BOE Meeting 8 23 22

001hey welcome everybody to uh here we go we kick it off it seems like we're just all together just recently figure out the summer is uh coming to an end i i had a chance to speak at the cranston heights pranced princeton school district today they were having their convocation and uh for my business but uh you know i gotta tell you those teachers were all pretty excited even though it was in the summer so there's a little bit of sadness i guess in that but they were pretty jazzed so i'm looking forward to our convocation and so you know how jazzed everybody is for that um so we are going to before we do the pledge of allegiance i just want to describe some changes that we're going to make to the uh to

002the format going forward so um in order to try and engage the public our public uh so much but hopefully we'll have more in the future we're going to move my report uh the student report and the um superintendent's report up to the beginning of the meeting and then we're going to do public forum that will give any public that may be online and or in the audience will give them a chance to hear some things that normally if they were just here for public forum it's the first thing off the right off the shelf um there may be some important things that they want to hear so the students will be giving updates on activities and events and dates as well the superintendent will leave his uh his report and then i'll follow my

003report and then we'll go to public forum and uh and we'll kind of describe the meeting to everybody and of course we'll we'll stay with the three-minute rule on the on the public forum as people come hiking so um so that's going to be the format going forward um we'll welcome everybody whether they be online or they'd be in the audience and then we'll go to the pledge of allegiance so that's that's the changes a little bit of the changes that we'll make so when you see when we have our meeting in january uh september you'll you'll see those on the agenda okay any questions all right with that small would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all as you're all standing don't

004don't that's it what is it i want you to take a look at our mission statement that's now going to be behind us hanging on the wall for all the read and i want to thank claudia for getting that done for us um i'm proud that we can do that and now when we go remote somewhere that banner will travel so okay thank you thanks for standing for a few minutes tonight's gonna be a night of a lot of good things i think a lot of compliments i can't wait to hear um actually mr casey's report but um don is going to lead us into uh some very interesting things and not to steal her thunder but if you get a chance you have to go by cis and then you have to go by

005cherry brook primary school and see the work that's been done there it's absolutely fantastic and and really um you know we take pride in so many things here in camp we take pride in our thank you we take pride in our students we take pride in our teachers and now we can really i think taking pride in our buildings because i think they're they're presentable for the taxpayer uh uh both inside and out so that's going to be great i think someone's working right now i think yeah they are both [Laughter] she's talking to me all day long um you know yes uh kevin and i had a chance to go to a a leadership meeting for cade thursday down in westbrook and the theme for the state board of education is the sky is

006not the limit and and i thought about that first i said and then i really started to like the slogan because the sky is no longer the limit i mean we're sending people into space onto mars and so on and so forth our students are the same way the sky you can look at the sky but we're not we're not held back from anything and really that's going to be the theme for this board going forward we're going to get very passionate and um we're going to get very um very involved i feel uh this year on a lot of good things that are going to happen so um i'm excited i'm excited this is our first meeting i was actually looking forward to it for a couple weeks and uh you know bothering him

007a little bit about it because we were both excited about it and and just just as a note um i know that this has been uh publicly announced but um you know with our superintendent being here this is his last year i want to make it one of his best years something that'll always remember and this board will be with him uh as he goes forward so kevin thank you all right so having said all that and kind of set the uh the tone uh we'll go to public forum and public forum is neighbors speaking to their elected officials and um anybody online if they're going to speak you can let karen know would you like to speak for a public forum sir uh no i'm pretty new oh so welcome yeah my son is

008just ruling and i got this form so i just came to you to see what it's about and see what you guys are doing and your name is my name is you okay and you have one child in the uh yes he will be going into a typical primary school this year that's great that's great we're so grateful you came to the meeting thank you welcome welcome to canyon and this is our superintendent if you have any questions you can always call his office uh kevin case just so you know and this is your board of education okay nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you okay public forum online we do we have one um andrea has her hand raised i'm going to go and allow andrew's squad go ahead

009hi andrea hi how are you great thanks for attending the meeting tonight thank you for hosting my name is andrea barber my address is 14 old mill drive in canton i am the co-president of the canton middle school pto along with julie fort and we're also members of the lobster loop 5k organizing committee and we'd like to say a huge thank you to the 386 friends families and neighbors who have already signed up for the middle school's largest fundraiser of the year which is the 30th annual canton lobster loop 5k road race and non-competitive health walk the event begins on the canton town green which is the corner of route 44 dowd avenue this sunday august 28th at 8 30 a.m we invite all to join us there's still time to register at runsignup.com we're

010excited to see runners walkers first-time participants absolute veterans and we encourage t can teams to register and we're going to have prizes going to the best team spirit and the highest team participation and all fundraising pro proceeds will be used in support of our mission for the educational social and emotional growth of our students and school community the registration fee is 25 and registration will be available through race day on your own device or phone in addition we'd like to thank aaron izzo who's a canton middle school parent and our lobster loop race director and our many wonderful canton middle school parent volunteers including our race committee organizing members i'd like to give them a shout out because they've worked very hard this summer rebecca briggs kim weller ali keith heather newman and carol mcconville

011we'd like to recognize the support of many canton and beyond businesses who have supported the school with generous sponsorships we'd like to say thank you to canton parks and rec for collaborating on a hugely successful and fun six-week lobster lube race prep course along with a big thank you to legendary kitten track coach tim o'donnell who led this class thank you to canton middle school principal jeff moore for his support of the pto and this event and rumor has it that he and maybe one of your very own canton board of ed members are signed up to run this sunday more details and up-to-date information including a full list of race sponsors can be accessed through our facebook page which is canton lobster loop 5k on the cms pto facebook page or the cms pto

012website so again online registration is still open at runsignup.com just search for canton lobster loop 5k um thank you for your time and we can't wait to see you at the lobster loot this sunday august 28th thank you andrea that was a great report thank you so much we we wish you a great success uh for sunday sunday correct not saturday sunday yup thank you so much andrea i wanted to let you know also for the pto and we'll get a note out to the pto presidents we're going to leave a spot open on our agenda going forward in reports we're going to actually ask the pto if they wanted to have a we'll have a standing opening for pto to give a report back to the board of education going forward so i thought

013maybe you guys appreciate maybe you don't have anything to say you skip it that's fine but we're going to we're going to have a standing spot in the uh in the uh agenda for you going forward thank you so much for giving us that platform that's very much appreciated thank you oh thank you anyone else here if anyone else would like to speak give their public comment you can go ahead and raise your hand and i'll allow you to i don't talk any other raised hands okay great thank you so we're going to close uh public forum then okay isabella nice to see you thank you for coming tonight great job with the pledge of allegiance thank you next time we're going to make you both sing it but that that's the next time so

014we we go to the student report i was mentioning by the way to uh simone going forward uh before public forum we're going to have the reports so the public can hear what's going on a little bit be a little bit more informed so we'll have you guys on a little bit earlier and then i'll just mention to you some nights go late you guys are excused whenever you need to go test homework or whatever after you give your report you're welcome to stay in the home meeting or if you have something or a ride that you need to get you go ahead and do that but i i also want to say final thing i'm going to say is i relish your input and so your input is not confined to your report so

015as we go through a discussion the board of ed you're more than welcome to raise your hand and say you know this is what we're thinking or this is what i think the students are thinking because your input is so valuable to us so don't ever hesitate during the meeting to give input and it doesn't matter what the topic is we'd love to hear from you okay all right so what do you have for us tonight okay so i'm gonna start yeah i'm gonna start with um past events so freshman orientation was held on august 17th where freshmen were given the opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of high school life and meet a variety of upperclassmen me and bella were both there and it went really really well a number of our school

016fall sports have either kicked off their season or have begun pre-season training and teachers recently began preparation for the beginning of the school year okay for upcoming events the kindergarten meet and greet will be held tomorrow on wednesday august 24th cms 7th grade orientation will also be held tomorrow uh wednesday august 24th uh the cbps grades one through three meet and greet will be held friday august 26th as previously mentioned the cms pto loss lobster loop will take place on sunday august 28th uh monday august 29th will be the district-wide first day of school uh friday september 2nd will be the cms and chs picture day and there will be no school monday september 5th due to it being labor day and ongoing events are just students are continuing to enjoy their summer as it

017comes to clubs any any questions for the students on their report is there is there a uh kickoff at the high school is there a cook sometimes there's a cookout right in the beginning or no do i remember that i think with code we've only really experienced like in high school during overtime so i don't think we've yeah recently all right obviously previously i mean i only entered freshman year and that was when i had orientation so i think besides that i think it's just entering this school year we're going to have to nudge we're going to have to nudge the principal to see if we can get something going for you that would be fun some kickoff we're going to get some excitement going and cis is having their meet and greet through friday

018[Music] any questions for the student reps okay thank you for that report thanks for coming tonight still part of your summer vacation will be appreciated so okay all right that that leads us a little bit into um really the meat of tonight's meeting which is to try to get some goals established by the board of education as we go forward this year these are not long-term goals these are short-term goals and they're not to be confused with tasks the task is you wanted to get the you want to get some plantings in the front of the building that that task is being handled the goal is beautification beautification of our buildings and then you know the action items that come down with it so um we have some of the goals um and i was

019i was going to use this easel i was just going to write some of the things as we go forward and felicia i hope you can see me and i don't want to block out the audience so um see how we can do this now from these goals the superintendent is going to take these goals he's going to see what we want to try to accomplish this year 20 20 23 and and then he'll come up with the action items that will get us to those goals so i want you to think um thank you i want you to think a little bit lofty but i want you to think doable i want you to think in terms of 12 months it may exceed it may exceed or extend further than that but really what

020we want to do is is come up with this series of goals four or five that will generally um get the superintendent us thank you so superintendent can uh kind of come up with his action items and then by november december we can measure where we are you know getting through the first half of january getting through the first half of the year where we are against those goals and what we have to do to tweak them modify them or improve them so i'll get everybody started on this um hey ryan so we were thinking in terms of excuse my back um so if you think in terms of the first you know the first big thing that we really have to uh we focus on is achievement right so i'm going to put that

