001Mr. Grippo here. Dr. Harrian here. Thank you. We have the pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Absolutely. Wouldn't be the same without you. Uh not seeing anything anyone from the audience that would like to speak. All right, we have a review for a first read reading of 5114 suspension and expulsion process. Thank you. So um this policy the only change here um is because of the change in the bullying definition you have to scoot all the way to page J. 42 pages. Wow. And it uh number 32 is the old definition of bullying which because the legal definition of bullying has changed that's stricken in this much much briefer version bullying means unwanted
002and aggressive behavior among children in grades K to 12 inclusive that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. That's just real or receive this uh pre in front. No person e r So we can't change that at all. That's the legal definition. It's very broad and very just We'll get to more of that in the next Okay. part of the show. Cool. So, seems like a very low bar for the term that's generally accepted as serious. Yeah. You know, I think that's what it's I think they're trying to destigmatize it a little bit like not quote why is it more serious than other things like you know coming up and punching somebody in the face. Is that more or less serious if it doesn't meet the bullying thing? I mean, you know, uh, somebody who
003assaults somebody else. I don't know. I think that's just the conversation. Um, I wasn't in the room when the decision was made to change. It wasn't Well, this is the type of thing that was a a law that was signed by the governor. This law has changed, I want to say it's 19 times over the years. Yeah. I mean, you guys who've been on the policy committee for many, many years have seen this many, many times um almost as much as the high school graduation requirements. It feels like it's uh this is one that is constantly revisited and we're going to dive into it in a at a much deeper level in the second reading of the bullying policy, which is next. So, if there aren't any questions on that, I guess we could jump
004right into that conversation if you'd like. Let's move on. You guys good? Yeah. Okay. So, this is the aforementioned um updated bullying policy. That's the school climate. School climate. Yeah. School climate policy which covers the bullying piece. But the um we were required We are required, every school system in Connecticut is required to adopt the school climate policy that aligns with the law by July 1st basically for the next school year. Um so this um policy take you through it basically provides 18 definitions. Um, Adam, you were asking about like what's the bar and stuff. The the definitions start to get at some of that, but really the definitions are much more focused on what is a positive school climate. It's recognizing that um, and it's something that frankly I've uh, believed for many years
005that punishment uh, alone does not do away with bullying. you know, if punishment was the most effective deterrent to bad behavior, prisons would be wicked successful. Um, we've never had recidivism, anything like that. And, uh, alternatively, the focus is on creating a positive school climate and what steps should be taken by a school community to ensure the development of a positive school climate. many of these things are things that uh we're currently required to do. Um it just provides stronger guidance I think around it than it has in the past. So you know things like the definition of a positive sustained school climate um has never been there and and this is where we would start with our um you know required school climate committees. Um it defines social emotional learning for example and emotional
006intelligence uh two terms that in recent years have been clouded by really what does that mean and so I think it's helpful that that is defined here you see number five that definition of bullying again real or perceived not even received power balance but here it's legitimately perceived power imbalance um what is the school environment define cyber bull bullying. It's uh clear to explicitly identify teen dating violence which um thankfully is infrequent but important to address. Uh you know all these different ways by which kids communicate with each other in which bullying could be executed. the school climate improvement plan. I'm sure you guys are familiar with these practices because we do talk about things like restorative practice on a regular basis. Um, so where do these definitions all come from? They came from the
007state. They're legislative definitions. Okay, great. Yeah. So, school climate Connecticut school climate policy. Um, so is that I'm sorry. Go ahead. Like the state department of education legislator. Legislative. The legislator. Yeah. Yeah. And um it's a reference to the social emotional and school climate advisory collaborative uh which was designed from the Connecticut statutes. Um that basically it's a cycle. It's almost like our curriculum review cycle where there's planning and preparation, evaluation, uh act action planning around that and then implementation and then you know those are four key elements of of designing the plan. these uh people like the school employee, school community are relevant because you'll see eventually it talks about who has to be on the committee. I do have one outstanding question here that I've had a couple of different people try and
008answer before I had to pay for an answer. Um and I'll get to that momentarily, but we're we're getting close. um defines what challenging behavior is, evidence-based practices, all these things are part of what's required within the plan. Um so that's why they're all defined here. Um so this is this is the various like this is the hierarchy of roles. So it starts with in essence a district-wide school climate coordinator which we already have uh that's Marlene and um the you know this person's appointed by the superintendent uh and they are responsible for ensuring the development of uh individual school building plans and they're the kind of the pivot person. Um they track the data and complaints and um ultimately they support the identification of strategies to improve climate um and propose recommendations for revisions
