr Bishop can give you a call regarding uh the Google issue you were talking about he actually did and I he

141said there's going to be an internal audit I just wanted to explain to the Board of Education why it's so important to me and my family but I think it's just better if I do it in an email and then you maybe can pass it around to everybody it's just it's an extremely useful tool in communicating with my student and with the teacher and just um just I've seen it help my daughter who has an IEP she's grown to be more independent because of the Google Classroom daily summary but it's for some reason there's a technical glitch on it Mr Bishop is working on it he's working on it but I just wanted to emphasize the importance of that thank you thank you so much have a good night thank you thank you anybody else

142from public forum that'd like to speak to the Board of Education you can use the raise hand feature Zoom it's located on the bottom of your screen I don't see any more raised pans okay thank you Carol we're going to close public forum then thank you all for uh for joining and I can obviously stand alive if that will close out public forum thank you okay Mr Case okay all right thank you very much um I want to at this point I want to talk about uh our business office and some issues related to uh for the business office when I say issues in business office Don't Panic nothing nothing Financial um Dynamic ask me who is here um tonight has just been working so hard all summer long um we have an end of

143the year report that is one of the most important importancy School District can file and it's known as the EFS report educational Finance system and that was due on August 31st and I want to thank Donna for your hard work to get that filed done in a timely manner as you know we have a shared a shared finance office where um several years ago a study was done and it was determined that it was best to share services with the town so Mr Bill Geiger is our shared Finance director or town Treasurer and then we have um Personnel one person uh handles from the um benefits for Town and board event employees another staff member handles accounts payable for the Board of Ed and another staff member handles account handles payroll excuse me for the

144board event we also have a shared Town accountant whenever one of those positions changes or there's a reshuffling of responsibilities um it really comes down to our business official who at this time is done in our office to take on those additional responsibilities Our Town accountant has left the position and we're currently searching for a another person to take that position I say that to let you know that those responsibilities have now fallen on Danish openers adding to the list of things that she needs to continue to do normally we would have had a finance meeting tonight to look at our July and August financials but because of everything that Donna is doing we weren't able to meet the deadline so number one I just wanted to explain why we didn't have a finance meeting

145tonight we do want to have our next Finance meeting and we'll send this out an email but if you want to take note of this now on Wednesday morning August 28th if you're on the finance committee Wednesday morning August 28th at 7 30. only because we have a policy meeting that night before the board of Edmonds I'm sorry September I've got August financials on September 28th what time that will be at 7 30. it's the only morning meeting because that evening we have our meeting and policy will meet at six o'clock so that's why we need to have a finance meetings that's why we we're doing it in the morning Joe and that's all right missed the time once again so Donna and I have been working on the past several weeks to bring a

146proposal to you for an additional person in our central office um as we've talked as a leadership team you've encouraged me to take a look at central office and to bring to you uh what the request would be because as I'm um leaving a superintendent at the end of the year one of my main goals is to make sure that systematically we are as strong as possible um due to the recent events with our town at cotton leaving and some other Personnel issues that I will not go into publicly um I want to bring this uh position forward with now with more of a sense of urgency um so I just passed out um the job responsibilities of this proposed position which would be known as uh an administrative assistant accounting clerk to the Board

147of Education business manager so this would be a board of education employee alone not a shared position and this position would assist our business office in fulfilling the responsibilities that are listed here and if you want to briefly um briefly explain a little bit more about him or such a position from your perspective uh well first of all I think this person uh would be able to help not only me but all of us uh you know during our stressful times uh so I want to stress that it's not just for me it's all yeah running itself a lot right it's it's the office um but I think you know there's several things that um you know even though I managed to keep up with things over the last year you know you know uh

148I think there's things that um I could do more on you know help you know be superintendent me uh and uh and John as well uh in my capacity whereas you know I'm I'm sitting here doing some other littler things that really you know somebody else could really do and help out and uh just make the the process smoother I think um uh one of the things that shared services was supposed to do but has has not done was also uh cross-trained in payroll and accounts payable um and they just don't have the capacity to do that so this person would also be that person uh and maybe even stretch down the the road PSIs to back up because there's only one person that does each of these functions around and when that person uh

149you know whether they're sick or out with you know covet or getting married or whatever whatever the case may be if they are out there's no one to do that except for me of course but uh so you know I think that that would help in a lot of different capacities even when you know if body is out or lends out or whoever's out uh you know would also bring a presence in the Board of Education to help answer the phones and kind of organize things and uh you know have someone there uh to you know receive phone calls and customers and yeah but I don't want you to undercut the position because it's definitely needed the um shared position doesn't work it frees you up to be more the financial planner for the board