021one up because i think it's an easy one because we always want to uh be focused on achieving it okay it's the first goal so let me let me get your thought process going a little bit so we've gone through a couple presentations by principals they come in in october and then they come in about may here's the case about and they come in about may the thing that the thing that i wanted to see or the thing that i'd like to have established is consistency and presentation so when they come in when and where they can because i understand the grade levels are different and some of the data evaluation and analysis is different but what i'd like to see is a board member and you can tell me differently and maybe you have

022some other ideas but i'm trying to get the thought process going here what i'd like to see is consistency in those presentations and i'd like to see consistency in data so we can evaluate it and i'd like to see year over year or trending data which i think mr bishop has offered to start doing some charting so that it's easier for you as a board of ed to see what our trajectory is where we're doing well maybe a comparison against what the state is doing and where our dirt is so that we have that data so we know are we accomplishing anything as a district and the data that we're getting how's that being compared so that would be my first part of achievement you know as part of the subheadings achievement being the first

023goal and then one of the things that i'd like to see so what do you think and what are you thinking about achievement because that should be a board of education's you know number one priority how are we achieving um certainly we have our mission and our vision and things like that but how are we getting our students you know academically where are they as far as learning goes thoughts i like what you said about you know the consistency and everything i agree with everything you said um and i think we did a little bit this last year looking at the data and making sure that all data we collect is like meaningful what has value and is purposeful and helps drive and move instruction forward and anything that's fluff or not necessary which i

024think john and kevin you already started that process making it really valuable for teachers and we talked about what was that thing with the so one of the things that threw me off this year second part is when jeff moore principal moore came in and he was he was just starting under a new program so um the data that he was providing us he wasn't using the same system as done the year before which he provided us that information and then there's new data he was using a new program going forward so it's hard really to understand where we are with the middle school is a board of education i don't i don't know about you but i and i mentioned it to kevin i came away a little bit confused from that meeting on

025you know how are we doing at the middle school level i understand if you're if you're changing over uh your metric uh system or uh analysis system i i can understand that and this year it'll be different because now we'll have a year or six months but that that's what i mean about consistency and data and are all the schools using the same same methodology um or does each school have a different uh system for for analyzing data because that confuses the board of education i think you know one is using this another and and i don't know if trajectory from cis if they're telling us or even cherry brook is is like this is that their data is that against so i i wasn't sure and that is a board we want to be

026sure that we're we're having an impact or that our curriculums have been intact so i hear what you're saying i mean data measurement is always something that can be confusing and kind of overwhelming uh and to your point earlier is that you know what they're measuring at your primary school is going to be different from what they're measuring at the high school so i think that possibly you know for this category achievement that maybe we need some some sub categories but i mean the you know the template idea of like saying like this is what we want to see you know makes a lot of sense to me but it's a little bit tricky i think because of you know because of the data because of the different age groups so maybe some maybe some

027overarching uh subcategories you know that kind of align with the mission i'm not sure okay yeah i think that's great input and i know kevin's taking this all in and when there's visuals i mean maybe it's just me but like when things are color coded like what color i hate the typical red green yellow but i don't know what works you know john whatever they do now but it just it's helpful at a quick glance in a meeting to be like okay so we're really good on that area we're above average but now it brings your attention to what we're doing really well and what our areas of weakness are and where they move i don't know that's just my opinion you know somebody else i appreciate it and just i'm sorry oh well i

028was just gonna say just one other thing i mean as far as achievement goes i mean they're you know are we talking just you know standardized testing are we talking you know social and emotional achievements you hear what i'm saying like so i think we should bring i think that's a great point yeah we should break it down i think it should be the academic but it's also it should also be the uh how are we doing against the social and emotional we should be getting a report on that because last year and we actually heard on an emotional on the students and we also heard our teachers we heard that the teachers were reaching out we heard that from our principals so and i know kevin addressed that nicely and he's going to really

029address it very well in the convocation uh we're really going to take a study of that but um that is a great point ryan i mean it's like you know social emotional is tough because it's so subjective yeah it is so it's like one person might feel like this is doing very well and then you might have somebody else who just has a very different perspective but i think it's also i think we do have to measure ourselves against our peers and peers who are contiguous because you know we're in theory of the same resources that they do um it's a much more even playing field um to measure ourselves right so you know i think a little competition is good too we say look we're concerned because we're behind whatever schools system right and

030and we want to catch up to them and surpass them so i think we should look at how they measure themselves um as well and maybe incorporate some of those so that we can say okay we know that we're doing better than a b and c but we're still behind you know e and f and z better step it you know on on the emotional side i still think we can measure that because i know kevin's thinking about a program but we'll know how many how many of our students are taking advantage of counseling that we're going to be offering and things of that nature and we'll know if that is actually if that program is working and uh maybe we'll do something for teachers but there is a way to measure some of that

031now it doesn't tell you how great we're doing but i think the more the more that are participating then we're doing something right right if i know that this is a board conversation but one thing i'd love to be able to jump in with this too is i think everything that we want to look at is yes the the performance and then what does the story look like what does the narrative of growth look like for kids um you might find a kid who has struggled mightily um but made immense gains to be able to get to that point where they're still under the cutoff but that opportunity to be able to celebrate what growth really looks like is something that that i know that that we internally are really really looking for all the

032time we're looking to see who are those kids who are growing or sliding so that we can celebrate that and keep that work moving that then you know in the end that speaks for itself and that gets to higher level performance overall but is that attention to the the forest and the trees that helps to to make a difference so you have to define that for the board so that we can follow it because it hasn't been defined yet so that i think that's a great comment and i'd love to see that so you know where we are even with the uh the folks are you know below the line but have made tremendous strides right joe i agree with a lot of what's been said i think it's important that we all agree on

033with the administration uh what is achieved how we're going to finance you what does it mean yeah um what are the areas involved what what is achievement i i like that which one write down and and where are we however we define it where are we succeeding in those areas and where are we not where we want to be there's the state testing there's the sats there's the ap scores there's i don't know probably 15 other things too that's going to be the starting point i think that that has to be where we start defining achievement where we are we got to get our baseline everywhere right right and are there what are the are there groups in the schools subgroups in the group that aren't achieving where we'd like them to achieve right and

034then we'll get to the administration and the faculty to how we're going to address those and areas build on what joe was saying lou that you know i was just saying that he said well what you know define achievement what does that look like you know it's obviously it's going to be a little bit different for each kid so like back to what john was saying you know that kid who he's still a little bit below but he works so hard to get right up to that you know that that edge and that's that's kind of the philosophy of um i'm sure some teachers or some fans i've heard of carol dweck and like fixed versus growth mindset and you know basically you know i mean if if if uh if bella here you know

035says oh that's it i'm done i'm never gonna grow or improve anymore i mean you know what i'm saying like you have your whole life ahead of you and the fix versus growth mindset is instills that into to kids because some kids do get stuck you know at a very young age like oh i'm never gonna do better i'm never gonna you know get that grade that i want you know and and so teaching that that difference fits versus you know the growth mindset that yeah you know everybody can grow everybody can improve that's great even us even us older that's [Music] we celebrate we celebrate a lot of things which is great i mean we give out a lot of awards i i was thinking about it um when i was looking at the

036goals we don't really celebrate though the academic achievements like the valedictorian um you know first time i was was at graduation and you know that's a that's a pretty um that statues yeah it's a tremendous accomplishment and never came to the board of education for us to say good job so maybe we should think about celebrating academic achievement as well as we celebrate sports and everything else but i think we we missed out on that one a little bit so a concept i heard you use in other schools um and it's it can you know there's there's pros and cons to it but of having a cut-off marker for strictly for academic achievement say it's you know eighty percent for better but to be or be average or better would be minus average and each

037at the end of each um you know semester or trimester we post who achieved in that group and kids might want to strive to be at that level i mean it has some more competition and feelings can be hurt and all that but yeah you know you're not saying that you're i mean you know it's it's a recognition that if you're achieving a certain level you are celebrated right um right you have an honors list right now with the high honors honors yeah okay yeah there you go but but i think what you're saying is helping to be in what you're saying too mr dean is this is understanding and being aware as a board to help celebrate those accomplishments yeah i mean because there's an honor let's say this is the honors of something

038this is terrific and you should all be striving for it because achievement's important okay anything more on achievement because i want to move to a couple more spots i'm trying to be cognizant of time trying to say one thing absolutely you know without publishing each order whatever you know my kid my kid's smart but she doesn't try as much but she's kind of been always been in the middle you know and it's like when she sees names that's repeating repeating repeating like you know it's like the middle child is kind of forgotten you know and she just looks at well yes them again it's them again you know so well i i don't want to lose track of the fact that we have these other things that we celebrate from um oh my goodness we

039did it to high school i mean all different awards for kindness and who's who's uh you know who helps out the most in the classroom we do all those things so we won't lose i mean people are going to get awards i just didn't want to lose track of the academic awards because they were kind of left out and you know they should be they should be in there as much as anything else that's all and i by the way i don't want to create more stress on our students lives by showing you know creating this intense competition but i i want to recognize performance yeah that makes sense and i think maybe like with what you're saying how it can be like you know intimidating for kids who are in the middle like i

040know i'm not quite tall but like getting an email maybe even i don't know that might be a hard but like individual like an individual email it feels good just to see like someone's recognizing you it doesn't have to maybe be in the public like in school but like if you get an email from the board of vet a board of member and they're saying congratulations like you did this we're so proud of you for your work um i think that would make a student feel really good and that way it wouldn't discourage others what resonates with me here a little bit that of what i'm hearing is we spoke to you last may about our our strategic drivers of student growth and and academic achievement and then school culture and climate right and so

041the school culture and climate really comes into that idea of positive behavior support programs within the schools to be able to build that camaraderie build that sense of school spirit and then connecting with all of our students to really encourage the the job well done that connects back with our vision affair to it as well and then from our academic program continuing to be able to boost achievement for all of our students so felicia i just wanna i don't wanna because i'm always looking at the chart is there anything you wanna add per chance okay no i'm i'm good lou good i don't want to leave you out okay just sure two seconds absolutely but you suggested ryan we do have to a degree at least seven through 12. right john but i think it's