009to the plan. Um and they assist with the completion of the school climate survey which we happen to be doing right now. Now, if you recall, the board just approved that at the last meeting and we're in the process of administering that right now. Then you have so that's the district uh school climate coordinator. Um I wish they called it district because they it can be confusing between school climate coordinator and school climate specialist. The school climate specialist is the pivot person at the building level who works to identify um who is on that committee. Um they have to um do a lot of the same things that the district-wide person does, but it's just at a a more granular level at the at the building. Is it the principal or is it doesn't have
010to be could be an assistant principal. Um I mean in our district it's pretty much the principal or assistant principal. Okay. School climate committee. Basically it's got to be a certified person who's been trained in um restorative practices and u you know the elements of the plan. And so it could be more broad than that but we do a lot of training with our admin team. So they're well positioned to facilitate this. Not to mention, they're often, you know, involved in the investigations and stuff. So I think it's better to be more attuned to what the uh what the uh actual plan is. So the school climate committee, the specialist pulls together this committee. it's with the uh district coordinator can provide support there but really it's the the building based committee to you know
011review the data uh develop strategies maybe plan PD um run special programming for students things like that so the school climate specialist is part of the building committee that's the person coordinating at the building level it's a teacher not selected by the building administration or anybody like that, but selected by the union. It's um a demographically and developmentally appropriate group of students to serve on that committee. Um you may not I mean at the elementary grades you're probably not going to have a kindergarter sitting on that committee, but it may be appropriate for us to have some sixth graders on that committee. um families. So, uh optimally we'd have some parents involved and at least two members of the school community. So, school community is designed in the defined in the definitions. So, we have
012to pull in basically additional members of the school team. So, it's a reasonably sized group there at that point. Um, and it's annually reviewed and approved by the school climate specialist um, in coordination with the school climate coordinator. So, it's annually approved by the building based person in coordination with the district person. What they're responsible every building will have one. Correct. Yeah. Why is a system under they want it to be capitalized? I was going to say it's probably not capitalized. Um, so they're going to, this is where I was telling you there's a question that I have. So here it says assisting the development annual scheduling which it it must mean like annual scheduling of the meetings um and administration of the school climate survey and reviewing the school climate survey data. Um you
013they they use the data to identify strengths and challenges to improve. Um they assist in the implementation of school climate improvement plan and recommending any improvements or revisions to the plan, advising on strategies to approve school climate like I was just talking about. Basically, they're reviewing the data. They're reviewing the um the reports. They're reviewing how things went with PD and trying to plan strategies that support a positive school climate. But we also have students involved in this. Yes. Okay. Mhm. Which, you know, I think that makes sense if particularly, you know, sixth graders on up. Yeah. Um now, didn't school climate also report the curriculum? They do provide reports to curriculum. They're not required to do so under the law, but we have. Right. No, I mean that that's been our general practice. Correct.
014Yeah. Yeah. So, I just like they do the reports, but then it doesn't say who they report to at the building. At the building level, they report to the uh district school climate uh coordinator. Okay. And those reports go on our website. They're there now. But does the um is our general practice was that the was it the district coordinator then would do a rollup report for the board? Um not well yeah the rollup report frankly is all of the individual building reports typically. Yeah. Um and we do have that on our on our website and we do report to the curriculum committee was shared out at the board level. Um yeah, generally so. Um so th this is where I like it. It says here um annual scheduling and administration of the school climate
015survey. I I feel like this is probably like a hard stop on annual scheduling of meetings maybe or it could have used some clarity because here it says the survey school year commencing 2025 and bianually thereafter. So trying to just confirm like this is so explicit that when it says bianually thereafter that the survey must be every two years but there's nothing prohibit prohibiting us from doing it more frequently. Um but we have to do it at least every two years. is only that little odd question where it says annually schedule and that makes me I've asked a few people actually have a problem with what annually administering because like you said we can but we don't and it's not I mean this isn't you know the SAT it's pretty quick you know you guys
016saw the survey last month well let's call a couple weeks ago. It's not like we're not asking the world of people to do this. So, we do want to make sure that it gets done like it's hard to I think every parents years is is really appropriate every two years. Yeah. Which is the survey that there were general questions but then there were writing answers. That was the old um climate survey. So, we are not administering that one anymore because that was probably the most telling. Yeah. Because you can answer the question, but it's the comments after where you could really find out what's going on. Right. The board just um approved the one that the state put out for the initial survey, which doesn't include open-ended responses, which I mean again can always be