150that we're what we're looking for to be able to do forecasting for us to begin to to take a look out two years and three years from now as we go through a building project and the things that we're going to need there so we we need bench right and we don't have it and you know I've been I've been following this since the January before I was even elected and I I was wondering how it was all getting done uh and and really I've said to Kevin earlier on in June I said I want to get into forecasting and and Donna is just um just swamp so I love forecasting too I know so so I think that this this plays well for uh administrative staff it plays well for the accounting area and

151plays well for the Board of Education too it's something that's needed now I've already um I've already talked to support Finance members back in May saying that I wasn't convinced that these shared responsibilities are working to the advantage of the Board of Education they work well for the town but the board is two-thirds of the budget we employ the most people we touch the most households yet we're scraping and we shouldn't be scraping as a board of education so I think I think this is an important position and what I'd like to do is uh I know this is in for our first reading I'd like to take a soft vote on this too so that you know they have a job description I'd like to get them in process to begin looking for the

152person rather than wait two weeks approve it and then they start looking let's kind of get on it if we could so you know I'd be interested in each one of your comments to see if you can support the social Erica yeah thank you I'd like to see the job description if it's in the packet I didn't get it it is uh usually no I just asked about tonight [Music] this is just a soft soft okay uh that's a student oh sorry I passed the wrong one and here's a short one bill for you pollution I'll come back to Joe I'm in favor full support and we've had I've watched over the years a lot of reduced staff in the central office and like even I know they have a role but other Accounting Office

153duties there is I observed just even going down for things like they need the support so I I both support absolutely Ryan I know you don't have the job description because it was just passed out um and we'll we'll get that to you if you have any comment on it no it's it sounds I mean it's it sounds fine and reasonable I don't see you know unless something comes up between now and the final vote I don't see any reason not to go forward so the other thing you should thank you Ryan so the other thing you should know is that uh Kevin feels that uh there's a grant available for 50 of the position so if you take the hours times the the rate that Kevin's proposing here um we should be able to

154uh to be able to fund most about half of this uh via a grant so that would be an annual brand so there wouldn't be a clip foreign [Music] budget we go back to the board of Finance for the real oh about half of it I understand that but the other half so as we get closer to the repetitive comment from the board of finances run your budget do what you have to do and if you're coming up short give us a heads up in plenty of time you know based on and again we're going to have to look at special education but as we get closer to April and May we're going to have to give them a heads up on where we are we are the superintendent search we're making some Personnel changes

155um so we we could come up a little short and that'll be my job to sell them on it but um I mean I think central offices understand [Music] okay thank you okay so we have a softball we'll still take that hard vote on the 28th but I think you can move thank you thank you thank you you're welcome Donna John Claudia and I really appreciate your support thank you sure so that's what I have for now okay I think we're good until I report okay you can you can excuse yourself there's no problem there required we're gonna go for another 20 minutes 25 minutes so okay um so just two things from the board is uh we have a tripod board meeting on 10 17 at 6 PM that we have to be prepared

156for every board member should be there uh in attendance and the uh second thing is on committee changes so we've changed the committee meetings to meet right before the board at six o'clock um so uh on Alternate days so policy will meet in at the fourth meeting on the board Tuesday meeting and budget will meet on the first at six o'clock and curriculum is free to meet when they normally meet we um Cindy is looking to uh to move uh because you can't make the curriculum meeting so I'm going to move Cindy to policy so policy uh senior will joining policy um and we'll kind of go from there it was really it was just you and Peggy on uh who's on communication Cindy who's on Communications right soap and Peggy [Music] Jim and so

157we may we may move you to budget I'd like a technology Wellness command well there's there's going to be I've talked to uh actually I've talked to Erica about this and we're going to try to add technology to the curriculum so it's going to be a curriculum technology Community yeah and our meeting was September 21st at 9am and then we'll said the rest of our own sounds good yeah okay so that's it that's it from the chair okay Kevin did everybody get Kevin's goals did we pass hold down that quickly right now So based upon the board to written feedback on um goals for this year in the discussion that occurred on August 23rd what you see in front of you tonight are my proposed goals for this year that align with the Florida Board

158of Education goals in these discussed does everybody everybody [Music] um so I won't elaborate on each of these in the interest of time most of them are are self-explanatory um I try to be clear into the point so that um you know really no interpretation needed but with student achievement uh my most important job as the chief instructional leader of the district um and what I've already begun to do over the summer is to identify successes and achievement gaps across all student groups and subgroups and in working with collaboration collaboration with John and our administrators establish and Implement action plans to address them um also we're making sure that there will be a systematic consistent approach to the collection and Analysis of data into the presentation which I heard loudly and clearly with the principles