042under recognized you know that okay you made the honor roll you haven't cured cancer but it's still worth recognizing by an email to the student to the parents that kind of thing i think that could be you know that could be a nice thing for kids and if you said that it's a multiple layer thing and you said standard so that it's not a joke but it's something that anybody who works can probably reach right yeah so you know 80 75 whatever the number is it's not unattainable it's not some goal and the top 10 kids get right right because the top 10 kids get their uh but it's the other youngster who struggles to get that 82 average for yeah so let me let me suggest that this is the task because this is

043getting into the superintendent's nitty-gritty but if we were to have board of ed little note cards that we all had and every quarter everybody had two or three they were given by the teacher recommends or and we each take two or three students to write a little note as a board of ed member and send it to them so so that's up for the superintendent decide but i'm just drawing that is there a way to get like a dis you know we probably have grids on all the field trips and a grid on events but like do we have a grid that shows pre-k through 12 what we are really doing like where do you you can look at a glance and you know that this is how cherry brook you know this is when

044they celebrate kids and this is how they do it and this is when it happens we don't really have like a sheet that describes but i wouldn't say that we have a one pager that would describe all that we have information from ourselves we've got our school calendars but we don't have the one page of celebration for that that might be something to do because like maybe there's stuff being done at schools that we don't know about that you kept you know and so just i guess gathering that information before we make a decision on what we're going to change sure and i also just you know i also send letters of combination to students three k through 12 throughout the school year so so many students get recognition from the superintendent not from the

045board of ed per se so who i like your idea of heavy note cards and having because we can touch more that's all it should be on you but anyways thank you and just oh i'm sorry i was just gonna say and then like uh what joe had said in here about revamping the canton celebrates that could and we're going to split that so it's not this marathon so people can enjoy it so we'll probably do that over two nights but thank you yeah absolutely i just want to say i think that you know like the emotional health safety safety and health of a child or a student is important you know like if you feel comfortable can you feel comfortable in the classroom can you feel comfortable to ask a dumb question can you

046be comfortable enough to say i don't know what you're talking about i mean to me those would be like great goals that bring everybody forward can you be a team in a classroom so that if someone doesn't understand something can someone who you know the student who does can they help that student you know i mean i think that's where all votes rise because if if you're suffering in silence as a student going i i don't want to say anything because i'm going to look like i don't know what i i don't know what's going on how do we how do we address even those things so that everybody moves forward you know and i think that's really important that's like that building i used to do a lot of building community with my kids

047at the very beginning because i was shocked later like mid-semester realizing some people didn't know another person's name like i'd say oh give that to janet they're like who's janna i mean they're like this isn't even a big town i'm teaching it you don't know who janet is so um yeah i i'm big on community and like trying to i don't know so you just led us into topic number two which is uh health and safety so on you those folks that uh filled out provide us with input that was the next one that seemed health and safety what should we do and you just let it off perfectly what should be the goals around health and safety and within that could be anti-bullying which we're going to talk about in the meeting later tonight

048but um health and safety i think the superintendent has done actually a really good job addressing health and safety i think the board has done a great job addressing health and safety are there other things that we should be doing and considering now i don't want to bring up a source subject but we were at that leadership uh meeting and quite a bit of conversation was around have an sro not have an sro who has an sro who doesn't have an sro who's having paid for so you know from a safety standpoint um and you know thankfully that hasn't been this burning bush uh platform here but you know what other things should we be thinking about safety we've improved our cameras we we've gone to that uh protected film i think did we do

049that yes yeah okay so we've done that uh what other things are on student safety and that like i said it could go into all different directions um and safety and health mental health for our students things of that nature have you seen things in other schools or other districts that you may have visited or i asked our student reps you know how do you feel about the mental health in school do you feel safe in school are you comfortable going to school every day and knowing you're okay or things like that you see on the news is that how upsetting is that to you what do you think about that i feel like our school takes like physical and mental health like very seriously um and i feel very safe like when i'm at

050school when it comes to you know what's happening on the news and in other schools i just i think you know mental health could be prioritized a little bit more not to say that we're not doing anything because i believe we're doing a lot but maybe more consequences for people who are contributing to i don't know bullying and like i just haven't seen that taken as seriously as you know someone physically threatens you that's very serious but even like cyber bullying and things like that are really detrimental to the students mental health and i would like to see more consequences taken not to sound harsh like yeah consequences could be more of a deterrent when when you know that's made more public i understand that and that's the whole idea behind you know you act

051improperly there's a there's retrofit punishment for that system think i mean i don't think we touch on that enough um in terms of we talk about you know being a good internet citizen and all that but you know i think there's some real issues here with with the effect that tech has on uh younger folks and um social media in particular you know it's when every the kids have phones at a younger and younger age and it's you know there's there's downsides to it and i don't think we do enough to have a we don't have to be you know the ludics over here but i think we have to have conversations like guys there is a dark side to this and it can have a really talk about social emotional health i think you

052know tech and social media has the worst influence right on social emotional health so where you're coming from it's more maybe review the policy on that a little deeper right but i mean also you know give parents and kids information like look you know like instagram is designed to do certain things to your brain that's what it does be more honest and real about the reality of what's going on so one of the things we're hoping to do tonight is to talk more about anti-bullying coming up in october it's anti-bullying month and can we bring in a speaker for parents maybe along those lines to educate them because sometimes parents don't know you know i'm going to sound really happy i just instagram like last year i finally you know got involved with that right

053i was a facebook fan so i don't know you know some of this stuff for my kids tell me i'm getting these initials and i don't understand it and so i i think that you know i mean i think even though this guy's wrong so you know look i think you can even capture kids imaginations by you know diving deeper and saying oh here's how the algorithms go right right these things are designed to do this to you almost like a smoking kind of campaign you know we explain to kids why smoking is bad but my tobacco is harmful you know on some level these things work in the same way they're addictive they're designed to be addictive the advertising is designed to capture young folks and try them i'll i'll echo that i i'm

054interrupting with you but i'm going with you with this that actually there are elements of that in the curriculum right now because because of that impact but being able to highlight that more and having additional uh support in that vein particularly from the social media standpoint the middle school has taken a risk but even it's just gotten down to be so much younger now i mean kevin did a great job bringing in justine ginsberg she was excellent you know the challenge is getting people there i know every parent who attended her things great he had great knowledge left there and maybe did things differently you know that's not the end all but i i agree with ryan we need to do more in that area to educate parents and students um you know it's a

055big influence it's a big challenge socially emotionally and friendships and community and it's i think there needs to be more work on that i i couldn't agree more with both of you it may not be a more important thing than educating kids how to make the internet work for them as opposed to work against them social media may be great but it doesn't change i think it needs to be replaced with you know more human interaction you know face-to-face interaction whether that's clubs or games or sports or i don't know fun stuff that you know play you know where's the play that kids have nowadays that's kim's point she said that for a while we're gonna sing we're missing that component a little bit that that's a culture and climate piece and i think simone

056was talking a little bit about about how to continue to support um and that that kind of works as the the the protective measure before bullying or some of these other things happen uh the root of a lot of those situations are are a negative sense of self or a negative feeling about the environment that you're in when you've got a positive environment that's what the research says when you've got a positive environment positive interactions from relationships if you prioritize that a lot of a lot of better things happen from that would you say that's a huge component of health and safety yes absolutely that would be the precursor that leads to everything else as well okay i think you got some good information on health and safety um across the board here there's been

057comments about building maintenance and infrastructure so building maintenance and infrastructure we actually started that and i were talking about it you know what we have to do to improve outside our outsider buildings to make the taxpayers proud i think when the taxpayers are proud about our buildings and the things we've done i think it helps us through a budget process in a cycle because they see that we're taking care of things they see things being improved infrastructure things what are we doing as far as technology to staff and i know john's done a great job in keeping us uh on top of that um cura jeff uh the whole roof um so what what would you say for the next 12 months might be some ideas or thoughts that we can give our superintendent as

058far as buildings and maintenance i know i know one thing that i hear is as i walk through the buildings by the way i haven't done this yet but if you haven't maybe mr case can get you through cis i understand they pulled that carpet the new flooring is in i understand it's beautiful so you should thank you very much so you should look at that when you get a second um but what other things should we be working on uh you know my finished thought is i i walked through jerry brooke and this is not an indictment cherry book but some of those classrooms are mounded with books and items and toys and and i said where do you put the students in here how do you get i mean so how are we

059cleaning inside outside how are we making it presentable to the public so when they walk by they say look at this school i'm i'm so proud of this school so what are your thoughts on that i agree i think that there needs to be time and resources or support for the classrooms that need that um cleaning out or you know sorting through and i mean teachers are working very hard and have been for years and i think pandemic added another layer especially at cherry brook because that's where the you know those classrooms are meant they should have materials right we should be having hands-on learning and i think over the years we keep adding and buying and things change and you get new stuff but there's never a time i'm a little passionate about this

060because i can relate i mean those teachers set up their rooms on their own time and they it's a lot of work educating young children your time is spent educating them not cleaning out your room and if you do that it's at nine o'clock at night so you know i just think that we need to shift our thinking of how we solve that challenge like you're saying there's some classrooms then there needs to be a plan in place like how are we going to support i think part of it is making the uh building managers first most part of the review and responsibility is we don't go forward but that would be something for mr casey to decide on how to get there but you hear you hear the statement um the other thing i

061would i would mention very important is are we ready to go through a building committee to review the the building study that we had and to review that k through two three four five six seven eight and then high school are we ready to look at that we're ready to have a committee put together and study that are we ready to roll up our sleeves and and and do the hard talking with the public uh begin to study the building and and that's something that we would lay on the superintendent to put together the format for that over the next year how we're going to start meeting on that it's going to be a couple two three year process but we have to get it started and there's a lot that can be accomplished this

062year and kevin's been through it and he knows how to run it so i think we use his expertise on that not to that because that's a whole other issue that's an important issue shortly after our meeting in june there was a school in the news that had fire and the first thing i noticed was the outside of the school the beautiful flowers and grass and all that stuff and only i was almost that in respect to our discussion i think we need a plan uh for who would have goals and responsibilities what do we want the grounds to look like who's responsible are we responsible for the first five feet whatever it is is the time responsible what do we want it to look like and and i don't think it can be volunteers