017revisited. I believe I mean they didn't mandate quote the survey they you just have to have a survey. So I think in the initial form we did a uniform wish I had that realization a lot sooner. Yeah I would have mentioned it. So I think you know that's something that can be explored moving forward. Um I think with the transition we just I wasn't at that curriculum committee meeting but Yeah. Um I think we just went with the boiler plate one that the state issued um because that was an update from the old one. Um so uh this is some one of my phone friends on the on the survey question. So let's see if they know. No, sorry for the confusion. Let me see if I can get the answer. So um but I'm
018pretty sure it means bianually administer the survey annually do the scheduling. This is the second reading. So certainly by the third reading I'll have that information for you confirmed. Um at worst I'll just go back and read the state statute over it. Um so the school climate specialist for each school in collaboration with the coordinator develops and updates as necessary the improvement plan based on the results of the survey and whatever data they deem relevant. Plan is then submitted to the coordinator for review on and approval on or before the end of the you know calendar year each fall. um then made available to members of the school community uh and which we do. We put that on our website now. It's available on our curriculum page. Districts may uh place the plans into their
019district and school improvement plans. And that's basically what we do. We roll up like we were just talking about the the plans. Here's where it gets a little more directive in terms of planning and what we have to deliver. So for this current school year, God bless you, we had to start and annually thereafter, we had to um provide we were districts were required to provide some form of professional development regarding social emotional learning, school climate, culture, restorative practices. Now we've been doing that since 2017. Probably when I became superintendent in 16, we adopted as a goal. We've been doing that ever since. I know some of that like the restorative practices stuff probably even predates 2016. So we we're ahead of that. We're evolving in that. So as you guys know, we approved the
020past survey, the people attitude about self at school survey um and started administering that late last year and we've been doing a lot of training with our staff around that. What is it telling us? What interventions do we then create? that would be something else that would fold into the the climate survey group and we are doing that now. Um so we've evolved with the times but I think we got a real jump on all this many years ago. Um including up to you know the pass survey last year better better information supports better planning. So we do have to provide training to people um funding. It indicates that the district shall in its discretion allocate sufficient funding to satisfy the requirements of the policy. Right. Um so if you feel like it, you can
021fund it is basically what that says. But you know certainly the board and the central office team um has prioritized this sort of training is one of our goals. So um we have prioritized that it has been funded in Cheshure for many years. Um so uh we have to adopt and allocate adequate resources to support the plan adhere to the regulations in public act and then it identifies the school climate standards. Um we have to adopt policies that promote a a sound environment and um support you know re-engage disengaged students and uh school communities practices are identified. I think what in these um standards it's it's probably going to modify to a degree what those plans look like. they'll probably be a little bit better defined to these standards um or at least identified and
022how how do we tie back what we're doing to meeting these standards and in future plans where it may not have had that level of of detail. So there's a lot here. Um it then goes into the regulation component which is the uh excuse me this is still still the policy I think is the forms. Yeah. And then it gets to the regulation I think is a separate separate. Yeah. Yeah. So this is still policy. So this is the boiler plate form and I don't know that this won't change at all. Um but this does reflect the um the uh the legislation and the policy. So basically an individual who submits this form either you could do it by name or anonymously. But uh the per if you do it um you know by and
023you name yourself then we have to return uh a response notification form describing the action steps taken within three school days after the assessment has been completed. So it may take you more than three days, three school days to do an investigation depending on the sophistication of the issue. Um but once that's completed, we need to report back within three school days. So again, the the school climate specialist assesses the facts in that last paragraph before the red um of the challenging behavior in incident and completes the response processes notification form. This replaces our current forms. It does. Yeah. For next school year. Yep. And you can see, I'm sure Adam jumped ahead to look at the detail on these forms. Um, so who fills out these forms? The person making the complaint. Now, if
024it's a student, you know, they don't mean I worry that they wouldn't have the stamina to complete this form to be honest with you. like at what point do they say ah it's not worth it. Right? So, you know, it is something we're sensitive to and want to make sure that our counselors, administrators are are coaching kids about, you know, we can help you fill this out. You know, as an adult, some adults would check out on this one. I think it's very interesting actually. It's not honestly it it looks more daunting than it is to be honest. It was just because of the check boxes and everything, but it's not it's not that hard to complete, but it does look fairly daunting. So, we've talked about like how do we make sure kids um
025are supported if they are if there's an issue that they want to bring forward to be able to complete this. And then who does the investigation for? the it's going to be an administrator. So, we don't have Oh, it says to be completed by the school climate specialist. Yeah, the school climate specialist, you know, it could be the principal as well, but um or if it's an assistant principal, you know, any administrator can engage in those um investigations. I'm curious when we get to uh the investigation. Yeah. So, when we get down to bullying being more important or a higher I would I don't think that they would say that it's higher. Um it may actually be uh I haven't looked, but is it potentially even alphabetical? So, well, no, it's I see a salt.