159and director of PPS present their reports we want to make sure it's done in a consistent manner with the same types of data so you can see Trends and trend lines and so forth the second major goal has to do with health and safety and it's where we're going to really work hard this year to continue to improve School culture and climate we're working in partnership with Amanda Pickett from the Connecticut State Department of Education to put together our safe schools climate plans we have a district plan we're putting together and school plans those will be on our newly updated website within the next few weeks and we're going to make sure that our systems are similar at each school for supporting the needs of students srbi strategic resource resource research-based intervention process that's been

160done a little bit differently in each School I want a more consistent format you'll be hearing more about that PBIS our positive behavioral intervention and support system which is which is one disciplinary approach that we have throughout our district restorative practices is another approach I'll be bringing these systematically and reporting to you throughout the year on each of these items and what's also important is that we continue to implement the board of education's equity and diversity policy this year um we're planning to conduct some feed from some focus groups to get feedback on how we're doing in that area and to continue with some Community conversations last year continuing the build off of what we talked about last year building infrastructure and grounds um I think that's self-explanatory so as you know we've done quite

161a bit of work at CIS and Cherry Brook Donna has pictures to prove it in the interest of time we're not going to share those with you tonight but we'll send those out thank you very much Donna we know we have work to do at the high school right the high school grounds look pretty bare we need to improve the look there and we already have plans in place for that so this will remain a focus the cleanliness and maintenance and upkeep of internal and external building grounds school grounds throughout the year also important I'm going to work with you to establish facilities feasibility committee uh made up of various stakeholders to look at the infrastructure needs um for the future thanks to pound number one our curriculum needs how should our students be grouped

162together by building and secondly based upon our growing enrollment needs from our space study that we did last year so that will be coming up shortly I'll be working with the town because there are some legal requirements for how to go about doing that and then finally policy um of course I'll be working closely with Joe on the policy committee we decided to update all policies 15 years or older and to make sure we revise those policies in conjunction with current legislation which we will do okay I'll stop there for your feedback your questions anything I left out so because this is a first reading it's the first time you're seeing it let you digest this a little bit and then we can take it up further on the 28th unless there's something that's glaringly

163um needs some thought you know right oh you you can't see these either so sorry all right no I promise I'll get you things out ahead of time so this doesn't happen I'm sorry Ryan so the idea was to uh to get down to four goals it's a superintendent I mean within that there's some bullet points but for him to get down to some specifics for us and I think he did that and I think we'll we'll be able to ask you some questions all right okay thank you for considering these all right on consent agenda uh approval of the minutes can I have a motion for approval dominance thank you very much all those in favor um Family engagement coordinator presented at the last meeting this is a combined position [Music] um [Music] Choice

164position coming together right any other comment on that thank you along with the additional responsibility of money engaging our students and Families this position any questions on it [Music] second Felicia aim for the discussion on the position right I'm sorry you vote Yes on this yeah okay thank you thank you you know we've already had several people reach out to express okay final reading for you uh Orlando music trip that um we gave a soft okay to I think she started working on this one already and she's been doing some fundraising tonight is the uh final reading to approve that trip on the 13th through the 17th the uh the itinerary is in your packet um and she has to sign the contract and get this off off the floor so um any questions no

165you know uh can I have a motion Erica Felicia any further questions on it all those in favor I'm opposed okay goes okay we had the first reading we kind of gave Jeff a kind of a winking knot here but the first reading of the eighth grade middle school trip to Washington DC that'll come back on the 28th any any further questions on that from the superintendent all those in favor oh I need a motion sorry Tim you want to make a motion Kim and Joe any further discussion all those in favor aye okay all right we have two more things uh one is is the first meeting of the superintendent goals uh I need that as a first uh first reading I need a motion on that thank you Erica second Russell any further

166questions on the uh superintendent goals all those in favor I opposed okay and then um the first reading on the on the central office clerk it's item F it's not on your packing but we need that is a first reading motion Ryan you want to make a motion thanks Ryan on the first second we should thank you Felicia any any further conversation discussion all those in favor I opposed yeah Miss okay right board member comments does the board want to bring up anything that was not said tonight or would like to make a point of anything that needs to be made that we're missing okay we're dead can I have a motion to go into an executive session for the purpose of a Personnel matter and a superintendent and uh born superintendent search will invite

167the superintendent to stay memorable motion thank you Cindy him on the second all those in favor okay thank you Kara thank you Donna thank you Claudia thank you for the cookies