063because that group of volunteers that makes chargebook look great in 2022 is gone in 2024 and then who cleans up the mess after that that we did an ongoing plan for the exterior of the building is that it should be a budget for shocking right it should be budgeted everybody has a question for right right uh and the packrat element the teachers is well known you know and that's that's the principles yeah we need to hold administrators accountable for the condition of the inside of the schools and and also lean on them to get back to us about things that need fixed or improved or whatever you know in their buildings they're the experts on their buildings i agree so i wrote that down beautification and won't believe that mr case to help do we

064have like a standard you know like who's driving this decision making because obviously the environments each school are different but like the physical environment for a student is very important we're so focused on achievement sometimes which is great and that's our job but it's also you know i just think it's important to look at the environment physical environment is just as important as the emotional environment sometimes for some students um i noticed one thing and i was wondering if i could just share this about the inside of the school absolutely um so in the high school in the third floor so the bottom level in the math way there's a bathroom that is just like very it's like in the older part of the building so it's not colder i don't know the paint's like

065chipping so people are like writing i don't know negative things and like i'm sure you've seen i would yeah i would just consider it inappropriate yes that's clear and it's just like i don't know like you were saying like the environment and i think the love is when you're taking consideration the impression especially when you have a whole class between freshmen and any other but we have 20 new students in that just the high school um a lot of it's just on the impressions doing so i think some things like that can penetrate this meeting sort of i do think it's [Music] that's a great point the only thing i would say that if i recall on the cip and we took the tour through the high school there was some bathroom partitions that were

066i don't know if it's this bathroom but i know there was going to be some bathroom improvements did that make it through the cip some did but i'm so glad you're mentioning this mrs nesikowski we'll work on that tomorrow because that's something that can take place immediately yeah you know for the opening of school next week so that's something um simone bell i didn't i haven't noticed so thank you for bringing that to our attention so you're making it that's the right people yeah that's the thing kevin you like physically you can't be in every spot yeah all the time so how do you hear things and there needs to be like what is our protocol or plan like where is there a forum that's submitted you know and is it is it easy process

067you know if there's something breaking in cis or you know how to i don't even know that like what's the plan so i will when i talk more about these goals on september 13th i'll share with you what our procedures are so not to take time now to do that thank you i will share in more depth everything you're talking about that's why i'm quiet i'm just listening i'll share more information with you that goes back to health and safety students and teachers should feel comfortable saying there's some garbage written in the bathroom not ratting anybody out or pointing the finger just like students should be comfortable finding someone to say there's some stuff online that's scaring us we got to look into it or the student seems to be talking about uh doing harm

068for themselves we need a climate and atmosphere where kids feel comfortable but teachers too i think you know we have two security personnel that i know that walk the halls all day long they can also be recording where things may need to be improved or fixed or i noticed this or i noticed that and i think they can be recording it but that's again that's that's on your list not behind us okay um i want to be careful of the time here so anything else on health and safety felicia anything on your end that you want to bring up um i just want to touch upon what peggy has said in regards to um student you know feeling essentially a sense of belonging so one of the goals i had was collaborative school community which

069i think ties into health and safety and then mental health and just being aware of like the community that we want to foster and having students feel a sense of belonging like simone's mentioning like something's on the walls like you know being okay with mentioning that and saying that that that's not good and stepping up and you know i know it's hard for peers to kind of say something when they think one of their peer groups may be you know doing something wrong but i think that's the climate that we want to try to um start fostering within our community yeah and i think what you're saying is we have they students as well as the community as well as the board of vet we have to have pride in the things that we are

070responsible for and we have to step up from time to time and point out where these deficiencies are because if we don't you know i got to tell you i was walking into the library i was walking into the back parking lot and i just come over for cis and i'll tell you i was on such a high when i saw those guys planting i'm saying this is beautiful this is unbelievable and i walked to our library and granted it's not we're not responsible for this and i looked at the gardens here there are leaves from last last i mean the summer's already gone their leaves from the year before there's growth all along the side i mean we're taxpayers in this town we can demand more we should demand more these are our buildings

071and and then and then five years from now when somebody says well we need a new driveway because we didn't do the proper maintenance or we didn't get all those weeds that were coming up in the cracks and so on and so forth so i think it's a poor event we can be more demanding on our buildings that we we want them to look a certain way and it's happening it's happening thank you thank you um it's happening and you know i'm really pleased about that but anyways thank you felicia for that comment okay the fourth thing there's uh there's kind of a hodgepodge on the sheet and so i'm not able to come up with a fourth but is there something that you want to talk about a fourth goal that we should institute

072something you know where it can get done over 12 months that you're thinking about that we should have because we have achievement we have health and safety we have building and infrastructure and we want to give mr space just one more thing to do to think about his policy is on what uh joe uh submitted policy no i know there's quite a few that's why i'm asking what's important to you policies i think policy is important i think you know we we talked about uh dress code we continue to talk about the things to do in policy there's also you know if you want to talk about policy one things i mentioned is the case was maybe every policy that is uh over 10 years old which i know is a lot and it has

073to be done over time maybe every policy that's over 10 years old should be reviewed by the policy committee a couple at each meeting as we go forward um to update that we review policies when there's a new right right i know through our detriment or our credit i don't know which of the policy books if you printed them all out are significant so i i i don't know if that's fascinating i don't think it's possible but over over 15 years over 15 years that would be more possible what's relevant to today that's not relevant anymore i mean it's it's a big job i know that and um maybe started 15 years and see how many there are uh and maybe not every policy has to be rewritten it's just are they still relevant are

074they still pertinent to the day that's all or if there's areas of weakness let's say there's an area of discipline that's a problem maybe we review the policies that are most meaningful to to help some challenges now that's generally how it's finished right yeah right the important ones that the staff meant or the state mandates or the board like dress code was not a statement and they that we came up with that uh technology was not a statement that i don't think but we looked at that policy as well um technology on the buses maybe maybe leave the state mandates out because they've been they they followed the state mandate so maybe we do everything that's not a state mandate that's 15 years old can we filter to that okay no i don't know claudia

075good luck [Laughter] i don't know policy is important maybe we should you know we should think about that a little bit more mr case could think about how we can maybe dig into that a little bit more yeah i would say policy is one of the three most important things that a board of education does right you're in charge of making sure the policies are written so that i can implement your policy so joe is our chair and our policy committee over the years has done a great job of making sure the most recent legislation has been incorporated in the policy and i know we can work with cave also that'll help us identify our policies that are older so we'll work in partnership with them so i think um i think that is doable

076looking at the policies that are 15 years or older and i think that would be good for the next superintendent coming in to have that all set right i know i know it's a big task but you got to do some time i guess anything else before we close this out yeah again sure it's really one and a half things uh felicia when i read what you submitted i circled something where you wrote down a sense of belonging and if you want to improve student achievement and if you want to secure make sure that there's safety and health the more students who feel like they belong i think the more achievement they'll be and the more safety they'll be and i i think we did that and we talked about the other things i just

077i thought it was well he put in capital letters so i couldn't miss it and i thought it was well stated and the other area that boards are responsible for is curriculum and i think that's not on anybody's list including my own but maybe it should be or maybe it's being handled so well i mean i think our curriculum does a great job when we follow everything that the state gave us i'm not saying it shouldn't be i'm just saying that that may be one place that's really sailing i don't know erica do you want to comment on that or well i mean we address things as they come up but i mean there's always room for improvement so is there anything that comes to mind that you would like to see handle differently you

078view differently um no i guess i'd have to think about it well what about the state remember i don't know the outcome that the state was going to determine never colombia so i was just going to so those are things that you know i had in my so i i look at policy and curriculum as just continuing their work every year there's going to be more work to do in those areas with curriculum this year the focus really should be on the science of reading because the state is still still examining what programs will be on the acceptable list and that list should be released on or about september 10. they're starting to dictate what curriculum you can cancer that's correct so that's that'll be a focus i know the committee john will be reporting

079out that information you know achievement is also going to dictate curriculum because if we're failing somewhere in achievement then then we're failing somewhere in curriculum and that that goes hand in hand to some extent so achievement will kind of dictate back to curriculum i just wanted to add on to the conversation about curriculum yeah i think um what you were saying like the columbia's teacher college uh stuff i think that's part of um you know the science of reading and all that that's for the younger grades right well we it actually the program that we partner with with um the units of study through teachers college that actually goes up through sixth grade okay but the science of reading legislation and the implementation efforts with that right now are in that k-2 range okay so

080there's that's where the conversation is right now yeah so so in addition to that so when you're talking curriculum at the high school level it's going to look a little bit different because you know you've got five teachers or you know maybe you have two teachers or three teachers i know the departments aren't that big and high school isn't that big but you know um if bella's taking you know english 11 honors and simone is taking english 11 honors with a different teacher there should be alignment and equity in within those two classrooms um and there should be common rubric rubrics and that sort of thing is is there not right now yeah there's not i mean as far as i know i i mean that was saying that would be important that that that

081to me should be a goal right there yeah i couldn't agree with you more we call it fidelity you want that fidelity of instruction no matter who the teacher is the curriculum is the same yes absolutely yeah k through 12. yeah and i would say that that's part of the process thank you that's that's actually part of the process that we've been engaging in yeah with our nesdec with our nasdaq review so that's going to be a continuous part of the work that we do our curriculum work will never be done you know that's not ever ever going to be something we'll check off but um and that's how you do it right but but that will be something that we continue to work on and i'm happy to be able to secure it forward

082here are we comfortable that our curriculum represents all of our students in terms of racial lesson and gender backgrounds the kids see themselves through all groups in the school see themselves in their curriculum i'm comfortable with that right how do you study that that's a really big that's a really big question to be able to ask and a great one to be able to wonder i know that the the efforts that we are engaging in right now are are efforting toward that but i i don't have i don't know how we would necessarily get information in regard to that other than other than surveys necessarily or reports back on on that effort for um for engagement um but that's something for example i'm sure every book that's read in english class isn't written by a

083man i'm not sure of that race i'm not so sure about uh do kids in american history learn about the tulsa massacre now i didn't learn about it in school is that part of the curriculum now we talked about native americans with our mascot the curriculum was supposed to change with that i assume it did but i think those are the things we have to be made aware of in fact i'd say based off the curriculum this coming year we've probably flipped too far joe so i thought and that would be good to know that it's going to be a whole different conversation of do some people feel ostracized because they're now you know feeling like it's less inclusive because of an over emphasis on some of those characteristics i think there is you know