026So these are all like I'm just talking about bullying and that's the first thing that you know these are all things that we have to be considerate of. Yeah. Because if it's a protected class there are different legal standards for that um investigation than there are for a bullying investigation than there are for an assault investigation. Yeah. So this uh title N is different. Um so administratively um this is kind of where you've all seen like the decision trees. Um and usually in a decision tree you might go left or go right. Yep. here. You can go left and right and center too, by the way, depending on the behavior and the situation. So, um, administrator's jobs aren't easy. Uh, and this I think if I were going to submit one exhibit to testify to
027that fact, it'd be this. Um, because you need to know what all these things are and be able to say, "Yeah, it meets that criteria or it does not." Um, which is why we bring in attorneys to provide professional development over the summer each year because it'd be one thing if these things were static and always remain the same, but they evolved too. Um, you guys know we just flip back our old Title N, right? So like given the um dynamic nature of of all these different definitions uh that's where it says you know are you providing the resources to support the community in in being able to follow this plan. I would argue yeah that sort of training is mission critical so that our administrators don't make a mistake that could end up in
028court or OCR or something. So, do we have a title n person? Yeah. Within district Robin Robin and Carrie is our title N coordinator. So, that's just one other person that who's sort of up to date on them. Correct. Yeah. So, oftentimes these things get tricky. I I said to you before like I'll share the data of the number of students per central office administrator and I was like why is that relevant? I'm not teaching any kids, but this is why it's relevant because these questions come up and you know they call us. Um they'll call me, they'll call Marlene, they'll call Robin um to try and answer these questions and guide what can be pretty tricky investigations sometimes. And uh you know I think this this chart and again this is only something that
029at least initially that the uh investigator sees uh is pretty telling about the decisions that you have to go through uh on a high pace and pressure scenario where you want to get this uh kind of adjudicated as quickly as you can to support everybody involved. whether the kid was um you know a victim or a perpetrator, you want to address it as quickly as you can and or maybe falsely accused or maybe it's just an issue we got to resolve but it's not any of this, you know. So, um this is what our administrators are going to be working through. And to be honest with you, they do it now. It's just not concise like this. You don't see it all in one place like this usually. So now that we have three fairly
030detailed forms. Yes. It says all over the form for you know about FURPA. Yeah. Doesn't say anything about FOYA. Sure. FURPO would trump FOYA. So it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. So you can't you can't um request your friend's kids records. Right. Right. that FOYA doesn't address that. FOYA is a public records act and by definition student records including discipline are not a public record. They're these are considered discipline work. Correct. Yeah. So they wouldn't be. However, and I think this is where it's been hung up in the legislature this year. If you get to the last part where you have to report out the notification. Yeah. You know, I think this is going to probably frustrate more people than it now you're getting a watered down sort of generalized. Yes. Yeah. What the hell is this
031is what I'm going to get. I know as a as a parent, you know, I'm going to hear a parent say that to me like, you just told me nothing. Well, you know, legally, I can't tell you anything specific to that child. Maybe I can give you generalities, but I can't I mean I can give you the safety plan for your child if they're the victim. Um, so it is I think this is the one where most educators bristle because I think I think the intention here is great. Like a lot of legislation, the execution rubs up really closely to Burpa and can't really put anything on this form meaningful, which is going to be a waste of our time and aggravate parents. So, you know what? I'll have conversations with parents certainly when I
032was a principal. I used to do it all the time or assistant principal even about you know you can't disclose what the discipline was but let me tell you about like what might typically happen in these situations and you know again every situation is different um but you know we have addressed it and usually you can develop a rapport with the parent where um there's a trust until they have a reason not to trust you and I think that's you know where a lot of our administrators rely on that because this isn't going to tell you anything. But what this does tell the parent and why it's important is it tells them that it's being addressed or it has been addressed except when you get that and it really doesn't. So it's not that Yeah.
033But it's not that silence like Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think there's ever that silence anything that that would be No, we you know I think our administrative team works really hard to No, but this assures that that is happening. Yeah. You know, my my dad was a cop and he would always tell me Humpty Dumpty was pushed and you know it's like that that basic lack of faith in society and we have plenty of parents who um subscribe to that mentality. So, it's like, you know, I didn't see this child stoned on the town green. You didn't do anything. Um, and so you have to have conversations and even if you put that in writing, um, you know, I didn't see it or this kid was in school two days, you know, and this
034is, it's hard. And so I think a lot of our communication with the uh people who report these concerns is is very careful, nuanced, doesn't violate for a public, but tries to give a family the assurance. And again, like they usually just want it to stop. Sometimes they want the eye for the eye, but you know, they want it to stop and you can assure them. Sometimes kids like they do the same, you know, bad behavior or poor decision again and that's where parents and educators frankly get pretty frustrated and you have to try a different approach at that point. But this is the what the state has defined is the most contemporary approach and we're required to adopt this for July 1 for the next school year. If I receive this form, right? Yep.
035Summarizing what happened. Okay. That can I sue to get the underlying forms? Um, you can sue all you want. You know, it doesn't mean you we can furpa does furpa protect that. Yeah. And because assault is on here and other things that a person can be arrested for. Sure. When if there's a criminal investigation, do those documents become part of the investigation or is the investigation start over? Do you pretend like that wasn't there and then when the police take over, is it a new thing? So, because it's Furpa, I'll tell you what typically happens is that it's a new thing that the police are going to do their own investigation and our documents are still FURPA protected. um Mark is a former uh youth officer or uh officer Khan is our SRO. They're not
036going to come to me and say, "Hey, I know you just did this investigate. You mind?" That that doesn't hold up in court. So, um they don't. In order for it to be valid in court, the police have to do it themselves. They have to start over. Yes. But if if but the complaint's coming from the school. Yeah. The complaint could come from the school. Rarely it does. more often than it comes from the parent. But my butt was if this goes and Mark brings that to a prosecutor, he might try and subpoena records, but at that point we probably still argue that they're forputed unless there was some sort of overarching legal reason. That might be the only time that the court could um make a decision that indicates no, this is not for
037protected record. But I've never seen that. Uh, and if anything, we've been required to produce documents that are heavily redacted. I mean, I've had subpoenas. I have one now for a student record of a graduate, you know, who's, you know, nothing violent or anything, but just an incident. And, um, you know, you have to comply with those subpoenas, but only when you're directed by the court to do so. But the Treasure Police is never going to come. I've never had that. I don't ever expect to have it where they're going to come to us and say, "Hey, give me give me that investigation you have." They might say, "We need to look at, you know, a video or something." Um, and they'll draw their own conclusions from that. Um, but that's it. So then there
038is So I mean, the word assault is on our forums. Yes. That's a legal term for a criminal like a potential criminal act. Yeah. And I don't know that. And so it's like did assault occur? Well, is it assault if no one presses charges? Like what? Like is that is it just a physical confrontation? You know what I mean? Like Yeah. Yeah. Just just to sort of point it out because we can't really change it. I'm pretty sure they don't, you know, I'm pretty sure they don't address assault in the definitions either, by the way, because you're right, that is a a legal term because it says there is active physical violence there as well. And and honestly, from the from the assault piece, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, you probably remember better
039than me. Assault is a verbal attack where battery is more isn't that the physical assault in Connecticut's going to be uh would attempt to cause injury or causes such injury. You've hurt my feelings before though Mark ugly assaults. So that's a physical assault. Yeah, that would be what's a battery in Connecticut? No. So Connecticut law combine the two. So, it was redundant. I don't I don't know. Like, you know, we're not I I think um these get wicked tricky. They do. Sometimes they get very very sophisticated. um where you start dancing around these terms and you and you read the situation and sometimes um you know I'll get a call on this and we'll weigh all the circumstances in this situation the ages of the kids the the stakes in the situation the whole nine
040yards and say you know what let's consult with the attorney on this one which is why the support services line looks the way it does when see forms like this that you know, you know, I can consult with the attorney now for $300 an hour or I can pay them for 20 hours later when we get sued for something. So those are the sort of decisions that we weigh in and try and um air on the side of of being prudent and certainly trying to stop anything before it escalates and gets worse. It is somewhat bothersome that we have assault, we have physical violence, but we don't have the definitions. Yeah. But if it's you know what this is the policy committee guy for CABE, so I'm going to step out for a second. I'm
041asking about assault, too. Well, it says though, was this a verified assault? Wouldn't that have to be verified by the police? I, you know, I think that the principal could probably look at a video and say, you know, student A punched student B and that's assault. But I don't think that that can be considered a verified. It depends on because what the state is going to define is verifiable. It's a legal definition. So and we don't and this the policy doesn't have those definitions, right? So that verified mean like in my mind that means that means that they've pressed charges with the we have verified teen dating violence defined but we don't have assault or physical violence. I think those need to Well, physical violence should be Well, then I guess we have to write
042to our legislature. Yeah. Seriously, this is their law. Yeah, we had a perfectly good one, didn't we, though? Yeah, it was very good. I do say so myself. The regulation that's this this one page the regulation. Yes. Which is part of the same thing. Yes. A regulation to consider. This is guidance from the Connecticut. Oh to consider. We're considering this. Uh, I'll take this time. Yeah. I'm glad he's having a good time. Fun conversation. Okay, sorry for that pause, but um so you know couple of points that Jody made was one, you know, he believes that the interpretation is accurate, but the language here uh around the administration of surveys is verbatim from the statute. So the first piece where it says the committee will review the surveys um annually scheduled annually um is what
043the statutory language is as the fact that it says they'll be administered bianually. So he thinks like you know bad grammar that it's just yeah poorly written uh legislation. It's not, but he believes that the intent certainly was. And these have been reviewed um by Tom Mooney and Shipment and Goodwin as well as Cabe as well as CAPS. Um and I know like there were some issues brought up by Tom and by CAPS like this form which is why and in the third form more so, but um which is why there was still some question about this session. Will they address any of that? And it doesn't seem like they're going to. They have other issues that they're focused on. But um I know that uh Tom Mooney who who literally wrote the Connecticut law
044uh education law book um has reviewed this and uh I said that so you know what I just said was we when we run into real sticky ones like are we going to label this assault that we're better off calling the attorney for one hour and then paying for 10 hours later. And his response was, I had Tom Mooney tell me that several times that, you know, when you run into something like you do sometimes, um, it's not all the time, but sometimes. And we just kind of was like, before you fill it out, oh yeah, put put ink on it like that. Yeah. Let's do this in pencil before we uh figure out what we're going to do. So, that's that's the gist of what we're supposed to adopt. And given the frequency with
045which this law has changed in the last decade, don't be shocked if you know we're sitting here next year processing version 2.0 of this edition. Any other questions that I can phone a friend on or we can just discuss? You know, my concern was that they gave us a list of definitions, but nothing about assault, physical violence, and you know, it's a very open ending. I think that's worth tracking down with the attorney to say, you know, under what, you know, when we'll I think we'll try and prioritize that for our training uh over the summer because pretty much do this annually. Um, I haven't done it in a couple years because of the shifts, but um, I think it's fair to say, explain to me under what conditions we would be identifying something as