084i certainly sense it's a broader issue for the country but you know people were being turned off by going too far to one side so we might need to more ourselves back into this but we we haven't we've been we've been directed by the state right right right i mean it's not something that can't can necessarily manage or control i don't think we've i think how you present it um is important okay and i mean there's the material there's how you present the material and i think we can control how we present it how much emphasis we put on what parts of it is there alignment across grade level across teams across classrooms well i'm to that on what you're saying i mean that is a that what you're talking about i mean there's a

085huge sorry what joe was talking about huge shift to include all of those underrepresented voices you know at that you know that have never i mean you know once upon a time i mean the you know the cannon was filled with dead white males you know and i you know there have been huge shifts right to include more you know people of color indigenous people women and so forth and i do i do understand what you're saying that some people feel that you know we've gone too far to the other side um or to one side i'll say uh and you know because i've had parents say to me you know as an english teacher you know where's shakespeare where's the shakespeare you know we want you know there are a lot of parents out

086there i mean they grew up reading certain classics and they expect that their kids are going to read them as well and you know i mean i love shakespeare though don't get me wrong but you know i i do think that there should be some balance but the bottom line is is that regardless of what text you're using we are we should be aligned with the common core state standards and we're teaching our kids skills we're teaching them how to write and how to think critically right and and you know regarding whatever text we choose should be very thoughtfully chosen you know and because you know once you've got these kids in a classroom they are a captive audience right and and they should just be very thoughtfully chosen and the focus should be on

087the skills right well absolutely but i think as a board we have to be prepared especially as election seasons coming up and i agree with you there's more and more and i'm not advocating anything i'm saying that um but i do like my deadlines but um i'm an old school litany no but but in all seriousness though um you know i i do think you're going to see more of this kind of hot button flash point cultural bs invading our classrooms and i do think as a board we have to be a little bit sensitive to how we're going to react to that and not be reactionary but i mean everywhere across the country you see this these these flash points about sometimes it's nonsense but i give one or two emails a week yeah

088on what are we what are we telling our children what are we teaching our kids are we doing this are we doing that from a variety of different folks today i got a video from an individual that said that showed interviews with teachers who were saying i don't care about the curriculum i don't care about the policy i teach what i want to teach if i'm getting it you're gonna get it at some point and as you mentioned this election season comes apart i'm sending a lot more of that kind of yeah across town you're not like ish i have an idea lou why don't we if when we i think we should you know in addition to some of those dead white males that we get you know like our tommy orange who wrote

089this you know he's an indigenous writer uh and have like a community you know book club reading so parents you know inviting parents to read what the kids are reading challenge them i'm telling you that book changed my life i mean i i love my dead white males too i'm not kidding i mean you know i i love that idea though about the word sponsoring changed my life like i will share one thing that i'm hearing is from kind of a meta level right now is communication and folks wanting to be able to know what it is that's out there what i'm proud about has been the work that we've engaged in to be able to document the work that is going on like what are our units what's happening and and that's part of

090my work this this upcoming year with our curriculum our curriculum folks to be able to get that information out there so that it is a story that's well told um and i think that goes a long way to be able to let folks know in the pilot of in uh history unit that we had at um cis which we're continuing to be able to understand so that they would be that they would be buy-in for us with this well guys i i just want to tell you this was a great meeting i feel like this was almost a breakthrough meeting because we all participated we all gave input we all had ideas and they were all very constructive very positive so i want to thank everybody for your time i think kevin you got enough

091input tonight now to maybe go back and draw up some things for us to look at on the 13th and we can further discuss it so thank you very much you guys thanks thank you to our student reps okay i think next on the agenda is a review of the student and family all right lou thank you so much thanks for okay guys thank you for uh and you know i just have to add one comment to the last discussion point about about our curriculum resources right because this is really important this is the message that we should be sharing with our community with all of our work on equity our goal is to make sure that all of our students see themselves in the curriculum we're teaching right so that goes back just to

092joe's overall broad question that is our goal prep is helping us to begin we begin this last year and we'll talk about this tomorrow with our administrators and with our leadership team here um the work that craic is doing looking at some of our english language arts units as well as social studies units so that's where we're beginning and the goal is to train teachers to evaluate the resources they have in their world that's going to take time but it's called culturally responsive teaching not critical race theory crt cultural responsive teaching using books where every student sees themselves in at least one book in the classroom that's that's her completely different name yeah could he pick a different name that's going to kill us all right when you read the literature you're going to see

093crt you get cultural cultural responsibility i wouldn't agree please don't please it's not a mr case term i don't know i know i spent a whole year fighting that i know it would ever do something don't abbreviate it oh my god yeah don't use crt just critical race parents are parents right so you're right yeah do that to us i hear your point okay so um so that closure to that discussion um we will synthesize all of this information and i'll bring you back goals based upon what you just talked about for feedback for our next week so thank you it's great to see all of you tonight exhibit three in your packet is a proposed job description that i'm presenting to you tonight for your review anytime we reconfigure a position or create the

094new position our board policy mandates that u.s board of education approve that job description as you know we had a resignation of our program choice liaison mr floyd campbell um late last year and it was late in the year so i was not able to present you with a proposed job description where that position has been reorganized so what i'm presenting to you tonight for your review is a position that will be known as a student and family engagement coordinator when i give my report i'm going to talk a little bit tonight about the work our administrators have begun in the area of school climate and positive school climate john was was great to make a connection with our state consultant on school climate amanda pickett and amanda spent a full day with the administrators

095last week as we begin to write our safe schools climate plans lou and i heard at the king conference last week about some districts who have hired people whose job it is to promote safe school climate and they're called school climate specialists part of this person's role would be to support our efforts in establishing a positive school climate i'm proposing that this job be a position that is not part of any union it would be an at-will employee and the reason for that is that this person would not be teaching students but this person would be supporting students and their families this person would take on the goals and responsibilities that are open choice liaison has in supporting our students in the choice program the person would also have responsibilities to to support our diversity

096equity and inclusion work that we began last year and i listed out specific job responsibilities as part of that job description we also need to monitor our absenteeism rates very carefully right any student who is absent more than 10 times is known as being chronically absent along with our social workers we need a person that can monitor attendance rates and reach out to the families to find out why is the student absent what can we do to engage that student more in what we're doing so those are three major responsibilities that this position would have i'm looking for a person who would have certification in special education or related services between school psychology social work etc the salary of this position would be paid similar to a teacher salary based upon the teacher's contract that's

097how i would determine the salary based upon the educational level of this person however i do want to make it clear again this person would not be a person in the teacher's bargaining unit the salary for our open choice liaison has traditionally come from our open choice attendance grant which is a perfect grant to use for the position and that's why i would recommend funding for this position as well so i hope you've had a chance to review on the job responsibilities tonight you would be voting on this as a first read asking any questions tonight making any comments no final decision will be made tonight i'm happy to open it up for any questions or comments that you may have so three it's actually broken into three tiers that position would recover we cover

098um similar to what floyd was doing for our choice um and adding some dei responsibilities along with attendance uh following and this would be around the teacher's salary all taken by the open choice grant yes okay questions was the former coordinator and at will employee as well yes was boyd full-time we can't underestimate the important job he did and how well he did it is it possible for a person to do that and these other responsibilities but is it possible i believe it is john i believe john and i believe it is felicia do you have anything you want to add um just yeah just in looking over the job description i think it's a great opportunity as we work towards belonging and i know joe kind of reiterated on what i had on um

099my form [Music] as far as goals go and i just think it belonging is just connected to so many other things um academic achievement um wellness mental health and i do have something that i'll share with the board um as well that just talks about belonging that was done by um panorama education just talking about how sense of blowing for kids ties into school and i think if the person is able to do the same responsibilities that floyd had along with us i think it kind of encompasses all of our students what i don't want to happen is it to be you know i think that's what joe had asked about be something where it's like too much and we're kind of splitting this one position over two rolls that's my only um comment on

100this thank you anybody else yeah i would agree i want like quality not about like you know if there's too much quantity of work that does not get done well so the thought the thought that i had when uh kevin felicia and i discussed this is that it's it's a new job it needs to be evaluated so we we try it and um we'll continue the superintendent will continue to give us how well it's working or that individual will tell us that it's overwhelming and it really needs to be split so we won't know until we try it out i thought this this might be um a good first step so uh you can continue to let this marinate a little bit and we will uh discuss it again and we'll pass it as a

101first reading then we'll discuss it at the next meeting okay and please feel free to send me any questions you have and i'll make sure that the whole board sees the question and the response thank you for considering it okay it's all about getting the right person so if you approve this it's about getting the right person that's the key okay thank you um next is a director of learning and innovation report and you're gonna give us an update on the summer academy and i'm only gonna i'll preface it by this i actually had a grandchild in the summer academy so i had the uh the tremendous opportunity to uh drop off and pick up so that gave me a chance to kind of mingle and talk and i i thought what a great job

102they did christy and a did with the academy and parents smiles on their faces kids smiles on their faces couldn't wait to get there um so i just i one of the reasons we're going to bring christy and amen in september because i'd like to recognize them for that job with um mr bishop and we really want to thank you uh mr daniels we really do want to sing the story of success of that program and the impact that that has in the summer months and uh part of part of my goal would be able to bring um both to prepare you to to see the value of it and then to be able to present and ask for the the further uh inclusion of that in the program that we have here as it's

103made a strong impact for our students we've been able to fund that through our sr funds over the past several years and if we want to look at bridging that gap and being able to continue to validate the support that it provides for us i want to make sure that it's again a story that's well told so i'm going to give you a quick rundown of the summer program ford k5 at the elementary program we had 66 students who were participating throughout those four weeks it was a a well-run program uh throughout a uh providing academic supports enrichment and engagement using a workshop model we were really able to dial in on what was most necessary and and needing for these kids and looking to see the uh and celebrate the growth that they had