046an assault. Um, because I can't verify something verified and I can think of one to be maybe, you know, in the last few years. And how's that different from physical violence, right? Yeah. So, I mean, even if you observe something that looks like assault, like someone filmed a fight at school, it doesn't become assault till someone presses charges, right? Well, I mean, if you're if you're if you're operating on the um on the basis that only only assault only a police officer could identify assault. You know, for me, I'm going to call it a fight. I'm gonna call it an attack maybe. Yeah. Um, you know, I I don't know. I think that's probably worth asking the attorney given that it's on some police action somewhere. Given that it's on our form for next year
047and we do refer to the police sometimes um different things, drugs, weapons, alcohol. They're just that it's automatically. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. I think I think they're the only ones that can verify it being an assault. Yeah. So, we'll follow up with that for the training piece. Um, you know, what constitutes assault? [Music] Well, and the physical violence because the physical violence like pushing each other is like a little shoving match. Yeah. Pushed into a locker. Is that physical violence? You know what I mean? Like is that an assault? You heard his back when he hit the hit the locker, right? Yeah. Or she lost lost their balance. Took a knob to the head there, you know, those high locker things or whatever. You never know. Get wild out there. I'll never forget when I was
048high school principal, the uh it's probably like 4:30 in the afternoon and the custodian came to my door and so we got a problem with a locker. All right. The lockers have pre-drilled holes in them for the old combination locks that we would put in screwed in. But we didn't do that. We gave them padlocks and the kid stuck his finger through the hole and couldn't get it out. Ah, we' call the jaws of life. Cut the lock. If you want to see the locker, those old school lockers would stop a train. And so Jaws of Life to get the kid I'll never forget watching the boy like this where this massive thing is trying to cut the the locker off his hand. There's a bird walk for you. I think that's our segue. Yeah,
049we don't do that. Yeah. Um Okay. Any other uh questions, concerns on this one before we move on to the regulations? Got lots of questions on that. Yeah, we may not be able to answer. Um, so the regulation just kind of outlines a a tiered response system. It's a regulation to consider. Um, well, regulation we don't really it's up to you, right? Yeah. And this is just something that we're talking about. Um, a tiered response, you know, I I think progressive discipline generally makes sense. Um, but I've never been a big fan of saying it has to be first response we do this, second response we do this because context matters. Circumstances matter. And so I just share this with you because we are looking at some of the regulation around this and when we
050resolve that I'll I'll kick it back to you just so you can see what it is. I mean, this is pretty serious stuff what they're talking about in A, B, and C. And then they're they're saying that we you could potentially allow it to happen more than three times before a kid is expelled or again, whatever. I think context matters. You know, the way I mean, that's pretty serious. Clearing classroom, physical violence. Uh, yeah. I mean, that's like stuff that can show up on the news. If Sparky's, you know, a first grader throwing a chair or kicking a chair around the room because they're throwing a tantrum and I clear the room, that's different than Cletus, who's an 18-year-old senior kicking a chair around the room. Well, yeah, I was going to ask about like
051a mental health uh situation or, you know, a few years ago we were talking about um restraint, right? Right. Like that kind of stuff. We still engage. Yeah. So, like I to keep kids safe from hurting themselves or others um on occasion. Uh not something that happens frequently, but when necessary. Uh and typically it's with students who have um significant developmental disabilities um who aren't really doing it as a conscious act per se, um but more as a response to a stimulus. Uh so yeah, we're in the process of reviewing that. So I'm sharing that with you. Um, so is this meant for general ed students because there's a whole different set of things that we were just talking about there. Yeah. I think that's why we want to probably tailor this a little bit
052differently. Yeah. Um, and generalize it a bit more and and be conscious of the fact that context matters. Um, so that's why we want to take another look at it. Just so you know, this is more of a This is what we were getting. This is what we were getting. Yeah. And we will. The second page is talked about PPTs. Yeah. You can overregulate as far as I'm concerned. What? You don't need You can put too much down in life. Yes. And then the third If it ties your hands, this is exciting. Yes. This is the third and exciting final reading. um of this iteration. Now um this is in essence what we've doing now. We've really focused on enforcement of this. I think there's still room for growth there, but we are way better
053than we were. And I say I would say at the high school level, uh the students are way better than they were, but it's an ongoing effort uh to try and police that. Middle school are night and day, and they've been great. Um because I mean it's it's a smaller building. There are um the students are developmentally in a different place than our high school kids are. And uh you know both I want to give credit to both faculties who are trying um to really clamp down on the use of cell phones throughout the day and access to cell phones and and like I said things have really improved. Um, that being said, you know, who knows in the next legislative session. I think that this ship miss slipped past out of town for this
054session, but you know, there has been talk about outright cell phone bans in school. Um, which as you might recall from our surveys that we did of parents may not be super well received, but especially at the high school level. So, who knows? I think it took time for uh public sentiment to turn on smoking and other things that we know aren't really great for kids or even adults. So maybe that'll change too. I'll tell you this is u good timing. So I know your staff and teachers just did some AI training. Yep. And I recently took some AI training and it blew my mind. It's insane as to what you can do with this now with with if you just have an AI prompt, you know, and to the kind of work that you
055can do, never mind if you had a laptop. And so I I think that's worth discussing too. And you know, um I guess shameless promo here. Mark Benigny and the people in central office in Meridan and I just wrote a book on like social media. Uh and Mark has real strong feelings that phones should be put into school, give them to all the kids and teach them how to use it responsibility responsibly. I don't share that perspective necessarily, so it's pretty interesting to hear us debate each other on this fact. But I will acknowledge that the AI technology is rapidly advancing what our and has to be what part of what we consider um when we're educating kids to be successful at the next level. But when we talk to our staff, and the more
056I use it, it's much better leveraged when you have a strong background knowledge of what you're doing to be able to c catch mistakes and adjust things because there are hallucinations there. There is bad info that gets cranked out of AI, even the most advanced today that we have. And of course that's going to evolve and get better. But you know, you can't introduce it too early is my point. If you don't know or you and I if I I asked it once to write a letter to a parent that had a legal subject matter and I didn't give the details of the individual or anything like that, but I I detailed the circumstances because I was knowledgeable about that. And I said, "Write a letter to a parent and give me the legal citations."