104so it was phenomenal we had eight certified staff that worked with us with that we're very fortunate with that moving on up into our high school we had our credit recovery program uh which we were able to have 15 students work with for certified staff and work to be able to regain some of the lost credit opportunities that they might have had with a 59 or below 50 to 59 where they just needed that opportunity to be able to bump themselves back up and have the opportunity to uh uh get passing scores for that so that was a wonderful one everybody make it john i i don't have the data for that just yet but i'm happy to celebrate that in our next meeting and then for our uh we also had our pathways program

105to engage students in progress a project based in community learning as a transition to be able to support students coming back into school and getting engaged within the school climate we have 15 students participate with that with re-certified staff um i will say we were very fortunate to be able to have staffing throughout the summer we did have some staffing issues in some places that did impact some of our some of our operations but overall we're very pleased with how we were able to move through for the summer um in addition in addition to this we had staff who were working very hard to be able to update some of the elements of our of our curriculum to be able to add to our curriculum alignment uh add to our curriculum mapping work that we're

106doing as a part of our uh uh reaccreditation process which will be coming to uh to ahead in november so we're really grateful for the work of our teachers our department chairs and our curriculum leaders who did all that work for us and then over the past week now i've had the pleasure of working with our new hires and continue to hear about needs for staff in so many different places and i can't tell you the the excitement that we have for these folks who are joining us and who will be joining us at an upcoming meeting um so many of them said that canton was their first choice or underestimate the weight of responsibility that provides us as leaders for that um a lot of what we've tried to be able to share in

107this week is how we're trying to organize and structure to be able to ensure that they are successful in supporting the success of their students i spoke at length about the additional additional staffing that we were able to provide with your support to support our curriculum efforts and our student performance and they are they're just they're amazed so they're very excited to be able to get in front of you all in a couple weeks and excited to get together with our students starting uh starting next week okay uh thank you mr bishop now um this is the superintendent reporter thank you thank you very much um and john thank you for all of your hard work to plan for the summer school program and make sure to make sure it was implemented effectively one of

108our biggest success stories was that students with special needs were able to be integrated into the general classroom this summer this is the first time we've been able to do that with having our special education staff in the classroom with the uh teacher we were very proud of that and we worked hard to make that happen and again i think the staff and the para educators who were there to make sure every student was successful i also want to mention that in your folder you have the names of the 17 newly hired certified teachers we will introduce you to them at our september 13th meeting they will come so you can match a name in the face but you can see we had a very very busy summer hiring i was hoping to tell you

109that every single vacancy was filmed and it was as of friday at four o'clock wow but this week we had a last-minute resignation from one of our world language spanish teachers at canton high school but when a person resigns um this late in the summer we're allowed to hold that teacher so that teacher can begin the school year with us so um so that teacher will be here through mid-september allowing this time to find a replacement for that position other than spanish all of our teaching positions have been filled we feel very fortunate because as john said that's not the case in many districts and we had some teachers come from neighboring districts so we have some experienced people who have been trained really well and again what john said is so true talk is

110out there the teachers want to come to canton in this show it's because of what they tell us is the school culture they hear about so we're excited to have them join us we'll introduce them at convocation and you'll get a chance to meet them on september 13th so please bear with me because there's a lot of opening of school information that i know you will be interested in first of all i'm going to not go straight down through my list right away i just want to talk to you about end of year our interview on finances so donna has been working hard to close out our books for the 21-22 school year bills still come in through august 31st so the books aren't officially closed until we make sure that all the bills are

111received donna is 99.99 sure that we've received all the bills and then the auditor needs to take the auditor needs to take a look at our finances but the good news is we do not have to go back to the town for any additional funding because our special ed costs while they were great the deficit was not as great as we thought it was so we don't have to ask the town for any additional money however we're ending the year with a zero balance right that is i don't remember when that's ever happened where we don't have any money to return to the town nor do we have a surplus so it's it looks great at this point unless something happens between now and next week we don't force about any outstanding bill so um

112that's the business officials in superintendent's most most important job to make sure we don't end the year in deficit and i thank donna i thank you so much for um for working on the budget the way that you did and this was a budget that you you yourself did not develop so so i'm very appreciative i want to let you know about food service also you're hearing a lot on the news now that a federal grant that was in effect that provided free breakfast and lunch for all of our students for the past two years that has gone away because congress did not approve that grant to continue however we are getting funding that will allow us to provide free breakfast and lunch for every one of our students through november 11th so the government

113did give every district a certain allotment of funds based upon our demographics there's a formula that they use and so that will allow our students to continue to receive three free meals through november but we need to work on making sure we communicate that that ends in november and we want families to fill out the free and reduced lunch form um so that they can qualify for um for that benefit as well once we have to begin charging from the last question what would the cost be if we continued to um christmas vacation we started january 1. have you figured that out is it a do you think an astronomical number uh not huge i mean you know it's uh we figured that through november 11th it's about 130 000 so extrapolate that out uh

114for another month and a half [Music] is there a grant i would love to see us be able to to take it through not to you know right right during the holidays how it's working you know i mean we can look at that for sure how it's working is sorry um they they're giving us 130 000 so you know when that 130 000 is up so it you know it's awesome so it's an estimate yeah so if we can go longer based on actuals we might be able to do it that way about the c as as the school year begins um but we can certainly you know look at that obviously we have had a good couple of years in food service because the increased reimbursement rate um how does the board feel about

115that would you would you uh if we had to um fund [Music] the why is you know in november we start to get closer to the holidays and the burden uh also the gas tax thing goes up goes away there's a lot of things that go away in november and i'm just thinking about the burden uh for parents and if we at least let them get through the holidays we start january one cleaner when we go back to school we're gonna give you some more information on that for september we don't have to think about it or make a decision now but if the board was against that you know i think your why it makes a lot of sense i think it makes a lot of sense i mean if you were able to

116do that i would certainly be in favor of doing it right i'm not against okay i'm concerned that if we wind up in a deficit i know i know that's that's a lot of dough it is and you know and traditionally you know our reimbursement rates are not going to be as they have been keep that in mind that food service uh pre-covered i believe i wasn't in this position but i think it traditionally ran at a loss because of the limited reimbursements so just keep in mind that we you know we also kind of want to keep a little bit in there you're allowed to keep three months of operating expenses uh in the account and food services going forward uh so you don't want to eat everything can i ask did you say

117it's two meals it's it's a breakfast okay and lunch by the way is to be served on half days uh which is a little bit different okay okay there may be ways different ways to split this up but even yes um i was just thinking i would almost rather see a student charge and have that charge on their account and figure out how to how to cover that versus what you're mentioning um i know there we won't deny a kid food if you know if they need food they can they charge it they end up like having a uh i guess an amount due i rather have that happen for a couple kids that are in need or a few kids that are need versus you know having to put through that full amount for

118all of all the students if that's an option right so let's let's get the numbers and we'll take a look at it that's all like i said there might be different ways to split this up or to do it [Music] thank you so much for considering that um lou as you pointed out earlier tonight a great deal of work has taken place both within our buildings and continues to take place outside of our buildings just as you said driving by cis the gentlemen are still out there reading and sprucing up the playground area so donna tonight we'll review for you the different projects that have been or will be completed by monday and at our next meeting we'll have pictures for you tonight we don't have pictures but we're not finished yet that's correct but

119donna we'll go over the list which we have in front of you tonight all right thank you kevin uh this is of course in addition to the hard work that our custodians do at every school every year on the inside and some on the outside as far as painting so this is the ancillary kind of items um so first i'm it down by school uh cherry brook uh the landscaping tree tree removal was actually a tremendous tremendous amount of tree work up at terry road they both opened the field we brought down a big a couple of big trees there so you can see down in that field he also uh uh took down a lot of uh along the side if you're looking at the school on the right-hand side all the way to

120the back and there's actually a beautiful stone wall back there now uh and it was also full of poison ivy actually both areas so all the poison ivy and poison sumac is all gone um so uh they are they've also pruned a lot of the trees around they did a lot of uh in the uh preschool playground they're sprucing that up a little bit and planting some flowers trimming things back um and also of course uh in the front uh i call it a courtyard it's not really in the front on the sides of the doors there's going to be work happening there uh over the next couple days you'll see that we waited until the last minute we could to plant mulch and weed because we wanted it as fresh as possible for school

121so that's why there's like a little bit rain but um so anyway hopefully that'll look uh really good when everything is all all done at cherry brook uh we had the uh the voyage system at uh cherry brook jeff domaster and his team uh worked very hard on that it was great to not have to call sherry brooke today and dial 1-860-693 you can just dial the four-digit code just like the rest of the schools so that's kind of been long and coming so that's completed um the fire panel uh at cherry brook uh that is also done that was uh uh on our cip for uh well last uh maybe three quarters of a year or so but that's all done the water heater uh was replaced up there that was a little bit

122unexpected but it's done these storage containers you can notice have already been moved from cherry brook uh we had three up there um and the rentals had gone back and the third one uh we got an agreement from the town to place it at the transfer station so we still have the ability to store that's not a cherry so what i would do then is if they don't move those 19 barrels with those 19 barrels right now you can't move the barrels because they're they're uh contaminated on a school property with children so what's wrong with that picture well i know exactly so we are we're still hoping that those uh drums will be removed from before that's what's going on yeah so i've got uh they're gonna text me it's the moment that they

123are removed from the property so don and i worked on that again today i thank you for your help so i fully expect them to be removed but on the small chance that they're not going to be removed then we have plans to make a nice covering for them until such time uh because the latest thing will be moved is you know i think early probably early september but we're hoping that there's a new move this week so they're really really pushing hard for that so um okay all right and there was you know i it was kind of funny as i was walking around looking at the landscape of cherry brook i realized how important it is to actually walk the grounds because i was walking along the front sidewalk and there was a

124manhole collar covered with a huge hole in it so that has been replaced so that was kind of interesting so that pretty much covers uh cherry brook uh cis you'll also notice that we did a lot of landscaping a lot of tree removal and the planting is happening today um and uh the there was again a lot of significant dead wood and things like that too so and the landscaping uh i would say really is something to i think lew's point earlier is something that we haven't really done in the past a lot of but i would encourage to maintain this uh year after year especially there were a few dead trees at cherry brook and scis you don't want those you know obviously so so if i could just inject there's this rumor going