057And I read it and I was like, "Wow, this is amazing. This is so good." And then you look up the case. And then I gave it to Floyd. He's like, "Yeah, letter looks great, but where the heck did you get those legal references?" Cuz they're all wrong. It doesn't work. So it doesn't work as well. The point is even adults even adults like if you don't have a strong knowledge of the content you're to evaluate the quality of what gets pumped out you're dealing garbage in garbage out and and so I think we really need to make sure kids are well educated in the content to best be able to leverage the AI but we also need them especially juniors and seniors to learn how to best leverage AI but but fifth graders you
058use AI Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, no. Because what I learned by just using it in the class I took is that the more good information you can give it while you're formulating its task, the better the product you'll get, right? You know, and that way and the more you know, then you can verify and then you're like, "Wow, that's really good." Or, "No, it's not." You know? Yeah. But like I consider myself an expert on Jeff Solen. And it I asked it to write me something about Jeff Solen before like before I really knew anything. This is probably going back a year about prompts and things like that. And wow, it sounded great, but it was so superficial, right? And so not really great details. And the a lot of the
059details it gave were wrong. Like it it had me as a hockey player, but I was a black guy from Canada. Both of those things are not accurate. you know, literally pulled in the Anson Carter, uh, right? Like I guess so. I don't know. But I think there's a guy with the same last name who was a hockey coach, former player, uh, black guy in Canada who started this, you know, program for, uh, African-American kids and I guess African Canadian kids in, uh, Canada. Canada is a North America. Yeah, I guess North America. But um so is I mean the point is like you really have to know the content to pump in the best. Yeah. But like how like be a great time saver if you know what you're doing or it's a great
060it's a great tool to polish what's already there and what right but like remember when calculators were like exactly people didn't trust calculator. You have to know, you have to have an idea of what the answer is before you go plugging it in and just taking it at face value, whatever it gives you. Or 20 years ago, there was kind of know what you're what you're expecting. This woman, Carol Loots, was the reading guru at Dodd Middle School like 20 years ago. She since passed, bless her. But um I was a young kid, you know, assistant principal and I made the mistake of saying to her, "Do you think that like digital devices will ever replace real textbooks?" You would have thought like I like I ripped her soul out. She was going to stab
061me. But like you know that's that that's kind of happening to a degree you know that that digital and so there is an evolution to this stuff and we have to we're not going to shun our our kids from it but we have to figure out what's the best way to best max leverage it for our kids maximize what they get out of it. And so we're in that process of trying to figure that out now. Yeah. Well, we're working with the adults first because until they really know and and help them understand the power of it and break down that fear of it that it's just a cheating tool. Well, it could be. Um, I mean, I run into this with teaching foreign language. Yeah. You know, because they're using translator tools. Sure. Up
062the yin-yang. And there are good times to use a translator tool, right? But if you're doing all your homework assignments by trying guess what the answer is in English and then running it through a translator tool, you're you're not learning the language because you're not picking up. They don't understand. But that's part of it now. It's teaching them to respond. But you cannot come down and say can't use the translator tool ever. number one because they they do use it. So you've got to say, "So here's where it go steers you wrong. Here's when it's really useful, right?" Yeah. Just having They bring it up all the time of being uh anasticized on the anesthetized on the surgery table and hearing the doctor go, "Hey Google, how do I remove an appendix? This is checking
063out." Something terrible. Something like that. Like this is not a time for AI. Check it out. Anyway, all right. So, all that being said, we've taken several looks at this uh policy and had it on pause while we did surveys and um I'll certainly entertain question New Yorker cartoon. Exactly. So, uh and I think we discussed this at the last meeting. I think you and your staff because that's how we ended up with the slides. At least how I ended up with the slides. you guys are looking at an AI specific policy for next year or a cadence or we're working on that. Um like I said, you know, we've done a lot we've done more focus on PD for staff, but we have um a strategic planning group of teachers and um Marlene facilitates
064that AI piece of it. We're focused on um you know, what does this ultimately look like for our classrooms and for our kids. So yeah, we are working on that. Great. So we're going to send this for a third and final reading and vote on it. Yep. But the idea is going to be with all things tech technology, we're going to be re It'll probably evolve. Yeah. It'll probably evolve. Yeah. But the general theme is personal responsibility for the most part at the sec at the high school level. Yes. Yeah. And and outside of the classroom really? Yeah. you know, in the classroom, put it away. Outside of the classroom, you know, we're trying to teach kids to use, you know, socially acceptable like, can you still do the hoodie earbud thing out in the
065hallway? You could um like, and that's why I say cuz I'll go into classes and I wasn't seeing when I was going into a class, you wouldn't see cell phones out all that much anyway. Um, not that I never have and I still probably always will. I can walk into a superintendent's cabinet meeting and find somebody with a cell phone, I'm sure. But, um, with the hallways like the use is like dramatically different when you walk down the hallway. Even a kid who might have one in will acknowledge you in the hallway now where like two years ago, they're sick of it too, you know, zombie. Like they they're sick of being zombies, too. But I, you know, I think there's a certain safety and comfort in being a zombie, you know, socially, which is
066uh not good. And so I feel good that we've really turned the tide on that. A lot of parent education, a lot of student education. We have kids that have made videos about it for uh freshman orientation and link crew and for kids coming into the high school. So our kids are educating our kids on it. I got to get a copy of that. I'll send it to you. But um you know we've really done a lot of work in that domain and you know I've certainly seen that at the high school. You know that'll be another challenge. You know how um uh principal Gerillo mentioned about uh what was it? Social interactions from sixth grade to seventh grade. Now we'll have like that additional social interaction where they sort of were cut off from
067their devices in school and how that's great. How is that going to translate when they have a little less um restriction on them? How's that going to work? Is it going to be night and day like it was from sixth to seventh grade or is it going to carry over to have better social interaction? And I think that's where we're trying to educate our freshman and our seniors. So I did a book club with our high school kids and all the girls were talking about, man, I wish I knew then what I know now. And so then they ultimately ma made a video about it, right, Mike? Did Did you do that video? Somebody did a video about it because I know um I heard about it the other day. Maybe they're doing the video
068for it. Pure wisdom. That's always very effective. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz these girls, they were definitely motivated like Well, they cuz they've seen it. They've been stung by it. Hurt by it. Yeah. And uh you know, they know it's really hurtful and just it stinks. So they're they're um wanted to do something about it. Give a lot of credit. For legal references, I think Hazel was cool miner, not cool versus I'm pretty sure it's cooler. Ku H. Hazel Wooder 1988. See, there are good uses for AI. You can just talk to your correct sir. Get the right one. First amendment rights of student journalists. Prior restraint. I'm very impressed, Mark, that you knew that uh very legal heavy edition of the policy. It's first first minute. So, it's M E I E R K U H
069O M E I E R E R. They really blew it on that one. See, I I would have got that. I just knew it was it was missed the boat. I feel so much better passing this along. Perfect. Make sure that's that's reflected in the Mark knew the Jeopardy answer to Hazelwood vers. Minutia anyway. Really good at the minutia. And you wouldn't have had to spell it. So, no. Well, I just got the K. You know, I didn't get the rest of it right, but I got the K. Okay. So, are we passing this along? Are we making a motion for this? Do we make a motion to push? All right. 4:30 to go to the full board. To go to the full board. Make a motion. Yeah. I move that we just need
070to motion for the third. The third. Yeah. That uh policy 5131.81 electronic devices uh be sent to the full board for vote for third reading and second. Yeah. Um, Carol, you know how to write. Further discussion. All in favor? Yes. So, there's no, we're not taking any action on We need to remove the others to the second and the first to the first. Yeah. This is so we need to suspension expulsion is going to be first reading. Yeah. For a first reading, we need to move school climate for a second reading. And then because of the we need to um we'll probably lump them both together in our June board meeting. Oh, we have what board meetings do we have left? We have miday where we'll do the second first and second readings and then
071end of June we'll do or mid June, right? We have one in mid June. Then we can do that budget meeting third reading and then the budget meeting. We'll do the um expulsion one. Have a policy committee meeting in between. Okay. 10 second policy committee meeting if we have to virtual. Okay. For a third or we could do it, you know, it's 75 minutes before 25. Yeah. Right. On that morning, enjoy your donut and have a policy meeting and call it a day. Coconut. Don't forget the coconut. There are already in my phone here. All right. So, are we uh So, so you want to make a motion? A motion to move to a first reading policy 5114 suspension and expulsion due process. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? And a motion for 5131.911
072school climate um be moved to for a second meeting. Second discussion on favor. And now there's nothing left but to move for Is that a motion? Motion. Yeah. Second. All in favor? Yeah. We are journ