125around in town i've got two calls on this that says that the town and the uh soccer association their negotiation broke down as far as using memorial fields there was there was 65 or 70 000 appropriated by the town if the soccer association could could gain or negotiate a long-term contract with the fire association for memorial field then the town was going to go in and provide some irrigation and improve those fields my understanding is that broke down the question that's come to me is they said well that's why that's why cis has gotten irrigation because bowdoin and cis are going to be the new homes for the soccer association which i said i've heard none of that none of that is true the cis got the irrigation primarily through arpa funds it was something

126that had been planned back in january or even before uh and it has nothing to do with the soccer association yeah so if you hear that i understand there's a lot of friction going on but the board of education is not involved in that anyway the sprinkler system that's going in cis they still have to top seed and bring some soil in uh to make it a field but it has nothing to do with the soccer association the irrigation is actually in and working they did they did some over seeding but you're right lou they have to bring uh not the entire field of topsoil but to even it out in certain areas and then they see it so that's that piece of it still has to be done um the courtyard at cis this

127was kind of a remarkable thing if you actually uh saw what had built up in this courtyard during the summer i was kind of appalled as i met with rebecca but in that courtyard there was a draining issue and a broken pipe um there was also a tree that was actually taken down uh some time ago but the roots were causing it caused the pipe they got it inside the pipe and cracked it so um we did this stump removal of that tree remove the roots we did a lot of landscaping in there and mulch and we actually made a little area for a rock garden because the cis students paint rocks every year and then bring them out to the courtyard so that's going to be built a little bit so and then can

128i just actually just in the interest of time i love your report just hit the highlights okay okay will do all right and with that by the way there's tables and umbrellas she's so passionate i know i love it i love it we're so grateful i'm excited about it it's been done i'm sorry give us the highlight all right and the outdoor classroom and this i have to see because i don't know if it was done yet but it will be uh on this uh right across from the library actually there's going to be a large area that is going to be mulched out for like outdoor classroom so we can put all those picnic tables on there and uh then the town will have to uh movement for the grass so i think you

129already know about the second floor uh some things are done with the playground for the compliance crack ceiling was at both cis and the high school and food service got their cooler and freezer installation at cis the big news at chs is the tech and wooded metal shop renovation and the additional classroom down in that area so that's pretty exciting excuse me did that get the air conditioner or the uh the ventilation there uh no it's the only piece that's not in yet uh we got biz on it and that's actually uh something that uh we just found out today that i wanted to talk to kevin about uh so that's the only piece that is remaining so so one of the things we learned at the um workshop that we went to is any

130door that is open and i know at that wood shop because they have poor ventilation if you go there may june or those those garage doors are open because they're trying to get ventilation in there and that would be something we would be concerned about because that's an opening but because the ventilation's so bad i understand why they have to do it so i think that that has to be that's one of those safety and health issues that we have to get done i think because we need to keep those doors closed right yeah it's definitely it's definitely in the works uh and we do also need to get the uh dust handler right so we're in it we're still working on those two pieces of it um but it's it's pretty much done it's

131functional right now and looks and looks pretty good um and so and they also have a new generator at the high school and a new pizza oven the other two things is uh district wide is the noon point of service system for lunches so it's uh almost done um but we've been working hard on that and it's great it's a web-based program so uh the other one was pretty antiquated uh so pretty excited about that and then of course the we were able to obtain uh cyber security compliance thanks to jeff's dell master's team we did a lot of work on that and part of that and the last piece was the multi-factor identification authentication and that is also complete so a lot of work what a phenomenal summer what what accomplishments and as soon

132as we you know can communicate this i think we have to in some newsletter or whatever because tom needs to know that we're taking care of ourselves thanks donna thank you so much i know it's not our practice but this softball field at the end of the driveway here so that's moving right along you'll notice the big pile of dirt has been ringed around several times so bob skinner explains that because of all the rocks there it's been somewhat delayed but uh but it is moving along at this point they expect to have it playable by the strength that's that's their it's a promise or a hope but that's their comment is that how long it's going to take to finish it yes they figure by the fall probably by the end of october november

133they'll have to sign down like that did the dirt feel that trevor get seated so that did not happen yet i want to talk to our finance facilities committee about that because the cost of that is pretty high so i want to talk to all of you about it that's the one thing that did not get done not through lack of effort yeah we had a few quotes and trying to figure out what's the best time to do and honestly um uh most of the quotes people get quotes from felt like it wasn't uh going to work very well so we'll talk more about that okay in the interest of time i'll move quickly student enrollment i always like to let you know where we are as far as the number of students moving in

134to a school versus the number of students moving out on october 1st i will report to our our official enrollment the state gives us until then to determine what our official enrollment is but i can let you know that all of our class size projections are where we thought they would be we did not have to add or reduce any classrooms so the projections were right on target i can let you know that at cherrybrook we had 18 new students register over the summer while 11 students moved out so that was a net gain of 7 students at the intermediate school we had 30 new students 11 students moved out so that's a gain of 19 students but it did not affect uh class sizes were able to spread the students out at cms we

135have 11 new students four moves so an addition of seven students overall at the high school we have 19 new students and 15 students move to other districts so a net gain of four students and we're still looking at what our choice enrollment is so i will be getting that in the next few days before next week any questions on student sector 37 increased by 30 okay i want to come on that new hires and vacancies i talked about our teachers we still have some vacancies in the area of special education para educators so if you know any good people please send them our way they can apply online through apple track so we'll continue to look at filling those vacancies coveted health protocols i'm happy to say we are going to begin the school

136year in a typical fashion with no mitigation strategies and tricks we talked about that last spring and that is still the case in your packet i provided you with two sheets that the framington health department is asking us to send to parents so we are not going to be identifying close contacts any student who exhibits symptoms or a test positive will need to isolate for five days in other words they'll need to stay home so we're using the word isolate not quarantined and these two sheets explain what the procedure is the second sheet is a flowchart if you have symptoms what do you do if you're living with someone who is tested positive what do you do so it's all here we will communicate that to parents and of course our school nurses will be

137able to answer any questions that parents have we'll be on the lookout for any cluster of coven positivity that's between three to five students or adults in one one area of the building or a classroom or a group of students for example or athletic team so we'll be looking for that but i'm happy to say we're going to begin in a typical fashion which is terrific when students return if they've tested positive or exhibited symptoms they're encouraged to wear masks that's the cdc recommendation in the farmington valley health district's recommendation but by no means are we as a school district mandating it's only recommended are we still going to be tracking with john's reports are we still tracking covent are we stopping so we still track the positive cases so we'll continue to report to

138you what our positive case rate is any questions about these guidelines okay i want to update you on the search for our director of pupil personnel services so we were um we're of course very sorry that uh dr murdoca resigned her position um in early july we are very fortunate that mrs laura o'donnell who had been employed by us for the last year as a an outplacement district ppt coordinator she has experience as a specialist supervisor and she was willing to take on the interim job until a permanent director is filed we've received several applications and we're planning on interviews um for wednesday september 7th beginning at four cindy i'm not sure you got my email on that did you get it in there okay eric i'm sorry about that's okay we need to work

139on those email glitches and become a people so um so september 7th we have um two parent representatives who will be on the committee uh cindy and erica will serve on the committee and then we have some staff members on the committee as well i'll be sending out a survey to parents for them for the parents to let us know what characteristics they feel are most important in the qualities of our next director i'll be meeting with the school staff all of the special education and related services personnel on friday afternoon to talk with them about what qualities they're looking for so the goal is that i will have a candidate to bring to the board for your consideration on september 13th so we're moving as uh moving as aggressively as we can and on

140paper we have some outstanding candidates so we hope the candidates are as good in person as they are on paper questions about that i received an anonymous letter through the mail i don't know if anyone else knows and it was not signed so there's no way of really saying anything they were very happy with dr murica but and disappointed that she was leaving but there's really nothing that can't make somebody say so people just move sometimes so i mean i'm glad that they had a good experience but it wasn't a mean letter so there's really no reason why they didn't written their name it is always difficult because we don't know who to respond to or get back to or have a conversation with that thank you thank you i know some other board members

141received that as well i want to update you on the administrative retreat our administrative team met for two days last week in this room all day all day on monday august 15th and all day on tuesday august 16th both extremely valuable days the first day we focused on our new student performance database called linkedin and this is a student data warehouse where every student in our district has all of their assessment scores so we can now start printing out bar graphs and circle graphs and color code and really be able to have visuals to look at trends in our performance data so it's very very exciting john worked hard last year with a committee to examine which would be the best student data warehouse for us we did some work on that last spring and

142all of the data was input this summer and so administration teachers will begin learning how to use that this fall so that was a great day and then the second day we had amanda pickett a state consultant from the a consultant from the state department of education who focuses in on positive school climate and john invited her to come in to work with us as we look at making a positive school culture within our district more systematic so this will be a presentation for you in the near future when felicia will and i said to develop the agenda this is one topic a positive school climate that we would like to talk more with you about there are really three components to positive school climate as we see it here in canton one is student

143engagement health and safety in the environment our students are in so when we think about engagement we're thinking about the relationships that we have with students i was so thrilled when i walked into monday's new teacher orientation that john was facilitating and just about every new teacher said the most important thing they can do right away is establish those relationships with students that's not a surprise because we find that out through the interviews and that's why we hired these teachers but they're going to continue our culture of knowing that developing that positive relationship with the student is the most important thing our equity work that we've begun implementing that's part of student engagement hopefully getting the position of family and student engagement coordinator will help with this as well and again looking at school attendance

144with safety it's making sure kids feel psychologically safe emotionally emotionally safe and to make sure there's no substance abuse happening within our schools and then with the environment just kim as you were saying we want to make sure that it's a great physical environment for students and teachers and we want to make sure that we focus on student and staff wellness this year and make sure that the discipline environment is not only punitive but a positive we want to make sure we're providing positive feedback to students through what we call our pbis model we focused so much the last two years on working through the health and safety protocols that some of these items fell down on the priority list so our theme this year and we'll i will talk about it at convocation our

145theme this year is to re-center reflect restore and reboot we have t-shirts made up for staff members that we want to give out on thursday but it's all about resetting what we're doing getting back to normal and improving what we're doing so we can continue to be an outstanding school district you'll hear more about school climate but i wanted you to know that's going to be a focus areas area of ours we need to post our school climate plans on our website which by the way our website is almost ready to launch our new website john's been working hard on that with input from felicia from our communications committee so that's almost ready to uh to watch so you'll be hearing more about school climate a couple of quicker items i sent you a couple

146of emails late today one with was with a picture of the mural that was completed at canton middle school um on unity and i sent you a couple pictures felicia was nice enough to forward an article that was in the valley press i believe so i sent that to all of you too so please take a look um i thank the students that were involved with that as well as mr moore and mrs brynton who supported their efforts i want to let you know that we're working on a mural project also at canton intermediate school uh deb costello along with the canon arts council with gail deutch as the chair are working on a plan to paint a mural at cis they're currently looking at what location that mural will be part of all of

147the students would play a role in putting together the mosaic which would be part of the mural and we're looking at planning a field trip for all of our fourth fifth and sixth graders to go to the american mural project which now open to the public in winston which i have a great passion for so we are rebecca deb costello and i are in the midst of planning that you'll be hearing more about that i want to let you know that uh the cape caps convention is coming up november 18th and 19th and if you want to go please let claudia know this week because the early bird discount ends on friday of course we can register you after that but if you have uh um if you are think you can go it's great

148it's a workshop that involves superintendents and board members with a lot of valuable topics being discussed i think felicia and i clearly you're in right i am so am i so you got a couple of buddies there anyway yeah so it's at the mystic area mystic area good 18th and 19th i think you signed up just for the one date okay the friday friday the 18th yeah if you need more information um claudia or i can send that to you a couple other presentations that you can look forward to this fall are on school safety right we want to make sure that we have a forum on school safety to let all of you know what's being done within our schools that's something that was recommended at our conference that lou and i attended last

149week and we're bringing back the resiliency program for our middle schoolers the program that justine ginsberg and i worked on through the farmington valley health department grant we're going to bring that back to our middle schoolers and we're looking at four parent presentations that we possibly can provide in collaboration with other area school districts so when we think of october as being anti-bullying month as lou suggested we're going to be looking for a speaker to come in uh as we kick off that campaign in october so i just want to let you know that that's on my radar to work on um opening convocation so it's hard to believe that in two days our teachers will return and all of our summer planning will come to fruition um i'm hoping that if you can you'll

150attend our opening convocation this thursday morning breakfast begins at 7 a.m from 7 to 7 45 we'll have breakfast in the high school cafeteria at 7 45 our official program begins in the auditorium where we will introduce our 2023 teacher of the year our para educator of the year we will introduce our new staff members we'll hear from mr daniels mr bessel and myself and then at nine o'clock uh the staff will be involved in a very engaging presentation um that's entitled focus on you the theme of convocation this year is on staff wellness mentally and physically staff wellness and so during this presentation staff will be engaged in reflecting as we look at reflect restore reboot they're going to reflect on what their core values are what got them into education why they're here

151in the canton public schools what their strengths are and how to be able to implement their strengths as we begin a new school year hopefully mostly coveted free so i'm excited about convocation we're working on having we're planning a well we planned a wellness fair so we have 10 health and wellness vendors from the community who will be present to talk to teachers to offer discounts to teachers and we will have our representatives from united healthcare and delta dental our new insurance plans representatives will be there also to answer questions teachers may have and hopefully we'll be able to build upon this year after year and make it bigger and better but the whole theme is caring for our teachers caring for them making sure we support them in any way that we can that's

152within our control because not a day goes by when we don't hear on the news about teacher burnout and how teachers are leaving the profession and we want to make sure our outstanding teachers here in canton feel like they're cared for and supported again in any way we can control we can't control everything but in ways that we can we want to show them that we value them and i know that's your philosophy and then we'll have a lunch catered by moe's southwest grill at 12 o'clock about 12 o'clock 11 o'clock in the cafeteria so even if you can stop by for lunch please do the staff loves mo's and i think it's healthy for the most part we like to think it is anyway um so lou mentioned you know this is going to

153be my last year's superintendent here it's hard to believe and i have 10 months of hard work ahead of me but i want to make sure it's the best year as a district also and i'm committed to that so it's great to see all of you i look forward to having a great year this year with all of you so thank you thank you okay thank you for that report okay quickly the things that i wanted to go over with you is uh i wanted to make sure you all uh got the retreat down on your book um in your books for the sixth starting at five as say it's going to be in my office my conference room uh i'm at um 35 nod road suite 102 call doctors plus you can't miss it

154we'll have dinner for you and it will have it'll be led by mary eric robert mary bryber so recently you've all received uh a survey from mary broderick that will help with the uh with help her with facilitating the uh um the workshop that she's going to run us through so please check your email there's seven questions i believe it takes all of seven minutes or ten minutes for you just to give some of your thoughts so she can see where we are okay i know peggy's gonna be away but anybody else not going to be able to make it on the 6th good okay thank you all right the other thing i want to tell you is i've been thinking about the committees and i'd like your approval to to do a couple of

155things one is i'd like finance cip building and grounds to be a committee and i want that committee to meet at our first meeting of the month on tuesdays at 6 00 p.m i i'm going to get away from the early morning meetings i just think that [Music] i know it's difficult sometimes to get to those but i've been looking at other boards of education and a lot of education to do their committee work right before the board meeting so finance will meet at 6 00 p.m on the first on the second tuesday of the month it'll be finance cip building and grounds policy will then meet on the fourth tuesday of the month right before our board meeting again it's six o'clock uh so we can get over to some of the the uh

156those things it might make it easier for other board members that aren't on that committee that would like to attend you you know you're always welcome to attend but i think the morning meetings were a little bit tougher um we will start the board of education meetings going forward on the 13th at 7 15. that'll give the uh the committees time to work for an hour take a break get a drink go to the ladies men's room whatever they have to do so the board meeting will start in 7 15 we'll publicize that going forward communications is going to be disbanded the reason why communication is going to be disbanded is because we have a communications director that we're hoping to hire in um in september in the next few weeks in september and the

157board will be able to provide that person with feedback and information they may attend a meeting or time but i don't think we need a committee anymore so that's one less committee that we have i've talked to felicia about it she's in favor of it the board will help get the information he has to get out to the public through the new part-time communications director any questions on that any concerns any disagreement finance is which tuesday finance will be the first tuesday because that way in that morning if there's anything has to be brought to the board then that after that meeting they can do it right from their update and then the policy is on september 27th policy will be on um yeah the fourth tuesday of the month we meet on the second

158and the fourth tuesday this is four so on the second tuesday is going to be uh finance building and grounds cip on the fourth will be uh policy and curriculum will go on as is as they normally do because that's a meeting that needs to take place during school time because you have teachers you have students so curriculum you're on you keep going we're gonna john and i are gonna talk probably try and set up a morning consistency is good if you can if you can set it and hold it that way people that like to join they can do that yeah okay i wanted also a compliment on on the mural at cms it's just the pictures are phenomenal i can't wait to walk over there and see it live but just trying to

159get over there to see it it really is something that's beautiful at the meeting that we went to on thursday the cape workshop i'd like everybody to write this down edsightconnecticut.gov connecticut.gov site connecticut ct edsitect.gov edsite is a report card on every district every school system in the state and you can look at look it up by our district you can look it up by school what the report card is on the state unfortunately they only are up to 2020 so you'll see where we are relative to 2020 they're hoping to have 2021 done before the end of the year so right now this state's always lagging behind but eggsite.gov also has a lot of good information in it that you may want to look at for safety health things that board members might be

160interested in uh as we go forward so really that's uh that's my report and that's it any questions did you say that it was edsightconnecticus.gov yeah inside ct.gov and it's and it's actually edsite.cp.gov thank you insight.gov i can provide support for folks too as necessary for them as well okay we reference this regularly okay yeah it's pretty cool it's a cool site we have a technology committee i know that's more district-wide but we do not have a technology do you see a need for technology what do we have that is technology we're a technology strategic planning committee we are we are going to go through a strategic planning process with the new superintendent it doesn't make sense to do it right now so we are overdue on a strategic plan so we will have that

161we're on communication can we think about what committee would like to do oh yeah yes yeah yes so i i need that that's the other thing i think it'll lend more support to the other two committees so our other three actually so thank you okay anything else yeah i know it's like just one minute uh sure tim o'donnell long-time social studies teacher time coach has given up coaching after 20 years probably coached 40 or 50 teams in his 20 years he's given it up he was the connecticut state track and field coach of the year and he was a finalist for the national back and field coach of the year he didn't know his final story and i just want everybody to know that maybe he's the kind of person we want to invite to

162a board meeting just to say did a phenomenal job with a million kids over 20 years and a couple years he coached three seasons and almost every year he coached too moved on i think i think that's a great idea um maybe this is some certificate or something we could love to honor them for that yeah [Music] okay uh we just have a few more things to go and then we're going to go into executive session so uh the consent agenda you have a motion consent agenda please joe thank you thank you erica first and second uh any discussion on the consent agenda has its changes and what you'll be what you're voting on is the uh resignation of the four staff members listed well that's not separate that's in the consent yes it's the

163approval of minutes and the uh the approval of the examinations okay so i wasn't clear so approval of the minutes from 2621 and the resignations any questions okay all those in favor i appreciate good unanimous thank you and can i have a motion on the first reading of the student and family engagement coordinator job description please thank you uh send me on the first ryan on a second any questions on that it's only a first reading you can certainly bring questions back done all those in favor aye again unanimous thank you okay there's there's an uh i've added board member comments sometimes we go through a meeting maybe there's something like joe i thought that was great did you brought up about tim any any other comments board members want to make concerns issues things

164you want to update us on things you want to need to hear more about or would like us to investigate everybody's good right now so this would be a standing piece of the agenda for you to there's something that you want to add was beautiful okay um with that we're gonna go into executive session um can i have a motion to go into executive session at 7 15 and we are going to include donna john and me donna john and the superintendent will be in executive session everybody else is late so can i have a first on that thank you peggy second i'm joe thank you very much all those in favor so we will go into executive session thank you